CHAPTER 23: INTRUSIVE PRESENCE

Shinji had to agree with Asuka that this had to be the most awkward test they've ever had. But even then, Asuka was being a big baby about the whole process. "Why do I have to go through all this for a dumb auto-pilot test?"

"With the advance of time comes the need for EVA technology to advance as well," Ritsuko replied as the pilots discarded their garments and stepped into the cleaning room.

"Holy fucking shit!" Shinji shouted as the high pressure wash machines came on. They cycled through ice cold, soapy water, some kind of chlorine mix, powerful ultraviolet lighting, a sterile chemical solution that was hot as hell, then back to pure water and finished off with a high power air-dryer that must've been hooked up to the engines of a Boeing 777 only for the process to start all over. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again; and then one last time they were subjected to the barrage for a grand total of seventeen times. All the while in their birthday suits. That got Shinji to join the 'Royally Pissed-Off Club' alongside its President: Asuka.

When the doors opened Shinji noticed that they were all connected to the same hallway. "Alright!" Asuka snapped sarcastically. "Here I am! Just the way you wanted. Butt naked and run through the wash cycle seventeen times!"

"Yeah," Shinji agreed. "I'm pretty sure we were clean after about cycle number five! I think if you were to throw in a 'buff cycle' I would shine like a new car!" Rei glanced over at him and once again took note of all of his scars. She also took in his physique; the lean, honed muscles in his biceps, back and pectorals. As Shinji half-glanced over, Rei quickly averted her eyes, feeling her face heat up in a blush.

"Knock it off!" Ritsuko snapped as laughter could be heard in the background. "Now, I want all three of you to walk through the hallway to your entry plugs."

"WHAT!" Asuka shrieked and blushed. "You want us to stay naked!"

"One at a time, or all at once?" Shinji asked. "Men or ladies first?"

"Don't get any ideas, Third Child!"

"Don't worry," Ritsuko came back. "The video recorders have been shut off. We do respect your privacy."

"That's not the point! This is a personal thing!"

"The purpose of this test is to measure the harmonics directly from your bodies without interference from you plug suits."

"Asuka, Shinji," Misato chimed in. "This is an order."

"Alright!" Asuka replied. "But I don't want anybody peeking, okay!"

"Since I know you're going to say this, Asuka," Shinji spoke up, "I'll go first." He stepped out as Asuka stood by. As he did so Rei, not one for modesty, stepped out as well and walked alongside him. Shinji couldn't help but slightly blush that he was walking, naked, side by side with a cute, equally naked girl. At first Asuka was amazed by Rei's lack of modesty but then she got a better look at all the scars Shinji had on his back. "Hey, Asuka!"

"W-what!" She snapped turning her head away.

"Mach doch ein Foto, dann kannst du es dir immer anschauen!" (Take a picture, you can always look at it!)

"ACH! Perverse arshloch!" Asuka screamed at him as the techs laughed over the intercom.

After the test got started the pilots synched with the simulation bodies. "Whoa," Shinji shivered when his synched up. "Now this feels weird."

"What is it, Shinji?" Ritsuko asked.

"Part of my body suddenly went numb," he said. "And it feels like there's something trickling up my spine."

"Yeah," Asuka agreed. "My right arm feels normal, but the rest of my body is fuzzy."

"I too am feeling a bit disoriented," Rei added.

"Rei, try focusing on moving the right hand," Ritsuko suggested. Rei complied. "Now Shinji, can you move your left arm?"

"I think so," he moved his real left arm. "Yup. It works."

"I meant the simulation body's arm," Ritsuko growled in annoyance. This time he moved it slightly out from the wall and waved with it.

"Happy now?"

"Yes," Ritsuko grumbled.

A couple minutes later, Shinji began to sense something was off. Over the past few weeks he had been having more and more feelings of a sixth sense developing within him. He could sense certain people's presences, he could feel the emotional levels of a room and he could even feel when something was about to happen. This time he felt as though there was a leopard or vulture nearby stalking him, and that it was slowly closing in.

"Another leak?" Ritsuko asked as Maya was on the phone.

"No," the female bridge bunny shook her head. "Some kind of corrosion in the protein wall above this floor."

"Great, just great. Could it affect the test?"

"Not at the moment ma'am," Maya replied. "Should we continue?"

"Yes. We can't cancel this because of minor technical difficulties. Ikari would chew my ass off."

"Misato," Shinji called out. "Is everything going okay out there?"

"Everything's fine, Shinji," Misato replied. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. Something doesn't feel right."

"Is there something wrong?"

"I don't know. I just…I feel paranoid. Like really paranoid."

"Like there's a car following you everywhere you go?" Asuka asked sarcastically.

"No," Shinji shot back. "This is more like if you walked into my room with a flashlight in your hand."

"Shut up, you jerk!"

"Cut it out, you two," Misato snapped. "We're trying to conduct a serious experiment here." She exhaled. "Shinji, are you sure you're not just apprehensive about the nature of this test. You were pretty vocal in your opposition to this auto-pilot system."

"It's not that," Shinji replied. "This is…I don't really know how to explain it. It feels as if something very bad is about to happen. Are you sure there's nothing wrong?"

"Just a minor technical glitch in another area of the complex, nothing to worry about."

"It's probably just the fact that you're in simulation bodies and surrounded by thousands of gallons of heavy water," Ritsuko said.

'I don't think so,' Shinji said to himself. Just as Unit-00 was remotely activating its AT Field the alarms blared. Almost immediately Ritsuko aborted the test. Out in the chamber, drones armed with high powered lasers were deployed. "What the hell is going on?" Shinji asked. Suddenly, he felt the presence of something nearby. Then another and another. Almost instantly he felt bombarded and surrounded by many individual but invisible creatures.

Then, things calmed down and felt quiet. But Shinji's paranoia kept going up. "Something is very wrong," he said softly.

"AHHAAHH!" He heard a shriek over the radio.

"Rei!" Suddenly her simulation body began writhing violently.

"Rei's simulation body is moving!" Maya announced. "No input from the pilot!"

"Impossible!" Ritsuko shouted as she rushed to her console.

"The corrosion is spreading! It's infecting the simulation body's active water system!"

"AAHHH!" Rei continued to scream as though in pain.

"Rei!" Shinji called out to her. "You've got to stay calm!" Her unit then began to reach for the control room. "No!" He then launched his simulation body at hers, grasping it with his arms. He struggled with the unit but then felt a burning sensation crawling up his arms from her unit. "AH! What is this!" He then felt himself losing control of his unit. He then realized what it was. 'It's an angel!' Rei's unit kept reaching for the control room. A technician hit a switch and explosives blew the offending arm off.

"AAAAAHHHHHH!" Rei screamed in pain as the arm was severed.

"How's Rei?" Misato asked.

"She's alright!" Maya announced. "But the corrosion is still spreading!"

"Eject the entry plugs immediately! Before they too are contaminated! Fire the lasers once they are clear!" Maya hit the button and all three entry plugs were shot out the emergency hatch in the ceiling. The drones fired their lasers but were soon repulsed by an AT Field!

"An angel!" Makoto shouted as what appeared to be pixels began to glow all along the simulation bodies and the walls of the test chamber. At that moment, pixels also began to glow along the windows followed shortly by cracks.

"Evacuate!" Misato ordered. "Everyone out now!" In the rush to the doors Misato had to turn back a second and grab Ritsuko. The windows caved and swept the two out into the hallway with the others before the emergency door sealed.

"Bozhe moi," a coverall garbed NERV employee grunted as he picked himself up. "Is everyone alright, Comrade Colonel?" He asked as he helped Misato up.

"Yeah," she said shaking out her jacket. "But this area is still not safe. We've got to get back to the Command Center." She then turned to the small framed Russian. "I'm sorry, um…"

"Captain Tokarev," the Russian saluted. "NERV Security. New arrival but I am at your service."

"Captain, ensure this sector is evacuated of all personnel."

"Da, Comrade Colonel, consider it done." And with that he headed to carry out his orders as the others headed in the opposite direction.

Inside his plug Shinji could still feel a lingering burning feeling on a tiny speck on the back of his neck. He grasped and scratched at it until it went away. He couldn't see the faint glow that slowly dissipated from the site of the annoyance. He did, however, feel the oncoming of a wicked headache.

XXXXX

Kaji climbed out of his elevator as it came to a halt. He looked up the shaft and saw the glowing along the walls of the shaft. "So," he said as the hatch above closed off. "That's the new angel. Time to take a break I think." With great precision he jumped for the nearest open hatchway, rolled when his feet touched down and shot back to his feet like a veteran traceur. "I should go find Ronin. This might be interesting."

Up in the Geo-front's lake, Shinji tried the communication panel to reach Rei. "Rei," he called out. "Can you hear me? Rei!" Nothing. "Damn." He decided to try something. He closed his eyes and began his meditation rhythm. He felt the LCL as it slowly moved about his body. He smelled the tiniest hints of blood in said liquid. He heard the gentle sound of the lake water against the plug itself. Then, he felt something else. He felt a spike of negativity. Then he felt a blip of panic, fear and minor pain. Slowly, this blip calmed down and became very neutral. 'That has to be Rei,' Shinji said to himself. 'And the other one has to be Asuka.' He knew Asuka would be pissed. Probably about being stuck in the entry plug. "Okay," he said as he sat back into his plug, closing his eyes. All the strange sensations from this little experiment with his new sixth sense had been draining. "Now what am I to do?"

After exiting an emergency stairwell Kaji almost literally ran into Ronin. "You're all wet," Kaji said stating the obvious.
"Just got done with a little swim, asshole," Ronin replied. "How the hell did an angel get inside NERV?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. Question is what'll it do next?"

"If I were an angel, trying to attack NERV from the inside, I'd go after the Magi."

"What for?"

"Self-destruction," Ronin said. "NERV has a massive N2 self-destruct device deep inside the Geo-front, right?" Kaji nodded. "Only with the unanimous approval of all three Magi can it be activated."

"But do you think an angel could actually hack the Magi?" Kaji asked as he accessed a 'courtesy' wall terminal.

"The angel took control of the simulation bodies. Is there a good reason why it can't do the same to the Magi?"

"I guess not. So, what do we do?" He hacked into the security system to get a better feel of the situation.

"Well, where did the contamination start? Maybe we could cut it off at the source?"

"Good idea. It originated in the 87th Protein Wall above the Pribnow Box." Kaji said pointing out the location on the screen. "I actually saw it myself."

"That's going to be hard to get to." Ronin said as he checked the adjoining halls to ensure nobody was around to see them. Even though he knew it had been fully evacuated.

"I think I may know a short cut." Kaji deactivated the terminal and headed back down the hallway Ronin had just come from. "This way," he said, and Ronin followed.

"Central Dogma has been sealed," the duo heard as they moved through the halls. "Megadeath facilities are all occupied by the intruder." The halls were completely vacant due to all personnel having evacuated the area.

"I know this is probably academic, but, don't you think it's risky to go into the heart of the enemy's territory like this?" Kaji asked. "We don't exactly have protection from it. And no weapons that can harm it."

"What makes you think we need to kill it in order to beat it?" Ronin asked. "The contamination started in the protein wall. Which means that's its anchor or base of support. If we can destroy the wall, not necessarily the angel itself, we may be able to weaken it. We'll just have to think of a way to fight it asymmetrically."

"But how do we destroy the protein wall?"

"Dr. Akagi's got all kinds of chemicals in her lab," Ronin suggested. "I bet we can find something in there that can help us."

"I like your style."

Meanwhile, up in the control room, the staff was focused on the angel and unaware of two free roaming agents who were about to assault the enemy directly. "Amazing," Ritsuko said as she observed the angel's infrared pattern on the atomic level. "That explains why the ozone isn't working anymore. It's actually evolving." At that moment the screen cut out and the alarms blared.

"What's going on!" Misato shouted.

"We've got an unidentified intruder!" Shigeru shouted. "Someone's hacking into the sub-computer!"

"Ah, shit!" Makoto swore. "Incoming in C Mode!"

"We've got to increase the barrier! Open a decoy entry!"

"Decoy entry has been avoided!"

"Completing trace in eighteen seconds!"

"The primary firewall barrier has been penetrated!"

"Open a second false entry!"

"No human's capable of this!" The floor was a maelstrom of computer whiz chaos.

"Trace completed!" Shigeru shouted. "The hacker's in THIS BUILDING! It's under B-Wing! IN THE PRIBNOW BOX!" That could only mean one thing, the angel was the source of the hack.

"Warning! Unauthorized entry into sub-computer system detected."

"Called it," Ronin said as he and Kaji searched the lab. "Looks like it's already hacking in."

"I sure hope the bridge bunnies know what they're doing," Kaji said.

"They know," Ronin nodded. "I just hope they're fast enough to beat a tech-savvy angel."

"I'm opening a new decoy entry," Makoto said. 'I doubt it'll work, though.' "Negative!"

"Cut off the main cable," Misato ordered.

"Negative!" Shigeru announced. "It refuses to accept the command."

"Utilize the defense lasers!"

"It's generating an AT Field," Maya responded. "No effect."

"The intruder is accessing the main security banks," Shigeru spoke up. "It's cracking the pass code! Twelfth-digit…sixteenth digit…" 'It's too fast.' "It's in!"

"It's broken into the main banks!" Makoto shouted over his shoulder in panic. "It's reading all the files! We can't stop it! It's got all our codes!"

"What the hell is it looking for?" The Vice-Commander asked out loud.

"It's scanning the main directory!" Shigeru cried out in a panic. "Accessing codes for…OH MY GOD!" He screamed. "It's going after the MAGI SYSTEM!" Ronin was right. It was targeting the Magi.

"Shut down the IO system," Ikari ordered the shutdown of the Interface Operating system. Makoto and Shigeru inserted their emergency keys into their consoles.

"System shutdown!"

"Three!...Two!...One!" Makoto counted it down and they turned their keys as one. But the alarms didn't cease. "Huh? WE CAN'T SHUT IT DOWN!"

"The angel is entering the computers!" Maya shouted out. "It's made contact with MELCHIOR! The angel is taking over MELCHIOR!"

"WHAT!" Fuyutsuki shouted.

"MELCHIOR is being reprogrammed by the angel!"

"MELCHIOR auto-self-destruct has been initiated." The color drained from everyone's faces.

"Damnit!" Ronin shouted. "I really was hoping I was wrong!"

"Same here!" Kaji agreed. But they kept searching the lab.

"Overruled." Thankfully the other two Magi overruled the sequence.

"No!" Shigeru shouted. "It's taken over MELCHIOR and it's hacking into BALTHASAR!"

"Fast! It's too fast!" Makoto shouted. "We can't beat it!"

"The calculation speed of this bastard's incredible!" Finally Ritsuko came to the rescue.

"Change the locking mode!" She shouted. "Change the sequencing code every fifteen seconds!"

"ROGER!"/"YES, MA'AM!" Shigeru and Makoto complied. The alarms died down and the hack was halted. For now.

"Sounds like it's over," Kaji said.

"More likely it's just a lull," Ronin said. He then spotted something. "Hey, take a look at this." Kaji walked over.

"Yahtzee! If we mix these up right, we can completely dissolve the protein wall."

"It may not kill the angel," Ronin said grabbing a bottle with a gloved hand. "But it may give the bunnies a fighting chance."

XXXXX

About an hour and a half later, Kaji and Ronin had whipped up a one liter bottle of their custom solution. "If we can get into this duct system," Kaji said as he worked on the grating. "We may be able to slip past the main walls. But it won't take us all the way to the protein wall."

"So what do we do?"

"We'll have to get as close as we can and enter the space between the walls and then climb into position."

"It's going to be a tight squeeze," Ronin said. "I'm smaller, I should go."

"I was just going to suggest that, my friend."

"Errm," Ronin rubbed his forehead.

"You alright?"

"Yeah," Ronin nodded. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"Ugh," Ronin groaned as he slid down into the wall spaces the glowing from the parasitic angel was enough to light it up like a Christmas tree. "This was tighter than I thought. Good thing it's me in here. I doubt your fat ass could fit."

"You want me to kick your ass now or later?" Kaji asked angrily.

"You? Kick my ass? That'll be a cold day in hell." Kaji just exhaled heavily.

"This is true." Ronin kept crawling for a few minutes before shimmying up towards the protein wall. Despite wearing coveralls he was getting braised by the walls and support beams.

"Found it," sure enough the glowing was much more intense here. Question was: where to put the solution. Up high, where it could spill over the whole wall. "Here we go," he found the best spot.

"You all set?" Kaji asked.

"Just a sec," Ronin said as he removed the duct tape he had placed in strips on his legs. He then fixed the bottle securely to a beam above the wall. "There!" He then taped a pencil detonator to the bottle and climbed down. "Detonator's in place," he said as he got back to the duct. "Let's scoot." They then crawled back down the duct. "Anytime you're ready."

"Bada-bing," Kaji smiled as he held up the remote.

"Bada-boom," Ronin smiled back. Kaji depressed the remote and the pencil detonator burst the bottle open, spilling its contents all over the protein wall.

"Let's just hope that does the trick."

"It should help at least."

"In the meantime," Kaji said as they exited the duct. "You'd best back to your post before anyone notices you're gone."

"Of course."

Up in the command center, Shigeru was the one who noticed something with the protein wall. "Dr. Akagi," he called out. "Something's going on!"

"What is it?" She asked from inside CASPAR. "Something wrong?"

"No. I don't think so. But, the 87th Protein Wall? It's…it's dissolving."

"Dissolving?" Misato asked.

"Yes, like its being eaten away and destroyed. That wall was the source of the angel but now it's almost gone."

"Probably just because of the angel's malignant presence," Ritsuko theorized. "We'll check it out once we've beaten this thing. But, with that wall gone it may actually help us out."

"Lucky us, right, ma'am?" Maya asked cheerfully. At that moment, the alarms came back.

"IT'S STARTING!" Makoto shouted. "BALTHASAR'S been taken over!"

"Magi auto-self-destruct sequence has been determined. Self-destruct will occur after all three AI consent."

"It's started!" Misato screeched.

"Area affected will include Geo-front minus grid 2-A, 4-A and 4-0."

"BALTHASAR is now invading CASPAR!" Shigeru shouted.

"They're faster than us!" Fuyutsuki panicked.

"T-minus 20 seconds to self-destruct."

"Ritsuko!" Misato shouted.

"Don't worry!" She shouted. "I've got one whole second to spare!"

"One second!"

"It's not a zero or a minus! MAYA!"

"WE CAN DO IT!" She shouted confidently.

"Five…four…three…"

"HIT IT!" Ritsuko shouted.

"Two…" Their fingers hit their return keys. "One…zero…" The place fell silent. No one even breathed.

"Hello?" Misato asked. "Still here?" On the screen, just one lone block of CASPAR remained clear. It flashed twice and then all three Magi cleared out from infection.

"Autonomous self-destruct has been canceled."

"YEAH!"

"YAHOO!"

"ALRIGHT!"

"Thank God!"

Topside, Asuka was getting more pissed by the second. "WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYONE! I'M STUCK BUTT NAKED IN THIS PLUG! IT'S UNBEARABLE! Oooohh!"