"Bradley."
He stepped forward.
"Report to the Temple."
He did, striding confidently into the darkened building, eyes forward. There was nothing new to see.
Burgess had been waiting for him. Bradley knew this was untrue; he could see the shiftiness in the little man's eyes, the sweat coming down his temple. Had he been ordered to kill the liar, he would have.
Bradley walked into the bower of the High Ferrule, removed his helmet, and knelt on one knee. "Sir."
As was his custom, the High Ferrule had his Echo sitting nearby. She waited patiently for her duties. Bradley had collected this Echo from her mother, amidst the screaming incoherence of the slums. She was growing well, he thought, for such a scrawny baby. She looked at him with a smile, and shining eyes.
"Bradley!" The High Ferrule placed his hands together in delight. "I am so very happy that you could come to see me."
"How could I not, sir?" he replied.
The High Ferrule laughed, cruelly. Echo laughed as well, but the feeling was less cruel. "Such wit! No matter, it may not be necessary or needed, in the future." He sighed, then. "I've a problem, Bradley."
"How may I assist you, sir?"
"To the point, as always!" The High Ferrule stood, pushing his Echo aside and moved from the glass throne. "Stand, Bradley. I will perform an exercise."
He stood, and he could just see over the High Ferrule's head.
"Now, strike me."
Bradley shook his head. "I cannot, sir."
The High Ferrule reached out and slapped Bradley across the face, growling. "Absurdity!" he shrieked.
Bradley moved his head forward again, and felt the sting in his face. He did not react.
"The older conditioning is still better," the High Ferrule muttered to himself. "I must have that dampener!" He clenched his fist.
"If you are looking for something, perhaps I may find it, sir?"
"Hmm?" The High Ferrule turned and put his fingertips together. "Oh, yes. I forget that you have such a simple mind."
Bradley took no offense. Simple was better, quite often. Ending an argument with a gunshot, wading a river rather than looking for a bridge, obeying an order without thinking. These were simple.
"Your subordinate, Wade," the High Ferrule said. "I sent him to collect a mate for this," he showed Bradley the metal piece, "about three months ago." He sighed, painfully. "I'm afraid I must order him back to the Temple for punishment."
Bradley hung his head in shame. "My training has failed you, sir."
"I doubt it was your training," the High Ferrule said, critically. "Rather, his conditioning failed him, and I offered him a chance to live through the day."
Bradley was aware of this problem with Wade, though he'd assumed that Wade had been reconditioned, or executed as non-viable. He was perplexed by this development. "If you permit, sir, I will find him."
"I know you will," the High Ferrule said. "You will find the metal piece, and Wade."
"Yes, sir," Bradley said, and excused himself.
It would be simple, he thought, if Wade had not already died in the wastes. Given Wade's terrible gun skills, he doubted the young man had made it very far. His prompt crackled to life, showing him the information that he desired to know.
Jesse sat with Celia around a campfire. He'd been edging closer to her for a while, but she'd noticed and was glaring at him rather meanly. He sighed, and stood up abruptly.
"I declare this land free from the Ma-Menace!" he hollered into the trees. The night sky watched on silently, and Celia shook her head at him.
"What are you doing?" she said. "You'll get us in trouble."
"Chick, I love me some trouble," he said, laughing. "Didn't you know?"
She looked away and ignored him. Jesse raised an eyebrow and picked a branch off the nearest bush. Shuffling on his knees, he moved up to her and offered it out. "C'mon, Celia, forgive me?"
"I don't think I want to," she said, but her voice was teasing. He smiled. Hook, line, just need the sinker.
"Well, if you aren't gonna forgive me, I'll have to beg," he said, and rolled onto the ground under her feet, putting his hands together and made a whimpering noise.
"Stop it, Jesse," she said. "I'm not in the mood for this." She sighed.
"Okay," he said, lying there, and stretched out, then ran a hand up her leg and tickled her behind the knee.
She kicked him softly in the side and moved away from him. "You're a creep, Jesse."
He sighed to himself. Man, this was harder than he thought. Ma wanted him to make googly eyes at her, but she wasn't swooning like Ma expected. He stared up at the sky, the stars obscured by the clouds.
Suddenly, he sat up, and looked at her. "I'm a creep?" he said. "How about some creepy stories?"
"Sure, whatever," she said, staring into the fire with her chin in her hand.
He spun a tale about a woman who heard scraping noises in the dark, and was eventually murdered in her sleep by a killer hiding under her bed.
"Not creepy," Celia said. "Just sick. And anti-climatic. Who the heck hides under a bed?"
"Little kids," he said. "And people with murderous intent."
She shook her head. "Try again."
Jesse thought for a moment. "How about Sasquatch?"
"...What?"
"Long time ago, when people could walk the world without fear in their hearts, there were still monsters in the dark," he said, spookily, kicking some dirt onto the fire to make it darker. He ducked into the dark of the trees around them. "In the depths of the wilderness, deep, deep in the trees and valleys of Michigan, a creature walked along on two feet, like a man. But it wasn't a man."
Celia looked up at the sky. He waited a moment, moving around behind her, and jumped out at her, roaring like a large animal might. She shrieked and punched him in the stomach.
"Ahh!" he said, hissing. "Dammit, Celia!"
"What?!" she threw her head up. "You shouldn't jump out at people!"
"Did it scare you?" he asked, teasingly.
"No," she said, defensively, and tossed a tree branch at him.
"Ow!" He didn't duck in time. "You're as bad as that damn mush-face!"
"Don't call him that!" she yelled, and thumped him on the chest with a fist.
"Oh that is it, chick!" Jesse moved closer, and held her shoulders tightly. "Don't you hit me!"
She looked up at him with big, scared eyes, and he tried to move in for a kiss. Bad idea, though, he thought later. She kneed him in the crotch and he yelped in pain, falling to the ground.
"Ohhhh," he moaned. "Dammit!" He looked up at her. "You just can't let go of that one, can you?"
"Why should I just forget someone?" she asked, angrily. Spots of color rose in her cheeks.
"Because," he groaned, and sat up. "You're so hung up on that living corpse, and you don't even realize what it means!"
"I am not that stupid!" she shrieked. "I have ears! I can hear what people say about him, about me!"
Jesse took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. She was angry, but there was a layer of hurt under them that he could tell needed to be aired. "What're you gonna do when he whops you like he did Lilian?" he asked, fiercely. "Or when he goes feral on you, and tries to eat you?"
She only glared at him. "Lionel would not do that," she said, with fire in her eyes, "and he's not going feral any time soon."
"You're delusional," he said. "It's a goddamn death sentence, and you never know when it's gonna hit you." Celia reached out for the tree limb again, but he jumped up and stopped her, holding her wrist. "I'm not kidding, Celia!"
She looked to his hand on her wrist, and paled. "Let me go," she whispered, a frantic tone in her voice.
Jesse dropped her wrist. "You need to understand that there are real monsters out there," he said, quite seriously.
"I know there are monsters," she said, in a small voice. The fire cracked a log and sparks rose into the dark sky.
"Why you act like this, I don't know," he told her. "Like the world is one big fairy tale, waiting for you to read it."
"I like fairy tales," she said, her voice wobbling with emotion. "They're easy to remember."
The fire dimmed. Jesse looked to it, and rubbed his eye. "Yeah, but they all end real badly," he said.
When he looked back, she was gone. He sighed.
"Well, I tried, Ma," he said, and kicked more dirt on the fire.