Inside Buckingham Palace, Her Majesty the Queen was holding her beloved pet... but she did not look comfortable in the slightest.
Because on this evening, which should have been a time of rest, a large crowd had gathered outside the palace... more than a thousand people stood before the main gate, protesting.
Moreover, the crowd was still growing.
The riot police had already been deployed. They formed a human wall and prepared smoke grenades, water cannons, pepper spray, and the like—but without orders, they could only raise their riot shields and stand there.
The Prime Minister had been urgently summoned an hour earlier, and he was not the only one present. The heads of Parliament who held real power were there as well.
What the center of power was discussing, outsiders did not know—especially the guards. They only had to be responsible for its safety and prevent anyone suspicious from approaching.
"There are more and more people. At this rate, they won't disperse by dawn, and there'll be even more." Through the human wall, the squad leader in charge of the riot operation looked at the crowd outside, shook his head, and said to his companion, "Prepare for a long standoff."
His companion shrugged. "Nothing we can do. Who told them to attack several places in succession? The key point is that the attacks succeeded. What they should be worrying about now is probably their own intelligence operations. They might even discuss next year's intelligence-system budget while they're at it."
The squad leader said nothing more, but he knew perfectly well that organizing such a massive protest in so little time had an extremely low chance of being spontaneous... The snakes of the opposition had probably already begun shouting.
He shook his head again. Ever since that farcical referendum in