Depth of Silence (LSoE Series)

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

3 April, Year 660

North-Eastern Campsite, 1:32 - Dakota Carton

Possibility... one hundred percent.

Probability... less than fifty.

Expectability... zero.

Or that was as far as we knew. Personally, I doubted it almost one hundred percent. If a Shadows was in you, that was it. You turn grey, lose all control of yourself, and try to kill everything in sight. Period. There were no "half possessions." You were either possessed or not. It is as simple as that.

"So what do you think?" Graham asked our medic.

"Well, I've certainly never heard of it before, but it's not like I've had many patients with this condition. I hadn't had an extremely high success rate with them either until Dakota came along."

"But how true do you think it could be?" I wondered.

"I wouldn't expect it to be greatly possible, but what really matters is if you want to bring attention to his potential condition or not."

"Why do all of your answers include 'but' in them?" Celia questioned.

"Because nothing has been written in stone! No matter how many degrees I've earned or how many people I've saved, I'm making as many guesses as the rest of you. This simply hasn't arisen before, and there's nothing I can do about that!"

Riley's eyes dulled and he muttered, "Alright guys, I'm literally right here. Would you stop talking about me?"

"Would you rather us talk about you when you're not around?" I challenged.

"I'd rather you all trust me!" he exclaimed. "You've all known me for long enough. You know I wouldn't lie about a voice in my head."

Celia put her hand on the younger brother's back. "Riley dearest, we don't doubt that. It's just... why would it be a Shadow? We all have voices in our heads. Our consciences. Our inner thoughts. "

"You have also been working on your 'French,' as you call it," I added. "The words are in your head. It is normal to speak aloud what you are thinking about. It could happen to anyone."

"It's distinctive, guys! I can tell it's not my voice! I hear someone talking to me like he was right next to my ear, or if the radio was playing in the next room over!"

Believe me, it was hard to not convince myself he was correct in some way. I wanted to believe he was right. That is just the way it went with Riley. I suppose he was the "protect at all costs" kid, the "too innocent for this world" soldier, even though he was twenty-five by now. In my mind, though, he was still eighteen, just joining the military and hiding his mourning for his mother, a scrap of her scarf tied tightly around his wrist. For some reason, he always saw the light in the world, and we wanted to keep him like that, maybe for the benefits of ourselves.

"But Riley dearest, if a Shadow was really talking to you, it wouldn't tell you the truth. It's would deceive you. Shadows are here for detrimental reasons, not to help us out. They've made that very clear."

7 April, Year 660

North-Eastern Campsite, 15:21 - Rei Marcotte

After a while, we all pretended to forget about Riley's condition. Graham made it out to sound like he's pretty susceptible to traumatic experiences, so he was probably just going through something. In total, he was fine. Didn't seem like anything to worry about. Sometimes he'd whisper things under his breath or stare for long periods of time, but that was the worst of it. We didn't want to make it obvious, but we were always making up excuses for him to stay in the camp with either Graham or Celia. Better safe than sorry, right?