Bzzt... Bzzt...

  The vibration returned, cleaving the brief silence in Noel’s study.

  Ravvi, who had just pocketed his device, reached into his suit jacket once more. This time, the furrow in the man's brow deepened. It was a priority summons from the Deputy of Operations for the Ministry of Transportation—his right hand in the field.

  Ravvi depressed the receive stud, then engaged the loudspeaker icon. The device was placed back upon the ironwood desk, beside a pristine stack of unread dossiers.

  "Reporting, Minister!" the voice on the other end crackled with panic, bordering on hysteria, underscored by the deafening wail of ship horns and blaring sirens.

  "The situation has breached all parameters. Reverse flow predictions have deviated by three hundred percent!"

  Ravvi leaned forward. "Hold your composure. Provide visual data."

  "There is no visual data capable of capturing this, Sir! The airport is completely paralyzed. Runways are deadlocked because foreign aircraft are refusing taxi protocols. The maritime terminals... Gods, they are butchering each other on the docks just to board coal barges! The overland routes at the western border have become an ocean of flesh. Vehicles are being abandoned dead on the interstate; people are fleeing on foot, dragging their luggage!"

  The voice hitched for a fleeting second.

  "Foreign nationals... they aren't merely returning home, Sir. They are fleeing. They are hemorrhaging out of Carta as if this very earth is scheduled to sink beneath the waves come morning. Immigration protocols have totally collapsed. We cannot hold back this dam any longer!"

  Ravvi cast a sidelong glance at Noel.

  Noel’s visage remained flat, an unreadable mask of stone. However, his eyes offered a minute gesture toward the flat-screen monitor embedded in the opposing wall.

  Ravvi understood. He delivered his final directive into the device.

  "Let them leave. Throw open every gate. Let no one hold the garbage back from throwing itself out."

  Click. The connection was severed.

  Without waiting for a vocalized command, Ravvi seized the remote control from his desk.

  "International broadcasts, Young Master," he murmured softly. "The world's eyes are upon us."

  The screen flared to life.

  The premier global news syndicate—GNN (Global News Network)—instantly dominated the room with blazing crimson graphics: "BREAKING NEWS: EMERGENCY UN SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING."

  The camera angle panned across the UN assembly hall in New York.

  However, the atmosphere was no longer that of an esteemed diplomatic summit. It was a feral menagerie.

  Papers spiraled violently through the air.

  Delegates from a multitude of nations stood atop their chairs, their faces engorged with apoplectic rage. Their index fingers stabbed aggressively toward a single desk anchored in the dead center of the chamber—the desk of the Kingdom of Carta delegation.

  There, sat the singular figure who had become the focal point of the world's collective hatred.

  Prince William.

  Noel stared at the screen with unblinking intensity.

  Prince William sat with a posture that actively spat upon diplomatic etiquette.

  He did not sit rigid, absorbing the condemnation.

  William slouched indolently against the leather backing of his chair, one leg casually crossed over his knee, looking for all the world as though he were auditing a remarkably cheap comedy act.

  A delegate from the Western bloc shrieked from the podium, his voice fracturing under the sheer weight of his emotion.

  "The Kingdom of Carta has violated the fundamental treaties of humanity! You have unleashed lethal biological entities! This is an act of state-sponsored terrorism! We condemn King Lavin! We condemn this sheer lunacy!"

  The camera executed a severe zoom-in on William’s face.

  Noel saw it.

  William did not flinch. He harbored not a shred of guilt.

  He was... laughing.

  The laughter was muted, his microphone temporarily severed, but Noel could read the somatic language effortlessly. William’s shoulders shuddered. His handsome yet cunning face was adorned with a sickening, imperious sneer.

  William then leaned his body forward, slamming his hand down upon his own microphone stud with such force the indicator light bled a furious red.

  The crisp, violently degrading sound of his laughter echoed throughout the entire UN assembly hall, and now, within Noel’s study.

  "Condemn?" William’s voice bled through the television speakers, his tone dripping with the condescension one might reserve for a dim-witted child.

  William swept his gaze across the global delegates howling at him. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand, as if swatting away a swarm of irritating flies.

  "Your shrieking sounds like the barking of a particularly annoying neighbor's cur," William remarked casually, his smile distending until his eyes narrowed into wicked slits. "You dare speak of humanity? Spare me your hypocrisy. You run in abject terror, clutching your gold, abandoning your own citizens..."

  The assembly hall detonated.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Plastic water bottles were hurled toward William’s desk.

  Vituperations in a dozen different tongues thundered through the air.

  "Devil!"

  "Deranged Bastard!"

  "Expel Carta from the UN!"

  Yet William merely laughed louder. He spread his arms wide, drinking in the hatred as if it were a standing ovation. He siphoned the negative energy of the room with a perverse, absolute delight.

  Noel muted the audio within his own mind, focusing purely on the visual data.

  He dissected the chaos with clinical, analytical eyes.

  This assembly was no longer a political forum. It was a theater of anarchy.

  And Prince William was the lead actor, executing the role of the antagonist to absolute perfection.

  Noel rested his chin upon his hands, propped upon the desk.

  Prince William... Noel thought with glacial clarity.

  You are not practicing diplomacy. You are buying time.

  Every second the world spends frantically screaming at your arrogance on a glass screen, they neglect to look at what is truly crawling its way out of Mirror Canyon.

  William was serving as a highly effective decoy.

  The world was entirely consumed by their hatred for a single, arrogant prince, while the true apocalypse was being orchestrated backstage, far beyond the glare of the camera lenses.

  Ravvi depressed another stud on the remote.

  The screen flickered, swapping the mad theater of Prince William for a wider montage of diplomatic ruin.

  Channel 1: GNN Financial.

  The stock market graphs for the Kingdom of Carta were in absolute freefall. A crimson line plummeted sharply, violently breaching the floor of the exchange.

  "Total Embargo!" screamed an economic analyst, his face flushed purple. "All of Carta's foreign assets have been frozen! This is economic suicide!"

  Channel 2: World Military Watch.

  Satellite telemetry displayed foreign naval armadas executing hard about-faces. Aircraft carriers and destroyers were not converging for an assault; they were massing at the international maritime borders to extract their citizens.

  "Full-Scale Evacuation Operations. All foreign nationals are ordered to abandon that cursed soil within twenty-four hours!"

  Channel 3: Breaking News Live.

  Helicopter cameras tracked the primary interstate artery connecting the capital of Ironseat to the western border.

  It was no longer a highway. It was a totally gridlocked river of metal. Thousands of vehicles sat paralyzed, their horns weaving a constant, maddening drone that bled even through the microphone of the reporter shouting over the chopper blades.

  At the airport, human lines snaked all the way out into the exterior parking lots. They crushed against one another, throwing elbows, dragging luggage and weeping children, battling like savages for the final tickets out of this impending hell.

  Those faces were painted with terror.

  Terror of the rumored "plague."

  Terror of civil war.

  Terror of a mad King and a sociopathic Prince.

  Ravvi dialed the television volume down to a faint whisper. He turned to Noel, anticipating his master's reaction to the kingdom's absolute global isolation.

  Noel did not appear perturbed.

  On the contrary, he settled deeper into the plush leather of his oversized chair. His posture was totally relaxed, as if he had just been informed that tomorrow's weather would be sunny.

  His obsidian eyes stared at the catastrophic gridlock on the screen—a sea of humanity sprinting in absolute terror to escape Carta.

  Slowly, Noel raised his right hand.

  He executed a sequence of slow, highly calculated somatic gestures.

  First, he tapped his index finger and thumb together repeatedly.

  [Statistical tally.]

  Next, he swept his hand outward, as if brushing filthy dust from the surface of his pristine desk.

  [Purge.]

  Then, he pointed a finger downward toward the floor of the room—representing the soil of Carta—and drew a finger across his throat, following it with a slight grimace of disgust while waving a hand beneath his nose.

  [Corpses. Stench. Nuisance.]

  Finally, he nodded once. Firmly.

  [Excellent.]

  Ravvi, who had memorized the physical lexicon of his master, instantly and accurately translated the silent decree.

  "I comprehend perfectly, Young Master," Ravvi stated calmly, as if they were reviewing logistical budgets rather than the exodus of millions of lives.

  "Permitting their departure now is the most logical maneuver. Should they remain here when the 'Main Gate' finally opens, they will serve as nothing more than collateral damage."

  Noel looked at Ravvi, and the corner of his lip twitched upward.

  Correct.

  The corpses of foreign nationals were a bureaucratic nightmare.

  If they perished here, it guaranteed endless red tape. Diplomatic incidents. Mass interments. Disease vectors. And most critically: their corpses could resurrect as fresh Anukh Ramj that would require a second execution.

  This exodus was no loss.

  It was Warfare Sanitation Efficiency. Let the trash take itself out.

  Noel swiveled his chair back toward the towering stacks of dossiers. He retrieved his pen, prepared to resume his labor. To him, a Carta devoid of foreigners was an infinitely more conducive environment.

  More empty space for the graves of their true enemies.

  Noel stared at the television screen displaying Prince William’s face, laughing arrogantly at the UN assembly.

  The world saw a power-mad sociopath.

  The world saw a spoiled prince actively annihilating his own nation's standing.

  The world saw a war criminal.

  But Noel saw something entirely different.

  His black eyes narrowed, vivisecting the layers of that theatrical performance down to the bare bone of its strategy.

  Slowly, the corners of Noel’s lips curled upward. Not a standard cynical smirk, but a smile of unadulterated admiration.

  Genius, Noel thought.

  He laid his pen upon the desk, offering a silent salute to the prince.

  This strategy... this was a masterpiece of efficiency.

  Noel simulated the alternative scenario:

  If William had played the diplomat, begging for international aid to combat a "natural disaster," what would have transpired?

  The UN would deploy investigative detachments. NGOs would swarm the borders. Foreign militaries would embed themselves under the guise of "peacekeeping forces." Mass media conglomerates would pitch tents on every street corner.

  It would devolve into an absolute logistical nightmare.

  Carta would be choked with people "demanding to know" and "wanting to help," while remaining entirely ignorant of the true nature of the threat. They would become nothing but dead weight, hostages, or worse: future corpses requiring disposal.

  But William chose the path of the sword.

  He chose to become the Villain.

  By deliberately stoking the fury of the globe, by deliberately acting the part of a dangerous lunatic, William achieved a feat impossible for any bureaucratic body:

  Total Evacuation within 24 Hours.

  Terror is the most efficient travel agent in existence.

  Without expending a single copper coin on deportation logistics, without deploying the constabulary for immigration sweeps, William successfully compelled millions of foreigners to sprint out of Carta entirely of their own volition.

  Clean.

  Swift.

  Absolute.

  Noel stared at William’s face on the screen, currently being pelted by plastic water bottles from foreign delegates. The Prince did not dodge; he absorbed it with a wide, mocking grin.

  You willingly make yourself the world's garbage bin, William, Noel thought with profound respect. You willingly allow your face to be plastered on every foreign military's shooting range targets, you willingly allow your name to be cursed in every church and mosque out there... all to cleanse our house before the storm breaks.

  Let Carta be condemned as a Demon State.

  Let them embargo our economy until it bleeds to death.

  It is a meager price to pay.

  Because when the "Long Night" finally descends, Carta will not need to spare a single thought for the safety of foreign nationals. Carta will not need to answer a single journalist's inquiry. Carta can wage total war with absolute impunity, devoid of eyewitnesses, devoid of international rules of engagement.

  Noel offered a slow nod toward the screen.

  A silent acknowledgment from one master strategist to another.

  He turned his head toward Ravvi.

  Noel raised his hand, forming a circle with his thumb and index finger—the sign for "Optimal" or "Perfect."

  Then he pointed toward the TV screen where William’s face resided.

  Ravvi, who similarly grasped the sheer brilliance of this maneuver, bowed his head reverently.

  "The Prince dances with fire exquisitely, Young Master."

  Noel lowered his hand.

  He picked up his pen once more. His operational zeal had redoubled.

  The chessboard had been scoured clean of interfering pawns.

  Now, the true game could commence in peace.