The woman was sitting behind a desk, in a room the size of a modest cathedral. It was strangely designed, a strangely impersonal feeling pervading it. The room felt like a stopping point that somebody had tried to make into a destination. There was noting there to signify any sort of a personal attachment. The windows went from the floor to the ceiling, steel girders splitting the whole thing into an enormous glass checkerboard. Something wasn't right about the windows; though they should have provided a stunning view of whatever was outside them, nothing more than steady illumination came through them. It was as if they were in a cavernous space, so big and empty that there truly wasn't anything outside to see.
The desk was the only piece of furniture in the room, save for an enormous clock at the other end. The grandfather clock was a Victorian affair, ornately carved walnut with a wood-bordered glass front. Every two seconds, the pendulum would swing from one side to the other, making a muffled clunk. Compared with the rest of the room, it was too detailed. Everything else was very modern: solid red floor, marble; a flat, rectangular ceiling.
The woman wore a red coat with orange shoulder lapels. Underneath this was a black undershirt. As far as she cared to remember, she had always worn them. The clothes were her identity; to take them off would feel like losing herself.
Spread in front of her was a wide assortment of papers, all covered with arcane diagrams. At the top of each document was a red stamp emblazoned with the words 'Eyes Only- No Copies'. The woman never deviated from orders. The documents would be destroyed at the end of the meeting.
Three other people were in the room with her. All were standing in front of her desk, as if awaiting orders. They were clad in identical uniforms, tan jackets with matching pants. The only difference between them was the color of their hair, ranging from red to blue to black. Their faces were vaguely androgynous, all the same shape and ivory color. Had they been wearing wigs, they could have swapped them and still looked the same. Their shoulders bore the same markings as the woman in front of them.
The woman was having a hard time remembering why they were all gathered, much less so in such a strange place. She felt that she had known, mere seconds ago. Part of her accepted it, but there was an insistent nagging voice in the back of her head that stated otherwise. She shook her head, her purple hair rippling at the motion, for the moment driving out the insisting portion of her consciousness. She cleared her throat, passing a sheaf of paper to each individual in front of her.
"These documents are for you, and your eyes only." It was a good start. Official sounding, but without giving a clue that she herself was still trying to figure out what she was doing. "They will be destroyed upon conclusion of this gathering."
The three of them nodded, accepting the documents. Each one flicked through the pages, giving the packets a speed-read before examining them in more detail.
The clock wasn't ticking anymore.
That was the first thing that the woman noticed. The heavy clunking of the pendulum, the only constant, had ceased. Even stranger, the pendulum had stopped moving at the apex of its swing. It was as if it were frozen.
The woman would have worried more about this, except for the fact that the three people were no longer sitting in front of her. She wasn't even sitting behind her own desk. Everything was fading out, going to black. She still sat there with her hands crossed in front of her on an invisible counter. For a moment, there was absolute silence.
The moment was shattered when a bright flash of light assailed her eyes, just as a shriek tore into her ears. The darkness had broken up in one explosive moment. The light and sound were piercing enough that she clapped her hands over her ears, squinting her eyes shut. The sound was like nothing that she had ever heard before-
Except she had.
And then she wasn't in a void anymore, but in a chair. A grey chair in a room with white walls and a white floor and a white ceiling and a white door and white everything, except her pajamas. Those were a pale blue, but the color was so close to the white that it didn't matter anyway.
Her knees were curled up to her chin. Yes, she remembered; she had been in that chair for two years, watching people look at her through the flap in the door and murmur words like 'mental contamination' and 'fit for release' and 'danger to self'. She knew full well why she was in the room, and she knew as well why she hadn't spoken in any of that time. What she had seen had put demons in her soul, and to open her mouth and speak or cry would be to let those demons escape. Nothing would be more painful.
And then she remembered where she was- no, who she was. She wasn't in a containment cell from 12 years ago. She wasn't recovering from having pieces of her father splattered all over her when he was ripped to shreds by a wave of torn metal and shrapnel.
She wasn't some dull military officer sitting behind a desk giving orders to her underlings. She had a place where she worked, a real place. There were real people that she worked with. She didn't belong inside this massive cathedral with the ticking clock.
She was the Major- something. Something went there, after her title. There was a name that went there, but she couldn't remember what it was. It was a crucial part of her identity, but it was still drifting around somewhere.
There was a muffled clunk.
She blinked, looking at the three people in front of her, at the false room with the ticking clock. At some point, it had restarted and returned life and color to the world. The expressions of the three were puzzled, unlike their collected faces from mere moments earlier. "Is there a problem?" the Major queried.
The redhead passed the paper she was reading across the desk. "Well, there's nothing here… well, no. The issue is, we can't read what this says."
"Show me, Asuka." The Major took the paper, glancing down at the writing there. Then she looked closer. The redhead was right. The paper was covered in scribbles. It wasn't language at all.
She looked up at the other two. "Shinji. Rei. Show me your papers." The two looked at one another before sliding over their documents. She glanced from one to the other, her eyes whipping over the documents faster and faster. There had been something there, she was sure of it.
There was something intruding on the edge of her consciousness. She brushed it off, resuming the study of the documents, but the sensation came back. It was impossible to concentrate. She placed the packets on the desk in front of her, massaging her temples with her fingers. All the while, the three people in front of her continued to gaze at the papers in front of them, faces emptied of emotion.
Something glinted at her from across the room.
Abruptly, the Major was standing. The eyes of the three continued to track her movement as she stepped forward, away from her desk, crossing the room towards the clock at the far side. Their eyes left her as soon as she passed their field of vision. It struck the woman how oddly sized the room was, and the feeling behind her head intensified with the thought.
She was in front of the clock now, gazing at the pendulum going clunk-clunk-clunk behind the glass. She reached to one side of the wooden paneling, fingers wrapping around the frame. She pulled, and the panel opened with seemingly no give at all. She reached in with a hand, stopping the pendulum's back-and-forth movement for a moment. With her other hand, she reached in, grabbed onto the hard rectangular object inside, and pulled it out. She stared at the object in disbelief.
It was a camera. It was on, recording. The noise of the clock had earlier covered the whine that the tape made as it spun. As she stared at it, the red indicative blinking light went dark. The whine faded away as she continued to stare at the dead piece of tech. Why was there a camera in the clock?
Although she would have cared to devote a great deal more time to the answer to that particular question, the woman quickly became aware of another problem. The clock, normally so diligent at keeping the time, had begun to tick faster. And another problem; the hands on the clock face were moving backwards. As the ticking sped up, another unpleasant fact revealed itself. The room was shaking. She felt it as a small rumble underneath her shoes, gradually getting stronger and deeper as it moved up her legs. Small bits of plaster began to fall from the ceiling as the shaking intensified.
She whipped around focusing her gaze on the three people she had left at the desk. They hadn't moved. They hadn't even reacted to the movement. However, the blue-haired one, Rei, was shaking her head as if trying to clear it of some unpleasant sensation. The outline of her body was growing fuzzy along the edges. Shaking herself from her reverie, the Major began walking across the room towards her.
There was a loud, resounding high-pitched noise. The woman stopped, looking up in horror. One of the girders on the massive windows had snapped, tumbling down to the floor. The noise was horrific, a grinding, tearing screech as it ripped from the metal surrounding it. Where the girder had been, there was no gap in the glass of the window; it was still filled with that ceaseless illumination. The girder tumbled to the floor.
It hit with a terrible screeching sound, tearing its way across three feet of marble before coming to a stop. It left long, white trails in the ground. She looked at it in shock. A second, louder noise echoed behind her. Her head whipped around, to see a second beam falling right over the clock. It hit- and tore through as the clock crumbled into white dust. A white cloud billowed out as bits and pieces of chalky whiteness flew through the air.
The ticking noise was growing louder now, even though the clock had been crushed; it was now a great pounding that tore into the woman's ears. She clapped her hands onto the sides of her head, including the hand that was holding the camera. That too was crumbling, leaving the Major holding onto a broken handle that slowly dissolved into the same white powder that the clock had, seconds ago.
Rei was no longer shaking her head, looking around in bleary-eyed confusion at the dust shaking down from the roof and the massive girders on the floor. Her outline had stabilized, but her clothing had changed; she no longer wore the tan uniform, but a typical schoolgirl's uniform. As the Major watched incredulously, a third girder tumbled down to the floor with a reverberating clang where it struck. This one bounced once before coming to rest, leaving a second screech in the air to mingle with the pounding of the clock.
There was a loud cracking noise. Slowly, both Rei and the Major looked up at the ceiling, right above where Rei was standing. A massive piece, holding on by just a few inches of material, finally snapped its way free. It began the long fall to the ground, speeding up. Galvanized into action, the woman put all her energy into a sprint, tackling the girl out of the way an instant before the ceiling chunk hit the marble. The two hit the ground with a loud smacking sound.
Asuka and Shinji hadn't moved. As the two of them watched in shock, the same white dust began to fall from the fingertips of the two. A white, pasty liquid oozed out of the holes in their hands, spreading up the arms in a chain reaction. The two of them watched in revulsion as the centers of their bodies collapsed inward in a white, gluey mess. Slowly, the bodies collapsed in on themselves. Rei hid her face in the Major's jacket.
Great chunks of the ceiling were falling now, massive divots left in its smooth surface. The room shook like an earthquake. The ticking of the clock was still there, all around them, all consuming. The woman clutched Rei tightly, attempting to impart to her whatever comfort she could.
The floor collapsed.
The Major didn't have time to worry about it, sudden as it was. Cracks in the marble radiated out from the two at an unbelievable speed, and they simply dropped into the black chasm. The Major's arms were still around Rei. The room visibly receded above them, as great chunks of the marble floor fell above the two.
The ersatz pendulum gave a final clunk as the two receded into the darkness.