Chapter 3: The Fallen

Chapter 3:
The Fallen

 

THE TRANQUILITY above the skies broke without warning.

Rei Quatre’s eyelids twitched open, drawing back the long eyelashes that had shrouded her view. On the surface below, Rei Trois saw the expansive blue planet through Quatre’s eyes.

Softly, Trois said, “What?”

Eva-0.0’s visual sensors could resolve detail at a resolution of less than ten centimeters and could perform real-time filtering of moving objects larger than five meters. Quatre’s Eva focused on a harbor, then filtered out the movement of its structures and equipment and that of the large ocean mammals in its waters. An unidentifiable object remained. The object didn’t appear to be a threat, but Quatre felt—if only vaguely—disquieted.

 

The primary Rei sent her thoughts out to her clones.

“We have no physical data. Should we conclude that this is an error?”

<<Cinq reserves judgment.>>

<<Six acknowledges the error.>>

<<Trois reserves judgment.>>

 

<<Quatre will perform a more detailed examination, including environmental data.>>

 

Rei Trois was walking home from school. She wore the white summer uniform of Tokyo-3’s private high school. Her feet, at the ends of her long, light-skinned legs, beat a quiet, steady rhythm on the pavement…until they didn’t. The pale fairy of a girl stood suddenly still, and her briefcase clattered to the ground.

 

The sun had set over the light rail station, but its heat lingered. Rei Trois gripped herself by the shoulders and watched as the doors of the train bound for Nerv HQ closed in front of her. The train glided away, leaving her behind.

She had a tendency to keep her eyes half-lidded, but now they were open wide.

“What…?”

She felt beads of sweat trickling down her skin.

Her breathing became ragged—unusual for her—and her chest rose and fell heavily. When she spoke, it came out as an uncharacteristic scream.

“Help!”

Something pitch-black flowed into her.

She felt a strange force pulling at her limbs, and then it was gone, leaving her with the shock of its absence.

“I can’t hear my other selves.”

 

Suddenly, she was alone.

She found herself crouching on the train platform while students wearing the same uniform as her came running, summoned by her scream.

 

An alarm sounded throughout the command center.

Nerv Japan HQ was in turmoil. The three Series-0.0 Evas had been orbiting the globe for two years without incident, but now one—piloted by Rei Quatre—had deviated from its prescribed orbit and started losing altitude.

Some officers shouted reports as others streamed in from the cafeteria. “We’re no longer receiving telemetry! Quatre’s status is unknown!”

“Commander on deck!”

Heads turned as Katsuragi Misato barked, “Stop your work!”

As order returned to the room, the commander strode across the top deck and called out loud enough for Hyuga Makoto on the middle deck to hear. “What’s the status of Rei Quatre?”

Hyuga was a bookish but highly capable technician who’d been a fixture in the command center back when Nerv Japan was just Nerv. “She’s not responding to comms!” he said. “Vitals unknown.”

“Is Rei Trois still at school?” Misato asked. “See if she can make contact with Quatre.”

From the same middle deck, the dutiful-if-distant Aoba Shigeru replied with information he’d just received. “The security intelligence division has recovered Rei Trois on her way home from school. They say she’s not in her right mind.”

“What?”

Trois had been their last hope of finding out what was happening with Quatre.

 

“Rei Cinq and Rei Six are in a state of confusion,” Aoba said. “Their vitals are unstable. I recommend we administer sedation.”

“Make it happen,” Misato said. “Can their observational equipment get a visual on Quatre’s Eva?”

Cinq’s and Six’s Evas should have been able to see Quatre at the boundary of the upper atmosphere. A technician applied a digital mask to darken the Earth, and a faintly glimmering light became visible at its edge.

“Those look like scattering fragments,” Aoba said. “AI spectral analysis confirms they belong to Quatre’s Eva.”

Shinji’s voice came over the comms. <<This is Shinji in the cage. I’m hearing that one of the Ayanamis got shot down!>>

From the fragments, that certainly seemed to be the case.

“It’s too soon to say,” Misato replied. “There might have been an accident. We still don’t know.”

 

“What about the rooftop cameras?” Misato asked. “Pull up the tower’s all-sky observation camera, A1.”

A technician routed the incoming feed from the observation team to the main screen.

“That’s Unit-0.0’s FSB flare!” Misato said.

The cross-shaped flare, violent, bright, and pulsing, was visible in the twilight. The FSB—or Field Stepping Booster—utilized an A.T. Field for direction and blasts from the N2 Reactor for power—enough to lift the Evas into orbit.

Was Quatre trying to accelerate back into position?

“No, the opposite!” Misato realized. “The Eva is rocketing itself east. It’s decelerating!”

Unit Quatre was firing in the reverse direction of its orbit.

The cross-shaped light slowed to a stop above Hakone and then winked out.

“Unit-0.0 has disengaged its FSB!” Hyuga said. “The Eva has lost its orbital velocity and is now directly overhead. Relative velocity zero.”

“And that means…?”

“The Eva is following a steep downward trajectory that matches the Earth’s rotation. It’s falling straight onto our heads!”

 

“Could the Eva burn up?” Misato asked.

Aoba replied, “Even if its A.T. Field is inoperable—and we don’t know that to be the case—the Eva won’t burn in the upper atmosphere. Besides, its orbital deceleration is already complete. If, however, the Unit-0.0 breaches the denser air of the stratosphere, the resulting shock wave could damage a wide area and penetrate deep underground.”

Is this a malfunction, or is Rei Quatre doing this intentionally? Either way, I need to take action now.

Misato reached a decision.

“I’m declaring this an accidental loss of orbit. Issue an emergency order to all sectors of Tokyo-3 and the surrounding municipalities! All residents must be evacuated to the underground shelters. Prepare for impact! Has there been any response from Rei Quatre?”

“We’re still trying to contact her,” one of the other technicians said, “but there’s no response.”

 

If the Eva is going to fall here, then…

“Shinji-kun, Asuka,” Misato ordered, “begin your entry sequence. Start up Unit Zero and Unit Two!”

The giants’ supports released. Shinji and Asuka had been waiting for the command; they immediately readied their Evas.

“Unit One,” Misato continued, “use your A.T. Field to absorb the Eva-0.0’s momentum at the projected point of impact! Just like you did with the Angel.”

Compared to the Angel Sahaquiel, which Shinji had successfully caught, the Series-0.0 Eva had less mass. More importantly, Eva-01 had gained an S² Engine since that encounter and could now produce a far more powerful A.T. Field. Over the past three years, Shinji had trained hard to learn how to use it.

So why did he feel so uneasy? Was it because of how long it had been since he’d responded to an emergency?

<<This is Shinji in Unit One. Understood!>>

“Asuka, we’re going to change your position a little. Deploy to the sniping post at Mount Komagatake.”

Mount Komagatake was one of many peaks near the center of the Hakone caldera. In a previous battle, Mount Kami, the tallest of these peaks, had been destroyed. Now Mount Komagatake was the tallest. The sniping post there provided a strategic anti-air position, commanding a clear view over the caldera that served as Tokyo-3’s home.

The mountain was located roughly 4.5 kilometers from Nerv HQ. Between the two, on the eastern side of Lake Ashi, rugged, mountainous terrain impeded above-ground travel, but high-speed Eva transport tunnels underground made the trip a straight shot. Even Evangelions that still relied on umbilical power could rapidly deploy to the sniping post.

<<This is Asuka in Unit Two. Understood!>>

Alarms sounded throughout the city for the first time in three years. Inside Nerv HQ’s command center, Aoba held the external comms line to his ear as he looked over his shoulder.

“The SSDF out of Matsushiro is offering their support. They’ve sent a live feed of Unit Quatre from the Tokachi air defense site.”

“Is it just me,” Misato said, “or does it sound like they’re saying, ‘serves you right’?”

“If only. They probably think we’re staging the whole thing.”

Misato could imagine the accusations: after three years without any Angels or mass-production Evas, Nerv Japan had staged an incident to justify their continued existence.

“Tell their officers they are welcome to come observe, if they have the guts to enter the impact zone. And warn them that their forces are not to cross the border into the caldera.”

 

When the Series-0.0 Eva crossed into the E layer of the ionosphere—the altitude where shooting stars glowed incandescent—a plume of white smoke enveloped the giant. Had some part of the Eva succumbed to the air resistance and scattered like so many flower petals? Was it the gamma-ray laser cannon’s hardpoint, or visual sensor panels from the parasol, or something else?

 

The buildings of Tokyo-3 began to sink into the ground, to protect against the impact’s shock wave.

Shinji said, “If we can catch the falling Eva, the buildings will hold, but if we fail, the damage could extend underground.”

<<Command center to Unit One: Be advised, the predicted impact point has moved to the former location of Owakudani!>>

“Unit One. Acknowledged!”

The ground rumbled as Eva-01 sprinted east from where it had surfaced near the center of Nerv HQ. The heavily armored Type-F unit had been outfitted with jump jets in its knee shields, which it used to hurtle over the city’s many above-ground light rail lines.

The present-day HQ facility resembled a half-buried sphere, neatly filling the hole that the mass-production Evas had blasted in the roof of the Geofront. In its center was a tall shaft, though the opening didn’t provide a view of the old Nerv headquarters. Instead, it offered three hundred meters of empty space that led to a gigantic white dome—nicknamed “the Sarcophagus”—which covered the underground world. Beneath the outer layer of the dome’s HTC—Hard Tektite Concrete, a strongly bonding, glass-like concrete—were several layers of armor plating followed by even more HTC on the bottom. All these layers worked together to form a secure seal over the former Nerv HQ.

 

<<Command center to Unit One. Shinji-kun, can your Eva get a visual on the falling Unit-0.0?>>

Eva-01 applied its brakes and looked upward. A tiny blotch appeared high in the evening sky, the fading sunlight illuminating the falling Series-0.0 Eva on one side. The image transmitting from Eva-01’s eyes was magnified and shaky. Shinji willed himself to stay perfectly still.

“Just barely! I’ll try to concentrate.”

A.T. Fields were the walls that enclosed every person and, as such, could generally only be put up around one’s self. Generating an A.T. Field at a remote location was possible, but there were limits—and the difficulty increased with distance.

 

“Focusing A.T. Field.”

Given careful concentration, the characteristics of the wall of the self had a certain amount of flexibility. Eva-01 raised its hands to the sky. Shinji usually found the most success by picturing himself in the remote location, particularly if there was an object present that he could focus on. He would feel as if he were physically there to catch Quatre.

Though the falling Eva was still a great distance away, Shinji had a direct line of sight. The human mind was highly visual, and even a single thin wall between him and the Eva would have made concentrating far more difficult.

“Focusing in three, two, one—mark!”

 

The command center’s main screen showed a live feed from the Nerv HQ telescope, which captured the faint, wispy A.T. Field manifesting in midair and the falling Eva-0.0 colliding with it—and effortlessly piercing through.

“Unit One, first remote ATF generated,” Hyuga reported.

“That didn’t even absorb two percent of the Eva’s velocity,” Misato said. “We’ve got a long way to go!”

“Unit Quatre is entering the D layer!”

“Shinji,” Misato said, “at this rate, you’ll to have to focus at least three more times. Slow that Eva down as much as you can before it enters the troposphere.”

She didn’t add, If you don’t, the shock wave will wreak widespread destruction.

 

<<This is Unit Two. I’ve arrived at the Mount Komagatake sniping post. Commencing with remote A.T. Field creation.>>

“We’ll do it together,” Shinji replied. “I’ll go on your signal.”

<<You’ll what? As if you’re good enough to match my timing! No, you do the countdown!>>

Unlike Eva-01, Eva-02 still had to drag along an umbilical cable. Its power, movement, and operational time couldn’t match an Eva with an S² Engine on board. But Asuka’s unit excelled at tasks that required precision.

Eva-02 had lost two of its four eyes to a head wound in the Battle at Nerv HQ, and the giant now wore a two-eyed mask, like Eva-01. But those two eyes zoomed in on the falling Eva-0.0 with perfect clarity.

“I wish I still had four eyes,” Asuka said.

Eva-02 raised its hands to the heavens.

“Ready to try again, Super Shinji?”

<<Could you not?>>

A ripple appeared around Quatre’s Eva.

This isn’t good.

From the command center, Hyuga reported, <<Unit Quatre is entering the stratosphere!>>

 

White smoke billowed from the Series-0.0 Eva. Shinji let out a deep breath and locked Eva-01’s eyes on his target.

“Focus,” he told himself. “Focus.”

Meanwhile, Asuka was concentrating on the same point in the sky.

“I’m not sending myself there,” she said under her breath. “I am there, standing in its path!”

She took slow, steady breaths as she waited for the signal.

 

“Mark!”

The A.T. Field was still faint, but now the shield had two layers generated by two Evas.

On the main screen in the command center, Unit Quatre suddenly appeared to have been struck by a large force and was thrown off course.

With satisfaction, Hyuga reported, “Command to Units One and Two. Nice work. You’ve absorbed a significant amount of the Eva’s kinetic energy! If you can do that one more time—”

In a sweeping motion, the Series-0.0 Eva reoriented itself.

“What the hell?!” Hyuga exclaimed.

Hearing his outburst, Aoba, who was coordinating the city’s evacuation and shelter, looked up at the main screen and said, “The Eva isn’t just in free fall? It’s a controlled descent?!”

“The Eva’s trajectory has changed!” Hyuga shouted, “The predicted impact is now five kilometers south—the middle of Lake Ashi!”

Not missing a beat, Misato said, “Asuka, you’re closer!”

<<Leave it to me!>>

“Unit One—start running!”

 

Eva-01 Type-F sprinted into the dense forest at the base of Mount Daigatake, which stood between it and the new predicted point of impact.

A.T. Fields had another quirk: No matter how weakened an Eva or its pilot might have been, there was one place they could generate a field without fail—the ground beneath their feet. Otherwise, the hundred-meter-tall giants wouldn’t have been able to walk across any stretch of ground—no matter how well engineered or fortified—without sinking.

That might sound too convenient to be plausible, but former Nerv executives had taken the phenomenon very seriously, and they’d left their records behind for the current staff.

The limits of the human form—

Humans cannot escape the ground. We are destined to crawl around in the dirt forever—to smear ourselves with it.

According to them, this quirk of the A.T. Fields was proof of our fate.

At the time, Asuka had said, “Duh, isn’t that obvious?”

Eva-01 cut a path through the trees at full speed.

 

I have to make it!

Shinji neared Lake Ashi’s eastern edge. The mountain used to run down into the water here, but after so many battles with the Angels, the forest had been completely burned down, leaving the mountain bare, and the land had collapsed on a large scale. The rugged rises and falls had shallowed out, and the few remaining trees were stunted and withered things. Eva-01 bounded over them and reached the lake’s shore.

The Eva made one last, large jump toward a floating dock that extended out into the lake. The Type-F’s sharp, backswept edges dragged little streaks of clouds with them, producing dissonant low- and high-pitched sounds as the Eva sliced through the air.

Resembling an animated suit of armor, the Type-F had been designed to test A.T. Field generation technology. Nerv Japan hoped that artificial deflection of A.T. Fields would lead not only to increased defensive capabilities but the ability to fly. Ultimately, flight hadn’t been possible, but the Type-F’s heavy restraint armor was more than upgraded plating; it allowed the unit’s field-assisted jumps to cover a tremendous range. Watching the heavily armored Eva far outstrip the jumping capabilities of the lighter, sleeker models was a surreal experience.

The floating dock was a series of wafers with hollows in between, and when Eva-01 landed, it became a massive drum echoing through the mountains. The Eva activated its brakes to halt its momentum, and a shrill, metallic cry reverberated across the water’s surface. Heavy anchor cables held the dock in place, but as the Eva landed, several snapped, kicking up large columns of water.

 

Quatre’s Eva faced the heavens as it fell, the giant reflecting the sunset’s afterglow.

<<Now!>> Asuka’s voice rattled through the hydrospeaker, and a new field generated by Eva-02 opened in the sky just in time for the Series-0.0 Eva to break through it.

“I’ll catch you, Ayanami!”

 

Rei Quatre broke her silence with a single sentence.

<<That’s a lie.>>

Before Shinji could generate another remote A.T. Field, Quatre created one of her own—strong, like a wall.

“What?” Shinji shouted.

 

Rei Quatre’s voice was weak and raspy, but Shinji heard her clearly. When she spoke, he felt as if all other sounds had vanished.

 

Asuka sensed something unpleasant was about to happen.

Eva-02 reacted immediately, without waiting for Asuka’s input, and leaped backward.

In the next instant, Asuka felt searing pain on the tip of her nose, and the spot where her Eva had been standing became blindingly bright.

“Eva-0.0 has fired!” Asuka shouted. Then she added accusingly, “Why?!”

 

There was a tremendous crash and Asuka was knocked backward.

The sniping post at Mount Komagatake had been constructed for Rei Trois’ Eva-00 Type-F, which had been equipped with a special artillery rifle, the A.T. Field Piercer, at the cost of a literal arm and a leg. As such, the post had been built to withstand all manner of explosions as well as the Angels’ highly penetrative attacks.

Now its layers of armor plating melted like butter.

Asuka screamed.

 

A ray of purple light fell across the peak of the tallest mountain south of Tokyo-3, followed by a large explosion.

The Nerv HQ building that housed the command center was protected under layers of heavy armor, and the structure had been designed to absorb earthquakes and other shocks, but the rumble still came up from below.

“The sniping post is under attack!” Hyuga declared

The room erupted as technicians began speaking over each other.

“Was that the Eva-0.0’s gamma-ray laser cannon?”

“How far underground did the blast go?”

“What about Unit Two?” Misato asked. “What about Asuka? Is her Eva damaged?!”

The commander looked at the main screen, but the picture had gone blank.

“The explosion created an electromagnetic pulse,” Hyuga said. “All systems are down! Reboot external communications, the monitors…everything!”

This temporary disconnection from the outside world might as well have been endless. Battles like this were measured in nanoseconds; everything would be over in half a minute. And for the rest of that time, the command center would be cut off.

 

The eradicated mountaintop stood to the east of Eva-01.

“Quatre? Asuka?!” Shinji cried out.

Several orange alert windows appeared on the plug’s display to announce that his battle comms, data link, and several sensors had been temporarily shut down to prevent damage from the EMP.

The gamma-ray laser’s impact had created a plasma cloud, causing severe electromagnetic interference throughout the surrounding area. Shinji had lost contact with the command center, his telemetry systems, and Eva-02. Even his laser circuit had been knocked out, and Shinji could no longer track where Rei Quatre was.

But then her voice came to him from somewhere above.

<<Don’t speak kindly to me when you don’t mean it.>>

Her Eva was directly overhead and closing fast. The giant had plunged into the troposphere, the air around it distorted.

 

“What…?” Shinji whispered.

Did Ayanami do that? Did Quatre attack us?!

Electrical interference passed into the plug’s LCL, and Shinji grimaced in pain. “What are you doing?” His voice cracked.

<<You chose her and ruined the Human Instrumentality Project.>>

 

Shinji was confused.

But he still needed to catch Quatre.

It wasn’t really a conscious decision. Instead of escape, his confusion led him to continue the task he’d been undertaking before the situation changed. If anything, Shinji had avoided making a decision.

“You’re Ayanami, aren’t you?”

Before her gamma-ray laser cannon could recharge, Eva-01 created a bright, distinct A.T. Field and pushed it toward the falling Eva-0.0.

“It’s not a lie! I’m going to catch you, Ayanami!”

 

The shock wave slammed into Eva-01 from above. Shinji grunted, and he and his Eva reeled. The sound of the impact carried for kilometers in all directions.

But that was just the wave generated by the Series-0.0’s initial descent. When Shinji and Asuka had slowed the falling Eva, the shock wave had kept going at the same speed, spreading and attenuating in the atmosphere. Like the foreshock of an earthquake, this impact only signaled the imminent arrival of the real danger.

Somehow, Shinji managed to keep his Eva’s feet on the ground.

Then he heard Ayanami’s voice again.

 

<<As I change over time, you feel more repelled by me, and you grow more distant… Because with each day, I become more like your mother.>>

 

Her words sparked understanding within Shinji. Is that why?

 

Over the past three years, Shinji had gained the trust of Misato and his other colleagues. His responsibilities had increased, and with them came a sense of satisfaction. He and Asuka were working well together, and—maybe, Shinji thought—getting along. His school life was almost unnaturally normal, and he even had fun sometimes when he made the effort.

But something still unsettled him, and the feeling grew stronger with each passing day. It had come from so deep inside him that he hadn’t been able to clearly identify it, but now he understood the source of that unease.

Is that why?

Shinji quickly rejected the thought. “That’s not true!”

He had to deny it—to Ayanami and to himself. His cheeks were burning.

<<You were only able to perceive me as someone different from your mother until three years ago, when my body was that of a fourteen-year-old.>>

“Shut up!”

He trembled as her words stripped his feelings bare.

 

<<If I became exactly like your mother, would you be able to acknowledge me then?>>

 

“Shut up!”

Why is this happening?

Why was Quatre’s Eva falling? Why was Quatre saying these things?

Shinji sent out a silent plea for all of this to stop.

 

The Eva-0.0’s and Eva-01’s fields collided in midair. Neither gave way to the other, and where they met, a two-dimensional explosion split the sky. What happened in the next moment was not Shinji’s conscious plan but a manifestation of his will.

Shinji created a spherical A.T. Field centered on himself. He expanded the field to several dozen times its original size, swallowing everything around him, including Ayanami Quatre’s Eva. The air inside the field lost pressure, like a piston pulled from a cylinder. There came a flash of bright white as the field expelled thousands of cubic meters of the lake’s water in the shape of a bowl 1,200 meters high. The water was stripped of its heat and instantaneously froze.

Astonishingly, this parabolic dish of ice not only caught the plummeting Eva-0.0 but also the conical, destructive shock wave that spread out around it. As the Eva and its shock wave slammed into the ice, a thin cloud erupted skyward and faded away.

The vast, towering ice sculpture momentarily swelled before crumbling.

From Tokyo-3, the bowl of ice, far taller than the surrounding mountains, seemed to have exploded—except in unnaturally slow motion due to its tremendous scale. The fracturing ice absorbed the last of the shock wave’s energy, which otherwise would have slammed into the city. Having lost its spearhead, the wave dissipated, radiating outward and pushing aside all of the clouds in the caldera.

The temperature dropped sharply in the area surrounding Lake Ashi, and glittering diamond dust scattered across the land.

 

Ibuki Maya, the chief of the science and engineering departments, was inside her Nerv HQ lab along with her team, remotely monitoring data from sensors in the floating deck, which had escaped destruction.

“Send this to the command center,” Maya ordered.

The engineers and scientists chatted among themselves excitedly.

“The temperature in the center has fallen from 1,000 degrees Celsius to minus 200. Are we seeing adiabatic cooling?”

“I think there’s more to it than that. This sample is showing signs of manipulation of the particles’ center of mass.”

“Are you talking about controlling the movement of atoms, like with optical tweezers?”

“The electromagnetic interference is completely gone, and the background noise is unusually quiet.”

 

“He’s put a stop to all movement,” Maya said.

Wearing thin-rimmed glasses and a subdued expression, Maya showed little trace of the cheerful but fastidious woman she’d once been. She now more closely resembled Dr. Akagi Ritsuko, who had, at one time, evoked Maya’s trust and scorn alike.

“The chemical bonds of the water molecules in this ice are unusual,” Maya remarked.

“With those bonds,” one of the scientists said, “the ice is going to be a lot stronger, and with this density…I don’t think it will melt easily.”

When it came to Evangelions and Angels, solving one mystery often only raised new ones. Over time, the roles of Nerv’s engineers and scientists began to overlap in unexpected ways, and both teams were now regularly working in tandem.

As their current chief officer, Maya had inherited stewardship of Nerv Japan’s Eva-related technologies, which she continued to develop. Due to the heavy pressure of her duties, Maya rarely smiled anymore. Today, a stern expression wrinkled her brow.

“Unit One is the only Eva to have absorbed an S² Engine by itself,” she said. “And yet, the past three years have given us little data on it. There was already so much we didn’t understand about that Eva, so we can’t say if this is a new development or something preexisting.”