X-X-X
Chapter 19
X-X-X
This body is 10.59 years old and its heart has beat 444,792,591 times.
"Lift your right arm above your head."
Rei complied, keeping her arm within the confines of the orange box on the floor as she did so. The computer fans on the instrument's controller whirred slightly faster.
"Good… now your left, please."
The menial task of having her AT field scanned was fairly normal to Rei. However, the task had already gone fifteen minutes longer than usual.
I suffered a medical emergency… perhaps she seeks to ensure my body retains its integrity.
"Now, both. Turn around slowly with your arms raised."
This body is 10.59 years old and its heart has beat 444,792,673 times. Rei did as the doctor asked.
Frowning, Ritsuko tapped the screen of her computer. She appeared to be muttering to herself, but Rei couldn't make out the words.
What is the matter? Has she detected the defect that led to all this? Rei's expression was schooled, but her thoughts were a great deal less ordered. What does she think of me…?
Her body is 30.71 years old and its heart has beat 1,290,820,137 times -
The scanner abruptly emitted a shrill string of beeping noises. Ritsuko looked up sharply, fixing Rei with a critical frown.
"What was that, Rei?" She asked, quietly.
"I do not know," Rei answered, truthfully. There had been a sensation, not quite entirely of the body, not quite entirely of the mind - something Rei had never experienced before. Rei blinked, and in her sight a bright orange halo flickered over the doctor's form.
Ritsuko glanced at the computer screen, then back to Rei. She, too, wore a neutral expression - but the ruthlessness in her eyes was as hard as the diamond-nanorod of an Evangelion's armor. "Whatever you just did spiked your AT field over ten animara, if only for about half a second. The ænima terminus strength of ten average humans." She produced a cigarette, lighting it in one smooth motion. "Four or five notches higher and you'll trigger the internal safeties installed around NERV-HQ. You know how well that will turn out for you. So, with that in mind, are you sure you don't know what just happened?"
Rei was silent for almost ten full seconds. "I do not fully understand what I did," she said at length.
Lacing her fingers together, Ritsuko rested her elbows on her desk - a mannerism oddly reminiscent of Commander Ikari. "Explain what you do know."
Rei straightened, her pose subconsciously correcting to stand at attention. "My attention drifted, and -"
"That's a shock in its own right," Ritsuko murmured. "Sorry, continue."
"I did something… something cerebral…" Rei struggled to explain the sensation, but then something else occurred to her. "It was reflexive. But it felt like casting the AT field when I am piloting Asherah."
Narrowing her eyes, Ritsuko tilted her head slightly. "Is that all the detail you can give me?"
"No, there is more. I count the heartbeats of my body, from the moment it was activated -"
"Yes, I remember."
"- And my attention drifted to you. In that moment I could quantify your heartbeats in the same manner," Rei finished.
Ritsuko drew back, her face a picture of surprise. "Really," she breathed. "How interesting…"
"Yes, you are thirty point seven one years old and your heart has beat one billion, two hundred and ninety million, eight hundred and twenty thousand, two hundred and fifty-one times." The computer beeped its warning again, and Ritsuko's gaze zeroed in on the display.
"Interesting… very interesting." The doctor's voice trailed off.
Rei tilted her head slightly. This is expression, right? Expressing curiosity. Is this the right way? "Doctor?"
Ritsuko started, as if she'd snapped out of a daze. "Oh, I'm sorry. I believe this test is concluded, Ayanami. Despite your recent medical distress, your AT field is healthier than I've ever seen it."
The test is concluded. This was familiar territory to Rei, and she nodded. "Are there changes to my medications today, doctor?" She droned.
"Oh, yes," Ritsuko replied in an odd tone. "Quite a change it is, at that."
Rei continued staring straight ahead, waiting for further clarification.
"Most of your medications are harmful to you and you're taking them for no medically valid reason. I'm taking you off them." With a few taps of the keyboard and a click of the mouse, several pieces of paper were spat out by the nearby printer. "Many of them are dangerous to stop suddenly, so I've drawn up a plan to carefully titrate the doses down in a safe manner."
Rei actually blinked at the oddity of that information. "I… have been told many times that these medications were necessary for my body's continued integrity," she said haltingly.
Ritsuko smiled, a faraway look in her eyes. "Oh, look at you, Ayanami," she said softly. "I find that red gremlin as insufferable as her mother was, but even I can't deny she's been a good influence on you… just a few months ago, you'd never have raised a question like that."
Another fault! Truly, I must be irreparably defective. I should have volunteered myself to be deactivated and replaced as soon as these errors began. "I apologize. I have grown increasingly defective in recent weeks, beyond my ability to self-correct." Rei looked down, a gesture she had learned meant deference. "Should I report to the Chamber of Guf for deactivation?"
"What? No! Not at all. I'm glad you're developing a greater sense of independence. And what do you mean by defective?"
The tiny desk-chair wheels emitted their distinctive whir of motion, but Rei didn't look up - at least, not until she felt the doctor's hand under her chin, pushing her bowed head back into an upright position.
"What do you mean by defective, Ayanami?" Ritsuko inquired again. Her tired green eyes were hard and piercing.
"I…" Rei struggled to organize her thoughts. And that, indeed, is part of the problem… "In recent weeks I have grown increasingly distractible and less able to focus. It takes me longer to perform tasks, it upsets my routines-"
"Distractible? Do you mean that you catch yourself spacing out or dissociating?"
"No, this distraction has a source. But I should be disciplined enough to ignore it. Since this discipline is lacking, I must be defective."
Ritsuko dropped her hand. "A source." Her expression was unreadable.
"Yes. These distracted moments began with pilot Soryu's arrival in Japan." Rei found herself blinking erratically for a moment; another defect - "She commands the complete attention of anyone in her presence, of course, but the preoccupation also appears to persist through the hours and days we spend apart."
Rei halted, looking over at Ritsuko - who had dropped the neutral expression, and was staring-wide eyed at Rei, her eyebrows raised higher than Rei had ever seen them. However, the doctor didn't speak up, so Rei continued.
"In an attempt to curtail these… distracting feelings… I increased the doses of my medication, but despite dulling the majority of my cerebral functions and requiring me to sleep longer, they did not successfully remove -"
"Wait, wait," Ritsuko interrupted, her expression shifting from surprised to aghast. "You increased all your medications? Without telling me?! You're lucky it was just hyperseretonemia, and not pulmonary paralysis! You can't just double down on CNS depressants and major tranquilizers - oh, what am I saying?" Ritsuk shook her head bitterly. "Even if you did know that, has a risk of death ever really meant anything to you? Fuck."
Rei waited silently for Ritsuko to finish. Nothing in the doctor's outburst seemed to warrant an immediate response, so after a moment she continued.
"Despite dulling the majority of my cerebral functions and requiring me to sleep longer, the increase in medication did not successfully remove the persistent distraction. I can therefore conclude I am irreparably defective, and I recommend my immediate deactivation, with a new instance to be restored from data backups made no later than-"
"Ayanami… Rei. You're shaking. Calm down, please." Rei twitched as Ritsuko's hand touched her shoulder - realizing, in that moment, how tense her posture had grown. "Why do you think this… uh, distractibility, makes you defective?"
"I must concentrate on my purpose."
"Have you failed any part of your purpose, lately?"
"I have lost attentiveness during training." Rei lowered her gaze.
"Was that before or after you cranked your medications up?"
"After."
Ritsuko chuckled, though it had a bitter edge to it. "With your doses that high I'm amazed you could stay awake during training, let alone focused." She shook her head. "That was an inevitability. Brought on by an uninformed decision on your part, perhaps, but not an intrinsic fault in you."
"But -"
"Ayanami," Ritsuko said sternly, looking close into Rei's eyes. "Before you call this a 'defect,' stop and think for a moment, and answer this. Do you truly want to stop thinking of Asu- err, Pilot Soryu, or -"
"Yes."
"- or, do you only feel like you must stop thinking of her, for the sake of your alleged purpose?"
I do not discern a difference! Rei felt more disoriented than she had ever been in her life. Where she was accustomed to nearly unbroken serenity outside of combat, she was now hounded by confusion. Conflicting thoughts and… feelings… conspired to deprive her of any kind of peace.
I am not supposed to feel. My purpose is too simple to be confused, and I am not supposed to grow outside its confines.
"Don't mind me, I have some work to look over." Ritsuko fished a tablet computer out of her pocket. "Feel free to take your time considering the question."
What would it be like, to be focused again? Rei tried to imagine what it would be like to have her recent stressors deleted from her mind. She knew she'd lost chunks of time from her memories before, when One had become Two, and when Two had become Three. And surely I will again, when Three becomes Four. If I am deactivated for this defect, Four will be born without the memories of any time spent with Lieutenant Langley-Soryu. After the fact, the Commander will surely isolate Four away from any contact with the Lieutenant.
Rei felt a strange sensation in her chest at the thought - a sharp, hollow pang, as if a muscle was spasming in pain.
I do not want to lose that. The realization chilled her to the core. I should not want anything at all, but I want to hold onto this.
And yet - despite what Doctor Akagi said - why should it matter what I want? My purpose is not my own, and never has been. Her thoughts shifted to those around her - Commander Ikari, Captain Katsuragi, the Pilot Corps, Lieutenant Langley-Soryu. They do not need a distracted… girl. The Commander needs an instrument of his will. The captain needs a disciplined soldier, and the Pilot Corps likewise. The Lieutenant needs…
A memory rose, unbidden.
"I'm glad you're alive, even if you don't give a fuck yourself. I don't want you to die. Keep that in mind next time you tell me I should leave you in the dust, yeah?"
Rei shook her head. Ritsuko looked up from her work for a moment, but when Rei didn't show any sign of speaking, she looked back at the tablet.
I would not truly die. Four would live on, and the majority of my life would live on through her. But in a literal sense, I would have died… and Four's contact with Lieutenant Langley-Soryu would be severely restricted after the fact, if extant at all.
Surely, what she values of me would not die? Four would be no less of a perfect soldier than Three.
Ritsuko had put down the tablet and rolled her chair back over to her desk, and was now occasionally tapping the keyboard of her computer. Idly, she lifted a nearby cup of black coffee and swallowed the contents in one gulp. Rei knew that it was cold. There was little time in the Doctor's work day to pay attention to a coffee maker; her coffee was always cold.
A new thought swam to the surface of the churning waters of Rei's mind.
Is Lieutenant Langley-Soryu that logical? Truly? She is very… human, to a fault at times. Rei blinked. She would no doubt see some ephemeral value of the old me, and judge it lost.
Would she be wrong?
Memories are sometimes illogically precious to humans, and Four would lack any of such that concerned the Lieutenant…
The stabbing ache lanced through Rei's chest again.
I must stop thinking of the Lieutenant. Such is not my purpose. But I do not want to. I do not want to disappoint her so, and…
"No."
Ritsuko's back straightened immediately, and she looked over at Rei with her eyebrows raised.
"I… do not want to cease thinking of Lieutenant Langley-Soryu. I do not want to lose these thoughts and memories."
Ritsuko smiled, and indeed, almost seemed genuinely happy. "Then you're not defective, Rei," she said simply.
"But -"
"No, no buts. That's part of being a person - no, part of being anything with a mind. People only do what they want. Psychologically speaking, everything you do is something you want, it just may be the case that conflicting motives come close to swaying your decisions."
Rei blinked, but didn't respond otherwise.
"If this isn't what you want, than my ethics as a doctor - ragged and ruined though they are, at this point - will not allow me to help you seek deactivation. Report yourself to the Commander if you wish; I'm sure he will be happy to oblige. But if you want to carry on living as Three, as you are now -" Ritsuko lit another cigarette and took a deep drag - "then keep it to yourself, as well as this change in medications. The Commander is a cruel man, with no respect for the freedom or well-being of others, and although there is nothing wrong with you as a person I am certain he will have a problem with your independent thoughts."
Rei blinked again. "I…"
"It's up to you." Ritsuko took another drag. "Still… my unjust, truly selfish sense of self-preservation demands that I urge… no, that I ask you to hide this. If the Commander deactivates you, I'll be next. And I don't have a Ritsuko Two lined up."
Rei nodded. "I… I must think further on this."
"Take all the time you need."
X-X-X
Gone again… the fucking Witch Doctor said it wasn't going to be serious, but if that's true, where's my verdammt pilot, huh?!
"Soryu?"
Welcoming the distraction, Asuka raised her head and fixed Hikari with a look of withering disdain.
"Err, sorry. Asuka."
"Better."
"Anyway, I just heard yesterday - Nintendo is making a new Smash game!" Hikari had stars in her eyes. "I was worried they'd leave us with Melee forever."
Asuka raised her eyebrow. "I don't know if I'm that excited. Melee is basically the most perfect fighter I've ever seen; I kinda doubt they can top it." She shook her head. "Still, good to hear they're making new games again."
Impressive that they weathered second impact at all, frankly. It's… encouraging, hearing things like this. Makes a soldier hope that the world might eventually truly recover.
"The new game's called Brawl."
"Hn. Stereotypical. Not bad, though." Asuka poked idly at her food with her fork. Her eyes seemed drawn to her own hand, and the flushed pink of the scar tissue that drew a thick line across the palm.
"Hey, Asuka. You okay?"
"Huh?" Asuka jerked her head back up, her tone defensive. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Hmmm…" Hikari narrowed her eyes and tilted her head slightly. "You seem a little distracted, I guess? You're pretty good at hiding when something's bothering you - at least, you are when it's not something you can get angry about - but I like to think I'm your friend, yeah? I can tell when you're preoccupied."
"Are you saying I'm easy to read?!"
"Well, a large part of it is that you usually sit with Shinji," Hikari replied, embarrassed. "The rest is in the little cues. Someone who didn't know you well probably wouldn't have a clue."
Kinda like how I can pick out Rei's little tells, even through that stone mask of hers, Asuka thought, then immediately regretted it. Ugh, what happened to hating her? She's everything I should hate… but I guess weathering enemy fire together builds camaraderie whether you want to or not.
That, or it's Stockholm syndrome. Since I sure as hell can't get away from her, as long as I pilot Eva…
Asuka looked down, away from Hikari. "The only thing me and Shinji have in common is a uniform," she muttered. "And Gott, I don't want to talk military right now."
"That's… yeah, that's fair." Hikari winced. "I know I shouldn't pry, but is it anything to do with Ayanami being out two days in a row?"
"I thought she was frequently out for no reason," Asuka deflected. "This isn't unusual, right?"
Hikari's sad expression didn't lift. "Well, yeah. But… well, whenever she was out for more than a day, she always seemed to come back bandaged, or limping, or…" she shook her head. "And that was true before you and Shinji, before the angel attacks. I worry about her."
Gott, what did the Commander do to her?! What kind of Evangelion stress-testing or surgery could… Asuka's enraged internal monologue trailed off as she remembered the metal implants in Rei's skin. Well, that would certainly do it. Fuuuck. Being a soldier sucks, fighting monsters sucks. But not as much as fighting for monsters.
"Oh!" Hikari perked up suddenly. "I suppose I needn't have worried, then!"
Asuka whipped her head around fast enough to elicit a clicking protest from the bones in her neck. At the classroom door stood one Rei Ayanami.
Oh, thank fuck. She's alive. That's something, at least.
She greeted the class as quietly as Asuka would have expected, and walked over to her designated chair. As the door closed behind her, Asuka glanced into the hallway, spotting the teacher talking to a man in sunglasses and a nondescript black suit.
Of course it's goon detail that drops her off. Still, she looks… better. Not perfect, but a bit better…
Though still slightly disheveled, at least to Asuka's discerning eye, Rei did look marginally healthier. Less sleep-deprived and confused, if nothing else.
Asuka's first instinct was to stand up and head over to Rei's desk, but even as she felt herself tense to do so, the teacher walked into the room.
Dammit. Missed my shot. The teacher began his usual droning, and Asuka rolled her eyes. Gonna be a long afternoon…
X-X-X
"I didn't think I'd find you outside of your lab. Sometimes it seems like you're down there twenty-four seven."
Ritsuko felt herself tense, although she didn't look away from the tower terminal.
"I come up here to… well, I always tell myself it's to try and rework the hardware drivers of the signal interpreter to see if I can increase the effective range of its AT detection." She sucked a cloud of smoke from the cigarette dangling carelessly from her lips. "It's really more to clear my head. Even I can't live and work in a cave all the time."
"I'm surprised." The other woman's voice was flat. "I thought monsters loved caves."
Ritsuko winced, finally turning her head to look at Misato. Standing in the doorway of the safety cage, the light of the noonday sky made the captain's figure into a menacing silhouette.
"Only most of the time." Ritsuko pulled her gaze back to the terminal, and tried to tell herself it wasn't because she was afraid to look Misato in the eye. "Sometimes even us monsters want to see the light."
"Oh? Not even going to try denying it?"
Ritsuko coughed as she tried to laugh through a lungful of smoke. "My sins amount to enough already, without lying to your face and insulting your intelligence too." Taking the nearly-dead cigarette end from her mouth, she tossed it through the chainlink weave of the safety cage. "I presume you came with questions? I'll admit, I'm surprised you let the little devil go first."
"Don't talk about Lieutenant Soryu like that." Misato's tone was harsh. "And I only have one question."
Ritsuko lit another cigarette. "Hit me."
"What happened to the woman I fell in love with?" Misato took a step into the safety cage, and the shifting light brought an angry face into view. "Because she sure as hell isn't sitting in front of me right now."
To her credit, Ritsuko managed to meet Misato's eye for almost two full seconds, even though the question felt like a punch in the teeth. Then she looked away again, grabbing the cigarette from her mouth and crushing it in her hand. The ember hissed as it died.
"Good question. I'll have to let you know, when I find the answer." Her tablet computer buzzed a notification from her lower lab coat pocket, but she ignored it.
"That's all you can say?!" Misato took another step forward, her fists clenching, and Ritsuko cringed.
"What, you think that was a joke? I wish there had been a decisive step into the dark, but -" Ritsuko shook her head. "There really wasn't. Just darker and darker shades of grey. I want to tell you the day it happened, but - no one becomes a monster in just a day."
"Poisoning a child sure seems like a pretty decisive step!"
Ritsuko put on a plastic grin. "Decisive enough to make me realize how far I'd walked." She pulled out another cigarette, wincing as she realized she'd burned her hand. "But I was already a monster by then."
"Did you take her off… whatever it was that hurt her?"
She would have been fine if she hadn't decided to overdose out of the blue, said a clinical voice in the back of Ritsuko's mind. She ignored it. A defensive statement would only make Misato angrier. "Interacting seretonergics, and yes. Well, instructed her how to safely taper them off, at least."
"Oh? Really?" Misato cocked her head. "What happened to 'the Commander would kill me if I went against his orders,' hmm?"
"It's not like I immediately informed the Commander or anything. That's Rei's choice to make now. I damn near killed her; I'd say turnabout is fair play." Misato looked taken aback, so Ritsuko decided to keep speaking. "If, in the near future, I disappear suddenly and without warning… I've hidden a dead drop with everything important in it. You'll find it if you need it."
"And why should I trust anything you say?" Misato's tone softened somewhat, though her glare was still cutting. Ritsuko could only hope it was the mention of her potentially impending death that had softened it.
"By my track record, you clearly should not trust anything I say. I can only hold out foolish hope. But I do have your back regarding Kaji and Mari's 'hobby,' whatever else comes about." Realizing she'd already smoked her cigarette down to a stub, Ritsuko ground out the ember and tossed it away. "If this does, indeed, turn out to be the last time you ever speak to me… well. Can you at least believe me when I say, I wish our goodbye had been under very different circumstances?"
Misato's eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth as if to speak - but then she merely clenched her teeth, turning and storming out of the safety cage without a word.
Ritsuko looked after her for a moment, contemplating the rust patterns on the catwalk railing just outside the cage door. Then she looked back to the reams of computer code crawling across the tower console screen as it happily ticked away at its debug sequence.
Well, that all went about as well as I expected it to, really…
She reached into her lab coat pocket, but the packet contained only foil and scraps of loose tobacco. Cursing under her breath, she withdrew the empty pack and threw it as hard as she could out the cage doorway.
Smoking two packs a day - no, three, it seems now - and driving away lovers because of your work… is there any way in which you don't take after your mother, Ritsuko?
A recent memory popped into her head, and she reached into her lower pocket, retrieving her tablet.
[Lt. Ibuki Maya]: The Genesis Dogma radiolab staff seem to be stuck on the last leg of the analysis from that strange AT phenomenon the pilots managed to generate. The lead analyst says he needs either ten more technicians on every shift for the next few weeks, or he needs your eyes on the data for a few days.
[Lt. Ibuki Maya]: I'm not going to go-between you two again, by the way. I know he's… difficult, but I don't have the energy to deal with that for you all the time.
"At least that prick can admit he's not the smartest scientist at NERV," Ritsuko murmured to herself, standing from the computer chair. "Well, back to work."
X-X-X