To Become One
Chapter Eleven
"Okay, Nozomi, are you ready?" I said.
At my station in the control room, I flipped through a binder. The main projector screens flickered, showing the Black Moon that hovered over the Indian Ocean.
The craft was not unguarded: the Disc Angel and others, of various shapes and sizes, patrolled outside it. They had good reason to: an armada surrounded the craft in turn. Prime among the armada was the helicopter destroyer Ise, which carried Evangelion Unit-14 on the aft landing pad.
Nozomi and the entry plug were shown on the third, rightmost screen in the control room. She gripped and released the actuation levers, staring out at the scene before her, and she said,
"I dunno, can we go over the plan once we break in one more time?"
I sighed. "Yeah, sure, all right. Let's pause it."
The images froze. Waves stopped mid-break against Ise's hull. The Disc Angel sat tilted in mid-air as it dove toward the armada.
In the control room, some of the controllers backed away from their stations, stretching and drinking coffee or tea.
I paged through the binder, going to a middle section. "Okay, what's on your mind?"
"Finding the target once we're inside," said Nozomi. "I was just thinking we don't have enough material in the plan for a search."
I looked to Major Hyuga at the adjacent station. He looked over an identical blue binder and shook his head. "That's not her job. People on the ground will have to identify the target's location."
"Nothing she can do to help with that?" I asked.
"Nothing we're sure of. Let's focus on phase one. None of that stuff matters if we don't make it inside."
I relayed this to Nozomi, and Nozomi agreed to continue. "All right," she said, "let's give it a shot."
The simulation resumed. Ise steamed toward the Disc Angel at full speed, and Unit-14 engaged the enemy. It hopped between towed platforms, punching the enemy before flying away thanks to bursts of thrust from its jetpack.
"Take it easy," I told her. "You're burning a lot of fuel here. Quick, short bursts."
"I don't think I can reach the center that way," said Nozomi. "You want me to go for the edges?"
"Yeah, let's try that this round and see how it goes."
And so, we went on. Ayanami was gone. The hooded stranger was gone, but her children and the Angels were still there, and so were we.
The pawns were left to fight while the queens had abandoned the board.
#
It'd been nearly a week since Ayanami left us.
We'd left the Yellow Sea with the images of Ayanami and the stranger still haunting the operations room of Ise—an eternal reminder of the war between them.
The stranger's children around the world had liquefied, retreating to the Black Moon in the Indian Ocean to regroup. The remaining Angels had left their battlefields as well, with the Disc Angel hovering around the Black Moon as its final protector.
We began to plot the siege of the Black Moon—the final operation to remove the Angel and alien threat from Earth—but we had no plan for the future. What would we do then? How would we get that Geofront off our planet?
That was the thing with everyone else—Misato, Hyuga, and the others. They were so focused on what was right in front of them that they couldn't look beyond it. Even if we beat our enemies, that wouldn't mean we'd done all we'd hoped to. The enemy had made a real mess of the world, and just killing them or driving them back to their craft wouldn't fix any of that.
So it'd be a mistake—a real mistake—to be satisfied with just defeating them.
We had find the stranger. We had to make her give Ayanami back.
But no one else on the base was thinking about that, let alone had a plan. All they thought about was battle plans and exercises, about forming armadas and integrated command structures and whatever else.
So I did.
When exercises were done for the day, I grabbed a quick bite to eat and went back to my office in search of the answer. I paged through the insane ramblings of Keel Lorenz and his Seele disciples. I dug through the old Nerv archives—the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ritsuko's research, all of it. If there were information about Lilith and her people, it had to be in there, right?
But not everyone would leave me alone to that. As I studied some documents on the Spear of Longinus, there was a knock on my door, from Captain Aoba, of all people.
"Sorry to interrupt," he said, drumming his fingers on a manilla folder. "I just had some recommendations for future Eva testing. I thought you might want to know, in case we need you and Nozomi for the test."
I waved him over to my desk, and I took a look at the contents of the folder. Most of it had to do with trying to remove fragments of the Crown of Thorns from the Eva; Aoba wanted to run some live exercises to make sure the Eva was fully functional again. The artifact the enemy had used to take control of the Eva—the Crown of Thorns—had occupied all of Aoba's time in the past week and kept Unit-14 out of commission while they removed it.
"I'll pass it along to Hyuga; that's his call," I told him.
"Ah, I see," said Aoba, who furrowed his brow. "I guess I'm still a little out of sorts."
As could be expected—being liquefied by those creatures and trying to reconstitute yourself had a tendency to scramble your brain a bit.
"Are you feeling all right?' I asked.
"Fine, fine." He laughed. "Once you've been there once, what's another trip to the ocean, right? We're all fine." He picked up the folder from my desk and shot me a look. "What about you?"
I raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"Are you doing all right—since Lilith left us?"
"Ayanami," I said, glancing at the Spear of Longinus blueprints again.
"Ah." Aoba frowned. "Right," he said at last. "So you're doing well?"
"Fine," I said, smiling. "Just fine. Ayanami…did what she needed to do for our sake. I'm sad she's gone. She deserved more, but we're still here, and we need to keep going. And we'll find a way to bring her back."
"That's good to hear," said Aoba, nodding. "I'm glad to hear that. Some of us have been worried."
I slid the computer mouse aside, looking at him. "Worried about what?"
"A friend of yours—a friend of all of us—is gone. As far as any of us know, there's no way to save her. She might not even know we're still alive."
"She knows," I said, staring at him. "Ayanami knows, and she knows we're looking for her."
"Maybe you are," he said, "but the general isn't. The major isn't. Maybe we can save mankind. She'll still have sacrificed herself."
"You don't know that."
"That's all we're doing here—sacrificing ourselves for others' sake." He put a hand on his chest. "You, me, everyone—we're all giving a little bit of ourselves, but who says we have to suffer like that?" He glanced at the monitor. "How much are you going to give up to fix what happened?"
I tilted the monitor away from him. "As much as I choose to," I said. "I'm sorry about what happened to you, but don't you have something else to do?"
"I wonder, though," he said, "let's say we get through this but Rei is gone and won't come back: is that worth it? Is that worth all of this just to stay out of the ocean?"
"Get out," I said.
"Is that worth staying out of the ocean where none of this would even hurt?"
"Get out!"
Eyes narrowed, he gave me a slight nod, and he walked out.
I didn't blame Aoba for questioning things. I'd been there before. I don't think I reacted much better, all those months before, when I first confronted those creatures up-close.
But Aoba's doubts weren't my problem. I had too much material in front of me: Seele R&D, manifestos, and so on. I could spend weeks combing through their writings.
I could spend weeks and not find anything of value, not accomplish anything. These reams and reams of documents would be spokes of a hamster wheel: I'd run through them and go nowhere.
#
I started asking questions about our plans going forward. What would we do if the enemy forces were defeated? What were we going to do about the second Black Moon over the Indian Ocean?
What could be done, if anything, to bring Ayanami back?
"What—did she go somewhere?" was Misato's remark. "Do we need to send a taxi?"
That's what she said when I visited her office. She shook her head, looking to the ceiling, and sighed. The point was well-taken: it wasn't as easy as just going to fetch her from someplace. Where Ayanami had gone—or where she could be found—weren't easy questions to answer.
"We'll take the Black Moon," said Misato, "and we'll capture the head of the snake. If there's a way to get Rei back, she'll know."
But whether she would tell us, even knew anything, or would relent to help us was something neither of us could know. We were trapped in that, in miserable uncertainty with no way out. I suggested we interrogate Keel Lorenz, but Misato just laughed.
"We are interrogating no one," she said. "My people are taking care of that. You're not a trained interrogator. You'd give him as much information as you'd get, if you even got anything at all."
"So, what am I supposed to do?" I demanded.
She cocked her head at that. "Shinji, some things aren't entirely in our control. There might not be anything you can do about Rei right now. That's reality."
Reality sucked.
"But there are things you can contribute to in the here and now," said Misato. "The enemy is still out there. The Angels are still out there."
So what. We'd kill them, or we'd pack them all up in the craft they arrived in and send them back. Then something else would come hurtling from the cosmos, or maybe some archaeologists would dig up another Geofront, or Godzilla would rise from the ocean. On and on we go. Cataclysm is always just around the corner. There's no salvation on the horizon—only the people we bury and trample underfoot in search of it.
The thing is, I knew that wasn't a healthy attitude to hold. It wasn't something I liked or embraced, but it was the only thing I felt capable of holding in my heart at the time. Misato was right—keeping up with Nozomi mattered—but I just didn't have it in me to feel it rewarding. I couldn't find a meaning in it that I liked.
But once Misato and others pointed out the futility of my search, I couldn't go back to what I'd been doing, either. I'd learned a lot about Seele's inner workings in the previous week, but even Seele didn't know that much about Lilith—about who she was, where she came from, or the group of seven. What they did know was cloaked in quasi-religious nonsense, identifying Adam and Lilith with figures from Jewish folklore. None of it really meant anything.
Rather than spend the rest of the day on that waste of time, I did something more for myself: I read a book, A Tale of Two Cities.
It wasn't the first time I'd read it; I'd once given Ayanami a copy for a school assignment, and she took to the piece. She read it cover-to-cover in a day or two, and she kept the copy on her for a long time. I used to wonder what she enjoyed about the story: I feared the moments of human brutality would offend her, but there was definitely something about the story she liked.
So I read the Dickens novel again. I read, and I remembered things I'd forgotten. A lot of people reinvent themselves in that book. The spy, Barsad, assumes different roles based on who's in power. Darnay sheds his aristocratic background to live a quiet life. Doctor Manette is reborn on his release from prison, only to die again for periods of time as he relapses into his obsessive shoe-making.
I think Ayanami would've appreciated, maybe even enjoyed, the idea that people can change so fully and completely. She'd done it before, and she would do it again.
As nice a diversion as that was, reading a book would only do so much. I ate dinner late, by myself, and I headed back to my quarters with Asuka. It was half past nine at that point, and Asuka was on the bed, in shorts and bare feet, as she worked on her laptop.
"Been busy?" she said, hardly looking up from the screen.
"I've been…looking into things," I told her. "And thinking."
"Yeah?" she said, peering up. "What about?"
I sighed, and I took the chair at the desk, sitting down backward to face her. "We're not getting her back."
"Aha." Asuka closed her laptop, and she leaned back against a pillow and the headboard. "It doesn't seem likely, does it?" she said. It was more of a statement than a question.
"No." I flicked a finger at the desk's edge. "I didn't want to believe it, but that's how it is. And everything we're doing is about going forward."
"Yourself included?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"First's gone, but you've been halfway locked inside the control room or your office ever since," she said.
"I'm not running away from this," I said, frowning. "Not after what Ayanami did. How could I?"
Asuka smiled at that, and she waved me over. "Shinji, come here."
I stared blankly.
"I'm not going to bite," she said, laughing. "Get over here."
I got up and pushed the chair back into place. I lay down next to Asuka, and she wrapped an arm around me.
"I'm proud of you, you know," she said. "But I don't think anyone would have a problem if you took a day to yourself. She was your friend. Take the time to grieve. I didn't do that when Mama left me, and I didn't realize until much later how much weight that left inside me. Don't do that to yourself."
I sighed. "I don't know. There's so much going on—"
"Shinji, you need to lean on people sometimes," she said, pointing a finger at me. "It doesn't have to be me—but I won't complain if it is. You put up with a lot of my shit. Give me a chance to be there now and then."
"You have been," I said, closing my eyes in her warm embrace. "You have."
"Thanks." She squeezed me a bit. "Now, at least take the morning tomorrow. Get outside this hole. I'll take care of Nozomi's session. Agreed?"
I opened my eyes and stared—stared at the gray ceiling that was bathed in the cold, blue-tinted lights of the room. "Okay."
"Good," she said. "That's good."
Asuka tried really hard. She tried so hard to help me, but being comfortable in someone's arms—that can do only so much.
It's hard to feel good when you think you don't deserve that. Someone else can't feel that anymore, so why should you?
It's hard to feel good when nothing you can do would really change the situation you're in. When every option is equally pointless, why do anything at all? Taking time to myself might help me let go, but it wouldn't really improve anything—nothing except what was in my own head.
People we love go away in time. We die, and if science has anything to say about it, we don't go anywhere after that. We fall asleep, never to reawaken. Why bother trying to live, then? Why bother doing things? They won't amount to anything. The people we touch with our lives—the people we influence—will only die in turn. The stuff we did will be forgotten and lost. In time, there will be no evidence we ever existed at all.
Maybe that's when I finally understood my mother. The chance to make something immortal and everlasting—the chance to do something meaningful in that it could never be erased—did appeal to me, at least in that time. It was something of real consequence. My father and I could never be that.
At the same time, I was still alive. I was still alive, and I had no interest in dying. But what is there to keep going for? Ayanami's wish? The promise I'd just made to Asuka? Something else?
I spoke to Asuka about that question, and just like always, she had an answer right away.
"Why do you think she did it?" she asked me.
I didn't know.
"She had to know she'd die," Asuka argued, "or something worse. She gave up a lot, didn't she?"
"She was always like that," I remarked.
"But she felt it was worth it. She must've felt that way. It mattered to her that we'd still be here, that we'd still have the chance to go on."
"Was it really worth that, though?" I said, sighing and looking to the ceiling.
"It was worth it to her."
And that's the only thing that mattered, isn't it? As long as it was worth it to Ayanami, who were we to judge that? We do things for people, for other people, that might not directly benefit us, but we can still take joy in them. We can still find happiness in that.
"We should get married," I told Asuka.
Asuka sputtered, showing me a bemused look. "Are you serious?"
"Of course."
"You're incredible sometimes, Shinji," she said, shaking her head. "But you know, we can't right now."
"Why's that?"
"You have to be eighteen."
I huffed at that. "Well, in two years then."
"Yeah, two years."
We lay there for some time, and I fell asleep in Asuka's arms. I'm not sure exactly when.
#
The next morning, despite my uneasiness, I left the base to pay my respects to Ayanami.
I set out for Minamiashigara around seven o'clock from the train station in downtown Tokyo-2. I'd been invited there a few times before, but I'd never visited—not since the end of Instrumentality. When they were holding the dedication for the monument, I was still in my reclusive phase. I didn't want to be seen in public. I knew Minamiashigara well, though.
It was the place where Asuka and I left the sea.
The town had been been rebuilt since those days. The rising of the Geofront from Tokyo-3—just 10 kilometers away—had carved out a new beach on the town's south side and widened Odawara Bay. When Asuka and I had first returned to the world of the living, we'd found most of the seaside property smashed and broken—likely from the initial tidal wave after the Geofront rose. Given two years to rebuild, the town had laid out a new road along the south shore, dotted with beachside homes. More than half of them were still for sale, though. The beach there wasn't much to look at, either, with rocks going right to the water's edge. It would take a few thousand years or more to weather that into sand, I'm sure.
The freshly-paved road led to the monument.
The monument park charged no admission unless you wanted a guided tour, but you still had to get a ticket. The government had been savvy enough to offer me lifetime admission, though, so I showed the person at the counter my pass, and he let me through.
The central area of the monument was a concrete dais. Three statues in black marble stood equally spaced around the platform: one of Ayanami, one of Asuka, and one of me. The statues were life-sized, and I would've stood a little taller than my stone counterpart if not for the statue's base. As uncomfortable as it was to look at myself that way, I did like the statue. The artist captured something about that boy—his uncertainty, his vulnerability, his anger? I wasn't quite sure. Those black stony eyes were hard to read. But it did, at least, feel like me at a different time.
Behind each of the three statues were stone slabs, engraved with the names of those who had not yet returned from Instrumentality. Fittingly, my parents' names were listed on the slab behind my statue. I took a moment to find them among the other names—some of whom had dates next to them, showing they eventually had returned—and I moved on.
From the stone dais, a staircase led to the ocean. The Walk of Life was meant to offer a path for those returning from Instrumentality, but that day, I stopped at the top step and looked over Odawara Bay. In the distance, one eye stared back at me—an eye on Lilith's petrified head. Only half of the head was still intact, and it sat knee-deep in the water. A ring of buoys was meant to keep people from touching it or trying to snap off a souvenir.
I headed down the steps, rolled up my pant legs, and waded to the buoy line. The head was enormous—four men could've stood on each other's shoulders and still not reached the top—and its expression was equally haunting, for even in death, the petrified face wore an open-mouthed smile.
As the waves lapped up to my knees, I craned my head to look up, and I said to no one in particular,
"This isn't goodbye, you know. That would be too sad."
I balled my fists at my sides. I was shaking; the water was cool and uncomfortable.
"But until I find you again," I went on, "I'll try to keep going like this."
The stone face didn't move. It stared blankly across the breach with its small smile.
"Thanks," I said to it, and I waded back to the shore.
If it came down to just Ayanami versus all of mankind having the chance to live outside of Instrumentality, then it was a simple decision. Ayanami knew that, and so did I, but that didn't make it any less unsatisfying. Ayanami might have found peace or happiness through what she'd done, but some of that peace came at the cost of my grief, too. Trying to be happy for her sake felt more like an obligation than something I really wanted to do. I would've liked it better if she'd been there. The challenge was to realize in my heart that it just couldn't be so.
Those heavy thoughts weighed on me as I trudged up the Walk of Life to the monument dais, but as I reached the halfway point of the stair, the wind picked up. There was a low thumping sound. Helicopter rotors sliced through the air. A military chopper came down on the road outside the museum. Three SDF members disembarked: Captain Suzuki and two of her men.
My satellite phone rang.
"Hello, Shinji?" It was Hyuga. "Asuka's going to be on the line in a moment. There's been an incident here."
Captain Suzuki and her men walked toward me.
"What happened?" I asked. "Is she all right?"
"We think she's fine. The control room—she's coming on now."
There was a clicking sound, and Asuka was next to speak. "Hey, Shinji? It's me. I'm all right."
Suzuki and her men stopped in front of me. "You need to come with us, sir," she said. "You're needed at the base immediately."
I covered the phone. "What's going on?" I demanded.
"Shinji?" said Asuka on the phone. "Are you there?"
"I'm here!" I answered. I pulled on my hair. "Are you sure you're all right? Talk to me!"
"I'm fine. Everybody here is fine. One of Maya's people was grazed; that's all."
"Grazed?" My blood ran cold. "Grazed by what?"
There was some static. A distant voice broke in. "That's enough," the male voice said.
"Hey, I'm not done; hey!" More static.
"Asuka?" I cried, hunching over the phone. "Asuka!"
The line went dead.
#
Captain Aoba had taken over the control room.
Asuka had started on the procedures for simulated exercises when Aoba and his people entered the control room. He pretended that he wanted to discuss the Eva's limitations after having removed the Crown of Thorns and repaired the damage from being submerged for so long. That was just a ruse: he and his men were already armed. There had been a brief firefight, with one of Maya's staff grazed in the action. After that, Misato's men had taken positions outside the control room doors. Aoba's people had disabled those doors and disconnected the interior cameras.
Aoba's demands were simple: collapse the launch chute and destroy Unit-14. "This war costs everyone too much," he said over the phone. "We're the ones killing people; they're not. Put a stop to this, General! Just let it be!"
We were in the briefing hall, which Hyuga had hastily converted into a command center for the emergency. Misato sat at the bottom of the bowl with the speakerphone in front of her, and when Aoba made that remark, she put him on mute and sneered. "Yes, sure, we should accept being crippled because that at least doesn't kill anyone!" she remarked, but when she unmuted the phone, her tone was more diplomatic. "All right, Aoba," she said, "if we're going to cooperate, we need a mutual show of good faith—a number of hostages for each concrete act you ask of us. Agreed?"
"Seal the launch chute, and I will release half of the hostages," said Aoba.
Misato put two fingers to her temple. "Wouldn't you like to divide this down to something a little finer? Putting so much leverage on a single act increases the risk for both of us."
"Those are my terms," he said, and he hung up.
Misato picked up the phone and slammed it back on the base to hang up in turn, and she rattled off instructions for Hyuga. "Find a way to launch the Eva without him knowing," she said. "Divert every camera, sensor, and radio to the secondary control room. Assume he has people on the outside looking to funnel him information or sabotage our efforts. Do not let him harm even any more of our people, Hyuga."
Hyuga nodded, and he doled out assignments to the remaining officers and staff. We were to set up in the secondary control room. The base's eyes, ears, and voice would be reconnected there, leaving Aoba with false feeds and dummy radio traffic.
With Hyuga's instructions given, we filed out of the auditorium, but I lingered at the back of the crowd. I ducked into the restroom, turned the cold faucet all the way open, and splashed some water on my face. I leaned on the sink counter with both hands, and I bowed my head.
I'd spoken to Ayanami in a restroom like that one—not that exact one, but they had the same layout: the same cool, blue-white lights; the same cream-colored, plastic countertops. She made an appeal to me in that place. And then she was gone.
I'd spoken to Asuka in the briefing hall before. I'd been sitting right next to her when she sold Misato and Hyuga on the idea of the puncture engine. That was some weeks before. How amazing it was to realize things could change so quickly. If Aoba or one of his men got jumpy, she could be gone just as fast as Ayanami left us.
There was a knock at the restroom door, and it creaked open. "Somebody in there?" asked Misato. "I was banging someone earlier and forgot my panties. Do you mind?"
I huffed, not looking at her. "You're not funny."
"I disagree," she said, stepping inside. "This is my base, and it's a standing order that I'm funny."
I sighed at that. "Don't you have something to do?"
"We both do." She put a hand on my shoulder, and we faced the mirror together. "How are you holding up?"
"It's Asuka in there," I said. "How do you think I'm holding up?"
"She needs you now." Misato rubbed my shoulder. "You up for it?"
I looked away. "I'll try." My eyes snapped back to meet her gaze. "Don't let them take her, Misato. Don't let them take anyone else."
Misato leaned to the side and kissed my temple. "There's not a chance of that," she said. "We're getting Asuka back."
I nodded and let out a breath, and we headed to the backup control room.
#
Technicians and support staff still had work to do in the backup control room, hooking it up with live feeds and radio systems. I had to log into an unfamiliar station and get my credentials entered for the communications loop. All that work took time—time we didn't have. My chair felt uneven and sat too high, but the lever on its side didn't seem to work properly. The backup control room was cramped, with only half the stations the main one had. In some areas, two or three controllers shared a single station. The lighting was flaky, with one overhead light going in and out ever few seconds. The room was far from perfect, but it would have to do.
I got on the line with Nozomi, who had been loaded into Unit-14. If Aoba wanted us to close the launch chute and trap the Eva inside, we had to do everything we could to get the Eva into the open and free. Nozomi had suited up for the most unusual operation we'd ever considered.
"So, have we got something like a harness to support me?" asked Nozomi. "You guys sent an Eva into a volcano. You have to have a plan for this."
I looked to Hyuga. "Don't count on it," he said.
"Sorry," I told Nozomi, "we'll have to worry about what we can control. I know it's tough."
"Well, for Soryu's sake…" Nozomi sighed. "Let's get this done, right? We got a checklist?"
"Just the essentials," I said, "and thanks."
"'course."
We worked through the quick launch checklist. While most of the basic tests passed, Nozomi felt that the Eva was stiff and sluggish. Some of that was expected: the Crown of Thorns had damaged the Eva's nervous system, and even though our people had excised the artifact, the damage would take time to heal—more time than we had. We were concerned that the loss of motor function could affect the Eva's ascent, but we didn't have many other options. If the proper safeguards were taken on the way up, the Eva still had a good chance of making it out of the launch chute, but if Nozomi felt she simply didn't have adequate control, it would be on her to abort. Actually launching the Eva was out of the question: the primary control room would detect that, whether through sensors in the launch elevators or by the power flowing to the electromagnets within. We had no choice but to make Nozomi climb the whole way to the surface.
The tricky part wasn't the climb, either: it was deceiving Aoba into thinking we were giving in to his demands while betraying him. As Nozomi scaled the chute, pulling the Eva up by nooks and crannies in the carved-out rock, Misato ordered sealing doors shut, cutting Nozomi off from the base beneath her. Aoba was wise to this, though; he wanted Misato to close the topmost sealing door, ensuring Eva-14 couldn't escape.
Misato and Hyuga deliberated about what to do there. Could the Eva break through the top sealing door on its own? And do so without collapsing the launch chute structure? They decided it was worth the risk. They closed one last sealing door behind Unit-14 as well as the topmost one. Nozomi and Unit-14 climbed on with only the glow of orange emergency lights to guide her upward.
With the shaft doors shut, Misato made her counter-demands: Aoba was to release half the hostages, including Asuka. The other half would be for removing and destroying the Eva's core.
Aoba refused. He felt that merely closing the doors wasn't enough. He demanded that we weld them together to ensure they couldn't be opened remotely.
"What does he want us to do—find an Eva-sized blowtorch?" said Misato, incredulous. She turned to the communications controller. "If we decline to do that without a release of hostages," she asked, "what will he do?"
The controller passed that along and said, "He says he'll liquefy hostages one at a time until we comply."
Misato and Hyuga weren't sure what to make of that. Could Aoba have smuggled one of the walkers in without us noticing? How else could they forcibly liquefy someone? Did they have some other technique?
Whatever the answers, Misato decided it was a moot point. It seemed that Aoba had no intention of releasing the hostages incrementally as a show of good faith.
"We're going ahead," Misato decided, coming down the aisle to stand near Hyuga and me. "Break the launch chute door open. Our people will go in on the first crack."
I glanced at the front projector screens. On one screen was the view from the Eva as it climbed the chute. On the next was a millimeter-wave image of the primary control room. In grayscale, Aoba's men manned the control room stations, with only a small handful standing guard. The control room staff sat underneath their desks. Try as I might, I couldn't get a clear glimpse of Asuka: the grayscale figures were recognizable as people, but without true color, clothing, or hair.
"Shinji," said Hyuga, "you need to let her know."
I flinched. "Right! Sorry." I pushed the transmit switch on my headset cord. "Okay, Nozomi, we're going to have you break down the chute door."
"You sure, Ikari?" Nozomi looked at the entry plug camera. "Feels like I'm fighting through soup here, like I'm drawing something but somebody keeps yammering away while I'm trying to concentrate."
Unit-14 pulled itself up on a niche in the rocky chute, but its fingers slipped, and the Eva flailed to regain its grip.
"Can't hold on to anything right now," muttered Nozomi.
"It might be interference from the core," I told her. "We might have to just push through it."
"Okay, just give me the word."
I looked to Hyuga, but he was pressing a finger to his ear. "Major?" I said.
"Tell her to stand by," he said. "There are reports of a security breach elsewhere on base. We need to assess the situation."
I gestured to the front screen. "Nozomi can't hang there forever."
And Aoba's people weren't going to wait forever, either. There was activity inside the primary control room. Aoba's goons went back and forth between distant stations. They used office chairs as improvised cover, and all we could do was watch them run about like actors in a silent film.
"General," said Hyuga, "Aoba's people clearly believe that a confrontation is imminent. If we're going to strike, the time is now."
Misato frowned, tapping a pencil on her desk. "Shinji, do you think Nozomi can break through—despite the trouble she's having with the Eva?"
I watched the front screen. Aoba's men drew their guns.
"Yes," I said. "Absolutely."
"Then make the call," said Misato.
I relayed the instructions to Nozomi, who—despite her unsteady grip on the rocks—pulled the Eva to the bottom of the chute door. Resting its shoulder on a ledge, the Eva drew its prog knife and started cutting.
On the front projector screen, SDF security teams barged into the primary control room, and just as the door opened, the footage went dead.
"Misato!" I cried, turning back to look at her.
She held up a hand. "These things take time," she said.
And time doesn't care how impatient you are.
The minutes ticked away in the backup control room. The air circulation system spat cool air at my neck. The computers hummed and beeped. On the screen, Nozomi sliced through the launch chute door and pried it open. Unit-14 emerged in the midday sun on Hachibuse Mountain outside Tokyo-2, and as the minutes passed, Nozomi guided the Eva on a stroll of sorts. She had nothing better to do, after all.
Hyuga had gone to Misato's station to observe and monitor the situation. Make no mistake: they were watching. They could see what was going on. They just didn't want me watching.
But after a time, Misato let out a breath and sat back in her chair. "Shinji," she said, "Hyuga will take over for you with Nozomi. Get up to the primary control room. Asuka's waiting for you."
My heart skipped a beat. I fumbled with my headset, getting the cord caught around my fingers. I ran out of the backup control room and scampered across the base to the primary control room's building. I ran so fast I lost my footing trying to turn a corner and banged my hand against an exposed pipe, but I shook it off and kept going. When I got to the control room, it didn't even hurt.
The scene there was confused and chaotic: infirmary staff had priority getting in and out. A line of controllers left the area under the supervision of a pair of medics. Base security guarded the doors closely, keeping me at a safe distance.
Then, at the end of the line, came Asuka. She had a medic personally attending to her; the side of her face had swelled up, and she was holding a compress to her cheek to dull the inflammation.
"Asuka!" I cried, and I ran to her—despite the guards' protests. Asuka wrapped an arm around me, cradling the compress and her face with the other.
"I'm all right," she said. "The Eva—did they—"
"No, we got Nozomi and the Eva out," I said.
"Did you now?" From inside the control room came the voice of Captain Aoba. He and his men lay face down between the cubicles, cuffed with cable ties. The SDF officers standing over them wielded tasers, and two leads stuck in Aoba's back. "You got the Eva out?" he said weakly. "Good for you."
Two SDF members dragged Aoba to his feet, and as they walked him out, I called to him.
"How could you do this?" I said. "We worked on this for so long. Why?"
Aoba froze me with a glance. The stare in his eyes was distant and haunting. "I've seen what could happen to us," he said. "They showed me when they took me to the sea this time. We can't let that happen. Have you thought about what would happen next? No you haven't. I know it." The SDF members began to drag him away. "That's all right," Aoba concluded. "None of that matters anymore."
As the security team walked Aoba and his henchmen to holding cells, Asuka and I lingered behind. One of the medics stepped in, saying that Asuka should go to the infirmary to get checked out, but I wasn't watching. I stared as Aoba and the others went down the hall.
"Asuka," I said, "are you going to be okay?"
"Yeah? I should be fine. Just got hit by a wussy punch; that's all. I should be back to work—"
I kissed her on the lips for just a moment, enough to quiet her, and I waved goodbye. "You rest!" I called out as I started down the hall. "Listen to the doctors! I'll check back later; I need to see Nozomi."
"Shinji? What's going on?"
I headed back to the backup control room at a brisk pace. For a man who'd been tased and defeated in his plan to shut down the Eva, Aoba had been a little too calm about things. Our mistakes soon wouldn't matter? The plot to invade the Black Moon hadn't even been launched.
More importantly, the man who had cleared the Eva for testing—for relaunch—was none other than Aoba. If he'd wanted to shut the Eva down, he'd had more than ample opportunity to do it right under our noses.
When I returned to the backup control room, I explained my reasoning to Hyuga and Misato. We needed to get Unit-14 back in the cage for testing; we should scour every last square centimeter of its body until we were confident Aoba had done nothing to sabotage it. They agreed, and they had me call Nozomi back.
We raised the launch elevator to the top of the chute, but when it arrived there, Unit-14 wouldn't move.
"Ikari, I don't have control here," said Nozomi, pushing on the actuation levers. "The whole thing's gumming up again, just like—"
The Eva shook and recoiled. An appendage grew out of its forehead: a thorny vine. It formed a ring across the Eva's six eyes and ran tendrils along the Eva's limbs like the strings of a puppet.
And they invaded the entry plug, too. Tiny roots crept inside around the entry plug hatch. They yanked Nozomi from her seat, stringing her up on a cross of thorns.
"Nozomi…" I rose from my seat, mouth agape. "Nozomi, can you move at all? Can you do anything?"
"Now, now, Shinji Ikari—you should know better," said a voice from inside the plug. "Eva has a will of its own. Those who dare try to control our precursors' flesh shall be dominated in turn."
Keel Lorenz. He was there—inside the entry plug with Nozomi. He swam freely, and he sat on top of the actuation levers' mount, in front of Nozomi, who stared back at him in fright and horror.
"My thanks for allowing me and the Eva to reach the surface," said Lorenz with a mocking nod. "Now, if you'll excuse us, we must bring about paradise once more."
The Eva took a halting foot forward.
And then another.
And another still.
And it brushed aside the trees as though they were saplings to a bear.
#
It took the next few hours to piece together what had happened—and how we were deceived.
Aoba and his people had released Lorenz. They'd liquefied him and mixed him into the batch of LCL meant for the entry plug. From there, it was just a matter of time. As long as we thought Aoba wanted us to seal the Eva underground and destroy it, we'd do everything in our power to set it free. Aoba must've deliberately left a piece of the Crown of Thorns embedded within the Eva—a piece that became active and virulent when the time was right. If it had asserted control over the Eva underground, it was very likely we would've kept Unit-14 contained. Even if it wrecked the base, it would've been trapped under tons of rock. Tricking us into releasing the Eva accomplished both of Seele's goals.
And Seele didn't waste any time proclaiming victory. Their propaganda was on the airwaves by the end of the hour, saying that all mankind should "prepare to enter the millennial kingdom." The Crown of Thorns would usher us into a new and final era—and so on and so forth. They rattled off promise after promise of false salvation, and their voices brimmed with giddiness and glee. Only devils could welcome the apocalypse with such open arms.
There was little we could do to shut them up. From Tokyo-2, Unit-14 headed for the ocean. Misato had all remaining SDF forces converge on the Eva's path, but it didn't matter. They bombarded the Eva with bullets, shells, and N2 weapons. It was futile: the Eva shrugged off N2 weapons like they were firecrackers. It flung tanks aside with a flick of its foot.
I stood with Nozomi throughout that time. I kept talking to her, trying to reassure her, but Lorenz was in the entry plug. He could undo all of my well-meaning words with just a look and a smirk. Nozomi resisted him and her bindings, but her efforts were futile. She could lash out at him as much as she liked; Lorenz didn't care. She could tug and yank on the vines, but they had no slack to pull against. She was a prisoner in the Eva, forced to watch and listen as the beast decimated all that stood in its way. Her strength faded, and she drifted into a daze, shutting both Lorenz and me out.
The Eva headed for the Indian Ocean. It could have only one destination: the second Black Moon.
Our purpose was clear, then. The attack plans that had been drawn up to attack the enemy's stronghold were quickly modified and co-opted for a new purpose: Get Nozomi back. Get Unit-14 back. Stop Fourth Impact before Seele make it happen.
All the world would contribute. The American and German Eva would be the vanguard. An international armada would steam for the Indian Ocean, providing passage and firepower. Allied aircraft would blot out the sky. Were it not for the loss of life in Second and Third Impact, it would've been the largest mobilization of armed forces in the history of the world. At the very least, it'd be the largest coalition—in terms of number of countries—ever assembled.
While Misato and Hyuga coordinated with our allies, I stood watch in the backup control room. We'd lost contact with Unit-14 once it reached sufficient depth, but there was still a chance that, even if we couldn't hear back from the Eva, that Nozomi might hear me. Every ten minutes, I made a call out into the dark.
"Eva Unit-14, this is Manoah Base Control, do you read?"
Nothing.
"Nozomi, it's Ikari. Can you hear me?"
Always nothing.
Every ten minutes, I made the two calls, gave it a ten-count just in case, and shut off my microphone. My responsibility was to stay on watch. What I did after making the regular check and hearing nothing was my business.
So, I brought some things with me to pass the time: A Tale of Two Cities and a sketchpad.
Well, I'm exaggerating slightly. To say I used these things to pass the time would be an overstatement. I didn't, really. I laid the book and the sketchpad on the desk—not my desk, mind you, but a similar plastic desk to my own in the real control room.
And I'd watch them.
Now, I know that sounds a little crazy. It's not as though I expected the book or the sketchpad to move.
But I watched them.
I watched them, and they spoke to me.
I heard Ayanami reading the monologue of Sydney Carton as he went to the guillotine for a death he didn't deserve. I heard Nozomi giving me tips on pencil strokes and perspective.
These voices I heard clearly, yet in time, they would fade, as all things inevitably do. My memory would fail me if I didn't hear those voices again. At some point, no one would live who'd ever heard either of them speak, and their voices would be lost forever.
That's all logical, but there was a part of me that didn't want to believe it. There was a part of me that stared at the book and the sketchpad. It stared and even held on to those objects, as though to capture Ayanami and Nozomi's voices in my hand like fireflies, but I had no jar to keep them in.
I realized then that Seele was right about one thing: life is painful. Life is full of pain and suffering, for that is the nature of it. The world itself and the passage of time—they were my enemy, my bane.
The promise of a world with people betrayed me. I'd known that time would come; I'd dared to think it wouldn't be so soon, but it came—not because Ayanami and Nozomi had been taken from me but because of what I'd left them with.
You never say all you ought to say to someone.
You never feel like you know how much people love you as well as you think you should.
This is always true, and yet how often do we go out of our way to tell people what they deserve to hear? How often do we remind the people around us that they're loved?
Not often enough.
Now, the easy thing to do would've been to speak some of those words over the radio, hoping Ayanami and Nozomi could hear, but that would've been empty. At best, it would've made me feel better without accomplishing anything.
What good are words shouted to an empty forest?
The ten-minute check-in came again.
"Eva Unit-14, this is Manoah Base Control, do you read?" I said.
Nothing.
"Nozomi, it's Ikari. Can you hear me?"
Nothing.
I looked up at the projector screen. As Unit-14 walked along the ocean floor, a dashed line traced its path. It would make landfall in China, presumably to continue its journey to India on the ground. Maybe then we'd be able to reach her.
Until then, there was only the faint hum of electrical noise in my ear. My words spoken to the void were never heard.
#
I passed on monitoring of the plugcom station after a few hours. There was no chance of reaching Nozomi while she was underwater, and Misato had been gracious enough to offer another SDF officer as relief while I retired for the evening.
I stopped by the infirmary to pick up Asuka—she was fine, aside from the bruise on her face. They'd given her some fluids just to be safe. As soon as the doctors cleared her, I took Asuka back to our quarters to rest—and I insisted that she rest. A little food was fine, but after that? Right to bed. No questions. I wouldn't have it any other way. Asuka was a little taken aback at how forceful I was about this, but once it was clear I wouldn't budge, I think she appreciated where I was coming from. She might have even liked it a little.
While Asuka was sleeping, I got back to work. I brought a heap of photographs and documents from my office and spread them over our desk. I brought up dozens more on Asuka's base laptop: photos of the Black Moon, disposition of naval forces, satellite thermal imaging, and more.
I searched through the material like a termite chewing through a grand staircase. Once I devoured each sheet, I tossed it aside. Papers fell like snowflakes around the desk.
Maybe you can't understand it, but have you ever felt there was something you had to do because you wouldn't forgive yourself if you didn't? Or, did you ever know there was something totally pointless ahead of you—something you could never succeed in—yet you felt like you had to go through the motions anyway?
This was like that, for me. I'm no tactician, no military planner. I knew even less about materials and battle formations than I did about Seele's prophesies, but it was something I had to do. If I had the choice between sitting there, listening to the silence, and combing through every document or piece of data we had on the enemy, I'd make the same choice every time.
These people had taken Ayanami from me. They were taking Nozomi from me. They'd almost taken Asuka from me. They'd nearly driven Misato from me. Well, not anymore, not if I had something to say about it! You can't stress friendships—you can't steal loved ones—and expect no one to come knocking on your door. Seele believed that there was nothing good in this world. They were the real problem. They were the ones dissolving the bonds that made us human. There could be no greater crime than forcing Ayanami to face an eternity of sameness—of neverending stubbornness—just so we could enjoy the right to exist. There could be no greater sin than crucifying Nozomi just so Lorenz could enact his twisted vision of paradise.
No more. No fucking more of that. I wouldn't have it.
Even so, as much as I felt that anger driving me, I don't think I expected to find an answer in those photos and briefings. I think, at the time, I felt compelled to look just so the rage wouldn't consume me.
But I did find an answer in there. I found a way to save Ayanami and Nozomi both. I found the way to end the war.
I held it in my hand, and the paper trembled, for my whole body shook as I realized the significance of it. The way to finding Ayanami—to bringing her back and stopping Lorenz cold in his tracks—was built on the simplest of things:
A diagram of a Geofront support strut.
#
I took my idea to Misato and Hyuga the next morning. The idea was simple: Ayanami had shown me a vision of a Geofront, and with her, I'd seen the white giant's chamber and a route from there to the outside. I couldn't remember the exact path in detail, but if I were there, it might come to me. All we needed was a starting point, and I had that: the airlock. There were only so many airlocks on the Geofront, in spite of its size, and I could pick out a particular one. I'd seen glyphs next to airlock control panel and etched above the airlock door. I didn't understand what they meant, but I was fairly sure they were a unique identifier. I drew them—an open triangle, a single dot, and an open hourglass shape—and Hyuga recognized them right away.
"They're digits from the First Ones' number system," he said, studying the drawing I'd made. "It reads as 3-1-5."
There were some minor details about that—the First Ones used a base-six numeral system, so the number itself wasn't three hundred and fifteen—but that was of no consequence. The core idea I had was sound. Based on photographs of the Geofront, we identified airlock 315. That would be our point of entry, and the vision I'd experienced, I would help lead an SDF team to the white giant.
But as Misato, Hyuga, and I went over these details in her office, Misato had one question for me:
"So we find the Seed of Life in her chamber," said Misato. "What then?"
That was a tough question. We could bring a bomb—or two, or ten?—to destroy the giant, but if she resisted, that likely wouldn't work.
Even so, I knew what I wanted to do. "We go there," I told Misato and Hyuga, "and we make her give Ayanami back. Whatever it takes."
Misato and Hyuga wanted some time to consider my idea and the part I'd play in it. Regardless of my role, the preparations to attack were underway. In 48 hours at most, the nations of the world would move on the Black Moon and Seele. Word was that our people would have to depart for the armada no later than the next day.
That left us with some time to plan, think, and wait.
#
The base was on edge. People were all over the place, going from one section to the next. Additional repair crews and technicians were on scene, working on the main control room, and military police took some of the captives back to Tokyo-2 for further interrogation and detainment. With so many people about, walking at a brisk pace from one sector to the next, anyone standing still was a stone among rapids, liable to be washed away at any moment.
I held my place against the current by resolving to reach Nozomi once again, and this time, I invited her sisters to help. The elder Horaki sisters—Hikari and Kodama—had been put up in a guest area on-base due to the circumstances. They might spend many hours on the radio trying to reach Nozomi over the next few days. It seemed a minimal kindness that I would be the one to show them how the transmitter worked.
The two sisters were uneasy, just like the rest of us. Stoic Kodama took a long time in front of the microphone thinking about what she wanted to say. At last, she made a halting plea: "Hello, Nozomi," she said, sitting forward in her seat. "This is Kodama. If you can hear me, say something. Hikari, Ikari, and I are all here—your family is here. We aren't going to stop reaching out and trying to get you home."
No answer. Kodama looked to me with a quizzical expression, offering the microphone back, but I encouraged her to keep going. We couldn't expect a response, let alone an immediate one. She kept trying, but it's hard to talk to a microphone and hear nothing back.
Horaki was having a hard time dealing with it, too. As Kodama made her appeals for Nozomi to answer, Horaki and I stepped aside, and she made some small talk. She lamented that she and Nozomi had just begun talking again—really talking—yet hadn't gotten anywhere.
"We thought it was best to take things slow," Horaki remarked, and she laughed bitterly. "We acted like there was all the time in the world."
"It's good to be careful," I said. "I don't think that was the wrong thing to do."
Horaki met my gaze from the side. "But she's a pilot. It's dangerous work. You don't always have time."
I sighed, and I glanced out the observation window in turn, even though the projector screens were blank. "That's true," I said. "But you were working on it. That has to count for something."
"For something." Horaki made a fist. "But we have to get her back."
"Yeah, we do."
Back in the corner, Kodama took her finger off the transmit switch, and she offered the microphone to Horaki. "Are you ready for a turn?" the eldest sister asked.
Horaki grimaced, and she glanced at me. "No one else is listening, right?"
I winced. "They…probably are, somewhere."
Horaki made a face at that, but she sighed, and she let it pass. Kodama passed the microphone to her, and Horaki cleared her throat, beginning timidly.
"Hello, Nozomi?"
Silence.
"Nozomi? Nozomi, can you hear me?"
A shiver went down my spine. For a moment, my mind wasn't in the observation room. I remembered sitting in the theater—the ephemeral theater that Ayanami and the stranger had shown me a few times. I remembered listening to Horaki. I couldn't see her; the screen was filled with Nozomi instead. Nozomi was in the entry plug, with vines and thorns from the Crown holding her up. Her breath caught at Horaki's voice, but she didn't respond.
"Nozomi, please," said Horaki. "I don't know if you can hear me. I don't—if you can answer, but you need to stay strong. Stay strong and keep fighting. Just be stubborn like always, and there's nothing they can do to you. Isn't that right? Nozomi?"
I'd seen it all before. I knew it was coming. I didn't want to believe it, but it happened. It was unavoidable. Ayanami saw it. I just didn't want to believe her.
As hard as we worked, as much as we tried, we were on a path to this state of ruin, this desperation, and nothing I had done could change that.
Did Ayanami know all of what the future held? Did she know that she would have to leave us? Was she avoiding that for all the time I'd seen her, ever since she saved me from the madman in the soup kitchen—the madman with the gun?
Did she try to avoid it and only realize that it was impossible?
And if she did, then what was the point of me sitting there, trying to reach Nozomi? Maybe Ayanami knew what would happen with that, too. Maybe she knew what the future held as far as anyone could imagine. If she did, then what was the point of any of this?
Horaki must've noticed what was going through my head, for she stopped transmitting and caught my attention. "Are you all right?" she asked.
I flinched. "What? Oh, sorry, yes."
"Do you want a turn?" She offered the microphone.
I laughed bitterly. "It doesn't seem to be doing much good. Maybe that was wishful thinking on my part."
Horaki's expression soured. "We can't control whether it works," she said. "What we can do is make every effort—our best effort—to try."
She forced the microphone to my lap, and I fumbled to catch it before it rolled away. Horaki shot me an expectant look, and I raised the microphone to my lips. I paused, my brow furrowing, before I said,
"Nozomi, I hope you can hear me. I hope you're still there. It's Ikari. I—"
I turned the microphone aside and gathered myself. I rose from my seat and paced beside the observation room window as technicians and repair crews continued to work below. So much damage had been done, yet they were coming along all right. They took out old, broken monitors and swapped them for new ones. They filled in holes in the wall with plaster and painted over them as if nothing had happened.
But the holes were still there, weren't they?
"I'm sorry," I said at last, looking to the communication station in the corner of the room. "I knew something like this might eventually happen. I didn't know what I could to do, not enough to stop it. We put you through a lot. We put you through too much. I don't think any apology can truly make up for that."
I glanced at Horaki and Kodama, and the girls smiled and nodded in return. I nodded back in respect, and I went on.
"You don't deserve to be there; you don't deserve to suffer like this," I said into the microphone. "We want to get you out, but I can't ask anything more of you. It's your choice to keep fighting to hold on or not. If you do…, then just know we're coming for you. I want you to know that. We're coming for you, and we will not stop until you're back with us. Count on it, Nozomi."
I switched off the mic, and I listened for several seconds—several seconds of dead air. Even so, I closed my eyes and listened anyway, hoping against all hope.
"That was very kind of you, Ikari," said Kodama. "Thank you for all you've done for her, these past few months. I think she's been better for it."
"She has been," said Horaki. "Definitely. Thank you, Ikari."
I bowed my head as the faint static in the speaker went on unabated. "I appreciate that," I told them, "but I'm not done trying."
I offered the microphone back to the Horaki sisters, but before Kodama could take another turn, there was a knock at the door.
"Any luck in here?" said Asuka, peering inside.
"Not yet," said Horaki. "Knowing Nozomi, she'll choose to answer when it suits her and not a second before."
Asuka huffed at that; the pretext of exasperation was more palatable than reality. "Keep trying; we'll get to her. Do you mind if I borrow Shinji for a minute?"
Neither of the Horaki sisters objected, and I went to the hall with Asuka, who pulled the door shut with a gentle touch.
"So, I just spoke with Misato," she said. "You're on for the mission."
"I am?" I breathed a sigh of relief. "Good, that's good. What about you?"
"I'm staying behind," she told me, looking away. "Maya wants to put something together to jam that mind control artifact. I'm gonna do a little double-duty between that and handling Nozomi, whenever she gets back to us."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to—"
"Of course you didn't." Asuka waved off my concern. "Don't worry about it. What I have to deal with should be the least of your worries." She put a hand on my shoulder and froze me with her stare. "Get them back," she said to me, "and get yourself back here, too."
I pulled her in close, hoping that the gesture would mean more than just words.
#
The main forces for the assault flew to the forward base the next day. Pacific forces of the international fleet gathered in Jakarta, an effort that was part coordination and part reclamation. Indonesia had fallen early in the war, but with the enemy on the retreat, humanity had taken the country back.
Or rather, we'd taken the land back—things like the airport and the harbor. Military people manned the port and organized people from the various nations to their ships, but beyond them, there was no one. There were few cars on the streets of Jakarta, and even where there were, they often had stopped in the middle of intersections or crashed into buildings on the side of the road. Even on the way from Soekarno-Hatta to the harbor, the caravan had to stop a few times for stray vehicles to be moved aside.
At the harbor, we were shown back to the helicopter destroyer Ise. As we got underway, I stayed on the deck, watching the waves and the sunset as we steamed for the Indian Ocean, but on a busy ship going to war, I wasn't alone for long.
"Are you feeling ill, Ikari?"
That was Captain Suzuki, leader of the assault contingent aboard Ise. She was short-haired and stern-faced, but she leaned over the railing, resting her elbows on the top, and stared out over the water with me.
"No," I said, nodding. "I used to get sick, but not much anymore."
"That's good for you, then." Suzuki popped two pills into her mouth and swallowed. "What changed?"
"Piloting."
"I see." Suzuki fished through her pockets, taking out a plastic bottle. "Dry run's in half an hour. You ready?"
"Yeah." I laughed to myself. "For all the good it'll do, I'm ready."
"That's all we ask." She took a swig while staring over the ocean.
"You think we have a chance?" I asked.
"I think we've planned, and we've practiced." She frowned, her gaze intensifying. "Everything else is out of our hands."
"Really?" I gawked at her.
"Yes."
"That's okay?"
"We don't get a choice in the matter." Suzuki fixed some stray strands of her hair, tightening them back into a bun behind her cap. "We can't do anything about it."
I glanced over the ocean again. The ocean waves broke against the ship's hull and dissipated in the wake behind us. Toward the horizon, the waves merged and intermingled with other crests and currents. They interfered with one another, muddying the wake.
#
The assault began at dawn.
I went with Captain Suzuki and her team. We took a helicopter, departing from the aft deck of Ise. The morning sun was like the backlight for a performance of shadow puppets: Unit-15 and Unit-16 stood above the horizon, casting long shadows over the ocean.
But even their shadows were dwarfed by that of the Black Moon. The sphere hovered over the water, and when the sun rose behind it, it was like a total eclipse—cold and dark.
Naval guns boomed, peppering the Black Moon's surface with shells, but the Geofront was so enormous that the bombardment was like trying to take down a skyscraper with airsoft pellets. The impacts lit up the Geofront with small explosions, but it went back to an inert black shell in no time at all.
On the far side of the Geofront, the Eva battled the Angels. Unit-15 and Unit-16 darted and zipped around the Disc Angel. Their jetpacks spewed blazing jets of gas. The Eva buzzed about the Angel like gnats. The Disc Angel lunged at the Eva in turn, over and over in suicidal attacks. Their AT-fields collided and exploded, showering energy over the ocean.
But we sped on under the unnatural aurora, bobbing with the air currents and eddies that swirled around the Geofront. The helicopter hovered along the outside of the Geofront's surface. Using binoculars, Suzuki's men identified the outline of a door, and a single man dangled from the helicopter to plant explosive charges. On the far side of the Geofront, the Eva and Angel shook the ocean whenever they fell, and the bombardment rattled the Black Moon, but as the sappers planted their charges and descended again, the rest of us held fast in the boats, waiting for the cue to go ahead.
KA-BLAM!
Debris showered down to the ocean. The SDF member on the tether went back down, stepped inside the gap, and planted another set of charges to break down the inner airlock door. He was raised clear, and—
KA-BLAM!
One last inspection, and the all clear signal was given. We were lowered two at a time to the door, with the first men inside pulling us through the gap.
Even still, smoke wafted out of the blasted airlock. I unclipped a flashlight from my vest, and I shined a light on the area. I inspected the area above the airlock door. The imprinted glyphs were worn, but the shapes were still legible: the open triangle, the single dot, and the open hourglass. 315.
Once the rest of the team had descended, Captain Suzuki did a quick headcount before getting us underway. "Everybody good?" she checked once more. "All right." She nodded at me. "Ikari, where do we need to go?"
The SDF members fanned out down two hallways; their rifle-mounted flashlights lit up a foggy atmosphere.
"To the right," I said.
The team down the left hallway pulled back and took the lead down the other passage, and Captain Suzuki and I followed from the middle of the group.
The inside the Geofront was far from pristine. We passed by corridors with no lighting at all, and the air was heavy with humidity. The dampness stuck to my skin like a film. It was more like walking through LCL than air.
After a while, we saw why that was so: some sections of the corridors had hollow doors, made of some synthetic metal or plastic in a honeycomb pattern. These weren't doors to rooms so much as access hatches to channels or ducts.
And what did these ducts carry, you ask? LCL of course.
When we passed by one of these access hatches, the LCL poured into the corridor and coalesced into walkers. They ambushed the two SDF members in the lead, stabbing them with those needle-like fingers, but bullets ripped through the beasts' bodies in short order. The walkers collapsed back into LCL once more.
"Watch for these!" ordered Captain Suzuki, who slammed her hand on one of those honeycomb grates. She tapped one of the men in front of us. "Are they coming back?"
Three of the SDF members circled the puddle of LCL in the corridor, but the liquid was still.
"Keep an eye on them," said Suzuki, and she motioned for the group to continue on.
We crept around the LCL puddle. Faintly, I could see a little of my own reflection in it, and even as we passed, the reflection was clear and the goo inert.
We passed a few more hexagonal grates like that first one, and Captain Suzuki's team obliterated the enemy walkers or shriekers in a hail of bullets each time.
In spite of those occasional interruptions, we pressed on. I did my best to remember the route, but in those dark and winding passages, with their confusing three-way intersections, I got disoriented a few times. Thankfully, the team had handheld pattern detectors on them. We needed the technology and my memories both. Where my memories failed, the pattern detectors gave us a direction to continue in. Where the handhelds pointed us at a wall, the memories of the vision reminded me how we could get around it.
We kept going like that until we reached the chamber.
The chamber itself was an artificial lake of LCL. We crept down a set of networked walkways over the lake, and the paths funneled us toward the center:
…where the white giant sat half-immersed in the liquid and stared at the back wall.
The giant was totally unresponsive. Suzuki shined a flashlight in its five eyes, but each eye blinked independently of the others in no clear pattern. We tried speaking to the giant; I even yelled at the beast, "You came all the way here just to stare at us like a dumb cow?" but still, nothing. On Suzuki's orders, one of the SDF members leveled his rifle on the creature and fired. There was so little reaction that we weren't even sure the bullet hit the target.
So much for negotiations. So much for persuation. So much for making the giant surrender. We couldn't even so much as scratch the thing, let alone make it listen.
With the giant unresponsive, Suzuki radioed for the second team to move in. They came some minutes later, wheeling a pallet of N2 explosives to the foot of the giant. The array was composed of sixteen warheads stacked in a four-by-four square and at least as tall as I was. Suzuki ordered that the men directly attach a few of the weapons to the giant's body, but the best they could do was float a couple warheads by inflatable boat to the giant's legs.
If the thing wouldn't listen to reason (or anything at all), the best we could do was kill it and make sure its power could never again be used against us.
But were weren't totally undisturbed while these preparations were underway. One of our patrols encountered resistance in the passages outside the main chamber, and Suzuki had her people dig in for a firefight. As the last weapons were being armed, I took cover on the center walkway, behind a portable barrier, while Suzuki took most of her people closer to the entrances. The SDF team erected black synthetic barricades ten meters or so in front of each entrance to the chamber, and the tunnels flashed with gunfire. SDF members took cover behind the barricades, peering over them to shoot down the passageways.
Captain Suzuki was right there with them. She lay down behind a barricade and barked orders to her men. More to the left, she told them. Get new magazines.
But when a bullet grazed one SDF member's shoulder, a whole barricade team shut down. Another man put his rifle down to tend to the wounded, but Suzuki was having none of that. They had to dress him up and get him out. They had a job to do. "We're holding this chamber," she instructed them. "We're holding it as long as we have to. Don't let them get the best of you!"
All the while, I stayed behind cover on the central walkway. As the SDF members made their stand, the popping sounds of gunfire echoed through the chamber, and the room rattled as grenades shredded the entrance halls. We were fighting so hard for this position—a position we would ultimately abandon, if given the choice.
But more and more of the enemy came for us. They descended on the chamber from all directions. Seele militants and alien creatures threw their bodies at the entrances, shrugging off bullet wounds like they were pinpricks.
And as one of the entrances was breached, one of the SDF members on the central walkway armed the N2 array. I made eye contact with the man, a sergeant under Suzuki's command, and he shot me a look of regret.
"I'm sorry," he said to me. "If they get any closer, those are my orders. We've got one shot at this."
One shot to destroy the enemy and be destroyed in turn. And all to destroy what—some inert giant that stared lifelessly at us? That had taken Ayanami away from me and didn't even have the nerve to act smug about it?
No way.
So I rose from the center barricade. I stomped to the end of the platform, and I challenged the white giant:
"Well?" I said to her, raising both arms. "How much more do you want? You got Lilith; you're going to get all of us. And you still want more?"
The giant didn't move. She just bled and bled into the lake beneath us; dark red fluid seeped out from her loins, swirling into the lighter-colored LCL that formed the rest of the basin.
Scowling, I took off my pack, and I jumped into the fluid, swimming from the end of the platform.
"Hey!" I yelled. "Wake up!"
Nothing.
"Kid, what are you doing?" yelled the sergeant. "Get back here!"
But I ignored him. I kept shouting at the giant, even as I tried paddling to it. "You don't get to come here and take all of that from us! Not for the sake of—of—whatever you wanted to accomplish! Say something!" I cried. "Look at me!"
I splashed to the giant's leg and clung to it like a bear to a tree trunk. I pounded my fist on the creature's skin. It rebounded off like a ping pong ball off a paddle. I beat the giant again and again, but the beast didn't even flinch.
"You moron!" I shouted. "What do you think this is going to do?"
I dropped my fist on the creature's side one more time.
And that hand sank into the giant's bubbly flesh.
I yelped, and I yanked my fist out. The giant's flesh stuck to me like bubblegum, but it all snapped back into place, more willing to stick to itself than to me.
Even so, I stared at my hand and then glanced back at the giant's body. I wiggled my fingers.
The giant's eyes were unmoving. The SDF members at the barricade rotated when they ran out of ammunition, but enemies had breached the tunnel entrances. Their bodies piled up in the open, and their rifles clattered on the floor as they fell.
I looked back to the tunnel we came from—an old tunnel, which some of the synthetic paneling around the frame decayed and in pieces. It hadn't always looked that way, I'm sure. Once upon a time, people had walked through a tunnel like that one, and it looked pristine and new.
I closed my eyes, and I took a breath.
I flattened my right hand and put all the fingers together.
I pushed with the tips of my fingers into the giant's leg, and my hand sank into it.
My arm sank into it.
I pulled myself tighter against the giant's leg, and the creature took me. The white, bubbly flesh crawled around my face and eyes.
My breath caught, but I couldn't breathe. The stuff of the giant's body choked me.
And it was dark.
#
It was dark, but something flickered in front of my sight.
The sight of a girl—a girl in white and green, and with red eyes.
"You shouldn't be here," said Ayanami, stern and disapproving.
She stood over me. My arms—I had arms!—rested numbly on purple, velvety armrests.
"Don't be hard on him, Lilith. He has a long time to think about his mistake."
The voice came from behind us. Up and back, next to a spinning film projector, the hooded stranger peered out at us, casting a long shadow over the room thanks to the projector's light.
"Hello again, Shinji Ikari," she said. "Welcome back to the theater of eternity."