I am not lonely [Mystrade] - BOOK 2

Panic! at the Palace

Mycroft had rarely seen the staff of the Palace so agitated. Everyone was running from an office to another, screaming orders into their phones like headless chickens. Outside of the Palace, no one knew of her majesty's disappearance but it was only a question of minutes before someone leaked the information, even just by accident. As soon as he had heard about the incident, the head of of staff had informed Prince Charles, who was already in Balmoral, and sent four army helicopters where the Queen had been tracked down for the last time but nearly twenty minutes later, they still hadn't find anything.

The elder Holmes rushed to the conference room where all the top executives of the palace where gathered, coordinating the operations. A large white board had been brought in to keep notes of every informations that could be useful in the search. The politician quickly scanned the board, picking up the informations he needed before interrupting the crisis meeting.

"How in god's word can you possibly loose the Queen ?" he roared loudly enough to gets everyone's attention.

"We haven't exactly loosed her ..." a redheaded man tried to tempered.

"Yes, that's right, you just don't know where she is and were her helicopter is sorry." the official retorted nastily. "Is there an helicopter somewhere in this city ready to take off ?"

"The police may have one yes, why ?" the head of staff answered, raising an eyebrow.

Mycroft gave no answer and exited the room, picking up his phone to request the said helicopter. He kew quite well that nothing would emerge from endless meeting held five hundred miles away from the research zone and he had no intent to participate to this masquerade. If he was usually more of a bookworm than a field man, he knew that desperate situations called for desperate actions and loosing your head of state was definitely a desperate situation.

The helicopter landed on the grass of the Palace and the elder Holmes jumped inside, trying to forget about his fear of the heights. The last time he had found himself in an helicopter he had cold bloodily killed a man after slightly torturing him and that was the only kind of situations that would convinced him of climbing in such a vehicle.

As he was trying to forget about the fact that he was flying two hundred meters above the ground in a shaky helicopter, he received more informations about the last communication the ground had with the Queen's helicopter. From the transcript of the conversation the pilot had with the ground, the vehicle had suffered a major breakdown on its engine and was trying to reach the nearest heliport. A few seconds later all communications had ended and that could mean that the worst possible events had happened.

The army helicopters were patrolling around the point were the Queen had been localized for the last time. The landscape was mainly composed of fields but a few spots were also covered with forest and Mycroft was slightly worried that the helicopter had felt into the trees, making it's discovery even more of a challenge.

On the ground, policemen were knocking on doors in the neighborhood were the helicopter had been seen for the last time, trying to get informations on what could have happened. The elder Holmes got in touch with the leading officer of the investigation, wanting an update on the subject but all what the man could tell him was that no one had seen anything out of the ordinary concerning that helicopter. All what he had got off a couple of local farmers was that the vehicle was "maybe a little louder than the one they would usually hear" but everyone agreed that it didn't meant anything probing.

The politician had to think quickly if he wanted the research to give some result. It had been nearly two hours now that the helicopters were drawing circles in the sky without results and the officers on the ground just gave the confirmation that nothing out of the ordinary had happened around here. The Palace on the other hand had no news either and the information had started to be leaked on the social medias, agitating the country with panic.