Chapter 3
Rei woke and stared upward, motionless. The light of the early morning slipped through the blinds over her apartment windows and illuminated the ceiling above her. Intermittent bars of shade indicated where the frame of the window interrupted the sun's rays.
Rei took an uncharacteristically deep breath, taking in the scents of the room. There were not many: it smelled faintly musty because the entire apartment complex was run-down; the smell of uprooted buildings and asphalt occasionally wafted in from the construction not far away; and she could make out a faint scent that she thought must be her own—but that was all.
Sounds were similarly scarce. Somewhere amidst the concrete and technology that dominated outside her window she could hear birds chirping, and on the streets below there were already cars, people on their way to work. But inside was silent, and for a brief moment her mind was silent as well.
She slid over slightly and got up, her mind focusing quickly, seemingly not the least bit caught in the sleep it had so recently left.
Rei washed and showered quickly, wanting to arrive at school early—as she always did. Without any need for NERV to test or screen her she had been in attendence on a more regular basis than at any time during her tenure as an Eva pilot. It did not bother her, but she still had become no more social—in fact, if anything, she had become less so, drawn ever more into her own mind.
She saw her face in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, and some emotion ran through her. She did not know what to call it—it was not shock, nor surprise, nor even fear or loathing. It had been brought on by the sight of her eyes, which reflected no emotion, and her face, not smiling or frowning or betraying any sensation—unreadable even to her.
The feeling, she decided must have been existence coursing through her. She did not know if this was good, or bad, or—as her face suggested—indifferent.
But she also realized something which caused a tremor of what she thought might be fear to ripple through her: she was unique. The first Rei, and the second, had known that if they died another would take their place. This had not made them reckless, Rei reflected, but accepting of death. They did not particularly expect to live, and so they had no particular expectations of their life—only servitude, doing as NERV—as Gendo—told them.
But for her, Rei III, there was no other. Akagi Ritsuko had destroyed the dummy project and with it all of Rei's broodmates, all of those who would gladly have taken for themselves the soul inside her now, if they had had the chance. (But would they have taken it gladly? she asked herself. They had no capacity to feel emotion without the soul, did they?) If she died, there would be no new Rei to take her place, to continue living this life.
And so? she asked. What does that do to me? Does it make this life I live real, any more real than that which my predecssors moved through? Did the first and second Reis not create this life? Am I not merely carrying on the legacy which they began?
She remembered the boy, Kaworu, and how unafraid he had been to die. But he was not a boy, she thought, he was an Angel. Nevertheless…did he not appear human? Did he not act human? And, in the end, is that not what I also do? I only act—I am no human.
She sighed. There was no sadness, no longing in the sound, it was only the result of air passing her lips. Now was no time for such ruminations, she knew; there were classes.
Attend school…that is what normal little girls do.
****
Asuka limped her way out of the hospital, muttering and cursing at the crutches which were now required to support her atrophied legs. She had been in physical therapy, yes, but there was never enough of that to go around and she was still working on learning to walk again.
Misato had come to meet Asuka and take her back to the apartment, and although Asuka was not happy with the idea of having to be so coddled, she accepted it nonetheless.
Misato lifted Asuka into the car, closing the door and blocking out Asuka's final obscenity. When she climbed into the driver's side of the car the girl was staring sullenly out the window, saying nothing. Under normal circumstances this would have bothered Misato on some level, but given the situation as it stood she was less inclined to be upset with Asuka.
Misato turned the key in the ignition and the car started with a rumble, the sound of a vehicle that had seen more than its fair share of use. Too bad for it, Misato thought. I haven't got the money for a new car.
The hospital and the apartment complex where Misato and the children made their home were not far apart—necessarily so, for swift access to NERV's headquarters had been essential during the Time of Trials—but it was still a noticable drive, and Misato wondered privately what she might do to break Asuka's icy silence.
"You know," Misato said tentatively, "Shinji's missed you. And so has PenPen." Asuka barely stirred at their names. "And I have, too," Misato added quietly. She thought she saw Asuka look at her out of the corner of her eye, although with her own eyes focused on the road she couldn't say for certain.
"All your things are just the way you left them," Misato said, hoping that the thought of her personal belongings might cheer Asuka some small bit.
Asuka continued to stare out the window, but suddenly her own voice in her mind stirred. Even the book, she assured herself. Even Misato doesn't know about the book. A little picture book, one of the few things she had brought with her from Germany. Rotkäppchen, the little girl who went to her grandma's house and met a wolf. She remembered hearing the name 'Little Red Riding Hood', someplace.
Outwardly, despite all her thoughts, Asuka only nodded, but Misato took comfort in it, the first reaction she had gotten from the girl. She determined to be satisfied with it and ceased talking, and the silence hung between them. But it was not the awkward, pressing silence that had occupied the car before. Something had been said, and something—however small or subtle—had been said back.
Asuka watched the road blur by, trees standing here and there along an otherwise bare stretch of highway. She thought of the apartment where her room was still in order, where the penguin was probably reading the newspaper, and where a forlorn little boy missed her. She was loathe to admit it, even to herself, but she had missed Shinji, too.
****
Shinji sat in class again, watching the teacher write something on the blackboard. But as usual, his thoughts were not on what the teacher was writing, but instead on almost everything else.
Asuka was coming home from the hospital today, assuming the doctors didn't suddenly revoke the release order. Shinji and Misato had considered trying to plan some kind of celebration to meet Asuka's arrival, but with the consideration, to say nothing of the planning, having begun at ten o'clock the previous night, there was little that could be done.
Rei was sitting in her seat, staring silently ahead. Shinji wondered if she had heard yet about Asuka's release. He understood that the two girls had never seemed to get along very well together, but wondered if Rei felt anything at all about the other child who was so different from her.
Not for the first time, Shinji wished desperately for a way to communicate with Ayanami. But he no longer knew why. He knew now what Rei was, had seen Ritsuko destroy the dummy system with her own hands. He knew that this Rei was not the Rei he had met when he arrived, and might never be. Did the soul, he had asked himself time and again, carry the personality with it? Both Reis had been very quiet. But Shinji knew no more than this and so could not judge whether they were different people.
Shinji wondered, sometimes, if he should be repulsed by Ayanami now that he knew the truth about her. Distantly, he felt as though he should—as though he should not be so attracted to a doll, a dummy. But with the other dolls destroyed, and this the only one left, was she not now human? Shinji didn't know.
There were rumors that a new transfer student would be arriving soon. It did not completely surprise Shinji; since the reports had been released that the Angels had been defeated there had been a relatively steady influx of new students who were actually old students, who had fled the city or ceased attending school during the Angel attacks.
Faintly Shinji wondered who the new arrival, if a new arrival there was, would be—if he or she might finally be someone Shinji could understand and talk to. But, no. None of the others had been. Kaworu had been the only one. Is everything I love destined to destroy me? Shinji asked himself miserably. His mother had been the one who created the beast which controlled him. His father, whom he might perhaps have loved in some distant past, had conscripted him into this terrible battle. And Kaworu, who had loved him, was fated to kill him, or to die.
Shinji sighed and looked out the window, but there was nothing there—only the invisible eddies of the breeze, free from care and worry.
****
There was a screech of rubber on concrete and a jolt as the plane touched down in Tokyo-3. Noriko watched the runway surroundings speed past as the plane heaved mightily to come to a stop.
The flight to Tokyo had been an uneventful one, something she was consciously thankful for. She had decided that the fewer events she had in her life, the better.
At length the plane came to a halt. The 'fasten seat belts' light flicked off and people began to stand and stretch, hefting bags onto shoulders and dragging luggage down from overhead compartments.
Noriko stood up, faintly disconcerted by the realization that she was back where she had started. For an instant she felt nauseous, but it subsided as quickly as it had come. She looked out the window, some part of her expecting to see a giant beast rampaging through the city. She smiled hesitantly and chided herself silently, trying to teach herself no longer to fear such attacks.
"Come on, Noriko, time to get off." Her mother's voice cut through her thoughts and Noriko turned slightly to see her mother waiting with a faintly impatient look on her face. The plane was mostly empty by now; Noriko had no idea how long she had been standing there. Jun'ichiro and her father had already disembarked.
She nodded and followed her mother off the plane. The only possessions she carried with her were in a green pouch slung over her shoulder; it was an odd constrast to the sleeveless pink shirt she had chosen and clashed almost as badly with her purple hair and the yellow hair band holding the hair back. Her father had her suitcases and had wheeled everything slowly off the plane and into the airport concourse.
The airport proper was flooded with people. Most of them are probably just going about their daily lives, Noriko thought, but she herself felt almost like she was returning from exile. However, whether the Tokyo she left would be the same Tokyo she returned to was a question that still bothered her. The masses of people in the airport seemed to indicate a city that was still teeming with life for all its trials, though one airport was not much to judge by.
Noriko's father led her and her mother and brother outside the airport and hailed a cab. Between them they loaded their luggage into the car's trunk and then climbed into the back seat of the vehicle itself, Noriko on the far side looking out the window. Her father gave the address of their new apartment to the driver, who nodded and worked his way onto the road.
The airport was somewhat removed from the city itself, and despite having seen the vista before, Noriko was still awed by the skyline as they approached. Tokyo-3 was riddled with skyscrapers, towers that stretched up to the clouds and, it seemed, beyond. The city was also peppered with smaller buildings, so that the overall effect of the picture was one of an undulating wave, tracing its way across the horizon.
The sun had already begun to set by now, and its illumination set the city on fire with oranges and reds, throwing light from behind the buildings so they were cast into shadow, heightening the appearance of an unbroken line of constructs.
As the cab neared the city the buildings grew larger and larger, until they were within the city limits and Noriko had to strain her neck to look up at the tops, and then the tips of the skyscrapers disappeared entirely from the vantage point of the car's window.
The city still bustled, was still inhabited by millions of people. When Noriko looked out the window at street level she saw people going about their lives—returning from jobs, putting out trash, emerging from subway stations—but she understood that she could not know how many of them, like her, carried secret sadness; how many grieved for those lost to the mysterious beasts or whose lives had been touched by the neverending fear imparted by those creatures.
And she wondered how many of them, like her, were returned expatriots of Tokyo-3, now strangers in a strange land.
****
Shinji arrived at the apartment and shut the door quietly. "I'm home," he announced to Pen-Pen, his bookbag making an audible whumph as it hit the ground.
"I'm glad to see you didn't let Misato completely destroy the apartment while I was gone," a familiar voice said. "Maybe you do have a bit of spine after all."
Asuka emerged into the main room of the apartment, trying her hardest to look tall and proud while limping along on crutches. Shinji smiled hesitantly. "You're home," he said, as though he had not truly believed she would be. Asuka stumbled on her supports and Shinji moved forward to help her, but she shooed him away with the few fingers she could free up from holding on to the crutch.
"How—How are you?" Shinji asked, searching for something to say.
"Never been better," Asuka said defiantly. It was clear even to Shinji that she had, in fact, been better; though he could hardly fault her for her frustration with her present state.
"You…you need help with anything?"
"No!" Asuka said fiercely, almost leaping forward with annoyance.
"Oh…okay," Shinji said, cowed. "Well, ah…if you need anything…tell me, okay?"
Asuka only sniffed, though Shinji chose to take it as an implicit agreement. He picked up his bookbag to take it to his room, but looked again at Asuka.
"It's…good to have you home," he said earnestly.
"Yeah, yeah," Asuka said, then slowly but surely limped her way, crutches and all, back to her room.
****
Misato sped toward the apartment complex, her car occasionally groaning under the strain. After transplating Asuka in the apartment and ensuring that she could get at food and water when she needed them, Misato had returned to work. It wasn't as though there was anything especially urgent to be done, but she hadn't the slightest idea what she would have done if she had instead stayed behind with the girl and her silence.
It's better to do it this way, Mistao told herself, let her re-acclimate herself to the apartment at her own pace.
Nonetheless, Misato had taken off early from work—all told, she had only been there about three hours, though no one noticed or cared—and had planned to pick up Shinji from school, just as a change of pace. When she got there, she found that he had already left, and so headed home on her own.
The trip to the apartment complex seemed quicker than usual today, possibly because Misato had been so absorbed in her own thoughts. But regardless of the reason, she headed into the parking garage and found a prime spot near an elevator.
Unfortunately, the garage and the apartments were not connected, so in the end Misato took the elevator to the ground floor of the garage, walked the fifty feet to the apartment complex, and took another elevator back up to the floor on which her room resided.
The halls of the complex were somewhat dim, but it didn't bother her; she had grown quite used to it. And with the option to bring as many lamps as one desired into the apartments themselves, there was really no need to worry about the state of the hallyway lighting.
Nonetheless, she was surprised to meet a party of four people coming up through the halls, made somewhat more indistinct by the darkness of the corridors themselves. A man and a woman, each perhaps in their mid- to late-thirties, stood on either side of a young girl whose strangely-colored selection of clothing seemed somehow to meld into a cohesive whole. The woman was holding the hand of a young child, a boy.
"Er, excuse me," the man said, "but we're a bit lost, do you know your way around here?"
"Pretty much," Misato said, smiling slightly.
"Well, we're new here," the man said, scratching the back of his head. "We're supposed to be in room 415, but we can't seem to find it…"
"415, huh?" Misato said, thinking briefly. "That's probably one floor up from here."
"Oh, I see," the man said, smiling sheepishly. "Alright. Thank you."
He almost turned to go but stopped. "It seems we'll be neighbors, in a sense," he said, now smiling a bit more fully. "I'm Amamiya Toshio," he said, bowing. "This is my wife, Shizue"—she bowed—"and our daughter Noriko and son Jun'ichiro."
"Pleased to meet you," Noriko said politely, also bowing. "Hi!" Jun'ichiro chirped. His mother looked reprovingly down at him but said nothing.
Misato smiled and returned the bow. "Katsuragi Misato."
"Oh, I've heard of you!" Toshio's wife, reticent until now, burst out. "You were one of those people who fought those awful creatures, weren't you! Tell me, are they really all gone?"
"That's what we're all being told," Misato said, her face darkeningly perceptibly. "I guess it's true—there were supposed to be seventeen—but they haven't disbanded my…organization, yet."
"Oh my," Shizue said, clearly at a loss for how to continue.
"You know, Shinji's your age, Noriko," Misato said, trying to mend the rift that had suddenly opened between them all. "I bet you two could be friends."
"Oh, you have a son?" Toshio asked, glad for the relief from his wife's awkward question.
"Oh, no," Misato said, "He just lives with me is all—" She stopped herself and said quickly, "Er, that came out totally wrong, I mean, he's kind of an adoptee, just not officially and all—"
"I see, I see," Toshio said, laughing. He did not seem at all discomfited by the slip, though Misato was not wholly convinced that he didn't now see her as some kind of deviant.
"Anyway, I should be going," Misato said, ready to escape this company for the time being. "Good luck finding your apartment, welcome to…here…" she finished lamely.
The Amamiyas smiled, bowed again, and piled into the elevator to ascend to the proper floor. Misato made for her apartment, uncomfortably disconcerted by the entire conversation.
****
Yamagata Satoshi was dressed all in black, covered from head to toe—a face mask, shirt, gloves, pants, boots. He had no idea what sort of good it would do him where he was going, but wanted to take every possible precaution.
A large but innocuous building came into sight. It bore a similarly large sign reading Momo-taro Realty, with an imposing representation of the Peach Boy on it. Satoshi crept through shadows and alleyways to reach his destination. He fished into a small satchel of equipment and withdrew a long piece of almost invisibly thin wire.
Several yards from the building, he stopped and stared into the night. There was a dark form moving past the entrance, looking this way and that. Satoshi could make out no security cameras on the side of the building.
So noting, he sneaked to another vantage point only a dozen feet away from the realty office. Still no overt sign of security other than the lone guard.
When the man passed by again, Satoshi made his move. Covering the distance in mere seconds, he grabbed the guard from behind and slammed a hand into the small of his back, hearing the guard's breath come flying out of him. In his opponent's moment of incapacitation, Satoshi slipped the wire over his throat and made one deep, swift jerk.
A horrible death rattled escaped the guard's mouth, but it did not faze his attacker, who thrust the body onto the ground, striving to remain out of sight. The streets were deserted but to make oneself inordinately visible was simply bad policy.
He stripped the guard of his uniform and put it on himself, then turned out pockets until he located a set of keys. Finally he shoved the body into a clump of bushes, expecting that it would not be discovered until well after he was gone—one way or another.
Thus attired, Satoshi unlocked the door of the realty building. Whether the stolen uniform would do him any good was dubious, inasmuch as he still wore the black face mask, gloves, and boots quite openly, but any way to improve his chances was a way he would take.
He crept into the darkened building, strange shadows cast on the walls by the streetlamps outside. But he had long ago learned not to be afraid of the dark—the dark, in fact, was his friend, perhaps the only friend he had in his line of work.
Satoshi walked slowly along the walls, pressing them and probing them, searching for something. He found only a door to the basement, which he also unlocked, and descended into the even darker bottom floor.
Down here it was not only impossible to see but reeked, and somewhere in the distance water dripped unceasingly onto the cold stone floor. Satoshi walked carefully, tapping here and there with his foot. Suddenly he heard something hollow. On the wall beyond, he could just barely make out a key pad, almost completely invisible for the darkness.
But he had no time to be hacking terminals and instead pulled a thin plastic explosive from his pack, setting it on the floor where it had sounded empty. Retreating, he triggered the bomb.
The sound was deafening, and lit the entire room for a brief instant: cracked grey walls which bespoke an old and dilapidated building, which might have fallen down long ago were it not for its new proprietors. But more importantly, Satoshi saw that he had been right; the hollow spot had been a doorway, and he came back to it quickly and dropped in.
Down here everything was polished and new, metallic. It was still dim; most of the lights had been turned off for the night, but a safety lamp here and there illuminated his path. He reached once again into the bag and withdrew a pistol, sleek and black. There was no more reason to be discreet.
Satoshi began to rush now, knowing that the sound of the blast would have attracted any security guards in this part of the building. As he ran he extracted a tiny radio from his satchel, a one-way communicator.
The sub-commander's orders had been very clear: get in, see if the computer in fact existed, and, if possible, escape. If escape was impossible—as Satoshi had been sure it would be—he was to deny any connection to NERV no matter what.
It seemed that although Kaji Ryoji had been working for the Ministry of the Interior, it was still altogether possible for NERV's finer 'technicians' to get at the data he had collected, ruling out 108 possible locations for the computer. But Fuyutsuki claimed to have heard of one more, the nearly derelict business Momotaro Realty, where SEELE might have hidden such a thing. He even thought he knew where the terminal was concealed.
Of course there's no way, Satoshi had told himself almost as soon as he saw the building. It was far too lightly guarded in every respect. But he was here to complete a mission; that was his given purpose in life. And death.
Satoshi moved quickly, but not quickly enough; he heard the steady footsteps of two guards coming up on him. He located the room where the computer was supposed to be and burst inside.
A dark chamber greeted him, lined with weapons and ammunition, but there was no computer terminal to be found.
"Stop where you are!" A man's voice called.
He turned and saw two pistols pointed directly at him. Satoshi held the tiny radio up to his mouth and hissed, "Nothing!" before crushing it violently in his hand. One of the guards fired, the shot ringing in the enclosed space. Satoshi clutched his shoulder and keeled, clutching at his pistol and trying to bring it to bear on his assailants.
Though he managed to wrench himself upright a second time, there was no real hope. He fired off one haphazard shot and saw a red flower bloom in the shoulder of one of the guards. An eye for an eye, a shoulder for a shoulder, he thought grimly, but the other guard had fired again, catching him in the arm and causing him to drop his weapon.
When he looked up again, the guards were already bearing down on him…
****
Noriko exhaled and settled onto the floor, her futon already spread out on the ground in her room. Most of the family's luggage still sat unopened and unsorted in the main room; they had after all arrived late in the day, found their apartment even later, and had no stamina left to unpack.
Noriko would be starting at her new school—actually her old school—beginning the very next day; her mother had had the stated intention of making sure Noriko missed as little class as possible.
Her father had already found a job in Tokyo-3, as a programming specialist for a small but growing firm that made its home not far from the family's apartment. Her mother planned to stay home and manage the apartment; at least, Noriko thought, until boredom seized her strongly enough to gall her into finding something else to do.
With such thoughts whirling nonstop in her head, Noriko doubted if she would ever get to sleep. But she had underestimated her own fatigue, and she drifted away almost as soon as her eyes were closed.