Phase 2: THE PANTHEON
Chapter 31
The Royal Mile was shrouded in a thick, wet mist that tasted of soot and ancient stone. It clung to skin and fabric alike, softening the sharp edges of the city while hiding its bones. To the tourists, Edinburgh was a city of festivals, bagpipes, and history pressed neatly into guidebooks. To us, it was a high-tech labyrinth built on centuries of paranoia.
St. Jude’s Research Hospital rose from the fog like a monolith of glass and steel grafted onto medieval soil. Officially, it was a private cardiovascular and infectious disease institute. Unofficially, it was a Pantheon facility, its funding buried beneath shell charities and academic grants.
Private security ringed the building tighter than any prison Konstantin Volkov had ever operated.
“The facili
