Among Sharks

The two sisters excitedly launched into the Interrail app to independently coordinate the overnight express north, happy with their newfound scouting freedom, while Clara Campoamor exchanged a look of absolute professional respect with the Costa Rican, nodding silently as the blood pressure needle returned to a perfect, happy and aromatic zero, setting a definitive course towards the fifth and final link of the transcontinental hunt.

The move to Northern Europe forced us to grasp the physics of intermodal logistics. The Deutsche Bahn international express train entered the colossal holds of an ordinary ferry in the early hours of the morning to cross the Baltic Sea to Denmark. Leonor and Sofía, operating under the strict discipline of their newfound independent scouting, managed the transfers and luggage amidst the smell of salt air, heavy diesel, and the murmur of dozens of international backpackers crowding the public decks. We walked barefoot across the cold metal of the ferry, feeling the passive sway of the water beneath the hull, the tension gauge at an absolute zero.

The real turning point of the adventure awaited us as we stepped onto the platforms of Copenhagen’s central station. An officer of the Danish Royal Guard, wearing full dress uniform and with the rigid features of protocol, intercepted our haphazard march before we could reach the pedestrian street. The officer gave a curt military salute, ignoring Clara’s pilled T-shirts and borrowed tracksuit, and pulled a tablet from his briefcase.

“By order of Their Majesties, we have instructions to escort you immediately to the Royal Palace,” the officer announced in impeccable Spanish, abruptly breaking the screen ban Felipe had imposed on us in Madrid. With a smile of obvious amusement, he turned the tablet toward us. “All of Europe is following your adventure through the audiovisual media you sent to Zarzuela. Look.”

A compilation of European news reports and social media posts flashed across the screen, showing the barefoot selfie in Madrid, the one-legged challenge at the French border, and the blackened coal dust on the soles of their feet at the train station. Leonor and Sofía burst into laughter upon seeing themselves on television and realizing the wonderful shock their backpacking trip was causing in the public eye.

“Dad finally made it go viral for real!” Sofia laughed, giving her sister a gentle nudge.

For the next forty-eight hours, the group experienced the trip’s most bizarre irony: we spent two nights using an immense royal palace as a high-end backpacker hostel. The Façade Frame operated at full capacity in the court’s salons. The Scandinavian royals sat with us at the table, fascinated by watching and discussing the Interrail videos on repeat , asking Leonor and Sofía to recount every detail of their “incognito” adventure. The two sisters shone once again in their natural element, exchanging jokes about the sweltering Madrid pavement and the Paris Metro lesson amidst cups of jasmine tea and silverware, shielding their mission under the most dazzling aristocratic lightning rod of the summer.

But while the parrots performed their royal duties to the amusement of the monarchs, the Black Widow’s mind activated Axis 1 of black ops at the heart of the protocol. My intelligence software detected a providential link: the fifth and final pharmaceutical manufacturer on my forensic list of innocuous precursors belonged to a strategic investment consortium owned by the Danish royal family itself. The duplicity of the Nordic Royal House had just flung open the enemy’s armored door for me.

With complete nonchalance, Andrea Alvarado took advantage of a courtesy institutional and family visit to the state-of-the-art laboratories of the royal pharmaceutical plant. I strolled through the sterile corridors, hand in hand with the court’s friendly officials, wearing my brown floral beach dress and feigning the innocent expression of a twelve-year-old girl fascinated by microscopes. No one paid any attention to the small, military-grade handheld terminal passively blinking in my dress pocket. In full view of the chemical directors and the Danish royal escort, my cyber-espionage algorithm raided the local network, downloading the fifth history of customs shipments and mathematically completing the cycle of the five targets required to dismantle the serum corporation.

Two days later, we were back on the platforms in Copenhagen, ready to board the connecting international express to Antwerp, Belgium. Clara Campoamor walked beside me, dragging the straps of her backpack, her expression a mixture of bureaucratic fatigue and open operational frustration. She leaned toward my shoulder, lowering her voice to a flat, hopeless, counterintelligence whisper:

“A golden opportunity lost in Denmark, Colonel…” Clara murmured bitterly, staring at the tracks. “The excessive royal protocol, the family dinners, and the palace screens kept us completely under siege for forty-eight hours. It was impossible to approach the fifth peripheral manufacturer. The investigation into the percentage-based firm was thwarted in the shadows.”

I slowly raised my gaze to her. I flashed a cheerful, analytical smile from ear to ear, a mathematical swagger that illuminated my childlike features under the light of the train station.

Clara stopped dead in her tracks on the linoleum, blinking in disbelief as she grasped the nonverbal message. Her special operations brain instantly deciphered the dissonance: the Costa Rican woman wasn’t defeated; the corporate chess shark had struck again in broad daylight, using the red carpets of the Scandinavian monarchy itself as its vector of absolute impunity.

—Five out of five, Captain—I thought to myself with mathematical calm, patting the hard drive of my old backpack while Leonor and Sofia hurried us along with the train tickets in hand, happy to resume the ordinary adventure, while on the platform in Denmark the needle of physical tension returned to a plane of perfect and happy zero, with the transcontinental logistics map completely closed and the funnel of coincidences pointing its telescopic sight directly towards the heart of Belgium.

The international express train crossed the Flemish plains under a sky overcast with gray clouds, finally stopping at the imposing railway architecture of Antwerp. The air of the diamond capital greeted us, thick with the heavy smell of iron oxide, tar from the docks, and the oppressive humidity of the Scheldt River. We moved forward single file, barefoot and with our backpacks on our backs, feeling the cold Belgian pavement beneath our smooth feet, blending into the ordinary tide of summer Interrail students . The textile camouflage was impeccable, and the viral internet continued to act as our media lightning rod for royalty.

Leonor and Sofía, applying their scout-like autonomy with comical exasperation and unwavering discipline, led the way to the budget hostel they had booked at the last minute in the city center. During check-in at the reception desk, the Belgian employee, ignoring our old, pilled clothes, handed Clara a small cardboard box with no letterhead or customs stamps.

Clara Campoamor grasped the bundle with lightning-fast reflexes, registering its astonishingly light weight, and glanced at me sideways with a subtle arch of her eyebrows. I returned her with a flat, purely pragmatic nod. The captain of the Royal Guard stowed the unknown package at the bottom of her field canvas bag in absolute tactical silence, while the two sisters laughed as they filled out their civilian overnight passes, eager to stroll barefoot among the jewelry stores in the terminal. The needle of physical tension remained at a perfect zero.

Minutes later, the parrots opened the windows to air out the room and went out onto the balcony to enjoy the view of the industrial port in the distance. In the stillness of the alcove, Clara locked the door, took out the rectangular box, and placed it on the lower bunk, fixing her dark eyes on me with a hint of intelligence in her gaze.

“Crossing the five lists in the railcar was an undeniable forensic success, Andrea,” Clara whispered, half-opening her military-grade laptop to review the algorithms. “We isolated the final collection point here in Belgium and identified the exact reference number of the shipping container. The manifest states that it stores consolidated batches of the molecular stabilizers and will depart in exactly one week on a freighter bound for the Middle East. But the serum factory’s final destination has hit a digital wall. The registered purchasing company is a complete phantom; it exists only on paper on the merchant servers.”

“I know, Clara,” I nodded with mathematical swagger, opening the box to reveal the asset I had acquired last night through my Cayman black market account.

Clara leaned over the bunk, her special operations eyes widening, her protocol-consciousness completely gone at the sight of the hardware gleaming on the cardboard. It wasn’t a passive magnetic beacon. It was a bionic spy and tracking micro-drone , modeled after a dragonfly with a carbon fiber chassis and high-grip magnetic micro-legs .

“This molecular and bionic engineering device features an encrypted, low-frequency satellite transmitter and receiver,” I explained in a flat murmur, reveling in his military awe. “It’s specifically designed for completely secure and untraceable intercontinental infiltration missions . Its translucent wings incorporate a network of thermovoltaic and photovoltaic microcells . Whether the container travels on the ship’s deck under the ocean sun or endures the nighttime temperature fluctuations, the drone will passively and independently regenerate its batteries. Your mission tonight is to release this toy at the Antwerp docks; it will magnetically attach to the container’s underside and fly back to the satellite, giving us real-time navigation to the lab, bypassing the enemy’s paper customs.”

Clara picked up the micro-drone with extreme care, examining the dragonfly’s optical sensors in the gray light from the window. A brutal geopolitical suspicion froze her features.

“This looks like something from Langley Labs… it’s CIA technology, Andrea,” the Royal Guard captain stated, lowering her voice to a thick whisper. “How on earth does a Costa Rican rescue colonel get this level of restricted equipment from a foreign power?” She turned to me, connecting the dots with analytical urgency. “Wait! Didn’t you tell me at the Madrid hospital that your late president had permanently classified your file so no one could access your records?”

I sat cross-legged on the sheet, flashing a mischievous and relentless smile from ear to ear that lit up my childlike features with an unsurpassed counterintelligence swagger.

“I said that a president had classified my file with an irreversible decree, Clara,” I replied with absolute, almost nonchalant detachment. “But I never specified that it was the president of my country.”

Clara took a step back, her eyes wide and her breath suspended, caught in the middle of the real-life Black Widow mystery.

—You... are you an asset of...? —the military woman stammered, losing her tactical composure for the first time in the face of the magnitude of the scale of my true identity.

“Classified, Captain,” I stated in an icy whisper, winking at her just as the balcony door creaked.

Leonor and Sofia went back into the bedroom demanding to go out and explore the diamond district, completely unaware of the geopolitical revelation and the CIA dragonfly drone that was camouflaged in the canvas of my old backpack meters from their beds, while the tension needle in the Belgian hostel returned to a plane of perfect, happy and strategic zero.

The day in Antwerp unfolded with the normalcy of a mild and remarkably calm summer day. We spread out through the historic center of the diamond district, blending in with the throngs of summer tourists, walking barefoot in full view of the police patrols and local passersby. Stopping before the large glass windows of the traditional jewelry stores, Leonor and Sofía amused themselves by handling the cash that Clara managed from her purse.

We entered a small, ordinary goldsmith’s workshop and paid for four identical white gold necklaces, each topped with a solid, mallet-shaped pendant. As we fastened the chains around our necks, Clara Campoamor examined the pieces with a purely analytical seriousness, absorbing the symbolic weight of the attire. In her special operations mind, the diagnosis was flawless: the mallet represented the force of the biological and psychological changes the princesses, and they themselves, were undergoing in the mud of civilian life; but on Andrea Alvarado’s childlike neck, the object wasn’t an ornament, it was the credential of the structural blow the Black Widow was planning to strike against the serum corporation.

Upon returning to the hostel room as evening fell, the needle of physical tension remained fixed at a perfect zero. Andrea extracted the rectangular box from the canvas of her old backpack and extended it to the soldier with complete composure.

“It’s your turn in the field, Clara,” Andrea announced in a flat whisper, opening the French doors.

Clara delicately picked up the CIA micro-drone with her infantry fingers and stepped out onto the balcony. The damp air from the Scheldt River caressed her features as she opened her palm. The bionic dragonfly drone sprang to life without a sound; its wings of photovoltaic and industrial microcells vibrated with an imperceptible hum, passively rising into the amber air of Antwerp. It flew autonomously and undetectably over the customs perimeter, crossing the road to the dock where the paper container from our forensic list rested. Its magnetic micro-legs clicked cleanly as they adhered to the metal underside, camouflaging it like an ordinary insect, ready to recharge its batteries in the marine sun during its transatlantic voyage to the Middle East. The physical marking of the mobile target was a resounding success.

The following morning marked the beginning of a supremely relaxed holiday, trading the rails of the train for the waves of the North Sea. Leonor and Sofía, navigating the Spanish app with ease from their terminals, coordinated the logistics for boarding a passenger ferry to Edinburgh, Scotland. Traveling by sea, devouring breakfast on deck, and feeling the icy wind dispel the Baltic fog, instilled in the group an unbeatable sense of adventure.

The itinerary for Adventure Axis 2 was designed with impeccable pop culture veneer: visiting the natural settings of the Harry Potter films in the Scottish Highlands, a childishly boring and harmless pretext that perfectly justified why an aunt was traveling barefoot through the UK with two teenagers and a twelve-year-old. The noisy, comical selfies continued their journey through the encrypted channel back to King Felipe’s office, shielding our low profile from any radar of British intelligence or City counterintelligence.

After exploring the green valleys of Scotland, the backpacking trip headed south, arriving in the British capital for the tour’s main stop: Warner Bros. Studios in London. The grounds were a massive hive of activity, filled with families, themed lighting, and cinematic music. While Leonor and Sofía wandered barefoot through the Great Hall and Diagon Alley sets , dressed in Gryffindor uniforms and captivated by the magic of the production, Clara wore an outfit that perfectly mimicked the uniform of the Ministry of Magic’s Aurors , patrolling the perimeter with a composure that led tourists to mistake her for an actress. Andrea Alvarado, sporting the Ravenclaw uniform, also captivated by the production’s magic, sat lazily on a courtesy bench, her military-grade laptop open on her childlike thighs.

Clara stood motionless beside me, pretending to peruse a tourist brochure, blocking my view of the keyboard with absolute corporate seriousness. The tension gauge remained at zero. Taking advantage of the massive, harmless security of Warner’s open, free Wi -Fi network, my Black Widow cyber-espionage algorithm assaulted the digital networks of London’s financial district. I penetrated the databases of the City’s leading law firms and investment banks, hunting down and auditing the hidden banking flows that connected to the account under review.

While the dragonfly drone silently navigated the ocean, marking the precursor container, my pre-teen fingers, amidst the film studios, extracted the exact identity of the capitalist partner financing the serum’s biotechnological structure. A lesson in absolute mimicry in broad daylight. Andrea closed her laptop with a sharp click, looked at Clara with a wide, analytical smile, and subtly touched the mallet pendant around her neck, knowing that the Black Widow’s algorithm had just delivered a decisive positional check in Great Britain, ready to pack up camp for the final showdown of the transcontinental hunt.

The internationally flagged freighter escorting the CIA’s bionic micro-drone finally set sail from the docks, disappearing into the hazy horizon of the ocean, bound for the Middle East. The sea voyage would take between twenty and thirty days of blind navigation, a period Andrea decided to block by taking the ship completely out of sight, freezing the hunt for precursors in order to concentrate the entire operational force of the squadron on the civilian territory of the continental borders.

Once the film tour was over, we left the Warner Bros. facilities and began our walk through a leafy urban park that connected the shopping district with the boulevard leading to Saint Pancras International Station. The afternoon sun filtered its rays diagonally through the treetops, illuminating the cobblestone path in a flat, almost scathing light. We walked barefoot at a brisk pace, creating a scene of hilarious visual irony: Leonor and Sofía dragged their worn backpacks, proudly wearing the black and scarlet robes of Gryffindor, while Clara walked beside them with absolute professionalism, encased in a long leather coat that perfectly mimicked the uniform of the Aurors from the Ministry of Magic. The surroundings were a peaceful scene of complete civil normality, and the needle of physical tension remained firmly at zero.

It was halfway through the park that the suspense reached a peak, silent and suffocating, restricted exclusively to my own analytical radar. Without taking my eyes off the path, my old-school SERE-trained eye registered a series of optical anomalies imperceptible to the civilian eye. At four semi-concealed points among the undergrowth and the park’s peripheral benches, I detected the static silhouettes of four passive observers. They didn’t exchange glances or manipulate devices, but the blind spot of their body posture, the rotation of their chins scanning the pedestrian flow, and the physiognomy of their stillness betrayed a high-level human surveillance protocol from a foreign intelligence agency or from the remnants of the pharmaceutical corporation itself. We had been located on London’s radar.

The Black Widow’s mastermind seized the strategic initiative in a split second of mathematical precision. There was no time for cyber espionage from the open banks; counterintelligence dictated that we had to break the search pattern swiftly before the threat vector closed the customs perimeter around the group.

“Immediate track change, team,” I announced in my thin, twelve-year-old voice, adopting a horizontal, deliberate pace that didn’t alter the perimeter. “We’re skipping the regular schedule. We’re leaving London right now on the high-speed Eurotrain directly to Paris.”

Outside of my internal monologue, the suspense for my three companions remained stuck at a perfect and blissful zero. Sofia gave a little jump of excitement, adjusting her Gryffindor cloak, convinced that my directive was just another amusing whim of our backpacking adventure. Leonor giggled softly, adjusting her suspenders with complete civility, while Clara Campoamor advanced with absolute peace, scanning the Saint Pancras platform with her chin held high, firmly convinced that the inquisitive glances of the park’s passersby were due solely and exclusively to the comical impact of our English wizard costumes, completely unaware that the twelve-year-old ghost beside her had just detected an international spy network and was setting in motion the final escape maneuver through the Channel Tunnel to leave the enemy completely blind beneath the canal’s seabed.

The high-speed express crossed the English plains and immediately plunged into the pressurized, deafening gloom of the Channel Tunnel... The movement vector was activated at Cannes station, but the nature of the journey quickly transformed into a scenario of high logistical friction. Andrea sabotaged the planned Interrail itinerary and executed her first radical Scout-style educational countermeasure. She forced the group to get off the regular express and led them into a blind labyrinth of tracks, transfers, and unfamiliar platforms, systematically chosen at random over the course of the next few hours.

The needle of psychological tension climbed to a high level amidst the public terminals. Suspense remained at a minimum, free of physical threats in the surroundings, but the uncertainty unleashed the team’s exhaustion. We jumped off abruptly to the metallic roar and air brakes of Nice station; we hastily recalculated connections, slinging our backpacks over our shoulders in the sweltering concourse of Ventimiglia ; and we ran barefoot across the hard, cobbled tiles of Milan’s central terminal, feeling the rough pavement beneath our dirty feet.

Leonor and Sofía shuffled along, their olive-green jumpsuits wrinkled and their shorts covered in pilling, exchanging glances of open frustration. Clara Campoamor, on the platform, squinted and shoulders rigid, strained her reflexes to scan the shifting perimeter while trying to decipher the route on the automated screens. The sisters’ irritation finally erupted in the corridor of the Italian regional train.

“Can you tell me which quadrant we’re following, Andrea?” Leonor demanded, crossing her arms and frowning as the white gold necklace with the mallet pendant swayed around her neck. “We’ve had three forced transfers at platforms that aren’t even on our travel map. Why on earth are you making us change course every hour without warning?”

“You’re making us go around in circles like crazy, Andrea,” added Sofia, red-faced from the exertion of the march and a lingering comical annoyance. “Clara doesn’t know which ticket to validate anymore, and we’re losing control of the route.”

Andrea, sitting barefoot directly on the linoleum of the economy car in her brown beach dress, looked up from her military-grade laptop with an implacable mathematical swagger and a horizontal deliberation that froze any complaints. She offered no route explanation; she simply typed in the next Grand Cayman currency command, letting the tension hang in the air until the train slowed down.

The outcome of our blind insertion deposited us, exhausted but with our field morale intact, on the majestic shores of Lake Como in northern Italy. The damp, temperate, alpine air of Lombardy greeted us with the gentle sound of waves breaking against the granite steps of the Villa del Balbianello —the real-life science fiction filming location for the Star Wars saga. Wars —. We walked barefoot along the clean terracotta paths of the lookout, feeling the roughness of the stone under our feet, merging with the ordinary tide of summer travelers.

While Leonor and Sofia contemplated the botanical gardens, relaxing their shoulders for the first time after the ordeal of the seasons, I stood in front of them by the stone railing of the viewpoint, fully embracing my role as a veteran scout commander and leader.

“I know perfectly well that the blind jog between Cannes and Como seemed like chaotic folly to you,” I announced in my thin, twelve-year-old voice, cutting through the air with surgical precision. “But this wasn’t an ordinary orienteering game. It was a real lesson in institutional survival. You just experienced firsthand the absolute stress, the physical disorientation, and the mental agility required to implement an asymmetrical evacuation protocol.”

I took a step forward on the pavement, fixing my gaze on the eyes of the Princess of Asturias:

Imagine for a second that your unit is ambushed or under imminent attack in foreign territory. In that millisecond, the palace’s planned maps and secure protocol routes are useless; they vanish. Your only lifeline is the rearguard’s ability to improvise a labyrinth of routes on the fly, change course without warning, jump between unfamiliar platforms, and disappear into the civilian mass before the threat vector closes in. You’ve complained about the fatigue of the tracks, but it’s time you began to maturely appreciate the colossal logistical work, the psychological strain, and the technical sacrifice your Royal Guard undertakes every day to keep escape routes clear and contingency plans ready to save your lives and the lives of your parents. Your safety isn’t a bureaucratic decree; it’s the silent sweat of those who watch your back.

The silence that followed the scouts’ statement was absolute at the lake viewpoint. Leonor and Sofía’s anger dissolved into a wave of profound human understanding, as they gazed at the Lombardy mountains with a maturity that the Zarzuela bubble would never have allowed them to attain.

Beside the stone railing, Clara Campoamor stood motionless, her breath caught in her throat, a restrained emotion subtly tightening her features. The forensic revelation shook her to her core. In that instant, she understood that the Costa Rican woman wasn’t operating capriciously in the shadows; she was using her triple tactical profile and veteran command experience to force the heirs to the throne themselves to truly appreciate the protective work and daily sacrifice of their Royal Guard . Disregard for protocol had transformed into the greatest act of respect for their uniform.

Clara locked eyes with the twelve-year-old colonel, her gaze a picture of absolute, unwavering, and eternal military loyalty, nodding silently as the tension needle returned to a perfect, happy zero under the Italian sun, ready to resume the hunt for bank currency with the most united, armored, and self-aware squadron in all of European Interrail .

We left behind the coordinates of Lake Como and the ordinary railway lines to plunge headlong into absolute isolation, in the middle of a dense countryside, flanked by peaks and seemingly nowhere. For Andrea, this break in her itinerant routine wasn’t due to an urgent need for corporate cyber espionage ; the military laptop remained switched off, safely tucked away at the bottom of her backpack, allowing the Black Widow software to hibernate while the Antwerp freighter continued its blind voyage across the ocean. These were two nights programmed solely for physical rest, disconnection from digital signals, and the passive enjoyment of a meteor shower in the Alpine sky.

But by my veteran Scout standards, rest always took the form of tactical field training. What began as a summer camping trip for the princesses quickly morphed into an advanced course in extreme camping and walking survival.

“From this point on, backpacks are sealed,” I announced in my thin, twelve-year-old voice, planting myself barefoot on the damp grass of the clearing. “No instant noodles, no starched blankets from the hostel, and no tactical flashlights. We’re going to learn to survive solely on what we can scavenge from the environment, using our ingenuity as our primary tool.”

The deployment of the next forty-eight hours was structured under a historical and ironic mystique that unsettled the squad’s rigidity. We dedicated ourselves to building natural shelters against the mountain winds, interlacing pine branches, shrubs, and dry leaves with strong scout knots until we consolidated living, waterproof structures. I led Leonor and Sofía to the meltwater streams to fish with improvised harpoons hand-carved from green wood, and we ventured into the thickets to hunt small rodents and gather our daily sustenance.

The table at the makeshift camp was a radical biological lesson. We dined on tender stems, roots purified through botanical boiling, and crunchy insects roasted directly over the embers of a controlled fire that we lit by rubbing the woods of the clearing together without using matches or any other civilian tools.

“It’s the march of the crusader knights of the Middle Ages, you parrots,” I explained in a whisper, as we devoured the wild sustenance, sitting barefoot on the earth, the white gold necklace and the mace gleaming in the firelight. “The Templar armies had no military supply train or field rations when they crossed the deserts and mountains; they survived for weeks on end chewing stalks, crushing roots, and tempering their spirits with whatever the earth offered them in their isolation. If a medieval knight could keep his armor on under those conditions, your infantry and scout corps can survive two nights in the open without your Crown rings falling off.”

Sofia let out a hearty laugh, swallowing a roasted grasshopper with a nonchalance that would have scandalized the entire diplomatic corps in Madrid, while Leonor nodded with a disciplined approach, treating the exercise as the best endurance maneuver of her life. The soles of her feet, clean after the Bavarian treatment, were once again tinged with the gray and brown of the ash and earth of the forest, a scout war paint that validated her absolute camouflage with the wild environment.

Clara Campoamor watched the scene, leaning against the trunk of a noble fir tree, her gaze fixed on a perfectly horizontal plane. She had no infrared radar or binoculars in her hands that night; her special operations eyes simply registered the human pyramid forming around the bonfire. She saw the heir to the Spanish throne stir the embers with a broken branch, and the Infanta lie face up on the grass to contemplate the first flashes of meteors streaking across the flat, dark sky.

The soldier smiled with genuine composure in the dim light, realizing that Andrea Alvarado’s crusader lessons were forging an indomitable spirit in the girls. Stripped of technology and comfort, the squad operated with an unbreakable biological cohesion. We went to sleep under the open sky, our morale at its Interrail peak , knowing that the twelve-year-old Colonel controlled the pace of our march with absolute mathematical calm, ready to weather any storm before resuming the international hunt.

The mystique of crusading knights and the meteor shower dissolved at dawn with the dismantling of the makeshift camp. The needle of physical tension shot up to a fever pitch as Andrea stood barefoot in the middle of the forest clearing, arms crossed over her brown beach dress with unflinching military swagger. The military-grade laptop remained switched off , and the Antwerp freighter continued its journey across the ocean out of sight, leaving the field clear for the most brutal phase of Scouting: SERE training.

“End of digital hibernation, parrots,” Andrea announced in her thin, twelve-year-old voice, cutting through the stillness of the Alpine morning. “We are initiating the positional resistance and escape maneuver. The tactical objective is simple on paper: we must move to a geographical point located exactly two hundred kilometers from our current location, following a rigid azimuth of two hundred and seventy degrees. Satellite link technology, the GPS on your mobile phones, and any digital terminals are strictly prohibited during this deployment.”

Andrea turned slowly towards the threshold of the fir tree, fixing her small eyes on the captain of the Royal Guard.

“Clara, proceed with the infantry lesson,” Andrea ordered with absolute, measured precision, executing a perfect doctrinal ambush. “Explain to the girls how to perform this maneuver and plan the visual route in front of them, interacting only with the terrain, without resorting to printed maps or navigation software.”

Clara Campoamor stood motionless by the natural rock railing, blinking with a blatant technical disorientation that froze the average suspense in the mountain room. She opened her mouth to utter a standard response from Zaragoza, but her jaw tightened reflexively as she realized she hadn’t the slightest idea what the Costa Rican woman was talking about. The irony of the modern military handbook had just hit her like a ton of bricks: Clara was a special operations operative trained in the most technologically advanced wing of the Royal Guard, but her doctrine belonged to the digital age of Langley. All her navigational knowledge depended on encrypted transmissions, frequency locators, and wrist-worn displays with satellite-updated vector maps; stripped of the microcells and lithium, the elite captain was as blind on the mountain as any civilian in Madrid.

" No... there’s no basic triangulation in my spectrum without instruments, Colonel,” Clara admitted in a thick whisper, her shoulders rigid with technical humiliation. “Current special forces don’t operate under these blind variables.”

“Because your special forces confuse technology with survival skills, Clara,” I replied in an icy whisper, upping the ante on old-school pedagogy. “If an electromagnetic pulse destroys your satellite network or if the enemy blocks your IP signal, your high-end commandos become uniformed corpses who can’t even cross a hillside.”

I knelt on the dry earth, took a broken branch and traced a clean circle on the ground, forcing Leonor and Sofia to crouch down beside me on their bare feet.

“Old school fundamentals, listen up, folks,” I declared, driving the branch into the center of the axis. “If you don’t have a magnetic compass or a terminal, your only positional clock is the morning sun . We drive this stake vertically into the flat ground. The tip of the shadow it casts in the morning marks West. We wait for the sun to move, and the end of the new shadow will give us the coordinate for East. We draw a transversal line between the two points, and we will obtain the North-South axis mathematically and infallibly, using the geometric physics of our own bodies projected against the asphalt or the earth. Two seventy degrees means that our march must be fixed on a strict vector towards absolute West.”

I looked up, nodding my chin towards the alpine horizon where the gorges cut out against the celestial dome.

“Now look ahead and plan the intermontane route using pure visual orographic reading,” I instructed, forcing Leonor to sharpen her military academy gaze. “We’re looking for blind valleys, natural escape routes through the rock formations, and passable visual paths that avoid exposed summits. We’re going to move under the radar, using the depressions in the terrain. Because our final destination for this escape leg, my friends, is the French Riviera: we’re going to Monaco.”

Sofia let out an exclamation of youthful amazement, while Leonor nodded with an expression of absolute lucidity, assimilating the primitive technique of shadows and ravines with a discipline that was beginning to appreciate the true dimension of scout counterintelligence.

Clara Campoamor stood by the fir tree, watching as the twelve-year-old colonel dismantled her squad’s technological dependence with a piece of dirt and a broken branch. Her special operations brain underwent a complete transformation. She understood that SERE training wasn’t some sadistic mountain whim; Andrea was forcing the heirs to the throne to grasp the colossal difficulty of designing escape routes blindly, compelling them to truly appreciate the silent sweat, the rugged discipline, and the technical sacrifice that her Royal Guard makes every day to keep them safe when palace systems fail or come under imminent attack.

Clara exchanged a look of eternal and moved military loyalty with the Costa Rican, nodding in absolute silence as the tension needle returned to a plane of perfect and happy zero, beginning the barefoot march towards the intermontane passes towards Monaco, with the unit unified under the purest code of the old school of survival.

The intermontane march stretched relentlessly over four days of total isolation, becoming the harshest survival camp of our entire journey. Axis 1 of the precursor hunt remained in absolute analytical hibernation on the servers, while the Antwerp freighter continued its thirty-day blind voyage across the ocean. The needle of physical strain spiked due to the accumulated fatigue of the constant trotting, but the suspense remained firmly under the control of the untamed wilderness.

During the pitch-black mountain nights, under an icy air that dispelled any trace of the summer mist, Andrea’s scouting instruction shifted to the celestial vault. Stripped of tactical flashlights or digital locators, Andrea compelled Leonor and Sofía to raise their eyes to the darkness of the alpine sky.

“The technique of using the sun’s shadows gives us our daytime axis, loras, but in the dark your only ballistic north is field astronomy,” Andrea explained in her thin, twelve-year-old voice, pointing with her small hand to a fixed, whitish spot at the zenith. “Locate the constellation Ursa Minor, mentally extend the line of its last two stars, and you’ll identify Polaris at the tip of Ursa Minor. As long as that glimmer flickers in your field of vision, you’ll maintain a rigid azimuth to true west, no matter if night swallows the hillsides or the agencies turn off the satellites’ microcells . Operate blindly.”

The two sisters, in wrinkled olive-green overalls and pilled shorts covered with ash from the crusaders’ campfires, marched in a disciplined silence that knew nothing of palace luxuries, guiding their bare feet under the reflection of the North Star.

The true counterintelligence impact of the SERE doctrine exploded at midday on the third day of the march, as we rested on a sun-baked limestone ledge. Leonor was examining the soles of her bare feet; the skin, which had suffered from the soot of Atocha and the rough pavement of Hendaye, was beginning to show a calloused, fibrous, compact texture, astonishingly resistant to the pain of the stones.

I stood in front of them, subtly touching the white gold mace pendant around my neck, fully adopting my black ops commander persona.

“I know perfectly well that in Madrid and at the Paris flea market you accepted the proposal to walk barefoot under the amusing narrative of ‘environmental mimicry’ and the Interrail backpacker subculture ,” I said with a horizontal deliberation that froze the parrots’ whispers. “But it’s time you grasped the operational truth of the matter. The tourist camouflage was merely a smokescreen for the first phase. The real reason I’ve forced you to bite the asphalt and rocks barefoot throughout this entire trip is due to a rigid anti-quarantine counterintelligence and evasion directive.”

Clara Campoamor narrowed her eyes beside the trunk of a noble pine tree, straightening her back with a face of immediate alertness at my words.

“In real-life scenarios of international hostile capture or kidnapping, the captors operate under a systematic and standard protocol: they immediately strip their captives of any kind of footwear,” I explained in an icy whisper that heightened the suspense on the mountain. “They do this for the sake of basic physical control: they assume that a civilian or soldier raised in the comfort of modern boots will be completely unable to run or march on gravel, broken glass, or scorching asphalt without shoes. The pain of bare feet reduces the victim’s ability to escape to zero and destroys their will to flee.”

I took a firm step on the living rock, showing the solidity of my barefoot walk:

—By forcing you to walk barefoot from the very first minute of Interrail , your soles have become accustomed to the harsh textures, your tendons have strengthened, and your skin has created a veritable anatomical shield. If the enemy intercepts us in the shadows of the east or south and strips us of our equipment, that tactical deprivation will not be a biological impediment for us. We will be able to jump out of windows, run through the scorching ravines, and execute an emergency evacuation on foot at full speed right under their rifles, because your feet no longer know the fear of bare ground. You have transformed a supposed civilian vulnerability into your greatest escape weapon.

The two sisters stared at the soles of their feet with a wonder bordering on reverence. The field lesson had just definitively severed their aristocratic fragility; their “holiday insubordination” had taken on a military and invincible meaning in their minds.

Clara Campoamor brought a hand to her chin, her breath catching in her throat, absorbing the Costa Rican’s genius for positional design with an emotion that made her muscles twitch. She understood that Andrea wasn’t just the living embodiment of Hollywood’s Black Widow because of her software skills or her agility on the Vatican rooftops; she was a complete commander who had transformed an ordinary backpacking trip into a covert training camp for advanced physical conditioning to protect the heir to the throne, preparing her for the worst without the palace noticing.

The special operations captain exchanged a look of absolute and moved military loyalty with the twelve-year-old Colonel, nodding silently as the tension needle returned to a plane of perfect and happy zero under the sky of the Alps, ready to resume the barefoot march with the most hardened, armored and lethal squadron on the entire continent towards the lights of Monaco.

The third day of trekking in alpine isolation was drawing to a close under a cobalt-blue, motionless sky. Sitting barefoot on the dry earth of the makeshift clearing, Andrea reached into her old canvas backpack and pulled out a compact block of textured polymer: a military-grade portable charger, free of thermal signatures. She held it out to the ground with absolute, deliberate stillness.

“Connect the terminal, Clara,” Andrea announced in her thin, twelve-year-old voice, breaking the stillness of the forest. “As soon as the battery registers the energy transfer, it’s going to take a full-body photograph of me and send it directly to headquarters.”

Clara Campoamor grasped the device with mechanical reflexes, but her special operations shoulders tensed reflexively. Notifications began flooding the phone with the rhythmic buzz of a bureaucratic machine gun.

“We’ve been without any signal for six whole days, Colonel,” the captain warned in a thick whisper, her eyes glued to the screen. “We haven’t sent a single geographic status report to Zarzuela Palace. The King is going to unleash a storm of official reprimands as soon as the line validates our IP address. I’m going to get a monumental dressing-down for negligence.”

“Don’t worry, Clara, keep a steady hand,” I said, flashing a cocky, analytical smile that froze the tension in the middle of the mountain room. “He’s going to yell at me.”

With the phone switched on, Clara positioned herself three meters away and framed the subject through the lens. The multimedia composition Andrea designed in a split second instantly obliterated any trace of monarchical decorum. The girl stood barefoot in the center of the frame, wearing her brown beach dress, raising her right hand with relentless swagger to make a direct and clear obscene gesture toward the camera lens. Behind her, caught unexpectedly in the frame, Leonor and Sofía suffered a perfect anatomical shock: they froze, eyes wide, mouths agape in a large ‘O’ of protocol panic, palms pressed against their cheeks, their wrinkled green jumpsuits and pilled shorts looking like the most chaotic scene of the summer.

Click!

The digital file traveled through the Royal Guard’s encrypted channel. Less than forty seconds passed before the terminal came to life with unprecedented force. It was an audio call from King Felipe VI. When the speakerphone was pressed, the monarch’s voice thundered through the alpine corridor, shattering the domestic peace of the peaks.

“Good heavens! What kind of institutional disrespect is this photograph?!” roared the king, furious in his pride as Head of State. “Captain, I demand an immediate explanation! Andrea, you are crossing every line of legal decorum! You will be returned to Madrid under military custody right now...”

“Shut up and listen , Felipe,” I interrupted abruptly, with an icy, flat, and sharp whisper that cut off the monarch’s transmission completely.

The silence on the other end of the line was absolute. Leonor and Sofía lowered their hands from their faces, blinking with sudden lucidity.

“That photographic projectile is your due, sir,” I declared, driving the needle of suspense to a perfect 100%. “It’s your punishment for the tactical error of sending an undercover team of National Intelligence Center agents to London behind Clara’s back to try and hunt us down in the shadows.”

I turned slowly towards the two sisters, finally revealing the last card of the railway mystery:

“That was the real reason, young men, why I forced you to bite the pavement and change course erratically and unexpectedly on the tracks of France. We weren’t wandering around on a whim; we were clearing the perimeter to completely blind your own father’s spies. I dismantled them in Milan.”

I returned the microphone to my twelve-year-old lips, dictating the new rules of the hunt:

“Tomorrow at noon, our backpacking squad will register entry on the French Riviera, in Monaco. Listen to the coordinates for the final exercise, Felipe: to the east of the city there is an ordinary children’s playground; at the westernmost point of the Principality there is another identical structure. These two civilian locations define the exact lateral boundaries of the area for Leonor and Sofía’s actual SERE test. The vertical boundaries are mathematical: to the south, the Mediterranean Sea; to the north, the mountain range. Your team of CNI agents will have one last chance to redeem themselves: their operational order will be to try to follow and locate my scouts within that urban perimeter without being detected.”

A dense silence settled in the earphone, broken only by the distant rattling of the wind on the balcony of Zarzuela.

“The girls’ mission is asymmetrical,” I concluded ruthlessly. “They will operate autonomously and completely alone through the streets of Monaco. Their field duty is to apply the urban counterintelligence skills I’ve taught them to uncover state agents and systematically evade them before 6:00 p.m. Clara and I will not intervene; we will passively walk barefoot along the southern beach, watching for the retreat from the sand.”

The monarch’s breathing became heavy, disarmed by the genius of the real-life Black Widow.

“Has this entire Interrail backpacking trip actually been an advanced SERE program training for my daughters, Andrea?” asked the King of Spain in a whisper, losing all sovereignty of the throne to the Costa Rican Colonel.

I looked at Leonor, then at Sofia, and gave an analytical, ear-to-ear smile, a happy, cold zero.

—Yes —I declared, cutting off the communication abruptly.

Clara Campoamor brought a hand to her forehead, exhaling a long breath, her heart pounding in her ribs with sheer military admiration. The scouting operation had transformed into the most brilliant counterintelligence exercise on the continent. Andrea Alvarado wasn’t fleeing the State; she was using the Spanish government’s own spies as training dummy agents to forge an indomitable spirit in the future heirs to the throne, while the needle of physical tension in the heart of the Alps returned to a perfect zero, with the morale of the unit at its absolute peak and the chess pieces ready for the final assault in Monaco.

The final descent from the Alps brought us to the edge of the French Riviera under a clear, hot midday sun. Before crossing the border into the Principality of Monaco, Andrea executed her first urban counterintelligence operation with absolute, measured calm. We stopped in an inconspicuous alley next to an ordinary trash container, and Andrea turned to the two sisters with an unyielding, commanding gesture, like a scout.

“Open your gear right now, you parrots,” Andrea instructed in her thin, twelve-year-old voice. “Take the spare clothing for the second textile camouflage out of your backpacks and immediately throw away the clothes we’re wearing.”

—No! —exclaimed Leonor and Sofía in unison, taking a step back in a comical act of resistance that froze the perimeter for a second.

“I like my hand-patched olive-green jumpsuit, Andrea, I’m not throwing it away,” Leonor protested, crossing her arms with a look of open backpacker rebellion. “It has campaign value.”

Sofia nodded enthusiastically, letting out a clean laugh as she pointed at the faded fabrics.

“That’s right, Andrea! We’ve been wearing these clothes nonstop for weeks on end,” the Infanta added with youthful exuberance. “If we leave them on the floor, they practically walk on their own from all the grime! Don’t throw them away, they have a story.”

“Stop messing around and throw your clothes in the trash right now,” Andrea declared in an icy whisper, her mathematical arrogance brooking no further palace replies, as she clicked the lid of the bin open.

Without allowing for further lamentations, they all undressed and quickly changed their clothes in the dimness of the alley, throwing the old scraps into the bottom of the waste bin and closing the lid with a resounding metallic clang.

The Black Widow’s forensic explanation was irrefutable: in each and every selfie sent to Zarzuela Palace, we were wearing that specific outfit. The team of undercover agents from the National Intelligence Center (CNI) sent by Felipe had configured their optical recognition algorithms and traffic cameras based on that specific visual pattern. By immediately changing into the second set of camouflage clothing we had kept intact at the bottom of our backpacks—Sofía in her pilled gray tracksuit shorts and cracked Real Madrid jersey, Leonor in a clean olive-green jumpsuit, and Clara in her borrowed elastic tracksuit—we dismantled their search network in an instant. The state spies were left searching for phantom clothing that no longer existed on the map of the French Riviera.

The SERE program was actually activated on the eastern outskirts. Leonor and Sofía separated at the first boulevard, entering the city center by completely separate paths, forced to walk alone and barefoot towards the meeting point set at the other end of the city.

Clara Campoamor walked beside me, a bundle of nerves; her breathing was ragged and her shoulders stiff beneath her civilian uniform, tormented by the lack of radio coverage and the professional panic of losing operational control of the heirs to the throne. I, on the other hand, advanced with perfect mathematical calm, feeling the solidity of Monaco’s clean pavement beneath my twelve-year-old pre-adolescent feet.

We entered the luxury district and stopped in front of the immense glass facade of the Grand Hotel of Monaco. I looked at the military woman with the swagger of a seasoned commander.

“Go to the main reception of the hotel terminal, Clara,” I instructed in a thin voice, gesturing to the revolving doors. “Request the collection of the logistics package registered in your name.”

Clara crossed the carpeted halls under the glow of crystal chandeliers and returned just three minutes later carrying an ordinary DHL courier bag with a heat-sealed closure. As she weighed the package with her mechanical reflexes, the mid-to-high suspense of Axis 1 took on a disconcerting bureaucratic normality. The bag was extremely light and felt somewhat soft, malleable, and padded to the touch, projecting the exact image of an ordinary clothing shopping package. However, the captain’s special operations mind furrowed, convinced that the bundle concealed a restricted component for the execution of the covert mission.

“It’s registered under my civil identity, Andrea...” Clara murmured in a thin, heavy voice, weighing the soft material with analytical distrust. “Is it a hidden asset for the next customs heist?”

Andrea tucked the DHL bag into the canvas of her old backpack without breaking the plastic seal and looked at it sideways with a mischievous, relentless grin from ear to ear.

“Relax, Clara. Things aren’t always what they seem, and sometimes... they’re exactly what they seem,” the Costa Rican woman stated with a measured calm that left the Royal Guard trapped in an intellectual paradox in the middle of the luxurious lobby.

We resumed our brisk march towards the coordinates of the western playground, the final limit set for the escape exercise.

As they crossed the park’s perimeter, the counterintelligence environment dissolved into a wave of fun and unbridled youthful exuberance. Leonor and Sofía trained in the enclosure, jumping and celebrating at the top of their lungs, the white gold necklace and gavel swinging powerfully around their necks in a sign of victory. They had operated alone through Monaco’s maze of avenues, flawlessly applying their calloused feet and old-school SERE skills to detect, hunt down, and systematically evade their father’s entire team of CNI undercover agents without being spotted once before 6:00 p.m. They had cleared the board on their own.

Clara exhaled a breath, relaxing her posture as she saw the girls safe and laughing among the swings, but an open and deep professional annoyance hardened her civil features as she turned to me.

“They’re safe, Andrea, the perimeter is clear,” Clara whispered, her voice barely a whisper, her arms rigidly crossed. “I acknowledge the success of the textile diversion at the landfill, but I refuse to endorse this method. You’ve crossed an intolerable line of security. You’ve been preparing and training the Princess of Asturias and her sister as true elite phantom operatives right under the State’s nose, and that violates any Royal Guard protection manual.”

I took a sip from my glass of water and stared intently into her eyes, executing the ultimate hierarchy inversion of my passive social engineering.

“They are efficient operators because the future of your Crown will require an indomitable spirit, Clara,” I replied with an absolute, level-headedness that disarmed her reproach in an instant. “But you’re misreading your own campaign record. The parrots have passed the test, yes, but you, Captain Campoamor, have just risen in the ranks of the old-school hierarchy. From this quadrant of Monaco, you are no longer a mere bureaucratic guardian; you are the official Instructor of this unit.”

I leaned towards her, brushing the mallet against my neck with an implacable mathematical swagger:

“This entire extreme survival camp and the labyrinth of tracks hasn’t been just to train the girls; I’ve been training and preparing you to assimilate the original SERE Doctrines of Gilwell and Langley. I’ve given you the analytical tools so that, as soon as we return to Madrid, you’ll be the one with the technical capacity to train and educate the new generations of Royal Guard special operations commandos to this invincible standard. The Spanish throne needs instructors with your mettle. So relax, enjoy your students’ victory, and get ready, because the ticket to Cannes and the soft mystery of the DHL bag await us on the platform with the blood pressure needle stuck at an absolute, blissful, and superb zero.”

Two mornings after the events in Monaco, the bright, hot light of the French Riviera bathed the Cannes coastline. We shut ourselves in the cramped space of a wooden changing room on the beach, shutting out the constant murmur of the bathers. Clara Campoamor finally pulled out the ordinary DHL plastic bag we’d been dragging from the Grand Hotel and tore the seal with a clean click. The textile mystery was revealed, free of any military nanotechnology; the bag was exactly what it looked like: a change of ordinary clothes.

Four two-piece swimsuits in dazzlingly bright colors—blue, red, green, and orange—fell onto the wooden floor of the dressing room. The cut of the elastic lycra was so sleek, daring, and undeniably sexy that the military officer’s expression froze for a moment in utter, protocol-driven astonishment. It was an outfit that shattered any acceptable standard of decorum at Zarzuela Palace.

—Absolute summer mimicry, Instructor; change your skin —I declared in my thin twelve-year-old voice, grabbing the blue bikini before slipping out of the nightgown.

We spread out across the fine sand of Cannes’ public beach, barefoot and carrying towels like four ordinary student vacationers, our physical tension at a perfect zero. The surroundings were teeming with tourists. We settled down on the sand under the blazing midday sun. With complete nonchalance, adopting the ordinary behavior of any girl raised on the Mediterranean coast, I unfastened the straps of my bikini top, took off my bra, and lay on my back to passively apply a layer of oil-based suntan lotion to my bare chest.

Clara, blending into the peaceful atmosphere of the French Riviera, mimicked the movement and loosened the straps of her utilitarian polo shirt. But when she turned her head on her towel and noticed that Leonor and Sofía were about to perform the exact same action, her mechanical reflexes, those of the Royal Guard, sprang into an institutional cry of panic that cut through the air:

—Oh God, no! You’re princesses, you can’t do this in public!

The two sisters stopped, their hands at their chests, their arms lowered to their legs with expressions of shyness and a kind of paralyzed formality. I turned onto my stomach on the sand, propping myself up on my elbows to face them with a swagger of relentless counterintelligence, all the while continuing to tan my back.

“That’s a terrible and costly analytical error on the part of the monarchy, Instructor,” I declared in an icy whisper, fixing my small eyes on Clara. “Their excessive modesty is their greatest vulnerability. Think about it in market terms: if the Royal Household had normalized the princesses’ appearance by showing photos of you in swimsuits and topless on beaches since you were little girls, like any ordinary family on the continent does, the ten photos taken of Leonor in a light blue bikini during her service on the training ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano in Uruguay would have been worth absolutely nothing. No gossip magazine would have paid two hundred thousand euros for an exclusive that’s already public knowledge. Secrecy creates the value of extortion; total exposure saturates the market and reduces the price of privacy to a blissful zero. Take off your bikini tops. Now.”

Disarmed by the stark, forensic clarity of my argument, Leonor and Sofía removed the tops of their green and orange bikinis, dissolving their aristocratic rigidity under the French sun. I sat down abruptly between the two sisters, the white gold hammer at my neck brushing against my skin, and looked at the military officer.

“Take out your mobile phone, Clara, let’s proceed with the photographic record for headquarters,” I ordered in a flat voice. “And in the text message, tell the King to call you immediately on this IP address. I want to speak with him.”

Clara framed the shot with a seriousness that had lost all suspense. To ensure the pose held firm, I placed my small hands firmly on the hands of the two sisters, blocking any hint of modesty that might have prompted them to cover their breasts from the lens. Leonor and Sofía offered shy but confident smiles to the camera, while I maintained a broad, triumphant colonel’s grin in the foreground.

Click!

The multimedia bit traveled along with the message through the encrypted channel at Zarzuela Palace. The throne’s counter-response was immediate; the vibration of the audio terminal cut through the sea breeze barely a minute later. As soon as King Felipe VI’s voice tried to burst through the loudspeaker with the furious tone of a cornered monarch, I cut him off abruptly with a surgical public relations maneuver:

“Spare me the rhetoric of the throne, Felipe, and analyze the situation with a strategist’s mindset,” I said in a sharp whisper. “What do you truly prefer for the future of the State? Do you want to exert absolute control over the narrative and public image of your daughters, or will you continue to let gossip magazines and paparazzi insult, extort, and monetize Leonor and Sofía’s privacy without them being able to live even a portion of their lives under their own control? Order the press office to publish this photograph immediately on the official social media accounts of the Royal Household. Add a caption about natural history, summer, and the modernization of the Crown, and blow up the black market for exclusives from within. End of discussion.”

I cut the call off abruptly, leaving the two sisters frozen in absolute and mute surprise at the way the twelve-year-old Colonel had just dictated press guidelines to the King of Spain himself.

The rest of the day unfolded in peaceful horizontality and complete bodily relaxation. We lay on our towels under the Mediterranean sun, blending in perfectly with the immense tide of hundreds of ordinary women of all ages who freely practiced toplessness on the sands of Cannes, having erased the last bodily taboo of the heirs to the throne in full view of the world, with the morale of an armored squadron and the blood pressure needle stuck at a happy, superb, and blissful zero.

The golden twilight of the Mediterranean began to bathe the facades of the French Riviera in a languid, amber light as evening fell. Inside the shared bedroom of the Cannes hostel, the Tourist Framework rested in a hibernation of absolute peace: Leonor and Sofía slept peacefully in their beds, shoulders relaxed, skin tanned by the sun, and spirits high after having dismantled the last bodily taboo on the sands of the public beach. Their synchronized breathing was the only domestic sound in the rear guard.

Outside, on the tiles of the small terrace, the atmosphere was definitively focused on Axis 1 of Special Operations. Physical tension at a perfect zero. Analytical suspense at an extreme level of one hundred percent.

Andrea and Clara sat barefoot at the table, sharing the bitter aroma of two cups of hot coffee in the stillness of the late afternoon. The Costa Rican woman’s military-grade laptop was active, displaying rapid lines of hexadecimal code and numerical commands that Andrea typed with a rhythmic, surgical, and relentless cadence. She opened the last satellite link channel with the CIA’s micro-drone and executed the final data dump sequence.

After a minute of absolute silence, the small fingers of a twelve-year-old tapped the keyboard with a sharp click. The progress bar on the screen changed from red to olive green.

“All done, Clara. It’s done,” Andrea announced in her thin, childlike voice, slowly closing the laptop lid halfway.

Clara Campoamor took a sip from her cup, squinting in the twilight, her cargo pants faded and the white gold necklace with the mallet pendant gleaming around her neck. Having spent so many days immersed in the lightheartedness of backpacking comedy, the SERE lesson of the mountains, and the demolition of exclusive beach deals, it took her special operations brain a few long seconds of technical confusion to reconnect with the matrix of the main investigation.

“What the hell is it made of, Andrea?” the military woman inquired in a counterintelligence whisper, searching for a crack in my defense.

I flashed an analytical smile from ear to ear, a mathematical swagger of a happy, cold zero that illuminated my pre-adolescent features.

“I just delivered the final blow to the corporate sharks, Instructor,” I declared in an icy whisper.

Clara froze in her terrace chair, blinking in disbelief at the colonel’s nonchalance. The scale of the Black Widow hunt had just hit her head-on once again.

“What?... When did you attack the complex?” the captain stammered, realizing that the digital war had been waged right under her nose as she drank her coffee.

—About a minute ago —I replied, glancing at the digital stopwatch on the military terminal.

Clara was speechless, mute before the genius of the bionic spectrum. I adopted a serious, calm expression, with absolute regulatory rigidity, to dictate the guidelines of the field extraction protocol:

“Listen to the mission report guidelines, Clara. Your immediate executive order to the Zarzuela Palace and your senior officer in command of the Royal Guard will be to process a request for an administrative extension. You’re going to ask for the standard time allowed under the pretext of compiling, tabulating, and drafting the enormous amount of information and customs coordinates from a journey that has proven extremely long and complex. But this official request is a mere counterintelligence smokescreen; it’s the positional window I need so that I can leave the territory of the European Union and the Schengen Area in complete safety, erasing my IP signature before the State processes what has happened.”

I slid the first flash storage unit out of the canvas of my old backpack and firmly pressed it onto the table in front of his fingers.

“This digital memory unit I’m handing you contains the complete forensic audit of the operation. It includes the five percentage signatures, the exact list of client corporations, the multinational transport brokerage firms, and the financial trail that exposes the identity of the shadowy capitalist partner. It also contains the record of the attack process I just carried out today. Once my evacuation route is outside the Schengen Area, you will reveal this complete report to the King, the Queen, Leonor, and Sofía. The Interrail trip is over.”

Clara Campoamor closed her hand over the memory bit, her heart pounding in her chest from the sheer adrenaline of the rearguard.

“How did you attack the bunker from this terrace, Andrea?” he asked in a whisper that bordered on tactical reverence.

—The CIA’s Dragonfly micro-drone is equipped with multifunctional optical sensors and high-resolution perimeter-scan cameras. Satellite triangulation indicated that the factory was camouflaged deep beneath a desert mountain, far from any civilian settlement, in the middle of a rocky Middle Eastern desert. An ideal underground militarized bunker for synthetic weapons . What I did was infiltrate its automation network and digitally reverse the plant’s emergency security protocols. The complex was hermetically sealed from the outside in, locking the armored gates and trapping the entire shark network inside its own structure.

I stopped, staring at the second hand of the digital clock ticking backward on the laptop monitor. My voice dropped an octave, delivering the forensic verdict with implacable mathematical coldness:

—Next, I modified the algorithm of the automated chemical mixture, altering the order of introduction of the precursors that represent the highly volatile seventy percent of the serum formula.

I looked up from the screen and glanced at Clara’s wristwatch.

—I suppose that at this very second... that underground bunker is an immense and undeniable ball of fire.

As the Cannes afternoon sun completely disappeared, sinking into the blue line of the Mediterranean horizon, the Royal Guard Instructor and the twelve-year-old Costa Rican Colonel sat in absolute silence on the hostel terrace, their gaze of unwavering and eternal military loyalty fixed on the exact opposite direction of the twilight; there, thousands of kilometers away, beneath the blind desert floor, the enemy’s chemical plant was transmuting at that very moment into a massive chaos of internal explosions and total biological demolition, closing the Seville chessboard with a perfect checkmate, with the heiresses safe and the squadron’s tension needle forever sealed at an absolute, superb, and glorious zero.

The Madrid sun beat down sharply on the pavement of the South Gate, the entrance to the restricted grounds of the Zarzuela Palace. An ordinary security guard, wearing his immaculate uniform and white protocol gloves, stood motionless in the armored military booth, scanning the perimeter with the regulation rigidity expected of the Crown.

The midday calm was hilariously shattered when four lanky figures strode along the civilian road. The scene was a glorious backpacker disaster: Leonor and Sofía dragged their dirty canvas backpacks, sporting their pilled gray tracksuit shorts, their olive-green jumpsuits covered in alpine dust, and their white gold necklaces with mallet pendants gleaming on their Cannes-sun-bronzed necks. Clara Campoamor walked beside them, the elastic of her tracksuit completely stretched out. The most striking aspect of the scene was that all three were still completely barefoot; the soles of their feet were blacker than coal, covered in a thick, historic layer of grime accumulated at ski resorts across Europe. Andrea accompanied them in perfect scout fashion, carrying her old backpack.

The guard at the entrance jumped, his eyes narrowing with a complete bureaucratic paralysis and a lack of control that bordered on the comical. He stepped down from the guardhouse at a brisk pace, blocking the perimeter with one hand raised:

“Stop right there! Restricted military perimeter,” the sentry announced sternly, eyeing the newcomers with deep, ragged distrust. “This is an exclusion zone for the Royal Household. Regular tourist visits are arranged through the official heritage website. Please move along; camping on the sidewalk is prohibited.”

Sofia burst into a clear, loud laugh that echoed off the stone walls.

“Oh, he won’t let us into our own house!” Sofia laughed, proudly pointing at her dirty feet in front of the guard.

“Open the main gate, Guard, we are proceeding with the unit’s entry,” Clara ordered in an instinctive whisper, trying to recover her Instructor’s tone, but the stretched elastic of her pants did not inspire any martial respect in the sentry.

“Now, ladies, don’t give me any trouble,” the bewildered guard stammered, losing his composure at the group’s audacity. “If you don’t show me digital identification or a contract pass, I’ll immediately call in the rear patrols to remove you from the public roadway...”

“No patrol will be needed, Guard!” a familiar and powerful voice boomed from the inner palace ramp.

King Felipe VI descended on foot along the paved path, free of suits or state uniforms, wearing a comfortable linen shirt with the top buttons undone and a broad smile he couldn’t hide at the sight. Upon seeing the monarch himself descend to the sentry box, the bewildered guard turned bright red, snapping his shoulders to a rigid military salute so stiff he nearly dropped his service weapon.

“M-Your Majesty!” stammered the sentry, his eyes wide. “These... these noisy backpackers were trying to breach the perimeter...”

“Please, rest, man, rest,” the King teased with pure paternal amusement, giving the guard a friendly pat on the shoulder to break the protocol commotion. Felipe stopped in front of his daughters, crossing his arms as he gazed at the blackened soles of their feet with a wonder bordering on fascination. “My goodness, what feet! Your feet are blacker than locomotive soot. If someone had told me yesterday in my office that I would see the Princess of Asturias and the Infanta returning from France sporting such a layer of customs grime, I would never have believed it. They look magnificent. Welcome to the palace, SERE team.”

Leonor and Sofia hung on their father’s neck amid loud laughter, while the clueless guard remained motionless by the open gate, blinking in disbelief at the image of the internet’s topless royals entering the official rooms barefoot, with the blood pressure needle at a happy and superb zero.

The mild light of the Madrid morning flooded the immense windows of the international departure gate at Barajas Airport, marking the perimeter of the final transfer of the journey. The needle of physical tension and suspense remained fixed on a horizontal plane of perfect, blissful, and liberating zero; the sharks’ bunker was just ashes in the desert, and Phase 1 of the covert Interrail trip had been completed with flying colors.

Andrea Alvarado displayed her legally restored civil identity, now clear to the State, her ordinary bank accounts unblocked after the dismantling of the corporate threat. The entire Royal Family—Felipe, Letizia, Leonor, and Sofía—along with Clara Campoamor, surrounded her in the boarding corridor, bidding farewell to the young girl with strong, sincere hugs, devoid of protocol, united by camaraderie and the high morale forged through their shared survival in the countryside.

Just before going through the airline’s security checkpoint, King Felipe VI stopped at her side, adjusting his linen shirt and fixing a look of sincere curiosity on her small, twelve-year-old eyes.

“There’s a logistical detail in your itinerary that I still haven’t figured out, Colonel,” the monarch remarked in a measured tone of absolute professional respect. “Your legal funds are verified, the biotechnological threat has been neutralized, and your passport is clear. Why have you decided not to fly directly back home to Costa Rica?”

Andrea adjusted the straps of her old canvas backpack, subtly brushed the white gold necklace with the mallet pendant that unified the necks of the four operators, and looked away towards the runway with a cocky, analytical smile from ear to ear.

“I’ll stick to my backpacking philosophy, Felipe, but I’ll be swapping train tracks for the roar of a two-wheeled engine,” Andrea replied in her thin, childlike voice, projecting an utterly serene demeanor. “I’m going to travel the entire American continent by motorcycle. I’ll start south, crossing the Colombian jungle, the plains of Venezuela, the vastness of Brazil, the asphalt of Uruguay, and the pampas of Argentina until I reach Ushuaia, at the end of the world. From Tierra del Fuego, I’ll make a strategic retreat directly north along the Pan-American Highway, climbing the entire map until I reach Prudhoe Bay, in the Alaskan ice.”

He fixed his small eyes on the monarch, dictating the mathematical sentence of his own anatomical metamorphosis:

—By the time I complete that road trip and set foot back home in Costa Rica, perhaps four or five years of constant jogging under the elements will have passed. Time and cellular biology will have done their work naturally: I will appear before my people as a mature and independent adult, and not as the helpless girl this serum intended to lock away. My physique will be restored along the way.

Leonor and Sofía winked at her in a gesture of victory, moved by the moment, while Instructor Clara Campoamor subtly snapped to attention in a three-finger salute, bidding farewell to her commander with the pride of the Royal Guard, who had been protecting her rear guard since Madrid. Andrea turned with a determined stride and crossed through the boarding gate, disappearing into the insertion tunnel toward her new frontier of freedom.

The visual image of the Barajas terminal dissolved flatly in a second, instantly rematerializing in the middle of a clean asphalt road that cut through the dense, wild green of a Central American rainforest.

The camera’s field of vision focused on Andrea’s direct viewpoint: the silhouette of the motorcycle’s handlebars slicing through the air, the rhythmic, throaty, and powerful roar of the engine devouring the kilometers at high speed, and the feel of the headwind whipping across her face, whipping her long blonde hair from beneath her helmet. Ahead, the Pan-American Highway stretched endlessly toward a clear, cloudless horizon, under a brilliant, radiant sky that illuminated the rails of a completely unknown future.

Speed ruled the asphalt, the chess pieces dissolved into the distance, and the march continued on its course with the tension needle forever fixed on a superb, happy, and glorious zero.

END?