Young Writers Society

The seven of us were chartered to fly in four separate airplanes, sent across the globe as they circled towards our destination. Virgo and I were the first to go. Before we left, he ordered the black-suited man to search my person, taking my gun and wire. Virgo smiled, held the recorder to his mouth, and spoke a death sentence.

“I, Arthur Virgo, give full consent to be killed by one Leonard Slott at the moment of his discretion.”

He pressed it back into my hand and smiled wordlessly, walking out of the building’s lobby to the airfield.

I turned to Mendoza, who was staring at the recorder with a mystified look. “He set his life as collateral,” he said, looking after Virgo. “He really does know the ways of La Guarida.”

“You know this place?”

“Only heard about it, from friends of friends.” Mendoza scratched his chin. “Assholes, actually. Left me holding the bag while they pranced off to paradise. But you know? Once they left, I never saw them again.”

He nodded to the black-suited man, who brushed past me awkwardly as they headed back downstairs. Clutching Virgo’s death sentence in my hand, I made my way out to the airplane and got my first look at the world I was entering.

The airplane was a generic craft from the outside, painted uniform white and of unremarkable shape. The windows were tinted pitch-black, the wings lying low outside our secluded corporate lair. Despite all these efforts to erase its identity, the plane’s name had been painted next to the door: Hopeful Abandon.

A figure in a black trenchcoat stood beneath the fuselage, discreetly checking its landing gear. They looked up as I approached, revealing a mask like a cubist painting. Beneath the cloak, there was no breath, no humanizing motion. They were oppressively faceless, an appendage of the thieves’ paradise.

“I wouldn’t bother talking to them.” Virgo was leaning out the door, hanging on the frame like an albatross in flight. He smiled down at me as I climbed the short ladder. “The court of Scamelot has many ways to keep itself secret. I doubt even our pilot really knows where they’re going.”

The pilot looked up at us, mask unreadable. “Anyways, come in,” Virgo said to me, gesturing to the private cabin. “It’s all warmed up for us.”

I entered, and Virgo shut the door behind me as the pilot climbed into the cockpit, presumably from a different door. Other than those, there seemed to be no reliable way in or out of the airplane. The lounge was equipped only with two bolted chairs and a coffee table. Safety gear was absent as well; when I asked Virgo, he shrugged and told me, “In such luxury, we won’t need it.”

The plane took off steadily with minimal incline; the wine barely moved in Virgo’s glass as he studied its reflection.

“Mendoza seemed impressed, didn’t he?” he said.

“Looks like wagering your life makes crooks popular,” I noted.

Virgo laughed. “It does immensely. Adds a dangerous flavor that you don’t often see in white-collar crime.”

“Is that why you’re going?” I asked, leaning forward. “Or are you meeting someone?”

“You’re trying to interrogate me?” he asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Slott, I’d thought you more courteous.”

“My name is Danton,” I retorted.

He leaned forward, eyes wide. “And my name is Arthur Virgo, but you don’t think anything of that, do you? You think it’s just another alias for the most evil businessman in the world. But,” he declared, pointing while swishing his wine confidently, “you can learn a lot about a person from the mask they craft for themselves.”

“You saying that is a mask in itself,” I countered. “You wear that wine like a suit, but it can’t cover up the garbage on your breath.”

Virgo stopped swishing. “What poetry,” he scoffed. “Then let me tell you one thing about masks, Mr. Danton: Yours is inside-out.”

We glared at each other from across the coffee table; Virgo looked away first, but it looked more devious than defeated.

“I should mention,” he said quietly, “that the cabin administers a sleeping gas to the people inside it.”

I surged upwards to try and grab him, but toppled to the side in a daze. Virgo chuckled. “Relax,” he said, wine spilling from the glass as his arm went slack, “It’s affecting me too.”

Virgo smirked as I pushed myself back upright. “I enjoy people being stripped of power like this. It lets them talk honestly.”

“Then talk,” I grunted. “Who are you, really?”

“An heir to a great kingdom,” Virgo replied. “But if I were you, I’d be more concerned with who you are now.”

“What?”

Virgo’s head rolled back, eyes fluttering. “I pledged to be killed by one Leonard Slott. But according to you, Leonard Slott doesn’t exist. He won’t exist to the Court, either, unless you make him real. So maybe Officer Danton wins out in the end; you’ll be taking me alive. But if you choose the court of Scamelot, well.”

He smiled weakly. “My neck waits only for you.”

It was that smile that blurred into my head as the gas sealed me over.