Chapter 21: Buzzing Wings
Chapter 21:
Buzzing Wings
Buzzing Wings
S
HINJI THOUGHT
he sensed a living presence nearby.
No, I’m just nervous testing out this new equipment. Focus, Shinji.
“Maya-san,” he said, “what is that…that vibration?”
As soon as he asked, he realized that the shaking was coming from somewhere in his own body.
In Cage Two, on the deck behind and slightly above Super Eva’s head, Shinji sat in a simulation plug cradled in the cage’s plug insertion arm.
The Eva had been equipped with a supplementary flight unit—a pair of small, hip-mounted wings called the Vertex system. Maya had scheduled a flight test for the afternoon and was running a series of final simulations with the Eva’s standard weapons and loadout.
“Vibrations?” the chief scientist asked. “Super Eva isn’t picking anything up. Are you possibly getting a signal from somewhere else?”
Maya was inside Super Eva, though her presence was hidden from the giant. From her shoulders up, she wore thought-shielding gear that electromagnetically jammed any signals with wavelengths approaching those of brain waves. Super Eva never shut down, not even during servicing, and mental contamination was an ever-present risk. The chief scientist wore a white lab coat because she didn’t want anyone to see her in the plugsuit underneath, which, like all current-gen plugsuits, had the same shielding mechanism as the headgear to safeguard against over-synchronization. She needed this outfit in order to bring her equipment to the entry plug, where she could directly monitor the transmission quality of the command signals.
“Sorry, Maya-san,” Shinji said. “I must have been imagining it.”
“Wait,” Maya replied. “Super Eva has started to shake, too—a faint tremor, distinct from the heartbeat. It’s almost like…it’s shivering.”
Suddenly, a loud, repetitive rumble sounded in the cage. The sound became more frequent until it was nearly continuous, like the buzzing of an insect’s wings, and the drone filled every part of the room.
This was supposed to be a stationary test,
Shinji thought.
Something’s not right!
He peeled off the sensor cables attached to his body and leaped from the simulation plug.
Shinji cried out in surprise.
The Vertex flight unit emitted an aurora-like light as Super Eva placed its hands on the platforms to its left and right, pressing outward, until—
CRAAAAAACK!
The Eva broke the suspended platforms. And it kept on moving.
“Maya-san!” Shinji yelled. “It’s activating! It’s moving! Super Eva and the flight unit, too!”
The flight unit’s bug-wing cacophony steadily increased in frequency, going past earsplitting to an almost unbearably shrill noise that reverberated in the brain.
Shinji stumbled over to a support column and slapped the alarm button.
“Everyone, leave the cage immediately,” he shouted over the alarm. “Super Eva is moving on its own. In fifteen seconds, I’m deploying the bakelite hard restraint system.”
He wasn’t even sure if bakelite could hold the Eva in place.
“You’re me, aren’t you?!” he shouted to Super Eva. “Quit moving on your own! Maya-san, get out of there!”
She didn’t respond. Had their communication link been severed somehow? Super Eva was directly in front of him, and he debated leaping onto the top cover of the entry plug. But if he were to miss the landing… He was as high as the giant’s shoulders—a long way from the ground.
He hesitated. But Eva appeared to be nearly free of the restraints around its thighs. If he was going to jump, it was now or—
KATHUNK!
The deck tilted beneath Shinji’s feet. A massive boom arm lost its hydraulic pressure and nearly grazed him as it collapsed onto the deck.
If Super Eva and I are one, what happens if I die? Physically speaking, I already died when Rei Quatre’s Eva-0.0 annihilated me with that gamma-ray laser. This body is my reincarnation, born along with Super Eva’s heartbeat from an extradimensional window. If I’m not with Super Eva, I become unstable on a quantum level. Can I even die in the traditional sense?
Now!
Shinji leaped toward the Eva.
Swung about by the rampaging Eva, Shinji pulled a lever located on the external armor plating and extracted the entry plug. But that wasn’t enough to halt Eva-01. Ever since the giant had gained a heartbeat, Super Eva had no shutoff mode.
Shinji tumbled into the entry plug.
“Shinji-kun!”
“Maya, this is bad.” Shinji glanced at the Eva’s internal signal monitors, which showed nothing but malfunctions, and then looked to the chief scientist, who was doing all she could to remain upright. “Give me sight, please.”
“I don’t know why the Eva went online,” Maya said as she unplugged the cable for the data logger from the center console.
One by one, the various status windows winked out, relinquishing the display to the external cameras, which showed the disaster unfolding within the cage.
“It doesn’t look like we’re getting down from here,” Maya remarked.
Bakelite surged into the chamber.
Shinji saw something on the gangway of the armored wall directly ahead.
Is that…a person?
I told everyone to escape!
The figure was wearing a black, outdated plugsuit.
Ayanami…Quatre?!
Impossible.
Shinji squinted and leaned forward for a closer look, but with the sound of shattering resin, the Eva’s view rapidly shifted upward, and Shinji lost sight of the figure.
The bakelite had flowed around Super Eva’s legs and hardened instantaneously to stop the giant’s movement. But Super Eva effortlessly broke its legs free and began climbing up the hardening fluid.
“Am I seeing things?” Shinji asked himself. “I don’t know what to believe.”
The figure Shinji thought he saw would have to wait. Right now, he needed to find some way to regain control of Super Eva.
“Shinji-kun, here!” Maya said as she attempted to move herself out of the pilot’s seat.
“No, Maya-san, you sit.”
Maya was wearing every conceivable piece of gear that could prevent mental contamination between herself and the Eva. Her brain waves were blocked from reaching the Eva, and the Eva’s awareness was blocked from reaching her. But the technique these countermeasures employed was akin to drowning out noise with louder noise. No technology existed that could isolate a person’s mental waves in the truest sense.
“I’m sorry about this,” Shinji said, removing the white lab coat Maya had put on over her plugsuit.
Maya yelped as he pressed her shoulders against the seat. A latching sound came from behind her back, and she was secured in place. She gave Shinji an indignant look, but if she’d been thrown forward, deeper into the Eva, her equipment might not have been able to prevent contamination.
Shinji stood next to the seat and held the grip from the side. The next moment, both of them felt the weight lift from their backs—still out of control, Super Eva had decided it would fly.
Shinji needed to take charge. Reluctantly, he said, “I’m bringing in the LCL.”
Maya took a deep breath. “Okay. Do it.”
The plug filled with LCL. This was Maya’s first time breathing the fluid, and it was as rough on her as could be expected.
But the medium provided a direct link that transmitted the Eva’s perceptions to its pilot, so Shinji once again had command of the disoriented giant’s senses. Now he could restore communications with the command center.
He did so, and Toji’s voice came over the speakers immediately.
<<
Shinji! Tell me what the hell is going on, will ya?!
>>
“Well, ah… A rampage!”
<<
What?! What are you doing that for? You should know better than that!
>>
“No,
Super Eva
is rampaging. The bakelite containment system failed, the flight unit activated, and it’s putting out some kind of light that breaks everything it touches! Maya-san is in the plug with me.”
<<
Can’t you eject the flight unit?
>>
Maya winced and shook her head.
“She says it’s not responding,” Shinji reported.
<<
Well, just stay where you are!
>>
“I’m telling you, we’re about to go into the air!”