The Milestone Protocol by Ernest Dempsey (best books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

“Why’d you leave one cut?” Tommy asked, pointing at a gilded column in the center of the room as if he’d just mentioned how beautiful it was.

“Because if I made the third one now, the glass could fall in and shatter. Don’t want to raise an alarm before we raise an actual alarm.”

“Ah,” Tommy breathed, feeling embarrassed for not thinking of that. Although to be fair, he was out of his element with this kind of stuff. He consoled himself by remembering that neither Sean nor Adriana was half as good at public speaking as he. Or building an agency.

He realized he was distracting himself when Adriana interrupted his thoughts. “Tommy, go pull the lever—now.”

“Okay.” He bobbed his head but didn’t move.

“Seriously. Go pull the alarm.”

“Wait, me? Tell the MI6 agent to do it. I could get in trouble. She’s a cop. No one can arrest her.”

Adriana rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She turned to Tabitha. “Would you mind?”

Tabitha hesitated, but she was already roped in too deep to turn back now. Despite how crazy their theories were about the shadow caste, she’d seen enough to take another step with the friends.

“Look,” Adriana said convincingly. “You’re already an accessory. Pulling that alarm doesn’t change that.”

“Fine,” Tabitha relented.

She looked over at the bishop still greeting people in the center of the cathedral’s antechamber. Then she strolled over to the red box the same way she would have to a bar to get another drink. Tabitha paused at the alarm and looked up at the nearest image of some patron saint she’d never heard of or seen before. Another turn of the head allowed her to sweep the other direction with a quick gaze. Then, subtly, she reached up and pulled down the white handle on the fire alarm.

The second the klaxon pierced the air, she covered her ears and returned to the group, putting on her most confused and semi-scared look.

Nearly everyone in the church had a delayed reaction to the alarm. The second they realized what was happening, though, it turned into disorganized urgency. To their credit, none of the visitors sprinted to the exits or trampled anyone, but the confusion was evident. The herds of people moved toward the doors in clumps, which only clogged the exits as they tried to push their way out.

Adriana swiftly bent down and made the final cut on the glass, then gently pushed the piece forward. Just as she’d suspected, the glass tipped over and shattered on the floor into hundreds of fragments.

She checked around. No one had seen or heard it.

Safe within the disorder, and with the three members of her party partially blocking her from view, Adriana slipped through the new opening and hurried over to the relic case. She blinked, looking over the four golden latches clasping the ornate golden box lid on top of the container. Her fingers worked fast, flipping the latches back within seconds. She slid the lid off the box and looked inside.

Adriana’s breath caught.

She’d seen a number of priceless artifacts and works of art before, often being one of the first to see them in decades, and in some cases thousands of years. This, however, was different.

All the things her father and Miyamoto told her came to fruition the second she laid eyes on the bones within the container, and on the little golden cylinder resting next to them.

She scooped up the cylinder, recovered the box, and clasped the lid shut.

Wasting no time, Adriana scurried back through the opening in the glass and walked by Sean. “Time to go,” she said.

He and the others followed behind her, melting into the thinning crowd at the door. The cold midmorning air wrapped its fingers around them once more as they stepped outside. Each one of the four moved quickly through the crosswalk and over to the other side of the street where the rental car waited.

Sean unlocked the vehicle before they reached it, and no one took more than two seconds to get in and shut their doors. The engine revved, and Sean waited for the traffic to clear before he stepped on the gas and accelerated through the intersection and around the next corner.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but it wasn’t as big as Tabitha’s, who audibly exhaled from the back seat.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” she said.

“So, what does it look like?” Tommy asked.

Adriana fished the cylinder out of her pocket and handed it back to him.

The tube was only four inches long, with a diameter of perhaps two centimeters. Tommy analyzed it carefully, noting a sequence of dots and lines cut into one end. The cap on the reverse side was solid.

He was tempted to shake it, but tried to pry the dotted lid from the end first. It didn’t budge, so he twisted it around and pulled on the other end.

Sean steered the vehicle back onto the main road leading out of the village and into the countryside.

“Need some help?” Tabitha asked, seeing that Tommy was struggling with the lid to the tube.

Sean let out an audible laugh. “Nice.”

“It’s on tight,” Tommy insisted with a grunt. “It’s only been sealed shut for, oh, I don’t know, nearly seven hundred years.”

The second he finished, the lid popped free. He let out a gasp and tilted the cylinder over to allow the contents to fall into his opposite palm. Nothing, however, fell out of the tube.

He tilted it up and looked inside the container.

Tommy didn’t say anything at first. His face turned ashen, then wrinkled with worry.

“What is it?” Sean asked, suddenly turning serious at the sight of his friend’s expression in the mirror.

Tommy held the tube upside down so all could see it.

The cylinder was empty.

33

Russia

“Empty?” Sean gasped in disbelief. “How could it be empty?”

He kept his eyes focused on the road, despite his instincts telling him to turn around and have a look for himself.

No one had an answer. No one could even speak for nearly two