Chapter 6 - The Savoy Blackout

I’ve been working on a new project that I’ve got completely outlined and partially written. I’m excited to share one of the earlier chapters in the book with you. This is Chapter 6. Shoot me an e-mail and let me know what you think.

The flight from Seattle to Heathrow was ten hours of synthetic air, espresso jitters, and existential dread. Somewhere over Hudson Bay, Morgan dry-swallowed a benzo and chased it with a plastic tumbler of Scotch, his stomach a war zone of tequila residue and airline pretzels. A man in a gold watch two rows back kept staring at him—either a Zane Elliot goon or a businessman with resting threat-face, Morgan couldn’t tell.

In the buzz of altitude, he hallucinated a cockpit announcement about BVM folding four kings to a jack-high straight and laughed out loud, drawing a glance from a flight attendant. The future was coming like a freight train and he was strapped to the tracks—scraping together a living chasing stories that AI would soon regurgitate in seconds in five languages with better grammar and zero overhead.

Once, his name opened doors. Now, Rolling Stone killed his last three pitches and his Substack revenue graph looked like a ski slope into the abyss. He had eight thousand dollars left in his bank account, which would evaporate faster than his credibility if this story didn’t pan out.

But worse than the debt or the looming threat of his ex-wife’s legal team was the stench of irrelevance. This scoop—whatever the hell BVM was orchestrating with QNC—might be the thing that either buries Morgan forever or launches him back into the bloodstream of public consciousness. He hated needing notoriety, but needed it all the same. Fame was a dirty needle and he was long past caring about sterile technique.

He landed in Heathrow just past 5:00 PM, dazed and rank, nerves on fire and skin buzzing from cabin pressure and chemical cocktails. The fog was classic London, the kind that seeped into your cuffs and whispered that you’d made a terrible mistake.

He cabbed west, stopping in Ealing to drop his bag at a hotel that smelled of mildew and broken dreams. The neon sign blinked like it knew he wouldn’t be back for breakfast. Morgan stared at the cracked ceiling for thirty seconds before swiping deodorant over his shirt and diving back into the taxi. There wasn’t time to unpack—not when Bernard von Moravek was tweeting about chaos and kings and the board bleeding like it had a pulse.

Now, pushing through the velvet crush of Savoy elegance, Morgan felt every mile, every minute of descent. This was the temple of tech’s next revelation, and he was the heretic at the door, not even sure what religion they were practicing anymore.

At 8:00 PM, Morgan Mason should have been overwhelmed by the spectacle—the chandeliers scattering prisms, the velvet drapes like blood pooling from the ceiling. Morgan had quick flashes, false memories really, of bodies lying in the velvet pools, like some bizarre crime scene photography from a 1940s tabloid.

Jazz horns glided over murmured IPOs and whispered corporate espionage. What were the Chinese doing with the information they were gathering in California think tanks? How had the centi-billionaire constructing data centers in Tennessee gotten such early access to the latest AI chipsets?

But Morgan’s attention kept circling one thing: the flash of a cream-colored napkin peeking from Bernard von Moravek's tuxedo jacket pocket, folded like a schoolboy's origami. The thing that had pulled Morgan across an ocean and out of a bottle.

Why would he be carrying something as valuable as he claimed it was so nonchalantly? It would be too fucking easy to steal. Or to find some drunken merely deci-billionaire had spilled champagne all over it.

He hovered near a dessert cart, rumpled jacket soaked with jetlag and nerves. The edges of his vision shimmered with benzo fuzz, but the napkin cut through like a lighthouse beam. This wasn’t just about cracking consciousness. It was bait. And Morgan, God help him, was circling like a moth.

The ballroom reeked of money, well-founded paranoia, and Adderall. Blockchain moguls laughed too loud. A man with a hearing aid kept fingering the edge of a wineglass, but the way he held his spine screamed “agency” or very elite private security. Morag Kerr floated through it all like something sentient and half-feral. Her raven dress shimmered as she passed, her perfume a scent of peat, ink and secrets trailing behind her. She caught Morgan's gaze for a half-second—not recognition, but acknowledgement. Then gone. A flare in fog.

Morgan shifted. His feet ached from the cheap shoes he’d quickly changed into as he dumped his bags in a cheap Ealing hotel. His burner buzzed in his pocket. Text from his British source:

"BVM's jacket open. No security on his flank. You seeing this?”

"I'm standing ten feet away," he texted back. Then, as an afterthought: "Feels like a setup."

And that’s when the lights went out.

Glass shattered. Screams erupted. A horn wailed like a dying thing. For one disoriented breath, Morgan thought his heart had exploded. It’s how he expected to go – too much booze, cigarettes, and weirdness for one life.

Then motion. Black hoodies darting through stuttering emergency light. Riley's crew—had to be. One of them, tall and narrow-shouldered, was texting mid-theft. You had to admire his commitment to his online life. Another, shorter and fast, vaulted a champagne table. A brutish figure surged into the fray—Viktor Kovalenko. Morgan saw the owl tattoo flash and felt something primal shudder in his bones. The same silhouette that had haunted his cabin window? The same glint of gold cufflink.

"You son of a bitch," he muttered.

Viktor shoved a waiter aside like a bowling pin. The hooded figure with the phone froze, caught in the enforcer’s tractor beam. Kovalenko lunged. But the shorter hoodie—Riley? Had to be Riley—slammed into his knees from the side, folding him like a beach chair. The enforcer fell hard. Champagne flew. Glass exploded. Morgan felt cold wetness slash across his legs.

For one unsteady second, the napkin was unattended.

For reasons that were unclear to him, Morgan moved toward the napkin.

Three steps. A stuttered breath. And then a fourth figure collided with him, shoulder to shoulder. He staggered back into a serving cart, the collision clanging like a bell.

The napkin was gone.

Morgan whirled, searching the mess. Hooded figures melted into shadow. Viktor was up again, limping and shouting in Russian into a sleek comm unit. The lights surged back on. Chandeliers flickered, then steadied. People screamed in relief or confusion or both. A keen of confused conversation rose in both pitch and volume as people sensed the emergency, if that’s what it had been, was over.

On the hacked screen behind the jazz band, new words blinked in stark Helvetica:

CHAOS EDUCATES.

The room felt gutted. A hive after smoke.

And then, in the doorway to the hallway, just past the ballroom threshold, he saw her.

Lena Voss.

Short blond hair. Cold blue eyes. Leather jacket zipped halfway. Not part of the gala—not by a mile. She was watching. Not interfering. Calculating.

Morgan froze. It had been years. Rotterdam? A New York sting? He wasn’t sure. He’d need to look that up later. A half-remembered headline floated through his mind—“Disgraced FBI fixer turned mercenary asset.” He wasn’t even sure what that meant. But she hadn’t changed. Still moved like someone who expected a fight. His first thought – Why is she here? – quickly shifted to – What’s she doing?

He turned instinctively to see where she was looking. Not Riley. Not BVM.

Viktor.

The enforcer, now hobbling, was exiting through a side door with another man—tall, slick gray hair, camelhair coat. Morgan recognized him. Lawrence St. James. Senior staff to Zane Elliot. The one who brokered that dumb drone-algorithm deal on *The Zephyr*. The one who always had a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Morgan’s pulse kicked.

He shoved toward the exit, jostled by someone shrieking about a ruined dress. His fingers shook as he lit a cigarette outside, the London fog dense and cold. His jacket still dripped champagne. His Substack draft now felt like a lie.

But he had pieces.

Lena Voss in London.

Viktor Kovalenko limping to St. James.

Morag, watching everything, including Morgan, like she was reading ahead in the script.

And BVM? Smiling. Always smiling. What. The. Fuck.

Morgan’s burner buzzed again. Text from his source:

"Told you it was big. Meet up?"