Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Dwayne Carlisle: Under Siege

I didn't know what I was doing. That would have been obvious to any impartial observer, but I doubted there were many of those around. I'd taken an impression of the helical key, but making a new key from that template would be a lot harder than I'd expected.

My impression was in a block of soap, some weird stuff that was probably made for a specific purpose, that seemed both harder and more rubbery than a regular bar. But that had been done by rolling the key across the surface, pressing hard. To make that into a mould, I'd have to bend it round into a circle. Fortunately,I'd also noticed that the key head's internal diameter was just large enough to push a penny into. So if I broke up the soap, and wrapped my impression around a stack of pennies with a little padding, I might just get a mould that would work.

Molten aluminium should be easy to work with. Drinks cans were often made of alloys that could be melted on a domestic stove, if you know what you're doing. The hard part with that would be controlling molten metal, which as you might expect could do some damage. But even if I could make my impressions into a mould, and manage to cast a replacement key, there was no guarantee it would work.

When I'd planned to make a duplicate key so I could help Cassie, I hadn't really thought about the effort involved. And in that case, if it didn't work, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But now we needed to get the Box open no matter what. I ran around the house, checking cupboards, looking for anything I could use to make a key that wasn't so time consuming, unreliable, and dangerous.

Monty was still downstairs. I'd brought a wheeled office chair down so she could sit comfortably while she talked to the girl in the Box. She said she'd been in the safe earlier talking, but had never thought to get a seat. I also sent Kris another text message, and an email, saying we needed the key back here pronto. Then I texted Ferrari and Marco too, saying the same thing, in case they found him before he got my message. I had to hope the message would get through to at least one of them.

I finished my frantic run through the house, picking up everything I could think of that might be useful. I had two shopping bags in my hand now, one filled with possible materials and tools to try out, and the other with snack foods and energy drinks so I wouldn't have any reason to leave the desk once I started trying to put this key together. I looked down at my phone again, wondering if any of the others had got back to me so I wouldn't have to sink effort into what was probably an impossible project.

'No Signal', I looked at the phone in confusion. There wasn't a response from any of the others, but my phone didn't have a signal, which seemed incredibly unlikely given that I'd had three bars most of yesterday evening. I didn't have time to think about it too much though. There was a pounding on the front door, and a yelling voice: "Armed police! Stand back from the door and put your hands where we can see them!"

The house was filled with rhythmic crashing as I sprinted down the stairs. I don't know why I ran, I guess I was less inclined to believe their authority after the fake CIA yesterday. The fact that they'd decided to break down the door rather than knocking was also a bad sign. I hit the bottom of the stairs and stumbled to a halt. Down here, too, someone was pounding on the door with a heavy weight. The plaster was cracked all around the door, and it looked like it might give up at any minute, but for five or ten seconds it held.

Monty was huddled up on her chair, eyes closed and shaking. I couldn't blame her. For a second I didn't know what to do, but then I saw the oversized metal door with a dresser mounted on the front of it. We didn't know if these guys were real police or not, and we didn't know if they were on our side. But we had to protect Hope from them. I ran over and twisted the handle on the control panel, starting the door on its ponderous journey to closure. Then I wheeled the chair, with Monty still on it, out of the way. If these people could convince us they were going to help, we could let them into the safe. If not, the real police would surely be here before they managed anything.

"Sorry Hope," I called, "Can you be brave awhile? We're going to have to–"

"No!" Monty snapped, "We're not leav–" The rest of her reply was cut off by a louder crash from the floor above, presumably the front door finally giving in to a battering ram. Monty ran over to the painting that covered the safe controls, and twisted it back into place. A gentle lift hooked it onto the pin in one corner of the panel, so it wouldn't move in response to a casual knock. Then she grabbed the bag of snacks from me and darted into the safe. I dived in after her, of course.

"Careful!" I said, "We're going to get locked in here, think about what you're doing." My words were punctuated by crashes and bangs, as what sounded like a squad of rhinos in jackboots checked out every room one by one.

"The guys who installed the safe refitted the whole basement, nobody will get in through the back door. And the blinds are down, so they couldn't even look in to see what we're doing. I almost got shut in here a few times when I was a kid, so Daddy had it set up with air recycling, climate stabilisers, lights, and emergency controls on the inside. I grabbed one of the phone handsets, and there's some fancy system that means they still work in here. So if we're lucky, we can watch them using the intercom and they might not even know we're home if the door finishes closing before they come down here."

I looked at her in surprise, in the last sliver of light shining through the closing door. She was still upset, maybe still crying, but she'd thought about the right thing to do. I'd thought she was just panicking, and I'd have to protect her on my own. But in the end, she knew exactly how to cope in a crisis.

The shaft of light around the edge of the door got thinner and thinner, second by second. The stomping upstairs got a little fainter; maybe part of the group was heading up. Then it was dark in our little hidey hole, except for the faint glimmer of a couple of phone screens. The banging and footsteps were muted about the same time, fading to complete silence as the door approached its final position. One final grinding clang as the bolts locked into place, and the only sound was our breathing, and the faint whisper of the ventilation system.