SEASON ONE

EMERALD CITY

E1S1: New Americana

Mikhail "Kai" Eidelman-Darren Criss

Mr. Weissman-Adam Arkin

Cid Silveira-Bruno de Almeida

Dr. Michael Riddle-Christopher Meloni

LaVon "LV" Henderson-Trevante Rhodes

Jackson "Jax" Roth-Charlie Hunnam

CocaCero-Adam Rodriguez

Kona-Keanu Reeves

Kai stood there in his room looking at the window. He wasn't watching the rain as it hit the pane, or the cars with their intense, gleaming lights. He was looking at himself. The way his chest hair curled showed how brown his genes were, his hazel eyes shining as he turned his head from side to side. His lips were blossom pink and supple. I've never seen somebody so beautiful. He thought as he reminded himself of a young Marlon Brando. Dark, mysterious, with eyes that told a story. He knew that come the morning, maybe 11:30 or so, he would know his fate. If he was sentenced to the full two years for each count of forgery, he knew it wouldn't be the end of his life, however, it would definitely feel like it.

Obsessed with his bone structure, Kai flexed his jawline and turned his head. He had been through all of the hearings. All of the meetings with attorneys trying for plea bargains, but he was too dramatic to take any of them. He needed a trail, so that he could showcase his skills. He got up on the stand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And he did that. Or at least he thought he did.

As Kai laid down in his California king, he thought about his truth. He told the jury and the rest of the courtroom that Mr. Weissman had given him permission to use his checks for "whatever he wanted". Gucci, Cavalli, Jacquemus. For some reason, nobody believed that the wealthy financier to a Fortune 500 company would give liberties to a man more than three decades younger than him. Kai knew that it was true, but he also knew that he had a tendency to make things up and go with them. Like the time he told everyone at school that his mother had dramatically fallen down the stairs and that's why she was wearing a neckbrace, but deep, deep down inside of him, he knew that she was wearing it because her neck was bruised at the hands of his stepfather. Or when he boasted to everyone that he was sleeping with Mr. Levy for his good grades, when really, deep, deep down, he knew it wasn't right. Or like when he went off to boarding school and he began to go by Kai. From zero to fifteen, he had been Mikhail, but once he got to Mesivta, he was just Kai.

Kai drifted to sleep thinking about his upcoming death date. Thursday, November 13, 1997.

The morning had finally come and Kai couldn't get a lick of good sleep. After three hours of shut eyes, watching his life flash before him, his alarm clock woke him up. He brushed his hair into a style resembling Leo DiCaprio at the Romeo and Juliet premiere. As he put on his clothes, Burberry spring collection from head to toe, the phone rang. His lawyer.

"It's getting late here, Mr. Eidelman. I'm standing outside the courthouse waiting for you." Mr. Cid Silveira explained. White collar crimes happen left and right in California. Kai could tell that he was ready to move on from him and he wasn't surprised.

"That's weird, I'm at the courthouse." Kai said as he held the phone between his ear and his shoulder and pulled his brown loafer over a paisley sock.

"1945 South Hill Street?" Cid questioned.

"Oh, South Hill. I thought it was North. I'll be like 20 minutes."

"I'll be counting," He said smugly as he hung up the pay phone.

"Asshole." Kai said as he grabbed his Hermes satchel with nothing in it.

The courtroom was cold and musky with the smell of old books. The judge looked at the papers in front of him and began to speak.

"The purpose of this meeting today is not to discuss what has happened in this case, but to assign the appropriate amount of time for Mr. Mikhail Eidelman to learn a lesson in honesty."

Oh, brother…

Kai couldn't help but to look down for the entire thirty minutes.

"Therefore, the court orders Mr. Mikhail Eidelman to 16 months for each charge of forgery in the first degree. That's a total of 5 years and 3 months in Oswald State Penitentiary. You will be transferred immediately." The judge banged his gavel and it was showtime.

Kai sobbed into his hands. He wasn't crying to beg for less time, he wasn't crying because he was afraid of what life would be like on the 'inside'. He was crying for applause. And he put on a fantastic performance as the deputy slapped the cuffs on his wrists.

The prison smelled just how Kai had imagined it. Like a thousand Roman soldiers who had never bathed a day in their lives. He was pristine. Hair slicked just right. Prison button up shirt, tucked into his prison khakis. They were going to eat him alive.

He watched the back of the man's neck in front of him. Dr. Riddle. His nape was sweating, but Kai was freezing. The prison social worker stopped abruptly and turned to him.

"Before, we enter...these people have...some of them are…" Riddle started.

"Are you saying they're murderers?" Kai said pushing out a chuckle. It wasn't a joke to him, it made him nervous, rather.

"Yes. But don't fret. They're...being rehabilitated. This is Emerald City. For the people who are really...working on themselves, you know?"

"So what's so special about me." He asked as Riddle opened the glass door to the segregated unit.

"I actually requested you. We had a bunk available and I wanted a crack at you." Riddle smiled as Kai stepped into the two-story room with 24 cells and 48 inmates.

"A crack? Are you flirting with me?" Kai joked quietly. Riddle hadn't answered and Kai assumed he didn't hear him while he was locking the door behind him. Kai felt his heartbeat quicken. He wanted to turn around and go back to where he came from. A condo on the west-side of Los Angeles.

"Hey Riddle," A Black man with a toothpick hanging loosely from his mouth, slowly made his way up to the social worker. "Who is this?"

"Why don't you ask him, LV." LaVon smiled with the whitest teeth Kai had ever seen. Then he walked away.

"So your cell is going to be on the first floor here. We usually reserve these for the older inmates, but I figured since the previous inmate died, you can just take his place."

Thoughtful.

"Alright, this is your stop." Riddle stopped in front of one of the many Plexiglas windows that slid open to expose the men behind them. Behind his door, was a shirtless man lying on the bed with the shirt he should have been wearing covering his face. Kai stepped in and began to make his bed, the top bunk, carefully as not to disturb the man under it.

"Hey, Roth," Riddle called out. He was halfway in and halfway out of the room.

The muscular man removed the white t-shirt from his face and sighed, loudly. He sat up and looked Riddle in the eyes. Kai tried paying him no mind as he got up and walked over to the social worker as he threw the shirt that barely made it to the edge of the bed.

"What do you want, Riddle?" He said as he leaned up against the concrete wall.

"You're just gonna ignore your new roommate?" Riddle said lowly.

"You know something," Roth smiled and brought his face close to Dr. Riddle. "I don't really like new people."

"Oh yeah," Riddle smiled as Roth backed away. "Well, honestly, I'm sick of seeing your face around here."

Jackson gently turned from Riddle's dancing eyes and put his back against the wall, crossing his arms. He stared at Kai as he finished making the bed. He watched as Kai smoothed the wrinkles out of the felt blanket and the stained pillowcase. He was apprehensive to turn around so he pretended, just like he had always done. Riddle looked on more time at Roth and then at Kai and at Roth again. He silently walked away, shaking his head and smiling.

"Bottom bunk." Roth called, plainly.

"Excuse me?" Kai said looking over his shoulder at the blond.

"Move your shit to the bottom bunk. Speak English?" Roth said, beginning to move forward.

"Yes," Kai said nervously, turning around.

"Yes...what?" Roth asked. He had known that he was intimidating. Taller than the man in front of him by at least four inches. And definitely bigger.

"Yes...sir?" Kai said, embarrassed. His first day and he was already becoming somebody's bitch.

Roth turned the corners of his mouth. Kai immediately noticed that his laugh was, for lack of a better term, cute. Soft but powerful. "You fell for that?"

Kai smiled as his brow began to sweat. "Yeah, I...I guess I did. You...you really got me, calling you 'sir' and stuff." Kai softly chuckled as Roth bent over in laughter.

Roth slowed his laughter down and stood up straight, walking up to the man. Still nervous, Kai extended his hand to keep a distance between the two of them.

"I'm Kai," he said smiling.

"Jackson, Jax, J.R., Roth, seems like everyone calls me something different." Jackson said, shaking the other man's hand.

"I gotta admit, man. You scared me." Kai said sitting on the bench that was extending from the wall. Jackson had grabbed the pack of cigarettes that was lying on his bed and shook one out. He struck a match and lit it, taking a puff simultaneously.

"If anything, I'd make you call me 'daddy'." Jackson said with the lit cigarette in his mouth, muffling his words. His back turned to his cellmate.

Kai knew he had heard him correctly, but still asked "what?"

"You know, I wasn't kidding when I said that you belong on the bottom bunk. And since you just got here, it would be wise of you to listen to me. Because I also wasn't kidding when I told Riddle that I didn't like new people"

Kai let out one small chuckle as he watched his cellmate turn to him with a serious look upon his face.

"Move your shit, rookie." Jackson said calmly, walking from in front of the bunk bed. "Now." He yelled as Kai stood up.

Kai stared up at the railing that was above him, old and rusty and at any moment, it seemed, Jackson could fall right through.

"You sleep, Kai?" Jax said in a low voice, but not a whisper.

"N-no," Kai said hesitantly. Dinner was unimpressive but the common area gave him a chance to fill out some of the characters he would be dealing with for the next five years. Just like in the movies, people were separated by race. The Black people were seemingly led by LaVon, who was quiet, but looked like he held a lot of secrets. The Latinos were led by "CocaCero", which Kai was sure was a nickname. The whites all listened to Jax, but Kai pegged him as a semi-permanent leader. The Asian diaspora, where Kai would have been if he wasn't passing, was led by a passing Hawaiian man named Kona. After dinner and the filling out process, Kai and Jax returned to their room in silence while Jax read The Clash of Civilizations and the New World Order by Samuel P. Huntington.

"Good. Things get weird in this place when people go to sleep." Kai could hear Jax shift to his side, facing outward. "What are you here for, Kai?"

"They say it's fraud. Um, check fraud." Kai said, laying perfectly still.

"Fraud, huh? How long they give you for that?"

"Five years and three months."

"Sheesh. Must have been a lot of checks." Jackson smiled to himself. A moment of silence passed as Jax lay thinking about his last five years in Oz.

"What are you here for?" Kai interrupted. He knew the answer to his question wasn't going to be a good one, but he was preparing for the worse.

"Nothing."

"Oh come on. We're all here for 'nothing'." Kai said as he made air quotations to himself. "What did you do? It can't possibly be as bad as what I'm thinking you did."

"Think whatever you want." Jackson said as he shifted again to his back. "I don't remember, anyway. It's anyone's guess." Jackson looked up at the ceiling and moved his hands behind his head. "Anyone's guess." He repeated.

"Well what was your trial like? What did they say you did?" Kai said sitting up in his bunk.

"I don't fucking remember. Drop it."

"Bullshit." Kai said plainly as he laid back down. "I told you about me."

"Drop it."