The tides had long forgotten calm. The waters just off the eastern coast of the United States had grown restless, churning in unnatural patterns as a shadow; vast and purposeful, moved beneath them.
Deep below the surface, Titanus Oodako, once a man, now a behemoth of hunger and purpose, sliced through the ocean with a monstrous grace, his armoured body carving through the waves like a living dreadnought. His twelve eyes; each shielded beneath the glistening, semi-reflective MUTO-born shielding, scanned ahead as the radiation signal pulsed in his mind like sonar, guiding him with unnatural precision.
The first target had been selected days ago. Now it lay before him. Buried beneath the Atlantic seafloor near a long-decommissioned coastal silo installation, hidden beneath layers of reinforced alloy and protocols of secrecy, sat one of the United States' many nuclear payloads, dormant but very much intact.
Mark had found it, not with maps or data, but with instinct; a kind of radiation-based sixth sense honed through his genetic absorption of the MUTO brood mother. Her flesh, her essence, had opened a new sensory domain in his mind.
He could taste radiation like sharks smelled blood in the water. He dug through the reinforced hull with barbed tentacles that had shredded chitin and cracked bone. Metal, no matter how manmade or reinforced, did little to hinder the behemoth now.
With a sickening crunch and an unnatural lurch, he tore open the final casing and slowly, almost reverently, coiled his tentacles around the warhead. There was no hesitation. He pulled it into his beaked maw and crushed it between jagged tusks like it was nothing more than the shell of an oversized crab.
The world should have ended then.
Instead of detonating as man had feared, the warhead seemed to react oddly within his body. The uranium payload was never allowed to explode properly, not in any normal sense of the word. The radiation dispersed wildly as it collided with the swirling energies already saturating Mark's flesh.
Every strand of DNA inside him lit up like a solar flare. Mutagenic reactions spiralled through his cells, expanding across every inch of tissue. His thermal glands screamed as his body temperature skyrocketed to unimaginable levels, steaming the ocean for miles around.
But Mark did not scream. He simply braced himself, pushing deeper into the seafloor, allowing the rock itself to help contain the flux.
For nearly an hour, his body rippled and twitched as the energy surged through him, triggering a chain reaction of internal recalibration.
The system whispered in his mind.
[Critical Radiation Threshold Detected]
[Compatible Traits Amplifying…]
[Trait: Regeneration Sequence Integrated has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Electroreceptive Perception has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Bone-Crushing Bite has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Tentacular Power Surge has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Radiogenic Regeneration has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Adaptive Radiotrophy has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Dermal Armor Plating has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Barbed Suction Arsenal has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Kinetic Quill Expulsion has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Cognitive Node Expansion has reached Level 5]
[Trait: Muscular Density Reinforcement has reached Level 5]
As the final line of system text faded from his thoughts, Mark exhaled deeply; not from lungs, but through every pore of his adaptive dermal system. Steam poured out in waves into the sea-water around him. His hydro-dermal cooling gland went into overdrive, draining the heat by circulating seawater through internal channels, redirecting heat outward in bursts that flash-boiled the surrounding waters.
'Efficient,' Mark thought, his mind now running at speeds no human could endure, 'But incredibly taxing. One warhead nearly cooked me alive.'
He retreated deeper into the trench for almost an hour, unmoving, processing. The sea cooled again. The burning metal tang of radiation faded from the water, and with it, the unbearable pressure in his joints and tendons.
Then, he moved again.
…
Far above, inside a fortified underground installation far from civilian eyes, the White House Situation Room had gone cold.
"It... consumed the nuke," came the words from a trembling officer, his voice cracking as he pointed at the surveillance feed; live footage from the spy satellites tracking the creature dubbed Titanus Oodako.
The monstrous being had just consumed one of the nation's most tightly secured nuclear weapons, and had only grown stronger.
"It detonated inside him… and he survived," someone else said.
The President of the United States sat silently, his fingers steepled before his chin. Behind him, a flurry of motion as generals, aides, intelligence directors, and cabinet members shouted over one another.
But when the President finally spoke, the room fell into a chilling silence.
"We can't let this creature feed again," he muttered, "If it consumes more... we'll be in deep sh*t, long before Godzilla ever returns."
"But sir," said the general in charge of continental defence, "We don't have a conventional solution. The creature is underwater ninety percent of the time. The nukes don't work. Missiles bounce off. Godzilla didn't kill it. We can't even predict its destination—"
The President did not raise his voice. He didn't need to, "Then it's time to test the DRRCs."
The room went utterly still. In a hangar-sized facility buried deep in Nevada, the ground shook not with fear, but anticipation.
Covered in tarps the size of football fields, long, narrow towers were slowly revealed; sleek, rail-stabilized weapons connected to miles of underground power lines and supercapacitor arrays.
Directed Radiation Response Cannons; DRRCs, were not meant for war with nations. They had never been designed with humans in mind. These were humanity's answer to Titans. The culmination of classified black-budget initiatives and theoretical physics, DRRCs operated using fusion-based plasma lenses to focus high-frequency radiation into a continuous laser beam capable of burning through several meters of reinforced alloy in seconds.
They had never been used before. Now, they would be.
…
Back beneath the waves, Mark had no knowledge of what was being prepared above. His mind was already focused on his next target.
Another warhead, older but intact, buried deep within a silo long since hidden from history. He felt its signature across the ocean, humming faintly against his senses like a beacon.
'One more... maybe two... and I'll go beyond what even the apex can predict.'
He surged forward, the ocean parting like silk before his massive form, his speed blistering past even nuclear submarines. No sonar ping could catch him now. He was faster than ever, stronger than any beast that had ever ruled the depths, and perhaps, more dangerous than any who had ever walked the Earth.
But even as he fed, even as he hunted, humanity had begun sharpening its own claws. And soon... the lasers would ignite.