Chapter 40: The Wolves

Chapter 40:
The Wolves

 

“I SENSE ANIMALS,” Rei Trois said. “A pack of animals, running around.”

“Really? Where?” Shinji expanded Super Eva’s eyesight far beyond the visual spectrum, and the black smoke appeared bright with heat. Something leaped out. It wasn’t a pack of animals but one Eva-sized beast.

“Wh-what is that thing?!”

Shinji raised his swords to guard himself, but Kesara pulled on his arm and swung at the beast-like giant.

“Wha?”

Rei Trois was accessing the Q.R. Signum scale, Super Eva’s current power source. Though she touched Armaros’ scale only with her mind, she felt the repulsive black hands physically reaching out from the scale and through her chest to grip the swords with Super Eva’s fingers.

The right arm swung Kesara wildly. The blade struck the beast above its shoulder, and its shield deflected the blow.

The sword recoiled, and the Eva beast leaped sideways, twisting its body to land with all four legs firmly on the ground. Its claws dug into the blasted soil.

Shinji got his first good look at the creature.

“That thing has a Q.R. Signum! Could it be a new kind of Angel Carrier?”

“Wait, Ikari-kun!” Trois said. “The AI is matching the insignias and code markings with U.S. military standards. Do you remember Armaros’ message? He said something about beasts.”

The song of Instrumentality cannot be woven into those who have degenerated into beasts.

Shinji and Trois had heard the black giant’s message just before they’d emerged from the tunnel network.

“Are you telling me this is an American Eva? And it’s powered by a Q.R. Signum, like Heurtebise? No one said anything about that…”

“Just wait,” Trois said. “See what it does next.”

“I’d like to, but—agh! The swords are swinging themselves again!” Shinji switched on his comms channel. “Transmission. This is Nerv Japan Eva-01 SE.”

On the secondary display, an orange window popped open and read: TRANSMISSION ERROR.

“Damn it! I can’t pick up the control signal to talk to whoever’s in that thing. Maybe we can try sending an unencrypted message over the civilian call frequency.”

“Don’t bother,” Trois said. “There are over eight thousand signals fighting to get through right now. Every frequency is saturated.”

Trois was keeping her pain to herself. She looked at Shinji’s back. His muscles were tensed, and his body shook as he tried to keep the swords from attacking.

“Super Eva is your body,” she said. “Why can’t you control it?”

“It’s like that old party game… What’s it called? Helping Hands? It feels like that.”

Kesara and Basara were trying to strike the same beast the voice had denounced.

When he’d confronted the mutant Eva-0.0 on the Apple’s Core, the same invisible force had moved his swords—or rather, had moved Super Eva’s arms.

According to Maya, Shinji wasn’t merely an Eva pilot now. Super Eva existed in a state of uncertainty, and the Eva and Shinji formed one complete entity. It didn’t seem possible that another being could interpose its will between them.

It’s almost like there’s another me.

In the tunnels, Asuka had told him, “You didn’t bring me here, Shinji! It wasn’t you!”

And then Shinji had followed Super Eva’s heartbeat and emerged on this battlefield, where Trois conveyed a new message: “My name is Shinji.”

 

A wide hole opened in the smoke, and a white, staff-like weapon thrust toward the U.S. Eva. Thanks to Super Eva’s previous attack, the Eva beast was already on guard and had managed to roll sideways out of the weapon’s path. The staff impaled itself in the ground, which exploded, forming a crater wide enough that Super Eva had to retreat to keep his footing.

Shinji didn’t even notice when two other staves similarly impaled themselves.

A fourth came swinging down to the beast’s new position. The U.S. Eva sprang backward, out of the way—but when the beast tried to advance again, it ran headfirst into an invisible wall. Shimmering colors, like on the membrane of a soap bubble, swirled across the wall’s surface.

Super Eva and the U.S. Eva had been trapped in a four-walled space, with each staff at one corner.

Shinji looked up, searching for a way out. The four walls converged at a point far overhead. He struck one of the walls with his sword, but the weapon bounced off with a loud clang.

“They trapped that beast,” Shinji said, “but now we’re caught in here with it!”

A voice came down from above. <<No, it was meant for you as well.>>

Outside the invisible pyramid, four pairs of wings beat away the smoke of battle and the steam of heated permafrost.

Shinji gasped as four Angel Carriers leaped into view.

The white giants circled the pyramid once, and then each placed a hand against one of the four walls. The carriers slowly pushed their way through the barrier, which rippled around them like the surface of a pond.

“They’re trapping us in here where they can gang up on us!”

But that wasn’t all.

“Ikari, look!” Trois said.

Inside the barriers, the carriers’ arms—and then their bodies—were twice, maybe even three times as large as they had been on the other side. Like light refracting through water, the carriers’ bodies grew as they passed through the walls.

“Oh, come on!” Shinji cried. This was absurd.

The carriers grew nearly as large as Armaros himself. Once fully inside, each supersized giant stood with its back to one of the four walls, where they stared down at Super Eva and the Eva beast, who’d both retreated to the middle.

“Trois, their Q.R. Signums…”

The Angel Carriers’ scales had grown proportionally with the carriers themselves, but that wasn’t their only change. Before, dark-red patterns had glowed softly across the surface of the quantum resonance plates, but now those patterns were bright and shining. Shinji could tell with one glance that far more energy was pouring into those scales.

“I see it,” Trois said. “Maybe this space allows the Q.R. Signums to receive an oversupply of Armaros’ energy. That could be why the carriers got so big.”

Shinji renewed his grip on the swords—which still wanted to turn toward the U.S. Eva—and pointed them at one of the Angel Carriers.

Cracks of all shapes and sizes had formed on the carriers’ armor, and blood oozed out through them.

“Careful,” he said. “It looks like not even the Angel Carriers can conduct that much of Armaros’ energy without paying a price. What if they’re like suicide bombers?”

The voice returned.

“Human… For the crime of taking non-human form—”

This time, the words weren’t coming from Trois’ lips but from Shinji’s. He reflexively clasped his hand over his mouth.

“I-I didn’t mean to say that!”

Was Armaros speaking through him as he had through the Ayanamis?

Another voice spoke inside the plug. It sounded like a little girl. The voice was lilting, its words clear.

<<Don’t worry about us.>>

“Who is that?”

He’d heard Mari’s voice—impossibly—not through a radio signal but as if she were present.

Well, it was hard to say what was impossible in this space.

It was as if the inside of the barrier conducted everything better—not just Armaros’ energy.

 

A terrible, oppressive feeling came over Shinji as the gigantic Angel Carriers stared down at him from every side. They projected a message, which came out through Shinji’s lips once more.

“Human child… Take dominion over the wild animals of the earth.”

Shinji’s eyes widened. He knew what was going to happen next. He could feel it in his body.

Realizing that he’d been unwittingly handed the role of executioner, he protested, “You’re telling me to do it?!”

The four Angel Carriers held up their hands as if to punctuate the voice’s message.

“You, in the American Eva!” Shinji shouted. “Keep away from me!”

And then Super Eva was charging toward the beast.

Kesara and Basara filled with a savage power, glimmering with anticipation.

As the immense, unstoppable power flowed through Trois, she cried out, “Ikari-kun!”

Super Eva was moving, but not by Shinji’s will.

“It’s me,” he said, “but it’s not me!”