The Abyss (The Island Book 3) Page 5

  “Did you come here purely to annoy me?” I snap.

  “You must miss her.”

  “That's none of your business.”

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Asher, come with me. I know they'd offer you a job.”

  “Do you really see me spending the rest of my life in a cubicle?” I ask.

  “You could take a mind-wipe,” he continues. “All this anger and fear and pain would be gone.”

  “And I'd forget who I am.”

  “Not who you are. Just what you remember.”

  “I'd forget Mads.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing? Mads is nothing but pain for you now. Imagine having all that horror lifted from your shoulders. You could get a job in a cubicle, and the biggest hassle in your life would be working out what to wear to the office each day. All this rebelliousness would be a thing of the past.” He pauses, as if he's waiting for me to surrender and tell him I'll get my mind fixed. “You could even end up living in one of the big cities, high above the abyss.”

  “And be like all the others?” I ask through gritted teeth. “Do you really think they've forgotten what happened to them in the war, or do you think they just pretend the memories are gone?”

  “I think they've really forgotten, Asher. Most of them, anyway.”

  “So why don't you want to get your mind wiped?” I ask.

  “Like I told you, I'm fine with what happened. I can live with those memories, but only because I didn't see anyone I cared about get hurt. If I'd seen you die, for example, I'm not sure I'd be able to live with myself.”

  “How endearing,” I mutter.

  “It could be perfect,” he continues, reaching down and taking hold of my hands. “It could be a fresh start, Asher. Sure, it's awful that Mads is gone, but that doesn't mean your life is over. Just think about -”

  “I don't want to talk about this right now,” I tell him.

  “No, just think about how -”

  “Harold, please...”

  “Just think about it,” he says firmly, squeezing my hands tight. “The memory wipe would set you back to a good place. And then I'd still be around to help out. We could share a place, we could get to know one another again in a way that gets us past all the terrible things that happened to us out at the Talton V battlefield. 'Cause if you think about it, Asher, maybe the pair of us survived for a reason.”

  “What reason would that be?” I ask, feeling a shudder pass through my chest.

  “Fate.”

  “I thought you said it was all down to luck.”

  “Maybe I've changed my mind,” he continues. “Maybe we survived because somehow, that's what's supposed to happen.” He pauses, before leaning closer. “Don't overreact, Asher, but have you ever wondered what our child would be like? You and me, together, creating a -”

  “I don't want to talk about this right now,” I reply, pulling my hands free.

  “But Asher -”

  “I have to go to my room,” I add, turning and starting to limp over to the door.

  “Let me help you!”

  He grabs my arm again, but this time I quickly push him away.

  “I don't want help,” I tell him, hurrying to the door and then out into the corridor before he has a chance to come after me again.

  “Just promise you'll think about it!” he calls after me. “It's hard to make it on your own, Asher! There's a perfect solution just waiting for you!”

  When I reach the end of the corridor, I look over my shoulder and see to my relief that he hasn't followed me. Still, I know from experience that Harold isn't the kind of person who ever gives up. And as I step into the elevator that'll take me to my dorm floor, I can't help worrying that next time, I might have to be a little more forceful with him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Iris

  Today

  “What happened to her?” Olivia asks as we stand in the doorway. “It's like she's a completely different person.”

  Turning, I look into the hut and see that Nissa is simply sitting quietly in the far corner. She's always been such an exuberant and hyper-active girl, but her experience on the boat has clearly left her shaken. I fully understand that she's scared, and it might even be good for her to deal with the fear, but what worries me is that she'll never quite recover. She needs to strike a balance between outright recklessness on one hand, and abject terror on the other.

  “I'll talk to her,” Olivia continues. “I've got to fix that wound on her cheek anyway, so maybe I can get her to open up a little.”

  I nod, before turning to walk away.

  “Who is she?” Olivia calls after me.

  I glance back at her.

  “Everyone's talking about the new arrival,” she continues. “About who she might be, and why she's here, and what's going on back in the world. Everyone wants to know.”

  I pause, before nodding and then making my way across the camp toward the isolated hut at the far end. With each step I take, I become more and more aware that people are watching me.

  Watching and waiting.

  ***

  “Come on,” Ripley says, standing in the middle of the hut with his hands on his hips, facing the seated prisoner, “everyone knows your name's not really Eve. So why don't you start by telling us who you really are?”

  I wait for Eve to reply, but she simply continues to stare at Ripley with a faint, curious smile on her lips. For a woman whose hands and feet are bound, and who has no hope of escape, she certainly seems very confident. In fact, I've got a horrible feeling that she knows something we don't, and that she feels absolutely no pressure to cooperate with us at all.

  “You've picked up a bit of a tan there, Eve,” Ripley continues, stepping around the edge of the room and stopping behind the prisoner. “You must have been at sea for a long time. I'm guessing once you were alone, you had to stay at the wheel so that the boat would keep running in the right direction. No auto-pilot, huh? And even if you tried to cover yourself up, the sun would have been too strong.”

  He pauses, before reaching out and pressing a hand against the side of Eve's face.

  Eve flinches, but she doesn't cry out. Instead, she looks straight at me, as if she knows that I have the answers she's after.

  “Seems like a suicide mission to me,” Ripley mutters, making his way around Eve and stopping in front of her again. “The odds of actually reaching the island were low, and you must've known that. So you were willing to throw your life away, in order to try to get here. To try to get to Asher. If you -”

  “I will speak only to Asher,” Eve says suddenly. “Not to you piddling little ants.”

  “Oh, is that right?” Ripley asks.

  Eve keeps her eyes fixed on me. “That's right,” she says darkly. “Unless there's some reason why I can't speak to her.”

  “Maybe there is, and maybe there isn't,” Ripley replies, stepping around the prisoner once more. “The thing is, you're not really in a position to issue any demands, so perhaps you should be a little careful with what you say.”

  “Where's Asher?” she asks.

  Ripley glances at me. I hesitate for a moment, before nodding.

  “Asher's dead,” Ripley continues, looking back down at the prisoner. “It's been -”

  “No,” Eve says, interrupting him. “Asher's not dead.”

  “Oh, I think she is,” Ripley replies with a faint smile. “Trust me, it's been a while now. Ten years, in fact. She's long gone. All that remains of her is this town. It was kind of a pet project of hers, and we've kept it alive. We even hung onto the name she had for it. Steadfall. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Asher isn't dead,” Eve says firmly, still watching me. “Believe me, I'd know.”

  “And how's that? Let me guess, you've got some kind of psychic link to her?”

  Eve smirks.

  “Then how would you know that she died?” Ripley asks.

  Eve continues to stare at me for a moment, and I swear s
he seems almost amused by this interrogation.

  “If Asher had died,” she says finally, “then the world would have turned upside down. Plants would grow with their roots reaching to the sky and their petals smothered in the soil. Fish would walk on land and men would live in the sea. The lions would settle down for a nap with the field-mice, only for the field-mice to slaughter them in their sleep. The whole natural order of things would have to have been upended. That's the only way a soldier like Asher could possibly die on a pile of dirt in the middle of the ocean. So yeah, trust me, I'd know if she was dead.”

  She pauses, watching me carefully.

  “She's not dead,” she adds. “If somebody has told you that she is, then that somebody is lying to you.”

  Ripley glances at me, but I keep my eyes fixed on the prisoner.

  She's bluffing.

  She has to be bluffing.

  And yet, as she continues to watch me, I feel as if she's reading my thoughts. Or my body-language, at least. I'm so used to finding it hard to communicate with people, it's somewhat discomforting to find myself in front of someone who seems to be able to read me so well.

  Still, this is a bluff.

  And I don't fall for bluffs.

  “So why don't you humor us for a moment?” Ripley asks, placing his hands on the prisoner's shoulders from behind. “What do you want with Asher? I remember her, she's smart and she's a good soldier, but she's hardly unique. There are smarter people in the world, and better soldiers.”

  “Not here on the island,” Eve replies. “I've never seen such an unimpressive bunch of specimens. Honestly, you're not impressing anybody.”

  “You need to watch that mouth of yours,” Ripley mutters.

  “Or what?” she asks, looking up at him. “You wouldn't hit a lady, would you?”

  “I might,” he says darkly.

  “Well, that's an interesting response,” she continues with a smile. “Does it make me weird if I'm slightly turned on right now?”

  “What do you want with Asher?” Ripley asks firmly.

  “I want to talk to her,” Eve replies, “and I think that's my right. And trust me, when she finds out that I'm here, she's going to want to come and see me.”

  She pauses for a moment, still looking up at Ripley, and then she turns to me.

  “Fine,” she continues with a sigh, “I was expecting Asher to be here, but perhaps someone's going to have to get a message to her instead. Tell her somebody wants to speak to her. Somebody important. My real name is Nicole Phillips. Doctor Nicole Phillips. And these days, I'm the closest thing Asher has to a mother.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Asher

  Many years ago

  “Do you remember what you said to me when I first selected you, Asher?”

  I flinch as soon as she says my name. To be honest, I flinch every time Doctor Phillips says my name. She always sounds so keen to be my friend, as if she thinks that some day I'll actually come around to her way of thinking. Still, I know that rebelling would be useless, and I'd just end up getting punished, so I figure it's better to let her get on with whatever lecture she's got planned.

  “Perhaps I should refresh your memory,” she continues, getting to her feet and heading across her office. “Join me on the balcony, won't you?”

  Sighing, I stand and follow her. This is the third time she's insisted on meeting with me since I returned from Talton V, and I'm pretty sure that she doesn't usually pay such close attention to survivors. I keep telling myself that there's no reason for her to be interested in me, but as I head out onto the balcony and see the vast, brightly-lit city spread out before me under the night sky, I can't help worrying that maybe this time she's going to tell me what she really wants.

  “It's beautiful, isn't it?” she says, stopping at the edge of the balcony and leaning against the railing. “How many lights do you think are in our field of vision right now, Asher? A million? Ten million?”

  She turns to me, as if she expects an answer.

  “I should get somebody to count some day,” she continues with a faint smile. “Just for my own idle curiosity, of course.”

  I force a smile, but I know it's not very convincing.

  “Come closer,” she continues, gesturing for me to join her. “There's no need to be scared, Asher. You've always had a tendency to look rather nervous around me. I'd hoped that the war might have toughened you up, and by the appearance of you it's clear you've been through a lot. But there's that look in your eyes again. Tell me, do you look at other people with the same fear, or is it just me?”

  “I don't know,” I reply, which is a lie.

  It's just her.

  Still, I know she won't be happy until I've joined her at the railing, so I walked over and stop to look out across the city. Up here on the side of one of the tallest government buildings, there's quite a breeze, and for a moment I watch as transit vehicles race along tubes that snake and curl through the air. Sometimes, when I remember how many human beings are packed into just this city alone, I can't help feeling a little claustrophobic. How can there be enough air for all these people?

  “It's so easy to be dazzled by the lights,” Doctor Phillips continues, before looking down over the balcony's edge. “I hope you don't forget, Asher, what waits at the very bottom.”

  Peering over the edge, I look down and see more lights. Far below, however, there are dark lines running between the bases of the buildings.

  “Have you ever been to the abyss, Asher?” Doctor Phillips asks.

  I turn to her. “The abyss?”

  “It's what we jokingly call the street-level area,” she explains. “About three miles below where we're standing right now, there are dark, gloomy streets filled with dark, gloomy people. They're actually the remnants of the old city, from the days before all these magnificent structures were put in place. If you compare a map of the abyss to a map of the city as it was in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, you'll see that the layout is more or less the same. It's rather quaint, really.”

  “What's it like down there?” I ask, squinting in an attempt to get a better view. Thanks to the lights, however, I can't really see anything much at all. The huge tower blocks rise up from what looks like darkness.

  Apparently there are people down there in the spaces between the buildings, but you'd never know that from up here.

  “It's dank and dirty down there,” Doctor Phillips continues. “Nobody ever goes down to the abyss unless they have a very good reason. There's a lot of crime down there, Asher. Have you ever been to the markets in the outer zones?”

  I nod.

  “Imagine those, but with vast buildings rising up all around. Frankly, there's not even very much light down there during the daytime. The abyss is the place where the dregs of society end up. The washouts and the burnouts. The people who lost their footing in the real world and ended up with absolutely nothing. It's a hard, miserable way of living down there, Asher, and most people don't last very long. You're lucky. As an orphan from such a young age, you had no safety net in life. You could have ended up in the abyss.”

  “It can't be that bad down there,” I point out. “At least they don't have to go to war.”

  “They live in a war,” she replies. “Oh, it's a different type of war, I'll grant you. It's more of a daily grind, where one has to fight for survival all the time. Nobody even bothers to investigate the murders, and the bodies get dragged away to be harvested. Can you imagine such a thing? I'd say it's a waste, but then the people who live down there are already the lowest of the low.” She pauses for a moment. “Do you want to end up living and dying in the abyss, Asher?”

  I shake my head.

  “Because you might, you know,” she continues. “People do fall, even from up here. They make the wrong choices, and then one day they find that instead of living a happy life in one of the towers, they have nowhere to go except the dirty, stinking streets of the abyss. And let me promise you one th
ing, Asher. As easy as it is to fall down there, it's impossible to climb back up. People die down there.”

  “People die up here,” I point out.

  She smiles. “Not in the same way. The point, Asher, is that you're at a crossroads. You could have a glittering, happy life here in the city's gleaming spires, or you could end up falling until you die in the abyss. And I suppose I brought you out here because I'm worried you don't understand just how bad things could get for you if you make the wrong choices.”

  “I think I can manage, thank you,” I tell her.

  “You need to take the mind-wipe and forget what happened to you in the war. That's the whole point of the technology we've developed, Asher. You've been extremely useful, but now it's time to move on with your life.”

  “And if I don't want to?”

  She sighs, and now I can tell that she's getting irritated.

  “There's nothing romantic about the abyss, you know,” she continues finally. “There's no -”

  “I never said I wanted to go to the abyss,” I reply. “Maybe I want to go to the island instead!”

  She laughs, as if the idea is crazy.

  To be honest, until this moment I never really considered the possibility that I could escape everything in the world and go to start a new life on the island. Now that I've said the words, however, the idea suddenly seems appealing.

  “The island is arguably even worse than the abyss,” Doctor Phillips says dismissively. “It's a place for criminals.”

  “Not exclusively,” I point out. “You could pull some strings.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because there's no way in hell I'm doing what you want.”

  “Asher, I'm trying to help you,” she continues. “You can have your mind wiped tomorrow, and you can start a new position in one of the buildings by the end of the week. You can be happy!”

  “I've seen the happy people around here,” I tell her. “I don't want to be like them.”