Derrek was awakened by the deafening sound of a trumpet in his ear, throwing him clear out of the bed, causing him to bump his head on the nightstand and knock the lamp over. He was dazed, and his ears were ringing, but he was sure he heard the sound of intense laughter.
A head popped over from the side of the bed, looking over him as he lay on the ground, rubbing his head. He couldn’t tell who it was at first, but the shiny scalp gave it away.
“Morning, sunshine!” Jeffrey said with great enthusiasm. “Probably should’ve worn those headphones!”
Derrek was in a lot of pain, but he managed to say, “Jesus Christ, Jeffrey! How did you even get in my room?”
“I told the front desk that I needed a copy of your key so I could wake you up with a trumpet.”
“And they just let you do that?”
“Of course not. I picked the lock.”
“The locks are electronic,” Derrek said as he managed to climb to his feet.
“They are, so I just threw a cup of coffee at it,” Jeffrey said as he went to the minibar, got a cold bottle of water, and handed it to Derrek. “Put that on your head. You’ll be fine.”
“Those are like eight dollars apiece.”
“First off, it’s like eight euros. And don’t worry about it. We’ve got full privileges.”
“I booked the rooms. I know that isn’t true.”
“Then it’s on me. Just take the damn water, dude.”
Derrek reluctantly accepted the water and pressed it to the bump forming on the back of his head. He sat on the bed and took a second to get his bearings. He looked around for a clock; he couldn’t find one, but he saw a few beams of light coming out over the horizon.
He remembered the note Jeffry left him on the bus. “Did you seriously wake me up at six a.m.?”
“I’m a man of my word,” he said, tucking his trumpet under his arm. “Coffee’s in the dining hall. Be down there in five.”
Derrek was exhausted, but even though his rest was abruptly interrupted by an unwanted brass performance, coffee sounded like heaven to him. Taking the water bottle away from his head, he said, “Fine, I’ll be down right away. But have a cup ready for me. I take it black.”
“That’s the spirit! Now, get dressed. Oh, and you might want to get someone to fix your door. Toodles!” he said as he exited, slamming the door behind him. But due to his method of entry, it didn’t latch but bounced back open.
Derrek looked through his bag for something to wear and settled on a pair of khakis and a plain white T-shirt. He put on his shoes and headed for the dining hall, doing his best to close the door but to no avail. After getting to the ground floor, he made a quick detour to tell the front desk about his “defective” door, then went straight to the dining hall.
The doors were open, and even though the sun was barely up, the wafting smell of breakfast pastries and sizzling bacon filled the lobby. As was par for the course, the room was huge; there were buffet tables set up, filled to the brim with breakfast foods, pitchers upon pitchers of drinks, dozens of coffee machines, and seating for hundreds, with decor matching the rest of the hotel.
Most of the seats were empty, but across the room, at a table next to a window, Derrek saw Jeffrey sitting with two cups of coffee. After making the trek across the room, he sat across from him and reached for the cup he assumed was his. Jeffry started to speak, but Derrek put his hand up in a ‘one-second’ gesture, then took a long sip from his mug.
It was still some of the best-tasting coffee he had ever had. It had rich, deep, earthy tones, with a hint of hazelnut. From just that one sip, he felt ready to take on the world. He put his hand down and waited for Jeffry to start speaking.
“Feel better, sunshine?”
“Without a doubt. What blend is this, anyway?”
“I think they call it Deus Ex Coffeena or something like that.”
“Well, it’s pretty great.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it, because today’s gonna be a lot tougher than it was gonna be.”
“What? Why?”
“I told you to be down here in five. It’s been at least six.”
“Are you really fretting this much over a minute? Besides, the only reason I was late was that you decided to destroy my door!”
“Excuses, excuses. You’d best tighten up, soldier, especially if you wanna run the show.”
Derrek was surprised by what he said and choked a little on his coffee, throwing him into a short coughing fit. After catching his breath, in a hushed tone, he said, “How the hell do you know about that?”
“Seriously? You thought Shale was gonna throw you into the thick of it with nobody to help you up?”
“I … I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“And that’s why he whooped your ass the last time you played,” Jeffrey said as Derrek glared at him, “but it’s also why I’m here.”
“So, are you my coach now?”
“Closer to drill sergeant.”
“Of course you are.” Derrek took a look at the closest buffet table, his mouth watering at the sight of the piles of bacon and stacks of pancakes. “So, is this just a coffee morning, or am I allowed to eat?”
Jeffrey smiled and said, “Feel free. Might puke it up after our ten-mile run.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh yeah, you’ll be joining me in my morning routine for the next few days: ten miles, fifty sit-ups, a hundred push-ups, and eighty jumping jacks. And don’t forget about your firearms training.”
“That sounds like a bit of overkill. I’m just trying to be able to run Frostbyte.”
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Jeffrey’s smile faded, and he let a beat pass while he made an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with Derrek. When the tone was set to Jeffry’s liking, he said, “You aren’t just trying to run Frostbyte. If that’s what you think all this is, you’d be better off booking the next flight back to the States and get real comfortable booking trips for the rest of your life. What I’m doing for you, what Shale’s doing for you, is not just getting you ready to take his place. He thinks you can do a lot of good and wants you to be able to move it all further than he has. For you to do that, you’ve gotta learn discipline, both mental and physical. I’d trust that man with my life, but the fact that you don’t get that gives me doubts.”
Derrek stared at his coffee, feeling small. His appetite was suddenly gone, and the bump on his head began to throb. He looked up at Jeffrey, and doing his best to keep eye contact, he said, “I’m sorry. Will only told me about this two weeks ago, and I still have no idea what I even need to know how to do. I’m trying to be the man he wants me to be, and if you think this will help me be that, I’ll take any order you give.”
Jeffrey kept his composure, staring him in the eyes, waiting for him to waver. After several seconds passed, Jeffrey cracked a smile and started to laugh. He laughed harder and harder until Derrek felt awkward watching this mountain of a man slam his fists on the table with laughter.
After regaining his composure, Jeffrey looked back at Derrek and said, “Kid, you gotta learn to not take everything so seriously.”
“What? You just told me I need to learn discipline.”
“That I did, but you also have to learn not to take things personally. Business is a crazy thing, and people are gonna try to screw you over. But sometimes, you’ve gotta work with the same ones who do. I’m glad you’re serious about this, but you gotta loosen up.”
“I’m really confused.”
“That’s the spirit! Now you’re in the headspace to learn. When you’ve got no idea what’s going on, you try to figure it out, and even if you don’t end up getting it, the fact that you’re trying shows a lot.”
Derrek still wasn’t sure what he meant, but he felt better. His appetite had returned, and he resolved to eat a heaping plate of bacon and eggs, and to his delight, Jeffrey joined him to do the same.
The two returned to their table, plates piled high with pancakes, topped with butter and syrup, eggs cooked sunny-side up and bacon cooked to perfection, not too crispy to taste burnt and not too chewy to be inedible, the perfect balance.
As they ate, they shared stories of their pasts, Jeffrey starting it off lamenting his youthful years growing up in Virginia. “I had a pet raccoon. Patches, I named her. She would always hang out on my head, y’know, like I was Daniel Boone. She always cackled like crazy when she scared anyone who thought she was just a hat. I swear, my mom almost had a fit!”
Derrek shared how he first met Shale, playing chess in Central Park. “I was in foster care for as long as I could remember, and when I was eleven, I decided to run away. It went all right, aside from all the hungry nights, the unforgiving cold, and most of the other vagrants. A few were nice though. I was making good money hustling people—chess is my game—until I hustled just the right person. I pegged him as some rich fat cat and figured his ego was big enough to take on any challenge.
“I swear, the look on his face when I put him in checkmate was absolutely priceless. I wish I stuck around longer to see it, but I thought he’d catch on to my scheme pretty quick, so I bolted. I wasn’t very good at covering my tracks then, so he found me about an hour later. He said he saw something in me, and I was convinced he was some weird pervert until he gave me his card. A few weeks later, I gave him a call, and the rest is history. He gave me an assistant job, clothed me, fed me, set me up in a decent apartment—the works—all from his personal funds,” he said as he finished his coffee. “He’s a good man. I’m proud to work for him.”
Jeffrey, with his mouth full of pancake, decided to share his story of meeting Shale. “I was freshly enlisted in 2020, and right out of boot camp, we were shipped off to fight the Russians after they decided they wanted the EU. The beard didn’t grow in full until a couple of years ago, so I swear I was a six-two soldier with a big ole baby face!
“We were deep in the Austrian countryside, doing our best to push them back to Hungary. They had some crazy tech we didn’t know about, so we couldn’t get shit for an idea of what they had with our satellites. Even without that, though, we thought we had the edge, figured they were too spread out to stop us.
“Found out we were wrong when the mortars hit our base. Totally blew us away,” he said, beginning to laugh, then resumed a somber look on his face. “Lost a lot of good men that day. A lot more got sent home from the wounds, myself included. I caught a chunk of shrapnel in my right leg. Went right through the bone just above my knee, and a little bit hit my face, as you can probably tell. By the time they were able to do anything about it, it was unsalvageable, and they amputated.
“Sent me home with a Purple Heart and a fat check every month, and if I were anyone else, I’d probably be fine with that. But damn it, I still had a lot of fight in me. I went everywhere I could trying to find a way to get back into the thick of it, but all I could find were some admittedly stylish 3D printed prosthetics, nothing that could get me back on the battlefield.
“After a year of looking, though, I got a call from William Shale himself. Said he’d heard of my struggle and that he wanted to meet me. I figured he was just gonna offer me the same thing everyone else had, but he was paying for my flight, so I went along with it,” he went on, smiling again. “First time I went to New York, if I weren’t there on business, I probably would’ve enjoyed it more. I met him in his office, y’know, with that view of the whole city? Breathtaking, I swear.
“He gave the same spiel everyone else did, how I was brave for what I was trying to do, some such prepared statements on the strength of the human spirit—you know how he talks. I thought he was full of it until he showed me the leg. I swear, it was perfect,” he said, putting his leg up on a chair and rolling up his pants, revealing a sleek, fully articulated metal leg. “This bad boy got me back on my feet, literally. The actual leg is removable, but the base has wires hooked up directly to my nervous system so I can move it just like if it were flesh and bone,” he explained, rotating his ankle and bending his knee back and forth. “Hell, I can even wiggle my toes! This one’s more for everyday activity, but he gave me one with armor plating, storage space for extra ammunition, and in a pinch, there’s even a blade that pops out from the toes, and the whole thing barely weighed more than my old leg to boot!
“It took some convincing, but with Shale on my side, they let me back on the front lines, and I like to think I did him proud. I was up front when we stormed Moscow, and I celebrated with everyone that night, American and Russian alike. I tell you, it was magnificent. You ever drink one hundred eighty proof vodka? It makes for one hell of a hangover—I’ll tell you that!”
The men burst into laughter. They had been sharing stories and eating breakfast for around half an hour, the sun was fully up, and other people were starting to fill in. Their plates had been empty for some time, and their food felt had digested enough to get to running. They got up, put their plates on a conveyor belt that took them back to the kitchen to be washed, and went outside. Jeffrey directed Derrek to a bright red, heavily rusted pickup truck double-parked close to the busses. The doors were unlocked, and the keys were in the ignition, so they climbed in and Jeffrey started driving down the road.
“I thought we were going for a run, why are we in a truck?” Derrek asked.
“It’s a big-ass estate. The track is two miles away.”
“My God. How much land does the hotel own?”
“Ain’t the hotel. Just the owner, Mila Müller. I swear she’s got an absolute fortune.”
“Where’d she get it all? Inheritance? Good investments?”
“Not sure, but I’ve got my own theory.”
Jeffrey was silent for several seconds while Derrek looked at him expectedly. “And what might that be?”
Without missing a beat, Jeffrey immediately said, “Bitcoin.”
Derrek said nothing for the rest of the ride but maintained a look that best expressed, Seriously?
They arrived a couple of minutes later. Derrek saw a full-kilometer circular track with Olympic-sized seating. In the center of the circle was a large assortment of exercise equipment, including weights, uneven bars, and an assortment of heavy objects, such as tires and thick ropes. The track itself didn’t match the hotel’s aesthetic, as it was made more for function instead of fashion, but it still seemed to be of high quality and very well maintained.
The two exited the truck and walked to the starting line. It was at this point that Derrek realized he was still wearing khakis. He turned to ask if Jeffrey had any exercise clothes but was taken off guard by the deafening sound of Velcro ripping. Jeffrey had torn off his pants and shirt, which before now, Derrek had not realized were tear-away. Underneath, he was wearing a plain white T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts.
Derrek was still stunned when Jeffrey pointed to the side of the seating where a door was. “Get some clothes from there. They wash them daily, so don’t worry about that.”
Derrek complied without saying a word and entered through the door into a large room full of labeled drawers. Each label had three words—the article of clothing, the size, and the color, except for a row by the entrance that was meant for leaving your clothes while you worked out. Derrek found a medium white T-shirt and a pair of black gym shorts to go with them, folded his clothes, deposited them into an empty drawer, and went to join Jeffrey at the starting line.