The Gates: Welcome to the Ghetto

[x-skin.livejournal.com]

Nathan and Angelo settle into the group's accommodations in Smichov and take stock of the situation. It's about as grim as they expected.



The sky over Prague was grim and gray, as if the weather was reflecting the mood in the city. Nathan had paid only minimal attention to the rest of the city as they'd driven through it from the airport; he wasn't here to sightsee, although it was true, Prague was lovely.

The security barrier was not. It was a rough, clearly hastily-erected thing of concrete and barbed wire, and Nathan had hated it the moment he laid eyes on it. It was perfectly obvious that the public rationale of protecting the people inside Smichov as much as those outside had either been a farce from the beginning or had become one in the intervening weeks.

Inside Smichov... had been worse. Deserted streets, obvious damage to the buildings nearly everywhere you looked. There was nightly fighting, one of the soldiers at the checkpoint had warned them when they'd been cleared to enter. They'd found a small hotel on a side street, out of the way enough to fit their need for semi-discretion. They were the only ones in the building apart from the manager and his family, who'd been more than amenable to letting them stay. Although the manager had pointed out rather grimly that the hotel couldn't actually offer anything but beds and doors that locked.

It was a snapshot, Nathan had thought as they'd settled into the deserted, power-less hotel. A snapshot of what they could expect to see elsewhere in Smichov, and wasn't that a heartening thought.

"This place is like a warzone," Angelo said grimly, wandering out onto the balcony with a cigarette in his hand. "Bullet holes an' all."

Nathan was leaning against the railing, staring out at the too-quiet neighborhood. "Makes me nervous," he said quietly. "Not just Smichov, although it's doing that, too. The Czech Republic's not like most of the countries we've been to. When a solid government decides to be moronic, they're usually awfully good at it..." The stray thoughts he'd been picking up from the soldiers at the checkpoint had been illuminating. And not in the good way.

"An' they're really makin' a good job of it so far," Angelo said dryly, looking out over the neighbourhood himself. "Easy to see how things're goin' to get worse from here."

"The other groups should be settled in by now." Four other groups, in total. Observers from the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors without Borders. Nathan was still amazed that Joel had gotten permission for Elpis to come, but there weren't that many mutant-oriented NGOs to choose from. "We'll get the situation properly addressed. And the one good thing, in a democratic country... you have a free press." He smiled tightly.

Angelo snorted. "Unless it's got no connections to the government at all, there's no such thing. An' the ones that don't have those connections don't get read as much."

"You're too young to be that cynical," Nathan said mildly, gazing back out at Smichov. He lowered his shields, letting his thoughts roam outwards. "Too quiet," he said softly.

"It is," Angelo agreed, frowning. "It's... creepy. The people are here, they can't go anywhere, so... where are they?"

"Inside. Waiting, talking. Being angry." Nathan's expression was distant, his eyes unfocused. The psychic undercurrents here were... fierce. Cold and dark and fierce. "Waiting for night. Safer to be angry under cover of darkness."

"...an' then the breakin' things starts again." Great situation.

Nathan shook himself out of the semi-trance, straightening. "We're a couple of floors up, at least. Lessens the need to sleep away from the windows," he said, almost prosaically.

"Think I might anyway," Angelo said grimly. "Even if they won't be throwin' things through our windows... someone out there's got guns." Even if it was the police, even their bullets could go astray.

Nathan opened his mouth to respond to that - then closed it again, shrugging. "I'll help you move the beds, if you want. Maybe we should suggest to the girls that they do the same thing."

"Not a bad idea," Angelo said with a nod. "If nothin' happens, then nothin' happens. But if it does..."

"We need to have the talk, again. You know, the crisis-management talk," Nathan said quietly, turning to walk back into the room. "It's pretty ironic that after all the places we've been, it's a EU member country where we're probably taking the most risks."

Angelo followed him, with a last uneasy glance back over his shoulder. "An' that's sayin' a lot, after the horse chases an' huntin' slave traders." It was a weak joke, but the best he could do.

"We don't have the institutional clout that some of our partners on this do. Only the truly committed or deranged would deliberately attack the Red Cross, for example. And one of the drawbacks to being here to provide specifically mutant witnesses is that we might attract adverse attention from people who are angry about being sealed in here 'because of mutants'." Nathan waved a hand and both beds levitated. "Just because they chose to live in a mutant-friendly neighborhood doesn't mean they were mutant activists. And under conditions like this..."

"...it makes everythin' so much more intense. Opinions an' all." Angelo nodded. "Best just hope those people don't know where we are, then."

"Hence, as we talked about before we came, the quiet little hotel on a side street, and the fact that we're going to be as discreet as possible contacting people we need to talk to."

"An' I don't turn this off unless there's really no chance anyone'll see." He tapped his pocket, with the image inducer safely in it.

It helped to review precautions, Nathan knew. Let you convince yourself that you were doing all you could to keep yourself safe. That wasn't always true, of course, but you could pretend it was... "Good call. I need to talk to Medusa about keeping her hair very strictly normal-looking, too." The beds lowered themselves gently to the floor again, and Nathan shook his head. "I should go get the girls and we can have our wonderful dinner of MREs."

"All she has to do for that is remember not to make it move," Angelo said with a wry grin, then pulled a face at the mention of MREs. "We couldn't have got Lorna to make somethin' better than that, even just for the one night? Sandwiches, even?"

"This is where you glare at me for not stopping to let everyone eat in the airport when we got here," Nathan said. But before he turned towards the door, he paused for a moment, laying a hand on Angelo's shoulder and squeezing gently. The look he gave him mingled reassurance, pride, and a few other, more unreadable things that were just as warm.

He got a smile at that, in acknowledgment of the reassurance and all the rest of it, and with warmth - and also the undertone that Angelo was more than a little scared, but determined not to show it. "Want to go move the girls' beds, then?"

Comments

[x-medusa.livejournal.com]

"All she has to do for that is remember not to make it move"

That is a lot more difficult than you might imagine. It actually takes more effort to hold my hair still than to allow it a slight wave of motion.

Of course, this is impossible to tell just by looking as it would obviously appear easier to keep it still than to keep it moving.