Jackpot. Chapter 9
Leroy and Carlos enter the control room, a dark space filled with flashing lights and beeping sounds, the walls lined with tall servers, the floor a labyrinth of desks and swivel chairs, snaking cables and computing equipment.
“Come on out, Arbuckle!” shouts Leroy. “We know you’re in here.”
There’s no response. Carlos gives Leroy a silent gesture and they split up and patrol the room. Leroy checks under desks, untangles nests of wire, and sticks his head in the spaces between servers, but there’s no sign of him.
“Leroy, I found something!”
Leroy runs over, tripping over cables and banging his knees a couple times along the way.
“Check this out.” Carlos points at a terminal lit up with green text. It’s a message from Arbuckle.
“Fools! You may have defeated T.A.U.R.O.S. and bypassed my firewalls, but you won’t get your hands on me! I have successfully uploaded myself into cyberspace and by now I’m long gone. I could be on any computer in the world! Sayonara, suckers! P.S. Good luck getting through the control room’s biometrically encrypted security system without my help!”
“Damn it!” shouts Leroy, crushing his hat in his fist. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“I don’t know,” says Carlos. “They didn’t teach us anything about this stuff in computer class.”
Under the desk, someone sneezes.
“What was that?” asks Leroy.
Carlos bends down and pulls Arbuckle out kicking and screaming.
“Arbuckle!”
“Don’t hurt me! I was just following orders, I swear!”
“Whose orders?” asks Leroy, holding him up by his shirt.
“The Prince of Danger!”
“The Prince of Danger?” asks Carlos.
“I heard about this guy,” says Leroy. “Who the hell is he?”
Arbuckle grins. “You don’t know?”
“Should I?”
“He’s only your closest friend.”
The idea of José being behind all this flashes through Leroy’s mind, but he knows better. “Well in that case I reckon he won’t object to us paying him a visit.” He lets go and Arbuckle lands on his hands and knees, panting. Carlos kicks his ass.
“Get walking.”
Arbuckle stumbles forward and leads them to the biometrically secured exit. “The Prince of Danger has grown quite powerful since you last saw him.”
“Just open the door,” says Leroy.
Arbuckle snorts. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He puts his eyeball to the scanner and a green light sweeps his retina. The doors hiss open and he scurries away.
Leroy looks Carlos in the eye. “You ready?”
“I was born ready.”
They do a complicated improvised handshake that ends in a half-hug, then march down the long dark hallway.
Back at his compound, the Important Client has been watching everything in his surveillance room. He strokes his mustache and nods thoughtfully.
“Leroy’s even more impressive than I thought. And that boy Carlos was a lucky discovery. Once again, I’ve invested quite well. But this Prince of Danger fellow––I’m intrigued. One never knows when one might need… let’s say… no, let’s not say. Let’s see.”
Leroy and Carlos reach the stairs leading up to the top floor.
“Welcome,” says a voice. “So glad you’ve made it.”
Leroy can’t believe it. “That’s not––it can’t be––is that you, Michael?” They summit the stairs and sure enough, it really is Michael dressed in all black with a cape and a pointy collar and triangular sunglasses, surrounded by a legion of Saguaro Sombrero Solutions Unlimited employees.
“Ah Leroy, still clinging to the past. They call me The Prince of Danger now, but you can call me CEO.”
A dark wind rattles the windows.
“CEO? I’m the only CEO around here!”
Michael laughs and the legion laughs with him. “Not anymore, Leroy! This is my company now!”
“I don’t get it. Were you unhappy as Vice President?”
“Unhappy? The best day of my life was the day you promoted me! It was only later when I learned of your abusive ways, always passing the buck to me when things went wrong, that I realized my duty to liberate this company.”
“Abuse? Liberate? Why I’ve never passed the buck for anything in my entire life, period!”
The legion boos.
“My legion disagrees!”
“Michael, I treated you with nothing but respect! Even when you’d come into my office and bore the crap out of me with all your trivia about the Wild West and country music! I’m from out there, I’m sick of that stuff! Half of what you said was wrong anyways!”
Something’s not adding up for the legion. These revelations about Michael’s boring conversations are too specific to be lies.
“See?” says Michael. “We’ve hardly spoken two words and already you can’t help but rehash your old petty grievances.”
“You started it!”
“Hey Prince of Danger, you haven’t been, uh, exaggerating about all that stuff Leroy did, have you?” asks one worker, a tall, upright man named Bartusz, polite but loyal only to the truth.
“How dare you suggest such a thing after all I’ve led you through, after all we’ve accomplished! We are inches away from defeating Leroy once and for all! Now is not the time for doubt!”
“Jeez, I was just asking. I don’t appreciate getting yelled at like that.”
“Yeah, that was out of line, Prince of Danger.”
“What’s your deal?”
The legion grows restless. Though some remain loyal to the Prince, they are increasingly overshadowed by those beginning to see him as another tyrant in the making, remembering that even though Leroy was in charge, he was never the one heaping abuse on them. It was always Michael. How could they ever have let him pass the buck for the way he treated them?
“The Prince of Danger’s a fraud!”
“Get him!”
And just like that, the tide has turned. The crowd tries to grab Michael but he evades their clutches and runs out the door. They chase after him and end up on the roof just in time to watch him board a chopper. It takes off. Leroy pulls out a lasso and tosses it. It snags on one of the chopper’s landing skids and he’s yanked into the air.
“No, Leroy, let it go!” shouts Carlos, but it’s too late, he’s already over the edge.
“Come on everyone, if we band together we can save him!” shouts Bartusz. The crowd roars and everyone joins together into a hundred foot tall Mega Worker. The Mega Worker reaches its hand out and grabs Leroy and the rope. The chopper creaks as it threatens to capsize, but the rope snaps and Michael escapes into the storm. Safe on the roof, Leroy dusts himself off as the Mega Worker disbands.
“Whew,” he says. “That was a doozy.”
“We almost had him!” says Carlos.
“And we’ll get him, alright. Don’t you worry.” Leroy slaps Carlos on the back.
“Hey, uh, Leroy?” asks Bartusz, scratching the back of his head. “We’re sorry about all this. For real.”
Leroy scans the crowd. Everyone’s nodding with sincere regret. “Alright, I appreciate it,” he says. “But y’all are liable for the damages.”
“But Leroy, there’s no way we can afford that!”
He thinks it over. “You know what, that wasn’t fair of me. I never knew how bad things were for y’all, and I kept a diabolical number two around who grossly mistreated you and tried to stab me in the back. I’ll pay for half.”
Bartusz thinks about it. “It’s a deal.”
The workers cheer and Carlos whips up a contract on the fly. Everyone lines up to sign it with smiles on their faces, not realizing that once they take the time to do the math, they’re all still gonna go bankrupt.
Michael gazes back at the smoldering office building, at the legion he just lost. He sheds a tear, then turns to the pilot.
“Who are you? Where are we going?”
“Relax, kid. You’ve made yourself a powerful friend.”
“I have? Who?”
The pilot smirks. “You’ll see.”