The Commander, Subcommander, Head of Operations, and Head of Engineering assembled in the Commander's office. An air of despair hung over them all.
"Katsuragi," Ikari began, bringing the meeting to order.
"Of the five Children, three are able to pilot, in a worst-case scenario," she said promptly. "However … they are the First, the Third, and the Fifth. The First can only synchronise with Unit-00, which is the weakest Eva. The Fifth –"
"Will not pilot," said the Commander, with no room for negotiation.
"– is suspended indefinitely," Misato said, nodding her agreement. Ritsuko pursed her lips. "The Third will be effective, especially with the upgrade to Unit-01, and I recommend him as lead pilot. However, both production models are sitting idle. We're significantly under-strength. We risk defeat from a blitz attack without reinforcements."
"I see," said the Commander. "And the other two Children?"
"The Second refuses to get anywhere near a plug. I have made no progress at all persuading her otherwise. I asked the Third to help, but he only did so half-heartedly and with extreme reluctance. I don't believe we can expect her to pilot again. If she ever does, I can't offer any sort of timetable, and have no reason to believe she will do so before the next or even final attack. The Fourth remains hospitalised. Doctor Venkatesh tells me his condition is incompatible with synchronisation."
"I see," he said again. "Akagi?"
"Repairs for Unit-03 are continuing; it should be usable in five days. Meanwhile, I've finished my investigation into the S2 engine. It's similar to the one we salvaged from the fourth Angel, but not the same. There are features missing, and some extra ones present; the functionality is similar, but the differences are more than cosmetic. I don't know where she got the blueprint she used, but it wasn't from that. I don't have enough data; I haven't been able to duplicate it in the other Evas, and honestly, I don't fully understand the one we do have. If you let Mogami try to repeat –"
"No."
"Sir, we could make huge strides in super solenoid theory, it –"
"This is not open to discussion, Doctor. If you don't have enough data to pursue this line of research, then close it and continue with your other projects. Understood?"
"… Yes, sir."
"Dismissed."
Both women turned and left, their heels clacking on the dimly-lit floor.
"I should have given her to Seele when they asked," Ikari said heavily.
"We would have lost that battle, without her," Fuyutsuki pointed out.
"In the face of extinction, the old men would have given us whatever let her do what she did. Now, the Second is useless. Between the Fourth's injuries and the need to protect Rei, we have only one usable pilot left. I should have Section Two escort the Fifth to the airport now. If we can't risk letting her back into a plug, what use does she have?"
"If Shinji is incapacitated again, she'll be our only defence," Fuyutsuki said. "Is there any harm in letting her stay? She knows she's on her last chance; she's not going to violate nondisclosure again."
"I still don't understand why you and Akagi like her so much," Ikari said.
"Because she annoys the old men even more than she annoys you."
"Debatable."
…
A new day dawned on Tokyo-3. The trams bore commuters to their work or study; shops opened; and the pounding of construction picked up. After Nerv's announcement that only four Angels remained, and given how little collateral damage the last two had caused, new people were moving into the city to take advantage of its special economic status and bottomless UN subsidies. Nerv had neglected to announce that two thirds of its pilot roster was unavailable.
Maya had felt dizzy and nauseated that morning. She wore a surgical mask; the other commuters on her tram gave her a respectful berth, but not so much as to be insulting. It was flu, not leprosy, after all.
Shigeru made his way over. "Morning, Maya. Are you sick?"
"Just a cold," she said, thickly.
"You're literally swaying in your seat," he said.
She sat up as straight as she could. "It's fine." He touched her forehead with the back of his hand; she swatted him away, with visibly poor reflexes and coordination. "I said it's fine!"
"Right." Shigeru took out his phone. "Dr Akagi? Yes, it's me. Maya's feeling sick today –"
"No I'm not!"
"– probably just flu, but it looks nasty, and her temperature's up."
"Ask her what four hundred and fifty-five plus two hundred and ninety-nine is," Ritsuko asked.
Maya glared at him. "It's, uh, a six, carry, four, carry, and … what were they again?" He repeated both numbers. "Six and four and four. With carries. Seven hundred and fifty-four."
Ritsuko nodded. That was much slower than usual. "Remember that time, after the fourth Angel?"
"Yes, Doctor," Shigeru said. She'd caught a norovirus and came to work anyway for fear of letting Ritsuko down; in spite of her surgical mask, it had caused a minor epidemic and wasted most of the week for the entire bridge crew. "I really do."
"Tell her to take the day off, direct order, and if she infects anyone I'm putting her in maintenance for the next fortnight. And stop by the infirmary and pick up a mask for yourself, too. That girl is ridiculously infectious."
…
Kensuke looked around. No-one wanted to say it aloud, but everyone realised it. Things were falling apart.
The most obvious point was Kaworu, who hadn't been seen since the big battle. None of the pilots would talk and there was no leaked footage online, but Nerv hadn't been able to cover up the fact that a mountain was half the size it had been. Rumour had it that either Kaworu or the Angel had self-destructed and killed the other, or that there had been some sort of experimental weapon malfunction that blew them both up. Kensuke didn't believe any of this, because Shinji had seemed surprised by the suggestions and had explicitly said that Kaworu was still alive, but it was obvious that something had gone wrong. He had used the word 'alive' rather than 'fine'.
The second point was Asuka. She had taken most of a week off, and when she came back, she wasn't wearing her A-10 headband. She seemed smaller than before, and it was more than the few centimetres it lost her, or how strands of hair kept falling forward and hiding her face; her posture was slumped, and she would listlessly shoo people away rather than declare herself the centre of attention. She sat alone, or with Hikari or Shinji, who had finally returned, and she'd stopped browbeating him; but after class, when he would sometimes take a tram down into the Geofront for a synch test or an exercise, she would go the other way and head straight home. The most popular rumour about her was that Unit-02 had been destroyed in the same explosion that had killed or injured Kaworu.
Shinji was short on breath and tired easily, but supposedly that would go away with exercise. He had spent most of his time with Asuka, usually in silence; when Kensuke had approached him, he'd only said, "She needs me more right now," and apologised. Kensuke had still got a decent read on Shinji's mood. It seemed like he was still fundamentally depressed, and was trying to show a brave face for her. Kensuke was worried; the last time that had happened, it had taken very little to make him snap and give up altogether.
Rei skipped school most days, and was visibly distracted when she did show up. Kensuke had the distinct impression that she usually only missed school because of Nerv business, but now she was skipping because she just didn't feel like it. Someone had mentioned that her roommate was behaving erratically too, but he had the sense not to pry into that. Right now, Rei was staring out the window, before glancing at Asuka, the ceiling, and the window again.
Even Hikari was deflated. She had seen a little more of Nerv than he and Toji had, but she was rule-abiding enough not to give any clues at all about it. Perhaps it was just Asuka's mood rubbing off on her.
At least Toji still seemed normal, except that he too kept wandering off after school, giving vague excuses. Somehow, everything was falling apart.
…
"Hello?"
"Schätzchen."
"You're mad at me."
"A little. You know we weren't supposed to copy the S2 design onto Eva."
"That was Seele's rule."
"Yes, and I follow their rules."
"You're not telling me that that's the worst rule of theirs I've broken."
"You did it because of me. After I told you not to."
"You would have died."
"I know."
"Why did you let it bite you? If you'd used your powers, you could have escaped."
"That's something you never understood. My survival isn't my only priority."
"Of course not, but it must be your top one. Whatever else you want, you can't have it if you're dead."
"For someone who hates being told what you should do, you're sounding awfully like doing the exact same thing."
"I'm not doing that! I'm saying that … hmm. Oh."
"I want to do my duty, and I want to protect things that should be saved. I want to protect them for them, not because I want them for myself while I live. So it's possible even if I die. According to the Scenario, it's probably only possible if I die. It's definitely not possible if Unit-01 wakes up, or if Nerv guesses what Seele is doing."
"Pretty words, but they don't change the fact that you'd be dead, and I don't want that."
"We always knew that eventually we'd find a point on which we could fundamentally never agree. Are you going to kill me now?"
"What? I'm the one who wants you to survive. In fact, I want you to get better. Why don't you just regenerate?"
"Partly because that would be a dead giveaway that I have inhuman powers, partly because my S2 organ isn't large enough to make up for such a large mass defect, as you well know. But you needn't worry about me; an alternative has been found."
"Kaworu … love … I know I messed up. Everyone hates me now. And they're right to. But you, can't you of all people forgive me?"
"We want different things. I can't blame you for acting the way you do."
"Thank you. I don't – oh, I've got to go. That's the school bell. I'll talk to you later, though."
She hung up. A few minutes later, the students began filing out of the school. Shinji was with Asuka, Rei several paces behind. The first two did double-takes on seeing Chitose; she hadn't been anywhere near school since the one day, and never at the new location.
"Hi," she said, uncomfortably. "I'm glad you're feeling better," she said to Shinji.
"Uh, thanks," he said, rubbing his chest. It had taken months of regenerative therapy, but Dr Venkatesh had finally declared that he had done all he could, and that Shinji would fully recover with fresh air and exercise; any further treatment would be counteracted by atrophy. Venkatesh had since spent his time caring for Kaworu, who, in Shinji's opinion, definitely needed it.
"Are you alright about, you know …" she asked.
Asuka harrumphed and began walking; the others followed, a pace behind.
Shinji breathed twice before answering. "It's … nice to know that she's been watching over me," he said. "It's a lot to think about. But not in a bad way. Not for me."
"I'm sorry I said it the way I did. I just …"
He looked away. "It's done."
She took this at face value. "Asuka, what about –"
"Why don't you just come out and say it?" Asuka snapped.
"Say what?"
"That Nerv told you to try to get me to come back. I'm not interested."
"Oh. Because they didn't tell me that, I suppose. They mostly just told me to stay out of the way; they're not happy with me now. I thought Major Katsuragi would have asked you herself? I mean, that'd be a lot easier, since she sees you every day."
"I'm not talking to her," said Asuka.
"Oh. Well, I actually wanted to apologise for saying what I did after the battle. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it. I didn't think it would affect you like this. It was the Commander, he … he reminds me of some other people I used to know and hate. I really hate it when people tell me what to do, like he tried to, and … I'm really, really –"
Asuka stopped short. "Third," she said, without turning her gaze from Chitose. "First. Beat it."
Shinji took Rei's hand and pulled her ahead. Asuka waited until they were out of earshot and pitched her voice low; the streets were empty enough in the early Thursday afternoon to count as privacy, especially given the ever-present crickets and construction working against any hypothetical eavesdroppers.
"Never," she said, "ever, ever, apologise to me for telling the truth."
"."
"I'm not angry at you, even though you're an idiot, because at least you haven't been lying to me for the past ten years about it. Right?"
"Right. Seele never told me how Nerv got its pilots to synchronise," Chitose said. "I only figured it out when I got into Unit-01."
"You've mentioned Seele before. What is it, anyway?"
"Another organisation. They control most of Nerv's other branches, and they do other things, like getting funding and helping politically, I think. Kaworu is with them; I used to be, too, but I, um, quit, just before I came here. Asuka, I'm not sorry because I told you the truth. I'm sorry because it hurt you. I didn't realise that would happen. I don't understand."
"You really want to know?"
"Well … don't I always?"
Asuka, who had been hoping the other girl would drop it, huffed, and turned and started walking again. Chitose kept pace.
"A few months before I joined you and Smarmy at the Berlin base, my mother snapped. She started thinking I was a doll. And then she hanged herself. And the doll."
"."
"So now, I find out that I've spent the past year fighting Angels under the care of the person who tried to murder me and who only failed because she was too crazy to finish me off, and I can feel her whenever I'm in the plug, and she's all around me, whispering in my ear, and I can't remember what she's been saying. Tell me, would that worry you at all?"
"Yes."
"That's maybe a third of it. I'd forgotten all about what happened with my mother. Can you believe that? I buried it so deep that I actually forgot it, just so I could cope. Now it's all come flooding back up at once. I flinch every time I open a door. Not those flimsy paper ones the locals think are doors, real ones with wood and hinges, that's the last thing I saw before … And as if all that wasn't enough, I also get to deal with the fact that Misato, Kaji, Akagi, everyone has been lying about the fact that they shoved my insane dead mother into my Eva, to manipulate me into piloting it for them. So. Yeah. It hurt me."
Chitose considered this. "That is … significantly more than I thought I could help with."
"Right. Because little Asuka-chan can't do anything by herself."
"I didn't mean that! But I said the thing that affected you so strongly, so I thought maybe I could say something else and get an opposite effect."
Asuka snorted. "Don't flatter yourself. It wasn't you telling me anything, it was me learning the truth. But you can't change the past."
They walked in silence for a while.
"So," Chitose said at length, "is this it, for you and Nerv?"
"I'm never going back," said Asuka. "You can have Unit-02, for all I care. If you don't mind exorcising the insane murder/suicide ghost from it. And why would you? You can pilot just fine without it."
"I can't, Asuka."
"Why not? You used Unit-01 just fine."
"Because I'm grounded. Apparently 'losing face' is an idiom in Japanese."
"Well – duh. How did you not know that?"
Chitose shrugged. "If you're mad with Misato, why are you still living with her?"
"Because Shinji begged me to stay. And she thinks I'm going to come crawling back and keep piloting for her." She snorted again. "Besides, it's nice having Shinji back. He can cook. Makes a change from that instant crap Misato kept throwing on."
"But what about the Angels?"
"What about them? You have four pilots and four Evas; you don't need me anyway. Shinji's fine now, and you somehow gave Unit-01 that physically impossible upgrade. Nerv is stronger than ever. Speaking of which, could you have done that upgrade this entire time?"
"Yes. So could Kaworu, if he'd been in Unit-01. We didn't for two reasons." She counted on her fingers, upward in the Western style. "One, if Unit-01 goes berserk now, it'll be unstoppably strong, and we can't just pull its cord and wait it out. I might have made a horrible mistake. And two, because now Nerv knows I know how to do it. Dr Akagi is going to make a lot of very accurate guesses about things that Seele and I would both rather Nerv didn't know. Still, it couldn't be helped; it was that or lose."
"How did you do it, anyway? That explanation you gave at the battle wasn't the complete truth."
"Well … please don't repeat this, but you know how Seele told me a lot before I got here? One thing I know from back then is the schematics for a fully-functional S2 organ. I don't know all the theory and it's not the right size for an Eva, but I could use my neural link to show it to Yui. She was a brilliant researcher; she adapted it for Unit-01. It was the imprint that did most of the work."
"Why are you the one telling me all this? Why do you know so much and I don't?"
"Seele has the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are a sort of instruction manual for the Angels. They know everything, and they like having a monopoly on the truth, so they only told people who needed to know, and forbade them from telling anyone else. That's the only reason Nerv is a secret organisation, and one of the reasons why I hate those NDAs; they're for Seele's benefit, not humankind's. Kaworu, Dr Akagi, and the Commander and Subcommander all know a lot too, but they all answer to Seele. The Major and Kaji have been investigating, but they're behind me. I'm the only one who knows and doesn't care what Seele thinks."
Asuka's heart ached dully, but only for a moment. Kaji had tried to get her to pilot again, a few days earlier; she'd screamed something about betrayal and threw a shoe, and he left. Aside from that, she'd barely thought about him in what felt like months. On one level, she missed him, but on another, she sort of didn't care. Ever since she'd moved in with Misato, he hadn't been there for her; he had his own problems, and had left her to hers.
"Why did they need you to know?"
"They want to defeat the Angels in a very specific way, so that Nerv isn't too powerful afterwards. To get it just right, I had to have a few tricks up my sleeve, like the upgrade, and the synch rate spike. Although I don't think they ever really trusted me. I ask too many questions."
"You think?"
"They meant to use Kaworu, not me. He probably knows things about the Angels that I don't, and I think they spent more time making sure he knew social etiquette than for me. I was always more wilful, and they're really quite sexist." She stretched, arching her back. "Asuka, you know just now, when you said we didn't need you, and that Nerv was stronger than ever?"
"What about it? You are, aren't you?"
"I did mean that apology honestly, and no-one else put me up to this, but no. We're not actually doing so well. The Commander still won't let me or Rei deploy, and … did you not hear about Kaworu?"
"What about him? Shinji hasn't said anything. I know he was hurt, but he survived; he can still pilot."
"No, he can't. Well, technically he can, but his legs were both bitten off at the knee. He can still synchronise, but his nerves have remapped themselves, and he can't make Eva walk any more. I suppose he could act as a sort of AT-shielded gun turret, but other than that, Shinji's on his own. He barely beat the last one of those yellow critters; did he tell you, there was another one yesterday? They're almost completely armoured now."
Asuka blinked, then set her brow again. "The Commander's a dick, but he's not suicidal. He'll let you and the Honours Student fight. She'll be fine if she has a real Eva. Copy that upgrade to either production model and have her synch with that."
"I can't. Yui had help from Unit-01's high Lilith component. I couldn't do it for the others. Besides, they'd go berserk if Rei tried to synch with them."
"How do you know so much about that? She's never tried, and even Akagi can't tell when Eva will go berserk."
"Well, it's obvious in this case, don't you think? A Lilithian Naphil can't synch with an Adamite Eva; that's like mixing oil and water, isn't it?" She didn't know a Japanese equivalent for 'Naphil', so she used the Hebrew, jarringly, since Hebrew and Japanese phonics sound nothing alike.
"I swear to God, say 'it's obvious' one more time about something biblical-sounding which no-one has ever told me but which they absolutely should have, and I will not be held responsible for my actions. What's a Naphil?"
"Someone whose DNA was spliced with genes from a Seed when they were an embryo. Rei can synch with Unit-00, and Kaworu told me that it doesn't have maternal imprinting, so she must be using the Nephilim hack." She again used the Hebrew pronunciation and plural, juxtaposed against Japanese grammar, and then abruptly switched to German; Seele had mostly used German when talking about Nephilim, so she associated it with the subject. "That's where the Eva itself acts as a sort of mother; it can do that if it shares genes with the pilot. Unit-00 is mostly Lilithian, so Rei must be too."
"They were injecting genes from the thing that caused Second Impact into human embryos?" Asuka asked, also switching to German, which she preferred. "Why would anyone ever do that?"
"It was part of a suite of experiments leading up to the Human Instrumentality Project, which is this huge top-secret project Seele's doing. Can you especially not tell anyone I told you any of this? This is exactly the sort of thing the Commander's likely to permanently ban me for talking about, and I don't want to watch Third Impact from the sidelines."
"Fine. How do you know Ayanami's a Naphil?"
"Partly because I can't think how else she could be synchronising, if she's not using the imprint method. And partly because of her colouring. Seed genes mess with people's pigmentation. It's for a technical biological reason, something to do with how genes express themselves; I don't know enough genetics yet to understand."
"Smarmy's hair and eyes are also weird, does that mean he –?"
"Yes. He's Adamite, though, so he can synch with the production models, but not Unit-00. Unit-01 would be hard, but he could manage. Can you even more especially not tell anyone about that? I'm worried that Nerv might … um, react badly. The Major in particular, and the Commander."
"My wing– my ex-wingman is part Angel. Why not. What about you? You're not albino, but if those are the only two ways, and you're not Shinji's sister, and you used Unit-01 …"
Chitose suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable. "Uh. I actually … I'm a special case."
"You can say that again."
"Can we please not talk about it? I promise I'll tell you after the Angels are all dead."
Asuka frowned, but didn't press; Chitose had already told her much more than she was allowed to. "If Smarmy couldn't synch with Unit-00 and they knew that, why did they even try?"
"Kaworu told me he went along with it because he didn't want to admit that he understood the tech; Seele and Nerv are on bad terms. Dr Akagi especially hates Seele. I think she hoped it would get him killed, or maybe she thought it would make Seele look bad for taking so long to send Unit-03 here? I can't hold it against her, though; I mean, it'd be pretty hypocritical of me to criticise someone for wanting to kill someone working for Seele. Besides, I don't think she's tried to kill him since then, so I'm letting bygones be bygones."
"Wait, back up. Why exactly would that be hypocrisy?"
"Because when I quit, I killed a bunch of their soldiers and some other staff who were in the way. Can you also not tell anyone about that?"
"You," Asuka said. "You, a fifty-kilo girl, killed soldiers, plural, without an Eva."
"I weigh fifty-two kilos."
"And I was having so much fun believing you, too."
"Oh! You thought I meant I killed them one at a time; no, only a few, and then I blew up most of the base at once. There were some N2 mines in the base's armoury; I set them off, and they blew the entire mountain apart. The other way would have taken far too long."
Asuka gave her a look. "You're kind of terrifying, you know that? You don't have a sense of humour and don't do sarcasm, and that's the exact same tone you'd use to say that you'd run out of tea."
…
Maya really was feeling terrible. She had tried to do some work on her laptop, but her head had started spinning and she'd had to lie down for a few hours. Then the nausea had returned. Her balance shot, she dragged herself to her feet and over to the bathroom. It was occupied. She considered waiting and even, briefly, forcing her way in, but her inner voice of reason quickly persuaded her to visit the kitchen. She shuffled to it and barely managed to throw up in the sink.
Her housemate Ami wandered in, yawning, her hair uncombed. "Hey, Maya. Yeesh, you look terrible."
"Thanks." She rinsed her mouth out, feeling sorry for herself.
"I'm going out with some friends tonight. I'll be back late. Don't wait up."
"Sure," said Maya, who knew that Ami's idea of 'late' ranged between eleven pm and five in the morning. Ami wandered out into the hall. Maya put on the kettle for some tea, thinking it might clear her head, and Ami came back in a few seconds later. "How are you doing that?"
Maya blinked. "What, dying?"
"No, being in the bathroom at the same time. Like, a recording?"
"I don't …"
She suddenly remembered her doppelgänger. She'd pushed it to the back of her mind after it had done nothing but sit in her wardrobe for the past six months, and she hadn't developed any other signs of craziness; she'd accepted it as being an inexplicable fact of life.
"You heard me in there," she said, setting the heat to minimum and following Ami into the hall. Ami knocked.
"I'm Maya!"
"You see?" said Ami. "I didn't think you did pranks? Is it, like, your phone and some sort of pressure switch thing?"
"You heard that," said Maya, pitching her voice low.
"Um. Yeah? Not like it was quiet."
"So she's not in my head. She actually exists."
"Maya?"
"Ami." She began backing away. "I think we should both step away from the door, very, very –"
…
There was a rumble, and the ground shook. Asuka's and Chitose's heads whipped around to stare, as a plume of dust rose into the air. A moment later, a hundred metres ahead, Shinji and Rei checked their phones.
"Angel," Chitose said, switching to Japanese, which she mentally associated with attacks.
Both girls took a moment to remember the last time the early warnings hadn't gone off.
"We're really not on the roster any more," Asuka noted.
"I still need to go," Chitose said, internally cursing the Commander for snubbing her by not sending her a notification; if she had been in a shop, she might not have known about the attack until the sirens went off. "Will you come with me?"
"I already said no, didn't I?" Asuka said, conflicted and deeply unhappy. "I can't make Unit-02 move anyway." And she turned to head toward the nearest shelter.
Chitose ran toward Shinji and Rei; her long legs got her there at the same moment a Section Two van pulled up and opened its doors.
"Get in," said the driver. He tapped his earpiece once Shinji threw the door shut. "Pilots secure. You're clear." He floored it, and the Angel alarm went off.
Rei sat beside Shinji. She opened her mouth to speak; he gave her a questioning look; she shut it again. He turned to Chitose.
"Are you allowed to be here?" he asked, pitching his voice so that the agents wouldn't overhear.
"No," she said.
"You won't be allowed to launch."
"What else am I going to do?" she asked. "It's my fault you're already down a pilot. I'm not going to hide in a shelter and lose you another. The Commander will let me do it if the battle goes badly." Which it totally will, she almost added.
Shinji blinked. After the Fourth Angel, when he'd made a mistake and been scolded, he'd abandoned his responsibilities and run away from everything. That thought apparently hadn't even occurred to her. On the other hand, it had never occurred to him to deliberately lash out at his father when they had disagreed, and he hadn't broken anything, or anyone. Still, he didn't have it in him to hate her.
"Can you call the Major?" she asked him; Rei had been giving her a cold shoulder since the last Angel. "I want to know how the Angel got into the city so fast, but I don't think she'll talk to me."
"Right." He fished his phone out and rang the Central Dogma line. "Misato? Is the Angel already inside the city?"
"We don't know anything about it," Misato replied. "We can't even find it, but we know it's moving. Our haemochromatographic cameras are going in and out. It looks like sabotage."
"I thought Angels weren't smart enough for that?"
"I didn't say the Angel did it. It wouldn't be the first time a human had sabotaged us. Or it might not be an Angel at all; that was an AT explosion, but it was small, and Ritz thinks a human with a modified S2 engine could have made it. Stay frosty."
"Okay," he said, a moment before the van turned into a fireball.
…
The three pilots lay in a heap, surrounded by the twisted, scorched wreckage of the van and Section Two men. Chitose, who had the most experience with explosions outside an Eva, was only stunned for a moment. She took Rei's and Shinji's pulses, then crawled over to the driver, searched him, and found his gun, a SIG Sauer. She weighed it in her hand and checked the clip: eight bullets, one of them chambered. It was just like the Eva-scale versions, or rather the Eva-scale versions were just like it.
Rei blinked, pushed herself upright, and took Shinji's pulse. "Mogami?"
"These vans are armoured. I think that this sort of thing is why. May I borrow your phone?"
"Shinji is hurt," Rei said, handing it over without a thought.
Chitose took the phone and deliberated for a moment. "Stay with him and give him first aid; call HQ with his phone and get him in when you can. I'll go ahead and do what I can."
"Why do you have a gun?" Rei asked, as a sidearm was about thirteen orders of magnitude too weak to penetrate an AT Field.
"Leverage," said Chitose, and ran off. She wouldn't need it to kill any technicians she met, but she would need it to threaten them.
She was only a block from the nearest trans-Geofront depot; she got there a minute later, just in time to see the tram leave the station.
"… and it's going to get to Nerv before I do," she realised. She raised Rei's phone to her ear. "Major?"
"Mogami? Rei filled us in. Where are you?"
"At the station. Can you stop the Geofront tram, right now? I think the Angel is on it."
"The security cameras are going haywire. None of our systems is working properly. How sure are you?"
At that moment, the call was disconnected.
"Someone's trying a remote hack," Ritsuko said, typing rapid-fire. "They're using my own back doors. I don't know how, I only ever told – it'll take me time to regain control of anything."
Misato glared at the phone. "Can you stop the tram?" Even if Chitose was wrong – which was likely – there wasn't any point in getting whoever was on board to HQ before the pilots. A second Section Two van was headed their way to help, and they would need to transfer to one of the trams presently.
"Yes." She sent the command and resumed what she was doing. "I never bothered putting back doors for that; there's nothing to stop a Magi override."
"Good. Now, scan it for a blue pattern."
"The scanners are locked. It'll take me a moment to override them," said Ritsuko, but she didn't get a moment, because the tram blew up.
Chitose, who had been looking around the station, glanced down at it. The tracks had been snapped by the explosion, and bits of tram rained down into the Geofront. She saw a human figure in a Nerv uniform falling out, and a glitter of orange light. The figure twisted in mid-air and locked eyes with her for a moment; the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
"Naphil," she breathed, and skipped away from the edge, breaking eye contact. She had broken out in a cold sweat, and her heart hammered in her chest. Nerv wasn't equipped to deal with Seele's trump card. "I don't want to die. I don't want to die."
She knew she didn't have a choice. Whatever the Naphil was planning, it was certain that she couldn't afford to let it succeed. It was also certain that she wouldn't be able to get permission to launch, even if she told the Commander everything about Nephilim: he'd never believe her in time. This wouldn't bother her so much if the Evas weren't physically locked down. She shivered, but slowed her breathing and calmed down enough to function.
She called Kaworu. His room was a Faraday cage, and Seele had apparently disabled the regular telco network, but her phone had permission to use Seele's private and secret relay, which used high-frequency channels that could get through the Faraday cage; both parties had reasoned that it couldn't hurt to leave one line of parley open for her. "Kaworu, what's going on?"
"Er – is anything?" He hadn't heard the alerts from his insulated ward.
"A Naphil just blew up something on the surface, tried to kill me, and she's flying down the Geofront right now."
She spoke with the phone pressed to one shoulder while she looked around the station. After the fifteenth Angel, Misato had had BASE parachutes stocked in the Geofront depots, so that a pilot could descend even if the rail was destroyed again. Chitose found the locker after a few moments, glanced around, saw a security camera, and shot the locker open.
"I wasn't told anything about this," said Kaworu, frowning.
"Then Seele doesn't want you to know. She must be going to assassinate you."
"What? Schätzchen, that doesn't make any sense."
Dr Venkatesh had spent the past week attaching cloned legs to his pelvis, and had had ample opportunity to poison him, or just nick an artery, or make any of a thousand subtle mistakes which would cause an autoimmune reaction and immediate and deniable death. She interrupted him before he could explain this.
"Get to the cages and squish her. I'll buy you some time."
"Very well," he said, and hung up. "Gyandev, is this Naphil coming a Seele plot to kill me?"
"There's a Naphil coming?!" He put his post-op equipment away and booted up his laptop; it automatically connected to a hacked feed from Melchior. Blue pattern in Geofront. "Well, if it's come to kill you, it's probably happy to kill me too. You're the only protection I have right now, so I think I'll stay behind you for now."
"Disable the cameras," Kaworu said, swinging his new legs out of bed. They were numb and clumsy, but at least they weren't going to fall off again, probably. "If it isn't with Seele, even more reason to destroy it." Dressed only in his hospital gown, he headed out to fight.
Outside the ward, he could hear alarms ringing, and the bark of gunfire. The alarms kept stuttering on and off; something was interfering. Staff ran past him, trying to assemble at battle positions, but blast doors kept closing and cutting them off. Kaworu ignored them all and headed toward the cages. A minute later, at the end of the hospital section, he ran into Maya's doppelgänger.
She was in her Nerv uniform, holding a smoking Minebea PM-9, and surrounded by dead Section Two agents; most had been shot, but several had been reduced to nothing but LCL, bones, and uniforms. Kaworu had only a split second to absorb all this, before he was overcome by Absolute Terror. His eyes glowed red, and light glittered around him.
"Die!" both shouted at the same time.
Doppelmaya raised her gun to fire; at the same time, Tabris glared, and the stream of bullets bounced off an orange octagon. Doppelmaya gestured, and a panel tore itself off the wall and slammed into him from the side. He staggered, snarled, and glared at her; orange light shivered between them, as their AT Fields clashed. Hers was stronger. It overwhelmed him and blasted him off his feet, sending him skittering down the hallway. She ran after, reloading.
He rolled to his feet and waved; a door flew off its hinges and rolled itself into a club. An orderly ran out, stared in shock at the Nephilim and flashes of orange light, before Doppelmaya hit him with a disintegration blast. Tabris took the opening and dashed forward, bringing his door around in an uppercut. Doppelmaya blocked with one hand; Tabris, who had had extensive martial arts training and had only wanted to close for mêlée, dropped the club and seized her gun arm, twisting it around in a pin. She wrenched free, snapping her own elbow, and drove an AT-enhanced foot into his chest, punting him into a wall hard enough to crack the plaster; he fell to the ground and slumped forward. She swapped her gun into her good hand and levelled it.
"Leave him alone!"
With that, Chitose ran up from behind and clubbed her in the head with a Section Two femur. Her AT Field still down from Kaworu's attack, the bone connected hard enough to snap in half; she staggered. Chitose didn't give her time to recover, following through with a flurry of elbows to the back of the neck and knees to the kidney, where she knew Nephilim's S2 organs were. She snatched Doppelmaya's pistol and swept out her legs, moving forward to stand over and execute her; Doppelmaya, however, spun around in mid-air without falling. Chitose hesitated for a moment before firing; it was enough time for Doppelmaya to shove the gun away, so it only blasted her leg apart, and then she punched Chitose in the gut.
Unlike Tabris, Chitose didn't have a full-power AT Field protecting her; even from a broken arm and with Maya's physique, the AT-enhanced punch curled her up and tossed her down the hallway, losing the machine pistol, bouncing against tiles, and crashing hard into the far wall, twenty metres away. She coughed up a mouthful of blood, then rolled to one side behind an alcove, barely avoiding a burst of gunfire. Doppelmaya held out her injured arm; there was a squelch, and it mended itself. She looked down at her ruined leg stump, and a blast of AT energy to her back sent her tumbling.
"Don't touch her!" Tabris roared. Tiles broke free of the floor and ceiling and swarmed Doppelmaya; she glared at them, blasting them to dust, and Tabris tackled her. They rolled in mid-air; she got on top and body-slammed him. She was heavier and stronger, and got two good punches in, which he half-deflected, before he hit her bad leg and rolled her off.
Chitose breathed as deeply as she could and winced, then pulled up her shirt to look. Her stomach was already deep purple. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. This Naphil was stronger than ought to be possible, given the amount of space a human body could spare for an S2 organ. She shouldn't have been able to shrug off those blows; she'd ignored what Chitose had been sure would be incapacitating damage, or at least pain. And she looked like the bridge tech, who was too old to have been born a Naphil. Whatever was going on, this wasn't a winning fight. She'd have to take a risk.
Tabris kicked Doppelmaya in the face, clumsy from his newly reattached nerves; she grabbed his leg and threw him into a light tube. He smashed into it and bounced against the floor amidst a shower of broken glass. She spun on her one leg, sensing as Chitose stepped out of her alcove, pistol drawn, and shot out a Bakelite valve directly overhead; pressurised red-orange fluid sprayed into Doppelmaya's face, knocking her off her foot. She recovered and waved at the valve, sealing it; a moment later, Chitose jump-kicked her in the head. Doppelmaya tried to block with her AT Field, but Chitose was too close to fully seal away; she screamed and tried to retaliate with denaturing blasts, but Chitose dodged around them and kept attacking with haymakers and leg sweeps, then pressed her gun against Doppelmaya's chin and emptied her clip, spattering her brains across the ceiling.
Undeterred by the large hole in the top of her head, Doppelmaya seized Chitose's lapels. The air around her hand glowed and hummed, and the pilot was blown backward, through a ward door and a long shelf of glass tubes, shattering them and leaving a smear of blood along the wall. Doppelmaya glanced over her shoulder, at Tabris, who was struggling to his feet, and blasted him back into a load-bearing wall; it collapsed, dropping two floors onto him and completely burying him. Then she returned to Chitose, who was fumbling on the ground, trying to push herself back to her feet. She was too weak, and only managed to smudge blood all over the floor.
In Central Dogma, Ritsuko entered a final command, and the camera feeds and security systems came back to life. She smirked, and spoke into the PA.
"Get away from her, you bitch."
With that, she opened the Bakelite valves throughout the corridor, and they disgorged a flood of the sticky fluid; it swept Doppelmaya off her feet and into a wall. The Bakelite swirled over her and hardened.
This held for about two seconds, before Doppelmaya broke out, spraying crystalline shards, flying above the Bakelite. She moved toward Chitose's room, then slowed, and turned and vectored out of the infirmary, leaving her and Tabris alive.
"Shall I flood the rest of the base with Bakelite?" Ritsuko asked, cutting the flow to the infirmary. She watched the Angel float down a corridor away from the cages; the stump of its ruined leg slowly elongated, regrowing, and its head refilled, although wrongly, into what might have been a wax figurine of Maya after lying atop a warm stove for an hour.
"No," Misato ruled. "That'll slow our response down more than her." She spoke into the PA again. "Mogami, can you hear me?"
"Turn off Bakelite," the girl wheezed. She was propped up on her elbows; the red plastic was rapidly hardening around her legs, waist, forearms, and hair. Blood ran down her forehead, from scratches along one cheek, from her mouth, and from glass punctures all across her back, arms, and legs. "Drown me, Kaworu. Think concussion, this time."
"How on Earth are you not dead?" Ritsuko asked, localising the PA to the infirmary.
Chitose tried and failed to pull free of the Bakelite, and coughed up more blood.
"Kaworu isn't in his room," Shigeru reported. "I can't see him; he could be in the collapsed area."
"What the hell was he doing –" Misato began, before catching herself and reprioritising. "Organise a team to dig that up as soon as the Angel's dead, and get a med team for her. Mogami, hang in there. Rei, Shinji, hurry!"
"So Angels can be intelligent," Ritsuko said coldly. "I assume it's been piggybacking off Maya's knowledge. If her brain's been destroyed, it should revert to typical Angelic intelligence, so …" She hit some buttons, and the entire security system lit up. "It's heading for the Terminal Dogma access shaft."
"Seal the bulkheads again," Misato ordered. "Purge the system, in case she left an override."
The two Evas shoved their restraints off. The pilots were still in their school uniforms; Unit-00 had been stripped down for servicing and was missing the armour over its legs.
The last bulkhead blew open and the Angel entered the shaft for Terminal Dogma. "Hurry!"
"On it!" Shinji replied. He raced Rei down the main corridor, through a door Ritsuko opened for them, and dived into the shaft, after Doppelmaya. "Wait, what the hell is this?"
"It's not human!" Misato said. She assumed it was and had somehow possessed the real Maya, but Shinji didn't need to know that, and there was no way to save Maya after so much damage. "It's trying to trick you. Kill it!"
Ordinarily, he would have argued with this, but the Angel no longer looked particularly human. With its brain destroyed, it couldn't regenerate correctly, and it had somehow shifted into the uncanny valley, shaped almost like a human but not quite; the regenerated leg was too long, the head shaped like a pumpkin. Misato's words were underscored as the Angel threw an AT blast at Unit-00; Shinji jumped in the way, and with the Angel's small size, it barely pitted his armour. Rei dodged around him and swiped at it, clashing with its AT Field; Shinji joined her and they overwhelmed it, and crushed the Angel against the wall of the shaft. It burst apart into LCL.
"Target is silent," Makoto read out. "It's gone."
Misato glanced at Ritsuko, to see how she was taking the loss of Maya. Her face was hard, giving nothing away.
"Fuyutsuki," said the Commander, standing to leave. "Finish up here."
Inside Kaworu's room, Dr Venkatesh switched off the hacked camera feed, set down his medical equipment, and straightened. Nerv had clearly dealt with the Angel. Ordinarily, as a professional, he would prefer to stay and fix whatever Tabris just broke, but with only one more Angel remaining, he suspected he had already outstayed his welcome. He opened the door and climbed out onto the Bakelite.
Subtly, without giving off telltale energy signatures that would alert Nerv's sensors, Kaworu shifted enough debris off himself to breathe and to restore circulation. His news legs throbbed with pain. The fallen roof had blocked the Bakelite from smothering him, and disrupted his AT rage. Presumably, the Angel had panicked on sensing Unit-01's activation, raced for Lilith, and not made it.
He shut his eyes and meditated on the battle. It was obviously a full Angel, given how it had so easily overpowered him. Probably its entire chest cavity was an S2 organ; his was taken up with niceties like lungs. Apparently the Angels had decided to take a leaf out of humankind's book: humans had copied their Fruit of Life, so an Angel had copied the Fruit of Knowledge.
He was more interested in how well Chitose had done. With the cameras down, he'd been able to use his powers all-out; she obviously hadn't had that luxury, and yet she'd managed to deal what would have been lethal damage if she'd realised its weak point wasn't in its head. They'd had the same combat training, but it had gone straight out of his head when Absolute Terror set in. She must have been preparing herself psychologically, planning tactics, and training in secret for months to be that cool under fire. Therefore, she'd expected all along to have to fight a Naphil.
Seele had always insisted he would be able to defeat her when the time came for their ultimate confrontation, had done so so often that he'd started to believe them, but suddenly he wasn't so sure. She'd been hurt worse than him this time, but if he knew one thing about her, it was that what didn't kill her made her stronger, and now she'd had an opportunity to field-test her anti-Naphil tactics.
Five holograms lit up around him, the only source of light in the dark. Kihl spoke first.
"Tabris. You disappoint me."
Kaworu shut his eyes. "I am sorry. I underestimated the power of a full Angel."
"Not that! We were explicit with our designs. The rebel must die."
"Ah. Then you wish that I had disengaged and waited for the Angel to finish Chitose off?"
"Why did you not? She is an obstacle to the Scenario."
"She saved my life from the seventeenth …" Kaworu took a moment to recalibrate. Seele counted the ten point fifth Angel as the eleventh, had ever since Kaji told them about it, and so their index was one higher than Nerv's. Of course, that still made them too high, as neither Adam nor Lilith were true Angels. "The eighteenth Angel. It would have been dishonourable not to return the favour."
"You care more about honour than Godhood?"
"That was my choice. The debt is paid; you needn't worry about a repeat."
"I do not trust you, Tabris! You are blinded by your feelings. You call her by the name she took for herself, even to us."
Kaworu mentally cursed but maintained outward calm. "And that was her choice."
"You are rationalising deviation from the Scenario!"
"I will continue to play my part in it."
"Then do so. The nineteenth Angel is dead."
"But not the thirteenth."
"Irrelevant. It is accounted for, and she will not be required for its defeat."
"The time to execute the rebel is now," said the man in red.
Chitose had guessed from the start that Seele would eventually order him to kill her. She hardly would have fought the Angel if she planned to kill him anyway, never mind initiating a deification event against the last, but she wouldn't have trained to fight Nephilim if she wouldn't prefer to kill him than die. As for Kaworu, he didn't particularly want either of them to die, but it was still his duty to obey Seele.
"Will this not impede the defeat of the thirteenth?" he asked, playing for time.
"That battle is already all but won," said Red.
"Kill the rebel, Tabris," said Blue.
He lay under the pile of rubble and was silent.
"Tabris," Kihl growled.
"No," said Kaworu. "I cannot."
"You will not let your heart override your purpose!"
"Not my heart. My head." He jerked his new legs clumsily. It felt like the Angel had torn a muscle in one. "I am still weak. I would not stand a chance against her, as we both are now."
"She is more wounded than you," said Yellow.
"Only superficially. It will take me longer to return to peak condition. My defeat here proves it."
There was a pause, as the Human Instrumentality Committee deliberated.
"You have two weeks," said Kihl. "After that, no more delays, and no more excuses. The rebel must die."
"As you wish," Kaworu said, wondering if it was true, and the holograms vanished.
…
A long way below him, in Adam's vault, Venkatesh opened his laptop and sent an email to a remote Seele server, attaching the data of a month's experiments on Kaworu's S2 organ and fresh Adamite cells. While it was sending, he took Petri dishes of cloned cells and packed them neatly into his briefcase until it was full. He checked the laptop. The email had bounced. He frowned and sent it again.
He whirled at the sound of footsteps. It was Ikari Gendo.
"Having problems with Nerv's firewall?" he asked. "We had it upgraded recently, you see."
"This is outrageous," said Venkatesh. "My sponsors paid for that research. You have no right to keep it from them."
"Yes. It's the final piece of the puzzle for Seele, isn't it? The key to Human Instrumentality. With that data, the only thing left for their plans is the defeat of two more Angels, isn't it? Given they control the last one."
"Please," said Venkatesh. If Ikari wanted to keep pretending that the ten point fifth had never come, that was his business, but everyone knew that the only Angel not accounted for was whatever kept making the yellow-and-grey ones. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a plane to catch."
"I wanted to tell you. Your work on my son was satisfactory."
And with that, Ikari drew his gun and shot him through the eye.
He put the gun away and went over to the work bench. He put on a pair of latex gloves, took a forceps, and extracted the bullet. Next, he took a syringe, filled it with cells from one of Venkatesh's Petri dishes, and injected it into his arm. He took a second syringe of Adam and injected it into the bullet wound. He took another two gloves and filled one with LCL from a vat, like a balloon; he held it over Venkatesh's head and pricked it with a scalpel, creating an LCL spatter effect. He then washed the forceps with methylated spirits, put it back in its place, and put the bullet, second syringe, dish, and gloves into a tupperware container. He moved over to Venkatesh's laptop and edited the email.
Seele,
I found Dr Venkatesh in Adam's chamber. Note the syringe and injection hole in his arm; the former contains traces of Adamite cells. I can only conclude that he attempted to implement Human Instrumentality on himself, and that he was unsuccessful. His home drive contains two sets of data, one in a folder labelled 'Instrumentality Research', the other labelled 'Real Instrumentality Research', the latter of which is heavily encrypted and which I have attached. He has been sending falsified data. We must treat it all as suspect and repeat the experiments; it has passed independent verification before, but we now know that his methods contain at least one fatal omission.
This is not a setback for the Scenario, only a delay.
Ikari Gendo
He created the Real Instrumentality Research folder, copied and pasted the original folder into it, ran an encryption program with a password of 300 characters of randomly mashed keys, and edited the files' timestamps. He turned back to Venkatesh.
The Fruits of Life and Knowledge were designed never to mix, and it had taken Gehirn many failures to overcome the safeguards to create Rei and the Evas. Without the cocktail of drugs required to suppress their natural antipathy, they reacted poorly. Because the Fruit of Life was stronger in the short term, it usually won. By now, LCL was bubbling up out of where Venkatesh's brain used to be; it looked exactly like the pressure had built up until it had exploded. The bullet was of a small enough calibre not to have made an exit wound; he'd made sure to bring a .22 today.
Ikari sent a code from his phone to disable Magi's firewall for five minutes. He took a dozen photos of Venkatesh from different angles, plugged his phone into the laptop, uploaded them to the email, and sent it. He then downloaded the Instrumentality data, unplugged his phone, took the tupperware container, and left for the incinerator upstairs.
…
A long way above him, Ritsuko took a call.
"Maya?! You mean you weren't – Yes, we know, it's dead. Between the fact that it looked like you, that the first explosion was centred on your home, and the fact you didn't call, I assumed it had possessed you. Why didn't you call earlier? Well, tell the emergency teams to work faster next time. There wasn't all that much rubble."
Several kilometres away, Maya sniffled; an ERT worker had just pulled Ami's body from the wreckage of their home.
"And when you get back here, we're going to have a long talk about how an Angel was able to hide near you for long enough to somehow learn your appearance, the layout of Nerv, and how to remotely override my security. Yes, well – stop crying – I said stop crying – the next time you think you're going crazy, tell me about it. Direct order. You're no more helpful here if you're insane than if you're dying of norovirus. And I … do care about you, Maya." She slammed down the receiver. "Smooth, Akagi. Smooth."
A moderate way above and to the side of Central Dogma, Shinji came out of his shower. He dressed in his school uniform, left the change room, and ran into Rei.
"Ayanami," he greeted with a smile.
"Ikari," she returned.
"… Was there more?" he asked.
"I," she said, looking at her feet and blushing. There was a long silence. "Class Representative Horaki said that there would be a festival in two weeks."
"The hanami," Shinji said, nodding. "I haven't gone to one of those since Mother died."
Rei swallowed. She had spent the past three months steeling herself for this one moment.
"I wish to go."
Shinji blinked.
"With – with me?"
"I am sorry," Rei said, turning to leave.
"No – I mean, wait! Ayanami. If you want to go, then let's go."
Rei nodded, blushed harder, smiled, and walked away.