Chapter 48: Rumble in the Pacific

Chapter 48:
Rumble in the Pacific

 

SHINJI HAD SUCCEEDED in shifting the impact point. The landmass landed 1,200 kilometers southeast from where the Izu Peninsula had once been, the former location of the Ogasawara Islands. Due to the Longinus Ring’s shrinking of the Earth, the islands were now located somewhere near the South China Sea.

There was a flash of light over the ocean, as intense as the birth of a new sun. The shock waves it produced burned the molecules in the air, painting the sky bright red. A pandemonium of heat, light, wind, waves, and electricity propagated outward from its center.

Hakone and Tokyo-3 were a thousand kilometers from the epicenter, and they were still hit with three earthquakes that day. Even if the aforementioned phenomenon had not produced any shock waves, Yomotsu Hirasaka hitting the water would definitely have shifted some tectonic plates. The settling of the landmass alone was probably responsible for the third quake.

Back in old Central Dogma, the linear rails set up for the experiment had fallen apart. The Carrier’s mace was out of alignment, and its power field had disappeared.

“Maya-san, we have to get out of here!”

“Agreed! All personnel, clear out! What’s happening on the outside…?”

 

The rumbling over the Pacific Ocean didn’t stop. In fact, it lasted for several hours.

Night had fallen by the time Toji reached the surface, and the wind blew like a typhoon over the outer rim of the Hakone caldera. The clouds protecting Tokyo-3 had been chased away by the lightning bolts snaking through the sky. The bolts were colorful, possibly due to electric anomalies producing something like an aurora borealis. Sometimes, the clouds themselves even flashed, perhaps as small fragments of the moon fell through them.

“It’s like natural disasters are having a party, and everyone’s invited,” Misato said, although one guest was suspiciously absent.

No matter how slowly it moved, a two-hundred-kilometer landmass like Yomotsu Hirasaka would produce tsunamis upon landing in the Pacific Ocean. There was no avoiding the water that thing would displace. And yet, no tidal waves had been observed thus far.

Six’s Eva flew over the caldera like it had been blown there by the violent air currents. The Eva-00 Type-F Allegorica stopped outside the dome of the sarcophagus, scraping the hard tektite concrete to break its landing. In the end, its damaged hind legs gave out, and it tumbled to a stop.

Meanwhile, Trois’ Eva had gone missing. Contacting her was out of the question, since all the communication lines were in a state of chaos. The newly installed satellites and stratospheric aircraft had either been knocked off course or had their lasers damaged. The guide beacons couldn’t be retrieved to be reset. There was no way of looking for Trois, even if she were still alive.

 

The next morning, Hakone command received an emergency transmission amid the communications chaos. It turned out that Eva-0.0 had been shooting down larger pieces of debris that were falling to the Earth. But Trois had decided it was time for her to land. She was running low on fuel, and Mari had awakened.

Toji had stayed awake all night in the command center and was thinking a little bit of sun would do his mind some good. He was about to step outside when security stopped him. They told him it was dangerous to leave because parts of the ozone layer had been blown away.

“Those clouds are moving fast,” Toji said. They were as black as they were thick, but from the breaks between them, he could see they were covering a clear blue sky. In fact, the clouds ended abruptly to the southeast.

Toji watched as a vertical line seemed to split the heavens.

“What the hell is that?!”

Above the point of Yomotsu Hirasaka’s impact, which was still covered in thick clouds, he noticed a pillar extending into the sky. He couldn’t see its apex.

Toji stumbled back to the command center. He ordered Trois to do a spectral analysis on the phenomenon before she made her landing.

Asuka’s voice shot through his ear. <<We were staring at the thing last night, genius! It goes up and up, and the top just disappears, like an optical illusion! Now let us land, damn it! I’m hungry!>>

<<Waaaah!>>

Asuka’s angry complaints were accompanied by the sound of a little girl crying. Mari’s wailing echoed throughout the command center, and the people there who knew about her past would never have believed that she was now clinging to Asuka like a frightened child.

Mari had shared her consciousness with the countless animals whose DNA had been spliced into her. Now they were gone, and she was alone. Her researchers would one day learn that this was the first time she’d ever felt loneliness and anxiety. The spatial lens had ripped her “family” out of her DNA, much like how it had ripped the organic data out of Asuka.

<<Waaaaaah!>>

“Someone’s cranky… Can you share your findings with us, Trois?”

Rei Trois began reading their observation data. <<Makeup is mostly water… Sodium chloride, magnesium chloride, magnesium sulphate…>>

“It’s seawater…” Hyuga muttered from the middle deck.

It’s a pillar of seawater stretching into space? That’s just great. But what’s causing it? Could be that spatial lens again, I suppose. It already did some weird things with the tide.

Toji furled his eyebrows, his expression growing more grim.

“Trois, Asuka. Sorry about this, but you’re going to have to head to the spatial lens to see if anything’s happened to it. That might be the cause of the pillar.”

<<Oh, come on!>>

“You might get the same spectrometer readings on the moon side of the lens. Command out.”

“Toji-kun…?” Misato put down the receiver in her commander’s chair.

“Various countries have sent drones to that area, and they’ve all lost visuals of the object,” Toji said. “I don’t know what Shinji made, but I think we owe it to him to get a good look at it ourselves. That pillar might be the tsunami that should have hit us last night.”

Toji’s speculation was so outrageous that he had to pause and take a breath.

“The moon’s 110,000 kilometers wide now. That’s about the size of the Earth. I’m guessing it’s gonna want to steal our waters, too.”