4345.96 · April 6, 2025 AD
Beneath the Royal Mile
Water drips in Mary King's Close, marking time in a place where centuries blur. Four figures gather around an oak table scarred by history—candlelight catching a platinum ring, a vintage brooch, ink-stained fingers, a pin worn inside a lapel rather than displayed. They speak of the Campbell greenhouse as though it belongs to them already. Plants. Artefacts. The Stewart legacy. Tomorrow night, they move. One of them is already calculating how to stop them from the inside.
The chamber exists where Edinburgh's past refuses to stay buried.
Elias Vayne commands from the head of the table, his white rose ring catching candlelight with each precise gesture. Catriona Erskine maps legal contingencies with courtroom precision. Malcolm Sinclair trembles with academic fever over documents connecting the Campbell hybrids to the Stewart sisters, to soil from "unique sources," to experiments he can barely bring himself to name aloud.
And Douglas Thomson sits among them, white rose pin hidden inside his lapel, playing the role of pragmatic collaborator while his Guardian training catalogues every exit, every weakness, every moment that might be turned to different purpose.
"The Campbell Estate will be secured," Elias announces. "Its secrets brought into the fold."
Tomorrow night. The greenhouse. Twelve minutes while Douglas creates a distraction with his paramedic credentials—an ambulance at the gates, a staged emergency to draw the family's attention while the extraction team moves through shadows.
Douglas nods his acceptance. His stomach twists with the weight of divided loyalties.
He has until tomorrow to find a way to warn them.
The candles burn lower.
The plan is set.
The dance of betrayal begins.
