The Screaming Grey

It was the hum again. Not a sound really, more like a feeling in my teeth, rattling the tiny bones in my ears. And the grey. Always the grey. Like trying to breathe inside a dirty cloud. I was running, I think. My legs felt like old wood, heavy and splintery. But running from what? Just… the knowing. The way the grid lines on the sky pulsed, a slow, sickening rhythm, telling me there was no way out. Not ever.

The air tasted like metal and old rain. I could see the lines, sharp and bright, criss-crossing everything, making the empty buildings look like broken puzzles. And behind the lines, something moved. Not people. Not animals. Just… shapes. Darker than the grey around them, but not quite black. They watched. I always knew they watched. Their eyes weren't eyes, but I felt them on my back, cold and heavy, pushing me forward, always forward, towards… what? A wall? A drop? My feet just kept moving, though my chest felt like it was splitting.

A tiny sound, like a broken hinge, echoed. It wasn't loud, but it cut through the hum, through the grey, through the frantic beating of my heart. It was a sign. A warning. The grid lines flickered, and for a second, I thought I saw a face, but it was just a shadow playing tricks, a memory of a face I couldn't quite remember. Then the hum grew louder, a wave of noise that pressed down on me, squeezed the air from my lungs, and pushed me, pushed me…

My breath caught, a small, wet gasp, and I was suddenly, painfully awake. The hum was gone, mostly, replaced by the low, tired rumble of the air purifiers in the communal sleeping chamber. My tongue felt thick, tasting of old dust and fear. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again, trying to make the last smear of grey fade from behind my eyelids. It never quite did. It just… shifted. Became the real grey of the metal ceiling above me, crisscrossed with wires and condensation drips. My knees were jammed against my chest, aching from being curled so tight. I could feel the stiff wool of my blanket scratching my chin, a familiar, unwelcome comfort.

"Jackie? You okay?" a whisper from the bunk above. Penny. Her voice was raspy, like she'd been dreaming too, or maybe just shivering. Or both. She always sounded like that in the mornings, especially in the deep winter cycles when the heat units barely pulsed.

I pushed myself up, my shoulder popping softly. "Yeah. Just… the grey again." I rubbed at my eyes, trying to get the grit out. There was always grit. In the air, on the blankets, clinging to my hair.

"The machines?" she asked, her voice a little clearer now, but still hushed. "They always come for you in the end, don't they?" She swung her legs over the side of her bunk, bare feet hitting the cold metal floor with a dull thud. Her toes were red, like always. Nobody ever had warm feet here.

"Not… come for me. Just… watching. And the hum." I shivered, pulling the thin blanket tighter around my shoulders, even though the sleep chamber was supposed to be the warmest place. It was never really warm. Just… less cold than outside.

Penny nodded slowly, her dark hair, a tangled mess, falling over her eyes. She didn't have to ask more. She knew. Everybody had their own version of the hum, the grey, the watching. Some kids woke up crying, others just… staring. Penny usually just got quieter, her face a little paler. We all knew. The dreams weren't just dreams.

She dropped down onto the floor, sitting cross-legged next to my bunk. Her old, patched-up jumpsuit, three sizes too big, made her look even smaller. "Did you… did you hear about the… the new Instruction?" she asked, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. Her eyes flicked up at me, then down again, quickly. She didn't like looking at people for too long.

I shook my head, my own stomach twisting a little. New Instructions usually meant bad things. More work. Less food. Or worse. "No. What is it?"

"They're doing… Recalls. Again." Her voice was barely a whisper now, her fingers working faster on the thread, almost frantic. The word 'Recalls' hung in the air, heavy and stale, like the recycled oxygen.

Recalls. Forced memories. Images and sounds the Overseers played in the communal area. Supposedly, they were from 'before', from a time when the sun was bright and the sky was blue. But they always felt wrong. Like a story someone made up to trick you. And they always showed happy people, eating lots of food, laughing. It just made everything here feel colder, hungrier.

"When?" I asked, my voice flat. My legs were starting to ache more now, the stiffness settling in. Getting up was always hard.

"Later. After the morning feed." She paused, then added, "But there's… there's another one too. A… a 'Collection'." Her voice cracked a little on the last word.

My blood ran cold. Collections. That meant outside. No one wanted to go outside. Not during the deep winter. The winds were like sharp knives, the snow piled higher than the bunker itself, and the Watchers… well, the Watchers were everywhere. Even if you couldn't see them. Especially if you couldn't see them.

"Outside? For what?" I tried to keep my voice steady, but a tremor ran through it. My hands were clammy.

Penny just shrugged, a small, defeated movement. "Resources. They said. Maybe… maybe scrap metal. Or… or old circuitry. Things the machines need." She didn't look at me. Her gaze was fixed on the condensation dripping slowly down the metal support beam nearby, tracking each drop until it hit the stained floor.

We sat in silence for a while, the hum of the purifiers and the distant scuffling of other kids the only sounds. My mind was racing, trying to picture it. The outside. I'd only been out a few times, for short drills, always with an Overseer barking orders. The air had felt like it was tearing at my lungs, and the snow had been so bright it hurt my eyes, even through the tinted goggles.

"Are we… are we going?" I finally asked, the words feeling huge and heavy in the small space.

Penny pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them. "Maybe. They pick. They always pick the ones… the quiet ones. The ones who don't complain. Or…" she trailed off, then murmured, "the ones they forget about."

I was quiet. I was definitely quiet. And they usually forgot about me. A knot of dread tightened in my belly. The grey in my dream, the watching shapes – they felt more real now, like the outside was just a bigger version of the nightmare, a place where the grid pulsed not just in my head, but in the actual, frozen sky.

The Morning Routine

The signal buzzed, a sharp, jarring sound that meant morning feed. We shuffled out of the sleeping chamber, a line of silent, grey-clad children, our breath misting in the slightly colder corridor. The floor here was rougher concrete, stained with years of dirt and spilled rations. My boots scuffed against it, a familiar rhythm.

I watched the other kids. Nobody looked awake, not really. Just moving, like little clockwork figures. Some had dark circles under their eyes, others just a vacant stare. Finn, a boy a few years older than me, stumbled, scraping his hand against the wall. He didn't cry out, just pulled it back, a small dark smear on the grey concrete. No one even looked. You didn't acknowledge accidents here. It just made things worse.

The communal hall was a vast, echoing space. Long metal tables, bolted to the floor, stretched out, each with its designated seating. We found our spots, the same ones every day. I sat next to Penny, across from a younger girl, Lily, who kept sniffing quietly, her nose red. She looked like she might cry at any second, but she held it in, like everyone else.

The ration drop was a clanking, mechanical process. A small drone, a boxy thing with whirring fans, moved slowly down the aisles, depositing a grey, nutrient-paste cube onto each metal plate. It smelled faintly of recycled air and something bitter. I picked up my cube, turning it over in my fingers. It was cold and slightly slimy. I ate slowly, trying not to think about the taste, just focusing on the sensation of something, anything, in my stomach. Penny ate hers even slower, breaking off tiny pieces and rolling them between her thumb and forefinger.

"You think the Collection will be far?" Penny asked, her voice barely audible over the scrape of spoons and the low murmur of the purifiers. She didn't look up, just kept her eyes on her ration.

I chewed on my paste. It felt like chewing on dry cardboard. "Hope not. The wind… it's bad today, isn't it?" Even inside, in the deepest parts of the bunker, you could sometimes hear the distant howl of the winter winds, a mournful sound that always made me shiver. It felt like the outside was trying to claw its way in.

"Yeah," she agreed. "My feet are already numb. Imagine being out there for hours." She sighed, a small, breathy sound that was quickly swallowed by the vastness of the hall. "I hope they don't make us go near… near the old factory." The old factory was a ruined, skeletal structure visible from the few high-up ventilation shafts – a place of metal wreckage and twisted beams, rumoured to be crawling with 'lost drones' – machines that had gone rogue.

Lily, across from us, sniffed again, louder this time. Her small, thin shoulders trembled. She was only six. The thought of her having to go outside… it was too much. "Don't cry, Lily," I mumbled, not looking at her. "It's okay. It's just… cold. We'll be okay."

She didn't answer, just kept sniffing. I knew she wasn't crying about the cold. She was crying about the dread, the same dread that was a tight fist in my own stomach.

The Recall

After the feed, we moved to the Recall chamber. It was darker here, the air heavy with the scent of stale chemicals. A large, cracked screen dominated one wall. We sat on the cold floor, our backs against the rough concrete. Overseers, looming figures in dark, utilitarian uniforms, stood guard at the doorways. Their faces were always neutral, unreadable.

The screen flickered to life, showing static for a moment before resolving into an image of impossible green. Trees. I’d seen them in other Recalls, but they always looked fake, too bright, too vibrant. And people. Happy people, laughing. Running in the sun, on something soft and green, not hard and grey. A 'child'—they called them children in the Recalls, not kids—was playing with a 'ball', a round, colourful object I'd never seen in real life. Their clothes were light, bright, and clean. No patches, no grease stains.

A smooth, calm voice, a woman's voice, spoke from hidden speakers. "This is the world before. A time of plenty. A time of joy. A time when humanity flourished in harmony with the planet." Her words felt like a distant, hollow echo, utterly detached from our reality. Harmony. Planet. What even were those things now?

Penny nudged me gently with her elbow. "Look at their faces," she whispered. "They look… like they're pretending."

I squinted at the screen. She was right. The smiles were too wide, the laughter too clear. It didn't look real. It looked like… like the way you drew a smiley face when you were very little, just a big curve and two dots. Not how real people smiled, not how Overseers smiled. Their smiles were always thin, almost invisible.

The 'child' on the screen tripped, and a man, his face also impossibly bright, scooped them up. There was no scrape, no bruise, no crying. Just more laughter. It felt like a cruel joke. Every scrape I’d ever had, every ache, every hungry pang, screamed that this wasn't how things worked. This was a lie. This was the grey trying to trick us, just in a different way.

Suddenly, the screen changed. The happy scene vanished, replaced by stark, flashing red warnings. The calm voice shifted, becoming stern, accusatory. "But humanity forgot its place. It became greedy. Selfish. It took too much. And the climate rebelled. The machines rose up, not to destroy, but to correct." The images flashed: abstract shapes, blurred movement, the faint outline of something colossal and metallic, then a quick cut to desolate, snowy landscapes, buildings like broken teeth against a perpetually dim sky. Our world. The real world.

This was the part that always felt right. The cold, the desolation. The brokenness. This was the truth, hammered home after the false, glowing dream of 'before'. The hum from my own nightmare felt like it was part of this 'correction', a constant reminder of our smallness, our insignificance.

The screen went dark. The voice stopped. The Overseers remained motionless. We sat in the silence, letting the 'truth' sink in, the feeling of collective guilt a heavy blanket over us all. We were the problem. And the machines, the grid, the endless winter—they were the solution.

The New Instruction

A different Overseer, a tall, silent woman with sharp, observing eyes, stepped forward as the lights flickered back on. Her voice was flat, emotionless. "Attention. As part of our ongoing resource management protocols, a Collection team will be dispatched this cycle." A shiver went through the assembled children.

My heart started to pound, a frantic drum against my ribs. I knew it. I just knew it. My hands were already sweating. Penny nudged me again, her small hand clammy against my arm. Her eyes, when she looked at me, were wide with shared fear.

The Overseer read from a small, smooth data-pad. "Designated participants for Resource Collection, Cycle 77: Jackie. Penny. And Lily." My breath hitched. Lily. The little one. My stomach lurched. This was worse than I thought.

Lily, who had been quiet up until now, let out a small, terrified whimper. Her head snapped up, her eyes round and glistening. She looked at me, then at Penny, then back at the Overseer, as if hoping it was a mistake, a cruel joke. But it never was.

My own name felt like a brand, searing hot. Jackie. It was me. They hadn't forgotten me. They'd remembered. And they'd picked Penny, too. And Lily. Three of us. Three small, hungry children sent out into the giant, frozen waste.

"Report to Processing Bay Gamma immediately," the Overseer commanded, her voice cutting through the rising tide of fear. "Gear will be issued. Briefing will commence in ten minutes. Failure to comply will result in reassignment to core maintenance duties." Core maintenance meant the deepest, coldest levels, where the biggest machines hummed, and the air was thick with the smell of static and something that always made your throat burn.

We stood up, slowly, woodenly. My legs felt like they might give out. Lily was openly crying now, silent tears streaking her face, her small body trembling. Penny put a hand on her back, a gesture that was both comforting and utterly helpless. "It's okay, Lily," she murmured, though her own voice trembled. "We'll be together. We'll be fine."

But we both knew that was a lie. 'Fine' wasn't a word that existed here, not really. Especially not when you were heading outside. I could almost feel the cold already, seeping into my bones, through the thin grey fabric of my jumpsuit. The grey of the nightmare, the hum of the watching shapes – it all felt like it was bleeding into the real world, becoming solid, inescapable.

As we walked towards the Processing Bay, away from the other children who averted their eyes, I tried to push the fear down. My thoughts raced, jumpy and confused. Was this really happening? Was I actually going out there? What if we saw a lost drone? What if the wind carried us away? What if… what if we didn't come back?

Penny squeezed my arm. "We'll be careful, Jackie," she said, her voice thin but resolute. "We always are."

I looked at her, then at Lily, whose small hand was now clutching Penny's sleeve, her knuckles white. We had to be. We had no other choice. The metal door groaned, a sound like a hungry beast, promising a world outside that was less understood, more terrifying than any dream, and I knew, with a cold certainty that settled deep in my bones, that we had to step through it.