Neon Genesis Evangelion
A Thousand Years of Secrecy
Twelve – Bleed / Lost
"The locust return."
She was destroyed. She folded into Misato's arms and wept for the first time she could remember since the first night with her foster family. This was a new pain, an unfamiliar one she had not expected of herself; one Kaji had not prepared her for. An Envoy heart was supposed to be a closed and limited thing, grasping at nothing further than comradeship in those whom she called friend. There was not supposed to be any deeper ties, save perhaps her attachment to Kaji-sensei. But she had let this other close, too close, and in moments both of them had been wrenched from her: first Kaji, now Shinji.
If it was only one perhaps she could come to grips, given the safety and comfort of the other. But suddenly both were gone and there was no one. Little Asuka was alone again, just as she'd been for too much of her childhood. One of them had disappeared into the rude, incomprehensible fog of a cold war; the other had died before her eyes, turned into the cold, calculating murderer she feared so greatly—those moments when his conditioning fully killed him. Yes, they were both dead to her, in a sense. Would it really matter if Shinji were now truly killed? He would never return to her and would never be the same. How ironic: this love born out of a lie.
Did she have any choice but to love him? Misato was a warrior of epic proportions, but Kaji was a spy of equal greatness. He had guided her straight into her role with perfection and sly control befitting the status of a master. From her teenaged crush on the unshaven man all the way to the mysticism and pity he had instilled in her for Shinji; this other child that was one part God, one part killer, one part child. A little boy wrapped up in the garments of a man to the point that even he believed himself to be one. But the childish fear, joy, and innocence all remained—an intoxicating mix of humanity.
Had she ever known any other so close to herself as Shinji? Had she ever wanted any other to know her more deeply? Before she had even met him, she'd fallen in love with this Shinji Ikari and much to her confusion, the feelings she'd once thought to be perpetrating for the sake of a mission lived on without her ambition.
When was the last time she'd ever done anything that wasn't for the sake of NERV or her sensei? Did such memories even exist for her anymore? She could not recall them if they lurked. There had to be a few. Things she'd studied under her mother's encouragement. Graduating from college on the accelerated program. But even those had somehow fit into Fuyutsuki's schemes. But Shinji. Shinji had been a new thing, an unfamiliar impulse driving her closer to him that bore some resemblance to a selfishness—one that only lingered in the frosted over edges of her personality; a neediness that was supposed to be eradicated with her training. Kaji must have left some intact, to complete the illusion. But the illusion, for all its cold cleverness, had taken on a life of its own and with that life a warmth.
Shinji had become a want, not an objective. But in her haste, he deserted her. And now a most crushing melancholy, an abandonment she had never fully known since her mother's abrupt suicide, crept back into her and poured its wailing heart out upon Misato's steady shoulder.
She wept for her life. For all the loved ones who left her behind. For her mother. For Kaji. For Shinji. For little Asuka, especially little Asuka, the girl who had ceased to be with Kaji's clever manipulations. She knew none of these people now. And they could scarcely know her. All had left her for… what? And why? She'd once thought to prove to the world her worth to them through NERV; to prove to these people their mistake in leaving. But none had truly had any choice in the matter, save Shinji. And the most horrible realization dawned on her as she cried out for these pasts—the most horrible realization that Shinji had been correct.
The liar revealed, wept in pity for herself, for her feelings of want and regret.
Conditioning would sweep them away in due time, correct her. But this piece would always remain missing, stolen by Shinji's angry exodus.
Goddamn you, Shinji. Come back. Come back to me. Please…
It was rare to see Fuyutsuki brood. The triad of the bridge crew could sense it, even through the Envoy's masking; dark things lurked over their collective shoulders and, they did not dare to turn and face them. They took orders sharply, and their collective chatter was reduced to nothing, leaving the cool silence to sweep into and over everything in the bridge room. For once its characteristically lively voices were reduced to coarse whispers and footsteps to and fro.
Everything now hung high in the air, balancing on invisible struts that crumbled with each passing breath. How long would the UN shelter them? Were they safe from attack? And when and where was it coming from? Everyone, even the lesser command crew could sense the noose tightening with every subtle tug of SEELE's hand. Fuyutsuki watched their hard work erode into the face of an enemy that had kept them running from the dawn of history. All the pieces were already in place; the details would kill or let them succeed but there was very little else NERV could attempt to alter the course of events now. That would be up to the Envoys in the field and their own sacrifices.
Ritsuko ran simulations through the MAGI as best she could, but the distraction to her side was an itch always to be scratched. She knew could not speak first and held her tongue with mighty self-control. Fuyutsuki would open with his concerns and leadership when the moments demanded it. When something finally went badly enough to require intervention.
"Sir," Aoba wavered, looking up from his console. "No, never mind…"
"What is it?" Fuyutsuki said, eyes still closed, hands still steepled across his mouth.
"Probably nothing, sir. Just some anomalous heat in one of the volcanic regions of the Pacific shelf you put on the watch list."
"Take a peak into scientific posts looking at thermal activity in that ocean," Ritsuko ordered.
"I already crosschecked with them, ma'am. None of their instruments are picking it up. It spiked up about twenty seconds ago and then went back to normal levels. Maybe just some atmospheric noise in our own relays?" Aoba responded, hints of self-doubt creeping in and out.
"What does your gut tell you?" Ibuki countered.
The three operators entered into discussion.
"Well, they have server banks offshore dedicated to monitoring and processing that info…" Aoba continued.
"Meaning?" Hyuuga asked.
"Meaning… that unless we were witnessing some sort of radioactive or electric anomaly in our own observations, their data can't be correct." He halted, twirling a well-chewed pen between nimble fingers. "But that can't be right. Their sensors are dedicated and re-calibrated for this kind of grunt work all the time; it's precisely the sort of thing that would send alarms up."
"Assume someone didn't want those alarms sounded then," Fuyutsuki growled, eyes opening to reveal their usual intensity.
Displays shifted immediately, the rainbows of data twirling and rearranging in the space beyond them to re-focus their intensity on Aoba's problem.
"That would… sir, that's not even possible," Hyuuga interjected. "That would require data manipulation on a scale comparable to what the MAGI can cook up. And what would be the point?"
"—sir, heat reading is back again. I don't understand… no one else is picking it up yet, but it's clear as day for us. And growing!" Aoba said, trying to mask panic with professional calm.
"Deep-launch ballistic missiles?" Ritsuko asked, perking up her brow and bringing up the relevant schematics on her tablet. A quick glance at her results proved inconclusive.
"Not unless they plan on starting a real war. They need their resources unified for longer," Fuyutsuki answered, eyes scanning back and forth over the floating lines of text and graphs.
"Planes then?" she continued.
"I've heard of China testing out some fighters that could reach the sea surface from submarine depth and go straight into flight with the proper ballast support but they never got much more than water-logged failures," Ibuki offered.
"Clearly something else SEELE's been hiding from us," Fuyutsuki countered. "Get us a live feed of the area where you detect the heat discharge. Start recording and prep a secure line to Turner and Washington as well."
"Yes, sir!" the operators responded.
Blue calm ocean flitted onto the largest real estate of the images projected, twinkling in a dawn sunlight. There was a brief visible glow beneath its turquoise surface, dimmer than candlelight, hardly distinguishable from the sun's rays.
"That's…" Aoba dropped his headset.
Five explosions of rising water burst forth, in the center of them the lines of sleek white aircraft. They had the smooth curves of something almost shellfish and alien.
"Those look like joint strike fighters!" Ibuki shouted.
"Impossible! Those things don't have this kind of capability," Ritsuko said, frightened eyes studying the floating planes.
They hovered over the water's surface a moment, then slowly began to glow; the brightness on screen almost fully obscured their fuselages before evaporating. Soon the pattern of the water was visible beneath their pale outlines. Then the shapes were gone entirely. After another moment the engine trails on afterburner shot out of the frame of view.
"No… thermoptic camouflage on that scale shouldn't be possible, not without an S2 Unit," Ritsuko mumbled to herself.
Fuyutsuki's smile held little mirth.
"Someone's been snooping around Antartica again, I see." He nodded for a moment at his invisible adversary's cunning, as if they were in the bridge. Then his manner changed.
"Alert NORAD! Send them the footage immediately! Someone open up that line to Turner for me. And someone give Dr. Akagi the line to Washington. Do it!"
"Yes, sir!" the three shouted, scrambling to catch up.
Fuyutsuki picked up the gray shapes of the phone from its bank in his desk.
"Hello, Admiral Turner. I have something you and your allies may want to see…"
She was taking them to school. There simply weren't any other options. Fuyutsuki had already told her that was the safest place to keep them. They drove in silence, all reluctant to discuss Shinji's running away. Asuka's composure trembled under Hikari's reassurances but held fast.
She'd made them put on their plugsuits under the baggiest clothing they had available, careful to keep Hikari out of the way as they changed. She'd put hers on after scrounging a pair of Kaji's jeans untouched, an old tank top she hadn't even remembered packing, and a jacket from Shinji's room which fit better than she'd expected. Her control gnawed as the smell of those two men wafted into her nose every so often under the A/C but she forced it away, concentrating on how to catch up with the one of them that was still alive: Shinji was heading to the northeast, already on the highway, according to the satellite she'd requisitioned.
She brought the feed up at each red light, letting the racing scenery speed past the red demon of a bike and directly into her optic nerve. Her sports car would be fast enough to catch him in an hour if she broke all traffic law after dropping the children off. She'd already made up her mind. He was her responsibility. She was his sensei. She would get him to stop if it meant running him off the road.
Shinji's suit was already in a NERV transport, snaking its way back to the fleet through a complicated system of switch-offs and false starts; Kaji's hadn't been in their room. The Americans must have somehow found it. Soon, very soon, SEELE would be on even footing with them. Then it would be a real battle to the death.
She pulled up to the parking lot and let them out, a soft "good bye" slipping out of her lips. Only Hikari returned it shakily, still uneasy from this morning's events, most of which she could not even begin to grasp.
Misato tore out of the parking lot with a screech of tires as soon as the doors had shut, nearly running over a student as she slid onto the main drag and through a red light. A truck honked angrily behind her as the bewildered student's face glared at her in her rearview mirror. She made for the highway.
As she hurled herself onto the ocean side boulevard she didn't quite see it in the corner of her eye, too busy looking at the ETA to Shinji shrink as she accelerated. She almost made a full turn of her head to look out at the ocean before the missile's noise caught up with the car and her hood turned into a pool of light, the brightness of which she'd not seen since her last combat mission.
Their first class had only just begun when they heard the explosion. Everyone stopped talking all at once, and the teacher peered out the window, searching for the inevitable car crash. From the second story window they could see no stopped traffic, no sign at all in fact that anything had happened.
"Everyone, take a five minute break. I'm going to go next door and see if Mrs. Carrington knows what's going on."
Students chatted with animated fervor and speculation, oblivious to Touji's tense expression.
His eyes ticked over to Asuka, then Rei. They wore the same expression.
Attack. They're coming. No time.
He turned towards the windows facing west, using his suit to magnify what he could see between the towers downtown. Slowly the white sparkle in the air came into focus.
Enemy.
He saw the trail of the missile gliding gently, framed in between the buildings.
He stood.
"Everyone get—"
Deafening noise.
He was on the floor. It was incredibly quiet. He could hear his own breathing, his heartbeat. Nothing more.
Someone was shaking him. He looked up, confused. Asuka's mouth opened over and over again, but the words would not come. Just an empty ringing. His head lolled by no will of its own, drool snaking free from his lips. She righted him, cradling the back of his head with her hand.
"—hear me, Touji? Get up, get up! Now!"
He struggled to his feet. The side of their classroom wasn't there anymore. Just the park and skyscrapers across the street. No windows. No wall. Nothing from floor to ceiling.
He smelled smoke and explosives, a spicy tinge in the air over the stink of burning flesh. Their blackboard was gone. Behind it, what should have been a classroom was black, charred nothing bleeding into the hallway and the classes across. The floor had simply fallen into the classroom below; he could see limbs sticking out from underneath the mess. Tiny clumps of flesh and brain painted the ceiling, roasted all shades of pink and brown. Students at the front of his class existed in jumbles of mixed bits and pieces. Each shape was slightly more intact as he scanned his vision towards the back of the room.
Crying and moaning sounds echoed emptily over the crackle of the fires. The boy in front of him, Alexander, gurgled something. He lay crumpled over his desk, face down. When he fell out of his chair, Touji saw the pink and gray intestines draped over his pre-calculus textbook. The front of the desk had a single diamond hole in it. It must have blown straight into his stomach. Alex thankfully died before making any more drowning noises. He had liked playing cards and acting in the school theater.
Asuka's hand drifted over his shoulder without quite touching him. She did not look at him as she spoke, something empty and confused filling her voice.
"We need to—we need to—we need to…" Her voice deserted her.
Their teacher stumbled in through what might have been the doorway to their class. His body was covered in burns and blood, most of his clothing gone. Nothing but dark emptiness appeared where his arms should have been. His face looked like pulp but somehow the cruel shapes moved and spoke.
"Children… infirmary," he muttered before falling into his desk. He exhaled very slowly and did not inhale afterwards.
Touji turned around to find Rei whispering to the crumpled heap of a girl who always used to sit at the back of the class. Her weeping was soft, not emphatic. Stanley, a boy near the front was dragging himself towards where the windows had been, moaning the most horrible noises; they did not sound human. His entire bottom half had simply gone missing somewhere above the thigh, mangled shreds of human spreading themselves out behind him like a gruesome red carpet. He stopped moving after a few more pathetic scrapes across the floor.
Hikari is on the other side of school. We have to evacuate. Draw them away.
Touji grabbed Asuka.
"Asuka. Asuka! Look at me! We have to go. Now!" he shouted at her.
"Yeah," she whimpered. "Go. Away."
Rei tried to convince the girl to stand up. She refused, struggling violently and crying out until they gave up and left her behind. Nothing else moved as they left the classroom.
Shinji weaved the bike back and forth between halted, rubber-necking drivers trying to comprehend the smoke billowing out of their pristine city. That was when the catamaran's shadow drifted over him gently, yanking his vision upwards. It was a sort of catamaran—at least, that was the only thing his brain could make of it. It was black, and huge even at whatever height it was hovering at, probably bigger than a passenger jet. Its two-pronged front was angular like one of those racing jet boats. Its darkness was immense, nothing reflecting off the gentle shapes. Probably stealthed materials. It blotted out the blue sky above him like an impossible silhouette and quickly became the focus of frightened and excited drivers, who ignored the green light from the highway exit ramp. The stillness it embodied evaporated as four other shapes detached themselves from it, drifting off its corners to hover on either side of the two prongs.
He recognized it then. It was a gunship.
An American gunship so well hidden even the MAGI hadn't conjured it prior to now. The four smaller craft were no doubt UAVs—the drones were being commanded from pilots inside belly of the catamaran probably; the weapons barge would be one part AWAC, one part carrier, and one part missile truck. It was some testament that the first—and so far only—thing the Americans had scrambled was this monster. There was a military base not too far away, he remembered. Unfortunately the decommissioned Second Branch could have probably added to the defensive weight—but they were too busy tearing it inside out. The aerial defense grid would be in the highest alert of its entire history to try and match SEELE's foes at the coast; five minutes ago marked a historical first for American mainland to be bombed from the air by enemy planes. It had to be SEELE, no country was crazy enough to try something like that.
The drones scattered with a whoosh, exemplifying an agility he wouldn't have expected and, further proof they were unpiloted—human pilots couldn't accelerate like that. The missiles poured out of its top next. Streams and streams of white trails bursting forth from the black shapes, snaking their way towards the growing sparkles on the horizon. The amount of explosives flying free was incomprehensible, uncountable.
Suddenly the catamaran's pontoons began to spark as the white mist above it continued to gather.
Of course, they're magnetic drivers—a miniature railgun.
The flash was sun-like in intensity, the sonic boom a roar reaching him through his helmet. A car's rear window beside him and cracked in and onto its occupants. Shinji looked back to the coastline and saw one of the sparkles now on fire. But the other four were growing all the time.
The drones might slow them down but it wouldn't be enough. This was SEELE; they would have expected and planned for this sort of response. Another explosion thundered somewhere in downtown, the sparkle's counter-offensive. The catamaran would be irrelevant when they had gotten sufficiently close to the city. They would have to use some other weapon to not destroy San Francisco in the process. He blared through the red light with no further hesitation.
The men started lowering themselves, their ropes making a tight screeching as they slipped down them. Touji watched them, head peeking barely over the window's edge as the students around him cowered underneath desks or anything else they could find. They trembled silently. Touji had already given up on the shredded civilian clothes, revealing the black glory of the plugsuit in full. Most seemed too terrified to ask him what it was or what he was doing. He engaged the progressive knife with a soft whir and crept to the stairs above the nearest entrance ignoring the students' frightened inquiries.
"Touji, don't go out there," someone pleaded to him. Conditioning refused to let him voice the unnecessary response.
When he was out of sight of the other students he engaged the chameleouflage, and blurred to nothing above the wide steps.
The grenade blew the doors off their hinges and inward. They stormed in with professional soldiers' grace, taking corners and sweeping their surroundings in tight, controlled motions; the effort expended bespoke months of VR practice for these moments. He would have to count on that inflexibility to work toward his advantaged.
The rifles gleamed black, new, and deadly. Touji was familiar with the model; it could turn bones to jelly with the proper ammunition.
They ignored his distortion in their haste, quickly spreading out onto the first and second floors. There were no audible orders which meant they were probably all linked via throat mics. That would make things more difficult.
Touji felt his nerves shudder and then tighten back down under Envoy control as one of them nearly ran into him, disappearing around the corner he lay pressed against. This was his first real combat experience. It was in many ways nothing like he had expected, but he shut down the fear and let the conditioning take over.
Follow him. Slit his throat so you disable the mic. Gently, gently now.
Touji listened and crept behind the jogging shape. The man turned into a classroom at random, eliciting a collective scream.
"Shut up! Who here knows Touji Suzuhara, Rei Ayanami, Shinji Ikari, or Asuka Souryu?" The voice was thick with a Russian accent.
Touji finally recognized the uniforms.
"They're Spetznaz," Touji sub-vocalized to his partners, keeping his eyes locked on the shape of the man. "Be careful."
He continued creeping forward. Slowly, slowly.
"Someone answer me! Now!"
Silence answered his demands. He seemed so impossibly far down the hall, the class' door too far to reach.
"Do you all want to die?"
Touji saw through the windows someone had stood up.
"I—I know Touji…" he said, raising a hand meekly, not looking the soldier in the eye.
The man turned like a hunter, leveling the weapon from his hip to point on the child's chest. Touji was behind him now, crawling through the open doorway. He saw the teacher shaking helplessly behind his desk, eyes squinted shut and hands clasped tightly over his ears.
"Where is he?" the soldier barked.
"I…" The kid was shaking. He was a freshman. "I don't know."
The assault rifle blew through his body as if it wasn't there, taking the wall and windows behind him as well. Everyone started screaming again though none of them moved.
"Anyone else not know where they are?" he asked of the room, satisfied.
Touji struck overly ambitious and, the vibrating knife cleaved his head clean off. He made sure not to let the blood get on his suit despite the mistake. More people screamed again, as the body fell to its knees, then to the floor. The head rolled into the wall to look up and the shuddering teacher, jaw flapping loosely.
Touji exited noiselessly. He saw a confused attacker inching his way up the hallway, flush against the wall and rifle aimed on the spot where Touji had just been—some sort of optical tracer was engaged over one eye but it would never catch the plugsuits careful chameleouflage. They knew how to fight chameleouflage but the plugsuits left none of the telltale signatures of the normal designs NERV had reluctantly bartered. They didn't know how to fight plugsuits—no one did. Its unusual abilities were an indulgence afforded only with the mysterious S2 Unit's capabilities.
As he crept toward his next victim, Asuka spoke through the private channel. She sounded tense, voice tight with Envoy control.
"Little problem here. My camouflage has cut out. Think they've spotted me."
She dug the knife into the shoulder blade and pulled him closer to her chest, ignoring the feeble scream. She wielded his freshly cut firing arm haphazardly, bursting rounds back at the ducking shapes while trying not to veer too close to where students lay. They returned fire, peppering their comrade in the ensuing "clak-clak" and silencing his sobs. She left the body and bolted for the window with the weapon in hand, bracing it in front of her as she dove. She tumbled into the courtyard with a spray of glass, nearly landing on another startled soldier.
Her foot swept under him, trying to trip the assailant but he jumped back and lowered the rifle. She sprung before the burst had fired, ramming an elbow clear through the barrel of the gun and one of his arms in her haste. He collapsed to his knees and lay crying and clutching the mangled stump. She put two rounds into his back and bounded away as one of the white VTOLs turned in her direction; the smooth white shapes of its nose cone looked feral as they tracked her, alive.
She heard the telltale spin up of the minigun and her instincts ignited nerves in the legs of the suit, accelerating her beyond a human pace and across the space of the building in seconds. The space behind her churned in noise and gunfire as the cannon went to work, shredding the building's wall in the hail of fifty-caliber shells. She made it to a wide enough tree trunk and dove—listened to it splinter under the barrage as she crouched. Bark spewed above her head as the gun cut through the wood like a barbaric chainsaw, and the tree toppled into the side of the building. The orb in her stomach began to glow, its charging finally complete.
She willed the AT Field into being and the sound of the fire ceased, leaving the empty whirr of the rotating cannon.
"Verdammt!" she swore, picturing her mother's arms around her just as she'd been taught in practice. The orb glowed harder.
Rei spun from her spot on the ceiling in time to see the glow of tracers spew into the side of a skyscraper, gouging a hole into the multi-national's glassy face. She ignored the shock, and dashed towards the white menace. Below her the soldiers corralled students, forcing them onto their knees; she'd even seen a few lifted up into the belly of one of the VTOLs, their crumpled forms not struggling as they disappeared.
Dust from her sprint would give her away if she was too slow.
She focused, imagining the field pushing up beneath her feet as she sprung towards the nearest craft, its overheated barrel still spinning as the pilot attempted to work off the excess heat for another barrage.
The plane jerked sideways in the air attempting to turn and face her; it was too late. She was already above it, fist primed with all of the kinetic energy she'd generated for the leap. She landed onto and through its nose, fist plunging through layers of white armor and deeper into the crumbling softness that she knew to be a human. She plunged the fist further digging until she clenched something that her suit acknowledged had electrical field. It clicked harmoniously, nano-circuits attempting and succeeding at an interface.
"Asuka, can you?" she said through gritted teeth, struggling to stay on the nose as the plane stumbled in the air drunkenly.
Her chameleouflage faded with the power drain, illuminating her to the bewildered soldiers below.
"Working on it, Blue. Don't let that thing buck you off before I'm finished," Asuka replied through their comm.
The plane swayed and swerved dangerously close to the tree tops before righting itself.
"Got it?"
"Steering's going to be a bitch, you tore through most of their fly-by-wire. Fire control on the other hand…" the German replied, something gleeful and wicked entering her voice.
The minigun cut swathes through the dumbfounded soldiers, kicking up chalky dirt into a powdery mist; the line of fire was careful to stay away from the children huddled together outside. The men scrambled for cover and disappeared under the hail of bullets, leaving behind not much more than red stains on the torn up turf.
"Goood. Let's see what else we have here…" Asuka hummed in her ear, delighted at the mayhem.
The three remaining planes spun angrily towards Rei but did not attempt to fire on her yet.
"Feeling a little exposed here, Asuka…" she reminded.
Two missiles screamed, tugging free from underneath her craft and narrowly missing the nearest plane; they careened harmlessly into the sky, fuses cut.
"Damn! They're culling my intrusion into the higher-level systems. They have linked nets!"
Beneath her, Rei watched with curious, impossible calm as the remaining soldiers regrouped, dispersing themselves into the crowds of huddled children. They began to kneel and take pot shots at Rei, misses sparking off the white armor with a metallic thrum.
"Asuka…" she said, impatience clear.
"Russian swine! Hold on, Rei."
The plane bobbed and wove over the lip of the buildings and into the center of the courtyard. The three others turned to follow her with calculated smoothness.
"They have a lock! Jump! Rei!" Asuka shrieked.
She did, and she floated impossibly slow—too slow towards the roof. I am going to die. She felt herself pushed violently forward in the air with the shockwave of the plane exploding behind her, flames licking her back. The pain was a distant, unreal thing. As she careened into the branches of the tree she saw the red blur of a sports bike plow several soldiers into the wall of the school. An unarmed Shinji rolled to a stop behind it, picked himself up and darted behind a tree.
But Ikari doesn't have a suit on.
It was her last complete thought as the world fracture away under the dull thunk of a branch against her body.
I won't let them have her. I won't let you.
They dragged Asuka across the grass by the feet.
The steel fingers of the spider on his back tickled his spine, trying a new combination of sedatives. His vision blurred, resisting. Think, the conditioning begged him.
Rei is MIA. Touji is MIA. Asuka is disabled but not dead. Shinji is disabled but not dead.
Still time. I still have…
The cool tap of the spider's legs on his neck again, prickling, stirring, trying to finish the job.
He vomited, his body's last defense. A useless gesture, the drugs were being administered through the skin. He looked up to find the dark smile of a Spetznaz officer, staring down at his convulsing form. He secured the straps of the harness around him.
"This one should be fun," he said not entirely to Shinji. He watched with vulture eyes. "Got plenty of fight in him."
His eyelids were fluttering shut. Giving in to the crushing forces on his brain. The spider stopped twitching and let go, satisfied.
Inside now. Where? Russian drowned his mind before it thankfully accepted and the conditioning translated their lullaby gently, unable to do any more for him now.
"The other two are dead, I think. We have to get the fuck out of here. Aerial grid is coming down like a hammer. Priority request to launch from sortie."
The darkness of the chamber invaded his sight.
"Acknowledged."
G-forces crushed him, relenting him to slumber. Auburn hair danced in his last moments of vision and then disappeared.
Twelve Fin
A/N: I hope that was as awesome as I imagined. I don't have too much to say about this chapter. It's something I've been thinking about writing since I started the story. It didn't come out quite how I intended but I like the end result. I'd like to point out my expediency in releasing this chapter! Probably the closest together consecutive chapters I've written for the story(!) Thirteen will come when it comes. I already know how I'm going to do it and fourteen so fear not.
Have a sweet week! Ja ne!