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“You can plan a pretty picnic,
But you can’t predict the weather.”
Outkasts, Ms. Jackson
The elevator was as silent as the conversation.
Aaron stood up
tall, freshly dressed in a new suit, the new days energy instilled in him.
He looked over at the reflective wall of the elevator, however, looking at
the bruise that still covered the left side of his face. And inspite of the
combed hair and rested eyes, he could see the fear that had become a part
of his life in the last weeks.
He looked in the reflection at Jericho as the Hand of the Brotherhood’s
leader worked absently to put his long blonde hair back in a ponytail.
Dressed in black jeans and a red shirt, the thick man looked frightening,
even with his hands over his head, his attention obviously focused on such
a trivial thing.
Jericho
looked over at Aaron. “What?”
Aaron said nothing. He shook his head and looked
straightforward again. In a matter of moments, the elevator chimed and the
door opened. A long, expansive series of hallways opened up before the two.
Aaron stepped out behind Jericho,
looking down either direction from the elevator. “What is it with the
Brotherhood and these mazes under our buildings?”
“You just have to know what you’re looking for,” Jericho said. He
looked down to his right, then turned his whole body to the left. “And it’d
be nice if I knew what I was looking for.”
“What are we doing here?” Aaron asked. “And more
specifically, what am I doing here?”
“We’re here to talk to Organ,” Jericho said, turning back around.
“That way,” Aaron said, pointing to the right. “I
came and saw him a little while back. The reactor’s down this way.”
“Great,” Jericho
smiled half-sarcastically, heading off in that direction.
“I repeat,” Aaron asked as he moved to follow the
larger Jericho,
“what am I doing here? Last time you and I spoke, you were trying to frame
me for sending that sniper, your sniper, on a killing spree. What was that
all about, anyway?”
“The plans of mice and men,” Jericho said cryptically, strolling quickly
down the empty, sterile hall. “I needed to expose the knights and draw
their attention from the fortress that we were building.”
“Really?” Aaron said. “So you drew attention to the
Brotherhood?”
“Only the knights would ever put it together that it
was the Brotherhood,” he said. “That and that weird World Alliance thing,
which, thanks to your boy Errol informing them of all this information,
they know about the fortress.”
“Errol was supposed to be feeding them disinformation,”
Aaron defended. “At least, until Phillip went nuts.”
“The chemicals will do that to you,” Jericho nodded.
“And again, why am I here?” Aaron asked. “Aren’t I
the enemy?”
“Aaron, I chose to blame the sniper on the
Investigators because I know I can trust you guys,” Jericho explained as he counted the doors
he was walking past.
“So you pinned it on me because you like me?” Aaron
exclaimed, stopping.
“Look, it’s more complicated than…” Jericho stopped and looked past Aaron’s
shoulder. Aaron looked behind himself, glancing at the doors he stood in
front of. “Isn’t that the elevator we came down in?” Jericho asked.
“This is like a bad dream,” Ken said to the
half-empty bottle in front of him. “Phillip takes over. Then Phillip
disappears, hopefully forever. And then, suddenly Jericho’s back. This just couldn’t get
any worse.”
At the hotel bar, he sat in a black tuxedo, the tie
and vest on the chair to his left, the red-dressed Mint on his right. The
breathtaking woman nursed a simple glass of water, staring into it morosely
as she seemed to consider the world in general.
The bar was mostly empty, except for the distant
bartender who was busy drying glasses. In the early afternoon, few came
into the bar except for the terminally depressed. And Ken felt he ranked
amongst their highest order. “What do we do from here?” he asked with a
slight slur in his words as he looked at Mint. “Jericho wants us to finish the project.”
“Then we finish it,” she accepted, looking over to
Ken. “Unless you have a better idea.”
“I don’t have an idea, better or otherwise,” he said,
going sadly back to his glass.
“You know,” Aaron said as he sat in the right chair
in front of the desk. “I always thought it was really rude when people came
in and just sat down in my chair, even if they did out-rank me.”
“You’ll get over it,” Jericho countered uninterestedly, sitting
behind the desk. With his right foot propped up over his left knee, he
turned in the chair to look out the frosted window of the cluttered office,
to see the shadows of the work that was going on outside. “It’s nearly
done, you know?” he mused. He looked at Aaron, an accomplished smile on his
face. “The reactor, the fortress. Pretty soon, the Brotherhood’s going to
make its presence known to the world.”
“Too late,” Aaron grumbled, turning to the
overflowing filing cabinets. As the Investigator’s Clan leader spoke, the
door burst open and in a flutter of loose paper, Organ came stumbling into
the office. His tie was crooked and his shirt was only tucked-in on the
left side. His socks didn’t match and neither did his shoes as he rushed to
the desk.
“Sor-sorry I kept you wa-waiting,” he said, sitting
down like a lap dog in the left chair. Aaron looked at Jericho, just eliciting a worried shake
of the head from the leader of the Hand.
“Organ,” Jericho
said with a sigh, already frustrated with the conversation that hadn’t even
begun. “You were my eyes and ears while I was away. I was able to effect a
few small changes through you and you kept things from falling too far
apart.”
“You were aware of everything that was going on?”
Aaron said, surprised.
“Of course, Aaron,” he said with a smile, almost
laughing. “Who did you think that voice was, inside the Triumvirate’s
chamber?”
Aaron’s blood went cold.
“Anyway,” Jericho
said, going back to Organ, “you’ve been working like a dog, I know. And you
and your men need a break. I know and I’m sorry about that.”
“No, no,” Organ stumbled fearfully, still talking
like a drunk explaining his condition to his wife. “It’s fine, re-really.”
“Let’s go ahead and get the big one out of the way.
How long until the reactor is completed?” Jericho asked, taking a deep, hopeful
breath.
“At our current, breakneck schedule?” Organ asked.
“Tuesday night.”
Aaron’s face went pale. He looked at Jericho, finding a similar look. “Okay,” Jericho said in
surprise. “Maybe Phillip wasn’t totally worthless as a leader.”
“B-but my men need a break a-after it’s over,” Organ
stuttered.
Jericho
laughed. “Organ, if you can get me the reactor by Tuesday night, if you can
complete it in five days, I will pay for you and your staff to go anywhere
in the world.”
“Bed will be f-fine,” Organ smiled. “But the
transporting of the, it’s going to be trouble,” he said.
“Why’s that?” Jericho
asked.
“We can’t move it through usual industrial channels,”
Organ explained in broken words. “They’ll find out what it is. And then,
it’ll get confiscated.”
“The reactor’s small,” Aaron tossed in to Jericho. “We might be
able to move it through the regular trucking routes.”
“But that would leave it unprotected,” Jericho mused. “If it
was discovered, we would have almost no way to defend it on the open road.”
“What about your Hand boys?” Aaron asked. “What if
you put them in a series of vehicles tailing the trailer. Could they defend
it?”
“I suppose,” Jericho
thought, obviously not liking the idea. “But you’re talking about an escort
measuring dozens of men.” Jericho
shook his head. “I seriously doubt we could spare that many.”
“Jericho,
this reactor is the last piece,” Aaron insisted. “We’ve got to see to it
that it gets to the fortress.”
“The battle with Phillip decimated the Hand’s
resources, Aaron,” Jericho
explained, his humor disappearing.
“Then I’ll send some of my men if they’re up to the
job,” Aaron offered. “Would you prefer that?”
“Actually, yes,” Jericho nodded. He smiled and looked to
Organ. “I want the reactor ready to be moved by Wednesday morning.
Understand?”
“Y-yes sir,” Organ stumbled out.
Jericho
looked at Aaron. “I want you to pick thirty men. Thirty men that you trust
in high-stress, unusual, combat situations.”
“You just described Errol and Orson,” Aaron said
confidently. “Thirty might be hard to find, but I can do it.”
“Do it,” Jericho
answered with a growing smile.
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