Page 85 of The Quiet
Her heart began to race as she tried to digest the implications of what he shared.
“Even my attempts to stop it were fruitless. I did much to create this new world in The Ocean. I’ve created prototypes before, versions that failed at the cost of many lives. I did everything in my power to prevent the Burning of the Strike, but even in this version of things, don’t you see? Walls were built all over again. Already there are stirrings in news and gossip. The authorities of the Imperia will take hold of the world and soon a rebellion will be incited against them. People have fed this government. People will burn it down. The cycle will begin again, even in this version of the world I’ve created to prevent it, a world where even the Strike don’t realize they are Strike. The Burning of the Strike is as human as humanity itself.”
She struggled with the words, trying to decipher it and break it into digestible pieces. She looked at him and asked a question that lingered deep inside her, painfully deep, “You tried to prevent something horrible, but you did so many horrible things. Are you good or are you evil?” His answer would in many ways help her determine her feelings about herself, because despite it all, as a girl, she had loved him.
“I don’t claim to be either,” he said softly, “I’ve only ever wanted to be what I searched for. I believe in the end that is what I became.”
He’d searched for life, for a way to create it. She wondered what the connection was now. Was he saying that in the end he became life?
She sat with his words for a moment, mulling over the last few months of her life, mulling over the questions. She’d thought so often of what to ask Peter, that as she sat before him now, she could only summarize all of those questions ambitiously into one broad inquiry.
“Peter,” she said, and it felt strange to say his name still. “Why did you save me?”
He nodded in a quiet acceptance of her inquiry.
“You remember our initial agreement?” he asked. “It was that I give you a path to be free from your fear just as you helped me find life. I am here to deliver on that promise.”
Her brows furrowed thoughtfully. “What do you mean?” she prompted.
He leaned back in his chair slightly, resting his hands on his knee.
“I told you it would be difficult, that many never pursue the end of fear, but you see, Baker, freedom from fear only ever comes in the end of all things.”
“You mean death?” she asked.
“A version of it, yes. And you have followed it faithfully to the end of the story, followed me, because that is what I meant to you,” he continued and paused for a moment. “Baker,” he said, “to Strike, in our understanding of time, a hello is in so many ways the same as goodbye. I said both when I first met you, but humans, in their way, cannot say them at once. This journey has always ever been about saying goodbye. Your goodbye. It’s what we’ve both waited for.”
“Goodbye,” she repeated quietly.
“Yes,” he confirmed, “to everything you were afraid to lose.”
“What happened at the Burning of the Strike?” she asked, shaking her head as she squinted forward. “I can’t…I still can’t remember.”
“Are you ready to remember?” he replied, ever calm. “That will be the end of this journey.”
She inspected his features, almost angelic in the light. She hardly believed it was real, wanting to reach out and touch his face, his hands, anything. He wore a light blue shirt, one she remembered him wearing on the last day she could still recall.
Was this real after all?
He stood to his feet and invited her up. “You came to this room, and I healed your wounds from Amiel. I preserved the moment, hoping you might find me one day. Baker, you see. I had plans once fate placed you so intentionally into my lap. In your dependence on me, you had the makings of a Strike, but in refusing that life, you showed me a path to something else. I found the answer. I discovered how to become life and how to end suffering. The solution was always in the Burning of the Strike, repeating itself until I could at last make the right decision.”
He stood in front of the window, the brilliant light darkening his form. He invited her to look outside.
“Do you want to remember?” he asked, “the choice is yours. But know, once you agree, the purpose of the present memory will be fulfilled and will cease to exist. I have delivered my final message, and you will not find this place again.”
She approached and squinted through the light of the window, determined to see beyond it. A sudden sadness came over her at her inability to see and in a moment of strength she admitted that she was finally ready to.
“Yes,” she said and the light outside grew brighter until she had to turn away, finding herself outside in the courtyard of the Bleeding Grin. She was a girl again, standing at the steps of the Bleeding Grin as if she’d just followed Peter out from the white table. Her clothes were bloodstained still, but her wounds had been healed.
Walls of flame shielded the horizon at every angle as explosions and echoes of battles could be heard among the roaring fires.
The gate at the base of the Bleeding Grin rattled violently as the crowds converged in panicked wails and harsh clawing. They beat and they screamed away from columns of smoke and burning houses. The city was on fire and their fear raged.
This was the Burning of the Strike. She’d been there for it.
The people of town didn’t look like people at all. They looked ravenous, just as they always had, fighting through the gates but now not out of just hunger but out of terror at the sounds and the chaos. Pandemonium had turned them into animals.
But they were not rats or vermin. She no longer looked down on them. She understood, and her heart broke for their fates.
