John was sure they failed to stop the mad scientist. All day, people were dropping like flies. How many so far? John thought he lost count somewhere in the triple digits. It was too bad he couldn't just shoot the nanobots out of the air - but the way they wriggled around, it was bound to take a lot of bullets to shoot one out of the air. He'd have to get them at land, but he didn't see any nanobots on land flooding the streets or sticking to walls.
He crouched behind a building corner and listened. He heard something. He could hear the buzzing of helicopters overhead, and the thrumming of their blades. But he could hear something else, too - gunfire. Was it the police or one of the military units? It didn't feel like the police, especially not the ones he'd seen back at the lab - they were all too sissy to fight. No, it was the military. They would be more than capable of taking down the mad scientist. He just hoped that the nanobots wouldn't get them before they got here.
He peeked out from behind the corner and saw some movement from the helicopter. The door opened and a man jumped out, rolling like a gymnast, expertly landing and immediately aiming his gun at the wall above John. Someone else was now looking out of the chopper and firing as well, behind the man.
The nanobots around John! John aimed his own gun at the wall beside him, where they were clustered, and squeezed the trigger. He missed, and no wonder - the nanobots were wriggling around like a pack of angry bees. He tried again, and got one right in the middle - it exploded, sending nanobots flying in opposite directions. He flinched and turned away, shielding his eyes from the flying nanobots. But no, they wouldn't get to his eyes like that, unless they worked their way in between his fingers into his eyes. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry - John removed his hand from his eyes.
He looked back and found another cluster of nanobots in the corner, moving around in a frenzy. He aimed again and fired. He hit one in the center, exploding a small flurry of nanobots in the middle and gently pushing the rest of the nanobots up and to the side of John. But they were still buzzing - and they were in midair, buzzing like bees, except a lot more deadly. He had to stop them. What would a beekeeper do?
He looked around, frantic, and spotted a long pipe nearby. He picked it up, as the bees bustled around and above him, and swung it hard at the air. It hit the swarm of nanobots and knocked a lot of them out of the air. One of them hit John's hand, and exploded. He yelped and jumped back, stung badly by the nanobots. He wanted to rub his hand, but he knew from experience that if he did, he'd just spread the nanobots to the rest of his body.
He squatted again and fired a few rounds randomly into the swarm, until they dispersed and melted out of the air. He didn't even need to look for nanobots anymore - he could hear them buzzing as they scurried on the ground, invisible to him. If he didn't look for them, he'd just make things harder on himself. If he did look for them, where would he look? There had to be a better way.
He flinched as he heard more gunshots behind him. That was definitely the chopper firing, not a gun of some sort nearby. Unless the mad scientist was here, too… No, not likely. He was probably still in his lab, doing his scientist things.
The scientist… That was a thought. He paused for a moment, thinking. The nanobots buzzing in the air behind him. The destruction around him. The gunshots in the distance. A name, one scene, and one thought. Scientist. Nanobots, destruction, gunshots. Scientist.
He turned and ran, sprinting backwards away from the burning buildings and running full tilt into the man with the mini-Mac-Guyver, who was lining up another shot at him. He knocked the man out of the way and ran back to the chopper. He swung his rifle around towards the pilot, who was also lining up a shot at him… but this was a different pilot. John was not in their way, so they just glanced at him and went back to wreaking havoc with their weapons.
John stared in the direction of the mini-Mac-Guyver. He had thought the scientist was here, a person to be blamed, but he didn't see the scientist. He couldn't blame the scientist, and he couldn't blame the scientists from the lab. The blame couldn't lie in the hands of the men and women who probably saved the world by creating the nanobot technology.
Pic (Source)