09-05-2013, 09:56 PM
(OOC: This one did not come together quite as well as I had hoped.))
In the days after the somewhat pointless raid on the escaped surgery patient's...lair? Hideout? Den? There was still some debate as to just what to call that blighted place...
In the days since, Chief Inspector Drayson had been looking a bit more closely into the situation in the tunnels and chambers that lay mostly forgotten under Moscow. He had been pouring over reports and even interviewing workers and project heads that had been working on reclaiming and re-purposing vast regions of the city's underground.
The picture that was pieced together from his investigations was...disturbing, at best. Past projects had led to dozens and dozens of arrests of illegal immigrants who were deported back to Africa and China. All told, the numbers were easily in the hundreds. Drug dens and manufacturing labs were found down there. Sex slaves (most of whom were also deported, it seemed). Some reports spoke of sex slave operations, or even black market organ trades. And on top of all that, there was little to no evidence of anything being done about any of it.
By all accounts, the hundreds deported were just a drop in the bucket. Hardly a fraction of the numbers of people indicated in the reports or by the workers he interviewed. But it wasn't hard to understand the why of it all.
Money. If what the numbers seemed to say were true, there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people living illegally under the city. On the surface, there was a healthy looking budget for government funded soup kitchens and shelters. The last census had indicated a healthy unemployment and homelessness rate. A critical eye would notice that that was amongst registered citizens, not illegal immigrants.
The cost of tracking and supporting all the people in the underground, or in deporting them all, would have been astronomical. So instead, it seemed they were ignored. And that lead to trouble. Trouble like the dead group of eerily quick healing cannibals they had found. He couldn't fault anyone for choosing to ignore the problem; it would prove far too costly to deport everyone down there, and equally so too costly to help them. So long as it remained a self-contained problem, then there really was no issue.
Drayson didn't like ignoring problems, though. Some things he would choose to ignore of course; had that ash and stone had a face? Probably not. Maybe it was just modern art. Anything could be passed as modern art, after all.
It was one of his rare days off...not technically accurate, as his rank and position meant he made his own hours and schedule, but it was one of the rare days he took for himself. These days were usually spent in one of the whole-in-the-wall British pubs secreted around Moscow (they were everywhere in the world if you knew where to look), or enjoying a book, or generally just relaxing and forgetting the stresses of his job and the world at large.
His personal style didn't vary in the slightest between his working days and days off, and as such he stood out rather sorely in the underground city below Moscow. He had learned quite a bit both from his time hunting the escaped heart patient, and from his investigations that followed, so it wasn't hard for him to find his way to one of the possibly hundreds of hidden communities below the city.
His exploration found him confronted by two men who seemed self-appointed guards, watching the tunnel into an area from which he could hear the sounds of a community. A zit-riddled teen and a paranoid old Chinese man with broken glasses. Drayson stood out in the under city like a sore thumb, with his nice clothes and general state of cleanliness, but aside that the fact that he was willing to look people in the eye, that he was calm and walked tall. He wasn't one of them.
And he wasn't the type to be stopped, either. A few teenagers had tried to follow him for a while, probably intent on killing him for his clothes and money. They had been dissuaded with a short conversation, and after that the criminal element seemed to give him a wide berth. He wasn't down there looking to arrest anyone, after all.
The point being, the two would-be guards had no luck or desire in really trying to stop Drayson from passing. At first, they probably thought he was some well-to-do's man, looking for any hidden gems in the gutter, but once he flashed his badge and made a friendly introduction, they weren't sure what was going on any more, and he was allowed into the would-be community.
Word would have spread ahead of him of course; that he was asking questions. Seemingly trying to understand how things were under the city streets. The problems, the dangers, and most curiously the stories. Stories of things like the cannibals found in the old bath house.
In the days after the somewhat pointless raid on the escaped surgery patient's...lair? Hideout? Den? There was still some debate as to just what to call that blighted place...
In the days since, Chief Inspector Drayson had been looking a bit more closely into the situation in the tunnels and chambers that lay mostly forgotten under Moscow. He had been pouring over reports and even interviewing workers and project heads that had been working on reclaiming and re-purposing vast regions of the city's underground.
The picture that was pieced together from his investigations was...disturbing, at best. Past projects had led to dozens and dozens of arrests of illegal immigrants who were deported back to Africa and China. All told, the numbers were easily in the hundreds. Drug dens and manufacturing labs were found down there. Sex slaves (most of whom were also deported, it seemed). Some reports spoke of sex slave operations, or even black market organ trades. And on top of all that, there was little to no evidence of anything being done about any of it.
By all accounts, the hundreds deported were just a drop in the bucket. Hardly a fraction of the numbers of people indicated in the reports or by the workers he interviewed. But it wasn't hard to understand the why of it all.
Money. If what the numbers seemed to say were true, there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people living illegally under the city. On the surface, there was a healthy looking budget for government funded soup kitchens and shelters. The last census had indicated a healthy unemployment and homelessness rate. A critical eye would notice that that was amongst registered citizens, not illegal immigrants.
The cost of tracking and supporting all the people in the underground, or in deporting them all, would have been astronomical. So instead, it seemed they were ignored. And that lead to trouble. Trouble like the dead group of eerily quick healing cannibals they had found. He couldn't fault anyone for choosing to ignore the problem; it would prove far too costly to deport everyone down there, and equally so too costly to help them. So long as it remained a self-contained problem, then there really was no issue.
Drayson didn't like ignoring problems, though. Some things he would choose to ignore of course; had that ash and stone had a face? Probably not. Maybe it was just modern art. Anything could be passed as modern art, after all.
It was one of his rare days off...not technically accurate, as his rank and position meant he made his own hours and schedule, but it was one of the rare days he took for himself. These days were usually spent in one of the whole-in-the-wall British pubs secreted around Moscow (they were everywhere in the world if you knew where to look), or enjoying a book, or generally just relaxing and forgetting the stresses of his job and the world at large.
His personal style didn't vary in the slightest between his working days and days off, and as such he stood out rather sorely in the underground city below Moscow. He had learned quite a bit both from his time hunting the escaped heart patient, and from his investigations that followed, so it wasn't hard for him to find his way to one of the possibly hundreds of hidden communities below the city.
His exploration found him confronted by two men who seemed self-appointed guards, watching the tunnel into an area from which he could hear the sounds of a community. A zit-riddled teen and a paranoid old Chinese man with broken glasses. Drayson stood out in the under city like a sore thumb, with his nice clothes and general state of cleanliness, but aside that the fact that he was willing to look people in the eye, that he was calm and walked tall. He wasn't one of them.
And he wasn't the type to be stopped, either. A few teenagers had tried to follow him for a while, probably intent on killing him for his clothes and money. They had been dissuaded with a short conversation, and after that the criminal element seemed to give him a wide berth. He wasn't down there looking to arrest anyone, after all.
The point being, the two would-be guards had no luck or desire in really trying to stop Drayson from passing. At first, they probably thought he was some well-to-do's man, looking for any hidden gems in the gutter, but once he flashed his badge and made a friendly introduction, they weren't sure what was going on any more, and he was allowed into the would-be community.
Word would have spread ahead of him of course; that he was asking questions. Seemingly trying to understand how things were under the city streets. The problems, the dangers, and most curiously the stories. Stories of things like the cannibals found in the old bath house.