The next thing Shinji knew, they were all crowded outside of the door to the chemistry lab. Even Misato stood off to the side, cell phone pressed to her ear, a sour expression on her face. Shinji tried not to look at her.
The Doctor had shut the door behind him. Inside the lab, Shinji heard cabinets being thrown open and objects being tossed around, punctuated, every now and again, with the sound of something expensive shattering into pieces.
"Hey, Shinji." Toji poked him in the back. "Look -- just who the hell is this guy?!"
"Is he really -- like -- a secret agent for the UN?" Kensuke asked, a fascinated gleam in his eye.
Shinji shrugged. "Um. I guess."
"Do you think we can trust him, though?" Hikari whispered. Her eyes darted to the lab door and back. "I mean, I know he's a teacher, but..."
"Uh..." Shinji scratched the back of his head. "I think we should listen to him."
"So he actually knows what he's doing? He's not just some kind of crazy person from off the street?"
Shinji hesitated. "I... I think we should listen to him."
The Doctor flung the lab door open. "Shinji? Perfect!" He shoved a pile of plastic into Shinji's arms. "Here, put this on. Ms. Ayanami -- I need you to check this whole floor. Bring me any cleaning bleach you can dig up." Rei nodded and disappeared. "Captain -- what's the word?"
Misato crossed her arms. "The science division is still running simulations. But it seems that you might have a point."
"Brilliant!" The Doctor grinned. "Love it when that happens. Well, not that there was any doubt. But the peer review's always nice." Misato rolled her eyes. "Now - I think I can put something together in here. But I'm going to need a good half-hour or so. Think you can hold the barricades that long?"
"Depends. What kind of something are we talking about?"
"Chemical mixture." The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. "Nonlethal. Aerosal-based. Won't affect any of us, but should react with the hydrogen in that other lot's bloodstreams. Keep them from detonating themselves while sedating them. We'll have to flood the building with it somehow. Maybe push it out through the heating vents..."
"We're closer to the cooling tower on the roof," Misato said. "That way, we'll at least have air support."
"Fine. Just be careful - there's no telling what might set them off. And non-lethal ordinance only! I mean it!" Misato narrowed her eyes. The Doctor grinned again and rubbed his hands together, without any apparent concern for the fact that he'd just ordered the city's military commander around as he would a waitress. Shinji winced. "Right, then! No time to waste!" He vanished back into the lab.
They all stared at the lab door for a moment. Misato shook her head angrily. "God," she growled under her breath. "Why do the cute ones always have to be so much damn trouble?"
Shinji looked up at her. "Wait, what?"
"Nothing. Never mind." She turned and marched down the hallway. Kongo shrugged and trudged after her.
Shinji watched her go, then looked down at what the Doctor had handed him. It took him a second to recognize it as a bright yellow hazardous materials suit, like he'd seen in movies, complete with a bulky transparent hood and an attached respirator. He blinked. Maybe the Doctor wanted him to help out in the lab, or something?...
"Um, Shinji?" Kensuke coughed awkwardly. "Been meaning to ask... could you do me a favor?"
"Uh, sure. What?"
"I - I know you're a lot more used to this than we all are, but - ummm... would you mind not smiling so much? You're really creeping everyone out."
"Oh, God, yeah," Toji agreed. Hikari nodded.
"I'm what?!" Shinji immediately covered his mouth with one hand. The corners of his lips hurt. Oh. Oh, God. Was he actually getting used to this? "I'm - why would I - I'm - I'm sorry. I didn't even know I was --"
"Yeah, it's okay. Really." Kensuke held up his hands. "Just -- yeah."
They retreated down the hallway, leaving Shinji standing alone by the lab door. He looked down at the hazmat suit in his hands. His reflection in the hood stared back at him.
"What the hell is wrong with me?" he asked.
***
Shinji sat in the hallway next to the lab door, wrapped head-to-toe in bright yellow plastic -- and more besides, as the suit was at least two or three sizes too large for him. The Doctor had yet to reappear.
There was the sound of a door opening. Shinji raised his head. But instead of the Doctor, he saw Misato step out from one of the classrooms down the hall. "-- after that, get in touch with Mikhail Kerenski at the Russian branch. See if he can get ahold of any of that one chemical agent they used at Beslan," she said into the cell phone. Shinji noticed that she held the Doctor's wallet open in her other hand. "And could you run that ID code I gave you through the database a few more times? Just to be sure? -- Great. Thanks. I'll be in touch." She hung up and sighed, then leaned up against the hallway wall, staring into the distance.
Shinji felt like he needed to say something. "His - his name's not John Smith."
Misato twisted around with a start. She obviously hadn't seen him there.
"Oh, sorry." Shinji pulled back the hood.
Misato let out a breath. "Oh. It's you, Shinji." She shifted her eyes away from him.
"Um. Yeah." Shinji swallowed. "So, um. It's not really Doctor Smith or anything like that. It's just the Doctor."
"Just 'the Doctor'?" Misato wrinkled her brow. "You don't think that's a little weird?"
Shinji shrugged.
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Shinji took a deep breath. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about him. He asked me not to and - I didn't know what to do."
Misato set her jaw. "It's fine, Shinji."
"It... is?"
"Yeah, it's..." Misato crossed her arms and turned her head away from him. "It's just that -- I guess I'd just hoped, after everything that's happened..."
Shinji looked down at the floor, a sick sort of feeling in his stomach. God. Couldn't she just have done the skull thing?
She shook her head. " -- look, forget about it. It doesn't matter right now. We'll talk after we're out of this mess. Right now, I need a word with -- whatever his name is."
She crossed past him to the laboratory door.
"Look, just --" Shinji burst out. "Just don't kill him, okay? Please. He's been nice to me. And I just want -- I don't want anyone to get hurt."
"Yeah, well..." Misato opened the door. "... that's life."
She stepped into the room and shut the door behind her.
***
Misato hesitated on the other side of the door. Shit. Why the hell had she just said that? Stupid. It's not like she had any intention of killing the man -- well, okay, unless he attacked her or exploded or turned into an Angel or something...
Her scars were itching again. She pushed it all out of her head. Worry about it later -- get Shinji out of this first -- focus on the mission. Game time. She squared her shoulders and turned towards the room.
The lab had obviously seen better days. The tables were covered with half-dismantled machinery and improvised equipment. Just in front of her, an alembic spun around on what remained of a CD player, while a metal wastepaper basket stewed away over a gas burner. Bare wires and glass tubes stretched around the room, up to the ceiling and back down again. The Doctor stood on the other side of the room, head down, pointing that... beeping, whirly thing at a beaker.
For a moment, she thought he hadn't heard her come in. Then he said, without looking up: "So. What news from the front, General?"
"Nothing," she said. "No sign of the enemy on either side. They seem to be very quiet, all of a sudden."
"A little too quiet, you mean?"
"Is there any other kind?" Misato tossed her head. "Any guess what they're up to?"
"Nothing good. Other than that..." The Doctor shook the beaker. Apparently satisfied, he put it down on the table and connected it to some of the tubing.
"So this gas you're making -- do you really think it'll work?"
"Of course it will. Why wouldn't it?"
"If I hadn't seen Uenohara..." Misato shrugged. "We'll give it a shot. But just so we're clear -- if it doesn't get the job done, I'm flooding the building with nitrous oxide."
"Won't work, but knock yourself out." The Doctor paused. "Well, don't literally knock yourself out, but -- oh, see, that's almost clever. Wish I'd done that on purpose now."
Misato allowed herself to smirk. Just a little.
An electric rice cooker on the table started to whistle. The Doctor grabbed a nearby spatula and whacked it until it stopped.
"So, look..." She crossed her arms. "It's possible that I might have come on a little strong earlier..."
"No! You really think?!"
"-- but look at it from my point of view. I still don't understand why you did things this way. NERV's fully chartered by the UN. Why would you choose to manipulate Shinji instead of contacting us directly?"
"Well, manipulate is a bit of a -- look, could this wait?" The Doctor turned around. He suddenly looked very tired. "I still need to put another compression cell together. And all I've got left on hand is a vacuum cleaner and a box of sporks."
Misato stuck out her chin. "So explain it to me quickly, then. Why would the UN keep secrets from NERV in the middle of a war?"
"Well -- that is --" The Doctor scratched the back of his head. "The Convention against Child Soldiers aside, you mean?"
She stared at him. "Are you... is that seriously what this is about? That's your concerns?!"
The Doctor opened his mouth, then looked away.
"That's -- is that all?" She had to repress the urge to laugh. "Do you actually think we choose to do things this way? What kind of stupid monsters do you think we are, anyway?"
"Well --"
"I mean - do you think I like this?" It occurred to Misato that she was shouting. It also occurred to her that she didn't care. "Do you think I enjoy sending kids into combat? Do you seriously think I wouldn't take Shinji's place in a heartbeat if I could?!"
The Doctor turned away from her.
"But I can't. No one can. There's an entire hospital up north filled with soldiers who tried and failed. I've been there. I've seen it myself. This is our only choice. The Evas are our only hope against the Angels. The Children are the only ones who can control the Evas.
"So what do you want me to do instead? Keep Shinji away from danger? Even if it gets all of us, including him, killed? Or should I help him fight for his only chance -- our only chance -- to survive? Because let me make myself clear, Doctor -- it might be easy for you to stand on the sidelines and judge us for our methods. But I don't get to sacrifice the entire human race just so I can sleep better at night."
"So why the panic attacks?" the Doctor asked quietly.
That caught her off guard. "What?"
"The panic attacks Shinji keeps having." The Doctor stood up straight by the lab table, his back to her. "If he's as important as you say he is, why isn't he being treated for that? Why would you let that go by?"
Misato narrowed her eyes. "What are you talking about? What attacks?"
"Oh, don't talk like you don't know about it. Any routine exam would pick it up, and besides, it's not like you don't have this whole city bugged from top to bottom." He was speaking rapid-fire now, almost too fast for her to keep up with. "Now, sure, you could be worried about medication interactions with the neural interface, but that's something you'd be able to test or compensate for. And wouldn't it be worth the risk, anyway? Even from just a functional point of view. Wouldn't do to have him panicking in the driver's seat, now, would it?
"Then there's that law. The one that keeps people outside the system from talking to him. Why would you do that? Why would you do more to isolate him? More than he already is, even."
The itching from her scars started to spread outward. She distractedly scratched at them. "I don't know... operational security, mostly. Does it matter?"
"It matters --" -- and there was a new sort of edge in the Doctor's voice now that she hadn't heard before, not even when she'd been pointing a gun in his face -- "-- because humans are innately social creatures. Even people like Shinji. Especially people like Shinji. You need each other, the same way you need oxygen. Support from others makes you live longer, process trauma better. So why would you deny him that? Why would you expect him to fight for the human race, on his own, without knowing anything about the people he's supposed to save?"
"I didn't! I don't!" Misato shouted. "And -- and -- that's what the school is for..." Why was she even listening to this crap? (And what the hell did he mean by you?) This was insane. She hadn't left Shinji alone. She'd tried to help him, tried her best, invited him into her home...
... except...
... except that had been her idea, hadn't it. The Commander and the others -- they'd all been perfectly willing to let Shinji go off and live completely on his own before she'd stepped in...
She felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her side. She reached out and grabbed the spot. What the hell - the scars hadn't actually hurt like this in years...
The Doctor snorted. "Oh, sure. Budget the size of a small country, and the best you can do for him is send him to middle school? Don't get me wrong, it's a start, but plenty of issues to sort out there without the giant robots thrown in. Now, I might just be able to chalk all that up to simple incompetence, if it wasn't for one thing. Just one tiny little thing.
"Psychology doesn't exist here. No textbooks, journals or self-help pamphlets in the libraries. Not a single counselor, psychiatrist, neurologist, support group or suicide hotline in the phone book. No information on the local computer networks. And it's not like you lot never had Freud or the DSM here, because trust me, I checked.
"City of the future, with a big international presence? Governed by computers running predictive behavior models? That's no accident. That's design."
The pain spread outward to the rest of her chest. What was going on here? Misato clutched her ribs. "What - what are you saying?"
"I'm saying someone built an entire city with the idea of leaving one fourteen-year-old boy with absolutely nowhere to turn to. Oh, given just enough to keep him useful, maybe, but not enough -- never enough -- to save him. Stuck in the middle of a darkest hour that never ends. But why would you do that? If he's supposed to save the world, why would you set him up to fail?"
Misato tried to say something, but it suddenly felt like her lungs were on fire. Like she couldn't breathe...
"The answer, of course," the Doctor said, "is that you wouldn't... unless the point was to break him."
The Doctor turned towards her. And Misato couldn't help but take a step back. Nothing in his tone had prepared her for the pure, elemental rage etched on every line of his face.
"Then it all makes sense, doesn't it?" he continued, without so much as raising his voice. "Tear out all his hopes and dreams. Leave nothing but an empty shell. Just another weapon component." His mouth twisted in disgust. "Like Rei. Your lot have had so much more time to work on her, haven't they? No identity to speak of. No emotions. Just follows orders. The perfect soldier for an eternal war."
He took a single step towards her. It occurred to Misato that her back was pressed against the classroom wall.
"So to answer your question -- that's the kind of monster I think you are," he said, his eyes burning with some strange, hideous anger. "And let me make myself clear, Captain -- me and monsters? We don't get along."
***
Shinji heard the door slam shut. He looked up to see Misato doubled-over in pain, hands around her chest, breathing hard. "M-Misato? Are you all right?"
She raised her head, sweat dripping from her brow, and stared at him right in the eye. He flinched, but looked back at her, bewildered. He couldn't quite place her expression. It almost felt like she was studying him, as if she'd never seen him before in her life.
After a second, she straightened up and, without a word, strode down the hallway and into one of the empty classrooms. Shinji watched her go, mouth open.
***
He walked into the lab to find the Doctor staring out into space, idly running his fingers through his hair. He didn't look like he'd been shot, at least... "Doctor? Are you all right?"
The Doctor seemed to snap out of it. "Oh! Yeah. Fine." He scratched the back of his head. "It's just -- you ever have something that sounded really good in your head, but when you go and say it, it just sounds all... over the top?"
"Sometimes, I guess." Shinji stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. "I usually just get around it by not talking."
"Yeaaaahhhh, bit late for that in my case." The Doctor straightened up and looked around. "Right, then. Back to work... Wait." He paused. "Something's not right. I've missed some..." He looked up at Shinji and suddenly jumped forward, his finger pointed. "Ooh! The mask! Put on the mask!"
"Wha - this?" Shinji pulled the hazmat suit hood out from under his arm. "But -- how am I supposed to talk with this thing?"
"Just do it! I'll explain in a second!" The Doctor gestured frantically. Shinji pulled the hood back over his head and started to pull up the zipper. "Besides -- didn't you see it was military issue? Has that whole speaker-radio thingy in the -- oh, here." He pointed the screwdriver at Shinji.
There was a crackle inside of the hood. "Oh. Okay." Shinji could vaguely hear the sound of his own voice being relayed by a speaker somewhere on the outside of the suit. The Doctor let out a deep breath and relaxed. "So... why am I wearing this thing, exactly?"
"Oh, for the smell," the Doctor said. "Well, that is, to help mask your scent. The masked lot outside -- they're bloodhounds, remember? If they're related to the thing we saw on the train, stands to reason that they must've tracked one of us back here. That's why I put the sprinklers on when we were downstairs. All that water in the air -- washes out the trail, you see?" He turned aside and tapped on a complicated device constructed out of a portable ice chest, PVC piping and a snow globe. "Anyway, I fiddled with the suit's material a bit. Should keep them from getting a lock on you, long as you keep it on."
"Well... okay." Shinji glanced down at the yellow plastic suit. "So why aren't you wearing it, then?"
"Oh. Huh." The Doctor paused midway through pulling out a fire extinguisher from one of the lab sinks. "Eh, probably wouldn't help in my case, anyway. I stand out a bit too much around here, scent-wise."
"Why?"
"Well..." The Doctor started to disassemble the extinguisher's valve. "There's the foreign-brand hair conditioner, for one. But main thing is, I'm not human."
"R-really?" Shinji stared at him. "But... I thought you said you were from... like... some kind of parallel Earth."
"Well, I've spent a fair bit of time there, it's true. But even then, I'm not exactly what you'd call a local."
"... oh."
Something in the back of the room exploded. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder, then went back to what he was doing.
***
"Makoto, I've started up one of the classroom computers," Misato said into her cell phone. "Get me remote access to the internal network. Terminal address --" She read off the code printed on the outside of the computer's tower. "-- AH2251960."
"Sure thing, Captain," the lieutenant answered.
She hung up. Within a few moments, the familiar NERV login came up on screen, requesting her user name and password. Instead of putting in her own credentials, she entered Ritsuko's -- and not the one with the password she'd left out on the post-it note on her desk. The secret account, the one Misato wasn't even supposed to know about.
She went to the pilot medical records. Rei's were still off-limits, as usual, but Shinji's reports were all there - one for each of his weekly exams, plus the observation notes from his post-combat stays in the hospital. She tried a text search for panic attack; when that came up with nothing, she tried panic, then fear.
She finally got a hit on terror:
1:25 am -- Nurse reports clear signs of post-traumatic night terrors. Symptoms within expected parameters, no medication administered. As per standing orders, this information has been redacted from the final report.
She stared at the screen for what felt like forever, trying to make sense of it. Trying to make it all add up in her head. Trying to prove the Doctor and his smug, crazy, self-satisfied arrogant tall logic wrong.
It was strange. She'd screwed up a lot of things in her time -- Jet Alone, the attack on the school today, Kaji, just to start with -- but she'd never really been able to imagine herself failing at something so completely.
She ran her hands through her hair. "How did I not see this?"
***
Shinji stood back from where the Doctor laid the half-dismantled vacuum cleaner across the floor, a large box in his arms. "So... if you're not from the other Earth, where do you come from?"
"Does it matter?" The Doctor motioned with one hand. Shinji passed him a spork. "S'not like you're going to recognize the name or anything."
Shinji looked down. "Yeah. I - I guess..."
The Doctor looked up at him and sighed. "Oh, fine. Let it never be said I can stand to see a man in a hazmat suit cry. Gallifrey. I was born on a planet called Gallifrey."
"Ga... Garifae?" Well, he was right. Shinji had certainly never heard of a place like that.
The Doctor pressed the screwdriver against the vacuum's motor. "So what about you?"
"Huh?"
"Where were you before all of this?"
"Oh. Umm. I was -- I lived with my teacher..." Some time later, it would occur to Shinji that this was the first time anyone had ever directly asked him that question. "-- well, I mean, one of my teachers. I - umm... see, when I was six, I was sent to this place. The Shimokita Special Evacuation School. It's this place in the mountains they set up after Second Impact, where people could send their children to learn while they stayed and worked on the flooded parts of the country. So... I stayed there. During the summers and the holidays, I lived with one of the teachers."
"Wait. So you mean you were at boarding school?" The Doctor grimaced. "Changed my mind. I don't think I want to know."
"It wasn't that bad!" Shinji interjected. "Really! I mean, it was peaceful -- and the teachers were nice, usually..."
The Doctor gave him an odd, sort of sad look that Shinji couldn't quite read. The motor made a clicking sound. With a sudden roar, the vacuum started up. "And THERE we go! Ba-dah-VROOM-bah!" Grinning like a maniac, he leapt to his feet and stretched the vacuum's hose over to the snow globe thing, where he plugged it into a spare piece of pipe. He tapped one of the glass tubes that ran overhead. "Aww, see, see, now we're cooking. Oh, and with the little bubbles even! Love the little bubbles. Just call me Bubble Man from now on. Well, except don't. Bit rubbish as nicknames go. And besides, pretty sure that's a Nintendo trademark anyway."
Shinji found himself smiling. He couldn't help himself. "You really enjoy this, don't you?"
"Enjoy what?"
"This." Shinji spread out his arms over the vast array of slapdash machinery across the room. "I mean, the whole running and science and saving people... thing."
"Well, yeah, of course. Love it." The Doctor scratched the back of his head. "Though, should say, there are parts of it I could do without. Losing people. Seeing people die. Or get hurt. I hate that. Always have, always will. But... every now and again, I get one of those days where I really, actually can pull it all off. Where the plan works out, I mean. And everyone lives." He smiled and stared out into space, like he could just barely see something wonderful in the distance. "Those are the days you aim for, Shinji. That you fight for. 'Cause those are the ones that make it all worth it. Every scrap of trouble..."
Suddenly, the entire building shook. The lights flickered on and off. Shinji looked around the room wildly. For a moment, he thought another one of the Doctor's contraptions had exploded, but he couldn't see any damage or fire or stuff --
The Doctor went pale. "Down the hall."
***
They threw open the lab door and dashed outside. The hallway looked exactly the same to Shinji. He could see Mr. Kongo and some of the parents at the barricade at the other end. Kensuke stuck his head out from the door of the third year classroom.
He collided into Misato as she stepped out of the room next to the lab. She saw Shinji and flinched. "Where -- what happened --" she started to ask.
There was a loud crack. The door to the empty classroom midway down the hall fell to the ground. A very tall schoolgirl stepped out into the hall. She didn't have the Angel mask -- but her skin looked like marble, and she looked far too thin, and her clothes were all dirty and mud-ridden...
The Doctor groaned. "Through the ceiling," he muttered. "Clever girl. Was really, really hoping they weren't going to try that..."
The tall girl lifted up her head and screamed.
And the horde came pouring out from behind her...