WARNING: Icky stuff ahead.











Rei Ayanami skipped along the corridor, looking into the gloom, red eyes
gleaming. Dressed in nothing but bra and panties.



Hunting.



She sniffed the air. Cold sweat and saliva; a hint of urine. From... that
way.



The smell of fear.



She skipped along, thinking about how to get ahead of her quarry.



*****



A Neon Genesis

Evangelion Fanfiction



Copying Error



By Matthew Harrison



*****



<2008- Osaka>



She didn�t have a name. It was the lab; she had come from the facility some
time earlier. She milled around, naked, with the others. Flashes of red,
black, brown and blonde hair. In here were representatives of every race
(Not that she _knew_ this, of course, she was uneducated as much as she
could be. She could speak and understand speech- but she knew virtually
nothing).



She muscled over to the group in the corner. There was a boy she liked here,
and he kept getting hit by some of the others. He had brown hair, and brown
eyes. They�d been together as long as she knew- she�d helped him whenever
there had been trouble. He kept whining and crying at trouble. She had to
chew his food for him, as the others had broken and knocked out all his
teeth. He cuddled into her, and she held him, telling him, in the
sub-language of the breeding camps, that he was okay. They wouldn�t hurt
him. A snarl from her drove the others away, and she continued her
comforting.



Two men in identical clothing with a funny red design approached her. One of
them twisted her hand, and ran a red light across the funny, painful marks
on her wrist. She could remember the things being put there- it had hurt
more than anything she�d ever felt before in her short life.



�Number one-zero-zero-nine-seven-eight. This is her. She�s next for the
processing.�



�Think she�ll survive?�



�Dunno. We just keep going until one of them does.�



The girl looked up. She didn�t understand what they were saying; all she
knew was that every so often, one of the children in the room would be taken
out and would never come back. She wondered if it was to do with the food...
in the camp, the glass was available, and there was nothing else.



�What if none of them survive?�



�Then we�re in the shit.�



And she was led away, the boy with the brown hair whimpering as she left,
the others crowding round.



*****



Fifty miles away, Ikari Gendou sat sobbing. He was well away from everyone.
There had been a terrible accident, and no-one would blame him for this. But
he couldn�t be seen in this state. He�d already sent an e-mail that unit
one-zero-zero-nine-seven-eight was to be preserved; the information said
that that unit would survive the tests and so should be kept. And, of
course, there were the similarities.



*****



�This one�s fine. It�s good. The sequences are fine, and the EEG says okay.
What do we do with the others?�



�You press the red button under that grille.�



The second technician flipped the grille, and pressed the button. A small
panel floated to one side, and a groaning, wheezing noise came from the
building just ten metres to the side of the one she was in. She watched with
interest from the window there; a set of yellow lights had come on, blinking
on the sides. Heavy doors had closed on the entrance. There were no windows,
and she could see a large wheel spin by itself on the side of a tank at the
side of the building.



�What now?�



The first technician, the one with the thick glasses and the stubbly beard
turned back. �You press the button behind that panel. Twice. Didn�t you read
the manual?�



�Fuck you! You know that all this stuff runs itself. I didn�t bother.� And
then he pushed the button.



A loud, metallic noise came from the building. She watched the lights.



He pushed the button again, as she stood up and walked to the window. She
just wondered what was going on. She could look, couldn�t she?



There came a rushing noise, and traces of smoke- a bluish-green smoke- came
from the joints of the building.



�Oh, shit- put her out!�



And then the screaming started, growing in volume as she faded out,
something impossibly sharp stabbing into her neck.



*****



<Two weeks later>



She was awake again. She couldn�t open her eyes, crusted shut as they were
by mucus from her enforced slumber. She felt something drip into her face,
and she could open her eyes. One of the technicians asked her if anything
hurt.



Her throat was so dry, her attempt to say no came out as a croak. One of the
techs stuck a straw in her mouth, and she sucked.



The sweet, iced tea sent her blood sugar skyrocketing, and, due to the
clamps around her head, she nearly choked on her own vomit before they found
an aspirator.



*****



<2014>



Gendou Ikari kept moving.



These tunnels and corridors had junctions only he knew about. This was
absurd. What had caused this? She couldn�t remember. How on earth could she
remember? It was impossible...



There was an emergency hatch ahead. The lights were out. He didn�t dare turn
them on. It would tell her where he was- he�d have to do this by memory.



Something impossibly fast hit him in the stomach.



As he doubled up, a soft, near-emotionless voice spoke.



�Hello, Commander.�



*****



(2008)



She had learned a lot. She knew now that she was a clone, and not a people,
as she�d previously thought. The nice woman who came in to see her was a
_technician_, and that was what she was, but not all the time. She also knew
her name was Rei, and that she spent most of her days in _machines_, which
was what they were all the time, and different from living things because
although they moved and sometimes made noises, they weren�t really alive.



And then she saw a man through the window. He was tall, and had a beard and
glasses. He had a nice type of clothes on.



Then she fell asleep, which was strange, as she wasn�t sleepy.



*****



She was curled in something impossibly soft, and very warm. Not
uncomfortably warm, but warm. And it was softer than anything she�d ever
known.



Eventually, she looked around. The walls were a nice colour, quite friendly
and yellow.  There was a blind across the window; from the colour of the
sunlight coming through, she could tell it was late afternoon.  There was a
wooden set of shelves and a dresser, on which were a few books (she couldn�t
read, but she wanted to know _how_) and a few stuffed animals (one or two of
which struck her as being utterly ridiculous- the purple dinosaur in
particular).



She climbed out of bed, looking at the door. It did not seem to be locked,
and padded to the door. She realised, absently, that she was naked, and that
she ought to cover herself up somehow. There was a pale blue
(-strangesmokecolour-) coat-type thing on the door and she wrapped herself
in that. The cord at the waist she had to think about. After where she had
been, she considered putting something heavy on the end in case there were
some awkward people here. Eventually she decided to keep the fluffy coat
closed with it. It felt right.



Outside the door, she followed the corridor, and found herself in something
that looked like the lab- except that there were a lot less of the peculiar
instruments. And in the corner was the man that she had seen in the lab. He
was idly flipping through a book.



He looked up and smiled. No-one had smiled at her before, really, so she
didn�t respond.



�I�ll be looking after you,� he said.



*****



Over the next few months she explored the place. The house, as it was
called, was not very big, and she saw another couple of children. She
decided she didn�t like meat, as she had too many memories of having to cut
and tear to get it- and she learned that it wasn�t good manners to try to
eat the other children that came here occasionally. There was food, and she
liked it. It wasn�t identifiable.



During the days she went to school, where she sat through lessons, which
were boring. Very boring, but she learned to read. She could count properly,
now, and she was surprised to find that her name meant, literally, nothing.
She enjoyed being on her own, too. She delighted in reading and writing,
drawing and painting.



And she saw a lot of Gendou, too. He was always there to tell her how much
he liked her paintings and drawings, and show her what the right way to put
on a plugsuit, or how to initiate the emergency startup in an EVA, whatever
that was. He would be there when she woke up screaming, remembering the
camps, and when she wondered what happened to the boy she liked. He would
stroke her hair and tell her how special she was, cheering her up and
helping her sleep.



And she wondered what the things above her bed were, that hummed
occasionally, built around the light.



*****



�So, have we got the full reading yet?�



�Yep. The scanners have pinpointed the memory clusters in her head, and when
we seal the bad bits, we can get them immediately.�



*****



The days were nice, the people were nice, and she was good at all she did.
For the first time in her life, she was truly happy. Gendou Ikari would come
in and see her every day, and make her feel happy.



So she was totally unprepared for the night when Gendou came into her room
at one in the morning, yanked her out of bed, and screamed in her face,
shouting and screaming and kicking and punching her until she was nearly
dead.



*****



The human mind is formed by experience.



A single kiss, a kind word, a rejection, a wound, all go to shape the
personality. The treatment of the children had been intended to produce the
perfect slave-soldiers; it had been derived from certain techniques that had
been started in the Nazi death camps, and later experimented with by the
Americans and the Russians during the Cold War. The camps were designed to
build stamina, the second phase (six months in length) was to educate the
subjects to an acceptable standard, increasing their receptivity, and
finally- the last stage- was to break them totally; to provide a killer�s
mentality, and to obey orders without question.



Various techniques were used: physical and mental abuse, sleep deprivation,
false memory reclamation, memory erasal and other forms of abuse.



It is not to be considered, though, that this was entirely improvised; the
techniques were constructed during the second phase, the periods and forms
of abuse all set to an exact timetable. Confidence boosting and cutting
timed to the microsecond. Blades entering the skin to precise depths, levels
of pain and distress calculated and refined and applied like a surgeon�s
scalpel.



The people who were selected to actually perform these tasks went through
rigorous training; the first part was the selection of the most sociopathic
individuals possible. Then they continued with ever more complicated and
refined tests to completely weed out (lethally) the final problem
candidates, leaving only  the ideal specimens.



As a result, the final hundred or so of the technicians were people utterly
devoid of conscience. They neither enjoyed nor disliked what they did, as
that would have ruined the training.



*****



<2014>



�Bring the third on-line. Implant the memories.�



�Um... sir? We have a problem. The system says that we have some disruptions
in the a couple of key memory areas. Loss of a couple of sections.�



Ikari Gendou bit his lip. He couldn�t re-stream the memories; it would take
three days to load them into the input systems again. They didn�t have that
time.



�Proceed. We can always re-train her while she�s in the hospital.�



*****



<2009>



Rei sat in the room with Technician 14. She was sitting at a table; blood
caked one eye closed, the other was quite puffy. Her right arm skewed out to
one side, it had obviously been vigorously broken and badly reset. Her left
hand had no two fingers facing the same way.



�Now,� the technician said to her, in a no-nonsense voice, �I want you to
look at the pictures and make up a story. The first thing that comes into
your head.�



�I can do that.�



Blood and saliva dribbled from her mouth. She raised her right arm and wiped
it clear, showing where someone had carved their name on her.



�Good. Now what do you see?�



�There�s a girl and a man. By a river. The girl fell in the water.�



�That�s good. Go on.�



�She fell in and she was drowning. He jumped in and pulled her out. He�s
giving her the kiss of life...�



�I don�t believe you.�



The words were suddenly harsh.



�That�s not what you�re seeing at all, is it, you dirty little slitch?
You�re lying. You always lie...�



The technician pulled an item out of his pocket. It looked like a torch.



No torch was ribbed like that with metal bands.



No torch had a shock-hazard sign on it.



No torch tapered like that at the end.



�Tell me what you do see, you little bitch...�



The technician grabbed her by the back of the neck and forced her onto the
table so the cards were inches from her eyes.



�Do I have to put this in you? Do I have to make you scream like the stupid
lying little slut you are?�



Rei�s eyes filled with tears. �I... I... I...�



�You�ve got until three. One.�



Rei began to resign herself.



�Two.�



�I... I... GRAHGH...�



After that it sounded like nothing on earth. After a very very active two
minutes, Rei was sedated and taken for a reformatting sequence; the
technician was quietly euthanised, being unsalvageable, having had one eye
removed, his throat slashed by her right humerus (smashed against the wall
by herself exposing the clean end of the bone, razor-edged and very, very
dangerous) and the  shockrod driven into the hole.



Gendou Ikari looked over the video.



�There was obviously something we didn�t plan for. Something critical. We�ll
just have to alter the schedule.�



*****



And in 2012, they put in the blocks. She was left emotionless but with only
memories of the good times. False memories were streamed to her, and she
became the quiet, calm and barely-human being that was Rei Ayanami.



*****



<2014- The tunnels>



Gendou lay there, spitting out teeth. A foot hit him again in the mouth, and
he retched as it hit the back of his throat.



�You made me,� She said. �From your wife and something that appeared in the
Antarctic, you made me. And what about all the other prototypes? The ones
that came from the breeding camps?�



Gendou was in no state to say anything.



�And Shinji. Dear, lovely, Shinji-chan. You know, I�d love to let him do to
me some of the things that the operatives did to me. The male ones. Not the
one who bit off my clitoris the first time round, though. That was nasty.
And what did you do to him?�



Gendou looked up in terror.



�You know what�s happened? He reminded me of someone. Someone I liked.�



*****



Rei was wheeled up to the cages. With only one eye, she looked at the boy
who stood over her. Brown eyes and hair. Slightly effeminate.



Familiar.

From where?

*****



�I�m glad to see you�re all right, Rei.�



�Thank you.�



�What did you mean by... ummm... wanting to join with me?�



But Rei was silent. There was a scratching, crawling feeling in her head as
the barriers broke down, and she feigned sleep as things came back to her as



she



KNEW



again



what had been done to her

                                                             why she
disliked meat

                        what Gendou had done

                                                                        
and what to do next.



And as night fell, she avoided all the guards in the hospital.



*****



Gendou was as near to panic as he�d ever been.



Rei was straddling his chest, and with his larynx cracked, he could barely
whimper. His arms and legs... well, he couldn�t move them. She�d been
horribly inventive with just hands and teeth.



She licked the corners of his eyes gently, and then lowered her lips to his.
He wouldn�t open his mouth, so she hit the sides of his face with the heels
of her hands, shattering the jaw and cheekbones.



Forcing his mouth open, she pushed her tongue into his, performing the
deepest kiss she�d ever thought of.



With her right hand, she smashed his nose, flattening it over his face and
blocking all breathing.



And just as the roaring blackness of oxygen-deprivation threatened to
overtake him she released his mouth, and he took a deep, shuddering breath.
His vision cleared.



�I know. I don�t know how, but I do. I think something went wrong when you
put in the memories. The mnemonic blocks are all gone.�



She turned around, looking vaguely amused. �Do you know what it was that
triggered this?� She looked down at him, enjoying the view of him, being
completely helpless, panicked and lost.



�Shinji-kun. When he came to me in the hospital, I suddenly remembered the
boy he reminded me of. A boy I protected all the time in the camps. Until he
was gassed on your orders.�



She brought her face down to his, and licked the end of his nose.



�And now the boot is on the other foot, Gendou.� She giggled.



�And now... and now it ends.�



And with one fluid motion, she locked the muscles of her left hand, driving
it into his belly and up, up to his diaphragm, splitting the rubbery
muscle-membrane, and pushing upwards, while he tried to scream, as she
stopped to tickle his lungs and pancreas, until he felt her stop, amidst the
shrieking pain, her fingers around the sensitive membranes of his heart.



�I have to thank you, Ikari-san. You made me what I am.�



And she squeezed.



Looking into the wide-open eyes, she pulled the arm free, and started to
lick it clean.



It was only cooked meat she disliked.



*****



Author�s notes:



Well, this is messy, isn�t it?



I must give much thanks to Dave Stone, an author with a nice sense of
self-parody. He wrote a few of the now-defunct Judge Dredd novels (the
cartoon strip, not the damn film) from whom I got the inspiration. If you
can find a copy of �Wetworks�, you may notice certain similarities between
various passages and this. But then the story is about a Clone who is
psychologically engineered to be a killer.



Any similarities?



But seriously, I wondered about what made Rei into Rei.



And here we go.



Thanks for reading.





*****



What am I doing here

half asleep

and the rest of me

still in bed

making coffee

with tea bags...?



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