Broken Hourglass (Sanscest Multiship)

Chapter 15 - Friendly Conversation

"I win again!," Gale exclaimed.

"Only because I let you!," Dust protested.

"Keep telling yourself that, Dusty," she shot back.

The teens were playing with the racing simulator in Dust's room, current score: Gale - 5 Dust - 4. Another close game, and neither of them were gracious winners. What they were, was a pair of idiot teens with massive crushes on each other.

They're actually pretty cute together.

That's irrelevant now.

The signal beeped to show a passing of another hour. "You got time for one more?," Dust asked.

"Let's make it interesting. You pick the bet," Gale said playfully bumping Dust's arm with her elbow.

In all of his youthful infinite wisdom, Dust picked probably the dumbest thing ever to say. "If I win, will you go out with me?"

"I have a better idea. You, me, next Tuesday, we go to those races you're always talking about. Loser pays."

That was better than what Dust was hoping for. "Computer, load track 15."

The simulation sprang to work, creating steering wheels in their hands as the visual of a brightly light city scape overtook the room.

—
Dust was surprised by the group he was put in. The only one of them he actually talked to was Error. But, overall, this group didn't seem too bad, it could definitely be worse. Worse being being stuck with the not-all-there Ink, quick-to-violence Cross and Horror, and whatever was up with Nightmare.

They were sat in a room with a holo-display and Epic talked at them about what the Asset Recovery agents' job entailed. It was fairly simple, the main objective was to find and return objects that had been displaced, but depending on the situation could work closely with either Black Ops or Search & Rescue. Apparently, it was extremely uncommon for Black Ops and Search & Rescue to work together.

"Ok, brahs, we're doing a training exercise," Epic told them. He tossed an orange metal box at the group. "I don't know what this is. Figure it out; you have 10 minutes."

Error was the one who caught the cube. Xe turned it over without anything of note showing on any of the faces. With a shrug, Error passed it to Reaper.

Each face of the object was milled flat with no obvious breaks in surface. It was definitely a puzzle box, Dust had seen enough of those to recognize one quickly.

Sci then had the box and almost immediately managed to twist off one of the corners, confirming for everyone what Dust already knew. Being partiality solved, the rest of the cube came apart easily. The pile of parts, mostly long rectangular shapes with chunks taken out and other jutting shapes for interlocks, was topped by a flat clear rectangle, about the size of a key card. Those were outdated by his time's standards, but being much harder to track, still found a use in illegal operations. Dust wasn't convinced that it was a key card.

The next person in line to have the thing was Outer. He focused on the key card-like object, turning it over in his hands. Holding it up to the light, Outer inspected the card closer, some barely visible lines were revealed by the strong light, but he didn't react. There was no magnetic strip so it couldn't be an actual key card, but Dust couldn't place exactly where he'd seen this kind of thing before.

Then, it was Dust's turn to have the object. General consensus was only the clear card was important so Dust only took note of that. He looked around the room to see if they were left any clues, when his eyes landed on a holodisplay with a scanner already set up. Going over to it, he started to get the feeling it was too easy.