An Unexpected Royal Visit

I did not expect to meet a king in Lviv.

Not because kings do not travel, but because when they do, they do it loudly. Flags, cameras, statements about cooperation and friendship. This one arrived exactly like that.

And yet somehow, I ended up sitting across from Carl XVI Gustaf in a quiet room with bad lighting and no witnesses.

No press. No aides. Just one woman who never introduced herself and did not blink nearly enough.

If you ever find yourself in such a situation, take it as a sign that something has already gone wrong.

He did not waste time.

“Mr. Marco,” he said, as if we had met before, “my military is conducting exercises. Routine ones.”

That alone was already a lie. Not the exercises. The word routine.

“They are receiving communications,” he continued, “on secured channels.”

I asked the obvious question.

“From whom?”

He glanced briefly at the woman, then back at me.

“That is precisely the problem.”

At first, they treated it like any modern military would.

Electronic warfare.

Spoofing.

A sophisticated adversary probing response times.

Then it escalated:

So they widened the scope.

NATO consultation.

Cybersecurity teams.

Even internal audit, quietly checking for leaks or rogue units.

Nothing.

No breach. No source. No explanation.

And yet the transmissions continued.

I asked to see the transcripts.

They were precise. Clean. Professional. Swedish military protocol, correct down to rhythm and structure.

And wrong.

Place names slightly altered. Unit designations that do not exist. Tactical references that feel… adjacent rather than incorrect.

Close enough to pass at a glance. Wrong enough to matter.

Then I saw the line that made this a problem.

One of their officers had replied.

Once. As a test.

The response came back within seconds:

Not confusion. Not interference.

Recognition.

I looked up.

“You still think this is spoofing?”

The King did not answer immediately.

Instead, the woman spoke for the first time.

“We think it is an attack.”

That is when I knew someone had already suggested my name.

He confirmed it a moment later, almost reluctantly.

“One of our advisors insisted we find you. Said you would… understand.”

I never like being the person someone “insists” on calling.

It usually means the problem has already crossed a line others refuse to name.

They gave me one more fragment.

A single line, repeated in separate logs:

I have seen many strange things.

This one is… organized.

Which makes it worse.

I stepped outside after the meeting and made a call.

Sora answered on the second ring.

I didn’t explain much. I didn’t need to.

“Listen,” I said. “Hypothetical. Two command structures. Same country. Slight deviation in geography, naming, doctrine. Clean signal overlap. Recognition both ways.”

A pause.

Then, calmly:

“You think it’s parallel alignment.”

“I think it’s already started.”

Another pause. I could hear her moving, something metallic in the background.

“Give me a second.”

She put me on hold.

Later, she would probably tell me she used the Harmonic Phase Comparator at Clovis. At the time, all I heard was a faint shift in tone, like the air itself being measured.

She came back sooner than I expected.

Then I asked the only question that mattered.

“Have they crossed physically?”

A brief pause.

And then:

“Not yet.”

That “yet” is why we are now on a night bus to Kraków, writing this somewhere between bad road lighting and worse coffee.

From there, a flight to Stockholm awaits us both.

Apparently, we are not the only ones being called in.

Even Frank is leaving his quiet retirement somewhere in the south of Italy and flying north to assist. He sounded almost pleased about it, which is never a good sign.

Sweden, it seems, is preparing for an invasion.

The problem is, it may not be from where they think.

— Marco