As We Know It
Chapter 7Once Taylor was sure they were out of sight, he grabbed Micah by the wrist and dragged him outside the office entirely, where he was sure no one would hear them.
"Are you crazy?" he said in a hoarse whisper, "what are you doing here?"
"I needed to talk to you," Micah repeated himself, not seeming to be at all phased by Taylor's tone of voice. "It's important and it can't wait."
"People are going to get suspicious," Taylor sighed. "Do you realize what this probably looks like?"
"Are you ashamed of me?" Micah asked. He clearly did not realize what it probably looked like, and the sadness in his voice weakened Taylor's resolve.
"I... of course not," Taylor's tone softened a little. "But just so you know, you've earned yourself a second job. I hope you like carrying equipment around, because you‘ve signed yourself up for a tour."
"No problem!" Micah said, an excited flush rushing to his cheeks. "I always wanted to live out a bit of the rock'n'roll lifestyle."
Taylor looked him over once - he was dressed well enough for the part, but he had too much of an honest-to-god do gooder expression plastered on his face for him to be much more than a choirboy with a hidden stash of rock records in the closet.
"I really don't think it's for you," Taylor said, trying to imagine if Micah would even understand the implications of such a claim. He imagined that his idea of a rock star would have been Beethoven, so he severely doubted that.
"I didn't even know that angels liked music," he muttered. Taylor didn‘t try to hide the annoyance in his voice. His trust in Micah‘s abilities was feeble enough without this kind of dramatic display. "Anyway, didn't you have some sort of urgent news that you pulled me out of a meeting for?"
"Oh, of course," Micah said. "I really need for you to be careful right now - people are cluing in to what's happening, and that you're involved."
"What people?" Taylor asked, alarmed.
"Well, not people so much..."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean that you can't just wait for things to start moving before you try and make a move. Because if you don't strike first, someone else is going to."
"I've been keeping an eye on Zac, and honestly, I haven't seen him do much more than adopt a new cat - which, really, I‘m sure is just the epitome of evil to some, but I'm not seeing much that I can do about it. You haven't really given me much of a game plan here." Taylor scoffed at the end.
"The Four are out - here's your game plan: stop it before it gets any further," the angel said with much more sting in his voice than Taylor had ever heard before. "Once they zero in on where you are, they're going to come straight for you, and I don't know if you're ready to handle them on your own."
"How am I supposed to be ready for something like that?"
"You need to know what you're looking for," he said, and then paused to retrieve something from his pocket; it glinted as soon as the light hit it, and Taylor could see that it was a silver chain with a small, intricate pendant hanging from it.
"Take this," Micah said, pressing the chain into Taylor's palm. "It won't be able to fight them, but it will help you know when something suspicious is going on."
Taylor examined it, letting the chain run over his fingers. It was surprisingly warm; not in a sense that it had been held, but rather a distinct feeling that it was emitting some kind of energy all on its own. Taylor closed his hand around it and looked up at Micah again, meeting his eyes.
"So what if this doesn't work? What's the other option then?"
"Stop Zac before he can use the Four to do any damage."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but Zac's not the type to respond to someone telling him - ‘hey, maybe you should reconsider destroying the whole world, thanks.' Really?"
"That's not the only option you have," Micah said, his voice taking on a more ominous tone. Taylor paced a few steps, his skin crawling at the implication.
"What do you mean by that?" he said. "Micah?"
Micah stepped from one foot to the other, and crossed his arms, clearly uncomfortable.
"You're not going to make me say it, are you?"
"If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, then yes, you'd damn well better come out and say it," Taylor spat the words out in a jumbled mess, not entirely caring to make sense of it. Micah looked at him for a moment, his brightness clearly fading a bit.
"It's... possible that, if nothing else works, and you can't figure out another way, that you're going to have to kill your brother."
"No," Taylor said flatly.
"I know it's not pleasant to hear."
"Yeah, which is why I'm making it easy and saying no right now. I won't k- I wouldn't hurt my brothers, no matter how much they pissed me off or would destroy the world, or whatever, I refuse to."
"If this goes any further, everyone you care about it going to get hurt anyway, you realize that, right?" Micah's voice had become softer and kinder, and Taylor could tell that he meant for it to be comforting. Somehow, that actually made him feel worse.
"How is this sort of plan coming out of an angel of all things?" Taylor asked, irritated.
"Oh, you'd be surprised at how common this kind of thing is, actually. Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, you'd think brothers killing each other was our official sport or something," he tittered nervously. "It's not, though, it's curling."
Taylor crossed his arms and looked at Micah like he was searching for an escape route. He glanced over his shoulder towards the door to their studio, suddenly feeling like their voices were carrying much more loudly than normal.
"Are you sure that this is the only other option?" Taylor said, refusing to look straight at Micah as he spoke.
"I wish there was another way."
"I need to think about everything, I don't know.." Taylor began to speak, but he didn't get to finish his thought. The door opened up beside them both, Taylor and Micah both jumping at the sound. Zac grinned at them from the other side of the door.
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you," he said. Behind him, Lilly was visible, and Zac stepped to the side to let her through.
"I was just on my way out," she said, her eyes lingering on Micah for a moment before slipping past the two of them. "But it was nice meeting you both."
"Likewise."
Lilly didn't respond to that, and walked away, exchanging a familiar look with Zac as she did. Taylor's eyes lingered only for a moment before he glanced back, his eyes shifting from Micah to Zac, attempting to reconcile the situation. He had been in awkward situations before, but he wasn't keen on letting this one get any further than necessary.
"Maybe you should wait inside for a bit," Taylor said, hoping that his pointed glare would be enough of a hint for Micah to get out of the way and act like a normal human for five minutes. Somehow, he severely doubted that.
"Oh... right," Micah said, seeming relieved for a reason to excuse himself. He slipped inside through the door, and Taylor kicked his shoe against the pavement beneath him, burying his hands into his pockets, the necklace still hidden in his palm.
"Hey," Zac said.
"Hey yourself."
"Is everything ok?" Zac's words caught Taylor off-guard. He sounded genuinely concerned, and Taylor could do nothing but look away from him.
"Everything's fine," Taylor said. Zac looked, for a moment, like he was going to press the issue, but ultimately decided against it.
"I wouldn't leave your friend alone in there for too long," he said seriously.
"Why's that?"
"Because, five minutes with Isaac, and he'll probably never want to come back." He cracked a smile, infectious enough that Taylor couldn't help but smile as well. In his hand, the necklace glowed with a foreign warmth, pulsing and burning into his hand like an alarm.