Rei Ikari sat at the kitchen table staring at her homework. Her aunt was at the sink nearby. The sounds of running water and clinking dishes filled the small space. Outside, the Spring was hot, the insect-song loud in the humidity. She glanced at the little slip of paper that peeked from the side of her stack of schoolwork. She pulled it out and looked at it.
The class field trip was next week, to the preservation aquarium up-prefecture from them, and a trip of that length required parental permission. In class, Rei had been the one chosen to hand out the slips. She walked up and down the class, row by row. Some kids took the slip right from her hand. Others weren't paying attention, so she set the slip next to their things, trying not to be a bother.
Tana Sapporo was one of the former. A large group of girls sat around Tana Sapporo, and listened to everything Tana Sapporo said. Rei was never one of those girls. Sometimes she wished she could be. More times, she wished she could be just like Tana Sapporo, or at least look more like her. Tana's hair was a perfect, lustrous black, whereas Rei's was a boring brown. Outside of school, in town, Tana always had cute clothes and nice shoes, while Rei wore whatever her aunt and uncle could get her. About the only thing they had in common was eye color, but while Tana's eyes were a rich, oceanic blue, Rei's own felt pale and faded by comparison.
Tana Sapporo took the slip from Rei's hand, looked her right in the eyes from under her perfect Tana Sapporo bangs, and thanked her. The smirk in her famous Tana Sapporo smile went some way to undercutting the sincerity of her thanks.
Rei moved away without comment.
"Get your parent to sign and date the slip," the teacher had said. "Please bring them back tomorrow so we can reserve the right amount of tickets."
"Ma'am," said Tana Sapporo, the smile in her voice. "What is Rei supposed to do?"
Rei froze. She felt her face flush at once, and decided not to turn around.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Sapporo?" said the teacher.
"Well, you know," Tana said, "because she doesn't have any parents."
The back door slid open on its squeaky track, bringing Rei back to the present. She heard her uncle take off his rubber boots in the entryway, then heard him enter the kitchen. He pulled a chilled jug of water from the refrigerator and drank it. He said hello to his wife and hello to Rei.
"Hello," they said.
He sat down across from her, in the empty seat. He was a thin man. His glasses were fogged from the change in humidity, and he took them off and cleaned them with the hem of his shirt. "What's that?" he said.
"Nothing," she said back.
"Can I see it?" he said.
She hesitated, but handed it over. He put his glasses back on and read it to himself under his breath. "Aquarium, huh?" he said.
She didn't reply.
"Sounds like fun. Can I borrow your pencil?"
"You can't sign it," she said.
Her uncle paused. "I'm sorry?" he said.
"You can't sign it," she said, again, eyes on the table in front of her.
"Why not?"
"You're not my parent," she said. "It's for parents to sign."
The water from the sink shut off as her aunt listened.
Her uncle sat back in his chair, still holding the slip. "I don't see the problem, Rei. We've signed everything in the past. There's no reason I can't sign this now."
"Everyone else has their parents except me. It's not fair."
"Rei, you know why—"
"No, I don't!" She looked up at him, holding his gaze. "I don't know anything! I don't know anything about them! You won't even show her to me!"
"Show you who?"
"My mom! Why can't I even know what she looks like?"
Her uncle blinked. "Rei, what's gotten into you? I don't know you like this."
For the second time that day, Rei felt her face heat up. She felt shame, talking like that to her uncle. Even worse, the reason for the outburst was elusive. His question was fair: what had gotten into her? To yell like that at him, in his own home, when all he was doing was trying to help. She looked back down at her work, unwilling to meet his eyes again.
"I apologize for raising my voice," she said. "May I be excused, please?"
"Rei, please, you have to understand—"
"May I be excused, please?" she repeated. There was silence in the kitchen for a moment.
"You're excused," her uncle said, and she got up and left without comment, taking her schoolwork with her down the short hall to her bedroom.
Her Eyes
First detection occurred 13 hours previous to landfall, in a part of the old Pacific defense cordon 170 kilometers from shore. A Seahawk VTOL overflight made first visual—little more than a blur on its gun-cam, moving beneath the waves, twice the mass of any whale and lit by a bioluminescent glow. From there, successive overflights and satellite observation charted its movement, tracking and projecting until a clear landfall point became obvious.
All this oversight had been official, military work. Nerv was not involved in the initial chain of information, likely cut out deliberately. Even when the command staff was brought into the fold on a need-to-know basis, exactly who needed to know, and when, was still up to the military types. This meant that the first Ritsuko Akagi knew that anything was wrong was when she got to work at 0830, about forty-five minutes before landfall, only to find her usual parking lot clogged by a convoy of olive drab armored vehicles.
"What now?" she said, throwing her car into reverse. She parked curbside on the north end of headquarters and got out, thermos in one hand, briefcase in the other. A great earthen rumble, like distant thunder, reached her ears. She looked up. Sunrise was still in progress, filtered late through the cavern's light refractors. In the center of the false-sky, like stalactites grown in time-lapse, the buildings of the central block made their descent.
Ritsuko watched them. Fifteen years of construction and planning and waiting, and it was finally here. Today was the day.
Inside, the corridors were jammed with green-clad UN troops forming ad-hoc checkpoints. She had to authorize herself past three just to get to the command center, under the watchful eye of the UN goons. The regular Nerv security had been reduced to bystanders. When she finally entered the command center, she found it in a state of barely-checked chaos.
A panel of UN officers occupied much of the space. They seemed to have brought their own filing department judging by the weight of manila folders and ash trays that dominated their little table. The Nerv staff was obliged to move around them. Each of the three senior Nerv analysts worked under the watchful eye of a UN liaison officer, hovering over their shoulder, relaying any pertinent data to their commanders themselves.
Ritsuko set her things down alongside Lieutenant Ibuki's console, ignoring the glare she earned from the lieutenant's overseer. "Good morning, Maya," she said.
"Good morning, ma'am," Ibuki said. "Sorry I didn't inform you. I'd have called if I could get an outgoing line."
The UN overseer grunted. "All outgoing communications are on—"
"A need to know basis. Yes, thank you." Ibuki looked tired already. "It's been all morning with this."
"What's the situation, exactly?"
Ibuki tapped at her console. "We're charting a large mass on a landfall trajectory. Possibly a false alarm, but I doubt it."
Ritsuko looked at the main view screen. It was split into several sections, showing footage from a dozen sources, including multiple UN main battle tanks, their barrels aimed to sea. As she watched, there was a plume of ocean spray, and the target emerged. The officers around her burst into sudden noise. The MBTs opened fire, soundless on the screen.
"Doesn't seem like a false alarm," Ritsuko said.
((()))
An intercom buzzed, notifying of an unscheduled stop. Concerned voices consumed the rest of the announcement, and roused Rei Ikari from her sleep. The train had come to a stop. Commuters stood and gathered their things, filing out of the car with haste. She checked her hair in the faint reflection of the window next to her. Sleeping had turned the right side of her head into a compressed mat of brown-black tangle. One hand went to her backpack immediately, finding her hairbrush. With it, she fussed in the window, waging a battle to straighten her hair as best she could. The battle was a mixed victory. In the aftermath, her head looked less like a disaster, but not by much.
She slung her backpack and joined the slowly-moving queue. They'd stopped in a train yard, not even at a station, and exiting the car involved one last jump down to the gravel. Once she was down, Rei turned and helped the lady behind her, an elderly woman who had to sit on the bottom step before sliding down. Rei held her hand and kept her steady.
"Thank you," the lady told her.
"My pleasure," Rei said, smiling. As the older lady moved away, she paid attention to the train yard's overhead speakers, and the orders they issued. An emergency declaration for the surrounding districts, and the entirety of the Kanto and Chubu regions. Exactly what city she had stopped in, or in what region that city lay, was unknown to Rei. But it clearly was not Tokyo-3.
Her hand went to her jacket pocket, crinkling the paperwork and temporary ID card concealed within. Break the problem down, step by step. Find out where you are, and find out how to get where you need to be. Get to a phone. Use the number on the paperwork, and call for help.
Vacant windows yawned at her as she moved down empty streets. Damaged buildings and empty residential structures, framed by the old lampposts and cracked pavement endemic to abandoned Japanese townships. Scrapland, they called it at school—the name given to areas of the country deemed economically unviable for repair and repopulation after Second Impact.
Rei tried to imagine what it was like when the whole country was populated, when tiny towns like this, just in from the coast, could still support themselves. She found it impossible, and so she watched it all scroll by like someone else's bad dream. No one was outside, and most of the storefronts were shuttered and boarded. A little dead city around the base of a tiny mountain.
Rei saw a payphone ahead, a bright green spot against the grey.
Then something exploded beyond the tiny mountain, and the dead city was suddenly alive with air traffic. Heavy-bellied military craft flashed by overhead, loaded down with racks of missiles, their jets howling. Rei ducked out of reflex, hand held up against the noise. She felt the ground quake beneath the tread of something titanic.
Then she saw it. A shape like a man, but not man-like, its proportions made somewhere not wholly of Earth—humanity stretched in a funhouse mirror. It loped around the mountain, steps asynchronous, all leather-black skin and bone-white chitin. Tall, so tall. Taller than the buildings around it, with twin voids in the cracked porcelain of its face; eyes like open graves, boring into her.
Those graves flashed white and with a thunderclap of noise, half a city block vanished in a roaring firestorm. Rei dived to the nearest curb, covering her head and neck. She heard the whip-crack of missiles as the military opened fire. She screamed, though she couldn't hear it, her voice drowned in the cascading detonations around her. All thoughts of safety, all plans she had formed, died in the blistering cacophony. Buildings rocked and the pavement pulsated beneath her, as if the world itself was breaking apart. She couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but cling to the ground and wait.
Then atop it all, the sound of tires screaming to a halt. A lull in the detonations. Rei looked up. Blue car, door open. A hand outstretched.
"Are you Rei Ikari?"
She nodded, numb.
"I'm Captain Katsuragi. Get in."
Rei didn't hesitate.
((()))
Visual feeds were down, and most target observation switched to high-level flyover data projected on the holographic display. The realities of the situation settled in on her mind. Despite all the shouting and uniforms and oversight, the military would fail. Ritsuko knew it with a certainty that bordered on precognition. Even without a clear look at the thing, without clear knowledge of its capabilities, she knew all their bombs and missiles and tanks would amount to nothing. The responsibility for defense would fall to Nerv.
Nerv, which had prepared for this day for over a decade. Nerv, where she had worked her entire adult life. Earth's last line of defense. Fifteen years spent in research and development, and they had no prepared response.
Unit 00 was in stasis. Its pilot was injured. They weren't ready. They weren't anywhere near ready.
Ritsuko took a drink from her thermos, shocked that her hand held steady.
Sub-commander Fuyutsuki was next to her. "Good morning, Doctor," he said.
"Good morning, sir," she said. She realized she had no idea how long the old man had been there. She looked over Fuyutsuki's shoulder. Commander Ikari sat at his desk, his command tower lowered flush with the rest of the center. If he was at all bothered by the proceedings, he didn't show it.
"We need you to prepare our response," Fuyutsuki said, bringing her focus back to him. "How long will it take to break stasis?"
"Three hours to crack the Bakelite using automated cutters. Three hours for core reconfiguration and synaptic de-bug after the last incident. Then we need to move it to the launch bay, which will take another hour at least, unless you want to achieve synch directly in the test socket and just march out from there."
"Those estimates are for Unit 00," Fuyutsuki said.
"Correct," Ristuko said, successfully keeping the 'no shit' arch from her eyebrow.
"What about Unit 01?"
"What about it?" she said.
"How long would it take to bring Unit 01 out of stasis?"
Ritsuko blinked. To her credit, that was all the hesitation she showed. "I'm not certain. Not enough to give you a precise estimate. We don't even have feeds connected to its core. Just configuring it would require at least one dive." She flicked through figures in her head. Maximum effort was required to minimize the fact that Unit 01 had never, ever activated, and just focus on the raw calculus needed to assemble a timeline for him. She took another sip of coffee and decided she needed a cigarette.
"Six hours," she said, at last. "Including launch time."
"Understood. Please take care of it."
"Sir, Ayanami has never managed to activate Unit 01. Wouldn't it be better to focus on Unit 00?"
"The First Child is to remain in the medical center, and Unit 00 is to remain on lockdown."
"Who is going to pilot it, then?"
Fuyutsuki gave her one of his half-smiles, the kind he always gave when she stepped outside her own need-to-know circle of information. "Leave that to Captain Katsuragi."
((()))
Military vehicles rushed in the opposite direction. Rei watched them pass in the rearview mirror. Tanks and transports, trucks and tractors, all disappearing one by one around the bend in the highway, into the fighting. She couldn't see the Thing anymore. Distance and buildings obscured it. Still, she could see its effects; explosions which bred in clusters across the horizon, leaping above the scrapland skyline, each a glowing cruciform.
An electronic buzz. Katsuragi pulled the car phone from its cradle. "Go ahead," she said. There was quiet as she listened. "Confirmed. I have her now. We're moving to the northwestern entrance—ready a tram for us."
She knew it was Katsuragi by the picture she had been sent—a professional one, like from an ID card. She had looked frazzled in the picture. Now, in person, she seemed vital with an excitement that verged on giddiness.
Another wave of vehicles passed them. This time, they were trucks with large, long boxes in the beds. Katsuragi spoke again. "And tell those idiots that they can't scramble an MLRS battery that close. It'll walk all over them inside of a minute."
"What will?" Rei said. She looked at the captain. "What is that thing? What's going on?"
Katsuragi hung up the phone and looked at her. "Seatbelt," she said.
"What?" Rei said.
"Seatbelt," Katsuragi repeated, her finger pointing.
"Oh. Right." Rei clicked herself in, wondering how a seatbelt would help when that thing flashed its eyes and vaporized them.
"It's an Angel," Katsuragi said. She flicked her blinker and took a ramp onto another highway, picking up speed. The only noise was the thrum of her tires on asphalt. Electric, Rei realized.
"An Angel," Rei said.
"I don't make up the names," Katsuragi said.
Another peal of thunder, close and overhead. Rei craned her neck to look, and caught sight of a jet, heavier and bigger than the others, clawing for altitude. A brace of smaller jets followed in its wake.
Katsuragi caught sight of it, too. "You've got to be kidding me," she said.
"What?" Rei said.
"You're buckled in, right?"
"Yes."
"Good." Katsuragi took a breath and pulled over to the side. "So. Weird question. Have you ever been bombed before?"
"No," Rei said. "Why? Are we about to get bombed?"
Behind Katsuragi's head, Rei saw the smaller jets peeled off, leaving the bigger plane on its own. It disappeared into the distance. Katsuragi smiled and covered her head with her hands.
"Would it help if I said no?" she said.
The N2 mine stole Rei's reply.
As it turned out, the seatbelt was a very good idea.
((()))
Ritsuko cinched her scuba mask to her face and slid down off the umbilical bridge and into the oil. The florescent drone of the overhead light banks disappeared immediately, replaced by the hiss-woosh of her respiration. She sank, letting her body weight carry her down into the magenta-tinged world of Unit 01's cage.
The oil wasn't really oil, but since 'hydrostatic bio-synthetic fluid' didn't roll off the tongue very well, oil it was. As a mixture, it was designed to keep the Evangelion's mechanical and biological components equally safe, and prevent degradation. A solution to entropy, her mother had called it, back when she first postulated the composition of the mixture.
Ritsuko kicked to a standstill in front of Unit 01's chestplate. She hooked her laptop to an access rung over the left pectoral—waterproof, its keyboard coated in rigid rubber—and called up an override on its core armor. She typed her way in and keyed her access codes. A chorus of dense thuds as the plate locks released.
Ritsuko swam down and planted one hand on the Unit's chest. The other grabbed a handle on Unit 01's core plating. Above water, this plate alone weighed eighty tons. Opening it would require heavy lift gear, or the employment of the Evangelion itself. Here, in the fluid, it was neutrally buoyant; Ritsuko lifted it with one hand. It groaned open.
The core itself was not exposed. Instead, one of its secondary globules was visible—an ancillary sphere connected to the main construct by a web of techno-organic mesh. Ritsuko sank a bundle of diagnostic needle-cables into it, then swam up and connected them to her laptop. The screen blinked, and began to run her reconfiguration program. All the twists and turns of the core configuration were mapped to her software. It could automatically handle most of the work for her, relying on algorithms she wrote for it.
If something went wrong, anyone on her team could fix it. The program was simple enough for a PhD candidate like Ibuki, but she was there to fix it herself. Another of her mother's snarky lessons: 'Never let someone else ruin what you could better ruin yourself.'
She spent an hour down there, busying herself with double-checking each of Unit 01's torso plates and listening to the hiss-whoosh, hiss-whoosh of her oxygen tank. She thought about the Angel coming towards them, right now, and the fact their entire response plan was 'use the thing that never works'. It didn't inspire confidence. She was tired of being cut out of the loop, tired of the need-to-know of everything.
Like the nature of the new pilot. Why wasn't that shared with her? She was the head of Project E development—a role she had earned through hard work, not nepotism—and yet she wasn't given the full details.
Not for the first time, she figured that the problem had her mother's name all over it. Naoko Akagi: the scientist who walked away from the greatest opportunity in science. Naoko Akagi: the woman who left at the height of her professional career. Naoko Akagi: the mother who hardly ever spoke to her daughter anymore.
If she left, then why should her daughter be any different? Why cut her in on the important things? She's probably not trustworthy.
The configuration finished. No problems. Ready for startup.
Ritsuko closed the laptop and swam down to the core, disconnecting the needles at the base of the cable. Logically, she shouldn't blame her mother. She knew that. But still her phone never rang, and she was in no hurry to pick it up herself. It had to be three or four years now since they last spoke. Maybe too much time had passed. Maybe—
She pulled the diagnostic needles from the sub-core, and for a split-second, she caught a glimpse of something inside that red orb. A reflection of her hand, she told herself, though the sight was of a hand open and flat against the inside of the core, like a person pressing on a window. She blinked and it was gone.
Ritsuko hovered for a moment, cabling held to her chest, staring at the sub-core. Her imagination, she decided. Too long down in this pinkish gloom. Then she swam to the surface, her feet kicking just a little faster than she cared to admit.
((()))
Hours passed like minutes, filled by flame and heat and the insensate sounds of roaring hell. By the time they were safe and secure on a transport train, ferrying them deep underground, Rei was unsure if her day had been real or imagined. Her ears rang. Pavement grit clogged the lines of her palms, and her hair was chalky with the dust of a pulverized city or two. She ran her hands through it, shaking as much of it out as she could.
There had been an explosion. The car flipped again and again, and she helped right it, helped jump it back to operation with stolen batteries. Was that real? Did that actually happen to her? She struggled to believe it, but then she felt the little cuts on her forearms from the shattered passenger window, where she had pushed it out to get free in the aftermath.
The lights of the tram played by, sweeping the darkened interior of the car with each pass. This morning, she had gotten dressed in her bedroom at home. Now, hours later, she had been in the middle of a battle, felt the shockwave of the largest explosive known to man, and lived.
In the slow flashes, she saw her shoes, dirty and soot-streaked. The left one was untied. When had that happened?
Katsuragi said something, but it was muffled, indistinct. Rei looked at her and tried to focus.
"I'm sorry?" she said.
"Do you have your temp ID?" Katsuragi said, voice slowed for emphasis. "It should've been in the paperwork we sent you."
Rei pulled it out of her jacket pocket. It was crisp and smooth, folded neatly. She wondered how out of everything, it had survived the day unscathed.
She handed it to Katsuragi.
"Thanks. Read this." A booklet landed in her lap. Welcome to Nerv.
She held it. "What is it?"
"Your orientation," Katsuragi said. "It'll tell you all you need to know."
Rei opened the booklet. Reading it helped ground her, and gave her something to do. Still, inside of a few pages, it was clear to her that 'all she needed to know' apparently encompassed very little. Nerv was an organization dedicated to the future endeavors of mankind, and improving the world through scientific research, application, and defense, blah blah blah.
None of that mattered to her. She wasn't here for a field trip. She put the booklet down. "Miss Katsuragi, what does my father do here?"
"I don't know if that's for me to say, Rei." Katsuragi looked at her and smiled. "You don't have to stick with that 'Miss Katsuragi' stuff. Please, call me Misato."
Rei tried hard not to frown. In what had easily been the most stressful day of her young life, this flippant woman was not making things easier. "I'm not very comfortable with that, Captain."
Katsuragi's frown wasn't as well hidden. "And why is that?"
"I don't know you well, ma'am. It wouldn't be appropriate."
"My apologies," Katsuragi said. "I guess I'm just used to children being more appreciative when an adult treats them like a peer."
Rei knew that tone of voice immediately. She had heard it from a dozen girls in her childhood, all of them snide, mean, and condescending. All of them wanting to put the little orphan girl in her place. She knew how to deal with it.
"No offense taken," she said. "I guess I'm just used to adults behaving like adults."
Captain Katsuragi laughed, but it wasn't very convincing. "I'll be sure to remember that from now on, Miss Ikari."
The tunnel vanished, exposing an underground world vast and golden. Neither woman commented on it, nor spoke for the rest of the tram ride.
((()))
A phone rang in cage 01's observation booth. Ritsuko pulled it off the hook. "Akagi here," she said.
It was Ibuki. "Captain Katsuragi is back with the Third Child."
"Alright." The tech scrawl on the screen in front of her didn't stop, and she watched it run start-up simulation after start-up simulation while she spoke. It was easy to watch, considering each sim flat-lined at step 108. This stupid thing was never going to work. "Send her my way."
"Well, that's the problem, ma'am."
"She's lost," Ritsuko said.
"Completely, ma'am."
Ritsuko stubbed her cigarette. "I'm on my way."
She found Misato getting off the elevator on sub-level B, junction twelve, with the Third Child in tow.
Misato saw her. "I wasn't lost," she said, quickly.
"Of course not."
"I was just showing her around."
"Obviously," Ritsuko said.
"I just want that on the record," Misato said.
"Consider it noted." Ritsuko nodded at the map in her friend's hand. "I suppose that's a map for a different facility."
Misato crumpled the map in both hands. "Whatever," she said.
Ritsuko smiled. It had been years since Misato had worked in the first branch; her expertise training Evangelion pilots was somewhat lost on Ayanami, and so she had spent the last few years in Germany. Having her back and in the role of operations manager meant that things had decidedly become more serious and deadly for everyone. Still, in spite of that, Ritsuko was glad to have her friend back.
"And who is this?" Ritsuko said.
"The Third Child," Misato said, shoving the map in her jacket pocket. "Rei Ikari."
Ritsuko hadn't recognized her at first. It had been a long time, and she had grown. How long had it been? Years and years, certainly. Since 03, probably. She had been a toddler then. Looking at her now, the resemblance was glaring. Cheeks, nose, eyebrows—all the spitting image of her father.
Ikari looked up at her. "Hello," she said, and bowed.
"I'm Doctor Akagi." Ritsuko inclined her head. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Ikari."
"Thank you, Doctor."
Ritsuko turned and led the way to the cage, the two women following her. They took an escalator down to the embarkation corridor. Misato rode at her side, leaning on the banister. Ikari stood behind them.
"Is Unit 00 ready?" Misato said.
"Still in stasis," Ritsuko said. "I'm prepping Unit 01 for launch now."
"Unit 01? It's never worked."
"I'm well aware of that."
"Is Ayanami ready, at least?"
"Not to my knowledge," Ritsuko said. She watched the implication of it all hit Misato's face in real time. The resulting expression was not pleasant.
"She just got here," Misato said, voice low.
"It's not ideal." Ritsuko looked at the Third Child. "What did you think of the geo-front, Miss Ikari?"
"Pretty incredible." The girl smiled. Like everything about her, the smile was small, polite, and a little sad. Ritsuko liked her immediately. "Seeing it is the weirdest thing."
Ritsuko brought them to the entrance to Unit 01's cage. She tapped in her access code, and returned Ikari's smile as best she could. "Somehow I doubt that," she said.
The door slid open with an easy swish. The overhead lights were already on, bathing everything in their florescent glow—the umbilical bridge, the oil, the massive faceplate of the Evangelion, and the man in black standing at the center of it all.
((()))
Rei remembered the last time she saw her father. Four years ago now, on the anniversary of her mother's death. Her aunt and uncle stood with her at the little grave marker, and he appeared some time later, arriving in a black staff car. For all she knew, it could have been the same car that left her at her uncle's home all those years before.
She tried to speak to him only once that day, but failed. She remembered nothing of his face—the sun was at his back, and there were tears in her eyes.
Now he was here. She found herself teetering on the threshold, the sight of him stopping her as surely as a slap to the face. Katsuragi came to a full, heel-snapping stop just inside the doorway. Her salute was crisp. Akagi made it farther in, and did not react with much gusto at all.
"At ease, Captain," he said, and Katsuragi relaxed. He looked at Akagi. "I've checked the boot program. Good work, Doctor."
"Thank you, sir," Akagi said.
Then he looked at her. "Rei," he said. His voice was soft but carried well—a man whose speech was given value by its rarity. "It's been some time."
"Four years," she said.
He inclined his head. "I would appreciate it if we could talk. Come closer."
Rei obeyed. Voices buzzed on distant intercoms not meant for her ears. The chamber swallowed the sound of her footsteps.
"Your uncle tells me you're doing well," he said. "A strong student."
"You talk to him?" she said.
"Occasionally. I don't often have the time."
"Your job," she said.
"Correct," he said. One of his hands was in his pocket. The other hung at his side—bare, relaxed. Without meeting his eyes, she focused on that hand. So composed and unhurried. Almost casual. "What have you been told?"
"That you are an important man. That your work was important," she said. That you never had time for me, she did not say.
"True enough," he said. He indicated the grim, violet mountain that occupied the space with them. "This is that work."
Rei looked at the face. Though the chamber was very high, the face dominated it. The walls were built to contain it, and even though it had been nothing more than a statue since she entered, she knew it could move. The angles of its design, the slope of its plating, and the jagged set of its mouth grille all exuded a sensation of barely-checked momentum—of potential, designed malevolence.
No explanation was needed. She looked into the dim lenses of its eyes and felt a familiar brush of pallid fear.
"It's a weapon," she said.
"We call it an Evangelion," he said. "This is Unit 01, our system test type. It is a humanoid fighting weapon, designed as mankind's last hope against the Angels."
Unit 01. Evangelion. Angel. Fresh terms all the time, new to her, and frightening. Terms that had kept him here, away from her for years.
"But every weapon needs a soldier, and our Evangelion needs a pilot. We had one, but now that pilot is unavailable. Injury. I need another." Her father turned to her, polished shoes clicking on the deck. "Rei, I need you to pilot it."
Oil lapped against the side of the footbridge, a current from deep beneath which churned to the surface, always circulating, always moving. Rei listened to it in the wake of her father's words. He was still there, standing over her. Black trousers, black jacket, like a tombstone in a windy cemetery at the edge of her memory.
She glanced at Dr. Akagi and Captain Katsuragi. Neither looked about to say anything. Katsuragi shifted in place, arms crossed; no help there. Akagi's face was neutral. Steady.
She looked at the machine—the Evangelion. The face of it was so large, so concrete, that she hardly believed it could be controlled. The concept of making it move herself, of climbing inside it… How did she even get inside it? Where did she even begin?
"I don't know how to do it," she said. "I've never—I don't even know what this thing is."
"You will receive instruction," he said, voice still soft, still cold. No threats, but no help, either.
I thought you wanted to know me, she wanted to say. But nothing good would come of it. He didn't want to know her. He never had. He wanted to her to do this now because he needed her. Nothing else.
Something rumbled in the distance, high above, and she felt the bridge sway under her feet. The oil quaked. The Thing above, the Angel, was making its way here, bringing fire and death in the hollows of its face.
"Your answer, please," he said.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream and go away forever, go all the way home, back to her tiny kitchen table and her homework and her uncle's rubber boots in the entryway, to the cicadas and her aunt's cooking and breeze-cool sheets on early summer nights, where no one came to turn out the light and she could read forever, until her eyes grew heavy and her head hit the pillow.
She did none of those things. Running away was a privilege she didn't possess, not to him. He was her father, and though she did not know him and might have hated him, that connection was a bond hard to break for a Japanese daughter.
She met her father's gaze. His glasses were square, and the lights overhead reflected white on their lenses. No eyes. Just two more graves, boring into her.
She gave her answer, the only one she was ever going to give, and she gave it directly to him, face to face, because there wasn't any sun to blind her this far underground, and any tears she had for him dried long ago.
"I'll do it," she said.
Her father did not smile. "Good," he said. He turned to Dr. Akagi, and the light on his glasses disappeared. She didn't recognize the eyes she saw there. "Doctor, take care of the rest of this, please."
"Yes, sir."
"Captain, you're with me."
"Yes, Commander."
And then he was gone, vanished out of the same door he entered, replaced by an orange flood of jump-suited technicians. Katsuragi was gone, too. Intercoms blared, radios squawked, and warning lights flashed as a large protuberance of pneumatic cables and interlocking rings lowered from the ceiling, bearing in its interior a cylindrical capsule.
Akagi was next to her. "Ready?" she said.
"You'll show me everything?" Rei said.
"As much as I can," Akagi said.
She watched the face of the Evangelion. "Then yes, I'm ready."
((()))
First, they smooshed a pair of hair clips into her head. They scratched her scalp and made her re-arrange her hair to accommodate them. The grit and dust of the city was still in her hair, rough like pumice on her palms.
Second, they led her up a catwalk to the cockpit—the big tube overhead. Below her, the oil was in the midst of draining from the chamber with the roar of twelve waterfalls. She could see it clearly, looking straight down between the catwalk and the cockpit—a gap of half a foot.
"Problem?" Akagi said, behind her. She oversaw the entire operation with a datapad and clipboard.
"No," Rei said. Her fingers gripped the paint-flecked railing. "Just not good with heights."
Third, they loaded her into the entry plug—that was the technical term for the cockpit, apparently—and strapped a restraint bar across her lap. Akagi flew through a barrage of technical terminology that she got half of, some to her, and some into a hand radio. Synchronization, absolute borderline, launch prep. None of it made much sense.
"Closing the hatch!" said one technician.
"Copy," Akagi said, and looked at Rei. "Don't forget to breathe."
"I'm sorry?" Rei said, and then the hatch sealed with a hiss and screwed into the Evangelion and she was alone in the dark.
Fourth, they drowned her.
Afterwards, when she was still alive and her intense panic had subsided into a milder, standard panic, she tried to get a grip on her surroundings. She heard voices in the dark, emitting from speakers in her headrest. They were muffled by the liquid, but not inaudible as they should have been underwater. What was this stuff?
"Primary circuits are active."
"All green through step 108."
"Approaching absolute borderline."
Rei spoke up. "Can anyone hear me?"
"Standby, Unit 01," said a voice she did not recognize. "Borderline in three, two, one."
The darkness peeled back with a rush of color, like falling through a star field, like the tingle of sleeping limbs re-awakening, and suddenly she wasn't just in her body anymore. She was so much more—a giant of steel and sinew. Her arms, legs, and chest were wrought with thick cords of muscle, and the weight of the armor on her chest and shoulders was reassuring.
Screens materialized and she saw the chamber around her. The oil was gone, but the sensation of height had vanished with it. No longer a vast space, but cramped. A little cage.
She saw the bridge in front of her, her little backpack on the deck where she had left it.
A moment ago, earlier that morning, and for every other part of her life to that point, she had been one thing, one self. Rei Ikari. Niece. Student. Athlete. Friend. Now, in a flash of sensation, she had become something new. Something different and unexpected, frightening and wondrous.
The term "pilot" seemed woefully ineffective. She would no more pilot this thing than her mind piloted her body. The two were the same, not separate.
"Evangelion," she said.
A window popped up in front of her. VIDCOM, it said. Captain Katsuragi's face was on it. "Come again, Unit 01? We didn't read that."
"Nothing," Rei said.
"Copy. Standby for instruction." Katsuragi turned to someone off screen. "Move Evangelion Unit 01 to the launch pad."
((()))
Ritsuko entered the command center for the first time since the morning. The soldiers were gone, taking their table and papers and shouting with them. The officers were gone, too. Their memory was not cherished, their absence not felt.
Misato stood in the middle of it, orchestrating the chaos. Screens plotted everything—Unit 01's ascent to the launch pad, and the approaching Angel like a demon in the dark.
City defense was inoperable. Very little of it was even completed, and what there was would be ineffective. There was no point in slowing the target, anyway. Not with a real response imminent.
Ritsuko stopped next to Ibuki's console. She felt stupid still wearing her wetsuit under her labcoat, but there was no time to change. No time to do anything else, for that matter.
"Status," she said.
"Remarkably green, ma'am," Ibuki said. "Crossed the borderline with no problems. Synch holding steady at 42.5, psycho drift just under 1500. I can't believe it worked."
Ritsuko couldn't believe it, either. She didn't voice her disbelief. Ibuki needed a rock, not a coworker. "1500 is good," she said. "Captain? I think you should be pleased."
"I'll be pleased when she's up top, Doctor," Misato said.
"Will it work, ma'am?" Ibuki said. "Can we really kill it?"
Ritsuko glanced at the commander, but his expression was, as always, inscrutable. He watched the proceedings without comment.
On the Evangelion's monitor, she saw his daughter's face as she checked the controls around her, cinched the belt tighter against her lap, and prepared for launch. Rei Ikari. Third Child. Unprepared, but focused. Willing.
"We'd better hope so, Lieutenant," she said.
((()))
Hydraulics kicked in, and the walls of her cage rolled away. She was pulled out of the enclosure, the tiny footbridge with her backpack receding as she was moved out and up, the platform under her feet gliding along on massive mag-rails. She watched it recede, that little blip containing all that she had brought from home.
There wasn't much in it. Some books. A journal she promised herself she'd write in, but likely never would. Brushes. Combs. Toiletries. Make-up. A change of clothes, and money to get more. Her school uniform. No pictures. No, never any pictures.
She remembered her aunt found her later that evening, when her tears had dried and she sat on her bed, trying to forget the kids at school and the stupidity of her own outburst. The rap of knuckles on the door frame brought her eyes up. In years to come, as Rei grew, she would come to realize her Aunt Ikari was not a very tall woman, but she was broad shouldered and thick set in a way that Rei always associated with kindness.
"Everything okay, Bumble?" she said.
"No," Rei said, and turned back to her book, pretending to read.
Her aunt moved in and sat on the bed next to her, hands in her lap. "How long have you been on that page?"
"I don't want to cheer up," Rei said.
"Too bad, because you will. Eventually it'll fade away, and you'll just be faking. What's the point in that?"
"I don't know. I just want to be mad." Rei looked up at her, trying to put her anger into her expression, but her glare died when she saw Aunt Ikari smiling.
"Can I show you something?" she said.
"What?" Rei said.
"Just come with me," her aunt said, and stood up to leave before she could say no. Rei tried to stay behind, but the magnetism of her absence was undeniable, and soon she set her book aside and followed.
Her aunt was in the bathroom in the hallway, and had pulled out the small step stool that Rei used while brushing her teeth in the morning. Her aunt tapped the stool with her foot. "Come on," she said. Rei climbed up and looked at the mirror. Her aunt stood behind her, hands on her shoulders.
"Your uncle never kept any photographs. It's the way he and your mother were raised—they had old parents." She scooped Rei's hair, tying it into tails while she spoke. "The trouble with pictures, he always says, is that they aren't very honest. We think they show you what a person looked like, but they really don't. They show you what a person looked like just that once, and that's it. Click, and it's over. Done with. It's nice to see an old picture now and then, but it doesn't tell you the real important things."
"Like what?" Rei said.
"Who a person was, what they were like, who and what they loved and wanted to love. All the places they went and people they met. Photographs have none of that. Just an image. Instead, we should tell stories about the dead, but a lot of those aren't mine to tell."
"Who can tell them?" Rei said.
"Your uncle," she said, "or your father."
"Why won't Uncle Ikari tell me any?"
"Because he's too sad, Bumble."
"Still?"
"Still. I'm afraid he always will be." Her hair was done back, and her aunt smiled at her in the mirror. "You know how brothers and sisters often look alike? And how children sometimes look like their parents?"
"Yes," Rei said.
"Well, your uncle and mother looked very much alike. But you look a lot like your father." Rei felt her aunt's fingers touch her cheeks, jaw, nose, and hair, as if itemizing her on the spot. "This is all your father, here."
Rei studied her own face, trying to remember what her father looked like, but all she could remember was the black car driving away from the street in front of the house.
Then Aunt Ikari covered Rei's forehead with one hand, and her mouth and nose with the other. Her palms were warm, and Rei could smell the soapy, coconut scent of her hand lotion. She giggled involuntarily.
"Now then," her aunt said, with patience. "What can you see?"
She heard something in her aunt's voice. This was important, and she knew not to laugh. They were treading near something holy.
In the mirror, Rei's reflection was effectively masked, her face mostly covered except for one thing. She looked at it, and tried to answer properly.
"My eyes," she said.
"Correct. But they aren't your father's eyes."
Rei looked, staring into her own sight, her own self, trying to see something else. "They're my mother's eyes?" she said, at last.
"More alive and real than any photograph." Her aunt's voice was right in her ear. "She loved you, Rei. More than you'll ever know. She was a great woman, and she wanted nothing more than for you to be great, too. So no, you'll never meet her, and you don't have any real parents, aside from me and your uncle. But your mommy left you with those eyes. And you know what you can do with them?"
"Launch in ten," said a voice over the radio. The liquid in her lungs felt heavy, and her stomach swayed with the ponderous momentum of the towering body around her. "Standby for lock."
"What?" she said, then, with her aunt's hands on her face.
"You can take those eyes with you wherever you go, and show her all the great things she would have loved to see her little girl do. Can you do that for her?"
"Yes."
"Do you promise?"
"I promise."
"Unit 01 is locked in place, Major. The shaft is green." Rei looked at the screen in front of her face and at the bay beyond. She saw the launch shaft stretching away above her, door locks clacking aside in chorus as they cleared the way for her ascension. Over that, the faint reflection of her own face in the glass.
Her aunt's hands left after a time. "Want to say anything to your mommy?" she said.
Back then, Rei had no words, and instead brought two of her fingers to her lips. Now, as then, she touched them to her reflection, between her mother's eyes—a little girl's promise to do something great.
The light switched green and Unit 01 thundered up the shaft, into legend.
