10. Eruption
Rei Ayanami often dreamed of things beyond her experience. She knew what a skyscraper looked like, but did not know what it was called. She had seen Unit Zero long before her first activation trial. And now, now she dreamt of fire, and death, and the sound a human body makes when grinded beneath an Eva's heel. When the dream ended, she was all alone in the Middle Sector, except the ceiling and the Source had been torn away. She looked upward, and saw not the savage winds or a clear blue sky, but a single, green, glowing eye.
After these dreams, she woke up emotionally unbalanced. The dreams she had of skyscrapers, a human city, and herself and the other pilots walking around in the sun… this nightmare of broken flesh and forms screaming as fire consumed them brought her back to reality. They would never see that city, and they would never see the sun. Very soon, they would all be dead.
Rei lived in the officer's wing at the barracks in the Outer Sector. Her one room was large enough for a bed and a dresser. A sink and mirror were set in to the wall opposite the bed, and there was a narrow door leading to a restroom Rei could not stand up in. Rei did not like or dislike her room, because it was the only place she had ever slept in before. If nothing else, it was familiar.
Presently, Rei was asleep on her bed, in a pair of loose fitting under-shorts and socks. Her chest was unclothed. Her breasts had grown in the last month, and her nightclothes had grown too tight. This was the way she looked when a shadow fell across her sleeping form.
Shinji got up at 0800, which meant he was dead. For whatever reason, his chrono had not gone off, and now he was more then an hour late for his session with Major Greene, who was probably on the way up to his apartment right now wish some lengths of rope festooned with fishhooks, or something. Shinji had been half-dressed, halfway out the door, when he noticed the package taped to its front, and on the front of that package was a message in hiragana/You don't have training today, read this./ It was signed by Doctor Akagi.
Shinji brought the package inside, and then took a shower. Afterwards, he put on his uniform and went downstairs to check on the girl that had been complaining about noise coming from Asuka's apartment. He located the apartment below Asuka's (18D), and knocked.
He heard things going on inside the apartment. Clothes fluttering, some muted music, and then the door edged open.
Clearly, it had not been a good night. The girl's hair was no longer in pigtails, and she was still in her nightclothes, a sort of purple silk shirt and shorts. Shinji was not drawn to her pale, bare legs. Her eyes held his attention. They were bloodshot, and the area around them was black. It looked like she had been hit. It looked like she had been crying. And the way she was looking at Shinji, he knew why.
"I didn't hear anything last night," he began. "I stayed up, and I listened at the wall, and I couldn't hear anything," he lied. "I think maybe you are a little…" and then he was wheeling back to the guardrail, and his upper body was suspended out and over the brink.
"You lying bastard!" the girl screeched. "You stupid…" she pressed her thumbs into his neck, and Shinji couldn't get enough air into his lungs.
And then the pressure went away. He sank down against the guardrail, and the girl fell to her knees.
"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!" she cried. "I just… you said…"
/Okay/ Shinji gurgled. "Okay… I'll, I'll take you up there. I'm telling you, it is just a girl I work with, and I haven't heard a thing out of her!"
The girl sniffed and looked at him. /You speak Japanese/ she murmured. Then she rose to her feet. /Fine/ she said. /But I… never mind, just come on./
She helped Shinji to his feet.
/Hold on a minute/ she said. /I've got to get dressed./ Then she looked down at herself, and back at him. She blushed again, then retreated back into her apartment.
The day before the girl had claimed, rather hurriedly, to be living with her family. Shinji leaned against the door, looking in to the apartment, and saw a single pair of shoes at the doorway. He was familiar with the Japanese custom, but had never seen it put into practice before. Her 'family' could be at their jobs already, but Shinji doubted it.
The girl emerged in jeans, a shirt and a light jacket. Shinji seldom saw people out of uniform around the Geo-Front, and this prompted him to ask this girl her name.
/Hikari Horaki/ the girl said. /Now… upstairs, please/
Shinji's one chance was that Asuka had gone to the Sixth Training Yard as usual. That way he could let himself in and quickly show Hikari Horaki that nothing unusual was happening in 18E. There was no telling what would happen if Asuka opened the door. Probably burst out of the apartment and push Shinji over the guardrail to his death.
/Why are you doing that/ Hikari asked as Shinji knocked on apartment door 18E, then pressed himself flat against the wall to the right of the door.
Shinji waited a heartbeat. No cursing, no banging noises, and no spirally point-of-view that ended with a sudden stop. Asuka was either not home or asleep. So Shinji banged on the door harder, because if Asuka woke up and found him creeping through the apartment with another person, she'd probably kill both of them.
Asuka failed to emerge and kill him.
Misato had given Shinji her key to the apartment before she had left. After putting the envelope on the island-counter in the kitchen, she had rested a hand on his shoulder and wished him good luck. Shinji now used that key on the door before him, and found it didn't work.
Hikari Horaki was looking around, less upset and more nervous. "Uh, maybe they've gone already?"
The key snapped off in the lock, and Shinji cursed. Now Asuka would definitely know they'd been there.
Wait…
"What do you mean, 'they'?" Shinji asked, turning slowly. Something in his memory sparked, a faint memory, or maybe a dream.
"Well… it seemed like last night there were two people. The screaming, the sounds… one was talking to the other, screaming…"
Shinji went down the walk-way to his own room and opened the door.
What was it? What was there on the edge of his mind, showing him more and more of itself as this girl spoke?
"The questions didn't make any sense though," Hikari continued. "The voice, the voice I normally heard would scream things about the 'children of the incursion', and would crazy requests like 'scream for me first!'
Shinji's heart stopped beating. Scream for me first. Scream for me, First.
"REI!" he yelled, and ran out of the living room, down the hall, and threw himself bodily at the door that separated the apartments. The door frame sunk into the wall, but held. Shinji turned and ran back the length of the hallway. Hikari, who had followed him into the living room, let out a screech of her own and backed into the kitchen.
He stopped, turned, ran. This time, not just the frame, but a good portion of the wall, sunk inwards. Cracks appeared in the plaster. Shinji's left shoulder felt lumpy, and he couldn't move his left arm at all. He turned and went back to the end of the hall, pausing in the living room long enough to croak "call someone!" at Hikari, who appeared to be going into hysterics again.
He stopped at the end of the hall, took a breath, and tried to make the pain along his left side go away. Then he turned and ran, hoping this time he would succeed, because after this he would have nothing left.
The door and frame flew from the wall and collapsed with Shinji into Asuka's side of the apartment. For a moment Shinji rested on his knees, trying to breath. His right hand clutched his left shoulder, which seemed to be pulling away from the rest of his body. He hissed, and then took in his surroundings.
Only one light, the one in the kitchen, was intact. Everything else was dark. Shinji saw one standing lamp had been bent in half, the half-dome of its head shattered. The Source light was meager, because most of the furniture was piled against the balcony doors. The floor carpeting was ripped in places, in others splattered with…
Shinji heard a sound behind him. "Don't come!" he yelled. "Just… just wait in there."
In a sad way, it was like coming home. What Shinji had at first thought were splatters and rips on the floor, were actually things etched and painted into the floor. The destruction looked random, but it really formed a sequence of symbols he had seen before… a long time ago.
The destruction traveled along the carpet and went up the walls and onto the ceiling. Shinji would have noticed this first, but the walls and ceiling were roughly the same color as the plaster beneath the surface, and the symbols were difficult to pick out in the low light.
There was only one piece of furniture that was not pressed up against the balcony doors, blocking out the light. A glass coffee table with brass supports rested in the exact middle of the room, and on it was…
Shinji walked over carefully, avoiding the spots in the floor where wood had been gouged out from beneath the carpet. He knelt next to what he knew was a corpse, and stared at Rei.
She had been beaten badly. Whereas Hikari's eyes had looked bruised, Rei's were puffed out. Her cheek was bruised, and her lips were dry and broken. She had been bound, legs together, to the coffee table, rope affixed to the brass supports. Her legs were just as bruised, and in some places cut as though with a knife. Her bare chest, and this Shinji took in without the slightest feeling of desire, was raw-red. There appeared to be a safety pin on one pink nipple, which Shinji carefully removed.
Rei opened her eyes.
She looked around, and her eyes focused on Shinji. She made a sound deep in her throat. Her eyes teared up. Shinji wanted to comfort her, but "It's okay," and "everything is going to be alright" seemed hollow and meaningless. He checked the rope knotted around her wrists and found it bound too tight to come undone.
"Miss…" he almost stopped, then "Miss Horaki, could you come here please?"
There was a shuffle of feet somewhere behind him. He put one hand on Rei's shoulder and nodded to her, something that, still, seemed so empty. He heard the intake of breath, counted to four waiting for a scream, then quietly said "Over here, Miss Horaki. I need you to stay with her."
The brown-haired freckled girl shuffled over to Shinji, eyes wide and not-totally-there. She looked at Rei without seeing her, then reached out and rested her hand on Rei's shoulder as Shinji took his hand away. Then Shinji turned and ran, bumping against the broken wall where he had bashed the door in, jiggling his left arm and not caring.
There was a pair of scissors in a draw in the living room. Shinji got them out, then tossed them aside. Rope, he needed something that could cut through rope. He went to the kitchen and found a sharp serrated blade that was used to cut meat. He hurried back to Rei, who now had Hikari's jacket draped across her chest and lower body. Hikari was talking to Rei in a low voice, who was staring at the ceiling. When she noticed Shinji she started to squirm and shriek.
Shinji backed off, and watched Rei's gaze follow the knife in his hand as he raised it in a warding-off gesture.
/This… the ropes, I need to cut them/ he stammered. Hikari turned to look at him, then looked at Rei's brutalized arms and legs. Shinji understood.
He approached the broken girl and got down on his knees. Rei's upper body began to shiver, but Shinji could not tell if this was voluntary or not.
/I'm not going to hurt you, Rei/ he said. /I just need you to stay still, and then we'll have you up, okay/
Rei focused on the knife, then on Shinji's face. She blinked, and her trembling mostly stopped.
Shinji went down to Rei's feet, and sawed through the rope binding them together and against the brass standing. He pulled the rope away and felt a sickening resistance as Rei's bloody flesh separated from the rope. Rei whimpered.
Shinji showed her the rope before moving to work on her hands, which were bound separately. Each time the rope was pulled away, the part that had been against her skin was slick with Rei's blood and sweat. Her wrists and the outside of either ankle were rubbed raw, the flesh broken.
As each appendage came free, Rei pulled herself into a ball. When Shinji cut through the last rope, she was in a fetal position.
He dropped the knife and knelt next to her again.
/Rei, can you hear me/
The girl's head bobbed up and down.
/We need to get you out of here, it isn't safe. I'm…/ I need you to get up and walk. I need you to lean on me and Miss Horaki and walk out. I see the wounds on your body, and I know what I need to do, but I'm not sure how to say it. Is that stupid? Do I sound like a coward to you? Shinji bit his tongue.
/I'm going to pick you up, is that okay/
Rei nodded again.
Shinji gingerly sat the girl up, then took off Hikari's jacket and slid it under Rei's legs. Her back seemed un-marked, but he didn't want to put too much pressure on her legs, which were cut and bruised and…
Shinji lifted her up, and carried her away.
The men eventually came, in black suits and ear-pieces. Hikari and Shinji sat next to Rei in the second bedroom of Shinji's apartment and were barraged with questions by one man while another confirmed Rei's vitals. Shinji wasn't really paying attention; Hikari was hysterical enough for two. He couldn't get his eyes off Rei. They had slid a shirt onto her before the security team had arrived, because Shinji did not want them to see Rei like that. He never wanted to see anyone so hurt and vulnerable, it hurt him too. He had never exactly been sensitive by anyone's definition, but when he threw his mind back to Rei tied to the table, his heart raced and his fists clenched.
There was no excuse. There was no reasoning around this.
They came in with a wooden board and secured Rei to it. As she was taken out the door of the apartment, Hikari and Shinji followed, and waved. Rei watched them until she was out of sight. Then the men in black suits sat Hikari and Shinji down again, and talked, at length.
Commander Gendou Ikari did not keep time like most people. He was awake when he wished to be, and would often go days without sleep in favor of research and study. That is why he was woken from a dream of chirruping cicadas by the phone, at an ungodly 1200 hours.
It was his Vice-Commander, Fuyutsuki.
/It happened/ the older man was saying. /We don't know where the Second Child is, though./
Ikari's went into high gear. Things were moving along much faster then he had anticipated. Additionally, the girl was supposed to have been under surveillance every minute of the day.
/Are the Eva cages locked down/ She would go there first, to destroy them or use them, Ikari was unable to guess.
/All three units were put in cryo-stasis after Units One and Two were repaired. We've got Section 8 positioned at all entrances to the facility. Not even the techs are getting in. But…/
But/What/ Ikari snapped.
/She attacked Rei sometime last night. We have footage that confirms that neither left their rooms. I don't think doors and locks matter, Ikari./
Gendou's mind raced. Why had the carrier gone to the First? Why not the Third/Authorize the use of lethal force/ the Commander ordered. /So long as it is in the Second, and not in an Eva, we can fight it./
There was silence on the other end of the line, then/Are you sure about this, Ikari? Are we ready to force it into a corner/
/That/ Ikari said/is why NERV exists./
It was several hours later, after the security men had been satisfied with their answers and left. Hikari had fidgeted next to Shinji on the couch after they were gone, then got up and looked to what was now a crime-scene. Engineers had come in and installed a section of paneling, effectively containing the room behind the broken front door. They had told Shinji that people would be coming to inspect it later, and that those people would slide a note under his door, so he would know Asuka had not returned.
Hikari stared where the door had been, then returned to the couch.
"Is it okay," she began "if I stay here for a while?"
Shinji just nodded. He was trying, once again, not to think. It had unfortunately occurred to him that this was the same as running away, something he had promised never again to do. He was a mixture of naked rage and confusion.
Hikari turned on the television set.
Shinji got off the couch and went into the kitchen. The package Doctor Akagi had sent him was still there, unopened. He opened it now, and several protein bars and bottles of water spilled out, along with a blank-faced laminated notebook.
Shinji brushed the bars aside, opened a bottle of water, and the notebook.
"Confidential" was printed across the top of the first page. Below this: "This and any other information pertaining to "Project E", is strictly classified. Only the recipient of this text is allowed access to its contents. Keep this text on you at all times. Do not go beyond a 100 foot distance from this book, or it will self-destruct."
Below that text was scrawled in pen: "I expect you to read this three times before our next appointment, a day from now, at 1300. Dr. Akagi"
The cryptic language was almost a diversion. Shinji turned the page.
"Primary Control Systems of Eva Unit One – Illustrated"
Shinji turned the page. And read.
Several hours had passed before Shinji figured out where Asuka was, or was headed, or where she'd already been. He had read the manual and found it interesting, but useless. The control system professed to be intuitive, but was actually insanely complex. Intuitive perhaps if you had three arms.
He had been reading about how to operate the video monitor painted on the inside of the entry plug (focus on a point and blink twice to zoom, use bottom left button in right control handle to activate targeting reticule), when it occurred to him that Major Greene was probably dead.
Shinji looked up and saw Hikari had fallen asleep. He went over to her and touched her arm, and told her he was going out. She wanted to follow him, using the same excuse; that she didn't want to be alone. There was more being said under those words, and it sounded like "anymore".
Shinji sat down next to her, and told her about the Sixth Training Yard, and Major Greene, and the way Asuka – the girl who lived next door – had barely been able to contain her hate of him. Shinji was going there now, he said, because he had a sickness inside him that calling security would not squelch. Security, he said, had probably already gone there and found out one way or another.
Hikari was quiet for a time, and Shinji got up, ready to leave.
"Rei and this Asuka…" she began. "How do you know them?"
Shinji looked at her and thought for a while.
"I think we might have been friends. I have only known Rei for… I guess less then half a month. I've known Asuka a bit longer. I… I don't think it matters anymore."
He shrugged into his uniform jacket and walked out the door. Hikari followed.
"You should go back," he said as they approached the Northern Outer Sector entrance. "You don't need to come with me. Go back… stay in the Source."
"I have to come," Hikari murmured behind him. "If she… I have to know that she is real. I have to see her. I thought for… for the longest time that I'd finally gone crazy from not having…" her voice got lower "anyone…"
They entered the white-hallway world of the Outer Sector.
"I know… I'm sure you don't want to hear this, and it isn't the right time," Hikari said, drawing abreast of Shinji, "but, could I tell you a story?"
The Third Child did not turn to face her. "Sure, I guess," his mind was elsewhere.
/Once upon a time…/ Hikari began.
/Once upon a time, there was a little girl. This girl had two wonderful parents, and two sisters, whom she loved very much. They lived in a house at the bottom of a big mountain, which was covered in trees. Every day, the girl would play with her sisters. Her older sister once told her how to ride a bicycle.
Then, one day, the world ended. The girl watched as the trees were plucked from the mountain. The girl's daddy, a smart man who worked in a big lab for a big company, put his family in the car, and drove them into a cave with lots of other people. The girl watched from the mouth of the cave as the trees near it, the rocks, the road, all of it was swallowed up by a fearsome wind. Then daddy took the girl away, and doors closed off the outside world forever.
The cave looked like the outside in some places. There were many people that worked there, and many children to play with… but the lights were fake, and the little girl could tell. The light was cold, the ground was plastic.
One day it was announced that other caves had survived, and soon they would all be connected! The girl was happy, because she had cousins and aunts and uncles in a town a hundred miles away. She hoped they would come and visit.
On the day the tunnel – that was how the caves were getting connected, tunnels – was to be opened, something happened. A dreadful thing happened.
The little girl was sitting with her family on the plastic glass, beneath the cold, false sky. There was a flash of hot light that washed over everyone when the bomb – that was how they formed the tunnel, with a bomb – detonated, and the earth shook. When everything settled, there was a hole at the lowest point of the cave, an opening big enough for twenty men to walk through side by side.
The little girl and the rest of the people in the cave waited, and they heard noises from the cave. Strange noises, like music. Then a car emerged from the tunnel, only it was covered in black.
And then that black got off the car and ate my family.
Shinji had stopped halfway through the story. He had sat down.
"She… Asuka, she's the black, isn't she?" Hikari murmured. "I… the little girl… saw people touch the black, and turn around and kill other people. That… happened to this little girl, didn't it."
Shinji got up and started walking again. Then he started running. Behind him, Hikari tried to keep up, but was not in any sort of shape. She lagged behind, and was out of breath by the time Shinji stopped.
The door to the Sixth Training Yard was open. Shinji edged inside and looked down the stairwell. He went to the bottom of the stairs and peered first into the Kitchen, which looked no different then the last time he had seen it, then out into the yard. The yard itself looked no different, but the glass pane window set between the yard and the weight room was smashed. Shinji moved as quietly as he could to the meeting room, and looked in through the wire-glass window on the door.
The Major's door was open, his office was dark. Shinji thought he saw something move in the darkness. Hands against the door, he thought he could feel sound through it, something dull and rhythmic.
Shinji snuck back to the stairwell that led to the yard, and motioned for Hikari to follow him.
As they passed the weight yard, Shinji glanced inside. Aside from a lot of broken glass and an out-of-place medicine ball, nothing was amiss.
They hurried to the far corner of the yard. Shinji glanced through the door window and then slipped in to the firing range.
The gun he had picked up the first day was no longer there. Shinji went over to what had to be the gun cabinet, and found it locked. He tried to force it open, but his left side reminded him that he had busted down a door not four hours ago. Hikari had followed him in, and now braced herself against one of the cabinet's doors while pulling the handle of the other. The door did not yield.
Then Shinji noticed the desks at each shooting location on the firing range had cubbies beneath them. In one, he found a pistol identical to the one he had tried to fire the first session.
Shinji did not much about guns beyond that you point the dangerous end at bad things and pulled the trigger, and that recoil and sound are just as dangerous as the bullet. That seemed to be enough, at the moment. Pistol in right hand, Shinji led Hikari away from the firing range, moving against the wall of the yard, back to Major Greene's office.
But what am I going to do? Shinji wondered. Shoot Asuka?
Hikari screamed.
Shinji, who had been looking to the catwalk, and the office, jerked around where Hikari was pointing and looked at… nothing.
Hikari looked at him, then back where she had pointed.
"I… she was… a girl was right over…" she saw how Shinji was looking at her. "I'm…" she lowered her voice to a whisper, remembering where they were "I'm serious! I saw a girl with a yellow shirt and blue shorts and red hair right over there!"
She had pointed to a section of the obstacle course that was surrounded by the track. Shinji could see no movement inside the course, and decided to just keep heading for the office… but in the back of his mind, he noted that he had never mentioned to Hikari that Asuka had red hair.
Glancing from the meeting room door to the obstacle course, Shinji edged up the stairs and across the catwalk. The Major's office door was still open, the darkness no thinner then it had been before.
Shinji was overcome with a sickening dread. He should not have allowed Hikari to come. That had been stupid. He motioned her to go back to the stairwell, but she would not. She kept looking to the obstacle course, and he understood her terror.
He took a deep breath, and opened the meeting room door. He eased just inside, then shut the door and twisted the locking mechanism in the handle.
Outside Hikari froze, tried to turn the handle, tried again. She looked at Shinji, and he could only look away.
The lights in the meeting room did not work.
Shinji moved away from the Major's office, then crossed over to the other side of the room. Halfway across the room, his feet crunched on something. In the dim light, Shinji could make out fragments the color of bleached bone. For one crazy moment he was sure he was walking in the remains of the Major. Then he calmed down and recognized the broken fluorescent tubing. Looking up, he could not see the ceiling, but was certain he was beneath the light fixture. No wonder the lights hadn't come on. He slowly moved to the opposite wall, and started for the Major's door.
He had no idea what he was doing, and was pretty certain that Hikari, who was watching him through the wire-glass window, was in more danger then he was, being so exposed.
He edged to the door and stopped just beyond the frame. What if the lights were broken in the Major's office as well?
It quickly became a moot point. Shinji glanced at Hikari, and saw she had gone pale, her mouth open. She was looking back at the track. Shinji bolted for the door, unlocked it, and pulled her inside. Then he locked the door again and pointed the gun at the dark, open office.
"Sh-she…" Hikari whispered. "Co-covered in blu-blood…"
Shinji rose to window height and looked out across the yard. He saw nothing.
In his peripheral vision, something moved. In the office, the blackness was bulging outward at the bottom of the door frame. Something hissed.
Shinji edged Hikari away from the door and tried to aim the gun, but his right hand was shaking too badly. He should have called security, let them deal with all this crazy…
A hand came out of the darkness, and slammed against the ground. The light from the yard came in at just the proper angel for Shinji to see the hand was far too red.
Hikari and Shinji both whimpered.
Another hand emerged from the darkness, and together, both arms pulled into view a skull free of scalp or eyebrows or cheeks. White eyes rolled and equally white teeth parted to emit a hiss. Shinji and Hikari were both backed as far away from the door as possible. Shinji's gun hand wouldn't stop shaking.
The dead thing crawled forward again, and more of its body came into view. Its back had been flayed, muscles clearly defined in slime. Intestines squelched beneath its legs as it moved forward. Beneath its chest and chin, liquid poured.
A few lurches more, and it became obvious that the thing's legs ended where people normally had knees. It pulled itself forward one last time, clear of the office doorway, then collapsed. In the darkness, it hissed on more time, and Shinji realized the air was going out of it.
Then he recognized the thing's build.
On his knees, he inched towards the fresh corpse. Pointing the gun into the darkness, he reached out and touched the thing that had been Major Greene on the back. The body did not turn and tear out his throat. It did not float up and rip off his arms. It was now just a dead body.
Shinji edged into the Major's office, and found the light switch. He did not flip it on, just rested he finger on it, and waited. Nothing in the darkness came for him, and the black was still. The smell of cooked pork was heavy in the air, as was the bitter tang of blood.
Shinji took his hand off the light switch, got Hikari, and got out of the meeting room. He did not want to look at the Major's broken body again, but couldn't help himself.
On the catwalk, Shinji once again surveyed the yard. It was empty. He pointed the gun into the Kitchen, then up the stairwell. At the top, he threw the gun over the side rail, and listened to it clatter on the landing below. Guns… guns were not going to be worth much.
They left the Sixth Training Yard, and discovered a track of bloody footprints walking back the way they had come.
The Evangelions were stored deep beneath the Geo-Front, in natural underground cavities that had been drained of water and filled with a special bakelite solution. The bakelite was chilled to close to absolute zero, the point at which even electrical current slows to a crawl. These frozen lakes were accessible by the rail that transported Eva, or by a narrow elevator that took properly clothed engineers many hundreds of feet down.
The engineers often said that if they went any deeper into the crust, they'd run into the asthenosphere. And then they'd laugh like they had just made a really fucking hilarious joke. Franklin Scorts did not like engineers or uptight bitches. He also didn't like being shoved into gear they must have unpacked from Antarctica, and sent down to check and make sure the forty-story tall giants they had buried down there were still, in fact, there.
The blonde bitch who had briefed them had told them absolutely nothing about their mission beyond the simple go-and-see parameter. Scorts hated that. It meant that someone higher up was getting paranoid, or they were being sent towards something so mind-numbingly terrible blondie would go crazy just telling it.
Franklin Scorts had survived one such mission, and had come away with professed amnesia and a twitch. People that went on those missions never came back. If they did, they were killed in 'accidents', before they could tell anyone the naked truth they had found down in the caves about life, the universe, and everything.
Scorts had once dated a grad student, two-three decades back, who had described how people who claimed amnesia in criminal prosecution cases were tricked into revealing their knowledge, and that had saved him from an 'accident'. Too bad that broad had turned into an uptight bitch after he got her pregnant.
The elevator didn't come with a floor-indicator; it came with a depth-meter. Scorts had found this hilarious until they passed the five-thousand foot mark. The air in the elevator grew colder, and Scorts and a few others that hadn't already secured their facemasks and breathing apparatus.
The depth-meter slowly crawled to six-thousand feet. Frost was forming on Scorts' mask, he wiped it away.
The elevator stopped at six-thousand five-hundred feet, the elevator doors opened, stalled, and then were forced open by soldiers. Scorts and his team walked in to a control room covered in frost. One of the thick plates of glass, the kind normally not found outside nuclear reactors, had shattered. Large lumps of glass covered the room, as did the fine frost one gets when all the humidity in the air has instantly been frozen.
Two corpses in black suits were there, one halfway out of a chair facing the broken window, the other bent over some instruments, looking the other way. As Scorts passed the last, it seemed that the man had been in the process of turning his head when he had flash-froze.
Scorts started to rehearse the trembling in his mind, the quick breathing, the headaches right behind his eye that would convince a psych team that he had completely blocked out terrible, terrible memories that, if remembered, could cause terrible, terrible things to happen to him.
Maybe it wouldn't come to that. Maybe they would call this an equipment malfunction or something, though nothing Scorts could imagine could break through a pane of diamond-frosted glass more then a foot thick. Heavy artillery, maybe, but down here?
"Sir!" his suit-mic chattered to life. "On the lake surface, three o'clock!"
We aren't in formation asshole, Scorts thought. Were is three… ohshit.
The lake was a thirty foot drop from the observation room. Some of the soldiers had gone out the now-useless airlock to get a better view. Some of the smarter ones were already aiming at it. Scorts stayed where he was, and took aim through the impossible-to-shatter shattered window.
The red-headed girl stood over a hole in the ice. She made motions with her hands, as though pantomiming using a shovel, and ice sluiced out of the hole. Beneath her was the red Evangelion.
The girl wore only a yellow shirt and blue pants, both of which covered little. She had no shoes. Around her there was an odd red dust that thickly covered the surrounding area, and if Scorts had had just a little more time to look at it, he would have realized that it was blood… blood that must have frozen and chipped off the girl gradually.
Whenever I think back to that day, all I can remember are pretty flowers, Scorts rehearsed in his mind.
Were these flowers red, or auburn? The canny psych would say.
No… they were all colors. They were white
-the frost was covering his facemask again, he couldn't see-
and orange
-one of the younger kids opened fire, the thing on the surface of the lake noticed them-
and blue
-one of the soldiers outside split up the middle, Scorts couldn't see how. The oxygen drained from his body, and blue blood pumped from either side feebly, before being frozen-
and gray
-next to the dead soldier, another's head exploded. But not the whole head, just the flesh and braincase. The man's brain and eyes flash froze. His body froze solid still standing, as had the man cut in half-
and some, yeah, some were red, doc.
-the girl was suddenly in front of him, frozen blood drifting off her body like flower petals. Scorts felt a pressure in his chest, and the girl held up a lump of meat for him to see that simply could not be his heart. He began to spit up something hot and salty.
Halfway out of the Middle Sector, Hikari and Shinji heard the rumbling. It came from somewhere deep in the ground, and if either of them could remember what it sounded like, would have called it thunder.
In his office in the Administration Building, Gendou Ikari stood and looked over the Middle Sector, and up at the Source. He glanced at his watch. All there was left to do was let events play out. His Vice-Commander stood beside and behind him. Unlike the Commander, Fuyutsuki was sweating.
In the hospital, surrounded by nurses and doctors and guards, Rei spoke for the first time since Shinji had knocked down the door and cut her free. "It is coming," she whispered.
In her office, Doctor Akagi was feverishly directing a search for the Third Child, who had disappeared, and running a program to guide the emergency retrieval of "spare parts".
Far beneath all this, the dying Scorts looked through the broken window and saw the girl jump down into the tunnel she had dug, then watched the ice lake buckle and break apart. He saw the red Evangelion rise and rip open the ceiling hatch. He felt, rather then heard, it roar. The sound shattered the remaining windows of the observation deck, and knocked Scorts' rapidly freezing body down, down, to the surface of the shattered lake. As one eyeball fused with the surface of the lake and the other one slowly turned solid, just before all the liquid in his brain turned to ice, Scorts had the curious thought:
Weren't there supposed to be three of them?
Author's Notes:
Are we having fun yet? Tell your friends.
I will soon standardize the formatting for this fic. I am also looking to see if I can put it somewhere the formatting parser doesn't, you know, delete punctuation and render half the fuckin' thing nonsensical.