Checkmate. 2

Chapter 2 - White and Black

At five minutes to the meeting time he had been given, Justin stopped his car just inside the front gates, and killed the engine as he awaited the arrival of whoever had gone through the effort to get him here.  Or, that was what Justin expected; he hoped, on the other hand, that the joke would go further.  It was exhilarating, like when he used to play in chess tournaments across the country.  He wanted nothing more than to see the plan continue, so he could try to guess what would come next, to expect what his opponent would do before he even did it.

With one minute left to eleven, another car pulled up, this one parking just outside of the front entrance.  A man easily in his fifties stepped out, dressed in a white suit and black tie with his hair slicked back in a neat mix of gray and black.  He looked at Justin's car, looked away again, and then back again just as the clock turned to eleven.

Justin opened his door slowly and stepped out, his eyes holding steady on the other man as he tried to judge his demeanor.  Was this the man behind it all, or just another pawn?  It was hard to tell, with the shadows from the overhead street lamps throwing dark shadows across half of the man's face.

"Hello," Justin called, walking over to the man and stopping a few feet away.

The man in the white suit nodded, and gestured to his car.  He wanted Justin to get in.

"Where are we going?"  He was almost sure that the joke was innocent and harmless.  Almost sure.

Instead of answer, the man in the white suit walked to the back door of the car and opened it enough for Justin to see its occupant - a young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, dressed in a smooth white dress and smiling at him with bright, white teeth.  "Come on in," she said sweetly.

Justin sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets and walking over to the car.  It was one thing to be around strangers; it was quite another thing to be around attractive women.  Justin always had a problem with girls who were pretty but had no knowledge of chess - it seemed whenever he tried to talk to one, all that came out were corny jokes or weak conversation starters, most of which having something to do with a king, bishop and knight in a bar together.

The girl in the white dress slid across the seat for Justin to get in, and when the door closed she moved closer to him again, smiling again with her too-white teeth and offering her hand.  "Hi," she said brightly, shaking his hand lightly and nodding.  "My name's Kylee, and I'll be your escort for tonight."

Justin closed his eyes and groaned mentally; he knew all too well what kind of tone the term 'escort' carried, and for as much as he was a teenager suffering from raging hormones and no outlet for them, he was also a pretty decent Christian, at least when it came to alcohol and adult pleasures.  "Hi," he managed to say, opening his eyes again and trying to return Kylee's bright - and by bright there was really no other word to describe it - smile.

As the car started up and took off, going back in direction it had come from, Kylee began inching closer to him and, eventually, pointing out toward different landmarks of sorts.  "That's where a lot of members go to get their morning coffee," she said, pointing to a near empty Starbucks.  "And there's the mini-golf course that the last President of the Society designed and built with his own two hands."

By the time the car stopped, Kylee had all but crawled onto Justin's lap, and when the man in the white suit opened the door on Justin's side, he nearly fell out with Kylee on top of him.  A part of him wondered if she had wanted that.  "Where are we now?" he asked as he quickly hopped out of the car, looking around and trying to collect himself.

"This," Kylee said, stepping up next to him, invading his personal space again and spreading her arms in a dramatic fashion, "is the White and Black Society."

Justin looked around, taking in the 'view' of an aging wooded area that bordered the small, two-way road they had stopped on.  "Wow," he said, letting his disappointment leak into his tone.  "After everything that led up to this, I was expecting... more."

"More?" Kylee asked.

"Well, it's all a bit anti-climactic, isn't it?"

The man in the white suit closed the car door and locked it with a press of a button, then pocketed the keys and turned off to walk down a barely-distinguishable path into the woods.  Kylee started to follow him, taking Justin's hand and smiling at him in a way that reflected the street lights off of her teeth and almost directly into his eyes.  "You're silly," she said, suddenly sounding even more bubbly and giddy than she had on the drive.  "We can't see the actual buildings yet!"

Justin should have realized as much; whoever went through the trouble to get him into a car with a slightly intimidating man and an "escort" in a white dress, would not be the type of person to stop halfway.  No, there would be more.  He let Kylee lead him into the woods, noticing as she slowed down to come up alongside him, groaning again mentally as she shifted the grip on his hand from pulling him along to walking as if the two were taking a moonlit stroll on the beach.

As she drifted closer to him, he came to realize that the man in the white suit had gotten far ahead of them, and was now out of sight.  Kylee seemed to be content to stop and spend however much time she could with him in the woods, and Justin felt himself giving way to her.  In a snap decision by his moral compass, he stopped and looked over at her.  "How much farther is it?" he asked, letting go of her hand.

"Just a bit further," Kylee said sweetly, clasping her hands behind her back.  "Do you want to take a break?"

"No."  Justin's reply came quicker than even he expected, but it did the trick.  Kylee nodded silently and brushed her dress off with her hands, looking at the ground for a moment before looking back up at him and, without the same giddiness as she had before, gestured for him to follow her.  "Come on, it's just another hundred feet or so."

Sighing softly with relief, Justin walked behind her, glancing around the woods that were, as he quickly noticed, lit by some light that he could not see; there were no obvious lamps or even a strong enough light to judge by the shadows where the light was coming from.  And now that Kylee had stopped smiling, Justin was left without any possible light sources.  "Hey, Kylee?" he asked.  "Where's all the light coming from?"

"Oh, that's the reflections of the moon," the girl in the white dress said, almost nonchalant.  "The members of the White and Black Society wanted to have some light in here, but of course wanted to maintain their secrecy, so they installed small shards of glass into the trees and bushes and stuff."

"Oh."  Justin was left dumbfounded, which was a rare occurence.  "Well, that's... cool."  He wondered how much time it had taken for the entire process to be completed.  Looking around at the dozens of trees he could see - and thinking about the hundreds of others in the area - he figured years.

Kylee glanced back at Justin and, seeing his stunned look, smiled lightly.  "Come on," she said, "they're going to be waiting for us by now."  She took his hand and started to lead him forward again, weaving around the trees as they began to grow closer together.

Justin followed silently and glanced around at the trees as he did, trying to pick out the mirrors in the woodwork.  But as he walked, he saw the trees starting to thin out again, and turned his eyes forward to where there was a new - and distinctly electric - source of light growing.  "Is this it?" he asked, wanting to be ready for the next step of the practical joke.

"Yes," Kylee said, nodding.  "This is it."  She led him out of the woods and turned to him, giggling despite herself at his stunned face.  "It's like he was expecting something else," she said airily, looking over at the man in the white suit, who was now accompanied by another man - also dressed in a white suit, but with a white tie instead of a black one.  This second man had an air of authority around him, but not from size or intimidation.  He was a leader.

The man smiled a white, gleaming smile at Justin.  "I'm glad you made it."