Greyson is not yet awake. At Bea's suggestion, he had finally decided to sleep for the first time in weeks. Underground it is dark, almost black, which had helped his eyes relax; he had been asleep the second he slipped into his bed.
But now Greyson wakes up. He wakes up, and he isn't in his dark underground sleeping hatch- not at all.
It's a building, but not a dark one. Not the way his Sleeping Room is. It is gloomy in this room, and it's grey, but not dark. In fact there is light in the room- and a window! He is above ground!
The world has changed. The buildings are dark and the outside is light in yesterday's world, and now the buildings are lit and the outside is dark. The window gave thorough evidence of that. He only assumed it was a window, because he had never seen one. He forgets to move and stares in awe at a piece of glass so painstakingly crafted to fill a hole in the wall, just so a person could see the outside.
Greyson starts to get the sensation that this is all a dream, because it has to be. It's simply impossible for him to go to sleep one place, and wake up in another, let alone a place that can't exist. There are no more buildings used above ground.
His adrenalin of discovering new surroundings temporarily masked the pain he was in, but no longer. In a burst of new sensation, he feels like his head is on fire. He wants to get away, to run, but trying to stand up is no different than trying to escape quicksand. He can hear screaming. This is when a doctor walks in.
"How are you feeling, Grayson?" the doctor says.
Greyson doesn't feel. His head is hurting, and the world- his world! Is entirely different. This is what he tells the doctor.
The doctor frowns. Greyson knows he has said something wrong.
"So your head hurts. That's understandable. You've been through a lot." The doctor says with an encouraging smile. "It's good to see you back, Grayson."
He fiddles with some machines by Greyson's bed, takes some notes, and leaves. As he exits, the door slides open with a rush of sound. The once muffled screams are now bursting through the door with the intensity the voice implies. "...to see Grayson!" A woman cries, and then the door slides shut, and Greyson is once again drowned into submission with pain. He wishes he could escape the quicksand.
