The Monsters In Men: Pacific Rim [On Indefinite Hiatus]

Chapter 3: Lost Boys

Chapter 3: Lost Boys

***

Dr. Sabine Jacobs studied the neural patterns of the three pairs of recruits who had achieved 100% match with their brain scans.

The other two pairs were explainable, to say the least—the first pair to reach 100% were two cousins who had grown up together for a time before the first Kaiju attack in 2013. The second pair was an uncle-nephew tandem; they were a mere seven years apart. They were raised more like brothers because of their relatively smaller age gap than what most uncles and their nephews share.

The third pair had been quite a puzzle: two young men, though of the same ethnicity and place of birth, had so little in common. At first. They both came alone to attend Jaeger Academy, without the company of friend or family.

Until the brain scan.

Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Zimmerman made sure to take enough sweeps over the data before providing recommendations.

The analysts had somehow placed certain stimuli in the testing room where the scans were made so that all levels of consciousness would be triggered in a subject. At a more conscious level, Nathan and Misha were less similar; it was in the subconscious level where their patterns began to overlap, until they practically came out as one pattern—the blue waves representing Misha’s, the red waves representing Nathan’s.

That’s it, the two doctors discovered.

Misha and Nathan share certain memories that were profound and impressionable enough to make an impact on each other.

When the Kwoon Combat trial was over, they would need to speak to the two boys. They share memories that had somehow been buried and forgotten, but were still strong enough to bind them together.

Perhaps when they were children.

That was, indeed, it.

Looking through their records, Dr. Jacobs unearthed the fact that the two boys were in the same area when Kaiju Hundun laid waste to the entire of Manila. They both survived the attack, although have been separated from their families, just like hundreds of children during that time.

It took more probing and research, but Nathan’s and Misha’s data were soon accompanied with the fact that they were returned to their respective families practically on the same day, and contact between the two boys had been cut off completely after that.

But there was no mistake: the two boys had met before.

 ***

It wasn’t an earthquake, Nathan knew.

He was sixteen and had been picked up by the family driver from school when he felt the earth shake so violently, he thought that everything around him would explode. It was like a hundred twelve-wheeler trucks rampaging at full speed through concrete made fragile by the weight.

The shaking didn’t stop, and Kuya Raymond, the driver, looked so nervous and did the sign of the cross more than thrice when the shaking didn’t cease.

The sound was like something that came from the bowels of hell: a monstrous, grating sound that echoed far and wide; if a sound could swallow entire cities effortlessly, that would be that sound.

Nathan was glued to his seat at the back of the car. He turned his head to the left just in time to see a towering shadow of some huge reptile some miles away. It was crawling out of the water. It was crawling out of the bay.

Kuya Raymond swore to the saints under his breath. People were beginning to abandon their cars which have been stuck in the road ever since the first vibrations shook the ground, and they were running in different directions.