A dying scream makes no sound

[notglitching]

Who: closed to Rinzler and Peter, later J, and later others
When: just past midnight on April 14th; right after Rinzler kills Vorrick
Where: hallways -> aft
What: murderbot prevention gone very wrong
Warnings: copious mindscrew references, violence, severe injuries, violent character death


He needs to run.

The door to Moro #009 slides shut without resistance. The steps that pace off down the barracks hall leave no stains or signs of violence behind. Only the catch and snarl of raw noise betrays any errors from a distance, and if the sound is more erratic than usual, it's hardly new. Rinzler has always had errors, always been mismatched [wrong], since long before he was capable of acknowledging the faults.

He has killed a user [user] [fightfor] and that fault, no one will forgive.

Killed a user. Killed. Not broken code or shattered voxels, not the clean crash of his disks through a threat or assigned target. The wet tear of blades through flesh. The prick of blood, sizzling across his circuits. He'd felt it in the simulation room, and Inugami before. He'd killed dozens of their monsters. Wiped thousands upon thousands of his own kind, in the Games and streets and hiding-holes throughout the Grid.

If he needed proof that he was [wrong] [wrong] [broken], it was how little different this had felt.

It doesn't matter. Doesn't, can't, won't; not for long. The users will find him and the users will fix the fault, strip his errors and his choices clean and remold what's left into a shape that's useful. Just like Clu had. If the admins don't, his user will. Alan-one had given him one task, and Rinzler failed, and the costs for that were laid out long ago.

Directive is a tattered snarl. Reprimand cuts every chain of thought apart, but makes no headway at all against the ache of failure that wells up from beneath. All of it is drowned entirely by fear. Rinzler's circuits shiver red/blue/red as he paces blindly through the halls, disk locked rigidly in his left grip. Red-brown liquid smears the unlit edge, wiped imperfectly away. More speckles his armor. He needs to run, to hide, but he can't do either.

He never could.

Comments

[notglitching]

Even through the heat, even through the damage, the lance of charge is too much not to sense. Rinzler has enough time to feel the storm of potential building. Enough time, even, to catch the shape—the signature?—of someone past that. Moving. Fast.

He doesn't have any chance at all to get out of the way. Electricity hits the program's shell and crackles, jumping across circuits and leaving scattered functions in its wake. He doesn't even have time to flinch inward before another impact hits him like a tank. Code cracks, voxels scattering to the ground as the fracture widens, and Rinzler's noise snarls out struggles against the black warnings of shutdown, struggles to think or work or move, escape—

Shepard's lunge smashes them into the far wall, disk dock slamming against the surface, and the program goes limp. Faint twitches still shudder through his shell, joined by a spark of power where the program contacts metal. More light trails across the distance of the charge: broken code that glints on the ground and crumbles loosely from the hole in Rinzler's side. Even unconscious, he doesn't release that merged code disk.

But Rinzler's not awake to struggle either, when or if it's pried away. It's really over.

[beautifulspaceraptor]

Something ugly twists in Nihlus' gut when he watches the Rinzler go flying but he refuses to acknowledge it. The turian's face remains set in a grim mask as the voxels scatter around his feet.

"Make sure he's down," he orders Shepard, pulling tubes of medi-gel out of a compartment. "Try to prevent further injuries if he's not. We'll see about moving him to medical after this." He also sets out a call on the network.

That's the closest he'll let himself get to worrying about Rinzler. The two people bleeding out on the ground were higher on the priority list.

He steps through the pool of blood with practiced ease, scanning their forms with a quick flash of his omni-tool. J was dead. Peter was not but he was quickly getting there. He kneels next to the unconscious teen and gently flips him over before starting to apply medi-gel to the stab wound, keeping a careful eye on the teen's stats. The medical ward should be pinged through the MID, but he makes an additional ping to Yewll anyways.

[squadgoals]

Standing over Rinzler's crumpled form, cracked code scattering amongst the voxels and crumbling away from his open wounds, Shepard can't help but think of the Geth, of inside the consensus itself. She'd figured Rinzler for a synthetic, or something akin to one, but this was something else entirely. Can a program take physical form without a mobile platform?

There's no time to wonder too deeply, and she snaps into action on Nihlus' words. Even without the initial scan she flashes, it's easy to tell that Rinzler's down for the count. She rolls him on his back to fully survey the damage — extensive, to say the least. Serious-looking web-like cracks of light extending out from his eviscerated left side (likely exacerbated by the charge) cover most of his torso, in addition to numerous standalone fractures.

There's blood as well, loads of it, the acrid metal smell enhanced by the heat, but that isn't his. She frowns down at the program, wishing she knew more of both the who of the victims, and the why of the attack.

"He's out," she responds as she stands, surveying the scene with a practiced eye. "But the damage on his left side looks like it's snowballing. Ideas? Not sure medi-gels will be able do much for this."

[beautifulspaceraptor]

There wasn't a lot he could do for the blood-loss presently, but Yewll's team should be here soon. He looks up when Shepard voices her concern, tapping his mandibles against his jaw.

"Keep an eye on kid." Nihlus stands up and quickly wipes the excess blood off on his thigh armor before popping a packet of omni-gel out and making is way over. "Start resuscitation procedures if his vitals fail before medical comes."

Spirits, this was turning out to be a messy night.

Plopping the gel onto his omni-tool to warm up, he kneels next to Rinzler's damaged side, voxels crunching under him. He plucks the program's disk from his limp grasp and slides it towards Shepard: better safe than sorry. He's not entirely sure how the substance would react with a program.

The omni-gel melts and reforms into an orb and he flips the field onto his palm before pushing it into the gaping crack, watching it spread and meld against the damaged edges.

[squadgoals]

Omni-gel. She nods approval as she watches the molten material seal the edges of Rinzler's damage. Don't even have a reader in my omni-tool for that, anymore. It would've been her first choice three years ago, but upgrades on medi-gel and patching of security loopholes had seen omni-gel's popularity in the field decline considerably. Considering the circumstances, it's an simple yet elegant solution.

Turning her attention to Peter, she switches her omni-tool over to medical, scanning his prone form for statistics. The medi-gel has already started doing its work, and Peter's vitals, while weak, are stable. J, on the other hand, was gone. She'd known that the moment Nihlus had neglected to apply medi-gel to her. We were too late. She shook her head, regret stinging and knotting up in her stomach, a feeling she wished was less familiar. All they could do now was help as best they could.

When Nihlus slides Rinzler's disc towards her, she picks it up, turning it over her hand. It's light, easy to manage. A great weapon for hand-to-hand combat, really. She hadn't seen much of Rinzler in action, but the damage to the two crew spoke volumes for its potential. Still gripping it firmly, she stands up and addresses Nihlus.

"The boy is all evened out. Until we get him to the med bay, that's probably as good as it's going to get." Shepard turns the disc in her hand again, and frowns. "Might be an idea to put Rinzler in the hold until medical is available and accompanied. I have a hunch he might wake up on the wrong side of the bed."