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I’ve recovered enough to update what happened the moments after Chloé stepped off the edge of the elevator toward the beast that was pursuing us.
I ran to the edge to see her fall toward the beast and covered my eyes as the explosion hit it directly in its strange misshapen face.
The first thing I felt was the heat from the blast. I could tell from the way the bomb was made it wasn’t professional, so the impact was going to be unpredictable. It was beyond my worst nightmare.
As the heat traveled against my skin and the monster roared with pain, I stumbled backward toward the wall where Phil was slumped over and grabbed him.
I held tight to the maintenance man as the elevator shook and shimmied and I was certain we would drop again. This time possibly for the last time.
Instead the floor itself gave way near the door and I watched as over half of the metallic flooring broke off and tumbled toward the void below.
I saw the last block of c2 and the backpack fall as well and only had time to grab one of the items. I held back my screams and kept Phil from falling out as well as the elevator continued to shake and I wondered if the bomb I had snatched would go off simply from the stress.
[Part 0]
No person - actually, no living thing - has experienced more suffering than clinical trial subject S-47. S-47 was a healthy male who volunteered to be a test subject for a trial of a drug called Mentanovox. Mentanovox typically yields mild improvement in memory and cognition. S-47 had a different reaction to the drug.
I’m the research scientist who administered the dose of Mentanovox to this poor man. And I consulted with his doctors in the ER after he was found crumpled under a bench at the Glenmont metro station. I have firsthand knowledge of the devastating trauma that a Mentanovox cross reaction can produce. So I couldn’t understand why someone would beg me to put them through what S-47 had experienced. Then I took the drug myself.
Mentanovox is essentially a calcium ion accelerator paired with a protein that binds to certain dendritic neuroreceptors. It makes signals flow faster through the brain. A lot faster. When I administered a mental speed assessment to subject S-47, thirty minutes after I gave him 25 mg, he was able to perform incredible, inhuman mental feats.
He finished a fifty-word word search in three seconds. Solved a maze drawn onto a poster-sized paper in two seconds. His mind worked fast enough to catch thrown cheerios with chopsticks. Mentanovox had pushed him well into the superhuman range of thinking speeds.
His mental speed was still accelerating when he left our offices. I told him to enjoy the extra time he would seem to have, since, to his super-accelerated brain, minutes would seem like hours. At the time, I thought S-47 would view the drug’s effects as a positive thing. I pictured him at home happily speed-reading through books he wanted to find time to read. That’s what I would have done! Or so I thought.
It didn’t occur to me that from his point of view, just getting home from our office would seem like it took days. He must have experienced hours of perceived time just in the elevator from our office. A day waiting for the next train and another day crammed inside a crowded and smelly metro car. If I had thought of that while he was still in our office, maybe I wouldn’t have just sent him on his way with nothing more than a Mentanovox trial pamphlet.
But what happened to S-47 was much, much worse than experiencing the equivalent of days on the metro.
Ninety minutes after I sent him home, I got a call from the ER at White Oak Hospital. A man had been found “behaving bizarrely” under a bench in the Glenmont metro station. By the time he reached the ER, he was unresponsive. Personnel in the ER found the Mentanovox trial pamphlet in his pocket and called my lab.
I took a blood sample and ran an engram decay. I’m oversimplifying the neuroscience here, but basically the cells in a conscious brain continuously make new connections and tear down existing connections. The new connections represent learning and the torn-down connections represent forgetting. When we sleep, cerebrospinal fluid washes away the metabolic debris from this activity. The test I ran measures how much engram decay - forgetting - has happened since the last sleep cycle. Engram decay is a good way of measuring the equivalent duration of consciousness - how long a patient has perceived they have been awake. We use this in the Mentanovox trials to measure the acceleration in thinking speed - more engram decay means the subject has perceived a longer period of consciousness.
You can read Part One here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/13g1805/the_seven_rules_of_the_midnight_mall/
A lot of you have asked to hear more about my experiences at The Midnight Mall, and so I thought I’d let you know what happened next. Partially because I opened this can of worms and figure I owe it to you to close it…but also because a few of you have tried to find out where the Midnight Mall is, and I cannot stress to you how superbly, extremely, ridiculously stupid of an idea that is. So, if my first experience didn’t convince you, hopefully this one will.
Now, where did I leave off…?
Ah, right. I had just dragged my unconscious, heavily bleeding friend Mike out of a pet store with a strict No Outside Food policy when I bumped into someone.
“You seemed to have caused quite the commotion little lady," the man said. "Maybe I could be of some help.”
Holding onto Mike like a lifeline, I slowly twisted around. The first thing I noticed were the man’s shoes. Those thick black combat boots probably saved my life. Running off adrenaline, my first impulse was to look up into the eyes of the man. But the dullness of his shoes caught my attention; they appeared to be somewhat new, but were already scuffed to bits. And what had caused those dark stains covering the tips?
With growing trepidation, my gaze darted from his boots to his dark trousers to the shiny security badge fastened to his lapel. Security Badge. That’s when I remembered Rule No. 5: The Security Guard makes his rounds between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. If you happen to bump into him, do not make eye contact. I swallowed, my mouth going cotton dry.
“Well?” the guard said. “Can I help you?”
It took me a moment to find my voice. Part of me wanted to turn tail and flee, but I knew Mike was running out of time, and even though he could be a bit of a jerk sometimes, I also knew he wouldn’t hesitate to do everything he could to help me in a situation like this. So, keeping my gaze level with the security guard’s chest, I nodded.
“My friend,” I choked out. “He’s hurt.”
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