Looking good so far as I said in IM. Very much liking the Pratchett-esque footnotes and humour here and there. Looking forward to seeing more!

            My alarm clock jerked me awake
around seven-thirty in the morning. Usually, I had it set to make that common
buzzing noise; the kind that’s like a freakin’ siren bashing your eardrums in.
That day, though, it was different.

            “Good morning, listeners. You’re up
with Reverend Teague MacNavi on W-XYZ. Oh, here comes the sun, finally breaking
through the clouds. I am moved to recount a portion of Psalm Seventy-Two: ‘His
name shall be endured forever: His name shall be continued as long as the sun:
and men shall be blessed in Him: all nations shall call Him blessed.’ And this
is truly a blessed sun. But, isn’t every sun a blessed one? For as long as the
sun continues to rise, we know that there is someone in Heaven ensuring an
enduring love for all of us…”

            I threw a book at my alarm clock,
knocking it off my night-table. It was too early for preaching, and that’s the
honest word according to Tino the Gospel.

            Of course, I puzzled over why I
heard Teague MacNavi on my radio while I was in the shower. It was more than a
little creepy. It continued to bug me through breakfast. I flipped on the
television while I was having my bowl of Frosted Flakes and was relieved that
Teague MacNavi wasn’t on any of the morning talk shows. Still, I couldn’t help
but feel that there was something plain awful about to happen when we took our
little trip up to his place.

            I was about to leave my apartment
when an obvious hindrance grabbed my attention: where were my keys? I began
poking around, looking for them in the usual places: on the peg by the door,
under the bed, on the kitchen table. Nothing. A fine time to misplace something
this vital, right? There I was, standing in my bedroom, painfully aware that
I’d miss my flight if those keys didn’t turn up soon, and cursing angrily
because of it.

            “Damn it, Saint Anthony, what the
hell did you do with my keys?”

            In frustration, I kicked my
night-table. Much to my surprise, it made an unexpected sound, like it was
banging against something other than the wall it was sitting against. I leaned
over and saw that my alarm clock had tumbled over the side and was sandwiched
between the wall and the night-table. Next to the clock were—yes, you guessed
it—my keys, but also another item: my rosary. Por Dios, I hadn’t seen my beads or even done a decade in ages! I
was mystified, sure, but there wasn’t time to think about it that much. Maybe
Saint Anthony had put me on hold temporarily and had just gotten to my call.*

            In any case, I was still feeling a
little—well, spooked probably isn’t the right word, but close enough—when I got
on the plane. I must have looked distant, because Rosette, sitting next to me,
clapped her hands in front of my face.

            “I swear, I didn’t do it!” I said,
probably too loudly even for first-class. I know I got some funny stares for
that. Brother Duke, sitting behind me, leaned over my seat and whispered, “Son,
what is the matter with you?”

            I shook my head. Brother Reiji,
sitting next to Duke, snorted, “He is a dreamer. Let us leave him.”

            Brother Rex, sitting to my left,
whispered, “Are you well?”

            “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” I insisted.
I didn’t want to tell anyone about what was bothering me, since if it didn’t
make any sense to me, what sense would it make to them? I tried to relax, but
much to my disgust, the in-flight movie was Highlander
II: The Quickening, and that threatened to make me puke more than the
turbulence. I got up and went over to the bar, in the mood for something to
mellow me out.

            “What would you like, sir?” asked
the cheerful young attendant behind the bar. Ignoring the little sting of guilt
I had for getting a drink this early in the day, I grinned at her.

            “How about your number, honey?”

            She blushed and replied, “I’m afraid
I can only provide services within the space of the bar, sir.”

            “Then I guess I’ll have to settle
for a Cuba Libre, and be generous with the cola. After all, we want those
Cubans really free.”

            The attendant laughed and said,
“Right away.” I turned away while she was mixing my drink and observed the other
passengers in this part of the plane. Most looked like businessmen. I am still
not sure what businessmen exactly do. They probably don’t know what I do
either, but the difference there is that my job affects them more than theirs
affects me.

            “One Cuba Libre, extra libre,” said the attendant. I turned to
her, took my drink, and said, “Thanks, honey. A little something for the love.”

            I tossed a few bills on the bar and
returned to my seat. Rosette shook her head in disapproval.

            “Do you flirt with every woman you
meet?”

            “Only the pretty ones,” I objected.

            “That’s low.”

            “Just making a quick pass at her?
No, that’s not low. What is low is writing my number on the bills I slipped
her.”

            Out of nowhere, Brother Reiji
appeared in the aisle and said, “I believe it is in our best interest to look
over our assignment instructions while we have the opportunity.”

            “With these many ears listening?”
asked Rex.

            “Not a problem. Brother Quentin?”

            Quentin leaned over and held out
what looked for all the world like a pack of gum. I blinked and then took a
piece from him.

            “Thank you; don’t mind if I do.”

            The others took a piece of Quentin’s
gum, apparently more hesitant about this than me. Reiji soon asked, “Is
everyone chewing?”

            We nodded yes. Reiji smiled.

            “Marvelous. Continue to do so
regularly.”

            “Why’s that?” asked Duke.

            “As long as you chew, your language
is entirely garbled to people not also chewing the gum,” explained Quentin.
Deciding to test this for myself, I took the gum out of my mouth and listened to
the others talking. It sounded like a mix of Japanese, Spanish, German,
English, and maybe some other languages all at once. Needless to say, I was
impressed and popped the gum back in my mouth.

            “Whoa, that’s crazy. The guy who
came up with this is a genius!” I said.

            “Thank you,” Quentin modestly
replied.

            “Let us begin,” said Reiji, holding
our instruction documents. “Here we have a blueprint of Reverend MacNavi’s
house, at least as far as the local zoning board knows. It is an elegant yet
simple affair: a two-story edifice overlooking the Charles
River. The floor plans suggest nothing out of the ordinary for a
common household. To our knowledge, the reverend lives alone, save for a dog.”

            “What kind of dog?” asked Rex.

            Reiji flicked through the documents
uncertainly. “It is not specified.”

            “A guy living alone with a dog.
Boring,” Duke commented. “What were they thinking, sending us on a wild goose
chase like this? Hell, they’ve pulled us the world over to New
York City, and then we’re going to Boston, and for what? He’s probably got some
poodle or something that he adores. I tell you, this is making a mountain out
of a molehill.”

            “That certainly doesn’t account for
radio waves,” Reiji said gravely. “A little gravity, if you please, Brother
Duke. There is a mission to be completed. We have no idea what our preliminary
investigation will yield.”

            “I don’t claim to rightly know how
it is over in Japan,
but over here, we’ve got a presumption of innocence until proven guilty,” Duke
said proudly.

            “Unless Arab, perhaps,” Reiji shot
back swiftly. I looked sideways at Rex, recalling he said he was from Cairo. Duke was already
on his feet.

            “You got something to say to me,
short stuff?” Duke asked, cracking his knuckles. A sudden rumble made all of us
turn and look at Brother Aleksandr, who was snoring. Quentin said, “Go easy
with the volume of your voices, please. Other people may not understand content
but an argument sounds the same in any language.”

            I chuckled a little. “They slapped
us together like the contents of fast food chili and just expect us to get
along. That was great planning.”

            Duke sat down. Reiji said, “My
apologies. I believe it is in our best interests to acknowledge that we have
certain differences in worldview and move on from there.”

            Quentin, engrossed in his laptop,
said, “Has anyone heard about this? It looks like MacNavi is going to be having
a sermon outside the Old
North Church
today. This could be a fantastic opportunity to get inside his house.”

            “Or maybe to meet him in person,” suggested
Rex, looking up. “I would like to see who this man is for myself, personally.”

            Reiji stroked his chin. “Perhaps,
then, we should conduct two efforts in tandem. One team will go investigate the
man, myth, and legend, whilst the other team will survey his property.”

            “I’m going to go see this man’s
house,” said Rosette firmly.

            “Very well; Sister Rosette, Brother
Quentin, Brother Tino, and I will go Reverend MacNavi’s house. Brother Rex,
Brother Duke, and Brother Aleksandr should go learn what they can about the man
as he conducts himself in public. Depending upon the degree of contradiction
between what we respectively find, we may have a deeper case on our hands,”
Reiji remarked.

            “How are we going to get in?” I
asked. “I think he’d notice the signs of a breaking in and entry.”

            “Not to worry!” said Quentin
happily, looking up from his laptop. “I have just the thing for situations like
this.”

            “What? A lock-pick?”

            “Ugh, how barbaric!” Quentin
responded with distaste. “No, what I have is far better than that. Behold!”

            He fished out a strange gizmo from
his pocket. It looked mostly like a flashlight but it had two pincers at the
top and a number of little buttons along the side.

            “What on earth is that?” asked
Rosette, on behalf of us all.

            “Why, isn’t it obvious? It’s a
magnetic wrench.”

            “Oh, of course,” said Duke.

            “How will that help us?” I asked.

            “It’s a very fascinating procedure,
involving the manipulation of the electromagnetic force that keeps electrons in
orbit in their cloud around the nuclei of atoms…” began Quentin, but I held up
a hand to stop him.

            “What does this look like: a science
fiction novel? Just tell me what it does.”

            Quentin looked crestfallen, but it’s
not like him explaining how it worked would have done you or me any good.

            “It separates matter, such as the
kind in locks and bolts,” he said sadly.

            “Awesome. See, that wasn’t so hard,
was it?” I asked.

            “More than you probably would
believe.”

            “And it won’t leave any traces of
our presence?” asked Reiji.

            “It’d be as if the door opened
itself, leaving not a trace of forced entry.”

            “What a delightful little device,
Brother Quentin. I may have use of that in the future,” Reiji said
thoughtfully.

            Aleksandr must have woken up at some
point, because he said, “What were we talking about?”

            “You, me, and the Star-Spangled
Slaphead are going to check out our target in person,” said Rex. Duke made a
face but said nothing.

            “Is that so? Good. I would like to
see what this man is made of. Sneaking around his house is for cowards who lurk
in corners,” Aleksandr declared. I looked up at the ceiling and sucked down
more of my Cuba Libre. This was going to be a long flight for a mere trip
further up the Northeast Corridor.

            Have you ever been in a situation
where you thought about something fanciful and dismissed it as unlikely to
happen, only for it to actually happen later on?

            Man, I freakin’ hate that.

            We’d gotten off the plane and
divided into our teams. Now under normal circumstances, I might’ve felt a
little out of place hiking through an unfamiliar town with the intent to go
pillage someone’s house, but these weren’t normal circumstances. After all, we
were just in plain clothes rather than our conventional Brotherhood uniform.
Usually, our day-to-day activities were conducted in business attire and a
black trench coat.** Today, we were walking
incognito like your average, everyday burglars.

            When we got to the house, I had to
stop and admire it for a second. It was your classic colonial set-up, with nice
brickwork and all that. I cased the property, pretending to casually stroll by
and look beyond the white picket fence for any signs of unexpected life forms
that might have been standing guard. Finding none, I headed across the street
and down another street to where the others were awaiting me at a street
corner. On that little walk, I was thinking about the dog Reiji had mentioned.

            “Anything to report?” asked Rosette.

            “The place is perfectly empty.
Doesn’t look like the neighbors are in. I didn’t even see the dog.”

            “All the better for us, isn’t it?”
Quentin said. “Allons-y.”

            We proceeded back to the reverend’s
house and pretended not to look at all suspicious in the process. Quentin went
ahead, hopped the fence, and darted up to the front porch. He took out his
magnetic wrench, fiddled around with the door, and, sure enough, a click
signaled that the locks came undone. He waved us onward. Rosette, Reiji, and I
jumped the fence and followed Quentin into the house.

            “Well, someone certainly leads a
good life,” I commented. While the outside of the house was modest, decadence
poured out of every piece of furniture inside. The upholstery was really fancy,
the floors were made of marble, the tables looked like a finely polished
mahogany, and the dining room had a massive chandelier. It was impressive, no
doubt.

            “Maybe he does have more ego than we
thought,” Reiji said, looking around.

            “So, what are we looking for?”
Rosette asked. “I’m not sure if there’s anything hidden that I should note or
if it’s going to be something that obviously doesn’t belong in a house.”

            “A fair question. I’d reckon that
not many people come into this house, so it may just be in a place that’s a
little out of the way,” suggested Quentin.

            “Let’s split up and cover our ground
efficiently,” Reiji said. I decided to go down to the basement, which seemed as
suspicious as any other place. I opened the door to the basement stairs and
felt around for a light switch of some kind. Finding none, I gripped the rail
tightly and made my way down slowly. It wasn’t lost on me that, despite it
being Boston in
January, it was really cold down there. I guessed that MacNavi might have a
refrigerator unit downstairs and dismissed the thought. Just then, a slam
behind me made me nearly jump off the stairs entirely. I glanced behind me and
couldn’t see a thing. The door at the top of the stairs had been shut. Even as
I was about to stammer out a shout, I heard a sound somewhere in the darkness.
I wondered if it was the dog. After all, we hadn’t seen it yet, and I doubt
anyone would leave their dog in place which it could escape from, so this
seemed like a good place to keep a dog home alone. I remember thinking to
myself at that very moment, “Gee, wouldn’t it be hilarious if the dog were some
sort of horrible, canine hell-hound?”

            I stumbled down a few more stairs
and caught myself at the bottom against the wall. By luck, I felt a switch
under my hand. A single incandescent bulb flickered into life. The basement had
the usual things in it; mostly boxes of forgotten and unwanted junk. Scurrying
around in the corner, chasing its tail, was a little Scottish terrier. I began
laughing at my overactive imagination. Giant hound beasts are for Greek myths.

            A
snort from behind the stairs made my blood run cold. Very slowly, I looked over
my shoulder. Padding around the stairs was a massive dog the size of a kitchen
stove. The terrier ran over to it and nuzzled against one of its massive legs.
Surely, I’d have thought it was cute, if I didn’t think I was going to lose all
control over my bladder at that same moment.

            The hound looked at me with eyes
that were just as opaque as they were red. Most people would probably have
given up right then and there, but when you work in the Brotherhood, these
sorts of things aren’t entirely novel occupational hazards. I was about to
reach into my trench coat, only to remember I wasn’t wearing it. I backed away
slowly. It took the opportunity to approach me, its mouth hanging open and its
nose twitching. Something round and hard was under my foot. I looked down quickly
to see a baseball bat underfoot; that was as good as I was going to get. I
squatted down, grabbed the bat in my hands, and held it in a tight grip, as if
my life depended on it. Technically, it did.

            The hound growled, apparently
sensing I didn’t have any friendlier intentions for it than I suspected it had
for me. It wasn’t stupid; I could give it that much. At once, I bounded back
for the stairs, only for the hound to lash out and completely obliterate the
wooden staircase with a swipe of its massive paw. This was enough to stop me
and I stood there, my mouth hanging open. What had been a staircase was now a
heap of kindling. Weirder still, I noticed that the hound had a red collar
around its neck with a little tag that read “PAWZ.”*

            “I think you need to learn that
breaking houses doesn’t mean being housebroken,” I said, though on reflection,
I have no idea why. I darted off to another corner of the basement. A heavy paw
came slamming down a foot away from me. I swung the bat as hard as I could and
bashed its paw. Naturally, this went over like a lead balloon for Pawz, who
howled in anger and started snarling. I was already ducking off behind the
hound, which was trying to spin around and hit me. It nearly clocked me with
its massive tail. As its tail cleared my head, I ran after it and nailed it
against the floor with my bat. Pawz jumped and kicked out. Its hind leg caught
me way off guard and I got the wind knocked outta me. I wound up getting sent
into a bunch of cardboard boxes stacked up against the wall. Pawz then began
closing in. I wrestled myself into an upright position and hesitated; what was
my next move going to be?

            I didn’t have long to think. I saw
Pawz raise its paw to crush me and I bolted. With adrenaline spurring me on, I
ran under its upraised arm and struck the big dog in its ribs. Pawz howled and
stumbled sideways. I was about to hit it again when Pawz swiped me clean off my
feet with its other paw and I got knocked for a loop into more junk in the
dusty basement. I really didn’t want to get up after that one, but I knew Pawz
wasn’t going to give me a break (except maybe in my ribs) so I couldn’t afford
to stop now. Even so, my vision was slightly blurry and I wasn’t sure if I was
going to be able to keep up this little game of cat and mouse, or dog and cat,
or whatever, for much longer. Pawz was already back up and on the offensive,
prowling around slowly like it was playing with me. That wasn’t going to fly
with me. But it looked to me like Pawz was smiling, and that was pretty freakin’
creepy.

            “Come here!” I shouted, standing on
wobbling legs. Pawz swung overhead and hit the wall above me. I struck it as
hard as I could in the wrist and raced unsteadily to one side. While Pawz was
trying to catch up with me, I wove in close and delivered a hard hit to its
underbelly. Pawz staggered backwards and fell onto its side, its legs kicking
frantically. I retreated as Pawz did its crazy doggie-paddling, and then I saw
my opportunity. At the far end of the basement was a tall filing cabinet, about
halfway up the side of the wall. I climbed up the file cabinet, clumsily
somersaulted backwards, and beaned Pawz right between its ugly eyes. Baseball
fans know that there is a certain ring with the crack of a bat that means it’s
going outta the park, and it is beautiful.
It’s like the closest thing to a full choir of angels singing. And oh man, it
sounded heavenly when I heard that divine bonk!
sound of my bat against Pawz’s skull.

            A slam from above me got my
attention. Rosette, Reiji, and Quentin were at the door, looking down at me.
They stared in silence for a second, and I guess I can’t blame them for that.
Rosette shouted, “What is that?”

            “How the hell should I know?” I
groaned. “The watchdog?”

            “Perhaps MacNavi is related to the
Baskervilles,” Quentin thought aloud.

            Just to make sure it wasn’t going to
get back up anytime soon, I cracked Pawz in the head once more. Rosette called,
“Where’s your Gospel?”

            “I musta left it in my coat pocket,”
I responded. Stupid, I know.

            “That’s very irresponsible of you,
Brother Tino,” Reiji said.

            “I know, Mom.” Like I needed a
lecture.

            “Do you need some help getting up?”
Rosette asked. I was about to answer her when my eye was drawn to the file
cabinet I’d just hopped off of. I guess when I did that crazy jump, I pulled
open one of the drawers or something. What I was seeing there was more
interesting than Pawz. I dropped the bat and went to rifle through the open
drawer.

            “Hey guys,” I called, “you’re gonna
wanna see this.”

            Reiji jumped down first, followed by
Quentin and Rosette. I yanked a stack of documents out of the file cabinet.
Some of them had been written on, but many more of them had drawings of all
sorts of things—angels and demons, war-torn landscapes, lightning bolts
striking out from clouds, skeletons and pentagrams—you could imagine this was
the last thing we’d expected to see from a reverend who was supposed to be on
the straight and narrow.

            “Dude, this guy’s sick,” I said,
looking at one picture. It was of some horrible beast that looked like it was
thought up by ancient Egyptian myth writers and modern perverts. It was a
lion-faced woman with twelve udders on a human body.

            “I very much doubt this is a
reflection of his personal predilections,” Reiji said.

            “I sure hope so. Dude’s twisted. Look
at this one.”

            I flashed a really obscene-lookin’
drawing at Quentin, whose eyes widened.

            “My word, I hope he doesn’t attempt
to do that with his wife,” he said.

            “Is he even married?” Rosette asked.

            “Probably not after trying something
like that,” Quentin said, his eyes still riveted to that drawing. I shuffled
through the papers.

            “Oh, what’s this? You guys able to
make any sense of this?”

            I showed them a paper that looked
like it had different scripts written over it. None of them were English. Quentin
gestured to have a look, so I handed it to him. He studied it quietly for a few
minutes before saying, “That’s amazing!”

            “What is it?” asked Rosette.

            “It seems like MacNavi is
well-versed in a variety of languages: this is Koine Greek, the language in
which the New Testament was purportedly written. This is Latin over here. And
this is Armenian.”

            “What does all of it say?”

            Quentin turned the paper over in his
hands. “I don’t even know where to begin. It’s just a stream of unconnected
words. ‘Hate. Love. Fear. Light. Hope. Destruction. Fire. Death.’ The list goes
on and on.”

            “Most perplexing. What do you
suppose it is meant to be?” asked Reiji. “Perhaps an incantation of some kind?”

            “What would a reverend need an
incantation like this for?” I asked.

            “I doubt very much we should be
posing questions so conventional for someone who keeps such an unconventional
guard dog,” Reiji answered, pointing at Pawz. His point was well-taken, but I
still didn’t feel quite right about that.

            “I’m thinkin’ we’re takin’ the wrong
lesson from all this,” Rosette said, sounding concerned. “Let’s look at the big
picture here. We have a megachurch reverend with a hell-hound in his basement
and horrific, satanic-lookin’ images kept in his filing cabinet. Mix that with the
suspicious stuff that has made us look into this man in the first place and
I’ve got a terrible feeling we’re only beginning to scratch the surface.”

            A gentle hum in Reiji’s pocket got
our attention. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small, fold-up
headset, which he fitted around his ears.

            “Brother Reiji speaking.”

            I could hear Duke on the other end.
“Boys, you better find you a television or something quick. You’re going to
want to see what we’re about to see for yourselves.”

            “Is it Reverend MacNavi?”

            “Naturally.”

            Quentin already was fiddling with a
small, portable TV set up against one wall. He wiggled the antenna on it and a
black-and-white picture came to life. The local news channel was covering
Teague MacNavi’s sermon in front of the Old North Church. He had a Bible in one hand.

            “Yes, we’re coming to you live.
Celebrated reverend Teague MacNavi has ended his sermon with a call to arms for
his followers everywhere: it’s time, says the reverend, to combat the ongoing
social problem of interfaith hostility head on,” said the reporter on the
television.

            “I only ask that we begin a dialogue
starting from common ground. We need not see eye to eye on every issue, for I
fear we may never reach that goal. However, we cannot continue to use one
another’s spiritual beliefs as a reason to do unholy things. It has been an
error from the start to presume that we should sit in judgment of others for
being different. For too long, we have attempted to make our brother into ‘the
other.’ We have chastised him for having a different-sounding name, for having
different practices, or for revering different texts. But at the end of the
day, God will look down and ask not, ‘Which of my children was right?’ but
rather, ‘Which of my children did good?’ So I ask you to consider what we were
placed on this earth to do. We are a race created in His image. Let us not
disappoint Him,” preached Teague.

            “This man’s image is practically
unassailable,” said Duke through Reiji’s headset. “I sure hope you found
something in his house. I hate to think we’d be leaving empty-handed.”

            Reiji extended his hand to me. I put
the papers in his hand. Reiji reached into his other pocket and pulled out a
small device that looked like a flip-open cell phone. Light beamed from the device
onto each of the papers in turn.

            “I am uploading our findings with
ANGEL as we speak. I recommend you take a look at them as soon as possible. It
will be eye-opening, to say the least.”

            The technology I’m describing
probably sounds crazy high-tech to you, but these sorts of things have been
around for decades in the Brotherhood. ANGEL is our vast communications
interface and universally accessible database. With it, any Brother can contact
any other Brother anywhere else in the world and share files of information and
talk as if they are right in the same room. Also, ANGEL never drops calls. Eat
that, iPhone.

            A few seconds later, Duke whistled.
“Damn, son. What’s all this?”

            “Ah yes, and Brother Tino seems to
have found Reverend MacNavi’s dog. It turned out to be far more hellish that
anyone expected,” Reiji added.

            “Not all dogs go to Heaven,” I
joked.

            Reiji looked sideways at me before
saying, “Let us rendezvous at our lodgings and discuss our next plan of
action.”

            “Mighty fine idea. We’ll meet you
there. Over and out,” responded Duke.

            “What about Cerberus here? Surely we
should put this on ANGEL as well,” Rosette suggested. Reiji nodded and began
scanning the brained dog. I looked down at it, sort of numb from the encounter.
Sure, in the two years I’d been a part of the Brotherhood, I’d seen some
nightmarish things that most people only claim to have seen if they live in a
town whose most fashionable restaurant is named “Eats,” but this was way out of
the league of even the extraordinary. I found myself thinking that Rosette was
probably right: we were only beginning to scratch the surface. If I’d known how
deep the rabbit hole went, I’d have stopped right there. Believe me, I don’t
say that lightly. I would hardly consider myself a newbie at the biz, but the
picture was grimmer than any of us, even with our collective experience, should
have expected.

            The seven of us were in the hotel
room booked for Rosette. After the usual scan for bugs, we opened a secure
connection with ANGEL to inform our superiors about our discovery. Rosette laid
out a projector on the table. It beamed an image of the ANGEL main screen
against the wall.

            “Hello and welcome to ANGEL,” said
the gentle, feminine voice of the program.*

            “ANGEL, connect us to Sister Kathryn
in the Manhattan Branch,” Rosette ordered.

            “At once, Sister Rosette.
Connecting,” ANGEL said in response. “Now connected to: Manhattan Branch,
Office of Sister Kathryn.”

            “This is Sister Kathryn. Proceed,”
said the ice queen herself.

            “Sister Kathryn, we have uploaded
our findings from Reverend MacNavi’s house to ANGEL. We feel comfortable
asserting that there is more than meets the eye to this fellow,” said Reiji.

            “Yeah, like his guard dog,” I said.

            “I have seen that,” commented
Kathryn dryly. “I believe you had a little run-in with it, didn’t you?”

            I hesitated. “How did you know?”

            “How do I know? Why, the same way
the entire nation knows. Through the television, Brother Constantino. Or have
you not noticed?”

            “Not noticed what?”

            “MacNavi reported that his house was
broken into and some unknown troublemakers destroyed his basement. Boston police are
treating it as a direct threat to the reverend’s person.”

            I frowned as the projection shifted
to the vision of Sister Kathryn glaring directly at me. Man, this woman was a
pain in the ass.

            “What do you want from me? It would
be conspicuous either way that something had happened in that house. A dog the
size of a refrigerator would be lying dead in his basement. Does it matter that
the rest of the place looked like it had been ransacked?” I grumbled at her.

            “Brother Constantino, needless to
say that we are not in the business of compromising our own business with
careless work,” she snapped.

            “So what? You think MacNavi would’ve
looked around and not noticed his giant dog missing? Or maybe he was going to
put up ‘Lost Hell-Hound’ signs all around the Back Bay?”

            “Brother Constantino, you will not
talk back in so disrespectful a manner to me!” Kathryn shouted. Quentin jumped
into the midst before I really lost my cool and raised a good question.

            “Sister Kathryn, the Boston police have been
to MacNavi’s house? And they didn’t notice a giant, dead dog in the basement?”

            She took a deep breath before
answering him. “There is nothing to suggest that they did. Which means, of
course, that there is still more investigative work to do on your part. The
likelihood of a creature that size simply being hidden under the rug or such is
quite low.”

            Kathryn must’ve graduated at the
freakin’ top of her class with intellectual reasoning like that, man.

            “The Twelve insist that you
concentrate your mission on coming back with conclusive and incontrovertible
proof of Reverend MacNavi’s questionable activities from his house. However
suspicious the material is that you secured, it is unfortunately circumstantial
in the eyes of the Twelve,” Kathryn added.

            In the hierarchy of the Brotherhood,
there are offices located all over the world. Regions and districts are headed
by select officials, and they are overseen by the Twelve, a dozen guys who
watch over the day-to-day administration of operations. At the very top is the
Grand Master, who usually operates with the Twelve like a corporate president
and his board. We usually don’t know much about our Grand Master, and usually
even less about the Twelve. It’s the sort of thing I don’t ask a lot of
questions about, since it’s well over my pay grade.

            “They’re sending us back?” asked
Rosette, unable to contain the surprise or irritation in her voice. I knew
exactly how she felt.

            “Yes, Sister Rosette, they are.
Please forward any objections you may have to them,” Kathryn said. Rosette
tightened up her mouth, like she was trying to keep some unpleasant words from
getting loose.

            “Thank you,” said Reiji. “Over and
out.”

            The projection faded. The
unhappiness was practically tangible in the room.

            “How the hell could they find
Clifford the Big, Red Dog to be ‘circumstantial’ by any stretch of the
imagination?” I said.

            Rosette sighed. “I can’t believe
they are sending us back. Who knows what we’ll find in there next time?”

            “Don’t worry,” said Duke. “This
time, the rest of us will be there with you. Any big, bad pups like you saw are
going to be laid down faster than Old Yeller.”

            “It’s not that,” said Quentin
quietly. “One doesn’t work only to be told that one’s labours are worthless. We
are all very pleased with our efforts, although the Twelve have a different and
rather condescending opinion.”

            “Well, I don’t know about you, but I
have had enough of talking,” said Aleksandr. “I am ready to have dinner. Who’s
with me?”

            There was a general agreement to his
suggestion. We began filing out of Rosette’s room. Before I left, Rosette
grabbed me by the wrist and stopped me. I glanced back at her.

            “Brother Tino, do you really think
that mouthing off to Sister Kathryn will help us at all?” she hissed. I pulled
my wrist free from her grasp.

            “What do I care what Sister Kathryn
thinks? The woman’s not worth my time.”

            “You’re missing my point. She’s our
superior officer. It’s needless to provoke her like you do.”

            I snorted. “What can I say? I have a
real problem with authority.”

            “Then why are you part of this
organization?”

            I looked into Rosette’s blue eyes
for a moment before I gave her my answer.

            “You wanna know why? It’s because
you see on the news alla time these things like an innocent mother of three got
her freakin’ head blown off in front of her children, or a baby was abducted
and killed by a psychopath. What for? You look at the courts and the lawyers
and they just kind of look at everyone else like their formal little dance in
courthouses is the only hallmark of civility and they’re actually dispensing
real justice, but you’re just too stupid to understand it. But nothing is
getting done. Not here. Nowhere. We don’t want to look past our distractions at
the big problems, which we just point at and say, ‘If only we could solve those
problems somehow!’ You wanna know what I joined the Brotherhood for? It’s
‘cause nobody has any answers but everyone’s got an opinion. I am gonna solve
those problems. I’m here to deliver justice. If you were from where I was from,
you’d know it isn’t police and attorneys who save us. Rely on someone else and
you’ll be freakin’ dead.”

            It is always a customary policy for
undercover agents in our organization not to publicly travel together in packs unless
absolutely necessary. So, we went to the happy hour at the bar at staggered
times. While I was waiting for my appointed time, I thought about how I wanted nothing
more than to be on a plane headed back for New York. I flipped through the channels on
the television. The usual, boring crap was on. One of the news stations had
some coverage of Teague MacNavi’s house being definitely but inexplicably
burglarized, except by burglars who took nothing. You know, when journalists
complain about the death of their industry, I wonder how hard they have taken a
look at what it is they do.

            I turned off the TV and stared
vacantly at the pastel wallpaper and the amateurish watercolor painting hanging
in the room. I felt restless, but I didn’t have anywhere to go. Peering out the
window, all that I could see was a rapidly darkening sky. Not having anything
better to do, I laid back on my bed and let my thoughts wander. In time, I
nodded off. I remember dreaming about my encounter with Pawz, only it took
place in a clock tower for some strange reason. Whatever that meant, I don’t
know. I also remember dreaming about a man in a chicken costume wearing a
crucifix around his neck. I guess that would teach me to fall asleep on an
empty stomach.

            A rapping at my door woke me from my
dreams.

            “Brother Tino, it’s your turn to
eat,” called Aleksandr from outside my door. I rolled off my bed, went to the
door, and opened it. The large man stood in the doorway, looking pretty
intimidating that way.

            “Thanks,” I said. “Uh, Aleksandr,
can I ask you somethin’? Why did you join the Brotherhood?”

            Aleksandr leaned in close, making me
step back. He smiled. I won’t lie; that was extremely creepy.

            “I come from a family that has
always prided itself on producing many smart men and women. I was the only one
who never achieved academic success like the others. They said I was stupid. I
am still amazed at that.”

            Looking at Aleksandr, it didn’t
really strike me that he was slow or anything, but it was clear he was no
genius. Then again, who was?

            “My father was a philosopher and he
said often that all people have something to be good at in this world. He said
I should find what my talent was. When I shot him, I found out what my talent
was.”

            I stood there, floored. A heavy
silence followed before Aleksandr burst into hysterical laughter.

            “Oh ho, ho, ho! You are too serious,
little man! I joke.”

            “Oh, heh, I see.”

            “I shot my neighbor’s pit bull
instead.”

            “Oh…”

            “Being fair, it was an evil thing
that attacked small children. So here I am, in a job that allows me to destroy
wicked things with big weapons. You might think that I have nothing to be proud
of in that, because it requires no thought. I say that I do not care. I’m a
professor in dealing death, and I love to school every opponent I meet.”

            “Had a lot of vodka down there,
Aleksandr?”

            “It’s happy hour. Of course I did,”
he grinned.

            He lumbered off to his own room. I
looked at him around the door frame hesitantly. He was like a big, slightly
crazy bear. Obviously, I had no intention of getting on his bad side. I pulled
my door closed behind me and I headed off to the elevators to go downstairs.
When the elevator doors opened, there was only one person inside: a middle-aged
man wearing cleric’s clothing. I nodded politely to him.

            “Good evening, Father.”

            “Good evening, my son!” he said,
rather brightly. I smiled weakly, feeling mildly uncomfortable by the thought
of someone so cheerful for no readily apparent reason. The doors closed behind
me, and the elevator started its descent to the bottom floor.

            “Is something the matter?” asked the
priest. My eyes slowly rose from the floor to his face, seemingly questioning
if he was talking to me. Oh yeah, like he was talking to anyone else.

            “No.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry. I was afraid you
were one of the unhappy souls in town to meet with the Reverend MacNavi for his
blessing.”

            I know I must have worn a surprised
expression at that statement. “His blessing?”

            “As part of his ongoing interfaith
summit. Reverend MacNavi is welcoming people of all faiths and denominations to
join him this week in seeking absolution and receiving his personal blessing.”

            I scratched my head. “What do I need
the blessing of a guy like him for?”

            “It’s merely for a bit of peace of
mind,” said the priest. “I doubt he really believes himself to be bestowing the
blessing. He’s merely a channel for granting blessings.”

            The elevator stopped and its doors
opened. The priest gestured for me to step out first. I looked at him with
suspicion before I stepped out of the elevator. He followed me out, but I was
eager not to be around him anymore.

            “I think this is where we part ways,
Father.”

            “Perhaps so. Good-bye, my son.”

            I quickly darted off across the
lobby and around a corner past the front desk. I wound up the hotel’s small
convenience shop, full of the usual knick-knacks bearing the hotel’s brand
name. But what really caught my eye was the amount of stuff being peddled here
that had to do with Teague MacNavi: shirts with his face and that funny spelling
of “Coexist” that is made up of a whole bunch of different religious symbols,
posters of him striking thoughtful poses with quotes of his written on them,
and of course, no shortage of books authored by him. I picked one up and looked
at the outside cover. It was a photo of him shining a flashlight in a dark
room. The book was titled The Light: Bringing Hope to Others. Apparently
it was third in a trilogy of the man’s personal religious musings. I looked
down and saw the other two. The first pictured Teague casually strolling down a
backwoods trail in New England, hands in his
pockets, whistling. It was called The Way: Finding Your Route to God. The
other featured Teague grinning, wearing a judge’s robes and holding a gavel. It
was called The Truth: A Deeper Understanding of the Bible and Its Origins.

            “¡Por
Dios!” I said in disgust. Could this have been any stupider?

            “Can I help you, sir?” asked the man
behind the counter. I smacked the book with the back of my hand for emphasis.

            “Can you believe this guy? His face
is everywhere on these books and posters and junk like he has all the answers?”
I said. The reaction on the cashier’s face told me that he wasn’t going to be a
very receptive audience.

            “Do you have a problem with Reverend
MacNavi, sir?”

            “You…don’t see a problem with all of
this stuff he’s selling?”

            “The reverend donates all of his
proceeds from this stuff, as you put
it, to charities the world over.”

            I cautiously set the book down. “Is
that a fact?”

            The cashier leaned forward over the
counter. “There isn’t an avaricious bone in his entire body. Everything he
does, he does for the benefit of others.”

            This was incredible. It was like
this whole place was brainwashed, a whole host of slaves to the cult of Teague
MacNavi’s personality. This was quickly turning into some kind of Stephen King
novel. All I needed now was Kathy Bates to come into my hotel room with a
sledgehammer.

            A hand on my shoulder made my heart
jump into my throat. Standing behind me was a hotel security guard, looking
grimly at me.

            “I see we have ourselves a little
troublemaker here,” he said gruffly. “Sir, if you are not here to buy anything,
I suggest you remove yourself from the store.”

            “I, uh, sure…” I managed to get out
as the guard started pushing me along out of the convenience shop. He
force-marched me to the elevators and hissed at me, “You’re going to draw no
end of attention to yourself that way!”

            I recognized the voice. “Reiji?” I
whispered.

            “Yes. Now, back to what you were
doing, before you have this whole hotel after you!” he said, releasing me. He
marched off to a different part of the hotel, leaving me to stray over to the
bar.

            I grabbed a handful of pretzels and
ordered a rum and coke. I took a quick peek at the television. To my relief, it
was a sports broadcast. You could imagine that I was terrified of encountering
Teague MacNavi’s face there. I sipped my rum and coke quietly, sort of staring
out into space. I could hear people talking all around me but I wasn’t
listening to any of them. I think someone was also playing the piano—very badly,
incidentally—in the vicinity of the bar. Finding I wasn’t all that hungry, I
left the bar and went back to my room, making sure to take the stairs this
time.

            I knocked on Rosette’s door to let
her know it was her turn to eat something. She opened the door and smiled wanly
at me.

            “I’m sorry if I upset you earlier,”
she said.

            “Nah, it’s nothing. You wanted to
know why I do what I do, and I was a little excitable at the moment. That
Sister Kathryn gets on my nerves.”

            “She does with me, too,” Rosette
admitted. “Anyway, thank you for telling me. It makes me feel a little less bad
about why I am a part of the organization.”

            I was reminded of something Rosette
had said to Kathryn when we were in Manhattan
and I decided to inquire about it.

            “Oh yeah, there’s somethin’ I’ve
been meaning to ask you: you said you transferred into L’Ordre de Recherche. I
take it you used to be in L’Ordre d’Avant-Garde. Why’s that?”

            The Brotherhood is split into two
divisions. The division for the paper-pushers, researchers, and all that good
stuff is L’Ordre de Recherche. The division for field operatives is L’Ordre d’Avant-Garde.
The names have no real value in and of themselves, I think. They aren’t in
French for any real reason, since the Brotherhood was founded in England. Still,
they just feel right, you know?

            “Is that what you knocked on my door
for, or were you letting me know I could go downstairs?” she asked, seeming to
be evasive. I guessed I wasn’t going to get my answer whether I pressed her or
not.

            “It was just a question that had
been on my mind. You can go downstairs now.”

            “Thank you, Brother Tino.”

            “Uh-huh.”

            I slunk off to my room, hoping
tomorrow would be better. And we all know what happens when someone hopes.

            It only gets worse.

            “Okay, this better be good,”
grumbled Duke. It was probably the thought all of us had at that moment. The
seven of us were standing outside in the pre-dawn chill, shivering our butts
off and standing in front of a United States Postal Service mailbox outside the
hotel like a bunch of morons.

            “Trust me, it’s better than good. It’s
fantastic,” Quentin assured us, standing beside the mailbox and beaming like a
child proud of his second grade science experiment.

            “It’s a mailbox,” Aleksandr said, stating the obvious.

            Quentin laughed in amusement. “Think
again, my friend.” He opened the hatch, stuck one leg in, and asked, “Well, are
you coming?”

            There was a brief moment of
hesitation on our parts before Aleksandr asked, “Coming where?”

            “Along for the ride,” Quentin said,
probably trying hard not to get annoyed with us. “This is her maiden voyage,
after all.”

            “Maiden voyage? Mailboxes don’t go
anywhere. Only mail does,” Duke said, shaking his head. Quentin managed to fit
his other leg snugly into the hatch and grumbled a little.

            “Think outside the box…get it?”

            He started laughing hysterically. We
continued staring at him. Eventually, Quentin’s amusement died down and he
slouched in despair.

            “Oh…I’m never saying that again.
Fine. Would you quite kindly get in?”

            “Quentin, what the hell are you
talking about? You’re climbing into a mailbox! A mail-freakin’-box!” I shouted
at him.

            “Don’t be silly, Tino. You wouldn’t
very well expect me to go climbing into a mailbox, now would you? Do you think
that I could do this in a mailbox?”

            For emphasis, Quentin pushed himself
into the mailbox. We heard a loud clunk inside, right before Quentin made a
squeak of pain.

            “Right, right, new plan,” he said,
struggling to free himself. “This…was not my mailbox. Help me out, help me out!”

            Aleksandr and Duke started laughing
while Reiji and Rex grabbed Quentin and hauled him out of the mailbox.

            “Would you mind explaining what the
purpose of that was?” Rosette demanded.

            “Well, it’s like this,” Quentin
wheezed as he was extracted from the mailbox, “you see, I’d planned it so that
we would get to our destination—that is, MacNavi’s house—faster if we took a
quick and inconspicuous mode of travel. Namely, the mailbox. However, it occurs
to me now that I’ve made a grave miscalculation.”

            “Oh, only now it occurs to you that
mailboxes don’t fly?” I said to him.

            “No, that’s a rubbish line of
thinking,” Quentin replied. “I just wired the camouflage circuitry too well.
This is, in fact, really a mailbox. What we’re looking for is that mailbox over yonder. I always
forget where I park things. You should see me at a shopping centre car park.”

            Quentin had a particular way of
talking that made all of his words run together, so I felt like I was on a five
second delay for processing what he was saying, though that didn’t mean at all
that I understood just what he was saying.
Quentin banged against the mailbox. It made a hollow clang.

            “Hear that?” he asked. “Now come
along. Step lively, will you? Now here’s the mailbox we’re looking for.”

            We followed him across the parking
lot. He rapped his knuckles against another, virtually identical United States
Postal Service mailbox at the other end of the parking lot. This mailbox made a
sound like someone banging on Plexiglas.

            “Ah, there she is!” Quentin smiled. “Meet
the ITE!”

            “The ITE?” Rosette asked.

            “Yes, this is the ITE: the Instant
Transmission Engine,” Quentin said professorially. “ITE also happens to be the
Latin word that means ‘go’, so it’s a bit of a pun. I wouldn’t expect you to
know that in advance, but I do expect you to appreciate my brilliance. Well,
are we all ready? Allons-y!”

            Quentin yanked open the hatch and
jumped in. Much to our surprise, he disappeared inside the mailbox like he’d
done a Houdini disappearing trick. Reiji seemed to be the first one to suspend
his disbelief.

            “Very well,” he said, opening the
hatch. “In we go, I suppose.”

            He stuck a leg hesitantly inside,
and then the other, and then he slipped inside like he was disappearing down a
slide on a playground. Even by Brotherhood standards, this was surreal. I
decided to take the plunge. I pulled open the mailbox and looked inside. It was
dark, and that was about all I could see. I crawled headfirst into the mailbox
and felt gravity kick in. I gave a shout of panic before the ride abruptly
ended as I landed on a bunch of very soft cushions.

            “Glad you could make it,” Quentin
said, looking over his shoulder at me. He was standing at the command console
of what looked like a futuristic space cruiser. It was like being on the set of
Star Trek, only fancier. Reiji was
standing in front of me, looking up at the ceiling. I did too, and began to
think I was losing my mind. It looked like we were in a space the size of a
modest bedroom.

            “How…how can we be…it’s bigger on
the inside…” I struggled to find the words that would sound least stupid for the
occasion.

            “The same is true of Death’s house,
according to Sir Terrence Pratchett,” Quentin assured me. “It’s yet to bother him.”

            “What?”

            “Brother Tino, the mailbox appearance
is a mere optical illusion,” Quentin said with a sigh. “You’ll get nowhere
worrying about the big stuff when it’s the small stuff that matters most.”

            “That doesn’t even make sense.”

            “It doesn’t have to when you’re clever
like me.”

            Quentin wasn’t exactly lacking
self-confidence, was he? I was going to object to how crazy all of this was
when I heard a shout of, “Incoming!” from above. I looked up just in time to
feel Aleksandr land on my legs. That would teach me to have hoped that this day
would be any better than the day before.

            Aleksandr rolled off of me just in
time for Rosette to land on my spine, deflating me like a balloon. I started
wriggling frantically under her. She hopped off and both she and Reiji dragged
me out of the landing zone. Quentin, seeing my plight, observed, “I’ll have to
remedy that at some point.”

            “I have so many questions,” Rosette
said, turning to face him, “but let’s start with this: why a mailbox?”

            “Who’d suspect a mailbox?” Quentin
asked by way of explanation.

            “This is so weird…” murmured Duke,
looking around at the interior of the ITE.

            “Come along, everyone. I can give
you the grand tour later. Right now, though, we have to head over to Reverend
MacNavi’s house. He always goes for a morning constitutional around this time
of day. We can’t afford to miss this opportunity. Right then, off we go.”

            Looking at the control panel again,
I was beginning to think I was in the middle of a really strange dream. Quentin
started pulling mad large crankshafts, slapping strange buttons that looked
like they belonged on a video game console controller, and, strangest of all,
he wound up a key on the back of a rubber chicken, which began clucking. I
figured this was the result of falling asleep again without having eaten
anything. But when the room lurched to the right and I nearly collided with the
wall, I knew this was no dream. A nightmare, maybe, but no dream.

            “What the…? Jane, stop this crazy
thing!” cried Duke, clinging to the floor.

            “Oh, give it a rest!” called Quentin
over the noisy engine revving into action. “Simply think of it as a roller
coaster!”

            I couldn’t imagine what it must have
looked like from the outside. Maybe right now, there were commuters on the
streets of Boston
getting into traffic accidents because a flying mailbox was streaking through
the skies and diverting their attention from the road. That was about the only
thing I could comfortably hold onto, because I was sure my sanity would slip
away if I thought about what was actually happening. A sudden jolt and a bang
hit the ITE, and all of the motion stopped. I looked around, waiting for some
shudder of the ITE in homage to comic tradition. When that didn’t happen, I
relaxed. Duke got up off the floor. Quentin yanked on something at the controls
that looked like a rip cord for a parachute and then leaned on the console. He
looked at us with a satisfied smile on his face.

            “We’re here,” he said.

            I’m sure we all had the same blank
stares we’d had since basically the moment we started this fantastic voyage, so
Quentin gave up on trying to impress us and went over to the back. He pushed
against the top of the wall, which opened up like a hatch. Then he walked out
silently. I guess he had reached his limit of our inability to get our heads
wrapped around the things that seemed to him to be simple.

            When we followed him out, we crawled
out onto the sidewalk in front of Teague’s house. I looked around for a moment
and puzzled. The thing actually worked! Though I’m sure that if Teague’s
neighbors were in and looked out the window, they’d probably have freaked to
see seven people climbing out of a mailbox that wasn’t there yesterday. Anyway,
when we were all out, Reiji said, “Who’ll stand guard and watch in case
Reverend MacNavi returns earlier than we expect?”

            “I’ll stand watch,” Rex volunteered.
Reiji nodded and reached into the breast pocket of his coat to pull out a small
capsule.

            “I trust you’re a reasonable shot,”
Reiji said.

            “The finest you’ll ever meet,” Rex
assured him.

            “A tranquilizer, in case you need
it.”

            “Appreciated.”

            I mean, it was obvious that Rex was
a man of few words, but I couldn’t read him at all. I really wanted to get to
know something about him, but I didn’t even know where I would try to begin.

            “Come along,” called Quentin. He’d
already opened the door with his magnetic wrench and was waiting for the rest
of us.

            We entered Teague’s house. It looked
like it had the day before. Nothing really seemed out of place. Rosette warned,
“Stay alert. We have no idea what else is watching this house now.”

            “I wonder what happened to that
dog,” Duke said.

            “I prefer not to think about it,” I
said, poking my head into a room off to one side. It looked like Teague’s
personal library. There were all sorts of books stacked on shelves in there. I
was amused by a set of bookends in the form of two little cows covered in that
cheap, gold paint; you know, the kind that flakes off after a few years or just
by touching it enough.

            “Huh, what’s this?” called Aleksandr
from the living room.

            “Whoa,” said Duke, also from the
living room. I hurried out of the library and into the living room. The room
looked basically normal, except for one small detail: there was a blotch of red
in the corner of the wall. It looked like scarlet dry rot, if you could imagine
such a thing.

            “What is it?” asked Duke, marveling
at it. Quentin hurried to the wall and pointed his magnetic wrench at it. The
wrench made a little humming sound for a second, and then he looked at the
wrench skeptically.

            “A particle analysis reveals
everything,” he said.

            “And…?”

            “Water, carbon dioxide, glucose,
some ions, proteins, iron…” began Quentin.

            “What is it?” I shouted at him
impatiently. Quentin shook his head.

            “Dime-store biology materials,
Brother Tino. What has you so agitated?”

            “Because it…wait, what are biology
materials doing in Teague’s wall?”

            Quentin looked off at another wall.
“The materials themselves are not so unusual, Brother Tino. Still, you raise a
good point. Their location is quite
unusual.”

            “Do you think he is making something
biohazardous?” Duke asked.

            “In his own house? Nonsense,” Reiji
said.

            “Is there a room above this one?”
Quentin asked.

            Reiji consulted the blueprints of
the structure. “It would appear that his bathroom is directly above this room.”

            “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me
too much,” Quentin said. “I believe our suspect was trying to flush away
evidence of something he did not want anyone to see.”

            “Wait one minute,” said Aleksandr
suddenly. “Why are no signs of police here?”

            We stood around quietly. It was a good
question. I looked up at the red blotch.

            “Quentin,” I said slowly, “you said
you found iron in there, didn’t you?”

            “I expect you’re pondering precisely
what I am. Come on!” Quentin declared, hurrying to the stairs. I shot past him,
bounding up the stairs, around a corner, and up to the bathroom. Much to my
surprise, the door was locked.

            “What? Who locks their bathroom when
they’re not in?” I said to nobody in particular. Quentin, the first to show up
after me, suggested, “Someone with a guilty conscience, I would hazard.”

            Just as he was about to open the
door with his magnetic wrench, Aleksandr came hurtling straight at the door
like a juggernaut. I could only stand there stupidly like a deer caught in
headlights as he came forward. He was practically unable to stop, a force of
nature unto himself. The next thing I knew, I was flat on the floor of Teague’s
bathroom. The door had been knocked across the room and practically into next
Wednesday. Quentin was sprawled over the marble countertop of the sink.

            “Ahem,” Reiji said at the doorway,
looking at the three of us. “Would we try to avoid wanton destruction? I think
the absence of a door from its hinges will draw the reverend’s attention.”

            He touched the broken hinges on the
doorframe. I was still in a daze. Quentin had staggered over to the shower. Its
curtain was drawn shut. With a flourish, he yanked it back and yelled, “Aha!”

            “Aha?” asked Duke. “I don’t see
anything.”

            Quentin scratched the side of his
nose. “Neither do I.” He knelt down and started pointing his magnetic wrench
all around the tub.

            “You’re pretty fast there, Tino,”
Aleksandr said, yanking me up to my feet. He nearly dislocated my arm.

            “Yeah, well, I used to play a lot of
baseball. I was always the fastest runner. I can be out of any place quicker
than a New York minute.”

            “Probably not a reputation you want
to cultivate with the ladies,” Duke chuckled.

            “Aha, for real this time!” exclaimed
Quentin triumphantly.

            “What did you find?” asked Rosette.

            “The usual suspects: all the materials
we found downstairs in the wall.”

            “Really? I can’t see anything.”

            “Believe me, you’re not supposed to.
Allow me to shed some light on the subject…or not, as the case may be. Close
those blinds.”

            Rosette went to the window and shut
the blinds, darkening the room. Quentin reached into his pocket and pulled out
a small spray bottle. He sprayed around the tub and waited. About half a minute
later, an eerie, blue glow lined the tub.

            “My God, what is that?” Duke said,
retreating.

            “Part of our answer,” Reiji
answered, approaching. “I should have suspected this all along.”

            “Observe the wonderful powers of
chemiluminescence!” declared Quentin.

            “In English, please,” I begged.

            “Brother Tino, you were right,” he
said to me. “This spray is capable of reacting to something very specific that
caught your attention.”

            This felt like a pop quiz. “Uh,
iron?”

            “Exactly! This spray goes by
different names, but most colloquially under the name luminol.”

            “Luminol? You’re telling me
that’s…?” Rosette began.

            “Almost certainly the blood of the
hell-hound Brother Tino encountered yesterday. Unless MacNavi has committed a
recent axe murder in this house, only the dog could have lined the shower with
so much blood as to make this much of a reaction.”

            “Creeping Jesus, that’s a horrible
thought,” Duke said. “So what we saw downstairs was dog’s blood leaking out of
the plumbing?”

            “It seems that way.”

            “But where’s the dog?”

            I looked at the tub. The blue glow
was beginning to fade.

            “Want to check the fridge for a lot
of chopped meat?” Aleksandr said with a grin on his face that did nothing to
lighten the mood.

            “Shouldn’t we get a picture of this
up on ANGEL before it’s gone?” I asked.

            “I doubt very much the Twelve will
see it as anything other than trivial,” Rosette commented, not trying to hide
the bitterness in her voice.

            “Are we sure that this is blood and
not, say, bleach?” Reiji asked. “Both substances produce the same effect under
a luminol test.”

            “Even if it were bleach, I’ve yet to
see bleach produce crimson rot such as we saw downstairs,” Quentin said. “If
you’d like to go look into the plumbing, Reiji, you can investigate for
yourself.”

            “That will not be necessary,” Reiji
responded with distaste.

            “Anyone smell that?” questioned
Aleksandr suddenly.

            At first, I couldn’t smell it, but
then it hit me: it was a sickening smell, like I was in a port-a-potty after
someone had a plate of toxic chili. Duke sniffed the air indifferently and then
made a face indicating recognition.

            “I’ve smelled it before on the farms
in North Carolina.
That’s Grade A bovine manure in the air.”

            “Say what? Cow manure, in downtown Boston?” Rosette said,
voicing our collective confusion. Duke’s assessment seemed so wrong that it was
hard to take it even the slightest bit seriously. Still, that stench wafted
through the air and was getting more intense. Being a city boy all my life, I
wasn’t entirely ready to say that Duke was wrong, but still….

            “Jesus, is it getting worse?” Duke
said, looking around.

            “It is, though I’m having a hard
time believing that we have cow manure somewhere in the immediate vicinity,”
Reiji stated.

            “After having a giant dog in the
house, is cow manure the most far-fetched thing you could expect hereabouts?”
Quentin asked, probably rhetorically.

            I decided to step out into the hall
and I leaned over the rail to look downstairs. For a moment, I swear I
something ducking out of sight when I did.

            “Um, I think we better make sure
we’re alone in this house,” I said.

            Rosette already had her headset on.
“Brother Rex, you haven’t seen anything enter the house, have you?”

            “Not a thing,” Rex said, sounding
pretty convinced.

            “So, what does that mean?” Aleksandr
asked. “Did it come from inside already?”

            I felt a terrible sense of dread,
pretty sure I knew where this was going.

            “Get out your Gospels, everyone. I
think Duke was right.”

            Duke cracked his knuckles. “Always
bet on Duke.”

            I was already racing downstairs,
pulling out my firearm. The standard issue firearm for members of the
Brotherhood is a kind of variation on a COP 357 Derringer peppergun. It’s
basically a four-chamber pistol with very short barrels. The weapon fires
faster than the average peppergun, though, due to the crazy technical geniuses
in L’Ordre de Recherche. I don’t know how it works, really; you’d have to ask
Quentin. Codenamed “The Gospel,” the gun is pretty useful in any situation you
could imagine. Personally, I like to think of it as a time traveling device,
‘cause whatever it hits is gonna get knocked into next week.

            I was the first one downstairs. I
scrambled straight for the library and kicked the door wide open. I felt my
heart sink down into my stomach. The little golden cows weren’t on the bookends
anymore.

            “Did you see something?” called
Quentin, hurrying after me.

            “Crap,” I muttered.

            “You didn’t?” he asked.

            “No, I mean, I see crap,” I said,
pointing inside the library. There was a big splotch of cow crap on the floor
at the foot of the bookcase.

            “Well, we know where it’s been,” he
said, looking out into the next room. “Anyone seen it?”

            “I haven’t,” shouted Reiji from the
kitchen.

            “Me neither,” yelled Rosette from
the living room.

            “Negative,” called Duke from the
dining room.

            “No,” declared Aleksandr in the
hallway.

            “How can that be?” I said quietly.
“A cow’s a hard thing to miss.”

            BANG!
A gunshot from outside got all of our attentions. We were spurred into action
and raced to the windows. There, in the back yard, Rex was back-pedaling from a
pair of golden cows lunging after him on only their hind legs.

            “What am I looking at?” Aleksandr
said with his mouth hanging open.

            Duke was already climbing out the
window. “Dinner!”

            The rest of us piled out through the
back door. For the moment, the fact that there were seven strangers running
around on Reverend Teague MacNavi’s backyard in a life-or-death struggle with
two golden calves being visible to the public didn’t really factor into our
thoughts. Go figure.

            The sound of gunshots echoed in my
ears as we started firing at the cows. However, we came to learn pretty quickly
that bullets don’t inspire too much fear in things made out of gold.

            “Anyone got a bright idea right
now?” asked Rosette, engaged in a staring contest with one of the enraged cows.

            “Brother Quentin, can you not use
your magnetic wrench on them?” Reiji asked.

            “With that kind of size, it’d take
far too long to be effective,” Quentin answered.

            “Blazes, anyone want to tell me why
Goldfinger’s zoo animals are in MacNavi’s house?” Rex protested, backed up into
a corner of the property bounded by a fence.

            Quentin made a face. “Gold is one of
the softest metals. Surely Gospel fire should work.”

            “Hold on. They’re not really gold
though,” I said softly. “They’re painted with that gold leaf stuff.”

            “Then what is it really made of?”

            “I’ll find out!” Aleksandr
volunteered with such a dynamic joy that it was startling. He tucked away his
Gospel and charged at one of the cows. I think even they were surprised by this
turn of events, because they stood there and wore equally confused expressions.
Before you knew it, Aleksandr had knocked one cow into the other and all three
of them were on the ground. He was yelling at the animals, “Time to wrestle,
little hamburgers!”

            The sound of the cows banging into
each other and hitting the ground made a distinct clang. Quentin drew out his
magnetic wrench and pointed it at the cows. As usual, the wrench hummed and he
took a quick look at it.

            “Copper and tin. They’re bronze!”

            “Bronze? I have the solution for
that,” Rosette said. “Brother Aleksandr, hold them down!”

            While Aleksandr wrestled with one
cow, the other cow got loose. Rex, Reiji, Duke, and I all dog-piled onto it,
trying to keep it from getting away. I know that Rex accidentally kicked me in
the shin three times during our struggle. The cow was putting up a hell of a
fight, and mooing in frustration at our combined weight keeping it down. In the
middle of all this, I wondered if Aleksandr weighed as much as the four of us put
together. Given how my legs felt after he landed on them in the ITE, it wouldn’t
have surprised me.

            “Stand clear!” Rosette shouted. In
the middle of our fight, I landed head first on the ground and flopped over
clumsily. I managed to turn my face up to see a contraption in Rosette’s hands.
It was like a small Rube Goldberg device, but just by looking at some of its
parts, I knew what it was going to do. I didn’t waste any time hurriedly
crawling out of the line of fire, so to speak.

            “Brother Quentin, can you spark a
light for me?” she called. Quentin pointed his wrench in her direction. This
told everyone else exactly what the immediate future held, and they didn’t have
any ambition to stick around for the festivities. With a flame at one end,
Rosette smiled. I’ll be honest: it was a freaky smile, like she was some sort
of crazy psychopath. Her blue eyes were wild with some kind of maniacal energy
that scared the hell out of me.

            “Two hamburgers, well done!” she
yelled. She squeezed what looked like an old-fashioned perfume dispenser, and KABOOM! There was fire spewing out
everywhere. Us guys ran for the hills, diving through the windows and running
in the back door as giant fireballs flared up behind us. The heat was intense,
even with the benefit of the walls of Teague’s house between us and the flames.
And the soundtrack through all of this was Rosette, laughing loudly like a
freakin’ lunatic. You woulda thought Michael
Bay had orchestrated this
whole scene. Great balls of fire expanded and rose skyward. Where Rosette had
been hiding that thing this whole time was a mystery to me, although I was
thinking that I was happier not knowing she ever had it in her possession. Now
I was certain I didn’t want to annoy her.

            “God damn,” Duke said, barely above
a whisper.

            I don’t know if it was a minute, or
even two, or even five, but at some point, the inferno died down. We peered
cautiously through the windows to survey the damage. Everything within a
certain blast radius of Rosette’s flamethrower was ash. Just ash. The grass was
charred black. The fence was a heap of ash. Trees in the backyard had been
taken down like they were houses of playing cards. There were sizzling
splotches of liquid that were probably all that was left of the golden-bronze
cows. There wasn’t even enough of anything left to still be on fire. That was
when reality hit like the A train going from Penn Station to Brooklyn.

            “Sister Rosette, have you lost your
mind?” shouted Reiji. “Do you realize the extent of property damage you have
caused? You may have jeopardized our entire mission by acting so recklessly!”

            I half expected Rosette to turn
around with that same crazed look in her eye, but when she turned to face us,
she looked normal, and kind of embarrassed. “I…did overdo it, I know.”

            “Aw, there’s not even any of the
cows left to eat,” Aleksandr sighed.

            “They were made of bronze,” Quentin
said, looking startled by Aleksandr’s sadness.

            “But if they weren’t, there wouldn’t
be anything to eat. It’s all burned.”

            Duke chuckled. “Burned? Son, where I
come from, we'd only call it ‘blackened.’”

            “Excuse me!” shouted Reiji. “This
will assuredly go noticed by even the blind! If we have any intention of
finding conclusive evidence of something to prove Reverend MacNavi’s dubious
activity, we need to do it today, before he has a watch set up to protect his
property!”

            “Dude, calm down,” I told him. “I
think we’re all aware of the situation. The problem is that we don’t know what
we’re looking for.”

            “Shouldn’t someone be watching for
MacNavi right now?” asked Aleksandr.

            “Oh, that’s very, extremely not
good,” Quentin thought aloud.

            As a group, we shot through the
house and out the front door. Quentin pulled open the hatch to the ITE and
waved us in frantically. When I landed, I felt something digging into my
stomach. Rex gave a yelp of pain when he landed.

            “Why, someone’s been dumping letters
in my landing zone!” Quentin said in shock, looking at the mountain of
envelopes we had landed in.

            “Not as planned,” groaned Reiji.
Quentin trotted over to the controls and punched it, ‘cause we were in flight
almost immediately. We all rocked to one side of the ITE. I looked at the
walls. There was no telling what Sister Kathryn was going to say to us for this
screw-up.

            We were sitting in Rosette’s hotel
room, waiting for ANGEL to connect us to Sister Kathryn. If we had expressed
any kind of displeasure at yesterday’s events in our body language, we were
really speaking volumes with our body language today. Kathryn’s face appeared
on the holographic projection. She was giving us a level look. I could hear
Reiji inhaling, about to speak, but Kathryn cut him off.

            “Don’t talk. Don’t even breathe. I
am not interested in your excuses. Every media outlet in the United States
is presently talking about the fiery destruction of half of Reverend Teague
MacNavi’s property.”

            We saw her flip open a newspaper,
whose headline she read aloud. “Evidently, ‘Mystery Assailants Torch Reverend’s
Home.’ It is worrying, isn’t it? And here’s another headline: ‘Fire and
Brimstone for Gentle Pastor’s House.’ And don’t think it’s merely limited to America. News
outlets in Canada, Mexico, Britain,
France, Spain, Italy,
Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia…they are all talking
about this with some alarm. Apparently the great fear is that someone is trying
to silence the most tolerant Christian in the United States, to the detriment of
any meaningful dialogue between faiths in this country. Do you honestly have anything worthwhile to
say?”

            Kathryn’s snarky condescension was
getting real old real fast. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I freakin’ do! What was
anyone thinking throwing the seven of us together to go look for something that
no one seems to be able to find or even knows exists? What kind of a mission
is, ‘Go find something conclusively weird?’ A damn dog the size of a garage
tried to kill me. What isn’t weird about that? What isn’t weird about two gold
cows made of bronze guarding a man’s home? If the Twelve want so badly to find
something out of the ordinary around here, they can come here and freakin’ find
it themselves. I’m sick of getting chewed out by people so far up their own
asses that they’re actually coming out the other side. And if you’ve got such a
problem hearing any of this, Sister, you don’t have to listen to it. You can
get out of my face about it.”

            A moment passed where it seemed like
everything was suspended. Kathryn had this stupid look frozen on her face.
Maybe she was having trouble processing all that.

            “Brother Constantino, you seem to be
under the impression that I have a negative opinion of your performance so far.
From the reports issued, nothing could be further from the truth.”

            Now it was my turn to have a stupid
look on my face. “Say what?”

            “The Twelve’s ire is not directed at
you, Brother Constantino. They do, however, have a problem with you, Sister Rosette. Do you have any
idea what you’ve done?”

            “I never asked for this position. I
specifically asked to be transferred into L’Ordre de Recherche to prevent
things like this from happening again and no one seemed to give this any
thought,” Rosette protested. You might wonder why she didn’t say something like
she was chosen for the mission without her consent. In the Brotherhood, consent
isn’t really worth consideration. We’re paramilitary, after all.

            “I am not interested in weak
excuses, and neither are the Twelve,” said Kathryn coldly. She could probably
make the Amazon jungle seem like the Yukon
with her personality.

            “Then they should remove me from
this assignment at once.”

            Anyone able to read between the
lines could see Rosette was blaming the Twelve for this outcome. It wasn’t
something you’d wanna outright say, of course.

            “Is that so? Then I will make the
necessary arrangements. Be advised, all of you, that, until further notice,
this mission is suspended. Sister Rosette, consider yourself under internal
review. That is all.”

            Kathryn’s face cut out from view, showing
the ANGEL main menu. Rosette clapped her hands together and heaved a sigh
through her smile.

            “Well, that was pleasant. Boys,
could you clear out? I’m tired.”

            I watched the others walk out the
door, but I stayed. Rosette gave me a look.

            “Tino, would you please leave?” she
asked.

            “No. Not until you tell me what is
the matter with you.”

            Rosette had an unpleasant look on
her face. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Tino. Why do you think there’s
something wrong with me?”

            “Because the day I came into your
office for my review, you were all jokes and smiles. Only days later, here we
are and you’re a hot mess. There’s a lot that Quentin might know about gadgets
and gizmos that I don’t, but I know people, and I know right now that you’re
actin’ really weird.”

            Rosette stood up, went to her door,
and slowly closed it. Then, she looked at me and said, “Tino, how old are you?”

            This was a wacky start.
“Twenty-two.”

            She smiled. “You haven’t lived long
enough to understand.” This sounded like a pretty insincere judgment. For one
thing, Rosette didn’t look a day over thirty. For another, I’d been hearing the
same kind of assessment from other people all my life.*

            “You’ll have to come up with a
better evasive maneuver than that,” I told her, remaining unconvinced by the
thought.

            “I don’t have to. I’m telling you
that you haven’t experienced enough of the world yet to understand the kinds of
things I’ve seen. Words could never begin to express the kinds of things I’ve
seen.”

            “That’s a cover for not wanting to
answer my question.”

            “Why should I have to answer your
question?”

            Okay, she had me there. I didn’t
have a particular right to know what was going on in her head. That didn’t stop
me, though.

            “What’s so wrong about opening up?
You make it sound like I’m the problem instead of whatever it is that’s eating
you.”

            “You’re hardly helping my problem.”

            “What is your problem?”

            Rosette gave a frustrated grunt. “I
saw a lot of pleasure in seeing that destructive power in my hands. Who
wouldn’t delight in having the ability to destroy anything with such a singular
intensity?”

            “So what you’re saying is you’re a
pyromaniac.”

            “It’s worse than that.”

            I hesitated. “Uh…you’re saying…?”

            Rosette was turning redder by the
second. “And I’m not the least bit proud of it. People don’t even acknowledge
it in the psychological community. At least with pyromania, it’s something real
that can be pointed to. It’s rare, but it’s not regarded as a falsehood. Me?
I’m a freak of nature. When I was in L’Ordre d’Avant-Garde, my specialty was
arson. It fueled my habits. I wouldn’t say it was like the way a smoker feels
from puffing on a cigarette, but it felt exhilarating every time something went
ablaze. I had to stop. I think when I set fire to Brother Duncan’s hair was the
moment I realized the depth of my obsession.”

            Brother Duncan was a stiff, uptight
poser who was high up in L’Ordre de Recherche. He’d come from Scotland, the land of the twenty-four hour
rainstorm, to float as an administrator in Manhattan for a time. I cracked a smile.

            “No wonder he has that hideous
toupee,” I said.

            Despite herself, Rosette smiled a
little. “That’s not funny!”

            “I agree. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen
it move on its own, and that’s real scary.”

            “Stop!” she said, beaming.

            “Is that all that it is?” I eventually
said. “Did you ever hurt anyone because of your fires?”

            “Not on any conscientious level. I
wouldn’t go around setting fires to buildings if I knew someone was in them.
That didn’t stop me from playing with matches with abandon. There was such…passion
to watching a match get struck….”

            Rosette was breathing pretty deeply
at that moment. I backed up to the door.

            “Um, I guess I’ll just leave you…?”

            “That’d be appreciated,” she said,
her eyes looking freakin’ wild. I couldn’t have slammed the door behind me any
quicker. I was slinking away to my room, admittedly a little blown away by
Rosette’s unspoken confession, but hey, who was I to judge? I grew up in the
freakin’ Bronx. It takes all kinds.

            “Tino,” Rosette hissed, peering
around her doorframe, “thanks.”

            I gave her a silent nod of
acknowledgment. My thoughts now went to wondering why the Twelve, knowing of
Rosette’s behavior with fire, would set her up in a situation that would give
her free reign to indulge in her love of fire. Honestly, a lot of things didn’t
make sense about this mission. Least of all at that point was Kathryn had
apparently demonstrated no problem with my performance on our mission. And what
exactly was it that we were doing? It was starting to make even less sense what
we were there for. Don’t get me wrong. I really had my doubts about the
credibility of Teague MacNavi; after everything I’d seen at his house, how
couldn’t I, right? But I was supposed to have my doubts about him basically by
default. My concern was what the Twelve wanted us to accomplish there. And now
the mission had been suspended.

            The more I thought about all this in
the hallway, the more it began to annoy me. I mean, did I really need to come
out to freakin’ Red Sox country just for this nonsense? I could’ve gotten
high-quality shenanigans right back in the City. There had to be a way to start
making sense out of all of this.

            Something, and I don’t know what,
guided my feet to Reiji’s room. I knocked on the door. Reiji opened the door
and looked at me suspiciously.

            “May I help you?” he asked.

            “Can I come in?”

            He stood aside in quiet admission. I
was surprised to find both Duke and Rex in his room.

            “What are you guys doing here?” I
asked.

            Reiji slammed the door behind me,
giving me a chill up my spine. “Discussing our mission, or the lack thereof.”

            “Tino, what do you think? D’ya
reckon we could handle taking care of that MacNavi fella ourselves?” asked
Duke.

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean,” Duke said, looking around
and lowering his voice, “that while we’re supposed to be officially off-duty,
we’re actually wasting precious time. We could secure the information we need
if we did this thing right just once.”

            “So, acting without orders,” Rex
interpreted bluntly.

            “You don’t have to be so bluff about
it.”

            “Actually, I think it’s a good
idea,” said Reiji, surprising me. I would have figured he was too
straight-laced for that. I looked at the other three in the room, saw the look
in their eyes, and gave myself in.

            “Sure, I’m in. When are we doing
this?” I said.

            “Tonight’s as good a night as any,”
Duke said, showing a lot of carelessness in his planning. To my surprise again,
Reiji agreed with him.

            “Indeed. Let us proceed tonight.
We’ll have Brother Quentin drop us off in the ITE and we’ll execute our mission
as it was planned. No more interruptions, no more excuses.”

            “You’re serious about this,” I said,
unable to stop myself.

            “Sure we are,” Duke said. “I’m ready
to put the smack down on this little minister’s candy ass. And I sure hope he
is ready for the hurt to be brought, because I’m not here to play games.”

            I couldn’t tell if Duke was trying
to be impressive or if this was how he really talked off the cuff. Either way,
it was a jarring transition from the thought of Rosette getting hot from fire
to Duke getting a thrill out of the idea of bashing seven kinds of hell out of
Teague MacNavi.

            “That is so barbaric,” said Reiji,
expressing a slightly more rational viewpoint. “We are looking at a surgical
strike, Brother Duke, not the inception of a battle. This calls for careful
tactical procedure.”

            Duke looked at Rex. “What do you
think?”

            “I think that no matter what the
situation, one good shot is all you’ll ever need.”

            I noticed the rifle standing against
the wall to Rex’s left. This certainly seemed consistent with what I knew of
him.

            “Then it is settled,” announced
Reiji. “We move after dinner.”

            One short ride on the ITE later, we
were parked on the block where Teague’s house was. Quentin leaned forward on
the console and looked at Reiji, Rex, Duke, and me like he was an unhappy
accomplice to a crime. Well, it kind of was, but that wasn’t the point.

            “Are you sure this is a good idea?
The repercussions that could come of this if anything goes awry will surely
exceed anything the like of which we have seen.”

            “Fear not,” Reiji said with some
convincing assurance. “I know what I’m doing. Your magnetic wrench, if you
please.”

            Quentin pulled the gadget from his
pocket and handed it over. “Be careful with it. I normally wouldn’t trust
anyone with this, so at least be so considerate as to not destroy it or lose
it.”

            “Of course, Brother Quentin. Well,
gentlemen, shall we begin?” said Reiji, looking at the rest of us.

            “You going to be okay waiting here
for us?” asked Rex.

            “Oh yeah, not a problem,” said Quentin.
“I’ll leave the engine running.”

            “You make a good wheelman,” I said.

            Reiji, Rex, Duke, and I climbed out
of the ITE. We were in our standard black coats and sunglasses, just because we
could. Sure, it was night, but that wasn’t the point. Rex lifted binoculars to
his eyes and whispered, “Can’t see anything?”

            “You sure that isn’t because you
have sunglasses on?” Duke asked.

            “Naw, it isn’t that. But even you
can see there are no police or firemen or anything like that. Strange.”

            “Perhaps he’s averse to government
officials snooping around his house, given the sort of pets he keeps,” reasoned
Reiji. “Proceed.”

            We crept across the street and over
to the picket fence surrounding his house. I looked at Duke as he landed
noisily beside the gate.

            “Did you really have to bring that?” I whispered. In his hands was a
shotgun, also standard issue from the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s shotgun
fired faster and packed more of a punch than the conventional shotgun. Someone
with a twisted sense of humor codenamed this weapon “The Evangelium.” I hear
that this literally translates to be “good news.” Yeah, maybe for whoever’s
holding one.

             â€œGospels probably won’t cut it for whatever we
find in there this time,” Duke said. I looked past him at Rex, who had a long rifle
strapped to his back. I was just carrying my Gospel, personally. I assumed
Reiji was also packing only a Gospel.

            “On my count,” Reiji said. “Three,
two, one.”

            He hopped the fence and bounded over
to the front door. I was right behind him. Rex followed me, and Duke brought up
the rear. Reiji had set to work using the magnetic wrench on the front door. I
had to wonder if the police had even come here. I imagine they should’ve
noticed something weird about no apparent forced entry. Even if they didn’t,
Teague should’ve. I wondered what he thought about all of these mysterious
break-ins.

            “We’re in,” Reiji whispered, hearing
the bolts click. He pulled on leather gloves and pushed open the door. He stuck
his head in, peered around in the dark, and then hurried in. The rest of us
stuck close to him.

            “Where are we going?” asked Rex.

            “To his bedroom,” Reiji said.

            Duke stopped moving. “What? While
he’s in there?”

            “It’s probably the best place to
find something,” Reiji explained. I leaned in close and whispered, “But if the
man’s asleep in his bedroom, wouldn’t four strangers wandering in probably wake
him up?”

            He didn’t respond immediately. He
made a face and asked, “What did you have for dinner, Brother Tino? Your breath
smells foul.”

            I pulled away from him. “Fish
tacos.”

            “How unrefined,” he said. Hey, he
doesn’t understand that the proof of a benevolent guiding force in the universe
is the existence of fish tacos. That’s his loss.

            “Man, would you stick to the point?”
I said. “This doesn’t make the least bit of sense!”

            “It will work, provided you three
stooges are capable of shutting up,” Reiji said darkly.  “Do you want to succeed or not?”

            I didn’t want to have a loud
argument in the house, so I gave in. “Awright, let’s freakin’ do this thang.”

            We crept upstairs slowly, trying our
hardest to be gentle on the steps. I think we were all afraid that one step in
the wrong place and we’d make the stairs creak. Reiji pointed at us.

            “We’ve come this far. Be extra
careful from here on forward.”

            The four of us advanced to the wall
in the upstairs hallway and kept our backs to it. The door to the bedroom was
closed. Then again, so were all the doors up there. Reiji put an ear to the
bedroom door and listened briefly.

            “I don’t hear anything,” he said. I
pointed to a door down the hall.

            “What do you think’s behind that
door?”

            “Only one way to find that out,” he
said.

            I tapped Duke on the shoulder. The
two of us padded over to the door. I tried the doorknob, but the door wouldn’t
open. Duke put his hand on my chest and pushed me away gently. I was both
amused and annoyed by the thought that he had some expertise in this field. He
didn’t exactly look like he had a gentle touch. Unfortunately, he didn’t. He
lifted his Evangelium and slammed the butt of the gun against the door,
breaking the lock with brute force. The rest of us stared at him in horror. We
heard noise coming from the bathroom. I jumped over the railing and straight
down the stairs. Duke and Rex hustled downstairs. I scrambled across the floor
and hurried through the kitchen, coming to the entrance to the garage. I
pressed myself flat against the wall, just next to the door between the kitchen
and the garage. I heard the gentle scrape of chairs and figured that Duke and
Rex had dived under the kitchen table. There wasn’t time for me to figure out
where Reiji had gotten to. That’s when the soft steps of someone moving with
deliberate but nervous movements reached my ears.

            “Hello?” said a voice in the
darkness. It was unmistakably Teague MacNavi. The steps were advancing toward
the kitchen. Man, I sure hoped hard that he didn’t turn on any lights.

            “Hello?” he repeated, shuffling
through the kitchen. I didn’t want to have to try and explain to Sister Kathryn
how badly we might have screwed this one up. I could imagine her stern face
giving me grief because I was forced to beat Teague MacNavi into a state of
unconsciousness in his own house and every newspaper and news channel started
talking about it. A sense of dread crept over me as I heard the footsteps grow
closer. I could practically hear him turn and start walking through the kitchen
toward the garage. Why was he coming this way? What idiot would think to come
this way? Go back to bed, you idiot! Every step, every inch…he drew nearer. My
blood was coursing hard through my veins, and I was tingling with anxiety. Man,
he was going to come right into the garage, wasn’t he? My mouth was dry. I
gritted my teeth and slowly reached into my jacket pocket for my Gospel. I
didn’t want to have to use this, but if push came to shove, so be it. The door
opened slowly. Teague’s hand extended gently into the room. He had long,
slender fingers. I could see them reaching for the light switch on the wall.
God, don’t let him turn that freakin’ light switch on! His fingers fumbled
around in the dark. My breath got caught in my chest. No, no, no!

            Click.

            A brief flash of light hit my eyes,
and then darkness immediately followed. For a minute, I thought the bulb burned
out. A blue spark and the sound of electricity crackling near the light switch
told me it was a little more than that. I could hear Teague suddenly make a
noise of surprise.

            “Wha…? Oh no. Don’t tell me the
house lost power….”

            He pulled away from the door and
shuffled back through the kitchen. My breath started to come in nervous,
shallow shudders. In my ear, I heard the faintest noise.

            “Could you breathe a little quieter,
please?”

            I hopped away from the wall, my
Gospel out at arm’s length. I was ready to pull the trigger, but Reiji calmly
pushed my wrist down to the floor. At last, I had a moment to take a deep
breath.

            “¡Por
Dios! You scared me half to death!” I hissed at him. He didn’t look
impressed. I wanted to know where he even had come from.

            “Listen to me. I went down to the
basement and had a little fun with the circuit breaker, thanks to Brother
Quentin’s magnetic wrench. You’re the fastest one among us. I need you to go
upstairs, find the reverend’s journal, and hurry back to the ITE. Brothers Duke
and Rex and I can handle things from here. Now go.”

            “Are you sure?” I said.

            “Go!” he commanded, hurrying out
into the kitchen. I didn’t really see any other option available. I ran through
the kitchen at top speed, skidded around a few corners, and sped upstairs.
Fortunately, the bedroom door was open, so that saved me the trouble of having
to fight with it. Where was the man’s journal? I could barely see anything in
the gloom of the night. Man, I wished Duke hadn’t blown our cover. I didn’t
want to come up empty-handed in a panic because he had no sense of subtlety.
That’s when I saw it: a slim, leather-bound book on his night-table. That had
to be it. I grabbed it and opened it, just to be certain. Sure enough, his
handwriting lined the pages of the book. Like that, I was outta there. My heart
was pounding loud in my ears. I raced downstairs. I felt like I was about to
break the sound barrier. I heard my back draft pull some loose papers off the
coffee table in the living room as I passed them. The doorframe was a distant
memory. There I was, out on the street, diving headfirst into a mailbox on an
adrenaline rush carrying a journal. If anyone had told me this would ever be
something I did in my lifetime, I’d have laughed at them. Now, I think I’m not
sure anything is entirely out of the zone of possibility.

            When I landed in the ITE, I was
pleasantly surprised by touching down in a comfy chair. Quentin was dialing a
rotary phone with one hand and banging a number of xylophone keys with a
ball-peen hammer in his other hand. I stared at him for a moment before this
proved just too bizarre for me not to comment on.

            “What the hell are you doing?”

            Quentin looked over at me.
“Maintenance work; isn’t it obvious?”

            I know I made a face at that. “What
does this thing even run on? Sunshine and dreams or something?”

            “Don’t be absurd,” Quentin said. “It
runs on…”

            When he stopped, I wondered why. He
looked like he was trying to think.

            “What’s the matter?” I asked.

            “I’m considering the best way to
attempt to explain the answer to you. The ITE runs on…ooey-gooey…ishkabibble…stuff.”

            I shifted in the chair. “Oh, you
must have gotten really good grades in English class.”

            Quentin pulled a rod from the
control console that looked a lot like one of those things that you use to
shoot a new ball into play on a pinball machine and let it snap back into
place. “It is hardly my fault you don’t understand the technical details of
this machine. I attended both Cambridge and Oxford, leaving those two
institutions with a total of thirteen degrees over the course of five years. I learned,
in that time, how to solve problems. Certainly, some of those problems were
philosophical, such as the question of what is good or what justice is. Others
were more temporal, such as how to perform quadruple bypass surgery. Irrespective
of what it was I learned, I was determined to learn it thoroughly. Thus, there
I was, a qualified surgeon with a penchant for technology, eagerly trying to
bring the cutting edge to…well, the cutting edge, frankly. I wanted to see
medical surgery leap well into the twenty-first century, but like many
institutions, the medical field proved to be surprisingly conservative and
static. I left in a huff of disillusionment, appalled by the thought that humans
could be so alarmingly short-sighted, so very parochial. It made me wonder
where the road will go with a global society so bent on erecting oblique
edifices to fields that should be open to all of its members. When I thought
that I had been proven validated in my disgruntlement, I found the Brotherhood,
and the rest, as it is often said, is history.”

            In spite of everything that had just
gone on, I’d found myself totally into Quentin’s story. “So you joined the
Brotherhood to fulfill your dreams?”

            “Nah, it was really because they
were willing to eliminate all of my student debts. Five years spent between the
most famous universities in the United Kingdom
can blow a hole in your credit the size of Scotland.”

            “Oh.” Well, that sure took all the
drama out of that story!

            He started pouring what looked like
grape juice into a funnel connected to the console. “Where are the others?” he
asked.

            The others! I’d nearly forgotten all
about them.

            “Oh man, we need to get back in
there! They haven’t come back yet!” I said. Quentin shook his head.

            “That would be foolhardy without knowing
what the situation is in there.”

            I pulled on my headset. “Fine, but
if they’re in trouble, I’m going back in. Rex? Duke? Reiji? Can anyone hear
me?”

            At first, I heard some static
interference, and there was German techno music fading in and out of hearing,
like I was picking up different frequencies. In the end, though, I heard Rex
report, “Tino, where are you?”

            “I’m in the ITE. What are you guys
doing in there?”

            “Not so loud! We’re trying to sneak
out the back.”

            “What’s taking you?”

            “Stealth is an art form,” Reiji
muttered from his end of ANGEL. I looked at Quentin helplessly. He shrugged and
started playing with a motherboard and a screwdriver.

            “As long as you get my magnetic
wrench back to me,” he said indifferently. I swear, he was more attached to his
wrench than Ratchet.

            “Is that all you ever are concerned
with?” I asked him.

            “Give me a quarter,” he suddenly
demanded. I gave him a funny look.

            “What for?”

            “Give me a quarter!” he shouted. I
admit it; this unexpected intensity from him made it all too easy for me to
obey. I reached into my pocket and gave him a quarter. He grabbed the quarter,
returned to the console, knelt down, and popped it into a small slot like you’d
find on vending machines. I heard a little chime, like a video game starting
up. All at once, the ITE bumped and rattled around, stopping as abruptly as it
had started. Though Quentin had startled me before, I wasn’t so cowed that I
wasn’t going to ask him what all that was about.

            “What did you do that for?”

            “I decided to quickly teleport to
inside MacNavi’s house.”

            “What? You mean the ITE is in his
house right now?” I practically shrieked.

            “Yes. Does that strike you as
especially unusual?”

            “What if he sees it?” I cried.

            Quentin looked amused. “What if he sees it? What shall he have
recourse to do? I very highly doubt he could report to the police that a
mailbox appeared in his house and left as quickly as it came. Highly doubt.”

            So yeah, that was a valid point. I
couldn’t really argue with that kind of logic. He grinned like he had all the
answers. It was an undeniably smug grin, but it was justified when it was
backed by a brain like his.

            “You may want to make room for the
others,” he said.

            “What? Oh, right. I was getting used
to this comfy chair.” This was all getting to be a little too much for me. My
heart rate hadn’t come down all the way yet. Quentin started giggling, making
me give him a questioning look.

            “An Inquisitor, are you?” he
laughed. I had to wonder if everything was always a big joke waiting to happen
with him.

            “Sometimes, I think you’re insane,”
I said.

            “Let me assure you, I’m naught more
than a madman with a mailbox,” he said, still smiling. I gawked at him,
probably pretty stupidly, but I got out of the chair. A few seconds later, Rex
came down and landed in the chair.

            “Well, that was a spot of luck,” he
said quietly, rising. Shortly after that, Reiji landed gracefully in the chair.

            “Where’s Duke?” I asked.

            “He’s coming,” Reiji answered.
“Ideally, he won’t do something quite as stupid as he did earlier.”

            “What did he do?” asked Quentin
conversationally, throwing a number of switches on his command console.

            “He broke open the door with his
Evangelium like a moron,” I said. Quentin gave a little laugh. Reiji stood up
and grunted.

            “How did you get to the garage from
upstairs without being seen?” I asked. Reiji looked at me and said, “First
things first. Did you secure his journal?”

            I held up the journal in both of my
hands triumphantly. Reiji wore a small smile of satisfaction at this. “Excellent,
Brother Tino.”

            “I hope it contains something useful
and we didn’t go through all this trouble for nothing,” Rex said.

            “Geronimo!” came a cry from above.
Duke dropped in and landed in the chair, looked at Quentin, and shouted, “Punch
it, Chewie!” I don’t think that won him any brownie points with Quentin, but it
wasn’t like Quentin was going to leave us there. He fired up the ITE and soon I
could feel us taking off. I tossed the journal to Reiji.

            “Let me know when you’ve found
something good. I don’t have the interest in reading anything written by this
man,” I said sourly. Reiji started flipping through the pages. Soon, he stopped
on one.

            “Found something?” Rex asked. Reiji
stared at the page blankly for a few seconds before remarking, “How novel. I mean,
this should sound like a work of fiction if I weren’t inclined to know this
man.”

            “Why? What’s it say?”

            “It says…that Reverend Teague
MacNavi hears the voices of angels talking to him.”

            “Say what?” came my astonished
reply.

            “What? Do you think me creative
enough to come up with something quite so absurd?” Reiji shot back.

            “Yes, but I don’t think you’re funny
enough to make that up,” Duke said.

            “Take a look for yourself,” said
Reiji, shoving the journal under Duke’s nose. I watched as Duke’s face creased
with thought, like he was doubting the really deep doubts of our age. Rex
peeked over Duke’s shoulder.

            “I’ll be damned,” Duke said quietly.
“The man’s off his rocker.”

            “That’s strange,” said Rex. “It
says, ‘The angel told me that I would soon receive new instructions, and then
the time of reckoning can begin.’ What’s that supposed to mean? The end of the
world is coming?”

            I became aware that the ITE had come
to a stop. Quentin yawned noisily.

            “Brother Reiji?”

            Reiji reached into his coat pocket
and took out the magnetic wrench, which he tossed over to Quentin. Duke
scratched his head.

            “I think that we can call this
mission a success either way. We have claimed all the proof that those stuck-up
dirtbags calling themselves the Twelve could ever want and then some. Boy, I
can’t wait to see that smug grin slapped off Sister Kathryn’s face when we
present this to her!”

            I had to agree with him. Finally, we
weren’t going to look like total embarrassments to the Brotherhood.

            “Coming?” called Quentin, standing
outside the ITE. The rest of us followed him out into the chilly air of the
night. A sense of exuberance was in the air. Victory was ours that night.

            When we got into the hotel, we went
up to Duke’s room at once to contact Sister Kathryn. Almost immediately,
though, I was awed at what his room looked like. Everything was either red,
white, or blue. I thought Captain America had exploded in this place.

            “Truly, this is the interior design
of a jingo,” Reiji said upon first sight.

            “Thank you,” said Duke proudly. He
fired up the communicator. I looked at the bed sheets. They were star-spangled.
For a moment, I imagined Duke probably used the kind of toothpaste that was
blue and had the little white sparkles in it. It certainly seemed like a real
possibility.

            “What is the meaning of this?”
Sister Kathryn demanded when ANGEL connected. “This, I trust, is important.”

            “It certainly is,” said Reiji. “We
have in our possession the journal of Reverend Teague MacNavi, the contents of
which should pique the interest of the Twelve.”

            “His journal?” Kathryn said, sounded
surprised. “How did you come to possess that?”

            “A quick little foray into the man’s
house unearthed this little bundle of secrets, Sister Kathryn. If I may: ‘Dear
Journal, have you ever felt odd when you were walking along somewhere and
couldn’t understand why? It happened to me today when I was going to get the
morning paper. I was heading to the store to get the newspaper and I felt the
strangest chill up my spine. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this.
Recently, I’ve been having those sensations. Today, however, I think I have
come to understand the meaning of it all. I heard a gentle whisper on the wind.
It was a faint voice on the edge of my hearing. I think it was telling me I was
chosen to carry out the will of God. Was it an angel speaking to me? I do not
know, but I like to think it was. The angel told me that I would soon receive
new instructions, and then the time of reckoning can begin. My heart beats with
eager anticipation at the thought. The dreams I’ve been having, the strange
feelings I’ve been having: these things must be coming together to finally make
sense. The melancholy in my heart is replaced with a curious joy and
satisfaction, knowing that I may soon be able to make His kingdom here on
Earth.’ Well?”

            Since we had proven to be such
losers up until this point, we’d never seen Kathryn express any positive
encouragement toward us yet. She put her fingertips together to form a
calculating steeple, and you know how the Grinch has that positively wicked smile that just radiates absolute
evil in his heart? That’s exactly what she looked like. It was so freakin’
disturbing. I still have nightmares about it. It was the kind of smile that
stayed with you just so it could continually scare the hell out of you, like
the Cheshire Cat’s smile if it were imagined by H.P. Lovecraft.

            “Excellent,” she said. “It looks
like you have finally secured what we have been looking for. Upload the
contents of that journal to ANGEL at once.”

            Reiji set to work doing so. I was
finally calm after that whole heart-stopping experience. Reiji then said, “All
contents online, Sister Kathryn.”

            “Thank you. Over and out,” she said,
with a hint of a purr in her voice. Ugh, it was so freakin’ creepy for her to
be pleased with us. I would’ve happily taken her being disgusted with us again
at that point.

            “Well, who would like to go down to
the bar and have a small drink of celebration?” Reiji posed.

            “Sounds good,” Duke sounded off. “Let’s
go, boys.”

            I guess we were being spoken for.
Very soon, we had journeyed downstairs to the bar and were buying drinks. Reiji
raised his brandy.

            “To flawless victory,” he toasted.
We clinked glasses. It was a relief to me to know that our initial friction had
disappeared in the face of a committed effort not to be totally pathetic. I
laughed.

            “Who’d have thought we’d all be
sitting here, getting along so well after that plane ride?”

            Rex smiled quietly to himself. Reiji
took a sip of his brandy and observed, “It always feels uplifting to be in to
be in the company of the victorious.”

            “It always feels good to be victorious,” Duke added. “What we
accomplished tonight was as fine an execution of tactical strategy as Vegetius
could have ever imagined. ‘It is much better to beat the enemy through want,
surprises, and care for difficult places than by battle in the open field.’”

            The other four of us stopped. Was
this the same Duke that impulsively banged down a door in Teague’s house with
his Evangelium?

            “What?” he said, looking at our
blank stares. “Vegetius was a great thinker on military matters. He wrote the
book on it so everyone could know how great he was.”

            “I had no idea you were so learned in
the classics,” Quentin said, showing his naked surprise at this.

            “Anyone who has put their time in
the service knows about Vegetius’s De Re
Militari. You haven’t really served until you know of his seven dispositions
for battle.”

            “I must say, I am impressed,” Reiji
admitted. “Until now, I thought you were a dull-witted Neanderthal with the
brains of a duck.”

            “What are these dispositions for
battle?” I asked, kind of curious.

            “An excellent question, Tino!” Duke said. “They go as follows: One, when
someone says stop or goes limp, the fight is over. Two, only two guys to a
fight. Three, one fight at a time. Four, they fight without shirts or shoes. Five,
the fights go on as long as they have to. Six, if it’s your first night, you
have to fight. And seven, you don’t talk about fight club.”

            I dropped the rum and coke in my
hand. Quentin pointed at Duke and said, “Truly, you have learned well from the
fountain of Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, though my only question is this: are
you certain you didn’t happen to read a radically different novel, perhaps
published in the middle of the Nineties?”

            Quentin sipped his wine and then
spat it back out into his glass.

            “What’s wrong with you?” I asked
him.

            “I just remembered: I hate alcohol,”
he answered.

            “Trust me, it was Vegetius,” Duke
assured us. “Only a Roman would have such contempt for the Greeks. He said he
wanted to take a sledgehammer to the Elgin
marbles.”

            Palm, meet face.

            When I woke up the following
morning, I had that usual momentary lull, when the brain is first coming online
and no thoughts are being processed. I like that feeling, however fleeting it
is. When there are things that weigh heavily on my mind for days or weeks at a
time, that’s maybe the most comforting moment of being awake: the state of not
thinking. That day, though, I started thinking about how good it was to finally
have a victory under our belt. With that satisfaction in mind, I got out of bed
and went over to the door to get my complimentary newspaper. I opened the door
just in time to see Reiji’s door, down the hall, was open too. Some pretty,
young thing was trying her hardest not to look suspicious as she ducked out.
Reiji appeared at the door and blew her a kiss. The girl blushed, made a quiet
gesture for him to call her, and she hurried away. All I could think about it
was that, in this world, there are those of us who like to celebrate, and there
are those of us who like to celebrate.

            “Sort of thing that makes you think
people aren’t always what they seem, doesn’t it?”

            Without moving, I turned my eyes
sideways. Rex was standing inches away from me. There was a real sensation of
discomfort in those few inches, and I retreated behind my door. Rex leaned
against the wall just outside my door and nodded.

            “Sorry for surprising you there,
Tino. Truth be told, though, I tend to scare people with my suddenness a lot.”

            “Ah.”

            “Read the paper yet?” he asked. This
abrupt shift would have been jarring, but this seemed to be Rex’s M.O. I looked
at the copy of the newspaper in my hands. The front page’s headline was “Rev.
MacNavi to Make Mystery Announcement.” I looked at this with some disinterest.

            “So what? Teague’s probably going to
talk about his curious run-ins with all kinds of things happening in his house
that he can’t explain.”

            “I’m a little amused by it, personally.
The reverend is somehow unable to handle his home being invaded but he seems to
think nothing of talking to figments of his imagination. Monsters are one
thing. Angels, though…that’s pure fiction.”

            “Good morning, fellows!” called
Quentin brightly as he rounded a corner and came up the hallway. I gave him a
quick nod, and Rex waved to him. Quentin smiled.

            “What are you two up to?”

            “We were just talking about the fact
that Reiji was entertaining a lady in his room last night,” Rex said. Quentin
turned to look at Reiji’s closed door and then looked back at us.

            “Is that so? I say, that explains
the squeaking I heard around four in the morning last night.”

            “Is that a fact?” said Rex.

            “Oh yeah. I thought it was the
signal of dying batteries in his smoke detector making that sound. I suppose I
was wrong.”*

            Rex gave a quiet chuckle and said, “Excuse
me, but I’m going down to breakfast. Would either of you like to come?”

            “Just came from there,” answered
Quentin.

            “Not that hungry,” I said. Rex
nodded and went off to the elevator. Quentin returned to his room, and I closed
my door. I flopped back onto my bed and thought about what we could expect to
hear from Kathryn. I was actually looking forward to seeing her face for a
change. Crazy, I know. And after the previous night’s exciting adventure, I
felt that I was justified in wanting to lie in bed for a little longer. I’m not
the sort of person who can drop off back to sleep after waking up, but I wasn’t
ready to engage the day head on yet.

            I looked to my right. There was the
night table. In the drawer was a Gideon Bible. I often wonder to myself: who’s
Gideon? I can’t help but think of the name Gideon as the sort of name reserved
for geeks and final bosses. Sitting on top of the night table was the remote. I
grabbed it and flicked on the tube. Local news was chatting about traffic and
weather. They said there was supposed to be sun for the next few days. The
banter between the local station hosts wasn’t engaging, but then again, it
never is no matter where you are. I was ready to go back to the City. Say what
you like about New York, it’s really the heart
of cosmopolitan America.

            “The real talk of the town, though,
is the mystery announcement from Teague MacNavi, the local reverend who has
already made headlines urging a dialogue between religious denominations in Boston. It has been
suspected that the reverend’s house has been the target of hate crimes since
petitioning for this interfaith dialogue, with strange occurrences of property
damage happening around his home in recent days.”

            My eyes were glued to the TV as soon
as I started hearing this. More talk about Teague MacNavi? Ugh, all of Boston was slavishly
devoted to Teague MacNavi and the freakin’ lousy Red Sox.

            “We now tune in live to Reverend
MacNavi’s press conference for this big mystery announcement.”

            Oh, this should be good. We’d all
get to see Teague talk about how agents of intolerance were persecuting him,
and yet he would persevere even at the expense of potential martyrdom in the
name of God. Oh no, go on without me to the Promised Land! I can only show you
the way! Dime-a-dozen crackpots in Grand Central say the same thing all the
time. I guess I’m jaded, but this sort of talk doesn’t inspire anything in me
but cynicism. There was Teague MacNavi on the television. You know, it occurred
to that this was the first time I was really looking at the man. He was tall,
slender, and had a ruddy face. Light brown hair was combed over neatly. His
teeth looked like they were painted, that’s how white they were. He looked
sharp in his three-piece suit in front of the podium, like he was a politician.
I wondered for a brief moment if he was considering making an announcement of
running for public office. I’m sure that wouldn’t have made the Brotherhood
happy. That would have been a laugh.

            “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,”
he said gently. “I want to thank you all for coming and giving me a voice today
for all those whose voices are never heard.”

            Ugh, I already wanted to blow chunks.

            “By now, many of you are well aware
of the curious events that have happened in the vicinity of my house. These are
things I cannot fully or rightly explain. They are every bit a mystery to you
as they are to me. I continue to work with the police to resolve these
incidents in a swift and conclusive manner. I know that some of you have been
thinking, ‘Gosh, there are people trying to threaten you. Perhaps you should
pull back from your message.’ But that’s not what this is about. This is about
something much, much bigger than me.”

            Yeah, your ego.

            “This is about things that have been
happening to me for a long time now,” Teague continued, sounding slightly
embarrassed. “As a young man, I’ve struggled to come to understand why there is
so much hate and so much pain in a world made by a benevolent creator. I’m sure
many of you have wondered the same thing. For a long time, this has been a
puzzle to mankind. We have never been certain, but we have always been certain
that the people who claim to know through some kind of revelation were bearing
false witness to the truth. Perhaps we have been hasty to judge. Recently, I
have had dreams and feelings that someone has been speaking to me about what
the truth is. Angels have come to reveal to me the true will of the Lord.
Understand that this is not my will, but His. It is that will that the Judgment
comes soon, and all good souls will not be afraid. He will be speaking through
me as a vessel to communicate his messages to you. I have no say in this
matter, but know that I am doing this not because I want to do it, but because
I have been chosen to do it. The angels tell me that the appointed judges will
soon be awakening and convening to render their verdicts on every individual.
For my part, I pray that I will see all of you in Heaven. Thank you.”

            The television was then a rushing
river of camera bulbs flashing and reporters calling for Teague to give further
statements as he walked away from the podium. I stared at the TV like a total
freakin’ vegetable for maybe a minute or so. From Aleksandr’s room next door, I
heard a huge shout of, “What?” I was in the same boat with him. What had just
happened?

            Seconds later, there was a frantic
banging on my door. I jumped out of bed and opened it. Quentin and Aleksandr
were standing there.

            “I guess you heard,” I said.

            “The little man wants to play games
with us!” Aleksandr rumbled darkly. I had the terrible feeling that if Teague
were with us at that moment, Aleksandr would have ripped him a new angelic
trumpet. Looking from him to Quentin, I said, “What do you suggest we do?”

            “I believe we should contact Sister
Kathryn at once and see what she would have us do. Clearly, the man has
attempted to preempt our efforts from last night by doing this. Afraid of how
things might turn out if his secrets came out in an unfavourable light, he has
instead publicised his ravings in the most sanctified manner possible,” Quentin
responded. I couldn’t believe that Teague had publicized the thoughts he’d put
down in his journal so openly. Surely no one would take him seriously now,
would they? As I thought about it, though, I lost hope in that belief. All of Boston, and probably most of the United States,
loved this man.

            “Reverend MacNavi also is the
founder of several philanthropic charities to help with uncured diseases like
AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as movements to spread literacy
across the world and end world hunger,” the TV rattled on noisily.

            Man, we were in trouble.

            About a half hour later, all seven
of us were in Quentin’s room, crowding around the communicator. It was a handy
little device, though I felt that these conference calls on ANGEL weren’t
really doing us any good. We were always on the defensive with this case. If it
wasn’t the Twelve looking for freakin’ unassailable evidence like they were
going to prosecute Teague in court and needed an airtight case, it was the man
himself playing us for fools. I couldn’t wait for this discussion.

            “I see you are all here,” Sister
Kathryn said when her face appeared, projected on the wall. “By now, I’m sure
you know what the situation is.”

            “This is weird,” grumbled Aleksandr.
“The man is behaving oddly. Doesn’t this meet what the Twelve were looking
for?”

            “Of course it does, Brother
Aleksandr. That is not the point. The point is that MacNavi has called our
bluff. Knowing that his journal had been taken with its most peculiar contents,
he had to make a move before it became damning evidence against him. He has no
idea who purloined it from him, so he had to move quickly.”

            “What? Who stole his journal?”
inquired Rosette.

            “You did,” Kathryn said blankly.

            “We did?” asked Aleksandr.

            “Last night, the rest of us took it
upon ourselves to do a little night hunting,” Rex said quietly. I don’t know
why, but I felt a little embarrassed about it. I guess Rex did too.

            “So, now what?” I asked. It felt
like a question that we were raising all the time.

             â€œIs it not so plain, Brother Constantino?”
said Kathryn, almost sarcastically. “Now the true detective work begins. All of
MacNavi’s talk about being a chosen vessel is the work of a good speechwriter,
but none of it is credible. He has an agenda somewhere in his mind, and he
plans to execute it soon. Your job is to find out what that is and stop it
before his plans come to fruition. You have leave to use any method you see
fit, short of harming MacNavi in any physical way.”

            “Rubbish!” declared Aleksandr. “The
man is threat. Why do we not kill him now and solve problem this way?”

            “Such are the orders of the Twelve,”
Kathryn explained. Our reaction was visible anger at this. She added, “I am not
here to deliver you cheerful thoughts of the day. Do not get so irritable with
me.”

            “I do have to side with Brother
Aleksandr here, Sister Kathryn,” Reiji protested. “Why not cut the Gordian’s
knot? We run much greater risks this way. If we were to…”

            “This is not a decision that I made.
Understand that and accept it,” she commanded. As usual, we were getting
nowhere in a hurry. I had it in mind to disobey those orders if it came to
that. I didn’t think that one man’s life was somehow more sacred than the lives
of everyone in the whole world. Especially if that one life belonged to a kooky
cleric who was planning to unleash something horrible on civilization as we
knew it.

            “So we’re back to snooping, huh?” I
asked, crossing my arms. “Great.”

            Kathryn sighed. “Yes, Brother
Constantino. That is all.”

            I looked up at the ceiling. “Tell me
something: is that really all? These are pretty vague directions, even in
comparison to what we were doing before. The clearest direction is also the one
that makes our job the hardest.”

            “We are not in the business of
making international incidents,” she said. I rolled my eyes.

            “Are you serious? This man seems to
want to make an international incident and now the Twelve is getting in our way
of doing our job. Which is it? Do they want us to do this thing or not?”

            Kathryn made this incredibly
unpleasant face, like she wasn’t paid enough to put up with me. You know, they
say, “Don’t kill the messenger.” Quentin tells me that this is from the ancient
Greeks and how the messengers sent between different states had diplomatic
immunity. But hey, this isn’t ancient Greece now, is it? Besides, none of
us were being paid enough to do this stuff.

            “You have your orders. The Twelve
expect you to make meaningful progress. That is all,” she said, wearing the
chilliest freakin’ expression. The projection reverted back to the ANGEL menu. For
a while, we sat there, sort of numb from these new orders. Eventually the
silence was broken when Rosette asked, “So you went to MacNavi’s house last
night and didn’t tell me or Aleksandr?”

            “It was a carefully executed plan
that did not require a full complement,” said Reiji. Rosette looked hurt by
this.

            “Why? Are you saying that we aren’t
as good at this as you?”

            “My dear girl, you set fire to half
of the trees behind his house. Subtlety is an art that takes years to grasp,
and some may never attain it at all. Stay with your forte,” he answered. I
think the only way to describe my look at him was askance, because I couldn’t
believe he’d just said something so condescending to a fellow operative. Maybe
it was lost on him that, in lecturing her about subtlety, Reiji showed not the
slightest ounce of subtlety himself.

            “You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “Do…do you have any idea how insensitive
that is?”

            Reiji didn’t look like he cared. “We
are not here to enjoy each other’s company for our own amusement, Brother Tino.
What I would give to be back home right now! But that is not the case, is it?
No, of course not. Let us do our job thoroughly and completely, and we may part
knowing that we have done what are here to do. That is the sole guiding force
that should be in our minds.”

            “Listen, Reiji,” Aleksandr roared,
looming large over Reiji, “you have big mouth for small person. I think you need
to learn your place.”

            Reiji smirked. “Har, har. There is
no question that a dolt like you would have no place in the sort of operation
we conducted last night. Gentlemen of refinement have a deeper understanding of
their place, as you put it.”

            “Speaking of operations last night,
who was the girl I saw slinking out of your room this morning?” I said.

            “Oho,” said Duke. “I see what he
means by a deeper understanding!”

            “A gentleman of refinement, my ass,”
I spat. “Rex and I saw you.”

            “I fail to see what that has to do
with anything we have been discussing,” Reiji responded. “Let me be clear: we
are…”

            “No, let me be clear,” I yelled at him. “We’re not going to get anything
done if arrogance is going to get in our way.”

            “Nor will anything get done if our
passions run high and we sit about shouting at each other. Harsh truths may
sound insensitive to you, but they are truths nonetheless. Do not characterize
me as a villain because I am saying that which you do not want to hear.”

            “May we all take a moment to assess
our situation?” petitioned Quentin politely.

            “No, I think we need to settle this
like men,” said Aleksandr, cracking his knuckles. Reiji arched his eyebrow at
Aleksandr and said, “Very well, you ox. Queen’s rules?”

             Quentin stepped between the two of them and
said, “There are two options as of the present. One: we either decide, as a
unit, to forge ahead in spite of our differences and work together in the fine
tradition of the persevering human spirit and achieve the objectives with which
we have been tasked. Two: we bicker endlessly in a determined effort to be
nothing short of utter embarrassments to our own names and that of the
Brotherhood. I’m not espousing any of the invective spewed thus far, nor am I
summarily categorising it is false. I am simply suggesting there is a road that
we may travel that is less laced with poisonous diatribe.”

            “Oh, of course; the one who has yet
to so much as pick up a Gospel wants to sue for peace,” Reiji said.

            “I do not use weapons,” Quentin said
matter-of-factly. It occurred to me that this was true, and I’d never really
thought anything of it. He added, “I have no need of them.”

            “What a fop,” Reiji laughed. “Even
the famous Englishman Sherlock Holmes carries a gun.”

            “Oh yes, fictional characters are
the standard by which I enjoy judgment,” Quentin said, slightly bitterly.

            “Go back to playing with your
technological toys. You’ll be called upon when you’re needed,” said Reiji. What
happened next blew my mind.

            “Do…not…speak,” said Quentin, a dark
edge in his voice present. There was something in the way he said those words
that made it sound like a knife had been drawn. “Nobody has had anything
meaningful to say about this. We had done our part for the time. We must now
move on. I did not think it would come to ad
hominem attacks, but you will not achieve anything of value by insulting me
or anyone else. So do not speak.”

            His words had picked up momentum and
volume as he went. He was in a full-throated shout when he pounded a fist into
the wall so hard that it went through the plaster and finished, “Because nobody so short-sighted has anything
worth saying!”

            I never thought that Quentin was
capable of rage. Usually, he was so reserved, if a little off the wall, that it
seemed like he never had a bad day in his life. But this…this was in a league
of scary all its own. Pawz was way less frightening than Quentin when he was
angry. And I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking that, because all the energy
moving us toward having a rumble right there between Reiji and Aleksandr
evaporated. In fact, it was like all of our high emotions had been sapped away.
We all dwelled on our thoughts and stared as Quentin pulled his fist out of the
wall. That hole was a grim reminder of everything that had brought us to the brink.
Could we afford to go that far in our inability to work together? Obviously
not. The problem was making it happen. I took it upon myself to leave the room
and returned to my own.

            I flopped down on the bed and
thought about what we could do. I wasn’t really interested in coming out with
an apology for anything I’d said. As far as I was concerned, it needed to be said. And it’s not like an
apology has any meaning. I’ve never regarded an apology as having any value. It
doesn’t really take back any word or deed, does it? It’s an empty husk, a
meaningless ritual. I know I can’t be the only person who feels that way.

            A rapping at my door woke me from my
idle thoughts. I was really hoping it was neither Quentin nor Reiji; they were
people I didn’t see myself having a good conversation with right away. I rolled
off the bed and went to the door to peek out of the fish-eye hole. This was
unexpected. It was Rosette. I pulled open the door, wondering what this was
going to be about.

            “Hey,” I said, in pretty much the
most unrevealing way possible.

            “Thanks for sticking up for me,” she
said, her hands clasped together in front of her. “You didn’t have to, but it’s
nice to know that I’m not totally on my own in this group.”

            “Oh, no. If anything, Reiji’s the
one in danger of being totally on his own around here. That guy is trippin’ if
he thinks it’s cool to start talking down to people right in their faces and
expect no one to take offense to that. It’s not right.”

            Rosette nodded. “I agree. But Tino,
why did none of you tell us about your nocturnal visit to MacNavi’s house?”

            “I guess…we didn’t really think
about it. It was so late at night that when we eventually got back, it was
almost close to midnight. I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but I can at
least say for myself that it was the sort of experience that deserved to be
followed immediately by a good night’s sleep.”

            I began recounting the tale of the
previous night: how we jumped into the ITE basically on a whim and in direct
defiance of orders, how Duke bashed open the door and we all had to scramble,
how Teague nearly discovered me until Reiji shorted out the circuits, the race
into his room to acquire the journal and the crazy flight down the stairs and
out the door with our target. At the end of retelling the saga, I could see
Rosette was sufficiently impressed.

            “Too bad he’s gotten ahead of us
again,” she said. Yeah, there was that.

            “The Twelve putting restrictions on
us doesn’t help, either,” I added. “But I don’t get how Teague can do this and
think that he’s going to be taken seriously now. I mean, we’re a secular
society. This is exactly the sort of thing that will get the guy ridiculed by
every late night comedian. Can you imagine the sort of skewering he’ll get from
Jon Stewart or Dave Letterman? They’ll crucify him on the altar of chuckles.”

            “Martyrs don’t care about public
perception. They leave that to their disciples,” Rosette reasoned. That was a
fair point. Still, it seemed like a big gamble to me, and the payoff was
practically nonexistent.

            “I guess whatever he was hiding,
he’s going to have to bring it all out in the open soon. He’s basically
predicted the Apocalypse happening soon. If he’s got something up his sleeve,
he’ll have to lay his cards on the table. Still crazy, though.”

            “Not necessarily crazy. The devout
would take offense to the thought.”

            I snickered at that. “Yeah, everyone
drinks from the same Kool-Aid fountain around here when it comes to that man.
But, like, the Catholic Church can’t be happy with this. Nor can basically anyone
who isn’t one of Teague’s mindless drones already. I think they’d be offended
by the thought that there’s some wanna-be prophet on the loose asserting the
end of the world is coming and he’s the one link between Heaven and Earth.”

            Rosette shrugged. “When you talk
religion, someone’s bound to take offense. The question is how he intends to
get around that.”

            “Bridging the divide is going to be
an interesting task for the man. You can’t win over everyone to believing
you’re right when you’re telling them that their most fundamental beliefs are
wrong.”

            “That, fortunately, is not a problem
that concerns us. Let us hope he fails to accomplish that much while we
investigate him further.”

            “Yeah, let’s,” I said. A silence
settled in, announcing that our conversation had run its course. I added, “So,
you gonna be okay?”

            “Yes, yes, fine; thank you. I’m
going to ready my Evangelium for whenever we go out to MacNavi’s house again.
I’ll see you later?”

            I was sort of surprised at how she
phrased that last sentence as a question. “Sure.”

            She bowed in a very courteous,
formal way, and went off to her room. I closed my door. I wanted to tune the
world out for a while, so I turned on my iPod and turned off my mind. At least
for some time, I needed to be away from my comrades.

            It was maybe noontime when I got a
knock at my bedroom door. Figuring it probably wasn’t a raven, I went over to
the door to answer it. Standing there was Duke, who had his hands in his
pockets and a big grin on his face.

            “Tino, are you going to be ready to
rock tonight?”

            “We’re going to Teague’s?”

            “You know it,” he said. “I’m looking
forward to it. Maybe more of his little pets are on the prowl. I haven’t had so
much fun since I left the service.”

            “You really get a thrill out of this
line of work, don’t you?”

            “Hell yes,” he hooted. “I did six
years of duty in the Army; retired as a First Sergeant. They said I was officer
material, destined to go to West Point and be
a commander. I never took that thought seriously, though; officers have got it
all wrong. They spend all their time arguing with each other about how to do things. Enlisted men? They
just do. There isn’t enough money in
the world to send me off to be a drum majorette at the academy up there in New York. I was done
with schooling after Fort
Benning. Believe you me:
when I joined the Brotherhood after my last tour, it was like the best days of
being freshly enlisted all over again.”

            I laughed weakly. “There’s certainly
a lotta truth to what you say.”

            “Make sure you have a big dinner,
Tino, but not too big. We can’t have our speed demon puking his brains out
‘cause he ran too fast on a full stomach.”

            Here, I laughed a little more
freely. “Yeah, yeah; thanks. By the way, are all of us going, or…?”

            “Between Reiji and Quentin, it was
decided that we’re all in this together. That’s fine by me. The seven of us
were put together for a reason, I would think, and we better use all of our
skills to our advantage, or else we won’t get a lick of work accomplished.”

            I nodded. “You’re totally right.
Check ya later, Duke.”

            Later, I heard from Duke that
Quentin had specifically requested Reiji to stay in his room after I’d left.
Just the two of them stayed in that room for over an hour. When it was done,
Reiji walked out and didn’t say a word or even demonstrate the slightest hint
of emotion. Nobody knows what happened in that exchange. Maybe that’s for the
best. All I know—all anyone knows, actually—is that every last wrinkle in team
cohesion had been ironed out on Reiji’s end. Now that didn’t stop him from
being a smug little sucker, but he never brought things up to the kind of level
that things had reached on that day again. I guess Quentin was a much more
intense guy than I realized.

            Feeling a little hungry, I went
downstairs to the bar. I grabbed a bunch of nachos smothered in salsa and
started chowing down. That is honestly like ambrosia to me. My food has only
one requirement to taste good: it must be excessively spicy. If it’s not
setting my teeth on fire, it doesn’t have enough flavor. Anyway, I was sitting
there, minding my own business, when someone comes up behind me and says, “My,
that must be like manna to you.”

            I turned around very slowly,
wondering who did I know who would approach me so randomly and with such a
simile. Lo and behold, it was the priest from before—the one I’d shared the
elevator with. He sat down beside me. Considering we were at a bar, this seemed
to be about as appropriate as Conan the Barbarian sitting down in a cathedral.

            “Hello,” I said cautiously.

            “Good day, my son,” said the priest.
“I see you’re still in town. On business?”

            “Yes. And you’re going to be
attending that interfaith council or whatever it is?”

            “That is the plan, yes.”

            I looked down at my nachos for a
second, and then I looked back at the priest. “Let me ask you something: you’re
Catholic, right?”

            The priest looked at me hesitantly.
Maybe he thought I was asking him a trick question. “Yes.”

            “You don’t see anything odd about a
guy claiming to be a prophet, basically, and talking about the End of Days? I
mean, the Church has nothing to say about that?”

            The priest grinned and scratched at
the bald patch of his scalp. “It’s a funny world, isn’t it? You’d think that
His Holiness would have a firmer opinion on this, but he doesn’t. I think there
has been so much uncertainty and so much doubt in the world these days that a
clear message is refreshing and comforting.”

            “Even if the message is that we’re
all doomed?”

            “It is a cross that humanity was
meant to bear.”

            I had to stop myself from rolling my
eyes. “Uh-huh.”

            “You sound skeptical, my son.”

            “Why shouldn’t I be? Just because
times are hard, suddenly everyone’s clinging to the first message they hear?”

            “The megaphone of Heaven is much
louder than you might think.”

            “But I have no reason to believe
that this is Heaven-sent at all.”

            The priest laughed. “Reason is all
well and good in our temporal matters. It has a great place in the advancement
of our existence. However, there are things that are simply unknowable. We
cannot dismiss the things we don’t understand. They are there all the same. For
that, we must turn to faith, faith that will guide us to do what is right when
times are hardest and when we are tempted to stray from the herd.”

            I fidgeted in my seat. “I want to
say that’s comforting, but it really isn’t.”

            He laughed again. “All things will
be revealed in time. Have you ever known a situation that didn’t resolve itself
neatly in the end? The righteous prevail and the wicked are punished. People
focus on the earthly—they look at police procedurals and trials, the gossip
columns of tabloids—and they think that virtue is dead. They do not look past
the immediate; when someone stands for his judgment, there is truly no
acknowledgment of one’s race, sex, class, or anything of the sort. There is no
discrimination in the Kingdom
of Heaven.”

            It was so tempting to accept that
on, well, blind faith, but that was not how I was trained. Members of the
Brotherhood aren’t there to listen to someone else’s convictions. They have
their own. And deep down, I knew that I could never be satisfied with the
answer of being told that faith would solve everything. Maybe God helping those
who helped themselves, yeah, but I wasn’t going to sit around like a mushroom
and wait for something to happen to me. If anything, I was going to happen to
others.

            “It’s been nice talking to you,
Father, but I really must be going,” I said, standing up. He nodded politely at
me.

            “I hope I haven’t distressed you.”

            “You haven’t. I’m just of a
different opinion than you.”

            “That’s perfectly fine. I can at
least respect your respectful opinion.”

            That tolerant tone struck me as odd,
I guess because in our society you get used to people arguing with more and
more conviction the less sure they are of their positions. These guys you see
and hear on the internet, the radio, the television…all of them operate on the
same, single volume: loud. Most of ‘em are cowards anyway. They spend all their
time way out in left field with people who think just like them and wonder how
the rest of the world can be so stupid. Present a confrontation, no matter how
logical, to any of their rigid dogma and they blow up. Worse still, you have
these people of self-professed authority, having degrees in easily the most
worthless subjects (what is a degree
in communications, anyway?), basically telling other people how to think. You
know, wasn’t there a time in this country when everyone was afraid of Big
Brother telling them what to think? I guess it’s safe to say that fear
disappeared when Big Brother stopped being a fictional character and started
being a reality television show.

            I went back to my room and didn’t
come out again until Rex knocked on my door and informed me that the seven of
us were going out to dinner at the bar and grill across the street.

            “That’s…not our customary
procedure,” I said.

            “Reiji is apparently in a mood for
rapprochement,” Rex remarked. “He’s footing the whole bill.”

            Getting to dine on someone else’s
dime? “Count me in.”

            “Come on. We’ll head over there now,
so we’re not traveling together in a pack.”

            While we were in the elevators, my
curiosity finally got the best of my reluctance to approach the man. “Rex,
you’re Egyptian, right?”

            He looked at me and shook his head
before staring back at the elevator doors quietly. Eventually, he added,
“Turkish.”

            The Brotherhood, like any
institution, is equal-opportunity. As you may have come to perceive by now, the
Brotherhood deals in what some might call the supernatural. Going well back to
the Dark Ages, the Brotherhood was established in Oxford,
England
to protect the world from dark forces that were, for the most part, generally
unknowable. Very soon, chapters of the Brotherhood crept up across continental Europe. Brothers were champions of virtue back in the
Middle Ages, or so the story goes. But like with all things, some people pushed
the envelope a little too much. Recalcitrant Brothers in Spain basically subscribed themselves to the Vatican, which
was completely not in line with the basic tenets of the Brotherhood. We weren’t
supposed to be someone else’s lackeys. But there you had it; the whole sordid
affair is still remembered in history as the height of the Spanish Inquisition.
After that, the Brotherhood disassociated itself from the type that took a very
hardcore “scourge and purge” approach to matters and went underground.* It also wiped itself from history books
the world over. Since the sixteenth century, the Brotherhood has operated in
secret, quietly saving the world from things it probably wouldn’t understand
even if it tried. A change in Brotherhood policy back in the eighteenth century
allowed in people from places outside of Europe.
Women were admitted in the nineteenth century. Lunatics have been admitted
since time immemorial, though.

            “So why are you in the Cairo branch?”

            Rex looked over at me and rubbed his
cheek. “My skills were required in the deserts and dunes of Egypt. It’s
that simple.”

            “Oh yeah? What are your skills?”

            “I’m a marksman.”

            “Oh, so that’s why you carry around
that scope rifle.”

            “That’s right. It’s not really as
fun as some people like to think, but that doesn’t make it an unsatisfying
experience. It certainly is the sort of line of work that disciplines you into
having a lot of focus and patience. Back when I was in the Istanbul branch, I was trained in sniping out
in the Balkans. There, you got to learn very fast that if you didn’t have a
firm grip and a sharp eye, you weren’t going to live.”

            That was probably the most words I’d
ever heard Rex say at one time. “Really? So you were out picking off guys out
in Kosovo or Albania
and places like that?”

            “Day and night. I remember one
evening I was there, freezing on the steppes, waiting for my target. The sun
was setting behind the mountains, and it got so dark so fast I watched my hand
disappear into blackness right in front of my face. I waited for hours on those
steppes, completely motionless. My stomach rumbled constantly. I couldn’t
believe how my body held out like that for as long as it did. That’s when I saw
it: a cherry.”

            “A what?” I interrupted.

            “That’s what it looks like when
someone lights up a cigarette from afar. A little cherry. All it took was one
shot within a moment of seeing that cherry pop up, and my work was done.”

            “Wow…but I guess that’s the sort of
job that also makes you feel pretty lonely, huh?”

            The elevator doors opened with a
chime. Rex stepped out and seemed to think about my question for only a brief
moment.

            “Lonely? No, not really. When you’re
a marksman, you’re never really alone because you know that, wherever you are
in the world, there are others just like you enduring the same struggles as you
are. You belong to a special group: the proud few, the happy few, the
sharpshooters.”

            As we went entered the restaurant, I
was amazed. Rex was more awesome than I ever imagined. “That’s a really
inspirational story. That sort of struggle…it’s incredible.”

            Rex smiled wanly. “I’d like to think
it is. But I guess it was bound to happen since my favorite childhood activity
was hitting squirrels in the head with my slingshot.”

            This took me by such surprise I
almost walked into the door. It occurred to me at that moment that the team
that the Brotherhood had assigned to prevent the Apocalypse consisted of a fast-talking
smartass from the Bronx, a British techno-geek, a condescending Japanese spy, a
Russian with a love of violent and wanton destruction, a Turkish crackpot crack
shot, an all-American soldier boy with the depth of a puddle, and a French
arsonist. Is it just me, or did that take both faith and some major cojones? For
some reason, the Twelve had placed their bets on us to be the heroes of mankind. Man, talk about a freakin’ gamble!

            We sat down at the table, where
Reiji was already sitting. The three of us sat in silence. A few minutes later,
Duke and Aleksandr strolled in.

            “I am ready to devour whole
restaurant,” Aleksandr announced, sitting down in his chair. Duke picked up a
menu and started reading through it.

            “Wha…? I thought this was a grill.
Where’s the steak?”

            “It’s a Japanese grill,” Reiji muttered. Around that time, Quentin came up
to the table. Duke scratched his head.

            “Oh, is this the sort of place where
they chop up sushi and shrimp right in front of you while you watch?” Duke
asked.

            Reiji heaved a sigh. “No, it’s just
an ordinary Japanese grill.”

            Very soon after, Rosette took a seat
opposite of Reiji. I don’t know how obvious it was to the others, but she had
this very chilly look on her at seeing Reiji. I couldn’t really blame her,
though maybe I’d have tried to be subtler about it.

            “Hey, would you look at that?” said
Duke, pointing up at a television suspended from the ceiling near the bar. It
showed a fuzzy picture of Teague MacNavi (big freakin’ surprise, right?)
confronting a whole bunch of young college students. It wasn’t possible to hear
what was being said between Teague and these students, but the students were
obviously protesting something. It wasn’t lost on me—or anyone else—that the
word “Live” was up in the corner of the television.

            “Huh…fancy that,” said Quentin
thoughtfully.

            “Um…” said Duke.

            Like that, all seven of us bolted
out of the restaurant and back to the hotel. Quentin peeled off to the ITE and
called, “I’ll have the engine up and running by the time you’re back!”

            A chance had opened up for us to get
deep into whatever was happening at Teague’s house. There wasn’t a moment to
waste. Who knew that a bunch of college slackers (with a strangely large amount
of ire in their souls for a crowd of stoners) would ever prove to be useful?

            We climbed out of the ITE. The seven
of us were armed and ready for anything as we stepped out into the street that
evening. I was starting to wonder if anyone even lived next to Teague. Nobody
thought anything of a mailbox that came and went of its own free will?

            After I hopped the fence, I noticed
there was a clump of black feathers stuck in the gate, standing out against the
white fence. Quentin took notice of it too.

            “Strange,” he commented to himself, “the
migratory habits of ravens would have them nowhere near New
England at this time of year.”

            “Stay on your guard,” Duke warned. “No
good will come of looking at feathers when anything could be watching us.”

            That was a fair point. We kept
moving. Quentin was about to use his magnetic wrench on the door, but he
hesitated. He had knelt down to inspect the lock, and he turned his face up to
us. Then, very cautiously, he gave the door a gentle push and let it swing
open.

            “That’s terribly irresponsible of
him,” said Rosette.

            “Perhaps he left it open for us,”
Aleksandr said. It seemed pretty freakin’ unlikely, but as we all knew,
stranger things had happened in that house. We crept into the house.

            “Very well,” Reiji said. “I suspect
I have a good idea where we ought to look.”

            He led us upstairs and toward the
one room that Duke had tried to get into the last time we’d been here. He tried
the doorknob, but the lock objected to his passage. Quentin set to work on it,
very soon unlocking the door. When Reiji pushed open the door, I think we were
all equally shocked.

            It was a very small room, practically
a closet space. In the little room, there was a young blonde woman, maybe a
college student, tied up and gagged, struggling on the floor. I was stunned by
this.

            “What sick man is this reverend?”
Aleksandr growled.

            Reiji quickly knelt down and cut her
bonds with a pocket knife. When her gag was cut away, she exhaled deeply. She
squirmed uncomfortably, like a bug that had been flipped onto its back. Who
knew how long she had been tied up like that?

            “Miss, who did this to you?” Quentin
asked.

            “Who do you think?” she complained. “That
Teague MacNavi creeper!”

            “Dude, this is getting weird,” I said. “I thought he was on the
level.”

            “Can you stand? Are you injured
anywhere?” continued Quentin. The girl stood up gingerly, wincing a few times
as she shifted her weight onto her feet. Looking into her green eyes, I had to
admit, she was kind of a babe. The hot little skirt and the long, leather boots
she was wearing probably didn’t do anything for her comfort at that point, but
it certainly was easy on the eyes.

            “How did this happen to you?” Reiji
inquired.

            “I…don’t really know,” she said,
rubbing her head. “I remember I was walking back to my apartment—I go to BU—and
I see someone. He was…holding onto a lamppost like he was about to throw up.
Normally, I would have thought he was some drunk, but when I passed him, I saw blood
on his face. I mean, that’s not normal, so I reached for my cell phone to call
for help, and that’s when he looked up at me. I swear to God, it was freaky to
see that this guy was Teague MacNavi, who I see on TV all the time. He…I think
he lunged at me. I think we struggled, but I can’t really remember things
clearly after that. I just remember waking up in that closet, tied up like a
pig.”

            “So, to your knowledge, he hasn’t
done anything to you other than assault and bind you?” asked Reiji.

            “No,” she said, looking pretty
ashen-faced at the implications. “I really hope not.”

            It was a pretty grim line of thought
to pursue. I guess nobody was willing to dwell on it, because nobody else said
anything along those lines.

            “How long have you been in there?”
Rosette asked.

            “What’s today?”

            “Wednesday.”

            “Jeez, I’ve been in here for close
to a day!” the girl shouted. “No wonder I feel awful!”

            We looked at each other, sort of
feeling a shared discomfort at this latest revelation. It was one thing to
think our target was trying to bridge the mundane and the supernatural. It was
something entirely different to think he was also a closet deviant.

            The girl suddenly pointed at us. “Wait,
how did you come to find me? You don’t look like coppers.”

            “Uh…” Duke began. In a fit of
stupidity probably brought on by testosterone, I put my arm around her
shoulders and said to the others, “Let me take this one.”

            “As long as you think you can handle
it,” Reiji said.

            “Trust me. You guys have other
things you should be doing right now, anyway.”

            While the others went back to work
looking for clues as to what Teague was up to now, I led the girl downstairs
and outside. On the way out the door, she suddenly clung close to me. I didn’t
mind that, that’s for sure. My arm dropped to around her waist. If the
situation wasn’t so weird, this would sure be a great start to any night. I
stopped outside the ITE, still looking like an innocent mailbox, and looked at
her.

            “Why are we out here? It’s cold,”
she insisted. I took her face in my hands.

            “Here. Maybe this will warm you up.”

            I planted a kiss squarely on her
lips. She didn’t seem to mind, if the fact that her hands wrapped around my
back was any indication. We maybe kissed for thirty seconds before I pulled
back and asked, “Feeling better?”

            “You move fast, guy,” she said. “How
could you have been so sure I wouldn’t have slapped you?”

            “I’m too charming for that.”

            “And hot,” she said, leaning in for
another kiss. We started making out a little more. Yeah, all of this was not
considered part of the job description or even ethical by the standards of the
Brotherhood, but when you think about how freakin’ lousy this assignment had
been, you have to admit that making your own perks like this is probably the
sort of thing you’d do too.

            Making out on the streets of Boston on a chilly night
in front of the house of a guy who thinks he’s communicating with God, next to
a mailbox that can warp through space. Life didn’t get much weirder than that,
I thought. Oh, how mistaken I was to think that.

            “What’s your name?” she said when
she pulled her lips away from mine. However much I was enjoying the company of
a live, warm female, I wasn’t freakin’ stupid. There was no way I was telling
her what my name was. Instead, I quickly kissed her again, hoping that would
keep her from asking nosy questions. Maybe she had qualms about sucking face
with a stranger, but I sure didn’t. She didn’t put up any resistance until a
little later, when she pulled away from me and looked at me with concern in her
eyes.

            “Are you going to avoid all of my
questions that way?” she asked. “You won’t tell me who you are or what you’re
doing here. You’ll forgive me if that seems to inspire some reluctance on my
end.”

            “You can rest assured that you’re
safe with me,” I confidently declared. She smirked a little.

            “So what’s the deal, then? Are you,
like, the Men in Black or something?”

            Maybe in her mind that was a joke,
but it wasn’t really that far from the truth.

            “Yeah, yeah, something like that.”

            She giggled. “You do look a little like Will Smith, only
more Latino.”

            I tried my best not to have an
outwardly negative reaction to that remark. I don’t know what it is about me
that makes people think this, but for freakin’ years people have said I look
like Will Smith. The truth is I don’t.
I just don’t. Maybe my ears are so big that it’s the only logical conclusion
people can jump to or something, but I don’t look like him. My opinion should
be the only one that matters in this determination.

            “Then just call me Will,” I said.
Hey, I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to be compared to a Hollywood
star in some girl’s eyes, even if it wasn’t the slightest bit true.

            “Alright, Will,” she giggled. “Tell
me, what are you doing here? I’m grateful you came to my rescue and everything,
but this is an odd place to come out to for no good reason. Are you looking for
something?”

            “I can’t say.”

            “You better stop poking around where
you don’t belong,” she said, quite harshly. The shift in tone was so unexpected
that I was almost convinced it was my imagination talking. However, looking at
her, I saw that there was a glint in her green eyes of something just
underneath the surface. Something unpleasant.

            “You just leave this to the
professionals,” I told her, letting go of her waist. When she smirked this
time, it reeked of something wicked.

            “Even professionals can be bad at
what they do.”

            “Is that so?”

            My eyes were suddenly drawn to the
bulges developing in her shoulder blades. She lowered her head and whispered, “The
flesh of man is too weak to ever understand.”

            The back of her shirt ripped open
around her shoulder blades. Two massive black wings spread out regally. She
raised her head. Her eyes had an animalistic look to them. The smile on her
face was maniacal.

            Well, damn. All the babes turn out
to be evil hellspawn, don’t they?

            I pushed the barrel of my Gospel
right up against the bridge of her nose, in what was probably the quickest
turnaround time from romance to business I’ve experienced. The girl was
grinning wickedly at me, dismissing any thoughts I might have had that maybe
this was a human being possessed by something awful. Generally, we in the
Brotherhood try not to kill possessed people. The usual difference between the
possessed and the outright monster is subtle; it takes some time to be able to
identify the difference. You see it in the eyes, in the way it moves, in the
way it reacts to stimuli. Monsters behave more like rabid animals. Possessed humans
still have human-like reactions, which can be hard to catch when your
adrenaline is up and so is theirs. So when I had my Gospel threatening to enter
her nostril and she seemed not to care, she quickly fell into the disposable
category.

            This suddenly took a turn for the
more unnecessarily difficult when the resistance of her face against my Gospel
practically vanished. Before my eyes, she’d teleported to up onto the roof of
the house and was perched there like some sort of evil pigeon. So in addition
to the fact that I’d been making out with an abomination of nature, it also had
the ability to teleport to anywhere it wanted to. Those wings were just for
show.

            “What do you want?” I said.

            “Your life,” she—maybe it, I should
say—answered. I rolled my eyes. Not only was that a stupid response, but it was
also a cliché one.

            “Hey, we got company!” I shouted,
firing my Gospel up in the air. It didn’t take long for the others to come to
the windows.

            “Tino, what are you doing?” called
Rosette. I fired again, this time aiming at the creature. It teleported away
and reappeared next to me.

            “You’re never going to hit me that
way, you know,” it taunted. I heard the others start scrambling from the
windows. At least they’d gotten the picture.

            “What are you?” I asked. “And ‘your
worst nightmare’ isn’t a good answer.”

            It raised its hands limply between
its face and mine. Like the flick of switchblades, ten fingernails extended
into long, thin, razor-sharp edges. This girl was getting more charming by the
second. Rather than give me a vocal answer, it brandished its newfound weapons
at me. I guess the time for talk was over.

            I emptied two rounds into its
shoulder. That barely seemed to inspire a thought of pain in the thing. At
once, I sprinted backwards and circled away, trying not to get caught in a
corner of the fenced-in real estate. The monster came after me right away,
taking wild swings at me with its claws. I fired two or three more times before
I ran backwards hard into the fence. It was winding up an uppercut that
would’ve torn me a new one, but I saw a tree branch not even a foot away from
me. I threw myself sideways, grabbed the stick, and swung it. A loud clack! resounded when it deflected the
oncoming assault of the monster’s claws. With my other hand, I fired again,
hitting the thing in the forearm. The monster brushed it off like a fly. That
wasn’t comforting.

            “Come here, Harpy!” yelled Quentin.
The monster turned to look over its shoulder. Reiji fired his Gospel, nailing
the monster right above the collarbone. You’d have thought that would’ve made
at least an impression on a living creature, but no. Not that day, anyway. The
creature turned back to me and raised its other hand. I wasn’t really thrilled
about the prospect of dying like this, as you might be able to imagine. But a
weird clunk sound interrupted my panicked thoughts. A boomerang had bounced off
the back of the creature’s skull. We all turned to look for who had thrown it.
Standing up on the top floor of Teague’s house was Rex, waving happily.

            “Standing still targets are the most
hilarious,” he called.

            Duke and Aleksandr came to my
rescue, pumping the Harpy full of Evangelium shells. The kickback from
receiving those shots was enough to knock the Harpy off of me long enough for
me to scrambled away and reload my Gospel as I took off to the other end of the
backyard. I jumped up onto the back porch and raced into the house, supposing
that I was going to be temporarily safe while the Harpy was occupied with Duke
and Aleksandr. Quentin came running in from the other side of the house,
shouting, “What happened?”

            “How am I supposed to know?” I
cried. “The girl was standing there with me and all of a sudden she got all
demonic on me!”

            “You have a magnificent way with the
ladies, don’t you?”

            “Shut up!”

            We had been standing in the kitchen,
in front of the sink. From the sink, you could see out through a window to the
backyard. To our surprise, Duke came flying in through the window and landed on
top of Quentin.

            “What the…?” I began, unable to even
process this.

            “She’s a tough cookie,” Duke
grumbled, getting onto his feet. He ran back to the porch and outside. I took
aim through the broken window and began shooting at the Harpy. Right then, it
was wrestling with Aleksandr and I was trying my hardest not to shoot him by
accident. Aleksandr was holding his own for a human, yeah, but I was worried he
wouldn’t be able to keep that up forever. We needed to kill that thing dead,
and in a hurry. That’s when I saw Rosette march right up to the Harpy, point
her Gospel at its head at point blank range, and fire. I was kind of surprised,
myself. Why hadn’t any of us thought of that? The monster flopped over limply
when Rosette had blown its brains out. I lowered my Gospel and leaned over the
sink. I was about to say something to her, but a little tinkle of glass
suddenly screamed loudly in my ears.

            “Ugh, Teague’s gonna notice this for sure,” I said, gawking at the
damage done to the broken window. Quentin, looking out the window behind me,
mumbled, “Maybe, but why don’t his neighbours seem to care? Are they not home
again?”

            “Maybe no one lives in these
houses.”

            The two of us went to the back porch
and looked around. The houses looked empty, definitely. You’d have to figure
that gunshots would alert someone, no matter how reclusive they are. Aleksandr
stood up, brushing some grass off of him.

            “Where did the girl go?” he asked.

            “That was the girl,” I said.

            Aleksandr looked confused. I
couldn’t blame him. I was still trying to come to grips with the fact that I
was kissing that thing five minutes ago. A little bizarre, definitely.

            “So, what do you think? Was this a
set-up?” Reiji said, advancing his theory.

            “If it was, it wasn’t a very good
one,” said Rosette.

            Duke squatted down and looked at the
Harpy’s body. He poked it in the foot with the barrel of his Evangelium. If he
had his suspicions that it wasn’t dead, I guess that wasn’t entirely
unreasonable. You tend to see a lot of undead things in our line of work. When
the Harpy didn’t move, he seemed satisfied.

            “I didn’t think it would go down so
easily after throwing me through a window,” he said, apparently annoyed by the
anticlimactic way Rosette took it out.

            “This neighbor business is starting to trouble me as well,”
Reiji said, looking at the houses on the block. “Surely, someone would have
taken notice of this commotion and phoned the local authorities.”

            “All right,” I grumbled, sensing we
were possibly losing focus. “Who wants to go and take a look around?”

            “Why, that’s very noble of you to
volunteer!” said Quentin.

            “Wait, what?”

            “All in favour of sending Brother
Tino to investigate, raise your hand,” Quentin said, submitting my will to a
popular vote. Unsurprisingly, it was unanimous. It’s times like this that you
wonder about democracy in action.

            So it came to pass that yours truly,
really resentfully, went off to inspect all the houses in the area. I knocked
on doors, rang bells, and the whole works. I would wait around for a minute or
so at each door before moving on to the next one. Nothing and no one greeted me.
Wasn’t this a laugh and a half? This was incredibly stupid and yet it was a
legit concern. Why were there no people on this block except for Teague? This
couldn’t be a coincidence. Something really freakin’ fishy was going on, but it’s
not like there were enough puzzle pieces that could come together to form a picture.
After giving up on the last house, I skulked back to the others in Teague’s
yard with all the cheeriness of a wraith.

            “That was an exercise in futility,”
I muttered at them. Duke smiled.

            “Seeing you waste your time knocking
on all those doors for nothing reminds me of my youth. Boy Scout, you know.
Never was prouder than the time I made a household buy four hundred dollars
worth of popcorn.”

            “How’d you accomplish that?”

            “The maggots slammed the door in my
face. I knocked on their door a second time with my pocketknife at their dog’s
neck. They were suddenly interested in my venture capitalism.”

            “That’s
horrifying!” Rosette cried.                                                                  

            “But I gave them cutthroat prices,”
objected Duke. Wasn’t that charming?

            “Duke, look out!” shouted Rex from
the house. I turned. Maybe it was just the nature of the situation, but it felt
like super slow motion to watch the Harpy rise up on an elbow behind Duke and
extend its claws toward his unprotected back. I could only stare in silent
horror as those claws came closer to his body. Duke turned so slowly. And all I
could do was stand there. I could not believe that monster was still alive. Now
it wanted to take one of our own. My movements felt so sluggish in those urgent
seconds. I tried to point my Gospel at it, but I wasn’t moving fast enough.

            The Harpy’s claws connected with
Duke’s side. But, weirdly enough, they didn’t do anything. They didn’t
penetrate. They didn’t even seem to scratch his clothes. And Duke…man, I’d
never seen anything like it. The man was glowing. And no, not like he was
looking good or anything. I mean he was literally glowing like a freakin’ light
bulb. Duke turned around and pumped six Evangelium shells into the Harpy’s
heart. Maybe that took just enough surrealism out of the moment to inspire the
rest of us to start plugging the horrible creature with all of our firepower.
By the time I’d emptied two magazines into it, the Harpy looked like Swiss
cheese. The chaotic gunfire died down about five minutes later. We stared
stupidly at it, practically daring it to wake up after that. Duke wasn’t
glowing anymore.

            “What was that?” Reiji said, looking
at Duke.

            “I don’t know,” he answered, looking
at his hand and flexing his fingers like he’d never seen them before. Quentin
cleared this throat.

            “If I may,” he said, shaking his
magnetic wrench with a flourish, “this does have some unique uses uncommon to
the world. A simple rearrangement of the carbon in your body, and presto!
You’re wrought of diamond.”

            “D-Diamond? I was made of diamonds?”
Duke stammered, unable to believe it. I was pretty skeptical myself, but this was Quentin we were talking about. I was
pretty sure the guy was capable of anything.

            “Believe it or not,” said Quentin
with a smile. “Of course, I can’t prolong that effect. You’re supposed to be
made of flesh and blood, and I’m sure the consequences of trying to make
something fleshy into something adamantine for a protracted period of time
would be….”

            “Hold on!” Duke said, grabbing
Quentin by the collar of his trench coat. “You can turn things to diamond with
that toy of yours?”

            “I assure you, this is no toy!”
Quentin protested.

            “Being made of diamond…I’d be worth
more than all of you fools combined!” Duke said, looking distantly at the sky.

            “For what it’s worth, blood doesn’t
flow through diamond very well, at least to the best of my knowledge. I’m not
entirely sure what, if any, physical side effects shall result from this
exigent use. To be honest, that was the first time I used the magnetic wrench
for that purpose.”

            Duke looked at Quentin hesitantly.
Maybe he couldn’t quite process all of his thoughts yet. “You mean you used me
as a guinea pig for your scientific experiment?”

            “Not out of sheer amusement,”
Quentin responded ruefully. “You were seconds away from having your visceral
organs punctured! I’d like to think that some gratitude is order for such
triage.”

            Duke rubbed his eyes. I looked down
at the Harpy. It was then, for the first time, that I noticed a crucifix
hanging from its neck. I looked at its face. It didn’t bleed. It just got
filled with holes, like it was made of clay and was poked through with fingers.
I knelt down in front of it, reached forward gingerly, and took the crucifix in
my hands, turning it over between my fingers.

            A sudden shriek from the Harpy made
me jump, practically out of my skin. In doing that, I yanked the crucifix from
her neck by accident. The Harpy suddenly had a pained look, like it had been
shot in the heart, if it even had one. Its eyes widened and weakly reached a
hand toward me before collapsing.

            “What was that all about?” Rosette asked.

            “Not a clue,” Quentin said.

            “I…think we killed it,” I said,
looking from the crucifix to the creature. It was withering up like a decaying
piece of fruit. So, it was powered by a crucifix?

            “Quentin, anything special about
this?” I asked, holding up the cross. He pointed his magnetic wrench at it and
the wrench hummed. When Quentin checked the readings, he frowned.

            “I’ve never even heard of these
elements before.”

            “What does that mean?”

            “It means,” said Quentin, looking
back at the house, “we still have some investigating to do.”

            We trudged back to the house,
occasionally glancing at the Harpy to see if it was playing possum. We made it
back to the porch without further event. Quentin looked around like he was
looking for something specifically. Rex came downstairs.

            “That was a heck of a fight it put
up,” Rex said quietly. Quentin wandered upstairs. Rosette made a face.

            “Where’s he going?”

            “Who knows? The man’s a mad
scientist,” Duke spat. It was my turn to make faces. Didn’t he have any sense
of gratefulness?

            “Dude, the man saved your freakin’
life.”

            “I have no idea what he did to me,
and he might not either,” Duke said, pointing a stern finger in my face. I
smacked his hand away from me reflexively.

            “Listen, Major Malfunction: you
could be dead right now. Remember that you aren’t because Quentin is a hell of
a lot smarter than you’ll ever be.”

            That was all I had to say before I
followed Quentin upstairs. I looked around in the upstairs hallway for a moment
before I saw him in Teague’s bedroom. He was leaning over a computer and
inspecting it silently. I couldn’t help but wonder what he hoped to get out of
that. It wasn’t even turned on.

            “What are you doing?”

            Quentin had squatted down by the
wall and was yanking plugs out. “Taking this thing with me for further
inspection. I can’t be guaranteed that the reverend will be occupied with
college protestors all night.”

            “What are you hoping to get from his
computer? Do you really think he keeps files on there that would give us
answers?”

            He gestured for me to help him with
the tower. “He seemed to think nothing of writing incriminating material in his
journal and storing it in his basement filing cabinet.”

            It was a fair point. I was always
told that if you don’t want something to be publicly known, don’t ever write it
down, or it’ll come back to haunt you. As I lifted the tower from the floor, a
question occurred to me.

            “Yeah, but you saw what Teague did.
He called a press conference to beat us to the punch about what was written in
his journal. He probably wouldn’t keep anything that would point to his
suspicious activity on his computer anymore. Like, he could’ve deleted those
things from his hard drive and cleaned out his internet history. We wouldn’t
know the difference. Won’t this be an exercise in futility?”

            “Unequivocally not,” he assured me,
lifting the monitor. “In fact, such things are very easy to trace. Deleted
files leave, for want of a better term to explain for simplicity’s sake, ghosts
behind. You know how, if you leave furniture on a carpet for a long time, it
leaves an imprint behind? This is comparable. A mere matter of tracing the
ghost will tell us everything we need to know about what was contained in any
deleted files.”

            “You can do that?”

            “I’d be rubbish at my job if I
couldn’t, wouldn’t I?”

            “What are you guys doing?” asked
Rosette, standing at the doorway.

            “Ah, Sister Rosette: please, could
you carry out those cords for me?”

            Rosette stared at us with a really
puzzled look on her face. Us taking away the computer seemed to be beyond her
understanding.

            “You really think he won’t notice
his computer missing?”

            Quentin smiled. “I’d think he’d be blind
if he didn’t. The question you have to ask yourself, however, is this: do I
care that he will notice?”

            “Don’t you? I mean, until this
point, the things that have happened in his house could be chalked up to
strange occurrences not outside anyone’s reasonable appreciation,” she
protested.

            “This is generally true, the
conflagration of his backyard notwithstanding.”

            Rosette looked put upon. “That’s
besides the point! The problem is that outright burglary is much, much
different, and he will surely wonder who is stealing from him.”

            “The man was keeping a monster in
his closet that was a shape-shifting demon. I think that, in light of the fact
that we killed that creature, the theft of his computer will very swiftly
become the least of his concerns.”

            Maybe she was tired of arguing or
didn’t have an answer for that, ‘cause Rosette walked into the room and picked
up the cords behind us. Quentin led the way back downstairs. I asked, “Are you
sure this isn’t taking a random gamble?”

            “Everything
is,” he answered.

            “Where are you going with all that?”
asked Rex, watching us come downstairs.

            “Back to the ITE. What are you lot
doing?” asked Quentin.

            “I was thinking—” began Aleksandr.

            “Always a good start,” Reiji
interrupted.

            “—that we have only seen this man
chattering to his people once. We have never been inside his church. Wouldn’t
that be a good place to look?”

            A heavy silence fell on us for some
reason. I wondered if time had frozen or something, since it seemed like
everyone was in suspended animation.

            “Was that a dumb idea?” Aleksandr
finally asked.

            “Actually, that’s brilliant,”
Quentin said.

            “So why haven’t we done it yet?”

            “Uh…” said Duke. “Did anyone even
think of that yet?”

            “I think not,” said Reiji, looking
slightly embarrassed by this. I guess it was kinda stupid that we hadn’t tried
looking in the guy’s church yet. Man, I’d hate to think of what Kathryn woulda
said to us if she heard us coming to that realization so late in the game
already. We probably would’ve been lucky if she stopped with merely chewing us
out.

            We went back to the ITE. The Harpy
still was as dead as it was ever gonna get, and I know that I was relieved
about that. Quentin fired up the engine and we hurtled back to outside the
hotel in no time. I was the first to start climbing out. When I poked my head
out of the hatch, I was surprised to see a police officer and another guy
standing right in front of me. Apparently, the cop had pulled this guy over in
the hotel parking lot and was writing up a ticket. Both the cop and the guy
looked at me in bewilderment. Not that I could blame them, considering I was
sticking my head out of what looked like a mailbox.

            “I say, what’s the hold-up here?”
Quentin called standing up and also popping his head out of the hatch. He
looked at the blue and red lights of the police car and then he looked around
at the situation in front of us. Something about the way his eyebrows fell
suggested to me that he wasn’t sure what was happening.

            “I don’t recall any police officers
attempting to pull over mailboxes for traffic violations before,” he whispered
to me. “Is this an American tradition?”

            “No! He’s pulling over that guy!”

            Cheerful recognition spread across
his face. “Oh, of course! That’s a relief.”

            “What the hell are you two doing?” snarled the police officer. I guess the
shock had worn off. I didn’t even know how we were going to explain this.

            “Never mind us, Officer,” Quentin
said. “We’re with the…uh, the…oh, right. I’m Captain Troy
Towers of the United
States Postal Service Internal Investigation Unit. We’re inspecting this
mailbox for signs of use by the Axis of Evil.”

            “Say what?” the police officer said.

            “It’s a new angle. Homeland Security
would go spare if I told you about this, so you didn’t hear it from me,
but…apparently, the new fad in terrorizing the United States is sending computer
viruses through snail mail. The DHS Secretary wants every mailbox in the nation
properly inspected and cleared.”

            Suddenly, Reiji popped up behind me.
When he spoke, he had a fake Boston
accent. “It looks like this one is cleah! No signs of anything suspicious.”

            The police officer dropped his pen.
His mouth just hung open.

            “We better get moving,” I whispered,
climbing out. I was still holding the computer tower in my hands. The officer
stared at that.

            “To check for the computer viruses,
obviously,” Reiji stated flatly.

            “But…I didn’t even see that mailbox
there a second ago,” the officer stammered. “What the hell is this?”

            “You’re not very sharp, are you?”
asked Quentin.

            “He’s a traffic cop. He can’t be
reasoned with,” I blurted out.*

            “Oh, I suppose that stands to
reason.”

            The officer drew his gun and had it
pointed at us in a heartbeat. Quentin stared down the barrel of the weapon
thoughtfully before saying, “It’s remarkable how there are some thoughts that
sound much better in your head than spoken aloud.”

            I heard a noise like the shaking of
earth and looked at the mailbox. Aleksandr emerged from it like some kind of spawn
of Cthulhu with his Evangelium at the ready. He had pushed both Quentin and
Reiji out of the mailbox in his rise and now he towered over the police
officer.

            “I have had enough of these games
for one night,” Aleksandr growled. “Americans have ideas about how secret
police used to operate. I will show you what we used to do to secret police.”

            Aleksandr climbed out, marched over
to the cop’s car, and lifted it over his head like it was a mere barbell. Then
he turned, carried it over to the trees just beyond the parking lot, and bashed
it against a tree three times before dropping the crushed remains on the
ground. He returned to the police officer, a fearsome look in his eyes. That
officer was trembling in his cheap shoes. Aleksandr ripped the pistol from the
policeman’s hands and held it in his own gigantic paw. Then, just to rub it in,
Aleksandr clapped his hands together, which made a sound like a garbage truck
crushing trash.

            “Who’s next?” Aleksandr asked,
really sweetly.

            The police officer fainted. The
other guy jumped in his SUV and peeled out. I started cracking up.

            “Man, that was freakin’ awesome! You
just did what I think everyone has ever wanted to do to a five-oh who pulls
them over!”

            “Bah,” grunted Aleksandr irritably. “Another
little child waving a gun like it gives him authority. Do all Americans behave
like this?”

            “No. That’s a stereotype reinforced
by country western movies and people who think that being folksy is charming.”

            Rosette rose out of the ITE, saw the
unconscious officer, and looked at us. “What have you boys done?”

            “Nothing,” I said at the same time
as Reiji, Quentin, and Aleksandr.

            “Are we going to make something of
our efforts, Brother Quentin?” she said, looking tired of putting up with us
for one night. I guess we were all on the end of our ropes with this case.

            “With any luck, we may very well
have the answer we’ve been looking for buried somewhere in this computer,”
Quentin answered.

            “How are you going to do that?”

            “The latest in data recovery,
engineered by the fine researchers of L’Ordre de Recherche,” he declared
proudly. “I could go into the details, but I won’t.”

            He looked at me when he said that. I
responded, “Thank you.”

            “Instead, it’ll be much easier to
demonstrate. Come along and prepare to be amazed at the power of
state-of-the-art technology!”

            He strolled over to the hotel. Reiji
chuckled dryly.

            “With that accent, you could almost
believe it,” he said.

            “So, how does this thing work?”
asked Duke, inspecting the contraption that Quentin had set up. It looked like
a spaghetti colander attached to a bunch of coiling wires. Quentin may not have
been Doctor Frankenstein, but there was sure something to be said about how
close he came.

            “I think the simplest way to put it
is to recall the film The Matrix,”
said Quentin. I could tell there was an ounce of reluctance in his voice to make
that comparison. “The gateway to the Matrix was the cable that connected to the
base of the brain. This is somewhat similar, although not entirely comparable.
For one, nothing that happens in there will affect you in real life. For two….”

            “Hold!” objected Reiji, pointing his
finger accusatively in Quentin’s face. “What is the meaning of this ‘in there’
and ‘in real life’ jargon?”

            “This machine simulates a physical
construction of the computer drive to which it is attached. In this case, we
are going on a fishing expedition in Reverend MacNavi’s hard drive. In order to
do so, I shall need one volunteer to dive into the depths of the hard drive and
go retrieve whatever relevant files are or were stored on the computer.”

            “There’s no danger involved, is there?”
asked Rex.

            “Well, this is all still very
preliminary. I’m not sure what kind of side effects might result from delving
too deep or for too long. Nevertheless, our earliest test runs have yielded no
negative consequences from the procedure, so there’s that.”

            “No, sir. You’re not tinkering with
me anymore,” Duke said firmly. He crossed his arms in express defiance.

            “Before we descend into a bidding
war for who is going to volunteer fastest to not volunteer,” began Reiji, “let
us settle upon an equitable arrangement. The time-honored tradition in Japan to
resolve matters such as this is the drawing of the straws.”

            “What? Really?” questioned Duke.

            “What do you care, Major
Malfunction?” said Reiji condescendingly. I smirked a little at that, no lie.
Reiji pulled some straws from his pocket and stacked them in his hand. He then
offered the straws up to the rest of us.

            “I’ll be abstaining, since I have to
operate the machinery to make this jaunt possible,” Quentin said. The rest of
us pulled straws from Reiji’s hand. Reiji said, “He or she with the shortest
straw goes in, no questions asked. Agreed? Reveal!”

            It’s not that I didn’t have faith in
Quentin. I just wasn’t exactly psyched up about whatever it was that he was
planning to do and use me as a test run, you know? I mean, The Matrix was a cool movie and all, but that’s mostly because it
was only a movie. I wouldn’t actually want to be one of those guys risking some
major grievous bodily harm in a digital world. You might think that having a
world where the normal boundaries of physics don’t apply would be cool and
free, but it’s precisely when you start thinking about the fact that the normal
boundaries of physics don’t apply that you realize that you’re probably way out
of your league. You’ve gotten used to gravity. When it moves from being a law
of physics to a suggestion, you may experience some concern.

            I can say all that for sure,
because, naturally, my straw was the short one. God, wasn’t it my lucky day?

            “Godspeed, son,” said Duke, saluting
me.

            “Yeah, sure,” I said. Quentin then
fitted the colander thing on my head and told me to sit at the table where he’d
set up his machine and Teague’s computer. The colander thing came past my eyes,
so I was staring into dark. Lots and lots of dark.

            “You should be able to hear my voice
throughout all of this,” said Quentin, sounding like he was talking from
another room. “Rest assured, you’re in no danger. That I know of, anyway.”

            “That’s a comfort,” I replied.

            “Here we go, Tino. Shout if you have
any problems.”

            I waited. At first, there was
nothing. Then, I saw a brief flash of light, way out on the horizon of…whatever
space it was that I was in. Who knew where I was? I sure didn’t. I wasn’t even
sure if Quentin knew. Then, I was greeted by a sight that was both familiar and
yet trippy as hell. The sight of the Windows logo appeared in front of my eyes.
The different-colored panels in the window then shattered in front of my eyes.
On instinct, I threw up my arms in front of my face to avoid getting my face
cut to shreds. As I moved, my body felt…odd. It was like if you’ve ever thought
about your existence and thought really hard about the fact that you are alive,
thinking about being alive. Have you ever focused so hard on something so
circular that your head starts spinning from it? Before you know it, your body
is tingling with this insane sensation. You might think you’re losing your
mind. That feeling was exactly what I felt when I moved.

            “Are you alright in there?” asked
Quentin. At this point, he sounded really distant, but still clear. I couldn’t
even recall my body in the physical world or anything about how that felt. I
was caught up in how I felt in that strange digital zone.

            “Yeah, I feel alright. I’m just
thinkin’ that I’d have liked this more if Teague maybe had an Apple computer,”
I said, lowering my arms. The Windows logo had grown much larger, and the
broken pane holes were big enough that I could crawl through one.

            “Count your blessings,” Quentin’s
voice said. “The reverend is running Windows Seven. If this had been Vista, you’d probably be looking at having a much rougher
time of it.”

            “Perish the thought,” said Reiji’s
voice, just on the edge of my hearing.

            Once I crawled through the window, I
took a short drop onto a floor on the other side. I looked around. I was still
in darkness. Then, an image of a Christian cross appeared right in my freakin’
face. The name “Teague MacNavi” appeared right underneath it.

            “What do you see?” asked Quentin.

            “I think I need his password,” I
said. “There’s a cross in front of me, and a box under it. Got any ideas?”

            I heard some muffled talking going
on in the distance. I guess they were debating what the password might be.
After some time, Quentin said, “Try the word ‘swordfish’, Brother Tino.”

            “What? Why that?”

            “Because it’s always that.”

            “Swordfish!” I shouted. Two big
gates suddenly reared up behind the cross and made the sound of a jail cell
door slamming shut.

            “No good,” I said.

            “Tino, try ‘Psalm One,’” called
Rosette. “Remember? He said that one was his favorite.”

            “Psalm One!”

            The cross faded away and the gates,
creaking under their own weight on their hinges, swung open.

            “What would you have done if we
couldn’t guess his password?” I asked.

            “I’d have had to spend some time
hacking,” Quentin answered. “But that was so much more fun, wasn’t it?”

            “Yeah. A real laugh riot in
hyperspace,” I muttered.

            Beyond the gates was a nearly
blinding white light. I squinted and held a hand up to block out the
overwhelming brightness. Soon, though, it began to fade and I was able to see
more clearly what was going on. It was like I was standing in the center of a
carousel. Going around in circles were all sorts of binary code in purple
digits. I shut my eyes, beginning to feel nauseous.

            “Quentin! What is this place? I feel
like I’m gonna hurl….”

            “You’re a man!” shouted Rosette.
“Deal with it!”

            “That’s a real help!” I shouted
back, my eyes still firmly shut.

            “Give me a minute. I’m trying to get
a stable sorting of all of this code. Blimey, this operating system is sloppy.
Right…here we are. What do you see now?”

            I skeptically opened one eye.
Instead of the whirling vortex of code, I was now standing outside what looked
like a high-rise office building. The building was massive, going on for
stories and stories, upwards and upwards. The whole thing was made out of
impressive glass, and it was in the sort of style of art deco similar to the
Brotherhood’s offices around the United States,
especially the offices in Manhattan and Chicago. I opened my
other eye and glanced around to see if anything seemed really out of the
ordinary—as much as could possibly be perceived, considering I was in a virtual
reality simulation of a computer’s hard drive.

            “I think I’m in. Place looks like an
office. I don’t see anyone around.”

            “I’d be mildly alarmed if you did see people around,” Quentin said.

            “I’m gonna have a look around.”

            With that, I wandered over to the
revolving door and entered. The place was definitely a masterpiece. Alternating
black and white marble lined the floor. The walls were made of more black
marble. I was going to wander over to the elevator to my left, when someone
shouted, “Stop!”

            I turned to my right. Seated there
were a few guys wearing uniforms behind a desk. I looked them up and down
before saying, “What?”

            “Do you have your ID?” asked one of
them. Man, freakin’ security guards? I wasn’t sure what to do.

            “If you aren’t authorized to be
here, we will have to ask you to leave,” said another guard, standing up. My
eyes fell on the gun at his side. They weren’t here to mess around.

            “Quentin, problem! They want my
authorization!”

            “Reach in your breast pocket.”

            I did as I was told, and was
somewhat surprised when I felt the lump of a wallet in there. I pulled it out
and looked inside. All that was in it was a blank piece of paper, about the
size of a business card.

            “What good is this going to do me?”

            “Don’t ask stupid questions. Just
flash that at them.”

            Again, I did as I was told. The
guards smiled at me.

            “Have a nice day, sir,” said one of
the guards. I nodded appreciatively and went over to the elevator. I had to
ask.

            “What was that?”

            “Some quick hacking on my end. Script
paper. It runs a script that shows the viewer whatever it thinks is
appropriate. To you, of course, it’s just a blank card. I’m mystified by the
fact that there are personalities manifesting in there, though. Be on your
guard.”

            I approached the elevator and froze.
There was a lock in the wall rather than simple buttons.

            “Quentin, it looks like I need a
keycard to get anywhere in here.”

            I heard Duke, very distantly, say
something like, “Mother$*&#! keycards.”

            “Check your pocket again,” said
Quentin.

            I reached into my pocket and pulled
out a handy keycard. I swiped it and the elevator chimed a little ding. The
doors opened and I stepped in. Once I was in, I looked at the button panel. The
buttons seemed to go on forever, just like the building.

            “Uh, where do I go from here?”

            “Hah, that’s an easy one, Brother
Tino!” laughed Quentin. “The forty-second floor.”

            Very faintly, I heard Reiji say,
“You’re quite the nerd, Brother Quentin.”

            Soon, I found myself walking out
onto the forty-second floor. I took a quick look around. The place looked
pretty normal for an office building: lots of little cubicles and things you’d
find in an office, like the obligatory water cooler. I scratched my head.

            “Are you sure this is the right
place?”

            “See any file cabinets around?”
asked Quentin.

            I prodded around the cubicles and
thought to myself how miserable an existence must be found in working in one of
those things. Talk about being a rat in a cage. Anyway, I saw a room that led
off to one side behind an open door. I strayed in and found that it was the
copy room. Apart from the big copy machine, there were a few small file
cabinets inside.

            “Oh yeah, we’ve got something.”

            “Good,” said Quentin. “I’m running a
search now for anything that contains buzzwords we should expect to be damning
evidence. Do you see anything that looks questionable in there?”

            Nothing really struck my eye as out of
the ordinary in there. How strange can a copy room get, right? I was about to
answer in the negative, but a mark on the wall right near the door made me stop
and reexamine the room. It looked like there was dirt in the shape of a
rectangle against the wall near the other filing cabinets. I relayed this
information back to Quentin, who must have been expecting this.

            “Of course. Deleted overt evidence
that would point to him. Most people seem not to know that these things can be
found by scratching a little bit below the surface.”

            “Does that apply for every
computer?” I asked.

            “Yes, it does. Why do you ask?”

            “I’m just thinking now…I should
probably wipe my hard drive clean back at the office if that’s true. And my
browser history.”

            “Oh, that never goes away. You
essentially leave a footprint once you visit a site from a certain IP address.”

            “Really?”

            “Brother Tino…precisely what have
you been doing on your office computer that merits this discussion?”

            “How do we find out what was in this
filing cabinet that’s gone now?” I wanted to shift the discussion to something
more relevant. We were losing sight of our professional purposes, after all.
Seriously.

            “Ah, well…you leave that to me and
tell me when something happens.”

            The faint clacking of fingers dancing
across a keyboard reached my ears. There was something rhythmic and almost
melodic about it, like he was playing a piano. It was at that point that the
transparent image of a file cabinet began to fade into place, neatly framed by
the collected dust and dirt on the wall. I would’ve said it was weird seeing
that, but hey, stranger stuff had already happened on this assignment. What was
a little unusual, though, was when a brick wall suddenly appeared around the
file cabinet, blocking it off from my reach.

            “What’s with the brick wall between
me and this cabinet? It just showed up out of nowhere.”

            “Ugh,” groaned Quentin. “A firewall,
really? For shame! Give me but a minute, Tino, and I’ll have that down for
you.”

            At that moment, I thought that there
could be little more awesome than a big old flamethrower that would make
charcoal out of that annoying firewall. I leaned against the copier, waiting
for Quentin to do his thing, but a noise behind me made me look over my
shoulder. Propped up against the back wall was a contraption I wouldn’t soon
forget the sight of. It was Rosette’s flamethrower, only looking bigger and
meaner. I stared at it for a second, wondering where that had come from; I was
sure it hadn’t been there when I first walked in. Why would it? Flamethrowers
aren’t normally left around in office buildings as far as I’ve ever seen. But
still, there it was, staring back at me. It practically insisted upon its own
presence, like it was saying, “Yeah, I’m here. You gonna use me or what, chief?”
Well, who was I to ignore that? I went over and hefted the thing in my hands.
It didn’t weigh much. I stood back against the wall, pointed the nozzle at the
brick wall, and thought to myself how strange could this be: having fire blast
down a firewall. There was only one thing to do now.

            With a gentle touch, I gave the
trigger an experimental squeeze. The sound and sight of a short burst of flame
flaring up from the end of the weapon resulted. Satisfied by this, I grinned.
In a fit of mindless amusement for myself, I shouted, “Shinkuu…Hadouken!” and
pulled back on the trigger as hard as I could. The recoil on that sucker nearly
sent me through the wall. A freakin’ inferno poured out of the flamethrower,
taking up everything that I could see in the room. Maybe three seconds passed.
I let go of the trigger, afraid I may have just set the entire building on
fire, and I dropped the deadly thing. I was shocked to see that the firewall
was now a smoldering heap of ash on the floor, but other than that, everything else
in the room was still perfectly intact. Not a trace of fire seemed to have
touched anything.

            “Hold on,” said Quentin. “Tino, is
the firewall still there?”

            “Nope. I tore it down.”

            “What? How?”

            “Oh, I took a page out of Rosette’s
playbook.”

            “That’s not funny!” I heard her
shout.

            “Can you at least reach the file
cabinet now?” asked Quentin.

            I hesitantly touched the file
cabinet with the back of my hand, in case it was smokin’ hot or something. It
was room temperature. Crazy. In the back of my mind, I was still dimly aware
that none of this was real, but I was having a hard time remembering what
“real” even felt like anymore. The scorching heat seemed to get as real as I
would’ve imagined. I yanked open the file cabinet, wondering what I was going to
find in there.

            “Hey, you!”

            I looked up, probably with the kind
of look on my face reserved for when children are caught stealing from the
cookie jar. Two guys in suits and sunglasses were staring at me from outside
the copy room, and they looked adequately unhappy.

            “What are you doing?” one of the
suits demanded. I sneered at these two clowns. Why was Teague’s computer
insisting on throwing so many curveballs my way? They weren’t going to stop me,
though.

            “Move along, boys,” I said, flashing
the script paper at them. The two suits looked at the script paper, then at
each other, and then at me.

            “I’m afraid we will have to remove
you from the premises at once, sir. You’re not authorized to go here unless
you’re the Administrator.”

            “What?” I was stunned to hear that.
“Quentin! Your toy doesn’t work anymore!”

            “What’s wrong?” he asked.

            I looked around behind me. The
flamethrower had disappeared. I would’ve loved to have my hands on
something—anything—to get ready for the oncoming rumble with these two jokers.
Even if it meant running around like a lunatic with a baseball bat, just like
when I was in Teague’s basement….

            A clank beside me made me jump. A
titanium baseball bat had rolled off the top of a tall file cabinet in the room
and landed on the floor at my feet. I started thinking that I should also wish
for a million dollars. A baseball bounced down from the file cabinet, too. Not
quite a million bucks, but it’d do.

            The two suits drew some
unfriendly-looking pistols from inside their black sport coats. The baseball
bat started to seem a little less intimidating at that moment.  I held up a finger for a moment of pause,
took a deep breath, and reached into my own coat pocket. I then smiled as my
hand curled around a weapon in there of my own.

            “Alright, boys. You wanna be a pair
of tough guys? You said you were afraid you’d have to remove me, but riddle me
this: do you even know what fear is?”

            The two suits remained stone-faced.
I had to admire their ability not to be scared, but hey, anyone can be programmed
to do anything, I imagine.

            “Want to find out?”

            I pulled out from within my jacket a
long, slender shotgun and pointed it at one of the suits.

            “Bang. Time’s up.”

            I squeezed the trigger unsteadily on
the gun. The recoil nearly took my wrist off. A hole the size of a soccer ball
had been punched through one suit’s guts, which were now splattered against the
cubicles. I dropped the shotgun. The other suit jumped backwards, perhaps in
legit shock at the fact that I’d blown his buddy away like that. Maybe even
these unrealistic things could understand fear. But it was too late now. I
hefted the baseball in my hand, wound up, and threw a real heater straight down
the strike zone, nailing that guy right in the freakin’ solar plexus.

            While the poor sucker was bent
double, clutching his ribs, I tapped his temple with my bat to get his
attention.

            “Damn, I don’t even know what to say
to you. I mean, do ya know why it is that I have a problem with little punks
who flaunt their authority around like you? I never got a chance to meet my
dad. And when I was, like, six, my mom got mugged and beaten to death on the
streets of Brooklyn on her way home to make
dinner for me. Oh, I watched the police kick the can around for days,
weeks…almost a full freakin’ year. They never made any arrests. Who cares about
one more murder outsida Prospect
Park, right? No
prosecution, no leads, no nothin’. They packed me off to a foster family in Queens. It was great. They were ready to give me anything
and everything, this young couple that couldn’t conceive. They doted on me. And
I still hated them. I’ve still yet to see some authority figure take
responsibility. They wasted my time giving me toys and no real compassion or
understanding. So d’ya see now why I have no patience for your kind? I’m not
doing it because I think I’m hot stuff for being a rebel. I’m doing it because
you’re the protectors that never protect and you have to learn that if you came
from where I did, you’d never hack it, you little $%#&@.”

            I swung hard. The window across the
room shattered when that guy’s head went through it. Out of the freakin’ park,
man.

            For a moment, it was totally quiet.
I was half-expecting a bunch of guys bearing resemblance to Hugo Weaving to
come pouring out of the woodwork, but nothing of the kind happened, which was
actually somewhat disappointing. Resolving myself to getting back to the reason
I was there, I went back into the copy room and pulled open the ghostly file
cabinet. There were a few manila folders inside, and I started nosing through
them. Some of the papers in these folders were like Teague’s trippy journal
entries from before, and others were unlike anything I had ever seen. They were
detailed diagrams, blueprints, and notes about how to correctly channel the
voice of angels and God into himself. Teague was serious, wasn’t he? This was
critical stuff! I flipped through other folders. The notes were written in a
language I couldn’t understand, but there were more diagrams illustrating the
transmission of these communications between Teague and Heaven. This was
getting more and more suspicious by the second. What was this guy planning?

            “Quentin, I think we got paydirt.”

            “Oh?”

            “Check it: the missing file was full
of blueprints and pictures and notes, some in English and some not, talking
about transmissions from Heaven. You’d be able to make more sense of all this
than I ever could. How do I get out of here?”

            I paused, and then snarkily added, “Do
I need to find a telephone?”

            “Hold on,” he said. “I’m getting a
strange source of code somewhere from around you. Is there anything really
weird in your general area?”

            I stuck my head out the copy room
and scanned the cubicles. Nothing seemed to scream crazy at me.

            “Nope, nothing around here. What
should I be looking for?”

            A sudden banging from inside the
file cabinet made me freeze and also made my blood run cold. I stared at it,
wondering what was in there that could have made that noise. I put my hand on
the handle, reasonably anxious, and pulled open the drawer. I fell over in
shock when a giant, bug-eyed paper clip appeared before me and happily greeted
me.

            “Good afternoon! It looks like you
could use some help navigating the features of the Office! Would you like me to
help you?”

            “Die, foul demon!”

            I beat the thing back into the file
cabinet with the baseball bat mercilessly and slammed the drawer shut. Some
things are too unspeakably evil to be suffered in this world, and that was one
of them.

            “It…wasn’t a giant, talking paper
clip, was it?” I asked skeptically.

            “A what?”

            “Never mind.”

            I went out among the cubicles.
Everything looked legit as far as I could tell. There were all the little
worthless creature comforts adorning them, like they were cheap attempts to
cling to any last strand of individual identity. Unimpressed, I shuffled out of
the room and out to the hallway in front of the elevator. I swiped the keycard
and waited for the elevator to get up to me. In the meantime, I leaned against
the wall, next to one of those fake potted plants like you see in modern office
buildings and flipped through the retrieved files.*
I was sure this was all going to be a fascinating read once it was deciphered.
Maybe it would explain why Teague’s house had radiation spikes, or why there
were strange monsters inhabiting his house, or even how many licks it really does take to get to the Tootsie Roll
center of a Tootsie Pop. Basically, I just wanted to hear that I had found some
real answers that weren’t going to be made useless tomorrow morning. After all,
this stuff looked pretty beyond the scope of what most people would feel
comfortable seeing, I figured. Even if Teague wanted to pre-empt us again, he
couldn’t get away with blabbing all this and not seeming like a total circus freak
to everyone, except maybe the most die-hard of his cultists.

            A creepy tingling sensation along my
neck made me shudder. It felt like someone had very lightly run their finger
along the back of my neck. That’s never a good feeling. I turned around. All
there was to see was the window past the plant. The elevator chimed, announcing
its arrival. Relieved though I was to know that I was on my way out, I was
still concerned that something was behind me, maybe following me. I was about
to step into the elevator when a nagging thought stopped me from going in. That’s
when I decided to look up at the elevator. It seemed pretty normal, but about
ten seconds later, I heard an unhealthy creak and a bunch of metallic noises
from inside the shaft. With a loud rumble, the elevator plummeted down to the
bottom of the shaft and crashed forty-two floors below. I guess it was safe to
say I wasn’t going out that way.

            I was going to leave by going to the
stairs, but I was surprised that I couldn’t find any nearby. This struck me as
a little odd too. Then again, I had to remember that I wasn’t playing by the
normal rules. A security guard walked by and nodded politely at me.

            “Excuse me,” I said. “Where are the
stairs?”