After one month of training I was finally released from daily workouts with Krupp and Hotchkiss, and was taken to see Chairman Keel. We walked through different parts of the fortress on our way to see him, and now that I had been here a while I got a better perspective for just how huge this place was. Just think about hollowing out a mountain and then putting a city the size of Second Branch, maybe five thousand people or more, inside, along with not only armies and airplanes and such, but also several Evangelions. If I got a chance I definitely wanted to see more of my surroundings.
The Chairman met me in a larger office that was richly appointed, with leather couches and keepsakes on shelves that looked like ancient treasures taken from all around the world. It seemed to me more like a small museum than an office. For this meeting I finally got something that resembled real clothes, with a turtleneck sweater and black slacks along with nicer leather lace-up boots, and a warm green-colored parka that I have to admit was comfy. I was getting used to having my hair long too, and now normally did it up as bun to keep it neat during the daytime. I thought about cutting it but it had felt very dry and damaged when I first woke up and I thought growing it out a bit more might help its condition.
Keel greeted me as I walked in, accompanied by several of his top officers along with Piotr, who was his manservant. Piotr was this really thin and kind of creepy-looking guy who would push the Chairman's wheel chair at times and see to his needs. Krupp had come with me for the visit and she stood alongside as Piotr moved the Chairman closer to me.
"How are you, Miss Forrestal?" he asked me with unusual warmth in his voice.
"I'm fine, Grandfather."
"You look much better now than you did when you came her," he said to me and I blushed a little.
"I feel a bit better, thanks."
"Please sit down, we have much to discuss."
I sat down at a conference table while Keel was parked alongside and closer to me. Krupp stayed for the meeting, while all of the others except for Piotr were sent outside.
"Have you been enjoying your stay here?"
"Well," I said honestly, "I wouldn't say I enjoyed it but I think I'm better off for it."
"We were quite concerned with your health both physically and mentally, but it seems that you've made considerable progress. I believe now that we are in a position to move onto the next phase." Keel then motioned to a video monitor on the wall of his office.
"Currently the so-called Alliance who runs the Tokyo-3 Geofront has six operational Evangelion units, and is working on getting a seventh," Keel told me. "If they can achieve that level of power, we are afraid that nothing in the world could stop them." I nodded, knowing the danger that the Alliance put the Earth in.
"We have, however, managed to get some of more skilled agents inside of their operation and now believe we have a unique opportunity to do to them what they once did to us. That is, strike at them from within." I nodded along, now knowing the real reasons why I was brought here.
"Our spies have also discovered that the Alliance is actively searching for you, Miss Forrestal, in the belief that you could serve as one of their pilots as they already have Unit 04. Of course, they have a pilot for that unit but perhaps they are having some difficulty using him that requires the original pilot."
"So the fake pilot's not working out then?"
"It would seem so," Keel told me. "Therefore I believe if you were to suddenly become available, the Alliance would take you into their operation out of necessity in short order."
"Wait," I asked. "You want me to sneak in there?"
"Precisely," said Keel. "You will infiltrate their stronghold and re-unite with your own Evangelion unit, you will then attack them from within when they least suspect it, and then you will escape and make your way back here to our base. Then with our own rebuilt Evangelion force we will be able to take care of the Alliance and NERV once and for all, and restore peace and order to the world."
Finally, I was being given something to do that could give my life some meaning. All up until this moment all I could do since waking up was just feel sorry for myself, but now I could do something about it. I could avenge Dad, and Vance, and everyone else. I could get my EVA back, and I could set things right.
"Sign me up," I told Keel, feeling confident for the first time in a long time.
For the next two weeks I was put through intensive preparation for my mission. While I was still given physical training, it wasn't nearly like it was before and was now limited to maybe an hour a day instead of eight. Instead I was paired with several new instructors and given what amounted to acting lessons, as to infiltrate NERV I would need to play the part of myself, but it would be the me that just woke up over a month ago, the me that didn't know anything about what had happened. In addition they also started me on an Evangelion simulator, as once reunited with my EVA I would need to pilot, take on enemy units right away, and then escape back to the fortress.
As part of my training I was given information about NERV and about my opponents. Dad never really told us much about the Japan-based NERV, other than they were our chief rival while we were building Units 03 and 04. I knew enough to know that he didn't like them at all, and it had a lot of do with how mom died.
It was when I started learning about the pilots of the NERV program that I became a bit suspicious, as perhaps for the first time I was not sure of what really I had gotten involved in. Like Vance and I, the pilots of NERV's EVAs were all teenaged kids. Some were from Japan and others from Europe, and then of course the boy who called himself Patrick, my so-called twin, was from the USA (if even that was true). But one of NERV's pilots I had clearly seen before.
While looking at my mission briefing book I saw her photo and clearly recognized her. With short-cropped blue hair and uniquely bright red eyes, there's no way I wouldn't have missed this girl. The name on the record was listed as Rei Ayanami, known as the First Child. The original Evangelion pilot, the first of them to successfully sync with an EVA unit. She was now one of the pilots on the side of the Alliance, but I knew her because she was the girl from my dreams.
The short-haired blue girl who looked out on the ocean, the one who stood in front of the tank filled with body parts, the one that I dreamed about kissing, it was her. It was always her.
Why was she in my dreams, and nightmares for that matter? I had never seen her before, so why would I dream about her? The whole thing became rather unsettling for me. But, I told myself, I couldn't let it distract me to the mission I now had. I wasn't the old me anymore, Princess Erin of Second Branch. That little girl was dead, and now I was just Pilot Forrestal and a pilot wasn't worth anything without her unit.
In preparing myself I did my own workouts in addition to the physical training session I had each day, and after extensively stretching in my cabin I usually went out and ran for about an hour. It was all I could do really, and the fortress was huge so I figured this would be a good way to explore my surroundings more.
Krupp had told me to keep my movements restricted to the area where my cabin was, which was a residential block of some sort although I never saw anyone else who lived here. Was I the only one? Could be. But after the second day I disregarded her orders and decided to go and look around on the pretense of needing more space to run. It was only then when I got a better view of where I was.
The fortress felt like a battleship or aircraft carrier inside, with multiple decks of cabins and other compartments. Some of this was for soldiers to sleep or train in, and on further exploration I found out there were hundreds of them here, to guard the fortress from anyone who'd want to try and attack. They also manned all of these defenses such as guns and missiles that the mountain was bristling with.
There were other places that were more to do with SEELE's operations, such as some sort of headquarters higher up in the mountain. That area was well guarded and I tried to stay away from there as it wasn't easy to jog though with all the security. I also discovered that far down below us were all sorts of caverns that were created by lava flows, and that the heat from below the mountain was from a still-active volcanic lava flow. Basically this wasn't just a mountain but a volcano too, and it was the heat from the volcano that gave much of the base it's power.
Everything around me had signs printed in German, Russian, Chinese, and English, and the German writing was the oldest. When I asked Krupp where this place was she wouldn't tell me but I'm not entirely dumb, and knew enough to figure out we were in Europe. If we could get here directly by submarine that meant we were by the ocean, and if it was really cold then we had to be high up closer to the Arctic. That left not too much of the world remaining, and I worked out mentally that we were either in Iceland, or then maybe Scandinavia or the very north of Russia. Somewhere where the mountains met the ocean. Norway maybe?
One particular day I made my jogging run towards the lower decks. Like I usually did I had on a green fleece running suit along with runners, with both a t-shirt and sweater underneath, because in some parts of the fortress it really was that cold. My hair was tied up in a bun again, as that's how I had become used to wearing it (and having long hair wasn't all that bad once I got into the habit of brushing it daily) The reason why I pushed this further downward today was because I wanted to see the EVA cages again, having heard whispers about there being more of the Mass Production Series being assembled.
After running down several flights of stairs I reached the larger chamber where the EVAs were held. This was a giant place, stretching for hundreds of yards in either direction, and laced with steel and concrete all around. Going from both to the left and right of me I could see them nestled within their pens, each cage containing a white muscular giant within. Unlike the last time I was here, there were more of the Mass Production series, at least ten that I could count, and they were all now at full size as each one of them stood up past a hundred feet or more.
I jogged down a steel gangway as I made a run to pass the giants, figuring that this would give me a good run and also satisfy my own curiosity to see what else was around me. Krupp was having me watched, I was sure, but for the moment didn't decide to rein me in so I just pressed on.
From the gangway I could get a good look at each of the giants, and you could see the strength of each one from the bounding muscles on the units. Some looked like they were just barely restrained as they twitched and jerked while inside of the cages, while others looked more like they were in repose. With no eyes it was hard to tell who was active and who was not but it felt like most or all of them were alive in some way, they had that kind of quivering movement to them as you passed by and it was a weird feeling. One of them turned their head towards me as I jogged past and I wondered if he wasn't looking at me. Good thing these guys don't seem to eat, I'd hate to end up a snack for any one of them with that giant mouth full of teeth.
Towards the end of the cage pens there stood one other Evangelion unit that didn't at all look like the others. It wasn't white but instead was dark grey and black, and had a regular helmet with a normal-sized head. Also, unlike the other units it wasn't twitching with activity, but instead stood stoically quiet inside of its own cage. As I ran closer I could see the insignia on its left arm as it faced me: Evangelion Unit 06.
At a closer look Unit 06 appeared a lot like Unit 04 did, with more proportional body limbs than the Mass Production EVAs. To me it seemed more "normal" like my own EVA, and then that got me wondering if there was a pilot to go with the unit. Sure enough there was, and he was standing right in front of the cage as I approached.
Poised in front of the cage railing on the gangway was a thin, sort of lanky boy that looked about my age. He had very pale skin and unusual white- grey hair, and he wore the black and blue plugsuit which I guessed was the standard SEELE suit. Earlier as I was fitted for a new plug suit the SEELE technical staff had suggested I wear the same colors, basically dark blue with black trims and I actually sort of insisted on my own colors of orange with black. I could give up a lot of things for this, but not my suit pattern.
Anyway the boy was just leaning against the railing looking up at his unit. Given that I finally found someone here that was at least my same age, I decided to see if he'd talk to me. So I then slowed down to a walk and came up to where he was standing.
As I got closer the boy turned his head towards me. He had a very fair face, slightly Asian and slender in appearance like the rest of him. To me he seemed rather handsome, in a soft sort of way. His height was just a few inches taller than me. What got me was his eyes as his pupils were bright red, the same shade of red that looked like the blue-haired girl in my all-too-frequent dreams. Also, and maybe it was just how he looked at me as I came towards him, but I got this very strange vibe from him but I couldn't describe it more than just to say that it felt queasy to be in his presence, almost alien.
Despite the way I felt I still approached him, figuring that at least I had a chance of making a friend here. "Hi!" I greeted in English as I got within a few feet of him. The boy didn't say anything back however, and then just ignored me and went back to looking at his EVA.
Maybe he didn't speak English, so I tried again, in Russian. Having Russian coaches for gymnastics ended up being more useful than I'd imagined as at least I picked up enough of the language in the years to use it in small talk. "Hello" I again greeted. "Are you a pilot?"
The boy looked at me again, seeing that I wasn't going to just go ignoring him. He still didn't reply back to me, and instead just stared at me.
Geez, are there any normal boys around that I can find? I greeted him again once more, this time going slowly. "Hello," I said in carefully pronounced Russian, "My name's Erin, Erin Forrestal. Do you understand me?"
"I understood you the first time," the boy spoke back in perfect, unaccented English. "I just didn't want to talk to you then."
Well, you're a prick. "You know," I said in English with a little laugh, "you're the only other pilot I've seen since I've been here. You might want to at least make a friend, yeah?" But silver-haired boy didn't say anything in return and just kept studying me instead.
"Look, anyway," I kept going, "at least let me know your name."
He just gazed off into the distance, seemingly indifferent to my request. If this guy was going to be too good to even talk to me I figured he wasn't worth wasting my time and decided to shuffle off. But only then as I was about to get going did he reply back. "They've given me the name of Kaworu," he said.
"Oh. But, is that your real name?"
"No."
I'm sensing a pattern here. "I don't suppose you'd want to tell me what your real name was, would you?"
"There's no need for the Lillim to know it," he flatly replied.
"What are the Lillim?"
"You see, girl," the silver-haired boy said, "how ignorant you are of the realities of the world you live in. That's why you don't need to know."
"I'm not ignorant," I retorted back. "I know how bad things can get in life, believe me."
Instead of answering me he peered at me a little more, as if he was examining me in a petri dish or some sort of experiment. "How peculiar."
"What's that?"
"You're split in half," he said to me, "yet you're not even aware of it."
"I'm what?"
The boy stepped up to me closer, and I could feel that creepy vibe over me just grow as my skin started to stand on edge. I became afraid and I didn't quite understand why.
"There's a whole other part of you that's somewhere else," he told me, "but you have absolutely no idea at all. How pathetic."
Fine then. "Okay," I said to Creepy Boy, "You know what? I'm done here. Have a nice life." With that I maneuvered away from the silver-haired kid, who gave me this sort of smirk as I moved to the center of the gangway to get back to jogging. Not wanting to really have anything else to do with this person, I just picked up my pace and moved down the gangway as far away as I could. "Weird," I muttered to myself. I have the worst luck in the world, every time I meet a boy my age it's always something problematic. No wonder I have dreams about kissing girls at night.
As I got back to running and the steel gangway that led me through the EVA cages led to another hatch and then through another compartment of the fortress interior, my mind shifted back to those dreams I kept having. In the month or more that I'd been here in the fortress recovering from my long sleep and then getting my strength back I hoped that my nightmares and other dreams would start to fade away as my confidence returned. I found however that instead they were getting more frequent, and growing stronger with each night.
The dreams I now had were of two kinds. One kind were dreams about piloting EVA, where I saw myself in the entry plug and usually engaged in some sort of battle. Those were infrequent but often heart pounding, it felt like life-and-death as I did battle against all sorts of enemies, including some that looked like the white mass production EVAs. The more frequent dreams however all included the blue-haired, red-eyed girl and as the dreams went on they were all pretty romantic as they come. It felt like I was living scenes from those old romance novels I used to just tear through while growing up at Second Branch. There was one particular one where I saw here in what looked like some sort of pastoral garden, with sculptures and courtyards and pretty flowers and pools of water, and there she was wearing a beautiful blue dress and we'd sit by the water and hold each other and…well, I tried not to think about the rest.
This really began to bother me and I realized there had to be something more to the whole thing. I remember that Dad was worried enough about these dreams to give me medication right before my accident, and then that got me thinking about just what happened that day, the day I fell into a coma and dropped out of existence.
There was something in the entry plug, something frightening. At this point I could just barely remember what happened, but like a shadow or a spectre, light and dark. It was something that appeared really creepy, and then it spoke to me. What did it say?
Turning the corner as I jogged down into another, darker passage of the fortress I tried hard to focus on what happened that time. Why was I so frightened? What was that thing? I had never told the others at SEELE about it as I didn't want them to think I was crazy and then I wouldn't be given the chance to get my Unit 04 back, and that was nearly all I wanted right now. That, and settle the score with that terrible boy who had messed up my life.
"Find" something, it said. At least I think it said, it came out so garbled. But what?
As I kept moving through the fortress my pace quickened, I wasn't now just jogging but rather running. I felt something about the dreams, something important, like how they were all linked together in some way.
The one thing that got me about all of them was that I experienced everything myself. I mean, it was like me in my own viewpoint, I wasn't just standing by and watching myself. When I was really little I used to have dreams like that, where it would be like I'd be standing on the ground and I'd see myself clutching a string of balloons, and then watch myself float way into the distance. That was scary, but all of these dreams were in solid, living color, like I was really there.
Back at Second Branch I kept having dreams about the boy, the one in the cabin. I knew it was a boy because I could just feel it, I could even hear his voice at times, and there was one time when I might have even seen him like in a mirror but it was so foggy that I just couldn't be sure of everything.
Then when I came back the blue-haired girl showed up. She was in a few dreams including that really frightening one with the tank full of body parts. I still got the chilly-willies from thinking of that. There were also dreams of being in EVA, of piloting and sometimes of really horrible things happening like my face melting off.
But then I was back to the cabin and with my boy in the mountains and suddenly the blue-haired girl was there too, playing in the snow with him and the weird penguin. The cabin had only shown up one more time, but since that point she basically had never gone away.
All of the dreams were from my own perspective. But here I was basically with this other girl. Why would I think that? Was I really that gay?
Or is this all the boy?
That startled me enough to get me to slow down my pace, and I just barely noticed that where I was now was dark and damp, somewhere deep within the interior of the mountain. Passing by a couple of uniformed technicians as I jogged down another dark passageway I kept up my train of thought, as I felt like I was on the verge of a breakthrough.
I always felt the old dreams, the boy in the mountains, were from his own perspective. Now I was having lots of those, again all from the boy's point of view. Naturally most boys like girls, right? So here's this really, sort of beautiful but strange looking girl in front of me and all I want to do is make out with her. Natural, right? If I'm the boy.
So are they all the same? If so, I've been having these since last year, since even before my accident. What the heck?
I slowed myself down to just walking and then wondered around trying to figure out what else was missing from all of this. I started to see the blue-haired girl the day I got here at the fortress, but yet I didn't see the photos of the other NERV pilots until much later. But yet I knew she was the same as the real-life girl, the one called Rei, I just knew it from those distinctive red eyes. How did she show up in the dreams before I knew who she was?
Pushing back though really hazy memories, I tried to build a timeline in my brain about when all of this started. It all started…when I started piloting. My first dream came the first day I got an activation on Unit 04. And then they haven't stopped since.
So then who was that boy?
He was in my head, he was living in my head. And then suddenly he was piloting EVA, and with this girl who really existed and was not something just in my imagination, yet someone I'd never met before. How could that even happen?
A sudden, horrible thought came over me at that moment, something that shook me down to my core. Maybe this boy was real. And maybe this boy was the one who had taken my unit, and then did something horrible to all of those people in Second Branch.
If that was true then he was the one who had killed Vance, and Dad, and everyone else. And now he was in my head every night.
How he could do it I had no idea, but it chilled me to think it might be the same person who came up with all of this stuff and then pumped it into my dreams. It wasn't enough that everyone else had to die, he had to come after me too.
But then why the girl? She was important to the whole thing somehow, I just didn't quite know how. I was so confused now, and terribly hurt. If this boy, the same one I once so innocently thought of early on as some sort of a romantic notion was actually the one who had killed all of those people, I couldn't stand the thought of him being in my head now. I just wanted to be left alone!
I didn't want to think about any of this any longer. My whole reality was devastating enough without the idea that someone was actually capable of entering my private dreams at night. Maybe I just made all of this stuff up to scare myself, or it was some really strange case of déjà vu. Either way I was becoming tired and stressed, and decided to turn myself back to my cabin. My training was still ongoing, and my mission of vengeance was coming up, and then I could settle the scores with everyone that had hurt me.
Looking upwards I tried to figure out where I had ended up. Somehow I was in a dark corner of the fortress basement that was poorly lit and smelt badly. I wondered where I even was and how I'd get back to my quarters. Searching for a sign, I turned and round and then suddenly jumped backwards. There was a man in a uniform standing right in front of me.
"Hello, young girl!" he said in Russian. "So nice of you to come here to entertain us down in the bowels of this mountain."
Panicked, I looked around and saw a second man, like the first dressed in a SEELE security guards' uniform and armed with a pistol. I realized immediately that I was in a lot of trouble, and really hoped that Ms Krupp was actually keeping tabs on me this time.
"Um…" I said to the two men, "you know, I'm just gonna go and get back to where I came from."
"Not so fast," the first man said, and he grabbed hold of me by the wrist. That was it I decided and immediately I shoved an elbow into his ribs, then followed by pushing under his waist and lifting him up and over me in a judo throw. It was bad form on my part but still enough to knock him off his feet and put him on the floor.
I tried running for the passageway behind me as the other man tried to intercept me. Again, he tried to grab me by the wrist but this time I took both hands and then swung my shoulder towards him and then pushed against his own body weight to flip him off his feet and onto the floor. With both creeps down on the ground I bolted for the passageway and ran as fast as I could out down the corridor.
Unfortunately there were more than two of them, and as I ran I bumped into a third man, he was large and sort of Asian-looking while the other two were more Caucasian. This one again took me by both of my wrists and then pushed me against the wall. Squirming to get out of his grip, I tried to swing myself underneath but it wasn't any use, as he used brute strength to pin me to the wall of the corridor. I fought hard to get free but I it was no use, as he fixed me tight.
As I struggled to get free the two other men who I originally knocked down and evaded moved to either side of me, the first one of them now looking down at my terrified face. "Well, little girl, it was so good of the Chairman to think of us toiling down here so hard on his behalf," he told me with a toothy smile, "that he sends you down here to us."
"What…what are you going to do?" I asked him, knowing the answer already.
"We are going to…show you our hospitality," he told me, moving his hand to caress my cheek. I tried to put up as brave of a face as I could. "You better not touch me," I said to him. "I'm pretty important!"
"So are we, my little dear, so are we," the man said as he traced his finger around the shape of my face, "and now it's time to give us our due." With that he started to take off his jacket and, frightened as I was, just closed my eyes and prayed to God that something, somehow would happen to get me out of this. But my present situation felt horribly hopeless, and my heart sank as low as when I first found out that Dad had been killed.
The man took his hand and then pushed my head back against the wall and I tried to scream, managing to get out at least a few seconds before they shoved a cloth into my mouth. Then he took both hands and ripped open my warm-up suit jacket, and then my sweater, exposing my t-shirt. My breathing was hard and I was trying anything that I could to get away, but with two guys over twice my size holding me down it was impossible. I looked at the man in front of me and saw his dark eyes bulging with emotion and I swallowed hard.
"Don't worry, little girl, you're going to enjoy this nearly as much as I am," he said in a faint voice. "So just lie back and don't fight it."
I tried to shout further but the wad of cloth in my mouth was huge and I couldn't get anything out that muffled screams. I did however manage to free up one of my legs and gave the ringleader a good kick in the thigh. Incensed, the man raised his right hand to slap me. I closed my eyes, dreading what would happen next, and then I heard a sudden noise that sounded like a loud electric shock.
Opening my eyes to see what it was, I watched my assaulter suddenly jerk with energy as sparks came from his behind his neck. Then came another voice, this time older. "It's not very manly to hit little girls," the voice said. My attacker's body then crumpled downward towards the ground.
The big Asian let go of me and swiveled towards my unknown savior. He tried to take a swing at him but instead he was quickly blocked and then kicked hard in the shins. The big man screamed in pain, but before he could do anything else he was punched in the gut and he too crumpled to the floor.
The last one, the one man that still had hold of my arm, attempted to swing me in front of him and brought out his pistol, hoping to use me as a shield to get out of the situation he was now in. My rescuer moved quickly however, and raising a pistol of his own put a bullet in the man's head. I could feel splatter against my face as the he too went down.
My body shook uncontrollably. I had never seen a man die before and now one just had his head blown in two inches away from me. I leaned against the wall and slid downward, locking up in cold shock. The shadow who had saved me from the other man came out into the dim lights of the hallway and I could see him now. It was the guard who Ms. Krupp put outside of my cabin, the middle-aged man who spoke perfect American English. Gently he crouched downward to see how I was.
"Are you okay, Miss Forrestal?" he asked. I couldn't say anything at first but just remained there on the floor trembling uncontrollably. When I did try to say something I realized there was still something in my mouth and I pulled the cloth out, nearly gagging as I did so.
"Let's get you out of here," the man told me. He then gently pulled upwards to get me on my feet. I found that I was shaking so bad that I couldn't manage to walk, so he then leaned over and carried me on his back to bring me out of the corridor and into better-lit areas.
I remained like that for a while, as he carried me like a little kid tired from too much playtime. After maybe twenty minutes or more, I wasn't quite sure, I was brought back to the upper decks of the fortress and closer to my own cabin. He then gently let me down and helped me to walk the rest of the way to my own cabin, instead of taking me to the medical center.
Silently he opened the cabin hatch and led me inside. I reflexively sat down on the bed as he closed the doorway and then proceeded to the tiny bathroom I had, taking wet towels and then returning to where I sat. The man then gently cleaned up my face as I sat there, and then he gave me a cup of hot tea to try and help me calm down. He also put a blanked around my shoulders to try and get me warm. Finally I got past most of the shakes I had, enough to be able to at least talk.
"T-thank you," I told him.
"It's nothing, miss," he said to me, "just doing my job." The man then looked at me directly, "What were you doing down there, anyway?"
"Just…sort of exploring," I told him, "I wanted to know more about where I was."
"Well, you need to be more careful and not stray too far. Nearly everything about this place is dangerous." I didn't reply but just nodded instead, having learned the lesson the hard way.
As I settled down I noticed that the guard looked at me curiously, as if he was searching for something. "What…what is it?"
"Oh, it's nothing," he told me. "You just remind me of someone I knew once. Someone very dear to me."
I think in all of the time I was here at the SEELE fortress this was the most anyone had ever opened up to me, such was the regimented and cold attitude of nearly everyone here. For a bit I dropped my guard as well. "What's your name?"
"Victor."
"Victor who?"
"Just 'Victor' miss. That's all you need to know for right now."
"Okay, then."
"Anyway, they'll be needing me to report in on this. Do you think you'll be alright now?" I nodded again, thankful that at least I had one guardian angel in my life.
"Do yourself a favor and if you go out and exploring again try to go to the upper levels. There's an observation deck there where you can see the mountain range where we're at."
"Where are we, anyway?"
Victor was at first reluctant, then decided to tell me more than anyone else here ever did. "This place is called Stetland, it's in Norway, It's a hollowed out mountain that used to be a Nazi stronghold."
I knew it. "Really?"
"Yes, it's kind of a long story. Anyway be sure you keep that to yourself, SEELE doesn't want you know to more than that?"
"Why not?"
"In case you get captured you can't give away where you were," he said. "I've got to go, but please take care of yourself, miss."
"I will," I said to him, giving him the best smile I could. It was then that I realized that I hadn't actually smiled at anyone for weeks, if not months. Victor didn't smile back but instead just nodded at me curtly and then went back out the hatch, shutting it tight.
I managed to put behind me the harrowing incident in the lower levels and focused on preparing for the mission ahead, and within a few more days of intensive training I was deemed good and ready to go into the lion's den of Tokyo-3. Just before my departure I had more meeting with Chairman Kiel, as I was walking alongside him while his manservant Piotr guided his wheelchair along one of the corridors close to SEELE HQ.
"Pilot Forrestal, they have told me you have made significant progress in your training."
"Yes, Grandfather." As I spoke to him I ran my fingers through my now much shorter hair, as they had nearly cut everything to give me a sort of "boy crew."
"Do you feel ready to embark on this most important mission?"
"I do," I replied with newfound confidence in my voice. I had survived all that had happened to me, and was regaining my strength by the day. "I'm ready to get my EVA back."
"Very well." Kiel lifted a finger as he spoke to me further. "You must never give them any indication that you have spent any amount of time with us," he instructed. "Once they find you it should be as when we first found you, and everything that you know must be unfolded to you again as for the first time."
"I understand."
"Your reactions must be convincing for them to accept you. But keep deep within your heart your true purpose, and wait patiently for the right time to strike. Others are already hidden within their underground fortress and will assist you in this endeavor, so you will not be alone."
"That's good."
"Know that you will be tested, and tested perhaps harshly or with clever tricks or deception. But don't let them deceive you, as you know the truth. Let it give you purpose." I nodded in agreement. I knew perfectly well why I was doing this: the deaths of my father, of Vance, and all of those other innocent people at NERV-2 were about to be avenged.
"Then when the time comes and you and the EVA are reunited, strike at them hard, and without mercy! You will be deep within their lair, and when you strike at them it will come as they least expect it. Once the mission is carried out then we will return you to here."
"How will I know how to get back to the fortress?"
"The pilot of the other EVA, Unit 06. He has…unique capabilities, and can spirit you back here directly in good order." I wasn't entirely sure what he meant by that but he seemed confident that I'd make it back alive.
"Good. There was one thing I was worried about?"
We turned a corner as we continued talking, moving towards the elevator shaft at the end of the hallway. "And what is that, my child?"
"What happens if I get captured? By the bad guys, I mean?"
"Do everything in your power to not reveal that you had any prior contact with us," Keel advised. "Should you come into their custody we will make every effort to ensure it won't be for very long."
That wasn't terribly reassuring, but I suppose this was dangerous work after all. "Okay."
"Very good. Child, I am told you still have the dreams, the same dreams about the boy?"
"Yes, I can't seem to get rid of them."
"These dreams originate from your link with the EVA, a link that they are exploiting," the Chairman explained. "Seizing the EVA and returning it here and away from our enemies should end the matter and give you peace." As the strange dreams I had were increasing in both intensity and frequency, I certainly didn't need any further convincing to go through with this, if getting back my EVA could clear my mind once and for all I was all for it. "Okay."
"Lastly, be careful of your contacts with the others. Our enemies will try to 'friendship' you and bring you into their circle of familiarity, to surround you with comforts and pleasant things and use these to bring down your defenses. Avoid interaction when you can, and when you can't be on guard as none of them mean you well."
"I understand."
We finally reached the elevators where we would part company, as one elevator car would take me downwards towards the submarine pen below the mountain and from there I would go some ways offshore and later be taken by aircraft back to America. I turned to face the Chairman just before the elevator car arrived to take me.
"Thank you, Grandfather. For everything."
"Thank you, my child. You have no idea what a blessing it's been to find you." I didn't say anything further but just smiled a little.
"Please do you best and mind what I've told you. The stakes are quite high but you must focus your mind on the mission. Nothing else should matter to you."
"I will."
"Then with good fortune we will see you again shortly."
Keel didn't say goodbye or even shake my hand, but simply motioned to Piotr to swivel his chair around and lead him towards another part of the fortress. As he did so, Piotr just slightly bumped me and then pushed the chairman down the hall. A moment later the elevator car arrived and I took it, and then the doors closed and the car led me deep downwards below the mountain.
As I watched the elevator doors close I noticed that when Pitor bumped me he also put something in my hand. Inside the elevator car were two other men, big burly well-armed types who towered over either side of me. I glanced at both of them and saw they were looking forward towards the door and not at me. So I looked at my hand and noticed what Piotr placed there was a tightly wound ball of paper.
Gently I unfurled the paper, careful not to let the other two men in the elevator see what it was. It was a very small and short strip but there were bold letters marked on it, bearing a message.
RUN AWAY!
By this chapter we are at the Mid-Way point in the story. The stage is now set, as Erin is on her way to encounter the rest of our cast in her mission to get back her EVA unit. The next few chapters will take place at NERV itself, at the GeoFront in Japan and sparks will fly!
Due to reasons related to work I am taking a slight break in writing, about 1-2 months, to catch up on business and the other parts of my life, and hoping to continue releasing new chapters in the New Year. I expect that this rate to have the complete story done by mid-Spring '17. There are plans for one remaining Blue Rose story and then on to original works, but I will focus on getting the current story over and done before writing the last one (and it should be the very last one).
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