Beneath Grey Skies

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

"Do you see something out there, Juliet child?" asked the aging male owner of the room, sitting opposite her, behind an antique-looking desk, looking at her through bespectacled eyes. The light played off his pale complexion, a complexion shared by everyone in the community. The seat she sat in was angled somewhat towards the window.

Being called a child felt like a misnomer for the teenaged girl, as she looked out through the window. It was a large, reinforced window, although the metal frame and fittings were showing signs of rust. Her blue eyes peered under a fringe of brown hair as she took in the view.

The room belonged to Prime Mentorate Gheeling, to whom she was but one of seven assigned. She had been assigned to a Mentorate at a young age and it was a source of pride for her family. For Juliet, it meant an escape from working in one of the factorial mills and she took the lessons and work, both mental and physical, given her.

Showing promise, she was reassigned to the Prime Mentorate two years ago, at the age of fifteen. He was strict yet not unkind. His room was the most unique, for it had a window to the world beyond, the only one in the whole facility. When she first came to the room, she had been asked that question but all she could see through the window was grey, a near solid wall of grey. It ironically reminded her that she lived within a mountain. She surmised it was a test that became a daily one.

Every day, she'd have half an hour with the Prime Mentorate after the morning lessons with the other assigned.

Every day, he would ask that same question before more injections, needles and further medical work upon her person.

At the time, the purpose eluded her. But over time, with knowledge gained from her lessons and subsequent interactions with other assigned, she started to formulate her own ideas, that she was meant to see something out there and all of the Prime Mentorate's medical work was to help facilitate that outcome.

Juliet questioned her conclusions over time, however, as she watched assigned leave, having reached the age of eighteen without ever seeing anything and go onto other opportunities within the community.

However, there were a few assigned that either simply vanished, never heard from again, or would go onto working in the Deep Ring, the protective workings at the base of the community's city. The latter assigned were the success stories of the Prime Mentorate's program. They saw something through the window, but, Andrea felt, it left them haunted and never spoke of what they saw.

The defence of the Deep Ring was of great importance, as it kept the community safe from the harshness of the outside world, a world that no one, but a select few, has seen in over twenty years.

"Well, my child?" The Prime Mentorate's question caught her attention momentarily before her eyes turned back to glimpse at the window.

She did not know how to answer, unable to process what she was seeing clearly for the first time. The past few months had seen a transformation of the solid grey, to fluid grey, to fluid blurry shapes, each day bringing more colour and definition. And what she saw brought understanding as to why they lived where they did.

The commonplace reason she and her people were given as to why they hid in the mountain, away from the world, was due to a catastrophic event twenty-five years ago. A mega volcano had erupted that destroyed Earth's ecosystem and capacity to support life and it had been only luck and ingenuity that this community had been established within a mountain.

Her time as an assigned had given her a more detailed version, one that she realised would have been damaging to the people and community at large. They were hiding from what became of humanity outside.

The adults of the community called them Greude, the boogeyman come to life, and the name was used in hushed tones to scare children to sleep. Only a very select few have ever seen a Greude alive, so most of the descriptions have come from the dead specimens brought in by the patrols at the Deep Ring for incineration.

The main feature of the Greude was the pallor and colour of their skin, which was grey, as if colour was leeched out of it. Indeed the name Greude was derived from the term "grey-hued". The body and slightly oversized head were hairless, with a face with two slits where a nose would be and no mouth. But the eyes were said to be terrifying, deeply sunken in and to look into it. All in all, the archetypical boogeyman.

Juliet's time as an assigned provided her with more information as to the Greude's origins. They had been indeed humans that were altered by something released into the air from the erupting volcano. There were theories that it may have been extra-terrestrial in origin as there had been conflicting sightings and reports of either a meteorite or an alien spacecraft landing at the epicenter of what became the mega volcano and that meddling by government agencies caused a series of events resulting in the obliteration of the meteorite/spacecraft and the eruptive birth of the volcano.

The fallout resulted in that within days of exposure, humans transformed into the Greude, who exhibited chaotically vibrant skin colouration as well as gaze from its eyes such that to look upon either caused various medical physical and mental symptoms on non-transformed humans ranging from severe nausea and hysteria, bleeding eyes to psychosis and death from varying causes. And death did not even necessarily leave a human's body untouched as the Greude would either bite the body to transform it or use it as a source of food.

In a matter of week, ninety five percent of the human population were either transformed or dead. The remainder, such as Juliet's community and home, were hidden, both to keep them unseen by the Greude as well to prevent them from accidentally seeing a living Greude's skin and eyes.

This is why today Juliet was fearfully agog to see the Greude outside the window, its multicoloured skin glowing with its eyes fixated upon her.

Juliet turned with her mouth agape to Prime Mentorate.

"Good, good. You see them don't you?" asked Mentorate Gheeling excitedly, his round, pudgy face distorted by a smile.

Silently, Juliet slowly turned back to the window. Behind the Greude, was the vista of a mountain range. The sky was grey, although there were no clouds, but flying about were more Greude.

"How....how can I see them?" she mouthed, tears running down her cheeks, as her eyes locked with the Greude's.

"I have been working on augmentations for the past ten years that will allow a human to be able to look upon a Greude without the effects being so debilitating if not nullified." He replied. "You have been my latest, most promising work that hopefully will lead us to not only fight them off but to take back the outside world as is our right as human beings."

Juliet remained silent in reply, as an insistent voice assailed her mind.

Mentorate Gheeling asked her to describe what she saw, which she did with some reluctance and difficulty.

"Excellent, excellent..... you are only exhibiting some discomfort." He turned away to consult some papers on his desk, ignoring of her plight.

Juliet said something as if in reply. "..... you want to be let in?"

The sounds of Mentorate Gheeling rummaging through his desk stopped. "What was that child?" He asked.

Juliet turned her gaze to the Prime Mentorate, who flinched back. "They want to be let in."

"Child, this is important. Don't listen to them. Listen to my voice." The Prime Mentorate's right hand was up before him as if to placate her, his other hand edging towards a box to his left. His head vacillated between Juliet and the Greude beyond the window.

Juliet squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on the Prime Mentorate's voice and words, but in her mind's eye, she could still see the Greude. And echoing in her mind, was the suggestion to let them in, an echo that continued to grow louder and more insistent until.....

Her eyes opened as she rose to her feet and went towards the window but a sudden warning in her head caused her to draw back sharply.

BANG!

She saw sparks at the window frame as a bullet glanced off and embedding into the glass.

Feeling incensed at being interrupted, she turned towards the Prime Mentorate, who had a handgun pointed up at her. Beyond him, she caught a reflection of herself in a small mirror. Darkened circles were around her eyes. In a screeching voice, she yelled. "They want to be let in." She went to grab the chair she had been sitting in, but suddenly felt as if punched in her shoulder and abdomen. She lost strength in her legs as she crumpled back away and landed with her back to the floor, the window occupying her view. The window was letting in more light than before. The Greude had disappeared.

The Prime Mentorate's face entered her field of view. "My dear, I'm sorry, you've simply seen too much..... I must have made you more susceptible to their mind control. No matter, a minor miscalculation. Take solace in knowing your death has given hope that the augmentation can work, and there are more of you to experiment on."

Everything grew fainter as she lay there. Mentorate Gheeling disappeared out of view behind his desk. She could just hear him signalling for a medical team before starting to dictate a message for her parents regarding an incident involving her. Her eyes started to close for longer and longer as her mind started to drift away.

CRACK!

Her eyes opened. Mentorate Gheeling had stopped speaking and popped up from behind the desk, head turned to the window. Juliet's head lolled, eyes fixed on the window. Where the bullet had struck, there was now a spidery trace within the glass.

The Prime Mentorate yelled in despair and denial, reaching for his gun on the table, pointing it to the window just as the glass exploded inwards, a blast of cold air stirring the room's contents, heralding the entrance of the Greude.