“There was another spore,” Graham informed him. “Intact. Found in the Philippine mine.” She looked at Serizawa, shaking her head in disbelief. “But we examined it, ran every test for years. You confirmed it for yourself. It was dormant.”

Serizawa understood her skepticism. He had indeed spent years studying the apparently inert egg sac they had recovered from inside the giant skeleton in the Philippines. Unlike the larva that had burst from the other egg sac and made its way to Japan, the organism in the captured spore had displayed no trace of vitality or growth. It had not been absorbing spilled radiation from a nuclear meltdown. By all indications, it had been an unbroken state of stasis or hibernation. And yet…

“Maybe not anymore,” he said.

The horror of this possibility, that they might be dealing with two MUTOs, caused a momentary hush to fall over the CDC. Martinez gulped and even Hampton’s stoic reserve cracked for a moment.

“The spore,” Stenz asked urgently. “Where is it now?”

“It was highly radioactive,” Graham said. “It was disposed of… by the Americans.”

“Where?” Stenz repeated, even more forcefully.

“Where you put your nuclear waste,” Serizawa said flatly. He called their attention back to the map table, where two converging dotted lines extended past the west coast of the North America.

Nevada lay directly in their path.

* * *

A stone marker, alongside a dusty desert road, pointed to the nearby Nevada National Security Site, about sixty-five miles northeast of Las Vegas. For over forty years, the desolate and cratered terrain beyond had been the site of nearly a thousand nuclear bomb tests. Cacti sprouted amidst the sunbaked dunes and gullies. A military convoy sped past the marker, stirring up a cloud of dust. Air Force helicopters flew overhead, keeping pace with the rumbling troop carriers below. Inside the trucks, tense soldiers geared up in anticipation. An assault force donned radiation suits and gas masks. Heavy weaponry was prepped for battle: assault rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, and whatever else might make a dent in a monster. The mood among the soldiers was grim. Everyone on the mission had heard about what had struck Hawaii and had seen some of the on-line footage of the gigantic creatures tearing up Honolulu. They knew they had to be ready for anything.

The convoy quickly reached its destination. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository was the final resting place for more than 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and reprocessing operations all over the country. Dug deep into a barren ridge of volcanic rock, surrounded by acres of restricted federal land, the vast repository was designed to contain the highly toxic materials for at least ten thousand years and possibly longer. In theory, it could withstand earthquakes, the elements, even time itself.

Giant prehistoric monsters, on the other hand, had not been taken into account.