Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Story Number Ten ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Studio Gainax production, its characters created by Hideaki Anno. They say the word, and this story ceases to exist.

Story Number Ten: Chapter 2

By MidnightCereal

Shinji had been following Rei for ten minutes and could still taste the copper tang on his breath. He wandered how the smell had followed him down the hall until he read his rust-colored palms and then stopped reading his rust-colored palms.

As barren as Nerv's thoroughfares were, as far as their distant junctions pinched into singularities and dissipated noise, they still had managed to latch on to reminders of what had just happened; it was Nerv's white hum of seamless machines, looking, listening, chatting amongst themselves in hidden fiber optic arteries.

He certainly wouldn't forget by following Rei, to whom `explain later' meant walking very fast, snapping wired gazelle glances left and right and aft, and not explaining anything.

Rei did occasionally dole out anecdotes or philosophy, truisms she undoubtedly fact-checked before allowing others to reflect on and tarnish them with their lazy, flawed minds. So maybe she didn't know what to explain. Maybe nothing was worth explaining.

Then she surged through a blinkered intersection and said,

-----

Caspar begins monitoring an anomaly on Sunday, twenty-two minutes after the destruction of the Twelfth Angel. It is a waveform radiating from a point seven-hundred and twenty meters above the remains of the Sea of Dirac destroyed by Unit-01. It is screened for active and dormant blue patterns and recorded for future analysis after the diagnostic confirms a negative signature. The waveform vanishes from the AIS on Mount Futago at 2208 hours.

Technical Division Three designates the waveform ISE-370 at 0700 hours, Monday, by which time several Nerv personnel have called in requesting sick leave of have been admitted into Nerv Medical to treat dizziness, stomach cramps, hunger pains, or mild to severe nausea. No correlation between the waveform and the sicknesses is suspected. Division Three's preliminary findings go live on the global Nerv plexus at 0916 hours.

By 1030 hours, Monday, at least sixty-two personnel suffer from dizziness or gastrointestinal maladies. Major Katsuragi complies with Nerv Medical Assistant Chief Furuya's recommendation of base-wide precautions against astrovirus, noravirus, and rotavirus. By 1130 hours, ninety-seven have been admitted to Nerv Medical, whose staff is being inundated and exhibiting the aforementioned symptoms. Major Katsuragi mobilizes our liaison office to the World Health Organization.

The Second Child and I arrive separately for post-sortie synchronization tests. We are both reportedly informed of the medical crisis and cancellation of our tests, and that we are to be escorted to Central Dogma by Section 2.

Central Dogma receives the first reports of provoked and unprovoked physical altercations among personnel at 1309 hours. No discernable geographic pattern to the outbreak of violence has been identified. To ease surveillance and security concerns, Major Katsuragi orders Section 2 to escort you to the emergency medical room in Central Dogma.

The first death is reported at 1319 hours. There are no eyewitnesses to corroborate the coroner's suspicions of cannibalism. Major Katsuragi implements readiness level Delta from this time forward.

I arrive at Central Dogma at 1330 hours, at which time Lieutenant Aoba hails the escort team en route to your medical suite; they do not respond. Attempts to raise the Second Child's retrieval group are also unsuccessful; Pilot Sohryu does not answer her cellular phone or order over TacNet, and is last observed proceeding in the direction of Nerv Medical, alone. Doctor Akagi remotely locks all points of egress to your suite.

By 1400 hours, the sick number in the hundreds. Tokyo-3's emergency city council cites the mutual quarantine policy in its refusal to admit Nerv affiliates to any of its municipal or private hospitals. Fights break out among the affected in and around Nerv Medical facilities. Reports of cannibalism cannot be verified. Renewed attempts to contact the Second Child fail.

The Magi identify ISE-370 as one of seven candidates for causation, due to verbiage in its report hypothesizing a link between the waveform's frequency and abnormal nerve and endocrine functions. At 1440 hours, the Command Staff summons Maho Kamakura, Chief of Technical Division Three, and Hitomi Zenzo, author of the report, to an emergency conference.

Kamakura's and Zenzo's bodies are among thirteen discovered in the West Campus Cafeteria at 1452 hours. There is evidence they had all overeaten to death. There are no eyewitnesses to corroborate the coroner's suspicions of cannibalism.

Coroner Joseph Fujitsu commits suicide at approximately 1506 hours.

It is past 1530 hours. Lieutenant Hyuga removes an L-bracket from beneath his terminal and slices his arm down to his ulna. He is physically restrained from chewing the exposed flesh and stabilized in the emergency medical room.

PET scans reveal that his receptors have ceased relaying glucose levels to his hypothalamus; eating normal food no longer sates his sensation of hunger. Subsequent scans for Lieutenant Ibuki and Sergeant Yagami confirm identical, albeit less pronounced brain functions.

The Second Child remains unaccounted for and is presumed hiding in Nerv Medical.

Doctor Akagi predicts a causal link between the severity of the symptoms and the level of exposure to ISE-370. Upon being contacted to confer, Chief Furuya is found in the specimens lab, and witnessed by all persons in Central Dogma, selectively consuming blood and tissue samples. Real time inventory confirms he is consuming your samples.

The Magi predict with ninety-nine percent confidence that the abnormal receptors will acknowledge glucose molecules originating from your body, thus sating the hunger of those affected.

At 1640 a security breech prompts a controlled Magi system shutdown, which fails. Doctor Akagi successfully executes a Type 666 firewall, but the results from the Magi, the digital feed of Chief Furuya, and your Nerv identification card photograph are distributed to all duplicate Magi systems via the global Nerv plexus and seventy-eight thousand network servers throughout the Pacific Rim. The information becomes available on the public domain at 1715 hours. The information is disseminated by over eleven-thousand media agencies around the world.

1730 hours. Under protest from Major Katsuragi, Commander Ikari orders Nerv Medical isolated from First Branch proper and the Geospatial Annex. Bakelite is injected into all suites aside from your own, and into all examination, recovery, emergency, and medical storage rooms.

Vertical and parallel command structures rapidly deteriorate in Central Dogma. A fight breaks out at com station 2, before encompassing the entire primary control center. Several dozen personnel desert their posts. Sub-commander Fuyustski is shot in the torso and is unresponsive. Commander Ikari evacuates Central Dogma. His whereabouts are unknown.

I fill an unused gym bag in the emergency medical room with first aid, along with Lieutenants Hyuga and Aoba's service pistols and ammunition. At 1750 hours, I evacuate Central Dogma with Major Katsuragi and Doctor Akagi. The doctor remotely locks all points of egress to Central Dogma and secretly begins the transfer of emergency operations to the Reserve Control Center.

I leave them and come for you. That is all.

Are you hungry?

-----

Shinji didn't have to think for long, which was perfect. “Now that you've said something…I'm getting there. Yeah.”

“I don't have any food,” said Rei.

Alrighty. So long as he had help digesting everything Rei had just rammed down his throat. He found no such charity beyond his sloppy reflection, etched in the galvanic luster of the walls. There weren't any windows in this corner or Nerv, no cork board bulletins soliciting exercise bikes or year-old futons, or any of the new GPS kiosks Misato had stumped so hard for.

YOU ARE HERE

Which was away from all those pesky employees: the soccer moms, car owners, subletters; steeped in heat and high electric whines, and according to Rei, far from anyone who might try to hurt him. Far from Misato.

“I did, however, procure a plugsuit,” said Rei, “should you wish to change…”

Shinji looked at his feet, pink from slapping the cold steel floors - he'd already stubbed his toe on an expansion joint. “No, I, uh, no. Why didn't you stay with them?”

“I suspect Major Katsuragi and Doctor Akagi of developing the same symptoms as those affected. I do not trust them to keep you safe.”

“Makes sense,” said Shinji, even as he watched his reflection shake its diffuse head. “No, it doesn't. If you wanted to --”

“It gets hot here,” said Rei.

“—to keep me safe, why take me out where you say everyone wants to kill me?”

“Not kill. Eat.”

“Um. Sorry?”

“Headquarters harbors sublevels, storage rooms, and emergency bunkers accessible to only high-ranking personnel -- Command staff and network specialists who maintain the security architecture. We must assume Doctor Akagi or Major Katsuragi has divulged the location of your recovery suite in Nerv Medical to affected parties that threatened them harm. We must proceed to lower, more secure levels.”

“We didn't see anybody outside of my room, Rei. All I saw were…” mismatched arm and leg strata; pressed cheeks and uniformed backs caught on spider webs of fractured office windows; flesh and blood and broken bone fossils newly preserved in bakalite. So no one. Nothing. He had been looking forward the whole time, locked on the scarlet patch seeping through between Ayanami's shoulders.

“What did you see?” Rei had spun, was walking backwards now and staring.

“It…doesn't matter,” he said. As promised, the sour heat of silicon processing permeated him. “You should have just left me there…”

The little part between her lips sealed up, the bruised flesh compressing before she spun back and veered into the right wing of a T-junction. Then over digitized whistling that cycled behind a phalanx of hulking doors, “I realize this is a difficult prospect to accept, but you must understand: you were not being saved for the sanctity of your life, but preserved for your eventual consumption…”

Rei paused for effect. No, she never did that. All business. Nothing but the facts, no matter what they took from you. “The incident with the Second Child is proof of this.”

“B-but, no, Asuka was, you don't…” Shinji couldn't keep the hiccup or the bubble of decayed laughter from escaping. “That's just how she is. You picked a fight with her. A fight. You don't live with us, that's how she…you don't understand…”

His shoulders crashed down as Rei powered through her slight limp and picked up speed. Shinji was sweating now. “Why is this happening?” he asked.

“The Twelfth Angel may have used your captivity to analyze human physiology, though a link between the Angel and ISE-370 hasn't been identified. It is more likely that the waveform was an energy weapon that targeted you and First Branch personnel. The attack on the Magi supports the latter theory.”

Block lettering on the walls. ISO-6, whatever the hell that meant. Nothing made any sense. “That's not…but I was just sitting in the stupid plug. I was dreaming. Dying…”

“”Nerv's defense against the Angels has inevitably raised its profile to domestic and foreign entities,” said Rei. “Hostile factions such as the Oceanic Union or Yu Lin Black may have devised ISE-370 to cripple United Nations or Japanese interests, or to publically assert an ideology.”

“By having people eat me? How could that help anyone?”

Rei slowed down. “There is always the possibility that maliciousness may have been the intent in and of itself,” she said. “Mankind's greatest enemy is man himself.”

“I…alright,” said Shinji. “Okay,” he said. “But…why?”

Rei stopped walking. “I don't know.”

She squared up to the only human-sized door in this entire acrylic-smelling branch of Nerv; Shinji had forgotten Rei was packing until the pistol drew up in her raw knuckles. Her free hand twisted the door handle and yanked hard so that the compartment vomited cable trays and Maya Ibuki and ergonomic chairs.

“This wasn't in your story,” said Shinji.

-----

And then Ritsuko framed them. They came up on the view screen, two Children and her kohai in a God's-eye portrait. Akagi zoomed in as Rei stooped to remove the gag from Maya's mouth. Misato stood and watched Ibuki's eyes spin into grainy white saucers.

“You know how she probably did it?” said Ritsuko.

Misato shook her head free from the pixel-flicker to peer down at the seated woman. “What?”

“Asuka. How she got into Shinji's med suite.”

“Oh. Don't do this.” Misato watched the screen again. Maya pressed herself against the wall as best she could with duct-taped arms and legs.

“She probably shoots the agents. Reaches…” Akagi extended an arm over the control panel. “Reaches up into his coattails to rip the sidearm out of its holster. Puts it in his back before he knows it. Bang, bang, before he knows it. He and his partner don't know they're dead.”

“You don't see them. You never…”

“Hmm?”

Misato shook her head. “Asuka was all frame. She was going to be five-foot ten, like, five years from now, sure. But the girl was a coat hanger.”

“I see,” said Ritsuko.

“No, you…” said Misato, “you never watched.” She shook her head again, slower.

“I watched them plenty. I'm watching them now.” Rei slipped a flat black shape out from her bag and laid it on the floor. Produced a knife and loomed. Maya shrank away after a skip in the feed. “Fact: Asuka gets away from her escorts, who probably do horrible things to each other. She takes one of their ear pieces, a direct passive feed into Central Dogma, which is too far away to risk. I'd locked Shinji's door by the time she reaches it, so she waits out the crazies in an empty room.”

Rei pulled the blade through Maya's bound wrists and ankles. The lieutenant kicked up into a sitting position, her mouth practicing round, stuttering shapes. “Commander Ikari can't finish ordering the quarantine before Asuka clears her sanctuary. Exposed, but that's better than being flash-frozen in Bakelite, isn't it?”

“Ritsuko.” Misato tried breathing over the skip in her voice.

“Asuka's lurking when Maya remotely unlocks Shinji's door. That green light goes on in the jamb, and she walks right in.” Ritsuko wagged one of her long index fingers. “I'm a bloodhound when it comes to confluences of circumstance. You have to give me that, at least.”

“Shut up and get your story straight,” said Misato.

“I'm just stating the obvious, here.” Doctor Akagi closed her emerald eyes and sighed. “You might as well have a seat, then. It looks like they're giving me enough time to brainstorm.”

“Don't tell me what to do,” Misato whispered. She looked up long enough to see Rei drop the flat shape into Maya's lap while Shinji hung back, making and unmaking lo-def fists. By the time Rei rose to full height, Katsuragi had crumpled into the chair next to Ritsuko, bent over at the waist, with her face cupped in her hands.

-----

Maya Ibuki shivered, but was otherwise paralyzed; it was how Rei talked down to her, that low prophetic venom Shinji had never heard the girl administer.

“You will use that,” Rei pointed at the powerbook coasting in Ibuki's lap, “to grant us access to pathways we have been denied by the base wide lockdown. We will proceed past depth minus three hundred. Prepare accordingly.”

Shinji couldn't tell if Maya had heard Rei, as the tech only smeared sweat and tears on a starched beige cuff. Then Maya stared up into Rei's machine-tooled apathy, and proceeded to melt all the way down.

“That's…that's it? You…you, you, you, you kidnap me…you brain me…you tie me up and lock me in that little sweat box with no water or food and I have to use the bathroom, I really gotta go and I can hardly damn breathe and - like a dog! A dog - and people are dying, they're dying out there and, and, and then you come back just bathed in gore, and these bruises, and with this, this blood all in your hair and nails and that's it and you don't even have the decency to tell me why and you want me to open more doors for you! You, you you you just, you, you…fucking doors!”

“Yes,” said Rei.

“You already have access!” Maya exploded. “You have access! You can go anywhere you damn well please, so go!”

“Beyond her own remote, retinal and card access, Doctor Akagi had revoked all security clearances after evacuating Central Dogma. I doubt she would cooperate in the event I located her. I'm also uncertain of her mental and physical capacity.” Somehow, Rei sharpened the dullness of her downward gaze. “I am, however, certain of your condition, Lieutenant.”

One second passed where Maya did not know what the girl was talking about - right before her dark eyebrows locked with comprehension. Ibuki's chestnut eyes swiveled over to Shinji, and…

And Rei was nuts. No doubt. Shinji saw nothing beyond the anxiety that crumpled Maya's simple, pleasant features. Not much at all.

Maybe some self-pity, like a wino hoping to score sympathy yen with a cheap lie. Shinji nearly accepted and filed that away when Maya blinked, and…

She didn't really see him. Like he was poorly lit and she needed his blood to trace him between his heartbeats, and…

“Do not look at him.”

Ikari breathed. The world came surging back through the incision made by Rei's command, flooding the space between him and Maya's eyes; fluorescent lights and recycled air warmed his blood. “I recommend plotting a route down to block H3 now, as it will be difficult for you to type while walking.”

“Please don't make me get up,” said Maya. She pulled an experimental breath, examining the space between her vaulted knees. “I don't feel so good.”

“I promise you will feel worse if you defy me again.”

Shinji imagined Rei being a fan of promises, of keeping them and carrying them out. This time he fought the glassy bovine numbness beginning to tranquilize him. “You should…probably do whatever she says, Maya.”

“Pilot Ikari knows the First Branch is in a state of anarchy,” said Rei. “He also knows I will accept neither your refusal to cooperate nor the threat you pose should I release you. If only for self-preservation, do everything I ask of you.”

“Self preser…I told them…” Maya lifted then shook her head, offered then retracted her smile. “The moment I saw your psychograph and all that random thought noise-”

The gun barrel gave Maya's forehead a cold, hard kiss, and she screamed.

-----

After a while, Misato said, “Don't just appeal to his sense of duty. It's not like Shinji doesn't have one, but couch it in honorific or nationalistic terms and his eyes will just glaze over.”

“I was planning on something much more guilt-ridden, I'm afraid,” said Ritsuko. “And that's why you're going to speak to him, yourself. See? I pay plenty of attention.”

“Good.”

“No, great, because you'll finally have some control over what's happening. Do you want some water?”

“I'll. Um.” Misato swallowed. “I'll be good in a few minutes.”

“That's what I'm counting on. When you are, sit up straight - you never pay attention slouched over like that.”

-----

Shinji picked his way over another skeletal shelf toppled onto the chessboard floor. No longer much point in calling the place a convenience store; five floor downs from where Rei had retrieved Maya, it was a mite larger than a phone booth, and had less food. It played better music, though.

Rei supervised the procurement effort, consisting of the highest ranking Lieutenant in Nerv rooting through a ravaged backroom for leftover foodstuffs. Maya had protested bitterly to Rei at having to enter another confined space against her will. But not for long.

The halogen fixtures above popped again, supersaturating the trampled space with light - making it impossible to miss the bloody stigma across Rei's back. Ruby negatives of the wound blotted out swaths of Shinji's retinas when the lights dimmed, nearly blinding him to the large cardboard box that had leapt out from the backroom and skidded to Ayanami's feet.

Ibuki stepped out and over a ravaged Maruchan ramen stand, trying very not hard to hide how pleased she was with herself.

“Open it,” said Rei.

Ibuki's smile hovered before collapsing beneath the weight of her own expectations. She bent over the box, ripped open its stapled flaps, and stood back as the First Child took silent inventory. Rei inspected a small plastic packet dangling between her pale fingers. “Do you like to eat potato chips?” she asked.

Silence beyond whispered strains of Yamazaki. Maya was taking an awfully big risk not answering Rei - oh.

“Sure,” Shinji said, shrugging. “It's better than nothing, I gue-”

“Plain or rippled?”

“I-I don't really have a preference-”

“Deep-fried or baked?”

He groaned. “It doesn't matter, Rei.”

“Salt and Vinegar, Barbeque, or Sour Cream and Onion?”

“He just said he doesn't care!” Then Maya sighed. She reined herself in and pointed at the exit to the shop. “All those partitions I unlocked for us use a strain-hardening adaptive algorithm. If they close again, it'll take me forever to reopen them.”

“I am aware of our time constraints, Lieutenant.” Rei swung the tennis bag from across her back and onto a raised knee, where she loaded it with an indiscriminate number of snack packs. The bag zipped closed with a pornographic crunch, and Shinji despaired.

“Has to be getting pretty heavy,” he mused, not meaning to say it out loud.

“It is still…” Rei fiddled with the strap until it settled between her breasts, “still manageable. Don't worry, I am not as weak as I appear.”

“You know I don't think you're weak.”

Either Rei didn't believe him, hadn't heard him, or didn't care to as she preoccupied herself with Maya. “Move.”

Maya moved. Mechanically trudged towards the stickycrunchymoist adjacent aisle. Once Ibuki flounced over the threshold, Rei hustled after her.

“Wait,” he said.

“Step carefully, Shinji, we're leaving.”

“How do you know there's not going to be anyone else where we're headed?”

Rei stopped. He caught the bruises on her face in one last epileptic flare: the channel of congealed blood carved above her right eyebrow; the ruptured capillaries in her left eye, their red feelers licking the edge of her iris; the Rosacea-like abrasions jailed behind her exhausted bangs; the pale lavender blush that had conquered her right cheek and was annexing the bridge of her nose.

It was as close to awful as someone could look and still pull off…no, she looked awful.

“I don't,” she said.

The final snap of spent power. Depth, color, it all collapsed beneath the weight of darkness.

-----

“You told me the primary lighting would be functioning, Lieutenant.”

Shinji thought that had been implied rather than explicitly stated. A brightly-lit path instead of docile auxiliary lamps recessed at the edges of the ceiling. Of course the primary lights would be working. All the same, they weren't, and Maya was about to get shot in the ass. She mitigated the odds of that happening by facing away from the enormous hermetic bulwark blocking their way. Good for her. “No. No, this should have worked…”

“You told me you were able to ensure egress down to H6, Lieutenant” said Rei, “that we had eleven minutes.”

“I know what I told you. God.” Maya glowered at the laptop docked at her abdomen, shadows tucking into her brow before she could iron them out. “Just a few minutes, here. My script was working fine, and-”

“No,” said Rei.

“But if you just let me recompile I'll use the error message to debug-”

“We cannot afford any more delays, Lieutenant.”

“Stop saying it like that. Lieutenant. And you didn't have a problem wasting our time in that sad little commissary.”

“I had only used the opportunity to procure food. Provisions may be unavailable at lower levels, and we could be isolated for an extended period of time.”

“Then let's head back,” Shinji said. To both of them. Well, not to Maya, not while her face craned down to Rei's so that her chin buzzed the top of her monitor.

“We can top off our salted potato shards with some potable water,” Maya said. “There's lots of that stuff in the utility plant, Rei, which is in the opposite direction.”

“That reasoning does not apply to you, Lieutenant, and we must temper our plan of action with an objective assessment of our technical competency.”

“I am not incompetent!” Maya yelled. “I'm sick and pissed and scared because you're going to kill me for no good reason!”

“It will be a good reason.”

Maya pulled back.

“She didn't mean that,” said Shinji.

A miracle: Rei took a breath, a hint. “My commentary on your expertise was not intended as an insult. We gain nothing by denigrating you or your vocation. I merely-”

“Then why did you say it?” Maya tucked her lips over her teeth, waited then unpuckered them and decompressed. “You knew I'd take it the way I did, and you said it anyway. You're not…you're not as smart as you think you are. I'm sorry. I see your prog matrices, Rei, I incorporate them into your core data every Wednesday. We have a chart for you - the Cram Graphical Index. A chart. You're a rote monster and we have the data to prove it. But I guess that's all irrelevant since I have to do whatever you say?”

“Let's just go back. We shouldn't…” be standing around like this, Shinji finished to himself. The words floated away from him as Rei gazed at a lone red star shimmering in the coffered black above them. Was that why she wasn't saying anything?

“Are we ignoring Shinji, too?” Maya flicked her bangs in his direction. “I agree with him. I can make another way, and we probably won't even have to leave this floor.”

“Try if you must.” Rei hadn't looked off the red pinprick floating in the shadows of the ceiling.

“Why don't you just say that you want me to move? Look at me. I'm moving. See? Here I go.” Maya clapped the laptop shut before jamming it beneath her arm. She remembered to give Shinji a wide birth as she stormed away from the shut partition, back the way that had came. “Just because you didn't like what I had to say doesn't mean you can afford to be diffi-”

Then tidal waves on rails. Torrents of freight air rampaging down the walls and lapping at Shinji's thin sleeves, roaring towards them and slamming against his eardrums. Funneling into him and howling louder than him. Driving his knees into the floor; Maya's too. The two of them hiding their ears while they waited for the sheet metal thunder to roar away to nothing.

When it finally did, Shinji cracked open an eye, with Rei's blood-black socks tugging at his peripheral vision. Maya unmuffled her ears and reeled from the partition that had shot down from the ceiling and sealed them away from the rest of the floor. She looked a bit pale.

A broadcast from somewhere above him: “We're trapped.” Poor Rei, having to state the obvious over the reinforced metal slab still thrumming like an empty cauldron. At first, Maya vibrated with it, hypothermic - it had nearly bitten her in half, after all.

“W-what's that look for?” Ibuki sifted through her teeth. She had nice teeth. Straight, white. Stenographic. “I'd try harder to not kill myself if I was going to ditch you!”

A broadcast from somewhere above him: “Give her a break, Rei. Maya's telling the truth. You should try it some time.” Ritsuko, her voice duplicated over TacNet with brass clarity, doped with scorn, which threw Shinji off a little. But here it was, again, “Rote. Monster. Couldn't have said it better myself.”

Try what some time?

What a fair, utterly vital question. A shame Rei turned to the ether before Shinji could ask it. “You have been observing us,” she said.

“More like waiting for you to hike to a relatively safe location before we stepped in. Watching you was part of it, yes.”

Someone else now, stumbling through a thatch of static. “It'll all be over soon, Shinji.” Misato. He felt his chest inflating, rising. Crashing inward as he coughed out an ache he hadn't known was there. “Hang tight, okay? Rei won't hurt you, she needs you alive.”

“Your father needs you alive, if we want to be precise. I'm afraid that you won't like anything I'm about to tell you, but it's…” Ritsuko went dead, her metered silence distancing him from Rei and Maya. Closer to Father. What did he do? “Shinji, do you know what the A-Series Special Declarations are? They're orders from the Diet in Tokyo-2, authorizing emergency actions. At 1100 hours today, you and I - Misato - everyone at Nerv HQ, we were all stripped of any constitutional amnesty; you're no longer a Japanese citizen, Shinji.”

It had just rolled off her tongue. Something she'd calculated to a thousand decimal places, he knew.

“Okay.” Then he closed his mouth. Rei was undressing him with her eyes or waiting for Ritsuko's words to grind him under tread. Shinji shook his head in the interim.

Ritsuko wheeled on. “So we have a problem. It's the four-thousand Self-Defense Force soldiers and the air support and the jamming domes and artillery they brought with them. And they've infiltrated the base, Shinji. And killing us, here and at Matsushiro. We haven't heard from Mount Futago in over two hours. I believe Misato when she says our security forces have done their best in stalling the advance on Central Dogma, considering they aren't trained extensively for close quarters combat.

“But we're running out of time, here. We might be able to stop the assault if we destroy their logistical capability in the Geofront. So, I'm guessing you see where you come in.”

Where did Father come in? Or Maya's double-hemmed lips stitching up all of her opinions? Where did Rei getting really good at that complicit silence thing come in? “No,” he said.

“No? Do you think Rei is on our side? On yours?” asked Ritsuko. “Come on, Shinji. If the JSDF weren't so busy destroying my life's work we'd all be helping them. It's your father they're after. He's going to initiate Third Impact. And Rei is taking you to him.”

“No…” Well, yes. He could believe it; No just happened to be all Shinji could muster before he forgot how to breathe. Oh God, Rei, I'm drowning was a mouthful, a tad metaphorical. And outside of her apartment, Rei liked precision. She preferred orders, elegant edicts. What a doer. A cutter. Ender. It might kill her to say something unless he told her to. “Rei…”

“Think of the Angels as…a gauntlet. Do you understand? To test man's mettle.” Ritsuko paused while Maya looked less and less like she was waiting to be hit by a bus. “Commander Ikari thinks the prize is your mother. He's desperate, or crazy, but right now that's unimportant.”

Shinji took tiny sips of malted air that froze halfway over his tongue.

Unimportant. Right now. Whatever you say, right now.

“All we know,” continued Ritsuko, “is that if he tries this before we've defeated all the Angels, the SDF won't matter. Nothing will matter. Do you know about Terminal Dogma?” A short, Velcro huff from her. “Never mind. It's why you keep going down. He needs you and Unit-01 with him. The test type acted on your behalf not even two days ago and she'll do it again if Gendo destroys your ego -- you don't want him to do that.”

Ayanami had plunged her hand into her bag, was calmly stirring potato chips and hydrogel bandages. “Rei!”

“Cut that out,” Akagi snapped at him. “She can't answer you because I'm right. All Rei can offer is whatever your father has in store for you. She doesn't care about what happens to you, she doesn't care about happens to anyone.”

“Listen to Ritsuko.” Misato again, slow. Always slow when she wanted to keep her words from fraying. “Look at what's already happened, Shinji. Think…think about what she did to Asuka.”

No.

“What did you do to Asuka?” asked Maya. She looked Rei in the eye, then at those handcuffs jangling from the girl's loose fist.

“Against the wall, Lieutenant.”

“All the praise in the world won't make up for what your father's going to do,” said Misato. “He's going to use you. The real fight is up top, and we need you.”

Maya applied herself to a large, composite wall panel, kept inventing these prosthetic, nauseated smiles. “What happened to Asuka? What did you do to her?”

“Place the laptop on the ground. Then sit down and place your arms behind your back.”

“Please tell me you didn't kill that girl…” Maya's mistake was in letting her eyes linger on the blood lakes between Rei's topographic pleats. “Oh my God!”

“Ritsuko's going to cut you a path and you'll link up with Captain Inouye halfway to Cage Six.” Rei threaded the handcuff through the guardrail running behind Maya's back. Shinji found himself filtering the image until he could stomach all the dirty black things swimming in Maya's face.

“Don't worry about Rei,” said Misato, “if she'd been authorized to kill you, she would've done so the moment we boxed you in.”

“Unlikely. I could not have verified outside involvement unless Doctor Akagi had first spoken.”

“An admission?” laughed Ritsuko.

“A demonstration.” Rei finished ratcheting Maya to the guardrail and hobbled over to Shinji. Red eyes pierced him from behind raccoon bruises. “Brace yourself, Ikari.”

“For what?” he asked.

For her punching him in the nose as hard as she possibly could, duh. If she could have hit him harder, the liquid flashbulbs popping on his eyelids wouldn't have cared. Shinji didn't care either, because, ow.

“Leave him alone!” someone shouted. Someone else towed their finger across his bloodied upper lip and tamped away.

“What're you doing? Don't!” Now that was Maya. That was her fighting her restraints and gasping and scraping metal. Her voice, draining into her throat and boiling.

“Open your mouth, Lieutenant.”

Open your eyes.

Shinji winked incessantly, let his rinsed vision synch with a distant, muffled outrage. There, where Rei was swabbing her fingers inside of Maya's mouth.

Even as Ayanami spun and stayed him with a palm against his stomach, he was reducing her touch to a vicarious thrill. Stock fantasy. He'd really wanted a closer look at Maya, but the woman had folded over, slumped and twisted like a broken awning.

“Is she alright?” he asked.

“Stand back and watch,” said Rei.

“Watch if she's alright?” He did that. Found nothing promising in Maya's crooked shoulders.

“This won't prove a damn thing,” Ritsuko huffed. “What are you waiting for, Ikari? ETA for SDF to breech Central Dogma is twelve minutes - eleven minutes. Ayanami's just buying time, because when Misato and I are dead you'll be on your own. And then Rei and your father are going to do to everyone what she's already done to Asuka. What you let happen. You think failure is telling the Commander to go to hell? That's just one of your twelve-thousand complexes talking.

“Failure is doing nothing. It's letting what happened to Asuka happen to everyone on Earth. Letting it happen without lifting a finger. That's total, abject failure, Shinji, and it's about to become you. This is it. This is Gendo Ikari's legacy, and now it's yours. You finally share something with him, just like you always wanted.”

And out of the corner of Shinji's eye, and upswell from the floor. And a noise - a crude distortion.

He blinked at Maya, springing forward to bite down on the space between them, where she wanted any part of him to be. Savaging air with her nice white teeth. Using up the slack in her shoulders and tumbling backwards. Fashioning blood bangles into her busy wrists. Kicking at him. Flailing at him. Each limb, each joint, each muscle, every neuron, carrying out its own unique tantrum in his honor. Reaching an armistice with herself, collecting her legs beneath herself. Lunging again. Silk drool slinging out to him as the cuffs choked her wrists again and snapped her back to the baseboard. She stayed there.

Her mouth hung open, allowing a sandpaper push-pull of air until Maya could furnish noise.

A crude distortion. A miscarriage of sound.

Watch.

-----

Ritsuko stood up. “Take off your safety, cowgirl. Caspar's been running our probable escape trajectories for the past ten minutes.”

Misato reached behind her head. Dark tresses fanned across her back as she pulled away the hair band. “We should have just told him the truth.”

“Oh, shut up,” sighed Ritsuko. “Do you want your security privileges restored or not?”

-----

The light left - the red one Rei had gazed at before Ritsuko and Misato had lied to him. Upped and nova'd. Shinji felt the loss for some reason, an emptiness pinching his belly. That's hunger for you. People got hungry. Maya got hungry.

“Do you think…are they still watching us?” he asked.

“I don't know,” said Rei. She crouched next to the pill bug posing as Maya and wasting Maya's breath with fetal, sputtering noises. “What matters is their pursuit of you, its intent. Do you understand, now?”

Yes.

“Shinji?”

“…Yes.”

“There is no invasion force,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Rei stopped breathing, fostering a collateral silence in exchange for his obedience. She held it long enough. Let him off the hook and pinpointed the huddled epicenter of Maya Ibuki, still racked by aftershocks. Still fractured and listing and unsound. “Are you calm, now?”

“Oh,” explained Maya.

“Listen well, Lieutenant.”

Maya nosed out of the shell she'd cobbled together and tilted forward, her momentum evicting the words. “Oh…it just. It fits…”

“Lieutenant.”

“Why do you fit? Shinji…?”

“You will not speak to him.” Rei had a talent for glacial edicts, inertial consonants and vowels. Or the swelling in her lips meant she had to really push the syllables through her teeth. "You will communicate all information through me. If you speak to him, I will punish you.”

“Okay,” said Maya. “Okay.”

“Do not touch him - if you do so, I will kill you. If you approach him, I will kill you. If you refuse to assist us, I will kill you.

“I will kill you, Maya Ibuki.”

End of Chapter 2

A/N: If Chapter 2 did not clear up some of the confusion expressed in the reviews for Chapter 1, then I will try to answer questions posed in my livejournal - my username is the same as my pen name, but all lowercase. I'll deal with any and all typos tomorrow. You know what time it is?

Random A/N: People said lots of things in this chapter.

Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.