[b]An Interruption in Service:[/b]

There is a stutter in reality. Can you feel it? Like the break in a train of thought, like trying to remember what you were just thinking about after you’ve just forgotten it. 

This course of events moved like an elevator, upwards, and there has been a stall. For a brief moment the lights cut out, the elevator lurches, and the emergency lights glow. There’s an ominous minute and then, without explanation, it continues on to its destination. Still, something has changed. We can’t feel steady until the doors open again, in a way we didn’t question before.

The trains switch, the PAs broadcast to the station police this is an emergency response. And then:

The train for Hermes is stopped by police, the doors won’t open at the station. Everyone’s trapped and waiting to see what happens now. 

The train for Apollo makes it through, waiting for the next round of trains to disperse them from here. Contingent on co-operation with the local cops that let them through so far - this one’s going according to plan. 

The train for Ares has been stopped a hundred metres out from the station. The rail is open on both sides to a three story drop. On board, a fight’s breaking out on whether to evacuate the train here, or trust in the plan to try for the station where the next array of trains can come. Some people are looking at up to a 30km walk home from here. 

The train for Zeus has made it through to the station, but it’s different here. All the passengers on board are getting booked, ID’d. There’s more than enough lawyers here to represent the group, to make sure this stays legal, but there’s more than enough cops to make a lot of civil rights violations happen before this could ever land in a courtroom. 

The train for Gaea has been diverted to a smaller station for processing, just to get them out of the system. It’s not ideal, but unless something pokes the bear here, the police will probably send people home themselves as long as [i]they[/i] get to be the ones to do it. 

There is a lot to do and deal with here, impossible to be the saviour of all these situations; But nobody is expecting you to be. You are now a general who has committed to the battle, and your ability to manoeuvre your forces is limited. For most of the on-the-ground specifics you have rallied able captains and empowered them.

Wars are won on logistics. 

In the cases where trains are blocked, get them onto the platform. In the cases where the trains are on the platform, the focus is to now get through your requisition to get the next trains organised to get people out of there. 

Acting directly to requisition trains in the areas where police are acting against you will be a DC 6 Cover Identity check. Acting indirectly, though, depends on what your Mycroft play is going to be.

The police response is being handled at the local levels of forces right now - the cops aren’t co-ordinating inra-district, this isn’t a federal level thing yet, which is why all the reactions are so different. Individually they’re a lot weaker, far less hostile to November’s scheme here because they don’t see the whole of it. 

It might be better to hold that up your sleeve for when the connection is made and the scale of what you’re doing is understood. It lets the pot simmer to a point that this is something that Mycroft would justifiably take over, and gives Knightly more of a chance to actually do something more incapacitating when it happens.

In cases of being outright blocked, Ares and Hermes, both were from a team outside the station who didn't hear the PA notice. That might be solvable by just figuring out how to make sure the IT department in those districts get the memo. 

This is all very anodyne and technical, because this is the general’s eye view, the matter-of-fact of what’s happening. This is what you need to do to solve and fix this. This is the puzzle, this is the problem, this is what you can [i]do[/i] about this. You still have PA access, your Crimson Tower cover isn't blown, and the police have bought this is at least a legitimate emergency action - they're just doing dumb commanding shit to feel like they're still in control of the emergency. Your trains have been stopped, but none were [i]sent back[/i]. 

Thousands of marginalised people are now trapped, in one way or another, at police barricades in a plan that would specifically antagonise them because of your plan. 

In Zeus, a foxgirl has cops accessing her medical records to match her current visual ID to her old photo ID, and asks if the gene mods had anything to do with her three miscarriages. No, they came prior. No, that was not necessary for you to know or ask about. 

In Ares, one of the doors of a back carriage has already been pried open and folks are deciding whether it’s worth the risk to chance the drop, because the emergency slides can’t be deployed until they know if the train’s going to stay stuck or not. They’d either be screwing over everyone else making their own break for it, or missing their only chance to not get got in this moment. A cyborg risks the jump, because he can see his apartment from here.

In Hermes the police are trying to ID people through windows for arrest warrants and terrorist charges before letting everyone else out. They’re acting like this is a trojan horse for the riot, like every person in there might be a live bomb. A SWAT team is gearing up to make individual arrests from the group. 

[i]They [/i]will have to deal with those problems, themselves. We are still in best case scenario territory here for these people getting home tonight, too.