Chapter 28: Lost on the Way Home

Chapter 28:
Lost on the Way Home

 

AS SHINJI AND TROIS raced through the darkness, Trois whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Shinji looked over his shoulder at her. She was sitting in the plug seat, close enough that he could almost feel her breath. Yet even from this distance, he couldn’t read her expression.

“You don’t have to apologize. We’ll keep trying as many times as it takes.”

What else could he say?

After serval attempts, Super Eva had finally broken back in to the tunnel network. But now they couldn’t find their destination. They were lost on the highway.

Inside Super Eva’s plug, Shinji and Ayanami divided roles the same as he had with Quatre. Shinji piloted the Eva, while Trois controlled the Q.R. Signum that acted as his power plant.

Why isn’t this working? Shinji wondered.

When Trois had piloted Eva-0.0, she’d lost sight of who she was. She’d traveled these tunnels many times, thoughtlessly following Seele/Kaji’s commands. But now that her thoughts were clear, she struggled. She’d found a reason to live, and the Q.R. Signum’s ever-encroaching darkness terrified her.

Unable to find an exit, Super Eva drifted at tremendous speed through the massive travel network that connected all the vast lands the Instrumentality Project had created.

Seele/Kaji had said that the Apple’s Core, the moon, and the Earth all constituted one land, no matter the distance separating them, while Kaworu had called this tunnel network the space below the stage, where the stagehands scurried to and fro. Super Eva felt no sense of movement within this dark space but was aware of the countless paths flowing past in rapid succession.

Why can’t we exit to normal space?

Shinji could think of two possible reasons.

First, Seele/Kaji might have followed through on his threat to cut them off and was somehow preventing them from opening an exit portal.

But during the fight with the Victors in these tunnels, Trois had felt that anyone who entered this space couldn’t be blocked from leaving, otherwise, the Victors would have trapped Super Eva here. Besides, however Kaji blustered about cutting off the only route to the Apple’s Core, Shinji could sense that Super Eva had returned from that long, lonely tunnel to the main network.

It was probably an empty threat. I’m not even sure Kaji-san has the power to do such a thing.

The second possibility was that Trois wasn’t letting the Q.R. Signum sink as deeply into her as Quatre had and that she didn’t possess full control over the abilities the scale could grant her.

But it’s not like I can just come out and say, “Hey, Trois, let the darkness consume you a little more.”

Every time Shinji drew power from the Q.R. Signum, he could feel the darkness trying to eat him away. Right now, Trois was taking on the majority of the burden. She didn’t complain, and Shinji couldn’t read her expression, but she must have been hurting.

The skirt of her black chiffon dress swayed in the LCL.

Shinji didn’t know why, but Trois was wearing the same minidress Quatre had taken from her room. The dress must have stayed with the mutant Eva-0.0 this whole time.

Whatever the particulars, Trois wasn’t wearing any mental shielding gear while she accompanied Shinji in the Eva—which was also his body. But he was experiencing no cross-contamination of thought.

Which meant that her presence was weaker than Quatre’s had been, though both were Ayanamis.

Shinji thought back to the promise he’d blurted out in the heat of the moment. I’ll find Trois’ color. But…can I do that? I can’t even get my own crap together.

 

Shinji thought he sensed something cut across Super Eva’s path through the otherworldly space—something very familiar.

Something red.

“Asuka?!” Shinji reflexively called out, startling Rei Trois.

“Crimson A1 is here in the tunnels?” Trois asked. “But Quatre thought Asuka went straight back to Hakone from Africa.”

“She did. But a lot of time passed while we took our little tour of Eden. I wouldn’t be surprised if something’s happened on the Earth side.”

Shinji could have said he might have been mistaken about Asuka’s presence here, but he was certain he’d been right.

His eyes stared at a single point on the virtual display. From behind him, Trois realized his consciousness was shifting out of the entry plug.

“Stay here,” Trois said, sounding oddly peevish.

“Why?” Shinji asked.

But Trois didn’t know the answer herself. “Never mind,” she said, and that was the end of it.

She told herself her emotional reaction had nothing to do with their current situation, but it wasn’t like she’d never felt that way before. In fact, she’d felt a similar way when she’d lost Gendo.

Having obtained a target, Super Eva began pursuing the red presence.

In this mysterious space, which provided no sense of speed or distance, the Eva changed course like a train switching rails.