Cognitive Deviance

36. Carnage

May 26, 2045 - 4:59 PM

Margo stood in the center of the park when the rally-goers started disappearing in blasts of blue fire.

Five explosions rippled through the crowds around her, each one more painful than the last. The young doctor-cop winced in pain as a cacophonous ringing noise assaulted her eardrums as if someone were trying to rip them right out of her skull. Ash and blood rained down on her and the unfortunate citizens around her, and her Blur activated just in time as they jostled against her to bolt for the exits. The next sounds attempting to carve through her ears were hordes of bloodcurdling screams.

She struggled to maintain her balance as she fought against the scattering crowds like a riptide on her way toward Commissioner Mason and the rest of her colleagues. Warnings of Threat Level 5 citizens blinded her vision with sinister red light, and the rest of the world in front of her appeared to be one monstrous amalgamation trying its best to tear apart anything in its way. She could feel the impacts of elbows, fists, and legs buzz against her body as her Blur prevented any injury from slowing her down, but the sounds of her colleagues frantically shouting into their ThoughtControl pieces made it feel like the entire city was housed inside her own skull.

Another bomb went off, the impact shattering the glass on the surrounding buildings. Margo and the panicking citizens around her collapsed to the ground, and she narrowly dodged a dismembered arm burnt to a crisp flying toward her. As she struggled to get back on her feet, she saw a man shrieking in horror at the charred stump where his arm used to be along with the remains of several other bodies nearly reduced to ash. Sparks of blue fire drifted by in the wind like dust, and Margo refused to admit those particles used to be human beings. A wave of light rippled across her skin, her Blur attempting to restore its full power after taking the impact of her body against the solid concrete beneath her.

She could still hear the shocked and confused voices over her colleagues screaming into her ear through her piece. Static reduced them to nothing more than monstrous, senseless noise as if their vocal cords were being ripped from their throats. She couldn't tell what orders Mason and Andrade gave next. The only sounds she could distinguish were the sobs of Holden and Nikki, the two of them begging for Carl to save them, so deafening that Margo felt as if she were standing right beside them.

She knew where she was going next.

With her Fatemaker in hand, Margo bolted through the crowds, praying she wouldn't have to activate Execute mode. Her heart pounded out of her chest. Her breathing felt too fast for any normal human. She flinched as the sound of gunshots crackled through the air like thunder, and for a moment she believed lightning truly was crashing down on the rally as every pull of a trigger bathed the park in blinding white light.

Then she saw the masked men at the edge of the park, wielding rifles too dangerous for unhinged citizens to carry around. Electricity sparked out of the gun barrels with every shot, and Margo couldn't comprehend the effects of those weapons until blood was drenching her entire body like a downpour. Everywhere she looked, anyone caught in the crossfires of those advanced firearms was instantly torn to shreds. Limbs flew. Bones were obliterated like glass.  And Margo's ThoughtControl piece assaulted her senses with red lights and hellish sirens with every life that vanished from the System.

"UNCLE CARL!" Holden cried, his voice distorted. "HELP ME! SOMEBODY, PLEASE—"

Margo screamed as a bullet grazed the very edge of her arm. She collapsed to the pavement once more, and she screamed as another round of gunfire filled the air. Six people crashed to the ground dead in front of her, their bodies brutally disfigured by shards of glass. Tears weld up in her eyes as she looked back between the unrecognizable piles of flesh lying motionlessly on the pavement only a dozen feet away and the long, deep gash trailing across her left arm, the torn edges of her Blur floating in the wind like plastic. A burning pain throbbed in her new wound, and she had suddenly forgotten every reason why she was running.