She was dreaming, and she knew she was dreaming. It was a weird feeling, like she could control what was happening, but only because she knew she could.
Mayer was there, and Bradley and Angus, and even Wade, but he looked like a corpse, walking around. His face was puffy and swollen, and grey with purple streaks across it. They were high-school kids, like herself, and everyone was in the Vault. Mr. O'Nan was droning on about some strange topic, and she craned her neck to see the board. Ghoul Physiology 101, it read, and she was shocked. What was going on?
Lilian was there too, and she was a high school girl, blowing bubblegum out and twirling her hair. She was wearing one of those poodle skirts that Celia had seen in a movie somewhere. She wasn't a ghoul, anymore, but a pretty pouty-faced girl with fat lips and a look of utter boredom on her face.
And Calhoun, he was there, sitting behind her with a studious look on his face, staring right at the screen ahead. He was a teenager, too. He didn't look at her, at all. She examined his face and thought to herself that he really was attractive, in a broad sort of way. Her heart panged, and she didn't know why.
She was confused. At the front of the class, she saw Officer Pesaro, also dead like Wade, wheel in a gurney and lift the sheet from it. Lionel!
She cried, a little. Calhoun lifted a large hand and put it on her shoulder, squeezing gently. The ghoul was dead on the table, eyes staring, his chest cut open from a previous Y-incision. Celia walked to the front with Calhoun, and looked down upon the body, seeing the damage.
"Hard to imagine them alive, isn't it?" Pesaro said, with a smirk. Celia didn't feel the anger she might have, only the sorrow. She put a hand out to Lionel's cheek and felt the rough skin, the dryness, the exposed muscle. Calhoun put his hand over hers, and drew it away.
"It's okay," he said. "He's not here."
What did that mean? She turned to him, bewildered, but he'd turned into Jesse, sitting on the projection table, smoking a cigarette and blowing rings into the air. "I told you," he said, and the smoke rose up around her, billowing. "I told he'd turn into a monster."
And then Lionel rose from the gurney and grabbed her around the chest, put his head down on her neck and bit her―
She jerked awake and panicked immediately. The room was dark and smelled of chemicals, but it wasn't the Sepulchre, or at least nothing of it that she had seen before. Her eyes unfocused and she felt a cold sting in her arm. An I.V. bag above her, she was on a hospital bed. She sighed and laid back, staring at the ceiling. The orange glint of the Rad-Away in the small light from the hallway entranced her for a moment.
She remembered everything, all of a sudden, and vomited violently off the edge of the bed. The I.V. stand rattled with her motions, and she pulled the I.V. line out, throwing everything to the floor in anger.
Darkness, the smell of rotting flesh, the growling of humans gone mad... the unbearable heat of the tunnels. How did they not dissolve in that irradiated heat? And Rock. She remembered him, of course, his eye glinting with slick mucus, staring up at her. She had held him in her arms, she owed him her life. He was so horrible, but so gentle, at the same time.
How close was he to utter madness? Had she helped him? She hoped not. It was probably better for him to remain insane in the Sepulchre than to reason with the empyrean darkness of that tomb. She pulled her legs up to her chest and stared at her toes for a moment.
She didn't want to think about Lionel turning into what Rock had become. She would rather die herself, than to even imagine that. All she wanted from him was to be there, to hold her if she were sad, to tease her mildly. She wanted his happiness, and he had seemed happy enough just to be with her until she brought up... that. It was only curiosity that compelled her. She regretted it, now.
Lionel, stay away from here. I'm the dangerous one, now.
The door to the tiny room opened and a soldier stepped inside. She froze and kept her eyes on her feet.
"It is my duty to inform you," Mayer said, "that although you were sentenced to death in the Sepulchre, you have been granted a stay of execution."
What? She plucked at the bedclothes, nervously.
"You have been ordered to see the High Ferrule," he went on. "You will serve him as he deems appropriate."
Celia wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her face. Rock may have been bad, but he hadn't struck her like the other had, or acted without compunction. She desperately wanted anything but to go back to that bower and see him again.
"If... I refuse?" she asked.
"I'm afraid you cannot," he said. "You know this."
Sober-minded and business-like Mayer was a good deal more scary than the laughing pervert he'd been before. She turned to look at him, sought out the visor on his helmet. "Please," she whispered.
"You've been given a great honor," he said. A tiny waver played in his voice, echoing gently through the helmet. "You should be proud to serve the High Ferrule."
She stared at him. He was afraid? Of... her? Why?
"When you are ready to go, I will take you to the Temple of Solomon," he went on.
She stared at the crumbling wall in front of her and felt the pain again, when her nose had broken the second time. How long would it take to heal? How much longer, if the ghoul on the throne hit her again, or would he even let her heal, but break her nose every day?
She thought about Lionel again. What would he do, in her situation? He was strong. He would try to fight, like he had with Wade. She wondered how Wade had died. She assumed Lionel killed him with the revolver he always carried. He was tough. He would live, she knew it. He wouldn't give up, either, if he wanted to do something. She'd never seen him quit something unless Lilian or herself had asked him to. She thought about what he said. Meet it, and beat it. She had to be tough.
But, oh, god! Please don't come here!
Celia buried her face in her knees and cried a little. I can do this, she thought. I'm stubborn. I can do this.
She stood from the bed and walked slowly with Mayer through the building. She wondered if the skies of Detroit would ever be free of the black smoke, or if the whole city was tainted by the evil that sat on the throne in the Temple. Celia had no aspirations for herself; she'd only wanted to find somewhere to belong, and then maybe she might farm and tend Brahmin until she died. She knew that it was selfish to want a peaceful life, when so many others led such horrible nightmares.
The people here, they need help, she thought. Mayer escorted her through the streets, but he did not touch her, or bind her. He was afraid of her, she knew. She turned her eyes to the filth and suffering. Children played in inky water, but their soot covered faces remained blackened. They ran through the streets, yelling and making noise, but they didn't laugh. A soldier kicked a woman lying across a doorstep, passed out drunk or dead. Others sat in the doorways, drinking liquor and staring numbly out over the asphalt. Men in the streets, both moving and not, were prodded by the soldiers, pushing them into buildings.
"How do you do it?" she whispered, her voice awed and trembling.
Mayer poked her in the back with his gatling laser and hissed, "You get better, or you get dead." He forced her through the awful streets, but didn't speak again.