He looked at us, shadows gathering around his eyes. I've forgotten how much time has passed, hypnotized by his voice. The sudden silence struck me, shattering the immersion. Sergei drank water from his glass, then carefully put it back on the table.
'Do you know,' he said. 'What Silent Genocide is?'
We shook our heads.
A crooked smile cut his face in two halves.
'Do you two have siblings?'
Mickey licked his lips.
'No.'
I repeated it, suddenly scared.
'Uncles? Aunts?'
Both of us shook our heads.
'No, I didn't think so. Statistically, you're not likely to. You see, the Silent Genocide is not so much the result of an action, as the result of the failure of all other actions. As I said before, the Agency was created with the purpose of harnessing the power of the Ability. But in that regard, it failed. Decade after decade, it failed. I don't think that the system was designed to destroy us. Some days, I even believe that humans who first designed it were benevolent in their plans. That they truly believed that their system will serve its purpose and be replaced with something new, and more enlightened. But the scientific tools of dealing with the wraiths that they were hoping for never came, and the system remained as it was. Degrading, intrusive and poisonous. But it did produce something, a side effect no one expected. You see, as it turns out, humans had no need to kill us. They just had to crush our spirit and watch us destroy ourselves. Do you know that animals raised in captivity often refuse to mate? Do you know that in the end, we're all just animals?'
I remembered Tanya, the pain in her eyes when she said that she'll never have children. Would you bring a child into this? Would you wish the same rot we were born into on its innocent soul?
Sergei turned away and continued, something akin to sorrow in his voice:
'Statistically, most wraiths are unlikely to have more than one child, if any. What it means is that with each generation, our numbers effectively reduce by half. In a couple of hundreds of years, humans won't have to worry about the wraiths anymore. We will just be gone.'
He paused.
'Can you imagine a world without us? Will it be better? Will it be smaller? Will we be a half-forgotten myth one day? When that day comes, will anyone feel shame for all the evil things their ancestors did to us?'
Sergei was silent for a full minute, and then turned to us.
'That is what the Silent Genocide is. A passive faction in the Agency, the largest of them all, a faction of defeatists and weak-minded tyrants. It is powerful, and it grew powerful because all the attempts to find a cure for the Disease were unsuccessful. But there are other, braver men. Other factions are still trying. And if they succeed, we might survive. That's why I joined forces with one of them. That's why I went to work on the Farm.'
The weight of his words settled on us, and Sergei looked us in the eyes, defiant.
'Come on, say it. Call me a traitor, a monster. You think I wasn't called that and worse? You think I didn't despise myself? You think I wasn't sick to the stomach, physically ill from the thing that I had to do?'
He clenched his fists.
'I judged myself more harshly than you would ever be able to. But in the end, I knew that it was all for the greater cause. And it gave me the strength to go on. And it's only because of this strength that I came to the second revelation. One more terrible than anything I've ever known.'
Sergei leaned back, his eyes losing focus. He rubbed his face, blinked, shook his head. Something was happening to him, but he shook it off, resolved to continue.
'Ask yourself this: how come that the Agency, with all its power and data and access, wasn't able to find ways to treat the disease in almost a century? How come nothing has ever changed for us? I'll tell you. This is the truth I learned on the Farm, for all it cost me. The truth that, once again, had turned my world upside down. Made all my sacrifices seem futile, if not meaningless. The final truth. It's this: they couldn't cure the Disease, because the Disease doesn't exist. It's a myth. It's all a lie, which they taught us to believe.'
#
The silence hung between us, burdened with almost physical weight. I scowled, looking at Sergei without understanding. His words summoned a dangerous, burning anger in me. How dared he to imply that our suffering wasn't real? That the curse I've built my life upon, one reigning my nightmares, was a lie?
'What the fuck do you mean, it doesn't exist?' I said, trying to control my voice.
Mickey shifted on his chair.
'Yeah. How can it be a lie? I've seen it. We all have.'
Zero moved his arms carefully, considering his next words.
'You don't know what you saw. You saw a thing that is terrible, and ugly, and tragic. And when tragedy happens, we ache for an explanation. The Agency gave us that explanation, and we took it with gratitude. Anything to make sense of the horror that comes to take our loved ones away from us, one after another, until the day it comes for us instead. Like a creature of the myth that demands blood sacrifice to satiate its hunger. The Agency came and told us that there's no creature, no monster hungry for our blood. It's science, they said. A degenerative brain disorder. The Disease. It was a neat explanation, but a false one.
What I came to learn on the Farm is that the Disease is not a disease. They tell us that the Disease kills us. But in reality, it doesn't. The Ability kills us. You see, evolution has its own parameters for success. Back when it created us, longevity wasn't its concern. Wraiths had no need to live long, they only had to live long enough to produce offspring. The Ability was a tool that raised their chances of surviving until then. But it was an unstable mutation, one hazardous to its wielder. In the end, it turned on the wielder, killing them.
But this is the blessing of evolution: it never stops. Creatures adapt to overcome their limitations. Some time in ancient history, wraiths started to adapt to the Ability, increasing their chances of surviving longer. Their bodies have developed a coping mechanism that we call the Disease. The Disease is not a disease; in truth, it is a cure. It is a way for our minds to change, to learn how to accommodate the Ability. That's why symptomatic wraiths show signs of increased potential. Their brains restructure themselves, increasing their capacity for the Ability, becoming attuned to its inhuman logic.'
I shook my head furiously.
'Then why the fuck do we continue to die?! If the Ability kills us, and the disease is supposed to cure us, why doesn't it fucking do that?!'
Sergei looked at me, regret and torment in his eyes.
'Because we are not complete.'
He sighed.
'Evolution is a slow god. It doesn't work in the span of centuries, or even thousands of years. It works in the span of hundreds of thousands of years. If we had time, if we had the numbers, we would have had hope of salvation. But we don't anymore, and the Disease is not finished. It hasn't learned yet how to be perfect. But it does learn. It changes. With each generation, it becomes more intricate. Did you know that? Did you know that our grandparents didn't experience the Disease in the same way that we do? That's why the rituals don't work. That's why no one knows how to be sure of when it comes. It keeps shifting, growing, turning this way and that, seeking ways to complete itself. Complete us. Make us perfect.'
He opened his palms.
'Of course, you can hurry the evolution along. That's what we were trying to accomplish at the Farm. That's what the Generations Program is for. We believe that one day soon, with our help, a wraith child will be born who is immune to the deadly entropy of the Ability. That child might even exist already. But if they do, we weren't able to find them yet. We failed, just like everybody else. I failed. If only I had more time! But fate doesn't care about the ambitions of mortals. I started showing symptoms, and I knew that this was the end.'
He blinked, sense draining from his eyes drop by drop. The madness was creeping back, flooding his mind, his soul.
'I'm tired,' Sergei whispered. 'I'm so tired. But I need to tell you so much more. To explain. Maybe if I rest, I'll be able to. Maybe when the sun is up, the darkness will be easier to endure.'
I showed him to my room, and let him sleep.