At Your Service (Book Two)

Chapter 23: Grande Adeus

The once vibrant and exuberant circus trembled to the chaos that erupted from within the tent. Screams of terror and fear quickly spread across the venue visitors as they discover what caused the sudden turmoil. Animals, normally tamed and controlled under good hands, now roared, snarled, and lashed out, breaking free from their enclosure.

Circus security members were losing control of the situation. Some of them fled for their lives, and some responded to their responsibility. One officer saw two unrestrained horses, neighing out of control. Without minding his safety, he neared one of the horses, no hint of fear in him as he did. While tugging on the horse's lead rope, the officer attempted to comfort it.

Meanwhile, pressing his hand against the gunshot wounds, Santiago made a run out of the tent through the battleground of man and beast. Everyone else was busy saving their own skin from the calamity that ensued on the circus grounds, they didn't notice the wounded circus CEO making his escape in pain.

Arriving at the scene just in time, almost conveniently, was a helicopter, pressing its landing skids against the dirt carefully. Its rotor blades continued to spin unstopped as the pilot didn't bother to turn the engine off, seeing Santiago already approaching.

"Boss!" The pilot cried out to him.

Santiago grinned at his savior and sprinted towards the helicopter. His once-kempt hair became disheveled due to the strong wind the helicopter brought. He slid the side door open but just before he could settle into the cabin seat, someone called out his name.

"Mister Vanderbilt?!"

Santiago investigated the voice and noticed that one of his personal officers was attempting to tame a raging horse. His strange decision to do so made Santiago wince.

"Leave it!" Santiago said. "I'm done here."

He didn't misspeak. He didn't mean 'we're done.' It was him, only him. By this rate of chaos, he is well aware that tonight's performance in animal control is getting heavy negative feedback. When he said 'I'm done,' he was referring to the circus. All is falling, thanks to Swift and Vicência's antics.

"No, you're not!" Another voice entered Santiago's range of hearing, one that belonged to Swift. Following his unrelenting and angerful yell were gunshots directed at Santiago, ricocheting against the helicopter's metal surface.

Santiago took his cover, putting his head behind his arms as he observed the boy approach closer and closer. "Go! Go!" He commanded his pilot. So, he obeyed in an instant, pulling up the flying stick and making the chopper airborne again.

Whilst covering himself from an officer that opened fire at him, Swift looked down the pistol's barrel in order to aim better. He sent multiple blind shots at the chopper, but one of them inadvertently struck the flight-control rod under the rotor blades out of place. Once he was sure he hit something, he put a bullet in the officer's knee, knocking him down.

The pilot tried to make the helicopter ascend higher, but to no avail, and his confusion. Being under fire, he knew exactly what caused it to go like this. "Shit!"

"What?"

"I can't go up!" The pilot began to erratically move the control left and right.

"What do you mean? Why?!"

"He broke the control ro-" His words were proven to be his last. The window mysteriously shattered, and the pilot suddenly ceased talking as his body shot to the side with a bullet hole on the side of his head.

Without a pilot to control the chopper, the control stick was stuck to the left, resulting in the vehicle uncontrollably flying tilted to the left. Stuck in the helicopter cabin was Santiago, holding himself in place with his blood-covered palms on the wall as the helicopter spun violently into the forest behind the massive circus tent.