|
“We need to
work on our communication.”
Capt. Steven Hiller, Independence Day
The knights were silent as they sat around the hotel
room. Sitting between the two beds, Morgan sat with his knees curled up,
leaning against the inner bed. At the table, Roland and Ledger pretended to
work on the knight’s shotgun, while Armand dozed on the bed. Sydney lay near
Morgan’s head. None spoke a word.
“I can’t believe it!” Everett exclaimed as he paced on the roof
of the hotel. Three stories up from the street, he erupted towards Edgar.
“That idiot killed a knight. He killed Arthur, probably the closest thing
the knights have had to a leader in a long, long time.”
“I know, Everett,”
the elder man said, leaning against the side of the roof. “Still, I think
you did a fine job leading the knights towards the goal of taking down the
fortress.”
“Maybe,” Everett
said, shaking his head. “But now what do I tell Marilyn and the others?”
“I have no idea,” Edgar chuckled. “But that was a
stirring speech you gave. I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with something
to feed her.”
“Edgar, I don’t like the idea of lying to her.”
“Of course you don’t,” he said, shrugging. “But you
know you’re going to have to get used to it. A woman like her asks
questions, even if she knows she can’t have the answers. Maybe because she
knows she can’t have the answers. I don’t know. But you have to reconcile
that she’ll get every drop of information out of you if she can.”
Everett
smiled and looked up at the sky. “Does that make her a bad person?”
“No,” Edgar laughed. “It makes her serious about her
job, which is leading the World Alliance. It makes her careful and
intelligent and very, very nosy. “
“She is that,” Everett
agreed, sitting down. “It’s just…” He started chuckling. “It’s just such a
cute nose.”
“That may well be,” Edgar said, standing up,
stretching his back in the midday air. “But the question is, what are we
going to do now? Go home and then go to the fortress?”
“I guess,” Everett
shrugged.
“Thanks, Hamlet,” Edgar said, smiling only
afterwards. “No, really. What are you going to do about the World Alliance?
What are you going to do about Marilyn?”
“I don’t know,” Everett
said, thinking.
“What are you going to do about Victor?” Edgar
pressed, his grin growing.
“I don’t know,” Everett
said, sitting up. “Put him in a room with Ledger and no windows?”
“That’d just be cruel and unusual punishment,” Edgar
chuckled inwardly. He turned from Everett,
but before he could take a step he turned back to him. “What are we going
to do about the three defectors, Errol and Orson and Ian? What about them?
You want to take them?”
“Hell no,” Everett
said, finally standing up as well. “For all we know, they’re setting us
up.”
“Probably.”
“Maybe I’ll get Marilyn to keep an eye on them,” he
mused. “I just, they’ve been awfully forward and helpful. And they seem
genuine. But I do wonder how much we can trust them.”
“Well, they all seemed pretty pissed about their boy
getting taken by Jericho,”
Edgar said. “And you know, if we go through with this assault on the
fortress, if the knights succeed, that means sooner or later, someone’s going
to have to come face to face with Jericho.”
“I know,” Everett
nodded. “But I think I can take him this time.”
“Everett,
I have the utmost confidence in you, but we don’t have a margin of error
for ‘think’. You either can or you can’t.” Edgar stepped over the side of
the roof onto the brick wall that ran along the three-story stairs. He stepped
off the side, his black jacket flaring up as he caught himself on his
fingers, to end up dangling only a few feet from the concrete stairs. He
looked up at Everett
and winked at the knight before dropping the rest of the way.
“The knights are supposed to be back by now, right?”
Ruwani said, sitting up from the bed in the small hotel room. She looked
over at the table as Marilyn studied some papers that were laid out before
her. She almost looked up from the papers, but then focused back at them,
not saying a thing. “Mar?” Ruwani asked. “Did you hear me? Aren’t the
knights supposed to be back?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Ruwani pressed. “Don’t you want to, you know,
go see them, see what happened? Or something like that?”
“Yeah.”
Ruwani sat
back on the bed, lying out over the blankets. “You know, you seem to be
taking this all real lightly suddenly.
“What
am I supposed to do?” Marilyn said, looking up from the papers. “They’re
going off, talking to all the good guys, and we’re left here doing this
crap!” she exclaimed, holding up a handful of papers. “I feel like I’m chasing
after ghosts while they know where the aliens are.”
“What?” Ruwani said, looking over at Marilyn in
confusion.
“I mean, it’s just,” her voice trailed off for a
moment. “The knights are like this super-secret army, right? And they know
all this stuff and they can do all this stuff, but it’s almost like they’re
the neighborhood boys who get to play in the tree house because it’s in
their yard and they won’t let any girls come in to play.”
“Are you saying you want to play with the knights?”
Ruwani asked coyly.
“No, it’s…” Marilyn looked away. “Scientology,” she
said, holing up one of the papers. “The Ku Klux Klan. All these famous
organizations, but they’re nothing to the Brotherhood of the Sun. But since
the knights have declared the Brotherhood their mortal enemy, it’s like
we’re not allowed to go after them either.”
“Fine,” Ruwani exclaimed. “That’s fine with me. They
nearly killed us on several occasions, Marilyn.”
“But they need to be stopped,” she exclaimed.
“And they will be,” Ruwani said. “By the knights.”
“But I don’t want the knights to stop them,” Marilyn
said, resigning herself to whispering.
“You want to stop them.”
Marilyn looked up in shock, but Ruwani was staring at
her. “You want to get to be the heroine who has to fight to save the day,
rather than having to wait back at home, sitting on your hands and hoping
like a good little girl.”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“You want to be involved.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to save the day.”
“Exactly.”
Ruwani turned back to the bed, stretching out comfortably.
“That’s why I’m quitting the World Alliance.”
Malcolm came strolling down the hallway, two big bags
of food in his hands. The warm smell of the fast food moved him faster as
the added tray of drinks ran condensation down onto his hand. He sped up
his pace, but it wasn’t fast enough. The bags began to slide, his grip
failing. Before he knew it, the two bags fell together. And out of reflex,
he reached down to the grab them, not aware of the falling drinks until it
was too late.
A dark-skinned hand grabbed the drink tray out of the
air only a second later to scoop the smaller of the two bags up from
hitting the floor. Malcolm looked up with shock as Armand smiled back at
him. “Thanks, buddy,” Armand grinned. “I was getting hungry.” Malcolm
gathered up the larger bag, putting the scattered sandwiches back into it
then looked at Armand as the knight handed him the smaller bag. “They
always put the fries in the smaller bag,” he explained with a smile. “You
want some help back to your room?”
“Sure,” he said, walking with Armand. “When’d you
guys get back?”
“About an hour ago,” Armand answered. “We’ve just
been trying to decide what to do about things.”
“What things?” Malcolm asked.
“Morgan, mainly,” the youngest knight answered.
“Don’t tell Marilyn or Ru that we’re back. Everett’s still deliberating.” He handed
the tray of drinks to Malcolm and smiled. “We’ll come in get you in about
half an hour.” He turned to head back down the row of doors.
“Armand,” Malcolm said, stopping the knight. “Did
everything go okay?”
Armand smiled but he didn’t turn back to Malcolm. He kept
walking. “God only knows,” he sent back.
|