A single light shone in a storeroom within NERV HQ, the one that had flicked its activator carefully and silently shutting the only access to the room behind her. The person who had entered was a woman sporting NERV technical division fatigues, one more from the vast amount that toiled everyday within the large pyramid. She was average in most respects: not plain, but not striking. Not short, but not tall, either. Not boring, but not exceedingly charming. She was, for all intents and purposes, a very forgettable face in the daily chaos involved in running Humanity's last line of defence.
And that worked out all the better for her, as far as she was concerned.
The tech specialist walked further inside the storeroom, searching for something amongst the tools, parts and other assorted items kept within. She checked the shelves and cabinets with hurry and attention, until she stumbled upon what she was looking for half-hidden in a dark corner of the room: a set of six heavy-looking rectangular boxes stacked on top of one another.
Letting out an irritated sigh and grumbling to herself about how people always seemed to creatively interpret their orders, the woman took hold of each box and began to carefully set them on the floor one by one until they lay in two sets of three, parallel to one another. She then knelt in front of the first container and began to pat its backside, fingers travelling up and down the surface as if looking for something. A tiny, camouflaged spot of the silver box soon gave in to the pressure and a hidden keypad sprang out of the container's side, the woman closing her eyes for a moment before she pressed a finger against the device.
"...Two, eight, four, six, nine." She muttered, depressing the numbers in the same order. A confirmation sound reached her ears right as the last digit appeared within the keypad's display, and the container it was affixed to opened up with the unmistakable hiss of decompression. Five more hisses followed, letting her know that the seal on the other containers had been broken, as well.
The woman then stood and took off her jacket, revealing little more than a tank top underneath as she abandoned the discarded piece of clothing and reached out towards her naked left shoulder. Her fingers caressed the exposed flesh for a few moments and then bit in, parting the skin with little effort and allowing her to displace the shoulder out of its socket.
The entirety of the woman's left arm then came off with a pop, and she placed the artificial limb between her legs, the stump that had once been connected to her shoulder facing upwards. The now one-armed female looked into the stump's hole and retrieved six small cylinders from a storage space in the shape of a revolver's drum.
The woman held one of the glowing sticks in her remaining hand and crushed it like a survival flare, then tossed it into the open container before her. A soft glow came out of the box a second later and she peered into the light for a moment, before the woman grabbed her detached arm again and stepped towards another box, repeating the same process for each of the other five containers.
When that was done, the woman quickly reattached her left arm onto its shoulder and let it hang limp, flexing her fingers as much as she could to ensure that it would be passably connected until she had the opportunity to properly re-join it. Finally, she walked back to the first container and inspected the cargo held within, nodding in satisfaction before she reached out towards the back of it and made sure to hide the keypad once again.
The woman then put on her jacket with some difficulty, inserting her left hand inside a pocket when she was done. More than enough to disguise the limb's lifeless nature in a building where most people didn't give each other a second glance.
"The cargo is live," the woman reported, touching her ear.
"Excellent work, 7520Y," complimented the voice of her handler. "Have any of our tracking hounds marked prey as of yet?"
"Nothing concrete, Arthur. We'll keep you apprised of any developments as we continue our investigations."
"Do so. The shipment of Violets will arrive imminently, and I need not remind you that time is of the essence for the continued success of the operation."
"Roger, we'll redouble our efforts. Out."
With a flick of her finger, the agent killed the connection. She then took a few seconds to ensure that no trace of her presence or her activities remained either on her person or in the storage room, before turning off the lights and leaving the area like a perfectly normal NERV employee.
Swiftly, blackness enveloped most of the storage room once again. And it would have remained so, undisturbed until the morning work shift arrived the next day and began their daily routine of maintenance and logistics...
...had it not been for the million reddish pinpricks that slowly came to life and broke the darkness.
A/N: Short update today. I'd been meaning to publish this short interlude in the middle of this week and continue with a proper update today, but it completely slipped my mind due to work. To make up for that, the next proper update will be going up on Wednesday and we'll continue with our regular schedule the following weekend.
See you guys then! ;)