Project Persephone

By all accounts, the suite of Clarity Shawn's high rise building is…decadent.

It would have to be, given its status as one of the nicest luxury apartments in New York City. Lavish, clean, well maintained, with all new appliances, every amenity, and the city at her fingertips.Its everything she ever wanted - her own space, her freedom. Luxury and style.

And yet…it was so very far from what it was on paper.

Currently, the space looked as if it was inhabited by a couple, if that couple happened to be comprised of a strung-out rock-star and a doomsday conspiracy theorist.

The ghost of a lavish dream, met with grim reality.

Marble floor is marred by a mass of belongings — everything she currently owns, in fact. The four post bed is stacked with her clothes. The finely finished mahogany dinning room set a mess of paperwork.

Every surface covered with Clarity's life.

The frazzled woman sits in the centre of it all, blonde hair a rats nest, green eyes near bloodshot, starting at one particular thing: A calendar.

Just a calendar.

Not a threatening thing.

But she had made the mistake of looking back, in the midst of changing the month from May to June.

Her June calendar is already packed, meticulously laid out. Days to clean her home, days to write, days to shop, days to maintain familial connections.

Her May calendar looked…much the same, really. She was nothing if not meticulous.

But…April was blank.

The sight of it wouldn't shock most, but Clarity had stood dumbstruck at the sight for far too long, long enough for her coffee to get cold.

So she looked further.

March was blank.

February, blank.

January, blank.

Not even a new year’s plan.

It really shouldn't have come to this, but she was so unsettled by the sight she actually pulled out the previous year's tracker from the depths of her filing cabinet, determined to find something, anything.

December and November, completely blank, before it picked back up in the year's previous September.

As if she just…ceased to exist.

It sparked the faintest itch under her skin, that sensation as if something nonexistent is crawling up your spine, because…well…could she remember anything from that time?

That was the first moment that she tried to call her sister.

Four rings sound.

Then she's sent to voicemail.

So she hangs up, certain that Melissa will call her back.

She must have gone to see her mother for Christmas, surely. There's a photo of this year's gathering on her desk, and she's there, she's smiling, albeit sadly, next to some aunts and uncles.

So why can't she remember a single thing?

It was as if she had one drink too many every night for six months, only that couldn't be, because Claire gave up drinking years ago, didn't she?

She tried calling Melissa again.

Four rings.

Voicemail.

Fuck, she needed her sister.

It was these increasingly frantic thoughts that had her sifting through every single item in her lavish home.

She found clothing she couldn't remember buying. Grey blazers, white work shirts, but that didn't make sense, because she hasn't worked since she made off terribly well in a divorce five years ago, she hadn't needed to.

Vinyls for her record player - since when did she have this particular one from Lady Gaga? Who even are the Crane Wives? Did her sister bring them to her and she forgot?

Four rings.

Voicemail.

Fine.

There are notebooks, definitely written in her hand, her penmanship, but…she can't make out a single word. It's all in code, like something a middle-schooler might use, pretending to speak in some spy code. Code, mixed with a shocking amount of reference to Greek Mythology, something she knows she hasn't read since middle school.

It really didn't help her rule out the drinking theory.

Four rings.

Voicemail.

Most baffling of it all was her most recent find, one that had her cross legged on the floor with her laptop beside her. In her hand, is an identification card. Basic, classic really, one anyone who's ever worked in government building might recognize. Name, employee ID, a photo, a strip on the back to swipe in.

Clarity Shawn, it reads, clear as day. Her face as familiar as the one looking back in the mirror.

Yet Claire doesn't have a single clue as to where this card came from.

And the business name on the card, FIRE Inc., doesn't ring a single bell.

The ringing of a phone interrupts her near-frantic search, and she jumps up with relief when she sees the caller ID.

"Melissa—" Clarity starts, but she's cut off with a stern, angry tone that she's only ever heard from her sister two, maybe three times in her life.

"Claire, you need to stop calling me," she all but hisses.

The frazzled woman stops dead in the midst of her home, eyes staring but not seeing at the mountains of belongings on her floor. "What?"

"I don't know how many times we have to go through this, Clarity, but I have nothing left to say to you."

"How many times…?" Claire echoes, mouth opening and closing like a fish, trying to think of anything to say. "I don't know what you —"

"Look, you need to see that doctor again. That therapist…Monroe? But I cant keep up with this — the mood swings, the forgetting, fuck, Claire, it's like every six months you become a different person and I can't fucking —"

"Why are you yelling at me?" Claire snaps back, growing frustrated. She's never been spoken to like this by her sister, never. "Look, I just called to ask you a question, and then you can fuck off. Have you ever heard of FIRE incorporated?"

The line is so silent she wonders if Melissa hung up.

"That's not funny," Melissa says lowly. "Mom and I were against that place from the start - it's sketchy, it always has been. But you didn't listen to us for ten years, so I don't expect you to start now —"

"Ten years?" Claire laughs, actually laughs, though it's just a little too sharp. "Don't be stupid, I'd know if I worked somewhere for ten damn years - I've never heard of the place!"

"Clarity, I can't deal with this —"

"No, I've been living off of Michael's —"

"Clarity, my god —"

"Look, can you just put mom on the phone?" Claire sighs eventually, tired of her sister's lack of help.

But she's met again with dead air.

"Melissa?" she tries.

"Clarity, you need help. But it can't be from me anymore," is the firm, detatched answer, before there's a definitive click.

Claire stares at her phone in a mixture of annoyance, anger, and dismay.

Before she even has the proper time to stew on it, midway through dialing her mother's cellphone number, there's a knock on her door.

"God dammit," she sighs, striding to the entrance, already ready to tell off the superintendent, who had an equally endearing and annoying knack for confusing which units needed help at any given moment.

Opening the door, however, she finds a complete stranger standing before her, looking positively benign. Grey suit, white collared shirt, combed back dark brown hair.

Yet something felt…off.

"Miss Shawn?" He asks, smile almost too polite, uncanny.

"Yes?" Clarity answers, the door only half open, her phone at the ready in her hand on the off chance she needed to call police.

"I'm Felix Navarro, from FIRE Incorporated," he introduces pleasantly, Claire's heart starting to race. "I've been told you're looking for answers."

"How on earth could you possibly —"

"We get a ping when someone Google's us, funny isn't it?" He says, smile never wavering, which only gives her more discomfort. "May I come in? I'd love to explain some things."

No, no, no, is ringing in her mind.

But her curiosity rings stronger.

And she was never one to meet politeness with rudeness.

"Of course," she sighs, stepping aside to allow him in, turning only to lock the door behind him. "Can I get you a water, or —"

Sharp.

A sharp, stinging pain in the back of her neck.

It takes less than a second for Clarity to start feeling faint. Another second for her to turn, finding the eerie face of the smiling man behind her. Another second for her thumb to hit speed dial instinctively.

Four rings.

Voicemail.

And everything went black.

**********

"You may just be the most stubborn person I know, Clarity," an unfamiliar voice calls as she begins to come to her senses.

Her eyes open blearily, wincing at the blinding fluorescent lights.

Despite the grunginess of the office she seems to be in, with it's grey, concrete walls and simple desk and chairs and no natural light…it's certainly cleaner than her home is at this time. Immaculate. Pristine.

Clinical.

Her eyes finally manage to focus on the woman in front of her. She wears a suit similar to the eerie smiling man, gray, with a white collared shirt. Her black hair streaked with grey, round glasses perched on her hook nose.

She was intimidating, not from form or stature, but from her ocean grey eyes — somehow, they seemed omnipotent. All knowing.

"Good morning Persephone," the woman hums, an amused quirk of the lips.

"Who…?" Claire doesn't even know what she's asking. Who's Persephone? Who's this woman? All she knows is she's groggy and her mouth is as dry as it gets when she has one too many cigarettes.

"You're a problem for us every time, you know," the woman points out, leaning back in her chair and examining Clarity. "A little early, this time, I'm impressed."

"Early?"

"It usually takes you…four months, maybe five," the woman explains, "before you start sniffing around about FIRE and causing a fuss."

Claire is coherent enough to put two and two together. "…This is FIRE?"

"Welcome back," the woman smiles with a cold, detached pleasantness. "I'm a director of FIRE, you can call me Dr. Vee."

"What have you people done to me?" Clarity starts to ask, but the doctor holds up a hand, looking almost…bored.

"Relax, relax, I have your answers. Let's see…" She sighs, getting herself comfortable. "You, Clarity Shawn, are one of our top researchers. Leading the charge on a little thing called Project Persephone — all very hush-hush, right now." Dr. Vee slides her a brown folder, filled to the brim, and Claire takes it carefully. At a glance it's…hard to understand. More of the code she'd found in the notebooks in her home.

"It's a mental experiment, one that's been in the works for a decade — the ability to warp cognition, alter memories, even erase them completely." The gray eyed woman speaks as if it's perfectly natural. "Originally the work started for veterans with severe PTSD wanting to forget the horrors they saw in war. Then it evolved into being helpful for survivors of sexual assault. And on a smaller scale…people who work for the facility or for other government agencies. People with top secret clearance that know information that is a liability were they ever compromised. You know?"

"You're…talking about wiping memories?" Claire asks, looking up baffled. "Mind control?"

"It's really more likely than you'd think."

"You're cracked."

Dr. Vee smiles, cold but amused. "FIRE stands for the Facility of Investigating Rarities and Eccentricities, but most of us internally call it 'For the Insane, Raving, and Eccentric'."

Claire gazes at the dossier, trying to comprehend.

"I don't understand - why isn't this explained to me on this side? Why…why do I 'wake up' completely unaware? Surely there's a process, a way to communicate it —"

"You signed off on a very particular side of the test, Clarity," the doctor explains. "We never found out why you consented to it - you were always quite private, even in your other life. But you agreed to run a particular trial where…it will never be explained. We're trying to determine if memories are wiped without that explanation, would the recipient…go insane, trying to learn who they are? Or is there a way to balance it, if someone wanted to forget entirely…."

Claire stands, moving to pace as she thinks. But Dr. Vee only continues to speak in that calm, clinical tone.

"Most, frankly, have ended up catatonic. In a depressive state where they no longer care about finding their memories. Some have chalked it up to madness, too afraid of consequences, too afraid to ruin their routine, that they just accept missing their memories. But you, Clarity…well, you crave clarity…you, without fail, have found your way back to us! Some people have horrible work life balance - you just keep trying to come in to the office."

"This is insane," Claire snaps. "You're telling me 6 months out of the year I…what, I work here? That I consent to this?"

The doctor's smile grows. "You're one of our top scientists, with very little concern for your own well being. Very…ambitious. Besides, it's not like this is for free! A pretty loft with all of the access one of the greatest cities in the world can offer? Heavens, have you seen your bank account?"

A sinking feeling hits Claire's stomach.

"I got that money in a divorce," she starts to say, but…did she? She can't quite remember those proceedings. Where the paperwork went. Any of it.

Dr. Vee shakes her head. "No. You get it from us. Hazard pay."

There's a shake in Claire's voice that wasn't there before. "I did this for…money?"

The doctor shrugs. "Things got tough. You spearheaded the research, and lo and behold…your husband left you destitute. Your mother passed and left a mound of debt. You agreed. And in exchange…all the financing in the world. 6 months of the year, you work for us, busy little bee. 6 months of the year…you get to live. Do anything, go anywhere. Hell, write that book you're always talking about in the lunch room. But instead, time and time again, for the last…five years? You've been using every resource to crawl back to us."

Claire wonders if she's going to hurl.

"Can it stop?" She whispers, barely audible.

But the gray eyed woman only smiles knowingly. "Every time, we offer you the chance to back out. And you decline. You insist there's more data to be found, more issues to flesh out."

Claire's head shakes frantically. "I can't be doing this to myself, I can't…And, what? the company just allows it?"

"Oh well you know how researches get," Dr. Vee waves off flippantly. "Besides, there's an office bet going."

A spark of indignation flashes through Claire.

"A bet?"

"Sure," Dr. Vee shrugs, clearly unphased by Clarity's anger. "For how long it takes you to give up. To break. Or…if you'll spend the rest of your days on this project fighting your way through your own work, to regain your memories."

The silence of the room is deafening, before a single question leaves her lips.

"And what're my odds, doctor?"

Dr. Vee's lips curl up. "Well, your work on the mind has always been strong…The majority of the office thinks you'll lose it by year seven, maybe eight. Others think ten years, a dozen maybe."

Clarity's nails dig into her palm. It's too much to take in. "Does…does anyone think I'll be okay?"

"One does," Dr. Vee answers, calm as can be. "Yourself. You have full faith that one of these rounds between hell and earth, you'll forget exactly what you're supposed to, and not go looking for any unnecessary answers."

Claire nods, but she's not really thinking, head swimming. If she hadn't been losing her mind before, with months worth of lost time, missing answers, and events she couldn't describe, she would have laughed at everything this woman was saying. But with an ever growing dread, she realizes it…makes sense.

"Well doctor, not that I don't love seeing you, but you aren't supposed to be off your…'vacation' yet."

Another, unexpected sharp pain hits Claire's neck out of nowhere, a cry falling from her lips in shock.

As her vision begins to fade to black, the grey eyed woman leans forward.

"We'll see you in four months time, our little Persephone."

*********

By all accounts, the suite of Clarity Shawn's high rise building is…decadent.

It would have to be, given its status as one of the nicest luxury apartments in New York City. Lavish, clean, well maintained, with all new appliances, every amenity, and the city at her fingertips.

Its everything Claire ever wanted - her own space, her freedom. Luxury and style.

And it's where she awakens, bright eyed, lighter than she's felt in…well, as long as she can remember. Her marble floors pristine, home so clean it almost appears staged. As her morning coffee brews, her hands reach for her cellphone.

Four rings.

Voicemail.

"Hey Mel, it's me! I'm not sure what you're up to this week, but we should be getting lunch soon - I cant even remember the last time I saw you!" As she speaks, Clarity finds a small sticky note on her vanity, one in her own handwriting, but that she can't remember writing.

'Trust me', it reads. 'I'm sorry'.

She doesn't give it a second thought, crumpling it and throwing it in the bin.

"Anyway Meli, give me a call back soon, I love you so much! Give a kiss to mom for me next time you see her…"