5V3 chapter 3

Tino darted behind a wall when the shrieking of other late night commuters started. The exits crowded with people, all fighting to get through.

Blanks. The shots were blanks. He let go of the breath he'd been holding.

Why were the bots firing?

A flood of those trying to get out ran back to the center, followed by more bots.

Rounding up. They were being round up. Tino tiptoed his way from the main wall and sprinted down a hallway. He paused at a corner and scanned for movement.

Tino wanted to smack himself when the metal pressed into his back. He turned around slowly and was led by the bot with a clenched jaw. His own subtle 'fuck you' to the bot was walking at different paces, slowing down and before the bot could jab him he'd speed up again.

C-5
City bot. Armed with a taser and blanks for rioting. Cabling beneath transformer weak for constant reprogramming. Arms disconnectable for maintenance. Lateral belt controls movement.

If he could get the gun off his back for two seconds he could rip it apart. He had no such luck.

The center was chaos, people amassed and shouting. The few that reached for a communicator on their person had been zapped. No point in reaching for his holographer.

Humans rounded up in a circle the bots stood, waiting. Tino could hear a baby wailing in the crowd.

As the minutes ticked on it grew eerily silent and a man took the opportunity to leave the crowd on the other side of the circle. In the next moment glass from the skylights shattered above them.

The man was unmoving in the blooming pools of blood.

From the fear drunkenness and loud sounds and pain, most looked to the night sky for answers. Tino felt his heart stutter, not at the death before them nor the glass but the walls.

Charlie.

The rudimentary chrome plated androids hung on the walls. They were security, most taken out of service because of updated models. Why they were there and why they had shot the man were what worried him.

He focused through the sound and pushed through the crowd forming a half circle around the body, bystander effect taking hold. Tino stared at one of the many wounds. Judging by the diameter, while it was a relatively small caliber, the metal had found its mark.

His analysis was interrupted by a familiar clicking sound of switching a magazine.

"Get down!"

Tino followed the instruction, a few dropping to the floor with him, the rest looked on for a moment dumbly before falling at the fire, hit or not.

Firing. Reloading. Firing. Reloading.

Firing.

Tino could feel the creeping warmth of blood through his sleeve.

Reloading-

And then he was deaf. Tino shut his senses off and laid still. Play dead. Play dead.

The roar stopped and the sounds of agony and relief filled his head. Things moved faster then. Tino was kneeling and had his hands on a victim before he could take another breath. He jammed the heel of his palm against the wound of the woman lying beside him. She was gasping and arching back, shoulder leaking more blood despite the pressure. Her breath hitched one last time as her eyes began hemorrhaging. Tino jumped back, nauseated at the movement in the blood. The little silver bits began rising out of the blood and coagulating. The rounds had been full of nano bots.

Left to kneel amongst the fallen, a few shredded C-5s decimated as crews of humans milled around to clear the area, Tino stared and stared at the puddles.

oooooo

He was led away by one of Kirkland's secretaries, who had to have been called to reach him, and taken in a separate car back to Kirkland's building.

"I heard about what happened-" Arthur started when Tino shook his head and went up to the boy's room.

Peter was fast asleep, his android posted by his door.

At a random table Tino sloughed his crusting coat and let the sanguine stained material fall to the floor.

His shirt was bloody too. He fumbled with the buttons, hands quaking and his teeth clenched to keep them from clattering.

Tino couldn't think of anything else other than the blood on his skin. He scrubbed his arms under the sink to an angry scoured pink, but at least he was clean. He took a few shaky breaths, keeping a feverish grip on himself. He had to keep calm. He had to keep calm.

It was getting harder to breathe. He realized how sore he had become from the night.

Tino pushed himself away from the edge of the sink and stepped a few strides back.

Red stained on the lab coat. It wasn't his.

He had to stay calm. He managed to stay calm the entire night, he couldn't break now.

Her face.

Why was there so much blood on his coat? On his shirt? On his skin?

Tino bit his lip to keep himself quiet.

The echo on the tile alerted him to the second person in the kitchen.

He turned on his heel to leave but went face first into the visitor.

"Okay?"

The voice was blunt and for a moment, Tino thought he could hear emotion behind it. Human or not, Tino clutched onto the shirt like a child and whimpered. He buried his head in Sve's chest and released some strangled wails in the fabric, droid carefully drawing an arm around Tino as he broke down.

oooooo

Bystander effect:
"...individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely related to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help." Of off Wikipedia and I thought it had a better explanation than summarizing off of my books.

Alright so I was a bit sadistic with the nanobot rounds.
Nanobots: you've got some nice arteries and other blood vessels. It would be a shame if someone-
Cut them! (From the inside. Whoop! I need help.)
So how my head says they work is they're built to want to group together/split in an attempt to get through and back to oxygen. Similar to how botfly larvae/other parasitic organisms/invasive bugs. They burrow into people (lovely topic, I know.) How do you get rid of them? Remove food source and/or deprive oxygen. alcohol. Some types of oils. You cover up the hole and they start suffocating. So that's my idea as to how it works.

Of course the bullets would need to be hollow point to allow it to separate. Solid would go through something, and likely anything behind it. Hollow points rip themselves up, thus we have released nanobots.

Completely logical, right?
You don't have to agree with me, I'm crazy.

I'm glad that my medical-ish notes aren't too annoying. I'm working on being as accurate as possible without overt medical jargon and making the writing too bulky. Notes for chapter 3 of 5V3.

*As for extra clarifications in chapter 2: Tino checked peter's brachial pulses as opposed to radial, (an obvious point would be that he only has one radius now): infants are often checked at the brachial points, as opposed to radial and carotid due to structural differences and size as well a different pulse pressures and rates as they are tiny humans and proportioned differently compared to an adult.

Of course there are several different regions to check for a pulse and depending on the injury/illness, you use those as well. (Femoral [crease where leg meets body.], popliteal [underside of the knee], posterior tibial artery [back of the ankle], dorsalis pedis artery [apparently you can check the foot but I'm having a hard time finding it on myself.]. It's not listed, but I can check a pulse at the temple pretty accurately.*

Alright. That's kinda it for now.

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Critiques? Let me know.

-Waltz.