John Cena's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Thursday came gray and cold. Cena drove to the council building before the meeting and found a wooden plaque nailed to the front door. Bold black letters spelled out the formal challenge against Triple H's vote. A clerk stood beside it with a clipboard. She said the council would hear arguments at ten and rule before noon. Cena read the plaque twice and went inside. Triple H was already in the chamber, sash across his shoulder, sitting in the seat Harris had left empty. He did not turn when Cena came in. Two reporters sat in the back row. A council member opened a binder and read the challenge aloud. Friendship of twenty years. Joint business ventures. A public record of support. The member said no honest vote could come from that chair on this question. He asked Triple H to recuse. Triple H stood. He said he had read the rule. He said the rule allowed a member to answer the challenge before the full council voted on it. Then he laid a stone tablet on the table. It was old and mossy at the edges, carved with tally marks down one face. He said he had pulled it from the town archive that morning. He said it listed every close vote Harris had ruled on since 2018, and showed how Harris had blocked four arts petitions by one vote each time. He said the seat he now held had been used against the arch for years, and the council had never once challenged that. He sat back down. The room went quiet. The chair called for the vote on the challenge. Three hands went up to bar Triple H. Three hands went up to let him keep the vote. The chair broke the tie himself. He said the friendship was real and on the record, and the optics could not be ignored. He ruled the challenge upheld. Triple H could keep the seat. He could not vote on the blank stone. A clerk walked over and lifted the green sash from his shoulder for the duration of that one item. Outside, past the window, Cena could see the pine banner Triple H had hung on the cabin fence the night before, three deep H's cut into the wood, already wet from the morning rain. Triple H found Cena in the hallway after. He did not apologize. He said the tablet would stay in the record. He said four other members had watched Harris work for years and owed nothing to anyone now. He said the vote would come next week, and he would not be in it, but the room would. Then he walked out to his truck. Cena stood with the plaque still visible through the open door. His best friend held a seat he could not use. The stone was still blank. The vote was still coming. He had one week to find three hands of his own.