I stopped at the head of the aisle, looking down at Vanessa, Kendra, and Beatrice where they stood huddled in their ruined pride.
“You told Kendra through the wall last night, Vanessa,” I spoke, my voice carrying forty decibels of compressed, sub-zero polar diamond:
“That I never realize anything until it’s already too late.”
I reached inside the folds of my bridal bouquet, pulling out that four-inch antique solid-titanium surveyor’s compass transit key, stepped with fifty-six analog cryptographic notches:
`KEY IDENTIFIER: MERCER-ARTHUR-010`
`CLASSIFICATION: STRATEGIC SOVEREIGN ESCROW // TITLE 50 CONTINUITY`
`TITLE: CONDUIT TEN // THE CAPITAL COMMAND SPUR`
*CLINK.*
I laid the heavy titanium keyway flat on the communion rail right beside the spilled wine.
Vanessa’s skeleton seemed to liquefy.
Her jaw unhinged, her face turning the color of wet lime plaster, her hands clawing at her stained bodice:
“The… the master transit keyway…?” Vanessa wheezed, her vocal cords tearing:
“Where did you get that keyway?! My father said Arthur Mercer buried the analog transit ciphers forty fathoms under the Atlantic!”
