Siegfried was trapped in an awkward position. The descending shuttle was behind him, Storm above, and Duel ahead. If he moved aside, Duel would see the shuttle immediately.
"Gravity correction, particle dispersion correction."
The previous hit had given him data to adjust his fire control, while Yzak Joule charged straight on without any standard evasion. What followed happened in a flash, driven by pure instinct.
The Heavy Particle Cannon overflowed with particles as Storm fired in panic. The shot grazed past the cannon, but the interruption caused the weapon to detonate prematurely, and Duel blocked the weakened blast with its left arm.
Before Storm could assess the result, alarms sounded behind it. Seeing the GINN disarmed, Kira finally entered SEED again, overwhelming Athrun and driving Storm away with Beam Rifle fire. Moments later, Assault's Beam Sword pierced forward, and a kick sent Storm tumbling out of the gravity zone.
Now unarmed, the GINN faced the onrushing Duel. Siegfried grabbed a chunk of wreckage and met it head-on, buying the final seconds needed. He dodged the Beam Sword and smashed the debris into Duel's back, exploiting its damaged thrusters.
Fury drove Yzak Joule to fire blindly. Siegfried evaded again, but a punch struck the GINN's wing thruster. After checking the damage and confirming the shuttle was safe, he kicked Duel away and headed for Archangel.
"Ten seconds to stage three!"
With the countdown echoing, everyone held their breath. Assault had already returned, leaving all eyes on the struggling GINN.
"Five seconds!"
The hull of Archangel loomed close, alarms blaring inside the cockpit as the GINN reached its limits.
"Three seconds!"
"How can I let you get away!"
Duel fired a spiteful shot that could never hit. Hearing the lock warning, Siegfried shifted slightly, and the damaged thruster finally died.
"Two seconds!"
"Unknown MS signature on radar!"
"Siegfried!!!"
The GINN almost grasped Assault's hand, but that tiny gap sealed his fate. As the ship fully entered stage three, Siegfried released the controls and touched his collar one last time.
No regrets, he thought. Sorry, Hilde. Sorry, Cagalli.
"I will not let you die."
Through the burning heat, Siegfried seemed to hear Hilde's voice. His final thought faded with a bitter smile.
"Notify Archangel. This is Hilde von Marindorf. Prepare immediately to recover this unit and the GINN."
Siegfried felt as if he had been having a long dream. In it, he was still an ordinary boy, scooping at a half-cut watermelon, with an old electric fan above his head making a creaking sound. On the television played the final episode of a pirated SEED disc.
A knock came from nowhere and pulled his eyes away. He muttered that he could not even watch a finale in peace, then opened the door to find a white-haired girl standing there, her face without expression. She looked at him as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
"Who are you?"
"I am Hilde. I am here to take you."
"Take me? Where to?"
"Archangel."
"Are you joking? Archangel was just on TV."
Feeling how absurd the scene was, the boy turned to point back at the room to show her what Archangel really was. Instead, he found that the space behind him had turned into a bottomless black hole, swallowing the familiar walls without a sound.
"Siegfried, you must come with me."
When he turned again, not only the room but even the strange girl had vanished. The whole world twisted under some great force and collapsed into meaningless blocks of color that offered no sense or direction.
He opened his eyes again in darkness, and as his vision slowly returned, Siegfried realized he was in the medical bay of Archangel. Hilde sat beside him, and it was impossible to tell how long she had been there. Her expression had not changed at all.
"Are you awake?"
"How long was I out?"
"Six days, eight hours, forty-six minutes, and twelve seconds."
"So it really is you. If it is six days, then we should be in Africa."
"We are negotiating with Dawn Desert, preparing to flee through the Red Sea."
"Where is Akagari?"
"He was taken away by Qisaka."
After a few simple questions about their situation, Siegfried found that his body still would not respond. He struggled to sit up, only to have Hilde press a single finger against his forehead and push him back down.
"Multiple organ damage, severe dehydration from heat. You almost died."
"Is that so."
"Why?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why did you have to save that ship?"
"For peace of mind."
"Was it because of this?"
Hilde took out the flower that had been tucked at his collar. Siegfried opened his mouth, but in the end he could not say anything at all.
"You are blaming me."
"I just want the truth, not to be pulled around like a puppet."
"Fine."
As Hilde spoke in her clear, cool voice, Siegfried endured the pain in his body and finally heard the truth he had been asking for. It was close to what he had guessed, though still unsettling in its details.
Hilde had arrived only a little more than three years earlier than him. Unlike him, she had crossed over together with two black mobile suits and crash-landed on the recently abandoned Mendel after the machines were badly damaged.
"So you are not human? No, I mean not from Earth? And why did I only ever see one mobile suit?"
Some of the facts still caught Siegfried off guard. According to her, her original form was a highly intelligent humanoid AI, but both she and the two black mobile suits were heavily damaged during the crossing. One suit was less damaged, while the other was almost completely destroyed after taking on the role of protecting her core.
After the forced landing on Mendel, what remained before the barely functional Hilde was a research facility left in chaos by the hasty withdrawal of the GARMR-D company. With no better options, she transferred the last power of the better-preserved suit into an artificial womb found there.
Inside were a pair of identical twins created under the Super Coordinator project and never destroyed in time. After transferring her consciousness into the female sample, her original mechanical body completely failed. Not long after she awakened and began gathering information about the world, the male sample showed signs of mental activity, which led to Siegfried's awakening.
"So you did not come much earlier than me?"
"Three months, twenty-one days, eight hours."
"Stop, stop. Then what about Haro? Why does that thing have awareness?"
"Because my emotional collection system and part of my cognitive logic are inside Haro. And…"
"And what? Do not drag it out."
"For some reason, I sometimes feel there is another consciousness controlling Haro, or perhaps Haro is controlling me."
"We were doing fine with science fiction. Do not turn this into a ghost story."
"I do not know. I cannot understand it. It may be quantum entanglement caused by the crossing."
"I did not get that. Then what level are our bodies at? I think I have SEED."