CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
Summer storms are already notorious for lightning, but this one carries a level of electromagnetic shear that borders on abnormal.
The sky is splitting itself open above the Estate, thunder rolling hard enough to rattle glass.
A geomagnetic event this severe hasn’t been seen in years.
Lachlan treats it accordingly. He checks and rechecks generators, backup power, drainage systems, flood defences, surge protection.
He makes sure every safeguard is reinforced, every vulnerable point accounted for.
He just didn’t anticipate how badly the storm would fuck their communications.
Radios crackle with distortion.
Signals drop in and out.
Earpieces spit bursts of static directly into already strained nerves.
Timing falters.
Messages arrive half-heard or several seconds too late.
In a place like the Penhalyx Estate, where security depends almost entirely on precise coordination, those tiny failures begin stacking dangerously fast.
Mimi has been in a terrible mood all day.
Irritable and frustrated for too many reasons to name, but he thinks it’s because she misses Mari furiously.
He sees her talking into the radio, crying sometimes and lying about it.
Come the evening, she’d worked herself into such exhausted misery that she finally passed out hard enough to sleep through the storm, but even so Lachlan worries it’ll wake her frightened and disoriented.
Blaire settles in beside her without needing to be asked, understands why Lachlan’s uneasy.
‘I’ll stay all night,’ she promises quietly.
Lachlan hesitates at the doorway longer than he should.
Mimi is sprawled across the bed with one fist still twisted in the blanket, lightning briefly illuminating her face every few seconds through the curtains.
Something about leaving her tonight feels wrong in a way he can’t properly explain.
He wishes he could stay, but there are hundreds of guests inside the Estate and the storm is interfering with comms.
The party is already becoming difficult to manage even though the people in the ballroom seem to love the drama of the lightning overhead, laughing and gasping whenever it strikes close.
The Estate is well built, each wing crowned with a primary spire designed to draw lightning safely away from vulnerable structures like the ballroom’s glass dome, but the sheer frequency of the strikes is beginning to worry Lachlan.
The first outage disorienting.
Lachlan never realised how reliant he’s become this past month on checking in with Control, but when the lights go out after a massive hit and his radio is strangled by static, Lachlan’s guts tighten and he knows now which of the children he would prioritise if it came to it.
He runs to the East Wing flat out, can make it there in under a minute at full tilt, which he does, and by the time he gets there, the power flickers back on but the radio is still dead. The four he has posted outside Mimi’s door all assure him she’s safe, but he needs to see it with his own eyes.
Blaire is curled up atop the covers with Mimi in her arms, both fast asleep.
Relief slams into him. The physical manifestation of eight bells.
Lachlan smiles despite himself. He’s wanted them to bond for a long time now. He draws a blanket over Blaire before heading outside again.
Bennett is the man he most trusts of the four guarding the Cove, so it’s him Lachlan speaks to. ‘If anyone but me or Jules tries to get in here, kill them.’
The man gives a sharp nod. ‘Heard.’
The radio is down which means the primary repeater tower has been hit, so Lachlan heads to Control, and finds Fenwick fighting to keep ahead of the chaos. Lachlan takes over seamlessly.
‘Switch to secondary repeater,’ Lachlan instructs, ‘and patch the network into the cellular backbone. Even partial coverage is better than nothing.’
Rook goes about it while Fenwick keeps trying with the dead frequency. Lachlan snaps fingers in front of his face. ‘Stop. North tower is fried for now.’
Fenwick has this look about him that Lachlan recognises.
It’s a shadow under the skin. Something bad that happened some other time, creeping into the present moment. PTSD is a hell of a thing and Lachlan knows it comes when you least expect but this is emphatically not the time.
‘Pull it together,’ he intones quietly.
Fenwick swallows and nods. ‘Is your rig fried?’
‘No, but secondary is patchy,’ Lachlan says, pulling out his earpiece. ‘I want everyone using handsets until the storm passes. Fenwick, make sure everyone gets one.’
‘That lightning isn’t natural.’
‘Yeah, it’s crazy, I know.’
‘No, you don’t get it.’
‘Are the repeaters running on a generator?’ a desk tech asks.
‘They are.’
‘What if it stalls?’
‘Good catch. Put someone close to it. It’s only the primary tower.
Secondary will hold. We can get through this, no sweat, we just need to stay calm,’ Lachlan says, generously clapping Fenwick’s shoulder.
‘I want eyes on Cascade at all times, and no one goes into the East Wing for any reason whatsoever.’
‘Heard.’
Armed with a handset, Lachlan hears a round of manual check-ins from the people who receive them. Back in the ballroom, the party is raging on, music and dancing, pleasurable chaos. The storm’s energy seems contagious.
Lachlan knows where to look for Jules by now, he’s learnt where he tends to go, the corners he seeks privacy for when he needs it. He spies him over by the indoor fountain, moves towards it, but Alistair Penhalyx interrupts the journey. ‘I trust there are no problems with the power?’
‘We’re prepared for a blackout, sir. The lightning fried the primary repeater tower, so we’re switching to handsets on secondary.’
‘Good, good.’ The old man looks up at the glass dome.
‘Such power in the skies, no wonder men believed all those silly stories.’ Lachlan is desperate to get to Jules, touch base and check in.
‘You should have a drink, Lachlan. Relax a little. My son can survive without you lurking behind him for ten minutes.’
‘I would prefer to—’
‘Yes, I know what you would prefer,’ he chuckles, walking away.
Lachlan hurries to Jules, finds him with the other teenagers.
Mikhail Sorrenko has two sons. Roman is the older brother and Vasily is the younger.
They both have the look of their father about them, jet black hair, dark eyes and pale skin, but there’s nothing sullen about them.
Both boys are healthy, alert and curious about their new summer home.
Ariadne Alderwyck’s daughter, Savannah, is older than all of them, on the cusp of turning twenty.
She has her own bodyguard who lurks close by.
‘Jules.’ Four pairs of eyes swivel onto him. ‘All OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘The power could drop out. Stay where I can see you.’
‘So don’t take your eyes off me, Bodyguard.’
Little fucker is in a bad mood, but what’s new?
‘Hello,’ Vasily says to him, tone brave because he’s very shy.
Lachlan gives a polite, somewhat distracted nod. ‘Hello, Vasily.’
‘Your bodyguard is worried about the storm,’ Roman observes to Jules, eyes on Lachlan. ‘Perhaps we will be playing murder in the dark later.’
‘Oh shut up, Roman,’ Savannah says, nose crinkled.
The boy seems faintly crestfallen. ‘I was telling funny joke.’
‘Your jokes are never funny.’
Lachlan leaves to perform a circuit around the ballroom, satisfied that the kids are together.
He notes several troubling elements. The looming threat of a blackout seems to make people behave worse than usual.
He hates having to politely break people up mid-fuck, to tell them to please find somewhere else to do it.
He can’t understand why Alistair is allowing it.
It’s grotesque. The energy is sickening, cloyingly ripe.
He checks in with his units through Control.
The East Wing is untouched. Mimi and Blaire are safe.
His circuit brings him back to Jules when lightning strikes so hard it blacks out the entire mansion and thunder cracks like God himself broke a bone.
Lights.
Power.
Signal.
Gone.
Lachlan loops a hand through the crook of Jules’ arm. ‘I’m moving you. Stay quiet.’ Jules does what he’s told but only at first. Isolated noises of panic fill the ballroom, but a strange sense of excitement too.
A glass breaks. Someone yells.
Lachlan guides Jules in near total darkness into a staff hallway on the edge of the ballroom, where he pauses and tries to use the handset with no luck.
‘What about the others? Savannah shouldn’t be—’
‘She has her own bodyguard. He’ll do exactly what I’m doing,’ Lachlan tells him, switches to direct, seeking other radios close by. With no repeater to bounce off of, the device has become a walkie talkie at best. ‘Anyone, come in. This is Kestrel, I have Cascade.’
‘Cascade?’ Jules echoes softly. ‘Wait, is that what you call me?’
‘Heard, Kestrel. I’m in the ballroom, northwest section.’
It’s Carrigan.
‘Do you have eyes on the Primary?’
‘I do.’
‘Status?’
‘Secure for now, we have six other units.’
‘Stay with him, try to get hold of Control.’
‘Heard.’
Lachlan wills his eyes to adjust in the dark, one hand around Jules’ wrist.
‘Bodyguard,’ Jules says gently. ‘I’m fine.’
Lachlan frowns. He didn’t even realise what he was doing. His thumb is pressed against the point that provides relief, making circles. ‘Sorry,’ he says, stopping the motion but not letting go. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You call me Cascade?’
‘It’s a codename.’
‘Why that word for—?’
He crushes Jules flat against the wall and covers him with his whole body in near total darkness because he hears the footfalls of a man, can tell a lot even in pitch black about height, weight, state of mind just from the clop of expensive shoes on marble.
Lachlan hides Jules completely, whispers, ‘Hold your breath,’ as the footsteps heighten, getting closer, then he’s right there, and then…
slowly moving away again. The man passed by, gone elsewhere. Lachlan slowly exhales. ‘Good job.’
‘Who was that?’