From Diamond to Coal

Chapter Two

Being William's PA meant that he got the best seat in the place, while the rest of the lackeys were forced to share a table and some folding chairs. He probably should have felt bad for them and how miserable their situation was, but he'd been there himself back in the day.

And sympathy was for losers. At least, that's what his brother had always told him before punching him in the gut.

He flipped through files on his ePad, skimming through the documents their creators had thought were so very important. There was very little chance that William was ever going to even see them.

Byron was the last line of defense saving William from the vast stupidity of his underlings. It made him feel like a knight of old, guarding the honor of his king.

I've been hanging out with Morgan too much, he thought with an internal snerk.

He glanced over a request for purchase of a complete Archon Missile Guidance System and the missiles as well. Since it was coming from a hostile dictator that was probably going to use it to continue subjugating his people, Byron didn't feel too bad about sending off a form rejection letter.

Why anyone would ever think that CyberAngel would be willing to provide weapons to anyone just because they had a bit of money was completely ridiculous. William had to be one of the most moral people he'd ever met. There was no way he would ever provide WMDs to the highest bidder.

Byron sent the request into the Saved folder, then started reading the next ridiculous message.

It was a relief when his phone rang, until he answered it.

"This is Hughes. Hello?" he said distractedly.

"You need to get William here right now," RJ sounded panicked. "We've got like a Chernobyl situation going on here."

Considering RJ was the head of R&D, Byron was already on his feet and heading toward the door before he thought to ask what was going on. "What's happened?" He nudged a Secret Service agent that didn't move fast enough out of his way.

"We were testing the Krioten Accelerator and something went wrong. We're approaching a massive overload situation. Can you just get the phone to William? Maybe he can do something," Rj said with desperate hope.

Jogging down the hallway toward the large banquet hall, Byron had a feeling things weren't going to get any better. Especially when he heard the echo of alarms blaring in the background of the call and RJ cursed vehemently.

Byron fumbled his ePad into his jacket pocket as he ran and sent off a quick emergency message through his Cymplant to David, William's head of security, telling him to arrange for the helicopter stat.

Whatever happened, even if RJ somehow got things under control, there was no way William wasn't going to want to be there. He would want to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb and find out exactly what had gone wrong.

And if things really were going completely wrong... well, from what Byron understood, the Krioten Accelerator had the capacity to blow a large patch of city right off the face of the world.

Which was not something Byron wanted to have happen. Especially when it was on his watch.

* * *

At first it was kind of a relief when Byron showed up with the phone, right up until he figured out what RJ was yelling about. That's about when everything went to total crap.

"I've gotta go," he said to the room at large, standing up.

He gave Alan a sorry glance and got a shrug in return.