Chasing Fate (Sentinel & Guide)

Chapter 68

[[A bit of an info dump about clan relations but i'll try to make it interesting]]

By morning every news site in the country was buzzing with speculation. The Hammonds had managed to lock down the hospital mere minutes after the first livestream news aired. The information was devastatingly thin. Everyone knew something HAD happened, but not WHAT happened. 

Several unscrupulous "journalists" had access to the police radio and kept it on to help them chase down news before the police received a statement. One such journalist was Casey Kurds, the camera man who had helped stream Jack's dramatic entrance into Mercy Medical. 

The issue now was that no one would take his transcript for the police scanner. For one, chatter was recorded, so if something truly had happened, then the station had that info. For two, releasing it would be a huge breach. It just wasn't done. Still, most news stations would accept the written transcript from an anonymous source just to get the first exclusive. 

Yet somehow, after hours of attempts, he had no bites. The Hammond clan didn't dabble in news, but Matthews agency was headed by a clan-affiliated guide. The Matthews agency was the reason anyone in any kind of showbiz got their meal ticket in this town, and no morning news anchor was going to risk their desk spot to cross the lead producer and CEO, Anna Beth Matthews.

But Casey wasn't some wet-behind-the-ears rookie. Anna Beth and the Matthews agency had a huge blind spot when it came to moving information around the regions. The Matthews agency was big time locally, but it couldn't control all the news all over the country. 

Sure he could link it on Tweeder, but that would still be considered speculation, and there was no money in that. No, he had to get this out and established, then rake in the first-look exclusive rights cash. There was one very good way to make that happen.

Anna Beth had trained one of the best information brokers in the entire industry.  While she had concentrated on consolidating her agency and talent empire, her daughter had focused wholeheartedly on improving one of their stock talents. 

Jack Hammond was far more famous than any fighter or Heir Sentinel had any reason to be. He'd never done any movies or shows, and was only particularly relevant in the fighting ring. He wasn't a known entity to other sports or reality celebs until after he started winning, so why did the public always have him in their minds eye?

Kaylee Ann spent the last decade playing a cat and mouse game with the national news media and online social media to create an image of Jack that was larger than life. He was handsome, talented, powerful, mysterious, and most of all, single. Or, he had been until a few months ago.  

Heir Sentinel bonds were only one or two steps below royal weddings in the potential for news cycling. Each clan had their own public and secret processes that caused a lot of speculation among the null populace, which thought of it as some sort of crazy hazing ritual done in dark dungeons with candles and thick books of clan law. 

The main thing was that it wasn't immediate. Casey's mentor had covered the bond ceremony for Martha and Sigfried all those years ago. Martha was born and raised in a neighboring region, so it wasn't as dramatic as her son's bonding excursion. The two had been made for each other and known it since they were young. When Sigfried turned 25 and was old enough to take the reins from his father, he quietly began the bonding ceremony with Martha. It was effectively an engagement. They had a small party and Martha moved into the Hammond estate so that preparations could be made. 

According to his mentor this year was the timeframe that was needed for the surface bond to be cemented into the full bond. It didn't make a ton of sense to him as a null. From what he knew, a bond was a bond from the moment a compatible pair crossed paths, and reversing it would end poorly for both parties. He'd never heard of a REAL surface bond being reversed, but rather that puppy love got mistaken for a true bond.