Shinji awoke with a violent start, to find himself strapped into the back seat of a large car which rocked violently as it navigated through the darkness. He couldn't see very far past the tinted windows, but he was more concerned about the pain that suddenly washed through his entire body. His arm tingled, his nostrils burned, and his eyes blurred and flashed with lights, but still he could make out the familiar face before him that seemed to scrutinize him.
"Thank goodness," Shigeru Aoba said with relief. Shinji winced as he felt his arm pinched painfully, and looked down to notice Shigeru withdrawing an empty syringe from his forearm.
"Don't worry. It's just some morphine," Shigeru explained as he handed the syringe to a NERV security officer next to him. "It'll wear off in a bit, though you'll probably wish it hadn't, when it does. You almost went into shock back there," he added, and smiled weakly. "Had to make sure you were okay. You've been out for about a half-hour."
Shinji flexed his arm a few times and examined his surroundings. There were about five of them in the car--the Hummer vehicle from earlier, he concluded-- from what he could see. Two in the front, and five in the back of the cabin; Shigeru, flanked by two armed personnel tensely holding their weapons, sitting across from Shinji and another man with a black silk hood over his head and his arms painfully handcuffed behind him in his seat.
"Sensei!" Shinji realized that he was looking at Howard La, the man who found him at the beach. He was about to remove the hood from the older man's head when one of the personnel raised a pistol and aimed it straight at Shinji's frozen face.
The cabin fell quiet, except for the vehicle itself, which jostled and rocked as it went over something. Beside Shinji, the man groaned, still incoherent.
Shigeru's face scrunched up in confusion as he laid a hand on the officer's pistol, lowering it. "Sensei? Shinji, is this man your teacher?" He gave a wary glance at the comatose figure, and flipped open the sleek black laptop before him, and starting typing furiously. "Do you know what his name is?"
Shinji nodded. "Howard La. He teaches--"
"Chemistry," Aoba finished for him, reading from his laptop. He looked up. "Shinji, I know you know him, but for now, it's best to keep some distance. At least till we can get him back to base."
"We're going to headquarters? There are more people still alive?" Suddenly a thought struck Shinji. "Asuka! Where is she? How is she doing? She's okay, right? Aoba, where's Asuka!"
The technician paused once more, his eyes lowered. Beside him, the officers squirmed. "She's in the back, Shinji. The back of the SUV has a makeshift equipment and sickbay. She was shot up pretty bad. I don't know what we can do, but we're trying to get back to NERV as quickly as possible."
"No! That can't be true. She's got to be okay. She will be!" Shinji gripped Misato's cross underneath his shirt, and fought back the tears. He angrily rubbed at his eyes. "How much longer till we get to the base, Shigeru? When can we get her some help?"
"Soon, Shinji-kun. Soon."
The words didn't console him very much, but Shinji knew there was little else to do but wait till they got back to Nerv base. Instead of worrying, he tried to force the issue from his mind by looking outside the windows.
It was dark outside, darker than even before. They were well into the city proper now, he could tell, though it was incredible that so much damage had happened in just the span of a few days. True to his sensei's word, whole sectors of the city were flooded with large pockets of LCL.
Garbage cans had been turned over, and many window storefronts had been smashed and looted. Occassionally the odd body or more was found in the middle of the street, on the sidewalks-- Shinji wondered whether they had been placed there, or if no one had bothered to move them from wherever they happened to lay. Absorbed in the details of the husk of a city before him, he idly pushed aside the curious thought of how bodies remained intact, when so many others had been liquefied instantly.
"What happened here?" Shinji breathed in awe, or in horror, of what he saw.
"The oldest story there is," Shigeru Aoba said, as he snapped the cover to his laptop shut. "Man, killing man. Are you ready? It's time to head back into the headquarters, Ikari-kun."
Shinji took one last look outside and realized they were nearing one of Nerv's many classified bunker entrances, scattered across the now-empty fortified city of Tokyo-03. He hadn't realized that they were so close, but now that they were, fear gripped and clutched at his gut, and refused to let go.
Be strong, Asuka, he thought, just as another face took hold in his mind. He gripped Misato's square cross even harder. Father!
Shinji nodded, understanding what he had to do, and then turned from the window. "Okay," he said, simply.
