Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Blunt chest trauma, or BCT, as it is often referred to, mostly occurs in car accidents and contact sports. In contrast to penetrating chest traumas that are caused by objects actually entering a person's thorax – a knife or a bullet for example – blunt thoracic traumas are the results of high impact collisions or enormous pressure. In car accidents and contact sports it's usually the former. In situations of heavy pushing and shoving, such as in the context of a mass panic, the latter occurs on a regular basis. High impact contact or enormous pressure doesn't make much of a difference, though. Both can cause potentially serious myocardial injury: Up to a quarter of all trauma deaths are the result of thoracic trauma.
Back when he had been a rookie Winston had been called to a nightclub where a fire had broken out. At the end of the day they counted seven victims. None of them from the fire. They had been trampled to death by the panicking crowd. Winston knew exactly what the fatal consequences of BCT looked like.
At the moment everyone in the tunnel was standing perfectly still. But this moment of shock wouldn't last forever: One single spark, one person losing it or a tad more pressure from outside and this would end in an explosion.
With this many people packed so tight, one of atom bomb proportions.
... ... ...
The news that the band reunion was cancelled in combination with a message from Winston that neither the tunnel's ventilation system nor its lights were still working at least helped Chance to decide what to do next. It didn't matter anymore who was doing this or why, and how they should be playing it with the authorities - now they needed to focus on saving Winston. And thousands of other people, too. Everything else was secondary.
"No matter what you do Ames, take your shirt off if you have to, but convince those guards to reopen their gates! We need to reduce pressure from the tunnel!" The last thing that Chance heard before he dashed down the HQ's stairs was the chief of operation giving similar instructions to his officers. Good. Thanks to the position of the building and the density of the crowd the officers would only be able to reach the guards on the north side, but if Ames managed to get only one additional exit on the east side reopened they'd create two streams of people leading away from the main entrance. It would make a world of a difference.
But only if nobody inside the tunnel panicked first.
"Winston? Winston?", Chance tried desperately, but Winston's earpiece had gone dead seconds after he had told them about the lights and the ventilation system. They had been lucky he had had a signal within these thick walls at all.
"We need to get fresh air into the tunnel", Guerrero told Chance. "With that many people crammed together carbon dioxide accumulates fast."
"Already in front of the turbine room. Don't think I'll have a signal inside. Door and walls look too well insulated." Chance quickly picked the lock. Thank God it was an old-fashioned one.
Creaking slightly, the door swung open to reveal two giant air handling units. Chance crossed the threshold. A slight buzz in his ear told him that he had lost the connection to the others. Just like Winston, he now was on his own.
The units weren't hard to spot, but which one was connected with the tunnel?
When they had looked at plans of the premises, Guerrero had said something about newly built-in ventilation of the tunnel... So then it had to be the one with the fresh paint, of course!
Chance looked around. Usually in a room like this, they kept a toolbox somewhere... They had to. Except for his lock picking equipment and a knife he wasn't carrying anything useful with him.
If they had no toolbox stashed somewhere his presence here was totally useless.
And Winston was running out of air.
... ... ...
Inside the tunnel, Winston came to the same conclusion. He needed to do something now, or this would end in disaster.
"Everybody calm down!", he yelled. Thanks to his size and his booming cop voice the people in his proximity actually turned their heads as far as they could and listened.
"Help is on the way! They're working on this problem right now!"
He still had the attention of those directly around him. But..
My voice just doesn't reach far enough, Winston thought. With this giant crowd it's a drop in the ocean. If I had a bullhorn...
But just like Chance in the turbine room had no proper tools, Winston had no technical means to turn the volume of his voice up.
But...
"You need to help me", he directly addressed three men and a woman right in front of him. "Come on, yell with me KEEP CALM – HELP COMES.
And they did.
Winston turned around, as far as he could, and asked more people to start shouting along with them.
It worked. The people kept standing still. But for how long? If the ventilation didn't come on soon...
... ... ...
It surely was ridiculous to sulk in a situation like this, but Ilsa did feel a bit left out. Chance hadn't even bothered telling her what to do. Ames was trying to talk to the guards, Chance was working on the ventilation, Guerrero was busy trying to override whatever program had allowed the attacker to gain control of all those vital functions... only she was sitting idly in the VIP box.
Well, she knew why Chance hadn't assigned her with anything. Judging from what she could see outside the windows, the entrance to the building with the VIP boxes was blocked by people, she had no chance of getting out. There was effectively nothing she could do.
With a cold shiver running down her spine she watched the dense crowd in front of the tunnel entrance. Guards were helplessly trying to restore order, but they were just too few. Hopefully nobody would have the bright idea to fire off a couple of a couple of warning shots. A human stampede would be the inevitable result.
And Ilsa would have a front row seat to that. From the VIP Box she had a perfect view of the horror scenario outside.
Hang on a second...
... ... ...
Chance cursed. No toolbox! Not a single screwdriver! Here he was standing right next to the heart of the problem and couldn't do ANYTHING.
Guerrero cursed. Whoever had hacked himself into the different electronic systems of the premises had done a very good job of building firewalls. He had bounced into three different ones in the last five minutes and the fourth had just popped up – it looked like it was connected with some sort of virus that started attacking his own computer now.
Bastard, you're going to pay for this.
Ames cursed. She had managed to reach one of the guards at a gate that was originally meant as an entrance. He understood what she was saying, but he had lost contact to HQ twenty minutes ago, none of his colleagues was present to give a second opinion and he just didn't feel "comfortable" with reopening the entrance just because a civilian told him so.
"What if everyone tries to get out through here? The people will get smushed!" He did have a point since Ames couldn't say for sure if other gates were reopened, too, but on the other hand, the pressure on the tunnel was growing and growing...
... ... ...
If the view from the VIP Box was perfect, it had to be fantastic from the roof of the building where they had accommodated the boxes... Ilsa didn't dare share her idea with Guerrero. She could hear him cursing over the ear piece, some sort of virus was causing giant problems... Chance was unreachable, so was Winston. Ames was still caught up in discussion with that guard...
Ilsa decided she needed to check the roof out on her own. It was highly unlikely. The attacker probably sat at home and watched everything through one of the security cams. That they weren't working for HQ didn't meant they weren't working for him.
But of course on the roof he'd be much closer to the action, could really indulge in the havoc he was wreaking...
Ilsa took a firefighter's axe from one of the walls and ascended the small maintenance stairwell that would directly lead her to the flat top of the building.
... ... ...
The yelling was helping, but Winston knew like everything that's done continuously, it's effect would eventually die down. He needed to figure out something else... and fast. The air was starting to feel perceptibly stale.
Maybe he should... It was an absurd idea. A police psychologist had told them a story during one of those seminars they make you sit through... Back then Winston had deemed the idea ridiculous. And given his current situation it was also dangerous, there was not much air left, should he waste it by...
But in desperate times... if he did nothing... a few more minutes of air wouldn't help anyone if a panic broke out...
Winston took a deep breath, held it for a second and then began:
I'm dreaming of a White Christmas...
At first no one sang along. It was really, really hard continuing, not only because breathing was hard, but because Winston felt like a complete idiot.
But as long as people are occupied, as long as they can focus on something, they are less likely to bolt...
Everybody knows the text of Christmas songs, no matter the cultural background or societal status...
Slow Christmas songs have a calming effect, the psychologist had actually mentioned some sort of research project on that matter...
...just like the ones I used to know...
Oh thank God, he wasn't singing alone anymore.
... ... ...
In the semi-darkness of the staircase, Ilsa stepped into something wet and sticky. She retrieved her mobile from the pocket of her blazer and used it as a flashlight.
A dark spot on the floor. Too viscous for water.
Good lord, it was blood.
A soft groan made Ilsa direct the beam to a dark corner. Tied up and gagged, apparently hurt seriously, too, there was a man lying curled up into a tight ball. Ilsa's makeshift flashlight danced over his nametag.
"Hello Mr. Walding", Ilsa whispered. "We've been trying to find you all day."
Oh how she wished she could contact Guerrero now, but what if the attacker, and by now she was sure he was on the roof, heard her?
For Walding's sake, for Winston's sake, for everyone in the arena's sake it was a risk she just couldn't take. She was on her own now.
Without even so much as a first aid box Ilsa knew she couldn't help Walding. Except with one thing - stopping the perfidious beast that had brought all of this upon them.
There was only one entrance to the roof - a small door right in the middle of it. If the attacker had positioned himself somewhere in the proximity, she had no chance in hell to sneak up on him. But what else was she supposed to do?
She weighed the axe in her hand. A potent weapon. In Guerrero's or Chance's hands. In hers?
Big question mark.
Cautiously she approached the door. Her own heartbeat was so loud, someone could have stomped up the steps behind her, she wouldn't have noticed.
Breathe, boss, breathe... don't let your own adrenaline level get you killed. An instruction of Guerrero's several years ago... she couldn't remember the exact context, but she did remember how much it had helped her back then. With newly found determination, she opened the door.
At first the roof seemed empty. Then she spotted him, as close to the roof's ledge as possible without being seen from the ground.
As close to the screams and panic of the crowd as possible.
Bloody hell, he had set up a regular little command center around him, with several notebooks left and right. And apparently he wasn't expecting anyone to come up from behind.
Now, had he stood right in front of the door and had he attacked her, Ilsa wouldn't have hesitated for a second to use the axe against him. But this here was a different story. Sure, sneaking up on him and splitting his skull in half would definitely end this ordeal in the quickest way possible. But this was a human being!
On the other hand, any less vehement approach involved the risk of him overpowering Ilsa. Her only real advantage was surprise.
But this was a human being...
Knowing that Guerrero would somehow make her pay for this later - if there was a "later" for her - she turned the axe around so that she'd now hit the attacker with the handle, not the blade.
As she slowly walked towards him, slightly crouched so that she would throw as little shadow as possible, it dawned on her that she should have taken off her high heels at some point. Too late now.
Try to make your first blow your last blow. Strike with all the force you can muster. Straight blows have the most impact while anything that requires you to reach back far slows you down. Instructions from Chance, probably in the aftermath of the opera ordeal. Well, at least this time a pipe from the ceiling wouldn't stop her half-way through...
The attacker, a rather young man, from what she could tell, still hadn't noticed her. He was too caught up in typing, probably countering one of Guerrero's maneuvers. She decided to aim for the back of his neck.
... ... ...
"Guerrero?"
"Ilsa, this is not the best moment to..."
"If I had access to the attacker's main computer, what would I need to look for to get things going again?"
For a few seconds there was silence from the other end. Complete and utterly stunned silence.