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On January 31st, 2022, Hermann wakes to the sound of a shrieking klaxon.
His heart rate spikes in sudden alarm as he shoves his blankets back and fumbles for his cane in the dark. He can hear boots thundering up and down the metal hallway outside his door. It sounds like everyone in the Sydney Shatterdome has sprung into action.
“Lights on,” Hermann grunts, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the heel of his hand. The green-tinted artificial lights in his room pop on with a staticky buzz. He gets himself out of bed with as much speed as he can manage and starts getting dressed, ignoring his morning hygiene routine in an effort to get out the door faster.
“Attention, all personnel,” drones a LOCCENT officer over the intercom, her voice echoing throughout the entire Shatterdome complex. “We have a Category II approaching the Miracle Mile off Melbourne, repeat, Category II kaiju approaching Melbourne. Designation: Spinejackal. Striker Eureka set to deploy.”
Tendo Choi was due to transfer to the Sydney Shatterdome in three weeks time. Hermann wrestles himself into his clothes and wishes that Tendo had transferred early. He was good on the intercom. He made a Category II kaiju sound like a rival baseball team ready for a sound thrashing.
Hermann clips his ID badge to the front of his jacket and opens his door, only to duck back when a crew of emergency medics pass him in the hall. He slips out, careful to lock the door behind him, and hugs the wall on his way to the nearest lift in an effort to keep out of everyone’s way.
Red lights are flashing, the klaxon screams on. People pass him in a rush, interns and medics and officers and J-technicians. Everyone is on high alert. The name Spinejackal is on every tongue.
Hermann is at his most useless during kaiju attacks, and he feels it acutely in moments like this. The best thing he can do now is head down to the lab and lay low with Newt, waiting with baited breath for announcements over the intercom. There is no question of whether or not Spinejackal will die. There is only the question of how many lives will be lost along with it.
There are over five million people in Melbourne. The thought of the kaiju making ground there makes Hermann sick.
He reaches the lift and finds it miraculously empty. Hermann swipes his ID badge at the switchboard, and when the light turns from red to green he hits the button for the basement and lets himself lean heavily against the wall as the doors slide closed. He’s been up for less than ten minutes and the sudden burst of movement so soon after prolonged inactivity makes his leg feel like lead.
He can’t stop thinking about Striker Eureka. A Mark-5, the first of her kind, and they’ve given her to an aging veteran and a boy who’s been piloting for little more than a year. Moreover, this will be the first time Striker Eureka will deploy K-Stunner missiles. Missiles which Newt’s research was directly responsible for developing, allowing the warheads to pierce kaiju hide.
Hermann can feel the heightened tension in the Shatterdome, beyond even the tension of a nearby kaiju strike. They’re deploying new technology today, and they’re not yet sure of how effective it will be. He rubs the bridge of his nose, tries to put aside his misgivings, but it’s not easy. He’s seen too many Jaegers fall.
The lift pings at the basement level and the doors slide open. The K-Science lab is at the end of the hallway- a lab Hermann has been sharing with Newt ever since the last funding cut. Xenobiology and Breach Physics had both been mercilessly gutted. Sharing the lab space was becoming so intolerable that Hermann had actually threatened to “draw a bloody great line down the middle,” and Newt, the bastard, had responded with an airy, “Like to see you try, dude,” and turned his attention back to the centrifuge.
Newt is not in the lab now.
Hermann stands inside the doorway, leaning on his cane and scowling at nothing. Behind him, the lab doors slide closed. Upon reflection he realizes there’s no real reason for him to expect Newt to be here. He would’ve been- should’ve been- asleep at this hour. Newt was only marginally less useless than Hermann in a crisis.
Hermann can hear the muffled blaring of alarms outside the door. On the floor above him, he hears more stampeding feet, and the droning voice of the LOCCENT officer informing him that Striker Eureka is set to deploy in T-minus ten, nine, eight . . .
They’re lucky to have Herc Hansen. They’re lucky to have Chuck. There’s no danger of Spinejackal taking out the Shatterdome, but the knowledge that Hermann is powerless against such an eventuality does not rest easy with him. The word impotent comes to mind. Herc and Chuck Hansen can fight the monsters, and they can win. Hermann can do nothing but hide, and hope that wherever Newt is, he’s hiding too.
Hermann twitches his head in irritation at his own foolishness. It does no good to think like that. Besides, wherever Newt is, he has a Shatterdome and over five hundred miles between him and Spinejackal. Striker Eureka will win. She has to. K-Stunners or no K-Stunners.
Newt’s desk is almost certainly a biohazard. He’s left his computer on too, damn him, and that’s entirely against protocol. Hermann mutters something obscene under his breath and lowers himself awkwardly into Newt’s desk chair, leaning his cane up against the desk. He shoves aside a pair of garish plastic kaiju toys- they’re figurines, dude, they’re not toys- and dispenses with Newt’s screensaver.
His desktop is surprisingly well organized, although everything has been sorted into folders with nonsensical names like X-Files, Not Porn, and Bird Law. A notification informs him that Newt has a new email, with an attachment.
Hermann Gottlieb, to whom privacy is only a word, clicks on it without hesitation.
Blackmail Material
Hey Pingu check out what your uncle found taped under the bathroom sink :) Along with all the rest of the photo albums :))) YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD HIDE THEM FROM US BUT WE KNOW ALL YOUR HIDING PLACES
Dad
PS: I hope you’re doing good down in Sydney but if you don’t come home for Rosh Hashanah this year I’m going to send all these to Buzzfeed.
The attachment turns out to be a picture of Newt at the Boston Aquarium, smiling awkwardly in front of the jellyfish tank. His all-black outfit is undercut somewhat by the big, colorful rubber bands on his braces. He looks about fifteen.
The fondness that wells up in Hermann’s heart at the sight is overtaken immediately by a sickening wave of grief. He drops his elbows onto the desk, suddenly desperate to lean on something, and runs both hands through his hair as he stares at the screen.
Fifteen years old.
Newt would’ve just graduated high school. He would have had dreams. The boy at the aquarium with his dad has no idea that in eight years time, the sea will rip apart, and some monstrous, alien thing will drag itself up from the depths and into San Fransisco and eventually onto his skin.
They’re not going to win.
Hermann knows that. Numbers do not lie.
Sometimes, when Hermann is in the blackest of moods, he wonders what it’s all for. The monsters keep coming, the heroes keep dying. His funding is halved, then quartered, then quartered again, until he’s sharing every hour of the day with his best friend, who he doesn’t even like. The war is a long hallway and the lights are snapping off one by one. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. Not Hermann. Not Herc and Chuck Hansen. Nobody.
Fifteen-year-old Newt has the strained smile of a boy told to stay still for too many photographs. His father must have loved him tremendously.
Hermann realizes he’s been staring at the screen for so long that the screen has left a pixel-blur burned into his retinas. He blinks furiously to clear it, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers.
The lab doors squeak as they slide open, admitting a middle-aged officer with graying blond hair and two piercing scars in his left ear. Hermann hurriedly closes Newt’s email, mortified. He plants his cane firmly on the floor and hoists himself out of Newt’s chair on it. “Excuse me,” he says, “can I help you?”
“Lieutenant-Marshall Baines,” says Baines, tilting his chin up. The bars on his uniform say he outranks Hermann. Not much of an accomplishment there. “I’m here regarding the recent installation of Striker Eureka’s K-Stunner missiles. Naturally I expect your full cooperation.”
“Yes, sir,” says Hermann, standing a little straighter. “What exactly can I help you with?”
Baines stands with his hands clasped behind his back, surveying the lab as though familiarizing himself with its contents. “This will be the first deployment of the K-Stunners in a battlefield capacity,” he says. “I’m going to require access to your research regarding their development, as well as your test results on the density of kaiju hide. Whatever conclusions you’ve made regarding the effectiveness of the missiles will be imperative when the next kaiju strikes.”
Hermann frowns. “I am well aware of the fact, Lieutenant-Marshall. Unfortunately as Striker Eureka has yet to engage Spinejackal directly,” he jerks his head vaguely at the intercom box on the wall, where the LOCCENT officer is still talking, “there will be no more tests, or conclusions made, until new specimens come in.”
“Then give me what you have now,” says Baines, more firmly this time. He takes a step forward and nods with a raised eyebrow at Newt’s paperwork-strewn desk. “I am required to confiscate the last three years of your xenobiological findings. I’m reporting directly to the Marshall on this so I expect you to step lively. Sorry,” he adds with a wry smile. “It’s just an expression. But the fact is we are currently facing a Category II crisis, and we all must pull our weight. Anything you can do to help me is one more blow against the archangels, you know. The human race must band together for the good of the nations.”
Hermann licks his lips, feeling suddenly uncomfortable for no reason he can easily pin down. “Do you have authorization for this? What’s your identification number?”
Baines gives him a look of incredible disappointment. “Dr. Geiszler, I am a superior officer, and I do not appreciate being questioned."
“I am not Dr. Geiszler,” Hermann says automatically.
This seems to throw Baines for a loop. “Oh?” he says, sounding genuinely uncomfortable.
“My name is Dr. Gottlieb, thank you very much. Furthermore, I do not have access to Dr. Geiszler’s research. Now, to return to my question, do you-”
“Not the Dr. Gottlieb?” Baines says with sudden interest. “Lars Gottlieb’s son?”
“. . . Yes,” Hermann says stiffly.
“You were one of the lead programmers working on the Mark-1 Jaegers, were you not?” Baines sounds excited now. His eyes remind Hermann of sunlight glinting off a Jaeger’s back. “That’s amazing. This is better, actually. This is better.”
“Sir,” says Hermann, turning back to Newt’s computer with the intention of finally powering it down, “I’m afraid there’s no way around it. Only the Marshall himself has authorization to-”
That’s when he hears it.
The unmistakable click of a gun being cocked.
“Turn around slowly,” says Baines, very quietly. “Lean your cane against the desk and show me your hands. Don’t try anything.”
Hermann feels the cold, sharp nudge of metal at the small of his back very distantly, as though observing something that could not possibly be happening to him. Within the span of a few seconds, he passes through fear and panic entirely and arrives firmly at shock.
He leans his cane against the desk and turns around slowly. He swears he can feel his heartbeat in his clenched teeth, but otherwise, he feels numb. Oh, he thinks in a daze. I wanted to die in a Jaeger.
Baines holds the handgun with the calm assurance of a man who’s handled weapons many times before. He takes a few steps back, getting some space between them. “I’m going to ask you some questions, Gottlieb,” he says, “and you’re going to answer them.”
“Alright then,” Hermann says dully. “Have at it.”
“You worked on Brawler Yukon?”
“Yes.”
“With Schoenfeld, Lightcap, and the rest?”
“Yes.”
“How involved were you with Striker Eureka?”
“I had no involvement with Striker Eureka.”
“None whatsoever?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Uh-huh,” says Baines, his hand tightening on the grip. “Uh-huh. Awfully cooperative, aren’t you? That’s good.”
His sleeve rides up a little as he raises his arm, and Hermann catches a glimpse of the symbol on the underside of his wrist. The curving, half-shattered shape of Tresspasser’s ribcage, inked into the skin in dark red.
“You’re a bloody cultist,” Hermann mutters, exasperation eclipsing the initial fear. “Of course you’re a bloody cultist.”
“Shut up,” Baines says sharply, and Hermann shuts up. “Here’s how it’s going to be. I am going to take you to the Shatterdome’s best computer lab, and when we get there, you’ll have ten minutes to hack into Striker Eureka’s PONS mainframe and desynchronize the pilots’ neural handshake.”
Something clenches uncomfortably in the pit of Hermann’s stomach. “Impossible,” he says weakly. “Striker Eureka has already been deployed. The most I could do from this range is disrupt its connection to LOCCENT.”
“I know for a fact that they installed a failsafe. A backdoor, accessible only to Striker’s programmers themselves via the PPDC network,” says Baines, adjusting his grip on the gun. “Bright thing like you wouldn’t take long to find it, would you?”
Hermann says nothing.
Baines comes a little closer, keeping the gun cautiously trained on Hermann. He moves behind him and grips his arm, nudging the gun lightly into the small of Hermann’s back. “Let’s move.”
Hermann swallows. “I need my cane,” he says slowly, “or I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ve got your arm.”
“People will notice something’s wrong. They’ll stop us to ask why I haven’t got it.”
They won’t, Hermann thinks privately. No one pays me any mind. Only Newton.
Baines is silent for a moment, considering. “Don’t try anything,” he says. “You can guess what will happen if you do.”
Hermann takes his cane with one hand and squeezes it till his knuckles turn white.
“Now march.”
They swipe Hermann’s ID for the lift. “The Girl from Ipanema” plays tinnily over the loudspeaker.
“I would have been satisfied with setting K-Science back a few years,” says Baines, as the floor moves beneath them and they start to rise. “I didn’t think they’d have Dr. Geiszler sharing lab space with Lars Gottlieb’s son of all people. Still, plans do change, eh? Melbourne is a corrupted city, deserving of condemnation. I’ll be glad to see Spinejackal scourge it to the ground.”
By the time they’ve risen past the first floor Hermann has already made up his mind. He’ll push for time, and when he can’t possibly delay any longer, he’ll go for the gun. There’s nothing else he can do.
He’ll fail. Of course he will. And he’ll bloody well get killed. But desynchronizing the neural handshake mid-combat could result in severe damage to the brains of both Hansens. Striker Eureka would crash, and Spinejackal would clamber, dripping, over the body and into the city.
One life weighed against five million is no question at all.
Hermann is distantly aware that the lift has stopped moving. “This isn’t our floor,” Baines mutters as the door slides open.
Newt Geiszler slaps his hand on the door to hold it open and immediately begins talking. “Hermann!” he says, “I’ve been looking for you!”
Newt is wearing the unmistakable pristine white coat of a PPDC first-responder medic, with an overstuffed medical bag slung across his shoulders. His hair is all fucked up at the back from rolling out of bed and out the door without combing it, and from the look of his hands, he’s forgotten his meds for the essential tremors.
He is, at the moment, the most beautiful thing Hermann has ever seen.
Newt squeezes into the lift with them, reeking of too much hastily applied pon farr themed deodorant. “You would not believe the morning I’ve had, man,” he rants, nudging the button for the sixth floor with his elbow. “They told me, they said, Dr. Geiszler, you can’t hit the streets with the first-responder medics, you’re not qualified, blah blah blah, and I said, hey man, I have six PhDs, I think I can handle myself on the ground in a kaiju situation, and they were like, Dr. Geiszler please get off the table, and I was like, I’m gonna see a kaiju up close one day if it kills me, so gimme a uniform, here I go, and they were like, speechless, dude.”
Hermann can feel Baines tensing up beside him as the door slides closed. He shifts a little to better hide the gun where it presses into Hermann’s back. His grip on Hermann’s arm says, don’t say a fucking word.
Hermann stares straight ahead and tries not to scream. They’re almost at the fifth floor. God, if Newt gets shot . . .
He has to warn him. Somehow.
“Anyway, they quit bothering me after that. Hi,” Newt continues, with a brief glance at Baines before turning back to Hermann. He rubs his hands together briskly. “You heard the announcements, right? Striker just engaged Spinejackal off the Miracle Mile. I’ll have a front row seat to the kaiju show, and maybe if I get some firsthand experience, you won’t keep kvetching about every fucking theory I put on the table. I have a point, Hermann.”
“You’re right,” says Hermann, deadly quiet.
Newt falters.
“What do you mean, I’m right?” he says warily. Hermann watches his eyes narrow behind his glasses, taking in Hermann’s ashen face and the man standing at his right elbow. It’s as though he’s seeing them both for the first time, having been too distracted by the dizzying pace of his own thoughts to pay them any real mind. “Who’s this guy?”
The bell rings for the fifth floor. The door slides back to reveal a hall full of flashing lights and the blurred figures of PPDC interns rushing past at top speed.
“Please excuse us,” says Baines, steering Hermann out of the lift. He has to brush Newt aside to do it.
Newt smiles awkwardly and backs away, hands raised as if in surrender. “Whatever, dude,” he says. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
Hermann sees Newt glance down at where Baines has him by the arm. His smile looks forced now, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Hermann swallows, nods once, and lets Baines lead him down the hall towards the computer room.
Just this once, Newton. Please.
Don’t do anything reckless.
The fifth floor computer room is dark and labyrinthine, and steaming hot from too many computers crammed into an enclosed space. Nine rows of five terminals each, all of them on, all of them with their chairs carelessly flung to the side as J-techs leapt into action at the sound of the kaiju alarm. Someone’s upended a tray of pencils and scrap paper in their rush. They crinkle and snap underfoot as Baines forces Hermann to walk ahead of him.
“This one,” says Baines. He jerks his head at one of the workstations in the ninth row. “They’re all identical. Get busy.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” says Hermann. In the back of his mind he knows it’s unsafe to put this much open malice into his voice but at this point he is beyond caring. “Striker Eureka is a Mark-5. Her PONS system will be far more sophisticated than what I’m used to working with. Furthermore there is the distance to consider . . .”
“Did I ask for excuses?”
Hermann stammers out an apology, his brain going a mile a minute, trying to puzzle out a solution. “Please,” he murmurs cautiously, taking a step back, leaning his cane against the desk. “Just . . . give me a moment, please.”
“You have ten minutes,” says Baines. “No more.”
Hermann lowers himself slowly into the nearest desk chair and drags it up to the computer terminal. He enters his ID, S-HGOT_471.120-V, and his primary password, spac3champi0n. He wakes up the holograph projector and in a matter of moments has pulled up personnel files and three-dimensional headshots of Herc and Chuck Hansen. “To, ah, desynchronize the Drift, I need a firmer grasp of the connection between the two pilots,” he says, hoping Baines doesn’t know anything about Drift technology. “Each Jaeger team reacts differently to the neural handshake, and the PONS may not be consistent from pilot to pilot.”
“Get to it,” Baines snarls, and when Hermann looks up to protest, he sees Newt’s silhouette in the doorway.
For a moment, he’s stunned into silence. Then Newt raises one hand silently, makes a circular motion. Keep talking.
“I, um,” Hermann stammers, his mind blank as his attention flickers back to Baines. He tries very hard not to notice Newt slowly creeping down the rows, his hands clenched tight as wires at his sides. He’s holding something that gleams in the light of the computer terminals. “It’s only that . . . even for a programmer of my ability a full desynchronization might take hours to acheive . . .”
“Do I need you, Gottlieb?” Baines says quietly. “Or should I kill you and go back to Plan A?”
Newt’s face is bloodless, and his hands are shaking even worse than before. Hermann’s not sure he’s ever seen Newt so angry in his life, and while provoking indignation in Newt is one of Hermann’s greatest joys, this goes far beyond indignation.
“What are you looking at?” says Baines, and Hermann’s heart drops like a rock.
One of Newton’s boots crunches on the loose paper.
It happens too fast for Hermann to stop it. Burning, bone-deep pain lances through his leg as he lunges forward. “Newton!” Baines is already turning, his hand already tightening on the trigger, but before he can fire Newt has already leapt at him, his hand going for Baines’ neck.
There’s an ugly, wet popping sound, followed by a hiss of mechanical decompression. Baines freezes in place, eyes wide and bulging, as Newt wrenches the injection needle out from where it’s sunk deep into the skin. It’s a thick, wicked-looking thing, meant for piercing kaiju hide. Hermann watches a trickle of kaiju blue drip down Baines’ neck and feels the sudden urge to vomit.
Baines drops the gun.
Then he hits the ground, twitching and gurgling, incoherent as blue rises in his veins.
Hermann can only stare, both hands gripping the edge of the desk as though it’s the only thing keeping him upright. Newt is still standing over the body, white-faced and shaking, his teeth gritted tight. He looks frightened, and furious, and when he catches Hermann’s eye he lets out a long, shuddering breath to steady himself, and looks back down at Baines.
“Abeck,” Baines sputters, both eyes blinking furiously. “Abeckabuh, kuh?”
“That’ll be the blue hitting his brain,” Newt says quietly.
“Gott,” Hermann breathes. “Will it kill him?”
“I’ve notified the MPs. They’re on their way. He’ll be fine if they get him to the med bay before it’s too late. I mean, not fine, but . . .”
“How late is too late?”
Newt makes a show of pulling back his left sleeve to check his nonexistent watch. Then he steps over Baines’ body- something about the dismissive way he does it makes something warm and not altogether unpleasant stir in Hermann’s chest- and cautiously reaches out to touch Hermann’s arm. “You hurt?”
Hermann doesn’t try to brush off Newt’s hand. “You knew something was wrong. In the lift . . . you knew.”
“Yeah, dude,” Newt murmurs. “I know you.”
Hermann answers questions without really hearing them. He sits in a creaking old swivel chair in the back of the room with his hands folded in his lap, clenching and unclenching them to stop their shaking. He didn’t realize how much adrenaline had flooded his system, and how long it truly takes to dissipate.
Newt is sitting next to him, his arms folded, his whole body tensed up as he stares at the floor. The guards questioning them- three in total- were already convinced by the cultist tattoo on Baines’ wrist. Once they hear the story from Hermann’s mouth, they’re more than satisfied. They want out of here quickly; Spinejackal has breached the Miracle Mile. Striker is trying to chase it down before it hits the coast.
The whole Shatterdome is on edge. Hermann watches a pair of emergency med techs hustle Baines onto a stretcher and out of the room, and thinks, no one will hear about this. They’ll cover it up, of course they will. It would not do for the Australian public to know that Melbourne had been jeopardized by a stolen uniform, a handgun, and a weak-willed scientist.
“S’not your fault you know,” mumbles Newt. It’s times like this that Hermann could swear Newt can read his mind. “You said he was looking for me. S’my fault for not being there. Thinking I was going to the front lines.”
“No. You mustn’t think like that, Newton. It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not even mine.”
It’s surprisingly difficult to say the words aloud, so he repeats them. “Not even mine,” Hermann looks over at Newt, still slumped in his chair with his arms crossed. “Why on earth did you do it?”
“He had a gun on you,” Newt says sharply.
“Yes, I’m well awa-”
“He was threatening you, Hermann. I kind of freaked out a little.”
Newt picks aimlessly at his sleeve with short, sure fingers. Hermann watches his hands as he rubs them together, then runs them along his own forearms, as though trying to reassure a nervous animal. Hermann thinks of the monsters inked into the skin there. Of those same hands rolling those sleeves back with quick, neat movements, revealing the places on his skin where he would most like to be touched.
Hermann looks away. The urge to embrace Newt is almost overwhelming.
“Attention, all personnel,” declares the LOCCENT officer over the intercom.
Newt’s head jerks up. He exchanges looks with Hermann, and both of them stand up at once. It seems better, somehow, to take the news standing, for good or ill.
“Category II kaiju, designation Spinejackal, has been terminated. Repeat, Spinejackal has been terminated. Minimal damage to Striker Eureka. Hercules Hansen and Charles Hansen set to return to base.”
Outside the door they hear a muffled roar as cheers echo down every corridor. Newt lets out whoop of excitement and jumps to punch the air, eyes shining with excitement and relief, and by the time his boots hit the ground again Hermann’s already got his arms around him.
He feels Newt’s shocked intake of breath more than he hears it, and before he can convince himself it’s a bad idea, Hermann wraps his arms tighter around him. One hand at his back, and the other hovering awkwardly at his shoulder before Hermann settles on the back of his head. He folds Newt closer to himself and closes his eyes, tries to enjoy it before Newt shrugs him off.
“Dude,” Newt breathes, and then his arms are around Hermann too, and oh, this is the first time he’s held Newt properly since 2017. Since that first awkward, too-eager hug in the airport, before they opened their mouths and the fantasy came crashing to a halt.
That’s all Hermann’s idea of Newt was, in the end. A fantasy.
So Hermann drops his arms first, and shifts awkwardly in Newt’s until Newt jolts back like he’s been burned. His hands linger on Hermann’s arms, as though feeling out the musculature under his blazer.
“Dude,” he says hoarsely, the only word in his lexicon. He gives Hermann’s arms a firm squeeze. “Your arms are beefy as hell.”
“Um,” Hermann croaks, completely blindsided.
“I can’t believe you’ve been secretly jacked this whole time.”
“I’m not- I’m not jacked. Secretly or otherwise.”
Newt gives his arms another little squeeze and finally drops his hands. He steps back, shoves his hands into the pockets of his white coat as if to keep them still. “I’m glad you’re alright,” he says quietly. “I need you to be alright, because without you, we lose this war. Without you, I’d be the smartest guy in the PPDC, and then we’d all be fucked.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” says Hermann. He’s nonetheless unable to prevent himself from standing a little straighter, raising his chin just a little higher. “You did just save the city, after all. Striker Eureka too.”
Newt’s smile is sudden and genuine, as though he’d forgotten all about it. “Yeah. Yeah, I did save the city, didn’t I!”
“Don’t go getting a big head over it,” Hermann warns, already regretting bringing it up.
“Well I’m not gonna make a habit of saving the world, but, y’know . . . good to know that I’m capable.”
“Capable of literally killing a man.”
“He’ll be fine,” Newt says doubtfully. “That blue was diluted.”
“Was it now? Well, that makes it alright.”
“He had a gun on you, Herm. I’d do it again.”
Hermann’s heart feels too big for his chest. He wants to hold him again. Wants to outpour everything to him, the way they used to in their letters. He wants to roll Newt’s sleeves up with his own hands and kiss the teeth of the kaiju he finds there.
But he doesn’t do any of those things. Not today, and not now. Not when there’s cheering in the hallways and a Jaeger making its weary way back home.
Instead, he says, “Thank you, Newton,” and together they return to their lab.