Chapter 20

Mark said, “As I was saying, before someone interrupted me ... What should we do with this place?”

Liyana said, “Well it’s been a secret for who knows how long, I say let’s just keep it a secret for a while longer, but I’d monitor this place just to see who else knows about it?”

Mark said, “Everyone in favour of keeping it a secret for a while longer?”

Everyone nodded yes, so Mark instructed Cricket to send drones out to monitor the island.

Deciding to leave the cave as it was, in case the Prince had some accomplices, they cleaned up the cave a bit and reset the beds.

On the way out of the cave, Mark touched something on the wall and accidentally opened another door inside the cave.

Everyone went inside and, as they entered the dimly lit cave, the lights intensified and they realized what they were seeing: a prison of sorts with one cell that had 6 small single beds, a toilet, a food synth and drink dispenser. There were two girls that appeared to be about 12 and 15 yahren old in the cell.

As soon as the lights brightened, they shielded their eyes. Both girls were naked and appeared to have bruises covering most of their bodies.

Liyana and Angela tried to open the door, but they couldn’t, so Mark tried and the door opened for him.

Angela said, “It might have to do with your royal blood, because of it, the King can do many things that others can’t. Further confirmation that you are the rightful king.”

The girls cautiously approached the scared girls. When they finally realized they were being saved, they started crying and hugging the girls. The younger girl pointed to a tunnel opening near Mark and sobbed out, “Maisie.”

Mark went down the tunnel she had pointed at and found a young girl, maybe 8 or 10, naked in a pillory anchored to the floor. The girl hung in the pillory very limply, and Mark wondered if she was even still alive. Her body looked very pale and emaciated, with dried blood down the insides of her thighs and fecal matter on the floor.

If Mark had to guess, the Prince, or one of his friends, had robbed her of her virginity and, in their arrogance or haste, just left her there to die.

Mark undid the pillory and lowered her to the floor. He lowered his ear to her mouth and watched her chest; she was still breathing, but barely.

Mark picked up the girl and carried her to the other room, where the two other girls, Taissia and Roberta, started crying.

Taissia, the older girl, said, “They took her 3 days ago ... is she dead?”

Mark told her, “She is still alive, but in desperate need of medical attention. We need to get her back to the palace ASAP.”

They seemed relieved that she wasn’t dead, but Mark asked, “Are there any others they needed to save?”

Taissia said, “I don’t think the others are still alive.”

The way she said it gave everyone an eerie sense of foreboding.

They wrapped Maisie in a blanket from the beds and Mark carried Maisie, while the others helped Taissia and Roberta out of the cave and up the steep trail as Annabelle asked, “How are we going to get the girls back to the palace?”

Knowing Maren had gone to visit her parents, they really didn’t want to bother her, but Cricket told Mark, “Maren is back at the palace.”

So Mark contacted Maren and asked her to come out to the crater island with the shuttle ASAP. Within a minute, Maren was landing the shuttle in the open grassy area. Mark carried Maisie in and laid her on the floor, and everyone else sat in the seats.

Realizing they still needed to get the boats back, Gyges, Solara, Rayven and Laruun said they would take one back each, while everyone else went back in the shuttle.

When they reached the palace, there were only two medibays, so they put Maisie in one, and Taissia went into the other, since she had significant bruising.

With the medibays started, they sat down with Roberta and talked.

They had taken all of them from Carthas by the Prince and his friends. Carthas was a decent sized city about 12 kilometres south of the crater lake. She got depressed thinking no one ever came looking for them.

Mark said, “They probably looked for quite a while, but they shielded the cave so scanners wouldn’t detect them in there. I’m going to look into how they could’ve taken her with no one knowing.”

Roberta said that Taissia had been there the longest and seemed to be their favourite, since she had the biggest boobs. Often all three of the guys took turns with her and they would bring her back to the cell covered in their cum.

Roberta had been there about 6 sectares and that two other girls had also been there, but they never saw them again. That was about 2 sectares ago, so she figured they killed them.

She tried to remember their names, but all she could remember was one name started with an S and the other started with an R. She didn’t know how old they were, but guessed they were about Maisie’s age, they were only there a day or two each.

After about 30 centons, Taissia was out of the medibay and Roberta went in. It was still estimating Maisie’s recovery at 10 centares.

They sat Taissia down and had her go through her story.

They kidnapped her from her room in the middle of the night, almost a yahren ago. She also wondered why no one ever looked for her.

After they had their way with her a few times, they started bringing younger girls in. She started being slutty for them and pretending she liked it. Hoping it would draw their attention away from the younger girls and it may have made their abuse less frequent, but they all got abused.

Since they had taken her, there had been 8 different girls. Taylor, Summer, Katie, Roberta, Sorscha, Robin and Maisie, but sometimes they wouldn’t bring them back. They all hoped that they had got away, even though they knew they probably didn’t.

Liyana had been doing some searches as they were talking. She had pulled up all the missing person’s reports of every name Taissia mentioned. All the girls were between 10 and 15 and all had disappeared, without a trace, from Carthas in the past yahren.

She pulled up a bunch of news reports about the missing girls. After the first three girls had gone missing, security was everywhere in Carthas and there was an increased number of drones there too, but girls still went missing and security had no clues. There were no signs of struggle, no signs of forced entry ... nothing! They seemed to just vanish ... sometimes during the daytime and sometimes at night, and from all over the city.

When the others got back after they had returned the boats, they brought them up to speed with the situation.

In all the commotion, Mark had forgot to ask Maren why she was back so soon, but Annabelle didn’t, “Maren, how come you’re not at your parents?”

Maren explained, “The surprise was on me! Mom and dad booked themselves a star cruise and vacation to the ocean planet of Neptune.”

Roberta was out of the bed fairly quickly as well, so Mark took them upstairs and had Jeff make supper for everyone.

When they asked if they could go home, Mark said they could, but to wait until Maisie recovered.

As they were eating, Mark got wondering and asked, “What did they do with the Prince?”

Liyana said, “They would’ve placed him in one of the holding cells in the basement, until it was safe to transport him to the orbital prison.”

Mark said, “I don’t remember him being transferred out, do any of you?”

Everyone shook their heads as Mark jumped up and ran downstairs to the holding cells, but all he found was an empty cell.

Immediately he asked, “As the Prince, he must have could change the palace, correct?”

Angela answered, “Yes, I suppose he could have, until you became King. Why?”

Mark said, “If I knew my end was coming, and I’d be at least temporarily held at the palace, I would’ve built in some escape tunnels into the cells.”

Angela said, “There’s nothing but forest and mountains for kilometres around this place. The Prince is not a rugged man like you, I doubt he could survive out in nature with no supplies, plus on the surface we would detect him.”

Mark said, “Cricket has there been any craft, other than the senators, in this area in the past two days?”

Cricket said, “No, they all landed and took off from the landing pad, nothing else until you reach Carthas. The last known location of the Prince’s ID was in the palace basement, but I see no trace of him right now.”

Mark said, “His tunnels hide him, so he could literally hide under the palace in a room with no door.”

Mark thought about it and extrapolated, “I bet the island cave is his escape plan, he has food synths, network access and isn’t detectable by the identification system. If I was in his shoes and the cave was a safe place to hide ... I’d probably hang out in the cave watching the news to see if they’re still looking for me. Then when they conclude that I must have escaped the planet somehow, I’d contact a friend and have them pick me up some place where there is regular shuttle traffic and then make my getaway.”

“Cricket, have we got a drone out at the island cave now?”

“I have two of them, one just outside of the cave relaying signals to one inside the cave. The Prince is not there right now.”

“Can you access the construx of the tunnel to see where it goes?”

“Yes, I can! The tunnel from the palace cells appears to lead to the island cave, but on the prison wing of the cave is another tunnel that leads to Carthas and then branches out to dozens of other tunnels underneath the city, I can see the construx structure, but I can’t see inside the tunnels.”

“Monitor the cave, he has to go through there to get to the Carthas escape tunnels. Bar the Carthas tunnel just before it branches off to other tunnels under Carthas and don’t let anyone but me open them. Once he shows up in the cave, notify me and let’s try to trap him there. Hopefully, he hasn’t escaped yet. Keep a vigilant eye on his ID and if it pops up, even for a second, notify me.”

Mark then told everyone his alternative theories about the Prince’s escape plan, “He has tunnels that lead all the way to Carthas and then splits up many directions. He could probably go directly into people’s homes via the tunnels, nab the girls, then seal off the tunnel behind him as they took their prey back to the cave.

You are undetectable inside his little tunnel network, so if he was going right into people’s homes, that would explain why their last known ID location was their house and why any security outside the house wouldn’t have seen anything.”

After they had finished eating supper, there were still a few centares until Maisie recovered, so Mark invited Jeff to discuss changes to the palace.

They already had a design for the senator wing, which was pretty much what was currently there just moved between the hotel and the senate chamber, including their eating and lounging areas on the ground level, so they wanted to discuss changes to the layout of the ground level and sub-level of the palace.

So they were going to move the kitchen from its current location to an area more central to the hotel and put the restaurant on one side and the lounge on the other. They also were going to have a deli, a sub shop and a couple of coffee shops, just to spread things around a bit and give people some faster food options. Then they were going to add a bathhouse and spa at the bottom of the west wing and they were going to have roughly a dozen meeting rooms of varying sizes, with two bigger dividable ones, so they could size to the event.

They were also going to add some faux fire pits out on the patio, and Mark wanted to add a faux fire pit on the patio of the royal suite. The royal floor was already one level higher than the rest of the hotel, so that area was locked away from the public, anyway.

Solara went to work redesigning the hotel, while Mark and Jeff called for a staff meeting in the dining hall.

There really wasn’t much for staff and they were pretty much all associated with the kitchen, except for two hostesses, a couple of janitors or maintenance people and a couple of landscapers. This was the first time many of them were meeting Mark.

Mark got up in front of them and said, “Thank you for coming! I know I haven’t met all of you yet, but I want you all to know that I am just a normal guy and don’t have expectations of being waited on hand and foot. In fact, you probably won’t be doing a lot of waiting on me anyway, as I will not be living here full time like previous monarchs.”

Many in the room got worried looks on their faces, until one of the kitchen guys spoke up, “So what do we do when you are not here? We aren’t going to just be hired for a few sectons per yahren, are we?”

Mark smiled and looked at Jeff, “Be honest with me please, how busy are your actual jobs outside of the few sectons the senate is meeting here?”

Another guy spoke up, “Sometimes it’s downright boring. I’m thankful to have a job, but sometimes it feels like I’m just being a drain on taxpayers.”

Mark smiled, “As I suspected ... I don’t enjoy wasting taxpayer money! I’ve been talking with Jeff, Senator Marsbe and my advisors and I have proposed to them, the idea of turning the palace into a hotel resort to keep it busy all yahren. More or less I want to take the palace from being a drain on taxpayers to a profitable venture. What do you guys, and gals, think about that idea? Don’t be shy, be honest!”

After it seemed like everyone was too scared to say anything, one girl spoke up, “I like the idea of being busy, some days it just seems like the day is crawling, because there’s nothing to do. I also think it will be nice having a variety of people around here, but I think we may need to hire more people.”

Mark smiled, “I hope so, we’re going to need some concierge services, we might actually have to have someone man the boathouse, I’m also considering building a golf course here and maybe developing some hiking or horse riding trails around here.

Think about it tonight and let me know your thoughts in the morning, after we all meet and have breakfast, and if you have any ideas for what amenities and services, we should offer here ... I’d love to hear them!”

Sensing the meeting was over, Jeff stepped in and told everyone to be there at 8:00 tomorrow morning for breakfast.

Mark then stuck around and talked to some staff and it seemed like they were getting a bit more comfortable around him, so hopefully he’d get some good feedback tomorrow.

Maisie still wasn’t out of the medibay, so Mark gave Taissia and Roberta rooms in the royal wing, but they didn’t want to be alone so they ended up staying with T’Soona, since she didn’t take up much room in a king-size bed by herself. Mark also moved Angela to the royal wing, since the rest of the palace was now vacant.

After the girls and T’Soona had gone to bed, everyone else converged on Mark’s patio in the hot tub. It had been a bit of a taxing day and everyone just needed to soak away the tension. No one voiced it, but if the Prince showed his face right now, any of them would gladly cut his balls off and shove them down his throat.