Chapter 3: Blank Slate
He was awake, but he wasn’t there.
His wide, unblinking grey eyes were focused on Lena like a cornered animal, reflecting the firelight but showing no light of their own. He showed no memory or personality, only raw fear. He seemed hollow and confused.
Lena maintained a safe distance, observing him from across the room.
She gripped her knife and then glanced towards the corner of the room where her rifle was placed, finding comfort in its familiar weight. It served as a clear barrier between her and the unfamiliar individual now resting on her bearskin rug. He was no mere patient anymore; he was now an unusual occurrence, which in Lena's world meant he was considered a threat until proven otherwise.
"Who are you?" she asked. Her voice sounded emotionless, hiding the turmoil she was feeling inside. Her voice was like a sharp and practical tool.
He jumped at the noise and quickly looked at the locked door, thinking about fleeing even though he knew he couldn't.
He opened his mouth, but only a dry, rasping sound came out. He swallowed, the effort visible in the cords of his neck, and tried again. His brow furrowed in a deep, painful concentration, as though he was trying to find a word in a book that the pages had all been ripped out.
"I... I don't..." His voice was a ghost, thin and weak.
He looked down at his own hands, turning them over and over as if they were strange, alien objects he had never seen before. "I don't know."
Lena narrowed her eyes, recognizing the man's pure fear as he struggled to understand his identity in a strange world.
She pushed, keeping her voice steady.
"Where did you come from? What happened to you?"
He shook his head, a look of pathetic, genuine helplessness was all over his face. The effort to remember was causing him physical pain.
"Trees," he whispered, his voice barely audible.
"The rain. Running. There was… a noise."
He looked past her, his eyes unfocused.
"Then... nothing. Just dark."
The emptiness in his eyes was frightening. Though he was unaware of danger, his body sensed it. The sound of fire startled him. The wind outside made him shake. Even his own memories felt haunted.
He clung to Lena as the only stable thing in a world full of scary and overwhelming sensations. She was his only reference point, and her cold, menacing presence was surprisingly the only thing that seemed real enough to hold onto.
Lena let out a slow, frustrated breath, her knuckles white on the stock of her rifle. This was worse than she thought. A man with amnesia was a problem. But this was a man that does know the basics of this present world.
She had to come up with a name to call him. Referring to him as "you" seemed like pointing fingers, and the silence was getting harder to handle.
She mentioned the name "Cain" without thinking, it came to her unexpectedly and quickly.
"I'll call you Cain."
He looked at her with a blank expression, not recognizing the name.
She explained, comparing the situation to an old story. "He was a wanderer who was marked and cursed”
His name seemed fitting, hinting at a dark past he couldn't recall but others could sense lingering around him like a foul smell.
She rose to her feet with a strong and purposeful gesture, showing her acceptance of the new responsibilities in her position.
"Listen to me, Cain," she said, her tone leaving no room for argument or misunderstanding.
"You are a guest. A temporary one. I will give you food and shelter until your wounds are healed. When you are strong enough to walk, you will leave. This is my place." She gestured around the small, fortified room.
"You will not touch my things. You will not go into the storage rooms. And you will not get in my way. Do you understand?"
He nodded slowly, not because he understood the social contract she was explaining, but because her commanding tone gave him something concrete to hold onto. A rule. In a chaotic world, a rule provided stability.
And so the dynamic was set. Lena, the reluctant protector, the resentful warden, hardened by a world that had taken everything from her. Cain, the broken man, the blank slate, as vulnerable and dependent as a child.
The tension in the ranger station was strong. She felt torn between survival instinct and compassion. He violated her rule and reminded her of her past choice.
The next few days passed in a strained, oppressive silence, broken only by Lena’s curt instructions and Cain’s quiet, hesitant questions about the world. She found herself in the absurd position of teaching a grown man the basics, the things a child would know.
"This is a knife," she said, holding up her machete.
"It's sharp. It can cut you. It can kill you."
He simply nodded, his eyes wide with a detached sort of interest.
One evening, the skittering, clicking sound of a Crawler echoed from just outside the reinforced walls. Cain looked at the window, tilting his head.
"What is that sound?"
"That's a Crawler," Lena said, her hand resting on her rifle.
"It means death. If you ever hear that sound and you are not behind a thick wall, you run or you hide..…Or you die."
He calmly accepted the information by nodding, which made her more uneasy than if he had reacted with fear.
She hated the process. It felt too intimate, too much like caring. She was rebuilding a person from the ground up, a person she didn't want and couldn't keep. The responsibility was a heavy burden on her,, heavier than any power converter.
The nights were the worse. She would lay on the bedroll across the room, watching shadows from the fire. Sleep was hard. She listened to his breathing and felt uneasy. Her fortress felt like a cage, and she didn't know who was the prisoner anymore.
On the third night, the fragile peace was shattered.
Lena woke up suddenly to a loud cry. She grabbed her rifle, her heart racing. It was Cain. He wrestled with himself. it happened to be that he was having anightmare.
She watched, her finger hovering over the trigger, her mind racing. Was he a threat? Was some dormant, dangerous part of him waking up?
He cried out again, a single, choked word that tore from his throat.
"No!"
The thrashing suddenly stopped. He gasped and sat up. His eyes darted around the dark room, seeing the ghosts of his dream instead of the stone walls of the station. The blank look on his face was now replaced by intense horror.
"What did you see?" Lena asked, her voice low and steady, cutting through the shadows.
Cain looked at her,confusion and terror all over. He shook his head, struggling to put the fragmented, searing images into words.
"Trees," he whispered, his voice trembling.
"So many trees. And running. I was running so fast." He wrapped his arms around himself, a shudder running through the powerful muscles of his back.
"The smell... the smell of blood. It was everywhere. Thick.”
His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard.
"And a scream. There was a woman's scream. It wasn't just in my ears; it was everywhere. It was in the ground, in the trees..."
He looked at Lena, his eyes pleading for an answer, for an explanation she couldn't possibly give.
"What was it?" he asked, his voice cracking with a pain that seemed to be more than a physical one.
"What did I see?"
Lena stared at him, the heavy rifle in her hands suddenly feeling less like a tool of protection and more like a useless weight.
The clean slate was beginning to have words written on it. The initial words were about violence and fear. Cain wasn't just someone without a history. He was someone escaping from one. And Lena had just brought him, and whoever or whatever that thing following him, right into her home.
