A deep chasm cut across the famed Vegas Strip, where the claws of an enormous beast had gouged the street and sidewalks all the way down to the bedrock. Thousands of displaced and traumatized tourists and casino employees staggered amidst the shattered pavement, while an army of first responders was overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. Water gushed from ruptured pipes. Flames erupted from the ruins of the Strip’s gaudy casinos, hotels, and attractions. New York-New York had been reduced to splinters, its faux Statue of Liberty defaced, its replica Empire State Building obliterated. Across the way, on the other side of Tropicana, the mock medieval turrets and battlements of Excalibur had been torn down by a genuine monster, who had wreaked havoc all along the ravaged boulevard. A half-scale copy of the Eiffel Tower had been snapped in two. Mountains of rubble filled the Venetian’s canals. The Luxor’s great pyramid and matching sphinx were history. It was as though the MUTO was symbolically laying waste to the entire world.

It felt like a prophecy.

* * *

The Saratoga was speeding across the Pacific, making thirty knots, but the crisis had obviously reached America before the carrier and its attached strike group could. In the briefing room, video feeds captured shocking views of the Las Vegas strip being torn apart by the second MUTO, the one that had just broken loose from the Yucca Mountain facility. Soldiers and scientists crowded before the monitors, gaping at this latest threat. Smoke and static obscured the video feeds, making it difficult at first to compare the new MUTO to the immense winged arthropod that had hatched from the cocoon in Japan, but Serizawa managed to make out its appearance.

Instead of six legs plus a pair of wings, the new MUTO had eight limbs in total: two sturdy hind legs, similar to those on the first creature, two sets of elongated middle limbs, and two smaller forearms on its upper thorax. Like the earlier organism, the creature was a chimera that defied ready classification, but, if pressed, Serizawa would have labeled it some manner of gigantic semi-arthropod. Its dark, iridescent exoskeleton, composed of a thick, chitinous material, displayed shades of blue and red. Its backwards-jointed hind legs rested on two squat claws, but its upper limbs ended in hooked talons. A flat, anvil-shaped head boasted glittering red eyes and beak-like jaws.

“You’re telling me this is a female?” Admiral Stenz asked. “Which means these things can procreate?”

“I’m afraid so,” Serizawa said. Sexual dimorphism would explain why two radically different creatures had hatched from identical egg sacs. Such gender-based variation within a single species was not uncommon in nature. “They’ve been communicating.”

Just as Joe Brody tried to warn us, he thought.

“The female remained completely dormant until the male matured,” Graham explained.

“And if they mate?” Stenz asked worriedly. “After that, then what?”

Serizawa did not mince words. “There won’t be an after.”