PART THREE
There are things that go bump in the night. Usually, we're only scared of the potential, the shadows that creep along the walls and fill our minds with what we perceive could be, doomed by our own imagination.
This, for him, was The Purpose. The Purpose was important to him. He was a shadow, and The Purpose, that potential he had, was what made him frightening. He cowed the others into submission with The Purpose, scaring even the most long-gone mind. He was the scariest, the quickest, the hardest. He was Phaeton.
It was a title, a prestige. Before The Purpose, he was called Rock. Before he was Phaeton, he killed any other creature who walked across his path. He only knew he was Phaeton by divining the entrails of the ghoul who'd come before him, in the Sepulchre.
On occasion, he would eat someone.
He still thought of himself as Rock. No one in the Sepulchre could call him that; they couldn't speak with sane words like he could. "Rock," he'd say to himself. "Rock, Rock."
Sometimes the horror caught up to him and he would run screaming through the tunnels, clawing at the others as they wandered through the living hell. He'd climb the walls and tear into the ducts, scrabbling through them with echoing growls and screeches. It didn't happen often and he would eventually pass out in the ducts, while his mind uncracked.
The Purpose would come back to him, when a newcomer entered the tomb. Time had some meaning to Rock.
He woke to a new feeling, a strange fluttery feeling. He remembered small creatures on the forest floor, little heartbeats stammering in the dark.
The flesh smell came to him, then. How long had this one been there? Flattened against the wall of the duct, eyes wide open, watching his every move. He turned one yellowed orb onto her and saw her squirm, saw the goosebumps raise along the smooth flesh.
She smelled of the chemicals that burned into the air, of disinfectant wash, and she smelled of ghoul. Stank of it, really. He wasn't sure. She had skin, but wasn't defiled. She wasn't running screaming through the Sepulchre with his demons hot on her heels, ready to catch her up and chew on her. The lucky ones were eaten quickly. The ones who hid would become demons in his army.
"Rock, Rock," he muttered to himself. This flesh was hiding from his demons remarkably well. She had a weapon, but it smelled of metal, rust. Not blood, not blood.
He inhaled. Under the other smells, he could taste the sweat, the fleshy smell of the panicked. A sweet smell. He wasn't hungry, but she had an aroma that was tantalizing.
"Rock," he croaked, and crawled over the corroded metal toward her.
She jerked and fled, crouching through the ducts. Phaeton followed, but Rock stayed sane inside him, warning him. There was danger, here. Phaeton ignored him.
No words were spoken when she disappeared into the ducts, and Phaeton followed her easily by the sweet candy smell. He could hear that fluttery heartbeat, like the frantic tapping of the knife she held, against the metal walls.
A vent lent her out into a power room, and he cornered her. Nowhere to run. She struck out with the weapon, sliced into his face, but Phaeton knocked this to the ground. He grabbed up her hands and pushed her against the corner, and went for the throat.
"Rock," he mumbled, pushing Phaeton back.
Her eyes were rolling in their sockets. Earth, the earth, with white skies above. "R-rock," she echoed him, her voice fearful.
He stopped, and investigated this sound, from the mouth of the sweet fleshy thing. One phlegm-filled eye crept over the fat lips, bruised and swollen.
"Rock," she sobbed. "Please," she added.
He heard his name spoken by another. It had not been said aloud by any other than himself, for such a long time, that he had not believed it was his name. He put his face near that swollen mouth and inhaled. The ghoul stink faded away, fainter. Perfume, cloying smells of flowers and cleaning products, aprons and apple pies. She was sweet.
"Rock," she whispered, into his mouth.
He liked it. The sound in the darkness. Made his blood beat faster through the sluggish memories, through his wiry limbs, through the mush that made his brain. He licked her mouth, tasting the sweat and blood and perfume. Tears, on his sandpaper tongue. Real.
A rabbit, in the tomb. Velveteen soft, but Real.
Calhoun numbly performed his assigned job. He was aware he'd been conditioned; the effect was like having a pillow over one's head, soft and downy, but an implied threat of violence if one removed it. He couldn't fight the feeling. "Paramount is security."
Instead, he examined the situation. It could be broken, he knew. If he could rip the pillow from his head and see that the violence was not only outside, but inside, he might be able to see the world again as he ought to. It had dulled his willpower, denying him the chance to fight. He was subdued, reminded by the thought that he was safe, he was safe, in Detroit.
He read the entries about soldiers and citizens who had "englished" their conditioning. With no exception, all persons were re-conditioned and reassigned to work for the betterment of Man. He studied the effects, observing the individual cases and comparing them to one another, working out how to break himself free. Even if he knew, he couldn't say whether he would be able to break free, but he would at least know how.
And knowing how seemed to be so very important, now―
He'd grown fearful of the thoughts in his head. He'd tried to remember Nina, the Vault, the shock of the outside world, even the ghouls. He remembered Lilian's horrible greenish face, and Lionel's lidless eyes. The patches of skin that were just gone, peeled like a potato. The mouths without lips, the―
"Paramount is security," and the thoughts would melt away, as if they'd never existed.
The night shift on Tower 2 was relatively slow. Calhoun shared the night with Senior Comm Officer Manus, logging the reports of the soldiers in the field. One evening he came across a familiar name, reported as having been detained and sentenced to the Sepulchre. He vaguely understood this meant that his wild child been taken to Golgotha, the prison, and thrown into a tomb of some sorts. Manus explained it further with a graphic tale about Phaeton.
Phaeton was death.
Calhoun read the entry twice before he archived it, saving it to the massive computer storage facility beneath Tower 2. He turned his eyes out over the wastes, seeing the distant haze blurring the lights of other towns, drowning the world in terrible smog.
He'd thought about her, of course. Others had not been gentle in words relating to her actions; he focused on her warnings. He ought to have listened, actually kept her terror close to his own heart. He'd had a simple undercurrent in his memories, that if she were still alive there was hope for the ex-Overseer and his people. That she might someday rescue them like she had pretended to do so frequently in her little games.
No, he thought, in reality, fairy-tales quite often end very badly.
Calhoun continued to perform his assigned job.