Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Marco Schmidt: Into Battle

We ran across the quad, and my heart was pounding. I knew it was probably too late, but I wasn't thinking about what I was doing at that point. I couldn't live with myself if someone else got to the Box when we could have stopped them. We'd heard that other societies might be trying to open it, and our first thought was to go and make sure nobody had invaded our room already.

Any other time, my heart would have been racing just from running alongside Ferrari, trying to match her speed. She was graceful, and beautiful, and fast. Best of everything. But I had my pride, I knew that in a contest of straight running on a track I could outpace her. Maybe nobody else got it, but that's what mattered to me back then, I just wanted to show her that I could win in one competition, and I think we both enjoyed having a serious challenge. But this time, she was so close and yet all I could think of was getting to the Mendeleev building as quickly as possible.

We came to the main doors, and there were two men in black standing there. Black T-shirts, black slacks, black hats. No distinguishing features at all, though their complexion and face shapes made me think they were most likely from somewhere in Eastern Europe originally. Then I saw that one of them was carrying a gun. My eyes must have bugged out like a cartoon character, I couldn't believe any of the other clubs would actually do something like that. Maybe they were the college paintball team or something. But that weapon looked real to me; it looked like it could cause some serious pain. I turned to look at Ferrari, who had reacted quicker than me and was dashing down the side of the building. I turned to follow, pushing my legs for just another little burst to catch up. It was painful, and I knew my muscles would be as responsive as water balloons in ten minutes, but if some other society was coming in to get the Box, then getting to the room before them was the only thing that mattered.

As I turned, I saw a couple of other guys in the same black uniform striding out down the corridor towards the other door. If they were going to stop us coming in that way, then I was sure we'd get there first. Unless they'd seen us running and they decided to hurry up too, of course. But Ferrari had other ideas. Down the side of the building was a little strip of grass and a few trees, so there was a small distance between the path and the wall. I was almost certain I could get to the other door ahead of these guys, whoever they were, but Ferrari wasn't going to take any chances. Instead of running she decided to climb, grabbed a branch of one of the trees and swung herself up to a higher branch and then another.

This wasn't a contest between us. I could run faster, but I didn't have that grace or dexterity. I glanced up and saw an upstairs window standing open, and suddenly it was clear what she had in mind. She was climbing fast enough that she would surely get up there and out of the room faster than I could get to the far corner of the building and up the steps, even if there wasn't anyone waiting for us. This was supposed to be a test of ingenuity and thinking outside the box, and she was certainly doing that.

'This isn't a competition' I told myself, 'I can get a few moments alone with the Box after we found somewhere safe to put it. The other societies are my only rivals now.' I found I could easily think about deceiving the society. It was only if I thought about it as betraying Ferrari, or Dwayne that it started to worry me. I hauled myself up the tree after her, keeping half an eye on where she put her hands and feet. It was easier than trying to plot my own route up, and I didn't mind being a few steps behind her if we weren't in competition.

The window led to a seminar room, one of the ones that had been a science lab at some point in the past. There were high benches all the way around the walls, wooden surfaces pitted by the scratching of a few decades of pens, the subtle vandalism of compass point scratchings adding up to make the golden-bronze timbers not quite level. I'd hated desks like that in high school, and I was glad that I'd never had to use them at college. Whichever faculty had the room now probably agreed, which was why the main part of the room was filled with identical grey desks, some kind of cheap wood with a plastic veneer on top to keep them smooth regardless of the punishment they were subjected to.