At World's End

S-Michael

Chapter the Ninth

Spies and Funerals and Grave Robbing

One week ago…

There was no such place as Brazil anymore. Much of the nation was at or just above sea level before Second Impact. Many of the two billion who died in the southern hemisphere because of tsunamis were from Brazil, and most of the rest were from Australia. Most of South America was claimed by the Atlantic, leaving a scattering of poverty-stricken islands and the area around the relatively unharmed Andes.

On a fishing boat in a straight snaking between two of the islands sat Keel Lorenz, leader of SEELE, waiting for his phone to ring. The satellite phone finally did, and he picked up. "Hello, this is Mr. Konrad. Whom may I ask is calling?"

"The line is secure," the spy said.

"I take it that means you have something for me?" Lorenz asked. He had been trying to get spies into HALO for months, but until now had not been successful in getting anything important from them.

"Firstly, I'm looking at this list of employees HALO is keeping under survailence, and the names of all our spies in their organization are on it."

"Holy shit." Well, that was one mystery solved. "How did they manage that one?"

"I don't know, but these orders were issued by Browne."

"I thought he was just an advisor."

"Oh, no, he is definitely more than he appears. Trust me. Browne seems at times to be able to read the minds of people around him, like he's psychic or something. It's not an ability he brags about, as he wouldn't work as effectively if people knew he was able to read them. I've been able to fool him, somehow, so I guess it's not really mind reading, though. He and Valaskas have had relations going back almost all of the way to Second Impact."

"You said 'firstly' a while back. I assume that there's a 'secondly,' then?"

"I, of course, haven't been able to infiltrate HALO, but by looking at records…piles and piles and piles of records…sorry, sir. Anyway, by looking at records, I have traced HALO to dozens of puppet companies, the net resources of which, both monetarily and in necessary supplies, are vast enough to create a whole army of angels. It might also interest you to know that both Valaskas and Browne have been making a killing in embezelment."

"Any idea what their ultimate goal is?"

"Considering the political connections they have, that their alleged primary goal is weapons research, the fact that they have invested copious amounts of money into a monetary system slated to take over once the UN—or whatever replaces it—grants itself the right to print money, and looking at recent events with the assumptions that HALO is responsible for the new angels and that it's all going more-or-less according to plan, I'd say that it's quite obvious that they're trying to force Unification, probably so that they can rule the world from the shadows but possibly also just to maximize the returns on certain investments. I think that the former is more likely, though, sir."

"As do I. Where would these angels be being stored, if in fact they exist."

"Looking at records of how much earth was displaced when HALO built their headquarters in Santiago 2 and comparing it to schematics, there is most likely a secret chamber hidden beneath it, large enough to hold thirty or so angels, assuming that there's also a tunnel leading them to the Pacific, as it's not likely that they'd get them out through the city. People might notice a thing or two if that ever happened."

"So to summarize, HALO has a storehouse of angels below Santiago 2. How sure are you of this information?"

"Yes, sir, and I would bet my life, respectively—one second." The spy's voice became muffled, "Yeah, I'll be there in a minute, Shinji." He was back, "Sorry about that, sir."

"Are you in a public place, you little idiot???" Lorenz demanded.

"Relax, sir, I know what I am doing. Besides, there's not a whole lot of privacy on a train. Anything else?"

"No, you have done well."

"Alright, then. See you on the other side, sir." The spy hung up.

Lorenz looked at the phone like he was mildly disgusted at it, and then put it away. That Don James was a good spy, but he was a pain in the ass.

"Orders, sir?" the man in the boat with him asked.

"Accompany me to the airport. I will go to Antarctica, and you will go to Santiago 2. You will break into HALO's main building, find the angels, and seize control of one with this," Lorenz handed something to the man. "If they're making the angels the way we think they pretty much have to be, then that device should work."

"And if they're not?"

Well, then you're holding on to the most expensive paperweight in the world. "They pretty much have to be."

-

Present…

Valaskas was a cold calculating man, some would say a scheming bastard (never to his face, though), but even so, his heart was in torment at the moment. So many good men and women lost…and why? Because he had made a mistake, that was why. Again. He had made a mistake again, for the third time in what couldn't have been more than as many weeks. The first was when that angel had howled, in spite of the fact that he had designed it to not have that ability. He had nearly died and gotten everyone around him killed for that mistake. The second was not figuring that an enemy driven to desperation by the threat of Sahaquiel II wouldn't resort to desperate measures and nuclear warheads to stop it. He had nearly died and gotten everyone around him killed for that mistake, as well. The third mistake was that in spite of the nuclear awakening, he hadn't realized that the Separatists would stop at nothing to make sure that the satellite would never see orbit. Valaskas believed that the ends justified the means, and wasn't one to let any number of bodies faze him, but the difference here was that these people didn't die to further his plans, they died because of a mistake. People were dead because he wasn't on the ball. Valaskas felt like a bumbling idiot, the worst kind of loser. Damn it, some of those people had been his friends, too! Even if this was far better than his little charade would have been in terms of accomplishing Advocate, the price for it had been too damn high.

The pathetic thing was, those Separatists might as well not even have bothered. The damn thing's weapons weren't even operational. It was a tactic Valaskas dubbed The Dashed Hope. People knew of the Sahaquiel II satellite. Its launch would bring them hope, hope that the Separatists could be scared into surrendering to the UN…which would then be dashed when the weapons test failed. All that fear that people would have been able to put aside for a moment would have come crashing down, driving them to demand more protection from the UN, even if it meant taking draconian measures. Ironically, this whole failure would work to that end a thousand times better than what he had had in mind. And even though he was mourning and in a funk, a part of him was still scheming. (He had stopped being disgusted at himself for that a long, long time before this in his life.) This would be a good excuse to get them to make "top secret" acceptable again. Perhaps. If he pushed on things ever so slightly, in just the right ways…

Browne was explaining to the Japanese people what Private Donald James had said and done, but Valaskas couldn't follow. "Call the Canadian military," Valaskas ordered. "Tell them to root out any Separatists that may have been too far away from the blast to be hurt by it," not fucking likely. "Also tell them to recover any pieces of the satellite for us that they can." After all, angels were good at surviving impact-style explosions like that. "Turn that thing off. Staring at static will do us no good." Valaskas made a mental note to do something. Set up some sort of monument to the men and women who had died here. With his own money, too.

"I need to go to Tokyo 3," Browne murmured in his ear.

"What for?" Valaskas asked. He didn't usually ask questions when his "subordinate" (ha!) asked for something, but considering the circumstances…

"I need to find out if Kaji found anything we missed—any information SEELE might have destroyed," Browne said. "I'd have said something sooner, but there was nothing to be done about it until we reach Anchorage."

Valaskas nodded. "I'll arrange it."

-

Don James had been likable, somehow, in spite of the fact that he was arrogant, showy, and always hitting on Shinji's girlfriend. Maybe that last bit would have been different if he had known that Misato and Shinji were an item. Then again, maybe not; Shinji had heard stories about him. Still, he had been a friend…and now he was dead. Damn it, Shinji should have known better. Every time you connect with someone, you get hurt. They die, or they leave you…Shinji looked at Misato. She wasn't dead. She hadn't left him. His continuing run of good luck with her had been what allowed him to let his guard down, in fact, but in his current state of mind, he could only wonder when it would happen. Misato grabbed his hand, and Shinji did something he hadn't done in a while. He tensed when she touched him. She noticed, and she drew back. Shinji was sorry that he had tensed, as she looked hurt by it, but he couldn't help himself.

He looked around at the scenery. Keokea was a seaside city in East Maui, fortified against attack from the sea. It hadn't of been before Second Impact. Fortified, a seaside city, or even in East Maui (there had been only one Maui). It had existed, though. It had definitely existed, and survived being assaulted again and again from the ocean before the signing of the Valentine Treaty.

A priest of some sort was saying something in a language Shinji didn't understand, probably English, and though there were interpreters telling people who didn't speak that language what he was saying (apparently, Don James had gotten around), the one speaking Japanese might as well have been speaking a foreign language, too. Shinji wasn't listening, he was lost in his own thoughts.

So much death. His mother, dead. Kowaru, dead. His father, first abandoning him, and then dead. Kaji had been a decent guy, and he was dead. Don James, ditto, dead. Oddly enough, that was not only the chronological order, but also the order of how significant these people had been to him. So much death. So very much death. How was he supposed to take it? How was anyone supposed to take it?

The coffin was lowered into the ground, and they started to throw dirt on it. There was nothing in the coffin, of course. Don James had been vaporized by the mini-impact explosion that the Sahaquiel II had used to end its existence. This wasn't Don James' true grave. Don James' grave was the hundred-mile-in-radius crater that now marked the location of the north pole. It was almost typical that he would go out flashy like that. Him and several other HALO soldiers, soldiers who had ceremonies like this dedicated to them around the world (mostly the Americas), where their friends and family gathered in a cemetery and laid an empty coffin to rest amongst corpses where people would bring flowers or burn incense or whatever was culturally appropriate, but the true grave of these people was the north pole, and their true gravestone an obelisk that was even now being built by Valaskas in the dead center of the crater.

-

Browne watched as Kaji's grave was exhumed in the dead of night, and though he was not an especially superstitious man, he had to admit that this was kind of spooky (not to mention really creepy, but that would have been the case regardless of the setting in which what was about to happen was to take place. The diggers pulled the coffin out onto the surface and opened it. Whoever had embalmed Kaji had done one hell of a nice job. He looked like he was sleeping. You know, Kaji, I never liked you, but still… "I am so sorry about this, man," Brown whispered as he sliced open the corpse's stomach with a knife. The stench of embalming fluid filled the night as Browne reached into Kaji's stomach and felt around. Finally he found what he was looking for, and pulled out a baggie, and inside of it were flash drives. He could tell by the feel. Closing his hand around it, so that the diggers wouldn't see, he pulled it out. "Put him back in the ground." Browne ordered. "I'm going to go wash my hands." That was the truth, but not all of it.

Browne walked to a drinking fountain and washed the various fluids off of his hand and his dagger, and then he opened the bag, pocketing the flash drives. After a moment's hesitation he dropped the bag, which blew away in the breeze. Fuck litter laws—he had just desecrated a corpse. Browne headed back to the grave, and saw that the diggers were carefully putting pieces of sod back in place so it wouldn't appear that the grave had been dug into. Good. I'll burn incense on his grave, or something. If he could ever get the smell of embalming fluid out of his nose, that is.

He hadn't had any prior knowledge that the flash drives would be there, but it had hardly been random, either. (If he had thought there was a chance that they might be in one of his pockets, he would have searched them first!!!) He knew that if the drives that he had given to Kaji still existed, this was where they had to be. SEELE would have searched everything he owned for anything the triple, no, quadruple agent had that would incriminate them, and even though they wouldn't know what a flash drive was, they'd know that it had to be important somehow if they found it. Kaji had been loyal to the cause, as much of it as he had known about, and wouldn't have trusted them to anyone else, so when they came for him, he'd either smash the drives or swallow them. After what Browne had just gone through to get them, he sure as hell hoped that they weren't as blank as when he gave them to Kaji.

Next morning, Browne woke up feeling like shit. He had had nightmares about disemboweling Kaji all night. He went into his apartment's bathroom, and looked in the mirror. He thought again about Kaji, and then puked in the sink. Staring down at the vomit, he thought, Oh, good. I was wondering when that was going to happen.

He went though his morning routine: (coffee, shower, coffee, breakfast, coffee), and then went down to the airport to see the Evangelion pilots as they got off the plane from Hawaii. Shinji, he noticed, was more withdrawn than he had been in a while. The hedgehog's dilemma, which had been tamed and subdued by his relationship with Misato (to a point) had reared its ugly head again. Browne thought he should do something. But first he had to deal with those flash drives. Sorry, Shinji, but your problems can wait.

-

Shinji stood at his father's grave, feeling all sorts of turmoil. They had finally gotten people to stop desecrating it. Suddenly he shouted, "This is all your fault!" Shinji punched the tombstone, and kept punching, and then he sank to his knees, crying, looking dumbly down at his bloody knuckles.

"Hello, Shinji," Browne said. Shinji jumped. He hadn't heard the man approach. No wonder, as he was too absorbed in his own pain at the moment. "Shinji, you're headed down a dark path."

"So many people dead. Friends. Family. Lovers." Shinji winced at his choice of the last word, as there was another lover he was worried about losing at the moment.

"My father died during Impact, and my brother was shot dead by a warlord a few months later. A warlord I strangled with my bare hands. As for my mother…to this day, I have no idea where she is, or where she's buried if she died. My parents were divorced, you see. Don James…was like a son to me. When he joined HALO, I was so proud, like I had created him or something. It was a dark time for me, after I lost my family, and to be quite honest, I can't say that I'm a better person for having experienced it. Quite the opposite, in fact. And I'd rather spare you that."

Shinji didn't respond.

"Let me tell you a story. A fable, really. It's about a clam and a jellyfish. The clam always shut itself away in its shell, while the jellyfish draped its tentacles all over everything, and it was always getting hurt doing this. So one day, the clam asked, 'Why do you do that when you'll just end up hurting yourself?' and the jellyfish answered, 'Yes, I experience pain sometimes, but pleasure, too. If I lock myself off from one, then I cannot feel the other.'"

After five seconds of silence, Shinji said, "You suck as a storyteller."

"Yeah, I'm totally lame," Browne said. "I do know you, though, so trust me when I say you can't close yourself off like you have been. I know you've been seeing someone—and I won't ask who—and knowing you, you'll pull away from her. Don't. After all you've lived through, well, there's worse tonics for it than a loving relationship and sex on a regular basis."

"You don't know me as well as you think you do."

"No? Tell me, do you plan on having children one day?" Yes.

"Yes."

"You have a name picked out for your firstborn already, don't you? What is it?" Raven Alexandra Lauren Browne.

"Akiko," Shinji said.

Akiko Katsuragi. Nice. "Akiko Ikari. Nice," Browne fumbled around in his pocket.

"Actually, I'm going to take my wife's name."

Just like your father did. "I figured as much, but I don't know who your girlfriend is, remember?" Browne said. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Shinji.

Shinji unfolded it and read, Akiko. "Wha—how did you know? How could you possibly have known?"

"Actually, I have about a thousand pieces of paper in my pocket, all with a different girls' name on it," Browne said.

"It's still pretty impressive."