He snorted the electrics off the dashboard, emboldened. He threw his head back to clear them down his throat, and then trained his eyes, with an automated whirr of shifting gears, on the hospital out front. Humanity lay ahead, in that building, at the end of the barrel of his gun.

“G-Get down on.. what — “ Security scrambling.

The man with the gun had no face – he was simply a tool, chrome and anonymous –  but he demanded one today, a face of flesh and blood. To be recognized, to be set free. To be more than a machine. 

Steel doesn’t bleed.