The man stood there in his perfect, spotless suit, his fingers interlaced as he awaited his accompaniment's response. "Amentum." The younger of the two men said quietly, pushing a strand of lose hair behind one of his ears. "The leading producer of Exorsta… and this is how they manage it." He turned to look the man in the suit, his eyes flashing with anger even though the rest of his face seemed to remain intrigued. "You tell me this girl—" He motioned towards a glass wall in front of them, separating the space where they stood from the area the girl was in. "—has no recollection of her past whatsoever?"
"Ah… that's right, sir." Mr. Suit responded. "She's a prototype Puella – number one on the list of currently available Exo-"
"I don't care. It's wrong. What do you do? Breed them in test tubes? How do you manage to raise a person who has absolutely no memory? She can't even remember what happened in the last five minutes, for god's sake!"
"S-Sir…" Mr. Suit stuttered, holding his hands up, trying to calm his customer. "Try to understand. They can't operate correctly if they—"
"Did you say there was a way to fix this memory thing?"
"Yes, but …"
"But nothing." The younger man shot. "Shut your mouth unless you have something to do besides insult people's rights as human beings." He studied the girl in the glass tank. She was completely nude, though she didn't seem to have any markings on her skin that would indicate that she had received sunlight whilst wearing clothing. Tan marks. Yes. That's what they're called. "I'll take her." He said rather abruptly.
Mr. Suit glanced at him uneasily. "Uh… her… specifically… her?"
"I said her, didn't I?"
"Yes, but…" Mr. Suit looked even uneasier, if that was actually possible. "That's … Ionius… she… belongs to Cecci as a prototype model. I… I believe you heard about her in the briefing…"
"I don't care who she belongs to."
---
"My name is Ionius." She said. "This information is programmed into my hard drive. I am a Puella–"
"That's not what I asked you. I asked you when you where born."
"I… What is your name?"
"What? Why do you care?" The same young man who had met with the representative for Amentum earlier that day shot the girl an appraising glance. "I didn't tell you to ask me my name. I want to see how much you actually know about who you are."
"I cannot access this information without entering your name." Ionius' voice was flat and emotionless as she reeled out information like a recording. "Amentum Interlunium likes to know who knows things about their products, and what exactly they know. It is not possible – though has not been proven impossible – to hack Amentum memory data even with the most technologically advanced software. To accomplish a feat like this, Amentum Special Security forces – ASF - snuff out those who have managed to trick Exorsta Puella models into giving out information not meant to actually be known."
"Are you sure they shouldn't call themselves ASS instead of ASF?" He remarked snidely.
"The Amentum Special Security forces have no say in what they are called. They are all Aduro models, not much unlike myself, though they specialize in—"
"If I tell you my name, will you tell me when you where born?"
"Yes. I shall do that, if it is what you request of me."
"Okay. First off, since you want to know so badly, my name is Sanctus. Secondly, you are not my slave. Don't act like one." He said.
"You are correct." Ionius replied flatly. "I am not a slave. I am a Puella meant for piloting Exorsta models three and latter."
"I meant… you're not a machine." Sanctus told her, moving down a hallway they had entered and carefully scanning the area for anyone who might be watching them. I'm paranoid. Augh. "You're a living, breathing…"
"Object." She finished.
"No." Sanctus corrected, stopping outside the last door in the hallway, then fishing through his coat pocket for an ID card. "You're a human. I'm going to prove that to you, even if you don't want me to. You're a human being with feelings and emotions and-"
"You are a human. I am a Pue-"
"You're not." He found the particular ID card he wanted and proceeded to jam it into the slot next to the handle. The thing beeped irritably… it was the wrong card. Sanctus sighed and looked over his shoulder at Ionius. "Your first assignment. Open this door."
Ionius moved forward, put her hand on the knob and turned it allowing the door to swing open freely. "Why can you not open the door to your living compartment?"
"It's not mine" Sanctus grumbled, pushing the door against the wall. A scent not far from that of rocket fuel drifted from the room causing Sanctus to recoil. "I got this card from… one of my friends." He explained, over coming his reluctance to go into the room and moving forward. Ionius followed. "He said he didn't need it anymore… I can see why."
The small apartment was made of three rooms – the main room which held one bed and a couch with a window at the far side, off to the far left was a bathroom and next to that a closet. There wasn't any wallpaper, but judging by the yellow patches on the walls Sanctus guessed that there had been at one point. The ceiling sagged a bit and the carpet looked too musty to walk on.
"How is it that you can afford to purchase something such as myself but not have enough money to afford a decent living quarters?" Ionius asked looking unwilling to move any further forward than the doorway.
"The world is a sad place these days." Sanctus said as he wrapped his strong had around Ionius' wrist and pulled her into the room. "You can have the bed." The couch looks more likely to actually be able to support a person. "I'm fine with the couch."
---
The sand was bone white in the glare of the noon sun that sat directly overhead. The sea looked glossy and cool despite its color as it rolled slowly in and out, scattering the tiny shells of dead creatures on the shore. Asuka's words hung still and dry in the humid air as I pondered where we were and let the situation waver. Just a few hours earlier I would have given anything to end my life. Anything to let the girl that now lay battered beside me in the crimson tide die. Anything to let go of the little hope I had for being able to pull through.
I had been forced to live.
You can still die if you want to after everything here is over.
My mind pounded with those words. I could still die. I didn't have to live on or force myself to keep going. She had told me that I could die after everything was over. If I still wanted to, that was. Why I wouldn't have wanted to die after everything was something I doubted I would ever know. If everyone was supposed to die during what Asuka and I appeared to have lived through, then what choice did I have? Death was inevitable. It was the only choice.
We'll continue the next time, when all of this is over.
Misato's words meant something to me so deep that I couldn't reach it. Not yet.
Asuka stirred restlessly beside me. I knew I would have to face her… that there was no way I could escape the consequences of my actions. But she didn't know. She never had to know. So I would never tell her. She sat up, slowly pulling her knees up to her chest, and then dipped a hand into the water.
"Shinji." Asuka whispered as she pulled her hand out of the water letting drops of the crimson sea roll slowly off her skin and stain the sand. Small wisps of steam rose from the sand where the water had fallen.
I turned slowly to look at Asuka. Her eyes weren't brown anymore and bandages no longer obscured her figure. Had I imagined it? … It seemed likely that I could have. Maybe I was imagining all of this. Maybe none of this was real. I could have easily been stuck in hell with the one person that despised me so much she could only spit in my presence and call me an idiot. Or maybe this was heaven. Maybe this was my punishment for wanting to die and not being there to protect Asuka when I could have been. That could have been why I was stuck with her in this place.
"The water is warm." She told me as she stared out over the ocean. "Too warm."
Asuka's hand that had touched the water was bloodied and discolored.
It looked like the skin had been eaten off of it.
"A-Asuka…" I stuttered. "You… your hand."
She glanced down at her hand. Her deep sapphire eyes narrowed at it almost like she was angry, but her voice was filled with concern. "I can't feel it."
I looked away, unable to stand the sight of what Asuka had done to herself. I knew it wasn't her fault. She couldn't have possibly known the water would be like that and somehow I felt like it was my fault. My fault she had been defeated. My fault she had ended up here. My fault she had put her hand in the water and not cared. And at the same time… it was my fault. She had wanted to live and had kept the will to go on. I hadn't.
"I feel it now." She sounded scared. "It hurts, Shinji… it's hot, too hot!"
The sun moved behind a cloud causing a rush of freezing air to come sweeping over us. The edges of the water froze over. Temperatures where at the extremes here -- the sun caused the ground to cook itself and the water to boil while the shade made the ground so could it could crack and froze the water – I realized.
"Put your hand into the water." I said. "It's cold now."
Asuka obeyed. "What is this place?"
"I don't know." I admitted. "I don't even know who I am anymore. I don't feel the same." It was true, too. I didn't feel the same at all. Not now in this strange place with Asuka acting decent towards me. I couldn't feel normal in a situation like that. I felt much more open, though, oddly enough. "… Do you think we where the only ones who survived?"
"I didn't survive." She said simply.
The sun began to move back out from behind the cloud. "Take your hand out of the water."
She did so, but looked slightly confused as to why. "How come?"
"The temperatures are at extremes here… like …"
"On the moon." She finished.
"Yeah."
"This isn't the moon."
I frowned and shifted positions to keep the underside of my arm from being baked in the sun, but didn't respond so Asuka continued. "It doesn't feel safe at all here. We could fry to death out here in the sun or try seek shade under something and end up freezing to death."
I knew she was right.
"We're going to die here, Asuka." I whispered, afraid she would hit me, scold me, and then call me an idiot. "We're going to die here because of me. Here in this stupid forsaken land with only each other…"
"Shut up." Asuka commanded sternly, turning to face me. "Shut the hell up. How can you say that? How can you fucking say something like that when it's your unwillingness to go on and to adapt that made you end up here? I know you can't help it. I know it's something that comes naturally to you, but how the hell can you do it?"
I stared at her… literally a huge, wide, gaping stare. For a few minutes she had actually treated me nicely. Normally. Like an actual person! It had shocked me so much that I had forgotten how harsh she could be. I had forgotten how true she could be. Asuka was a dose of reality that I needed horribly, but was also what I ran from and feared. I wanted to be the clueless, stupid boy. I didn't want to know what she thought of me. I didn't want to know the truth.
Her hand struck the side of my face sharply. "Listen to me, Shinji! How the hell can you go on the way you do when you know it hurts other people. If you had just accepted that your life wasn't going to get any better and had done what you where supposed to have then everyone might have lived! If you hadn't wanted so badly to give other people what they wanted and be accepted then none of this might have happened and you know it. That's the worse part. You know what you're doing and you know how badly it hurts other people but you do it anyway! How, Shinji?" Asuka's voice broke. She no longer sounded stern or threatening. "How can you live like that?"
Asuka and I both fell silent.
---
I sat for a long time thinking about what she said and trying to forget it at the same time. That stinging pain in my cheek wouldn't let me forget it, though. It wasn't something I was supposed to forget. I didn't think she could blame the entire third impact on me, though, if that had really been what it was.
Asuka stirred beside. I immeadiately got an intense feeling of déjà vu.
One of us spoke for the first time in at least three hours. "We'll do this over and over again, Shinji." She whispered while staring up at the vast, blue sky. "We'll talk, then argue, and then be sorry we ever did it."
She appeared to regret having said her words just as much as I regretted having heard them.
"How's your hand?" I asked trying to think of something else to talk about.
"It's fine now." Asuka muttered absently. "The water helped. … What about your cheek?"
"It doesn't hurt." I lied.
She said nothing. No skeptical looks, either.
When I looked back over at her she was no longer moving.
Just lying there. Limp. Lifeless.
I couldn't even bring myself to cry.
---
Some time later I was alarmed by the sound of something where Asuka was.
She was groaning.
She wasn't dead!
"Asuka!" I tried to yell, but it came out in only a hoarse whisper. I slipped my arms under her back and pulled her towards me, able to find my voice now. "Asuka… are you… alive?"
"Of course I am, stupid." She muttered. "Put me down."
She was alive! She was really alive! I couldn't bring myself to let go of her, mostly because I was afraid if I let her fall back down to the sand that she really would leave me. Then reality hit me. She had called me stupid. Her outbreak earlier that day appeared to have drained her so much that she had gone back to being… her. "You scared me, Asuka." I told her; unable to tell her how much I hated it when she called me stupid. "I thought you left me… here… all alone…"
"You idiot." Asuka grumbled. She struggled against my hold, not seeming to realize that her strength had been diminished so completely that she barely even moved when she did. "You wouldn't be alone. You've got Misato. Toji. Kensuke." She paused as though unsure she wanted to say the last name on her mind, but decided to. "… Rei."
"T-They…" I started to tell her they had died, but stopped myself. If she didn't know they where dead… if she didn't know what had happened… then maybe she wouldn't act like anything was wrong. Maybe. Just maybe.
"Let go of me." She demanded.
I gripped her back, sitting her up straight so she was looking out over the ocean.
"What the hell?" Asuka asked, looking over at me and narrowing her eyes. "Why're we here?"
"This is where we washed ashore." I told her simply.
She reached out towards the water, but I grabbed her arm to stop her. "It's hot." Was my excuse. I showed her the place on her hand where she had touched the water before and explained about what was going on… what had happened.
She had nothing to say.
---
"When I was in school…" Sanctus started slowly, staring up at the sagging ceiling. He had finally gotten Ionius to lie on the bed and stop insisting that he needed to, though it had taken awhile. She had seemed to like to talk… a lot. She reminded him of one of those psychologists he had seen on television when he was younger. Television had been banned a long time ago, though, because Cecci claimed it promoted things that… they didn't want. "When I was in school, we used to look at pictures in our text books of the way the world looked a long time ago. It wasn't really that long ago, that's true… only about thirty years. Maybe more than that, I didn't pay much attention. I never was really bright. It was so beautiful though…"
"The Great Destruction." Ionius muttered into the darkness. "That is what my database tells me to call it. Approximately 64 years ago, a meteor struck the earth causing vast populations of humans to die. Approximately 49 years ago, a meteor stuck the earth causing what was left of humanity to-"
"To move into underground settlements." Sanctus finished. "Yeah, I know. I don't care, either. It doesn't matter to me. Someone told me teachers taught history so humans wouldn't repeat their actions. How would we be able to tell a meteor was going to hit us?" He laughed dryly. "It's like something else happened and they just want us to figure it out on our own."
"This is one of the reasons that Cecci Inc. has banned television from the public household. Television programs promote the act of free and rebellious thinking therefore making humans harder for the ASF to keep in check."
"Pff. It's like they don't consider themselves humans."
"Maybe they don't."
"You weren't programmed to say that." Sanctus said wryly. "Were you?"
"I…" Ionius sounded uncomfortable. "No. I was not."
"Tell me you were."
"I cannot lie."
"I want you to anyway.
"But…"
"It's an order."
"I was programmed to say that Cecci does not consider themselves human." She told him falsely.
"You've got ASF tracking devices on you, don't you?" Sanctus asked.
She didn't answer. Sanctus lifted his upper body so that he could look at her. Ionius was sitting straight up in the beam of moonlight that came through the window and looking as uncomfortable as ever. "No." She whispered.
Sanctus grinned. "You're practicing lying, eh?"
Ionius nodded, slowly.
"Good." He said as he brought his legs around so he was in a sitting position. "You've got to lie a lot to get by in life. Amentum and Cecci both know that well so I would suppose you should."
"I would suppose."
---
As the began to set above the blazing ocean, the only thing I could seem to think about was how I would burry Asuka's body in the sand. I knew I would have to if we didn't find someplace to stay. Any place. The possibility of finding people that survived – or even buildings that survived – seemed out of reach. We where going to die there and I knew it.
---
Author's note: I know this is a bit odd with the presence of what may seem like a parallel or psuedo world right now and if that much bothers you than you can always skip those parts and go onto the ones that bear an extreme relevance to Evangelion. The two "worlds" will, however, meet, even if you don't already see the relationship between the two.