Chapter 3.

He found that he couldn't move at all when he regained consciousness; his body just felt so weak. He tried to open his eyelids and found that they were far too heavy. All that he could 'see' was a faint blur of yellow light creeping through at the corners.

He heard the faint voice of a man that he definitely didn't recognize. It grew louder and more intelligible as the seconds passed.

"...wake? Are you awake?"

Whoever was the source of the voice opened Shinji's eyelids one at a time with a finger. His facial features were indeterminate, partly because of the residual moisture in Shinji's eyes and partly because of the strong light shining overhead.

"Wake up."

The figure snapped his fingers in front of Shinji's face.

"Wake up. I need you awake."

From his dry throat, Shinji let out a weak groan so quiet that it may as well have been just a soft breath. The man continued speaking.

"Listen to me: you can't move, you can't speak, you can't scream. If all goes well, you will only be in pain for a couple of minutes. It will be terrible pain, but you will live. Do you understand? It's only for a few minutes."

He left Shinji's field of view for a moment, then returned with a hard, translucent ball, about two inches wide, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. The ball was a particular shade of red that worryingly reminded Shinji of blood, and at the very center was a dark, solid object vaguely in the shape of a comma — or an embryo.

"Also, you probably won't like the taste of this."

The man slipped the 'marble' into Shinji's mouth.

"Don't worry, you won't choke."

The marble began to dissolve onto Shinji's tongue. Shinji had expected it to taste like blood. The actual taste was so, so much worse. It almost hurt.

"We'll let that sit for a few seconds," the mysterious man added, "and then we'll begin with injection."

'Injection'? Shinji felt like his stomach was melting from the combination of fear and whatever the object in his mouth had been made of.

The man stepped out of Shinji's line of sight. "Remember, you can't move and you can't scream. Just let the procedure take its course. I promise you'll be fine."

A clicking noise followed, and then a faint 'hiss': the kind that a syringe made when the doctor checked for air bubbles.

"I'm putting the needle into your arm now."

Shinji felt a dull jab in his upper arm, close to his shoulder. A simple feeling of soreness at the injection site quickly turned into a searing pain, and that very quickly turned into what Shinji imagined electrocution felt like.

He tried to scream. He had to. But he couldn't. All that he could manage was a low, sustained moan.

"Uhhhhhhhhnnnn. Uhhhhhhhhnnnn."

Out of sight, the mysterious man was completely silent as Shinji suffered — and continued to suffer — the most excruciating physical pain he'd ever known.

He'd never actually thought that he wanted to die before, no matter how heavy an emotional toll life had brought him. He wasn't sure he even believed in 'a person's time to die.'

At that moment, however, he prayed for as quick a death as possible to spare him from experiencing any more of this.

He just hoped that Misato, Rei, Asuka, and everyone else that he cared about would forgive him for it.


NERV Headquarters break room. 7:20 P.M.

"Katsuragi."

Misato had been trying her best to listen to Kaji's recapitulation of his plans, but apparently had spaced out — far too preoccupied with her thoughts about Shinji.

She returned her attention to her ex-college-flame across the table in the break room.

"Ah, sorry."

Though his short, scruffy beard and loose ponytail hairdo gave him the appearance of a stereotypical beach bum (all he needed was a floral print shirt and khaki shorts to complete the look), NERV's Chief Inspection Officer Ryōji Kaji really did care about things. He was nothing if not a genuinely considerate and empathetic person, and while his attempts at mood-lightening humor sometimes didn't stick, he could accurately read any room and accordingly adapt.

This time, with something — someone — so important on the line, Kaji was all business; no jokes, no flirting, nothing.

"You need to get some sleep," he told Misato, who had sat down with him to listen to his initial report about the physical search for Shinji across Tokyo-III.

"Yeah, I tried earlier," Misato replied, "and I couldn't do it." She rubbed her dark-circled, dulling brown eyes. "Really, I'm more worried than anything else."

Kaji exhaled. "Hey," he said softly, "we'll find him. I don't make promises I can't keep, and I promise you now that we will find him and bring him back to us. It might not be me who finds him, and it might not be my team who finds him, but someone on our side will."

There was a silence across the table before Misato snorted somewhat amusedly.

"You almost made me feel better there, you jerk," she said with a tired, sad smile.

Kaji couldn't help but grin a bit to himself, and shrugged in a 'Well, what can I say?' sort of fashion.

"You know, Katsuragi," he said after waiting a moment, "I notice how Shinji is around you. The way he looks at you, the way he talks to you. He trusts you — so much."

He paused.

"He loves you. In what way, I don't know, but he does. To me, that means that you have to be doing something right."

Misato felt tears begin to well up in her eyes. She wasn't normally one to cry, but the lack of sleep, the lack of a decent meal, and the intense worry for Shinji had all conspired to create just the right conditions. She covered her mouth with a hand as she choked back a whimper, and was only able to compose herself enough to speak after close to a minute.

"...When this is all over — when the Angels are gone and we've saved the human race and all that — I don't want Shinji or Asuka to go back to being alone."

"They won't be alone," Kaji said with conviction. "They'll have you."

The tears began to trickle down Misato's face and became more profuse with each passing second.

She then buried her face in the crook of her elbow to muffle her voice, and groaned as loudly as she could to just let it all out. Kaji said nothing. Misato was just glad to have someone else there with her.


Supreme Commander Ikari's office. At the same time.

NERV's Supreme Commander Gendō Ikari had a certain flair for the dramatic, and his office was just one of the things that was indicative of that 'style.' At the very top of NERV's pyramidal main building, the room was tall, long, and wide, and in place of three of the four walls were equally wide windows with a view of the underground Geofront environment that housed NERV HQ. The floor and ceiling were a smooth black, like obsidian, and into the ceiling was etched in white a massive design: the tree of life from the Jewish Kabbalah, a symbol that Ritsuko still didn't understand after all the years she'd been working for NERV.

A monolithic desk sat as far away from the entrance as it possibly could, and behind that sat Commander Ikari himself, as most usually saw him: elbows on the tabletop, white-gloved hands folded in front of his mouth, and orange-tinted spectacles obscuring his eyes.

To the Commander's direct left, Vice Commander Kōzō Fuyutsuki stood straight with his hands behind his back. Tall and gaunt, with prominent cheekbones and swept-back silver hair, Fuyutsuki was a former mentor and longtime friend to the Commander, and he frequently served to balance his superior's often cold detachment with a sense of compassion and understanding. If Commander Ikari was the left brain — logical, analytical, and in control — Fuyutsuki was the right brain — creative, intuitive, and more emotionally adept.

Both the Commander and Vice Commander wore austere uniforms with high-collared jackets, with Commander Ikari's in a dark blue and Fuyutsuki's in a plan gray. Despite the fact that Ritsuko was not beholden to a particular dress code, and the fact the Commander himself wore his jacket in a more casual fashion with a simple red turtleneck underneath, she felt a bit underdressed at times.

"Do we have a time frame for completion of this device?" Fuyutsuki asked.

"If we move Heaven and Earth to get it done, with what I have at my disposal right this second," Ritsuko answered, "I would say four to five days. The more people that NERV can spare, the more minds we have in the room, the sooner that we can complete it and find Shinji."

Fuyutsuki sighed. "This is a difficult situation, indeed."

He turned his head to look at Commander Ikari, who did not move.

"No ransom demands, no clues... Why? Why would these people want to kidnap your son?"

"We must assume nothing," the Commander said. "All we know is that Unit-01's pilot is missing. He must be retrieved as soon as possible — preferably before the next Angel attack. Dr. Akagi, ask and you shall receive. Do whatever you must. You may go."

If the Commander had any personal, fatherly concern for his son, Ritsuko certainly didn't see or hear it.

"Thank you, Sir," she said, blankly, and turned to leave.

She felt a pang of disgust. She knew, of course, that saving humanity as a whole required sacrifices, and individuals' emotional well-being was often the first thing to go. She was guilty of making decisions that had a negative effect on the people in her charge, not to mention her friends. But, at the least, she wasn't happy to make those unfortunate decisions. She legitimately cared about the people she knew as people, not as pieces on a chessboard. They weren't even her immediate family.

Gendō, I know you, and I respect you — but for God's sake, he's your son.

Not for the first time, Ritsuko thought to herself:

I don't know if I can keep doing this.