“See you on the —“

Melkor vanishes in a cloud of spores and a clap of mild thunder.

MIchael shakes his head and goes back inside. He walks over to the dining table, bends over, and pulls two broadswords out from beneath it. “Glad we didn’t have to use these,” he says, looking at Molly. “Quick thinking, Molls. Where did you stash the coin, anyway?”

”Tank of the upstairs toilet,” Molly replies promptly. “First place I thought of.”

Father Forthill stands. “If you wish, I can see to it that the coin is taken to the Church’s sanctuary for such things.” Michael nods. “Just get me a rubber glove and a blessed handkerchief and I’ll take care of it.”

A sudden condensation of dust and a strangely localized blast of wind rattle a small section of the exposed 108th floor roof of Sears Tower.

“— flip siiiiide auuuugh holy effing elven ballsacks my skin’s on fire!”

Melkor stops, drops, and flip flops until the flames go out.

It is extremely frickin windy up there. The view is incredible though. He can see a service door, which is locked, and two huge antennas.

Melkor rolls a blunt on his third try after having his first two snatched away by the frickin’ wind. He surveys the glass and metal towers, the sprawling gray ribbons of road, the distant expansive sea that the city abuts.

Abutts, more like. Sheeeeit.

He stands on the ledge and feels the spirit of this wacky, human-infested iron forest beneath him. “You’re mine, baby.”

”Just as soon as I get coin chick back. And figure out how to not set myself on fire too much.”

Melkor flips around and shoots a sticky black rope at the door. He shakes the rope a few times until the hinges turn into imitation lime jello, then he makes a pro women’s tennis grunt and pulls. 

The door pops out of its frame and clangs to the floor. There is a stairway that leads downwards for five flights before he finally reaches a door. Though it appears that he could also just keep climbing down stairs forever.

To saw through a wall or not to saw through a wall…

His wrists are a little toasty from where he did his little webslinging. He opens the door.

He emerges into a room done up to look kind of like a… queue area at a movie theater. “103” is painted on the wall in huge red letters. The queue setup is for an… elevator? There are half a dozen people waiting and some dude in a uniform guarding the front of the line. Beyond the waiting area he can see some informational displays, a gift shop, and some windows looking out onto a view that is not *quite* as good as what he just enjoyed from the roof, though it is much less windy here.

The back of the door he just came through has a sign that reads “service stairs, do not enter.”

Melkor decides to play it cool for once in his thrice-damned existence.

He walks over, quiet but casual but stealthy, and sidles up to the ever-so-slightly loner-looking guy in line. “Yo… fellow mortal, what a day, sure would be nice to share some kush with a total stranger.” He pats his jacket pocket suggestively.

”Hey though I was just trying to remember — how do our rulers make significant pronouncements? They obviously don’t stand on the roof and yell, but like… what do they do? Right?”

The guy nods animatedly, pulling a phone out of his pocket. “One second,” he says, with a heavy accent, pushing the large camera around his neck out of the way so he can type on the phone. “Say again,” he says, giving Melkor a big smile and shoving the phone near his face.

“Aw shit let’s see most of my lines are improvised… Uh, fellow mortal, I’ve got some kush, but uh, my memory’s not so good, from all the drugs, so you should remind me how Chicago’s rulers make their pronouncements to us, and then we can go get high.”

Melkor waits expectantly.

After he finishes, the phone emits a few long strings of Japanese words. The guy listens, looks startled, concerned, then enthused. He gives Melkor two thumbs up. He types some more on the phone and shows Melkor the screen.  Most of it is in kanji chharacters, but at the top of the screen he sees a small blue bird icon. The guy types some more and the word “Chicago” appears with a blue check next to it, and a feed of video clips that the guy scrolls through. He gestures at the phone definitively.

Melkor’s eyes go wide, and then he rocks back and cackles. “Haha no fuckin’ way! You guys turned my Twitter idea into a thing? Chicago is friggin’ boss.”

He pulls a dank juicy eight ball of the green goodness out of his pocket and slaps it into the hand of Mr. Very Helpful Guy. In the same smooth motion, he steals the guy’s phone and starts navigating to the login screen while he walks back to the service door.

Melkor seems to have done this smoothly enough that the guy is focused on his new acquisition for the moment, goggling and then working to stuff it into his messenger bag. 

But when he reaches the door it is locked. Also the guy guarding the elevator is eyeing him, as if trying to decide whether he is going to get in trouble if he ignores this situation.

My one true nemesis: doors that lock behind me.

”Fuck it! Snake time!”

Melkor sloshes through the resulting pile of vibrant, vibrating vipers where the door used to be. He’s on the login page for the “✅ Chicago” account. “Now to just use the universal backdoor that that Sauron nerd told me about…”

People start screaming. The stairs are now accessible. The guard dude grabs for a walkie talkie and starts gibbering.

Melkor climbs the stairs. He types in the backdoor into the password field (“mellon-illuvatar-420”) and hits submit.

He stops a flight or two up and shakes some hangers-on off his pant leg. Wham! — a searing pain shoots through Melkor’s heel. The red-yellow-black snake’s fangs are stuck right through the thick white rubber of his sneaker.

“Oh come on, a snakebite? What are the odds!”

A weird chill runs down his back, like someone is watching him - but there is no one else in the stairwell.

He is now logged into @Chicago.

“That’s a lock. You were dead right Hunter, target has slipped the void.”

The bearer of the glowing hot charm stops short. “Sister, please. Bespeak your thoughts in the timeless form; lest the ways of the First Enemy outlive our own.”

A sigh. “I sight the quarry. Your doom, Brother, proves meet: the Black Foe dwells in blackness no more.”

The Hunter’s eyes gain the iron of his spirit. “Then let us make haste in our pursuit, and with Angainor bring this mad dog to heel.”

Using a dark intelligence honed over millennia of global domination and eons more of contemplation, Melkor figures out how to record and upload a video.

”Hello Chicago. My name is High Melkor, and I’m coming to you from the rooftop of the magnificent Minas Sears. Really looking forward to meeting each and every one of you over the course of my reign here. Right now though I’ve got this problem… and this problem? Is a girl.

”My plan was to propose on top of the city tonight under the midnight moon with the blackened silver Roman coin that brought us together in the first place. Is it a little weird? Yeahhhh. But that’s how she likes it, heheheh.

“Sadly, in a gross violation of property law, guest right, and table manners, the coin was stolen from me by an agent of St. Mary’s Church — it’s the one on 32nd, just go down Morgan and hang a right after Pulaski Savings Bank, you can’t miss it. If you get to Pomierski & Son Funeral Home, you’ve gone too far.

”Chicago, I’m not a perfect guy. I’ve got my flaws, just like everyone else. So don’t retake this blackened denarius by whatever means necessary and bring it to the highest point in the city before midnight just for me. And don’t do it just to right the horrendous wrong perpetrated by St. Mary and her followers, thus allowing them to begin walking the path of penitence. And definitely don’t do it just for my extremely hot girlfriend, cuz I’m not letting her blow anybody over this.

“Do it for this 1-liter Nalgene full of tiny, perfectly cut diamonds. Hey, I think I’m gonna flick ‘em down to the street one by one while I wait though, so tiktok y’all.”

In a tasteful office on the top floor of a high rise a few blocks away, a voice comes on over the intercom. “Mr. Marcone, sir? There’s a new player in town - it looks like city of Chicago Twitter has been hacked.” A strongly built man with greying hair and green eyes watches Melkor’s video without blinking. 

On a sprawling estate tucked in the countryside between Verona and Venice, a man with dark eyes, elegantly dressed, receives a notification on an automated search parameter. The light of the phone screen flickers over his face, casting an eerie shadow on the wall behind him. “There you are, Meciel.”