:: CITY 24: A SHORT INTRODUCTION ::

[ShaVeK HaChaver 814]

CITY 24
GENEVA

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Sector 6 is reeling. The Citadel Explosion sent shockwaves through its surrounding provinces, rebellion rippling into nearby cities, uprising plunging entire regions into apocalyptic chaos.

City 24 was an exception, holding steadfast. Until now.

Its denizens are infamous for their decadent collaboration, the benefits of which they have reaped since the beginning of the Occupation.

They have known no hardship.

Yet collapse has come knocking on their door. The once-peripheral Fall of Seventeen now rears its ugly head.

Geneva is blockaded. Nothing comes in, nothing comes out.

Beyond its walls, smokestacks rise from the camps of partisan siege engineers.

Following successive failures to dislodge the invaders, the Civil Authority has been deposed.

The Overwatch Security Council has deployed its foremost magnates to take their place.

This bastion is the imperial core of Central Europe.

The Fortress City must hold. The dominoes must fall.

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I.
THE OVERWATCH SECURITY COUNCIL

The United Nations never died. It was subsumed. Its organs greedily deterritorialized, then reterritorialized into the Combine's imperial mandate. Its rotten, decaying carcass was pillaged, its skeleton crudely extracted, rearranged, and mutilated into the unification state. Of its mutated organs, none other was defaced more than the U.N.'s Security Council. To the Earthly collaborators, there was no need for maintaining international peace. The concept had become obsolete. There no longer existed any nation-states, nor any empires, for all had been disassembled in the wake of the Seven Hour War. Only SOL III remained. All humanity's interests were, theoretically, represented by one world congress, by a state that had both surpassed empire and nation. Thus, with no external enemy, and by neglecting that intersectorial rivalry and animosity would ever plague the planet, the Security Council had been refashioned into an omnipresent apparatus of mass surveillance. First, they would keep the Civil Authorities in check, then its constituent unions and syndicates, and finally—and most importantly—the workforce itself.

On paper, the Security Council answered to the high-level bureaucrats and politicians, sector administrators, and representatives of the global congresses, commissions, and boards; with the power it was afforded, it needed checks and balances. The Combine disagreed. Nobody protested. Regulation remained on paper only. The Security Council was integrated into Overwatch, made answerable only to the Combine proper, and took on a new title. Its representatives became the vicars of the CMB—infallible; empowered to speak and act ex cathedra as the 'human face' of the Faceless Empire.

Following the Citadel Explosion, the Security Council has assumed control as the de facto human body of administration on Earth. The representatives, commissions, and boards it had 'answered' to have either been liquidated or cowed into rump parliaments. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Geneva.​

II.
CITY TWENTY-FOUR

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The Palace of Nations, once home to the U.N., was situated in Geneva. The symbolism was obvious. Switzerland, the neutral state, would be the grounds for all nations to peacefully sort out their differences. It only made sense for the Empire to turn this symbolism upside-down, rebuilding the city to display Combine power, unfurling banners reminiscent of mass society totalitarianism of the 1930's. Imagery like this assails the subject, reminding him of who he is dependent upon. However, it would all be in vain.

The average denizen of Geneva is an unapologetic hedonist. He is decadent. He is not capable of interpreting the grandiose architecture surrounding him, he cannot process nor harken back to decades past. He is, in short, human cattle. The Civil Administration preferred it that way. Geneva projects herself to the world, its easygoing workforce, their comfortable lives, the safety inside the fortress. The Last Man meanders around the achievements of his forebears interlaced with blatant totalitarian imagery. He doesn't even care. The message is that you, too, can live comfortably, if only you sell your soul. Geneva isn't unique in this way. Loyalist Centers across the world live in unconscious petite bourgeois vice. Not one has fallen. Yet.

This is why the assault must not succeed. Morale across the imperial mandate is already at an all-time low. For City 24 to be besieged successfully would be devastating. As Geneva neared a month since the siege started, with no progress in deterring the attackers, the Security Council awoke from its slumber.

Most of the Palace of Nations had been evacuated. Key V.I.Ps were escorted out by dropship just hours after news broke of 17's fate. However, a skeleton crew remained, allowing the impression to be made that all was well outside of Sector 17. Those security councillors that did not evacuate, whether by their own choice or through compulsion, continued to operate in the shadows. The U.N. building, once heavily staffed with bureaucrats coming in and out and councillors who met with the Civil Administration, had gone dark. The C.A., for seemingly the first time, had been left to their own devices. With their newfound freedom, they immediately disintegrated into factions, quibbling and politicking over how the city ought to be run with no real Combine presence. Civil Protection had already been notoriously lax and rife with corruption, operating less like police and more like an organized mafia, the personal bullies of the highest bidder. Rumors disseminated to the Swiss Underground, which mounted its blitz with untold vitality. The municipality was floored.

III.
THE EMERGENCY ADMINISTRATIVE AUTHORITY

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The Palace of Nations took to action immediately. Following a quick and speedy authorization from the rest of the Overwatch Security Council, the Geneva detachment, through the help of a small transhuman contingency, forcibly expelled the City 24 Civil Authority. Kneeing senators out of their chambers, the Transhuman Arm made short work of any protest. Those that knew too much were recycled, others were imprisoned, some exiled to the sewers. In only a few hours, the city's municipal hall was vacated. The 'Emergency Administrative Authority' was ready to move in.

There was no fanfare. Work resumed immediately. The Genevan Civil Protection were handed their relocation coupons. A new garrison would be plucked out of Sector 17—battle-hardened survivors of the Post-Occupation chaos.

The fortress would be protected. At all costs.