Michael Ares - Dayfall

Many of the cops instinctively pulled out their sidearms and started scanning the park, especially when civilians approached them. Jon noticed a few of them fixing their eyes on him and moving in his direction. He looked at Hegde and Dixon in a plea for his own protection, holding his cuffed hands out in front of him. But the normally laid back, even lackadaisical pair of detectives had their own guns lifted halfway and pointed in Jon’s direction. And they both had a wild-eyed look that Jon had never seen on their faces before.

“What did you do?!” Dixon shouted at him.

“Me? What?!” Jon shouted back, waving his cuffed hands, which were shaking a lot more now. “It’s Gant! He obviously he didn’t want to be sidelined, or leave the city. Despite the best efforts of his old friend to protect him. He’s the villain here…. We need to find him and take him in!”

As he blurted this out, Jon watched as the two or three cops who had recognized him and moved in his direction had trouble navigating the panicked crowd that surrounded them. One of them was confronted by an angry couple and had to deal with them, and another was knocked off his feet by a family of three, holding hands and frantically trying to find their other child. A third cop managed to make it to their little group, and now stood in a tense pose behind Jon with his gun pointed at Jon’s back.

“Whoa, hold on,” the officer named Malachi Croft said, stepping closer to Jon with his hands up and his gun still in its holster. He seemed to be a lot more rational than the others, and confirmed it when he said, “Put those away and let’s talk.”

A gunshot suddenly rang out not far from them, all the cops around Jon ducked, and the noise and chaos multiplied intensely in the park.

A screaming Goth girl ran over to Croft, randomly it seemed, and tried to liberate his gun from its holster. When he pushed her hand away from the leather clasp, she yelled, “Help me!” and clung to his arm. Two young men appeared from the direction she had come.

“Kitty, come on,” one of them said as they approached, “We just want to keep you safe.”

The Goth girl screamed again, and the uniformed cop who had joined their group swiveled and pointed his gun at the two other men. Jon could see that he was sweating profusely and the veins were standing out on his forehead.

“Come on, man,” one of the young men said, also noticeably sweating. As he did, he very unwisely moved toward the overwrought policeman.

“Guys!” Croft yelled. “Settle down!”

A big dog, with a leash trailing behind it, ran straight through the uneasy gathering, and in the confusion, the young man accidentally veered even closer to the cop, and the cop shot him. The Goth girl screamed even louder than before, and Croft finally did unclasp his holster.

As a large group of freaked-out people migrated into the space where Hegde and Dixon were standing, and his captors became preoccupied with them, Jon took off running to the west, in the direction of Mallory’s bar. He half-expected to be shot in the back for the first twenty seconds or so of his flight, and regretted that he couldn’t swing his arms freely to run faster. He heard several gunshots from various directions, but didn’t feel anything hit him and kept moving as rapidly as he could.

He slowed when he realized he was near the big bronze sculptures where Sturm had attacked him with a knife. He ran behind one of them and risked a look back. The Goth girl had managed to get Croft’s sidearm, or someone else’s, and was waving it wildly around her, fending off a small group of people that no longer included Hegde or Dixon, as far as he could tell. It was hard to see because people kept running by between him and that spot, but he wondered if the Chaos Crimes cops were fleeing the scene, too.

He took a moment to scan the park and its vicinity, and noticed other seemingly random scenes of bedlam and mayhem. He noticed how the largest groups of people were crowding into the buildings around the Square, or at least attempting to. Whether or not the sunlight was actually having a physical or psychological effect on them, they definitely wanted to get out of it.

One particular mob scene was taking place at the Gotham Security headquarters at Eleven Madison, on the east side of the park. Jon could see police and civilians, who were in the sun, shouting at the security guards who had formed a ragged line in the shade at the entrance to the building. Some of the civilians were throwing various objects in their direction. There hadn’t been any gunfire yet, probably because the GS sentries were ready to engage in it if needed.

Knowing that no such security existed at The Office, and that no one was currently pursuing him, Jon pushed himself off the statue and headed toward Mallory’s bar.

When he reached Fifth Avenue, on the west side of the park, he stopped to figure out the best way to get to her. The street was jammed both ways with cars and taxis, some of them occupied because people thought they would be safer inside of them, and some of them unoccupied because people thought they would be safer in a building. Horns were blaring, creating a cacophony of noise that almost drowned out the one created by screams of panic and shouts of rage. While studying the street, Jon could see some of the fearful citizens climbing into unoccupied cars, and even some trying to get into ones that were occupied, causing more chaos and violence.

To his left, the traffic jam at the intersection of Fifth and Broadway had spilled over into the large pedestrian patio called Flatiron Plaza. Motorists trying to bypass the jam had driven up onto the cement there, smashing into tables and chairs and umbrellas, and at least one pedestrian. Jon could see the victim’s body lying on the left side of the Plaza, since the cars were giving it space and jostling for other paths through the intersection. As Jon instinctively moved forward to help, one of the cars in the jam decided it didn’t want to wait any longer. It swerved out of the crowd of cars and ran right over the body, just to gain fifty feet or so on the others.

To Jon’s right there were several different-sized mobs fighting to get into the stores and restaurants to the north on Fifth Avenue, so it seemed that going straight across the street from where he was, and passing through General Worth Square, was the easiest way to get up Broadway to the bar. He took a deep breath and waded into the river of cars, jumping back at the sudden movements some of them made when space opened up ahead, and trying to steer clear of the altercations happening at others.

Jon made it through to the other side without incident, but then looked back across the street to see a greater danger approaching. Coming from inside the park, and moving in his general direction, was a group of about seven or eight uniformed cops who had banded together to restore order, or whatever passed as order in their strained psyches. They had formed a phalanx of sorts in order to be able to protect themselves from all directions, but also to do more than just protect themselves. One of the cops shouted into a small megaphone that “anyone perpetrating acts of violence will be shot on sight,” but they were shooting more than just violent people. As Jon watched, a woman in a Gotham Security uniform approached them peacefully from the left, as if she just wanted to talk to them, and two of the cops on that side fired about five rounds into her, without any hesitation.

Jon wasn’t sure where the cops were heading, but it occurred to him that they might be making a wide circle around the Flatiron in an attempt to restore some degree of control to the area. Whatever their intent, which was probably capricious because of the effects Dayfall was having on them, Jon knew that he didn’t want them to see his handcuffs or recognize him, because he doubted he would survive the encounter. So he looked around for a hiding place, and ducked behind a big umbrella that had provided cover for one of the tables in the little square and had fallen on its side.