wonder if he'll ever know

[cestrumnocturnum]

Who: Benji Ryans (and later, Wolfgang Einhorn)
What: Just a little law and order.
Where: The Spatters
When: All of 31st.
Note: During the raid, there is a halt on all communications going in and out of the Spatters -- no media is leaked, and the reception for CiD is just flat out poor. In the aftermath, there's a blackout of information.
Warnings: References to police brutality.

The book lies neglected on the kitchen table as they share coffee instead and talk lightly. Benji will have to coax her-- Sepa, the mother of one who has lived here for almost five years-- into returning to it, thinking ahead already to what better literature might make this more enjoyable than tiresome.

With her attention out the window, Sepa speaks of her home world, of the volcanic earth and the hot springs and the devastating winters, of the epic on-foot journeys and the enormity and scale of their governance. How small and petty and cluttered Baedal seems to her and how the fog at least reminds her of home. Second eyelids blink horizontal in a gesture that has begun to read to Benji as uncertainty. In the corner of the kitchen, her daughter, Kidirin, is drawing. She's being raised Baedal, Sepa had said, when she'd told Benji she'd given birth to her in the Glory Shada. The little girl's skin is the same pale green as her mother's, but more human features show in the shape of her tiny jaw, the tiny nails on her fingers.

Setting down her coffee, reluctant to end the conversation but feeling guilty should she not try to do her job, Benji reaches back for the book. But before she can say anything, Sepa hisses and points out the window--

"Look."

~

The fog was rolling in thick today, disguising some of the activity beginning to brew in the Spatters. There was no calming down Sepa, who kept slipping into her native language but was more than able to express her urgency that she couldn't remain in the building. Benji could only take her word for it, only urged her into a coat and helped her dress Kidirin. She told Sepa she should leave her CiD before remembering that Sepa had gotten rid of it a long time ago. They'd left out the back and ducked through a gap in the fence.

Benji hugs a corner as she observes the street. Heavy barricades erected to cut off the street, the roaming shadows of the Militia men and women patrolling it, conversing with one another. Veiled in the creeping mist, they seemed to be almost the only tangible things in a ghost-like world of uncertain definition. She sinks back as a group of them move down the street, on foot and horse both.

The sound that follows, less than a minute later, is one she has heard before -- the breaking of a door beneath handheld battering ram, and it takes three blows. Something breaks. Tension and anger. The arrest of one turns into the arrest of several when someone is dragged from their home and those that love them and those that don't even know them rise to their defence.

Benji has zero compulsion to get arrested, especially not when she can feel Sepa anxiously watching her back. She stops recording on her CiD -- because that's what they do, isn't it? -- and turns back to her.

~

They wait it out, for a while, with a few others who discover the cover they've found behind a building, and Benji gladly keeps Kidirin in her lap as Sepa accepts a cigarette. One of them reports a story of a criminal -- maybe, maybe not -- who'd breached the barricade on horseback. It sounds heroic, and someone asks what happened to him.

Shot in the back, of course. Someone else confirms they heard gunfire.

Soon, they disperse as quickly as a flock of birds at first word that a line is closing in on them. Benji stays with Sepa and her child, unsure who is protecting who, before realising that no one is.

~

Underground, with old world cobblestone that is slippery underfoot. Sepa has to use her powers to break down the barred off way someone had installed some more recent time ago, and it's too dark to see. Benji uses her CiD as a light, and they feel their way with their hands. It's meant to come out somewhere in Ketch Heath, making it a lengthy journey for being underground, but Benji would settle for emerging somewhere beyond the guard set up, sealing off four winding blocks of Spatters.

She keeps expecting the click and whirr of camera bots, the green-turned-red eyes of a hunter in pursuit, the choking yellow smog. But soon, Benji finds the metal rungs of a ladder, the faint light of an opening. Sepa climbs first with her child riding her back, arms around her neck, and confirms safety. Benji comes up just for the fresh air and to see the sun's position in the sky, to share a quick and awkward embrace.

And as agreed, at least by her, she goes back down, and makes her way back through the tunnel. It will be a journey she repeats until the barricades are taken down.

They aren't until sunset.