Part Four: The White Coat
20. Black Moon's Arrival
If you didn't experience it, if you weren't around for it, I wonder—can you imagine something everyone on Earth would watch?
A lot of people might watch a World Cup or a US presidential election, but those events don't interest everyone. They don't even interest most people.
But I haven't yet spoken to someone—if they had a television, or knew someone who owned one, or knew somewhere they could see one—who didn't watch the Black Moon's arrival.
As TV cameras tracked a fireball in the sky, occasionally the telecast would switch to scenes from Japan and around the world. In Tokyo-2, traffic came to a standstill. People stood in the streets—in the middle of the street!—watching the Black Moon's descent on skyscraper video boards. In Los Angeles, Berlin, and London, the scene was the same. For a few minutes, all the world stopped in awe, trepidation, and horror.
I can only imagine what it was like to be there—to stand on the beach at Nigercoil, at the southern tip of India, and to marvel at the fire in the sky.
No one I know was there. Misato didn't dare send the Eva against an unknown threat. Only a few scout cutters from the Indian Navy dared approach the projected splashdown point.
But the Black Moon didn't land there: it hovered over water with supernatural lightness, casting a shadow over the Indian ships.
I've sometimes wondered what those sailors felt as that sphere passed over them and blotted out the sun. Were they afraid? Did they tremble as an artificial mass nearly fifteen kilometers in diameter hovered overhead?
Or were they angry and defiant, manning the cutters' guns and training lead on the enemy?
I don't know if anyone who wasn't there knows the answer, actually.
I've yet to meet any of those sailors.
I doubt anyone has, for once the door to the Black Moon opened…
The beasts of the underworld poured out and melted them all.
How do you sleep after something like that?
The reality is that you don't sleep very well.
The next morning I spent most of the wee hours staring at the ceiling above my bed. Every so often, I glanced over at the clock on our nightstand to see what the time was. 3 o'clock passed, then 4, then 5. After a while you wonder where the time went, even though it feels like eternity too. Time still passed. We just weren't doing anything with it.
"This sucks," said Asuka at one point. She pounded her fist into the pillow in frustration, but it didn't do any good. Asuka was more restless than I—she tossed and turned all the time, trying to find some way to sleep. I just lay there, knowing that it was useless.
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, it does."
I shut my eyes anyway, but only for a few minutes. 5:00 turned to 5:03--then 5:06, 5:10, 5:15…
So the minutes went until 5:30. The alarm went off for about a half-second before my finger was on it and our attempt to sleep was over. We were up.
Lights came in with the flick of a switch—not that there was much to see in our base quarters. The ceiling was just generic, speckled tile panels.
Clothes? No issue. Mine were folded up at the desk, and Asuka had a hanger set up with brown pants, a sweater, and a cleaned laboratory coat. We cleaned our teeth in a flash and were out of the room by 5:32.
Our first stop was the officers' mess. Breakfast was already on the table when we got there, with eggs, natto, miso soup, rice, and tofu all available, plus a few SDF mess staff available to cook eggs or tofu for you on the spot. Far from a pleasant sit-down breakfast, though, it was more of a quick stop: officers were constantly in and out of the mess at various times. Hyuga himself stopped by only for a piece of toast and coffee. He shot us both an apologetic look before leaving his cup at the head of the table.
"Better to be early, right?" said Asuka between bites of scrambled egg.
"Yeah," I said, nodding, and like the rest of the officers and civilians, we made quick work of our breakfast, too.
Our rushed morning's final destination was the control room. At 15 minutes to the hour, it was only partially staffed, with positions sitting open and staffers filing in and out with paperwork, reconnaissance, and other material.
I dare say the only one who didn't seem rushed or hurried to get ready was the commander herself: Misato sat back in her high chair, eyes shut and breathing slowly, but as soon as I sat down, she said,
"Are you ready to save the world, Mister Ikari?"
And yes, she did say Mister, in English. I don't know why, but it stunned me long enough to be caught by Misato and the one eye she opened to look at me.
"Well?" she said. "Are you?"
"That depends," I said, putting on my headset. "What are we up against?"
Misato sighed at that, looking aside. "An unfair fight—what else would it be? Recon's on your desk."
I scooted forward and flipped through the folder on my desk. I saw the photos. I glimpsed the enemy and read what it was capable of.
I shut the folder and hissed. "Does she know?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder.
Misato nodded. "She's not happy."
"She usually isn't."
"She's less happy than usual."
Sighing, I typed at the computer in front of me, logging into the communications system.
"Shinji."
"Yes?"
"Stay cool, now."
I smiled to myself. "You're setting a good example there."
"It's something I'm trying to learn."
I peeked over my shoulder, but the general in green had her eyes closed again. She nodded with her breath steady as the time to launch ticked away.
That couldn't be said for our pilot. I brought up the entry plug camera, and Nozomi was contorted over the entry plug's seat like a gymnast trying a surreal trick.
"Be glad you never had to do this, Ikari," she said.
"Are you hanging in there?" I asked.
She huffed at that. "I'm hanging from something all right."
I glanced at the feed from an exterior camera: Eva-14 was clamped to the belly of a jet airliner. At least it wasn't too uncomfortable for Nozomi—in air launch configuration, the entry plug seat was rotated to keep the blood rushing from her head. Still, just knowing you're strapped to the belly of an aluminum bird isn't the most comforting thing in the world.
"Sorry," I said. "Let's go with, uh, how are you holding up?"
"I'm not holding up. I'm being held up."
I raised both eyebrows and stared at her. "Nozomi."
"Sorry, just a little worried about this I guess." Nozomi sighed, and she started looking forward again. "Have you seen the briefs, Ikari?" she asked.
I nodded, averting my gaze.
"You got any ideas?"
"I don't, really."
"Big help," she said, huffing. "Why's that?"
"Usually," I said, "we outnumbered the Angels when we fought them."
"Fair." She pulled herself up in her seat, and she grasped the controls, ready for action. "You ready?"
"Nope, but I'll try anyway."
She huffed again, breaking into a wry smile. "I've heard of worse plans."
We said nothing more for a time, not until Eva-14 flew over the target.
The place was Ho Chi Minh City. A coastal town, Ho Chi Minh City was a prime target for the enemy. The walkers—those ghastly, nigh-unkillable beasts with needle-like fingers—had materialized from the ocean and pushed into the city. They liquefied civilians one at a time, and all it took to dissolve a man was a stab to the head, held long enough to torment the victim until he or she gave in. They were like raging bulls, and every man, woman, and child in their way may as well have been wearing red.
That's not to say no one tried to put the bulls down. The People's Army rolled into town from the north, and as sectors of the city fell, the PAVN resorted to bombarding the city with artillery. Nothing short of obliterating the enemy would do—otherwise, they would just regenerate and come back fighting—so the PAVN made the city burn. In some places, they didn't even bother waiting to hear all the civilians had escaped or been taken. A dark haze hung over the city, with fires starting at the water and petering out further north.
Yet where men dared make camp to rain fire and metal on the enemy, there was no true safety.
Why, you ask?
Because an Angel came after them.
It was like a snowflake, or a fractal: a repeating, geometric pattern branched out from its center, shrinking with each iteration so that the very edge of the Angel was really an infinite number of smaller branches tapering out, each built on top of another. The Fractal Angel floated over the northern suburbs of the city, gutting buildings, artillery, and tanks without truly touching them. It just floated nearby and cut anything in the vicinity in two.
The Angels had come again, and there was nothing else to do but rush headlong into battle and hope for the best.
"Separation in ten, nine…," one of the controllers announced.
If the enemy loomed on our doorstep, our only option was to take the fight to them before they breached the gate.
"Eight, seven, six…"
Standing at his station, Hyuga counted down to separation. Nozomi Horaki flew in Eva-14, latched to the back of a cargo plane. She hung on for dear life, and all of us—all humanity—clung to our hopes with her.
"Five, four, three…"
From Misato, who sat at the rear of the control room floor, overseeing its every move; to Asuka and the gaggle of scientists and engineers monitoring the Eva's heartbeat, nerve impulses, and more; and to me in my stuffy cubicle, with just a few monitors around me and file folders laid out like a photographer's portfolio.
So we had gathered—dozens of us, maybe fifty in all—to try to save the world.
"Two, one, separation!"
The cargo plane dove down, and Eva-14—wielding a black airfoil on each arm—glided over water to the battle site.
What awaited the Eva was shrouded in smoke. A city by the ocean burned, and though Nozomi couldn't see around the smoke, our satellites could. As the Eva flew toward battle, new fires broke out in the city every few seconds, for a constant barrage of small explosions peppered the beach and the streets nearby—not to destroy the buildings or the people.
You see, there were no more people left there. There were only those things. The bulls ran the streets, as it were. That's what the bombardment was meant for. It was the only thing that could slow them down. It may have kept the walkers at bay, but the Fractal Angel was undeterred: it flew over the ground with supernatural flight, and as it did so, it cut anything and everything beneath it. Buildings? Gutted. Tanks? Split in two. Artillery pieces? Mangled beyond all recognition.
So you see, when Nozomi and Eva-14 emerged from the cloud of smoke over the city, when she sighted the Snowflake Angel in the distance, she banked the launch envelope's airfoils, turning her toward the Angel.
But as the Angel helped the walkers invade the city, the Angel had help for it, too.
THUD! Nozomi rocked in her seat, and the Eva pulled down on one side, tilting off course.
"What was that?" I cried, rising from my seat. "Nozomi!"
She winced, and she popped the prog knife through a slot in the launch envelope.
"It's hanging on to my back…"
It was a white, leathery-winged creature, and there were many more like it. Unit-14 flew through a flock of them, and they didn't "fly" so much as spin to maintain altitude. These three-limbed creatures floated like frisbees, with each limb holding the fleshy part of an adjacent wing to form a disc.
Only when one landed, like one did on Unit-14's back, did we get a good look at its face: its three-eyed face with gnashing fangs.
The creature clung to the launch envelope's right wing, and no matter how Unit-14 twisted and stabbed at it, the beast wouldn't let go.
"Nozomi, hard impact!" I said. "Release!"
"Urgh." Nozomi jammed a switch on her controls, and the launch envelope blew apart. She curled the Eva into a ball, grabbed the levers tightly, and—
Ka-PANG! Unit-14 skidded on the soft ground, rolling along the side of a road. It smashed into a two-story building and stopped halfway through the structure, lying in a heap of splintered wood and shattered glass.
"Okay…" Nozomi slid back into her seat, pressing a hand to her chest where the restraints had caught her. She winced. "That sucked. Can we not do that again?"
There was a rumbling beneath the Eva's feet. Broken light fixtures snapped off the ceiling and fell to the ground.
"Ops, pattern white signal is closing on Unit-14's position," said one of the controllers.
I pressed down hard on the transmit switch on my headset. "Nozomi, second Angel is coming your way!"
The Eva—big, round, and lumbering as it was—pulled itself to its feet. "It's underneath me right now," said Nozomi, as the Eva swayed to keep its balance, "isn't it?"
I looked over the wall of my cubicle at the detection controller, who nodded twice, grimly.
"You're not going to let that get in your way, are you, Nozomi?" I said.
She smirked at that. "Nope."
The Eva bolted. It dashed over the soft, wet ground, making a beeline for the Snowflake Angel. As the Eva kicked up divots and left gashes in its steps, Nozomi bared her prog knife and rushed past the front line of artillery pieces. Soldiers and vehicles alike scampered out of her way.
But the ground quaked and trembled before Unit-14, and from the depths of the earth emerged the second Angel: a giant worm. It slithered out of the ground and wrapped up Unit-14 the way a constrictor might kill a rabbit or a hen. Three times the size of the Eva, the Worm Angel wrapped Unit-14 up and had room to spare to press its mouthparts against the Eva's AT field. Those mouthparts had several independent rings, each spinning opposite the other, and together, they drilled into Unit-14's AT field, shedding bolts of energy as they ripped the AT field apart.
"Ops," said the detection officer, "pattern red is retreating, but S2 engine output is increasing."
"Ops," said Asuka, "Unit-14 is showing one AT field layer breached. Synch rate cut to 50%. Significant stress on the left ankle and ribcage. We've got to get her out of there soon."
Hyuga looked back, to Misato, but the general shrugged her shoulders. "Your show, Captain," she said, "but I'd consider getting her out of that pickle before worrying about what the first Angel is doing."
Hyuga nodded at that, and he tapped his fingers on the top of the cubicle wall.
"All right," he said, "Shinji, break out the emergency maneuvers. We can't let Unit-14 become compromised in this position."
I got on the radio. "Nozomi, what can you do to break free?"
"From this position?" Nozomi swayed left and right in her seat, but no matter how she angled herself, the Worm Angel's body blocked her view. "Is that a serious question?" she asked.
"What about the—the, uh—" I frowned, and I tapped the side of my head with a pen. "The Cyclops Maneuver?"
The Eva twisted and shuddered; the Worm's grip tightened, and Nozomi grabbed her wrist, wincing. "I'll—" She bit down on her lip. "I'll face up—just try to get it to back off. A direct attack could backfire, right?"
"Yeah, I agree."
"Okay." Nozomi nodded, and she started breathing more heavily. "Let's do it. Have them dial it up. Are we good?"
I looked to Hyuga, but he didn't seem to be on board: his eyes were narrow and his jaw clenched. "That's dangerous at this range," he said.
"She can pull it off. We've practiced it more than enough."
He sighed with his mouth closed and stared at the middle screen on the wall, on which Unit-14 was having the life squeezed out of it.
"All right," he said, announcing over the communications loop for all to hear. "Cyclops Maneuver. Let's go."
The room erupted with a flurry of chatter between controllers, but one voice stood out over the rest: Asuka's.
"Increasing plug depth," she said, standing over the virtual gauge on her monitor. "110% normal depth, 120%…"
"Gah!" Nozomi convulsed. Her hands clenched the controls, and a piece of plastic failed under that force, cracking along a seam.
"Is it bad?" I asked, rising.
"It's like—" She was hyperventilating. "It's like getting trapped in quicksand!"
"That's because you are getting trapped," I said, keeping my eyes on the entry plug feed. "The Eva has you. Do you feel her? She's speaking to you. She speaks to you, and you don't even know what she sounds like because she sounds like you. You sound like the Eva in your mind, and she sounds like you. Right?"
She went strangely calm then. She stared right at the camera, eyes wide.
"We sound the same." Her eyes flickered away and stared into space. "We are the same?"
I bowed my head, let out a breath, and stared at my desk as I opened the radio line again. "Yes, you are the same. And it—it hurts, doesn't it? It hurts to be together, and what the Angel is doing hurts, too." I peeked up. "Right?"
The Worm Angel's grip tightened further, bending the Eva's arms away from its body, yet Nozomi didn't react immediately. She just sat a little more upright in her seat and cast her arms away from her, like the Eva's, as though connected to the creature through a puppeteer's strings.
"We don't want this to hurt anymore." Her eyes narrowed, and her whole body trembled. "No more."
"Do you see what's hurting you?"
She nodded.
"Make it go away."
Nozomi set her sights on the Worm Angel, and—
TCH-CHEW!
A light blasted through the Worm's body; it shot across the whole battlefield and cut through the haze of smoke above. The Eva's eyes—all six of them—glowed a bright and dangerous red.
Though its armor charred from the blast, the Eva stepped through the hole in the Worm's body on its own two feet, grabbed the severed tail of the Worm, and promptly started smashing the Worm's head part with the bleeding tail. It bashed the enemy a hundred times over in seconds, attacking with inhuman speed: its arms blurred, and Unit-14 panted and growled with an animalistic heaving.
"Wake up, Nozomi!" I cried. "I have some graphite pencils for you! Graphite! Graphite!"
"Graphite sucks!" She shook herself and slapped her cheek, shaking off her trance. "It sucks! Do you hear me?" Her body lost its tension, and she sagged over the plug controls, panting. "They suck, right?" she said, laughing to herself.
"Yeah," I said, smiling in turn. "They suck. Good work, Nozomi."
"It's not time for 'good work' yet." Misato rose, leaning over her desk to supervise the room. "What's the story with the first Angel?"
The Fractal Angel had retreated about a kilometer and a half from Nozomi's position, but it had stopped right there, on the outskirts of town. "S2 engine output is 220% of baseline and rising, and the Angel's AT field wavevector is fluctuating," one of the controllers explained. "It could be an inversion."
"A wavevector inversion?" Hyuga stormed over to the controller's station. "Are you sure?"
"No, sir, that's the worst case," said the controller, pointing with her hand at the monitor's readouts. "I can't tell if an inversion is likely, but it's possible, and at this range and S2 engine output level—"
"Then Nozomi is goo," muttered Hyuga. He balled his hand into a fist. "Shinji, get her to that Angel. We're running out of time."
"Nozomi." I pressed the earpiece so hard it hurt. "Get to the Fractal. Waypoint's on your screen. Go, now!"
Unit-14 dashed across the soft land near the river delta. It ran on all fours like a bear, and the ground rumbled with each of the Eva's heavy strides.
But the Eva wasn't the only beast to roam the city outskirts. A brown tendril shot out and grabbed Unit-14 by the ankle.
"Oh no you don't!" Nozomi sliced the tendril clean, but though the Eva picked itself up from the ground, it had already lost time: the Worm Angel was in pursuit. Shorter and stubbier than it had been before, it was no less quick to slither and crawl over the muddy ground, using its tendrils to fling itself forward when needed.
"Don't let it slow you down," I instructed over the radio. "It's a distraction. Get to the Fractal!"
"Total wavevector inversion!" one of the controllers cried. "S2 engine output at 1000% baseline!"
"All right," said Misato, sitting forward from her seat above the control room. "Asuka, get Captain Ibuki on the horn."
Asuka typed at her console, and she unplugged her headset. "You're on, Misato."
"Ibuki," said the general, "what is the minimum safe distance for Unit-14?"
"We're working on that right now, Control," said Maya. "We have—let's see, safe distance for AT field inversion at 100% baseline power is 800 meters, and the distance doubles for every factor of four in power above that. 1000% should be…about 2.5-kilometer blast zone."
"1600% baseline now," said the detection controller.
Hyuga covered his microphone. "Control, I think we have to assume the Angel's goal is to liquefy the whole city. It's not going to settle for taking out a handful of city blocks."
Misato narrowed her eyes, staring at the front screens. "Is she going to make it?"
Unit-14 batted away another pair of tendrils as the worm gave chase. It hopped over two-story buildings, collapsing the ground behind them as it ran.
Nozomi set her sights on the Fractal angel, which sat unnaturally on a point of its spiky body pattern, but the Angel glowed, brimming with energy. Its light cast shadows across the cityscape and blinded me even through the entry plug camera.
"100,000% baseline!" cried the detection controller.
The Worm Angel burrowed into the ground.
"Nozomi, get down!" I yelled.
Unit-14 skidded to a halt. It curled into a ball, and—
The light exploded. A wall of glowing octagons held between Unit-14 and the blast wave, but overwhelming light surrounded the Eva, searing it from all sides.
"That's enough!"
Misato rose, and she looked to the ceiling.
"We're not losing Unit-14 today, not on my watch. Rei!"
The room went quiet, save for Nozomi's struggles against the blast.
"Misato," I stammered, "Ayanami is—"
"Here."
It was a soft, quiet voice, and yet it felt as though it could be heard no matter how far you were away from it.
Something looking like Rei Ayanami stood at the front of the room, just underneath the center projector screen. Her head was in line with the image, and yet it didn't cast a shadow. Her whole body was translucent and shimmered with an ephemeral glow.
"My God," cried Asuka, "the geist is alive!"
Ayanami's eyes flickered to Asuka, who shrank and turned aside in her seat, but the two didn't exchange words. Instead, Ayanami met Misato's gaze. "What do you want, General Katsuragi?" she asked, her stare impassive and steady.
"Evacuate Unit-14 to safety," said Misato. "You can do that much, can't you?"
"And give the enemy the power to do the same, or worse?"
Misato barged down the central aisle of the control room, standing face-to-face with Ayanami. "That's in the future," she said. "This is right now. You asked me to do this. I'm asking you for one thing now."
"One act," said Ayanami. "That's all I will do for you."
"That's all you'd give us?"
Ayanami looked away—meeting my gaze. "That is all that can be afforded," she said.
She closed her eyes, and two of the projector screens went blank: the entry plug feed, along with plots and graphs of telemetry, went out for five full seconds.
And then…
"Control," said the telemetry officer, "we have reacquisition of signal from Comm Relay Nagano."
The center and right screens flickered back to life. The Eva was still alive, and the view from its eyes showed a mountainous forest.
"Okay…" said Nozomi, gawking. "Somebody want to tell me what just happened?"
"It was—" I looked to Misato and Ayanami, but already, the ghost of that girl was gone, leaving only the general to stand there with the light of the projector reflecting off her hair. "It was…something," was all I could muster.
"Yes, yes it was," said Misato, hearing me.
She craned her neck to look at the leftmost projector screen—the view of the battlefield Nozomi had left. The unnatural light faded away, and all was quiet. Neither the enemy, nor humankind, walked the streets of the city. The artillery cannons were silent, and not even a bird flew over the scene.
Only the Fractal angel floated slowly over the wasteland, as though nothing were wrong at all.
"This is what we're up against, people," said Misato, "and if you weren't sure what the enemy would bring against us, now you know. And you know we weren't ready."
She turned a hard eye to the control room, and she said,
"We got our asses kicked."
