Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Kris Alexandros: The Fear

I didn't hear the shots. I heard a scream, though, and people running in panic. Then I saw groups of people standing around talking about what they'd seen, which was mostly nothing, and speculating what might have happened based on other people's guesswork. Nobody had a clue.

They say that you remember where you were at the time of major events. Everyone knows where they were when Johnson was assassinated, or when they heard about the Berlin bombings. I don't. But I remember quite clearly where I was when Professor Hawthorne was shot, and that seems like the more important event to me. I was sitting on a barstool at a tall table, sipping a mug of incredibly strong, rich coffee. I was trying to calm down a little after the events of the last few days, so I could make a rational plan.

I could have gone back to my lectures after Rasputin released me, and tried to carry on with a normal life. I could have called Uncle Sal, and asked what the Box had promised him. I could have gone out looking for my friends, trying to work out where they might be. But I was afraid, and I was confused. I didn't know what was the best thing to do, I didn't know which of the factions I'd run into had the right idea. The only thing I was sure of was that I needed to protect my friends, and without my phone I couldn't even find out where they were.

So I went to the pub.

Brassic Bar was a lot quieter during the day, a few groups of students drinking frothy coffee out of impractically tall mugs that looked very much like extra-thin beer steins. I sat in a corner, and the next time one of the bartenders looked in my direction, asked for four black coffees in a large mug. For some reason, a milky coffee in this place was always tall and thin with froth on top, and black coffee came in cups barely larger than a thimble, so I'd got into the habit of ordering more than one in my second year. It was expensive, but it was good coffee.

From my seat, I could see through the balcony to the quad outside, and in the other direction I could keep an eye on the people walking past down Sociology Avenue. It was just like any other day on campus, and for a while it made the chaos we'd been through seem almost unreal. I'd been lucky to be on the periphery, not being attacked or threatened or shot at, but the stories from my friends disturbed me as much as if I'd actually been there. And then it had all been confirmed by Grigori Rasputin appearing in my room. I'd heard the name before, of course, but he was nothing like I'd imagined. Three men with guns, and a man with a clockwork heart. When I looked at all these people, my peers, going about their lives in such normalcy, all that had happened seemed like a dream.

That peace evaporated with a yell in the distance. I guessed somebody had fallen over, or there'd been a fight, or people were cheering on a particularly good (or bad) street performer. It must have been something big, because there was a susurrus of motion along the avenues outside. People called out, or told their friends. Those who hadn't been close enough to see or hear the original event started moving too, wanting to see what was going on, and after about a minute virtually everyone on the avenue was moving north, many of them trying to nonchalantly pretend they weren't rushing over to see what might be behind the disturbance.

I was curious, but content to stay and sip my coffee. Whatever had disturbed the student body, it couldn't compare to tales of soldiers in the club room, or meeting a historical mastermind in my flat. Then I heard a couple of girls by the open window asking their friend outside what had happened, and I caught just a couple of words.

Someone'd been shot. A student went crazy. He walked into a sports science lecture and started shooting. The police won't let anyone in the quad. There were a dozen ambulances parked outside Fairbanks Building.

Then I started paying attention. I had no reason to believe this was connected to Rasputin's men; he'd been pretty clear that he would wait for us at the club room. But two separate gun-related incidents on campus in the same day seemed like too much of a coincidence, and I knew that Marco studied sports science. Could he be the victim?

I threw back the rest of my coffee and got to my feet. They wouldn't let me get to the scene, I was sure of that, but I was also sure the police forces had to at least answer if my friend was among the victims. I strode towards the north door, and almost walked straight into Marco. He was ducking as he walked in, a conspicuously furtive type of walking as if he didn't want anyone to see that he was there.

"Marco!" I gasped, "I was worried, I just heard some people –"

"Yeah, I should have been there," he answered. From his voice, it was almost like he was dead inside. His heart was wounded, and he was compressing all his emotions because he didn't want to deal with them. "My friends. My classmates. I saw Spenser's guys in the crowd as the classroom door opened, and I walked away. Twenty seconds later..."

"Did anyone die?" I knew it was tactless to ask so soon, but that thought didn't cross my mind until the words were already out of my mouth, "I mean, I've only heard rumours, I was going to call you to check but my phone battery is dry, I can't believe something like this... You said Spenser?"

"Yeah, the guy hires out mercenaries as well as discreet storage. You couldn't have known, I'm sure he was involved before you even thought of calling him. And why don't you plug your phone in?" he pointed at some of the power outlets dotted around the Brassic walls. I looked at them, and stared. I knew they were there, but I hadn't even imagined I could use them to charge my phone.

"Great idea," I nodded, "But I haven't got my charger."

"No worries," he pulled a black wafer about the same size as my phone out of his jacket pocket, "Your phone's the same as mine, I think. Dwayne gave me this for Christmas, collapsible charger thing. I always leave it to the last minute to charge, this thing's a lifesaver if you get a moment in a pub or something."

"Awesome," I headed back to the table I'd been at before, and nodded to Steve behind the bar to indicate I'd have another coffee. I wished I'd thought of putting an emergency charger in my jacket pocket; Dwayne had got me one too, proclaiming excitedly that they were going to be standardised so one charger would work for all the phones you had in the future. I'd smiled and nodded, and plugged it into the power strip under my desk. Now I thought about it, I could have saved myself from at least two or three embarrassing situations if I'd got into the habit of carrying the thing with me.

We talked a while, giving my stricken handset time to recover enough that I could actually turn it on. First he said he didn't know what had happened, but then admitted he thought it was something to do with the Box. He couldn't focus, he kept jumping back to thinking about all the friends who had been in that room, all the people who could have been victims. He mentioned Cassandra Pipestone, but only as part of a list of a dozen names. Until I asked what he thought it might have been about; why Spenser would have come for him there.

"They hired some students," he said, "paid our classmates and friends to find a way to get the Box away from us. And then rather than leave evidence, they came in to kill them. Nigel was one of the people who'd gone for it, hoping for a bit more cash. I can't believe it. And that Cassie girl too. They thought it was just a game, and ..."

"Spenser hired them?" I cut in. That was just a little hard to believe. Spenser had only been on the job since Tuesday, surely that wasn't enough time to pull together the kind of elaborate con Marco was describing. But it must be possible somehow, I couldn't deny the facts just because they seemed to describe a situation that made no sense to me.

"I'm not sure," he admitted, "But someone hired them. And then Spenser's goon walked in and..." he hesitated, "Maybe it was somebody else who hired them. But I can say for sure, it was Spenser's guy on the scene."