Mr. Jay’s Castle
“L ike I said,” one of his surviving men said. “The deadline ends much earlier than when the nukes would arrive.” The man cautiously stepped over the dead bodies in the office. “But don’t worry, they can’t escape.”
“Are you sure of that?” Mr. Jay said from the dark.
“Where can they go? We’re breaking in and exterminating them. Either they’ll panic and escape outside where we’ll catch them and put them on trial — if we don’t get the chance to shoot them right away. They’re dead.”
“Are you sure they have no way else to escape?”
“Even if the tunnels could help them, our forces are everywhere. Be it a sewer or a door that should lead them out, the police will shoot them on the spot.”
“It better be so.”
“It will. I wouldn’t risk you shooting me if we failed.”
“I’m shooting you either way,” Mr. Jay said. “It’s a hobby. I don’t just shoot for punishment.”
“Oh.” The man shrugged with a loud twitch.
He could hear Mr. Jay’s leather chair moving, as if he were leaning back.
“Would you mind if I ask you something before I die?” the man said reluctantly.
“I know what’s on your mind,” Mr. Jay said. “You want to know why I gathered the Inklings all up in the asylum. You want to know how I did it.”
“The how is somehow imaginable,” the man said. “I mean you used some technology and faked a message for Alice, supposedly from the Pillar’s phone. Then did the same with the March Hare; then faked a message for the Pillar from Alice. Then Alice and March arrived at the asylum, though the Pillar had been hit on the head and sedated, then sent as well.”
“I may not want to kill you,” Mr. Jay told his smart employee. “You’ve figured it out just fine.”
“But I still have questions. Why fake the messages for the Queen and Margaret as well?”
“Not Nutty — I mean the Queen. I will miss her. But I faked it for Margaret. I was starting to suspect her loyalty. I had a plan to get rid of her too, but the Pillar thankfully beat me to it by blowing up the limousine.”
“Aha,” the man said. “Which brings me to the final question: Why gather and ambush them? Why now?”
“Because the Chessmaster told Alice about her family, and so she wasn’t going to stop until she knew. Once she realized I killed them, there was no way I could convince her to join Black Chess again. It’s Alice whom I’ve always wanted on my team. Now that it’s not possible, I had to get rid of them. To do so, I had to use the media and turn the Inklings into a public enemy.”
“Isn’t Black Chess powerful enough to end the Inklings?”
“Every powerful organization in the world always needs the media backing it up. You can’t win a war with guns only. You need the people on your side. You need them to help you win it by washing their brains with false information. Just give them a villain they’d love to hate, and you’ve got yourself a winner.”
“Brilliant Mr. Jay.” The man clapped in an attempt to win his boss’s sympathy. “And what about the Plan B you’ve talked about?”
Mr. Jay laughed in that hollow voice again. It filled the walls with a subtle shade of grey, and sucked most of the oxygen from the room. “Plan B is my masterpiece. It will ensure that even those who would survive the massacre at the asylum will not survive the day after.”