Spider

CHAPTER 3

Vincent, The Conqueror

On a sunny morning, Jason said to his roommate Adrian, "Dear, some guy touched my ass in the coffee shop bathroom last night."

"And then what?" Adrian moved his gaze from the news section of the newspaper to the employment one, his mouth biting on a piece of over-baked toast.

"Needless to say, I beat him so hard that not even his mother would recognize him! I told him that even if my ass did look that sexy, he, a baldheaded, beer-bellied old man, was not qualified to mention it! Then the boss fired me before he went to the manager for complaints and compensation." Jason smiled immensely proud of himself. His handsome face showed a kind of childish naughtiness, but his stretched body exuded the temptation of languidness while the soft morning light sprinkled on his hair through the window, like a shining golden halo.

"Flies always fly around the sugar bowl, Mr. Sweetheart. That's quite normal," Adrian concluded. "What strikes me as odd is that you haven't had a single relationship this month."

"I met a very handsome priest at church last time. Moved by his love, I decided to abstain from my desires."

"Bullshit. The Council has stated that prisoner abuse is forbidden."

"Don’t speak so harshly, Adri, even if it’s true." Jason hugged the pillow and turned around to hang on the couch like a koala. "Actually, it's because it's too boring. It's hard to meet a lover as passionate and bold as Derek, especially when you feel a void in your heart that needs to be filled with fire-like passion."

"It seems that this new job is a better fit for you," Adrian handed the newspaper to the tip of his nose.

"Firefighter? Oh, no way! I'm not horny enough to actually yearn for its central temperature. Thanks man!"

"Then go find a job quickly! The landlady came again yesterday, and you don't know how ugly she looked. You actually owe two months' rent!"

"Can't help it, there are too many places that require money... Don't give me that hideous look, dear, next time I'll remember to find her myself and stop using you as a shield. I promise."

"Your promises aren't worth a penny!"

"I know," Jason sighed exaggeratedly. "Actually, I'm thinking about prostituting myself."

Jason wandered the streets all day. In fact, it's not difficult for a young person like him to find a job, but the nature of it frequently didn't satisfy him. For instance, he was harassed by the old woman from the recruitment company before he even took out his resume; when he applied for a job in a hotel, the manager hinted that he must also do 'room massage services', and he was struck up by a 'star scout' on the street, and it turned out the other worked for a small film company specializing in porn. After several depressing job-seeking failures, Jason finally found a job as a courier. Although the salary was scanty and he had to run errands, he was quite satisfied with the manager's approach — she was a lesbian.

Not only he got used to the job very quickly, but he also worked very happily, as the tips added up to more than his salary, not counting the small gifts that women shoved at him.

"Jason!" his new boss shouted up at the top of her lungs. "A package, Marriott Hotel in Brooklyn Bridge!"

"Brooklyn? That's half New York away from the area I'm in charge of! Why are you asking me to go?" Jason complained.

"Because the sender asked for you by name!" The shopkeeper glared at him viciously. She was a voluptuous Black beauty with a headful of dazzling cornrows, and her face makeup was as strong as a visual band's. "Listen, we're short-handed here! I don't care if it's a horny grandam or an enthusiastic little miss, hurry up and come back to me after the receipt is signed! If you get on something ridiculous and you are half an hour late, you'll be deducted a day's salary!

Therefore, Jason had no choice but to carry the far-ordered package to his long-overloaded car, mumbling words like 'fascist', 'exploiter' and the like as he sped off.

The Marriott Hotel in Brooklyn, where Blacks and Mexicans lived, was known as a 'criminal paradise', and is undoubtedly regarded as a high-class place for the rich to spend in. Room 3404. Jason looked at the address and names on the package, reached out and knocked on the door, saying in the politest tone he could, "Arrowhead Express, there's a package for you."

The door lock popped open (they actually used a remote control), and a man's voice said, "Come in."

That fully warmthless, imperative tone made Jason frown. The customer is God, he said to himself. You must accept any command from God and resign, even if He tells you to go to Siberia to grow rubber. He brewed up his emotions, burst forth a bright and graceful smile on his face, and walked into the room.

'God' was sitting on the sofa in a kingly, emperor-like attitude. He was about his early thirties, tall with brown hair and gray eyes. He looked like a successful businessman, CEO or government elite or something. He was quite handsome, but a pair of arched eyebrows was raised high, eyes full of arrogance and hate, as if he were incompatible with the whole world.

Being stared at like this and still being able to smile, maybe I should consider entering the film industry, Jason sighed inwardly while striving to put on a cheerful expression. "Mr. Casper?"

The other nodded slightly.

"This is a package sent to you from Manhattan. Please confirm it and sign this receipt slip."

The man glanced at the package. "Open it."

Although a little surprised, Jason still obediently began to tear the package open."

The box opened soon, and inside was a dagger covered in brownish red blood! It was big enough to pierce through a normal-sized person — like him, for example!

"Is it beautiful?" the man raised his eyebrows and asked in a very vile tone.

Jason felt a burst of chills coming up from his calves, cold. This guy shouldn't be a lunatic, right? "Uh, you see, since I was a kid, my art performance has only hovered around the edge of C. Miss Anne would always say I didn't have an adequate appreciation for artworks... In fact, I get a little dizzy when I see sharp things, like Alexandra's chandeliers in the museum [1]..." He swallowed with difficulty. "As long as you think it's beautiful."

"It's for you, how can you not like it," the man said, in a voice so mild and gentle it made you shiver.

Jason tried his best to restrain his desire to rush out of the door. He hasn't got a signature yet, so Erika would kill him when he came back. "Sorry... our company stipulates that we cannot accept gifts from customers..."

"Is that so." The man stood up, picked up the dagger, which was stained with the blood of some unlucky ghost, and gracefully turned it twice between his fingers. His grizzly and gloomy eyes stared fixedly at him, as if two pale and sharp needles would prick out from the depths of his pupils. "What if I insist?"

Holy shit, that kind of look is just like a viper's! Fuck his signature! Even if Erika dropped him from the fourth-floor window, it wouldn’t be more terrifying — this guy must be Jack the Ripper's in-law! Jason cursed, jumping up and scramming towards the door like a hare.

A cold light brushed past the side of his head! First, his skin felt momentarily icy, and then there was pain. The dagger was nailed shakily to the door panel in front of him, emitting an ominous odor of peril. He touched his neck (which now hurt like it was going to break) and saw his hands full of shocking blood!

"You... you psycho! Pervert! What the fuck do you want? You almost killed me!" He covered his wound tightly and turned around ferociously, his chest going up and down excitedly under the burning rage. "If you want to play the killing game, enlist yourself and go to Iraq, why looking for me?!"

"Because you have something on you that I want." The man squinted, watching pleasantly as the blood on his neck gushed out from the seams between his fingers.

Jason was stunned. "You want something? On me? Oh, no, you definitely have the wrong person. I'm just a tiny little courier. I don't have anything, not even next week's living expenses. Because of this dart game you're fond of, I have to donate my entire salary this week to the hospital. God, just the thought of the latest flush toilet in some doctor's house being invested by me using food expenses pains me so much!"

The man exposed a hint of a grim smiling expression. "There are always people in the world who don't know how to learn unless they suffer a little. Jason Spencer? You can insist on keeping your mouth shut until I dig many other holes in you, and I promise you, each of them will be much bigger than your mouth. You don't need to contribute to any doctor's home decoration, just invest in a cemetery for yourself. "

Jason took a step back — the other was serious and could do it! The icy ashen eyes showed a cruel coloration of complete disregard for life, which made his heart twitch and his scalp feel numb. If he didn't want to become a strainer [2], he had to know exactly what the other wanted, even though he simply had no clue.

"...I get it! You see, turns out life is sometimes as dramatic as Hollywood's blockbusters, isn't it? You’re the leading cadre of a mysterious corporation, or the head of a confidential government department or something like that. It's almost the same anyway. You guys are developing a high-tech product, closely related to artificial intelligence or human cloning or space-time machines or something, that will change the entire future of mankind..." The courier's green eyes began to glow with excitement. He seemed to have forgotten about the large gash in his neck, and his limps moved like a director explaining a script to an actor.

"Then one day something unexpected happened, evidently a premeditated secret operation, probably a spy from another opposing class or corporation with the skills of a secret agent, the looks of a model and no less racy than 007 — Wentworth Miller could be considered to play this one...." The sci-fi film director pondered about it in earnest and nodded. "He stole the key part of that technology, a chip loaded with raw data. It doesn't matter if it looks like a small frisbee or spiral DNA, the important thing is that he also stole your fiancée's heart along with it, so a marvelous ground-to-air chase and escape begins, with car chases and high-altitude explosions... Stint to succeed and ground-rise the spectacle with dollars. The audience eats these settings..."

"This may be a bit lame, but it doesn't matter, the creative part lies behind: as long as it’s not Superman, there should be human limits, so Mr. Spy hid the chip in a place that's not the least bit noticeable in the most critical juncture. As a result, an accident happened — an unaware courier moved the thing. It might as well be just a cardboard box or a candy one, so the key to the future of mankind flowed into the vast sea of people in a series of coincidences and embarked on an unknown journey... They must find it, learn to cooperate with each other, use each other, and compete for the last dawn of a new era..."

The courier looked at the wall behind the man with a dreamy expression, as if it were a shining path to the future of mankind. His eyes were focused and misty, the corners of his mouth curved slightly in a charming arch, and his blood-stained blond hair leaving stigmata-like marks on his ivory skin... If the express uniform was replaced by a Victorian military one and a white cloak, he'd simply be the son of mankind who leads the future.

The man on the other side punched him in the lower abdomen. Jason bent down in pain and coughed, feeling his intestines snapped in two.

"Is the satire over, bitch?" The man's gloomy eyes were flaming with hate and tyranny, clearly angered by some parts of Jason's words. "You're absolutely right. He stole everything that belonged to me! My family, status, career... Even my wife! But so what? I'm still alive, but he's dead! Oh, I heard it was an accident? You were there? Did he look ugly when he died? No, certainly not to my satisfaction. If I had done it, I guarantee that no forensic doctor would dare to touch his corpse!"

Jason raised his head, eyes widened. "You're talking about—"

"Derek? di Berardi?" The man quickly recovered from his hysteria, calm as an English gentleman at this point. "Say, where is the signet? Any more nonsense and I'll dissect you into a human specimen."

"Signet?"

"Don't repeat what I said like an idiot! Hand it over quickly, the signet of the Berardi family — a viper and a lily."

The last three words seemed to evoke Jason's memory, and he raised a finger. "Wait a minute... These two things seem to ring a bell to me... I have to think... That's right! A two-headed viper entwined around a lily — it's a ring! He wore it on his right ring finger; it was square-shaped, with a bezel so big it could almost fit in the Cullinan Diamond..."

The man before him grabbed his collar. "Exactly, where is it?"

Jason took a deep breath, feeling like he was walking high in the clouds. His whole body was utterly weak, and the heavy tiredness engulfed his consciousness increasingly. I knew I should've stopped the bleeding first... A final thought flashed past his mind, and he fell forward into the man's arms.