All I can remember about what happened next was this moment of strange "fuzziness," I don't quite know how else to describe it. It was a dream yet it felt different and I wasn't quite sure why.
It was night and I was out of doors, I can remember feeling the cool ground on my bare feet. A cold wind blew and I could hear it whistling through the trees as I stumbled along in a daze. Unsure of where I was going, I saw a light in the distance and I moved towards it.
The light came from a small building that was in a clearing within a forest, and as I moved closer I saw what looked like a door. Something was drawing me closer, something that had a hold of me inside and it wanted me to go to that door. I obeyed it, and slowly raised my hand to knock.
I knocked on the door once, but there was no response. I tried it again and still nothing answered. For a third time I then pounded on the door. It was then that the door finally opened.
As I looked to see who it was that opened the door, what I remembered most was their eyes. Green eyes that were like mine, and a face like mine. Then a voice inside my head said in a ghostly whisper "Find the other." I couldn't remember anything else of what happened after that.
When I finally woke up the first sound I heard was a soft "beep…beep…beep" that was next to me. I slowly opened my eyes and tried to breathe. My body ached all over and felt stiff. Something brushed against my face and I could barely move my hands. The light in the room seemed bright and I noticed that there was very soft music turned down low, just audible enough to fill the silence of the room.
Where was I? I slowly turned my head to the right and saw a row of hospital equipment. Noticing that there was a pulse monitor attached to my finger and an IV injected into my elbow I realized that I was a patient here, wherever here was.
It felt so difficult to move, like gravity was pushing down against me on the bed. My legs could barely work, and my neck felt incredibly rigid. I opened my eyes wider and looked around, and found that I didn't recognize this place at all. It didn't look like any of the hospital rooms in Second Branch that I had been to.
There was light from the windows dimmed by blinds that were pulled down. There was also a TV monitor hung against the far wall of the room but there was nothing playing on it. I took another deep breath and tried to figure out what was going on, to me my brain felt thick as a brick. What happened? How did I get here? The only thing I could remember then was being inside the EVA and doing…something.
After what I think was a few minutes someone walked into the room. She was short with auburn hair and hazel eyes, and wore a white-colored nurses uniform, more like the traditional ones with dresses and white tights and not hospital scrubs. When she walked in initially she started to look at the chart attached to the end of my bed, but once I nudged myself her head turned towards me and her eyes immediately went wide.
"Doctor!" she shouted out the door way. "Doctor! Sleeping Beauty's awake!"
Sleeping Beauty?! How long had I been here?
A few seconds later another white-clad nurse came into the room along with a man wearing a doctor's coat over a shirt and tie. The doctor, who I guess was maybe in his forties with graying hair, immediately got a penlight and shone it in my eyes as the first nurse tried to speak to me. "Erin? Erin? Are you alright? Can you hear me?"
I tried to speak but instead of words my voice came out like a screech, my throat was incredibly dry. One of the nurses rushed to get me water and then after the doctor was finished examining me gave me a small sip from the cup.
"Erin?" the first nurse asked again in a voice that sounded to me like it was from the southern USA. "Erin are you alright?"
"Um…" I replied weakly, "I, uh, I don't know…"
"She's awake!" the doctor said to the others. "When did you notice this?"
"Just now," the first nurse replied. "I came in her to check on her medications and saw her eyes open and that she was moving."
"Erin, dear, how do you feel?" asked the doctor.
"Where am I?" I asked instead.
"You're in a safe place, we're taking care of you now," said the first nurse.
"But where is this? Is this Second Branch?"
The nurse looked puzzled. "Second Branch?! Second Branch of what?"
Now I was scared. "Second Branch of…NERV." I felt incredibly weak as I spoke, like it took every effort to get the words out.
"NERV?" the nurses asked together and then looked at the doctor. The doctor looked very concerned but didn't say anything right away.
I pushed further. "Where's my dad?"
Rather than respond to me, the doctor spoke to the first nurse. "Send an email to the address on the chart, tell them she's awake and active," he instructed. "Then wait for them to reply."
"Yes, doctor," she replied and then left the room. The doctor then spoke to me. "Honey, Erin," he said, "listen to me carefully. We don't know where your father is right now."
"What…" I'd have been more panicked if my energy wasn't so low. "What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that you were brought here, to us, for safe keeping, by someone who was very concerned for your health and safety," the doctor told me. "That means you're important to someone."
"But where's my dad? Where is this place?" I started finding my energy coming back and tried to move myself out of the bed.
The doctor whispered to the second nurse. "50ccs of ambrozil, get her calmed down," then he turned to me again. "Erin, you need to settle down. You were out of it for a while. I suppose a lot of things have happened since you came here."
"But where am I?" I tried to sit up in the bed but found my body still too weak to do much. Instead the second nurse put a syringe in my IV and a moment later I felt more sleepy. I couldn't force myself to stay awake but I didn't like this at all. "Where am I? Where's my dad?" I kept asking. "What are you doing to me?" It's all I could say as I drifted again into unconsciousness.
I woke up some time later, in the same hospital bed and room. Not much had changed since the first time I woke up, but there was no one in the room. While I felt awake it was hard to concentrate, and the only indication of change was that the outdoor light from the windows wasn't so bright this time.
Closing my eyes to focus my strength, I brought up my left arm to my face. On my wrist was a hospital wristband, with the words "ERIN ?" typed out on the sticker. Erin Question Mark? No last name? They didn't even know who I was. That was the first time I got the feeling that something very bad had happened.
Trying to figure out what to do, my most obvious course of action was to find a way to communicate back home. Was I kidnapped? Had there been an accident at Second Branch? Or maybe the Angels had finally come and wiped it out, and I somehow survived. I just didn't know. I closed my eyes to concentrate again, this time to move my legs and then I was able to get them to move and then bend. Good, I thought, at least I wasn't paralyzed.
I felt something brush against my face again and used my left arm to get it out of the way. It felt a little like coarse fabric but when I tried to push it away I noticed it bounced back again. Feeling where the strands came from I discovered that it was in fact my own hair: it had grown long, long enough to go down below my neckline. Wherever I was I had been here for at least several months, assuming that my hair hadn't been cut already. Knowing that contributed even more to the dread I was now feeling.
Marshalling up all strength that I could find, I finally got myself to sit up in the bed. My body felt very light, I was skinny enough to feel the ribs in my body. Trying to focus on my situation I looked around the room for anything like a telephone and after a minute found one that was hung on the far wall.
I didn't want to trigger any kind of warning that I was out of bed so I tried to very carefully move to the right side of the hospital bed, where the machines and IV were. I didn't take out my pulse monitor and found the IV stand, noticing that there were wheels underneath. Figuring that maybe I had enough space on that cable between my finger and the heart monitor to make it to the wall I slowly eased my way out of bed.
Slipping over one side my feet touched the floor and I promptly tumbled downwards. I hadn't walked in months, so my legs weren't ready to move this far. I struggled and pulled myself up on the IV stand, and used it as a sort of crutch to hobble my way across the room and to the far wall.
I stopped by the windows and took a peek out of the blinds that were closed. Outside seemed like an ordinary hospital, although not modern-looking like the one at Second Branch was. There was a grassy park that was inside the grounds and then another building across from us. I had no view beyond that.
Moving slowly, I shuffled over to where the wall was, carefully to try and not pull out the heart monitor from my finger. The telephone was wall-mounted and had several buttons below the main dial pad that I knew must be outside lines. Looking around to see if I had been noticed out of bed I saw no one, the door to my room was closed.
I picked up the receiver and listened for a dial tone. There wasn't one until I pushed one of the buttons below, this was how the Second Branch phones worked where you had to get an outside line to call away from the base. I may not have had anyone in the outside that I could call, but I saw how my dad did it often enough and tried it. From that I got a dial tone and I dialed my dad's private mobile number.
The phone rang once and then a recorded message came on. "This line is disconnected or no longer in service…" Not good. I tried again on my dad's mobile phone and then for the lab line, all with the same recording. If I felt frightened before, I was truly scared now. Something had happened to him, I knew it.
Taking a risk I tried one other thing: I dialed the operator by selecting an outside line and dialing "0." I was getting tired again, I knew that there were lots of painkillers in that IV and I wasn't going to last much longer, but I had to at least figure out how to call home.
A live voice came on the receiver. "Operator."
"Yes, I need to dial a number. 702-321-6669." It was one of my dad's other mobile numbers and one I knew he would keep with him no matter what.
"Area Code 702? Are you sure?"
"Yes, ma'am" I whispered into the phone. "702."
There was a long, silent pause and then the operator said "Area Code 702 is no longer operational."
"Oh, did they change the area code?" I asked.
"Miss," the voice came back slowly. "There's nothing there anymore."
Before I could say anything further the door to my hospital room opened and the doctor came in, followed by one of the nurses and two larger men in white unforms. I tried to speak into the phone again but the doctor took the receiver and put it back while the two larger men grabbed me.
"What's…what's happening?"
"Now, Erin, you're going to be alright," the nurse tried to re-assure me. "There's no need to get out of bed!"
"Why can't I call home? Where's my dad?"
As the nurse tried to calm me down the doctor stuck another needle in my arm. "Erin, there's someone coming to get you tomorrow," she told me. "They'll take care of you."
"Where's my dad? Where am I?! What happened!" I started to get more hysterical as the orderlies picked me up and dragged me back to my bed. I felt myself becoming weak and drowsy and the voices around me seemed distant, the light became more dim. In another minute I had again lost consciousness.
For the next day I was in bed, drowsy from medication and unable to say much. I saw the nurses maybe twice, one to feed me solid food and once to change me out of my hospital gown and into a white cotton nightgown. I tried asking questions again that second time but still the nurses didn't give me any answers, only saying there would be someone coming tomorrow to get me.
At this point the continued isolation was making me angry. Unable to get even an answer of where I was (or even when I was), I marshalled up my strength and prepared myself to try and make a break for it. I had woken up the following morning and saw that the IV was no longer in my arm and my pulse monitor was gone. I was just in the room by myself, no doubt being prepared to present me to whoever it was that was coming over.
Was it Dad who had engineered all of this, spiriting me off to a secret location while he took care of urgent matters at home or wherever he was now? It could have been, and only that gave me hope that he was okay. Dad was at times really, really paranoid and always warned me about enemies to him and our project. I was just hoping either he or I hadn't fallen into their hands.
I made an attempt to get out of the room but the only door was locked, and I found that the windows were locked as well. I also discovered that the phone that used to be on the wall was also gone. In any desperation to get any information at all I tried turning on the TV monitor but even though it powered on there was no signal from anything. The radio only played music, and not from a radio station. It was a nightmare being in here and I really only wished at this moment to wake up back in my bed at the penthouse and laugh it all off later with Vance over cookies and milk. Failing to get out of the room I went back to the bed and waited, not sure what to expect next.
About an hour later I heard voices outside in the hallway and then hopped off the bed, this time determined to at least get someone's attention that I was being kept here. Running to the doorway, I pounded on it with my fists, shouting "Hey, let me out of here!" I kept at it for a few minutes until I saw a large shadow in front of the frosted glass of the door, and then backed up to see if they'd finally open it.
The door opened slowly and someone entered. He was large and looked quite old, and rolled in on a motorized wheelchair. The older man wore a green uniform tunic and most notably also wore a metallic vision enhancer. I realized as he rolled in that I had seen him once before! That time he wasn't in the wheelchair but I remember him from the first night I got Unit 04 activated, as he was the strange old man who was part of the group of VIP visitors we had that night. As he rolled into my hospital room someone closed the door behind him and then we were alone.
"Who are you?" I asked him.
"My name," he said in a deep, drawn-out voice, "is Chairman Keel. I'm an old friend of your father's. You are Erin Forrestal, I presume?"
Finally someone at least knew who I was. "Yeah, that's right. Where's my father?"
Keel didn't answer me at first. "You are the pilot of Evangelion Unit 04? Yes?"
"Yes, I am," I said to him with some pride in my voice.
The chairman took a remote control from his wheelchair and then pointed it at the monitor hung on the wall of my hospital room. The TV set turned on but now had a signal, and this was from a video file with messages from the UN about how secret the images were. There was a caption on the video that said "NERV-02 Incident 2015.10.28," and from that I dreaded what I earlier feared might come.
"Six months ago you suffered an accident inside of Unit 04, correct?"
My memory of how I got here was still very cloudy, and I didn't remember much of it at except that I was in the entry plug. "I think so, I don't remember. All I remember is waking up in this place two days ago."
"Yes. Well my child, quite a lot has happened. Unfortunately while you were gone there was an act of sabotage at your father's facility. This," he motioned to the screen with his remote, "is what happened two months ago."
I looked up at the screen and saw an image of Second Branch taken from very high up, possibly from a satellite. You could see the entire base stretching for miles across, sitting in the middle of the desert. Suddenly there was an orange glowing from the center of the base, where I knew the main assembly area was for the EVA units were. The orange disk expanded rapidly to envelop the entire base, and then was followed by a billowing grey cloud. The camera suddenly went into static.
Gasping with shock, my eyes still glued to the monitor, I asked the Chairman "What…what happened?!"
Keel looked at me and in a slow, sad tone said "I'm afraid my child that I have some bad news…" My glance went back to the monitor and I saw the image of Second Branch again, only this time Second Branch wasn't there. Instead there was a gigantic crater where my home used to be.
Second Branch…my home… was destroyed.
My body shook with panic as my worst fears were realized. Something horrible had happened while I was out of it all. I tried to speak but I couldn't, and Keel slowly gave me the rest of the story.
"A little over two months ago your father attempted to install an S2 engine into your Evangelion Unit, EVA-04. However the unit was sabotaged during the test and created a Singularity, or Sea of Dirac that enveloped the entire facility. I'm afraid," he said slowly, "that there were no survivors."
Trembling, I started to cry. All I could think about was Dad. He was there, and now he was gone.
"NO!" I shouted, "no, please tell me he's not gone."
"I am sorry," was all that the Chairman had to say.
I struggled to figure out what was happening but my mind just couldn't wrap itself around it. I fell to my knees and put my head to the floor. What was all of this? I had just stepped into the entry plug and then suddenly everything changed.
Keel didn't try to comfort me, but instead spoke to me further. "My child, there is much you need to know but we cannot continue our discussion in this place. Your father was kind enough to entrust you into my care, and I will be sure of that. But we will need to leave shortly if we are to avoid those who pursue us."
I didn't want to move at that moment. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and die right there. The old man didn't wait for me to recover, and a few seconds later I felt myself picked up by two large men. Initially struggling to get free, I then felt the prick of a needle in my arm and then a sudden blackness. My journey had only just begun.
I woke up some time later, lying on yet another unfamiliar bed. This was in a very small room made out of metal. The air tasted of oil and salt and it felt buoyant, like we were floating. I shook my head and tried to snap out of whatever it was that happened.
Once I got down off the bed I noticed that my clothes were changed again, this time to a set of blue and white pajamas that were comfortable but a bit thin considering how cold this place was now. Was I on a ship? I seemed like it. I sighed deeply, and put my head in my hands. I didn't feel like myself, like somehow I was dragged out of my body and then stuck in someone else's. I hoped that this was all some sort of terrible nightmare still and that I was going to just wake up any minute now.
There was a clanging knock on the hatch. I didn't say anything. The hatch then opened and a man came in. He was dressed in a blue uniform and looked middle age and gaunt, European with short-cropped hair.
"Ah, you're awake," he said upon seeing me siting on the bed. "I'll go tell the Chairman, he'll want to see you right away.
"Where am I?"
"You're on a submarine," he said matter-of-factly, speaking in decent but accented English. "Be careful not to open the wrong door." I wasn't really in any mood for humor and didn't say anything in return. The man motioned to a tiny table that was bolted on the floor next to my bed, on top sat a black duffel bag and a plate of bread.
"If you're hungry, you should eat," he told me. "And then change into warmer clothes. We have some days to go on our voyage."
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere safe," he replied, not really answering my question. "I'll come back to collect you within an hour." With that he left the room.
While I didn't feel like doing anything, I was also cold and needed to warm up. There was no obvious heater in the room and only a very thin blanket on the bed to keep me warm. I went to the bag and found blue jeans and a blouse and sweater, plus just basic underwear including socks. There was also a pair of sneakers in the bag.
Noticing a very cramped bathroom built into my cabin I used that to change in, hoping in the back of my mind there weren't hidden cameras in here.
I didn't eat the bread, nor drank the water. I just let my mind go numb. If this wasn't a dream, then it meant my father was really dead, and so was everyone else at Second Branch. It meant that Vance was dead, it meant that Jo was dead, and all of those other people at NERV-2 were gone. I was truly an orphan now.
The tears just didn't come. I wanted to cry but I couldn't do it. I just couldn't believe any of it was true.
An hour later the man came back, and he escorted me down a crowded hallway towards another cabin further up the boat. The uniforms of the other crew matched his own, and most of them looked either Russian or some sort of European. As I moved past them I heard bits of Russian, something I had learned after having several gymnastics coaches from Russia.
We stopped at another hatch that was guarded by an armed soldier. The man spoke to him briefly and the guard picked up a phone and announced us. The hatch was then opened and I was shown inside.
This cabin was much larger than the one I had been placed in, and looked like a conference room. There were various military-style maps on the walls and computer equipment. There was only one other person other than me however, and he turned around in his chair as soon as the hatch closed behind me.
"You are awake, Pilot Forrestal?" the chairman asked me. I nodded, and grabbed my arms as despite my new clothes I was freezing cold.
"Sit down," he said to me, "and I will explain everything to you." I did as he asked, getting a seat next to him.
"Before I start, can you inform me as to what your father told you about Evangelion? About what its purpose was and what you were doing?"
I sighed deeply and answered. "Well, he just said that we were there to fight the Angels, that one day they were going to come and destroy mankind if we didn't do something about it and that's what EVA was for." The chairman nodded as I continued. "The last I remember is that the Angels did come, and they were attacking Tokyo-3, but not us. He was waiting until the right time to reveal our secret."
"I see," said Keel.
"Did Dad ever finish the project?"
"Yes, your father did fully complete both Evangelion units in his custody, and that is where I will start my tale. Not long after your accident your father was approached by another man who made a quite incredible claim: that your mother had in fact given birth to twins."
I nearly choked. "T..Twins!?"
"Yes. He had claimed that she gave birth to a son as well as yourself, and that he was entrusted by her to keep the child secret and away from your father."
"How is that even possible?! If my mom had twins instead of just me dad would have known it."
"Except that apparently your father was not actually present at the moment of your birth, a detail known to this man. This provided a modicum of authenticity, further reinforced when he presented the boy himself."
"So…this kid just shows up after, what, fourteen years?"
"Your father was quite skeptical at first, and put him to the test. However, this boy was actually able to activate and interface with your own EVA, and for your father that was convincing enough."
"Oh my God! Well, then was it actually true?"
"No," the old man replied. "We have evidence that this boy was using a sort of medicine to facilitate the link between himself and EVA. This however was unknown to the others and in the space of a couple of months this boy was able to ingratiate himself into your father's operation."
Keel continued. "The dark truth of the matter is that this boy was an agent for a rather nefarious cabal of men who wanted to control the Evangelion for themselves, to use them to achieve world domination. It was their plan to take over all of NERV and its branches, and then use the Evangelion to take over the world."
"Wow," was the only thing I could say.
"We were informed of us when one of the pilots, Vance Vinson, discovered that his own father was part of the plot."
That got my attention and my head went up. "Vance?!"
"Yes. The incident happened not long after your father revealed his work on Units 03 and 04. Both of the units were sent to Japan along with their pilots to train against the Evangelions based in Tokyo-3. It was during that time when Vance Vinson discovered that in fact several of the EVA pilots, including the impostor were involved with the conspiracy. He had tried to stop one of them from stealing an S2 organ from a destroyed Angel when he was killed."
I gasped in horror. "Vance was killed!? How?"
"He was mortally wounded when the pilot of Unit 04, the boy who called himself Patrick Forrestal, attacked him with his own EVA."
My own thoughts went to Vance at that moment. Poor Vance, he had been murdered! And by my own unit no less. Tears came flowing from my eyes and I trembled with emotion. Losing home was bad enough, but this was getting worse all the time.
"Your father, unfortunately, was not completely convinced that the boy was a traitor and while he held him in custody, your father still attempted to use him in an effort to achieve an activation of Unit 04 together with the S2 organ. This boy then, using both the EVA and the S2, created the Sea of Dirac that wiped out Second Branch."
"Oh, no…" I was now sobbing. What a horrible end to everything. "At least…" I struggled to say, "at least this kid is dead too, right?"
Keel just looked at me at first and didn't anything. I knew from his response that his story wasn't nearly over.
What I learned in the next half an hour didn't make anything remotely better. The boy who blew up Second Branch had in fact survived, as somehow the bad guys had recovered him and Unit 04 intact from the remains.
The Angels themselves were defeated, the final one being destroyed towards the end of last year, but then shortly after that the supreme commander of NERV, Gendo Ikari, launched a crazy plan to basically end the world. SEELE, which was the organization that the Chairman himself ran, used their own special Evangelions to try and stop Ikari. They succeeded but then ran into Vance's father and his commando force, and the Evangelions that they controlled. Unfortunately SEELE lost of most of their EVA units in that battle and then the Alliance, as they called themselves, were now currently in charge of Tokyo-3 and most of NERV's surviving EVA units and pilots, and were now hell-bent on world domination.
Some of the parts of the Chairman's story seemed incredible. When I asked if the other EVAs were like my own, with other children as pilots, Chairman Keel (who asked me to call him "Grandfather" instead of by his title) confirmed it was true. However two renegade NERV agents had managed to take control over the young pilots by emotionally manipulating them, and were now using them as cannon fodder in the current war. Most of SEELE's own EVA units didn't use children, or had any pilots at all.
Another shocking part of the story was about Vance's own father, Admiral Vinson. While he was often quite busy in the times that I saw him he always seemed sort of kind and decent, and Mrs. Vinson was about the sweetest person ever. To find out later on that he was a ruthlessly efficient killer, willing to sacrifice his own son in order to control NERV and EVA was horrible. I guess you never really know anyone.
After some reassurances that I'd be taken care of, Grandfather made sure I made it back to my cabin. I didn't say much in return, I was just too stunned to find out all of these horrible things had happened while I was in some sort of coma. I felt terrible, and when I finally did return all I could do is go back to my bed and cry myself to sleep.
No one bothered me much for the journey, except for making sure I was at least physically okay. For the next few days I just curled up in to a ball in one corner of the room and replayed everything in my mind over and over again. Dad was gone, Vance was gone, and everyone at Second Branch was gone, wiped out by some crazy kid. A kid who claimed he was my own twin.
I wanted to die. I just wanted to stop eating and then stop breathing and then just go away. No more dreams of a happy life, no more challenges like piloting or gymnastics or anything else. Just everyone and everything I knew was wiped out while I was away. It felt like I didn't really exist anymore.
But somehow I had survived. I was spared all of this. Why? I felt lonely, and just wanted to be around something, anything familiar. But no one came to my rescue, and no one was going to.
It was after about three days of doing nothing but sitting in my bed or on the floor when I finally decided to get up and get out of the cabin. The door wasn't locked, and I could walk around the submarine. No one really paid any attention to me. I spent a good hour just exploring things like I would do when was younger and lurked around all of the corners of NERV-2, although the sub was a lot smaller. Finally I made my way back to the Chairman's cabin and just stood there. The man I first saw on the boat, who I found out was named Doctor Kirov, saw me there and asked if I wanted to see the Chairman again. I told him that I did. He then used a phone mounted on the bulkhead and spoke on it, and in another minute they let me back in the room.
Chairman Keel was again seated in the conference room, looking at various maps and seemingly in deep thought. He heard the hatch close behind me after I stepped in the room, and then slowly turned in his chair towards me.
"Hello, Grandfather," I greeted him.
"How are you, my child."
"I feel like hell."
Keel didn't reply back immediately but we just sized each other up as I stood in front of him. "What can I do for you?" he finally asked.
"I want to get my EVA back," I told him, growling as I said it, "and I want to get the boy who stole it from me."
"Then we have the same objective. Please sit down and let us discuss our options."
This chapter is where we get the "pivot" of the story and how Erin's world completely changes. I think for anyone to wake up in a strange place Rip Van Winkle-style and find that everything you knew and loved is gone would be pretty frightened. That's she's emerged in the custody of SEELE only makes matters worse in ways that she's currently unable to fathom.
In the writing the chapter wasn't that difficult to put together except for the first paragraph, that was a last-minute addition which I felt was needed to link the narrative together better. Readers of The Blue Rose of course know what's in the cabin, but Erin is still figuring this out.