Chapter Four

    The next morning, Mercury was eating his buttered bread when he heard John stir in his bedroom. John soon came out, fully dressed, and looking very much awake. He sat in front of Mercury, put some butter on his bread, and began eating. He didn't say anything during breakfast, but, once they were both done, he decided to speak.
    "I foun' us another job."
    "When did you do that?" asked Mercury, astounded.
    "While you was sleepin'. Ya wen' ta bed early las' nigh', so A decided ta go lookin' fer a job"
    "And you found one. Good. Well, where?"
    "If you have a glance out the window, you'll see." Mercury did so, and saw nothing except the governor's house that had always been there.
    "I don't see any…" and they it dawned on him. "We're robbing the governor? Are you crazy?? We'll never be able to rob the governor and get away with our lives intact!!"
    "You've managed to break into an unbreakable safe, you can do this…" John said, looking disturbed.
    "I used dynamite. What am I going to do, blow the house up?!? Why do I let you pick the jobs so often?"
    "This is my first time!"
    "Exactly."

    During the rest of the day, mercury left John alone to find the map. When he returned, map in hand, he found a note on the table.

    Mercury frowned, thinking of how that guy had possibly managed to sneak up on John, and he realized that John had his mind on other things - their fight, for example. He hid the map in a secret compartment under his desk, grabbed a few flash bombs, shut the compartment, and set out to the Llama's Tongue.

    Having arrived at the pub, Mercury asked around to find out where the man lived, but no one knew. They said he'd thought one of them would come and kill him in the night if he told. Mercury was quite aware, as usual, of the irony - the man tried to protect himself from people like himself. Mercury walked out of the door and continued up the street a ways, until he reached a fork in the road.
    Looking around him to make sure he wasn't being watched, he slipped into the shadows. He slowly made his way back to the pub through the shadows, stopping often to make sure he hadn't been noticed. When he reached the pub entrance, he stopped, and settled down for a nice long wait.
Sooner, however, than he was expecting, the man arrived. He entered the pub, where most people greeted him with cold stares. He stayed for about an hour, Mercury listening intently from the other side of the wall for anything he might let slip. Finally, the man got up, paid the bartender, and exited, cold stares on his back now.

    As the man exited, Mercury froze, almost stopping his heart to avoid being noticed. Once the man was past, Mercury walked behind him, almost never leaving the shadows, invisible to anyone walking by. At several points, the man stopped and looked around, supposedly checking if he was being followed, but actually failing - he never saw Mercury.
    Finally, he arrived at his house. It was fairly large, Mercury estimated its price at $1,000. The man looked around one last time, and then went in. Slowly, Mercury creeped onto the porch, carefully, listening for movements inside. A sudden streak in his peripheral vision made him turn left, just as the man came at him with a heavy club. Mercury dodged the club and turned, giving the man a kick in the small of his back. The man staggered forward onto his hands, and then used the porch railing to right himself. Mercury delivered a hard punch to the spot where, moments before, the man's head had been. Meanwhile, the man had spun around and delivered a hard blow to Mercury's legs, which doubled up under him from the force of the hit. Mercury, however, spun on his limp legs and managed to hit the man's unguarded face. Getting to his feet again, he delivered another blow to the man's chest, and then one more to his neck. The man crumpled, unconscious.
    Mercury took the man's keys and walked over to the door, unlocking it and entering. He was about to put the keys back in the man's pocket, but he thought better of it and continued through the dark house. All the blinds were drawn and all the shutters closed, so that the house looked deserted from the outside. Mercury's mind adjusted as quickly as his eyes - he was in his own, natural element. He glided through the doors, looking for any sign of John, but finding nothing.
    He had gone through almost every room in the house when he realized the man would not have kept John in plain sight, that he must have some hidden room or something of the sort. Cursing his stupidity, he started to look for hidden levers and doors. Finally, he decided to use the old searching technique - he began to knock on the walls, listening for hollowness. Having reached the last room - the kitchen - for the third time, Mercury was getting discouraged. However, on the west wall of the kitchen, he heard a strange, metallic sound. He hit the wall with his knuckle again, hearing the reverberation throughout the room. Mercury smiled and started looking for a lever or some other form of control over the door.
    It took him quite a while, looking through the kitchen cabinets and the nooks and crannied, of which the kitchen was full, but he finally found a minuscule lever concealed on the underside of the bottom ridge of one of the cabinets. He had to turn it clockwise a few times before the mechanism activated, but, finally, the concealed metal door swung open. Mercury approached the door slowly; wary of traps the man might have placed to stop intruders.
    A noise behind him made Mercury whirl around, hand forming a fist. His fist connected with the now-conscious man's jaw, but much earlier than Mercury had anticipated. He had to quickly wrench his arm up to avoid his hand being broken by his body's momentum. Having been taken by surprise, the man staggered backwards, a look of mingled pain and fury on his face. Recovering, he cocked his right fist and rushed at Mercury, but Mercury was expecting him. Ducking, he grabbed the man's left arm, effectively holding him back, and kneed him in the stomach. The man grunted, but didn't give up. He kicked backward, catching Mercury in the leg. Mercury's leg gave way, but he punched the general area of the man's groin. A short-lived whimper of agony told Mercury his aim had been true. Painfully getting up, Mercury looked down at his once again fallen and disabled opponent. He scowled down at him, and then bent over to knock him out. The chloroform had a quick and painless effect on him.
    Mercury once again advanced on the door and, seeing nothing, he stepped through. Carefully descending the steps, Mercury watched and listened thoroughly before descending the next step. Finally, after a tedious half an hour, Mercury reached the bottom of the stairs. Looking around, however, he only found a short note.

    Mercury sat down heavily on the bare ground. A thousand thoughts flashed through his mind, the foremost being that John was the traitor, not the man he had called Marco. Mercury expunged all these thoughts before they could do anything to his illusion of impassiveness. He then took the steps to the kitchen two at a time and closed the secret door.
    Swinging Marco over his shoulder, Mercury headed back to the Llama's Tongue.