[b]Addis Ababa, Capital of the [s]Seven Kingdoms[/s] African Empire[/b]

[i]Malta.[/i]

There had been something in the air when Dr. Sisi left the Hassan's offices in the government's Imperial Palace. Walinzi agents were there, dressed in black knee-length greatcoats and sunglasses. They looked like reapers, skulking in the corner and talking in hushed voices about something Sisi could not understand. [i]Malta. I am absolute on this matter. One of the phantomed operatives made mention of that knighted isle.[/i]

He sat in the back of an air-conditioned limousine, the noontime Addis Ababa sun darkened by the tint of his windows so much that it looked like dawn. The seats were slick black leather, and the plush lining of the frame was an eggshell white. Sisi rested royally with his leg on one cheek, his body turned so that one pressed firmly ahead of the other. A gold tipped cane rested next to him, holding down a perfectly folded oil-black coat. 

From the outside, his ride looked out of place among the weighed down sedans and ill-repaired trucks with their chipping paint and make-shift parts. His was a Maybach - an old symbol of German luxury from a generation ago when the last of the true European aristocrats began to fade away . White-wall tires, washed tirelessly by those in his service and protected by polished black fenders. The nose of the car was long and thing, ending in a silver grill and impeccable raised round headlights. The cab was more than any simple four-door sedan - it was smooth and rounded, like something designed by artisans rather than engineers. It was what any gentleman such as Sisi would prefer. Sisi had traveled Europe in his youth, and he had fell in love with the ruins that existed behind the modern reconstructions. Old castles hugging hilltops, velvet carpets and silk sleepwear. He discovered western learning and western speech. He loved it all, and it defined him.

But he had never been to Malta. He knew little about the island, save for its Christian past. The Knights of St. John - crusader knights that had harried the Holy Land as the Knights Hospitaller - held the island against Turks and ruled it as their sovereign land through the European golden age, until Napoleon took it. And then it was British. And then it was Spanish.

[i]Hispania. There is that heinous name label again. How they vex my employers.[/i] The image of Sotelo made newspapers and television broadcasts more often than any other world leader. He was a well dressed man, with slicked back hair and pointed features. There was a charisma too him that was difficult to nail - different from Yaqob's young warmth. It was stone, solid and certain. But there was also something else. [i]I am scholar of the mind and an abiding student of the brain. Sotelo is concealing a truth with... those eyes.[/i]

Spain was a unique customer from the perspective of Sisi's... other ventures. The Spanish had money - more money than there was in Africa, there was no doubt - but there was some obstacle in the way of Sisi's custom. It was not simply borders - smugglers always found a way, even into the supposedly impregnable China. Spain had simply not warmed up in the way he would have liked. 

Psychedelics were a unique sort of drug. Uppers and downers had ruled the market for ages, with the more hallucinogenic narcotics hiding in monasteries and sweat lodges. Someone had once told him that psychedelic mushrooms had been found to be relatively abundant on Sinai, where God was said to have given Moses the laws of the land. It was blasphemous, surely, but it was hard for Sisi to pretend that it wasn't an amusing fact at least. When he had heard it, he had smirked and done the sign of the cross lazily - but sincerely - over his chest. 

[i]Malta[/i] 

Sisi thought of knights again, and he thought of Sotelo. It brought an image of the later to mind, dressed in silvery steel with a surcoat displaying the Spanish flag. [i]I imagine that is how he sees himself.[/i]

They reached one of the centers of the city, where three of the capitol's main arteries met in a single turnabout. In the center was the statue of a lion carved in stained dark granite - some of the stains coming from the rock, while others were simply the white smear of bird droppings. It was a true enough depiction of a lions form, but there was something square about the design. The folds of its mane, the shape of its paws against the flat top of its base, and it's sturdy jaw... it was all square in some vague way. In it's left paw, it held a long sceptre and on it's head it wore a crown topped by the Ethiopian cross - a cross whom's branches flared out into three ornately designed diamond shapes. 

And behind him, a panorama of the city spun around.

Addis Ababa was small. White-wash buildings stood next to egg-shell blue and pale pink, each one heavily plastered. There were a few buildings that could truly be called skyscrapers. Few of them reached even twenty floors, and even fewer - a small handful of towers built from dull concrete and glass - reached thirty or forty.

Sisi reached for a small manila folder sitting neatly next to his coat. The label on top of it read "Project Think." [i]What a ghastly title.[/i] He opened it and flipped several pages in.

It was all updates on the discoveries of his laboratory in the depths of the Congo. The subjects there had been acquired from the Germans during their invasion six years prior, and they had mostly been used up. The few remaining - a few hundred at best - had been moved to a new facility in the jungle interior. If Sisi had been given a choice, he would have managed them completely alone - a subsidiary of the school he operated in Kinshasa. Those students who rose to the very top of his classes were given the privilege of working on his prized subjects. [i]With exception of the one who protested so indignantly. That was ugly business.[/i]

But the rest of his manpower came from the Walinzi, and Sisi's friendship with Ras Hassan. They had met during that war, when Sisi fed Hassan the basic materials he needed to win. Food, clothing, ammo... Hassan had found himself trapped in the African interior, and Sisi's supplies were the lifeblood of his war effort. 

Sisi flipped a few more pages. 

[indent]Slow substitution of CSF with Lysergide produced limited results. Early experiences suggested a reaction similar to typical inter-venous usage, but this was soon followed by a catatonic state. Death followed. The statistical outflows...[/indent]

[i]A peculier choice for experimentation.[/i] Sisi wondered. He had preferred surgical matters to these more chemical ones, but he was proud to admit that his students had discovered interesting bits of information as well. Still, the Congo lab was no longer interesting. Too much had been done there already, and even their remaining subjects had nearly reached the point of being so often used that there were too many confounding factors working against their experiments.

"Doctor." the driver called back. Sisi looked up and recognized where they were immediately. "We have arrived. Your plane is ready on the tarmac."

"Pleasant. Marvelous." Sisi answered. He scooped up his cane and folded his jacket under his arm. 

[i]Enough of Africa. I have a better laboratory to revel in.[/i]