The Regent

by Marcus Richardson

  “What is this?”

  The officer in charge shook his head and planted his hands on his wide hips. “No bloody clue. Been finding them all up and down the Royal Mile today. This is the third we’ve discovered between here and St. Giles.” He shook his head. “Bleedin’ nutters out there.”

  As Danika stared at the device in her hands, a bad feeling settled in her stomach. Whatever these things were, they had Jayne’s fingerprints all over them. As she stared at the hieroglyphs down the side of the cylinder, she racked her mind, searching for any memory that might give a clue as to what the thing could contain. The symbols looked vaguely familiar.

  “I’ve seen this before…” she said, tracing the engraved symbols with her fingertips through the water-soaked bag. “I just can’t remember what the hell they mean…”

  As she spoke, a red LED inside one of the circles at the top of the cylinder switched on and glowed softly.

  “Blimey,” said the second cop, taking a step back.

  Danika peered through the clear plastic bag as the red light blinked several times and then began to speed up, decreasing the time between each blink. “It’s a countdown…” she whispered.

  “Bomb!” the first officer said, reaching to snatch it from her hands. As he grasped it, the second circle slid back inside a recessed pocket, revealing a black hole leading down inside the canister. A white gas hissed out of the out of both ends of the canister, completely filling the evidence bag and stretching it to its limits within seconds.

  “Christ!” said the first officer, now holding the bag as if it were a poisonous snake.

  Danika took a step back. “Listen to me very carefully,” she said, flipping one sodden lock of red hair out of her face. “Put that very carefully on the ground—without any extra pressure. Release it slowly and step back…” She raised an arm and motioned the second cop to step back from the car as well. “You said there’s more of these things?”

  “Aye—found two others myself.”

  “You need to spread the word—run—tell everyone to back away from these things. They're some kind of gas device.”

  “Aye,” he said, nodding. “I can do that.” He turned and sprinted from the car, yelling to the next group of cops down the hill.

  Having safely disposed of the evidence bag, Tommy stepped back to Danika. “What do you think it is?”

  “Could be some sort of nerve gas,” Danika mused. “I’m guessing these canisters were meant to be detonated at the same time. Where were the rest of them found?”

  The cop’s already pasty face went two shades paler. “We found two inside the parliament building…that’s what tipped us off. The call went out to search the Royal Mile, and that’s when our radios went out.”

  Danika turned and looked toward the Scottish National Parliament Building. What the hell are you up to? She sensed Jayne’s hand in this. “You’ve got to warn everyone. I don’t care if your radio’s out,” she said, quickly cutting off the cop’s reply. “You’ve got to tell everyone…”

  “Tell them what? If these things are going off all up and down the Royal Mile, it’s already too late…”

  Danika turned and looked up the street toward the castle. When she left the senator, they were still heading southwest, toward the castle. With any luck, Angus and Cooper had been able to get them safely uphill by now.

  She glanced back at the bag, now stretched to the bursting point and slowly leaking a thin plume of white smoke from the cop car’s hood. “This rain might dampen any effects the gas may have…at least for anyone caught outside.”

  The cop coughed. “What the hell?” He wiped his eyes. “It smells like flowers…”

  Danika’s eyes widened. Oh my God.

  24

  Escape

  Cooper took one final check to make sure that everyone was around the corner, then closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. The carbine bucked, and the world lit up behind his closed eyelids, and he heard nothing but a thunderous roar.

  Hoping that did the job, he gave his eyes an extra couple seconds before he opened them. He felt no pain, so he assumed that no ricochets had clipped him. “Hey, bring that light up here,” Cooper called over his shoulder. He wasn’t worried about being too loud now. Anyone back there still chasing them would know exactly where they were from all the noise.

  Angus shuffled around the corner, his footsteps and a muffled voice reached Cooper’s still-ringing ears. Cooper peered at the damaged boards. He took careful aim and launched another kick, this time succeeding in knocking loose two of the boards. They didn’t break or fall, but they moved—it was good enough for Cooper.

  He had Angus slip around the corner again, taking the light with him, then pulled the trigger until his magazine emptied, another six or seven shots. This time, when Angus appeared around the corner and shone his light on the barrier, Cooper threw his shoulder at it and crashed through with a curse.

  He picked himself up off the stone floor, brushing dust, splinters, and chunks of jagged wood off his clothes. Coughing, he called the others through. When Angus arrived with his light, they saw the new room was a continuation of the tunnel, ending with a set of roughhewn stone steps climbing up to the ceiling. Cooper motioned the others to stay quiet, then crept up the steps.

  “You really think it matters?” Angus asked. “After all that?” he asked, shining the light on the ruined barrier and bits of wood and rocks strewn across the floor.

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Cooper muttered. He reached the top step and placed a hand on the wood. It was cool to the touch and much smoother. It felt like it had a layer of dirt embedded in the surface, despite the fact that it was on the ceiling. “This wood is older…much older.” He pushed with his hand and the trapdoor covering the stairs raised up a quarter inch before meeting resistance.

  Cooper saw a flash of light a split second before thunder rumbled. He let the door close again just as quietly as he’d opened it. “There’s a storm going on outside, and at least one window up there. It’s some kind of room.” He turned to Angus. “Any idea where we’re at?”

  The cop stared at his phone. “I can’t get any GPS signal down here…no idea, mate.”

  Cooper tried the door again. “Well, something’s sitting on top of this door. Something heavy enough that I can’t budge it just by pushing…”

  “Can you see anything?” asked Tecumseh.

  Cooper shook his head. “No sir, the edges of the door want to open, but something’s holding it down in the middle.”

  “Maybe a piece of furniture?” suggested Tecumseh.

  Cooper looked up at the door again, illuminated in the dim light of Angus’ cellphone. “Could be.”

  “Help!” Tecumseh’s chief of staff suddenly hollered, surprising everyone. “We’re stuck down here! Can anyone hear me?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Cooper whispered.

  “What does it matter if anyone hears us?” Eli shouted. “I’m bleeding out down here—we’ve got to get someone to help!”

  “He has a point, Mr. Braaten. It’s not like shooting your way through that barrier back there did us any favors in the stealth department…” the senator said.

  They all started shouting for help. After a few minutes, Cooper’s patience evaporated like their chances of being saved. “Fuck this,” he said. He threw his shoulder into the door and for a brief moment, it opened about two inches, then something heavy slammed back against it and drove him straight into the stone steps below.

  Surprised at the force of the weight above him, Cooper lost his footing, twisted his right knee at an awkward angle, and crashed to the ground, knocking Tecumseh over with a yelp of surprise.

  “Goddammit!” Cooper snarled, grabbing his right knee. Rage bubbled up in his chest. Shrugging off the pain from his recently healed and now re-injured knee, Cooper surged up the steps at full speed and threw all his weight against the door.

  Whatever had been holding the door down tipped over and crashed to th
e sound of something delicate shattering into a million pieces. Cooper was beyond caring. The door came down one more time, but he was ready for it and launched himself up with all the power he could muster in his legs. The sudden change in motion was just what he needed, and a heavy dresser crashed to the ground on top of what was left of several vases. The door flung all the way open, clattering to the floor. Cooper found himself launched out of the hole and fell against the side of the heavy armoire.

  “Got it open,” he called. Cooper dragged himself over the lip, then reached a hand down to help Tecumseh up, who dragged Eli up behind him. Angus was the last up out of the hole. Cooper dropped the empty rifle and drew his sidearm, shuffling over to the door on the far side of the small, stone-walled room. Next to the door was a small bed, neatly made with an old quilt. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a brown nightstand made of wood that looked as old as Edinburgh itself. A layer of dust covered everything and their footprints were the only evidence that anyone had been in the room for a long time.

  Tecumseh froze, looking around. “This is a plague house.”

  Eli, his chief of staff quailed in terror and backed up against the wall, pulling his shirt up over his mouth. “You’re going to get us all killed!” he said, glaring at Cooper.

  Cooper smirked. “Feel free to go back down there if you want,” he said, gesturing at the hole in the floor. He turned back to the door, peering out the single small window next to Tecumseh. “I don’t see any movement out there—looks like we’re still on the Royal Mile somewhere.”

  “Aye, so what’s next?” asked Angus as thunder crashed once more.

  Cooper gripped the door knob. “Let’s see what the hell is going on.”

  25

  A New Toy

  Jayne stepped out of the bathroom, toweling her hair and padding across the dense carpet in her bare feet. She paused before the trembling politician who lay on the bed, feverish and eyes wide, staring at her naked body, glistening with water.

  “There, that’s ever so much better,” Jayne purred in her British accent. “I do appreciate you letting me borrow your shower. It’s simply dreadful outside.”

  The middle-aged man on the bed tried to form a reply, but his teeth chattered too much and his eyes rolled back in his head. He groaned.

  Jayne sucked air through her teeth. “Oh, never mind all that, dear. It will soon pass.” She looked down at the gleaming golden ring on her finger. She depressed the modest ruby on its face and the micro-injector needle emerged, spring-loaded from the side. It was the ring she’d used to drug Harold Barron and take control of the leader of the free world.

  Using a new, more refined formula, Jayne had successfully injected dozens of politicians now working in the reformed Congress. Jayne had done likewise to almost a dozen delegates from the United Nations in as many days. It was her backup plan—if everything fell through with her intentions to delay or cancel the summit, if Gregor failed her and Senator Tecumseh escaped alive, she had yet one more way of taking control the situation.

  The castle’s lieutenant governor, laying on the bed in the grips of his initial dose, was just one more layer of insulation. She’d discovered he was a minor official with the U.N. security forces; however, he was also the Lieutenant Governor of Edinburgh Castle. As he’d displayed his Scottish chivalry and taken her in from the rain, he explained that his role was largely ceremonial, but he did wield actual power among the castle.

  Now that he would soon be under her control, or at least out of commission to interfere, Jayne’s next order of business was to track down the actual governor and remove him from the equation. It shouldn’t be too hard, she figured. The man was a Lieutenant General in the army and was bound to be surrounded by soldiers, what with the chaos she’d unleashed gripping Edinburgh. She turned and eyed herself in the large mirror across from the bed.

  On the tall side for a woman but shapely and athletic, Jayne couldn’t help but smile at her own figure in the mirror as water glistened and dropped off every soft curve of her body. The towel, balanced precariously on top of her head, barely contain the dark golden tresses that threatened to escape. She lazily traced the outline of her abs, impressed that after all these years, she still held the physique of a twenty year old. The only blemish on her flawless, tanned skin was the still-healing scar left by 13 during their fight by the fire in Reginald’s castle.

  If Daddy could see me now…

  Jayne smirked. No, the castle’s governor wouldn’t be much of an issue. She merely had to track him down. The castle was crawling with soldiers and cops, but she knew how to get a man’s attention. She stared at herself for another long moment, looking past her reflection and at the man writhing on the bed behind her. She’d certainly gotten his attention. He stared at her nakedness with wide eyes, his mouth working furiously to form words that his anguished body could not produce. His hands clawed in the air, opening and closing, seemingly at random.

  Jayne knew that the chemical concoction she’d injected into his bloodstream was playing havoc with his nervous system, but soon his body would get attuned to the new order of things. Then he would be highly open to suggestions, and as long as she continued to up the dose in a controlled manner, he would be pliant as a toddler in no time. As a bonus, Jayne would get to have a little fun—he wasn’t terribly good-looking, but it’d been a long dry spell for her lately.

  Though she had to admit, MacTavish had been fun while it lasted.

  Thinking of the big Scotsman made her remember the boy-king. Jayne frowned. Well, that’s a mood killer.

  She laughed out loud, thinking of how the king would probably explode if he could see her right that second. With an impish curl of her lip, she reached for her phone, intending to call him before the authorities shut down cellular communications to keep word of the attack from spreading.

  The phone rang in her hand, buzzing gently. “Hello?”

  “It is me,” said the Russian voice she’d spoken to earlier. One of Gregor’s insipid lieutenants.

  “Please tell me you found the senator.”

  A long pause. “Nyet. I can confirm he is not in the tunnels, though. We lost several men when it collapsed—”

  “I’m not interested in how many men you lost; if I have to, I’ll kill every one of your men myself. You have a job to do. Now,” she said, examining her high, sculpted glutes in the mirror as she cocked one hip, “where is the senator?”

  “He’s on the surface. We just spotted him. But…”

  “But what?”

  She could almost see the man trembling with fear. “Two of my men have been infected with your gas…I had to shoot them.”

  “Terribly sorry about that,” Jayne said. “Where’s the senator?”

  “This is worse than what you told me…the cops out there are killing each other…we’ve seen civilians—”

  “Where. Is. The. Senator? I won’t repeat myself again,” Jayne said in a low voice.

  After another long pause, the man returned. “The last I saw, he was heading across the parade grounds toward the castle. He was being chased by at least fifteen—”

  “Toward the castle?” Jayne’s pulse quickened. “Oh, that’s marvelous! Why didn’t you say so?”

  “What? I—”

  Jayne shifted topics. “Where are you? Your voice’s echoing…”

  The man dropped to a whisper. “I’m hiding in one of the—”

  “Hiding? What kind of a mercenary are you?” Jayne laughed.

  “The kind who’s trying to survive!” the man hissed. “Everyone is gone insane! Two of my men tried to kill me—I had to shoot a woman in the face, just a minute ago…what the hell did you do?”

  Jayne hung up on him as he begged for answers. She smiled at herself in the mirror, purposely ignoring the scar on her cheek. “Oh…a little of this, a little of that…a girl’s got to have her secrets, you know.”

  Unable to resist any longer, she glanced at the scar on her cheek an
d thought of 13. The surge of anger and adrenaline that coursed through her body puckered her nipples as her frown deepened. “With any luck, you’re out there right now, ready to kill the first person you see…” Jayne said, tracing a finger down the scar on her cheek. “Once I take care of the governor and secure the castle, I’m going to find you…”

  The man on the bed moaned behind her. She turned and noticed he wasn’t shaking as much as he was before. Good. You’re coming out of it. As the water dried from her skin, Jayne felt a delicious shiver ripple across her exposed belly. She glanced down and noticed the man’s basic biological functions seemed to still be operating.

  “I think I may have some time for a little fun before business…”

  His eyes widened as she approached the bed.

  26

  What Would You do if…

  Denny stepped out into the cold North Atlantic rain following Eli. His chief of staff staggered down the steps and almost collapsed in the cobblestone street behind Mr. Braaten. The first thing he noticed was how gray everything was.

  When they’d been trapped in the tunnels, everything was, of course, pitch black except for the cone of light illuminated by the Scottish cop’s phone. But even when the lights were on, everything was in shades of brown, either through age or by the simple fact that they were underground.

  When he’d arrived in Edinburgh, Denny had noticed everything was in shades of gray—gray streets, gray buildings, gray slate roofing tiles on those gray buildings, even the gray castle sitting atop its gray rock. But now that the rain was thoroughly soaking everything, those shades of gray turned darker, richer. He saw subtle striations and color in the rocks that the buildings were made from.