[Eva][FanFic] Neon Exodus Evangelion 3:4 - The Trigger Effect

[Benjamin D. Hutchins]

/* Genesis "Land of Confusion" (Extended CD-Single Version) */

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
presents

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION

EXODUS 3:4 - THE TRIGGER EFFECT

Inspired by NEON GENESIS EVANGELION created by Hideaki Anno, Gainax,
et al.

Most characters created by Hideaki Anno and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
except

DJ Croft created by Benjamin D. Hutchins
and
Jon Ellison created by Larry Mann

Additional material and inspiration cadged from TOMB RAIDER by Core
Design, Ltd., X-COM: UFO DEFENSE and sequels from MPS Labs (whoever
owns them nowadays), THE X-FILES created by Chris Carter, and
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Arthur C. Clarke

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins, Larry Mann, and MegaZone

Aided and abetted by the Eyrie Productions, Unlimited crew
and special-guest-for-life Phil Moyer

(c) 1998 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

Misato Katsuragi lay on her back, her hands behind her
head, in the dark. It was nearing 2:30 in the morning, but she
couldn't sleep; she was too upset, too angry and too anxious. Without
DJ and Asuka, who had returned to the abandoned house they'd been
calling home since Commander Ikari had issued orders banishing them
from the city, the apartment seemed empty and silent. Even -with- the
sound of Kaji snoring on the couch to break up the quiet.
Misato sighed. Her brain was still a little scrambled from
the shock of seeing -him- again, after she'd first written him off as
a hopeless asshole and then written him off as dead. She'd had Jenna
run a tissue scan on Kaji (without letting her know where the sample
was from, though she figured Jenna had her suspicions) and confirmed
that he was the genuine article, which was the only reason he'd been
allowed to stay at all. Through it all he'd been meek and
accommodating, allowing himself to be disarmed and not reacting
defensively to the suspicion heaped on him until that test had come up
clean. He hadn't even made any suggestive comments when he was told
he could sleep on the couch. Maybe he'd actually grown up a little in
the years since she'd last seen the real him.
As if that weren't enough, there was the matter of DJ's
father. DJ had always been convinced that his father hadn't died in
the Great Pacific Earthquake like the United States government had
informed his mother. He'd carried that belief in the back of his mind
most of his life, always on the lookout for anything that would prove
him right. Now he had that proof - at a terrible price. He hadn't
said a word after going to his room; he and Asuka had waited for dark
and then slipped away, using the network of tunnels under the city to
head back into the demolished zone. He hadn't even remembered or
cared to take his coat with him.
The situation couldn't go on. Alarms had sounded, a guard had
been killed; Commander Ikari and those above him must know that DJ was
still in town. Their action was likely to be swift and vicious. If
that couldn't be avoided, perhaps it was time to beat them to the
punch...
Misato got out of bed, threw on some clothes, and went out to
the living room. Kaji was still asleep on the couch, snoring in that
old familiar way, and Misato couldn't help but smile nostalgically.
She bent down next to the sofa and kissed his cheek, then took the
pistol-like alien weapon from the coffee table, leaving her SIG
automatic in its place. The plasma pistol, a heavy, slab-sided
weapon, was a little bulky compared to the SIG and wouldn't fit her
holster rig, so she took it to the kitchen where the light was
better. Some kind soul had etched English markings and an X-COM
Weapons Testing Division proofing mark on it, so it was easy enough to
dope out its operation. The safety was already on, so she stuffed it
into the waistband of her jeans, feeling the cold metal against the
small of her back, and then dropped the loose folds of her Detroit Red
Wings jersey over it. She was about to grab her jacket and leave when
something inside made her pause.
She took her jacket off the peg by the door, turned it over in
her hands, and examined the oak-leaf pins on its collar tabs and the
NERV patch on the left shoulder. She'd sworn an oath of loyalty the
day she'd worn that patch for the first time, and reaffirmed it the
day she was given those oak leaves. Now she was about to break that
oath. It wouldn't be right to wear the colors while she stabbed NERV
in the back...
She went back to her room, put on a black turtleneck sweater
under the Red Wings jersey, and then left the apartment. She locked
the door, turned to go, and drew up short with a gasp, almost jumping
out of her skin as she came all but face to face with Lara Croft.
"Jesus!" she cried, then dropped her voice to a whisper.
"Lara! How long have you been out here?!"
Lara shrugged. "Just arrived. The Imperator docked in New
York at eleven-thirty." She closed her eyes for a moment, then met
Misato's gaze. "I'll bet I know where you're off to," she said, "and
you're not going without me."
Misato sighed. "You know."
"DJ faxed me via Hal before he left," Lara replied. "Shall
we?"
Misato nodded. "Let's go."

Asuka Soryu-Langley couldn't sleep, either, for essentially
the same reasons. DJ hadn't said anything much to her either. Since
they'd arrived at home, he'd just gone into his room and shut the
door, making the point that he wanted to be alone.
Asuka, on the other hand, didn't want to be alone.
She climbed from her bed, still dressed, and found her cane
where she'd left it leaning against the nightstand. She probably
didn't need it for so short a walk, but better safe than sorry; her
right leg still had a habit of buckling at inopportune times, though
it was, like the rest of her, getting stronger every day. There was
little left of real bone in that leg, and it took the muscles longer
to fully bond with the replacement materials, so that was the part
that would take longest, she'd been told, to heal.
She opened DJ's door and went inside; in the dim light coming
through the window from the distant lights of still-populated parts of
town, she could see that he was curled up on his bed, motionless.
Whether asleep or just not acknowledging the world, it didn't much
matter to Asuka; leaning her cane against his nightstand, she slipped
into bed behind him, her arms crossing over his chest.
He was awake; his hands came up to touch hers as she held him,
but for a long time, he made no sound, but for his slow, even
breathing.
Then he turned to face her and returned her embrace. His
hands roamed her body, his touch not erotic, but rather... seeking, as
if he were trying to convince himself that she was really there. With
a fingertip, he traced the small scar that had remained after all on
her face, down her right cheek and under the corner of her jaw.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"Shh," she replied. "It's all right. I'm all right."
"No thanks to me," he said.
"Don't say that," said Asuka. "You did all you could."
"But I failed!" DJ replied. "I couldn't save you. I couldn't
save my father, either. I haven't come up with anything to break open
the Ikari situation. I'm no bloody good to anyone any more."
"I don't agree," said Asuka. "For that matter, I don't think
Ryoji would, either."
"Weren't for him, I'd have died down there too," said DJ.
"I wasn't paying attention... I was sloppy." He sighed, wiping at his
eyes. "First Dirac's Ocean, then you, now this. Maybe I'm past it.
They say prodigies burn out fast."
"Are you stupid?" asked Asuka, her voice gentler than her
words. "Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, DJ. Everyone
fails. It happens."
"Not to me!" DJ hissed angrily, the intensity in his voice
making Asuka draw back. "I don't fail. I've never failed. If I had,
I wouldn't be here. Failure isn't something I've ever accepted from
myself."
Asuka, her own temper sparked by DJ's anger, was about to
retort, until she realized how familiar the words sounded; then, her
anger destroyed, she couldn't help but laugh.
"What the hell's so funny?" DJ demanded.
"Oh, DJ," said Asuka. "You and I deserve each other, you know
that? All my life I've had to succeed. For my parents, then for
their memories, for NERV, then for the whole damn human race. Never
for me. No one ever asked me what I thought was important. And here
you are, living the same life, but who's driving you?" She sat up,
pulling him with her, and levered his chin up with her fingertips so
she could look him in the eyes. "-You- are. We've both had to live
up to impossible standards, but in your case they're your own. It's
stupid. Who will it help if you drive yourself crazy or get yourself
killed trying to save the world all by yourself?"
DJ, stunned, looked at Asuka in the dim light as if he were
seeing her for the first time. "So what are you saying we should do?"
he wondered. "Give up?"
"No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying we have to relax
a little and accept our fallibility." She chuckled wryly. "I've had
my nose shoved in it the last six weeks, so maybe I have a head
start. I mean, -look- at yourself. What happened to me was
terrible, I'm sure not going to argue with that, but you did what you
could. I don't love you any less because you failed. I love you even
more, because you tried."
"I... you... " DJ trailed off, then tried again, his voice
small. "You... you still love me?"
Asuka reviewed her own words, then smiled. "Yeah, I guess I
do."
DJ's hands shook a little as he put them on her shoulders.
"That's... I... "
Suddenly, the house shook with a resounding impact. DJ and
Asuka both turned toward the door, eyes narrowing.
"That was the front door," said DJ.
"Shit!" said Asuka, getting up and grabbing her cane. "They
found us."
DJ jumped up, flicked on the battery lamp next to the bed, then
quickly grabbed his shoulder holster from the back of the chair and
shrugged into it. Opening the window, he climbed out, then helped
Asuka through.
As they turned away from the house, a spotlight snapped on and
pinned them, causing both to cry out and raise their hands against the
glare. When they could see again, they found themselves surrounded by
black-suited NERV Security operatives, none of them familiar.
The one at the point had a plasma pistol like the one Kaji had
taken off the Muton, aimed straight at Asuka's heart. For an instant,
DJ thought of fighting; but even if he could kill this one before he
could shoot Asuka, there would be too many remaining for them to have
a chance. Slowly, grudgingly, he put up his hands.
"Commander Ikari wants to have a little talk with you two,"
said the NERV Security pointman, just before he drew the fist with the
blaster in it back and pistol-whipped DJ to the ground with it.

Rei Ayanami sat suddenly upright, gasping, as if from a
nightmare. By her side, Jon Ellison, no stranger to nightmares
himself, muttered groggily, "What's wrong?"
"DJ and Asuka have been caught," said Rei.
"What?!" said Jon, coming fully awake in an instant. "How do
you know?"
Rei looked a little puzzled underneath her shock, then said,
"I'm not sure... but I know it." She threw back the covers, got out
of bed, took off her pajamas and began dressing. "It's time to end
this, Jon," she said flatly.
Jon nodded, got up and found his own clothes.

Misato drove in silence down the S490, paying little
attention to the gorgeous spectacle that was the Geo-Front at night:
the illuminated city below and the illuminated city above, like a
single city mirrored in a glass-smooth lake. Beside her, Lara Croft
sat in a similar brooding silence, her face blank and her eyes
unreadable behind her dark glasses.
Finally, Misato broke the silence: "I can't see you falling
for an FBI agent."
Lara looked a little startled, then laughed a brittle laugh.
"To be honest, neither can I," she replied. "It was a strange,
strange time to be alive." She thought for a moment, then added, "You
know, I never thought DJ was right. I never believed Mulder might
still be alive."
"'Mulder'?" said Misato, a trace of amusement in her voice.
"What?"
"You call the father of your son by his last name?"
Lara colored a little. "If you'd known him you'd understand.
I don't think anybody ever called him 'Fox'. Not even his partner,
and she was the best friend he ever had. He was... Well, he was
rather a strange man, really. He and Dana had been partners for ten
years, they were everything -but- lovers, and yet even in private they
were still 'Mulder' and 'Scully'. He was a hard man to get to know.
He cared so much about what he was doing, it didn't leave him much
left over to feel about anything or anyone else."
Misato nodded. "I know someone like that... "
They arrived at the NERV parking level a few minutes later.
"Ready?" asked Misato.
"Always," Lara replied.
"Let's go, then."

Jon Ellison was feeling a certain sense of deja vu as he
parked his Avenger in a service tunnel off the S490 accessway, and he
and Rei proceeded on foot into the maintenance spaces. He'd left the
car in the same place the day that he, Rei and Asuka had penetrated
the Geo-Front during the Seventh Angel's attack. It seemed like only
yesterday, but so much had changed since then, it made Jon a little
dizzy to stop and think about it.
He wanted to ask Rei how she could be so certain of their
course as she led him deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels,
crawlspaces and ducts, but the intensity with which she did it gave
him pause. In the dim light of the maintenance spaces, her eyes
burned, almost glowed, with concentration. Every course change, every
fork in the path was weighed and chosen without hesitation. Something
only she could see was drawing Rei deeper into the maze, and all Jon
could do was follow her.
Jon would never have second-guessed Rei's reason for coming
or her confidence in the path she was choosing. All the same, he was
wondering if it might have been better for at least one of them to
bring some kind of weapon.

3:15 AM

DJ Croft crashed to the glossy tile floor heavily, having been
propelled somewhat less than gently through the doorway behind him by
the NERV Security officer who had disarmed him, searched him, knocked
him around a bit, and escorted him this far. Asuka followed no more
gently, eliciting a stifled shout from her and a vicious curse from
DJ; he turned, as best he could with his hands bound behind his back,
and sought her eyes with his own.
"I'm all right," she said through her teeth, her eyes showing
more anger than pain despite the tears at the corners. Except for
being pitched roughly through the door, she'd been spared the
contemptuous, somewhat cursory battering DJ had been subject to since
their capture.
The door closed behind them, cutting off the light that had
been streaming in from the corridor, and for a few moments, all was
silent and dark. Then DJ slowly, painfully dragged himself to his
feet and looked around. He could see nothing but darkness.
Then a pin light snapped on somewhere above him, cutting a
stark white circle of light around him and Asuka, who remained where
she had fallen, conserving her strength. Moments later, another light
lit a second circle, twenty feet away. Inside that circle was a large
desk, and sitting behind that desk, his eyes invisible behind the
reflective squares of his glasses, was a man.
"Gendou," said DJ, in a strange tone somewhere between cordial
and seething.
Gendou Ikari sat and regarded DJ, his hands steepled before
him, for several seconds.
Then he got up and walked around to the front of his desk, his
face still impassive and his eyes still invisible.
"I gave you a chance," said Ikari. "Why did you have to be
so stupid?"
DJ favored the older man with a look of startled outrage. "I
beg your pardon? Are you talking to me? -You- gave -me- a chance?!
You never gave anybody anything but pain, Ikari!"
"I gave you a chance," Ikari repeated, the muscles at the
corners of his mouth bunching. "All you had to do was go home. Drop
it. Leave me alone to do my work. But you couldn't do that, could
you? You had to keep pushing. You had to see just how far you could
get. Just how much you could learn that you weren't supposed to know.
You couldn't just let it go." Ikari inclined his head, his eyes
suddenly becoming visible through the glass, and said coldly, "You're
as stupid as your father was."

"This is wrong," Misato murmured as she and Lara walked
through the Wedge. "Nobody in the control room, nobody in any of the
corridors. No tech workers, no monitor staff, not even guards. Why
would Central Dogma be cleared?"
"Maybe somebody's doing something they don't want to risk
anybody stumbling over," replied Lara.
"Maybe," replied Misato. They continued on in silence, deeper
into the complex, until they came to the security door that separated
the administrative office block from the Operations Section.
Lara slipped quietly off to one side, her weapon at the ready,
as Misato ran her ID card through the reader next to the door. The
green light on the reader flashed, and the door hissed quietly open -
To reveal a black-suited NERV Security officer, plasma pistol
in hand.
"Major Katsuragi, by order of Commander Ikari, I'm placing you
under arrest," said the blacksuit, leveling his blaster at Misato's
head. "Please surrender your weapon and your identification and come
with me."
Without really thinking about it, Misato threw herself to the
side, pressing herself into the corner between the corridor wall and
the doorframe. As she did so, Lara dove and rolled, coming up on one
knee with a line of fire into the doorway. The security officer's
plasma bolt whined down the corridor through the spot where Misato's
head had been, splashing against the far wall, as Lara's .45 automatic
rapped out a shot.
The plasma pistol and the divided halves of the security
officer's sunglasses clattered to the floor, followed shortly by the
muffled thud of the officer's body touching down a moment later.
"Well," said Lara as she tucked the automatic away and picked
up the guard's fallen weapon. "I guess it's officially a war, then."
Acquainting herself with the plasma pistol's control layout, she then
looked over it at Misato and grinned a nasty grin.
"Suits me fine," she added.

"You bastard," DJ hissed. "You would want to rub my nose in
that, wouldn't you? You had him here all the time and I never knew
until it was too late."
"Don't trouble yourself," replied Ikari. "You couldn't have
rescued him as you rescued Kaji, anyway."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Ikari remained silent.
"Answer me!" DJ shouted, his voice echoing in the mostly-empty
room.
"Agent Mulder provided much of the baseline data for the 'E'
branch of Project Ascension," said Ikari. "Once those tests were
done, what was left was put into cryo-storage in case some of the data
needed to be re-examined later." Ikari pushed his glasses up his
nose, blanking out his eyes again, and went on, "If you had cycled
down -that- hibernaculum and opened it, you'd have been in for a nasty
shock."
DJ's knuckles went white as he fought the foolish impulse to
strain against the handcuffs binding him and lunge for Ikari's
throat. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths; then his
eyes snapped open as he heard the unexpected sound of metal on metal.
Gendou Ikari had taken a plasma pistol from the top of his
desk and was fitting a power pack into its grip.
"I am not a violent man," he said as he pulled back the
charging lever and the strobe-like whine of the weapon's charging
cycle filled the room. "I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but you've
forced me to it. You're too close to discovering, and destroying,
everything I've devoted my life to. I'm too close. I can't let you
stop me now."

Misato stopped at the last corner, then peered carefully
around it.
"Yup, just as I thought," she said. "Five blacksuits holding
the door to Ikari's office, and none of them are ours."
"I hate to do anything the easy way anyway," replied Lara.

"What -have- you devoted your life to, Ikari?" Asuka demanded,
struggling to her feet. "Replacing, destroying the human race?
Second Impact not enough death for you? Figured you'd pick up where
God left off?"
Ikari scowled. "You stupid child. You can't comprehend what
I'm doing, what it means to the world. I'm not trying to destroy
humanity - I'm trying to help it realize its potential."
"By interbreeding humans with aliens? You're insane!"
Ikari's shoulders slumped; he shook his head miserably.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't have time to explain it to you
now." He raised the plasma pistol, and DJ was stunned to see an
actual tear slip down from behind Ikari's glasses as he took aim.
Then the sound of a volley of plasma discharges came from
-outside- the room, causing Ikari to pull back the weapon and look in
surprise at the door. "What the - ?!"
At that moment, the ventilation grating above and behind Ikari
broke free from its mounts and fell, landing with a crash on the floor
between Ikari and his targets. Jon Ellison followed it, and after him
came Rei Ayanami.
Ikari recoiled in shock, and then, at the sight of Rei, all
the color drained out of his face.
"Rei!" he gasped. "No. Not here, not like this. No!"
"Stop it, Professor Ikari," said Rei, her tone soft but
unequivocal.
Gendou Ikari, a fairly tall and well-built man in his early
forties, was armed with a powerful, compact weapon more than capable
of killing any unarmored human target. Nevertheless, he backed away
from the pale, slight, red-eyed girl, his hands trembling so violently
that something in the blaster's mechanism rattled.
"No... Rei, not you, not you," he whispered. Jon, DJ and
Asuka stood in shock as Ikari stumbled away from Rei, his face white,
beads of cold sweat standing out on his forehead.
"These people are under my protection," said Rei flatly. "If
you wish them dead, you must kill me first."
"No," Ikari repeated.
"I'm unarmed," said Rei. "I have no armor, no defense. If
you want DJ and Asuka dead, then kill me."
"Rei - !" said Jon, but Rei held up a hand, not taking her
gaze off Ikari, and Jon stopped. I must trust her, he told himself.
She wouldn't do this unless she had some idea what he'll do...
"Do you understand, Professor?" asked Rei, her voice touched
with a trace of the scorn in her eyes. "Use your weapon. Destroy me,
if you must."
Ikari tried to train his plasma gun on her, but his hand shook
so that he could hardly aim, and the harder he tried to do it, the
worse the shaking got. Then he sank to his knees, his breath coming
in sobs.
"Rei, I - I can't - I can't - " he whispered, panic in his eyes
and tone.
"You must," said Rei calmly.
"Rei, I... I... I'm sorry... " Gendou Ikari whimpered, tears
flowing freely down his face. With the desperate look of a condemned
man, he tried again to aim his blaster at her. For several seconds,
the war within Ikari raged, his hands shaking, his tears flowing.
And then, something inside Gendou Ikari snapped. Flinging
away his glasses, he clutched at his head with his free hand and
screamed as if touched by hot iron. Then, his face still twisted in
agony, he staggered to his feet, raised the pistol, and fired.

The wall behind Misato and Lara was pitted with plasma hits,
and as they knelt behind the slowly eroding cover of the corner and
took stock of their powerpack situation, the two women exchanged glum
looks.
"I guess all we can do now is go for that blaze of glory,"
said Misato.
"It was fun while it lasted," Lara replied.
Around the corner, forty feet down the corridor, three
blacksuits still remained, one of them armed with a plasma rifle.
"Let's go, then," said Misato, standing up. "It's been good
to know you."
"Don't say that yet," said Lara, grinning. "There's still a
chance we might get lucky."
The two women rounded the corner, each letting off a shot.
One found the far left security officer's chest, cutting him down as he
tried to bring his own pistol to bear; the other took his right-flank
counterpart off at the sunglasses, sending him spinning and smoking to
the tile.
Neither one of them could get off a second shot at the guy in
the middle before he could blow at least one of them away with the
rifle. Misato was closer; she closed her eyes and waited to die.
The next sound she heard was not the thick whine of the plasma
rifle, though; it was a lower-pitched electric "blat", underlaid with
a sharp crackle and a whiff of ozone. She opened her eyes again, just
in time to see a bright yellow beam burn into the rifleman's weapon,
split it in half, and go right on through to bore a hole completely
through him.
The man looked down at his huge, smoking wound, and then
collapsed without a sound.
Misato and Lara whirled, drawing down on the man (yet
another!) in a black suit who had come up behind them; then Misato let
out a huge sigh and held up her hand.
"Stop! Don't shoot!" she told Lara, but Lara was already
putting up her gun, having recognized the man for herself.
Ken Stanfield lowered his X-COM Mark VII laser rifle against
its sling over his right shoulder and favored the women with the hint
of a smile. "Much obliged if you wouldn't," he said.
"Where's J?" asked Misato.
"Securing the area," replied Stanfield. As if to punctuate
his statement, the distinctive sound of another laser rifle emanated
from somewhere not far off in the corridors. "What've we got inside?"
asked Stanfield.
"I don't know yet, but it's almost sure to be - "
The sound of a plasma discharge came from inside Ikari's
office. Misato and Lara spun at the sound, staring at the door in
mutual horror.
"No!"

Ikari's shot went wide, missing Rei by almost three feet, flew
back into the corner of the office, and then splashed off the
distinctive hex-pattern of an Absolute Terror Field.
"Wha - ?!" said Jon, his eyes going wide.
Forced into revealing itself by the effort of blocking the
shot, the owner of that AT Field appeared in the corner of the room,
and suddenly, Jon Ellison had the reason why he'd always felt a subtle
wrongness about Gendou Ikari's office.
Standing in the corner of the room was the brown-robed shape
of an Ethereal, a leader alien. It was no longer feeling the need to
conceal itself, and so Jon, and everyone else in the room, could
-feel- the wave of alien hatred that surged out from the creature,
directed at all of them. Jon cried out, feeling the alien's hate and
rage clawing at his mind, and fell to his knees, his hands clutching
at his head.
Undaunted, Ikari fired again, then again and again. His
repeated shots battered at the creature's AT Field, but could not
penetrate it, and he began to shake again as the Ethereal renewed its
psychic assault on his mind. Gritting his teeth, he brought his free
hand up to steady the pistol, maintaining his fire as the alien's
defensive field began to dim, then fracture. Blood began to trickle
from Ikari's nose as he stood up, took a shuffling step toward the
alien, then blasted it again.
This time the AT Field collapsed with a miniature version of
the usual shimmering, sparking effect, and the next shot bored into
the alien's robes and the frail body underneath, spattering the wall
behind the creature with faintly glowing purple goo. The Ethereal
screamed, then lashed out once more with its telepathic powers. DJ,
Asuka and Rei seemed unaffected, but Jon and Ikari flinched as if
struck. Jon took the worst of it, letting out another cry and then
collapsing to the floor; Ikari stumbled and fell, then dragged himself
back to his knees.
"Go... back... to Hell!" he grated, and sent his next shot
into the darkness of the Ethereal's hood.
With one last keening cry, the alien died, its massive,
powerful brain blown all over the wall behind it.
Jon Ellison got unsteadily back to his feet, holding his
ringing head and feeling as if he'd had his ears boxed. Rei gave him
a solicitous look, but he shook his head and turned his attention to
Ikari.
In slow-motion, Ikari dropped the plasma pistol, then sagged
and fell forward. Rei darted forward and caught him, slowly lowering
him to the floor as she sank to her knees.
"Rei," he said hoarsely. "I'm sorry... "
"Don't talk," Rei replied.
"No... " said Ikari feebly. "I need... forgive me... "
Rei took one of his hands, turned it over and touched the
burn scars on it with her fingertips.
"I forgive you," she said.
With something akin to a smile on his face, Gendou Ikari
slipped into unconsciousness.
Then the door crashed open, and the questions began.

The Central Dogma infirmary was a bustle of activity within
minutes, as Misato got onto the tactical emergency net and sent out an
all-call to the Medical Department personnel on duty, recalling them
to the facility from their homes. No explanation was given for the
sudden revocation of the Central Dogma lockdown carried out by Ikari
earlier in the evening, which suited most of the Medical personnel
fine. They figured the caprices of the Ops staff were none of their
business anyway, and they were safer just following orders.
One person who it did -not- suit fine was Ritsuko Akagi. She
had been annoyed at having her work interrupted in the first place
(since it meant that, with no work to distract herself with, she would
have to go home and have another deep blue funk), and was now doubly
annoyed that her funk had been interrupted to boot. She came into the
infirmary's emergency room with a good, solid head of steam built up,
ready, willing and able to go straight for Misato's figurative (and
possibly literal) throat.
Her opening rant, well-rehearsed in her car on the way to
Central Dogma, died unspoken as she came through the door and took
stock of the situation beyond it. Misato was there, in civilian dress
and looking somewhere between worried and angry. So was Lara Croft,
DJ's mother. DJ himself sat on the nearest of the ER gurneys, his
face marred by a bloodied lip and a vicious bruise spreading across
his left cheekbone, his arm around Asuka Soryu-Langley. Rei Ayanami
stood between the next two beds, each of which had an unconscious
person on it.
Here was the really startling part, to Ritsuko. The
unconscious persons on the beds were Jon Ellison and - most startling
of all - Gendou Ikari. There was nothing obviously wrong with them,
but both were out cold.
Ritsuko skidded to a stop, her angry comments flickering and
dying in her mind, and struggled for a few moments to put together
something to replace them. The loss of focus for her anger, and her
confusion over the tableau before her only served to contribute to her
inner turmoil. Finally, after a few seconds of mental fumbling, she
shook off her consternation enough to turn to Misato and ask,
"What in hell's going on here?!"

5:08 AM

In her Central Dogma office, a weary Misato Katsuragi rubbed
her eyes and stifled a yawn as a voice coming from a figure on her
viewscreen told her,
"Well, the good news is, we've cleared all the Mutons out of
the subbasements."
"All right, K, so where does that leave us?" she asked.
Ken Stanfield, still maddeningly immaculate in his black suit
despite the ridiculous hour, replied, "90% of the facility's under
control, and Kaji and the heavy weapons group should have the rest of
the big stuff by 0800. Screening the rest of the security personnel's
going to take the rest of the day."
"Great. Find any more Ethereals?"
"Not yet," said Stanfield. "Figure there's got to be at least
one more down here, though - Mutons are too stupid to work on their
own, and the one Ikari cacked would have had its hands full just
keeping him under control all the time. J's got a PK tracer and his
squad's fitted with dampers. We'll find it."
"Good enough," said Misato with a sigh. "Call me when you
do."
"Will do," said Stanfield, and signed off.
Misato looked up as the office door opened, admitting Otto
Keller.
"Morning," she said. "You've missed all the excitement."
"So I've been told," said Keller. "You seem to have
everything in hand."
"Bureaucracy and planning give me fits," said Misato, "but
crisis management I can handle."
"Good," Keller replied, "because it looks like we'll be doing
a lot of that."
Keller was interrupted by a bleeping noise. Misato punched a
couple of keys on the comset, raising a fuzzy image of Maya Ibuki.
"Maya, what's the word on the computers?"
"We've broken the feeds to Geneva, diked SHODAN out of the
network and put Hal back onto managing the Magi until we can make
certain SHODAN is trustworthy," Maya reported. "I'll need Dr. Akagi's
help to do that, though, once she's finished in Medical."
"Yeah... I wonder... " said Misato, chewing reflectively on
her thumbnail. Maya looked expectant, but Misato just shrugged.
"Forget it. I'll tell her you need her help when she reports in."
"Thank you, Major."
Misato broke the connection and turned back to Keller.
"Sorry, you were saying?"
"I've just been online with X-COM Central Command," Keller
told Misato. "General Koniev agrees with me that the presence of
alien dominators in the NERV command staff, at the NERV-SEELE
interface level, clearly demonstrates that SEELE is unfit to continue
as the controlling body of an organization as important as NERV."
"Meaning... ?"
"Meaning that X-COM is taking NERV back, effective
immediately. This facility and all other NERV facilities around the
world are now exempt from any and all SEELE-originated directives. It
also seems obvious that a new NERV Supreme Commander needs to be
appointed to replace Professor Ikari - even with his controller
destroyed, he's obviously incapacitated."
"Well, that'd be you," said Misato. "And good luck to you. I
think you're going to need it, to have any hope of putting -this- mess
back together."
"Not me," said Keller. "My X-COM commission has been
reactivated - I'm to serve as the new command liaison, helping to
coordinate NERV's activities with those of X-COM proper."
"Then who... ?"
Keller cracked a faint grin, came to full attention, snapped
his heels smartly together, and saluted. "Congratulation, Brigadier
Katsuragi," he said.
Misato jumped to her feet. "WHAT?! Otto, that's a
THREE-GRADE JUMP, in case your math skills have failed you! There's
no WAY I'm senior enough to take over the whole friggin' show!"
"Needs must at times like these," replied Keller. "Ikari's
out of the picture, I've been reactivated on the X-COM end, and you're
next in line."
"What about Ritsuko?"
"Dr. Akagi isn't Operations personnel, she never has been,"
said Keller. "She hasn't got the administrative background or the
military training to head up the whole organization."
Misato fumed. "Goddamn it, Otto, what're you guys smoking? I
can't even keep my apartment clean without help from my housemates."
Keller's grin widened a little. "Face it, Katsuragi, you're
stuck. You're the best person for the job, despite your posturing to
the contrary. You might have some trouble keeping your personal life
in order, but in case you haven't noticed, you're the one who's really
kept this place running for the last three months -anyway-."
Misato was about to protest further, until she looked down at
the piles of requisitions, operations notices, and personnel files on
her desk and realized that Keller was right. As Ikari had withdrawn
further and further into his own little dreamworld over the past few
months, Misato -had- taken more and more of the responsibility for
NERV's running onto herself. It had been a way of escaping from the
confusing, painful turmoil her private life had become. She'd always
been a good field commander, with solid instincts and good leadership
abilities. Somewhere in the middle of it, while she hadn't been
paying attention, she'd become a good administrator, too.
Beaten, Misato let her shoulders slump.
"Will the 80% pay increase that comes along with that
three-grade promotion help your outlook any?" wondered Keller.
Misato looked up at him and gave him a tired grin. "Only if I
live long enough to enjoy it," she replied. Her comset bleeped
again. She punched the answer key. "Katsuragi, go."
"It's Ritsuko," said the set's speaker. The screen flickered
to a red malfunction-report pattern, the words 'CAMERA MALFUNCTION'
prominent in the center.
"Go ahead, Ritsuko. What's the matter with your comset? I
get no picture."
"I don't know, I'm not a video tech," replied Ritsuko
irritably. "Do you want my medical report or not?"
"Sure, go ahead," replied Misato. "(Bite my head off, why
don't you?)" she muttered under her breath, so the comset's pickup
wouldn't carry it.
"Dr. Ikari's suffered what amounts to a fairly severe neural
disruption - similar to what happened to DJ his first time out, when
he got into a feedback loop with EVA-01's external camera feed.
There's no permanent physical damage, so he should recover and regain
consciousness within a day or two, but God only knows what his mental
and emotional state will be like. He could be fine, or hopelessly
insane. We're just going to have to wait and see. For now I've
had him placed in a private room and monitored."
"Check," said Misato. "What about Jon? What happened to
him?"
"From what I've been able to dope out of X-COM's files on
Ethereals, it seems as if the one Dr. Ikari shot tried to place Jon
under psionic control as it was dying. Either it was too weak or he's
had training in resisting that kind of attack, because it didn't take,
but it left a residual shock effect. Similar things have been
documented by X-COM's medical department in the Ethereal file - it
seems to be the same principle that neural stunners work on. He'll be
fine - he regained consciousness about an hour ago and, except for a
slight headache, he's asymptomatic. I want to keep him here until
this afternoon for observation, but he should be fine."
"Great, that's a relief," said Misato. "And the others?"
"Some of the security officers were wounded by enemy fire, but
nothing severe. Infirmary personnel are handling them now. DJ's been
on the receiving end of a minor beating. Other than that everyone's
fine. Except for Jon, I've sent all the Children home to rest."
"OK, thanks. Maya could use your help over in the computer
center when you're free down there - she needs to make sure SHODAN's
completely trustworthy before we put her back in charge of the
important stuff."
"All right... I'll get over there as soon as I can."
Misato was about to go on and ask Ritsuko how she was dealing
with the bizarre shifts of fortune that had happened over the last few
hours, but the connection had already been broken. Slightly miffed,
she glared at the screen for a couple of moments, then went back to
discussing the incipient administrative headaches of splitting NERV
away from SEELE with Keller.

8:17 AM

Misato looked up from the first draft of an explanatory memo
to all remaining personnel at the sound of the comset's bleep, then
blinked in surprise at the timestamp. Where had the last three hours
gone?
Then, shaking her head to clear away the disorientation, she
punched the answer key. "Katsuragi."
"It's Lara," said the explorer. She looked considerably more
disheveled than Stanfield: her hair was starting to come out of its
braid, her shirt and face were dirty and sweaty, and she had the
barrel of a laser rifle resting across her shoulders.
"Go ahead," said Misato.
"We've got trouble," said Lara.
"What kind of trouble?"
"We just cleared the cryo-storage level. DJ said when he was
down here, the ones in Cryo Storage 01 were in use, yes?"
"All but one, yeah," said Misato.
"Well, then somebody's pulled something, 'cause they're sure
as hell not in use now."
Misato leaned closer to the screen. "Are you putting me on,
Lara? 'Cause it's not funny."
Lara tipped her shades down and gave Misato a wry, if somewhat
bloodshot, look. "Do I look like I'm putting you on? Every freeze
chamber down here is empty. We've checked them all."
"Damn. Well, there's nothing we can do about it now.
Continue your sweep and let me know when the entire facility is
secure."
Lara nodded. "By the way - did you send Ellison down
here?"
"Jon? No, I think he's still asleep in the infirmary, why?"
Lara frowned. "Huh. I could've sworn I saw him back in
Section 129, figured you'd sent him down to help with the sweep.
Must've been somebody else. My eyes playing tricks."
"Well, maybe if you didn't wear your sunglasses inside," said
Misato, smiling.
"You can use one of these without shades if you want," said
Lara, hefting the laser rifle off her shoulder and back to the ready.
"I want to be able to see when I'm sixty. Catch you later. Must get
back to work if we want to finish this sweep in time for breakfast."
"OK, go to it. Katsuragi out."
Misato sat back in her chair and scowled. What in the hell
would anybody want with a short dozen copies of Rei?

11:43 AM

John Trussell rubbed at eyes that felt as if someone had
thrown sand in them, not that this action did anything to improve the
situation, and checked the monitors arrayed around him. The console
directly in front of him showed SHODAN's top-level diagnostic
progress, which was so complicated and took so long that the display
did not so much change visibly as evolve over time. To its left was
the status screen for the full emergency network-invasion lockdown
he and Maya had performed immediately upon being rousted from bed and
dragged back into the office at 4:30. To its right was the screen on
which he was compiling the tools the Magi would need to communicate
securely with the triumvirate of HAL 9000 computers at X-COM Halifax -
until that was set up, no data transmissions could leave Worcester-3
with any degree of safety against SEELE interception.
Behind him, on the work table in the middle of the room, a
Craybook 446MP, connected to the NERV internal network by a thick
Ethernet cable cobbled directly into an open access panel on the wall,
chuntered busily away with the latest build of Jet Alone's operational
image.
When Truss had become project head of the Jet Alone Adaptation
Initiative, he'd been faced with a choice of Herculean labors:
1) Decipher the cryptic, almost universally uncommented,
sparsely and sloppily documented, original AG Systems-created
operating kernel code. This was essentially a mutant version of AGOS
System VI UNIX. To make things more interesting it included various
and sundry completely incomprehensible bits provided by the military
in ADA, translated to something resembling BIXLOR by AG's programmers,
and then jammed into the main code base with the programming
equivalent of baling wire and spit.
2) Throw it all away, twist the appropriate arms to get the
hardware spec from AG, build a simulation of that hardware on a
suitably powerful computer, and then code for it on the bare metal.
Task 2 was probably, technically, a little bit harder, but it
had the advantage that Truss would know EXACTLY what the new Jet
Alone operating code could and could not be made to do, and how it
could and could not be made to do so, without any nasty surprises
lurking in the shadows. That, therefore, was the option he'd gone
with.
The code cooking on the Craybook was the first stab at an
actual runtime image for JA. It was primitive. All it was really set
up to do was handle the simplest, lowest-level tasks of running the
robot: reactor management, gross motor skills, sensor/databus
interface. An autonomic nervous system for a 500-ton mechanical baby.
If it worked, Truss could expand upon it over time, evolving in more
complex movements, fine motor skills, weapons management, targeting
and tracking... the spec list alone was twenty pages long.
He didn't really need to be working on JAAI right now, but
something told Truss that, whatever the hell had happened here today
(because no one had yet found the time to tell him exactly what it
was), alternative modes of defense were going to get much
higher-priority very soon. He might as well beat it to the crunch, if
he could.
He looked across the room at Maya. Despite the fact that she
didn't understand anything of what was happening to NERV, she kept
working, doing her best to do her duty, even when it was less than
clear what that duty was or to whom it lay. She hadn't been brought
into the counter-conspiracy; at the first meeting they'd decided that
she would be safer out of it. That suited Truss fine. He'd have been
safer out of it, too, but he'd been thrown into it accidentally by
being the one on the spot for the Jet Alone findings.
Now, though, he felt she should be brought into the loop. He
resolved to run it by Misato the next time they spoke.
Of course, that was contingent on Misato bringing HIM the rest
of the way into the loop, telling him what the hell had happened in
the preceding couple of hours. All he knew was that first Professor
Ikari had ordered Central Dogma cleared and locked down, then Misato
was calling everybody back in on an emergency order and declaring a
complete break with SEELE, details to follow.
As if summoned by Truss's thoughts, electronic mail arrived
for all NERV personnel. It came from Misato - Brig. Gen. M.
Katsuragi?! - and directed all personnel to report to the decorative
plaza in front of the Dogma pyramid, the only area large enough to
hold them all assembled, at 0900 the following day for a complete
situational briefing, and thanking all in advance for their patience
and the continued observation of their duties until then.
Well.
As a member of the counter-conspiracy itself, Truss wanted to
know a little sooner than that. Checking that all his compiles were
complete, he went to see Misato about it.

12:20 PM

"... Which brings us to, well, now," Misato concluded.
Maya sat back in her chair and tried to digest all that she'd
just been told.
Then, slowly, she turned to look at Truss.
"You never told me," she said.
Truss spread his hands. "I didn't want to put you at risk."
"I'm an adult," Maya replied stiffly. "I can handle a little
risk. Was that really the reason, or was it something else? Were you
afraid I'd tell Dr. Akagi, and from her it would get back to Commander
Ikari?"
Truss's shoulders slumped. "Look, Maya - I didn't want to be
involved myself, I just didn't have a choice."
"I was involved, too, John, or have you forgotten? I was
there in Maine too. I should have been told about the tampering with
Jet Alone, if nothing else."
"If you want to be angry at somebody," Misato interrupted her,
"be angry at me, not John. He suggested bringing you in at the first
meeting. I'm the one who decided we shouldn't."
"Because you were worried about my loyalty?" said Maya
pointedly, scowling at the other woman.
"Partly," said Misato bluntly. "I know Ritsuko is your
mentor, and Ikari is hers. But it wasn't a question of trust - I just
didn't want to put you in a situation where your loyalties would be
divided. I didn't see a point in putting somebody else through that
kind of stress if I didn't have to. You think acknowledging Ikari's
criminal behavior and deciding to investigate him for possible
prosecution was easy for me, for any of us? The man's been the
guiding light of this project, and whatever we may think of him
personally, however suspect his motivations may be now, he -has- done
a lot of good work."
Maya nodded slowly. "I... I see your point."
"If I had any question in my mind about your loyalty -now-,"
Misato went on, "I'd have Jim Edwards in here with a psi probe making
sure you're not under the same kind of control Ikari was, or you'd be
locked up in the basement with about a quarter of the Security force."
Maya considered this for a moment. "All right... so... now
what?"
"Now, well, I won't lie to you - things are going to get
pretty sticky. We still don't know what the real truth is behind the
Angels' attacks and NERV's purpose in fighting them, although I think
it's pretty safe to say that the story SEELE gave us when we started
isn't it. We might have to deal with more Angel attacks, and we're
certainly going to have to deal with the backlash from breaking away
from SEELE. They're not going to take this little rebellion of ours
lying down. It could be very dangerous for anybody associated with
the breakaway effort.
"If you want out, I'll see what I can do to arrange you safe
passage away from here. You can go back to... " It occurred to
Misato that she had no idea where Maya was originally from.
"... You can go wherever you think you'll be safe," she amended the
statement. "If you want to stay, then we keep on doing what we've
always done."
Maya got up and paced away from Misato's desk, as far as she
could go in the somewhat limiting confines of the small office, her
face pensive. She turned and gave Truss a searching look, then turned
her dark eyes back to Misato.
"All right," she said. "I'm in."
Misato smiled. "Thank God," she said with feeling. "For a
minute there I thought I was going to lose one of the three most
important people -in- this rat pack."
Maya grinned. "Maybe you'll pay me more now that you've
realized that," she said.
Misato shrugged with a sigh. "I'm not even sure I'll be able
to pay you, period," she replied.
Maya smiled, a little wistfully, and said, "Oh well... it was
a nice thought. Anyway, now what?"
"Now we keep doing what we've been doing all along," said
Misato. "I need you to keep tightening up the network, plug all the
holes SEELE might sneak in through, and firm up our datacomm links to
X-COM. We need to be able to share everything we've got with them
without our -old- boss eavesdropping."
"That should be done by evening," Maya replied.
"Good. After that we have to start rebuilding our defensive
situation. We've got one EVA destroyed and another out of commission,
and a pilot who's about to come off the DL and needs reacclimation. I
want you to start running harmonics tests with Asuka in Unit 03 as
soon as you think she's ready, get her back into the swing of things
as gently as you can. Test DJ too, while you're at it. It'll
probably be a while before Ritsuko's group can get EVA-01 replated,
and who knows when she'll decide we dare try to fire the thing up
again. I'm putting in a request for at least one more
production-model EVA from X-COM, but that's contingent on Westinghouse
being able to meet contract without interference from SEELE."
At Maya's nod, Misato turned to Truss. "And -you- I need
focused on the Jet Alone Adaptation Initiative. We're two EVAs short
of a full-power squad, and God knows what the other side's going to
try and throw at us."
Truss gave a tired smile. "I figured that'd come up," he
said. "I've got a few things started already. I'll let you know when
I've made it to the ready-to-test stage."
"Fine. Anything else you two need?"
Truss looked at Maya, who shrugged.
"All right, then. I really appreciate your willingness to
stay on - I'm going to need all the help I can get to sort this mess
out." Misato grinned. "Get back to work!"
The two tech saluted and departed, and Misato watched them go
with a smile. Then she punched a key on her comset and hailed one of
the MIB security teams.
"Hey, Kaji, how are things in the sub-subbasements?" she
asked.
"I was just about to call you," Kaji replied. "We're clear."
Ticking off the points on his fingers as he talked, he went on, "J's
team accounted for three Ethereals, which is the Enemy's standard
leader pack for a thirty-Muton company, which is our current tally.
We've swept the maintenance spaces and engineering plant three times
and stationed guards at every major junction point."
"How's morale?"
"Pretty good, if you consider the shit's closing in and
everybody here's got front-row seats by the fan," said Kaji. He
paused to light a cigarette, then went on, "How about upstairs?"
"About the same. It's pretty weird."
"I guess they know they're in good hands," Kaji said.
"Or they're waiting for the other shoe to drop," said Misato
wryly.

5:45 PM

By that afternoon, the day had become unseasonably warm - that
is to say, just above freezing, and with clouds threatening sleet and
freezing rain. Heading home from the Geo-Front, Jon Ellison found
himself constantly checking his surroundings for anything which even
looked like it might be out of the ordinary. Having studied the Enemy
for years at Alcatraz, Jon's knowledge of their tactics was second
only to those who had actually fought them, war veterans like Keller
and Stanfield. This, at least, was a crisis he had some idea how to
deal with.
He glanced down at the black case sitting in the Avenger's
passenger seat. After clearing the SEELE security forces and their
alien enforcers from the Dogma complex, the MIB had allowed for rapid
distribution of the captured store of advanced weapons to all who had
X-COM weapons training. What few heavier plasma guns and clips Fort
Devens and Alcatraz could spare would soon be shipped over, along with
a cache of surplus laser weaponry for the rest of the NERV personnel
authorized to carry firearms.
Jon found himself mulling the subject of advanced weaponry
over as he parked his car on Lee Street.
<<You're pretty good with guns.>>
He had just shut off the engine when the voice crawled
into his head, bringing with it that strange musical feeling.
But this was neither Rei nor Moloch, and this music did not seem
particularly pleasant, for that matter. He'd felt strange ever since
that alien's psychic death shriek, but then, he supposed that was the
kind of thing you didn't shrug off right away. He hoped the feeling
faded soon, though - he was distinctly not enjoying it.
<<You should go use that gun right now.>>
He shook his head. Where had that thought come from?
Plasma ammunition couldn't be used lightly.
<<No, you fool. The angel. You like killing angels,
don't you?>>
Suddenly he felt as if something was crawling up his spine,
forcing its way into his head. A psionic attack? Reflexively he
called to mind all the psi-defense tricks the Alcatraz spooks had
taught him, though they had done him little good against the sudden
and ferocious attack of the dying Ethereal. But the presence paid
them no mind and pushed the rest of the way through. It was dark, and
evil, and frighteningly familiar...
<<The -angel-? Remember your -job-? Don't you have
someone you need to -KILL-??>>
...it was him.
He uncoiled from the ball he'd almost curled up into, calm
once more. Turning to the case, he worked the locks on the front
and they popped open. He raised the lid and lifted the pistol out
of its padding, activating its power cell with the touch of a
button, then extracted one of the two Elerium clips also contained
in the case and slapped it into the gun. A moment later a green
LED flashed and a short beep signaled that the gun was online.
Good.
Hiding the weapon in his jacket, he got out of the car and
made for the apartment, moving with a purposeful, deadly stride.
The dog took one look at him as he let himself in and let
out a low growl, its fur standing on end. He glared at it for a
moment, but it didn't back down, and when he took a step closer to
the room, it went for his leg. Annoyed, he snatched it cruelly by
the scruff of its neck and hauled it up to eye level, all eight of
his pupils widening as he gazed deep into its eyes. The dog
whimpered pitifully, and then went limp. He dropped the animal
on the couch, giving it no further thought; he could have killed it,
but it would have been a waste of energy he might need.
Reilael was a tough angel.
He had to be a tougher demon.

Ritsuko Akagi finished the last of her tests and concluded
that, as she had suspected all along, SHODAN was free of outside
alterations and influences. No one really understood the way the
computer worked any more, anyway - only Dr. Chandra and Ritsuko's late
mother had been privy to the innermost secrets of some of the changes
they'd wreaked on the hardware of what had once been a vanilla SAL
9000. Neither had been good at writing things down. Without a full
understanding of the way the hardware worked, a change such as Misato
had been worried about would be quite impossible.
She keyed the comset next to the SHODAN console. "Maya," she
said.
"Ibuki here," said Maya's voice.
"I just finished my sweep," said Ritsuko. "SHODAN is clean.
Can you handle things on your end from here?"
"Sure. Are you all right, Professor? You sound sick."
Ritsuko smiled wryly, although Maya couldn't see her with the
comset's camera disabled. "No, I'm not sick, Maya. Just..." She
paused, searching for a word that would describe how she really felt.
Finally she added, "...tired. I'm just very tired."
Ritsuko Akagi switched off her comset, looked down at SHODAN's
console, and let herself sink back into the state of shock she'd been
drifting in and out of all day.
Dr. Ikari, one of the Enemy? Ritsuko couldn't believe it, not
like she really wanted to. She had dedicated her life to working for
the goal, -his- goal. All of her hopes, dreams, and desires
subjugated to the overriding mission. All she had in her life was her
work. And her work had been whatever Ikari had said it was.
Working for the Enemy.

/* Rush "The Weapon" _Signals_ */

All of the things she'd forced herself to do. So many things
she found distasteful, but necessary for the mission. How many people
had she hurt? How many had she -killed- through her actions, or
inaction?
It had been enough of a shock to find that Kaji was one of
them, alien. But that was different. She hadn't devoted her life to
him. Hadn't even really known him all that well... after all, he was
Misato's boyfriend, not hers...
Kaji.
Seeing him again today. Real. Alive. How do you forget the
things you remember? What he'd done to her. The rage and pain she'd
felt and hidden because of him.
Only...
It was -not- him. She knew that what had happened to her
hadn't been done by this Kaji, the -real- Kaji. But she still -felt-
the pain. She still -felt- the rage whenever she looked at him. How
could she ever learn to separate he memories from reality? How could
she deal with seeing Kaji again? How, when seeing him triggered such
primitive feelings? How, when thinking about him made her relive that
night? This, on top of everything else, just seemed like too much.
Tears began to flow as the images flooded her mind.
Kaji's panting face grinning down at her.
["Not so bad, now, is it?"]
Rei, battered and bloodied in the infirmary, her face blank
and uncomplaining.
["... I understand."]
DJ forced out on his first mission.
["You and your spook brigade don't control the whole bloody
world!"]
Asuka, nearly crushed to death on Ikari's orders.
["Control, what's happen- "]
Jon, boiled in his plug on his second mission.
["Control, I'm locked down!!"]
DJ absorbed by his EVA.
["My God! It's full of stars!"]
The countless times they'd risked the children in tests and on
missions. The way she drove John and Maya. Maya especially, as she
tried to mold the young engineer into her own image. The cold
treatment she'd given them all; DJ in particular she'd treated badly.
"My God, what have I done?" she mumbled between sobs.
And Misato, her old friend. How badly had she treated her?
Misato had never let the mission crush her humanity, her compassion.
She'd been right all along. And instead of acknowledging that,
Ritsuko had avoided her, and cooled their friendship. Since their
fight over Misato's night with DJ they'd barely even seen each other.
She'd thrown away the one true friend she'd ever had; all because she
couldn't understand love.
They must all think me a monster, she thought to herself.
She'd been able to bite back the pain and frustration by
justifying it to herself as necessary. Able to override her
reservations and distaste for the way Ikari had treated others. To
hold back the tears and sympathy as a way to stay the course. She had
skillfully fought off her own humanity for so long, all in the name of
The Cause. The ends could justify the means, when it was for the
greater good.
All for nothing; worse than nothing, all for the wrong
reasons. Was this how her mother had felt when her one simple
programming error made HAL 9000 #3 murder the Discovery astronauts?
It was at that moment that she reached a fateful decision.
She felt the foundation to everything she had done in the last
fifteen years falling away, leaving her with nowhere to turn back.
She spoke quietly to herself. "There's no way I could face
them all again. Not now, not knowing what I've done."
With a new conviction she wiped the tears from her cheeks and
calmly left her office. She stopped briefly at the infirmary to pick
up a few things, before continuing home.

The door to Rei's room opened silently, and Jon peered into
the room, his sensitive four-fovea eyes taking in every detail as if
it were broad daylight as opposed to gathering dusk. She was there,
asleep and fragile in appearance, though appearances were deceiving.
<<She is merely a shadow of her former self. Destroy what's
left, before she regains any more of her power.>>
Yes.
He thumbed the safety off, and the gun whined faintly as the
Elerium fed into the power chamber and energized the plasma coil.
Taking a firm grip on the pistol, he leveled it at her head. At this
range, he would not miss.
But his hand refused to squeeze the trigger. Grumbling,
he tried all the harder to fire the gun.
...why am i doing this??
(a frightened voice which was supposed to have been destroyed
began clawing its way back up from the abyss he'd tried to drive it
into)
<<Shut up, you idiot.>>
(he snapped to himself)
no! this is wrong! what am i DOING??
<<I said -SHUT UP-!>>
It was only just now that he realized her eyes were open, and
staring right back into his own. She did not look confused, or
frightened. Only very, very angry, increasingly so with each second
passed.
<<Damn you! Kill her before she kills you!!>>
but i--
<<*KILL*!!>>
He was visibly twitching now as the two voices clawed at each
other, the deeply dissonant music exploding inside his brain. The gun
began to shake in his hands.
i... i... stop it please stop <<Shut up! Kill her!>> i love
her <<KILL HER!>> NO!!
And in a flash, Rei was moving, both her hands locked firmly
around the gun as she leapt out of the bed, trying to wrestle the
weapon away from Jon. Instincts welled up from the abyss as the
darker voices seized control of him once again and tried to draw the
lifeforce out of Rei. She winced at the attack, but held her ground,
and at the corners of Jon's cold eyes, she could see the building
moisture. Her own anger crystallized, and she reared back a fist and
smacked Jon hard across the jaw, sending him sprawling. The pistol
went off, spitting out a ball of superheated green death which ripped
through the wall and sent pieces of plaster cascading down from the
ceiling.

DJ sat bolt upright in bed, then blinked, coming fully awake
and not quite sure what had awakened him.
"What... ?" he muttered.
"DJ," said Hal, "I have monitored a high-energy event in
Apartment 3-F. It was outside the field of view of any of my cameras,
but I believe it was a plasma weapon discharge."
"What?! Christ almighty!" said DJ. The noise came again, and
this time DJ heard it clearly. He scrambled out of bed, pulling on
shorts and t-shirt as he crashed out into the hallway. Asuka was
emerging from her room as well, looking similarly confused.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"I wish to Christ I knew!" replied DJ. "Hal, call Misato,
call everybody! Asuka, wait for Misato to get here, I'm going to try
and find out what the hell's happening."
"Be careful," Asuka shouted after him, knowing full well that
he would do no such thing. Cursing, she went back into her room to
get dressed.
He went to the door that divided Apartment 3-D from 3-F, tried
it, and found it locked. It was a sliding door, and as such would
probably be impossible to kick open with a single blow. The last
thing he wanted to do was get drilled through the wall as he tried to
batter open the damned door.
So instead he went out into the hallway and tried -that- door,
which, as it turned out, Jon had left ajar anyway. He found Rei in
the kitchen, having overturned the kitchen table in the doorway as a
sort of makeshift cover.
"Rei, what the hell's going on?" DJ demanded.
"I don't know," replied Rei. "Jon's trying to kill me."
DJ crouched down behind the counter, then peeked over it into
the living room. A fusillade of plasma fire sailed over his head,
burning a line of holes in the wall behind him.
"Christ!" DJ declared as he ducked back down. "He's
completely off his head."
"Or they've done something to his mind."
He and Rei shared a look filled with dread, then chanced
another look over the counter at Jon.
The darkness in Jon's eyes had made him look unnerving to Rei
before. Now, in this half-insane rage, he'd graduated to downright
frightening. The alien nature of his eyes was quite obvious, but what
was more disturbing were the changes to the rest of him. His
fingernails had thickened and blackened; the same had happened to his
teeth, especially the canines. His skin had darkened too, taking on
an unnatural brick-like ruddiness.
None of it daunted DJ. He'd arrived angry to begin with, but
the plasma bolt that had nearly clipped him had transmuted that anger
into a towering rage. Throwing aside his jacket, he waited until Jon
had exhausted his weapon's power pack and stripped it out for
reloading. Then, with a snarl, he vaulted the overturned kitchen
table and made for Jon at a dead run.
Jon slapped the new power pack into the butt of the plasma
pistol, yanked the priming lever, and took aim, but DJ was already
upon him. DJ sank low, a plasma bolt burning harmlessly through the
air over him, pushed off with his legs and drove his shoulder into Jon
at belt level. The impact crushed the breath from the taller boy with
a loud sound and knocked the plasma pistol from his hand; the two
tumbled through the doorway into the living room.
As they sprang to their feet, Jon lashed out with a hand bent
into a claw, his talon-like fingernails ripping four crimson-edged
parallel tracks across DJ's shirt. DJ ignored the sudden lash of pain
and stepped inside his taller opponent's optimum reach, remembering
the smattering of boxing training he'd had, driving home body blows as
fast as he could muster them - working Jon's torso like the heavy
bag. Jon stumbled back, disoriented by this approach, and then his
wits seemed to return as he dealt DJ a powerful blow to the jaw with
his elbow. It was DJ's turn to stagger, and Jon pressed his
advantage, raking his opponent's abdomen and then going for his
throat.
DJ slipped inside the throat strike, feeling Jon's nails clip
his shoulder, and threw his hardest left into Jon's face. Jon snarled
ferally, seized DJ by the shoulders and hurled him across the room -
where, fortunately, he collided with the sofa, overturning it but
saving himself the more painful trouble of crashing into the wall.
Jon sprang atop the overturned sofa and looked over the other
side, to be met not by the sight of a broken opponent, but by that
opponent's uprising fist, as DJ sprang to his feet and drove the
uppercut with his whole strength. Taking the blow right on the point
of his chin, Jon was thrown backward off the couch, to crash down next
to the coffee table (though luckily not ON it). DJ rounded the couch,
winded and bloodied but unbowed, but Jon was on his feet by the time
he arrived on the scene, and the battle continued. Within a minute,
practically everything else not nailed down had been knocked over,
leaving the place in sorry shape. The combatants weren't much better
off, Jon bruised and battered from the hits DJ had scored, DJ's arms
and chest raked by cuts from Jon's sharpened nails, neither one
willing or able to back down.
Then the decision was made for them, as Rei stepped into the
doorway between the two apartments, the flinty glare in her red eyes
speaking nothing but controlled rage. Her gaze encompassed both the
fighting boys as her lips pulled back from her teeth and she spoke a
single word:
"Enough."
DJ suddenly felt as if the very air in the room had somehow
become a great invisible bell, and that Rei's voice had rung that
bell. He stumbled, raising his arms to protect his face, as every
glass object in the room exploded amid a great, terrible, wonderful
sound he could never consciously classify. Consciousness winked out
as the sound of Rei's anger crashed into his brain, and he crumpled to
the floor.
Jon, too, was knocked from his feet, but unlike DJ he quickly
rose. There was a definite glow in his eyes now, and a sound that was
not quite human screeched out of his throat as he lurched clumsily
toward Rei, fingers clawed into an instinctive strangulation posture.
Ken Stanfield lunged around the corner from the kitchen, his
own plasma pistol rising from Ready to the Fire position, knowing
already that he would be too late, that his shot would merely avenge
the girl's death.
Calmly, Rei took a step backward, and suddenly Jon crashed
into nothing a foot short of her, his hurtling body crumpling and
flattening as though he had plowed into an invisible stone wall. For
a heartbeat, a faint pattern of hexagonal shockwaves rippled across
that invisible wall from his point of impact, but no one in the room
was in a position to notice or appreciate it.
No one but Stanfield, whose expression changed from rage and
horror to frank amazement behind his shades.
Stunned by the impact, Jon stumbled back, tripped over the
wreckage of the coffee table, fell again, into the pile of glass left
behind by its destruction. Everyone winced at the shriek which
erupted from his throat as the razor-sharp shards bit into his back.
Rising, hunched and panting, Jon surveyed the forces arrayed
against him with the furtive desperation of a cornered animal.
Everyone was arriving now. Edwards joined Stanfield, his deceptively
tiny concussion blaster at the ready. Misato entered through the
connecting doorway, following Rei's path, her blaster ready in her
hands; Kaji followed, bearing Misato's old SIG. As DJ got to his
feet, still groggy, Jon noted that even Asuka had arrived, hobbling
into the room after Edwards, determination showing through the pain
and shock on her face and DJ's left-behind .45 in her hand.
His quick scan came back to Rei, whose eyes still shone with
rage - but under that rage there was a terrible, terrible sadness that
flashed out for the barest of instants.
And suddenly, the mindless hatred that echoed in Jon Ellison's
mind was replaced by a deafening shame. With an inarticulate scream,
he turned away from that accusing glare and took the only exit he
could, leaping into space through the opening where the window had
been and plunging the three stories to the street below.
With various exclamations of surprise, those he left behind
crowded into the window - to see him, unhurt, running away, across
Park Avenue.
"I can stop him," said Edwards, rausing his weapon. "At this
range the blast will just knock him - "
"Let him go," said Rei softly.
"What?! But he needs--"
"He needs to be alone," Rei interrupted, her voice less angry
and more pained now. The anger was still in her eyes, though. Anger
not at Jon but at the thing which had been planted in his mind, which
had turned him into the worst possible Judas, and at the people who
had put it there.
DJ could relate. So could his friends. He shared a look with
Asuka, and their blue eyes carried the same message:
Somebody will pay dearly for this.

Jon wasn't looking where he was going. He didn't know where
he was going, either; he was just running now, running blindly,
mechanically, following some incoherent need to 'get away', even as
another part of him wanted -- needed -- to be in the place he'd just
fled from.
The more he ran, the more the darkness receded, and the more
he realized just how wrong, how terribly wrong, he had been about
everything. The pain from the glass was gone, and the cuts in his
body were healing, but he didn't know if the huge gash rent in his
soul could be fixed so easily.
Mindlessly, driven by some irrational need to be nearer the
crying sky, he ran across Main Street, to the accompaniment of a
chorus of irate motorists' horns, and into the first tall building he
saw, the gleaming glass spire of the AT&T Tower. Ignoring the
startled looks of the executives and telecom workers he passed, Jon
charged into a secondary stairwell and began climbing, driven by panic
and some unearthly drive within him. By the twentieth floor his heart
was pounding and his lungs burned, but he was young, healthy, and, as
recent events had demonstrated amply, not entirely normal, even if his
appearance had reverted back to what it had been before.
When he ran out of stairs fifty-two floors later, Jon crashed
through the panic-barred door and found himself on the roof. Before
him was the spindly steel shape of one of AT&T's northeast-region
wide-band transmission antennae - three of them spiked up from the
roof of the building, arranged at the points of a triangle around the
great dish of the building's satellite transciever. Without pausing,
Jon vaulted the railing around the antenna's base and mounted the
access ladder.
Three-quarters of the way up the antenna, the ladder ended at
a six-foot by three-foot steel-grill platform - a place for a
technician to stand and rest his toolbox while he worked on the
transmitter equipment housed here. Here, at last, Jon ran out of
places to go. Fatigue was finally overwhelming him, and anyway, the
steelwork of the antenna tower was too wide open to climb.
Gasping for air, he crumpled to his knees at one end of the
platform, his hands gripping the railing above his head. For several
minutes, he knelt, head down, chest heaving, mind racing, as the rain
and wind lashed at him.
The conclusion was inescapable, and as soon as he regained
breath enough to do it, Jon Ellison threw back his head and wailed
into the cold winter rain, a wordless sound of rage and desperation at
a universe that had played the cruel joke of making him everything
he'd been trained from birth to hate.
At the other end of the platform, another young man stood.
Jon had failed to notice him when arriving on the platform, for the
simple reason that he wasn't there at the time. As Jon's howl trailed
away into silence (except for the hollow moan of the wind and the
hissing slash of the rain), the other spoke, a single word, in a voice
that carried despite its quiet tone amid the background noise.
"Jon."
Startled, Ellison rose to a half-crouch and turned, his feet
slipping on the metal and dropping him to a sitting position. For a
moment his heart pounded with panic again, and as Jon recognized the
person he shared the platform with, the reaction did not fade.
Kevin Nelson stood impassively at the other end of the service
platform, wearing the black suit of his school uniform despite the
closure of the school months before, his hands in the pockets of a
black raincoat whose tails flapped behind him in the cold wind. He
was hatless, his dark hair plastered to his head by the rain.
As Jon tried uselessly to form words, Kevin seemed to weigh
something in his head. Then he spoke quietly: "You've worked out what
you are, I see. Now the question becomes: What are you going to do
about it?"
Had he been in a more stable frame of mind Jon might have
wondered how Kevin knew what he knew (let alone how he'd come to be
way the hell up here waiting for Jon). As it was, he was simply too
aggrieved to be concerned and just skipped to the question at the
last. "... i don't know. i don't know anymore."
"You'll never get anywhere until you deal with that nasty
little monster they've buried in your mind," Kevin replied gravely.
"I can help you, if you want, but you'll have to trust me -- a hard
thing to ask of a man who can't trust himself."
Finally it did dawn on Jon that Kevin suddenly seemed to have
become quite knowledgeable about his personal situation. For the
first time he actually looked at the boy, and noticed that he suddenly
seemed different, not physically, but in the way he looked at Jon.
"What do you want? Who are you?"
"I've been asking myself those questions for millennia," Kevin
responded, that faint smile on his face. "I think I'm pretty close to
working out the answers. Like you, I am not what I seem."
Kevin closed his eyes, still smiling, and as he did, he
changed. His dark hair faded, bleaching first to sandy blond, then
gray, then silver. The pinkish tint washed out of his skin, turning
it to a white so pure the collar of his dress shirt seemed gray by
comparison. He seemed suffused with light and contentment, such that
Jon felt a momentary surge of envy, almost buried in a wave of
unreasoning hate. As Kevin changed, so Jon felt himself changing, but
where Kevin was becoming strangely - familiarly - peaceful and white,
Jon gathered darkness, his skin becoming dusky, his nails blackening
and lengthening.
Then, still smiling, Kevin opened his eyes, and when he saw
them Jon was so shocked he reverted to humanity - for Kevin Nelson's
eyes had changed from brown to a clear, glittering red.
"My Father," said Kevin wryly, "named me Tabris... but if you
want to go on calling me Kevin, feel free. I've grown used to the
name."
"...Tabris..." It took a minute for the name to sink in.
When it did Jon's eyes grew wider, and the darkness began clawing at
his spine again. "You're an angel," he continued, fighting off the
feelings, the urges.
"Yes. Yes, I am. And you, Jon Ellison..." his eyes became
almost sad. "You're not sure what you are. But then, there's never
been anyone like you before, so why should you know?"
"Stop... speaking... in riddles!" Jon grated as the blackness
nearly won the battle with his patience.
"Sorry, it's an old habit," the angel replied quietly. "What
I mean to say is this: All creatures are unique unto themselves, but
you are more unique than most. Stop judging yourself relative to the
others. You're not like them."
"Do you know what I AM like?"
"After a fashion," Tabris replied. "Your genes are mainly
human, with a touch... well, rather more than a touch, actually... of
the celestial grafted in. There's more of Hell than Heaven in your
celestial side, I must say, but you shouldn't fall into the trap of
believing that such a thing obliges you to be evil."
"No?" said Jon, the first flicker of hope appearing in his
eyes.
"No. It's merely a matter of celestial breeding. A golden
retriever and a Yorkshire terrier are both just dogs. Good and evil:
-that- is a choice. No... that conflicting desire you feel within
you, that sinister voice that cries out for blood? That's not your
devil heart. That's programming."
Jon pressed his hands to his temples as that programming
bellowed at him to strike, to hurt, to destroy his enemy. His
desperate eyes found those of the angel again.
"How can I escape it?" he whispered.
"As I said, I can help you... but you will have to trust me.
Completely. Unconditionally. I've done nothing to earn that trust,
and the process is delicate... if there is any doubt in your heart I
could accidentally destroy you instead."
"You're saying it's hopeless."
"I'm saying it's dangerous," replied Tabris evenly. "Probably
too dangerous for me to help you directly... but there is another
way."
"Then tell me about it... quickly... because I don't think I
have much time."

Night was falling by the time DJ returned home again from
Central Dogma, where he'd been taken for another medical review after
his knock-down drag-out with Jon. Between that, the beating he'd
taken from the SEELE security agent the night before, the beating he'd
taken in the catacombs before -that-, and the periods of bad and
interrupted sleep he'd had in between, he felt as if he'd been run
through a wringer, though fortunately he'd sustained no permanent
damage in either of the later encounters.
Grumbling about the awful weather and dripping on the
kitchen linoleum, DJ dropped his helmet and jacket on the table. He
squelched over to the bathroom, pausing only to whack the playback key
on the answering machine on his way. He removed his HALcomm unit and
laid it on the edge of the basin as he washed up. He was looking
forward to a hot bath; between all the beatings he'd been taking the
past couple of days and the filthy, chill and rainy weather, he could
use a soak.
He cocked an ear to the door as he did so as he heard the
machine finish rewinding and began to play.
"Hello, Misato... this is Ritsuko," said the familiar voice -
but something didn't sound right. Well, we're all exhausted and a bit
confused after today, thought DJ to himself, then shushed himself
mentally as she continued. "I don't know how to say this, really. I
wish I hadn't gotten your machine, I never liked these things." DJ
wandered out of the bathroom, scrubbing his hair with a towel, to
better listen, as Ritsuko's voice gave an ironic chuckle. "That's a
laugh, huh? One of the world's leading AI researchers doesn't like
talking to machines." No, it wasn't just exhaustion, she definitely
didn't sound well. "I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry for the way
I've treated you the past few years. And to thank you for... well,
for being such a good friend for so long. I never deserved to have a
friend like you."
DJ began to feel a tight, cold ball forming in the pit of his
stomach, and icy fingers reaching up his spine. "I know I could never
make up for the way I've treated you," Ritsuko went on, and then her
voice broke. "All I can do now is get out of everyone's life. Can I
ask one last favor? Ask DJ to take care of Chandra for me. Thanks."
DJ was in a fine panic now, throwing the towel back through the door
to the bathroom as he started for the door. Then her voice came back,
as an afterthought. "Oh, and tell DJ... I'm sorry."
Click.
The ball in DJ's gut gained a few pounds and his face felt
cold as he stepped to the counter and checked the time stamp on the
recording.
Five minutes ago.
"Bloody HELL!" he snarled, forgetting helmet and jacket
entirely as he dashed out the door.
Behind him the machine obediently rewound and the message
light went out.

Ritsuko sat, quietly sobbing, for several moments after making
her last call. She'd hoped to say goodbye to Misato directly, but
perhaps it was better this way after all. She wasn't sure she could
have kept her composure talking to her old friend.
At about the same time DJ was rushing headlong out the door
she rose from the couch and went about her business. When she'd
arrived home she'd gone about tidying the place. She was always a
neat person, and something in her wanted to leave a good last
impression.
She'd put the dishes away, neatly stacked the magazines on the
living room table, and taken out the trash. She'd sat for a while,
petting Chandra, and clearing her mind for the task ahead. After
feeding him she'd steeled herself and made the call.
But now, with the call made, she had nothing left to do but
get on with it. She chose a DVD from her collection, the soundtrack to
an old film, and started it playing.
She entered the bathroom and began drawing a bath. As the tub
filled she stripped, neatly folding her clothes and piling them on the
vanity.
Carefully she laid out her supplies on the floor next to the
old clawfoot tub she'd had specially installed. A smile crossed her
face now, however briefly, when she remembered all of the trouble
she'd had to go through to find one. But that was a long time ago, in
a different world, it now seemed.
"Yes, a different world," she whispered, apparently without
noticing.
That task complete, she poured bath salts into the rising water
and stirred them in languidly with her hand. Satisfied with that, she
walked slowly around the room, lighting the candles as she had many
times before. Many times she had soaked away the stress that came
with her work here, in the candlelight. She felt it was a fitting
setting for this final act.
She finished her course as the tub filled with water.
Shutting the taps she stood for a moment and looked at herself in the
mirror, quietly. Finally, with an almost imperceptible nod, she
turned away from her reflection and entered the bath.

/* The Ventures "Blue Moon" _Walk - Don't Run_ */

NEXT EPISODE:
Rei regains her past.
Jon battles his present.
DJ fights the future.
And the Missing Child confronts his destiny.

NEON EXODUS EVANGELION 3:5
CONNECTIONS III

"I must not run away."

[No Bonus Theater! for this episode. It'll be back next time, though.]