The Purge was Charles' plan. I am not laying the blame for it solely on him, for all of us who took part in it were equally culpable. How can I explain what it was like for us whose whole lives were bound up in the Island, watching this band of Outsiders gradually taking more and more of our territory, doing experiments on Our Island—it was like watching them do it on our children, or our father—being called by them Hostiles or Savages for protecting what was ours?
Nevertheless, we slaughtered several hundred people, including the more defenseless among them. Was there no other way to defend ourselves?
Charles, I am certain, was not plagued with these doubts. Nor was I, at that time. Neither, for that matter, was Ben. He had friends among the people he lived with, I believe, if the kinds of relationships he cultivated could be called friendships. He had a father.
When I first told him about the plan for the Purge, I asked him what he wanted us to do with Roger Linus. I gave him the option for the man to remain alive, though I know Charles would not have approved. Charles never did understand that I did not answer to him. Ben did.
He lifted his head and fixed his large blue eyes on me. He was just a young man. I don't remember what year it was. Dates have always been a curiously slippery concept with me. But I remember that he was young, in age and in body but not in mind.
"I'll take care of him myself," he said.
"Take care of him?" I asked, wanting to know his precise intentions. I thought it would be right and proper for him to be the one to kill his father. It would be a fitting sacrifice to the Island and a kind of initiation into our life. I had become oddly pagan in those days. I wonder if Jacob knew, if he even cared. He was so very removed from events, until he was forced by his approaching death to enter them.
"How do you intend to carry out this purge?" Ben asked.
"We thought gas. We have some left over from when we eliminated the American military several decades ago. Do you think you could get us more from Dharma stores?"
He nodded. "Tell me the day and time, and that day I'll take my father aside and do it myself."
"Do what, Ben?" I asked again.
He looked me in the eyes. "Kill him. I'll kill him myself. I want him to know it's me doing it. I want him to know why."
I wondered if he really could. If he could, it would only prove what he was meant to be.
On the day of the Purge, Charles insisted on leading the team that would take out Hydra Island (the true seat of power, he said) and gave me leadership of the team going to the Barracks. Eloise led the Orchid team, Tom Friendly the Flame team, and so forth.
We entered Dharma territory at 3pm. Ben had given me the day's code to the sonic fence, and we passed in easily, without detection. No one caught us in the jungle; the Dharma folk rarely went into their own jungle, and with good reason. We approached the Barracks with great caution, as only we knew how to do, and at 4 o'clock we pulled on our gas masks and threw our gas grenades into the little neighborhood. Then we ran up to the buildings and threw them into windows and doors. In moments, everyone was dead.
We checked each of the buildings and then all came out into the center of the little village. Ben was there in his silly Dharma jumpsuit and gas mask, standing and staring around at all the dead. People he'd known. I timed the dissipation of the gas and took off my mask, and as all the others followed suit, he did too. His eyes were wide, a little shell-shocked. He'd never killed before. His father was his first.
Did I say before that Ben lost his innocence when I took him into the Temple? I realized that day I was wrong. He'd still had some shred of it locked deep inside, until I helped him finally kill it the day of the Purge. But at least his waiting was over. He was finally one of us.