THE EVIL DEAD The Series Episode 03 "Unexpected Complications"
New York, New York
The GlobeCo Tower rose majestically in the Manhattan skyline, its sleek metallic blue glass windows shining in the morning sun.
It was barely past dawn, and the employees were just now beginning to trickle into the building.
Unlike most corporations, where the higher rungs of management tended to the higher levels of the building, the offices of GlobeCo's CEO were in the sub-basement.
The employees didn't question why; The company's founder and director, East European business magnate Lajos Szabo, wasn't known for his tolerance of questions, and those who annoyed him quickly found themselves unemployed.
Szabo's central office was elaborate, with a mix of antique woods and streamlined, ultra-modern furnishings. It was also exceptionally dark, except for a desk lamp that did not seem able to penetrate the darkness more than a few feet, and a fish tank in one corner of the room that did likewise.
At the moment, his personal assistant, Newton Fisk, stood beside Szabo's enormous black onyx desk, looking over headlines in the morning paper by the illumination of the desk lamp.
Fisk was a stocky man, heading toward pudgy, bald on top with sparse brown hair on the sides of his head. He wore a dark business suit that seemed ill-fitting, especially around his thick neck, a gaudy paisley necktie of the sort only chosen by the true fashion illiterate or by kids buying Father's Day gifts, and reflective sunglasses. He was the only one in the enormous office, and his attention was focused on one particular article.
"Oh, the boss is not going to like this," he muttered.
"Not like what?" came a voice that startled him.
Fisk looked down as the leather chair at the desk spun around and a shadowy figure looked up at him.
If it were possible, it seemed the room grew darker and colder as soon as the figure spun around.
Fisk tried to smile, but though he could not make out his boss's expression he could tell he was the subject of a contemptuous gaze.
"Um, didn't hear you come in, boss," Fisk said. "Something happened yesterday in England.. or is it tomorrow? I never can get these time change things figgered---"
The shadowy figure snatched the newspaper out of Fisk's hands, revealing nothing more than long, elegant fingers with carefully-manicured nails and the sleeve of a lime green Armani suit. Fisk watched him, having long ago given up figuring out how he could read in near-total darkness.
"Two museum employees and five constables massacred in London, eh?" the man asked, his indeterminate European accent lilting and harsh at the same time. "Tragic. What does it have to do with me?"
"Last paragraph, Mr. Szabo," Fisk said, bracing himself.
"Farquahar was examining skeletal remains taken from the castle of Kandar, according to museum officials," Szabo read aloud. "The remains are still missing, as is Assistant Curator Belinda Macreary."
Szabo folded the newspaper slowly, calmly, and put it down on his desk.
He got up and paced over to the fish tank.
"I had hoped that whole Kandar nonsense was behind me," Szabo said coldly.
Detroit, Michigan
Ash flicked the channel.
Sitting next to him on the ratty plaid couch was Scotty Jarvis, his best friend since high school, a used car salesman with feathered blond hair that fairly screamed 'early 80s fashion victim'. He was a bit of a twit, with a lowbrow sense of humor and a tendency towards practical jokes, but he was one of the few friends Ash had, and probably the only one he actually trusted. Back when Ash and his then-girlfriend Linda had gone to the cabin in the woods, he had invited Scotty and his girlfriend Shelly (soon to be wife, and soon after to be one of his several ex-wives) along, but they had declined. Ash often wondered how history would have turned out differently if Scotty and Shelly had been along for the trip, if it hadn't just been Ash and Linda in the woods against the Evil Dead.
But there was no way of knowing the answer to that, and no sense pondering it too deeply. So Ash just relied on Scotty as an occasional buddy, someone he could depend on most of the time.. unless money or discretion were involved, of course.
In front of them, sitting on the floor with an arm propped on a big coffee table that had once been a wire spool, was Jesinia Tree, a pretty, tomboyish young blonde clad in overalls and a baseball cap turned backwards. She had known Ash for over a year now, since they had met in the laundromat of the apartment building they both lived in; Jesinia was away from home for the first time, attending college, and had terrible luck with roommates. She had grown up with five older brothers and, as a result, found herself more at home hanging out with Ash and Scotty than with her latest roomie, a Martha Stewart-wannabe.
Ash flicked the channel again.
"Hey, I hear they're showing a Planet of the Apes marathon on the Classic Cinema Channel," Scotty said, half-interestedly.
"We already missed the good one," Jesinia said, stifling a yawn as she dug her hand into an almost-empty bowl of popcorn. "The only good movie I know of today is 'Quick and the Dead', and it isn't on til five o'clock."
Ash flicked the channel again.
"Goddamned NBA," he groused. "How dare they go on strike."
"Hey, those shoes they wear cost a lot of money," Scotty said.
"What are we gonna watch?" Ash asked.
"We could go outside, in the fresh air," Jesinia suggested.
Ash and Scotty stared at her.
"Sor-ry!" Jesinia said with a shrug, then got up. "Gonna irradiate us some more kernels. Anyone want anything else?"
"Another beer would be stupendous," Ash replied.
"I'm fine, still nursing this one, and it's getting my nipple wet," Scotty said with an insipid grin.
Jesinia rolled her eyes and headed into the kitchen.
Ash flicked the channel again. "There's got to be a movie that doesn't suck completely somewhere on this dial!"
Scotty rubbed his chin and glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where they could hear the microwave oven starting. "Say, Asharooni, you ever thought about askin' Jes out?"
Ash raised an eyebrow. "Are you kidding? She's just a kid!"
"She's old enough to be in college," Scotty said. "And I think she has a crush on you."
Ash took a last swig of his beer and crushed the can with his mechanical hand. "Aw, baloney," he growled. "She's just a neighbor, fer Christ's sake!"
"I was talking with Shelly about it..." Scotty started.
"You talk with your ex-wife about my love life?" Ash asked.
"Beats arguing over the kids," Scotty replied. "I'm telling ya, man, I don't think she comes over every Sunday just to watch sports with us..."
"That's crazy talk," Ash sneered. "She's just one of the guys."
The phone rang.
Ash glanced over at it.
"You gonna get that?" Scotty asked.
It rang again.
"Nah, might be American Express again," Ash replied..
It rang again.
Scotty took a swig of beer and sat back on the couch. "Say, if you think she's just 'one of the guys'.."
The phone rang a fourth time.
"-- how come you take down the Samantha Fox poster whenever she comes over?"
Ash shrugged.
The answering machine clicked on, and they heard Ash's voice, tinny-sounding on the cassette, 'Hail to the King's Answerin' Machine, baby. Leave a message at the beep.'
The caller hung up.
Jesinia came in from the kitchen and handed Ash a beer. "Here ya go. Popcorn'll be ready in another coupla minutes. Find anything good on TV?"
Ash shrugged. "Nah, just football."
Jesinia laughed and plopped down on the couch on the other side of Ash.
Scotty glanced over at the two of them and smiled knowingly.
"Who called?" Jesinia asked.
"Somebody who didn't leave a message," Ash replied. "Must not have been very important..."
Thousands of miles away, Bad Ash hung up the telephone.
He was sitting in a chair in Belinda Macreary's flat, somewhere in west London.
On the floor by the front door were two constables who had been casing the flat to see if Belinda would turn up, after all that had happened at the museum the night before. Unfortunately for them, she did come back, and she wasn't alone.
Bad Ash looked at the telephone and smirked. "Wonderful little invention, this... what did you call it, dear?"
"Telephone," Belinda's voice chimed in from the other room.
"Ah, yes," Bad Ash replied. "Telley phone. Using it and the... what was the other one?"
"Internet."
Bad Ash laughed. "Using it and the 'inter net', it's easy to find where old Goody Two Shoes is living now. All we have to do is hop on one of those... what was that other word?"
"Airplane," Belinda called.
Bad Ash cracked his knuckles. "Well, all that can wait a few hours, can't it?"
"I hope so," Belinda said, emerging in the doorway clad in a black silk nightgown. Her face was different, no longer kind and soft, and she now had the glowing eyes of a woman (literally) possessed.
She slinked toward him, enjoying the lusty gleam in his eyes.
Bad Ash glanced over at the dead constables. "All this death and destruction is giving me a real hard-on," he said.
Belinda smiled wickedly. "I can't believe I helped you do that."
"Believe it, baby," Bad Ash replied. "It's simple really; I introduce you to the dark side, you embrace it and go from frump to sex kitten. Just like I did back in Kandar, with Goody Two-Shoes's girl there."
A flash of jealousy flared in Belinda's eyes.
"Don't fret, lovergirl, she's long dead by now," Bad Ash said.
"Goooood," Belinda cooed.
"And Good Ash will be joining her soon," Bad Ash continued. "And that's just the beginning. This 'twentieth century' of yours seems to have lost touch with the supernatural. As a result, they don't believe in my kind, and that's going to make taking them all over that much easier.... and that much more fun."
Belinda stood in front of him and slid off her nightgown.
"You look good," Bad Ash leered.
"Yeah, but I feel like such a bad girl...." she purred, climbing on his lap.
"Then, perhaps I should spank you," Bad Ash replied.
Elsewhere in London, two detectives stood outside a coroner's office.
One was a gangly man with unkempt black hair and a dashing, Errol Flynn-ish moustache, and was clad in a tweed suit that had seen better days; the other was better-dressed, solidly built with greying sandy brown hair and a nose that bent in the middle due to an old injury.
The coroner, a chubby-faced woman with hornrimmed glasses, looked over her note pad. "I'm afraid I don't have any details to add to what you already know, sirs," she said.
"Preposterous," the gangly man said in a Cockney accent. "There HAS to be more to it. These murders had all the markings of a serial killer who was able to do his --"
"Or her," the broken-nosed detective added.
"Or her," the gangly man corrected himself, "work in minutes... perhaps even seconds."
The coroner nodded. "The remaining flesh on subject number 3 bears no indications of tearing. It's as if the flesh above it simply SLID off, rather than being cut."
"And another victim had his eyes removed," the broken-nosed detective said, contemplating. "And another was literally skinned alive..."
"And the elderly or obese ones were left alone," the gangly detective said. "It's as if someone was harvesting organs from each of the fit, healthy men -- or women -- and leaving the unfit ones be after killing them."
"Harvesting organs?" the broken-nosed detective scoffed. "Sounds like that TV show about the aliens and whatnot."
"This is no TV show," the coroner said. "Whatever happened here, I'm afraid, is very, very real."
Nearby, another coroner -- this one a seedy-looking young man with spiked black hair and a Walkman radio that was currently switched of -- glanced over at the detectives contemptuously, but kept a low profile as he worked over the body of one of the victims. When the two detectives had left the room, he strolled casually over to a telephone and picked it up.
New York, New York
Newton Fisk looked over the shoulder of Joshua Chang, a twentysomething computer programmer at GlobeCo. Chang, a good-looking, lean Chinese-American clad in a 'Xena, Warrior Princess' t-shirt, did his best to ignore the man hovering behind him. Chang's Pez collection, thirty strong, stared down at the two men from the bookshelves over his desk.
"Anything yet?" Fisk asked.
Chang rolled his eyes. "Not since you asked me two minutes ago, Mr. Fisk," he sighed.
Fisk coughed uncomfortably. "You, ah, do know that Mr. Z himself is waiting for this information..."
"Shouldn't it be S?" Chang asked, not taking his eyes off the screen as his fingers worked the keyboard at tremendous speed.
"Eh?"
"You always call Mr. Szabo 'Mr. Z', but his last name begins with an S," Chang replied.
Fisk shrugged. "It's pronounced with a Z, and that sounds cooler than 'Mr. S' does."
Chang nodded marginally, not agreeing so much as he was deciding this conversation was pretty stupid and he didn't want it to go any further.
Something buzzed. Fisk looked down at his belt, and the pager on it. The digital display read '666'.
"Aw, heck," Fisk said. "The boss man wants to see me. Keep researching it, and as soon as you see anything more lemme know."
Chang nodded. "Nothing new in Scotland Yard's data banks, but they're notoriously slow to update them. Buncha stuffy old farts who barely know how to use a PC. Don't worry, Mr. F, I'll keep you apprised."
Fisk strode out of the room.
Chang watched him go, and sighed to himself. "What a loser."
Fisk walked into Mr. Szabo's darkened chamber, where he found Szabo standing over a large lit fish tank in the far corner, flicking food in to a foot-long exotic white and black-striped creature that seemed like a cross between an eel and an octopus. Its attention caught by the food flakes, Szabo dropped a squirming mouse into the tank. It splashed around frantically as the creature circled around it.
Szabo watched this for a moment, then looked up. "It's been hours, I expect you to have an abundance of new information."
"That punk kid Chang is still investigating," Fisk said.
"That 'punk kid Chang' is a genius," Szabo said. "I surround myself with the best and the brightest... present company excluded, of course. If there's any new information to be found, Mr. Chang will find it for me."
Szabo strode over to his desk and sat down in the leather chair, then propped his feet up on the desk and scowled off in the distance. "My... contacts... in London have had nothing new to give me, either. One of them was able to examine the bodies, and found evidence of mystic energy but nothing more specific than that."
"I was thinking, this might not be a bad thing, sir," Fisk said, then regretted speaking out. Even though his boss was standing in the shadows, Fisk could feel his icy eyes.
In the fish tank, the panicking mouse tried to claw at the sides of the glass, but could get no footing. The striped creature continued to swirl near it in the water, its tentacles trailing behind its torso.
"What I mean, sir," Fisk continued nervously, "is that, from what I've read, there was only one Deadite at Kandar powerful enough to still be able to regenerate itself, and that was the evil doppleganger of Williams."
"Bad Ash, he called himself," Szabo said scornfully.
"But if it's him, all he'll want to do is kill Williams, right?" Fisk asked.
"My orders, as you should recall in that collection of mould and spores you call a brain pan, were that Williams be left alone, that no creatures of the night attack him...."
There was a sudden splash in the fish tank, accompanied by a squeal. When Fisk glanced over that direction, he saw the striped creature drifting contentedly towards the bottom of the tank.
"... until we are ready," Szabo continued.
Fisk shifted uncomfortably in place, waiting for his next orders.
Szabo paused for a long moment, apparently enjoying his henchman's awkwardness.
"Have Oracle keep an eye, so to speak, on the situation," Szabo said finally. "Ask her to look into the prophecies, and how they may apply to this latest variable. As for yourself, take the first flight out to Detroit. If it is indeed 'Bad Ash' and he comes for Williams, I want you to be nearby to run damage control."
"Whatever you say, boss."
"Now, if you will excuse me," Szabo said coldly, "I have a company to run...."
Fisk nodded and quickly left the room.
To be continued...
New York, New York
The GlobeCo Tower rose majestically in the Manhattan skyline, its sleek metallic blue glass windows shining in the morning sun.
It was barely past dawn, and the employees were just now beginning to trickle into the building.
Unlike most corporations, where the higher rungs of management tended to the higher levels of the building, the offices of GlobeCo's CEO were in the sub-basement.
The employees didn't question why; The company's founder and director, East European business magnate Lajos Szabo, wasn't known for his tolerance of questions, and those who annoyed him quickly found themselves unemployed.
Szabo's central office was elaborate, with a mix of antique woods and streamlined, ultra-modern furnishings. It was also exceptionally dark, except for a desk lamp that did not seem able to penetrate the darkness more than a few feet, and a fish tank in one corner of the room that did likewise.
At the moment, his personal assistant, Newton Fisk, stood beside Szabo's enormous black onyx desk, looking over headlines in the morning paper by the illumination of the desk lamp.
Fisk was a stocky man, heading toward pudgy, bald on top with sparse brown hair on the sides of his head. He wore a dark business suit that seemed ill-fitting, especially around his thick neck, a gaudy paisley necktie of the sort only chosen by the true fashion illiterate or by kids buying Father's Day gifts, and reflective sunglasses. He was the only one in the enormous office, and his attention was focused on one particular article.
"Oh, the boss is not going to like this," he muttered.
"Not like what?" came a voice that startled him.
Fisk looked down as the leather chair at the desk spun around and a shadowy figure looked up at him.
If it were possible, it seemed the room grew darker and colder as soon as the figure spun around.
Fisk tried to smile, but though he could not make out his boss's expression he could tell he was the subject of a contemptuous gaze.
"Um, didn't hear you come in, boss," Fisk said. "Something happened yesterday in England.. or is it tomorrow? I never can get these time change things figgered---"
The shadowy figure snatched the newspaper out of Fisk's hands, revealing nothing more than long, elegant fingers with carefully-manicured nails and the sleeve of a lime green Armani suit. Fisk watched him, having long ago given up figuring out how he could read in near-total darkness.
"Two museum employees and five constables massacred in London, eh?" the man asked, his indeterminate European accent lilting and harsh at the same time. "Tragic. What does it have to do with me?"
"Last paragraph, Mr. Szabo," Fisk said, bracing himself.
"Farquahar was examining skeletal remains taken from the castle of Kandar, according to museum officials," Szabo read aloud. "The remains are still missing, as is Assistant Curator Belinda Macreary."
Szabo folded the newspaper slowly, calmly, and put it down on his desk.
He got up and paced over to the fish tank.
"I had hoped that whole Kandar nonsense was behind me," Szabo said coldly.
Detroit, Michigan
Ash flicked the channel.
Sitting next to him on the ratty plaid couch was Scotty Jarvis, his best friend since high school, a used car salesman with feathered blond hair that fairly screamed 'early 80s fashion victim'. He was a bit of a twit, with a lowbrow sense of humor and a tendency towards practical jokes, but he was one of the few friends Ash had, and probably the only one he actually trusted. Back when Ash and his then-girlfriend Linda had gone to the cabin in the woods, he had invited Scotty and his girlfriend Shelly (soon to be wife, and soon after to be one of his several ex-wives) along, but they had declined. Ash often wondered how history would have turned out differently if Scotty and Shelly had been along for the trip, if it hadn't just been Ash and Linda in the woods against the Evil Dead.
But there was no way of knowing the answer to that, and no sense pondering it too deeply. So Ash just relied on Scotty as an occasional buddy, someone he could depend on most of the time.. unless money or discretion were involved, of course.
In front of them, sitting on the floor with an arm propped on a big coffee table that had once been a wire spool, was Jesinia Tree, a pretty, tomboyish young blonde clad in overalls and a baseball cap turned backwards. She had known Ash for over a year now, since they had met in the laundromat of the apartment building they both lived in; Jesinia was away from home for the first time, attending college, and had terrible luck with roommates. She had grown up with five older brothers and, as a result, found herself more at home hanging out with Ash and Scotty than with her latest roomie, a Martha Stewart-wannabe.
Ash flicked the channel again.
"Hey, I hear they're showing a Planet of the Apes marathon on the Classic Cinema Channel," Scotty said, half-interestedly.
"We already missed the good one," Jesinia said, stifling a yawn as she dug her hand into an almost-empty bowl of popcorn. "The only good movie I know of today is 'Quick and the Dead', and it isn't on til five o'clock."
Ash flicked the channel again.
"Goddamned NBA," he groused. "How dare they go on strike."
"Hey, those shoes they wear cost a lot of money," Scotty said.
"What are we gonna watch?" Ash asked.
"We could go outside, in the fresh air," Jesinia suggested.
Ash and Scotty stared at her.
"Sor-ry!" Jesinia said with a shrug, then got up. "Gonna irradiate us some more kernels. Anyone want anything else?"
"Another beer would be stupendous," Ash replied.
"I'm fine, still nursing this one, and it's getting my nipple wet," Scotty said with an insipid grin.
Jesinia rolled her eyes and headed into the kitchen.
Ash flicked the channel again. "There's got to be a movie that doesn't suck completely somewhere on this dial!"
Scotty rubbed his chin and glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where they could hear the microwave oven starting. "Say, Asharooni, you ever thought about askin' Jes out?"
Ash raised an eyebrow. "Are you kidding? She's just a kid!"
"She's old enough to be in college," Scotty said. "And I think she has a crush on you."
Ash took a last swig of his beer and crushed the can with his mechanical hand. "Aw, baloney," he growled. "She's just a neighbor, fer Christ's sake!"
"I was talking with Shelly about it..." Scotty started.
"You talk with your ex-wife about my love life?" Ash asked.
"Beats arguing over the kids," Scotty replied. "I'm telling ya, man, I don't think she comes over every Sunday just to watch sports with us..."
"That's crazy talk," Ash sneered. "She's just one of the guys."
The phone rang.
Ash glanced over at it.
"You gonna get that?" Scotty asked.
It rang again.
"Nah, might be American Express again," Ash replied..
It rang again.
Scotty took a swig of beer and sat back on the couch. "Say, if you think she's just 'one of the guys'.."
The phone rang a fourth time.
"-- how come you take down the Samantha Fox poster whenever she comes over?"
Ash shrugged.
The answering machine clicked on, and they heard Ash's voice, tinny-sounding on the cassette, 'Hail to the King's Answerin' Machine, baby. Leave a message at the beep.'
The caller hung up.
Jesinia came in from the kitchen and handed Ash a beer. "Here ya go. Popcorn'll be ready in another coupla minutes. Find anything good on TV?"
Ash shrugged. "Nah, just football."
Jesinia laughed and plopped down on the couch on the other side of Ash.
Scotty glanced over at the two of them and smiled knowingly.
"Who called?" Jesinia asked.
"Somebody who didn't leave a message," Ash replied. "Must not have been very important..."
Thousands of miles away, Bad Ash hung up the telephone.
He was sitting in a chair in Belinda Macreary's flat, somewhere in west London.
On the floor by the front door were two constables who had been casing the flat to see if Belinda would turn up, after all that had happened at the museum the night before. Unfortunately for them, she did come back, and she wasn't alone.
Bad Ash looked at the telephone and smirked. "Wonderful little invention, this... what did you call it, dear?"
"Telephone," Belinda's voice chimed in from the other room.
"Ah, yes," Bad Ash replied. "Telley phone. Using it and the... what was the other one?"
"Internet."
Bad Ash laughed. "Using it and the 'inter net', it's easy to find where old Goody Two Shoes is living now. All we have to do is hop on one of those... what was that other word?"
"Airplane," Belinda called.
Bad Ash cracked his knuckles. "Well, all that can wait a few hours, can't it?"
"I hope so," Belinda said, emerging in the doorway clad in a black silk nightgown. Her face was different, no longer kind and soft, and she now had the glowing eyes of a woman (literally) possessed.
She slinked toward him, enjoying the lusty gleam in his eyes.
Bad Ash glanced over at the dead constables. "All this death and destruction is giving me a real hard-on," he said.
Belinda smiled wickedly. "I can't believe I helped you do that."
"Believe it, baby," Bad Ash replied. "It's simple really; I introduce you to the dark side, you embrace it and go from frump to sex kitten. Just like I did back in Kandar, with Goody Two-Shoes's girl there."
A flash of jealousy flared in Belinda's eyes.
"Don't fret, lovergirl, she's long dead by now," Bad Ash said.
"Goooood," Belinda cooed.
"And Good Ash will be joining her soon," Bad Ash continued. "And that's just the beginning. This 'twentieth century' of yours seems to have lost touch with the supernatural. As a result, they don't believe in my kind, and that's going to make taking them all over that much easier.... and that much more fun."
Belinda stood in front of him and slid off her nightgown.
"You look good," Bad Ash leered.
"Yeah, but I feel like such a bad girl...." she purred, climbing on his lap.
"Then, perhaps I should spank you," Bad Ash replied.
Elsewhere in London, two detectives stood outside a coroner's office.
One was a gangly man with unkempt black hair and a dashing, Errol Flynn-ish moustache, and was clad in a tweed suit that had seen better days; the other was better-dressed, solidly built with greying sandy brown hair and a nose that bent in the middle due to an old injury.
The coroner, a chubby-faced woman with hornrimmed glasses, looked over her note pad. "I'm afraid I don't have any details to add to what you already know, sirs," she said.
"Preposterous," the gangly man said in a Cockney accent. "There HAS to be more to it. These murders had all the markings of a serial killer who was able to do his --"
"Or her," the broken-nosed detective added.
"Or her," the gangly man corrected himself, "work in minutes... perhaps even seconds."
The coroner nodded. "The remaining flesh on subject number 3 bears no indications of tearing. It's as if the flesh above it simply SLID off, rather than being cut."
"And another victim had his eyes removed," the broken-nosed detective said, contemplating. "And another was literally skinned alive..."
"And the elderly or obese ones were left alone," the gangly detective said. "It's as if someone was harvesting organs from each of the fit, healthy men -- or women -- and leaving the unfit ones be after killing them."
"Harvesting organs?" the broken-nosed detective scoffed. "Sounds like that TV show about the aliens and whatnot."
"This is no TV show," the coroner said. "Whatever happened here, I'm afraid, is very, very real."
Nearby, another coroner -- this one a seedy-looking young man with spiked black hair and a Walkman radio that was currently switched of -- glanced over at the detectives contemptuously, but kept a low profile as he worked over the body of one of the victims. When the two detectives had left the room, he strolled casually over to a telephone and picked it up.
New York, New York
Newton Fisk looked over the shoulder of Joshua Chang, a twentysomething computer programmer at GlobeCo. Chang, a good-looking, lean Chinese-American clad in a 'Xena, Warrior Princess' t-shirt, did his best to ignore the man hovering behind him. Chang's Pez collection, thirty strong, stared down at the two men from the bookshelves over his desk.
"Anything yet?" Fisk asked.
Chang rolled his eyes. "Not since you asked me two minutes ago, Mr. Fisk," he sighed.
Fisk coughed uncomfortably. "You, ah, do know that Mr. Z himself is waiting for this information..."
"Shouldn't it be S?" Chang asked, not taking his eyes off the screen as his fingers worked the keyboard at tremendous speed.
"Eh?"
"You always call Mr. Szabo 'Mr. Z', but his last name begins with an S," Chang replied.
Fisk shrugged. "It's pronounced with a Z, and that sounds cooler than 'Mr. S' does."
Chang nodded marginally, not agreeing so much as he was deciding this conversation was pretty stupid and he didn't want it to go any further.
Something buzzed. Fisk looked down at his belt, and the pager on it. The digital display read '666'.
"Aw, heck," Fisk said. "The boss man wants to see me. Keep researching it, and as soon as you see anything more lemme know."
Chang nodded. "Nothing new in Scotland Yard's data banks, but they're notoriously slow to update them. Buncha stuffy old farts who barely know how to use a PC. Don't worry, Mr. F, I'll keep you apprised."
Fisk strode out of the room.
Chang watched him go, and sighed to himself. "What a loser."
Fisk walked into Mr. Szabo's darkened chamber, where he found Szabo standing over a large lit fish tank in the far corner, flicking food in to a foot-long exotic white and black-striped creature that seemed like a cross between an eel and an octopus. Its attention caught by the food flakes, Szabo dropped a squirming mouse into the tank. It splashed around frantically as the creature circled around it.
Szabo watched this for a moment, then looked up. "It's been hours, I expect you to have an abundance of new information."
"That punk kid Chang is still investigating," Fisk said.
"That 'punk kid Chang' is a genius," Szabo said. "I surround myself with the best and the brightest... present company excluded, of course. If there's any new information to be found, Mr. Chang will find it for me."
Szabo strode over to his desk and sat down in the leather chair, then propped his feet up on the desk and scowled off in the distance. "My... contacts... in London have had nothing new to give me, either. One of them was able to examine the bodies, and found evidence of mystic energy but nothing more specific than that."
"I was thinking, this might not be a bad thing, sir," Fisk said, then regretted speaking out. Even though his boss was standing in the shadows, Fisk could feel his icy eyes.
In the fish tank, the panicking mouse tried to claw at the sides of the glass, but could get no footing. The striped creature continued to swirl near it in the water, its tentacles trailing behind its torso.
"What I mean, sir," Fisk continued nervously, "is that, from what I've read, there was only one Deadite at Kandar powerful enough to still be able to regenerate itself, and that was the evil doppleganger of Williams."
"Bad Ash, he called himself," Szabo said scornfully.
"But if it's him, all he'll want to do is kill Williams, right?" Fisk asked.
"My orders, as you should recall in that collection of mould and spores you call a brain pan, were that Williams be left alone, that no creatures of the night attack him...."
There was a sudden splash in the fish tank, accompanied by a squeal. When Fisk glanced over that direction, he saw the striped creature drifting contentedly towards the bottom of the tank.
"... until we are ready," Szabo continued.
Fisk shifted uncomfortably in place, waiting for his next orders.
Szabo paused for a long moment, apparently enjoying his henchman's awkwardness.
"Have Oracle keep an eye, so to speak, on the situation," Szabo said finally. "Ask her to look into the prophecies, and how they may apply to this latest variable. As for yourself, take the first flight out to Detroit. If it is indeed 'Bad Ash' and he comes for Williams, I want you to be nearby to run damage control."
"Whatever you say, boss."
"Now, if you will excuse me," Szabo said coldly, "I have a company to run...."
Fisk nodded and quickly left the room.
To be continued...