“Any luck on clearing that list?”

Veronica could feel the wrinkles below her eyes getting worse, deeper, etched into her features with a chisel and hammer. Not only had she spent several days running around the country like a chicken with her head cut off, but she had no luck at all! Every single location she visited was either above board or completely empty.

She had a handful of properties left to search, but the top of her list was an old sanatorium on the coast. It was big, defensible, and close enough to the city that Welt could feasibly move back and forth to pull the strings from inside.

The problem was that Welt’s plan was already in motion. WISA’s head office was in a complete flurry, with papers and pencils flying and telegrams being sent as they attempted to position themselves between the two emerging sides in the conflict. Welt was not happy about their public relations strategy garnering significant doubt from the people about the border post assault.

Veronica’s worst projections did not come to pass. A lot of people who read the story also found the full picture puzzling. Why would they launch an assault on a random border post with a dozen men and not a larger invasion with all of the support infrastructure that it demanded? The police assured the public that it was not an international invasion, but a group of opportunistic criminals who still posed a serious threat.

They were trying to track them down as they spoke, although that project would likely be put on hold as the chaos unfolded in the capital. They would have to focus on keeping the peace instead.

“None. I have one last building I’d like to search, but I fear it may be too late to do anything now. Welt is going to be pardoned by the King.”

“I hear that he refused to play along. They’ll anoint a successor from a branch family within the day.”

Veronica shook her head; “Are they insane? Nobody is going to accept the legitimacy of an easily manipulated toad plucked from a branch family. It’s almost like they’re trying to cause another civil war.”

“Maybe they are. You should never doubt the unfounded self-confidence of an ambitious man. When you believe you will win easily, even terrible ideas begin to sound appealing.”

The entire agency was in a state of paralysis. Nobody was going to issue orders when so much of the chain of command was being thrown into disarray, and none of the other handlers were as initiative-driven as Frankfort was. She did what she thought was correct first and worried about the consequences later. In her eyes that was what made her a professional - trust in her own decision-making.

There was a commotion coming from the downstairs lobby. Voices travelled up the main staircase and into the areas where the paper pushers liked to gather. Moments later – a group of armed men burst into the offices with weapons prepared. And who was at the head of this marauding gang? The one and only Bernard Jones, the very same snake who Veronica had been chasing for the past month.

Veronica groaned, “Looks like I don’t need to worry about finding Bernard anymore. He’s parading himself through the corridors like a preened cockatoo.”

In the chaos of the cubicles and enclosed offices, the man of the hour was marching through the halls with two armed military men on either side. He dipped into each small room in turn and spoke with the occupants before moving on to the next. Within minutes he was upon Frankfort’s – and he pushed through the door to find an irritated field agent and her equally prickly handler.

“Frankfort, Gladwell.”

“Bernard, where have you been these past few weeks?” Frankfort inquired succinctly.

“I’m not here to make small talk with you or Veronica,” he said, “I’m the new man in charge of WISA.”

He reached into his jacket and unfurled a bill of appointment – marked and stamped and ready to go. Frankfort could count the number of legitimate articles she’d seen on one hand, and she was the longest-serving handler in the intelligence community. She knew right away that it was real.

Rather than expressing fear or shock, she leaned back in her chair and laughed. Veronica and Bernard remained still. She was really going for it, slapping her hand against the desk like it was the funniest damn thing she’d ever heard. Veronica had never seen Frankfort laugh before, not like this.

“Welt put you in charge?” she gasped, unable to contain her mirth, “He honestly to goodness put you in charge of WISA? Did he really do that?”

Bernard tried to portray an image of cool, calm control.

“Not Welt – the King. The restoration act has already been signed. His authority is absolute, and WISA’s position as the personal service of the royal family has been restored with it.”

Veronica sighed, “Already? You didn’t even bother making a show of it and bringing it into parliament?”

“They wouldn’t have voted for it anyway!” Bernard replied, not seeing the issue. It was a terribly shoddy plan all around. At least the thin veneer of legitimacy might have kept some of the guns from being pointed in their direction.

“Spare me the bullshit, Jones – are you here to gloat? Or demand that we go and kill some nobles for you?” Frankfort asked.

Bernard adjusted his tie, “I respect you both very much. I am more than willing to live and let live in regard to our prior incidents. You both represent the values and attitude that every WISA agent should bring with them into the role. A stellar record of dedicated services, with an even-handed, fair, and thorough application of justice no matter the case.”

“And?”

“I will allow you to retain your positions here. That is all.”

Frankfort’s brow rose, “Jones, I don’t hold any particular animosity towards you based on the morgue situation, but don’t you feel like this is a little out of your league? He’s about to throw you to the sharks. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in charge given the changes he’s trying to make.”

“Underestimate me at your own risk. He’s got an excellent handle on all of this. I’ve seen it, and he’s already making moves to make sure that there isn’t a moment of weakness for our enemies to exploit.”

The only thing Frankfort had underestimated was how stupid he was.

“If you would rather pack up your things and retire, then I can’t stop you.

Veronica was firm; “We don’t retire. We serve the crown and the public until the day we draw our last breath.”

“I can offer you whatever you want.”

“Don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping, Jones. You want me on hand to take care of all of your dirty business. Losing a valuable asset like me would be problematic to your position as the new head of office.”

“Then if we’re all on the same page I want a simple answer. Yes or no?”

“Frankfort is being diplomatic, so I will be frank. I would rather shoot myself than ever consider working for you.”

He was already backing away towards the door where his fellow monarchists were waiting in the wings.

“You need not make the effort, Veronica. We’ll take care of that for you.”

An example needed to be made. The other officers might have fallen in line behind Veronica if she started fighting back and agitating them. Jones ducked out of the way as a flurry of hands drew pistols from pockets and aimed through the doorway.

“Don’t start a firefight in the office – you damnable rubes!” Frankfort barked.

Jones shrugged it off and shouted back, “This isn’t a firefight! This is your last dance, your retirement party!”

Veronica and Frankfort were outnumbered. None of the other agents in the building were going to step in and they knew it. They were all sitting in their offices and waiting to see what happened. Bernard and his fellow loyalists were in control of the space, and now they were trying to kill them.

“This is fine. I wanted to shoot that bastard dead anyway!” Veronica sneered.

For all of her fury, this was not a battle that they could win. Neither of them possessed the ammunition necessary to realistically make a dent in their numbers. Frankfort kept a pistol in her drawer that could hold seven rounds and came with two magazines. She would easily waste most of those bullets without hitting anything if the fight was as chaotic as she expected.

Cornered in the office, the fight started with a riotous volley of gunfire from the inside looking in. Frankfort ducked down and concealed herself behind the desk, while Veronica quickly stepped out of the way so that they couldn’t get a clear angle on where she was standing.

Frankfort’s small subdivision was ruined, with bullets shredding papers, shattering wood and breaking the windows behind her head. Veronica kept her nerve and studied the clouded glass panes that surrounded the temporary walls, tracking the blobs that moved through them.

She steadied her aim and fired, cracking a hole through it and sending one of his men to the ground with a new hole in his chest. The people in the office scattered, desperately clambering over dividers and desks to get out of the way before a stray shot hit them too.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Stop sitting there like you’re not involved and help!” Veronica barked.

Frankfort peered over the desk and steadied her arm against the wooden surface, firing two shots through the window and killing the second.

“We have to kill Jones!” she declared.

Frankfort grabbed her shoulder, “There’s no time. He’ll be running for the safety of the top floor, and we won’t be able to break that line with just the two of us.”

“If he asserts control over WISA, we’ll have bigger problems than that.”

“It’s too late. Welt’s taking control of everything. We have to retreat and consider our next steps carefully.”

Another voice called out; “They killed ‘em, send more men up here!”

A stampede of feet was closing in on their position. Frankfort whipped around and considered making a leap of faith through the now broken windows, but she was too old to take that impact without breaking something in her legs, and the last way she wanted to go was being executed in the street gutter by one of her old subordinates.

“Come on, we can’t stay in here. We need space to move!” Veronica said. Frankfort followed her out of her office and onto the main floor. A direct left would take them down one of the channels that led to the stairs. Unfortunately, a wall of fresh bodies was already pushing and shoving their way through.

Veronica fired into the group – killing two more men. Each shot had to be counted carefully, which was harder than it sounded amidst the chaos of a firefight contained entirely within an office building. She didn’t feel bad about killing them. To detach oneself from personal affection was the bare minimum of what the job demanded.

Besides, they would happily kill her first given the chance.

“This way!”

Veronica pulled her along, moving past the cubicles, with bullets flying in every direction and almost hitting them as they ran. They whizzed past their heads and embedded into the concrete pillars that supported the floor above. Dust, gun smoke and scattered papers filled the air and obstructed their vision.

On the opposite side of the floor was a second set of stairs that led to the ground floor. Since Jones wanted to make a statement by going through the front and through the lobby – there were only two men stationed by that flight. Veronica and Frankfort summarily dispensed of them with a round of gunfire, riddling them with lead and sending them down. One of them stumbled back and down the steps – rolling head over foot before slamming into the brick wall.

Veronica and Frankfort stampeded over his body to reach the ground floor. Another set of gunmen turned their attention to them and opened fire. They both dashed for cover. Veronica decided to try and flank them by running around the side.

There were too many bodies and not enough bullets. Veronica resorted to looting ammunition and a pistol from the next man unfortunate enough to get in her way. Rifling through his pockets while bullets were flying overhead was not a smart decision by any means, but if she didn’t take that risk she would quickly run out of ammunition to fight back with.

She left her cover position and shot at the group that was chasing them from the other set of stairs, forcing them back into hiding. One unlucky agent was too slow and had his brains painted against the marble floor of the lobby.

Frankfort was doing her best to pick them off too, but the small amount of rounds she had meant she had to be extremely cautious with her shots. She killed one more of the enemy agents before scrambling across the floor to try and follow Veronica. She hadn’t done field work like this in decades – and it showed.

Her knees and back were crying out under the stress. Didn’t these ruffians have any manners? They should have learnt to respect their elders at this point, surely. Veronica kept up the fire. She dumped the entire magazine from her stolen pistol before discarding it and switching to another.

“There’s another exit! Let’s go this way!” Frankfort suggested, having to shout over the noise.

The group attacking them was too timid after Veronica’s assault. They didn’t have time to react before both women ran in the opposite direction and headed for one of the rear doors to escape. Veronica’s heart was pounding in her ears. She’d been in intense fights before but this was on another level. Close quarters, deadly, with a million different routes to worry about. One wrong move could spell her end.

But she would never forgive herself for letting Welt run wild across the nation with his reckless ambition. The entire reason she committed to being a member of WISA was so that she could create a safe place for Maria to live. They were so close to escaping. She could smell the fresh air coming from the outside.

“This way! We’re almost there!”

They were in such a rush to reach the door that they neglected to notice the man standing in the corridor to their right, waiting in ambush should they decide to make that exact move. He swept outwards with a gun pointed directly at them, ready to put an end to the farce.

Veronica and Frankfort saw the sum total of their lives flash before their eyes. The man held up his gun and compressed the trigger. They were done. Caught out of position and vulnerable to his ambush. It would take him no time at all to gun them both down unless his luck turned sour and he failed to strike a vital area.

Unlikely.

Equally as unlikely was the arrival of an interloper, bounding through the door with a shotgun in her arms. A deafening bang echoed through the building as several lead pellets ripped through his flesh, shattering bone and sending him off of his feet, flying into the plastered wall to his right and crashing through it.

When the dust settled – she was the one standing there. She pumped the gun and dispensed a still-smoking shell onto the marble floor.

“Your carriage is here,” the girl chirped.

Was this divine intervention? They were milliseconds away from being killed then and there, but this stranger had arrived on the scene and saved them. Veronica knew that it was Maria. That distinctive voice and small stature made her stick out like a sore thumb, except this time she was clumsily concealing her identity with a black mask.

“Who are you?” Frankfort coughed, waving away the particulates in the air.

“We can have a talk over tea later. This is an urgent situation, is it not?”

Maria escorted them through the door and into the alleyway. They made their escape, slipping through the routes that she had learned during her exploits in the city. When they were a safe distance from the building – she removed her mask and led them to a quiet yard behind a shopping street where a horse-drawn carriage was waiting.

“Ladies first,” Maria intoned.

Frankfort hesitated, but Veronica accepted the offer and climbing inside was the push that she needed to place a little faith in the small girl. Once they were both safely inside, she called out to the driver and slammed the door shut, drawing the curtains closed so that they wouldn’t be seen from the outside.

Frankfort stared at the stranger, although describing her as a ‘stranger’ wasn’t accurate given her almost identical resemblance to the woman sitting on her left. A recent revelation about Veronica came back to the surface.

“Goddess above – she looks exactly like you! You’re telling me that nobody ever figured this out?”

Veronica sighed, “We don’t exactly assemble in the same location very often, if at all, why would anyone have reason to suspect that she’s my daughter?”

“Is this really the topic that you have to discuss first?” Maria pondered, “I decided to visit your office for some information, only to stumble across the place being shot to hell and back. You’re lucky that I was here to help.”

“Welt’s taken control of the organization,” Veronica explained, “There’s nothing else to discuss. We’ve been marked for summary execution. And don’t you think it’s rather presumptuous to come and ask us for information?”

Maria laughed, “I’m afraid that I was trapped at the academy for some time. It sounded like the best way to get ‘up to speed,’ as they say.”

Her eyes flickered to Frankfort and the mood took a sudden turn. She was still trying to recover from the stress of the fight in the headquarters – so having a girl, a teenager, who looked the spitting image of her best agent was throwing her for a loop.

“Besides – I’m not asking. Are you not a veritable treasure trove of valuable, highly confidential information?”

The rocking of the carriage did not help the sense of disorientation the former WISA agents felt. Veronica had seen glimpses of this before. There was an opportunistic monster that his beneath Maria’s highly preened noble façade. She would back people into a corner and hold as many of the cards as she was able, twisting their arms until they gave her what she wanted.

Maria was waiting for this. She was hiding out near the office with the expectation that trouble would arise. How else would she have a carriage and escape route already planned out for them? Now they were stuck with her, and she could throw them to the wolves at any time.

Frankfort had a headache, “Gladwell – can you handle this? I feel like my head is about to explode.”

Maria spoke out of turn; “We all want the same result. This is not a negotiation. The only way we will see our preferred outcome is if we pool our resources and knowledge.”

“I’m not involving civilians in this, and especially not my own teenage daughter.”

“I hate to break this to you, Veronica – but you are a civilian. All of that legal authority you enjoyed was torn to shreds at the drop of a hat. From now on, this is merely charity.”

The carriage rolled to a stop, passing through a pair of wooden doors and hiding within an old warehouse. Maria opened the door and motioned for them to follow her.

“Where is this, exactly?”

“An old warehouse owned by our company. It isn’t being used for anything at the moment, so it serves as the perfect place to lay low and plan our next move.”

Veronica helped Frankfort stay steady. The ‘living’ area of the building was an old administrative space with some bedrolls thrown into it. Luckily the building also came with working plumbing and a toilet. Frankfort happily sat down on one of the chairs and caught her breath. The sounds of gunshots still rang in her ears, along with a high-pitched whine which made her spine crawl.

“And what do you suppose you’ll do with the information we have? He has the entire apparatus of state at his fingertips now, with a good little toady sitting on the throne to give him whatever he wants.”

“He replaced the King?”

“Allegedly, although it hasn’t been announced to the public yet. I don’t know if it’s for good or ill that they haven’t. A lot of people would react poorly to the news, yet they would likely fail to dislodge them from their positions. Walser has changed a lot since the civil war, after all.”

Apathy amongst some and the advancement of military technology and training meant that a successful popular uprising would be difficult. During the civil war, it was mostly untrained soldiers fighting untrained militias, and they used most of the same equipment too.

“What I’m going to do is find which hole he’s hiding in and put a bullet through his skull. I hope that sounds agreeable to you.”

Not that Maria’s statement left any room for argument. She was going to do it with or without Veronica’s help, just like with the cult attack. It was play her way or miss the opportunity to assist, and potentially save her life. It was a horrible gamble to make. Veronica couldn’t understand her reasoning.

Frankfort finally found the energy to join in.

“Are you certain you never taught this girl anything? She sounds exactly like you as well.”

Veronica frowned, “You’re right. She does – but I wasn’t responsible for that, and she never told me where she did learn to do all of this. How about you shed some light on that issue before we go any further?”

“I already said that this was not a negotiation. I can shove you back out onto the street and let those old friends of yours chase you down, or, you can agree to give me what you know and I’ll help you keep your heads down until the storm blows over.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

Maria walked to one of the tables, which was covered with a large beige tarp, ripping it away and revealing a veritable armoury of different weapons and ammunition. Veronica’s eyes bulged out of their sockets at the sight of her collection.

“I asked a few favours, went back home, and collected every firearm and round of ammunition that I could get my grubby mitts on. I believe this should be enough to kill every fool who gets between us and Welt. Do you disagree?”

Frankfort looked concerned, but Veronica was going to plough ahead regardless. Killing Welt was what they had to do – no matter what methods they involved to make it happen. He was the man pulling the strings and corrupting the government with his influence, and he had a direct hand in dozens and dozens of brutal murders at that.

Besides – Frankfort technically wasn’t her boss anymore!

“Fine,” she said, “But I’m getting answers from you one way or another.”

She picked up a gun from the collection and left to use the bathroom. Maria smiled cheekily and turned to her new guest.

“I’m Maria Walston-Carter. It’s lovely to meet you.”

Frankfort nodded, “Yes. My name is Isabelle Frankfort.”

Did Maria have to toy with that pistol while making pleasantries?