Neon Genesis Evangelion:

Apocryphal Rhythms

Part8

by ZERØ's Wings

By the time the first medical team arrived, the blood pooled around Rei's head had dried out, turning a dark burgundy. The specialized NERV EMTs gingerly picked her up using a series of leather bound straps to support her spine, head and neck in case of injury. They didn't pay any mind to the distraught young boy, huddled in a corner under a coffee table, clutching his knees and rocking back and forth.

*****

Fuyutski felt very alone as he marched down a dank corridor to retrieve Dr. Ritsuko Akagi. The labyrinthine innards of NERV headquarters were a tribute to all the atrocities spawned by the advancement of human science. He reached the detention area, a narrow hall lined with impenetrable metal bulkheads. Behind each bulkhead was a tiny cell that would, in any normal prison, be considered solitary confinement used for storing only the most dangerous criminals. And yet, the brig's only occupant was the relatively mild-mannered Dr. Akagi, who had never harmed a living being in her entire life. However, her destruction of the dummy plug ensured that the third incarnation of Rei would be the last. Although it was perhaps her greatest act of love for Gendo Ikari, it was also the act that he would never forgive her for, the act that made him hate her.

He came at last to Ritsuko's cell. He winced as he swiped his crimson keycard through the electronic lock. The steel panels of the door shuddered; then slid back with an awful grinding sound. Dr. Akagi sat upright on her bed in a very dignified manner, almost as if she had been expecting him. She was wearing a blue, wool-knit sweater her grandmother had given her. It had a grey cat knitted onto the front.

"You are needed," Fuyutski ordered flatly.

"I'm not your whore," Ritsuko hissed. "Ikari just keeps me down here in the shadows, the dirty little secret, and calls me up when his own incompetence grinds you all to a halt." Fuyutski ignored her.

"The first child is in critical condition. You will make a diagnosis and operate on her if need be."

Ritsuko was nearly doubled over with bitter laughter. "You want me to operate on Rei? Ikari must be really fuckin' desperate if he has to call me to patch up his little doll." Fuyutski's eyes narrowed slightly.

"That's enough," he said. He grabbed her roughly by the arm to pull her along.

"Leave me here," she muttered. "I'd rather be dead." Fuyutski ignored her, dragging her limp body into the elevator. "You here me?" she screamed vehemently as they began to rise toward the hospital branch. "I'd rather be dead, than help her."

Soon enough though, Ritsuko was dressed in her usual medical garb, with an array of stainless steel instruments laid out before her. Fuyutski only had to put a gun to her head once through the whole process. However, when he did, she just stared down the barrel with such an empty, uncaring gaze as to make the threat nothing more than a pointless formality.

"You fool," she said with a tinge of hatred. "I want to die. Can't you see that?"

Fuyutski put his sidearm back in its holster. "Then your punishment shall be life, if you cannot save that girl."

"So I can't win, huh?" Ritsuko mused, wiping a single, poisonous tear from her eye.

*****

Ritsuko was pulled into a brightly lit, stark white room, and she winced, squinting, her eyes unused to so much light. She made out a single shape, a black pillar in the middle of the blinding white. It was Gendo Ikari. His stare permeated every mental barrier she had set up, and she felt like she would shrivel up into nothing just standing before him.

Gendo motioned to Rei, who was lying on an operating table against the right wall. Dr. Akagi could barely see the child at first, her pale white skin blending with that of the walls around her. Only her eyes betrayed her location; the two red orbs that stared up, unfocused, at the ceiling. Soon, Ritsuko's eyes had adjusted to the light, and she saw not just Rei's crimson eyes, but the surprised, open-mouthed expression that had frozen on her waxwork face.

"How long has she been unconscious?" Ritsuko asked wearily.

"Approximately thirty minutes," was Fuyutski's clipped response. "The EMTs that brought her in believed she experienced some kind of cerebral hemorrhage."

Ritsuko shook her head. "That doesn't explain the vaginal bleeding."

"Bleeding?" Fuyutski asked. "She's just menstruating."

"Rei can't menstruate," the doctor barked back impatiently. "She doesn't even have a uterus. We had to give each spare body a hysterectomy so that we could insert their S2 organ."

Gendo spoke up for the first time, issuing controlled, moderate tones. "You must make a diagnosis quickly, doctor. Very soon Rei will be past the point of surviving any kind of operation."

How can he sound so calm? Ritsuko thought incredulously. Rei is all but a lost cause now, and he hasn't even broken a sweat. Ritsuko was struck suddenly with an idea. She ripped open a jar full of cotton swabs, and took a small dab of blood from each of Rei's bleeding orifices. She placed each sample in a separate dish and took her microscope off the top shelf.

"There's no time for one of your little science projects!" Fuyutski yelled impatiently. Gendo remained silent however. He felt he was just grasping the tip of some great realization, something Shinji had said. Ritsuko waved a hand to silence them as she studied each sample. Suddenly, she twitched and tittered, and quickly checked each microscope a second time.

"I was correct," she said, just a bit of her pride creeping back into the statement. "The substance that Rei is releasing is not blood."

"Then what is it?" Gendo demanded, his brow folded over itself like a rolling thundercloud.

"It's LCL, mostly. There are some trace elements of plasma and red blood cells, but they only affect its coloration. It seems her body is using a very unusual method to clear waste products from her circulatory system."

With those words, Gendo's mouth parted slightly, and was left ajar as the breath was suddenly pulled from his lungs. It was something that his son had said over the phone…

Um, she uh, she's still breathing and she has a pulse, but she-she she lost so much blood, uh, oh god…

She has a pulse, Gendo mouthed silently. Then, he suddenly regurgitated the words out loud, from his shock.

"That's impossible," Dr. Akagi said. "Rei doesn't have a heart. Her S2 organ, which functions as the nexus of her circulatory system, doesn't register one."

"But she has a pulse," Gendo said again, breathlessly. "Check it."

Dr. Akagi placed two fingers against the girl's carotid artery. Her mouth dropped open, and she stared up at her Commander, shaking her head in disbelief. "It's just not possible."

*****

Misato was halfway to NERV headquarters when she received a frantic phone call from Hyuga. She turned around in the middle of a four-way intersection, causing hapless drivers to swerve frantically out of her way. She found Shinji under the coffee table, still curled up in a little ball of nihilism and fear. Misato picked him up by both arms and hauled him out to the car, trying to ignore the circlet of drying blood and cerulean blue hairs left on the floor of the laundry room.

"I can't take this," Shinji whispered as he lied prostrate in the backseat of Misato's car. "It's too much, too quickly. Everything was okay…and then it all went bad, so fast, so much," he shivered and curled back up into a fetal position. Misato looked back at him through her rear-view mirror and shuddered.

"I'm sorry Shinji," was all she could say.

Shinji had tears coming down his face now. "I don't want to live…if everyone I touch…becomes miserable and dies."

End part8