Chapter 7: Falsehood

Chapter 7:
Falsehood

 

NOT ALL OF THE RECOVERY TEAM’S aircraft were headed to Japan. One plane, bearing the security intelligence division, peeled off from the formation after takeoff, without announcing their destination. They returned to where they’d left—North Africa, post-earthquake—to search for Ayanami Rei Trois, who’d gone missing there.

Only Misato, Toji, and a select few other personnel knew that she’d walked away alone soon after Misato had come back. Later, Misato happened to come across Rei Quatre, who was in a near-catatonic state. For now, the commander was pretending she was Trois and had placed her in the cargo plane’s medical bay.

Why had Misato done this? In order to bring Super Eva home.

Misato reckoned that if Shinji knew Trois had gone missing, he would have demanded to search for her until the bitter end and would have refused to evacuate.

But unlike Shinji, Toji was responsible for everyone under his command. He was, of course, concerned for Rei Trois, but the people on the rescue team had entrusted their lives to him, and it was clear now that he’d made the right call. Had he continued the search operations and not ordered the evacuation, everyone on the ground would have been buried under the collapsing mountains.

Shortly after takeoff, the departing personnel had looked down to see the great earthquake level the mountains and kick up giant dust clouds. While most of them had let out sighs of profound relief, Toji had shuddered with dread as he imagined what would have happened had he acted differently.

 

Managing to stay in flight, mostly thanks to Crimson A1, Shinji caught a glimpse of a figure through a window of the giant cargo plane overhead.

“Ayanami?”

He zoomed in his view without conscious effort. The interior of the plane was dark, but Super Eva’s vision automatically compensated and increased its photosensitivity. The girl’s features became more distinct. Shinji had been right. It was Ayanami.

Unaware that she wasn’t Trois, Shinji said softly, “Ayanami… Trois, you offered to come with me, and I put you through hell.”

Then he gasped.

A door near the window blew out in a cloud of smoke. The plane’s safety systems forced open the hatch, and the difference in pressure threw Ayanami’s body out into the sky where she blew about like a scrap of cloth.

 

“Wh-why the hell…?!”

Moving quickly, Shinji initiated the entry plug release sequence.

He partially ejected Unit One’s entry plug and opened the hatch. The LCL hadn’t had time to fully drain, and it sprayed out in a fine mist. The low temperature instantly crystallized the liquid, creating a white cloud that trailed after the Eva.

“CIC!” Shinji shouted into his headset. “This is an emergency! Ayanami is—”

But the nearly five-hundred-kilometer-per-hour wind swallowed his voice.

As Ayanami fell toward him, Shinji reshaped his unsteady A.T. Field in an attempt to catch her and pull her into the plug. He forgot to focus on his flight, and Super Eva’s hands slipped out of Asuka-Eva’s grasp. Now he and Super Eva, like Ayanami, were in free fall.

The low-temperature, low-pressure atmosphere squeezed the air from Shinji’s lungs, and he began to feel faint. But even as his consciousness faded, he managed to catch Ayanami by the arm and pull her into the plug. The pair collapsed into the pilot’s seat.

“Seal…seal the hatch,” Shinji commanded his Eva’s systems. “Commence entry sequence.”

Ever since Super Eva had been given a heart, Shinji hadn’t needed to go through the entry sequence. He and the Eva were one entity. But the legacy commands remained in the system, and the plug’s environment rapidly stabilized from the emergency ejection. The plug filled with LCL—warmer than usual—and Shinji filled his lungs, letting out a deep breath.

His lungs thawed—expanding, contracting, and hurting like hell.

That was close, Shinji thought.

He realized he still had his arms around Ayanami. She was dressed in orange coveralls and work clothes. Flustered, he sat her upright on his knees.

“What the hell were you thinking, Trois?!” Shinji yelled. “What if you’d hit something when you were getting sucked out of the plane? What if you’d blacked out from the pressure change? Do you have any idea how many different ways you could’ve gotten killed with that stunt?”

But something wasn’t right with Ayanami—specifically, her movements.

She gave the impression of a broken puppet, her red eyes fixed on a point somewhere off in the distance.

Oh, no. She must have hit her head.

“Ayanami! Breathe in the LCL. Breathe it in deep!”

Her eyes focused on him. Super Eva was still falling toward the Earth’s surface. Ayanami floated, weightless inside the plug. Behind her, an array of alert windows popped up in rapid succession. Their red glow accentuated the outline of her face.

One of the windows reported a system error: PILOT THOUGHT-PATTERN REFERENCE INDISTINCT. The entry plug was picking up Ayanami’s thoughts.

Damn!

In his haste, Shinji had brought someone else inside Super Eva without any thought-shielding equipment. In the old Eva-01, the additional presence would have resulted in a decreased field-generating capability and impaired command recognition, but with Super Eva…well, no one had ever tried it before..

Ayanami, her eyes still locked on Shinji, spoke softly.

“Take Ikari-kun—and take me—someplace far away. The farthest place.”

 

Shinji felt a sharp knot in his chest. He grunted in pain and clutched the front of his plugsuit.

Intuitively, he knew why. The Q.R. Signum implanted in his other chest—Super Eva’s chest—had responded to Ayanami’s call. The girl’s words were an incantation directed at Armaros’ black scale, the source of Super Eva’s power.

“If Ikari-kun won’t set this world free, and if I can’t escape…then at least take us to the edge of the Earth!”

Shinji was clutching his chest so tightly his fingers had nearly dug between his ribs. “You’re…Quatre?!” he realized. “But how?”

Super Eva continued to fall toward the Earth—one arm extended, the other trailing limply behind.

If the heavily armored, four-thousand-ton Eva continued falling unchecked, the giant’s impact would crater the Earth. But the Indian subcontinent was already sliding north, violently pushing the mighty Himalayas up and slipping under the Eurasian plate. Any mark Super Eva left would pale in comparison.

 

The giant-transport plane was in an uproar.

A shrill alarm announced the release of the outer door and awoke the off-duty personnel in their sleeping bags, which they now scrambled out of. The primary compartments maintained normal operating pressure, but the UN pilots followed protocol and immediately shed altitude. The massive plane’s wings pushed through the clouds, and everything inside began to rattle and shake.

“Stop the low-pressure alarm!” Misato shouted up to the cockpit. “Is Super Eva all right?”

The expelled door and any other objects that had been sucked out might have hit it.

She looked to the external camera feed where Super Eva plummeted toward the Deccan Plateau—and then, like magic, was swallowed into the ground.

“He’s gone,” Misato said. “No emissions detected.”

One explanation came readily to mind.

Again and again, they’d fought enemies with the Q.R. Signum’s ability to teleport into and out of battle. Had Super Eva been contaminated, like Unit Quatre, and joined the enemy?

Misato pressed the button on the intercom by her seat. “Medical bay, is Quatre there?”

But she already knew the answer.