Chapter 11
Asuka came to consciousness as if she'd fallen into her body from a great height, and the effect was the same. It took her some time to simply open her right eye, only about halfway, and swirl her vision around the room. It would not have taken her genius intellect to discern that she was in a hospital, and the blurred field of white around her and the beeping of machines only confirmed it. Her throat burned with thirst, and it took an effort to croak "Water".
She felt a straw touch her lip, worked her lips around it, and pulled in a delicious, cold mouthful of ice water. She was immediately relieved, but only for a moment. Her thirst relieved, she was assaulted by the plague of sensations coursing through her body. The left side of her face was pulled tight, and she could feel the bandages, from forehead to chin. Her left arm felt the same, and she couldn't move her fingers, held tight by the bandages. To her relief she could feel her legs, though she lacked the strength to move them. What worried her was the void she felt in her left eye socket, a coldness that wasn't quite pain, and an intense itching all around it.
"They took my eye," she rasped.
"Yes," said Rei. "Are you still thirsty?"
She nodded, or tried to nod, not even sure if she made the gesture at all, but Rei helped her drink and she was grateful. "How bad is it?"
"Your injuries were extensive. Without immersion in LCL, you would not have survived. Your left arm, face, and back will be severely scarred. I am sorry."
She lay for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling.
"Where is he? Why isn't he here?"
"He is confined to the detention cells. He made me promise to look after you, and tell you he will come for you when he can."
"Did he do something wrong?"
"I do not know."
"The angel, is it dead?"
"Yes."
"Tell me what happened."
Rei snapped her book shut, and told her.
The thundering shudder of each step ran up Unit Zero's legs and into Rei's own, but she ignored it and pressed on, her face a mask of grim determination. With each bounding step she drew nearer Tokyo-3. She would skid to a stop, soon, replace the umbilical, take it as far as it would go, and release it once more. It would take her a full six minutes to make the run, the last of which would be on battery power as she approached the city and dropped into the Geofront. It would be a close run thing.
She traced along the optimized route the Magi had prepared for her, keeping as far ahead of the red blot of the seismic readings of the angel's movements as well as she could. In her readings she had begun to study strategy, and the nature of the angel's attacks began to make sense to her. The first attacking angel was simply a probe. Where it had failed by land, the second came by air, better equipped for close combat than its predecessor. When that failed, the creature destroyed by simply being torn to pieces, the next angel attacked from afar. The next angel to actually attack the city split itself in half, dviding its efforts to succeeded where unity of purpose had faltered. Only the aquatic angel, which had elected to attack via the water, eluded her.
The intent of the most recent one was clear. The others had failed in attacking on land or above it, so it would come from below, tunnel under the Geofront and attack from a direction they were not prepared to defend. It would be a close run thing.
She crested the hills that ringed the city, dropped the umbilical, and ran down among the streets. Where the optimized path carried her over a building she simply ran through it, trusting that the evacuation had emptied it. In the end, it mattered little, as they would die anyway. When she reached the open deployment shaft she jumped with both feet together through the opening and tore into the sides with her fingers, digging deep funnels in the concrete and long trails of sparks. It took nearly thirty seconds for her to reach the staging area, dart through the cage, taking an umbilical as she did, and burst out onto the surface of the Geofront, palette rifle in hand.
She was just barely in time.
Breaching like a whale breaches the ocean, the angel, vast and broad and shimmering with heat, erupted from the side wall in the distance, a cascade of molten rock and sulphurous smoke around it. Instinctively, Rei snapped into position with the rifle and emptied the magazine, the rymthic thump-thump-thump of detonation shuddering up her arm. The shells burst upon the creature's rocky back, and there dug out deep elliptical craters, but if it felt the impacts it showed no sign. As it neared her it dove down, setting the forested floor of the geofront aflame. She dropped the rifle and looked to the arming tower set beside the headquarters pyramid for weapons, but there was no point and she knew it.
It came up from under her. Its rocky body unfolded as it breached the surface again, long feelers of rubbery flesh spreading out from inside. It pulled her down by the legs, slammed her to earth, and she felt it biting into her back and screamed. She was not disturbed that she was going to die. Ultimately, she could still be replaced. She hoped that some of her memories of Shinji's touch would be preserved by the link, and that he would not grieve too much, and that Unit Zero would remain operational.
With a half human scream. Unit One simple tore open the roof of the Geofront, ripping a great gouge in the layers of armor and packed earth with its bare hands, wreathed in shimmering forces of its AT-Field. Blazing, licking flames erupted from its back like wings, folding and furling on themselves into a trailing column of white hot fury that followed it to the Geofront floor, where it crouched like an animal and unleashed a ululating cry of challenge to the angel. It simply dropped Rei and turned to the more pressing target.
She wasn't sure if the voice was coming through the comm channel, or somehow inside her own skull. "You hurt Rei! You! Hurt! Asuka!"
Without regard for anything but his fury, Shinji screamed into battle with it, leaping over its body and taking hold of the long, fleshy feelers as it did. Unit One yanked the arms back over the creature's body and began dragging it out of the earth, yanking it upwards. Strangely thin arms along the creature's side wriggled, scrabbling for purchase as it was pulled onto the surface, out of its element. It rolled until it could dig into the soil and drag itself back to the opening, but found no purchase, dragged every moment further and further away from the rent in the earth.
The angel puffed, its body growing red with heat, and then contracted, the rocky shell of its body turning rock hard and a deep, rich obsidian. The fleshy arms pulled Unit One forward, and then it exploded. Rei raised her AT-Field just in time to deflect flaming shards of white hot rock that blew into gouts of flame when they struck her, setting fire to the fields below. A chunk of it hit the pyramid and gouged a furrow in it surface, then rolled to a stop, cooling in the artificial lake. Unit One was wreathed in flame, and Shinji screamed, screamed as if he was dying, and the Evangelion with him, the pulsing cries pulling at her soul itself.
He was not dying, he was living.
Unit One picked up the now exposed angel, its rocky shell gone, though it was still many times larger than the Eva itself. Rei gasped as she saw the fire and smoke and whirling dust begin to spin over Shinji's head, spin into a glowing halo of fire, and saw the light in Unit One's eyes and gaping mouth as it gaze up in the creature. She heard a sound not unlike the chiming of a bell, and the angel was unmade, its body unbecoming itself into a vast explosion that swallowed them both, swirling up into, absurdly, the shape of a cross, as if to mark its grave.
From within the flame Unit One stamped forward, wreathed in fire, its snarling growl shaking the foundations of the Earth. As it neared her the flame around it winked out of existence, as if he'd simply willed it away. It knelt beneath Unit Zero and lifted her up as a groom carries his bride, and from there strode down the ramp into headquarters complex.
From there, her memory became sporadic as she began to drift in and out of consciousness. She remembered him pulling her out of the plug himself, remembered teasing the promise from her to care for Asuka. She remembered when the Section 2 men came and he gave himself up voluntarily, offering up his wrists for the handcuffs, joking and talking with them as if they weren't arresting him, the way his face became grave and serious as they wished Asuka well and told him of their wives and children. The blackness took her, and she woke up in the hospital.
"When I awoke, I came here."
Asuka looked up at the ceiling blankly. Her eye rolled to catch the light coming from the doorway. It took closeness for the blurred shape to resolve itself into the sub commander, Fuyutsuki. The old man rested a hand on Rei's shoulder, and then leaned over the bed.
"How do you feel?" he whispered.
"Like I look," she said flatly.
He nodded.
"Why is Shinji in lockup?"
"The Commander is afraid he's been contaminated. Unit One is sealed in Bakelite until Akagi can finish going over it."
"That's bullshit," Asuka hissed. Rei offered her another drink and she turned away.
"It is what it is," Fuyutsuki said as he turned.
"Isn't there anything you can do to help him?"
The old man looked to both of them and said nothing.
He left, and for a time, they sat in silence.
"Will they fix Unit Two?"
"Yes," said Rei, "although it will take time. I must go. Misato will be here soon."
Asuka closed her eyes. Eye. "I just want to sleep."
Gendo was glad he'd elected to have gas nozzles installed in the cells when the detention center was constructed. It made dramatic entrances so much more glorious. He waited in the half-light of the laboratory of Central Dogma for the boy to come around, hunched over himself in the metal chair to which he was bound in unconsciousness. It amused him to see the boy's face when he came around, and their eyes met.
"Hello, Shinji," said Gendo.
The boy was silent, his jaw set. Gendo wanted to burst out laughing at his amateur theatrics, but he'd had far more practice and new the value of the subtle nuance of keeping his stone faced exterior intact.
"I thought we should have a little chat. We haven't had the time to talk since you came to Tokyo-3, both of us have been so busy."
Shinji continued to stare at him, so he went on. "I wanted to make a few things clear to you, redefine our relationship, as it were. Right now, that little redheaded brat is lying in a hospital bed over our heads. She won't be pretty, but she's currently making a miraculous recovery. It's very tenuous, you see. It could turn at any moment. She could go into a sudden cardiac arrest. Berlin would protest, I'm sure, and I might get an angry letter from her father, but that would be it. I'll cremate her and put her in a pauper's grave with nothing but a date. I won't even tell you where it is."
Shinji's eyes hardened, but he said nothing. Gendo smirked in amusement. The boy had certainly been practicing his stoic stare, handn't he?
"As for the Major," said Gendo, "after this grotesque debacle, I'll have no choice but to fire her and strip her of her clearance. You would no longer be allowed to live with her, I'm afraid. As a valuable asset, I would have to hold you in detention indefinitely."
Still no reaction. He continued. "Of course, you're thinking, 'my beloved Rei will still be true to me', but alas… Rei?"
As he planned, Rei stepped forward. She didn't have to be nude, but he was sure it increased the effect. He did react when he saw her, and if Gendo was reading him right, he was panicking. Rei walked to his side, staring at the cold floor. The three of them remained there in the darkness, for some time, until Gendo drew his sidearm from his jacket. He handed it to her and she took it, letting it hang limply at her side. Good girl.
"Rei, put the muzzle of that firearm under your chin."
He watched Shinji's horrified reaction in amusement as she did exactly that, turning her head up as she did, so he could see the tremble in her lips, the tears welling up at the corners of her eyes. He didn't even have to tell her to do that; it seemed that whatever part of her was capable actually cared about him, which, he would admit, surprised him to a degree.
"Remove the safety and put your finger on the trigger."
Slowly, Rei complied, the click of the safety ringing in the dark room like a bell. She stood there, finger on the trigger, for a full minute before Gendo reached into his pocket and pushed the button on the remote, bathing them in light. Behind them stood the storage tank with the floating, soulless Rei bodies, their beatific grins innocent of what transpired outside. Shinji's draw dropped as he gazed on the sight of it.
"Rei is mine, and will always be mine," Gendo said simply. "If the current version proves too intractable, I will simply give the order, and she will blow her brains out. If you become too intractable, I will give the order, and she will blow her brains out, and then she will wake up, walk over here, and do it again, and again, and again, until her only memory is the bullet tearing through her skull because you just wouldn't do what you were told. Are we clear?"
"So you can take everything away from me," Shinji said flatly.
"Of course I can. Do you think your inane plans would elude me? Your little girlfriend is walking around with my technology on her head and you thought you could keep secrets? You're deluded."
"There's one thing you can't take," said Shinji. "The riddle of steel."
Gendo frowned. "I see you need a demonstration. Rei, pull the-"
He felt a gun barrel against the back of his head and froze.
"Not one more word," Misato Katusragi growled. "Keep your hands where I can see them."
He clenched his jaw. She reached around beside him, fished out the handcuff key from his pocket, and held it out.
"Rei?"
The girl looked at her.
"You take orders from the Commander, right?"
No reaction.
"Well, he can't talk right now, and when he doesn't give orders, you take them from me, right?"
"Yes," Rei said softly.
"Good girl. Put the gun down on the floor."
Slowly, she knelt and put the gun down, then stood up.
"Take this key, and uncuff Shinji."
"Rei-"
Katsuragi jabbed the gun into the back of his head for emphasis. "I said shut the fuck up."
Shaking, Rei uncuffed Shinji and he immediately jumped up, tore his shirt off, and swaddled Rei in it, pulling her into an embrace. He looked over her shoulder at Gendo, and slow smile spread across his face. He didn't remember his son having fangs.
"I think it's time," he said, "for us to redefine our relationship."
Asuka woke up to a lancing pain in her face and sat up with a yelp, pulling at the bandages on her face with her clawed left hand. A white-clad nurse darted into the room and put hand son her, but she shoved the idiot aside and slid to her feet, pulling away her hospital gown as she did. She grit her teeth and started pulling at the bandages on her hand, not caring that she was standing there exposed. When she finally tore the free, she saw her hand- the skin was warped and melted, freshly pink, wrapped around the bones of her fingers like melted candle wax, but she could move them, although shakily and with great effort. She continued to pull at the bandage on her face.
"Please," the nurse pleaded, "get back into bed, you shouldn't be standing up! You shouldn't be sitting up!"
"Get me a mirror!"
"But-"
"Get me a mirror!"
Nervously, the nurse reached into her pocket and pulled out a small makeup compact, then slid backwards, pressing herself against the wall. Asuka ignored her as she opened the mirror. All around her eye socket was the same damaged flesh as her hand, pink and wrinkled, pulled tight against the outline of her skull, down the side of her head to her jaw. By some miracle, her hair had been preserved. She pulled her sunken eyelid open and gazed on the black void inside and smiled, the expression pulled into a sneer by the scars.
The pain came again and she nearly dropped the compact, instead sinking onto the bed. She clutched at the empty socket and her stomach lurched as she felt something moving in it, wriggling around painfully. When she looked in the mirror again, blood well out of her eye like tears, and where blackness had been there was a solid green orb with only a tiny, constricted pupil. She closed her good eye and looked at herself through the new one, and with clawed forefinger of he left hand pulled back her sneering lip. Her left incisor had grown out into a sharp fang, protruding from her other teeth, matched on the bottom by sharpened teeth all along the left side of her jaw.
"I think I like it," she said, and tossed the compact to the nurse. "Where's my plug suit?"
Shirtless, Shinji stood in the doorway, holding the suit in his arms. He looked her up and down and said, "I think I prefer you without it."
She snatched it from him. "Go play with your doll. Don't stare at my ass while I'm putting this on, either."
He did anyway, and didn't have to work for it. She turned her back and pulled the suit on over herself, the cool material pleasant on her skin. Working her damaged hand into the glove was difficult, and the suit fell away from her body as she fiddled with it, until Shinji came up behind her and helped her with it, pausing to run his hand over the scar on her back. She suppressed a shiver as he ran his hands up her back to pull her hair out of the suit and close it at her neck. With a hiss it closed around her, and she felt whole again.
She looked at the nurse. "What are you crying about? You're not the one with the fucked up face. Get out."
With a cry of alarm, the nurse crawled onto her feet and darted past them into the hall, sobbing. Asuka snickered at her, until Shinji sidled up to her, draping his arms around her waist.
"Don't bother trying to make me feel pretty," she snapped. "Just go away."
"You're not pretty," he said honestly, "but you are beautiful."
She pushed him away. She didn't remember being so strong. "Don't bullshit me."
"I'm not. The world can see what you are inside, now. I still hide it."
Her eyes narrowed, both of them, as she stared at him. "Where is Rei, anyway?"
"Resting," he shrugged. "My father decided it would be a good idea to psychologically torture her to break my will."
"Oh," said Asuka.
"It wasn't a good idea."
It surprised Gendo how easy it was for him to speak with one of his legs broken to ensure his cooperation, crudely splinted with a broken crutch. Sitting down with the leg hidden under his desk helped matters, of course. Since he'd always sat in a desk during the holographic conferences, this would raise no suspicion. He kept his speaking to a minimum, however.
From the opposite end of the chamber, Keel boomed at him, "this has been a disaster. Your installation is severely damaged, all three Evangelions are out of commission for at least a month, and the budget-"
"Humanity is saved," Gendo cut him off, "and the Scenario continues apace. The plan to attempt to capture the angel was a mistake, a product of the Operations Director. I have censured her appropriately."
"You stand on a knife's edge, Ikari," Keel snapped from within his black monolith. "If you fail us again, you will be dealt with. As it is, we have no choice in the matter. The S2 core experiment with Unit Four will be cancelled, and it and Unit Three will be transferred to Tokyo-3 with all speed. I expect Marduk reports on the new pilots soon."
With that, the holographic conference ended, leaving Gendo and Fuyutsuki standing alone in an empty white void.
"What a coincidence, the Institute has already identified the Fourth and Fifth, respectively. Suzahara and… Horaki, I think it is."
"Yes," Gendo deadpanned, "what a coincidence. Speaking of coincidence, how did Katsuragi know?"
Fuyutsuki smirked at him. "I can't say. You should get that looked at," the old man glanced at his leg.
"It's quite painful," Gendo almost snapped. He was beginning to wonder if he was maintaining his composure only out of habit.
"Yes," said Fuyutsuki as he turned to leave. "Well, good luck. I hope you don't mind if I turn out the lights, we'll need to save electricity, with the budget and all."