[Lauchenoiria]

They had waited just long enough to reduce medical risks to the baby. Given, however, that their intentions were to kidnap him, this was small comfort. They did not know the name that Natasha had given her son; hospital staff had kept all the tags which usually displayed the name to ID-number only for precisely this reason - security concerns directed towards potential Zongongian interference.

Nobody was actually concerned about Kerlian interference, despite what the newspapers said. Messing with newborn babies was not their style (even the Auroras weren’t taken for training until they were two). In another universe, where Eiria was not so hostile to Auroras, a couple who had some loyalty to the Robinson family would have hovered around Natasha and her son as extra security. But in this universe, no self-respecting Aurora would touch Eiria with a barge pole these days. And thus, the three-person Zongongian task force did not have them to contend with.

The first member of Prince Kristofer’s kidnapping team was in charge of the distraction. On the appointed day, he entered the hospital alongside the evening visiting-time crowd in the opposite wing from where Natasha was being kept more securely. He slipped into a particularly foul-smelling public toilet that he intuited would be off-putting to real visitors: the less collateral damage the better, they weren’t Xiomerans after all. He chucked some piles of newspaper he’d brought into a bin and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a large multipack of lighters, fluid included.

He did not smoke. The cigarettes had only been purchased to make the lighters make sense. He discarded the box in a nearby sink. Then he opened the packet of lighters and emptied the fluid carefully, in a trail which would cause the most damage with the amount he had. Ideally he would have brought more, but the lighters gave plausible deniability if he was searched in a way that a can would not. He reached up and disconnected the fire alarm for the room, which he had learned to do back in his covert ops training. Then he used the last lighter with a teeny bit of fluid to light the fire, and left the bathroom.

Meanwhile, another was disguised as a “nurse” on loan from another hospital to cover staffing shortages (the team had slipped some rotten food into the nurse staffroom, to induce food poisoning which would be temporary, barring complications). Her job was to monitor the situation, and keep her eye on the baby when the building was evacuated. Sure enough, the fire alarm started to blare once the smoke reached the next room’s alarm. Everyone looked around as if it was a test, and after a few minutes began to grab all of their belongings, and slowly evacuate the building.

Then someone smelled the actual smoke and shouted it aloud, and the drill-weary crowd turned into a panicked mob. The “nurse” made sure to bump into the most highly-strung looking individuals to stoke the chaos, while she made her way to the secure neonatal unit. It was crawling with doctors, midwives, and security personnel all arguing with each other. She pushed into the crowd, and assertively took control, lifting the baby up and yelling “enough! There’s an actual fire, you can debate this later!” and walking out before anyone questioned her.

The third member of the team, dressed as an Eirian firefighter, waited for the engines to arrive and then pushed into the building, heading to the rendezvous point with the “nurse” and not being questioned in the slightest. Their plan was going perfectly so far. The “firefighter” reached the rendezvous early and awaited his colleague.

She almost arrived. The “nurse” was all of one corridor away when an arm reached out of a door and grabbed her by the throat. Someone else slipped out of the door and grabbed the baby off of her. She gasped for breath as her assailant slammed her against the wall, squeezing all the air out of her. She blinked to see Natasha Robinson, barefoot and in a hospital gown, belly still postpartum-large, trying to strangle her. Next to her, Carmen Robinson stood, holding her grandson and glaring at the “nurse”.

“I sensed something wrong,” Natasha growled as she continued to squeeze on the kidnapper’s throat. “I knew. A mother always knows.”

This, to digress, is a phrase that is widely considered taboo enough in Kerlile to almost the point of becoming anti-matriarchal speech, and yet is also widely believed across the country, as anyone familiar with the legal case against Charissa Clarke during the post-Second Lauchenoirian Civil War Truth and Reconciliation Commission could tell you. Digression over.

Regardless of the Kerlian political correctness of Natasha’s assertions, the kidnapper was slowly losing consciousness due to lack of air. Once she stopped struggling and went limp, Natasha dropped her on the ground. She waited a few moments before checking for a pulse, and nodded.

“Good, the Eirians can still interrogate the [word banned in Kerlile],” she spat at the kidnapper, and then gently took her son from her mother. “Now, is there an actual fire, or…?”

“There’s an actual fire,” Carmen said. “We should leave, but not in the direction she was heading. How did you know, in reality?”

“I didn’t lie, it was mostly intuition. That, and the button camera on Ben’s babygrow,” Natasha shrugged, tapping on the top button of her son’s outfit. It was barely noticeable as a hidden camera, perhaps because Natasha had ensured the other buttons also looked the same. “Paranoia is a gift, not a curse.”

“Perhaps,” Carmen replied, leading her daughter and grandson to a fire exit in the opposite direction to that the kidnapper had been heading towards. “In some circumstances, certainly. I know how it can eat you alive, though. But we can discuss this later.”

And the three generations of Robinsons calmly left the hospital by a fire exit and made their way to the nearest fire assembly point, via a group of police officers who they told about the unconscious kidnapper in the corridor.