บท 67: Chapter 67
Twisted metal and concrete rubble greeted Ritsuko Akagi as she entered the main cage inside Central Dogma. One of the walls had suffered a near complete collapse and the massive door that led to the catapult overhead had come off its hinges and crumbled in the space below. The smaller debris was gathered together in piles; jackhammers worked on the larger pieces, breaking them down for removal. And that was only above the surface.
The devastation reminded Ritsuko Akagi of an urban battlefield, which in a way it was. Three Evangelions had done battle here, brutally, armed with only their bodies and their pilot's will to survive. Such destruction was to expected.
A week after the battle the general feeling in the Geo-Front was that they were lucky Asuka had miraculously activated Unit-02 and joined the fray when she did. They all realized how close it had been. And yet they couldn't have known the truth. Ritsuko did.
She was glad, and even a little proud, that Asuka could ride Unit-02 again. But the narrowly-won victory did not fill her with complacency. That was why she had insisted on keeping up a strenuous test schedule, hoping to catch minor problems before they became major ones. After what happened in China, she had to eliminate any risks.
Glancing around her, the blonde doctor regretted once again having to delegate Unit-02's testing to Maya. The operator was capable, certainly—Ritsuko had trained her herself—and with the decision not to repair Unit-00 a second time she had nothing else do to while Ritsuko, on the other hand, had a lot to deal with. She would have liked to look at Asuka's data first hand, but it wasn't strictly necessary at this stage. Maya could read graphs and plot data points well enough, and MAGI could do the rest.
Ritsuko made her way down the gantry, her heels clicking loudly.
The repairs to this part of the installation alone would cost hundreds of millions of yen. Repairing the outside would cost even more and take longer. The UN had wasted little time approving a new emergency budget as a result of NERV's renewed importance. Protecting the world was an expensive business.
Both Unit-01 and 02 had long since been removed to their holding cages; those had been easy tasks, accomplished with routine equipment. The cages, however, were not designed for the removal of chunks of pulped Evangelion, which was mostly what was left of Unit-A, or parts of their own outlying superstructure. Despite these difficulties, the modular components that made up the cage allowed a great deal of flexibility so it was mostly a matter of thinking and careful planning.
And Ritsuko was very good at those.
There was a small army of techs and machines working in the cage, and even more of them under the LCL's surface, each with a specific task, just as there had been all week. Ritsuko judged that they were only about halfway back to having the cage usable again. And while she had enough trust in the crew to do a good job, she needed to be here for the next part of the operation.
A technician with a pair of large headphone and clad in orange coveralls greeted her as she approached.
"What's the status?" Ritsuko asked.
"Access plate has been released," he reported.
"Good." Ritsuko nodded. "Set the charges in the ejection mechanism and bring up the entry-plug."
The tech relayed the orders into the microphone around his neck and fixed his gaze on the LCL below. Ritsuko leaned over the rail at the edge of the gantry and peered down. What was left of Unit-A lay sunken beneath twenty feet of LCL, making it easier for teams of divers to cut it up into pieces that the cranes could then remove. It was a slow, tedious process, but it was better and safer than having people climbing everywhere with chainsaws.
At first only a few bubbles could be seen, then divers began to emerge and swim away. Finally, the entry-plug bobbed to the surface like a massive cork in an angry orange sea. It was badly dented and covered in scuff marks. Remarkably, it was not crushed.
A crane was lowered from a gantry overhead and the divers attached the plug to it. Ritsuko noticed that both ends of the long cylinder were painted red, with white rings running through them, forming a pair of darkly-ironic bullseyes. Chinese characters were printed on the plug in black. They weren't particularly interesting; just the usual mixture of techno gibberish: Interface Service Capsule 01 Alpha.
Below the characters was a yellow star, crude and obviously hand-painted.
"A dummy-plug," Ritsuko said to the technician. "Remove it to Terminal Dogma for disposal."
"Yes, Ma'am."
It was a lie, of course. Like a lot of other things that none of the people present had clearance to know. Ritsuko preferred it that way. She was not looking forward to opening the plug and finding the week-old carcass of the young girl that the Chinese branch had used for their experiment. But at the time it had been a necessary lie—Shinji would not have fought the way he had if he had known that there was a human life at stake.
So she had lied to him. Actually, in truth, she lied to Misato and Misato lied to Shinji. While not absolving her, it was enough that she didn't believe herself responsible.
Ironically, as it turned out, Shinji was not the one to defeat Unit-A, and Ritsuko was pretty sure that she wouldn't have had to lie to Asuka about something like this. Misato could dote on Shinji all she wanted, but Asuka was the only real natural warrior among the pilots. The girl would do anything to win battles, even if it meant having to kill another human being in the process.
Assuming there had been anybody left to kill, Ritsuko thought. She doubted it.
By the time Unit-02 activated, Unit-A's pilot was most likely dead. The Emerald Tablet had probably destroyed her mind when it took over the Eva, and the damage inflicted by Unit-01 would have sent her into physical shock.
Ritsuko had known that removing the Tablet's safety measures could have severe consequences, but the violence of the results had defied even her expectations. The Chinese really hadn't known what they were dealing with. And to think it was the same code now residing inside ...
The crane stopped overhead with a hiss. Ritsuko turned around as a recovery vehicle was brought in by a separate crew. Most of NERV's vehicles were purpose-built, and this one was no different. It consisted of a long flatbed trailer with a half a dozen wheels on either sides and six semicircular brackets to hold the plug in place. There were cabs at both ends, allowing it to be driven forwards and back without the need to turn.
Under her careful gaze, the crane slowly lowered the plug onto the trailer. The suspension screeched as the added weight pushed down on it and the entire trailer sank noticeably. LCL poured out of two large fissures in the plug, soaking the trailer and the floor beneath it. Several crew members jumped on board and closed the brackets around the plug. They worked quickly and efficiently, as Ritsuko had come to expect. When they were finished they flashed a thumbs-up.
"Entry-plug secured," the technician next to her said.
Ritsuko nodded. She began walking towards the cab. "Clear the maintenance crew for access into Terminal Dogma."
Gripping one of the metal bars that served as handholds, she climbed aboard and opened the passenger door. The driver, a blonde girl in orange work coveralls, looked at her curiously.
"Doctor?"
"Miko, right?" Ritsuko said casually but did not wait for an answer as she settled into the seat and looked through the thick windshield. "Lets go. Gate seven."
Miko started the vehicle with a flick of her wrist on the ignition key. The engine came to life with a roar, like a dormant beast waking from a long hibernation. She dropped the emergency brake, engaged the clutch with her right foot, and put the tractor in gear.
The vehicle rumbled towards one of the loading tunnels, making more noise than Ritsuko thought it should have. She made a note to herself to schedule some maintenance; there had been neither time nor resources to look after a lot of the non-Eva equipment lately, and some deterioration was to be expected. Now that they were regarded as necessary to humanity's survival again, she was confident that the government would be forced to provide replacements if NERV asked.
The narrow entrance opened into a wider space in front of them, a dark, concrete cavern painted only by strips of light placed where the walls met the roof. The tractor's headlights looked like bright circles in the darkness, and the space they illuminated was the only relief in the middle of an impenetrable black void.
Heavy components like entry-plugs were normally loaded directly to and from storage via the elevators in the cages, thus making cargo procedures simpler and less time-consuming. In fact, weapons and battery packs could be loaded directly to an Evangelion once it was properly placed. But this plug was not going into storage. Nor would it ever go back into any Eva unit.
Ritsuko looked at the girl across from her. "You've never been to Terminal Dogma, have you?"
"No, ma'am," Miko said.
She could not have known what she was carrying. Death had stopped making Ritsuko uncomfortable a long time ago. From her mother's suicide to the destruction of the Dummy and Rei's bodies, she saw death as something to be acknowledged because of its omnipresence, but it wasn't something to be upset by.
People died. The world was far too uncaring to feel sorry for those who met that fate. It was the living that deserved pity.
Once the vehicle rumbled into the central hub, the larger overhead lights came on automatically. Six different rail lines extended out of a central ring like a big turnstile, and each rail led to a different gate. There was a long, rectangular cargo platform locked in front of each gate and as the tractor exited the tunnel it rolled smoothly onto one of these platforms, its multitude of tires never touching the hub's floor.
It took a few seconds for the RFID on the trailer to register, and then the hub began turning, placing the vehicle to the gate exactly opposite their assigned one. The center of the turnstile opened up mechanically, allowing them to drive down a ramp, through the hub, and back up to the platform on the opposite side, where another gate led into a tunnel identical to the one they had just left.
"Is it true what they say?" Miko asked suddenly. "I mean, about there being monsters down there."
"It depends of how you define a monster." Ritsuko checked her watch, the hands glowing green. Fifteen minutes and they'd be to the elevator. From there it would be a much longer trip down to Terminal Dogma and the giant incinerator installed in its recesses. Thus were NERV's secrets hidden.
Before that Ritsuko would have to dismiss her driver and cut her way into the mangled entry-plug. Unfortunately, they still needed whatever information the pilot could give them before disposing of her.
"How would you define them?" Miko said.
"I work with some of them," Ritsuko said. "And we kill the rest."
Miko did not respond, but in the scarce lighting Ritsuko noticed that she became tense, clutching the steering wheel more tightly than before. A perfectly reasonable reaction as far as she was concerned.
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