Monarch: A Contemporary Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 2)

by Schow, Ryan

  “Nurse Arabelle asked that you be conscious throughout the surgery. You see, there is a part of her that enjoys the sadistic arts. One of her more attractive qualities, I must admit.”

  I’m instantly terrified something was done to me while I was lying helpless and unconscious. I dare not breathe a word of my suspicion, nor will I bring light to my own creeping vulnerabilities. But still…

  “Where is the chip?” I say, calm, cool, collected. Gerhard hands me a small glass dish. In the center is a very small object, about the size of a grain of rice.

  “As I said earlier, this is a highly modified version of the VeriChip human RFID chip. Like the original, it has the tracking chip, the antenna coils and a continuously repeating 128 bit tracking signal.”

  I’m squinting my eyes to get a clear look at the tiny object. My eyes strain to bring it into focus. I shift for a better look, but a stab of pain charges through me and all the sudden I’m throwing up on the floor at Gerhard’s feet.

  “That is almost better than the screaming,” Arabelle says, smiling and sliding a bucket under my dripping mouth.

  “Tell that to my shoes,” Gerhard says, looking annoyed. He shakes his head then says, “Get her a pillow or something. And after you clean up this mess, call her a cab.”

  “I can drive,” I hear myself saying. “I just need a minute.”

  “You’ll need about an hour,” Gerhard says. “But even then you could end up killing yourself in a car wreck on the way home.”

  “Right now that wouldn’t bother me so much.”

  “Right now that wouldn’t bother either of us so much,” Gerhard muses.

  An hour later, I’m heading home, and fortunately for both me and my beautiful new car, I manage to get home in one piece.

  Houston, We Have Problems

  1

  The managing members of the Virginia Corporation gathered together in the penthouse board room of sixty-three year old Jamison DuPont’s fifty-three story New York high rise overlooking Central Park.

  Having just flown in from California, forty-one year old Christine Kennedy joined her male associates by saying, “You’d better not be wasting my time.”

  Warwick Bundy’s short notice and the long flight drained most of Christine’s patience. One look at her three male counterparts and she was certain the displeasure of meeting with them would exhaust the rest.

  Thirty-five year old Tate Russell was already seated at the mahogany board room table, smiling his Playboy smile, like he wanted to eat her for dessert. Hmmm…how about never? Christine sat down across from Tate, who wasn’t taking his eyes off her. He said, “I know the table seats twelve, Christine, but must you be so coy?”

  “Leave her alone,” the cagey, quietly psychotic philanthropist Warwick Bundy barked. At six foot seven, with a fighter’s build and too much testosterone, Warwick stood before the floor-to-ceiling glass wall partaking in the multi-million dollar views of the New York City skyline.

  Christine acknowledged him, then gave a nod to Jamison DuPont, a sun-starved dinosaur with booze-shot nerves. He was at the bar fixing drinks.

  “Savannah Van Duyn,” Warwick announced, as if the name denoted a strain of terminal cancer rather than a sixteen year old girl.

  “How that audacious mongrel blackmailed Wolfgang Gerhard into anything at all defies reason and understanding,” Tate mused. “Now this?” He pulled a cigar from its case, his arrogant eyes falling back on Christine. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  With Jamison at the bar, Warwick at the window and Tate ogling her like a piece of meat, she thought, the hell with it, and unscrewed the top off a travel-sized bottle of Van Gogh Vodka.

  “What in blazes is that?” Jamison grumbled, missing nothing.

  “Vodka.”

  “Travel-sized?” he asked, the wrinkles in his ruddy cheeks deepening. “My God, Christine, have some dignity.”

  “It’s a double espresso, and I’m not a shameless drunk like some people in this room who aren’t named Tate or Warwick. And while you’re at it, bring me a glass, one that’s chilled.”

  Christine was every bit as poised and moneyed as the late Jackie O, but with more attractive features, a gymnast’s body and the sort of intestinal fortitude only a man as ruthless and as twisted as Warwick Bundy could appreciate. Deep down, she suspected Bundy longed to break her, if only to prove he could. The man craved a challenge.

  Even though an inheritance from the ultra-powerful and well-heeled Auchincloss family yielded Christine a trust fund profound enough to make the Queen blush, she earned a Harvard Law degree and became one of San Francisco’s most prominent defense attorneys. How would she ever ascertain her true value if she didn’t try to make it on her own? Now she spent her days around affluent scumbags, white-collar criminals and occasionally, murderers. All this and still these three clowns set her teeth on edge. Especially Warwick. Twice he tried to bed her and twice she reminded him that Kennedy’s don’t breed with Bundy’s. Ever.

  “We should attend to the business at hand before Jamison gets so shit-faced he can’t remember his own name,” Tate remarked, lighting up an expensive and extremely rare Arturo Fuente Opus X “A” cigar.

  “Finally the boy says something of value,” she mocked, her patience stripped. He hated being referred to as the boy.

  Crossing one leg over the other, Tate drew deeply from the lit cigar and joyfully blew a cloud of flavored smoke into the center of the room. Winking at her, he said, “With you, I don’t mind being the younger man.”

  She scoffed out loud. Jamison handed her a glass, which she promptly filled and then drained.

  Still lost in the view, his giant hands now clasped behind his back, Warwick heaved an audible sigh. Over his shoulder, to where Jamison was holding vigil at the bar, he said, “Pour me one, too, old man.” Jamison obliged his friend, filling a second glass from the fifty-five year old bottle of Macallan single malt Scotch.

  Then, to Tate, Jamison said, “With that nine inch cigar in your mouth, you look more suited for high heels in the Castro District than 5th Avenue.”

  Grinning, Tate said, “Good one, DuPont.”

  Christine cut through the banter, thinking only of making her return flight on time. “So this impromptu inconvenience is about Savannah Van Duyn, again?”

  “It is indeed,” Warwick said.

  “A conference call would have sufficed.”

  Warwick took the drink Jamison handed him and said, “For this conversation, a conference call simply wouldn’t do.” He took a modest sip of his drink, as if the action was the period at the end of a sentence rather than a ridiculously expensive Scotch.

  When Warwick offered credence to neither the smoothness nor the flavor, Jamison said, “That drink you just gulped down came from a thirteen thousand dollar Lalique decanter. It’s not Jim Beam for Christ’s sake.”

  Warwick waved off the comment and said, “We’ve lost the signal on her chip.”

  Regrettably, Christine understood the implication. “So we’re here so you can talk about killing Atticus Van Duyn’s daughter.” Just saying it out loud made her feel like the room was closing in on her, suffocating her.

  Nursing his drink, his broad back still to the three of them, he said, “Exactly.”

  2

  At the bar, Jamison topped off his drink, then lowered himself into the chair at the head of the table, careful not to spill. His eyes were cherry-rimmed and watery, an almost lazy look in them, and his rumpled, navy-colored pin stripe suit was a little too large for his diminishing frame. Jamison gave a jovial laugh and said, “Don’t act so surprised, Christine.”

  “I defend murderers all day long. Don’t mistake my distaste for this stupid idea of Warwick’s as surprise.”

  Jamison said, “We all know it’s in Warwick’s nature to build and destroy things.”

  She couldn’t help thinking, is this conversation really happening? Scrambling for alternatives, she looked at Warwick, flawlessly posture
d in his fifty thousand dollar suit, and said, “So the signal is gone, so what? Have we even bothered to rule out technological failure?”

  “That’s not the point,” Tate said.

  “She’s a teenage girl, not ISIS. It’s ridiculous that I’m even here.” She went to take another drink from her glass, found it was empty, and set it back down on the table. As tasty as it had been, the alcohol failed to soothe her.

  “I don’t know about all of you,” Tate said, “but if she can pull one over on Gerhard—and we know all the horrible things that God-forsaken monster has done—then she sure as hell can pull one over on us, too.”

  Jamison said, “I vote we put her down.”

  “She’s not a dog,” Christine snapped.

  “Regardless, it has already begun,” Warwick said with a flippant wave of his hand. “Which is, perhaps, why we find ourselves in this predicament.”

  “We need to talk about Atticus,” Tate added. “I mean, does anyone even know what he looks like now?”

  Immediately after selling his interest in the Virginia Corporation to the four members, Atticus underwent the same procedure as Savannah, but with the east coast team of scientists rather than with Gerhard. Judging by everyone’s silence, the new version of Atticus remained a mystery. She never told them he’d reached out to her, to let her know everything went well.

  She and Atticus had a different kind of bond.

  In a sturdy voice galvanized by the strength of his convictions, Warwick turned and addressed the group. “Ms. Van Duyn’s RFID chip is offline, she has disconnected her cell phone and home phone, and her Range Rover is at present sitting in a storage lot in San Francisco’s east bay collecting bird shit and dust. I fail to see coincidence in any of this.”

  “What about the house?” Tate asked. Warwick slowly shook his head. Tate drew deeply on his cigar, then with smoke rolling like a forest fire from his mouth, he said, “Them finding our surveillance devices, that’s unfortunate, wouldn’t you say?”

  “This is all so very paranoid,” Christine said, wondering who else these three were running surveillance on. Were her phones tapped? What about her car, her house, her office? Judging by the nature of this conversation, she reminded herself not to put it past any of them.

  Warwick took a seat at the end of the table opposite Jamison. The big man cleared his throat, tented his scarred, brawler’s fingers and bent his head ever so slightly against the room’s dying light. Shadows caught in the more hardened ridges of his handsome, fifty-two year old face, peeling away any false air of civility that might have existed earlier.

  “I’m convinced the chip has not failed on its own,” he said. “As for Gerhard, I’m not so certain. I realize he has drifted somewhat from the thing he once was, but he is no humanitarian. And he most certainly is not a team player. The man is never without an agenda, and he has a strong distaste for authority.”

  Working to tactfully make her points heard, Christine said, “What we don’t know can hurt us, Warwick. We have a limited amount of information. You know this.”

  “I believe Monarch Enterprises can resolve this on our behalf,” Warwick replied, his plan becoming crystal clear. He looked right at her when he said this, his empty eyes drilling into hers long enough to let her know her opinion bore no value whatsoever.

  Christine’s stomach dropped at the mention of Monarch Enterprises and suddenly she was woozy and smelling everything in the room like it was PMS week. Warwick’s cologne, Tate’s cigar, Jamison’s geriatric, alcoholic stench, the wood polish on the table, the cleaning solution in the carpets.

  The sweat soaking her armpits now trickled down her sides and she couldn’t stop smelling the musty air or her own chocolate-tinged breath.

  Her voice sounding remote, even to her, she said, “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “Actually,” Jamison said, beaming, “I think it’s brilliant.”

  Doing her best to veil her emotions—as every successful attorney learns early on—Christine replied, “This kind of thing isn’t Monarch Enterprise’s specialty. We get bodies from them, that’s it.”

  “Actually this is right in Monarch’s wheelhouse,” Tate said. “Human trafficking came later. Not first.”

  “Never-the-less,” she said, “this all feels a bit hasty.”

  Speaking out loud, but not to her, Warwick said, “I’m told of a boy with an unusual skill set. He is lethal and efficient, two of my favorite qualities in an assassin. His actions cannot be traced back to us, therefore, this course of action is not only prudent, it’s in the best interest of the corporation, our investors and our clients.”

  She was wondering how to object when Jamison said, “All in favor say I.”

  The three men responded in favor of Monarch Enterprises while Christine issued a solitary and steadfast Nay. She fought to keep the heat from steeling into her cheeks, but the loss felt catastrophic.

  “Christine,” Warwick said, returning his full attention to her, “you will handle the transaction at Monarch’s San Francisco office.”

  The most unpleasant task for a woman like her being run over by men such as these was looking unruffled and wholly blasé when you were ignored and crushed to the point of devastation. She donned her courtroom smile, forced herself to breathe. With a practiced resolve, she said, “I will need contact information, of course.”

  “Of course,” Warwick said, pleased.

  The proverbial lamb among wolves, she couldn’t help the vulnerability she felt. Real fear set in, taking on size and dimension. If she did this, she’d be orchestrating the death of a friend’s only child. If she refused or failed the group, there was no telling what Warwick might do to her. Would the three of them vote to have her killed, too?

  Or worse?

  3

  Christine Elizabeth Kennedy wasn’t exactly a chameleon, never-the-less, the stunning brunette had plenty to hide. Rather, she had plenty to protect. Specifically several lucrative investments, and a nine hundred fifty million dollar trust fund.

  Most people knew Christine by her thriving practice—Kennedy, Collins and Yamamoto—and the multitude of national magazine and newspaper articles detailing her many victories in court, her tireless charity work, and her impeccable sense of fashion. What most people didn’t know was that she used her knowledge and experience with the law to protect her family history. Keeping the bloodlines of the elite out of the media often proved to be the most difficult challenge.

  Hiding her family’s business was no exception.

  Christine was from the Auchincloss bloodline, an influential and extremely wealthy Scottish bloodline whose treasures were passed down through the generations for centuries. Many a trust fund recipient failed to further their wealth and influence for purposes other than status and extravagance, but when Atticus Van Duyn convinced Christine to put her money into the Virginia Corporation, she felt she could do her bloodline proud.

  With ties to Earls, Lords and Kings, her blood ran thick with the royal mindset even though she fought tooth and nail to make her own wealth. When Atticus explained his goal was to use DNA reconstruction to not only cure illness in a single treatment, but to eventually create immortals through periodic DNA reconstruction and replacement, the project not only intrigued her, it embodied the true ideology of much of her lineage: preservation of life for the purposes of global dominance.

  She pledged two hundred million from her trust fund, and thus began her professional relationship with one of Palo Alto’s most famous multi-billionaires.

  In a few short years, with the addition of various accomplished and well regarded scientists, the Virginia Corporation accomplished the goal of healing the terminally ill, albeit with some interesting side-effects. Now that Atticus was out of the Virginia Corporation, Warwick had his sights set on his own immortality. He often spoke of a nameless man who used science similar to theirs to successfully reverse the aging process. Everyone of them knew exactly who he was talking about.

&nb
sp; “This scientist looks forty-five years old,” Warwick announced when asking the other members of the Virginia Corporation for additional funding sources, “but he is, in fact, more than one hundred years old. The children at Astor Academy are proof that what was once impossible is now a reality. Our reality. Immortality was once impossible, but not for us. Not now.”

  The four members pledged another fifty-million dollars each on the idea that they would all personally benefit for centuries to come. In a rare show of affection, Warwick looked at Christine, Tate and Jamison and said, “It would be my absolute pleasure to add centuries to each of our lives, and to eventually rule the world together.”

  Later, in a show of allegiance, Tate Russell confided in her, telling her Warwick and Jamison got smashed at Warwick’s Virginia estate and killed two girls in celebration.

  “Stories like that will never get you laid, Tate,” she said.

  His face, however, was as serious as she had ever seen it. Tate never recanted his story, nor did Christine bring it up again. Deep down she knew Warwick was capable of murder because he was a Bundy. Even deeper down, to the innermost center of her soul, she had to admit that for the first time in her life, she was way out of her league, and scared.

  Never could she have imagined a blue-blooded woman as affluent, as composed and as refined as herself would be orchestrating the death of a child, much less Atticus’s daughter. She knew enough about Warwick and his proclivities to know going against him was akin to a death sentence. She had been in predicaments before, hundreds in fact, but none as constricting as this one. She was, however, too invested to withdraw. And now, like Warwick and Jamison prior to her, she was off to have a girl of her own killed.

  4

  Two days after the meeting in New York, Christine pulled into a long series of what looked like vacant warehouses and a helipad on the outskirts of Richmond, California. The location of Monarch Enterprises screamed of privacy. After being subjected to a number of security measures, including an invasive and felonious TSA-style enhanced pat-down by a bullish woman wearing latex gloves, she was taken to Brice O’Brien, a gorgeous thirty-something woman with the most plastic expression Christine had ever seen. Hers was the same look you see on rape victims, or witnesses to murder. The moment Christine met Brice, her senses flared so bright, she instinctually knew bad things shaped this woman’s past, and perhaps ruined her future.