Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences

  The Mystery of the Thrice Dead Man

  In Which Agent Books Takes a Paid Holiday

  By J.R. Blackwell

  One Thousand Twelve Feet above the Atlantic Ocean

  September 8, 1894

  Wellington clung by his fingertips to a freezing metal pipe on the outside of the giant airship Hammarström as it zipped through the sky. He chanced a look down, to see the clouds floating below him, and below that, the wide expanse of the rolling ocean. From the balcony above him, where he had been so unceremoniously tossed, beyond the rush of air outside the ship, he heard the crackle of electricity and a loud shriek.

  “Not a real mission,” he muttered, clinging to the cold pipe. “Practically a paid holiday,” he growled, and looked up towards the ship full of pirates that waited for him if he could find his way inside.