VII. And When the Night is Cloudy

Those at NERV now kept themselves on a secondary alert status at almost all times. Sixteen of what was predicted to be seventeen Angels had been destroyed, and now they all were waiting for the last one to arrive.

Akagi Ritsuko walked through the corridors of the base, trying to look official and not grave.

"Have you seen the Third Child?" she asked a passing tech.

"I think he's waiting at Bay Eight," the tech said. "Poor kids don't have anything to do."

"Probably the better for it," Ritsuko said under her breath, but thanked the tech nonetheless and turned toward Bay Eight.

Shinji was indeed there, sitting at the edge of the vast, open room. No thing and no one else was present. Ritsuko approached, but Shinji did not seem to notice despite the echoing clack of her shoes on the floor.

"Shinji?" she asked quietly, as though afraid to hear her voice echo in the room.

"Yes," he replied.

"Why here?"

"Section Two said that when the patrol out looking for Asu…the Second Child arrived, it would come here."

"I see." Shinji nodded wordlessly. "Shinji, there's something else you should see."

"Is it more important?"

"Possibly. Regardless, you should know about it." She took his shoulder and tugged, urging him to his feet. Resignedly he stood and followed her out of the room.

"What are we seeing?" he asked distantly.

"Nothing I can say with this many personnel around. You'll understand. For now, just follow me."

"Yes m'am."

For some reason the formality of his address irked her, but she said nothing, merely kept walking.

They arrived at an elevator marked "Authorized Personnel Only" in large red letters. Ritsuko pressed several buttons on the keypad and the door slid open smoothly. She stepped on and motioned for Shinji to do the same.

Ritsuko reached out and pressed a button on the elevator's keypad, and the machine started with a jolt. Shinji could hear machinery clacking and straining as they descended level after level of the NERV base, reaching ever deeper into the Geofront's core.

After many minutes the elevator came to a halt and the doors opened, revealing a blackened corridor ahead. "This is the place," Ritsuko said. They walked down the corridor, arriving at a door just large enough for one man to pass through. Above it was a bright sign reading 'Central Dogma', with a variety of 'Do Not Enter' warnings.

Ritsuko walked to the door, leaving Shinji in the shadows. Her fingers flew over the keypad, but nothing happened. She tried again. Still no response.

Suddenly Ritsuko heard a click and felt the muzzle of a gun pressing into her back.

"It won't work without my code," Misato said. Ritsuko calmly raised her hands.

"This is Kaji's doing, I presume?"

Misato nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Knock yourself out," Ritsuko said, stepping aside. "But he gets to come with us."

Misato jumped slightly as Shinji emerged from the darkness. Then she steeled her reserve again. "Alright."

Misato stepped forward and tapped on the keypad. The door slid open smoothly, revealing a dim room beyond. One by one, the three of them stepped through.

Shinji was amazed by what he saw: a dilapidated room that recalled nothing so strongly as Ayanami's apartment.

"It looks just like Rei's room," he said quietly.

"It should," Ritsuko replied. "It is Rei's room." Shinji gasped under his breath. Ritsuko pointed to an huge spinal column and quasi-rectangular head. "This is the Land of Misfit Evas," she said. "That's the very first prototype, from ten years ago."

Shinji gawked at the sheer size of the Evangelion parts around them. The discarded bones of dead gargants, all. Shinji gazed about as though he expected Anataeus to lower them into the next room, but only a large curtain seemed to separate one section from another.

The trio emerged into the new area, and Shinji's breath left him. The room was surrounded by a tank built into the wall, filled with the sickly-orange liquid LCL. But more than that, it was filled with people. With children. With Rei. Tens, perhaps even hundreds, of Rei floated about the tank, wearing empty smiles and pushing at the glass of the tank.

"Welcome to the Dummy System," Ritsuko announced dryly.

"What?" Misato gasped.

"Yes. Any one of these creatures could become part of a dummy plug."

"What?" Misato said again. "We're killing children to make dummy plugs?"

"No," Ritsuko said emotionless. "They're not children. They're not even people. They're things with human form. All of them have only one soul to share among them." Ritsuko seemed to crumple as she spoke.

"When one is destroyed, so many others wait to take its place. But just one can exist at a time. They're only fakes…and now…and now…" she began to fight tears. "And now…Commander Ikari likes her better. I've lost him to her! She's a doll! A fake! A thing!"

She reached for a pedestal in the middle of the room, riddled with controls.

"It doesn't matter…"

She pressed several buttons, and suddenly the Reis began to drift apart. Arms separated from torsos, heads floated away from necks. The smiles never left their faces as the human detritus settled to the ground.

"Now it doesn't matter," Ritsuko said, sobbing. She collapsed to the ground, entirely bereft of strength. Misato made an empty motion with the gun and then holstered it again.

"No," Ritsuko said, next to tears. "Kill me. I'd rather die!"

Misato only watched the other woman, her eyes filled with sorrow.

"So this is Project E," she whispered to herself. "Weapons built on deception, children that don't exist, and a phone that never rings."

****

Asuka was crouched in a dingy corner of Tokyo-3, surrounded by darkness. She had pulled her knees up to her chest and was sobbing into them, no longer willing to fight the tears.

She was whispering frantically to herself when Kiyomasa Gatsuki found her. It was a language he did not understand and did not care to make out.

"Ich bin nicht wertlos…ich bin vollkommen…nicht wertlos…ich bin nicht wertlos…ich bin ein starkes kleins Mädchen…"

He stopped several meters away from her, watching her. Her entire body was shaking with sobs, though her cries barely went past her own ears.

"Sohryu Asuka Langley," he said, stepping forward until he was only a few paces behind her. "I am Kiyomasa Gatsuki, Section Two. We'd like you to come with us."

"Fuck off," she muttered into her knees, "just leave me alone."

He moved to put his hand on her shoulder. "We'd like you to—"

"I said fuck off!" she shouted, wheeling on the agent and shoving his hand away. She leapt at him as though to drive him backwards but instead he pushed a finger deep into a pressure point on her shoulder. Asuka was enveloped in a flash of blinding pain and dropped to the ground, curling back into a fetal position as though a spring had been wound back up.

"We have the girl," Kiyomasa said into a walkie-talkie. Three more men emerged from the shadows, one of them with his pistol drawn, as though afraid the child might attack once more.

The four of them lifted Asuka between them. She neither resisted nor assisted, and they nearly stumbled trying to support her dead weight. Not far away a car was waiting for them, black and nearly invisible against the darkened Tokyo streets.

There was no real barrier between the front and back seats, and the men opened the back doors and shoved Asuka inside. Kiyomasa climbed into the passenger side door and another man took the driver's side. Behind his seat he could see Asuka, and hear her, still muttering occasionally.

"Ein…Ein starkes kleins Mädchen…" she said softly.

Kiyomasa laughed gruffly. "Speak Japanese, bitch," he said, giving her a shove on the shoulder.

Her response was so soft he could barely hear it.

"Go to hell."

Kiyomasa turned forward again, smiling outright. He had heard much of the fiery Second Child.

She had lived up to her reputation…yes indeed.

****

"It seems that Section Two has successfully retrieved the Second Child," Fuyutsuki said, not looking down at Gendo.

"Yes," he said.

"I've heard she put up quite a fight."

"I have spoken to Mister Kiyomasa myself," Gendo said, silently wishing Fuyutsuki would stop telling him things he already knew. "She was not as vicious as you seem to think. In fact, as of this moment she is in a bed in our hospital wing, staring into space, a weak little girl."

"You seem to know quite a bit about the status of the pilots for a man who never journeys beyond his office," Fuyutsuki said dryly.

"I also go to the command center," Gendo said inflectionlessly. Fuyutsuki thought once again about his desire to be able to tell when the Commander was being humorous.

"Be that as it may," the Deputy Commander said, trying to hurry the conversation along, "we are now less one pilot. And one Angel still remains."

"The first concern is no concern at all. The Fifth Child should be arriving tomorrow. The second concern is only incrementally more a concern than the first. We have defeated sixteen Angels already, Fuyutsuki-sensei. One more should be no trouble."

"They do say not to let victory go to your head."

Gendo smirked slightly, still not looking at his sub-commander. "They also say…the able hawk hides its claws."

****

Asuka slowly rose to full consciousness. She found herself in a stiff bed, staring at a ceiling that seemed overbright. Towering over her were countless machines, beeping and buzzing. Intravenous fluids dripped into her arms at several locations, and she could still feel a vague ache where the Section Two agent had struck her.

"Awake?"

The voice startled her terribly.

"Dammit," she said, "here I'm getting over being manhandled and you come and give me a heart attack!"

She had not even considered whose the voice was, merely followed her knee-jerk reaction to the statement. Now she registered the voice's owner—Ayanami Rei was seated by her bed, watching her.

"Sitting shiva, I'll bet," Asuka said venomously. "I'm not dead yet. Sorry."

"I do not know what you are talking about," Rei said quietly.

"Yeah, right." Asuka noticed the many bandages tied across the girl's head and arms.

"Wonder you're not in here, too," she said. "Did Wonder Girl save the day again?"

"Yes," Rei said emotionlessly, slowly taking a dislike to this other child. She did not know that she had, in fact, saved the day, but it seemed to irk the girl before her.

"You are the Second Child, are you not?"

Asuka's face twisted. "Like you didn't know that. You're just rubbing it in, aren't you? You know they're not going to let me pilot an Eva after that!"

"Is that what you desire? To be a pilot?"

"Yes! And so do you!" The girl seemed surprisingly charged with energy for a convalescent. "But now I'm no pilot." The emotion seemed to drain from her.

"I could pull this plug," Rei suggested, indicating a socket on the wall.

"That would be easier, wouldn't it," Asuka reflected. "Maybe you should."

"Would I get in trouble?" Rei asked. Asuka wondered silently where the girl had obtained this sudden naiveté.

"I guess, if they figured out it was you. But if you left right after you did it, maybe they wouldn't know. I don't think they really monitor these rooms twenty-four seven."

"What about the Third Child?" Rei asked quietly. "Wouldn't he miss you?"

Asuka's face clouded again. "Stupid Shinji would never miss anyone. He could drop dead and he wouldn't even miss himself!" The thought seemed to trouble Rei.

"Do you really believe that?"

Asuka watched Rei for a long moment, then sighed deeply and sank into her bed.

"No."

"I shouldn't pull the plug, then?"

Asuka thought again, for a long, long time.

"No…I guess not. Not yet."

"I will wait, then," Rei said. She got up from the chair, the sound of metal scraping on metal ringing throughout the room.

Asuka watched the girl's back as she left the room, her carefully-pressed school uniform fluttering slightly in the breeze of the door. Asuka leaned back into her bed and gazed at her hands and legs.

"Ich bin ein starkes kleins Mädchen…"

****

"And this is the Fifth Child?" Gendo asked the man who was accompanying him.

"Yes, sir." The man was large and beefy, but the boy who accompanied him was almost frail, as though he might fade away at any moment. A mop of grey hair fell down around his ears and slightly into his eyes—red eyes, an albino—and he wore a half-smile that Gendo found annoyingly disconcerting.

"Direct from SEELE," Fuyutsuki muttered to himself. Gendo seemed to nod despite the fact that the comment hadn't been directed at him, but the deputy commander said nothing more.

"Very good then," Gendo said. "I will take him from here."

"Yes, sir." The man turned and departed, leaving the boy to Gendo. They stared at each other for some time, as two cats sizing up their respective opponents.

"Your name," Gendo said at length.

"Nagisa Kaworu," the boy said confidently.

Gendo grunted. "Very well, then. You will be assigned to Evangelion Unit 02. I imagine the transfer personnel have already granted you a living space within Tokyo-3?"

"Yes."

"Then." Gendo turned and left without another word, Fuyutsuki only a second behind him. They returned to the Commander's office, where he re-assumed his standard position behind his desk.

"I don't know about this boy," Fuyutsuki said once they were situated. "He seems awfully…strange."

"Name an Evangelion pilot who isn't," Gendo said dryly. "Yes, he is strange. He came to us directly from SEELE by their personal selection, which puts him under suspicion by default. The chances are good that Nagisa Kaworu will cause us a great deal of trouble."

Fuyutsuki had ceased to be surprised by the Commander's sudden outpourings of knowledge he should not have had, but his interest was still piqued by the idea that Gendo had allowed entry into the base for someone he knew was going to be a problem.

"And what of the rightful pilot of Unit 02?" Fuyutsuki asked.

"What of her?" Gendo replied evenly. "The original pilot of Evangelion Unit 02 is officially incapacitated and unable to pilot an Evangelion for the time being. At such time as she recuperates, we will thank God that we have a back-up pilot, a resource which happens to be in very short supply."

Fuyutsuki had to force back a laugh. Instead he only nodded, without a word.

****

Shinji watched Asuka, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully. It had been almost a week since they brought her back, and she had not yet been allowed to move from the hospital bed. Thus far he had not been able to speak with her when she was awake, but he imagined that having her energy dammed up this way had made her even more furious than usual.

"Asuka?" he whispered urgently. "Asuka, are you awake? Wake up…!"

He thought he saw the muscles at the top of her eyelids flutter, but she did not stir.

Shinji reached out and set his hand on her arm, her flesh seeming very thin and light beneath his fingers. He could feel the bones running through her arm, felt as though if he were to take the limb in his fist and squeeze that it would simply snap in two.

"Asuka…" he said, looking at her face. Had her eyes been open, he would have been gazing deeply into them, but instead he only stared at her gaunt features as though committing them to memory. "Asuka, it's frightening here…I remember being here…" He shuddered involuntarily.

"It smells like blood here…everything smells like blood here. You shouldn't have to be here, Asuka…it's not your fault…you're a good Eva pilot…you're better than I am…you have to wake up, Asuka, it's time to wake up…" The babble began to run together into a nearly incomprehensible stream of syllables, his voice cracking as he talked on.

"Asuka, I need you…wake up, Asuka…" Her form was still, her breathing even, her chest rising and falling at uninterrupted intervals.

"Please, Asuka, I need you…" His voice cut off and he fought tears.

Stupid Shinji, Asuka thought wistfully. You think I'm asleep. But I can hear every word.