22. The Puncture Engine
The Puncture Engine
There are a lot of things I should've considered before asking to step into an Eva again. Never mind that it was only a partial, malformed Eva with half a head at best. I should never have asked to pilot such a thing again without thinking about the stress it would exert on my mind; the pain I would suffer if it should be injured, even in a test; the nightmares I might endure from connecting with something that had only a fragment of humanity within…
Or the discomfort of a plugsuit squeezing my crotch.
First, before anyone gets the wrong idea, not all the plugsuits for Unit-14 were made for Nozomi. I was spared that repeat embarrassment, at least. No, there were plugsuits in several shapes, but not all sizes. Few of them had been made tall enough for me—and I was getting taller, honest!—so fitting in one was like having rubber bands pulling on my shoulders to fold me in half.
And that was a shame, really: the suit was fairly nice, I think. It was even elegant, you might say, with a sleek combination of white, black, and forest green. It suited Nozomi well with her cool personality, and I must admit that, despite the discomfort, I stood in the pilots' locker room for a bit and studied myself in a mirror, to see how the outfit suited me.
The tight-fitting suit left, well, very little to the imagination, and I wondered, did ancient warriors of the past run around more or less naked, and if they did, did that help show off their muscles? Did that help intimidate their foes?
While I was considering this, someone else in the locker room thought I was a madman. That person was Sasaki, one of the backup pilots. He was a shorter boy with an even shorter bowl cut, and he eyed me from the side with his mouth slightly open.
"Ikari, what are you doing?" He frowned. "Are you…having trouble with your suit?"
I bowed my head, not even facing him. "Sort of."
The locker room door banged on its hinges. "Oh boys!" Asuka's voice rang out, and she strode in without a hesitation in her step. She peered around a bank of lockers, tracking us down. "Come on, both of you—we've got a test to run!"
"Aren't you supposed to wait for people to come out first?" I asked.
She sized me up from head to toe. "Nothing I haven't seen before."
Sasaki looked aside, stifling a chuckle, and I said,
"But what about Sasaki? He could've still been getting dressed!"
"Please," said Asuka, rolling her eyes. "Does an adult need permission to lay eyes on a babe?"
Sasaki gaped at that, but said nothing.
"Asuka, please," I said, wincing.
"It's true, isn't it?" she said, leading the three of us to the hallway. "Come on."
Still, I took Sasaki aside on our way to the stairs. "Sorry about that."
He just shrugged. "It's okay. It doesn't bother me. I'm not into older women."
Asuka looked over her shoulder and glared. "What was that?"
Sasaki looked aside, albeit with a slight smile on his face, and this time it was my turn to stifle a laugh.
The simulation body pool was a wide, cavernous space. Dark red fluid flowed around the simulation bodies themselves—two malformed, half-human shapes that rested peacefully in the goo. Captain Aoba oversaw the entry plug operations: his team loaded Sasaki and me into our respective plugs. "You might need to adjust the seat," he told me as I climbed inside.
It took me a minute or two of searching the controls to realize it: there was no way to adjust the seat.
"You're not going into combat, Shinji." That was Asuka over the intercom. She, Maya, and other members of their research team observed the procedure from behind a wide, rectangular chamber beneath the water line. "Relax," said Asuka. "This should be quick."
What was not quick was the filling of the entry plug with LCL. I put my head underwater and forced my airway open as best as I could remember, but I gagged a couple times before old habits took hold. Even so, it's an unnatural feeling: you have to work harder to breathe. Even with practice, it doesn't come naturally.
Once Sasaki and I were immersed, the technicians loaded our entry plugs into the simulation bodies. The first connection was merely mechanical—the sliding of the plug into the partial Eva's neck. The second connection was not.
"Okay, Shinji," said Maya from the control room, "we're going to ease you into synchronization. It's going to be pretty low-level, so you shouldn't feel too many ill effects, but with the development of your nervous system, you may feel it a little more than you remember. All right?"
I nodded and gulped—and instantly regretted it for the taste of bloody fluid going down my throat. "Let's, uh, go for it then," I said.
"All right. We're going to initiate the secondary contacts…now."
A jolt went through my body. My right arm tingled. I looked out, and I saw goo—not the outline of the simulation body's frame on the holographic display. I saw outside myself. I saw an arm react as my thoughts moved it. I saw—
"Shinji!" Asuka snatched up the microphone. "Stay with us, Shinji. You're a human. You're not one of those things. Right?"
I blinked, and I was back in the entry plug, but the tingling sensation remained—like a huge weight behind my eyes. I tightened my grip on the controls and forced my eyelids wide. If I backed off for even an instant…
"It's okay!" I called out, breathing deliberately. "I'm here."
"Good, keep it that way. You're the one with the engine equipped, so if you screw this up, we'll have to get someone else."
At that, Maya covered the microphone and asked Asuka something. Asuka made her response, and Maya reluctantly took her hand off the mic. Asuka went on.
"Like I said, you're the one with the engine equipped, so if even you can make it work with the synch rate you have now, anyone can use it." She winked. "So don't be shy trying to impress us, Shinji."
I took another deep, steady breath, keeping my eyes fixed on her. "I understand."
"Good."
Asuka, Maya, and the rest of their team continued with the process of getting Sasaki up to speed. I have to admit I tuned out most of what they were saying. The pressure behind my eyes demanded almost all my attention to quash. It was like having a nest of spiders just behind your eyeball. You can feel it's there, and you know when those spiders hatch and start rummaging around your brain, but you can't do anything except to ignore them. You have to ignore them with a purpose.
So I watched Asuka. She spoke with technicians and pointed out to them important readouts on the monitors. She got on the intercom with Sasaki and had him position just so—not too far away from me, not too close. She was the conductor of this whole affair. Even though Maya was technically her superior, Asuka would let no one interfere with the harmony of her magnum opus. She was the conductor, and even there, I was more like a pair of drums than any of the players in this piece.
"Okay, Shinji—Shinji, are you with me?"
I blinked. Asuka was looking right at me.
"Ye—yes," I stammered, shaking myself to attention. "Sorry about that."
"Your heart rate's a little high," she said. "If you're thinking about me, that needs to wait, understand?"
"I understand."
"Do you? No problems? Nothing to be concerned about?"
"No, not—" I grimaced. The ball of spiders in my head was moving. "Well, it's a little uncomfortable, but I can manage!"
Asuka covered the microphone and talked with one of the technicians. She cast a furtive look toward me for a minute before continuing on.
"We're going to do an AT field test first, to establish a baseline. Shinji, Sasaki, bring your arms forward, like you're going to try to push each other."
Our pair of one-armed giants raised their arms, but just as we were going to press our palms against each other, a flickering barrier appeared between us, with energy rippling outward from the closest point of contact.
Asuka left the microphone to check some readouts, and Maya took over. "Good, not too much, just hold it right there," she said. "It'd be bad if you two went full power and shredded the whole building with that. Just stay put."
That was all well and good for them to ask, but just holding in that position, with Sasaki's simulation body pressuring mine was like having that ball of spiders turn into a ball of scorpions instead, stinging and crawling and grasping at my optic nerves.
"How—how long do we need to hold this?" I asked, shuddering.
Asuka raised an eyebrow. "That should be good. Shinji, you can lower your arm now. Sasaki, leave yours the way it is. Now we're going to open the interlocks for the puncture engine. Shinji, the engine activation toggle is mapped to Button 4 on your right induction lever. Don't activate it until I give the word. Got it?"
I fingered the button on the underside of the controls. "Got it. Ready when you are."
"Okay, you can activate the puncture engine with one press of Button R4 and try to grab the other simulation body's arm."
I pressed the button on the underside of the controls. Some kind of whirring or vibration went through the simulation body, and those scorpions in my head turned into a colony of soldier ants. I bit my lip and thrust the induction lever forward—too roughly for the simulation body's arm punched at the AT field. The barrier held but bent visibly under the punch's force.
Then it shattered! It shattered in a flash of light, and I saw—
I saw a woman?
Yes, a woman—unmistakably so. With a smile, she screwed a pair of eyeglasses back to one of their temples. She cleaned the lenses with lens cloth and handed them back to…someone, someone with slender, precise fingers—pianist's fingers. "Try to be more careful, hm?" she said with an affectionate lilt in her voice.
"Nice job, Shinji, that's great!" Asuka was practically clapping for the microphone. "Test number one is a resounding success, I think."
My vision cleared. The image of the woman left me. My sight was awash with orange and red hues once more.
"Resounding success subject to full analysis of experiment data," said Maya, her voice quiet—she was some distance from the microphone.
"Yes, yes, subject to analysis and all that." Still, Asuka was beaming. "Shinji, you ready to get out of that thing now?"
"Yes, please!" I cried out.
Thankfully, they didn't wait too long. They cut us out of synchronization quickly, and I was more than happy to cough up the LCL in my lungs. In fact, I was still coughing up some stuff when Sasaki was let out of his entry plug and back onto the catwalk.
"Are you all right, Ikari?" the boy asked.
"I'm not used to it, that's all," I said, putting on a weak smile.
Sasaki wiped at his eye, flicking some LCL off his skin. "I don't think anyone really gets used to it," he said.
I nodded at that, but something caught my attention—something about the boy's hand. His fingers, though still cloaked in the plugsuit's gloves, were long and slender.
There was something else about him, too: a faint discoloration around his irises, a hint of blue.
I glanced between him and the simulation body he'd just finished piloting, and I said,
"Sasaki, you need contacts to pilot, don't you?"
He nodded. "I tried my glasses, but the stuff in the plug sticks to them, and the vision isn't very good, either. The doctor said it had to do with refraction?"
"Right, I understand. Did you—did you, uh, have a problem with your glasses recently?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Yes, a screw came loose—the one that connects the lens part to the part that goes over my ear."
"Did someone fix that for you?"
"My mother did, yes. She has good hands for small things like that. Why do you ask?"
I glanced back at the observation room, where Asuka and Maya were going over the results.
"Just curious," I said.
I kept the vision I'd had to myself for a while—until dinner, anyway. Maya and Asuka were not surprised.
"Mental contamination was always a risk," said Asuka, helping herself to a serving of rice. "But you can't be violated by a dead Angel."
"That is," said Maya, who poured herself some soup, "if the engine lets us kill the Angel fast enough."
The two scientists mulled over the matter as they ate, and the rest of the table didn't have much to add.
You see, it was dinnertime on the base, and the mess staff had prepared a great meal—a meal in preparation for victory, I think. Grilled catfish, pickled radish, soup, and rice adorned the table in huge bowls and heaping plates, but despite the feast in front of us, the mood was quiet in the officers' mess. The two tables ate in an orderly, almost mechanical fashion. When one person was done with adding to their bowl, they passed the dish to the next in line, like clockwork.
For my part, I took a look at the pot of miso soup in front of us, and I thought back to my time in the soup kitchen. They didn't have pots that big in the soup kitchen, nor did the soup smell so nice. And yet in Manoah Base, all this soup was merely a means to satiate hunger. There was no time to enjoy it, no time to savor it. Indeed, some of the officers stopped by, had their fill, and left to return to duties.
Duty was never far from anyone's mind. Even while Asuka and Maya thought over the implications of mental contamination, Captain Aoba—sitting across from me and beside Maya—had a thought as well:
"Just getting close enough to use the engine is a risk, isn't it?" he remarked, putting down his chopsticks for a moment. "It's a two-way gap, isn't it, Ibuki?"
Maya looked aside and nodded grimly. "The disruption comes from within the Eva. There's no way to propagate that without some kind of gap in the Eva's own AT field."
"So you'll want to be close," Aoba concluded. "Close enough that the Angels can't find the gap and exploit it. Turn on the engine, attack, and then shut it off again—is that right?"
Nozomi scooped some catfish and rice into her personal bowl. "Sounds like it's gonna be hell," she said.
"Look, let's not overreact here," said Asuka, pointing her chopsticks at Aoba. "You—just keep the Eva together. This gap in the AT field is momentary. That's all it is. We use it to break through the enemy's AT field layers one at a time if we must."
But Aoba put down his chopsticks and folded his hands in his lap, meeting Asuka's gaze. "If the Eva's going to expose gaps in its AT field, however breifly, I'll make recommendations to the general to augment the Eva's armor."
Asuka scoffed. "Like that's going to do anything. Armor doesn't mean much against some exotic Angel attack like a quantum hole or a domain wall."
"We'll get you some data on the AT field reconnection timescale," Maya assured Aoba, and when he nodded in acceptance, Maya turned her gaze to Asuka with a resigned shrug. "If the general wants to take action based on that, that's her decision. We'll try to inform her as best we can."
Asuka frowned. With her arms folded and her legs crossed, she tapped her foot on the floor, sizing up Maya.
"Gonna make sure this has no chance of blowing back on you—is that right?" she remarked.
Maya nodded in Nozomi's direction. "That's only the best, for everyone's safety."
"Even if it costs us another city, another country?"
"Rushing to get the engine in service could cost us an Eva, or a pilot," said Maya.
"Yeah, you know, I'm too young to die," said Nozomi, who helped herself to some pickled radish. "I'm supposed to fall in love, marry someone who's got money or connections, settle down, have lots of kids who make a mess and never thank me, get cheated on because the guy's an asshole and I'm better off without him—all that stuff. You can't take my future divorce away from me, Soryu."
"Ooh, very good," said Asuka, who took a sip of tea. "I'll give you 9 out of 10 for that one."
The girls exchanged a glance, and Nozomi bowed her head like a novice taxidermist in front of a teacher. Maya, Aoba, and I looked on sheer terror. It was easy to see what was happening: Asuka and Nozomi were playing off each other—a partnership that could only spell doom for the rest of us. Their wit combined would be as massive as a black hole—and just as inescapable. We could only hope that the two of them would never work together in the future.
Thankfully, Asuka saw fit to show mercy. "Now then," she said, "what I was trying to say before Nozomi's valiant attempt to sidetrack me is this: we can investigate all these issues, sure, but we've been working on this a long time, and I like to think I've anticipated a lot of these problems. Going back to study them in excruciating detail could cost lives, too."
"I'll review your exeriment logs before we perform any costly tests," Maya assured her.
"Good, do that." Asuka leaned forward, into the steam coming off her soup bowl. "But maybe you want to do something else, Maya—like get a second opinion for our own sake?"
"Whose opinion?"
"Professor Nakamura, perhaps? Akagi's advisor?"
At that, Aoba shook his head, and he folded up his napkin to punctuate his disagreement. "He's not cleared, and I doubt anyone would clear him for it."
"He wasn't on Seele's side," Asuka pointed out. "Even Akagi wasn't on Seele's side, technically. We could use someone to vet this stuff—someone with a proper education."
"Education?" said Maya, and she and Aoba shared a nonplussed glance. "I am working on my metaphysical biology degree."
"Yes, I know," said Asuka, who picked up a couple grains of rice with her chopsticks and ate. "How many years until you're through? Three? Four?"
"How many years for you?"
Asuka shrugged. "I admit, I'm a little behind. I had to take a couple years off after my second bachelor's to pilot a super advanced cyborg called an Evangelion, so I'm still catching up, you know?"
I cleared my throat. "Asuka."
"What?"
"I think you have some stray threads on your coat. Maybe we should go outside for a little while?"
She narrowed her eyes at me, but a couple glances at Aoba, Maya, and Nozomi seemed to convince her. "All right." She rose, and she said toward the head of the table, "Captain Hyuga, may we be excused briefly?"
"Sounds like that would be for the best," he said with a nod.
Asuka blushed slightly at this, but she said no more, and I followed her out. Once we were in the hallway, I showed her aside—where careful ears within would have a harder time hearing.
"You don't need to pound your chest in front of them," I said, straightening out some wrinkles in her coat.
"You think she's being reasonable?" asked Asuka.
"I think she's can't look at it any other way. She has been the one in charge here now for what—two years?"
"That's because nobody else in the lab has a clue."
I didn't say anything directly to that. Rather, I just brushed away a few strands of hair and loose threads from Asuka's white labcoat—which wasn't even her real labcoat, mind you. You would never wear a real labcoat—one that had been exposed to chemicals and such—outside the lab. No, this one was Asuka's own; it had the coffee stains to prove that.
"Shinji?" she asked.
"Hmm?"
Her eye caught mine as I tended to one last fiber near her waist.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"I think even if you're right, Maya and Aoba aren't inclined to agree with you."
"No point in fighting them on this, is there?"
"That's…one way of looking at it."
Asuka thought about that for a while. She balled her hands into fists, and she gave me a peck on the cheek. "Thanks for taking me out here."
I nodded, saying nothing more, and we returned to the table—with Hyuga's blessing, of course. Asuka got right to it:
"Sorry, I was an ass," she said, as matter-of-factly as a weatherman announces an afternoon shower. "And Maya, I know the last thing you must want is for someone with suspicious ties to second-guess your work."
Maya looked aside. "Suspicious or not, Nakamura trained some brilliant students. It's something I'll bring up with the General as well."
"That's all I'm asking for," said Asuka. She put on a grin and set her gaze on Aoba. "Now then, Captain Aoba!"
He looked to Maya, then to me. "What's this about?"
I showed him both my hands. "I'm not a part of this."
"That's true; Shinji's not a part of this," said Asuka, "but I have it on good authority that you've been up to something in your time off-duty."
"Wh—what could you possibly mean?"
Asuka leaned forward, drumming her fingers on the table.
"Maybe…a secret rock band?"
At that, Aoba bowed his head, and he slid two bowls of food aside. He leaned forward, meeting Asuka's gaze in turn.
"Young lady, what do you know about rock and roll?"
"Not enough," said Asuka, "but I hear you're an expert. Maybe you could enlighten me?"
Aoba was more than up to the task. As dinner finished up in the officers' mess, he gave Asuka, Nozomi, Maya, and me a brief history of the genre, from the Boswell Sisters to "Shake, Rattle, and Roll."
And Asuka, for her part, engaged him with poise. She watched his eyes religiously, nodded as he spoke, and smiled. She never gave up that smile, not for the rest of the evening. She wore it as she ate and sipped her tea—and believe me, she wore it well.
Two days later, Sydney fell to the enemy, and Misato and Maya mutually agreed to certify the puncture engine as ready for combat trials.
"Is it actually ready, though?" I asked Asuka.
"Of course it is," she said. "I'd stake my life on it."
She put on that smile again. She did wear it well.
As well as she wore that white coat of hers.
