Control Freakz Page 31

  They have to come with me. If I lost them for good, if I continued on with my life knowing that their families could have been saved as well, I would never be able to sleep at night with the amount of anguish pent up inside of me. I would have no choice but to succumb to my emotions, and surrender to the evil and darkness.

  I can’t let that happen.

  I glanced at the hell-bent, furiously determined look in both of their eyes, and knew that I would have no chance at winning this battle. I have to wait till after we shut Protocol 00 down. After that, I can convince them to come with me, maybe Danielle will even allow us to try. We can use the shutting down of the program as a diversion to let us break out our families and escape the compound.

  Finally.

  I exhaled, trying to let some of the anxiety, which caused my muscles to spasm, leave my body. I have a plan. I can get my happiness back, I can get my life back. For once, there was a hopeful feeling inside of me, as I envisioned, not only a future, but the possibility of a good future, both for me and for America. Even despite the fact that my plan was borderline delusional, and almost bound to fail, I could feel the small, rusty key of hope longing to liberate me from the chains of defeat. But then, just as my mind was starting to let reality instead of the made-up fantasy in my head sink in, I finally realized that we were trapped.

  I can’t get out of this place. I looked around frantically, just trying to picture the tons and tons of dirt that was above us. We are buried in hell. We are suffocating in the tons of defeat and pain surrounding our minds. There is no way out of this. We are trapped in purgatory.

  I stepped onto the glass platform, just ahead of Hunter and Ethan’s mechanical strides. As the platform began to move deeper beneath the earth, my eyes finally connected with the one thing that would actually allow us to rise above the earth and painfully climb our way out of hell.

  Fire Escape Tunnel.

  The words were written in small font to the side of what looked like a large, narrow pathway that stemmed from the bottom floor of the compound. We can escape! There was a spine-tingling bliss that coursed through my veins. I could feel my eyes begin to block out all the gray around me, and focus on the dim, sparse lights of hope that sporadically hung from the ceilings in the hallway.

  Despite the air feeling heavy, my lungs felt light with every breath. Despite the fact that the pressure of the moment and pressure from the tons of earth only kept intensifying in my brain, I somehow felt like I had a clear head. As the door opened at the edge of the circular platform, we finally ended our descent downward into the darkness.

  I exhaled. The second we stepped out of the elevator, we were encased in a cramped, metal, gray box. I gulped, wondering for a second if the metal was going to crush our bodies into human pancakes, but then my eyes connected with the fingerprint scanner embedded into the metal wall. Each of us had to take turns scanning our own finger, which miraculously worked for all of us.

  Yes. I exhaled, and some of the anxiety and doubt left my system, as the mind-control computer approached dangerously close on the maps on our ICLs. I could almost feel the repulsive energy emanating from the computer, infesting the air.

  The second the wall moved up into the ceiling to let us walk through, my eyes connected with the dozens of armed guards that lined the sides of the hallway. All of their eyes were hypnotically trained forward, as they held the machines guns strewn across their sides, like they were babies. Oh, shit. The terror that coursed through me instantly caused my body to freeze. How do we run away from this?

  There were only a few main halls that passed through the bottom floor of the compound, and seemingly all of them were full of military personnel. The second we tried to run away, or even talk, they’d all just shoot us―we were fucked. Besides the dozens of guards, who could very well have been just hi-tech robots, the hallways were completely empty. Every step that I took echoed in my ears ominously, almost as if it was a ticking time bomb, readying to blow-up on me and disintegrate my entirety into nothingness.

  Hunter and Ethan walked just ahead of me, their posture upright and formidable. I can convince them, right? I stared at their emotionless bodies, hoping desperately that I could manage to drag some of their old selves up to the surface. They have to be inside their somewhere. I felt my fingers start to tremble, as I wondered if it was possible for Danielle to wash away the remnants of their life with one horrendous storm that cascaded over their mind.

  “Make this right,” Danielle said, a new bitterness to her tone.

  I could tell she was starting to get on edge, and she wasn’t even the one in the compound. I hope I don’t regret this. I eyed the other metal barricade that appeared in front of us, and wondered whether we would have to surrender our souls to get past it. I hope this doesn’t bring down another world of pain upon me. I hope that this doesn’t cause my body and mind to forever pass the point of no return.

  Hunter approached the wall first, and I watched with trepidation as a machine came down from the gray ceiling and began to scan his face assiduously. After a few seconds, which felt like hours of helplessly waiting, the metal wall quickly opened up, only to slam right back down the second that Hunter’s body passed through the opening. The machine repeated the same process with Ethan, and then with me. My muscles were clenched, trying to keep the tension and fear inside of me from exploding.

  Finally, after only a few grueling minutes, we had all made it through the precarious metal barricade, and right in front of us, in all of its awe and glory, stood the mind-control computer. It was dozens of feet high, about a hundred yards wide, and seemingly hundreds of yards long. Thousands, maybe even millions, of neon flashing lights blinked incessantly on the outside of the enormous computer tower that was encased in glass. From a distance, it appeared to be smooth, like the night sky, and with the countless number of lights flashing on it, the computer appeared to look like a fleet of airplanes flying through the darkness. But as we neared closer, the roughness to its edges, and indentations in the metal casing, made it evident that it was the paneling that surrounded the trillions upon trillions of transistors inevitably lying within the computer.

  I took a deep breath, trying to garnish some oxygen from the ever-thickening air. There seemed to be an ominous, almost suffocating energy that emanated off the computer. For a moment, I stopped completely in my tracks, staring in shock at the one massive object that possessed enough power to completely alter America―and my life―forever.

  A wave of anger and disgust coursed through me, as my eyes connected with one of the tunnels that pierced right through the computer. This thing destroyed my life. This thing destroyed America. In that moment, with the amount of rage festering inside of me, I felt the intense urge to slam my fists through the glass and desperately try and break the computer with my own bare hands. But one look around at the dozens of guards stationed around the exterior of the computer, and my body stood frozen with fear. I could feel the energy of their deathly glares drilling the shock and terror into my skin.

  We can’t escape this. Despite the gray that was practically lurking everywhere like a dreadful parasite, the black that covered both the computer and the guards stood out to my eyes and made me shiver. There’s too many of them. I glanced up at the computer that loomed above my head, suddenly feeling the shadow of my life begin to bathe me in darkness. They are too powerful.

  “Head straight through this tunnel up ahead, which will end at the control center for the mind-control computer.”

  Danielle’s voice seemed light and airy in my head. I could just picture her maniacal grin as she watched us walk right into our inevitable demise. Selfish bastard. I felt my body tremble as I thought about the sheer evil that must be bundled up inside of her. She was willing to risk other people’s lives to further her cause, instead of her own life. She’s not a hero. Even knowing that fact, I knew that the second we shut Protocol 00 down, not only would America change forever, but Danielle would be regarded as the o
ne who’d saved it. She’s a fucking coward.

  There were only two things that kept my feet moving forward through the cramped, narrow tunnel that was burrowed right through the guts of the computer. The first was the sort of demented will inside of me to both prove Danielle wrong and defy her will by making it out of Area 51 alive. The second was the equally insane, and even more pie-in-the-sky notion, that I could somehow get my family and get my happiness back. It’s this or death. I looked around me, and let my hand run across the smooth glass that protected the internal parts of the computer from being tainted by the outside world. Inside the dark passage, which seemingly led to hell itself, there was a musty smell that perforated through the air.

  “Conducting routine hourly testing,” a robotic, feminine voice boomed over the loud speakers outside of the computer, and the sound waves echoed off the wall and managed to travel dozens of yards down the passage until they finally rung in my ear.

  Damn. My mind felt dizzy at trying to follow the path of the electrical impulses through the computer. The machine was so massive and complex that it probably had more brain power than everyone in America combined. I can’t believe something this powerful even exists. Imagine all the amazing things this is capable of. Imagine what this could have been used for. I would like to believe that my dad was one of the few people who’d intended to use the machine for good, but then I realized that even my dad knew the risks. Even he had to have known that, in reality, no matter how good something was, it had an equal amount of power to evoke destruction and pain.

  It’s just like love. I let the vibrations of the cement floor against my heels rock my body, as a wave of emotions began to overtake me. Love can hold us all together, but it can also destroy us at the same time. Love can be the best thing to experience, or it can evoke a hell of endless pain upon you.

  I’m done with the pain. My eyes connected with the opening in the dark tunnel up ahead, and I felt my heart rate start to pick up. Time to end this pain; time to end this hell forever.

  The clank of my high heels penetrated through the silence as we all stepped into the control center for the mind-control computer. Large screens enveloped all the walls of the room, yet the computer was still visible above the glass ceiling. Surrounding all the screens were a various system of buttons and keyboards that all blinked sporadically, and were somehow intricately connected together. The blue light emitting from the screens caused the darkness to have a new ominous vibe that sent a trickle down my spine.

  I took a deep breath, looking at Hunter, his blue eyes narrowed at the keyboards with killer determination. I can convince him. I frantically looked down the tunnel that we had just come down, and peered at the rays of light piercing through the darkness hundreds of feet away. My entire body convulsed with an unimaginable amount of terror, as I pictured the dozens of guards stationed directly outside the computer. We can get out. I calmly told myself the words, hoping that it would have a relaxing effect on my nerves, which were going batshit crazy.

  “Go to the computer to the direct left of the tunnel you entered in,” Danielle’s voice commanded, and like two soldiers, Hunter and Ethan instantly followed.

  The screen turned black, and a message in red appeared, prompting them to scan their fingerprints on the pad next to the large keyboard, along with a huge set of weird-looking buttons. The screen flashed blue again, and a command prompt popped up on the screen. I gazed around, my eyes practically bleeding from the amount of fear, desperation, and pain inside of me. Danielle coughed a bit, and I watched in awe as Ethan held his hands above the keyboard, eagerly waiting to begin typing. Danielle’s voice then told us the code to terminate Protocol 00: 783526838763873638200.

  She spit out the numbers at a rapid-fire pace, but Ethan typed them all in with mechanical precision. Before my mind could even register all the numbers, Ethan had already finished typing, and the eerily monotonous voice began to boom over the loudspeaker: “Initiating total shutdown of Protocol 00 in thirty seconds.”

  The instant the words echoed in my ears, all the lights on the computer began to go berserk, like a wild, epileptic-shock-inducing disco ball. For a moment, I felt my body start to shake as I watched in awe at the computer that was beginning to have a literal panic attack.

  Holy crap. I stared at Hunter and Ethan, my entire body frozen, as I thought about the magnitude of the action we’d just taken. We just shut down Protocol 00. We just liberated America from the mind control. We probably just started a rebellion. I smiled, just imagining President Ash’s livid face as the people began to take back some of the power that he’d stolen away from America.

  For a moment, I stood frozen in shock, but then a thunderous roar began to shake my body, and I instantly jumped into action.

  “Guys,” I said. I looked into their eyes, trying to pull out some of the humanity that I knew was still inside of them. “We have to go. We have to get our families back.”

  I tugged on Hunter’s arm frantically, already starting to move toward one of the four tunnels that led out of the computer. In response, they looked at me with blank stares, seemingly unable to comprehend what I’d just said. I glanced down one of the tunnels, and the wall of guards charging at us with their guns up became visible through the darkness. I froze in place, suddenly realizing that the onslaught of death was pursuing us from all four sides, effectively cornering us into our little box of hell. There’s no escape. Everything around me began spinning as I started to scream madly.

  “Initiating total shutdown of Protocol 00 in fifteen seconds.”

  The voice shook my mind, only intensifying the chaos ensuing around me. The footsteps of the guards steadily grew louder, until my ears started ringing from the force of the sound. My eyes widened, every hair on my body standing straight up as the gleam of the shiny, black machine guns trained directly at us became discernible through the darkness.

  I ferociously and desperately grabbed onto Hunter, hoping to somehow pull the life out of him and get him to at least try and run away with me. We can do it! The truly delusional thought crossed through my mind the second that I could feel the familiar warmth of death return. We can still get out families back, we can still get our lives back!

  “No, stop!” Danielle shouted, before regaining the normal affirmativeness to her voice. “Stay there! You have to make sure no one stops it from shutting down―at all costs!”

  I could tell by the frantic tone to her voice, that she’d been just as caught off guard by the soldiers charging toward us as I’d been.

  I felt Hunter’s body suddenly grow rigid underneath my hand, as both he and Ethan made a barricade in front of the control panel.

  “No!” I pushed his body to the side with all my might, trying to revive him, despite the fact that he was already dead. “Hunter, Ethan, listen to me! We have to go! We have to try!”

  I took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears from pouring down my face.

  “I told you, Natalie,” Danielle’s voice sinisterly echoed in my mind. “You either could have died with the pain, or died without it. This wasn’t my choice.”

  The second those words left her mouth, I could feel the fire of rage begin to scorch through my entire being. My eruption of raucous, truly desperate screams came right as the monotonous, foreboding voice announced that there was only five seconds until the program shut down.

  I’m going to die. The realization hit me just as the guards became visible from yards away. The emotionless, determined looks on their dozens of faces sent chills down my spine.

  “You fucking bitch!” I screamed.

  I ferociously slammed my fist against the control panel, contemplating ending the shutdown of the mind control program just to defy Danielle’s will. But before I let my hand press the red button, I realized that I would be acting incredibly selfishly, and effectively succumbing to the ways of Danielle, President Ash, and all the other greedy assholes that infested the horrid human species.

  I took a deep
breath, readying to unload all my hatred for myself and for the world onto Danielle in my last moments.

  “I fucking hate you!” I screamed. Hunter grabbed my shoulder to stop me from pounding madly against the computer screen. “I will haunt you for the rest of your life! I will make sure that you rot in hell! You are worse than your husband, Danielle! You are a bigger control freak than your husband ever was!”

  I wanted to hear her scream one last time, but in response, there was only silence. She’s gonna pay for this. I will avenge this. The anger was beginning to overtake my body. I had completely lost control of my muscles and my throat from yelling incessantly. I looked up at Hunter one last time, and into his beautiful eyes and gorgeous face that were a constant reminder of the love and happiness. In that moment, I wanted to touch him. I wanted to taste the splendor of love and hold onto the connection forever.

  But it was too late.

  The guards rushed into the room, instantly unleashing a hailstorm of bullets upon us. I froze, my eyes glued open, as I looked death in the eyes, who was now surrounding me. It was too late to resist. It was too late to hope that things would change, because it was all over. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes―my last breath of the thick, hellish air. I hoped that the pain and sorrow in this world didn’t carry on with me. I hoped I didn’t have to reside in a state of perpetual hell. I hoped I could forever forget about love, and about happiness. I hoped I could forever forget that I even existed.