Amy Cross - Persona

“Please,” he continues, “would you allow me to pick your brains about an important matter? Ordinarily I’d say it could wait ’til morning, but since you were here at Steadfall from the start…” He pauses for a moment, watching me carefully, almost as if he’s studying me. “It’s important,” he adds finally. “It’s about your friend Asher.”

Reaching my hand between the rocks, I fumble for something, anything, I can grab. I need to keep pulling myself through the darkness, but the effort is almost too much and my entire body aches. Still, deep down I know I can’t give up, so finally I force myself to ignore the pain as I haul myself forward inch by inch.

Suddenly another hand grabs mine in the darkness, holding it tight.

“I’m here,” Deckard gasps, his voice filled with pain. “Asher, I’ve found the way out!”

“Asher’s alive,” Harold says as soon as we reach one of the huts at the far side of the clearing. With just a small fire burning near the doorway, there’s barely enough light for me to see his face as he turns to me. “I feel it. You feel it too, don’t you?”

I wait for him to continue, but after a moment I realize that he’s testing me.

“It’s okay,” he continues. “I can lip-read. Please, Iris, tell me you feel it too. Maybe Ben and Leanne are mistaken, or maybe they’re lying to me, but I know Asher is alive. She’s far too smart to get picked off by those idiots.”

“You can lip-read?” I mouth.

He nods.

I feel a shudder pass through my chest. Harold’s only the second person I’ve met who seems able to understand me.

“I don’t know where Asher is,” I mouth carefully, moving my lips slowly so he can read them. “I haven’t seen her since I left here months ago.”

“Lip-reading isn’t always enough,” he replies. “Without a tongue, you clearly struggle to form certain shapes.” He steps closer. “It must be frustrating, Iris, not being able to talk to anyone. I’m sure you have so much to say, I’m sure you see a great deal, but—”

I flinch and pull away when he tries to put a hand on my shoulder.

“Where did you go?” he asks with a faint smile. “I heard the others saying that you set out to look for other towns. Tell me, did you find anything?”

I swallow hard, before slowly shaking my head.

“Really?” he continues. “I find that difficult to believe. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I mouth.

He stares at me for a moment, as if he’s trying to see the truth in my eyes. “You didn’t find ruins, Iris?” he asks finally. “You didn’t stumble across the remains of old towns out there? You didn’t find the bodies of people who tried but failed to work together?”

Again, I shake my head.

“They are out there, you know,” he continues. “Maybe you weren’t looking in the right places, but there are ruined towns on the island. Few of them are as impressive as Steadfall, although one or two even surpassed this muddy little place. Every single one of them fell, though, and can you guess why?” He waits for me to answer. “I’ll tell you,” he adds once he realizes I’m not going to reply. “They fell because here on the island, mankind is a savage beast, ruled by his baser instincts.”

“Not everyone’s like that,” I mouth.

“Oh, I know,” he replies. “There are still some hold-outs, people who cling to the idea of civilization. They even build little towns from time to time, just like this one here at Steadfall. They pretend to have recovered their own corner of peace, a sanctuary in the heart of such a terrible place, but it never lasts. The savages always turn up eventually and tear everything down. The best part is that the same is true of the wider world, the world you and the others here left behind. No matter what mankind builds, eventually some form of human savagery will tear it down again.”

I want to turn and get out of here, but at the same time I feel as if I need to hear what he has to say. I need to understand him a little better.

“I fought in the war,” he continues finally. “I was a medic, but still, I fought. Like Asher, I was shipped off far away to fight an enemy whose very identity is a closely-guarded secret. And like Asher, once I came back from many years on the battlefield, my mind was wiped so that I would not remember any of it.” He smiles. “Do you have a fondness for history, Iris? Do you know how things were done in the old days?”

I shake my head.

“Once upon a time,” he replies, “mankind couldn’t wipe memories so easily. People who returned from war had no option but to remember what they’d seen, what they’d experienced. Some of them coped with it admirably, but others fell apart. The horrors of war were too much for their minds to comprehend. There are accounts of life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, of men and women who tried but failed to fit back into society. They were haunted by what had happened to them in the war, and they couldn’t be normal again.”

He steps past me and stops in the doorway for a moment, looking out at the dark town, before glancing back at me.

“Of course now we wipe the minds of soldiers after they come back. Not only to hide the identity of our enemy, but also to spare those brave men and women the horror that their memories will bring. And yet…” He pauses, and for the first time there seems to be a trace of fear in his eyes. “And yet there’s a gap where the memories should be,” he continues. “I don’t remember events from the war, but I remember sensations. I remember being terrified, I remember being absolutely certain I was going to die. I remember sorrow. I remember loss and grief. I remember fear beyond anything you can imagine. I remember a crippling sense of hopelessness. All of those feelings and more are in my soul, but they’re not anchored to any specific memories. They’re just in me, rattling around.”

“Asher never talks about the war,” I try to tell him, mouthing the words as carefully as I can manage.

“Asher feels the same way, I’m sure,” he replies. “The only difference between me and her is that whereas I embrace the chaos I feel, she tries to push it away. She tries to deny who and what she is, while I try to dig deeper and deeper into myself so that I might tear the truth out. But Asher still is a soldier, she still has all those instincts, and that’s how I know with absolute certainty that Ben and Leanne weren’t able to kill her. She’s like me, she’s a survivor, and she has passed every test I’ve set before her. I haven’t been entirely honest about my reasons for coming to the island, Iris. You see, I—”

He turns to me, and then he frowns.

“The person who cut your tongue out,” he continues. “Did you gain revenge?”

Staring at him, I see that there’s a kind of anger in his eyes now.

“Revenge is one of the most vital of all human emotions,” he adds. “When someone does something to you, it’s natural to want to make them pay. Those who preach forgiveness are just… self-deceiving fools. There are no lengths to which I would not go, in my pursuit of those who have wronged me. Do you not feel the same?”

“She’s dead,” I try to mouth to him, hoping he’ll understand.

“Never mind,” he mutters. “I suppose I wanted to talk to you, because it’s the closest thing right now to talking to Asher. You know her better than anyone else in this miserable town, don’t you?”

He pauses, and I swear I can see a hint of admiration in his gaze as he stares at the fire. If I didn’t know better, I’d start to wonder whether he really wants to kill Asher or whether, instead, he wants to somehow get her on his side. At the same time, it’s hard to believe that he could feel that way after just a few days here at Steadfall.