Kyle West - Darkness

The Community members ceased their panic, staring at Makara blankly. Lyn stepped forward. But what she said was far from expected.

“We…just want to know where we are. What’s happening. How…”

Lyn didn’t finish. After a moment’s silence, it was clear that Lyn had asked the question in all seriousness. I looked at each of the Community women. None of them had any idea where they were. Could Elias have actually brainwashed them to the point where they would not remember anything?

No, not Elias — the xenovirus. Elias had been controlled by it, and apparently, so had all these women. But with Elias dead, somehow the virus had lost its power. Elias had said he was the intermediary between Askala and the Community. With the intermediary severed, these women would be free once more.

The only problem was, they didn’t remember a thing.

“You are aboard the Aeneas,” Makara said. “The day is December 24, 2060.”

Lyn looked at Makara, uncomprehending. She looked at all of the New Angels for confirmation that this was true.

“No,” she said. “The year is 2045. I remember…the fires. The screams. I remember…”

“What you remember,” I said, stepping forward. “Is the fall of Bunker 84. This happened fifteen years ago, when Elias took control.”

“Elias,” Lyn said.

I looked into her eyes to see if she remembered anything about the man who had led her for fifteen long years.

“I feel…different. I can’t explain it, but…I feel that time has passed, like waking from a dream…”

“That’s because time has passed,” Ashton said. “Fifteen years of time.”

The other Community members stared, similarly shocked. They looked to Lyn to figure this out for the rest of them. From the sidelines, I saw Deborah and Ada, watching. Their eyes appeared completely lucid. They had not been under Elias’s spell. Maybe Deborah and Ada were genetic anomalies, able to resist the version of the virus that infected Elias.

“Something is different,” Lyn said. “I can feel it.”

She trailed off, looking at each of the Community members.

“I don’t know most of these people…and the ones I do know look…”

I could see from her blue eyes that she could scarcely believe it. I finished her thought for her.

“Do they look older?”

Lyn shook, and finally nodded. “I see now that you are right, as hard as that is to believe. I’m not sixteen. I’m…thirty-one.”

“Fifteen years,” Makara said, shaking her head. Her eyes were disturbed as she looked at the women under guard. “You remember nothing from the past fifteen years?”

I could now see that Elias’s powers had not merely stopped at the physical. Of all the incarnations of the xenovirus I had seen, this by far had to be the strangest. It was a strain that likely did not exist anymore. It had developed in isolation, back in 2045, where it had infected Elias at Ragnarok Crater when he had been taken there by the recon team from Bunker 83. I thought of the Howlers or any other form of Radaskim xenolife. They all obeyed the Voice — Askala. Askala was able to communicate directly with Elias in visions and dreams that Elias had shared that with the Community. These women, along with Elias, had not transformed into Howlers. They had retained their full human form. Yet, they had all blindly obeyed him — as much as anything infected with the Radaskim version of the virus would obey the Xenomind, Askala.

It wasn’t just the women who were directionless. It was the children as well. They stared blankly ahead. If my theory was true, then they had lived their whole lives as agents of the virus. How much would they remember? Would they remember anything?

“I still remember all of the things I did,” Lyn said, finally. “I just can’t remember why I did them. The emotions…they are all gone. The memories bring up nothing.”

“You were under Elias’s control,” I said. “He was infected with the xenovirus. Apparently, he could control other people who were also infected. Maybe only women, which would explain why he wanted the men dead. But now that Elias is dead…the spell is broken. He had been a pawn of Askala.”

Somehow, the virus could only control the women. Elias had said it himself — men would just go crazy. I didn’t know why, exactly, but there it was. Elias had mentioned that it was possible that only one male could be the Prophet. That would mean that any male would have to be killed in order to keep unity.

“Whenever a boy was born,” Deborah said, stepping forward, “he was allowed to live for one year before he was sacrificed to the Voice.” Deborah made a fist. “That’s what happened with…my son.”

“Was Elias…?”

Deborah nodded. “Yes. He was the father. As he was to all of the children. And…I had to go through with it. I couldn’t let him know that I had my own thoughts. He always suspected, and I was always afraid he would find out. But when I found Ada, I knew I wasn’t alone.”

Ada said nothing, only staring at Lyn and the other Community women, tears in her eyes.

“She and I became friends, and we existed in secret, pretending the entire time that we were just as much under Elias’s spell as everyone else. I never really understood why he had such power. Why no one resisted him.” She looked at me with haunted eyes. “But what you say makes sense. Not everyone would have followed the man willingly. More would have resisted, if only they could.”

“Elias told me himself that he once tried to resist the Voice,” I said. “He said it was long ago, in the beginning. But maybe…he didn’t have much of a choice either, in the end.”

“Some girls were killed, too,” Ada said. “It’s happened a few times. We never knew the reason why, but I had to hide my sorrow, my pain. Deborah and I couldn’t reach them fast enough.”

“It was probably around the age of ten or so that I started to realize that I was different,” Deborah said. “I could say no to him, unlike everyone else. I didn’t understand this — not one bit. As soon as I realized how dangerous it was to say no, I never did. Sometimes, Elias would push things, to test us — but I always made sure I passed each test. I became good at pretending. Ada and I recently talked about trying to…kill Elias. The thought was ridiculous. We never carried anything out. It was only talk. But even talk was dangerous.” She sighed. “I just wished we had the courage to do something about it. All of this might have been stopped.”

“You did what you could,” I said. “There is no reason to be ashamed.”

It was easy to think that all it would have taken was sneaking up behind Elias and offing him with a knife. But Anna, Michael, and I had a hell of a time trying to bring him down, and we had weapons and months of fighting experience.

“No, I’m not ashamed,” Deborah said. “Elias grew worse, over time. I guess the virus started corrupting his mind even more. The visions increased and he began to be more vigilant about finding dissenters. Before, he had allowed us to exist so long as we didn’t disrupt the balance. I felt more and more out of place as time went on. All I had was Ada. I told her everything. I had to tell someone or I felt I would go crazy. If anyone did anything against Elias, they were condemned — filled with darkness.”

I suddenly felt overwhelmed with everything. I had no idea what to do with this situation — and from everyone else’s eyes — Makara, Ashton, Anna, Michael, Julian, and Grudge — they had no idea, either. It was hard to imagine something like the Community existing for fifteen years. Fifteen years of slavery to a man who was a pawn of the xenovirus.