03-30-2014, 10:12 AM
Related to Dreams of Fire
Drayson stood calmly in the crowded subway station, hands clasped calmly to his front. He towered over much of the crowd, and for both his size and appearance was afforded a small circle of space around himself, save at his back. He stood with his back to one of the fresco covered pillars of Moscow's largest metro station.
It had been a long shift, even by his standards. Growing trouble in DV had led to increased background and security checks throughout the CCD; while not expected, they were still keeping a sharp eye out for potential extremist attacks in other regions. Moscow especially.
He had spent the last twenty hours overseeing the newly formed police task force's counter terrorism training. There were other organizations in the CCD that already existed for the task, but he had learned long ago that one needed to be prepared for everything, and this task force was to be the test pilot for similar teams later.
His gaze swept across the crowd with apparent disinterest; just another tired businessman on his way home at the end of a long day. Of course, he paid attention to details few in the crowd noticed; what people carried in their hands, who shied away from the two metro security officers standing in casual conversation near a vending machine and not doing their jobs to Drayson's standards. He would pay their shift supervisor a visit tomorrow. They were there to assure the people of Moscow were safe, after all.
One hand lifted to rub at tired eyes, and when he opened them again he found a pair of young girls staring up at him. The elder could have been no more then five, and the two studied him with open curiousity. He smiled tiredly and cast a glance at the crowd under his brows, before deciding on the likely parent of the two children. He opened his mouth to speak, then just shook his head in quiet amusement as the children's mother saw him and carefully maneuvered her charges ahead of herself and out of his sight in the crowd. At least someone was paying attention to their duties.
He could just barely make out the distant rush of wind in the tunnel that would signal the approach of the train he waited for, when a series of events distracted him from any thought of home and sleep. And of the paperwork he needed to do before he could sleep.
First was the sudden movement of the two terminal guards. Both men jerked upright and grabbed at their shoulder clipped radios, turning the little speakers there towards their ears in an attempt to hear something more clearly. At the same time, the lights flickered, briefly, and those in the tunnels went to emergency lighting levels. The station went next, emergency lights flicking on instantly.
The crowd quieted, asides from a few startled yelps. The sound of the train came to a distant stop, and Drayson worked his way through the crowd easily to the two metro guards, who were speaking into their radios and apparently getting no response. He pulled his badge and held it open to the two men, the exhaustion of his long day forgotten. "Situation?"
The two men glanced at his badge dumbly for a moment before realizing what they were looking at. Both looked suddenly relieved. One of them leaned in closely, while his partner tried to hide obvious worry as he glanced at the crowded station. "Chief Inspector. Something has happened at the central control station."
Drayson glanced towards one far wall of the crowded station. Sturdy, unassuming doors marked one of many entrances to the control room that oversaw the running of Moscow's entire metro system. Most of the functions were delegated to sub-stations around the city, but the one here was the biggest, and oversaw everything that happened with every train and tunnel and platform in the city.
He pulled his Wallet, and quickly thumbed a few commands into it. The Moscow metro systems were no stranger to terrorism, and the central command station was an ideal target to try and bring the city's entire public transit system to a crashing halt. Trains could be derailed or crashed together if someone knowledgeable of the controls were so inclined.
The commands he had thumbed in where to the head of the newly formed task force. Most of the unit was administrative and investigative; they were to track persons of interest, had access to the city's wide range of security systems, and through him had the ability to wire-tap or search buildings without having to hack through kilometers of red tape first.
They also had the cream of the crop of the city's various Special Purpose Mobile Unit (OMON) teams, who had just received the order to mobilize.
"Keys, now. Get the rest of your men here, be ready to evacuate, and keep everyone calm."
He took a keyring from the two security guards; any electronic locks he could bypass easily enough. Physical ones were a barrier even his Wallet couldn't get him through.
With the keys in hand, Drayson made his way through the crowd, ignoring the pre-recorded message of technical delays. Some small part of his mind pictured a bed he would not be seeing any time that night. The responsibilities of his office came with a 24-hour work schedule.
A minute later, he was out of the crowded metro station and into the service tunnels that ran behind the artistically detailed walls of the station proper.
Only the emergency lights were on there as well, and the tunnel was long, wide, and empty, save for three carts used by the night shift cleaning staff.
Drayson un-holstered his pistol and held it low to his side as he walked down the hallway, staying close to the left-hand wall. he stopped briefly by a service map of the tunnels, and once he had his bearings made his way to the central command station.
He passed a break room and glanced in the open door, frowning slightly at the sight that met him. Three of the night shift cleaning staff, who had probably arrived hours early for their shift, and two metro security guards lay sprawled about the small room as if someone had thrown them around. Furniture was knocked around the room, and blood spattered the walls, ceiling and floor.
His Wallet in hand again, he stepped part-way into the room and watched the hallway towards the command center. "Chief Inspector Drayson. Security breached at central metro command. Five dead. DOLAs are a go. Secure central station and metro command."
He received a surprised and worried affirmative from the shift commander for the newly founded task force. It reflected badly on the man in Drayson's mind.
Wallet returned to his pocket, on silent of course, he proceeded deeper into the service tunnel. Like a series of dominos, his message to the task-force would filter down to regional police and emergency services. The key was to try and gain control of the situation before news services could reach and contaminate the scene. The less information those vultures could get the better everything would be for people that were in harms way, and the fewer resources they would have to commit to keeping a lid on things instead of assuring the safety of the public.
He did not like reporters.
His journey to the control center was littered with broken bundles of wires strung along the ceiling, and banks of fuses blown and shredded. It was strange though; explosives or an overload would surely have meant smoke and fire, but there was no sign of either, as if the system had been shut down then destroyed manually. As if they had been crushed inside their housings, on closer inspection. Jaws of life, or some other heavy hydraulic tool might have managed that, but how could a group have gotten such equipment down there unnoticed?
Two more dead security guards lay in the hallway outside the command room, the doors of which were closed. Like those in the break room, they seemed to have been smashed against the opposing walls repeatedly. Neither man had drawn their pistol. Security cameras were destroyed, even those mounted and hidden in the concrete walls, again as if they had been crushed or torn free of their reinforced mountings.
Drayson's mind raced to piece the situation together. Multiple assailants? No...how could they have covered the distance of the corridor to the two guards and subdue them without either man pulling his sidearm? Maybe it was someone they knew? But that made no sense either. The way they were killed spoke of one violent individual, not a coordinated and armed group.
The destroyed relays and master fuses explained why the system had shut down. If central control went offline, all the lines would come to an abrupt halt. Without central control's oversight, the various secondary stations only had control of their own lines, with little input on how their neighbors ran things.
So what else could it have been? He remembered a monster that had led to the deaths of two good friends of his, in an old abandoned London subway station. Something that could possess a man's body and turn him against his friends. Could that have been it? It had been unnaturally strong, and had worn familiar faces? A Wefuke?
He approached the door to the control station, finding the heavy magnetic-lock doors offline and ajar. He paused, listening at the crack for a moment, and a desperate man's voice pleading with someone. Promises were given, the man's desperation growing more and more evident as the pain in his voice grew more pronounced. Pain and desperation that turned to horror and suddenly ended with the sharp sound of bone breaking against a solid surface.
The second man's voice was all the curses and rantings of a mad-man. An ex employee, from what Drayson could gather, but it still made no sense. It sounded as if there were only one man left in the room. One man could not have done all the damage he had seen reaching the control room.
Metal squealed and tore abruptly, and Drayson grimaced at the ear-splitting sound. He glanced at his Wallet a moment and frowned irritably; ETA 20 minutes. That wouldn't do. The team needed to be faster. He glanced back down the hallway, expecting to see more attackers, or any hint of the heavy equipment that would have been needed to accomplish what he had seen, but no answers were provided there.
One assailant, crazed and by all signs not armed. Not with a firearm at least. The room beyond sounded large, the man's ranting screams at least a few meters distant of the door. Even if he had some sort of tool, the distance was enough that Drayson could dispatch the man before the distance was closed.
Assuming it was a man. He had glimpsed the other side of the veil once already, and was painfully aware that man was not alone on the Earth. So what the hell was he dealing with?
Shaking his head, Drayson cursed his own stupidity and stepped back from the door. One practiced move of his thumb released the safety on his weapon, and a moment later he was jerking the heavy door open with one powerful pull. It swung on well oiled hinges and slammed in it's hinge-breaks before hitting the wall.
Drayson entered the room with surprising speed for his size, weapon up and leveled at the only man that stood in the room. The man was pasty white and sweating, spattered in blood, his clothes rumpled and soiled. His hands were raised towards one of the control panels, which even as Drayson watched suddenly crumbled in on itself as if under a heavy weight.
An invisible heavy weight, apparently. The man seemed to push down on something, and the panel finally gave way, metal screeching again as it caved in. Drayson's brow furrowed at the sight, then his gaze snapped back to the perpetrator. The ex-employee spun on Drayson, arms flashing out towards him and a look of mad glee on his face.
Drayson fired once, then everything went dark.
-----
He came awake with a start. His eyes snapped open, but the view that met him was...off. He had been standing in the doorway, but now he could only see ceiling tiles and an emergency light. And a face hidden behind a featureless face-mask. One of the members of the newly formed task force, from what he could tell of the unit name emblazoned on it.
They were twenty minutes out, how did they get here so soon? His mind raced to understand what had happened, and he tried to raise his left arm to rub at tired eyes, only to find a brief flash of pain as his reward. His brow furrowed irritably and he slowly turned his head to look at his arm.
He was in the hallway, near two dozen meters from the door at least. It was hard to judge the distance from where he lay. He was laying on the floor, apparently. And his arm was broken. Or maybe just dislocated. The officer kneeling next to him patted his other shoulder and removed his helmet; a she, apparently, not a he.
"Lay still, Sir. Dislocated your shoulder, maybe a mild concussion. Situation is secure though, Sir."
She grinned down at him, although it was easy to tell she was uneasy despite her attempted casual airs, then moved away to make space for paramedics that came swooping in with a stretcher for him.
He could over-hear the investigators, and one confirmed that Drayson had shot and killed what appeared to be the perpetrator. He sighed quietly and turned his gaze back to the ceiling. This was going to make for a lot more paperwork. And reporters...damn reporters.
Edited by Drayson, Mar 30 2014, 10:57 AM.
Drayson stood calmly in the crowded subway station, hands clasped calmly to his front. He towered over much of the crowd, and for both his size and appearance was afforded a small circle of space around himself, save at his back. He stood with his back to one of the fresco covered pillars of Moscow's largest metro station.
It had been a long shift, even by his standards. Growing trouble in DV had led to increased background and security checks throughout the CCD; while not expected, they were still keeping a sharp eye out for potential extremist attacks in other regions. Moscow especially.
He had spent the last twenty hours overseeing the newly formed police task force's counter terrorism training. There were other organizations in the CCD that already existed for the task, but he had learned long ago that one needed to be prepared for everything, and this task force was to be the test pilot for similar teams later.
His gaze swept across the crowd with apparent disinterest; just another tired businessman on his way home at the end of a long day. Of course, he paid attention to details few in the crowd noticed; what people carried in their hands, who shied away from the two metro security officers standing in casual conversation near a vending machine and not doing their jobs to Drayson's standards. He would pay their shift supervisor a visit tomorrow. They were there to assure the people of Moscow were safe, after all.
One hand lifted to rub at tired eyes, and when he opened them again he found a pair of young girls staring up at him. The elder could have been no more then five, and the two studied him with open curiousity. He smiled tiredly and cast a glance at the crowd under his brows, before deciding on the likely parent of the two children. He opened his mouth to speak, then just shook his head in quiet amusement as the children's mother saw him and carefully maneuvered her charges ahead of herself and out of his sight in the crowd. At least someone was paying attention to their duties.
He could just barely make out the distant rush of wind in the tunnel that would signal the approach of the train he waited for, when a series of events distracted him from any thought of home and sleep. And of the paperwork he needed to do before he could sleep.
First was the sudden movement of the two terminal guards. Both men jerked upright and grabbed at their shoulder clipped radios, turning the little speakers there towards their ears in an attempt to hear something more clearly. At the same time, the lights flickered, briefly, and those in the tunnels went to emergency lighting levels. The station went next, emergency lights flicking on instantly.
The crowd quieted, asides from a few startled yelps. The sound of the train came to a distant stop, and Drayson worked his way through the crowd easily to the two metro guards, who were speaking into their radios and apparently getting no response. He pulled his badge and held it open to the two men, the exhaustion of his long day forgotten. "Situation?"
The two men glanced at his badge dumbly for a moment before realizing what they were looking at. Both looked suddenly relieved. One of them leaned in closely, while his partner tried to hide obvious worry as he glanced at the crowded station. "Chief Inspector. Something has happened at the central control station."
Drayson glanced towards one far wall of the crowded station. Sturdy, unassuming doors marked one of many entrances to the control room that oversaw the running of Moscow's entire metro system. Most of the functions were delegated to sub-stations around the city, but the one here was the biggest, and oversaw everything that happened with every train and tunnel and platform in the city.
He pulled his Wallet, and quickly thumbed a few commands into it. The Moscow metro systems were no stranger to terrorism, and the central command station was an ideal target to try and bring the city's entire public transit system to a crashing halt. Trains could be derailed or crashed together if someone knowledgeable of the controls were so inclined.
The commands he had thumbed in where to the head of the newly formed task force. Most of the unit was administrative and investigative; they were to track persons of interest, had access to the city's wide range of security systems, and through him had the ability to wire-tap or search buildings without having to hack through kilometers of red tape first.
They also had the cream of the crop of the city's various Special Purpose Mobile Unit (OMON) teams, who had just received the order to mobilize.
"Keys, now. Get the rest of your men here, be ready to evacuate, and keep everyone calm."
He took a keyring from the two security guards; any electronic locks he could bypass easily enough. Physical ones were a barrier even his Wallet couldn't get him through.
With the keys in hand, Drayson made his way through the crowd, ignoring the pre-recorded message of technical delays. Some small part of his mind pictured a bed he would not be seeing any time that night. The responsibilities of his office came with a 24-hour work schedule.
A minute later, he was out of the crowded metro station and into the service tunnels that ran behind the artistically detailed walls of the station proper.
Only the emergency lights were on there as well, and the tunnel was long, wide, and empty, save for three carts used by the night shift cleaning staff.
Drayson un-holstered his pistol and held it low to his side as he walked down the hallway, staying close to the left-hand wall. he stopped briefly by a service map of the tunnels, and once he had his bearings made his way to the central command station.
He passed a break room and glanced in the open door, frowning slightly at the sight that met him. Three of the night shift cleaning staff, who had probably arrived hours early for their shift, and two metro security guards lay sprawled about the small room as if someone had thrown them around. Furniture was knocked around the room, and blood spattered the walls, ceiling and floor.
His Wallet in hand again, he stepped part-way into the room and watched the hallway towards the command center. "Chief Inspector Drayson. Security breached at central metro command. Five dead. DOLAs are a go. Secure central station and metro command."
He received a surprised and worried affirmative from the shift commander for the newly founded task force. It reflected badly on the man in Drayson's mind.
Wallet returned to his pocket, on silent of course, he proceeded deeper into the service tunnel. Like a series of dominos, his message to the task-force would filter down to regional police and emergency services. The key was to try and gain control of the situation before news services could reach and contaminate the scene. The less information those vultures could get the better everything would be for people that were in harms way, and the fewer resources they would have to commit to keeping a lid on things instead of assuring the safety of the public.
He did not like reporters.
His journey to the control center was littered with broken bundles of wires strung along the ceiling, and banks of fuses blown and shredded. It was strange though; explosives or an overload would surely have meant smoke and fire, but there was no sign of either, as if the system had been shut down then destroyed manually. As if they had been crushed inside their housings, on closer inspection. Jaws of life, or some other heavy hydraulic tool might have managed that, but how could a group have gotten such equipment down there unnoticed?
Two more dead security guards lay in the hallway outside the command room, the doors of which were closed. Like those in the break room, they seemed to have been smashed against the opposing walls repeatedly. Neither man had drawn their pistol. Security cameras were destroyed, even those mounted and hidden in the concrete walls, again as if they had been crushed or torn free of their reinforced mountings.
Drayson's mind raced to piece the situation together. Multiple assailants? No...how could they have covered the distance of the corridor to the two guards and subdue them without either man pulling his sidearm? Maybe it was someone they knew? But that made no sense either. The way they were killed spoke of one violent individual, not a coordinated and armed group.
The destroyed relays and master fuses explained why the system had shut down. If central control went offline, all the lines would come to an abrupt halt. Without central control's oversight, the various secondary stations only had control of their own lines, with little input on how their neighbors ran things.
So what else could it have been? He remembered a monster that had led to the deaths of two good friends of his, in an old abandoned London subway station. Something that could possess a man's body and turn him against his friends. Could that have been it? It had been unnaturally strong, and had worn familiar faces? A Wefuke?
He approached the door to the control station, finding the heavy magnetic-lock doors offline and ajar. He paused, listening at the crack for a moment, and a desperate man's voice pleading with someone. Promises were given, the man's desperation growing more and more evident as the pain in his voice grew more pronounced. Pain and desperation that turned to horror and suddenly ended with the sharp sound of bone breaking against a solid surface.
The second man's voice was all the curses and rantings of a mad-man. An ex employee, from what Drayson could gather, but it still made no sense. It sounded as if there were only one man left in the room. One man could not have done all the damage he had seen reaching the control room.
Metal squealed and tore abruptly, and Drayson grimaced at the ear-splitting sound. He glanced at his Wallet a moment and frowned irritably; ETA 20 minutes. That wouldn't do. The team needed to be faster. He glanced back down the hallway, expecting to see more attackers, or any hint of the heavy equipment that would have been needed to accomplish what he had seen, but no answers were provided there.
One assailant, crazed and by all signs not armed. Not with a firearm at least. The room beyond sounded large, the man's ranting screams at least a few meters distant of the door. Even if he had some sort of tool, the distance was enough that Drayson could dispatch the man before the distance was closed.
Assuming it was a man. He had glimpsed the other side of the veil once already, and was painfully aware that man was not alone on the Earth. So what the hell was he dealing with?
Shaking his head, Drayson cursed his own stupidity and stepped back from the door. One practiced move of his thumb released the safety on his weapon, and a moment later he was jerking the heavy door open with one powerful pull. It swung on well oiled hinges and slammed in it's hinge-breaks before hitting the wall.
Drayson entered the room with surprising speed for his size, weapon up and leveled at the only man that stood in the room. The man was pasty white and sweating, spattered in blood, his clothes rumpled and soiled. His hands were raised towards one of the control panels, which even as Drayson watched suddenly crumbled in on itself as if under a heavy weight.
An invisible heavy weight, apparently. The man seemed to push down on something, and the panel finally gave way, metal screeching again as it caved in. Drayson's brow furrowed at the sight, then his gaze snapped back to the perpetrator. The ex-employee spun on Drayson, arms flashing out towards him and a look of mad glee on his face.
Drayson fired once, then everything went dark.
-----
He came awake with a start. His eyes snapped open, but the view that met him was...off. He had been standing in the doorway, but now he could only see ceiling tiles and an emergency light. And a face hidden behind a featureless face-mask. One of the members of the newly formed task force, from what he could tell of the unit name emblazoned on it.
They were twenty minutes out, how did they get here so soon? His mind raced to understand what had happened, and he tried to raise his left arm to rub at tired eyes, only to find a brief flash of pain as his reward. His brow furrowed irritably and he slowly turned his head to look at his arm.
He was in the hallway, near two dozen meters from the door at least. It was hard to judge the distance from where he lay. He was laying on the floor, apparently. And his arm was broken. Or maybe just dislocated. The officer kneeling next to him patted his other shoulder and removed his helmet; a she, apparently, not a he.
"Lay still, Sir. Dislocated your shoulder, maybe a mild concussion. Situation is secure though, Sir."
She grinned down at him, although it was easy to tell she was uneasy despite her attempted casual airs, then moved away to make space for paramedics that came swooping in with a stretcher for him.
He could over-hear the investigators, and one confirmed that Drayson had shot and killed what appeared to be the perpetrator. He sighed quietly and turned his gaze back to the ceiling. This was going to make for a lot more paperwork. And reporters...damn reporters.
Edited by Drayson, Mar 30 2014, 10:57 AM.