Under Covers

eleven | prague

eleven | prague

the capital city of the Czech Republic; nicknamed the 'City of a Hundred Spires' due to the hundreds of large towers and steeples spiking into the skyline

RAYNA

May 7th, 7:09 (GMT +2)
8 days until it happens

FORGET MEN. FORGET strong hands and nice butts and monster penises. Prague is fricking gorgeous – I think I'm in love.

Yeah, my Czech is practically non-existent, but I'm fluent in six other languages and proficient in another three, so I can get by just fine.

Stunning gothic buttresses, trembling kaleidoscopes of stained glass, lofty copper domes burnt aquamarine by the elements.

Oh, speaking of monster penises—actually, you know what, nevermind.

My phone rings. I instantly regret answering it. "So you're telling me he nailed you." Howling laughter blasts through my headset. "Like, literally pounded your ass into the chair."

"Shut up, Sam." I'm strolling across a medieval stone bridge on a mild, overcast morning, fighting exhaustion with a latte in hand. It's early; the sun is still just a foggy amber smear on the horizon. Grey whorls of the Vltava river foam against the piers. The colour reminds me of a pair of stormy flint irises, and my coffee stales on my tongue.

"Girl! You were hammered by a tall, sexy British spy. Lucky bitch."

My body is disloyal; the memory of last night makes me throb. "Don't fucking remind me." Ya kalb. I'm not subtle about switching the subject. "Any word about what Morgan found on those hard-drives from Sidorov's desk?"

"None, babe. Sorry." He sniffs, annoyed. "Those fuckeroos at MI6 are making my life hell. They sent us an army of viruses. Our servers are swamped! So rude." Then he goes on to mumble something I can't understand about a hairy ass? Or maybe a person named... Harriett? Henry? Harry? Hanson? I genuinely have no clue.

After disconnecting the line, I stare out at the roiling water, processing. Cassidy was last seen six days ago at her family's summer mansion in Tofino, with not a photo or video or eye-witness of her since. With each second that passes, her odds get grimmer and grimmer.

I'm still holding onto a sprig of hope that she's alive. Sidorov as good as confirmed it to his guests yesterday, and then there were the meagre scraps I managed to tear from him when I got him alone.

He was delirious from whatever the cook had used to poison him, so he could barely string together three words. Eventually, after I forced a knife to his throat and asked him so very nicely, he admitted to me that he actually had no clue where Cassidy was. (Great. Just fucking perfect, hey?)

Apparently his associates were all being very hush-hush about the whole thing. Last he'd heard, she was in Prague. And then before I could find out anything else, that fucking bitch burst his skull like a ripe watermelon.

Listening to the news this morning, another inconsistency occurred to me. Elias Dalton is the head of a multi-billion dollar weapons-manufacturing corp. Why the fuck would he rely on our inefficatious, beaurocratic government to find his daughter when he has the resources and technology to do it himself? I fiddle with my tiny golden bracelet, thinking through the mess of it all.

I mean, yeah, he's a total nut, like every other billionaire on the planet. He says pretty words about strengthening our public institutions, but if he truly believed in the common good, he'd give all his money away. And! Even if he somehow was an altruistic, pro-democracy kinda guy, it wouldn't fucking matter – no matter how principled you are, it all hurdles out the window when someone you love is in danger. That's how the universe works.