Story code: ST-001308
Part 2: The Weight of the Lenses
Silas’s fist never connected with the teenager’s phone. A vice-like grip locked around his wrist mid-swing, the momentum of his lunge violently arrested. The heavy boots scuffed against the polished concrete as a mass of dark fabric and tactical webbing slammed into Silas’s side. He was hauled backward, his boots skidding through the spreading, dark pool on the floor. “Get back! Everyone get back!” a deep, authoritative voice boomed, though the command was directed entirely at Silas. It was an expo security contractor, his face flush with adrenaline, thick arms wrapping around Silas’s chest to put him in a standing bear hug. The crowd didn’t retreat. Instead, the wall of glowing rectangles merely pivoted, the silent hive mind effortlessly adjusting its focus to frame the new struggle.
“Let go of me! Look at him!” Silas roared, thrashing against the thick nylon of the guard’s uniform. He threw his weight forward, desperately pointing toward the twisted figure on the floor. “He’s bleeding out! Call a fucking medic!” But the guard only tightened his grip, the heavy brass buckle of his duty belt digging painfully into the small of Silas’s back. To the guard, arriving late to the chaotic silence and seeing only a wild-eyed vendor throwing punches at a teenager, Silas was the active threat. The security contractor swept Silas’s legs out from under him. They crashed to the hard floor together, jarring the breath from Silas’s lungs. The impact rattled his teeth, his cheek slapping against the cold, unforgiving concrete mere feet from the victim.
Pinned beneath the crushing weight of the guard’s knee, Silas’s perspective was forced to ground level. The harsh overhead fluorescent lights glared off the forest of shoes surrounding them-hiking boots, pristine sneakers, sensible orthopedic flats. Above the shoes hovered the relentless, unblinking eyes of the smartphone cameras. Through the ringing in his ears, he could hear the sickening, disconnected commentary of his neighbors. “Yeah, he just went crazy,” a man’s voice muttered in the steady, conversational tone of a livestreamer. “Attacked a kid holding a phone. Unbelievable.” Not a single voice asked about the person bleeding. Not a single hand reached down with a tourniquet or a wad of gauze. They were documenting a scuffle, willfully blind to the mortal tragedy laying at the center of their circle.
Silas twisted his neck, scraping his skin against the floor, straining to look at the victim. The figure was a young man, maybe in his early twenties, wearing a faded flannel shirt that was rapidly turning a wet, glossy black. The chest rose and fell in shallow, erratic jerks. The metallic tang of copper grew overwhelming, mixing with the suffocating scent of cheap cologne from the guard pressing him down. Silas tried to reach his free hand out, trying to bridge the gap to press against the young man’s wound, but the guard slapped heavy metal cuffs over his wrist, ratcheting the teeth tight. “Stop resisting, buddy. You’re done,” the guard grunted, keying the radio on his shoulder. “Dispatch, I have a 10-15 at the south hall. Combative male. Send backup.”
“He’s been shot, you idiot! He’s dying!” Silas screamed, his voice cracking, tearing at his throat. “Someone help him!” The plea echoed off the high corrugated ceilings of the convention center, but it landed dead in the crowd. The spectators simply zoomed in on Silas’s face. The teenager whose phone Silas had tried to smash squatted down, moving the camera lens within inches of Silas’s restrained hands, capturing the raw, helpless panic for his followers. The stark apathy of the people he had spent years living beside, drinking coffee with at local diners, and selling gear to on weekends, struck him with a physical force. They weren’t in shock. They were entertained.
Then, through the forest of legs and the blinding glare of camera flashes, Silas’s eyes locked onto a metallic shape resting near a discarded soda cup. It was partially obscured by a woman’s floral-patterned sneaker, but the distinct lines of the slide and the custom-stippled grip were unmistakable. It was a heavily modified subcompact, featuring an olive-drab cerakote finish and an extended magazine well. Silas knew every millimeter of that frame. He had assembled it himself. He had spent three hours polishing the feed ramp just last Tuesday. It was his display model, the centerpiece of his current expo inventory, the very weapon he had been enthusiastically demonstrating the safety features of not twenty minutes prior.
The cold concrete beneath Silas seemed to drop away. The ringing in his ears pitched into a high, agonizing whine. He had spent his entire adult life preaching the doctrine of self-reliance, the absolute necessity of an armed, capable citizenry ready to step up when wolves came to the door. He had sold thousands of these tools to the very neighbors currently standing around him, assuring himself he was fortifying his community. But as the woman in the floral sneakers casually stepped directly onto the barrel of the olive-drab pistol to get a better downward angle for her video, the foundation of his lifelong ideology fractured. The good people with the guns weren’t stopping a threat; they were waiting for the lighting to improve.
The young man on the floor let out a wet, rattling gasp. His eyes rolled back, fixing on the ceiling, completely ignored by the ring of amateur cinematographers. The guard on Silas’s back pressed down harder, unholstering a Taser and pressing the plastic muzzle against Silas’s neck to force his compliance. “I said stop moving,” the guard growled, completely oblivious to the dying man just outside his peripheral vision. Silas stopped fighting the restraint, his muscles going entirely limp as a profound, paralyzing horror took hold. He stared at the custom subcompact under the woman’s shoe, tracking the thin trail of blood connecting it to the dying stranger, just as a second, identical deafening crack echoed from the far side of the exhibition hall.