The Supernatural Regeneration granted by the Godzilla genes he had once been so proud of now lay completely dormant, like a machine with its power unplugged.
The Bio-Energy within him had been utterly depleted in the previous battle and the final "freeze." It had fallen so low that even maintaining the bare minimum of neural activity was precarious.
Without energy, regeneration was water without a source, a tree without roots.
He was like biological waste discarded in a deep-sea dump.
Despair, like the surrounding seawater, heavily crushed what remained of his consciousness. Was eternal confinement and slow decay to be his end?
No! Godzilla's instincts, the primal desire to survive, even Connors's own obsessive scientific will, erupted with astonishing force at that moment.
He could not die! He had to recover! He had to... take revenge!
Focus! Focus every shred of his remaining consciousness!
He no longer thought about his missing body or his hopeless predicament.
He concentrated every last trace of Bio-Energy, every desire to "exist," onto a single point—the remaining tissue near the vestiges of his esophagus.
It was a process of excruciating pain that went Beyond Limit, like forcibly growing new flesh atop a red-hot branding iron.
Cells were forcibly driven to divide and differentiate despite the energy shortage.
Faint sparks of bioelectricity flickered in the darkness.
A day? A week? Time held no meaning here.
The heavy stench of blood, the not-yet-coagulated bodily fluids slowly seeping from the break in his skull, became the most primitive bait.
The first to be drawn in were true Abyssal dwellers:
Amphipods—thousands upon thousands of pale, translucent Sea lice no larger than fingernails—came Pouring Out like a white tide, covering the necrotic tissue and cracks in the scab on Connors's skull as they gnawed greedily.
Polychaetes, bizarre creatures resembling slender