Old hag.
The words reverberated inside Naoko Akagi's head as she wrapped her hands around the doll's neck. Old hag. The doll's neck was soft. Its trachea, easily malleable, deformed with the slightest pressure. Old hag. Its red eyes, bulging from their sockets, and blue hair failed to deceive Naoko. Even with the death of her physical form, Yui still mocked her. Old hag. Naoko's breaths grew more ragged. She squeezed harder. The doll sputtered.
Then, its neck snapped.
Naoko let go, and the doll fell to the floor; its limbs scattered around its torso haphazardly. She bent down and felt for a pulse. None. Naoko took long, deep breaths to steady her racing heartbeat. Her emotional high was crashing down with the weight of the life she'd taken. She hovered over the doll's body. The countdown to her doom began the minute she laid her hands on Commander Ikari's most precious specimen. This whole ordeal was maddening. It was absurd.
It was perfect.
The were two impulses Naoko resisted: the urge to test her theories of life after death and the urge to erase the doll's existence. She satisfied one of those impulses. Now, she hungered to satisfy the other. Carefully, she carried the doll in her arms and hurried to NERV's medical wing. In the dead of night, no soul would bare witness to the transgressions she carried out.
A considerable distance separated Central Dogma and the nearest examination room, but Naoko's excitement towards having a fresh body propelled her and dulled her sense of time. She stopped at her office along the way and collected the necessary tools to carry out her trial. In a fridge at an inconspicuous corner of the room, one that she inspected daily to ensure the temperature was within an acceptable range, she stored the reagent, a green liquid that glowed like neon, and LCL. She collected these as well, organizing everything in a duffel bag.
At the exam room, she laid the doll down on a bed and set the contents of the duffel bag on the nearest table. Her hands shook as she measured out the specific amount of LCL and reagent required for a human subject, mixing both in a vial. She dedicated the exact ratio of both chemicals to memory, a result of countless experimentation with small animals and slaving over numbers, both accomplished in her spare time. Though this doll was an artificial human with an artificial soul, it would suffice in testing her theory at last. She felt for a vein in the doll's forearm and jabbed the needle in as steadily as her hands permitted, injecting the doll with the reagent infused with LCL.
She began the timer on her watch. Her heart beat, furiously, like a rabid dog attempting to break free of its cage. She tuned out all possible distractions, focusing only on the seconds passing, on every tick of the hand. Her eyes routinely glanced between the watch and the doll. A minute passed. No movement. The fear of failure chewed at Naoko.
Suddenly, the doll's eyes opened. They glanced around the room like a drop of blood roaming in a petri dish. Naoko felt its wrist. There was a pulse. There was a heartbeat. There was life. Naoko laughed in sheer joy. Her cackles escaped the room into NERV's hallways. The terrible sound echoed all throughout the facility.
Ritsuko placed the cardboard box on the floor next to a row of other boxes. A billow of dust flew out as it made contact with the ground. Ritsuko coughed. She wished she wore a mask before touching these long unbothered relics. In all her visits to her grandmother over the years, she was always asked to take a look inside. "Your mother left these for you," Grandmother said, but Ritsuko always refused.
"Do you want any help sorting though all those things?" Her grandmother asked from the door frame.
"I can handle this, grandmother. I doubt I'll be keeping any of this old junk anyway," Ritsuko answered. Beads of sweat trailed down her forehead. An entire day of packing and sorting her grandmother's belongings for the move had exhausted Ritsuko. The office was the last place left to clean. Ritsuko intentionally ignored it until now, for it belonged to her mother.
"When you're done, I'll heat up dinner. I'd like to enjoy one last meal in this house before I leave."
"I should only take a minute." Ritsuko gave her grandmother a smile before returning her attention to the collection of boxes that lay in front of her. She respected the scientist in her mother, but she had never taken an interest in her mother's life unrelated to NERV. She didn't have to know about such matters, she reasoned with herself before, and so the secrets inside these boxes remained hidden for the years to come.
Ritsuko sighed and opened the first box, plunging straight into the abyss. She expected to find odd trinkets, photo books, journals, or some other long lost echo hearkening back to her own childhood or her mother's past, but she found an envelope addressed to her at the top of a pile of old journals, much to her shock. She gingerly picked it up. Her thumb caressed the name, her name, written on the front of the envelope. She tore it open.
It is now your duty to carry on my legacy and that of Dr. West, my professor from Miskatonic. I know that, by the time you read this message, you will have grown into a brilliant scientist, just like me! You will find all that you need in this box and in the freezer. I asked your grandmother to take care of these items until you could take them yourself, and I trust that she did so. I believe in you.
- Mother."
Ritsuko snorted. A photo was attached to the mother stood in between two men: the one to her right was slight, wore square frames, and the one to her left was taller, more fit. All three smiled proudly in front of the school's logo. Ritsuko guessed Dr. West to be the spectacled man. A manic quality existed in his eyes and in his smile that could only belong to a dedicated scientist. That look reminded her of her mother. Were the Akagis always doomed to follow mentally unstable men?
She turned around and opened the freezer, a tiny and decaying unit, with its pale white now a stained gray. Across the three rows inside, air tight glass canisters full of some glowing green liquid were arranged.
"Grandmother!" Ritsuko shouted. "What's in the freezer?"
"I'm not so sure, dear. I only made sure it was running at the temperature your mom asked me to keep it at before she passed. This science stuff is all beyond me, you know that," Grandmother said from the kitchen.
"How come you never told me about this?"
"I tried to, but you always said no."
Ritsuko always had the feeling that she should've listened to her grandmother more.
Ritsuko basked in the hellish ambiance of Terminal Dogma. A fitting stage for the trial that would soon commence. She reviewed her mother's notes one more time.
An entry dated a few months after her study abroad at Miskatonic University Medical School: Dr. West's greatest mistake was not believing in the soul. He believed that the body acted purely as a vessel for muscles, nerves, and bones. His rejection of the soul meant that his subjects failed to achieve intelligence without succumbing to madness as well, and ultimately led to his demise. Only in understanding this crucial element can we truly reverse the process of death.
The latest dated entry: Twenty days since successful reanimation of subject. No physical or mental abnormalities detected. Subject continues to function in daily life as before death. However, I feel the Commander's gaze behind my back where-ever I turn. His eyes hide in every shadow, every crevice, every corner of this damned facility. I am certain he knows of the horrible crime I have committed against him, and I count every hour left of my life in my head. Even though I have given nothing but devotion, he will show no mercy nor forgiveness.
The revelation regarding Rei's death hardly fazed Ritsuko. Regardless of whether her form was resurrected by some chemical mixture or brought back in another body through the dummy system, the girl already acted like a walking corpse. Ritsuko also ruminated over the added context behind her mother's death. Previously, she'd only known it as a suicide and nothing more. She didn't think on the matter for very long, however. Her mother was dead, there was nothing else to understand about that.
Ritsuko entered some commands into the terminal, and in the center of the room, the belly of Terminal Dogma spat out a lifeless copy of Rei. She brought the body into the adjacent room, a facsimile of Rei's hovel now set up as a test chamber. A table with surgical tools lay near the bed, and the fridge carried the supply of reagent. Ritsuko placed the body on the bed and injected the solution, mixed to the specifications provided by her mother, into it. She stared at her watch and waited.
After several minutes of inactivity, Ritsuko scoffed. Maybe this nonsense about resurrecting the dead was a charade, a practical joke spun up by her mother to mock her daughter in the future. Ritsuko grabbed a marker, and wrote '00' on the subject's hand. The first test and the first failure. She had a date planned with Maya that night, so properly disposing of the failure would have to be saved for another time. She turned off the lights, and left the room.
Ritsuko collected the last of her notes, a mix of NERV related documents and her mother's last scribbles, into her backpack and shut the PC off in her office. She was mid stride, halfway across the room when the door slid open, revealing Maya.
"Hey Ritz! You ready for dinner?" Maya asked. "We should be able to make it for our reservation but I don't think we'll have enough time to change."
Ritsuko smiled. "Indeed I am. I don't care about changing. I just need to get out and eat."
"Me too." Maya giggled. "Oh! I actually ran into someone on my way here." Maya reached to her side and pulled Rei in front of her, holding the girl by her shoulders. "It seemed like she was looking for you, so I just thought I'd bring her along with me." Rei impassively looked at Maya before turning her attention to Ritsuko.
"That's fine." Ritsuko eyes trailed down from Rei's face, down her shoulder, down her arm, and stopped at her hand. "I suppose she has a ques-," she paused suddenly. On Rei's hand, an inky black '00' sharply contrasted against pale white. "-tion..." she couldn't finish the rest of her thought. That last word dangled from the precipice of her tongue.
"That's what I assumed too." Maya failed to notice Ritsuko's dilemma. "I thought they would've left by now, it's been a while since the synch test, but I guess she had a really important question to ask you." Ritsuko reached into her backpack, searching for a solid object, something hard, something with weight. She settled on a clipboard. "I tried to ask her what she needed, but she doesn't seem to be talkative tonight."
"Do you trust me, Maya?"
Maya furrowed her eyebrows. "Of course I do, why?"
"Bring Rei to me, and I promise I'll explain everything."
Maya nodded, and gave the subject to Ritsuko. Ritsuko held the clipboard up with both of her hands, and brought it down upon its head, delivering a forceful blow that knocked it out instantly. Ritsuko bent down and picked up the subject. "There should be an unused dormitory nearby that we can take it to."
Maya gaped. "Ritsuko... why did you hit Rei?"
Ritsuko sighed. "I promise I'll explain. We'll take her to the dorm, then I'll show you all that you need to know."
Maya opened her mouth to respond, but a voice interrupted her.
"Lt. Ibuki."
She turned around. "Rei? I thought you would've left by now. It's been a while since... the synch... test..." the words slowly trailed out of her mouth. She examined the girl from head to toe. The same hair, the same eyes, the same neutral expression, the same school uniform. This was Rei. Or was it?
Rei nodded. "It has, but I had a question to ask Dr. Akagi."
Maya stared blankly at Rei. Rei tilted her head.
"Lt. Ibuki?"
Maya shook her head. Questions wormed through the recesses of her brain, but she quelled them."Oh right!" She laughed awkwardly and looked back into Ritsuko's office. To one side of the door frame, Ritsuko stood carrying the subject, back pressed against the wall to avoid Rei's view. Ritsuko shook her head. "I actually came here to see Dr. Akagi too, but it doesn't seem like she's here now." Maya turned back around. Her eyes pointed down towards Rei. "Why don't you go ask her tomorrow? I already have plans with her tonight, so she wouldn't have time to meet with you."
Rei nodded and walked away. The quiet ambiance of NERV at night gradually swallowed the sound of her footsteps as she disappeared further down the hall. Maya pushed down the temptation to immediately interrogate her girlfriend and superior. So much of her loyalty and faith was dedicated to this woman, and she had yet to feel that such trust was misplaced. Maya sighed.
"Let's go, Ritsuko."
The images replayed continuously through Maya's head. Images of the secrets buried underneath, hiding in the bowels of NERV.
"Are you okay, Maya?" Ritsuko asked.
"Yeah," Maya sighed. "It's just... a lot to take in." She dug her hands into her pockets. Both women sat on opposite ends of the tram carrying them upwards to Tokyo-3. Maya felt surprised at her own composure after so many shocking revelations, but a few years working in this facility ripped from a science fiction novel, working to exterminate monsters beyond her imagination strengthened her mind. A little more madness seemed insignificant in the long run.
"Why are you even going through all..." Maya waved her hands around, trying to find the right words. "all... this then? Are you looking for redemption with your mother?"
"No," Ritsuko answered. "I'm long past seeking redemption. Reconciliation, I suppose. I only respected my mother as a scientist, so this is my only chance of burying that hatchet." She sighed, and made direct eye contact with Maya. "I understand this is a lot, and I don't want to exploit our relationship any more, so if you want to leave, this is your chance."
"You already know, Ritz, that I could never do that." Maya's expression steeled. "As your partner in science and your partner in love, I've pledged to follow you wherever you go."
Ritsuko walked to Maya's end, sat down, and hugged her. "Thank you." Maya returned the gesture and hummed into Ritsuko's shoulder in response.
"I don't think we'll make it to our reservation anymore," Ritsuko said.
Maya giggled. "No, I don't think we will." They let go of each other. Ritsuko wrapped an arm around Maya and leaned against her as they looked upon the Geofront below, the tram now nearing its destination. NERV HQ radiated at night, glowing like the stars above. A wonder of the world that required years of human innovation, determination, and labor to bring to life. For a brief second, Maya forgot that it housed the second Angel in all her glory and enough weapons to decimate a continent.
"Why don't we go to the noodle stand again?" Maya suggested.
"We always go there. I was looking forward to eating somewhere more special tonight."
"But it's cheap, it's quick, and I'm hungry." Maya poked at Ritsuko's belly. "And I'm pretty sure I heard something in here."
"Oh hush."
They laughed, their fears and worries giving way to mirth. The tram continued to ascend.
Borrowed a Lovecraft story collection from the library recently and wanted to write more Ritsuko and more Maya, so this is the result of these two events. Consider this an exercise in madness from yours truly. Takes more from the Re-animator movie than the short story (both tone and lore wise). Not marked as a crossover since I'll only make tiny references here and there. Currently have this planned at four chapters, but we'll see how far we can go in that time span.
Next chapter: More science! More blood! More romance! More decapitations!