@Zwei_____
The cab ride seemed incredibly short, the weight of worry on your mind transporting you to an almost alternate world where time just dissapeared.
You re-reviewed the footage from the cameras as you sat on the chair opposite your mum's usual spot and sobbed a little at her obvious state of panic.
The microphone in the home sensor suite picked up the background noise of sirens, chants and the roar of the crowd as it surged past the house; the external camera showing scuffles with the mounted police before they affected a retreat and surged across gardens, parked cars and hurled items at the retreating police lines.
Flicking back to the internal camera footage you see your mum frantically trying to manually lock the doors and shut the curtains, moving as fast as her old legs and walking frame would allow her to. She overbalances at one point, banging against the glass before steadying herself against the frame.
She'd headed back to her chair and flicked the channel over to the news, you recognised the BBC anchorman on the trid and saw the announcements of the civil disobedience as they'd been broadcast.
She'd then called you, her muffled voice barely audible above the background noise and then she span around in her chair, looking over her shoulder into the kitchen.
Getting up, she'd overbalanced a bit again, swaying on her walker before righting herself again and moving as fast as she could into the kitchen. She stared through the kitchen window out over the back garden and was clearly horrified, she started waving her finger and shouting at someone or something that must have come over one of the neighbour’s fences.
Something had taken its toll on her though, she rubbed her head and looked unsteady on her feet. She rummaged through the cupboards looking for some medication but her movements were slow and uncoordinated. Grabbing at her head again, she gave up and walked unsteadily towards her chair, collapsing into it at an awkward angle and appearing to pass out. the footage doesn't change much from there on in until the paramedics arrive, using their emergency responder access to gain entrance via the home node.
By the time you'd got back into the cab bex had replied:
//No problems, busy away here as usual. The usual site should be fine with me! That's not good, hope all is well?//
@Lumen___________
He nods silently and sets to pouring your beers as you scour your brain for a name to put to the face, you ultimately couldn't but you remember him as some distant relative of the Maxwells, third cousin or something like that. He was a barman in one of their now-razed pubs in the east end, courtesy of your lot.
He hadn't aged well, deep lines in his face revealed he'd not had an easy life and his thinning grey hair belied his age. It was definitely him though.
@Saithor__________
You pushed your way down heaving stairways full of tourists and shoppers once more and claimed a seat artfully from under a suited bloke thanks to your smaller demeanour. He tutted disapprovingly and then cracked on with his AR activities as the train pulled off.
Nothing particularly caught your eye as you stared back out at the crowded platform, the faces too dense and too plentiful to scan through in the short amount of time you had for anyone paying you close attention.
None of your carriage mates appeared to be interested in you, they were all too absorbed by their AR feeds or chatting amongst themselves.
The tube clattered and whistled along the dark tracks, the occasional electrical short between the tracks and the bushels providing a fleeting illumination of the extremely close up walls, revealing just how crammped the whole arrangement was down here.
You tried to put the thought of the weight of all that earth on top of you out of your mind and focussed on catching your next train as Bank station rattled into view.
Plenty of people got off, presumably to ogle at the square mile and take a riverside walk down to Tower bridge, though you didn't really give much of a fuck, you had a job to do.
Keeping an eye out, you headed up the escalators with the throng of metahumanity at your side and headed for the DLR line.
The stream of people thinned out significantly here and you had plenty of personal space on the platform. The smell of the stale air never changed, neither did the rats feasting on the discarded kebab from last night on the tracks. They scattered as the green DLR train approached, boxier and more spacious than the standard underground trains, given the DLR spent most of its time above ground and the few underground sections were about 75 years newer than the oldest lines still in service.
You took a seat in the front carriage facing backwards to see the platform through the window as a few stragglers rushed down onto the platform. A heavyset eastern-european bloke caught your eye amongst them, frantically searching for something with his eye movements other than the massive DLR train right in front of him. He joined the train a couple of carriages down from you and dissapeared from sight.
the doors beeped and closed shortly before the train departed, clanking up the tracks and into the frigid daylight of the Old Smoke
