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“Sorry I’m not home right now,
I’m walking into spider webs.”
No Doubt, Spider Webs
“You did well,” Jericho
said, putting the small stack of twenties down on the mirrored desktop. In
the well-decorated office, he sat behind the imposing desk, looking across
at the man in the other chair. Dressed in the simple clothes of a college
student, the young man stared at the money, not making a move towards it.
“I’m not a hit man, sir,” the young man said, looking
up from the money to Jericho.
“I killed the club owner for the good of the Brotherhood, not out of malice
or a contract or anything.”
“I understand, Eli,” Jericho said accommodatingly, leaning
back in his leather office chair. His face became a mask of concern and
fraternal generosity. “But the Brotherhood needs to look after its
members.” He stood now, his motions carrying him fluidly around the desk.
“Especially such reliable members as you.”
“Sir, I’m not worthy of such praise,” Eli said,
fighting a flattered smile. “I’m, I’m just trying to do my part.”
“And doing your part you are,” Jericho encouraged with a charismatic
smile. “But I’m afraid it’s finally time to implement stage four.”
Eli’s eyes widened with concern but he made no move.
He looked down at the money, just to give him something for his eyes to
focus on. He nodded his head. “Yes sir.”
“You do remember stage four, Eli,” Jericho asked with a warm voice. “The Triumvirate
has decreed the World Alliance is too dangerous to be tolerated. We need to
remove them from the equation before they can fully affect events.”
“I understand, sir,” Eli said, swallowing, running
his fingers through his short hair. “It’s just, stage four will lead to
stage five.”
“Is that a problem, Eli?” Jericho asked, his mask turning into
concern. “If it is, now’s the time to bring it up.”
“No, it’s not that,” the younger man said, short of
breath. “It’s just, well…stage five is going to be…difficult.”
Jericho
moved around to the front of the desk, kneeling before Eli. He put on his
best worried but confident face. “Eli, I know you can do this. I know you
can. You’re the best man the Hand of the Brotherhood has.”
“Thank you sir,” Eli said, his eyes closed. He shook
his head, resigned to his fate. “I know. It’s just…it’s so many people.”
Morgan stared at the sheet music, not sure if he understood
it or not. “You see,” said the husky biker that stood next to him. “It’s
kind of a grinding bit here. It’s a heavy song, but this part really
super-busts your guts.”
“Yeah, I got that Will,” Morgan said smartly,
stepping back mentally from the song. He scratched under his chin as he
kept staring at the scribbled notes on the sheet music. “You said you
wanted an 8-line, four stanza set-up, right?”
“Hey, man,” Will said, stepping back. “Whatever
sounds good, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” Morgan muttered in thought as he sat back.
“It’s just going to be hard to come up with the lyrics you want with these
constraints.” He turned around in his rolling chair, looking at the
leather-clad man across from him. The man’s tattoos seemed more evident
then usual today. “You want an entire album on the concept of cars and
driving, but you need to have the single word ‘mustang’ in each song.”
Morgan turned his chair around again, looking at the sheet music. “And
you’ve given me about fifteen beats to work with.”
“Hey, man,” Will grinned. “I mean, not to sound like
a dick or anything, but you’re the best. And we’re gonna pay you good.”
“That’s not the concern,” Morgan said, taking off his
reading glasses. “It’s just that,” He laughed. “Will, this is really going
to be hard.” He glanced back at the music with a sigh. He scratched his
hair, his fingers shuffling the blonde tips of the otherwise black hair. “I
don’t know, Will. It’s going to be…” Morgan stopped, really giving it some
thought. “’Stang, range, made, fang,
came, sang,” he rattled off quickly in a whisper. He was staring at the
music behind him for so long that Will was about to speak up, to see if he
was still awake. “I might be able to get you something by, I don’t know, Friday.
Maybe.”
“Hey!” Will said, jumping up with a giant grin.
“That’s what I’m talking about. If you can just get us something to go
with, we can really start rehearsing it and then you and me can go from
there.”
“Yeah,” Morgan mumbled, standing as well. In the
narrow control room of the recording studio, he motioned for Will to lead
the way out.
Outside the metal door of the control room, Will
stepped through to the small hallway that led out of into the recording
studio itself. He went straight, heading through the cramped space barely
larger than a phone booth. Outside, the small living room of the modest
house stood before him. “Okay,” the biker said, looking to Morgan. “We’ll
get together a thousand for the lyrics on these two songs, then we’ll front…”
“Sixty an hour,” Morgan maintained unobtrusively,
reminding the mathematically impaired Will. “That’s alone in there,” he clarified.
“Did you want me to produce the record as well?”
“Hell yeah!” Will laughed. “Man, you’re half of
what’s making us big.”
“Of this, I am aware,” Morgan mumbled under his
breath, scratching his head. “Then, and I can’t tell you how much I hate to
do this, but I’m going to need a hundred an hour, flat.”
“Okay,” Will said, nodding his head as he raced over
some numbers. “We can do that. It may take a little longer, but we can
swing that.”
“It’s only twenty per person, so if you guys split
it, you’ll be set,” Morgan offered. “And if you can only swing an hour or
two at a time, I can always just save your stuff. It’s all on computer
anyway, so don’t worry about that.”
“Cool. Cool,” Will nodded, working hard to look like
he understood. He looked at Morgan, his smile growing again. “Alright, man.
I got to go.” He held out his hand to Morgan. “I’ll call you on Friday?”
“Just come on by,” Morgan shrugged, shaking Will’s
hand. “Bring your daughter, too. She’d probably like playing outside. It’s
a big backyard,” He said, thumbing towards the back of his house.
“You wouldn’t mind?” Will asked. Morgan gave him a
look. “Cool,” he grinned again.
Morgan rolled his eyes. “All
right, then. Friday.”
“Later,” Morgan called after him as the biker
strolled out of the house.
“This is what we’ve got,” Ernesto said, laying the
paper down before Phillip. “It’s the best plan we’ve come up with. To date,
anyway.”
“That’s not saying a lot, Ernie,” Phillip said
cynically, looking quickly through the blue pages of the design. “This is
totally…” He kept reading, unimpressed.
“It’s everything I was asked to design, Phil,” the
Cuban man said with an aggressively defensive tone in his voice as he
motioned with his eyes towards the folder of pages that Phillip was
flipping through. “I was told to keep within the original parameters, but
scale it down and keep the construction time to an absolute minimum.”
“But this will involve the construction being public
for six weeks,” Phillip said, his long black bangs getting into his eyes.
“That’s totally unacceptable.”
“Phil, there’s no way the Brotherhood’s going to be
able to do this by the dark of night on its own,” Ernesto stated as calmly
as he could, used to such objections. “If you can come up with a better
plan, please, by all means, show me. But that’s the best I’ve got.”
“You’re not supposed to give us your best,” Phillip
said back. “You’re supposed to give us what we asked for.”
Ernesto sighed, looking down. He reached for the
designs, waiting for Phillip to give them back. The man simply stood there,
staring at Ernesto. “Give them back to me then. I’ll work on a new project
for you.”
“We need you on this one,” Phillip said. “This has
top priority. It was given to us directly from the Triumvirate.”
“Then why is the Hand breathing down our neck?”
Ernesto asked, his frustration growing by the mere mention of them. “One of
Jericho’s little lap dogs nearly got my team
killed when we were trying to get out of Amsterdam. And what we were doing there
wasn’t entirely clear, anyway.”
“It’s none of you concern,” Phillip said
managerially. “I’m the head of the Projects division. I will handle Jericho.”
“No one can handle Jericho,” Ernesto said.
“As for what you were doing in Amsterdam, leave that to the
Investigators,” Phillip continued with a grave caution in his voice. “They
come up with the materials, the Triumvirate comes up with the goals, the
Hand of the Brotherhood comes up with the security. We, as the Project
team, the Miracle Workers, must come up with the actual way to execute the
Triumvirate’s vision.”
Ernesto sighed, not wanting to get caught up in this
argument. Again. “Fine,” he said, giving up on the fight. “Tell them to
give me clearer instructions, and I’ll do what I can to give you the plans
you want.”
“It’s not that easy, Ernie,” Phillip said, backing
away, turning to the desk on the opposite side of the large room. With the
giant window between the desks, the expansive view of the corporate site
beyond them, it was almost hard for Phillip to concentrate. “You don’t just
call up the three and tell them you don’t understand. They get rid of
people for stuff like that.”
“No, Jericho
gets rid of people for stuff like that,” Ernesto said. “I don’t trust him
or his Gestapo. You call them ‘Hands of the Brotherhood’. I call them
‘Fists of an Ass…”
“That’s enough,” Phillip said, exhausted. “He’s the
head of one of the divisions of the Brotherhood. That should be enough for
you to give him the respect.”
“Respect is earned, not given, Phillip,” Earnest
retorted.
The banging of the gavel echoed through the small
room. The four other men ended their conversations instantly, all eyes turning
to the young black man at the head of the room. “Gentlemen,” Everett said, looking
out over the tiny audience. “Welcome to the first meeting of the Unified
Knights of the United
States.” The small crowd applauded with minor
enthusiasm.
“From today forward, we shall endeavor to salvage the
reputation and dignity of the Knights of old, while also pushing to bring
the knights of the world up to speed with the new age.” More applauding.
“Now, I know most of you don’t know who each other is,”
“You’re a college student and you can’t even speak
right?” called Roland from the front of the room.
“Shut up,” Everett
tossed back to him jovially. “Anyway, you guys may not know each other, or
may not know everybody, so I’ll introduce you to each other. At the back,
in the far left corner, is our patron knight, Edgar. Edgar’s beard began to
go gray three years ago. And as you all know, the Oath of Chivalry states
that when a knight’s beard begins to gray, his responsibilities to the
generation and people have passed and he is to become a mentor. Well, he is
just that.”
“I’m also the only one who could rent this room,”
Edgar called, laughing as the others joined him.
Everett laughed also,
then continued going around the room counter-clockwise. “Next to him is
Armand,” he said. “Armand’s the newest knight in the city. He moved here
not long ago, amazingly enough, because he knew there were other knights
here. He’s got a lot of growing to do, but he’s already proved himself.”
“That’s Roland. If you don’t know him by now, you’re
either blind, deaf, or just plain stupid.”
“Or all three,” Armand called, laughing as Roland
gave him a playfully harsh look.
“Next to Roland, god help his soul, is Ledger.
Ledger’s one of the most dedicated amongst us.”
“That’s the
polite way of saying he’s a paranoid yahoo,” Roland shouted.
“And like any
self-respecting black man,” Everett
continued with a grin, “he carries a gun.”
“Damn right,” Ledger called up.
“You don’t carry a gun.” Roland yelled. “Does that
mean you’re not self-respecting?”
“Somebody, please?” Everett said, laughing as he motioned
towards Roland. “Some duct tape or something? Come on!” The group continued
to laugh, until Everett
calmed them.
“All joking aside, guys,” he said, his seriousness
affecting them. “We’re here for a serious reason. It’s become far too
obvious that the knights are needed in this day and age. And while we shall
turn away no ally who has the strength of conviction to stand with us, we
will be prepared to face this battle alone. It’s no surprise that there are
those out there who would like to see the knights never mobilize again. But
for the good of our city, the good of our country, and for the good of the
world, from this day forward, the individual actions of the knights shall
no longer be the only avenue in which the force of good is exerted. As a
unified force, we shall once again rise up as the protectors of humanity.”
As Everett
spoke, outside the closed door, Morgan leaned back against the wooden walls
of the hotel. He sighed deeply, his head resting against the wall itself.
When he finally stood up, he shook his head in worry. “Idiots,” he said, walking
away from the others.
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