Shattering Me

41~ the Mindless Army

Finding the control room was easier said than done in a mall with hundreds of stores and empty rooms, but Kyle gave it his best. Fortunately for everyone, he didn't need to find it as desperately as he'd thought. The sprinklers soon spread their last drops onto the mall's slumbering inhabitants. The damage was done however, and the compulsions were not quick to wear off on anyone. No one except for the one person who had been struggling against the narcotics since they first entered his system.

With the sprinklers out of commission, Ryan's awareness began to sharpen and expand once again. He could now clearly see the Helix grunts for what they were. He could now see that they were no longer trying to capture him or his brother. It looked as almost as if they were now stalling for time...

Ryan's head snapped in the direction of the table where his friends were eating. Arden and Julie were slumped over in puddles of black ink on their trays. Kion and Kiara were gone.

"No!" without hesitation, he burst away from the brawl and sprinted over to where he last saw them, then peered out over the railing to scan out over the lower floors of the building. He knew the elevators wouldn't be a would-be kidnapper's first choice, so he looked out over the various escalators crisscrossing between the floors. It only took him a moment to spot the only other moving figures going down the central flight of stairs to the ground floor. "Kiara! Kion!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, letting his voice echo out into the vast space between them.

The two grunts that escorted them down looked up at him in shock and tried to hurry the kids down the last few stairs. But Ryan's voice had reached them, even if only barely. As one of the grunts tried to push him forward Kion stumbled and Kiara latched onto her brother unsteadily. It wasn't much, but if they could just hold on until he could climb down...

"Don't let the yellow one intercept the targets!" a commanding voice interrupted his strategizing. He turned to see more grunts moving away from the wild brawl with Carman to block the two stairways leading down. With his head clear, none of them scared him. They couldn't pin him down when he was handicapped by their drugs; they didn't stand a chance of beating him now. The problem was the sheer number of grunts that had assembled so far.

He counted twenty grunts piling up in front of each stairwell, and he sensed there was more than what met his eyes. Ryan looked out over the railing again, this time taking in all the edges, floor, stairs and distances. Directly out in front of him was a visible forty-foot drop to the ground, but a single layer of hard transparent glass flooring was stretched twenty feet above it. There were still people sleeping and puddles of black ink on that glass flooring which was the only reason he could tell its position. the glass wouldn't hold his weight if he fell onto it, but he didn't have a choice.

Ryan threw himself over the railing and plummeted feet first toward the floor. There was a moment when his boot connected with the very solid glass and a wave of pain rippled up through his leg. Then the glass seemed to cave in and liquefy as his lower body sunk straight through it. As he crashed through the invisible floor, a shrill explosion broke into existence. It was the sound of a massive layer of four-inch thick Plexiglas cracking and shattering under a 240-pound human projectile. This became an architect's worst nightmare when bodies began falling to the ground level without a floor to hold them.

All that really mattered to Ryan however, was the fact that he could reach the bottom before the kidnappers could. His body on the other hand screamed bloody murder through his nervous system when the actual landing took place. His left leg had taken the brunt of his weight and the damage, so he wouldn't be sprinting for fun in the near future.

"What the fuck?" breathed a wide-eyed Helix kidnapper. Ryan had landed only a few yards away from the base of the central stairway. The two kidnappers stood stock-still and stared at him in shock. They couldn't see the pain he was in and only saw a grown man come hurtling down to earth followed by an endless field of shattered glass. "It is supposed to be weakened by the drug! Why is it still chasing us? What the hell is that thing!?"

The panic in the man's nasally voice was as clear as it was in his eyes.

"Stay calm, Charleston. We're almost to the end. We can make it!" the other kidnapper yelled to his partner in crime. He made it sound as if they were hiking a long trail rather than abducting two innocent children to use as hostages.

"No. No you can't make it. This ends here! You'll regret targeting the Krags," Ryan growled. Adrenaline and fury flooded his body to the point where he could no longer feel the pain in his legs. He stood in between the Helix and the mall's entrance, so there was no chance of them getting away anymore. That was, at least, until the speaker system chimed back into life once again and a female voice spoke through it.

The voice was unfamiliar and disturbingly harsh. "Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time to wake up." All around him, bodies began rising off the wet floor and staring blankly into space. It seemed like there was still enough of the Helix drug in their systems for them to be controlled. "It is time to wake up; time to defend your home. A terrorist wearing yellow clothes and yellow hair is standing among you."

A sense of dread began climbing its way up Ryan's spine as he realized what was about to happen. All of the mall shoppers eventually spotted him and stared with cold fearful expressions.

"A terrorist is standing among you. Destroy him at all costs!" with the final words spoken, the speakers stuttered into silence once again. And the fearful expressions of the mind-molded mall shoppers turned murderous.

I'm looking forward to the seeing the next chapter! How about you? ;)