A vast and bright pillar of light was blasting straight up seemingly out from nowhere. At what appeared to be its base, very faintly, we could see the outline of what would have been Bella’s mouth. All around the dimensional holes were brightening and growing, and in their centers we could see another world.
The barrier was breached. There was a way through.
Wind started whipping up as the hot warm air of Kaiju Earth was sucked into the colder, thinner atmosphere of the human Earth. As it hit, it immediately condensed, forming a cloud of vapor.
I looked around near us and a few meters away saw a vaporous hole, big enough to run through. I started running.
“Come on!” I yelled, although I could only barely hear myself. I hoped the other three were following, but I had no time to check.
I was almost to the hole when the lights suddenly went out. The vaporous hole in front of me immediately began to close.
I leapt into it, closing my eyes as I did so.
And then I was through and tumbling on the ground, which was soft and gave way, cushioning me.
And then I was kicked in the head by Niamh as they barged through, followed by Aparna and Kahurangi, neither of whom, I’m happy to say, followed up on the kick.
“Sorry,” Niamh said.
“It’s all right,” I assured them. I looked up to where we had come through.
The hole was gone.
“Everyone okay?” I asked.
“Okay?” Kahurangi said. “I’m awesome. We’re through. It worked!” He unclenched his fist to show his fuel pellets.
“It did not work,” Niamh said. “We got through because of Bella’s atomic belch making the barrier fall.”
Kahurangi nodded. “And the fuel pellets.”
“The place we went through was meters away from your godforsaken fuel pellets, you impossible man.”
“Still counts.”
Niamh held up a hand. “I’m not talking to you about this anymore.”
“Hey,” Aparna said. “Look where we are.”
We looked. Right next to us was Bella, all hundred-plus meters of her, going straight up. All across her body, things shifted and moved; her parasites and personal ecosystem. There was a pronounced breeze as Bella’s body sucked air into itself. Around us was a thick layer of something rubbery. Natal jelly.
“We landed in goo,” Niamh said, looking down.
I stood up. The jelly did not stick to me, thankfully. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone and, for the first time since we had gone over to Kaiju Earth in September, switched over to cellular mode to see if I could find a signal.
There was none.
This was not terribly surprising; we were in the forests of Labrador, and the nearest human population of any size was a hundred kilometers away. The trees did not need cell service. It was too bad. If ever there was a time for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, this was it.
I looked at the time: 2:20 a.m.
“It’s cold,” Aparna said. She fished in her pack for her pullover. We all did the same, as well as retrieving, checking, and loading our various weapons.
“We came through at two twenty,” I said to Aparna.
She nodded, knowing why I was telling her the time. We were now waiting to see what the interval was between Bella’s ventings.
“Anyone else feeling a little woozy?” Kahurangi asked.
“You got used to the atmosphere on the other side,” Aparna said. “Just breathe.”
“Right, got it.”
I looked around. Bella was illuminated by the moon, which was nearly full and to the west. We were too close to her to see anything else, but I could hear faint noises in the distance.
“I think we landed on the far side of Bella,” I said. “Away from whoever took her, I mean.”
“That’s a bit of luck,” Niamh said. “It would have been inconvenient to pop into existence in front of the people we were trying to surprise.”
“So, how are we going to do this?” Aparna said. “Get to the perimeter thing and turn it on to get Bella back?”
We all looked at Kahurangi.
“Why are you looking at me?” he asked.
“You’re the one who got us here,” I said.
“He is not,” Niamh retorted.
Kahurangi held up his hands. “I was kind of focused on getting us here,” he said, and then pointed at me. “I thought Jamie was the one with the plan after that.”
I was going to respond to that, but at the moment, someone came around Bella and stepped in front of us, carrying some sort of equipment. He took several steps toward us before he looked up and realized there were four people in front of him.