"Dead, dead, oh all so dead~" Terra sang in a soft voice. Yet, she was wrong. I was alive, but she thought I was dead. But why was everyone dead. And why was Terra so little? Why did she look like she did when she was five? Then I saw what she was singing about. I was really dead. And so was everyone else. The Overseer, his head was split in half, decapitated, and there were frying red rods coming out of his mouth. Butch, he was being eaten by a thousand tiny radroaches, as big as they should have been before the war. Amata, she was the best looking. She simply laid there, blood coming from her mouth, her eyes wide open. And then. There was me. I was looking at myself, and even though it was completely destroyed, completely mutilated beyond any sense of recognition, I knew it was me. And then, there was everybody else. We were at the center, Butch, Amata, the Overseer, and Me. Probably some of the most important people in Terras' life, and we were at the very center. The center of that giant circle. The circle of bodies, and every single time I looked at a person, the next looked worse, more bloodied, more dead. The only ones who never changed, no matter how hard I looked or how many times I turned away, they stayed the exact same. Them. Us. And Terra. Terra simply sat in the center, looking incredibly happy as she sang. "The world has died, I have hopes, why must we fi-g-ht? The shells, they drop, and the world goes dark, so dark. Oh, why must we fi-g-ht? I have hopes, I have hopes, high hopes that we can st-o-p!" And then, her singing of the song changed. She changed the words, and as the words changed, she changed, becoming older, but as she aged she became darker, shadows played across her body, and her voice became sad, dark, and depressing. "I have my hopes, my hopes, but those hopes are dashed! Why must we fi-g-ht? Why must we fi-g-ht? Why don't we kill? Why don't we kill? We should kill! When we are no longer here, we can't fight! So why must we fi-g-ht, why must we fi-g-ht?" Then her song stopped. She stood up, grasping herself tightly as if she was cold, and then the shadows disappeared. They were replaced by light, and she seemed to glow with brilliance, happy and enchanting. Then, I could no longer see my body. Because I was in it. And my body was raised, destroyed as it was, and I faced my daughter as she smiled brilliantly. I could see all the others do the same, all floating in the air, all facing Terra. And then, she opened her mouth wide-
And I woke up to the sound of alarms, and the sight of red. There was an emergency, and for a second I felt horrifying fear that the person above me was Terra, and that she was holding a knife. But then I regained my senses, and saw that it was Jonas. Except he looked horrible, as if he had been beaten, and there was fear etched across his face. "James, wake up damnit!" I groggily wiped my eyes, and asked "What's happening?" as I sat up, the dream already fading. "T… Terra has left! The vault, she's fucking left!" I was speechless for a moment, and then I grabbed Jonas by his shoulders. "What are you talking about?" He yelled "She's left!" and before I knew what I was doing I was up and heading for her room. When the door opened, I saw her bed empty, completely straight the same way it was always straight. Her BB gun was gone. Her baseball bat was gone. I searched through her room, gone, gone, gone, everything was… gone. Jonas stood in the doorway, but I didn't notice him. I ransacked my daughter's room for fifteen minutes, finding nothing but stupid little things. Finally, I collapsed on her bed, attempting to understand what this meant. My daughter, wasn't… in the… vault. That meant she was… in the… in the wasteland. Outside. With the raiders and the slavers and the deathclaws-and-the-yaoi-guai-and-and-and… I had to calm down. I had to calm down. But I couldn't. I couldn't. Then, I jetted from my daughters bed. I pushed past Jonas, not even noticing him as he followed. I went through the halls of the vault, ignoring the bodies, ignoring Jonas behind me. Then, I reached the Atrium. Guards were there, at the door to the vault exit. They shot at me. I felt old instincts take over, and I was out of sight within milliseconds. Bullets darted after me, and I felt rage build. I went into the workshop just by, I picked up a random piece of metal, and then I threw it at the guards as I rammed forward. As they were distracted, I slammed the both of them, banging their heads into the door. Then I stomped on one's head, and just beside me I heard Jonas pick a guard up and slam him into the wall. And I killed him. I ripped his helmet off, picked up his gun, and… shot him. Twice. The first went into his eye; the second struck his upper left jaw. And he was dead. But that barely mattered. The bullet that had been shot into my leg didn't matter. I pressed the open button on the door. Didn't work. I rammed my fist into the console. Didn't work. I shot the lock mechanisms. It worked, and I went through, with a pale Jonas behind me, begging me to stop and think this out. I didn't listen, and as I slammed my fingers on the buttons and switches and levers that would open the vault, I didn't listen. I would not listen to him beg me to make sure my leg was okay, or to stop and think about why there were bodies everywhere, to think about why we hadn't heard a single thing from the overseer through this whole thing. I did not listen, I did not care, I did not notice. Terra… Terra… Terra. Terra. Terra, Terra, Terra, Terra, I needed Terra! I was out of the vault before the grinding door was even halfway open, and as I approached the outside, I felt my eyes burn. It didn't matter. It would never matter, so long as I found Terra. I rammed through the wood door, and for one glorious second I forgot about Terra as I saw the outside, the brown sky that was filled by clouds, the grey earth dotted by greyer ruins. It wasn't much, but it was one of the grandest things I had ever seen. Then the sun really hit my eyes, and as pain ripped into my eyes and head like a giant sword being driven inside, I felt my mind fade. I felt every drop of blood that came out of the bullet hole and exactly how the shredded skin moved and reacted to each move with flaring pain. And I hit the ground, my head making a solid thunk on some rock that was unluckily directly where my head hit. I heard Jonas yell, and then there was only black in my mind. And Terra. Terra, and black, emptiness, and then I was asleep, left to the mercy of nightmares. Mercy of Terra.
