(Horror)

Soon after regaining consciousness, I was inevitably questioned about the incident involving Unit Zero by Dr. Akagi, but unfortunately, I do not think that I was able to provide her with the answers she sought.

There might have been a clear stream of consciousness if you had put together the thoughts and impressions of myself, Unit Zero, and the soul contained therein, but viewed by my current, singular consciousness, the memories of the event were a jumbled, nonsensical word salad, and the sequence of events wasn't clear.

I supposed it might have been analogous to trying to open a glitchy, corrupted computer file.

Much of what I could access seemed too disjointed to make sense of, so I did not by any means relate every available detail to the good Doctor, if only because I would have very much struggled to explain it, let alone answer any follow-up questions she might have.

Immobile and confined as I was in this bed while she towered over me, eying me up like a fish she was about to cut up, there was a mounting sense of unease building in my chest when I considered what she might do, decide, or recommend to the Commander based on what I tell her.

I did not let this influence my actions, of course, since it is irrelevant to the topic at hand, but as soon as she had gone and ceased to occupy my attention, I found myself shuddering against my will.

The thought popped into my mind to wrap my arms around my shoulders, but with my left arm stuck in that heavy cast and the right wrist pierced to allow the IV to connect, this was of course out of the question.

Before she left, Doctor Akagi had asked me to try to put the events together as best as I could – for the advent of the angels was drawing ever nearer, and it was crucial that NERV be able to use its tools reliably.

Anything I might provide could be a vital clue, she said – and of course, she and her team were already working overtime to repair EVA 00.

This was a truly untenable situation, she'd said – the enemy could arrive at any moment now, and EVA 02 was still being completed overseas.

She did not go so far as to tell me that I had failed in my duties, while I lay broken and immobilized in this bed before her, but impatience and frustration were so plain in her voice that even I could sense it, though she probably thought that I did not.

I simply saw no point in bringing it up, as there was absolutely no way that it might make any difference, or end well for the better.

Dr. Akagi concealed herself behind appropriate surface politeness, but it wasn't too hard to guess what she really thought. Even I could tell.

I knew what I was. I didn't need to be reminded of it.

There is no way I could forget.

Nobody told me, exactly, but it was beginning to look like I would be laid up here in this sickroom for a long, long time.

No one came to explain this to me, however.

No one told me what was going to happen to me.

Of course not – they do not tell the supply crates where they are going to be moved nor do they warn the EVAs when they're being transferred to another cage.

Strangers came in regular intervals to change my IVs, replace the sheets, empty the bedpan and apply fresh bandages. They would also take the opportunity to turn me over to a different side to keep me from developing sores, but I wasn't sure if it was working.

I experienced a lot of discomfort in the parts of my body that kept touching the surface of the bed.

Aside from those visits, I noted the passage of time mostly by the fading and brightening of the diffuse light that filtered in from the windows and the ever-shifting positions of the shadows.

For the first few days, I was heavily medicated and thus in and out of consciousness.

For much of the day, I was mercifully too exhausted to do anything more than to trace the falling light beams.

When I could sustain wakefulness, however, I had to fit the time, to fill my mind with something to escape from the onslaught of full consciousness.

So I did as I was bid and tried my best to piece together what had happened from such fragmented impressions as I could reach.

First I'd gone into the entry plug, obviously. Next, I'd felt this strange foreign sensation cramming itself down my senses. But was that before or after I'd had that curious illusion of a second inner voice narrating my experience?

Was that something real, coming from the EVA, or a simple malfunction of an overloaded faulty brain, akin to a near-death experience or a hallucination?

I wasn't told if there was permanent damage.

My brain must have been fairly intact if they had not booted up the next clone, but perhaps there were subtle damages that didn't show on a scan. The absence of individual cells whose information contents I couldn't reconstruct in their absence.

Would I even know?

I wasn't certain whether I was recalling a few images from the point of view of the rampaging EVA, or whether they were imaginations induced by me wondering what it might have looked like.

Memory is malleable, mutable after all, so I must take care not to distort the very information I am looking for in the act of accessing it.

I'd read extensively about memory, of course, as well as the workings of the mind in general, since anything to do with the brain and the nerves might prove vital to controlling an EVA.

As best as I could, I combed the various fragments for any details that might indicate their order, like hints in the images – was the wall damaged yet, for example?

Was I certain?

But the more that I tried to put the pictures in order, the more than I pondered them lying there, strained to the end of my physical limits, struggling to hang onto thoughts until I reached the end of my capacity, trying to connect them still as the proximity to sleep lured them along twisting, hypnagogic parts, the more that there seemed to be a different set of images mixed in, inextricably linked and tightly connected to my impressions of the incident, and yet unplaceable in time and space.

I ended up having to remind myself that these things had never happened at all.

To argue, inwardly, to myself, that they couldn't have, since they didn't fit anywhere in time within the short and quite manageable collection of my memories.

….

There was an image, of a place that seemed like NERV HQ, but it couldn't be, because it wasn't right.

I had spent all my brief life wandering those hallways, so I knew them like the back of my hand, surely enough to find my way even in the pitch-black dark – so therefore, I could tell that what I saw in the image was different – minute details of the facilities were absent of changed, such as the transparent panels of the observation deck.

Most curious of all, everything seemed larger, or strangely distorted, as if the perspective was all wrong.

I looked down, and saw the seam of a dress I had never owned, a dress that I wouldn't own because of its striking, bright red color.

I looked to the side, and I saw a tall man walking beside me – it took me a moment to recognize Commander Ikari. His chin was sharper, the wrinkles around the corners of his mouth milder. In place of his beard, he just had a bit of messy stubble, and he was wearing a lab coat rather than his uniform.

I trailed my gaze down his arm and followed it down to a tiny little hand, smaller than I could ever recall mine as being.

Yet he held onto it and as he led the way, I felt the pull -

was this my hand?

Whoever it belonged to, she was lightly smiling without a care in the world, watching intently as various features of her surroundings were being pointed out and explained her.

It's like she had no idea that she was any different from any other little girl taking a casual stroll with her father.

I woke to Dr. Akagi's commanding voice dressing down some junior nurse.

"I hope you understand that until the Europeans finish outfitting Unit Two, this is our only pilot. Think on the implications of that – and then make sure to ask her explicitly about her pain levels and any new symptoms, understood? Don't wait for her to tell you. And once she's strong enough for it, the same applies to walking her to the lavatories and making her eat thrice a day. Don't leave the room until you've seen her finish her meal. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Ma'am!"

"Alright then, dismissed!"

Someone excited the room. I'm certain that it wasn't Dr. Akagi. The clacking of her shoes tend to be pretty distinctive.

I could hear the door sliding shut, but there was no indication that the Doctor had moved.

Perhaps she was staring at me.

I do not know if she intended to wake me on important business, but so far, she had given no indication.

I would rather prefer not to interact with her if it wasn't strictly necessary, so, I did what I could to lie still, pretending I was still dozing.

There was a shuffling on the floor as if she had shifted her weight, her posture deflating somewhat once she thought herself unwitnessed.

A deep sigh escaped her, and soon after, she began muttering to herself:

"To think that we're wasting so much effort on fixing 50 kilos of vat-grown meat that doesn't even have a will to live…" she mumbled.

"I guess it's inevitable. Our brains evolved to track our fellow monkeys, not to understand logic. That's why two dots and a line look like a face to us and you see people getting attached to their blasted Roombas. Or that case where dozens of women fell for that scammer pretending to be a rich guy on tinder. I guess Mr. Turing didn't account for the fact that most human bonds are really so shallow that most people wouldn't even notice that they're talking to a robot. Entire political propaganda campaigns are based on that truth these days."

And with that, she turned and walked out.

I'm in such excruciating, incandescent pain that I don't understand why I haven't died already.

I keep bleeding and bleeding torrents of blood, but I never bleed out.

The agony burns me, but I never fall to ash – though my stiffened fingers have stopped seizing and twitching from the nails piercing into my palms.

Even the scar of my chest still aches, the tiny cross-pillars they drove deep inside, the tubes driven deep inside my flesh that knows not how to die nor how to repair itself, festering misshapen growths twitch hapless where my very flesh and blood were taken to be devoured by those who would become part of my body, to share in this dubious immortality.

One of them would have perished just from hanging here like that, from having this thing pressed into my face so long that my skin has begun to grow in folds around it, and in this, it is shown that I yet live, the very worst injustice of all:

That my cannibal kin would thus violate their own mother-

...what… what was that?! Was that… Unit Zero?

At school, or at NERV, people have sometimes told me not to be shy, or that I needn't hold back.

But I am not being shy.

When I have something to say, I say it, but most of the time, I don't.

There is nothing forthcoming.

I tell myself that there is no reason to say or think anything or to respond in any way.

That I am simply being purposeful.

But there is, at times, this doubt as to whether that's really true.

Whether I'm not any more choosing or renouncing than I am being shy or holding back, but that the truth is far, far simpler than any of that:

That there is simply nothing there.

No impulse, no capacity.

Just emptiness.

I remember being afraid of it, sometimes.

I recall filling my mind with stories, ponderings and observations to keep from feeling, concentrating on work, reading, some insignificant little detail in the ceiling –

I never contemplated what might even be worse:

That there's something in there after all.

Something foreign, unknowable.

Incomprehensible to the lackluster facsimile of a tiny human mind that I've been outfitted with.

Something moving, stirring inside of me…

Oh how I wish that sleep would take me again, and how I fear it all the same.

I look down and see tiny knees covered in pink fabric.

I try as much as the seatbelt lets me to look outside the window of the helicopter.

I recognize the Commander's personal craft at least; It's the very same one that he still uses today.

Outside beneath us is a landscape of hills, covered in grave markers as far as the eye can see – proof and witness of a world half emptied.

The noise of the propellers becomes more fully audible when the door of the cabin opens.

This strange younger version of Commander Ikari takes my hand and beckons me outside, gently detaching me from the window I had been glued to.

I do not protest, however, because it's the Commander doing it, and because this strange outside place is every bit as interesting.

It's very, very rare for me to be brought all the way up to the surface.

The Commander carefully helps me descend down the stairs, which are somewhat daunting to my little feet.

I don't really understand the meaning of this occasion, as the Commander hasn't really explained – he just said that we would be doing somewhere important.

It seems that we have been traveling to visit one particular grave – the humble marker is not really any different from all the great multitude erected around it, but it can only be that one, since it already has people standing in front of it – a pair of figures that must have arrived here by somewhat humbler means, standing exposed on the barren hill.

There's a nondescript old man whose most memorable feature is the firm hand that he's placed on the stooped shoulders of his companion: The most miserable-looking little boy that I have ever seen.

Well, I would call him a little boy now, since he is smaller than I have ever been, a droopy little grade-schooler looking notably malcontent – head hung low, hands tightly grasping the legs of his formal black pants.

But to the little girl in the red dress, he registers as rather tall, and she has no point of comparison to qualify his demeanor with. She merely finds him curious, kind of funny even, as if it were the very first time she had seen a genuine human child.

The red girl seems animated next to me, but compared to this person she is revealed as a wan imitation.

He'd stand out as vibrantly aspectabund even among my classmates – I can't name a single part of him that isn't trembling with barely suppressed emotion. But aside from that, he's fairly plain, and doesn't have many noticeable features.

The red girl didn't have very many examples to compare him to, so she couldn't note such differences and similarities in her memory.

She quietly takes in her surroundings as Commander Ikari leads her toward the two strangers.

Though they are evidently not strangers to the Commander: He addresses the old man with a vague greeting.

The boy tries very, very hard not to look at us.

It would be so much easier to hang onto wakefulness if my waking moments weren't such a yawning chasm of empty.

The light shifts.

The nurses come to tend to my wasting, ailing body.

The days begin to flow into one another without leaving behind much trace of memory.

Sometimes Commander Ikari visits, and those are the instants that seem to retain the most substance.

It is only for a short time, of course, since he is a very busy man.

It is surprising that he comes at all.

He asks vague, generic questions the answers of which he could have gleaned from my chart.

Sometimes he just… sits there, for a while, pondering, elbows resting on his knees.

Once in a while, he mentions how the repairs are going.

It is a relief when he leaves.

I always sink back limply onto the sheets, glad to be rid of the effort to keep my eyes open, to try following what he says.

Once he is gone, I always miss him.

When he doesn't come, I wish he would stay longer.

...

This seems to be a continuation of the graveyard scene.

But somehow, things have gone crooked. Loud. Chaotic.

The tale becomes fragmented.

The little red girl barely understood it then, so I can't piece it together now.

There is most certainly shouting, and glittering tears running down the stranger's face.

There seems to be a distinct impression of a scene where the little boy pulls out some crumpled papers from his pockets.

"This is all bullshit!" he asserts, with all the red-faced indignation of one who has felt compelled to use that word for the very first time. "Why did you pick up that girl when you left me all alone all these years?! I know what happened, you know!"

He unfolds his little old newspaper clipping, indignantly holding the uneven cut of yellowed paper straight in the Commander's face.

"I'm not a little kid anymore. You can't fool me like you used to. I know you did it.

You're the one who killed mom!

She didn't just die, you made her a test subject, and then you bought your way out of jail so that you could get away scot-free and make out with that mean lady who wears too much lipstick!

Is that weird girl her baby? Do you like her more than me?

Do you even think of us anymore, now that you've got your shiny new family?

Can you imagine what it's like to grow up with people talking behind your back about how you're the son of some crazy mad scientist murderer?

ANSWER ME!"

The confrontation ended with the little boy running in tears from the scene, as far as his little legs would take him.

The man who had brought him went after him in pursuit;

Commander Ikari didn't.

My eyes flutter open.

It feels like it's been a long time since they have done that.

When I mentally reach for my arms to wipe the sand from my encrusted eyes, there's nothing there.

I look down.

Just below my shoulders, everything stops but my spine, wrapped in countless electrical cables.

Electrodes yank at the back of my head.

I am a convenient piece of machinery, enclosed in a cylindrical vessel whose walls are painted red, red red….

...

I think this place is something like a train station.

This at least seems like a real, sensible place, except that it is utterly void and bare of people in the middle of the day, glinting beneath a cruel sunny sky.

Nothing moves, but for one hasty shadow – a young man, I think?

He's wearing our uniform, but he doesn't resemble any of my classmates… I think.

It's not like I paid that much attention to them.

There's nothing too outstanding about this boy, either, that would make him especially memorable, no special feature by which he could be mapped to my memory.

He's thin, delicate-looking, with a long scrawny neck and somewhat stooped posture.

He looks rather lost, like he's looking around for something…

Then, suddenly, his searching face comes to a halt, quite abruptly, and facing right toward me, precisely as if he's seeing me -

How could he see me, when this is merely a scrambled memory?

It's just for a moment, but that is more than enough:

I caught sight of his eyes, deep-set and watery.

A striking shade of dark-grey, almost blue, that I had only seen but once before.

They are exactly the same shade as Commander Ikari's.

...

I… can't… breathe.

My feeble little hands try as they may to free my neck from the merciless vice-grip pressing down on it, but they're smaller than I ever remember them being, and avail precious little.

As everything goes black, a fury-like voice rings in my ears -

'You're replaceable, do you know that, Rei? You're just like me!'

...how could I ever forget….

Yet, I think, for a split second, just before the world disappeared, there was the image of a young man, a smiling, silver stranger, reaching out his hand to take me home.

...

It has been said that dreams do matter, because once a man has dreamt that he is a frog, he can never again be sure if he is a man who dreamt that he is a frog, or a frog who thinks he is a man.

But these weren't dreams.

They weren't even memories, because they couldn't have happened.

They fit nowhere along the timeline of my life.

They concern times I shouldn't have existed in.

They must be illusions – Mirages. Jumbled malfunctions of an overloaded nervous system.

Most likely, it is only the waking eye of my conscious mind that retroactively arranged them into some semblance of a narrative.

A mere confabulation.

That's what a dream is: The frontal lobe beginning to string random firing patterns into a narrative as it starts to come online.

Concentrate.

Look at this objectively.

They're just thoughts.

Images.

Even this sense of reality they seem to have is likely to be a product of my nervous system misfiring – it's still recovering as much as my lungs and my twisted arm.

It's not real.

I am I.

I became me by the interactions with my surrounding environment and the people that surround me.

They influenced me just as I influenced them.

My memories, my experiences, my thoughts, all this here right now – that's me, not some vague ill-defined phantom.

I am here.

I'm nowhere else.

In the night-time darkness of my hospital room, I glance intently at the dim reflection of Commander Ikari's discarded glasses.

Once again, voices.

Several this time.

Commander Ikari is among them this time.
I think he's talking business with Dr. Akagi and the Vice-Commander.

He didn't have to do this here at my bedside, he could have gone to his office as well.

I was going to make myself known, but, it occurred to me then, that they would likely just keep talking if I pretended to be asleep.

It's not solely about not bothering them – I keep wondering what they are going to say next.

"To be honest, I wouldn't expect her to be released from the hospital until at least a month or so, and even then, I doubt her lungs are ever gonna be what they used to be. If you're asking me, we should just terminate this one and activate the next clone."

I felt a sharp spike of cold going up and down the entire length of my body.

I hoped, dearly, that Dr. Akagi had not seen me flinch.

But her attention was probably all-too preoccupied with her companions, particularly Fuyutsuki, who it appears was ill at ease with her judgment: "How cruel."

Why? Wasn't this the plan all along?

What makes it different now that it's actually happening?

I always knew it might.

But would it?

Somehow I particularly dreaded to hear what the Commander's eventual decision would be:

"That might be premature."

"But then what are we going to do?" questioned the Doctor. "The Third Angel could arrive at any moment."

"We might have to procure a spare pilot."

"You don't mean-"

Subcommander Fuyutsuki did not have to finish the sentence; It seems that except for me, everyone present knew what the Commander had meant.

"I had been hoping to avoid this, " he stated, "but it seems that it might have been inevitable all along. I 'll just have to hope that Yui will forgive me."

...Yui?

Who's Yui?

I had never once heard of anybody with that name.

(But that's when an image came unbidden to my mind, from that unreal graveyard hill:

The name on that grave marker was, without doubt, 'Ikari Yui'.)


As of now, this ff has its own official playlist: [spotify]playlist/6PZjrunT2Lur78fbshbUjS?si=d6f8d3032d624786