Chapter 3: Shinji

"You're kidding, right?" Asuka said. She had calmed down visibly after Jinnai had removed his mask. Her voice carried a greater note of authority now. I, on the other hand, was still terrified.

Jinnai leaned against the wall and smirked—an expression I wouldn't have expected from the kindly bridge officer I'd met earlier that morning.

"Yes, Miss Sohryu. In fact, this is all an elaborate practical joke. Gotcha."

He'd probably calculated that the humor would put us at ease, and to some degree it did. It wasn't particularly funny, but it seemed like a gesture of goodwill—people usually don't wittily banter with their victims. At least, my father hadn't.

"You'll never get away with it. You're planning to seize the Berlin MAGI, right?" she said.

Jinnai nodded, but his smirk didn't recede.

"But that's insane!" Asuka shouted. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides as she planted her feet on the ground and leaned forward, looking for all the world like an angry schoolgirl. I realized that she'd never had anyone to tell her how absurd it looked. For a moment, I wondered how many of my own childhood tics had escaped my notice due to my lack of peers.

"Why is it insane?" Jinnai asked. His voice was smooth and patient, like a teacher waiting for a particularly quarrelsome child to burn herself out before correcting her.

"You wouldn't last five minutes! Even if you somehow manage to get unrestricted access to the bridge, and by some miracle you fight off base security long enough to lock the place down…"

"Go on, Miss Sohryu."

"Winthrop's got a hundred thousand troops! Two regiments of Executive Guards! A parachute regiment, for crying out loud! They'd be on your ass faster than Misato on an unopened beer can. How long d'you think the control room doors could stop heavy artillery?

Jinnai nodded appreciatively, as if to say well, you're not an idiot after all.

"A good summary, Miss Sohryu. However, you omitted Riot Unit 5 and the militias."

"You think the militias would help you?" she asked incredulously. "They answer to their ethnic block wardens, who answer to Winthrop. And Riot Unit 5 is the English-speaking arm of the police department, for fuck's sake!"

"Of course. I note them only to make you aware of our adversary's assets—"

"—Although no police department has ever intervened to stop a coup," Aoba interrupted.

"There's always a first time," Jinnai said, holding up a hand and motioning for Aoba to sit down.

I'd decided as soon as the conversation began that it would be useless to argue with Jinnai—he'd obviously been planning this for a while, and if he was half the salesman he seemed to be, he'd already considered every possible objection before we could think of it. There was nothing left to do but listen. Asuka had apparently come to the same conclusion.

"So what are you going to do?" she asked. There seemed to be a note of genuine curiosity in her voice.

Jinnai's smirk broadened into a grin.

"Of the hundred thousand men in the main UN army, only a small fraction is available in the capital. Most of them are occupied with holding down resource-rich areas or fighting rebels. In fact, Berlin is lightly defended."

"Define 'lightly'," Asuka said.

"Winthrop's worried about a coup coming from the regular army, so he keeps only a skeleton force in the city itself. The air force is negligible—eleven thousand men, but most of them are busy resupplying our troops overseas or providing air support. Besides, most of them would rely on the MAGI to coordinate their landing in Berlin. The entire garrison consists of an understrength training division and an infantry brigade, plus the Executive Guard you so cleverly pointed out. As for the militias, they won't stick their necks out. They're useful for basic community policing, nothing more."

"And what about the CPR?"

"What about them? The Colonial Parachute Regiment is three hundred miles away and dependent on air transport. They'll never make it in time."

Something seemed to click in Asuka's mind.

"You've recruited technicians from their unit, haven't you?" she asked.

Jinnai chuckled. It sounded very different from the high pitched howl of laughter I'd heard from him earlier. "A magician doesn't reveal all of his secrets, Miss Sohryu. I will only say that there are more ways to neutralize a unit than simply destroying them."

My own curiosity got the better of me, and I worked up the nerve to speak.

"What about the regular people?" I asked.

Both heads swiveled around and stared at me as if I'd just asked for directions to Atlantis.

"What, you mean civilians?" Jinnai asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah…You'd call them the common people, I guess," I said.

Jinnai looked questioningly at Asuka. She shook her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.

"The common people will do what their Wardens tell them to, Shinji," she said.

"Oh…"

I stayed quiet for a while and traced the wet, dirty cracks in the concrete walls with my eyes. In the meantime, Jinnai and Asuka argued about logistical details. Asuka worried that a single loyal unit in the wrong place could throw everything out of whack. Jinnai countered that some of the training regiment and most of base security had already been subverted. Asuka brought up the security services, which Jinnai dismissed with a convoluted explanation involving 'noise' in intelligence gathering. A bureaucracy was a machine, he said. It had a certain set of preset responses, and a cunning opponent could take advantage of them. To my surprise, Asuka conceded the point and moved on.

Then Jinnai said something that sent a sickening jolt through my stomach.

"…Of course, none of that will matter once you and Shinji wipe them out with your EVAs."

He said it with unnerving carelessness, as if a thousand lives here or there were really nothing to worry about. Asuka merely bobbed her head once in agreement and moved on to other details.

"So they won't believe that it's a coup at first?" she asked.

"Of course not," Jinnai replied. "It could be anything from terrorism to a guerrilla attack. And even if they do find out, for all they know it might be coming from Winthrop's inner circle or even—what is it now, Shinji? Speak up."

"Colonel Jinnai, why are you doing this?" I asked softly.

"Eh?"

"Why do you want to overthrow the Secretary-General?"

He frowned and straightened his tie, then leaned back again. He wasn't quite as relaxed this time, though. In the shadowy lamplight, his sharp features made him look like a nervous weasel.

"Isn't it obvious, Ikari?"

I shook my head.

"Understand that we are doing this with great reluctance," he said with a theatrical sigh. "Aside from me, none of the individuals you see here holds a rank above lieutenant, despite being far better qualified than the men who hold those posts right now. Before Third Impact, most of us had UN careers of one kind or another."

He turned to Asuka now, his eyes boring into hers.

"In those days, Miss Sohryu, being affiliated with the UN and NERV meant something. Before Third Impact allowed Winthrop's clowns to take over, the armed forces had the respect of the population. They weren't a bunch of underpaid gunmen licking a dictator's boots."

Asuka's attention was now riveted on Jinnai.

"I think it's time we erased the stain on our honor from Third Impact. Don't you, Miss Sohryu?"

She flinched when he said it, and at that moment I realized just how well he'd been playing on her insecurities. I found myself becoming angry, an emotional luxury I'd tried to avoid since Third Impact. It would have been understandable—even justified—if Jinnai had been manipulating me like this. After all, Third Impact had been my fault. I was the selfish little bastard who wiped out the human race in a pathetic cry for attention. Asuka had died trying to stop it.

I asked a question I already knew the answer to, trying to make it sound as innocent as possible. True to form, I didn't have the guts to challenge him directly.

"You were in NERV, Colonel Jinnai?"

It caught him off guard.

"Er, no…not exactly. But my company did a lot of business with them before Third Impact…"

Asuka's eyes narrowed. When she spoke again, she did so in a clipped, icy tone.

"Colonel Jinnai, I can't agree to help you because I don't think that your plan is feasible," she said. "There are too many unplanned factors that could screw it up. If you want to kill us now, go ahead…but I don't think a government investigation into our deaths would be healthy for you or anybody else in this room."

She straightened up again, rigid as a guardsman, and faced Jinnai with poise that I found incredible under the circumstances. Jinnai was unfazed. If anything, his expression seemed to have grim humor in it.

"I was afraid of that. Ikari, Sohryu, there's something you need to see."

He beckoned one of the guards over, and the man snapped a laptop open. The computer fan started whirring almost immediately in the basement's heat. It beeped twice as it booted up—an everyday sound that seemed wildly out of place in that milieu. As the computer started, another man set up a collapsible table for it in the center of the room and Jinnai stared at the screen like a businessman reviewing a powerpoint presentation.

"Skip to 12:44," he ordered. A flurry of mouse clicks followed, and he swiveled the screen toward us.

The footage looked like something filmed on a 90's home movie camera, complete with a little white date and time indicator at the bottom right corner. The camera seemed to be sitting at the front of a small, windowless courtroom. A balding, greasy-haired man in long robes that I assumed was the judge sat with his back to the camera, with a group of uniformed men sitting on either side of him. A shabbily dressed man stood in the center of the room with his hands held over his legs. Somebody turned on umbrella shaped lights in the back of the room that looked like the ones our school photographer had used. The man's face became clearer.

"Father," I whispered.

The camera zoomed in clumsily and I realized that there was something wrong with him. His ragged clothes and thin, starved appearance weren't a surprise—I'd seen more than my share of that after Third Impact. What scared me was the way my father held himself. He looked down at the floor, his hands crossed protectively at his waist. At first, I thought he was in handcuffs. Then I noticed that he seemed to be holding up his pants. My father's hunched shoulders made his jacket look three sizes too large for him.

"Get your hands out of your pants, pig!" the judge snapped. The camera's recording system made him sound like he'd screamed into a cheap computer microphone.

My father said something that I couldn't make out.

"What's he saying?" the judge demanded. The men on either side of him shrugged. "Speak up, Ikari!"

"I said the guards took my belt away from me. They were worried I would…injure myself."

"A pity. And you will address this court as 'your honor', Ikari."

"Yes, your honor."

"And don't think for a minute that I believe your excuses. I've dealt with perverts before. The interrogators tell me that you had a fourteen year old girl in your care before Third Impact." He turned to the soldier sitting to his right. "MacPherson, what was her name again?"

The man shuffled through a stack of papers. "Rei Ayanami, your honor."

The judge flashed a yellow smile before turning his back to the camera again.

"You were thinking about Ayanami just now, weren't you, pig? That's why you had your hands in your pants, wasn't it? Speak up!"

"No, your honor," he replied tonelessly.

The badgering went on for several minutes, with the judge screaming abuse and my father meekly accepting it. At last, my father was allowed to read a prepared statement.

"Item one: That, in collusion with SEELE, I knowingly tried to bring about the extermination of the human race. Item two: that I ordered numerous murders in pursuance of that goal, including but not limited to Ryoji Kaji, Kimihiro Sato, Gregory Wilson, Pyotr Virchis…"

His voice faltered for a moment as he read the next name.

"…Yui Ikari, Donald Branaugh, Johann Brandt…"

I shuddered and tried to suppress the urge to vomit.

"You're probably wondering why Commander Ikari isn't the calm, collected man you remember him being," Jinnai said from behind me.

I shook my head. It was obvious what they had been doing to my father.

"I was there," he said. "Winthrop ordered most of his senior commanders to attend—I can only assume he wanted to intimidate us. BABYKA found your father near Berlin, a year ago. He re-embodied shortly after he realized that Yui hadn't been part of Instrumentality, but it took him a while to get here. He was looking for you."

I kept staring at the screen. My father was still reading his list of names.

"Actually, this is only one of the show trials we found on the MAGI," Jinnai said. "There are others, you know. Former politicians, military commanders, industrialists…"

"Stop it!" Asuka screamed. "Turn the fucking thing off and leave him alone!"

Jinnai nodded to the computer operator, and the image paused.

"There's more film you need to see," he said.

"What more could he possibly need to see? You want him to watch his father's execution?"

"I said film you need to see, Miss Sohryu."

Her eyes widened. Please, no, I thought. No, no, no, no…

"Skip to 56:70," Jinnai said.

Another defendant stood before the court, a woman I recognized from the visions that had danced through my head during Instrumentality.

Asuka tried to scream, but it was strangled into a soft whimper as it left her throat.

"Mama…"

"Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu, I understand you have a confession to make," the judge said. The woman looked back at him pleadingly, tears filling her eyes.

"Please, just let me see my—"

"Do you have a confession or don't you? If not…"

"Please!" She threw herself on the ground and crawled toward the podium. "Let me see my baby again! I need to see my baby! Where's Asuka? Kill me, do whatever you want, but please just—"

"Remove her," the judge said, motioning to the guards. They tried to pry her off the floor.

"No! No, I need to—ugh! Uurk!"

They kicked her until she stood up.

Asuka grabbed the computer and hurled it against the wall, then flung herself at Jinnai. I grabbed her, trying to stop her before the guards decided to. She turned back to me. I can remember only one other occasion when she looked at me with that much hatred in her eyes.

"Get off me, you filthy little son of a bitch!" she screamed. "You're working with them, aren't you Shinji? You've been with Aoba for years, planning this! It's fake! FAKE! You're all trying to manipulate me! It won't work, you hear me?! It won't work!"

She sank her teeth into my arm. My hold loosened, and if she'd been in more control of herself, she probably could have pushed me off. Fortunately, two men rushed over and gently secured her before she made a serious mistake.

"It's real," Aoba said. "As I understand it, part of your mother's soul was stored in the Evangelion. After you failed to save her from the MP EVAs, she was absorbed during Instrumentality along with the rest of the recently dead."

Asuka stopped struggling.

"Is she…still alive?" she asked. I could see a flicker of hope in her eyes.

Aoba shook his head grimly.

"When BABYKA located her, Winthrop was elated. He thought that he could use her to finish the MP series. Unfortunately, only the nurturing part of her soul was left in the EVA…"

Asuka's heavy breathing began to transform into sobs as the message sank in.

"She's gone," Jinnai said. Look, Miss Sohryu: I don't need you. If need be, we'll kill you both and proceed using improvised dummy plugs. But I think you need us."

She didn't say anything, and Jinnai motioned to the guards to let her go. She slumped to her knees, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

"How many people would get killed in this operation?" I asked.

Jinnai beamed. He tried to hide it, but there was no mistaking the air of exultant victory.

"Very few. We'll be concentrating overwhelming firepower at a few crucial points. Soldiers generally aren't stupid enough to get killed in a political squabble. They'll surrender, Mr. Ikari,"

"What about the government officials?"

"Kept in isolation until the coup is completed. They won't be able to do anything once we have the EVAs, the N-2s, and the MAGI."

"I…I don't know," I said. "I'll do whatever Asuka wants, when she recovers."

"When you both recover," he said. He gave me a reassuring smile that I'd seen too many times from Ritsuko and Misato to believe it was genuine. He thought he'd already won. I nodded anyway, since what he'd said was true.

"We'll arrange to drop you off near the site of the attack. I doubt BABYKA will suspect what's actually going on. If you decide to join us, you're only going to get as much information as we feel you need to know, and you won't be permitted to send messages back to us. All communication will be one way," he said.

"Colonel Jinnai?" I said.

"What?"

"How do you know you don't have informants in your group?"

He stopped and considered his answer before speaking.

"They have an idea that something's up, but they're not going to move until they have more information."

"How do you know?" I pressed.

"I'm never wrong, Ikari."

Somehow, I didn't find the answer reassuring.

Less than an hour after our recovery, I found myself in a BABYKA interrogation chamber. It was a small, badly ventilated room with hot yellow lights. The place smelled like sweat and refuse. Bizarrely, the walls were covered in chipped pink tiles and the floor was painted in bright, cheerful yellow. It would have looked like part of an elementary school if it wasn't for the bloodstains.

The interrogator they'd assigned to me wasn't what I expected. He was a slightly built man, no more than a hundred thirty pounds. Instead of the customary BABYKA shaved head, he wore a long, sloppy mop of black hair. Strangest of all, he looked Asian and spoke Japanese smoothly and easily.

"Are you familiar with the Prisoner's Dilemma, Mr. Ikari?" he asked.

"What? Er, no, I don't think so."

He looked at me skeptically. "Aren't you supposed to be a philosophy student or something? It says so in your profile."

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't know."

"Don't worry about it. It's more of an economics concept anyway."

I guessed he was going to elaborate, so I stayed silent.

"Tell you what: I'll give you a rundown. Let's just say, hypothetically speaking, that you and Asuka were involved in some sort of scheme against the state."

It took every ounce of my limited willpower to avoid a guilty start. I tried to swallow and realized that my mouth was dry.

"You're in this room, and she's in the room across the hall. So guess what we'll do?"

I'd read somewhere that liars were supposed to be afraid to look their accusers in the eyes. As I shook my head, I tried to keep my gaze locked on his.

"I don't know, sir."

He chuckled and took a long drag on his cigarette.

"It's surprisingly simple, Ikari. We just tell each of you that whoever squeals first gets off scot-free, as long as the other guy doesn't blab as well. Then we wait for fear and self-interest to do their work."

"I don't think Asuka would betray me, sir."

"Betray you? Why? Do you have anything to hide?" he asked sharply.

"I—ah—in the scenario…I mean, the situation you just gave me…if we were...um…" I stumbled with the words and began to realize that I was probably dead.

He acted as if nothing had happened.

"Ah, I see what you mean. You're trying to say that some criminals—you and Asuka, for instance—have loyalty to one another. You might have arranged ahead of time not to blab, eh?"

I racked my brain for an innocent-sounding answer. There wasn't one, so I just nodded. He mock-seriously waggled a finger at me.

"You're not thinking your options through, Ikari. Even if we can't get you on the bigger charge, we can still lock you both up for a while. So you have a choice. On one hand, you can stay quiet and hope your partner does the same. Then the best you'll get is a long prison term. On the other hand, you can blab and get a chance to walk away a free man."

"But if she makes the same choice, we're both dead!" I said.

"Very good, Ikari. You catch on quickly. But you can't control her choice. No matter what she chooses, you're better off confessing."

Every second I spent clinging to the fiction that this was a hypothetical scenario postponed my trip to the torture chambers. I tried to keep him talking.

"What's the solution?" I asked.

"There isn't one."

For a second, I felt my muscles tighten in the opening stages of a panic attack.

"That's why it's lucky you're not suspects," he added. He must have read my puzzled look, since he continued.

"You know, BABYKA was furious when your escorts got killed. They don't have many police interrogators who speak fluent Japanese. Care to guess who their last Japanese-speaking interrogator was?"

"My...my escort?" I asked.

"Funny how the universe works, isn't it? Jinnai assigned me as a substitute."

His eye twitched in an almost imperceptible wink, and a surge of hope passed through me.

"Now then…how many men attacked you?"

What answer does he want? I wondered.

"Well, there were a lot of them…" I said.

He bit his lip, which could have been a sign to stop or go on. Should I say there were only a few?

"Not that many, actually."

He jerked back and shot me a look of disbelief.

"Not many? Then how did they kill your escorts?"

Wrong answer!

"Er…I guess I didn't mean it that way. It's just that there weren't as many as I was expecting," I said.

"You weren't expecting any of them, Mr. Ikari," he said. Nervousness and frustration were beginning to seep into his voice.

"No, of course not! I didn't mean it like that. I…um…what I meant to say was that you'd think it would take more men to beat our escorts. We—they—the BABYKA agents were pretty heavily armed, I think."

"So…?" he prompted.

"What?"

He gritted his teeth and stole a glance at the one-way mirror.

"How many attackers were there?"

"Um, I don't know. Twenty?" I guessed.

He inhaled sharply, but scribbled my answer down.

"And they were Segunda Ruta members?" he said.

"Yes. They were Spanish."

"Spanish?"

"Um…they spoke it, I mean. I guess they were Mexican, or Central American. Segunda Ruta's a Central American group, I thought. Isn't it?"

He rubbed his forehead and gave me a look of equal parts exasperation and terror. This was very, very bad.

The interrogation continued for another hour. I stumbled into one unintended trap after another, enough to mark me as a fool or a traitor several times over. When I finally left the interrogation room, I was shaking. I saw my interrogator's hands as he lit a cigarette and realized that I wasn't the only one. As I stepped out of the room, a rough hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. A huge, seemingly neckless BABYKA agent sneered down at me.

"You don't fool me," he said. "If they got Charlie, there's no way you would have survived it."

I tried to stammer in my broken English that I didn't speak his language very well. His grip on my shoulder tightened and I fell silent.

"We'll find out what happened," he said.

My heart was still hammering when I arrived home. Asuka stared dully back at me from the kitchen table but didn't say anything. It was an empty, hopeless look. What if she'd wilted during the interrogation? What if she'd let something slip?

I hurried to my room, huddled into a corner, and turned on my SDAT. It didn't help.

That was our second day back together.

We didn't talk again for a long time. In the mornings, I would make breakfast and Asuka would shuffle out of her room to pick it up. Without a word, she would carry it to her room and shut the door quietly behind her. By the fifth day, I began wondering whether we would run out of clean plates, but I didn't want to go into her room unless she asked me to. I remembered what had happened the last time I tried to force an emotional issue with her.

Sometimes, I sat in front of her door and listened to the sound of fake explosions and gunshots from her video games. She must have known that I was listening there, since she once paused the game and stayed silent until I got up and left. Other than occasional glimpses of Asuka, my life now consisted of listening to my SDAT and living with the certain knowledge that BABYKA would be coming for us. I spent my evenings rehearsing in my head what I could say to convince them that Asuka had nothing to do with the coup.

During one of these sessions, I was distracted by the unfamiliar sound of splashing water. At first, the sound's significance didn't register with me. Then I realized what was odd about it: Asuka didn't take baths anymore.

I hurried to the bathroom door and knocked. How long had it been before I'd noticed?

"Asuka?"

The splashing continued, along with what sounded like gagging.

"Asuka! Are you all right?" I yelled. I began pounding on the door. The ragged, choking coughs continued.

"Asuka!"

I ran at the door and slammed into it, sending a wave of pain shooting through my shoulder. The door didn't budge. I ignored the pain and tried again, smashing my now bruised shoulder into the wood. Nothing happened, and the sounds from inside were getting faint.

Please don't let it end like this, I thought. Please…

I kicked the door just above the knob. The latch loosened, but didn't snap. Then, in desperation, I did something that I should have tried a long time ago: I grabbed the knob and turned it.

The door opened, and I rushed into the room. Asuka was lying naked in the bathtub, face up, flailing her arms and gagging from the water in her lungs. I struggled to pull her out and winced when one of her fingers poked me in the eye.

Her face was turning blue. I pumped my hands on her chest, trying to get her to cough the water up. After some hesitation, I put my mouth to hers and blew air into her lungs. She jerked up and down and started spitting bathwater up. I didn't know what to do next, so I sat there and waited for her to finish. She turned over onto her stomach and kept coughing. While she lay there, I rooted through the drawers and took all the razors and other sharp objects out.

My third kiss, I thought bitterly. The coughing finally died down.

"Asuka, are you okay?" I asked.

She lifted her head off the floor and looked at me like a cornered animal. Her arms snaked around her body, covering it as best she could.

"Get out of here!"

The response took me by surprise.

"I want to make sure you're okay," I said.

She began shaking and glared at me through newly forming tears. Her jaw clenched as she saw the razors in my hand. When she spoke, her voice took on a soft, dangerous tone.

"Get out, Third."

"How do I know you won't just—"

She grabbed a shampoo bottle and threw it at me. It struck me on the side of the head.

"GET OUT!" she shrieked.

I obeyed, shutting the door behind me so she could get dressed. When it opened again, she passed me without a word and headed for her room.

"Asuka, I think we should—"

The door slammed in my face.

I thought about opening the door and then wondered if it even mattered. We were both dead anyway—for all I knew, the arrest warrants were already signed. And even if I did go in, I would only make it worse. How could I even relate to her, let alone comfort her?

Oh, yes. That line of reasoning worked so well with Misato.

I opened the door. Asuka was sitting on the floor, an open laptop lying on her legs.

"Lemme guess: you want to talk."

"I think we should," I said.

She gave me a twisted, angry smile.

"Okay, Third. Let's talk about you."

"I'm serious, Asuka."

"So am I!" she snapped. "During all our time together after Third Impact you wanted to ask me what I thought of you but you didn't have the guts. Well here's your chance, Shinji! Whaddya wanna know?"

"Asuka, I'm trying to help you talk about your problems. I don't think this is the time to—"

She jumped to her feet. "Bullshit! It's always about you! See, I know why you're trying to help me now. It's the same reason you didn't have the nerve to kill me on the beach four years ago. You need me to keep you company, like a tapeworm needs a host."

"That's not true!" I said.

"Of course it is! Your idea of 'talking' is sitting and pretending to listen until I feel good enough to pay attention to you again. I knew it the moment I saw that vapid naked fantasy of me in your mind during Instrumentality. Your own personal Asuka doll. Even better than having me in a coma, right Shinji?"

Her voice suddenly became high and girlish. "'Oh, become one with me Shinji! Let me hold you, Shinji! Let me comfort you and be your mommy and fulfill all your emotional needs whenever you feel like it!' That's all I ever meant to you!"

Stupidly, I tried to put a hand on her shoulder, hoping that it would calm her down. She slapped it away and shoved me backwards.

"Don't touch me!" she growled. "Don't you dare try to comfort me! You didn't even care enough to sortie when my mother was getting torn to bits by SEELE's Evas!"

"That's not fair!" I said, more loudly than I'd intended to. "My EVA was trapped in bakelite! It wouldn't move! You must have seen that during...I mean…"

"During Instrumentality? Oh yeah, I saw everything during Instrumentality. Your entire pathetic life story. Every missed opportunity and orgy of self-pity you ever had. And you know something?"

I just stood there, too burned out to move. This was infinitely worse than what I'd expected. At last, I shook my head weakly.

A look of triumph appeared on Asuka's face. "At that moment I realized you were too screwed up to help anybody." She laughed humorlessly. "I even tried to help you. But you just stood there, hanging your head like a fucking zombie, and begged me to take care of you while the entire human race was getting destroyed."

"And you refused," I said. "The entire human race and it still wasn't enough."

She reeled as if I'd hit her.

"Oh, so it's my fault? I think we both remember what happened next, don't we Shinji?" She pulled down on her shirt collar, revealing her neck. "Come on! You want to finish the job?"

"I…"

Her right hand shot out from her collar and slapped me. I stumbled backward, more from shock than from pain.

"Still haven't got the nerve, huh?" she taunted. "You know what? It doesn't matter. BABYKA'll take care of it soon enough anyway."

BABYKA! I'd forgotten them! The apartment was bugged—they must have been listening to all of this. For all I knew, they had surveillance cameras as well. I held my fingers to my lips.

Asuka looked as if she was going to keep screaming, but suddenly stopped herself. Instead, she walked up to me and put her mouth by my ear.

"I'm going to die, one way or the other," she whispered. "And then, Shinji, you'll be all alone."

She patted my shoulder and walked out of the room, brushing against me as she passed. I must have stood there, shaking, for several minutes. What should I do? I wondered.

If I stayed, she'd shout something incriminating and get us both killed. If I left, she would have unrestricted access to pills, knives, and who knows what else. Then again, maybe it was better to die quietly in her apartment than in BABYKA's torture chambers.

I put on a fresh shirt and walked to the front door. Two secret police escorts were waiting for me.

"That's it, Shinji. Run away again," Asuka called from the couch.

I didn't answer.

Berlin is a terrible place to take a walk, especially at night in the rain. I spoke enough English to learn from my escorts that I was expected to stay within the cordoned-off area around my apartment—a few blocks at most. The one saving grace was that the streets were empty. Even the pimps and beggars made themselves scarce at night. To do anything else was to violate curfew, a necessary evil in a world where the lack of electrical power made every night prowler a likely thief. Why else would you be walking around at ten PM?

I approached a circular garden I'd noticed two days ago during my car trip in. Some minor government official probably owned it, but there were no houses nearby and my escorts didn't complain. It was actually a pretty little place. Most of the flowers were semi-tropical, since few European species did well in the post-Impact heat. I closed my eyes, savored the rare cool of the nighttime, and listened to raindrops patter on a plot of broad-leafed plants that I assumed were begonias.

I sat down on a stone bench. Moisture sank into my shirt and the seat of my pants, but I was past caring. On a whim, I brought my feet onto the bench and lay down, letting the gentle sound of the rain lull me to sleep.

When I woke up again, the air had become colder and my escorts were gone. The fat raindrops I'd seen earlier had transformed into a light mist. Fog had begun to rise from the ground.

What was going on?

"Hello, Ikari."

I recognized the voice, and looked around wildly trying to find its source. It didn't take very long. An elfin figure with red eyes stepped out of the fog.

"Are you…real?" I asked.

Rei tilted her head to one side. "An odd question, pilot Ikari. If I was an illusion, I would hardly be an accurate source of information."

"I guess you're right."

We didn't say anything for a while. She waited patiently while I stared at her. She looked much younger than I remembered her, a fact which made me vaguely uncomfortable. Memories of Rei had always been tied in with the odd longing I'd always felt for her—I guess you'd call it romantic love, at least to the degree that I'm capable of such a thing. Without realizing it, the image of her that I carried in my mind had aged with me. Yet here she was, a fourteen year old schoolgirl standing in front of a nineteen year old young man.

"Help me, Rei," I said.

"I cannot."

"Why?" I asked.

"You have made your choice, Pilot Ikari. I cannot accept you back into the Ring of Souls. I am the gatekeeper of a door that can only open outward."

"Listen to me, Rei. Asuka and I are going to die. I don't know when. Soon, I think. I'm not asking you to accept us back, but…can't you do anything? Please, Rei."

She gave me a sad little smile. "You are still with Sohyru, then."

I sighed. "No. She still hates me," I said.

"It is…curious," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"I have noticed that humans are often attracted to those who do not reciprocate their feelings."

I rested my head on my hands.

"Heh. The story of my life," I said.

"And mine," she replied.

It took me a second to process the statement, and when I did I wasn't quite sure what to say. She stood there patiently waiting for an answer as her school uniform dripped from the rain.

"Would you like to sit down?" I offered.

She gave me another of her sad, far-off smiles.

"I would…very much like to, Pilot Ikari."

We sat in silence for a while longer. She didn't seem to mind. Patience must be easy when you've spent the last four years swimming through the infinite memories of Instrumentality. To my surprise, she broke the silence.

"If you die, I will be able to harvest your soul again," she said.

"And Asuka's?" I asked.

Her head lowered slightly. "I…could also do the same for Pilot Sohryu, if she desired such a thing."

I remembered the feeling of violation I'd felt from Asuka when her mind was forcibly opened to three billion people.

"I don't think she would, actually."

"And would you?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Sometimes I think it would be better if I just let nature take its course."

Rei didn't reply at first. She looked at me with the expression she'd worn when I'd insulted my father years ago, right before she slapped me. Then her face softened.

"When it happens, I shall give you the choice to stay or go," she said.

I didn't want to press the issue, so I nodded.

"Thank you," I said.

"You are welcome. I…I will be waiting, Ikari," she said.

"Rei, I—"

I woke up again. Someone was standing over my body, shaking me. The rain was still coming down heavily. Apparently, the BABYKA agents were there after all.

"How long have I been out?" I asked in broken English. At first, he didn't understand. I repeated the question slowly.

"A minute or two," he said.

My mind was working at full capacity again, and a terrifying thought suddenly hit me. What if it hadn't been a dream at all? What if I was still in Instrumentality? For all I knew, the past four years could be false memories, like the ones I'd "remembered" during Instrumentality when Asuka was an old childhood friend and Rei was a goofy transfer student.

I shuddered and tried to push the possibility out of my mind.

The apartment was dark and quiet when I got back, and for a moment I worried that Asuka had already gone through with her plan to kill herself. I knelt by her door and listened until I could hear the sound of gentle breathing.

For now, I thought.

I tiptoed to my room and shut the door. My desk lamp was still on, and its soft white light illuminated the new SDAT lying on my bed. Asuka had given it to me on my first night in Berlin; she'd said it was an old model she'd been trying to get rid of. I'd had the grace not to point out that a week-old price tag had still been attached. I carefully placed it in the dresser and lay down on the bed.

Third Impact must have run through my mind from start to finish a hundred times that night. I remembered the macabre white EVAs as they tore into Asuka's mother. I saw the huge, gangly form of Kaworu reaching out to me. I saw myself whining the five words that destroyed the human race.

They can all just die.

Everything that had happened after that—the separation of families, the famines, the nuclear meltdowns, the warlords, Winthrop's dictatorship—flowed from my choice. The nightmare world that was driving Asuka to suicide was the one I chose to create.

And now, it's up to you do undo it, I thought.

"You win, Jinnai," I said.

I fished through my desk for a piece of stationery and a pencil. One way or another, we would be coming under suspicion soon. I would give them their suspect.

Dear Asuka,

You probably remember the day we got separated after the rocket attack. When you found me again, I told you that I'd managed to evade our attackers just as you did. I lied.

They weren't Segunda Ruta at all. It was a coup, Asuka.

"Too melodramatic," I muttered. I started again.

Dear Asuka,

I snuck this note into your dresser because I don't know how else to tell you. The Segunda Ruta attack was a front. The people who attacked us were planning a coup. Captain Jinnai, your commanding officer, was leading them. He wanted me to use the EVA to overthrow the government, and I accepted. If you're reading this now, we've probably failed. I'm sorry, Asuka. I knew you were always loyal to the government, and this must come as a huge shock. Please forgive me.

I debated for a moment whether I should erase Jinnai's name, but ultimately decided to leave it in. He was the one who brought us into this mess; let him swing for it if he failed. Now all I needed was some way to explain Asuka's depression and suicide attempts…and to stop any new ones after I was gone.

P.S.: I know you've had a rough couple of days after the attack, with the memories it brings up of Third Impact and all. I hope you get through it OK. Please don't do anything to harm yourself.

Sincerely,

Shinji "Baka" Ikari

Third Child

When BABYKA chose to search our apartment, they'd find the note and decide that I'd been the only one involved. Hopefully, Asuka's handlers take the hint about Asuka harming herself and put her on suicide watch until she snapped out of it.

I folded the paper several times and crept over to Asuka's door. Her breathing pattern told me that she was still asleep, so I opened the door and crept in. It took me a minute to locate her desk, and I experienced a brief thrill of nervousness when I knocked over a box of paper clips and heard it clatter to the floor. Fortunately, Asuka seemed unaffected by the noise. Her face was still placid, and I was struck with how much she still looked like the girl who had accidentally crawled into my bed four years ago.

"At least one of us will live through this," I muttered.

I closed her door and retreated to my room for another night of troubled dreams.

I woke up at three AM to the sound of angry voices in the hallway. Then I heard the words I'd been dreading for days.

"We're taking the Third Child to NERV central."

I was surprised to find that the expected panic didn't come. I was scared, yes. Sick to my stomach. But what I felt most was resignation. I sat up in my bed and waited for the inevitable.

"Where's your authorization?" another voice demanded. "All I see is a bunch of scum-mouths." It must have been one of my escorts who had spoken; 'scum-mouth' was their special word for non-English speakers.

"Right here." Someone turned the television on and cranked the volume up. I couldn't make out what it was saying, but it sounded like a public service announcement of some sort.

"Shit! This is a—"

The man's voice was cut off as the room erupted in gunfire. I scrambled under the bed before I realized what I was doing. It turned out to be a good decision when a stream of bullets tore through my door a few seconds later. The noise was deafening, but short-lived. Unfortunately, my ears were ringing too hard to appreciate the silence that followed.

"Shinji?" a voice called. The door creaked open and a man in black leather shoes stepped into the room. I didn't answer him.

"Aren't you a little old to be hiding under the bed?"

"Aoba?" I gasped.

"In the flesh."

"Then…"

"Yeah," he said. "The coup's on."

I stared at him, open-mouthed, and then dashed into the living room. Splayed across the floor were the bodies of three BABYKA agents, leaking blood onto the carpet. One of them lay a short distance from my bedroom, a submachine gun still clutched in his hands. I guessed that he was the one who fired into my door. He must have had orders to kill me if there was a risk of capture. The TV was still droning on, but I could recognize the words now.

"…This is not an announcement, but a vow. The previous government has trampled upon the sacred cultures of its subjects. It has systematically misused the public funds allotted to it. We, the leaders of the April 2nd Revolution, are now entrusted with the future of humanity—a future we intend to restore. All existing treaties agreed upon by the previous government will be honored. All government posts, with the exception of BABYKA's command structure, will be retained by their current occupants. The secret police will be disbanded…"

Aoba grabbed my arm roughly.

"Get moving, Shinji! The training division left an hour ago!"

"What?" I yelped. "This has been going on for an hour?"

He dragged me out of the room and down the hallway, so fast that I almost tripped over another corpse.

"Calm down," he said. "Every unit left its staging point at a different time so that they'd arrive simultaneously at their targets. It denies the opposition warning time."

"What?!"

"Just shut up and trust me," he said.

We ran down the stairs and into a waiting car. When I hesitated, Aoba shoved me inside and slammed the door.

"I'll meet you at the base," he said.

The car started moving, and I suddenly realized something.

"Wait!" I shouted. "Where's Asuka?"