The rain in Inverness wasn’t a mist; it was a horizontal assault. The wind howled off Loch Ness, churning the dark water into whitecaps that lashed against the stone foundations of Urquhart Castle.
Inside a private, heavily guarded estate just three miles down the coast, the atmosphere was bone-dry and sterile. This was the archive of the MacInnis estate, home to the Loch Ness Fragments—thirteenth-century parchment scraps that detailed the true, un-redacted lineage of the Highland clans. If the Ordo sanitized these documents tonight, a massive piece of Scottish heritage would be erased to validate an Ordo-backed corporate land grab.
Martha and Sophie were parked a quarter-mile away in a rented, mud-splattered Defender. Martha was comfortably draped in an oversized, emerald-green cashmere shawl, her knitting needles clicking away on a pair of thick wool socks.
“The security grid is entirely thermal, Gran,” Sophie said, tapping her laptop screen. “If I try to climb…
