Fractured Soul: One-Shot
Title: Fractured Soul
Author: Solarbaby
Rating: T
Disclaimer: All I own is the plot.
Words: 784
Summary: Pre-RPM. The world ended on a Tuesday. Except that it didn’t, not really.
Spoilers: None.
Notes: An attempt at crazy!Ziggy except that he’s not really crazy. At least he doesn’t act that way.
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The world ended on a Tuesday. Except that it didn’t, not really. Truthfully, it took months for the world to end. But his world managed to end in a day. One where the whole world he had known had disappeared with a pop and turned into chaos. And he had no way of knowing if that day had been a Tuesday or a Thursday or a Sunday. Days were relative in the world he had lived in.
But in any story he had ever heard it ended on a Tuesday and Ziggy just liked the sound of it. The world ended on a Tuesday. Yes, that was it.
He could still remember the flickering lights before everything went completely black and how everyone went completely silent. Even Marshall had stopped his rant about cannibalistic mummies a few doors down, which had never happened before because, even drugged, the boy had a tendency to mutter things. But the world had gone totally silent, then, just when he had begun to feel the ever encroaching darkness start to suffocate, there was a definite, familiar ‘click’.
Then all hell broke loose.
There was yelling and screaming and not just from the other patients either as they crashed from their rooms. Guards rallied through the doors but there were too few of them and they were quickly out numbered.
Finding a way out of the institution was easy after that. Just follow the flow of kids making their way down the hallway. He hit the grass and took off, whatever had unlocked their doors had unlocked the gate as well. Everyone around him scattered into the dark, wanting nothing more than to get away from the white coats and the sterile rooms and the confinement. A few followed him out into the forest.
It must have been the middle of fall, there were dead leaves on the ground but it was warmer than it should have been, like the dead heat of summer. His feet were bare and covered with mud and dried leaves by now, as was the pants of his generic light green standard issue scrubs that they all wore. A glance over his shoulder told him that he was once again alone.
By the time he had reached a road dawn was breaking. Ziggy stuck to the tree line; there was no way of knowing if any of the adults had made it this far and he wasn’t too keen to find out.
As soon as he reached a city clothes seemed easy enough to find. There were clotheslines outside of most houses, and washers and dryers along with other pieces of machinery lining the side of the road.
It was almost deceptively easy to survive in the city of Corinth. There were people constantly at work making it easy into blend into a crowd. The doctors had called him a functioning sociopath and he couldn’t help but wonder if that helped in any way with the pick pocketing by which he lived.
Ziggy had guessed that it would have only been a matter of time before he had been caught. He knew that uniformed men would have happily tossed in an overcrowded cell but they couldn’t without finishing paperwork so he was shoved in a darkened room instead. It was suffocating and he wrapped his arms around himself as he curled up in a chair. Time passed, seconds, minutes, hours, he couldn’t tell how long.
The door opened and he jerked, ready to head to a cell just to get out of this room. But it wasn’t one of the officers. Instead a gray haired man entered the room and sat down across from him.
“The name’s Fresno Bob. And I think I can help you.” The man held out a card and slid it across the table to him. On it was what seemed to be picture a herd of horses but it was hard to tell in the faint light. But the words ‘The Scorpion Cartel’ were easily seen. He glanced back up at the man who smirked in reply. “As long as you help me that is.”
Ziggy just sat there in that small, confining room that resembled far too much the one he had managed to escape not so long ago. His hand tightened around the card before he dropped it back to the table.
“Well?”
“Yes,” he replied. His voice was rough and sounded strange to his own ears due to lack of use. “Yes, please. Just get me out of here.”
Fresno Bob grinned. “Good.” He reached his hand out to the teen. “I think you might have a promising future.”
Future. That sounded nice.
They shook hands.