The next day, Qin Guang quickly completed the procedures for Morin, discharged him from the hospital, and brought him back to PPDC headquarters.
Zhao Wei and Qin Guang, now aware of Morin's "true identity," chose to trust him.
They stood on his side.
They also helped conceal that "true identity."
Becoming, in a sense, his accomplices.
Hmm.
That word made it sound like they were about to do something bad.
But it was close enough.
For Zhao Wei and Qin Guang, they were preparing to deceive the entire world-with a lie shared only by the three of them.
Morin was different.
He was a one-man show.
Deceiving everyone except himself.
The image of Morin "dying on the front lines" spread rapidly.
First throughout PPDC China headquarters.
Then across the entire PPDC.
Finally, to the whole world.
Fortunately, Morin's identity and the limited time he supposedly had left gave him a perfect excuse to refuse interviews and invitations.
With Zhao Wei's full backing, that part was easy.
Even so, his reputation kept spreading.
His "genius" became common knowledge worldwide.
May 11, 2020.
A heavily restricted underground laboratory in the Hong Kong quarantine zone.
After a Kaiju died, its blood decomposed in the air.
It polluted the atmosphere, water, and soil, causing fatal harm to all living things.
Because of its blue color, it was called "Kaiju Blue."
Humans had no way to neutralize it yet.
They could only wait for it to decompose naturally.
That was why quarantine zones existed.
Inside the lab stood a tall, burly man in a dark red suit.
He looked like he was about to head to the Cotton Club in 1938 to listen to Cab Calloway.
His shoes were covered in overlapping, fish-scale-like plates that clinked softly as he walked.
His teeth were inlaid with various metals, each carved with different patterns.
He looked bizarre.
If Morin were here, he would have recognized him instantly.
Hannibal Chau.
The black-market boss from Pacific Rim.
The man who sold everything related to Kaiju.
His most profitable product was Kaiju bone powder.
Supposedly good for "enhancing male potency."
At the moment, though, what he was doing had nothing to do with black markets.
He looked more like a mad scientist.
Inside the underground chamber, aside from him, there was only a machine.
And a Kaiju Category II brain.
It floated in a tank of nutrient fluid, still showing weak activity.
Lovecraftian.
Kaiju were massive.
As hybrid silicon- and carbon-based life forms, they relied on flesh and blood for control.
Their huge bodies required multiple Category II brains to operate.
Hannibal Chau had obtained this brain through his own channels.
Recently, the PPDC had become unusually interested in Kaiju brains.
Chau thought they had discovered his intentions.
So he moved early.
He wanted to synchronize with the Kaiju.
To see what it was thinking.
To learn which parts were the most valuable.
Maybe he could even sell the information back to the military.
As he imagined future profits, his nerves finally eased a little.
(In the original timeline, Hannibal Chau did synchronize with a Kaiju.
Shortly after, the mech piloted by Raleigh and his brother had its cockpit destroyed.
Mech damage rates skyrocketed.
This led to a global decision to abandon the mech program in favor of the wall project-except for China, which continued limited support.
Although China eventually withdrew as well, it was clear that without China's consent, PPDC headquarters would never have been located in Hong Kong, nor would mechs and armed forces have operated there.)
"Let me see..."
Hannibal Chau connected the Pons neural link device.
He held the activation button in his hand.
Cautious as ever, he had set a five-second automatic disconnect.
He wasn't sure he could withstand Kaiju consciousness.
So he planned to test it briefly.
After psyching himself up, he pressed the button.
Power surged.
The Pons neural system connected his brain to the weakened Category II brain inside the massive glass tank.
In an instant-
Endless bone bridges.
Bone roads.
Active rivers and lakes of flesh-like mud.
Exoskeletal buildings.
Shell-like structures housing constantly beating organs.
Smaller bipedal, shelled, lizard-like beings-human-sized-worked busily with strange instruments.
Nearby, in a flesh-and-blood breeding ground, Kaiju were being designed, cultivated, grown.
And then-
Everything stopped.
All the "Precursors" froze.
They sensed it.
A fragment of foreign consciousness.
Something that absolutely did not belong to them.
What... was it?
As they turned their attention toward it-
The connection broke.
The Precursors looked at one another.
Confused.
The link had been too brief.
No mental imprint.
No deep extraction.
Only fragments.
Mechs.
Pilots.
A "genius" mech designer.
Morin.
PPDC China headquarters.
No wonder the other side had grown so strong so suddenly.
The Precursors laughed.
They had found the greatest weakness of that unfamiliar world.
A clear target.
"Huff... huff..."
Back on Earth, Hannibal Chau was gasping for breath.
His eyes were wide with terror.
He had seen what he wanted.
But he had also realized the true danger.
The synaptic link went both ways.
He had seen them.
And they had seen him.
That meant he had unknowingly leaked massive amounts of information about Earth.
About mechs.
About humanity.
His left eye was bloodshot.
Vision blurred.
That five-second connection had linked his nervous system to the consciousness of an entire species.
Surviving was already a miracle.
But he felt no relief.
Only fear.
How much had they taken from him?
As Hong Kong's largest black-market boss, he knew far too much.
If the Precursors used that information to design targeted Kaiju...
What then?
Breathing heavily, Hannibal Chau thought for a long time.
Then he pulled out a handgun.
Two shots.
The already-dying Kaiju brain in the nutrient tank went still.
He put on his sunglasses.
Walked out.
Signaled his men.
A concrete mixer truck roared to life, pouring cement into the underground chamber.
"If the sky falls, tall people will hold it up," he thought, wiping the blood trickling from beneath his glasses.
"What does that have to do with me?"
"I'm just a black-market trader."
He was human.
But he looked like a ghost.
Inside PPDC China headquarters.
Morin stood on the ground, looking up at the colossal figure before him.
"This is your mech," he said.
"Brother Morin," Fang Xing asked from the side, curious,
"Who did you choose as the pilot for that single-pilot mech? You still haven't told us."
In the past year, Morin hadn't fainted once.
If not for the shadow on his CT scans that never shrank, no one would believe he was still dying.
One year.
That was also how long it took to complete the two mechs.
Thanks to Morin's techniques and stronger alloys, all active mechs were upgraded.
All.
Not just in China.
Across the world.
China, in the spirit of "building a shared future for humanity," provided upgrade services.
Of course, the technology itself wasn't given away.
Only the service.
At a steep price.
China profited enormously.
That was also why Morin chose to appear in China.
Good things that benefited both country and people should go to one's own first.
Even if it was only symbolically the same.
Patriotism, after all.
With comprehensive upgrades, mech damage rates plummeted.
Kaiju attacks became more frequent.
Kaiju grew larger.
But battles only lasted longer.
They no longer caused catastrophic losses like before.
The mech program remained the top priority.
The wall project never became mainstream.
It flared briefly.
Then vanished.
This was also influenced by a paper written by a certain genius designer.
Morin.
In it, he demonstrated that once Kaiju reached Category III, the wall project would be meaningless.
At the time, Kaiju were already close.
Using mathematical modeling, he predicted Category V as the upper limit.
But that wasn't the key point.
At the end of the paper, Morin left a question:
"Did the 'wise men' advocating the wall project ever consider what would happen if Kaiju could fly?"
He also pointed out that Kaiju were clones.
That the real enemy had never set foot on Earth.
After Zhao Wei verified it, the information spread rapidly.
Other scientists reached the same conclusion.
The wall project, which had been loudly praised days earlier, became a joke.
As for why the media had promoted it-
You already know.
Zhao Wei's position was now rock solid.
He was even expected to be promoted.
"As for that mech," Morin said, smiling,
"I already have a candidate."
"You'll meet him on the day the plan is executed."
"I guarantee he won't disappoint you."
The plan.
A counterattack.
Against the Precursors.
To destroy the wormhole.
It had received unanimous approval from the United Nations a few days earlier.
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