The time that we spent in the cells seemed to go by endlessly, the only things changing were that we received meals on a regular basis that were always the same thing: water and near-stale bread served in disposable Styrofoam , we
spent the days talking to each other, both of us bringing up what we knew of our own lives to tell the other. I felt like after however long we were in the prison that I really knew Patrick as well as I could, and that he knew me just as well. But
it seemed like we'd never get out of there.

Things finally changed when I woke to the flickering lights of my cell. Earlier I had fallen asleep as I usually did, against the wall I shared with Patrick's cell, and the sudden flashing of the interior lights had surprised me awake. Hearing movement
close by, I stood up and pressed myself against the plexiglass of the front wall of the cell to get a better view of what was happening.

A man in a guard's uniform rushed inside our holding area and went to the front of Patrick's cell. Patrick had also woken up and recognized the man immediately, conversing with him in hushed Japanese. Man, who looked Japanese with short black hair and
a muscular build, entered a code and the door to Patrick's cell immediately opened, Patrick himself nearly jumping outside as soon as the door swung with a woosh.

This new Japanese guy definitely was not one of the SEELE guards, given by how warm he was received by Patrick once the two of them stood together. As they whispered the voice of another man was heard down the hallway, a voice that I thought I knew.

The first man made motions to leave the prison while Patrick argued with him, and it was becoming obvious that what they were discussing was me. The spy or whoever he was looked at me sternly and then at Patrick, as he was impatient to get out of the
prison we were in while Patrick frantically tried to persuade him to at least release me from my cell.

"You're not going to just leave her in there, are you?" Patrick said to the agent in English. The larger man smirked at my brother. "She's the one who put you in here, Patrick," he replied in heavily accented English. After hearing the agent say that
about me, any remaining hopes that I had about getting out of here were dashed on the rocks, as this agent was from NERV and there was no way he was going to let me go after what happened.

"You can't just leave her here!" pleaded Patrick, "She's dead if we leave her behind!"

"Patrick," the agent spoke to him in a more serious tone. "do you know what actually happened at Tokyo-3?"

My brother put his foot down in front of the agent, determined to at least fight for me. "I know that something really bad happened to Kensuke and Mari, and I know that they think I had something to do with it. Look, Mr. Kaji," he called the agent by
his name, "it doesn't matter. Yes, Erin tricked me to get the EVA and we both know it but they lied to her and now she knows everything. She's not going to be on their side anymore, otherwise they wouldn't have put her in here!"

"Or this is another way for them to gain your confidence…" he said skeptically.

"Fine," Patrick declared. He then walked to the front of my cell and turned towards the agent. "If she doesn't go, I don't go!"

As much as I wanted to get out of that cell I couldn't let Patrick throw away his only chance to escape. For me the other shoe had finally dropped, and my punishment for all of those awful things that I had done and those good things I hadn't done had
all come home.

"It's okay," I called to Patrick. He turned around to face me, looking at me with sadness as I tried to dissuade him from letting me stop his getaway attempt. "Just leave me here. That boy," I sadly thought of the young Japanese boy with glasses that
was killed during Unit 06's raid on the Geo Front. "That boy's dead because of me. I…" I stuttered, emotions gripping me as I confessed to Patrick how I really felt. "…I deserve it."

But Patrick didn't give up on me, and with his face in a very determined expression he pivoted back to Kaji and once more began to argue with him. Then from outside of the prison came again the voice of the second man, now practically shouting in English.

"What's the holdup?!" After hearing his voice again I realized that I knew who it belonged to.

Kaji replied out the doorway. "Our escapee apparently doesn't want to go just yet,"

"He's always stubborn like that," the voice called back and inside walked another man in a SEELE's guard uniform, only I knew this who he was. It was Victor.

I'll admit that once Victor came I felt a lot more relief if not outright surprise. Victor was my one companion here at the fortress that I could at least trust. To know that he was working with the man helping Patrick escape could only mean one thing:
Victor was himself a spy. There was however one further revelation about Victor that would really change everything I had thought I understood up until now.

As Victor entered the room Patrick turned around and then suddenly froze in place on the sight of him, his face becoming pale white in shock. Victor himself looked right at Patrick and spoke to him in a very familiar way.

"Hello, Lad," he said to him calmly. "Long time, no see."

It took Patrick a few seconds to get anything out, but when he did answer it was like a glass wall had been shattered, for both him and for me. "U-u-uncle? What the HELL?!"

Victor, the closest thing to a friend and protector that I had in this cold and lonely place, was the same uncle that had kept Patrick with him his whole life up in the California mountains. Here I was thinking about how I was so alone and abandoned and
yet during all this time there was someone watching over me after all.

Uncle Victor ignored Patrick for the moment and turned to Kaji, the Japanese agent. "We've got about thirty-five seconds to get out of here…"

"He won't go without out her," Kaji protested, "but considering that she stole the EVA…"

Undeterred Victor walked straight to my cell door and keyed in the lock code, releasing the door locks to my cell. The plexiglass door swung open and I leaped right out of the cell. Now on solid ground outside the walls, I was finally free and took a
deep breath.

I looked up at Victor, my Uncle Victor, with a new sense of hope and gratitude. "Thank you," was all I could say. He didn't reply except to nod his head in acknowledgement.

There were now so many questions I had but time, which had flowed so slowly while we were in the cells, was now racing in front of us. But there was something that I had to do, and I had to do it right now. Standing in front of me was Patrick, his face
in a mixture of expressions of happiness and of nervousness. Now unfettered, he wasn't sure what he should do but I made it easy for him, bounding to him with my arms wide open and throwing them around him. I held him as tightly against me as I could,
and his own arms squeezed me with all of his own strength. Taking another deep breath, I buried my head in his chest, just wanting him to hold me right there and then. My missing piece, the emptiness inside of me that had felt so wrong all of my life
had just been found once and for all.

"Finally together," my uncle said in a soft voice as Kaji and him watched us embrace.

The Japanese agent was still very skeptical of me. "Can we trust her?" he asked Uncle Victor. Patrick, still holding me in his arms, turned around and provided a defiant answer. "I'll bet my life on it!"

"I've been listening in on their conversations," said my uncle to the agent, "and I believe we can trust her. Besides, somehow this isn't going to work unless they're both in the unit together."

Patrick and I were still perplexed by this very dramatic turn of events. "Uncle, what's the hell's going on?" Patrick asked. "Why are you here?"

"No time for that now. Get out and follow me." Uncle then turned and ran outside of the cell, with the three of us following him. I took Patrick's hand as we hurried down the hallway that was deep down in the lower levels of the fortress. Silently scurrying
down the corridor, the group of us watched from a hiding place in the stone walls as two guards came down the hallway. The pair of security men looked at the cell door and saw that it was closed, then after a long glance continued along their way.
Once the coast was clear we bounded out and silently the group of us snuck down until we reached a bank of elevators. Uncle Victor shooed us in, and then closed the elevator door and keyed the STOP button.

"That buys us three minutes," he told us as we all stood in the elevator. I could see Patrick, his hand still in mine, fuming with frustration. Uncle of course could read him quite well.

"This isn't a college lecture," he said to Patrick as he anticipated his argument, "If you've got something to say, now is good." Patrick promptly blew up at him. "Father told me that the UN army took you!"

"You really believed what your father told you?" uncle chided. "I thought you could do much better than that."

"Fine," replied Patrick, still angry. "Obviously not. But what's really going on here?" Uncle just smirked at him. "It's just another puzzle, lad. You figure it out."

"Uncle, be serious!" screamed my brother. "Just fucking tell me for once, will you?"

Back in the cells Patrick had told me that he didn't get along that well with his uncle, but I had no idea it was this hostile between them. "Were you two always like this?" I asked Patrick.

"Worse, usually,"

"Two minutes, thirty seconds," Uncle counted down.

"Alright, alright!" yelled Patrick impatiently. "You were preparing me for EVA when I was growing up, that's clear now."

"No," said Victor. "I was preparing you for what you'll be doing in the next few minutes, EVA is just the means to that end."

Patrick started with the interrogation. "You knew about Erin."

"Go on…"

"and...you knew about SEELE and NERV and the UN and the Alliance and all that."

"Okay, go on..."

"and...are you like a spy or something?"

Uncle Victor smirked at him. "Something like that."

"So let me get this straight then," Patrick said to Uncle, his voice increasing in volume and intensity as his grip on his anger came loose. "You keep me away from my parents and Erin, then when something goes wrong you let Father have me, who then tries
to screw up NERV with the EVA. Then after things go haywire with the EVA you...you like what, sneak in this place and then arranged to have me kidnapped? I get that this is some sort of a secret plot, okay! But I've been through a lot in the last
nine months and instead of being glad to see me alive you're still making me solve puzzles for you! I have you know I could freaking pound you into the ground with the EVA, man!" Patrick slammed his fist into the elevator wall with a hard thud.

Here we were trying to make our escape and the last thing I wanted was to have someone outside of the elevator hear my brother's temper tantrum. "Patrick!" I said, trying to calm him down. "He's not trying to hurt you!"

But Patrick was close to tears as he argued. For him his uncle's sudden appearance had set loose all of his own frustrations and anger about his own life and how it all had come to where we were now. "Damn you, at least tell me I've got a twin! Do you
have any idea how lonely it was being with you in that goddamned cabin! Not being able to contact normal people! Not being able to have real friends! Having your mother go away like that..."

Uncle Victor didn't flinch with the protests but let out a long sigh. "I was afraid of this," he told Patrick. "you still always see a downside and not an upside to your life."

"So?!"

"So you're still here, and now at the right moment you're exactly where you need to be," Patrick angrily sneered at him. "And where were you, then?"

"Cutting the keys that you'll need to finish this for everyone." Uncle flipped the "OFF" switch and the elevator started rising, and then began his own explanation.

"It's true," he told Patrick, "I did keep you in the dark about so much, and for that I am sorry. But if you contacted your Evangelion and what know what it really is, you probably know the real reasons why I did it this way." Patrick didn't say anything
at first, but then replied nearly at a whsiper. "It was Mom, wasn't it?"

Uncle nodded and continued. "It was her instructions to me to arrange it to make sure we could spring you when we needed to. You needed to be an outlier, someone who was from the outside of both NERV and SEELE, and who could think on their own." Uncle
then turned to me and asked. "Your EVA tried to contact you as well, didn't she?"

"That's what happened during that test when I blacked out, I think," I said to him, referring to the Ghost I saw in the entry plug so long ago. "Only I didn't realize it."

"Our original plan was that I'd switch the two of you," said Uncle. "I would keep Erin safe with me while Patrick took her place at NERV-2. Sir John facilitated this but unfortunately your father got wind of it just before the two of you contacted each
other. Erin, I'm very sorry," he told me. "I didn't intend for your father to hand you over to SEELE when that happened, and that messed up much of our original plan."

"What does General Sheffield have to do with this?" I asked.

"Sir John, my friend Piotr, and others with him were part of a group that has been watching SEELE for centuries. It was they that rescued your mother and I from SEELE some years ago."

"What?" exclaimed Patrick in surprise. "You were with SEELE?!"

"It can be explained later," answered Uncle, "but that's how I came to be here. Now we move to the final piece in the puzzle: why you're actually here. Your friends in NERV and the Alliance are likely to try and attack this fortress sometime soon. They've
already started moving units around and SEELE's sent a force to the GeoFront to try and destroy it and whatever Evangelion units are left."

Patrick went into a panic. "Oh, no! We have to warn them!"

Uncle Victor didn't seem particularly concerned. "NERV can take care of itself. What's more important is how you two are going to end this war," he said to the two of us. "EVA is now here, and you two are also here and free, and," he said with a slight
smile, "in sync with each other."

"So what is it that you want us to do?" I asked.

"This elevator is going to take you to the EVA cages that are here in this fortress," Uncle instructed. "You need to take the Evangelion yourself and go to the bottom of this fortress with her. There at the very bottom you'll see a old stone temple that
bridges a river of lava that's underneath all of this. In that temple will be your target: Chairman Kiel."

"You want us to kill the chairman using the EVA? " said Patrick with incredulity." You're a secret agent! Now that you're here, why don't you just shoot him?"

"It's not that simple. You'll find there's a lot more to the chairman than meets the eye. But," he told the twins. "I will be sure that he is there, and waiting. When the time comes, you will come for him."

"And after that?

Uncle Victor shrugged. "You're done."

The elevator took us upwards and towards the EVA cages, finally letting us out on a steel gantry that was close to both our Evangelion and the Mass Production series units. We silently ran up a flight of stairs and then into a small shack with metal walls
that was in a darkened corner of the scaffolding. Uncle went in first, and then I followed him in. Patrick lagged behind with Kaji to talk to him about something outside.

We both sat down on the floor as my uncle pulled out a couple of metal tool boxes he had hidden away earlier. He opened one of them, revealing a small control unit.

"What's that?" I asked him.

"I've got a part of this place rigged to blow," he explained to me. "This should buy you both enough time to get the EVA going and get downstairs." As he adjusted the control device I couldn't help but look at him with a newfound affection. I had felt
drawn to Victor when I first saw him for some unfathomable reason, but now I knew the reason and I was glad I did.

"Thank you. Again, I mean" I said, smiling at him.

Uncle shrugged, only showing a bit of emotion. "It's the least I could have done." Working quickly, he then changed the subject. "I heard you're pretty good with computers."

"I guess you can say that."

"SEELE put a software control lock on your EVA Unit's entry plug system. Do you think you can take care of that?"

"I'm sure I could. It can't be much tougher than NERV's software."

"Good girl. Once you do that the EVA's yours."

"What happens after we take care of the Chairman?" I asked, not really knowing what we should do after we finished our mission.

"Just get the hell out of here," replied Uncle.

"What about you?"

Uncle wagged a finger, admonishing me. "Don't you dare worry about me, just focus on your job. If you can't succeed in doing this nothing else will matter anyway."

"I see. No pressure then?" I joked with uncle and managed to get a small smile out of even him. He looked up at me and glanced for a long moment, then said "You really are like your mother."

"She never talked about you," I said in reply. Victor went back to fiddling with his control box, then placing it inside one of his uniform pockets. "We both had burdens to carry, and she had the worse of it by far. But we knew each other well, and that
it would come down to this. We twins always have that way of knowing how the other one works, so much more than other siblings would."

Twins, he had said. Was Mom also a twin? I now had so many questions to ask my uncle, so many things I wanted to know about Mom and about how they were kids and how their lives were. But events were moving lighting fast, and before I got the
chance to say anything else Patrick and Kaji the agent slipped inside of the control room.

"What the hell kept you?" growled Victor.

"Just catching up on current events," Patrick said as he sat down right next to me on the metal floor. "What happens now?"

"The two of us," Uncle motioned to Kaji and himself, "will need to take care of the security sentries around Unit 04, they usually have four guards posted at any given time. Meanwhile the twins will have to make their way to the EVA's gantry and get into
the entry plug on their own. It's too much distance for us to climb up and then help them once the guards at the lower level are out of the way. Unfortunately there will be at least two or three techs on that side of the gantry where the plug loader
is located."

"Is the entry plug still in the unit?" asked Patrick.

"The good news is that it's half-way, so you can just climb up and get inside. But you have to take care of the techs first." Omega then pulled out one metal box from a shelf and popped it open. From inside he pulled out a pistol and then screwed in a
silencer, then after checking it handed it to Patrick.

"You didn't forget how to use this, did you?" asked Victor. Patrick took the gun and looked right down the sights. "Yeah, I still know how to use it."

"Keep out of sight, then one shot for each tech, in the center," instructed Uncle. "Don't double-tap. The bullets are hollow-points, they'll do the rest."

This was something I hadn't yet learned about Patrick. "You know how to shoot?" I asked him. He just shrugged at me and gave me a slight smile. "Let's just say uncle gave me a well-rounded education."

"The techs may or may not be armed, but don't assume that if you don't see a gun that there isn't one they can get to." Uncle pointed a finger in the air towards Patrick. "Don't mess it up, lad. Your sister's life is on the line too here."

"Yeah, I got it."

Uncle then turned to Kaji. "We need to go now. I'll go first, you follow in another minute." As Kaji himself checked his own weapons to be sure he was prepared, Uncle Victor made his final words to us. "You'll have sixty seconds after we leave to start
making your way. Once you take out the technicians, get them out of sight and work fast to get into the EVA."

I worried about one thing in particular about this escape plan. "Won't they notice that we're activating once we're inside?"

"I've got that worked out too. You'll know when to get started." He checked his watch. "There's no more time left. Just remember, head down the main shaft after you've got the EVA activated and don't let anything distract you. Once you're in the chambers
you'll find the target sure enough. There's no time to give you a more detailed plan, the two of you will just have to think your way through anything else."

Patrick and I both looked at each other and nodded, we were as ready as we could ever be for something like this. "It's okay," he told his uncle. "We're good, I think."

"Then off we go," said he said to us, and started to get up off the floor. Patrick told him just as he was leaving "Thank you. I mean, I'm sorry about arguing from before."

Uncle was nonplussed and looked at him seriously "Lad, don't screw it up and you can thank me later if we're all still around." There was no goodbye from Uncle. Instead he then slipped out of the room before I could say or do anything else.

Just before following uncle out the door, agent Kaji spoke to both of us. "Once we're back in Japan I'll help sort things out with NERV for both of you. If you do encounter them for any reason before I speak to them, it's important that you don't engage
them, but try to avoid capture."

"Okay," I said together with Patrick, speaking in complete unison. Both of us looked at each other in surprise. We were on the same wavelength now. Kaji also seemed pleased and smiled at us.

"Very good," he said, "and Patrick I will work on the issue we discussed." Issue? What issue?

"Yes, thanks!" he said as he asked him one last favor, "Um, Mr. Kaji? If you see Rei and somehow I don't again please...please tell her I love her."

"Of course."

"And tell the others," Patrick said as he looked at me, "tell them I...we're so sorry about all of this."

"If you can help us deal with the chairman, I think they'll be much more forgiving. In any case, it's time to go. Ciao," he said, and then he too slipped outside and back into the dark fortress.

After the adults left there was long silence in the control room, and both Patrick and I worked up the courage to get up and get going. He looked at me and I smiled at him, glad to have him by my side. I was frightened to be sure, but also knew I wanted
to get back into the EVA and get this over with.

"You ready?" Patrick asked me. I took my brother's hand and held it tightly.

"Yup."

We waited another minute and then both snuck outside of the little shack, crouching downwards to keep in the shadows of the gantry. Patrick had his pistol ready in his hands, and I followed closely behind.

We hid behind another big power center while Patrick carefully peeked around the corner to see if anyone was between us and the EVA. Seeing someone, he rolled away quickly and looked at flashing two fingers. I nodded, gently squeezing his arm to let him
know I was ready for whatever came next. Patrick then closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then rolled back around the corner and came out shooting.

I heard one "plop" and then another a few second later as Patrick moved down the scaffolding. There was a clanging sound, then some voice in the background followed by a bunch of other "plops" and another clanging sound, and then finally silence. Still
scared but knowing I needed to do it, I leaned around the corner to take a look and saw Patrick standing over a man's body. There were two others also on the floor of the gantry, both wearing SEELE technician uniforms.

With the coast clear, I ran over to where Patrick was now standing, whispering to him to let him know I was coming so I wouldn't get shot by accident. He swiveled over in surprise and then quickly put the gun down, relieved to see me come out and towards
him. Seeing the three dead bodies on the gantry floor I was surprised at just how well I handled it, not to mention just how skilled Patrick was at taking care of them. I had always thought that Vance was the better hunter, but perhaps not.

"Your uncle taught you how to shoot like that?"

Patrick just shrugged in response, shaken from the action but still managing to keep himself calm. "Actually, I do tactical training at NERV every week. I just never thought I'd have to do this outside of the EVA." He looked around and saw the
bodies. "We'd better cover up everything."

The two of us found black tarps and threw them over two of the bodies, then Patrick worked on trying to cover up the third body (who was enormously fat) while I looked for our plug suits. There was a storage rack close by the entry plug and on it I spotted
two orange-and-black colored duffel bags that I quickly pulled out and lowered to the floor.

After covering up the last of the bodies, Patrick hopped over to where I was as he tried to hurry me along. "Don't bother with those," he said as he looked at the plug suit containers. "You really don't need the suits to pilot."

I tugged at my ugly and smelly prison uniform. "There's no way that I'm going to get drenched in LCL wearing this garbage." Pointing to a corner of the gantry that had a large container next to the railing, I told him "I can change over there."

Reluctantly Patrick agreed on the suits as I carefully picked out my personal one. "They made a plug suit for you?"

"They wanted to make it black," I said as I pulled my suit out of the bag while kicking his bag over to him. "But I insisted on my own colors." I batted my eyelashes at him. "Do you, um, mind turning around?"

My brother did as he was told and I scooted over to the corner with the storage and got out of view. Once hidden I practically ripped off the prison garb, sliding down my panties and then stepping into the plug suit." I could hear Patrick's voice from
behind me.

"If we're twins then it's not like the first time I've ever seen you naked, you know?"

Was that idiot looking at me? I quickly swiveled around, just to check. Behind me was Patrick's backside. He wasn't facing me but I could see all of him sans clothing as he got into his own plugsuit. I only glanced for a second but I had to admit he looked
pretty built for a guy his age. Nice butt, too. "Shut up!" I told him, nearly giggling. I turned back around and within a few more seconds we got our suits fully on and pressurized. I felt the plugsuit hug me snugly, fitting just the way it should
in all the right places. "Ready?" Patrick asked.

"You can turn around now," I told him and we both did our big reveal. For a couple of seconds we stood admiring the other as we wore our plug suits. Patrick smiled at me broadly, "Looking good!"

"Yeah," I said with a sheepish grin, feeling the suit wrapped around me. For the first time in a long while I was finally feeling things were the way they needed to be. "I kind of missed it actually," I looked up again at Patrick and noticed something,
his face seemed much more pale than before and he was clearly uncomfortable about something. I walked up to him, placing my hand against his face. "Are you okay?"

He was reluctant to answer at first. "Um, maybe I'm still a little shaken from the shootout. We should get going." Patrick then turned around and went to the entry plug, lifting open the lock lever and spinning it to get the doorway open. The entry plug
door swung wide and I jumped inside. Patrick then set his pistol on the ground outside and then followed me in, closing the door behind us.

The entry plug presented a dilemma for the two of us: how do two pilots use just one seat? Patrick and I haggled until we worked out that because I was smaller I'd sit in front while he'd be just behind me. As the plug seat was only so big we were fairly
cozy, being pressed against each other as we settled in.

I grabbed one of the hand actuators and flipped up the top, revealing a keypad. Then quickly I started coding in numbers while I watched the status display in front of us.

"What are you doing?" asked Patrick.

"While you and Kaji were talking your uncle told me they might have a security lock on the EVA's controls," I said. "This is a way to get around that."

"You're hacking the EVA?"

I giggled just a little. "Oh, please. The term is not 'hacking', it's 'cracking' and I'm not really cracking the code but just activating our own little shield program here. " It took me a few more lines of instructions and then I had Dad's security program
turned back on all the way. The entry plug screen displayed in large text LOCKOUT ACTIVATED SLAVE CONTROL DEFEAT. That felt rather good.

"There, that should avoid any interruptions." I then explained it further to my baffled co-pilot. "Dad put a hidden script in the EVA control OS to prevent anyone from getting access to it other than the pilot."

Patrick just shrugged. "Could have used that a few months ago. You didn't tell me you were a coder."

I gave him a half smile. If there was ever a good side to Dad it was that other special ability that I had gained from him. "I learned from the best."

We silently waited inside the entry plug for something else to happen, carefully watching the outside of the EVA through the monitor when suddenly we noticed that the lights and power went out all around the Evangelion cages. Uncle's plan was now in motion.

"That's our cue!" Said Patrick as he grabbed for the actuators at the same time I did. He shouted "Unit 04 Emergency activation protocol!" And suddenly the video display in front of us went alive with startup sequence graphics, now all moving in fast
forward.

Below us the LCL rose up rapidly, and the two of us collectively took a deep breath then blew out all of that air before taking in the LCL. I had always hated dealing with LCL as a pilot, but now I didn't mind it quite so much. I was a part of the EVA,
and she was a part of me again.

It only took a few more seconds for us to get Unit 04 fully activated, and just as we did so Patrick pulled down on the left actuator at the same time I pushed forward on the right one. The EVA did a clumsy twist and nearly fell out of the cage until
I pulled things together. I guess Patrick and I weren't as nearly in sync with each other as I had thought.

"Do you even have any idea where you're going?" I asked him in an annoyed tone.

"Sure, it's down the main shaft over here, right?"

"You can't get there directly, you have to go around the cages first!"

Patrick didn't relinquish control however, and fought me by pushing when I was pulling. "Just let me pilot, okay?" He told me. "I've been doing this for the last three months and I'm pretty good by now."

"Yes, and I've spent much of that time wondering aroudn this place. I know where everything is better than you do!"

"Look, I've got a bunch of kills on the Harpies. You should at least let me take the lead."

"She was mine before she was yours," I argued. "So my sync is bound to be better than yours!"

Seeing that twin brother or no I wasn't going to just give up piloting the EVA when I knew what I was doing, Patrick's anger boiled up until he managed to get it under control. "Alright, alright! We'll do it this way: you move, I'll fight. Deal?"

That works. "Deal!" Patrick then let go of the actuator on the left and I grabbed it, pulling both towards me and moving the EVA out of the cages and in the right direction. "Hang on! We're moving out!"

I spent a minute carefully maneuvering our unit around the cages and trying to sneak towards the outside. We weren't the only EVAs moving either, as the power outage had sparked a general alert at SEELE-2 and within a few moments most of the other Mass
Production units were also on the move. This was good for us, as we could maintain cover as we blended in with the other giants while they moved around.

There was a strong vibration that felt like an earthquake and even the red-tinted emergency lighting went out for a few seconds. "What was that?" I asked reflexively.

"Looks like the party's getting started," quipped Patrick from behind me. "I think the Alliance is bombing this place."

As the rest of the Harpies made for the exits, we stepped around the gantries and jogged over to the main shaft of SEELE-2, a gaping hole about half a kilometer wide that let down to the very bottom levels of the base. It was at the bottom of this shaft
that we had been told earlier by Uncle Victor where the Chairman would eventually be found. Getting down would be tricky, the walls of the shaft were smooth and we'd be sliding in a nearly vertical position several thousand feet, all of the way down
the mountain and into the volcanic furnaces below.

Just as I was about to make the plunge, Patrick put his hand on my shoulder. "Um, sister dear?"

"What?"

"On the way down, we're going to need to make a slight detour."

A few minutes later we found ourselves sliding down the central shaft tunnel as I fought to break our speed while we plunged downward. On the way down Patrick had explained why he had been late to show up at the EVA cages, as Kaji had asked him if we
wouldn't mind trying to free the captured NERV pilot Shinji Ikari on the way to meeting Chairman Keel.

I was really worried about this, as Uncle made it clear to me that we needed to find the chairman where he'd said he'd go to if the mountain was attacked. But Patrick was clearly concerned about his friend, and in a way having Shinji and Unit 01 get captured
was sort of both our faults. So grudgingly I went along with the detour, and landed us where Kaji had instructed Patrick to look for Unit 01, over a kilometer down below the fortress's bottom level.

The last hundred feet down the main shaft was free-fall, and I quickly threw our weight forward so that Unit 04 would land softly in a rolling somersault. It didn't go that soft as we were thrown together hard against the seat as the EVA hit the ground.
Fortunately I was still able to get us back on our feet.

Where we had ended up was not any place I had explored previously during my stay at SEELE-2. We were now standing in an underground cavern. There were a few red and green LED lights spread all around, but on the far side of the cavern was a deep red glow
with smoke rising above it: it was the volcano underneath of the mountain. Part of the way to the cavern's edge was a giant crucifix, with an Evangelion nailed to it. There was a large Lance of Longinus plunged part of the way into the EVA's abdomen.
The whole thing was surreally scary.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" I again asked Patrick.

"I can't just leave Shinji like this," Patrick voice came from behind me. "Besides, if there's really an attack on this place they're going to need all the help we can get. Believe me if we can get them up and running, it's going to really even the odds."

"He's that good?"

"Yes. If you don't believe me just ask all the Angels that he killed."

As we moved closer to the edge of the cavern the heat from the lava flow intensified, and even in the entry plug we could feel the temperature rise sharply. Within a minute we reached EVA-01 and I hit the exterior lights on our own unit. As we looked
at the captured Evangelion I noticed that it was covered in strange, hexagonal markings all over it's body. It wasn't moving.

"What happened to it? There's some sort of grid all over the surface."

Patrick studied the video and was at a loss for what had happened to Unit 01. "I don't know what that is! EVA can do pretty weird things sometimes."

Back to business. "Okay, we're here. What do we do now?"

"First let's get him off that cross." Patrick didn't wait for me and just grabbed the actuators himself, moving our EVA to try and start freeing up the unit by lifting up the cross first from the ground. I could see what Patrick had in mind and then quickly
put my hands together with his, combining our mental energies to push over the massive weight of the steel crucifix. After some strenuous effort we managed to push the thing onto the cavern floor.

From there we started working on getting the EVA off the cross, working on the nails in the hands and feet first. Fortunately we still had the Progressive Knife and used that to dig out each of the nails. As we did so there was still no sign of life from
Unit 01, nor any word from the pilot despite Patrick calling to him several times.

After the four nails the Lance of Longinus was harder to take out, as it had been plunged deep inside Unit 01's abdomen. It took us several minutes to slowly work the lance out of the wound, as we carefully tugged and tried to lift it out. It was getting
tiring doing this, and I started to worry we'd miss our chance with the Chairman, but Patrick was dead determined to free his friend so I didn't bother protesting and just tried to help as much as I could.

The Lance came loose after several more minutes of effort, and we checked the EVA Unit for any response or sign that it was still active. It just laid there however, LCL slowly leaking out of its wounds. Patrick was about to call over to the pilot again
when we heard loud noises to our left. Swiveling around we saw another two Evangelion units, not Mass Production types but instead one that was Red and another Blue. These were from NERV, and they were not happy to see us at all.

The red unit suddenly drew a knife as her pilot screamed over the audio channel. "Hey you asshole! Get away from him!"

Crap. "I guess this really doesn't look very good, does it?" I asked Patrick. A second later a video channel popped up on our display. It was from the red-haired Asuka Langley, pilot of Unit 02.

"You son of a bitch!" growled Asuka as she spoke to Patrick. "You fucking betrayed us!"

Patrick had known these two girls for months and did his best to try and calm things down. "Asuka, this is not what you think it is!" he tried to explain. "We just set him free, that's all."

"Bullshit! You think you can sweet talk me like you do with the First? Kensuke's DEAD because of you two!" she shouted.

A second video display then appeared. It was Rei, and for the first time I was now looking directly at the blue-haired girl I had only seen in my visions. Her face seemed emotionless as her red eyes stared directly at Patrick though the video channel.
Despite her apparent coldness, Patrick was actually happy to see her.

"Rei!" he gleefully called out, hoping for a good response. He didn't get it.

"Forri-kun," she replied in a deadpan, monotone voice. "Surrender your unit now and we will not harm you." I looked at the video monitor and saw that Unit 07, Rei's unit, was pointing a Pallet Gun right at us at nearly point-blank range.

Patrick keyed off the audio, allowing us to talk and figure out what was next. "What do we do?" I asked him. "If we give up now we'll miss our chance."

"I know it," said Patrick. I could see the strain on his face as it pained him to work up a way to get out of this. He sighed deeply and gripped the actuators tight when he came up with something. "Erin?"

"What?"

"Can you trust me?"

Well, those were famous last words. "Oh, shit!" I said "What are you gonna do?"

"There's only one real way out of this. Whatever you do don't put up the AT Field."

"What?! Patrick!" That didn't sound good at all, but he took control over the EVA and brought up the Lance that was in our hands. He spoke to Rei, his voice almost pleading in its tone.

"Rei? Do you remember when we talked about Romeo and Juliet? About how stupid they were for not reading each others' minds?" Rei didn't reply back, but looked at him curiously.

"Well," Patrick said as he lifted the Lance and cocked it behind our EVA's head. "READ THIS!"

Before I could do anything Patrick screamed and thrusted the spear right towards Unit 07, the Lance just missing the EVA's head as it shot towards the back end of the underground cavern. The response from Unit 07 was quick, as three blasts hit us right
in the chest. I could feel the burning in my heart as the pain the EVA felt relayed back to us. The force of the hit pushed us backwards and off the cliff side, and then into the cavern below.

Thanks for checking into another installment, one that took a bit to get going as it's been nearly two months since my last chapter update. Life for me is crazy as usual, and with visiting relatives, sick dogs, and hectic work that at least is paying well, there hasn't been a heck of a lot of time to really write.

If you've read The Awakening already much of what's here is already known to you, but now we see it from Erin's perspective. She's realized that she's not quite so alone in the world as she had once thought and that's going to have an impact on her beyond just getting out of their mess with SEELE.

We're still on target to get to twenty chapters, probably by October at the rate I'm going. I've got plans on a new story beyond that that will continue Blue Rose, but where and when is still being worked on. Expect there will be another story about the same length as this one within 2018.

Please stay tuned and check out the Facebook page for The Blue Rose frequently, as I do try to update from my vast collection of EVA images. Thanks!