Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
Page 68
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Kuro felt no surprise to be woken at three o'clock in the morning to the clamour of alarms and whistles.
He dressed quickly, wound the gears in his arm, and bound his long black hair with a rawhide cord, recalling the days in Japan when he’d shaved the top of his head, in the chonmage style befitting a Samurai. Beverly met him in the hallway. She somehow looked even lovelier to him in her half-awake state, bedecked in long cotton nightclothes, tousled hair clinging to her scalp. He was tired enough to consider telling her, but neither said a word.
They instead went silently to the basement cellblock, where Roderick Scharnusser stood listening to a visibly quaking guard’s report. The doors all appeared intact and locked, save for two. These both hung ajar on their hinges, severe scorch marks around where the bolts had been. Two other guards lay inert on the floor near each of these.
The lone conscious guard held up a pair of goggles with shattered lenses for his employer to see, his hands trembling. Kuro recognised them as Campbell’s. “We did search him, but the goggles—there were two lenses in each frame. The cufflinks were keys, and they unlocked the frames.” Kuro’s eyes darted to the goggles, and protruding from the curve of each frame were Campbell’s fine gold cufflinks. “Hidden inside each of the compartments must have been some explosive compound.”
Absent his usual air of menace, Roderick smiled gently through the entire report, nodding encouragement to the young soldier. He said, “I understand that our two prisoners have escaped through a gap in the incomplete wall?”
“I think s-so, sir.”
At the word, “think”, Roderick Scharnusser’s face switched from kindness to fury. He grabbed the guard by the throat. The young man’s eyes rolled, a sickening sound in his throat as his body shook with convulsions, and that was when Kuro caught a glimpse of the Tesla-gloves under Scharnusser’s coat sleeves.
The guard fell from his grip, slumped to the floor, the only sound in the hallway was the crackle of the deadly gauntlets. His face still twisted in a rictus of anger, Scharnusser looked up and pointed directly at Kuro. Sparks of blue leapt from his insulated finger. “You,” he snapped. “You were with me when he put those blasted goggles on in my study. You should have seen the threat. So now you will lead a team to fetch me Campbell and the Amboy child. Dead, alive, slightly unwell—it don’t matter. You make this right.” His hand lowered, but his cold gaze never left Kuro. “This is family business, so take my cousin with you. And you better make sure you don’t kill the boy unless Zachary Amboy is there to see it. You all hear me?”
No one spoke. No one moved.
“Get to your goddamn shadow zeppelins,” he barked. “NOW!”