NERV Headquarters

Three Hours Later

"Angels," Shigeru Aoba said quietly to himself, though his voice carried throughout the darkened Logistics Room. His grave expression was lit from underneath by the soft glow of the three-dimensional hologram before him, which featured a scaled relief map of western Japan.

The news had come right after electricity had been returned to the underground fortress and caused a massive panic through the already-shocked survivors. It had taken a long time to calm them down, and even then it was only after agreeing to relocate them deeper into the headquarters' bowels.

"As crippled as we are…," Shigeru began, but cut himself off with a tired shake of the head. "Unbelieveable. I thought we were finished with them."

"We WERE finished with them," Makoto Hyuuga said, beside him. "Everything had gone exactly as foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls. There were seventeen Angels in all, ending with Kaworu Nagisa... the Fifth Child."

Shinji looked up at the mention of his friend's name. "But… all of the Evangelions are gone, aren't they? All of the mass-produced Evangelions were destroyed—Asuka and I could see them when we were down by the lake. Eva-00 is destroyed; same with Eva-02. And Eva-01…."

"—Eva-01 can be retrieved," Maya Ibuki said, referring to her laptop computer. "We've traced its signal to the center of the lake, where Shigeru found you two." She looked up and regarded everyone with a flat expression. "Our resources are strained enough as it is keeping us alive down here. It's not like we can all of a sudden do a search and rescue for one of the Evas. We'd need money. Equipment. And ESPECIALLY man power," she listed off her fingers.

"But, like I said, we're in no position for any missions," Maya said again.

The room fell silent for a moment as everyone stared at the Angels, represented on the map by four massive energy spikes that appeared to be roaming in seemingly-random directions from each other.

"People," Shinji said after a moment. "What about the other survivors out there?"

Shigeru laughed. "Shinji-kun, we'd been scouring the city for exactly that, before we saw your little smoke signal and saw you, Asuka-chan and your professor the day before. You three are the only ones we've been able to find."

"But—if we three made it, then others must have, too!"

"It's a probability," Maya said, "but I wouldn't count on it."

"Why not?"

Maya Ibuki typed a few keystrokes into her laptop, and the hologrid map quickly changed to a giant screen image displayed on the massive projector beneath their feet. Instead of showing a map of Japan, Shinji stared at live footage of a giant conical structure built out of concrete. Winds whipped debris past the camera as huge plumes of ivory-white steam made a pillar connecting from the earth to a furious-looking sea of storm clouds.

"This is the current situation at the nuclear reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, in Niigata Prefecture. That's just one of the few stations still standing, whose cameras are still operational and accessible. After the Third Impact, nearly all of the 53 nuclear reactors in Japan had meltdowns."

"Oh my god," someone in the room exhaled. Shinji didn't know; his eyes were locked on the horrendous destruction before him.

Maya Ibuki nodded. "Exactly. Normally, the plants are fully automated, and can theoretically run with a minimal staff for 24 hours. The Third Impact, however, changed all that. With no one to monitor the stations, they've almost all blown up. Even if there were survivors scattered throughout Japan—or even the world—the scenario is the same everywhere."

"Either the Third Impact killed them, or something else did," Makoto said.

Maya turned her head away, and slowly nodded.

The room fell silent, save the cold hum of the holographic displays. The air suddenly felt thick and heavy, like a blanket of moroseness wrapped about them. Slowly, Shinji stepped forward, casting the video feed of the nuclear station's fall-out aftermath across his face.

"We...," he began, and paused, swallowing audibly. At his sides, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists. "We shouldn't give up yet. They should be our first priority!

"There must be more survivors! Otherwise...fighting them, fighting the Angels, what's the point of it at all?" Shinji glared at everyone in the lightless room, daring them to meet his gaze.