Genesis was necessary to protect PLANT. As Athrun Zala headed toward the hangar, he repeatedly tried to convince his wavering self with dry, hollow reasoning.
But every time he used that self-hypnosis to forcibly suppress it, a faint yet thunderous echo rose from the depths of his heart, impossible to ignore: an instinctive rejection of indiscriminate slaughter.
Athrun hurried to the hangar boarding bridge. Ignoring the maintenance crew's salutes, he leaped straight into the fully opened cockpit of the Justice Gundam and slammed the button to close the outer hatch.
The Earth Alliance's Agamemnon Class battleship Doolittle drifted slowly through the boundless expanse of space. Within this warship, tempered by countless battles, Flay lay exhausted on a bed in a cramped room within the residential section—an individual rest cabin assigned to senior crew members.
The fighting was exceptionally fierce. From time to time, the surrounding cabins echoed with the footsteps of maintenance personnel rushing about and their hurried, hushed conversations. Amid the chaos of the fleet's intensified repairs and resupply efforts, the higher-ups had specially granted her an extremely brief period of rest so she could maintain peak combat capability and her best condition for the coming decisive battle.
She roughly pulled off the Earth Forces uniform that represented her mission, yet also felt unbearably restrictive and oppressive, and casually tossed it onto the floor.
She turned over, closed her eyes, and intended to force herself to take a short nap.
But she simply could not fall asleep. The moment her eyelids shut, her mind did not grow quiet. Instead, it began racing even faster.
Whenever she was alone like this, avoiding others' eyes and trying to completely relax her nerves, the chaotic scenes from the battlefield earlier would surge into her consciousness like waves.
That man's voice suddenly