Adrian was deployed into the belly of the beast to find out where Jones was. As far as he and WISA were concerned – Maria was walking directly into their trap, as Micah had revealed the intended deception to him from the very start. He never considered the possibility that this standoff was what Maria wanted all along.

But in order to lure Maria in Jones also had to be present at the newly organized party, happening in a concealed country house a short walk away from the city. He was going to act as the bait. He wanted to make Maria, Veronica and Frankfort go all in to take care of them as a group.

Adrian wondered how he ever thought that a plan like that would work. From the first second he meandered up the stone driveway and reached the pavilion where the festivities were ongoing, it was obvious that there were WISA agents and demonic guards watching every angle. Maria would have to be suicidal to charge into this hornet’s nest unsighted.

He counted twelve obvious plants from a cursory examination. Two by the front gate. Two at the top of the steps. Three placed near the buffet table. Another two by the doors to the house. The last three were further down the garden where the guests were enjoying the landscaping. There would undoubtably be even more.

The direct approach was impossible. Maria had trouble with one of those magically enhanced monsters – so this number was going to ward her away through their presence alone. Jones may have overestimated her confidence in that sense. Wasn’t he supposed to be luring her in with an easy target first?

Veronica and Frankfort were not kind in their assessment of Jones’ intelligence. It was possible that he hadn’t thought it through to that extent as was hoping that Maria would become so fixated on pulling off the job that she’d go ahead with it even when the resistance was obvious and well-organized.

That wasn’t how she worked. Adrian knew that. Maria was always scheming and rarely made a move unless she had the upper hand. He kept his head down and tried to find Micah amongst the crowd. He was perhaps the only teenager present at the property – as it was originally intended to be adults only.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Micah intended before Adrian showed up.

He could even overhear some of them grumbling about not getting to drug themselves to the gills and sleep with some prostitutes. What a respectable bunch of cohorts Micah had gathered to be his extra limbs. Adrian wouldn’t trust them to organise a piss-up in a brewery.

Adrian decided that his best bet was to find Micah and say hello. This entire party was being thrown to win him and his business empire over to his side after all, so he could at least pretend to be interested while searching for Jones. He found the moustachioed man bloviating to a small group of nobles near the table where the alcohol was being served. His rosy cheeks and ruby-red nose were a dead giveaway that he was already inebriated.

“Adrian! It’s so good to see you! Come over here, let me introduce you to everyone.”

Adrian smiled as best he could and endured a raft of quick-fire introductions to every man and woman present at the table. It took him almost ten minutes of non-stop rambling to run through them all.

He held his glass of wine aloft; “I’d like to make a toast to welcome an esteemed member to our little circle. It’s Sir Adrian Roderro! As you can tell, he has a good head on his shoulders – he knows who his friends should be!”

That ‘joke’ earned a laugh from the crowd, although to his ears it sounded more like a threat than anything else. They raised their glasses into the air in concert with Micah and welcomed him with a jolly cheer.

“I hope you all give him a warm welcome. He has a lot to learn about being in the world of nobility – so don’t try to win him over before I get my claws into him!”

Another wave of laughter rolled over the already intoxicated guests. Adrian recognized a handful of them. They were people who worked with his Father and Uncle and made occasional appearances at other parties and gatherings to rub elbows with upcoming businessmen and politicians. Every aspect of Walserian society was combined into a singular amorphous mass – intended to enshrine their power and wealth for generations to come.

For all of the consternation about the end of the monarchy, the people who claimed to suffer the worst were unperturbed about the change. In truth, the liberalization of the economy and abundant access to the political parties made them wealthier than ever. They could only fall upwards from here.

There was no obvious sign of Bernard Jones from Adrian’s initial sweep of the crowd. Veronica had given him a very clear description of the man he was looking for and even put together a sketch of him using her well-honed detective skills. It wouldn’t be hard to recognize him when he found him.

The crowd dispersed back into their own little pockets, and Adrian finally had the chance to speak with Micah alone again. To his surprise – he was the one who asked the first question.

“Adrian, are you familiar with Maria Walston-Carter?” Micah ventured.

Adrian kept his cool and carried the discussion by talking about his relationship with her; “Very. She’s a regular attendee of the shooting events near our estate. Our fathers did a lot of business together too.”

“Shooting?”

“Yes. Unfortunately for me, she’s exceptionally good at it. She’s also the most popular girl at the academy. Everyone wants to be her friend, or her betrothed, depending on what kind of social favour they’re attempting to curry.”

Maria had told Adrian what was going on with Micah – so it was no surprise that he was curious. He was still paranoid about what was going to happen now that Jones was pressing him into double-crossing her.

“It sounds like you have an acrimonious relationship.”

“I can’t stand her, to be honest. She drives me up the wall. She buys into her own mythmaking. She always thinks she’s better than everyone else.”

“Well, that may be the case, but you should never burn a bridge that you think will be helpful in the future. A disquieting conversation is of little consequence compared to the money that moves between hands every single day.”

“I never said we ignore one another. It would be grossly neglectful to sheer my relationship with Maria and her Father – he owns one of the most prolific business portfolios in the country. Everything worth making goes through at least one of his mines or factories. Sometimes I wonder how a genial man like him raised such a conceited daughter.”

“Genial! That’s a good word. That’s Damien Walston-Carter in a word if I’ve ever heard one.”

The alcohol was calming his nerves and allowing him to speak naturally, but internally Micah was starting to panic. He had no idea that Maria was a talented shooter, which greatly increased the number of ways that she could kill both him and Bernard without having to infiltrate the party personally. There was a large hill across the pond at the back of the property with a thick treeline. It was possible, with a modern rifle, to find a spot there and shoot whomever they pleased.

Jones had accounted for that possibility but only assumed that Frankfort or Veronica were going to be the ones pulling the trigger.

“I’ll leave you to meet some of the others. I have a lot to take care of, but I’ll come and find you in an hour or so.”

Thus, he attempted to make a swift exit from scene left to tell Jones all about it. Adrian nodded politely, before silently shadowing him some of the way to his destination. He passed a pair of guards and entered one of the small buildings from the courtyard. Adrian couldn’t follow him in there without eliciting too much suspicion.

Instead, he moved into the garden and tried to spy through one of the illuminated windows. He could see shadowy figures moving inside, but not the faces of the people responsible. It wasn’t going to do any good – but he was confident that his information about Maria had prompted him to find and speak with Jones again.

Adrian was correct.

Micah hurried through the hallways and into the room that Jones had designated as his operational HQ. More agents and enhanced secret police were mulling around the area in case they were needed. Jones was reclining on a couch seat in a well-pressed suit with a glass of alcohol in one hand.

“It’s nice to see that you’re having a good time with an active threat on the doorstep,” Micah complained, “I was speaking with our guest of honour, and he seemed certain that Maria is capable of using a firearm herself.”

Jones scoffed, “Do you honestly think that a young girl like that is going to personally visit these grounds and pull the trigger? She’s a sheltered noble, more so than any of the others attending this party of yours. She doesn’t know the first thing about how the world works.”

Micah leaned into Jones’ ear, “I warned you about making this estate look like a damn fortress. They aren’t going to come if they notice how many guards you’ve posted everywhere!”

“I’m not running the risk of either of us dying,” Jones said defensively, “Caution is our best friend. Frankfort and Veronica will want us to become overconfident so that we expose ourselves.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“You said offence was the best defence in this case, don’t change your mind just because I’m criticising you.”

“I’m not changing my mind. The only way they’ll know how many guards are here is if they’re attending the bloody party themselves, and I haven’t seen any sign of them. I need to move on to make myself known so that they feel inclined to launch their attack. Don’t complain until we’ve failed – Micah.”

He placed the cocktail down on the table and stood up. It was time to make his presence known at the party and see if Micah’s worries were justified. Adrian was still waiting by the door when he emerged. He watched closely as both men wandered back to the buffet table and started shaking hands.

He was here. Adrian double-checked that he had the right guy and moved away. He kept his head down and slipped towards the gazebo by the pond. He made sure that nobody could see him and turned his eyes to the treeline at the top of the steep hill.

He delivered a series of three hand-signs to the darkened woods. A circle with his fingers to confirm Jones’ presence, holding his palms parallel horizontally to one another to indicate that he was currently inside the building, and finally covering one eye with his fist to relay that Micah had gone to him and told the full story about the factory incident.

There was a small glint of light in response. They were going to have to do this the hard way. Adrian exhaled and tried to look natural. He turned back and spoke with some of the people there to blend in, slowly working back towards the house. Nobody besides Jones, Micah and his men were aware of the threat that lurked so close to the area.

He could feel Maria’s eyes on his back. Moving through the crowd, he headed down the side of the main building and found a lantern that was hanging from one of the supporting pillars. Taking it down – he smashed the glass against the post and tossed it through the nearest window, allowing the naked flame to catch against the furniture inside.

“Here are your fireworks...”

Adrian made himself sparse, leaving via a different path than the one he used before. The fire spread throughout the room, but nobody was aware of it yet. It was only when he had reintegrated into the party, and the flames were visible from Maria’s hiding place, that the chaos started.

The flashing light caused by the mirror became more intense. Adrian could see Jones’ attention being drawn to it by one of his men.

“They must be communicating to someone here!” the guard declared.

Jones was eager to play the hero; “Or they’re aiming for me as we speak! I want people on me! We’re going up there and dealing with this right now!”

At that moment the fire was finally noticed by another agent, who stumbled through the door and yelled out loud for all to hear.

“Fire! There’s a fire! Get some bloody water!”

Jones wasn’t concerned about that. He dispatched what little men he had to spare and took the rest out of the party and towards the rear end of the property. Adrian stood back and hoped that everything would go as planned.

They mounted their imaginary steeds and launched a suicidal attack up the foot of the steep hill, with guns in one hand and a fistful of dirt and grass in the other. Jones was living the fantasy. This was the heroic charge that would come to define his time as the chief of WISA. Bullets flew overhead and men fell in place – but not him, he was going to sever the head of this great and terrible serpent himself if he had to.

None of this was true. His men were never in any real danger of being shot. They converged on the position where the reflection was coming from but found nothing at all. Jones momentarily turned to face the party, where the fire was starting to spread between the buildings by travelling across the canopy.

“These woods aren’t that big! Break up into parties and find them!”

Each group took a ‘vanguard’ member with them to provide some extra muscle. Jones was joined by a pair of agents and one enhanced vanguard, trudging through the tall grass and decaying flora. It was too dark to see, forcing them to rely on lantern light to guide their way.

They delved deeper, moving further into the trees until the lights of their companions faded from view. Jones was overly engrossed in his fantasy. A rational person would have noticed that they were getting further and further away from the site of the original sighting.

A voice cut through; “Where the hell did Mark go?”

Jones turned back and counted the men who had followed him. One of them was gone.

“Did he just run away?” Jones asked. None of the others had an answer, not even the agent who first spotted his absence from the group.

They pressed on regardless. Jones wasn’t going to quit because one of his men had gotten scared and run away. He would have to discipline him later. It was two minutes from that point when they noticed another light glimmering through the trees. They had done an almost complete circuit around the forested area and were returning to the house, which was still burning. The other groups had fanned out to search the surrounding hiding places.

“There’s something there. You two, go around the side and I’ll close in from here.”

Jones crouched down and waited patiently as his compatriots flanked the spot from both sides in a pincer manoeuvre. The light was still flickering. The reflection of a telescope or mirror, which Maria and her thugs must have been using to contact a spy within the party.

He waited and waited, and kept waiting.

The bodies of his allies had long since disappeared from plain view. Jones pushed through his sense of unease and charged towards the glimmer with his pistol drawn, ready to be the hero that he always wanted to be.

Jones had walked straight into our trap.

His eyes widened as he discovered that the glint he saw in the woods was nothing more than a telescope attached to a tripod, intentionally positioned to catch the light and his attention. His men were already dead, lying on the ground where he could see them.

“Shit!”

We were on him like a pack of leopards.

Veronica tackled Jones into the dirt, wrestling the gun out of his hands and tangling him up in a chokehold. The strength left his body along with the air in his lungs. I unloaded a series of shots into the men who had come with him from my hiding place in the bushes. They never stood a chance.

His cries were muffled by her hand, and soon we had his hands and legs trussed up good so that he couldn’t get away. We hoisted him up and hauled him further away from the scene, out of sight and out of earshot. The crackling of the fire on the property would distract them from any calls for help.

We dumped him out into the mud and dusted off our hands. Frankfort peeled away to keep a watch of the perimeter while we worked him for information. Jones squirmed and tried to escape – but it was no use. He hissed through his teeth around the fabric in his mouth, at least until Veronica ripped it away and let him speak again.

If I was in his shoes I would have begged for mercy, but Jones’ reputation as an impudent and overly ambitious man preceded him. He was not going to go quietly into this good night without having the last word.

Jones sneered, “Is this supposed to intimidate me? A pair of has-been field agents and a child?”

Veronica punched him, whipping his head to one side with the force of the impact against his cheek.

“Has-beens? You seemed rightly concerned about what would happen if we got away and refused to side with Welt. It’s no good pretending that we’re not one of your primary concerns now. Why else would you go to so much effort trying to catch us out?”

“You can’t get away with this! I’ve got enough eyeballs on this place to ensure that nothing goes below our notice!”

I checked for dirt under my nails, “You did, which is why I took care of the most problematic guards before we brought you here. All it takes it a snap of my fingers and that enhanced blood you’ve pumped them full of isn’t an issue at all. They might be resistant to physical harms – but they still fall over all the same without their spinal columns intact.”

I made it sound much easier than it really was to play mind games with him. It was a long, tedious and risky process to remove the three men he had hidden in the treeline across the pond at the rear of the estate. I had to move swiftly and quietly, which was easier said than done in a wooded area that was covered in a carpet of sticks and leaves.

“Veronica and Frankfort know all about the patrol and search patterns you use too. All we had to do was evade your men’s net for a few minutes until they left for greener pastures.”

He shifted the discussion to try and cut me off.

“You kill me and you never find out where Welt is hiding. I’m one of the few people who know.”

“I’m sure that’s true – although a man like Welt wouldn’t accept living with anything but a handful of servants at his beck and call. I’m sure we could figure out their identities with enough groundwork.”

“I don’t care what you think. You’re not doing it.”

“If you don’t tell us we’ll simply have to do it the hard way. It would be a strike against my integrity if I threatened to kill you for not giving us what we want only to back away at the last minute.”

“You’re not going to kill me. I’m too valuable.”

He was going to repeat that same line until he went blue in the face. It was not going to help him get out of this situation. I paced around the clearing, the flames from the chateau illuminating my face and the outline of my body.

“We already understand you very well, Jones. You always felt you were smarter than everyone else, which is why you bristled whenever the other agents went over your head or disrespected you. Being the chief of WISA would get you all of the respect that you believed you were so richly owed.”

“Nobody gets to this spot without playing the game, Carter. All of the men who preceded me did the same thing, and their portraits are still hanging in the halls of the head office.”

“I don’t care in the slightest.”

I swung down with a kick and hit him in the chest, forcing him back into the dirt. I fiddled with his gun, which I’d picked up during the scuffle and brought with us.

“Tell us and you live. Don’t, and you’ll die here. Lie to us and it’ll be the same result.”

A bead of sweat rolled down his head and onto his nose.

“This isn’t worth it! You’re trying to fight with the man who runs this country!” Jones pleaded, “It’s not a battle you can win! Why are you even doing this?”

I remained silent - as did Veronica. This was not the time for a discussion or debate.

“Time’s running out, Jones,” Veronica warned, “Do you really value your pride more than your life? Welt’s only going to replace you with another worthless toad the moment you croak.”

Jones clenched his teeth and looked away. He considered calling for help and hoping that it turned out the way he wanted with a last-minute rescue, but a bullet travelled a lot faster than the legs of his friends in the woods. He would be dead before they had a chance.

“Ten seconds,” I declared.

I counted down.

“Nine, eight, seven.”

Jones rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes, shaking his head.

“Six, five, four.”

He’d sacrificed everything for this, was he going to throw it away?

“Three, two, one...”

He cracked.

“Okay! Okay!” he cried, “I know where he is! He’s bloody hiding in one of Rentree’s apartments on Fifth and West! Third floor, Carpenter building!”

The black maw of the gun that was pointed at his head hovered for a terrifying instant before pulling back and facing away. Veronica nodded and gave me the okay. It sounded like a realistic answer.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I quipped. I unloaded his gun and tossed the empty pistol onto the ground by his head, pocketing the magazine and leaving him unarmed. “You know what’ll happen if this is a lie.”

Jones double-took at me. He couldn’t believe I was keeping my word and letting him live.

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“You have me what I wanted, so I’m not going to shoot you. It’s a professional transaction. A woman whose word is worth nothing can never make demands of others,” I observed, “Besides, my name and face are already known, and Welt will only replace you with someone else if you die...”

The sound of a safety switch clicking was the punctuation.

“...But I never said that Veronica wouldn’t.”

His head snapped against the forest floor as a nine-millimetre round penetrated and splattered what little brain matter inhabited his skull against the leaves. The birds sleeping above our heads cawed and fled in a flutter of hurried wings.

With that piece of business attended to and revenge attained – we left to regroup with Frankfort, collect Adrian from the party, and move to find and kill Welt before he could relocate from his hiding place. We moved quickly. That gunshot was not so easy to ignore.