Infinity + 1 Chapter 9

 

Infinity + 1 Chapter 9

Anglesey, North Wales, 2011

The rain had finally ceased over Anglesey, leaving the world washed clean and smelling of damp earth and salt. Inside his modest cottage, however, Prince William was anything but clean and refreshed. He was a man unravelled. The digital clock on his bedside table glowed a merciless 4:17 AM. In precisely nineteen hours, he would begin his walk down the aisle of Westminster Abbey, a global spectacle waiting to devour him. And he couldn't sleep a wink.

It wasn't nerves about Catherine. The thought of her, steady and bright, was the only solid thing in his whirring mind. It was the crushing, monolithic weight of The Next Day. The history, the eyes, the deafening silence inside the Abbey before the first note of the anthem. It was a panic that had him bolt upright at 2 AM, heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

He’d done the recommended things: a glass of warm milk (useless), a chapter of a bland biography (his eyes skimmed the words without comprehension), even a few minutes of deep breathing that made him feel like a hypocrite. In desperation, he’d opened his laptop, the blue glow a cold moon in the dark room. A mindless scroll through Facebook, a digital opiate for the terminally awake.

That’s when he found him.

The algorithm, in its infinite and eerie wisdom, served him an artist. A page called “Ramon Atila’s Cosmic Doodles.” The profile was a picture of a young man with intense eyes and a beanie, standing in front of a brick wall covered in vibrant, chaotic murals. Location: Brooklyn, New York.

William clicked. And then he fell in.

The art was unlike anything he’d seen. It wasn't the clean, futuristic sci-fi of starships and alien diplomats. This was grimy, pulpy, and alive. It was a world called “To Live and Die on Mars.” But this Mars wasn’t a red desert; it was a sprawling, rain-slicked megalopolis that looked unsettlingly like Los Angeles, if LA had two bruised-peach moons hanging in a smog-orange sky.

The aliens weren’t noble explorers. They were gangsters. They wore sharp, iridescent suits that shimmered under neon signs written in a jagged, untranslatable script. They drove ground-cars with retro-finned designs that hovered a few inches off the streets, kicking up sprays of lurid, chemical-colored puddles. Their weapons weren’t laser blasters; they were ornate, hand-crafted pulse-guns that looked like they belonged to a 1920s mobster who’d raided a supernova.

William was mesmerized. He devoured panel after panel. A four-armed crime lord in a fedora, negotiating a deal in a bar that served bubbling blue liquor. A chase through the canyon-like streets of the Syrtis Major City, hover-cars weaving between monolithic, decaying skyscrapers. A femme fatale with shimmering silver skin and eyes like nebulae, holding a smoking pistol.

The clock bled into 3:00 AM. The warm milk sat curdled in its glass, a pathetic monument to failed remedies. William’s mind was a trapped bird, fluttering against the cage of his skull, each beat of its wings a frantic echo of tomorrow’s processional music, the weight of the Imperial State Crown, the billion-strong gaze. He opened the laptop again, a sinner returning to his vice. This time, he delved deeper into Ramon Atila’s page, into the sketches and half-formed ideas the artist posted alongside his polished panels.

And that’s where he found it. A series of sketches, rougher, more philosophical. It was titled, simply, “The Great Filter.” It depicted the evolution of a species, but not the triumphant march from ape to man he’d seen in textbooks. This was different. It started familiarly: a fish crawling onto land, a mammal rising on its hind legs, a primitive human wielding a tool. Then it shifted. The human form, having mastered its environment, began to atrophy. The body shrank, the limbs grew slender from disuse. The skull enlarged, a grotesque balloon to house a brain now dedicated entirely to consuming digital spectacles and virtual experiences. The eyes, no longer needing to squint at the sun or track prey, became vast, black, and depthless—windows to a soul that lived entirely online. The final panel was a Grey Alien, passive, serene, and floating in a nutrient tank, its existence a silent, endless scroll through a universe of its own creation.

William felt a cold dread that had nothing to do with his wedding. This wasn't just a cartoon; it was a prophecy. It was the end point of every comfort, every innovation his world had ever produced. It was the logical conclusion of a life where every need was met, every danger mitigated, every moment planned and sanitized for your protection. His life. The life he was born into and the life he was destined to perpetuate. Was this the ultimate destination of royalty? Of humanity itself? To become a symbol so refined, so removed from the grit of living, that you ceased to be human at all? A ceremonial alien, floating in the tank of tradition.

He should have scoffed. He should have closed the tab. This was stoner philosophy, the kind of half-baked, late-night speculation that was far more his brother Harry’s department. Harry would love this, would probably want to get the artist’s number, invite him for a pint. Will was meant to be above it. He was meant to be contemplating sovereign duties and constitutional nuances, not the existential fate of the species as illustrated by a Brooklyn graffiti artist.

But he couldn’t stand how it gripped him. It wasn’t the concept itself, but the delivery—the raw, punk-rock energy of the lines, the unsettling beauty in the grotesque transformation. It was art that didn’t ask permission to unravel you.

He fell back against his pillows, the laptop glowing beside him. The dread began to mutate, to ferment into something stranger. Lying there, in the silent pre-dawn, he felt a bizarre, euphoric high settle over him. The artist hadn’t just shown him a bleak future; he had, perversely, illuminated the brilliant, terrifying present. This cartoon, this wild, unauthorized thought, had just reminded him of the raw, biological miracle of it all. The thump of his own heart, the ache in his tired eyes, the gritty, real feeling of not having slept. This was life. The messy, unscripted, evolutionary turmoil of it.

Ramon Atila, a stranger he would never meet, had somehow reached across the ocean and shaken him by the shoulders. Tomorrow wasn’t a sterile ceremony. It was a primal, human ritual. A vow, not just of state, but of blood and breath and choice. He felt high on the thought of it, not as a Prince, but as a man. A living, breathing, gloriously imperfect animal, lucky enough to be alive at all.

Ramon Atila’s captions were snippets of a hardboiled narration: *“Vex’lor knew the score. On Mars, you didn’t get what you deserved. You got what you negotiated with a hot pulse-ray to the face.”* Another read: *“The twin moons watched, indifferent as always. Another body in the canal, another secret lost to the rust-red tides.”*

This was it. This was escape. This was a world where the problems were immediate, violent, and solvable with a smart line and a quicker trigger finger. There were no centuries of tradition, no press scrutiny, no delicate constitutions to consider. There was just the stark, beautiful, dangerous poetry of survival on a fake Los Angeles Mars.

William forgot about the Abbey. He forgot about the vows, the guest list, the perfect, suffocating precision of it all. He was just a man in a dark room, falling into the glorious, ink-splattered dream of a kid from New York he would never meet. He clicked ‘Like’ on every image, a ghost in the machine, offering silent, fervent gratitude.

The sky outside was shifting from black to a soft, pearlescent grey when he finally closed the laptop. His mind was no longer racing with panic; it was buzzing with the electric hum of Ramon Atila’s Mars. He felt… unburdened. And utterly exhausted.

A few hours later, at the RAF Valley base, he was a man running on a different kind of fuel. The lack of sleep was a hollow ache behind his eyes, but it was papered over by a fierce, jittery energy. He’d had his usual morning regimen – a potent hit of caffeine from an industrial-strength espresso, the kind that could jump-start a helicopter, and the adrenal thrill of the ride over.

He pulled into the base on his red Ducati 1198, the bike’s roar a defiant announcement of his arrival. He killed the engine, and in the sudden silence, the only sound was the *tink… tink… tink* of the cooling engine block and the distant whine of a trainer aircraft.

He pulled off his helmet. His hair was perfect, of course. His uniform was immaculate. But his eyes told a different story. They were the bright, slightly wide eyes of a man who had seen something that wouldn’t let him go.

His squadron leader, a gruff, no-nonsense man named Evans, took one look at him and grinned. “Bloody hell, sir. Big day tomorrow. You look like you’ve been wrestling with the future all night.”

William clapped him on the shoulder, a gesture that felt more like the gangsters on Mars than a future king of England. “Something like that, Evans. Just doing a bit of off-planet reconnaissance.”

He strode towards the hangar, his boots crunching on the gravel. The day ahead was a familiar script: pre-flight checks, navigation drills, the stark, comforting logic of aviation. It was duty. It was reality.

But as he walked, his mind kept drifting. He saw the rain on the Anglesey roads not as water, but as the neon-glazed chemical runoff of Syrtis Major. The grey hangars weren’t buildings; they were the monolithic landing bays for hover-cars. For a fleeting, glorious moment, Prince William of Wales wasn’t heading to a helicopter. He was Vex’lor, the four-armed gangster, walking into his favourite dive bar under the watchful, indifferent moons, ready to negotiate the terms of his own destiny with a hot pulse-ray and a smart line.

He smiled, a real, unforced smile that reached his eyes. He could do this. He could walk down the aisle. He could face the world. Because he now carried a secret, a tiny, blazing shard of another world in his pocket. A world where you could live and die on Mars, and all that mattered was the score you settled today.

---

Westminster Abbey

The scent of beeswax and old stone filled Westminster Abbey, a fragrance of history that did little to calm Catherine’s nerves. Sunlight, fractured by the great rose window, threw coloured patterns on the flagstones where she would tomorrow walk towards her future. Today, it was just a practice.

“Right, from the top, everyone,” a clipped voice echoed in the vastness. “The procession will begin…”

Catherine’s mind snagged on the instructions. Her smile, practised and warm for the small gathering of family and her bridal party, felt brittle. Every step, every pause, every turn was a move in a choreography watched by the world. The weight of it pressed down, a physical sensation on her shoulders.

Her sister, Pippa, noticed instantly. She looped her arm through Catherine’s, pulling her aside as the vicar discussed timing with the organist. “Hey,” she murmured, her voice a soft counterpoint to the echoing directives. “You’ve gone a bit pale. Deep breath.”

Catherine obliged, the air catching in her throat. “It’s just… a lot.”

“It’s a rehearsal, Kate. The point is to get it wrong now so it’s perfect tomorrow.” Pippa’s eyes, so like her own, searched her face. “This isn’t just about the steps, is it?”

Catherine shook her head, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement. She glanced around to ensure they weren’t overheard. “I didn’t sleep. Not a wink. I feel… untethered. What if I’m too tired? What if I stumble? What if my mind goes completely blank when I’m meant to speak?” The fears tumbled out in a hushed rush.

Pippa squeezed her arm. “You could do it in your sleep. Honestly, you probably will,” she joked, but her tone was gentle. “Look at me. You are Catherine Middleton. You have handled a decade of this madness with more grace than anyone deserves. A little lost sleep isn’t going to undo you.”

“It feels like it might,” Catherine confessed, her voice small. “I want everything to be right for him. For us.”

“And it will be.” Pippa’s smile was knowing. “You know, I saw Will on FaceTime this morning. Just for a second when he was arriving at the base. He looked exactly how you feel—like he’d been run over by a lorry. But his eyes… he had this wild, happy look about him. Like a man who’d seen a ghost and rather enjoyed it.”

Catherine frowned. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” Pippa laughed. “But my point is, he’s probably just as nervous, just as exhausted. Maybe more. And if he can get through today looking like he’s just had the most bizarre and brilliant night of his life, then you, my un-slept sister, can absolutely get through this rehearsal.”

The image of William, exhausted yet strangely euphoric, steadied her. They were in this together. Their private anxieties were just that—private. A shared secret they would each bear tomorrow, a hidden current beneath the glittering surface.

“Now,” Pippa said, straightening the lace on Catherine’s sleeve. “Let’s go and walk very, very slowly to some profoundly boring music. And if you forget the steps, I’ll just give you a hefty nudge in the right direction.”

Catherine’s laugh was genuine this time, a real sound that bounced softly off the ancient walls. The tightness in her chest eased. The sleepless night wasn't a portent of failure; it was just a long night. And today was just a rehearsal.

Taking another deep breath, this one fuller, calmer, she let Pippa lead her back to their marks. The organist began the processional, the notes swelling to fill the Abbey. Catherine looked down the long nave, not with fear, but with a quiet, resolute anticipation. Tomorrow, she would walk this path for real. And tonight, she would try to sleep. But if she couldn’t, it would be alright. She wasn’t alone. She was just gloriously, humanly, awake.

---

The roar of the Ducati was a purr compared to the engine in his head. The flight drills were over, the banter with the lads at RAF Valley a distant, muffled echo. As he sped away from the base, the structured world of rotors and radar gave way to the wild, untamed landscape of his own thoughts.

They weren't about flight paths or fuel loads anymore. They were about time. The crushing weight of it. The Abbey was a sinkhole of history, pulling centuries of tradition into its vortex, and he was the event horizon. Tomorrow, he would become a focal point, a man tasked with elevating an entire people—through a *wedding*. The absurdity of it, the sheer, magnificent pressure, was a constant hum in his veins. He was supposed to be a symbol of the future, yet he felt more like a curator of the past.

The men had noticed his distraction. The way he’d stared a little too long at the horizon, his answers a beat too slow, his smile a touch too philosophical for a man about to have his stag night. But he was their future Commander-in-Chief, and he was entitled to a little strangeness on the eve of his wedding. Their respect was a wall that politely contained their curiosity.

He didn't turn towards the abbey rehearsal route. Instead, on an impulse as sudden and undeniable as the panic the night before, he gunned the bike towards the cottage, then past it, down a narrow lane that led to a high, windswept field.

At the crest of the hill stood a gnarled oak, a solitary sentinel against the Welsh sky. Its roots clutched the earth like ancient fingers. And buried deep beneath them, wrapped in oilcloth and sealed in a rusting tin bread box, was a time capsule of a different life. His and Harry’s.

He knelt, the damp earth soaking into his uniform trousers. He didn't care. His fingers, clumsy with a strange urgency, dug past the loose soil and stones until they scraped against metal. He pried the lid open. Inside were the artifacts of boyhood: a cracked compass, a few faded football cards, a petrified stick of gum. Two compartments. His was orderly. Harry’s was chaos.

His hand went straight to Harry’s side, pushing past a tangled mess of fishing line and a broken action figure. There. Tucked in a corner, in a small plastic baggie, was a single, clumsily rolled joint. It was brittle with age, the paper yellowed. A relic of adolescent rebellion, a dare they’d never quite gotten around to.

He held it up. The unthinkable. The absolute, protocol-shattering, front-page-headline if-caught transgression. Prince William, second in line to the throne, with a stolen joint from his brother’s stash, about to commit a minor crime the day before his wedding.

Every fibre of his training, every instinct of duty, screamed at him to stop. This was not the path of a king. This was the path of a problem.

But the image of the Grey Alien, floating serene and useless in its tank, flashed behind his eyes. This was the opposite of that. This was grit. This was raw, un-sanitized, gloriously imperfect life. It was a choice. His choice.

His hands were steady. He lit the end with his Zippo, the flame sucking in the sea wind. He inhaled.

The smoke hit his lungs, a harsh, ancient burn. He held it, watching the clouds race over the Irish Sea. Then he coughed, a ragged, unprincely sound that was carried away by the wind. A warmth spread through his chest, a chemical calm that began to soften the sharp, terrified edges of his mind. The monolithic weight of The Next Day didn't feel lighter, but it felt… farther away. Manageable. The buzzing thoughts of legacy and history blurred into a single, profound sensation: the wind on his face, the salt in the air, the thump of his own heart.

He took one more drag, then carefully extinguished the tiny ember, pocketing the evidence. He stood there for a long time, a solitary figure under the vast sky, no longer a prince preparing for a spectacle, but simply a man, quiet and present, watching the world turn.

---

The sleek, dark car sat idling outside the Middleton’s hotel, a silent rebuke. Every second it remained empty was a deviation from the iron-clad schedule.

Inside, Kate’s phone lay dormant in her palm. Her third call to William had gone straight to voicemail. The serene composure from the Abbey rehearsal had evaporated, replaced by a cold, creeping dread.

“He should have called by now,” she said, her voice tight. “He said he’d call when he was wheels-up from Anglesey.”

Pippa, hovering nearby, tried to sound light. “You know him. Probably got caught up with the lads. One last farewell pint that ran long. He’ll be on a chopper, no signal.”

But the excuse rang hollow. William was never late. Not for this.

Against all protocol, Kate scrolled through her contacts and called the direct line for the duty officer at RAF Valley. The conversation was brief, polite, and utterly chilling.

“No, Your Royal Highness-to-be,” the confused sergeant said. “We’ve had no request for transport. The aircraft is on standby, but we’ve received no word from His Royal Highness. We assumed the plans had changed.”

The world tilted. Kate ended the call, her hand trembling. “They haven’t heard from him. They were waiting for him to call them. He never did.”

Pippa’s face lost its reassuring smile. “Okay. Okay. Don’t panic. Maybe he’s just… delayed. Maybe the bike broke down.” Even she didn’t believe it.

“In the middle of Anglesey? With no phone call?” Kate’s mind, tired and wired, leapt to the darkest possibilities. The relentless press. A accident on a lonely road. The unthinkable.

“Call Harry,” Pippa urged, her voice low and serious. “He’ll know what to do. He’ll know how to find him.”

It was the only option that didn’t involve triggering a full-scale security panic. With numb fingers, Kate found Harry’s number. He answered on the second ring, his voice cheerful with pre-wedding chaos.

“Kate! To what do I owe the—”

“Harry,” she interrupted, her voice a strained whisper. “William’s missing.”

The line went silent for a beat. “What do you mean, missing?”

“He was supposed to be flown from Anglesey hours ago. The RAF never got the call. He’s not answering his phone. No one knows where he is.” The words tumbled out, laced with a fear she could no longer suppress.

She heard Harry take a sharp breath, the background noise fading as he moved somewhere quieter. “Right. Okay. First, don’t alarm anyone. Especially not the police yet.” His tone had shifted completely; it was now all focused, military precision. “He’s probably just being an idiot. Needing a moment. There’s a place he goes… a thinking spot. Let me make a call. I’ll call you right back.”

The line went dead. Kate clutched the phone, staring at Pippa. The two sisters stood in the opulent silence of the hotel suite, the weight of the unknown pressing down on them. The perfect wedding, the global spectacle, was suddenly secondary to a single, terrifying question: where was he?

---

The Ducati ate the road in ragged gulps, the Welsh wind cutting at his face, the roar of the engine a narcotic rhythm that matched the thud of his heart. He leaned into the curves too hard, laughed too loudly into the night air, and blinked too slowly at the streaked lines of the road. He was stoned, thoroughly, indisputably stoned, and for the first time in his hyper-managed life, he didn’t give a damn.

The thought should have terrified him—should have snapped him back to the straight, Windsor-laced reality he had spent three decades rehearsing. Instead, it thrilled him. It was transgression, yes, but more than that: it was liberation. The joint had cracked something in him, a dam of expectation and ritual. And now the flood rushed in, warm, relentless, and irresistible.

By the time he pulled into the gravel drive of his cottage, the Ducati cooling in sharp metallic ticks, the dread had curdled into something stranger. He had the vague, queasy sense that he’d crossed an invisible line, one that could never be uncrossed. But instead of recoiling, he leaned into it. Let the straight-and-narrow William die here, tonight. Let the clean-cut, dutiful face of tomorrow’s groom dissolve into smoke. A billion people could watch the coronation of his corpse tomorrow; the man inside had already slipped free.

He staggered through the doorway, boots thudding against the floorboards, and kicked the door shut behind him. The silence of the cottage pressed close, suffocating in its prim tidiness. He needed noise. He needed a pulse to match the one still hammering in his chest.

He jabbed at the stereo, fumbling through the dial until a euphoric synth anthem flooded the space, big and pulsing, the kind of song that belonged to smoke-filled clubs and flashing strobes, not this damp Welsh hideaway. The bass rattled the windows. He laughed aloud, the sound sharp and unhinged.

The shower was next. He stripped, shedding his immaculate uniform onto the tiles in a careless heap. The water blasted down, hot enough to sting, and for a moment he simply stood there, head bowed, letting it pound the back of his neck like a punishment. Then his eyes opened, and he saw it.

The tiles.

They weren’t tiles anymore. They were time. Each square a year, each grout-line a century, stretching upward and outward into infinity. He saw his life mapped out in neat, white geometric inevitability: the decades of royal service, the gradual crawl toward the throne, the silent, suffocating march of expectation. Beyond his death, he saw centuries unspooling, lines of successors, children’s children’s children, all etched in cold ceramic permanence. A millennium stared back at him from the bathroom wall.

And in that moment, he wasn’t Prince William, the groom, the heir, the son. He was a millennial. A word he had always dismissed as trivial, a generational label, suddenly bloomed in his mind with the force of revelation. Millennial. It meant belonging to time itself. It meant being a child of the turning, born in the hinge of history where old empires cracked and new realities simmered in digital shadows. It meant bearing the weight of centuries not yet lived, carrying the baggage of ancestors who had paved his way with crowns and blood.

He pressed his palms to the slick tile, water streaming down his arms, and whispered the word to himself. “Millennial.” It felt absurd, like calling a king a hashtag. And yet—it was true. He was not timeless. He was bound. A creature of his era, trapped in the same glass tank as everyone else, scrolling and numbing and consuming until the Grey Alien prophecy was complete.

The thought should have driven him back to despair. Instead, it set him alight. Because if he was truly a millennial—then he was no monarch, no alien priest of tradition. He was a mortal, flawed, vulnerable man. A man who could rage against time, against destiny, against the very tiles that promised his future.

He threw his head back, water streaming into his eyes, and laughed again. It was not the laugh of a prince. It was the raw, cracked sound of a man who had looked too long at infinity and decided, at least for tonight, to dance in its spray.

Tomorrow, he would wear the suit. Tomorrow, he would smile the smile, say the vows, march the march. But tonight, under scalding water and pounding bass, the dead William was gone. And in his place stood something wild, fragile, and utterly alive.

---

The ceiling of the cottage was a vast, blank screen, and William was projecting his entire future onto its textured plaster. The shower’s revelation had faded, leaving behind a hollow, buzzing comedown. He was adrift in a terrycloth robe, a king of nothing, the pulsing synth music now a distant, annoying throb he couldn’t muster the energy to turn off.

His phone vibrated on the floor, skittering on the wood like a trapped insect. He ignored it. It stopped, then started again. And again. The persistence was aggressively Harry.

With a groan, he fumbled for it. “What.”

“Christ, Willy, you sound like death warmed over.” Harry’s voice was tinny, laced with a forced casualness that didn’t mask his underlying tension. “Where the hell are you? Kate’s doing her nut. The car’s been waiting. The RAF thinks you’ve been abducted by aliens.”

“Maybe I have,” William mumbled, closing his eyes against the spinning room.

“Right. Well, tell the little green men you’ve got a wedding tomorrow. A big, important, globally televised one. Remember?”

“I remember.” The words felt heavy and meaningless in his mouth.

There was a pause on the line. William could practically hear Harry’s gears turning, reassessing the situation. The jovial tone vanished, replaced by something quieter, more serious. “Will. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“I looked at the tiles, Harry,” William said, the confession sounding utterly deranged even to his own ears. “I saw it all. The whole… thing. It’s all just… time.”

He heard Harry sigh, a sound of weary understanding. “Right. Okay. You’ve had a moment. A big, philosophical, end-of-the-world moment. Brilliant. Now, you need to get out of your head. You’re in a cave of your own making and it’s starting to smell.”

“I can’t, Haz. I can’t get in that car. I can’t go to the hotel. I can’t do the last supper with everyone watching my every forkful.”

“Then don’t,” Harry said, the solution simple in his mouth. “Don’t do any of that. Just do the next thing. The only thing. Just come and have a kickabout.”

William barked a short, dry laugh. “A kickabout.”

“Yes! I’ve got a ball. I’ve called James. I’ve called a few of the others. They’re on their way. We’re commandeering that field behind your place. No press. No cameras. Just a few lads, a ball, and a couple of jumpers for goalposts.”

“Harry, I’m in my dressing gown. I’m… not myself.”

“Perfect!” Harry said, his enthusiasm grating and perfect. “No one expects you to be yourself in a dressing gown on a football pitch. They expect you to be a madman. Which, currently, you are. So lean into it. Come and run it off. Come and kick something that isn’t a priceless antique.”

The idea was so absurd, so profoundly un-princely, that it began to pierce the fog. A game. Just a game. No history, no future. Just a ball and a field and the simple, physical imperative to boot it between two piles of clothing.

“James is coming?” William asked, his voice a little clearer.

“He’s already in a car, probably breaking every speed limit in Wales to get here. He said, and I quote, ‘Tell him to stop being a melodramatic git and get his boots on.’” Harry paused. “He also said he loves you. But the git part was more prominent.”

A real smile, weak but genuine, touched William’s lips. James Meade. His rock. His best man. The one person who never treated him as anything but Will.

The crushing weight of the “millennial” revelation didn’t feel lighter, but Harry was offering a shovel. Not to dig out, but to dig in. To connect with the earth, with his friends, with the simple, sweaty, glorious present.

“Alright,” William said, pushing himself up onto unsteady elbows. “Alright. A kickabout.”

“Yes!” Harry crowed. “Boots. Now. We’ll be there in ten. And Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Try to put on some trousers under that robe. For the sake of the children.” The line went dead.

William let the phone clatter to the floor. He looked at the ceiling one last time. The future was still there, vast and intimidating. But for the next hour, the only thing that mattered was a ball, a field, and the friends who would chase him across it, shouting his name not as a prince, but as a player who’d just shanked a shot wide of the goal made from his own discarded robe.

---

The lie arrived fully formed, a cool, polished stone in the palm of her mind. It was so simple, so perfectly plausible, that it felt less like a fabrication and more like the recollection of a forgotten truth. The panic that had gripped her just minutes before receded, replaced by a serene, steely resolve. She was no longer just Kate; she was the future Princess of Wales, and it was time to perform.

She turned to Pippa, her face a mask of chagrined relief. “Of course. How could I have forgotten? He mentioned it weeks ago. A last-minute, classified briefing at RAF Valley. Top brass. He wasn’t sure he could get away, but he’d try. He must not have been able to slip out to call.” She delivered the lines with such conviction that Pippa’s worried frown began to smooth.

“A briefing? Tonight?” Pippa asked, a sliver of doubt remaining.

“The RAF’s schedule doesn’t stop for weddings, not even this one,” Catherine said, her voice dropping to a confidential, slightly awed whisper. “It’s to do with the new Search and Rescue protocols. He was so annoyed, said it was the worst possible timing, but duty calls.” She infused the words with a mix of pride and slight exasperation, the perfect tone for a fiancée understanding of the unique burdens of service.

She picked up her phone, her movements now decisive. She didn’t call the frantic duty officer again. Instead, she called the number for William’s private secretary. When he answered, his voice tight with the same anxiety she had just shed, she was ready.

“It’s Catherine,” she said, her tone breezy and apologetic. “I am so sorry for the confusion. My fault entirely. I’ve just remembered—William told me about the emergency briefing at Valley weeks ago. It completely slipped my mind with all the chaos. Please, call off the car. And could you please inform the RAF that His Royal Highness will require transport at his convenience once the meeting concludes? Thank you so much.”

She hung up before he could ask a single question. The authority in her voice brooked no argument. It was not a request; it was a clarification of fact.

She then turned her attention to her mother, Carole, who had entered the room, her face etched with concern. “Mum, it’s all fine. A mix-up. William’s been detained at the base. A security briefing he couldn’t miss.” She offered a warm, reassuring smile. “We’ll have to start the rehearsal dinner without him. He’ll be along as soon as he can.”

The lie rippled outwards from her, a calming wave smoothing the troubled waters. The frantic energy in the suite dissipated. Shoulders relaxed. The narrative had been established: not a missing prince, but a dedicated officer. It was a far better story.

Later, as she sat at the head of the table at the rehearsal dinner, making polite conversation and laughing at the appropriate moments, Catherine felt the weight of the secret. It was hers to carry now. She glanced at the empty chair beside her, not with worry, but with a new, fierce sense of partnership. She had protected him today. She had built a fortress of a story around his unexplained absence, a story so sturdy and British that no one would think to question it.

She took a sip of wine, her hand steady. The global spectacle could wait. The perfect precision of the day could be bent. For now, all that mattered was that he was safe, wherever he was. And tomorrow, when he stood beside her at the Abbey, she would look into his eyes and know the truth they now shared: that before the fairytale, there had been a night of panic, a lie told with love, and a bond forged not just in joy, but in quiet, unwavering defense.

---

The Welsh night was a damp, black blanket, pierced only by the stark white beams of two Range Rovers parked nose-to-nose. Their headlights illuminated a ragged rectangle of grass, the “pitch,” with two lumpy piles of jackets serving as goals. The air was thick with the smell of cut grass, damp earth, and the faint, sweet tang of expensive whiskey passed around in a silver flask.

It was a surreal tableau. The future King of England, still slightly glassy-eyed and swaddled in a cashmere dressing gown over a pair of muddy jeans, dribbled a football with an intense, almost manic focus. Around him, a constellation of his inner circle—James Meade, Thomas van Straubenzee, and a few other trusted faces—panted and laughed, their breath pluming in the cold air. And then there was Harry, the ringmaster of this bizarre pre-wedding circus, cackling as he executed a ludicrously bad slide tackle that took out his brother’s ankles and a significant chunk of turf.

“Foul!” William yelled, sprawling into the mud with a squelch. He was laughing, a real, ragged sound that felt torn from the core of him. “You absolute animal!”

“No rules on Planet Haz!” Harry declared, scrambling to his feet and stealing the ball. “It’s a state of mind! Anarchy with a hint of top-tier tailoring!”

It was then that a third set of headlights cut through the field, a low, purring Aston Martin that pulled up with a deference the situation didn’t warrant. The door opened, and David Beckham stepped out, looking like he’d walked straight from the pages of a style magazine into a particularly muddy dream. He was clutching a bottle of vintage Bollinger like a holy relic.

“Ah, the cavalry!” Harry shouted. “Or at least, the really, really well-dressed militia!”

Beckham approached the edge of the light, his famous smile tight with nerves. “Got your message, Harry. Said it was… urgent. Brought this.” He held up the champagne.

William got to his feet, brushing mud from his robe. “Becks? What are you doing here?”

“I, uh… hoped to wish you well. For tomorrow.” Beckham’s eyes darted around the field, taking in the dressing gown, the makeshift goals, the flask being passed around. It was so profoundly, earth-shatteringly *unofficial*. He looked like a man who’d accidentally walked into the wrong version of history.

“Perfect timing,” Harry said, slinging an arm around Beckham’s stiff shoulders. “We’re just discussing the metaphysical implications of the 4-4-2 formation and whether the Illuminati are responsible for Arsenal’s defensive line. Your input is crucial.”

Beckham gave a nervous laugh, his eyes fixed on William. “Whatever I can do to help, sir.”

William finally took the champagne. “Thanks, David. Really. And stop calling me sir. You’ve scored more goals for England than I have.” He took a swig directly from the bottle, a move so un-princely Beckham’s smile became a rictus of polite horror.

The game resumed, now with a global icon playing left bench, looking utterly lost. Beckham’s passes were pinpoint perfect, even in dress shoes, each one a silent plea for approval. William, fueled by adrenaline, THC, and now champagne, played like a man possessed. He weaved through his friends, who parted for him with a mixture of reverence and amusement, until he was clear in front of the jacket-goal. He unleashed a shot that was less a kick and more an exorcism, a blistering drive that smacked into the centre of Thomas’s Barbour with a satisfying *thump*.

He stood there for a moment, chest heaving, then stumbled to a large, flat rock at the edge of the light and collapsed onto it. The dressing gown fell open. He was sweaty, tipsy, and gloriously present.

Harry immediately plopped down in the grass at his feet. The others gathered round, a loose circle of loyalists under the stars. Beckham hovered just at the periphery, unsure of his footing.

“Right,” Harry began, taking a long pull from the flask. “So the goal’s been scored. The universe has been momentarily appeased. Now, the real talk. I’ve been doing some research.”

“God help us,” James Meade muttered, earning a chuckle.

“No, seriously,” Harry said, his eyes wide with mock-seriousness. “The truth is out there. And it’s not about me possibly wearing a Nazi uniform that one time. That’s small potatoes. I’m talking about the big stuff. The lizard people, Will. The reptilian elite.”

Thomas snorted. “You’ve been on the internet again, haven’t you, Haz?”

“It’s all there!” Harry insisted, warming to his theme. “Think about it. The cold blood. The unblinking eyes. The desire to sit on gold. It’s not a metaphor for bankers, it’s literal! Grandma? Lovely woman, fantastic hats. But have you ever seen her in direct sunlight? Really looked? I’m just asking questions!”

William threw his head back and laughed, a full-bodied sound that echoed in the quiet field. It felt so good to be ridiculous.

“It would explain the press,” James offered dryly. “A race of emotionless reptiles feeding on human drama. Checks out.”

“Exactly!” Harry pointed at James. “See? Meade gets it. And tomorrow, Will, you’re not just marrying Kate. You’re providing a vital, genetically stable bloodline for their hybrid overlords. It’s not a wedding, it’s a strategic merger for the New World Order. The cake is a lie! The fascinator hats are mind-control devices!”

Beckham, desperate to participate, cleared his throat. “I, for one, think you’ll make a… a wonderful king, sir. Lizard people or not.” He winced, immediately realizing he’d killed the joke.

The group fell silent for a beat, then erupted in louder laughter. William reached out and clapped Beckham on the arm. “Thanks, Becks. That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Sitting on that cold rock, surrounded by the absurdity and the unwavering loyalty of his friends, the monolithic terror of the Abbey finally shattered. It wasn’t a ceremony for the reptilian elite or a millennial burden. It was just a thing. A big, complicated, beautiful thing he was going to do with his best friend by his side, his brother providing the idiotic commentary, and a bunch of madmen in a field who’d lie for him, fight for him, and never, ever let him take the lizard people too seriously.

He looked at Harry, who was now elaborating on a theory involving the Crown Jewels and a hidden dimensional portal, and he felt a surge of pure, uncomplicated love. The future was still a vast, unknown country. But tonight, under the indifferent Welsh stars, he had his map: this ragged, laughing, brilliant crew.

The last echoes of laughter faded, leaving only the vast, silent press of the Welsh night. William sat on the cold rock, the weight of his friends’ camaraderie a warm but fleeting blanket. He tilted his head back, seeking solace in the indifferent sprawl of the cosmos.

A single thread of light tore across the black velvet—a shooting star, breathtakingly vivid. As he watched its silent, burning death, a sensation, cold and utterly alien, pierced his mind. It was not a sound, nor an image, but a pure, crystalline concept, deposited directly into his consciousness.

It was a single, unshakable truth: You are witnessed.

The message carried no judgment, no warmth, no malice. It was a simple, profound acknowledgment of his existence, from something immeasurably old and distant. The paranoid thrill of Harry’s reptilian theories evaporated, replaced by a humbling vastness. He was not the subject of a conspiracy, but a specimen under a microscope of infinite scale. His wedding, his crown, his entire lineage—it was all a fascinating, fleeting pattern in a grand experiment he could never hope to comprehend.

The weight should have crushed him. Instead, it liberated him. His anxieties, his fears of failure, the eyes of the world—it all shrank to irrelevance. He was already being watched by something far beyond. The performance tomorrow was not for the planet, but for himself. For the simple, human act of it.

The star’s light faded. The telepathic chill receded, leaving behind only a profound and quiet calm. He was Prince William, soon to be a married man. And he was, unquestionably, not alone in the universe. The knowledge settled in his bones, not as a fear, but as a strange and silent comfort.

The laughter of his friends, Harry’s conspiratorial ramblings about reptilian royals, the sharp, clean night air—it all began to curdle. The high that had carried him through the kickabout was receding, leaving a strange, metallic aftertaste in his soul. The manic energy that had felt like freedom now felt like a frantic dance on the edge of a precipice.

He looked at Harry, at James, at Beckham’s politely bewildered face. This was a distraction, a brilliant, beautiful, loving distraction. But it was just noise. The profound, gut-churning truth he’d felt in the shower—the crushing weight of the millennial, the heir to time itself—hadn’t been erased by the football or the whiskey. It had just been waiting for the noise to die down.

His mind, unbidden, flashed back to the art. Not to the four-armed gangsters or the neon streets, but to the watchers. The Grey Aliens from Ramon Atila’s “Great Filter” sketches. He saw them not as an end point, but as silent observers. They weren’t grabbing the Martian mobsters by the hand, weren’t intervening in their petty, violent wars over territory and respect. They were just… there. Impassive. Recording. Witnessing the frantic, glorious, doomed struggle of a species that refused to go quietly. They didn’t judge; they merely archived.

A cold clarity washed over him. His own life wasn’t the gritty struggle of Vex’lor on Mars. It was the opposite. He was being groomed to become one of the watchers. A symbol. A silent, serene, ceremonial archivist of a nation’s story, floating in the tank of tradition. His rebellion tonight—the joint, the missed calls, this muddy, chaotic farce of a stag night—wasn’t a defiance of that fate. It was just a different kind of performance. A more entertaining one for the watchers, perhaps, but a performance all the same.

The joking, the conspiracy theories, the deliberate, laddish stupidity—it all felt hollow. A costume he’d put on to hide from the heavier one waiting in London. He was playing at being a rebel, while the true rebellion—the one that mattered—was accepting the burden with clear eyes.

He stood up from the rock. The movement was quiet, but it carried a finality that cut through Harry’s monologue about the psychic properties of the Imperial State Crown. The circle fell silent. All eyes turned to him.

He didn’t look like a madman in a dressing gown anymore. The set of his shoulders had changed. The glint in his eye was no longer euphoric, but resolved.

“Right,” he said, his voice low and steady, devoid of its earlier frenzy. He looked at the empty champagne bottle lying in the grass, then at the pile of jackets that served as a goal. “Enough of this.”

Harry opened his mouth, a fresh joke undoubtedly on his lips, but he stopped when he saw his brother’s face. The message was clear: playtime was over.

William walked over to the Range Rover and popped the boot. Inside, next to the emergency kit, was a sleek, locked case. He keyed in the code, the latches snapping open with a precise thud. Inside, nestled in foam, were two gleaming, unloaded pistols—part of his security detail’s kit, always nearby, never used by him for sport.

He took one out, the weight of it sobering and familiar in his hand. He looked around the field, his gaze sweeping over the fence line at the far end.

“Thomas,” he said, his tone even, instructional. “There are empty bottles in the recycling bin by the cottage. Bring them. James, find something to use as a stand. We’re going to do some shooting.”

There was a beat of stunned silence. This was not the script. This was not anarchic Planet Haz. This was something else entirely. It was disciplined. It was focused. It was, unmistakably, William.

Without another word, they moved. Thomas jogged toward the cottage. James and another began scouting for a suitable log. Beckham looked utterly terrified, as if he’d been invited to a secret royal duel.

Harry came to stand beside him, his voice a whisper. “Willy? You alright?”

William kept his eyes on the fence line, his profile sharp in the headlights. “I need to do something real, Haz. Just for a few minutes. I need to aim at something and hit it.”

It wasn’t an explanation. It was a statement of fact.

The bottles were set up on the fence post, glinting in the crossbeams of the cars. William loaded the magazine with a practiced click-clack that seemed deafening in the quiet field. He didn’t offer the other gun to anyone. This was his exercise.

He took his stance, feet planted, arms extending in a straight, unwavering line. The world narrowed to the front sight and the faint glow of the glass twenty paces away. His breathing slowed. The chaos in his mind, the visions of aliens and Martian gangsters, the crushing weight of time—it all funneled down into this single, simple objective: *squeeze, don’t pull*.

The crack of the shot shattered the night. A bottle exploded into a thousand glittering pieces.

He didn’t smile. He ejected the casing, took aim again. Another crack. Another bottle vanished.

This was the real defiance. Not against a solar system government on a fictional Mars, but against the entropy of his own life. This was control. This was precision. This was the rejection of the passive, observing Grey Alien. He would not just watch. He would act. He would aim. He would hit his mark.

He fired again. And again. Each shot was a punctuation mark ending a sentence of panic. Each one was a step back from the edge, a deliberate, difficult trudge back to the man he needed to be.

When the last bottle was gone, he lowered the pistol. The air smelled of cordite and crushed grass. He turned to his friends, who were watching him, utterly still. He saw no laughter in their eyes now, only a kind of respectful awe.

“Right,” William said, his voice calm, utterly his own. He handed the empty pistol to his protection officer, who had materialized silently from the shadows. “I think I’d like to get to London now.”

---

London

The Bentley’s purr was a world away from the Ducati’s roar. Clarence House enveloped him in its hushed, gilded silence. The frantic energy of the Welsh field had been spent, leaving behind a deep, bone-level calm. He was in London. He was ready.

He’d even taken a walk, just him and his protection team, through the cordoned-off streets around the Mall. A few dedicated well-wishers camped behind barriers had called his name. He’d gone over, smiled, shaken hands. “A bit nervous, if I’m honest,” he’d admitted to one woman, and her delighted, reassuring laughter felt genuine. It was a human transaction, uncomplicated and warm.

Now, in his dressing room, the weight of the day finally off his shoulders, he felt a quiet contentment. Harry was downstairs, probably raiding the kitchens. He couldn’t see Kate; tradition dictated they spend the night apart. The old-fashioned rule felt oddly comforting, a familiar marker in the surreal journey.

He changed into comfortable clothes and sat in a deep armchair, the city’s nocturnal glow faint through the windows. The memory of the art that had steadied him last night surfaced, a grateful afterthought. He’d used that Brooklyn kid’s wild imagination as a life raft. He should see what else he’d posted.

He pulled out his phone and navigated to the “Ramon Atila’s Cosmic Doodles” page.

The most recent post wasn’t a vibrant panel of Martian gangsters. It was a block of text, posted just a few hours ago.

Hey everyone. Ramon here. So, uh, bad news. I’m going to have to take a break from the art for a while. Some serious shit went down. Got picked up by the cops last night. Criminal mischief and resisting arrest. My lawyer says I’m looking at maybe some real time. My head’s also just… not in a good place. The meds aren’t working like they should. The stuff in my brain doesn’t want to be on paper right now, it just wants to scream. So yeah. To Live and Die on Mars is on hiatus. Sorry to let you all down. Peace.

William read it twice. A cold knot tightened in his stomach. The intense young man with the beanie, the creator of that brilliant, chaotic world, was crumbling. He was facing prison, battling his own mind, and his escape hatch—his art—was slamming shut. The vibrant, life-affirming energy William had clung to was born from someone else’s pain and chaos.

A wave of guilt washed over him. He’d taken this stranger’s struggle and used it as a private therapy session, a thrilling diversion from his own gilded problems. He’d “liked” the art while its creator was being handcuffed, was possibly sitting in a cell right now, scared and unwell.

For a moment, he considered the absurd power at his fingertips. A single call, a word in the right ear, could probably make this entire “criminal mischief” problem vanish for a kid in Brooklyn. He could be a guardian angel, a deus ex machina descending from a world Ramon Atila could hardly imagine.

He held the phone, weighing the impulse. It was a kingly thought. But it was also a dangerous, corrupting one. It was the first step down a path where every problem could be solved with a phone call, every messy human reality tidied up by privilege. It was the opposite of the gritty, negotiated reality of Mars he’d admired. It was the Grey Alien, passively adjusting the experiment from its tank.

He let out a long, slow breath. He couldn’t fix Ramon Atila’s life. Their worlds were too different, their struggles incomparable. His intervention would be a violation, an act of supreme arrogance.

He looked at the post one last time. He felt a pang of sincere empathy for the young artist, a hope that he would find his way. But the gratitude remained. The art had existed. It had done its job. It had reached across the ocean and held a prince together for one crucial night. The gift was given; its own creator’s turmoil couldn’t retroactively taint it.

William closed the browser and set the phone aside. The brief sadness lifted, replaced by the solid, quiet certainty of the present. He was here. He was ready. Tomorrow was waiting.

Somewhere in Brooklyn, a light was going out. But in London, a prince, fortified by its final, brilliant flare, turned off his own light and slept.

AtilA