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“Well, at least it’s not raining.”
Igor, Young Frankenstein
The rain poured down hard over the glass of the
hospital. Pelting relentlessly against the windows, the rain seemed
fitfully determined to get inside the cold sterile world of the pale building.
And as it pounded hard against the windows, it seemed like it might do just
that.
Ledger sat in the waiting room, Ruwani across from
him, the unremarkable imitation wood table between them. The two didn’t say
a word to each other, nor did it look like they were about to. As they sat
in silence, Ruwani shifted uncomfortably. Across from her, the dark and
somber knight seemed as annoyed with her as he was angry with the entire
situation.
Ruwani turned at the sound of footsteps. Ledger just
glanced up, his head not even moving from its thoughtful place on his hand.
Behind Ruwani’s chair, Roland strolled up, his usually tan skin seeming
pale in the clinical lighting of the hospital. “Marilyn and the others are
awake,” Roland said, looking sympathetically to Ruwani. “They’re fine, near
as the doctors can tell. Nothing bad; they’re just a bit bruised and banged
up.”
“Thank god,” she said, collapsing back into her
chair. Her head fell into her hands as she closed her eyes, her breathing
growing hard and controlled, to keep her tears back.
“What about our boy?” Ledger asked, barely having
moved from the position he had been in for the last hour. His right arm
stayed on the chair’s armrest as he looked to Roland. “How’s Armand?”
Roland was hesitant to answer. When he finally did,
his voice was soft with worry. “I don’t know. But when I saw him, I…” He
took a deep breath. “He doesn’t look good.”
There was a knock on the late night door. Morgan
checked through the peephole. He closed his eyes tightly, as if praying
angrily to the torrential rain. He undid the multitude of locks on his door
and threw it open.
Everett
stood in the rain, glaring at him.
“Jericho
got arrested?” Aaron exclaimed, sitting in his office, ignoring the light
stains of water that splashed across his walls opposite the giant window
behind his desk. In the lightless office, the light from the outside world
gave watery life to his office.
“Looks that way,” came Ernesto’s voice over the
cordless phone. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of Phillip yet. He went
out to the site, to appraise the situation with the fortress. He and Ken
apparently haven’t spoken in some time.”
“Still, if Jericho
got arrested by the Triumvirate,” Aaron puzzled, sitting back in his chair.
“Who’s going to head up the Hand of the Brotherhood? One of Jericho’s drugged-up
lackeys?”
“Word has it, it’s going to be one of the Clan heads,”
answered Ernesto.
Silence.
“Are you serious?” Aaron asked to the phone, suddenly
very vocal as he sat forward. He was too surprised and overcome to smile.
“That would mean either me or Phillip.”
“Looks that way,” said Ernesto, obviously smiling as
he spoke. “Even if that goes against the general guidelines of the
Brotherhood, it really looks like one of the Clan heads is going to head-up
the Hand. At least for a little while.”
“Oh my god,” Aaron said, sitting back. His worry
shattered and his face began a giant grin. “That’s great.”
“I thought you’d be pleased,” Ernesto went on.
“Ernie, I’m going to get Phillip to give you a raise,”
Aaron said, his smile so large it was turning into laughter.
“Screw that,” Ernesto said. “How about you tell him
to give me a few days off? I don’t have time to spend the money I make now.
And how about you don’t call me ‘Ernie’?”
“You got,” Aaron said, turning back around to his
desk. “Ernesto, thanks.”
“Any time, Aaron.”
“I’m going to make this very clear to you,” Everett said, staring
at Morgan. The former knight who stood inside the door prepared to speak,
but Everett
interrupted him immediately. “Shut up!” he snapped, his eyes turning to
fire as he glared at Morgan. Morgan stepped mentally back, allowing Everett to continue
as he stood before the doorway, oblivious to the rain.
“I don’t know what possessed you to pull that stunt,
but Roland and Ledger are at the hospital now,” Everett said. “The doctors aren’t sure if
Armand’s going to make it through the night.”
“He’ll live,” Morgan said callously. “And besides,
he’s a knight. He’s prepared for that contingency.”
In a flash, Everett
grabbed the collar of Morgan’s green t-shirt. The former knight made no
move to intercept Everett.
“You listen and you listen good,” Everett
said with a cold, silent voice as he pulled Morgan up with one hand, taking
the former knight to his toes. “If you EVER pull a stunt like this again,
you’re going to deal with me.”
Everett
pushed him back, but Morgan kept his footing, only stepping back a single
step. But by the time he had regained his balance, Everett had already turned from the
doorway and was heading down the steps and into the rain.
Roland and Ledger waited at the foot of the bed,
watching their friend. Underneath the pale blue sheets of the emergency
room bed, Armand seemed to struggle to breath. On either side of the bed,
crowding the room, an assortment of devices moved and beeped, monitored and
lived with each breath of Armand’s.
“He doesn’t look that bad,” Ledger finally said,
turning from the boy on the bed. “That chick doctor said that these
instruments were trying to identify the…” He stopped and took a deep
breath, then turned to Roland. “He might still pull through.”
“Might,” Roland said, turning also. He glanced back
over his shoulder. Several tubes ran from Armand’s arm into the machines,
while the IV drip remained constant. As Roland stared there, hoping against
hope, all he could think about was that it genuinely looked like Armand was
going to die.
Everett
pushed the door to his apartment open. The thunderstorm light from the
outside pushed into the large open room. The impeccably clean apartment
waited for him in utter darkness as Everett
dropped his ninjato by the doorway. He closed the door with his foot and
stripped off his black jacket, revealing the soaked red shirt underneath.
“How’d it go?”
Everett
whirled around to face his dark apartment, his black jacket held ready for
lethal use. But sitting at the couch against the wall, the light from the
rain outside cascading just beyond him, was Edgar. Everett took a moment to calm, shaking
out his shoulders as he eased. “What brings you here?” he finally asked.
“Just curious,” the elder knight said, standing up.
In the streetlight from the rain outside, the old man seemed strangely
powerful, like his youth had been restored. “It’s been a long night. For
all of us. I wonder how Morgan took your thanks.”
“About as well can be expected,” Everett said, draping his black jacket
over the coat rack before heading into the bathroom. When he turned on the
light, the white ambience seemed to explode into the apartment, momentarily
blinding both men. “I don’t suppose there’s been any word from Roland or
Ledger?” he asked as he turned on the faucet. He grabbed a handful of water
and rubbed his face vigorously with it.
“Not that I’ve heard,” Edgar said, the man coming
into the doorway of the bathroom. Standing now in the light, his
mid-thirties face seemed much younger, inspite of the half-grown beard with
its streaks of white amongst the thick black. “My cell phone’s on and I’ve
been here for awhile.”
“I guess no news is good news,” Everett concluded fatalistically, turning
off the light.
“Since you two are his friends and he has no family
in the city, in the state even, I thought you should see this,” the doctor
said as she led Roland and Ledger into the dark room. When she shut the door,
the two were momentarily left sightless. But she switched on a viewer on
the wall, clearly showing a series of x-rays. The weak light from the
viewer cast over Roland and Ledger, the blue light hitting harshly their
black clothes and red shirts.
“Look at this,” the doctor said, pointing
specifically to the X-ray of a deep chest wound. “This is an X-ray of your
friends chest and of the wound that was made. Look at the incision, at the
angle of entry.” She turned back to Ledger and Roland, her middle-aged eyes
showing knowledge beyond her years. “Your friend is very lucky. This was a
very precise cut.”
The two knights glanced at the X-rays with surprise.
They looked at each other, then to the doctor. “What are you saying?”
Roland asked, not sure if he was following what she said as he studied the x-ray.
“I wasn’t sure at first,” she went on, stepping past
them to turn on the dim, over-head light. When it came on, it seemed like
thunder had sounded. But the low buzzing from the ancient, overhead light
was lost on them as the doctor opened a manila folder and started to flip
through it. “It looks like a nasty cut. And it should be.”
“Should be?” Ledger asked, his eyebrows rising.
“But when we were about to start the pre-surgery
evaluation, we saw a lot of inconsistencies,” she went on. “That wound,” she
explained, motioning with her eyes to the x-ray, “that wound is one in a
million, gentlemen.”
“Come again,” Roland asked, his eyes narrow in
disbelief.
“This was a surgeon’s cut, guys,” she said, speaking
more clearly. “Whoever made this wound did it with the sole intention of
not hurting that boy at all. The muscles have barely been damaged. There’s
no noteworthy arterial damage and absolutely NO organ damage. Nothing.” She
shook her head, closing the folder as she addressed the two. “I wouldn’t
believe it until I saw it. It’s a huge wound.”
“I’ll say,”
Ledger exclaimed.
“It doesn’t
really make much sense,” the doctor went on. “That injury would have killed
him. But it was aimed so precisely, so carefully, and executed with such
precision…” Her voice stumbled off. “It went right between the ribs. And it
drove in deep. But it didn’t actually puncture any of the organs. Scraped
the lungs. It NEARLY punctured the left lung. But…” She shook her head
again, completely at a loss. “But honestly, guys. It’s a flesh wound. One
that nearly went half-way into the torso, yes, but it’s totally clean.”
“A flesh wound?” Ledger asked, having difficulty
believing it. “A flesh wound? That?!”
“So what you’re saying is that he, the attacker, was
specifically trying not to kill him?” Roland asked, stepping forward as if
the proximity would make a difference in his understanding. “He stabbed
him, in the chest, with a big-ass sword, and was trying NOT to kill him?”
The doctor thought for a moment. “This strike was
decided very carefully. It’s something that most doctors would spend hours
preparing for. That, gentlemen, is a surgeon’s cut of the highest caliber.
The instrument that made that injury was finely prepared.”
“Sounds familiar,”
Ledger whispered loudly to himself. Roland gave him a look, but the doctor
went on.
“But the
magnificence of that wound is obvious,” she said. “Your friend will be
perfectly okay in probably an hour or two. There probably won’t even be a
scar left.”
“But, the
attack,” Ledger said, “he stabbed our boy in the chest and did no damage?
He was trying not to kill him?”
“Gentlemen,
that’s exactly what I’m saying,” the doctor finalized with a solemn and
slow nod of her head.
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