Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Dwayne Carlisle: The Negotiator

I didn't know what I was supposed to be thinking. This was just a time capsule, though some societies seemed to be taking it a lot more seriously for reasons that made no sense to me at all. I didn't know what was going on, and I couldn't ask the others without revealing that I already knew the Box was supposed to be opened each year.

There had been guys watching us all the way around the ring road. That was creepy enough, but I figured out right away they weren't likely to have posted sentries at the old farm. You could get there by car from both sides, but taking vehicles into any of the courtyards was strictly forbidden, and only someone who'd found the stories behind the old buildings interesting enough to study would even realise it was possible to get through without going through the building. Then we'd seen them on the front parking area, and I'd thought that confirmed my first assumption; that they were campus security, on the warpath after last night's conflict between societies had blown up with the sounding of the fire alarm. Only campus security would have thought to put someone in the farm, they knew the place well enough.They had to be after answers.

The guy outside my window was saying something to Monty and Ferrari. He looked pretty angry, I had to guess it was something about them riding on the back of the truck, as well as cutting through the old farm where we certainly weren't allowed to be. I almost stepped out to defend Monty, to say this hadn't been their idea at all and that they should just blame me for taking this route. But then Ferrari was blazing past in their car, along the road back to campus, and we were moving off as well. I caught sight of one security guy lying in the dirt, and my stomach clenched in sudden terror. What had we done? But just when I was starting to fear for my academic career, or even worry about ending up in prison, I saw the guy who was still standing chasing after Ferrari's car, taking shots. He was armed, which certainly wasn't normal for campus security, and then I realised that they were in a dark car, not one of the ubiquitous vans with the university logo on the side.

By the time we reached the industrial park, I was on the edge of some kind of breakdown, but just managing to project a normal exterior. I wasn't shaking, because I was making every effort to seem like I could cope with this. The others didn't know what was going on, they had no idea what the Box even was, but they were managing to do whatever it took to defend it even so. I had a better clue, so I should find it easier to do the right thing. But the number of people trying to get at the Box, that really didn't make any sense, and the only thing I could think of to do about that was ignoring it.

We stopped in a large parking lot before we moved in to hand over the Box to the storage contractors. Marco said he wanted to make sure Monty was okay, and that made plenty of sense. She'd been outside as we raced along those lanes, the hedgerows brushing against the side of the truck. She'd probably been peppered with bits of debris as we broke off the tips of branches or whatever, and even a little twig could hurt if it was moving fast enough. Maybe it would have been better not to put up this big macho facade, then maybe the others might realise I needed a little reassurance as well.

I was going over it in my head, trying to reconcile all the facts that didn't make any sense, but there were simply too many of them. I stepped out a good while after Marco had, hoping he hadn't read weakness in my hesitation, but it seemed that Monty didn't need anything I could offer. She looked like she was coping better than I was, somehow. She was the last person I would have expected to cope well in a crisis, but they were deep in conversation. Maybe she was coping better because she felt no hesitation about just saying how she felt, she didn't feel like she was obliged to show she was good. She'd tell Marco what she was worried about and then there would be no more worries.

I glanced around at the parked vehicles. Mostly plumbers and fitters, vans with logos on the side. No dark saloon cars. But when I looked towards the factory shop behind us, there was nobody moving at the counter. The door was open, but the place looked deserted. Something was wrong there, something more subtle than the pairs of suited men I'd been looking for. I turned slowly, looking in every direction, and realised there wasn't a single person in sight. Then I saw movement, just the faintest flicker. Not in line of sight, but reflected in the shiny parts of a big brushed aluminium sign on the factory opposite. The image was blurred and hard to make out, but there was enough movement to make me think there was someone lurking just around the corner of the building. Someone else, reflected in the windows of a plumber's van, was crouching where we couldn't see them. I could make out suits this time; I was sure in an instant that they'd caught up with us, and this time they'd learned from their mistakes.