ii.
In the lower hangar below Central Dogma, auxiliary power switches to primary—three clicks, a droning hum, and the full force of light shining the walkway like a stage. Maya stands behind Ritsuko, masking confusion with practiced confidence. Straight back, neat uniform, arms at her side. Maya betrays nothing.
From inside her coat pocket, Ritsuko clicks and unclicks a pen, her eyes falling to the shadow of the prototype asleep in its restraints. Around them hard metal clangs and echoes, and engineers chatter as they make the day's preparations. Here, underground, breathing recycled air and rust, Ritsuko has raised the only progeny she can claim.
The light settles to reveal fully what Ritsuko brings Maya to see: a colossus, human-shaped and submerged in a pool of LCL. From behind, Maya gasps—soft and girlish, an abandonment of pretense. She steps beside Ritsuko, gawking.
“This is Evangelion,” Ritsuko says, her voice dull even to her own ears.
The prototype leers with dead eyes, its grafted skin sallow and stretched thin across artificial bones and muscle. Maya, Ritsuko knows, understands the gravity of the prototype, the time and skill devoted to its upbringing. They stand together, watching it watch them.
“Is it operational? Have you tested it?” Maya’s eyes move from face to shoulders, to the hand hanging limp near the prototype’s head.
“To a point,” Ritsuko says. “There’s a harmonics test in the portfolio I gave you. Do you notice anything?”
Remembering herself, Maya fumbles for the portfolio, steadying it in her hands with difficulty. On one side she holds the calendar, and on the other the report, both cluttered with Ritsuko’s scrawl. Maya scans them once, then twice more.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Maya observes—to which Ritsuko hums an agreement. “And the pilot, too—Rei, is it?—It’s been months and she’s barely synchronized with the simulation body.” Her eyebrows furrow and she bites her lip, hunching her shoulders. “The pilot is only fourteen.”
Maya releases a slow exhale, glancing from prototype to pilot profile, but avoiding Ritsuko.
“Does her age bother you?”
“Doesn't it for you?”
She feels the intensity of Maya's incredulity, her sudden harshness. Ritsuko thinks of the Reis she has harvested, prior experiments challenging assumed thresholds—all done to see, or to prove a point. But Rei is a clone, a simulacra, a mirror of someone's stale yearning. To consider Rei, or her age, implies that Rei is human, and Ritsuko knows this is not the case. She wonders if Maya would agree, too, if she knew.
“Like you said,” Ritsuko says slowly. “We have little time.”