Reversal (Camren/Norminah)

Chapter 25: Handwritten

"Lauren tell me." Mike countered, not answering one of Lauren's questions. "Are you the fledgling?"

"I am."

"Then it's finally begun." Mike leaned forward, reaching down to the bottom left drawer of his desk and pulling out something in a brown paper bag. Before removing the contents, he shifted his gaze to me. "Are you... a fledging as well?"

"No." I shook my head quickly.

"She's with me." Lauren moved forward to the edge of her seat, clearly ready to defend me if need be. "Everything that you wish to say to me, you can say in front of her."

Mike nodded, reaching into the bag and pulling out a cluster of brown papers. Looking closer, I saw that it was composed of letters, the pile held together by a string of fraying brown twine.

"Who are these for?" Lauren asked, peering at the pile curiously.

"These are for you." He replied. "I'll start at the beginning. If you really are who you say you are, then you'll understand everything I'm about to show you."

***

"Clara is my wife." The man began, leaning back in his seat. "You've already met my daughter Taylor, and the young man who answered the door was my son, Chris."

"Right." Lauren nodded.

"She left long ago, called to a place in the north for work. We haven't seen her since, but we support her choice." The man began to untie the stack of letters. "Clara left for a reason, and she had a goal. She still does."

"A goal?" Lauren leaned forward to look down at the letters. "What kind of goal?"

"My wife has a very strong will, and the moment she discovered that the Silent Hill research facility existed, she knew she had to do something about it. So she left Miami, and she registered at the institution as a nurse, gaining their trust." Mike explained. "Clara wished to take down this system, to cripple it from the inside out because just as I do, she knows that no human deserves to live that way."

I kept my eyes on Lauren, watching as she placed her hands on her knees and sat back.

"She realized not long after she arrived that this was less a research facility, and more a lifestyle. Silent Hill had cut wounds in its fledglings so deep that the damage done to them was irreversible." Mike began to fan out the letters before him, all of which now pointed to Lauren. "That is, until she met you."

Lauren glanced at me briefly, and I gave her a supportive nod. She then reached forward and took one of the letters, sliding it out of its damaged envelope and unfolding the fragile sheet of paper.

"My wife wrote letters home, endless letters that detailed how things were going. Over many years, she saw child after child perish at the hands of science, each one breaking her heart more and more. But you defied all her expectations Lauren, and you have been the subject of her letters since the day she met you."

Finishing off the letter, Lauren handed it to me before taking the next.

My dearest,

I've taken responsibility of a new child today, a young girl of Spanish descent. There is something very different about her, for I see in her eyes a fire that has never existed in this place. I won't give you her name yet for fear that they will take her away, but if there is even a glimmer of light left in this world, it lives within her.

I stopped reading, placing the page down and looking at the desk. There rest of the letters had been released from their envelopes, and each of them detailing a different moment in time. I started picking them up in random orders, scanning only through their first paragraphs.