Reprise

[Istkalen]

Areai's Mansion, Bomballey, Copala City

They had received no response from the Nicoleizians; regardless, it was impossible, under the present regulations, to get out through any legal means. All of them in Bomballey was in some way connected to the uprising, from the youth to the elderly; leaving would mean arrest and trial before a kangaroo court.

It was fortunate, then, that Areai had been a drug lord - or rather drug lady. The queen of the trade of ievonuia and opium in Copala City, if not all Europe, she had, using the church and state around her, built a massive network, its tendrils stretched across Europe. The Haanean Empire lived on, its irredentist dreams fulfilled, if in a twisted way.

From her mansion at the center of Bomballey stretched tunnel upon tunnel, spreading across Copala City to her warehouses, one - the key to escape - twisting its way, deep underground, for 18 km to the "Budget Copala City Hotel," which would be forever under construction - the great intake from which drugs were funneled in and out of the city.

There was nothing actually there save for a hole in the ground; people would go in and out, in and out, but nothing would ever be done. That was how it was and how it would be - a good cover for the drugs, for the agents of the "Haanean Empire," and for the desperate refugees that it smuggled into Copala City in return for large sums of money. (That last source of income had dried up, of course, but by then the Empire had collapsed - or rather reformed - so it didn't really matter)

And now, for those who would be escaping Bomballey. People now flowed into the hole in the basement of Areai's mansion, ushered by the Citizens' Militia, walking, hopefully, to freedom - to the "Hotel," then to Istkalen, and from there to any stable country that would be willing to take them in.

The announcement had been frantic. They had expected to be able to leave without much fuss; the Administration of Bomballey - legally a corporation which owned effectively everything in Bomballey, and thus impossible to be dissolved without some legal hassle - had beforehand, ever since Asianization, collected money as for the departure. But the restrictions had suddenly come as the Nicoleizians made no response - they didn't blame them, probably had a great deal of stress themselves. So they had resorted to this.

In the morning, the Citizens' Militia was told to go out and to tell as many in Bomballey as possible to depart for the mansion, for their lives were at risk, before themselves going to fortify the borders. Crowds now flooded the streets, pushing their way towards the building before Bomballey Square, once hated and now, it seemed, oddly enough, their only hope.

Only a single door remained open; the windows and the remainder of doors had been boarded up tightly. Members of the Citizens' Militia, wearing the now easily recognizable uniform of black coat and red armband, stood before it, inspecting arrivals as to ensure that they were, in fact, "citizens of Bomballey," and not, for example, Reitzmic spies.

Ushered through the front doors and into the darkened foyer, citizens were then pushed down, down, down, into the "belly" of the mansion, endless passageways and rooms expanding far beyond what appeared to be the building's confines from above, further down and down and down until finally they reached a darkened passageway, into the final room from which, for so long, the drugs and the people were taken in and out.

Above, apparently, the barricades were being rebuilt. The buildings facing the edge of the borough remained boarded up, reinforced lightly; the doors to the Bomballey Zoo, surrounded by high brick walls, stretching across the border with Reitzmag, were closed and locked tightly.

Behind them, members of the Citizens' Militia. Young, old, so many. The last defenders of Bomballey, parked in high buildings, behind hastily constructed barricades - some deep in the sewers, for reasons as of now unknown to them.

The remaining drugs, in Bomballey, in the warehouses across Copala City, were "tended" to by those who had guarded them. Some was taken out, onto the roofs, onto canisters that remained in the streets, even after the end of the short independence; they were lit aflame, noxious, intoxicating smoke rising into the sky. Fifteen different drugs, some exotic, from the homeland, others more "milquetoast" - opium featuring most prominently. The flames danced across them, the issuing smoke mingling, mixing, forming a terrible mixture that would sicken as it did those months before.

It had begun; how it would end they did not know.