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“Hey, man, you don’t talk to the
Colonel. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet-warrior
in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he’ll…uh…well, you’ll say “hello” to
him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And
suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “do
you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when
all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust
yourself when all men doubt you”…I mean I’m no, I can’t…I’m a little man, I’m
a little man, he’s…he’s a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws
scuttling across floors of silent seas…”
Photojournalist,
Apocalypse Now
Alan Vick sat in the barstool seat
with an uncomfortable certainty. Everett watched him take
a sip from his tall beer glass, unable to fully size up the knight. “What brings you to the city?” he asked
over the noise of the restaurant.
“Work, mostly,” Alan said, turning
to Everett. “I’m working on this project while I’m on
hiatus from grad school.”
“Oh, where do you go?” Everett asked.
“Kent State,”
Vick said as he prepared some food.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” he asked with a gesture to his
meal.
“I just ate,” Everett said. “What’s here that you’re interested in?”
Alan smiled, taking a bite. “Solaritec,” he said.
Everett’s blood went cold.
“I’m trying to put together a
timetable and the data from the final days of Jericho Kingston,” Alan went
on, not looking at Everett. “I understand it that Jericho, who was the head of the
Brotherhood of the Sun’s enforcer branch, based himself out of this
town.” Alan took a moment to finish
his bite and sipped his beer. He
turned intentionally to Everett. “I also understand that you knew Jericho. And that you were instrumental in
his…downfall.”
Everett’s eyes narrow. After a moment, he turned towards the
door. “I think I need to go,” he said
quietly to Alan.
“Why?” Alan asked with a tone of
almost-complete obliviousness. “Jericho an uncomfortable
topic for you?”
Everett stood up from the bar, glancing at
the people around him. Satisfied that
they weren’t paying attention, he took a forceful step into Alan’s
space. “A word of advice,” he said
quietly. “While opinions of Jericho
Kingston outside of this city might vary, they’re pretty uniform within
it.” He stepped back, holding himself
ready to move as he stood before Alan.
“Now, I don’t know what information you hope to glean from scouring
through the remains of the old Solaritec site, but I recommend you get to it. The site’s going to be demolished. After it is, I imagine your business here
will be done.”
“You never know,” Alan said
simply. He looked intentionally at Everett, then glanced
past the bar towards the kitchen. Everett followed his
glance, seeing Marilyn ringing up an order.
The two looked back at each other.
“There’s a lot going on you don’t know about.”
In the blink of an eye, Everett grabbed the
handle of his ninjato within his trench coat.
But just a breath faster, Alan stood up, setting his hand on Everett’s with the
subtlety of a feather and the firmness of a rock. Pinning Everett’s
hand to the sword and keeping the sword from drawing, Alan stood in Everett’s face. “Do you really want to start a fight here?”
“No,” Everett answered back adamantly. “But I’m not the one stirring up trouble.”
Alan stepped back slowly, standing
right in front of his seat. Everett remained ready,
but let his hand move away from his sword.
“This is your town, Everett,” Alan said fairly. “I’m not looking to change that. I’ll stay out of your way as best I can and
I’ll be gone sooner than you think.
But I’m not the kind of man you want to make an enemy of.”
“Jericho
once said the same thing to me,” Everett
said.
Alan smirked. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“I say it like it’s the insult it
was meant as,” he said before turning away.
Storming out of the restaurant, Everett walked with a
vicious glare in his eyes until he was around the building. Away from the windows, his aggressiveness
evaporated and he looked back, a worried gaze filling his eyes. Letting his whole body slow down, he wiped
his mouth, thinking for a few breaths.
His mind raced as concern nearly overwhelmed him. Finally, he turned around and began to fish
for his keys. “This isn’t good,” he
said to himself as he headed for his car.
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