Broken

Chapter 30: Vulnerability (Kratos)

Running through the facility with great speed, I was absolutely breathless. "Help! We need help! Shadow's hurt! We need a Cura! Please, Curas help!," I screamed down the hallway, pacing down it. Lily came out into the hallway in a panic, tired bags under her eyes.

            " What's wrong? What happened?" She asked, her eyes widening in nervousness.

            Running back to her door, I leaned against the doorframe, and held out a finger to her as I tried to catch my breath." In the lab room!"

           " I'm getting Nox and I'll be there asap," she said, zooming out of her room.

            " Alright. Please hurry," I screamed down the hallway, taking off again.

            After what seemed like years, I reached the end of all of the halls. Looking at a nearby clock, I realized that only five minutes had passed since I had found Lily. I wanted to go to help Shadow, but there were way too many emotions flowing through me right now to try to be emotionally stable. The last thing I needed was for the others to get stressed out because of my anxiousness.

My mind just couldn't seem to wrap around the whole situation. Why did that lady attack him? What was she talking about when she said that he has secrets or when she said that he was betraying us? Could it be that the things that she was saying true? I just couldn't bear to think that they were. I yelled in frustration, punching my fist furiously against the wall. For the time that Shadow is out, he's left me in charge, which means that I have no choice other than to step up as a leader. This was excess stress on me because I didn't know if I was capable of stepping up and taking charge. What if I'm not good enough to lead the organization? Or even worse, what if Shadow never wakes up?

            Nothing was adding up at all! I just couldn't see Shadow hiding things from us, especially from me. He's known me since I was a toddler, and he was the man that raised me. He was the man that I looked up to as a father figure and a role model, and now he just thinks it's okay to have a bunch of secrets that could put the rest of us in danger? I just couldn't believe that he would jeopardize all of our safety like that. Yet, he was acting pretty strange lately and a lot of his stories weren't adding up.Whatever that was going on, I was going to get to the bottom of it.

            Curiosity took the best of me when I charged downstairs and down the hallway. Luckily, Shadow's office door was cracked open. Did someone come in here before, or did he leave it like this? I felt as though I should just close the door and leave his life in peace, but I felt that if I didn't get answers for myself, he would never bother to tell any of us what was really going on. I looked around to make sure that the coast was clear, and entered his room.

Making sure that the door was closed behind me, I flipped on the lights and did a quick scan of the floor. It happened to be spotless except for a scabbard lying there. It looked as though he had been in a rush to get it out, and so I examined it. There was no blood on it, so he wasn't being attacked in here. Looking at his desk chair, it was faced towards the direction of where the sword holder had been laid on the floor. This didn't really give me much information though. Moving over to his desk, I noticed that his laptop was open. I clicked on some keys to see if I could get in, but it was asking for a fingerprint. Great, just great. My anger instantaneously flared up, and I furiously punched his desk. I noticed that my emotions were starting to work up again and suddenly I felt a mixture of anger and sadness at the same time. Anger because there was no way for me to find out if there was information that he was hiding in his laptop. Sadness because in a way, I did feel betrayed from his actions. He put me in charge if something were to happen to him, and then this happened. I felt like this was no coincidence.