White Forest City, Confederate Armed Forces Headquarters
October 2, 2041
1356 hours

"Sir, are you sure it was a good decision to settle with a simple investigation?"

"Something had to be done." – Calhoun replied curtly, taking a sip from his glass of water before continuing. – "We need intel on the capabilities of this... 'Evangelion'. The mere fact that they they successfully managed to conceal the development and existence of something like that hints at considerable counter-intelligence efforts."

"Indeed." – followed up a lieutenant general. – "There's no telling what else the AEL might be hiding. In my personal opinion, we should confiscate that thing as soon as possible. Even if the preliminary reports of our analysts are correct, that massive battleframe is practically a walking weapon of mass destruction. We simply cannot allow it to fall into the wrong hands or the consequences could be catastrophic."

"A weapon like that requires an extensive support base no insurgent faction could possibly have." – the rear admiral who asked the first question countered. – "Even if it is used against us, something of that size is a sitting duck for orbital precision fire."

"And risk massive collateral damage and civilian casualties if it happens to sit down in the middle of a populated area? You flyboys must be out of your minds!"

"Patience, people!" – Calhoun called out. It wasn't the first time interservice rivalry between the military's branches almost degenerated a staff meeting into yelling and bickering... and he knew better than to think it would be the last.

Sometimes he cursed having been saddled with this job, even though he knew it was mostly a publicity stunt by Keel. After all, he was a war hero: formerly just a low-ranked security guard in Black Mesa, Barney Calhoun went through one hell of an adventure to get out with his life. Add to that going undercover in Civil Protection while working for the resistance, followed by unofficially becoming a general in the resistance forces by virtue of his reputation as a Black Mesa survivor, ending it all by a flying piece of debris (courtesy of the Prime Citadel's reactor going explosively prompt supercritical) bashing him on the head hard enough to send him into a coma for several weeks, and Calhoun had more than enough adventuring to last a lifetime.

He still wore the jagged scar on his face from that last one – and considering that he was well into his sixties now, it was probably going to stay there for the rest of his life. On the other hand, age meant that he would soon get to retire and finally get away from the constant shouting matches and forced mediation that was his job. At times, he entertained himself with the thought of just gathering all those idiots into a single room, firing an Overwatch pulse rifle's underslung plasma cannon inside and closing the door for a couple of minutes.

That would surely go a long way towards keeping his blood pressure below the doctor's recommendation.

"We all agreed that the AEL's stunt couldn't be ignored. That is why we dispatched the observer in the first place."

"But shouldn't we have sent someone with proper intelligence training?" – the rear admiral pressed.

"Ikari is already suspicious of us; their mainframe is too heavily fortified against cyberwarfare attacks for someone with nothing to hide." – Calhoun pointed out. – "If she were to trace our man to any intelligence training school, all we would do is validate her suspicions."

"Still, are you sure the colonel is the right man for the task?" – a battlegroup captain asked. – "His file has several black marks: minor insubordination, violating protocols, disrespectful behavior, even repeated recommendations for honorable discharge under psychological reasons."

Calhoun shrugged. – "All the better. This assignment not only allows us to keep two issues under watch at the same time, but he can also consider it a paid leave."


Geofront, AEL Headquarters
October 3, 2041

While she outwardly gave no sign of it as she observed the sync test in silence, Yui's mind was in turmoil.

It all started with a simple teleconference, a discussion with Keel about the usual topics: funding, budget allocation, the like. The first deviation was him suddenly asking her to meet him in person. Yui never saw Keel in the flesh before, but when the Confederacy's first citizen asks for your presence, not complying makes quite a bad impression... to say the least.

Had she been living before Second Impact, it would've taken her a plane trip several hours long and at least a few days away from work to travel halfway across the world. Even after the Uprising, wealthier people kept their own private SSTO spaceplanes but Yui wasn't among those; she didn't travel all that often to need one, nor did she really see a point. Therefore, her best option was the Planetary Teleportation Grid. Derived directly from the displacers first developed by Black Mesa, then further developed in secrecy by the Resistance during the Occupation, displacement node facilities across the globe provided quick, long-range public transportation at only a fraction of the cost.

Therefore, the day before saw Yui walking out of the Geofront and to the Tokyo-2 Node Facility where she was shunted across a dimensional shortcut around Xen to the Kyoto Regional Hub Facility. From there she took to the Irkutsk Continental Hub Facility and finally to her destination, White Forest City. Travel time: a little under two hours, mostly from waiting for the displacers to be reset. Since reconfiguring the displacement system to a new destination wasn't instantaneous, the facilities all operated under strict timetables with fixed departure intervals.

She fully expected him to ask for technical details about the Evangelions, due to the fact that there was no risk of a communications intercept if they discussed it in person. However, he apparently had different plans. By the time she got her bearings, she was being led into a sealed vault where she got the surprise of her life.

A wall containing a large collection of old photos, each bearing timestamps dating all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century. What was interesting wasn't the photos themselves but what they pictured: cave paintings from what Keel claimed to be an extensive cave system found beneath the Dead Sea.

One picture in particular was scaled up and digitally remastered to reveal a purple, horned figure bizarrely similar to Unit-01.

Others were there as well; the same figure roaring at the sky, a red, hornless one lying on the ground with what looked like nine winged humans circling above... and one that chilled the woman to the core: various animals and shriveled plants lying haphazardly on the shore of a blood-red lake, with massive crosses rising over the horizon despite the radiocarbon dating revealing that the scribbles predated Christianity by several tens of thousands of years at the earliest.

Keel's narration was no less troubling. According to the man, the upper levels of the cave contained paintings of a more recent origin and archaeological excavations have yielded a number of scrolls written in a strange dialect that may have been the original Proto-Semitic language; even with computers, a full translation was still eluding them. What they did find was a disturbingly detailed foretelling of the future; Keel actually recited passages referencing the Toba Catastrophe, various major conflicts in the ancient world, the Black Death in the Middle Ages and World War II.

Then he pointed out a reference to Second Impact.

Yui was seriously considering the possibility of the man pulling a massive practical joke on her expense until he showed her a passage describing the seemingly impossible creature that recently visited Tokyo-2 and the corpse of which the military hastily swarmed afterwards. Most unsettling was the word the texts used to describe it: one that was almost identical to malak, the Hebrew word for 'messenger'. The same word that was later translated into the Mycenaean akero and subsequently corrupted into the Greek aggelos and Latin angelus which in turn eventually became the root for the Western word 'angel'.

Yui knew several fellow scientists who were religious but she wasn't one herself. Yet when she considered the possibility of humanity accidentally slaying an angel, it was a logical conclusion that divine retribution would follow. Keel apparently had a similar train of thought as he expressed his belief that the Evangelions may be the only weapons that can stand up to what was coming.

Using science to battle the divine. Not exactly your everyday scientist's job description.

She didn't find it particularly hard to not go public with what she learned; she had no physical proof and it's not like anyone would believe such outlandish statements right off the bat. She still had a lingering suspicion that Keel wasn't telling the whole story: he carefully maneuvered around certain parts regarding the outcome of the conflict.

Still, his offer to assist the development effort with a cash infusion was welcome, even if he couldn't allocate much without someone taking notice and questioning just where exactly that money is going. Accusations of embezzlement were the last thing the government needed right now. Yui herself had no time for PR either, being busy with figuring out a way to accelerate Adam's development.

The most recent experiment they tried was giving the AI limited access to various online libraries and it seemed to be working so far. Already he demonstrated a tentative grasp of human morality and psychology, with his capability of processing hundreds of books per hour being used to its fullest. Of course, all of his traffic was routed through the MAGI which filtered out undesirable content. Yui's field wasn't AI psychology but she knew that, given enough input from an outside source, AIs eventually develop their own personality if sufficient excess processing power is available.

The AEL knew from their experience that Evangelions were no exception; Lilith was the living (?) proof to that. It was therefore obvious that Adam would eventually follow in his "sister"'s footsteps once he tackled the biggest obstacle in his way: unlike Lilith, Adam was not fully self-aware yet, not having formed a physical self-image. Or to be more exact, Adam viewed Unit-01 as his hardware, the environment he existed in, as opposed to Lilith viewing Unit-00 as herself, an individual separate from the environment.

That was another of the AEL's secrets: aside from Lilith, there have been no documented cases of spontaneously developed self-awareness at all. Due to Lilith's nature however, this fact couldn't be released to the public just yet – even though it would surely earn her developers a Knuth Prize.

Yanking her awareness back to the present, Yui leaned down to a vacant terminal and opened a communication channel to Unit-01's entry plug. Kaworu immediately noticed being watched. – "What is it? Did I screw up something?"

"Not yet. Does your apartment happen to have two free rooms?"

"Uh, yeah. Why?"

Yui decided now was the time to drop the bombshell. – "I need you to provide permanent housing for two, starting next week."

"Huh?!"

"I'm sorry for the short notice, but this came down directly from the military. They took interest in the Evangelions and are dispatching a supervisor to observe our activities as an alternative to a full seizure of the facility and all research materials. I myself was told only of the fact and that we need to provide accommodation. Considering that you live by yourself, I figured your residence probably has free capacity."

Kaworu closed his eyes, sighing. – "Okay, okay... who's the guy?"


Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange point
October 8, 2041

As the Sun's bright disc rose from behind the Earth's dark mass, the light shone onto the metallic construct floating in the void. A one-time occurrence per lunar cycle, the immense structure of Nexus Station was bathed in the brilliance of the lone star millions of kilometers away, reflecting some of it towards the planet with such intensity that - were it not for the full moon behind it - the station would've been visible from Earth's night side with the naked eye. Its 28-day orbital period gave the station two short sunsets every month, during which the nearby planetary bodies hid the station into shade, its navigation lights the only long-range sign of its existence.

Aside from its radio emissions, of course. And the impossible-to-miss sight of FTL transit.

"All nearby craft, be advised: we have inbound transit. Clear the area immediately."

As the slowly rotating ring system sped up, staggering amounts of energy flowed through conduits built specifically for this purpose and into the dozens of gleaming orange crystals. When the buildup reached a crescendo, a thin beam of emerald energy lanced out from each focal point and into the middle. Nanoseconds after the beams intersected, an explosion of light was followed by the very fabric of space tearing asunder into a green-orange vortex spanning the entire ring.

Teleportation technology was first researched sometime during the late seventies, finally coming to fruition in the form of the A-17 Prototype Labs of the Black Mesa Research Facility in what used to be New Mexico. The science behind the initially room-sized devices was impossibly complex for the common folk, nor was this angle of research public. How could it have been, if first attempts at using it ended up discovering a strange world that was definitely not part of this physical universe?

That part of the story saw the light of the day only when the facility became ground zero for Second Impact.

No one knows why it happened. A piece of exotic matter coming into contact with a high-energy particle beam for a fraction of a second was all it took. It didn't explode in a nuclear reaction or collapsed into a microscopic black hole; rather, xenium sample GC-3883's emission of gravitational waves was so violent, it shook the entire facility's foundations and caused massive landslides on the mesa itself that sealed several evacuation routes, trapping hundreds of scientists inside the complex.

And that's when the Xenians arrived.

Nightmarish creatures defining all evolutionary science, the very aliens the scientists used to research swarmed the facility and surrounding towns by the hundreds, killing all they came across. Even the very soldiers sent to contain the situation It was now commonly-known history how the US government tried to cover it up, dispatching a USMC force to clean up the infestation and silence any witnesses. Only they didn't expect to be counterattacked by a force far more intelligent than the mere animals arriving before them. The Marines found themselves outnumbered, outmatched and outgunned at every turn, finally withdrawing with a staggering 70% casualty ratio and watching helplessly as black ops units entered the former ICBM launch facility-turned-laboratory and solved what three days and over a thousand men with full armor, artillery and air support couldn't with three hours and a thermonuclear weapon.

Not that it helped much: the detonation's energetic particles found their way to the several tons of xenium stored inside the Lambda Complex, igniting a cataclysmic chain reaction that tore the very fabric of space and time apart. Massive vortexes later dubbed 'portal storms' raged across the entire planet, belching out billions of Xenian creatures attacking everyone indiscriminately. Panicked masses retreated into major population centers as military forces geared up for a long and bloody war.

When the Combine Citadels started raining down on those very population centers from orbit, they got their wish, albeit not in the way they expected.

Seven hours. That's how long it took for the Combine invasion force to turn humanity's collective military hardware into scrap metal. And not just military: entire cities have been exterminated by Combine synths to make an example, to plunge those who were still alive into absolute despair. By the time the smoke cleared, a good third of humanity was in various states of being dead, dying or worse. It was the UN Security Council's last assembly that announced humanity's unconditional surrender, only a week after the accident at Black Mesa. In just that single week, from May 16, 1998 to May 23, the end of the millennium turned from an age of prosperity into an unending nightmare no one could wake up from.

All because humanity got too curious for their own good.

One must consider the other side of the coin, however. While it was teleportation technology that brought Earth to ruin, it was also this very same technology that eventually became humanity's salvation. And the same technology that might prove to be humanity's salvation once more. After nearly fifty years since its inception, advances in the field of teleportation finally unlocked the ultimate prize: a way to cheat special relativity and achieve faster-than-light travel, something that surpassed even the freakishly advanced Combine technology. Even if Earth were to fall once more, humanity would endure, survive and recover. Even if their creators were to go extinct, the massive structures would remain, standing as eternal monuments to humanity's existence.

A single craft crawled out of the swirling event horizon as the focal points continued to pump the exotic radiation scientifically known as displacement energy into the spatial anomaly. As the craft cleared its arrival point, the waygate abruptly cut power to the crystals, resulting in the event horizon collapsing in on itself with a final flash and sending an immense ring of light into space bright enough to be visible from Earth. The ring's spinning gradually slowed to a halt and cooling nacelles extended outwards from the rim.

"Transit complete, wormhole disengaged. One arrival confirmed. Nexus Control to unknown vessel, transmit identification and state your destination. Failure to comply will result in the seizure and investigation of your craft by Earth Defense Fleet forces."

"Nexus Control, this is the CSS-Odessa. We have a VIP on board, priority transport to Kyoto Spaceport. Transmitting verification codes now."

"...Odessa, Nexus Control. Verification codes confirmed, you are clear to proceed. Do you require escort?"

"Nexus Control, Odessa. Negative on escort. Please notify the defense fleet of our arrival."

"Odessa, Nexus Control. Arrival has been logged. Current local time is 2127 White Forest Mean Time, prepare for chronometer synchronization."

"That's affirmative, Nexus Control. Synchronization in progress."

"Confirmed, Odessa. Welcome home."

Jets of helium plasma erupted from its rear as the small frigate fired its laser-ignited fusion engines and began the long trek towards its destination. From the tiny observation deck on the bottom, a pair of steel-blue eyes glared silently at the planet floating in the distance.

'11 years.' Beneath his graying blond bangs, the uniformed man's eyes narrowed. 'Hard to believe it's been that long... and yet, here I am again.' He sighed. 'I just never learn, do I?'

His musings were interrupted by the automated door behind opening with a hiss and a slim form sailing through the zero-gravity environment. – "So, we're there?" – The teenage girl asked, blond hair trailing behind her.

"Yup."

"Lemme see." – She immediately rooted herself to the nearest window, staring at the distant planet. – "Huh. It does look better than on pictures."

While unusual to someone who spent all their lives on Earth, the statement still carried some truth in it: Earth, Polygonus, Paeon and Sethlans were the only Goldilocks planets throughout the star systems controlled by the Confederacy of Man. Of these three, Earth was the only one with naturally-occurring surface water, let alone indigenous life. Not even Polygonus, the largest and oldest human colony, had surface water until the long-term project aimed at terraforming the planet redirected several icy comets at the planetary equator.

"Is that an admission of defeat I hear there?" – he asked with a small smirk.

The girl's expression blanched at that. – "Oh, for the love of... I didn't actually mean that!"

"Sorry, a bet is a bet. Pay up."

She thumbed towards the planet. – "Down there."

"I'll hold you to that." – He knew from experience better than to try pushing past the point where she agreed on a compromise. Chances are, that was the best he was going to get.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever..." – She settled down next to the window, glancing at the Earth from the corner of her eye. – "So, what's it like down there? Do they really breathe unprocessed atmospheric air? And what about the animals, do they really live outside biodomes?"

The man promptly held up his hands defensively. – "Slow it, kiddo! We have nearly a day 'till the ship lands."

The girl, however, would have none of it, eyes narrowing. – "So what? I already bored my ass off in the week we spent in FTL, what's one more day? Now spill!"

"Not right now, I gotta ask the captain about the exact time we'll land." – he dismissed, kicking away from the wall and twisting his body around with practiced ease to face the doorway. – "Go and get your stuff packed."

Still, the girl didn't let go that easily, following him out to the corridor. – "Didn't you say..." – She paused, making way for a member of the ship's crew heading in the opposite direction. – "Didn't you say that we have nearly a day?"

"I don't know the exact math but it's gotta be somewhere around there. We're talking 323,000 klicks here, give or take a few hundred; not exactly an afternoon stroll in the countryside, you know."


Chapter rewrite complete on 15/06/08

The Confederate military's rank structure and their NATO equivalents:

Army: private (OR-1), private first class (OR-2), corporal (OR-3), corporal first class (OR-4), sergeant (OR-5), sergeant second class (OR-6), sergeant first class (OR-7), master sergeant (OR-8), sergeant major (OR-9), lieutenant (OF-1), captain (OF-2), major (OF-3), lieutenant colonel (OF-4), colonel (OF-5), brigadier general (OF-6), major general (OF-7), lieutenant general (OF-8), theater general (OF-9), supreme general (OF-10).

Navy: airman (OR-1), airman first class (OR-2), corporal (OR-3), corporal first class (OR-4), sergeant (OR-5), petty officer (OR-6), petty officer first class (OR-7), warrant officer (OR-8), warrant officer first class (OR-9), ensign (OF-1), lieutenant (OF-2), lieutenant captain (OF-3), field captain (OF-4), captain (OF-5), battlegroup captain (OF-6), fleet commander (OF-7), rear admiral (OF-8), fleet admiral (OF-9), supreme admiral (OF-10).

Calhoun's rank of Commander-in-Chief has no NATO equivalent, as that position is usually filled by a head of state. In this case, the rank is given out to a single person at a time, to whom both branches of the military are subordinate to, while he himself is directly subordinate to the head of state. The best real-life equivalent I can find is the US' Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, except that one has no actual command authority and is more of an advisory role.

The exact date of the Black Mesa Incident in Half-Life lore is never mentioned; there are multiple sources but they all contradict each other. After cross-referencing all available side material and staff interviews, as well as the calendars seen in the first game, the HL wiki came up with May 16, 2003 as the official date of the Incident. Another possible year, based on what date falls on which weekday, is 1998. I used the latter. Accordingly, the events of HL2 took place in 2018; the kids were born in late 2027, except Shinji who was born a year earlier and Misato who was born another year earlier than that.