“So let me get this straight,” I said, scratching my perfectly square chin. “You want me to drop everything, leave behind my entire life, and go with you to Hong Kong on a moment’s notice? You haven’t even told me your name yet!”

“It’s Carl.”

I laughed long and hard. It was an evil, diabolical laugh. The laugh of a champion who has finally encountered a challenge worthy of his skill. It felt good.

“Well then, Carl,” I said, “sign me the fuck up.”

So yeah, I went with the guy. Twenty hours later, I was in the Brotherhood’s AH-64 Apache attack chopper, staring out the window at the Hong Kong skyline.

“Down there,” Carl the Hunchback said, pointing. “That is the location of KEFVGAAIR.”

It was the middle of the night, but luckily I was wearing my advanced prototype Sony XL-9000 scopes with 3D night vision, so I could make out the entire complex in perfect detail.

“It just looks like some random-ass abandoned warehouse.”

“Exactly!” he said. “Just as I promised—a top secret, maximum-security facility that lies at the heart of the Brotherhood’s vast criminal enterprise, entirely invisible to the outside world!”

“Wait, that was serious?” I said. “I thought you were kidding! Why wouldn’t I want the whole world to watch when I kick everyone’s ass and look great doing it?”

“Well, um—”

“I figured you meant ‘top secret maximum-security facility’ in a cool way. Like—and this is just off the top of my head, I haven’t even given this much thought—giant black steel walls and blood-red towers with mysterious sweeping klieg lights and maybe like an iron drawbridge with a giant eagle skull or something.

“And then around the perimeter you’d have armored ninjas and tanks and Robocop ED-209s patrolling everywhere, and then like a moat that’s filled with acid and mutant crocodiles and genetically engineered super-piranhas where if they bite you, you don’t just die, you also get all these little baby super-piranhas growing in your spleen, and when they hatch you start screaming in total agony as these killer fish with vicious teeth are just eating their way out of your spleen.

“And then near the moat and the drawbridge you’ve got these big poisonous iron stakes and at the ends of the stakes are a bunch of ragged, bloody, gory decapitated heads, and a huge flashing neon sign that says ‘WARNING! ALL WHO ATTEMPT TO ENTER THE TOP SECRET KEFVGAAIR WILL DIE. Media, please see Will Call for your official commemorative press passes.’ You know, something awesome like that.”

Carl the Hunchback looked at me for a minute.

“Uh-huh.”

“Listen, Carl the Hunchback—do you mind if I call you that?”

“Yes.”