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.

What's going on? she thought. Where am I? Where am I going? Why are you hurting these people? Why? WHY!

Orange light trailed across her Fatemaker before she could even blink, and she aimed her gun at the Threat Level 5 masked men with her gun on Subjugate mode. With her first shot, she blasted both arms clean off one attacker, his gun disappearing into the chaos. Before she could blast the weapon and limbs off another, the four masked men crashed to the ground in sprays of red mist, orange light bursting through their bodies. Behind them stood a Psychwatch officer wielding an Assault Fatemaker.

The officer bolted toward her fallen comrade and hoisted her up. Margo didn't realize it was Andrade until she got a glimpse of the fear in her eyes behind her visor. "Get up, Sandoval!" she shouted. "We gotta rescue Sanger and Atkinson! We'll get your wound patched up later."

"Where the hell are Carl, Royce, and Jack?" Margo cried, wincing as blood seeped out of her wound down the tear in her Blur.

"No damn clue. The Scans keep activating and deactivating. It's hard to keep track of anyone in this place. Commissioner, what's your status?"

"Unharmed but very fucking pissed off!" Mason shouted through her piece. "Too many Threat Level 5's, most of which can't even be identified by the System. Some of them are forcing the citizens into vans!"

"What do you mean they can't be identified?"

"Look out!" Margo shouted, and she and Andrade were knocked back by a concussive blast of shrapnel.

Margo hit the ground once more, her Blur preventing her from suddenly losing air from the impact. She saw a masked woman standing above her, red Xs scratched across her eyes, a bizarre-looking shotgun in hand. Behind the attacker, citizens continued mauling each other apart like wolves. Some had knives. Others had guns. Everywhere Margo looked, all she saw was red, partially blurred by the new crack in the right lens of her glasses. Even the albino girl she recognized driving her machete into the neck of one unfortunate Omniluv member stood against the crimson wind like a tree in a hurricane. Time itself felt like it was slowing down.

Crimson, Margo thought. Such an appropriate name for someone like her.

She flinched at the familiar sound of a Fatemaker being fired, and she watched as the masked woman's corpse was launched into the fleeing crowd, a dark red blot in the center of her chest. Several other Threat Level 5's were quickly taken down in a series of red splashes. Margo glanced to her right to see Andrade armed with her Assault Fatemaker and stumbling toward her colleague, a small piece of shrapnel protruding from her Blur.

"Let's go!" she hissed as she heaved Margo off the ground.

Margo winced as stinging sensations burst through her skin. She could see her Blur clearly as it shimmered against her body, almost as if she'd been wrapped in form-fitting plastic. Three shards of glass lay buried in her protective force field, their tips pricking her skin like splinters, but she kept moving. She and Andrade were approaching the building where Holden and Nikki should've been.

"Commissioner!" Andrade shouted, still holding onto Margo as the two of them raced through the crossfire. "We're approaching the PIT campus! What were you saying before about the targets being undetectable?"

"Not enough time," Margo croaked. "Just let Holden and Nikki explain."

"You kidding me? After everything that's going on, do you really expect them to be stable enough to help?"

"I guarantee you one of them will be able to explain." Margo flinched as more gunshots rang out in the distance.

Andrade scoffed. "So you're putting your trust in two doctor-cop trainees, one that talks too much and another who doesn't talk at all."

"Holden doesn't like feeling useless, Andrade. We can at least count on him."

Margo could hear Andrade mutter something else under her breath, but several more gunshots rang out behind them. The two of them leaped away from each other and fired their Fatemakers at the enemy, quickly taking down four masked individuals. However, seemingly signaled by the sting of the glass shards piercing through her Blur, Margo spotted Wendell Asch and Arthur Cohen being loaded into a van alongside a dozen other rally-goers. What disturbed her the most was the fact they were the only two willing to enter the vehicle.

"Hey!" she shouted. "Asch! Cohen!"

Only Asch looked back, and the devilish grin stretching across his face a mile wide birthed hundreds of wildly different thoughts in Margo's head, not a single one of them good.

Trace the locations of Wendell Asch and Arthur Cohen, she ordered through her ThoughtControl piece as she continued behind Andrade. Alert us if their Threat Levels surpass acceptable—

Margo winced again as a deafening buzz filled her ears like the destruction around her, and the bang of her back against the doors of the abandoned PIT campus shook her down to her very core. Even with her Blur preventing her from being bruised, she felt as if all of her bones were rattling beneath her skin. The purpose behind that internal thunder crashing through her eardrums was finally revealed through a robotic voice:

Error, it groaned. There are no individuals by those names registered to the Psychwatch Societal Stability System.

Margo gasped. She could've sworn Arthur's data was in the P3S. There was no way an anti-Psychwatch parasite like Asch would submit to the System, but Arthur was simply skittish about the doctor-cops seeing what was going on in his head. He was uncomfortable about a diagnosis, like most patients. He was angry. He must've been hiding something. There was no other guess that made sense.

"Sanger! Atkinson!" Andrade called out. "Where are you?"

"Up here, Inspector!" Holden cried, and she and Margo jerked their heads towards the stairwell before racing up the steps.

Ever since she'd joined Psychwatch, Margo had seen her fair share of abandoned buildings throughout the City of Brotherly Love, and this was arguably one of the nicest. No discarded furniture blocked her path as she and her superior marched up the steps to rescue the youth. Hardly any garbage littered the floors aside from a few small accumulations of bird feathers and scattered papers. The only conspicuous sight she spotted that shouldn't have been there before was the bundle of wires trailing across the corridors like snakes in a jungle. The Psychwatch logo repeatedly painted across the dark blue surface of the wires reassured her.

Not as much as it used to, however.

"Hold on," Andrade said, and Margo skidded to a halt. The two of them stood before a door into a classroom. More of their wires slithered into the tiny gap left behind by the door, and Margo noticed a mess of footprints beaten into the floor beneath her. She followed their path away from the door and saw the prints racing up and down the hall.

Before Margo could push through the door, Andrade grabbed her shoulder with the force of a machine. Her superior flashed her a dirty look as she recharged her Assault Fatemaker, the lights on her weapon flashing bright green. Flashing her own frustrated leer, Margo did the same with her own standard, Fatemaker handgun before the two of them kicked through the door.

Holden and Nikki screamed in horror as the door crashed against the wall with a resonant bang. Dozens of holographic screens floated above the desk beside them, just solid blue rectangles rendered useless by their disconnection to the System. The two of them were sitting down on the floor, scooted up against the wall as if the room were closing in on them. Their Fatemakers rattled in their hands as they aimed them at the door, their lack of faith made further evident by the fear in their eyes. Holden's cheeks were moist with tears, and his breathing was slow but harsh as if dirt had entered his lungs. Nikki was curled into a fetal position, her eyes remaining glued to the floor and her Fatemaker resting in her hands. Margo noticed her pants were completely soaked, and a peculiar smell filled her nostrils the closer she got to the poor girl.

"Are you two hurt?" Margo asked, holstering her gun.

"No," Holden mumbled.

"Nikki?"

Nikki shook her head as she reattached her gun to her MagniSheath, refusing to take her eyes off the floor.

Andrade approached from behind Margo. "It's all right, Atkinson, " she assured her. "We'll get you to safety so you can clean yourself up."

Nikki silently nodded her head again. With a sniffle, she stood from the floor, embarrassment weighing her down like a ton of bricks as she shamefully glanced at the large stain running from her crotch down to her feet.

"Do either of you know where Royce went?" Margo asked as she helped Holden onto his feet.

The four of them flinched as the electronic sounds of modified gunfire filled the air. Margo limped out of the room toward the nearest window. Down below she watched as the world proved harder and harder to save. Bullets and deadly energy soared through the park, ripping apart anyone caught in the crossfire. Hundreds of bodies lay on the ground dead and ravaged. Blood was splashed across the grass and stone pathways as if it had rained from the sky above. Deep, searing pits remained where the bombs went off, piles of ash scattered around the holes as reminders of Psychwatch's human nature, that nature being their inability to save everybody.

Now they were just like everyone else.

"Get away from the windows, " Holden croaked. "Their modified guns can tear through our Blurs."

Margo looked down at the shards of glass still embedded in her armor through her Blur along with the gash across her left arm. She walked away from the window, turning so the other officers would have a good view of the evidence. "No kidding," she groaned.

"Holy shit!" Holden gasped. "Are you okay, Margo?"

"Yeah. Didn't penetrate too deeply. I'll just have a few mild cuts by the end of this."

"Are you sure? Those look really bad."

Margo chuckled as she carefully stepped over the wires to enter the room. "I'm glad you care, Holden. But Andrade and I came here to rescue the two of you. Now, where's Carl and Royce?"

"They were supposed to be gathering reinforcements. Finding better Fatemakers, I believe. But the Scans aren't picking them up anywhere!"

Andrade gasped. "That reminds me!" she said. "Mason says the attackers aren't part of the System."

"She's right," Holden replied, wiping the tears off his cheeks with his sleeve. "The Scans either declare them as dead or can't even identify them at all. Probably an effect of cybernetic implants of some kind. Nikki knows."

The three officers all glared at Nikki with anticipation. The poor girl could hardly move a muscle, sitting up against the wall as she resisted the urge to cry. She exchanged some very brief glances at her fellow officers, but she couldn't look at them in the eye for more than a second. She wanted to scream out in frustration as urine dripped down her legs, but her silence was her only refuge. Even if the world around her was far from quiet—especially at a time like this—she felt like it would be made infinitely worse if a word left her tongue.

Margo caught a single glimpse of the fear in Nikki's eyes and knew what she had to next. "We'll get answers later," she declared. "All that matters is getting the two of you to safety."

The gunshots grew louder than ever, and the windows in the hallway vaporized into thousands of tiny particles. The holographic screens in the room vanished in a series of flashes, and the four officers dropped to the floor as ammunition tore the room apart like paper, their Blurs engulfing them. Streaks of electricity danced through the fragments of the walls as their safe haven crumbled apart around them. Margo grimaced as her cuts continued to sting her, especially because of her cramped position on the floor, and she feared that more shrapnel would harm her and her fellow officers.

Seconds later, the gunfire dissipated like mist. The only sounds left were Holden and Nikki's frightened whimpers. Even Margo was fighting back the urge to scream. Dust hung over the room like fog, dulling each officers' vision as it descended upon their Blurs like sand against glass. The lights above Margo and her colleagues flickered with a series of rhythmic clicks, and she slowly rose her head away from the floor to inspect what remained of the room. The walls looked as if they were forcefully torn away by wild animals, and sparks flew out of the destroyed wires and electronic equipment scattered around the room. The screams of innocent people still echoed from outside the building, and Margo suddenly had forgotten whether she was still in the real world or if she had somehow sunken to the lowest, darkest pits of Hell.

What is Psychwatch even doing here anymore? she thought to herself.

As she sat up against the wall beside Holden, she wiped the dust away from her eyes, her Blur shielding it from ever making physical contact. The world around her was hazy, imprisoned in clouds of brown and gray. She saw the silhouette of a man standing at the room's entrance. He carried a modified automatic rifle, the kind that would reduce Margo and her fellow officers to nothing more than mincemeat, much like what happened to the room and the rally-goers outside. And even though she couldn't make out the rest of his attire, she knew from the adrenaline shooting through her veins and her automatic reaction to reach for her Fatemaker that the stranger standing before them wore a mask marked with red Xs over his eyes.

She thought it'd be the end of her now that his gun was trained on them. But her fate was sealed, destined to live another day, as half of the stranger's head was reduced to a mess of red pulp following a flash of orange light and a shrill, metallic boom.

Their attacker's body collapsed to the ground limp as a puppet. Carl approached the entrance to the room wielding a Fatemaker shotgun. The weapon was a long, black tube roughly as long as his arms, and an orange pinstripe shimmered across the gun's slick surface. A gray holographic screen protruded from the gun's receiver, the words THREAT LEVEL 5 NEUTRALIZED stretching across it. Carl lowered his gun and flashed a frail but hopeful smile at his terrified colleagues.

"Carl!" Margo and Holden exclaimed in unison.

"Hey, guys," he exhaled as he approached them.

"Maslow, where the hell have you been?" Andrade barked.

"In the dark, that's where. Vince pulled me back in to distract Catty from coming out. Once I came back into the light, I was suddenly standing beside Holloway and Royce holding this." Carl lifted up his gun for emphasis. "Then I made my way here as soon as I could. Holden, are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine, " Holden replied with a sniffle, "but Margo was hit with the shrapnel gun. And Nikki has to change her pants."

Nikki smacked Holden upside his skull, the impact rendered painless by his Blur.

"Alrighty then," Carl declared. "We're getting the three of you to safety. Can you still walk, Margo?"