Chapter 7: DEA

(Disclaimer: I claim no Evangelion affiliated material as my own creation)

A/N: Answers, Answers, Answers. Pay attention to Gordon. And for your sake, he has brushed up on his Japanese.

When he realized that the grime covering the reflection was not stuck to the broken mirror at all, Shinji found himself slightly horrified by the state of his face and blood-matted hair. The gashes in his cheeks and lips were split open due to the excessive swelling and his teeth were stained pink with the blood from his bleeding gums and broken tooth. His right eye was still mostly sealed and beginning to change to the color of an overripe banana. He imagined the broken tooth would hurt a lot more if the deep gashes in his arms didn't sting like mad from whatever the quiet and less than ginger nurse was dressing them with. Wincing, he set the mirror down on his bedside table as she jerked the last bafndage tight. She jabbered away in some deep-mouthed language that Gordon told him was Canadian French and pointed to a basin of soapy water in the corner of the small room. Shinji stared at her coldly, but nodded that he understood what she intended. His response was apparently impolite and sent the blabbering nurse on her stomping way from the room. The door slammed behind her with a hollow "thud".

Although the only furnishings were his single hospital bed, the table, and a long counter with a sink and mirror; the yellowing room that Shinji found himself alone in once more felt crowded and cramped. A smell of old wood permeated through the ancient wallpaper that barely clung-to at all. The walls of the base infirmary were so thin that he could hear any door shut within the building and the strange mechanical noises or beeps coming from an adjacent room. Asuka's room? He wasn't sure if Gordon told him the truth, but something told him that she was alive and definitely near him. Somehow, he could feel the truth in that.

Aside from Gordon, the building was filled with non-military personnel and not one of them understood Japanese or, for that matter, Shinji's versions of fragmented English and German. French was an absolute mystery to him and he wondered how that nurse could talk so much without straining her mouth on those long syllables and frequent "j's". This language barrier was preventing him from getting answers to his army of questions, and his panic continued to rise by the hour. Jumpy and borderline feral; one would think he'd spent years in the wilderness instead of a handful of days.

Despite his gestures and sign language; he could get nobody to reveal the date, time, or even how long he had been in the yellow room, but judging from the three meals (a lunch, supper, and breakfast in the American style), it hadn't been a full day yet. As he scrubbed at his face with a hot cloth and tried to get the grime from his fringe, he went over the plan once more. When he was certain of Asuka's whereabouts, he would charge the door at his next visitor and make his way to her. Then he would…

What am I supposed to do if she's unconscious? I don't even know where we are, much less where I'd go. What if Gordon has already contacted someone with the disbanded NERV? Or SEELE? What if he's gathering bidders on our lives? What if Asuka and I are separated again..?

When he felt his breathing quicken at the multitude of flaws in his half-baked plan he stopped thinking about it. Rationally, it was important to force an exterior of calm. He wanted to speak to Gordon. Maybe there was something else he would tell him… something to reassure or convict him to design some notion of what to do about this disaster of a situation.

He stood back to look at himself in the small mirror and assess the damage, post-wash. There would definitely be a scar on the bridge of his nose and, if his fears were correct; an accompanying bump if it was actually broken. His eyes looked terrible, and the right one still resembled bruised fruit. His bottom lip was puffed out to a comical size and one of his ears was painfully red without explanation. Small cuts and scrapes from various falls were smudged across his face and shoulders and Shinji patted them with the soapy liquid with a neurosurgeon's care.

"Well… I look like hell." He said to the scrawny reflection. Even in the fresh pants and white bandages, his injuries and out of control hair made him appear as if he had been painted by some angry, half-blind Rembrandt—all bruises in sharp contrast with the gauze. Suddenly, the door opened and the ever-imposingly large Gordon stood hunched in its small frame.

"You look like hell." Gordon mused aloud. Although it was English, Shinji guessed it's meaning relatively easily and would have smirked if he hadn't been too busy composing questions for his captor. "I thought you might—ah shit; English. Okay Japanese… hmm. You want to know about Asuka? Yes? You want to see?" The man scratched his neck in frustration. Shinji nodded and crossed the room in two strides.

"Yes, please. Is she okay? Is she awake or—"

"You can see her. Follow and be quiet. She is awake, yes. Do not excite her." Gordon interrupted. "After, I want to talk and explain. You need to know about our group, DEA. Important reasons for rescue and the program." Shinji impatiently nodded his consent and peeked around the man's shoulder. "This way"

Now he was even more unsure of Gordon's intentions. What evil power lets it's captives visit eachother? He noticed that there was no lock on his door-knob from the outside... What merciless mercenary keeps his prisoners in an unlocked room? Still, Shinji wasn't about to let his guard down any further. Gordon's strides were massive, and he found himself scurrying after him. The act made him feel even smaller and weaker. Did it truly matter if his guard was up or not? "At least," he thought, "I will have to keep my wits about me."

Just as he suspected, Asuka's room was adjacent, but in another hallway. Hers, however, was far from the primitive quarters he just left. Everything was washed in white, from ceiling to floor, much like the hospital rooms at NERV headquarters. There were some important differences, however. The walls were brick with no windows and the lighting came from florescent bulbs, practically antiques. Her bed was practically in a sitting position and she was facing the other wall, a small heap under the blankets. Many tubes and medical apparatus were scattered around the floor under her bed, but at least some were still attached. The equipment seemed slightly primitive with its outdated wires and handwritten charts, but Shinji knew it must all seem like SEELE's experiments to her. He circled around and knelt down to look at her face. Gordon solemly made his way towards the door.

"I'll leave you, but the visit will be short. She needs rest." he said in barely a whisper.

"Hi Asuka…" Shinji's voice cracked out quietly. He couldn't stop staring at the feeding tube in her nose. She just stared from him to the various machines surrounding him in disbelief. Before she could draw conclusions, he made them for her. "I know… we've been picked up. I couldn't stop it from happening, and I… we had no choice... But it's not SEALE. The soldier, Gordon, says that this place doesn't have anything to do with Evas or piloting programs. We're safe." He tried to convince himself of the word by smiling, but he knew it looked pained and his battered face wasn't convincing.

"You…" she breathed. "…held me down. Now it's happening again… The tests…" Though her face was barely moving, she portrayed the betrayal of Caesar in her eyes.

"I had to, Asuka. There was no other choice. I couldn't let you drown yourself. We'll find a way to—"

"No. We're not getting away this time. They've got us. We're nothing but rats to them. We're nothing…" she mumbled as her eyes drifted. Shinji was truly hurt by this reaction. She still believed that SEELE had them.

"No, Asuka. We're safe. These people are trying to help you. No more testing. Just trust me, please." He begged. She slowly extended her hand towards him, pulling with it a tangle of medical tape and gauze. He reached out to take it, but she made a fist and glared at him menacingly.

"You had better fix this. We can't stay and you know we can't leave. I'll never forgive you if you don't fix this. I'll—" She choked on the last sentence and that cough began racking her body again as she curled up with the pain in her chest. Some of the medical monitors began their own panicky whirring sounds as their charge began to shake and gasp.

"No! Somebody! Please!" Shinji reached out to hold her still and prevent her from tangling herself in the blankets, but already there were several doctors and nurses swarming about her and a large man was pulling him away by the shoulders.

"She'll be all right, laddie. Jest you come with me, then," said the man in a brogue that was altogether gibberish to Shinji. He twisted in the powerful grip and took a last look at Asuka, thrashing between the two doctors who were administering injections and soothing her. Her face was suddenly slack and she slumped into the bed again, sedated.

He wanted to hurt those men for doing that to her, for scaring her, and for holding her down. More than anything he wanted to protect her like he should have always done, but now the only way to help her was to let them do what they needed. He was shaking with suppressed sobs and his eyes were hot and blurry. The man turned him around and patted his shoulder gently. "There, lad, don't be crying. You need teh be strong for her and come with me. Don't you be bothered with her well-being. It's all set."

Shinji couldn't make out much of what he was saying, but the kindness was palpable in his reassuring tone. He let out a ragged sigh and nodded, pushing away the hand on his shoulder. Gordon, standing a short distance away, nodded to the other and signaled for Shinji to follow him. The halls he limped down were narrow and dim, but not menacing. The whole building appeared to simply be outdated. "Gordon? Where are we?" Shinji dared to ask. A smile spread across the soldier's face at the boy's attempt to sound fearless and in control, but especially at the use of his name.

"We are in the North-Eastern former United States of America. This building was a school before the last Civil War. DEA uses its faculties and classrooms for offices and medical rooms. The gym is our hangar." He explained slowly while simultaneously composing his next thoughts into Japanese. "Because DEA is not approved by the government, we have to be secret. This building is old and nobody will care if we use it."

"What is DEA? Does it stand for something?" Shinji asked, careful to enunciate for Gordon.

"Designing Eva Alternatives." Gordon said it first in English, and then explained the acronym in Japanese. "We don't want to stop fighting the Angels, but we believe that using children as pawns is unfair and cruel. The life-span of a pilot is dramatically shortened by the stress on his body." Shinji felt a pang at the truth in those words. Something he was never told, but he knew just the same.

Gordon continued, "Since the beginning of the Evangelion pilot recruiting many years ago; there have been people all over the world who were opposed to using children. The reason that programs got away with making soldiers from babies, we were told, was that there was no other way to create that unique bond with the mysterious robots. It doesn't take a scientist to know that something was hidden from the public about the piloting programs. DO you know of any pilot whose family keeps close contact? Any pilot who lives at home?"

Shinji thought of Asuka's distant relatives' brief bimonthly calls and Rei's detachment from any family, whatsoever. He thought of his father… "Not one. Any real family is distant and uninvolved with the pilot's life, I guess…"

"Yes, exactly. No program can afford to let it's precious pilot to be distracted with the ties and rituals of a normal family. Do you think that the pilots in other countries were all sons of involved scientists or had families willing to throw their child into absolute Danger? Of course not! When a child elicits notice from one of the programs for some special trait (high intelligence quotient test scores, abnormal agility, or other forms of prodigy), special measures are taken to make the separation from his or her family…a clean break." Gordon paused in front of their destination and let Shinji absorb this as he unlocked a door.

"What do you mean…?" Shinji asked. Gordon waved him into the warm room and put a finger in the air to arrest his questions for the moment. The room was designed with comfort in mind, despite its oppressively dark curtains and sharp, black conference table. The man took a swift look around and selected a pair of empty leather chairs by a cold fireplace. A cloud of dust rose with a squeak as the pair at down, facing each other.

"What this means, Shinji, is that if the parents could not be paid or compensated for their child's permanent recruitment (provided he or she passed the basic synchronization tests)… Other means of persuasion would be used without the child's knowledge. The family is given a choice: silently and calmly surrender your son or daughter without hesitation or…" Gordon dragged his finger across his throat and stared into Shinji's horrified eyes. "Either send him to the wolves, or see him butchered before you. Those are the options given to each mother and father of your average pilot. And the child must never know of the threat; lest a tragedy occur." Shinji could guess what a "tragedy" was when a desperate recruitment was hanging in the balance. He gasped at this new knowledge and held his hands in his hair. He had never wanted to pilot, but was doing it anyway and… well he never thought of it as an evil thing in this light. He piloted for the benefit of those he loved, at whatever unfair cost… but to know that families were torn apart for this…

"And what about DEA? What does this have to do with you?"

"It's simple, in one sense. Like I said; many people were opposed to using the children, obviously. We were only told that there was simply no alternative. We were unhappy with this pacifier of an excuse, and so now we are the alternative."

"But… how? What can you do without an Evangelion? There have been other robotics and attacks that were no good against the Angels. Nothing else works!" Shinji appealed. He was afraid of where this conversations was headed and how much it reminded him of the Dummy Plugs.

"We are aware of the unique powers that an Evangelion has against an Angel, and we believe that they can be harnessed in a different capsule, so to speak. An unmanned machine can only go so far with our current technology in remote manipulation. Also, power sources are limited for large vehicles or weapons. Most of the members of DEA are ex-members of pilot programs, space programs, or scientific universities. We have every sort of scientist available, as well as a number of military personnel working inside several organizations as spies. We are a network of pilot families, repenting recruiters, and troubled citizens. This school represents only a minute fraction of our front, and we are spinning webs throughout every remaining country… except Japan." He explained, purposely avoiding the answers to Shinji's questions.

"But, I've never heard of DEA… Surely NERV would have been aware of your existence if you are global…" he reasoned. "And if you didn't have any men in Japan, then how did you know about Asuka and I? How did you know we were still alive after the last… attack at headquarters." Gordon sighed and sat back in his chair.

It was going to be a long morning.

A/N

I'm starting to put things together, now. Hopefully you understand about as much as Shinji does at the moment, so just be patient for the next installment. Also, I'm going to change the name of this story. The original title, Don't Leave Me, was just a temporary fix for my usual problem with names. I just happened to be listening to a friend's 90's playlist on an ipod and the song "Don't Leave Me" by that preteen cult-favorite band, Blink-182, came on. DOn't get me wrong, I've always had a special place in my heart for their good beats and immature lyrics, but I don't think that the title carries the fun of that song. It just doesn't fit. I thought I'd tell you about it before I changed it.

I'll mention the new title in a note at the end of the next chapter, and change it for good when submitting the chapter after that. The description keeps changing because it's hard to describe something that you sort of... add-lib throughout. The entire story is composed of liberties taken on my own ideas (which were already taking liberties on a copyrighted concept.) haha

Leave me comments or I'll feel ignored and stop writing :D

In the next chapter: (Title: Secret Celebrities)
What is it that DEA does, really?
Why do they want Shinji and Asuka?
What is their "alternative" and will it be just another dummy-plug project??
And, hey! What the heck is going on with Asuka, anyway?