“Brussels!”

“Parliament!”

“A bomb!”

“A missile! Three!”

“It’s burning!”

“Someone just blew up the European Parliament!”

I, still a prisoner of the operating table, was one of perhaps a thousand people in the world who did not watch. The Senators, like you, reader, or like your ancestors, tuned in and watched the flames which boiled around the columns of the Parliamentary Hall, like the bloody juices of some demon’s gut unleashed upon the stone. A mob had assembled in the streets of Brussels, with stones and Molotov cocktails hidden behind their signs and chants, but they scattered now like blasted sand before the inferno which, in their fervor, they might have created themselves, had someone not beaten them to it. Stone shards flew like hail. More missiles followed, sky-bolts trailing white smoke like celestial fingers pointing to the target of Providence’s wrath. Even riding the Space Elevators, children invited by Utopia to enjoy their first taste of humanity’s next destination froze to watch the trails bloom around Brussels like the starburst of a dandelion.

Commentary followed, the more resilient reporters struggling to narrate what they could understand of the barrage. Others, honest about their ignorance, resorted to film, replaying the impact of the first missile on the dome, or the last footage of the session within. Parliament had been full, every bench filled by the Prime Minister’s summons, wings crammed with judges, aides, and Europe’s Senators, who had accepted Perry’s invitation to share the security of the Parliament House, and so escape the Romanovan mob. Casimir Perry himself, bandaged and bloody from his fall at Madame’s the night before, had been at the podium at the final moment, railing at the assembly like a man possessed. «I’m no more guilty than any of you! Everyone in this room consented to the O.S. murders, not once but a hundred times! It is impossible to deny! Every one of you voted for ‘special means’ more than thirty times since Spain was voted out! And you protected it with your silence for decades before! You are guilty, all of you! The world—» The first blast knocked him to the ground, and buried a third of Parliament in stone and flame. «You see! We all deserve judgment! The world knows it! The world will be our judge!» Flame followed.

In Romanova, Heloïse was most prepared to break shock’s spell. “Aunt Bryar, come!” She tugged the Cousin Chair’s limp hand. “The world needs you! There are victims! Fires! Orphans! Burns! Europe is wounded! It needs your ambulances, your nurses, your councilors! It needs your Cousins! Come!”

Bryar Kosala paused, eyes locked on her husband the ex-Censor and ex-Anonymous—Hiveless and soon to be a Humanist, but with the French nation-strat band still bright around his wrist—who sat doubled over in his seat, winded by sobs as the heart of Europe burned. She followed Heloïse.

* * *

“Madame must marry me!” King Isabel Carlos II paced like a tormented lion in the too-small chamber outside Madame’s bedroom. “She must! There is no other solution!”