Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Marco Schmidt: The Cleaners

I stayed in the Brassic with Kris for a while, reassuring him three or four times that I was still alive. Each time, I got the impression he wanted to say something about his morning, but couldn't bring himself to say it. I assumed it was because he'd had an easy morning, nothing that seemed as important as people getting shot at. He'd mutter 'this morning', or 'before I came here', and then go silent. Then ask how I was feeling, if I was okay. Of course I wasn't, I told him, but I'd live. And five minutes later he'd ask again.

In between the dumb questions, I couldn't stop going back over it in my head, wondering if I'd led Cassie to her death. Would I have paid more attention and maybe got her out of there if I didn't find people like her so irritating? It was one thing to make sarky comments about her promiscuity, but something else again that I might have let her die. But then I remembered each time that if she hadn't been shot, it was just as likely to have been one of my friends.

Kris did his best to reassure me that it wasn't our fault. He reminded me wherever the chance came up that we were charged with protecting the Box, but we hadn't made the thing, we hadn't done anything to bring in these guys with guns. We were just the first group of innocents caught in the crossfire, and there was no reason for us to feel guilty about people we knew following in our footsteps. We were just lucky to have survived so far.

Knowing that didn't make me feel any better. Didn't stop me feeling sick when I visualised the scene a few seconds after I left the building. I didn't even know yet, I didn't dare ask the police who else had got out alive, and somehow that was even worse.

When I got a message from Ferrari to say she was on the way, I jumped at the opportunity to do something. Maybe if I was busy, I wouldn't have time to keep playing variations of that scene over and over in my mind. I waved to Kris, like I knew I was going to see him again as soon as his phone was charged. I couldn't help thinking that the way things had been going lately, that wasn't as much a foregone conclusion as it would normally be.

I was at the bus stop when she disembarked, a livid bruise on her forehead but otherwise looking as fine as always. I wondered if she'd been in some kind of incident like the one I just avoided, but there was no polite way to ask. No way I could bring myself to form those words. I couldn't talk about it yet, it was too close to tragedy, and I was terrified to hear that something similar might have happened elsewhere. The memory and guilt was an open wound in my mind.

"I thought Dwayne would be best at looking for a missing person," I shrugged, after a brief greeting and just a few seconds of small talk, "He's good with the computers and everything."

"He's still at Monty's house, and now I can't reach him. So you got me. Besides, I've seen as many fictional detectives do this as he has, and a police procedural or noir thriller probably comes closer to reality than some anime or video game." I couldn't really argue with that.

We went over to the residences where this Mirabelle girl lives. Cassie hadn't actually had her room number, but Ferrari knew right where it was. Dwayne must have looked up some background before sending her to join me, I guessed. It was close to the Theatre Arts faculty buildings, but it was anyone's guess whether the girl had known to ask for a room close to her classes, or if she'd been placed at random by the college's complex and mysterious processes. We didn't know anything about her, save that she was maybe a friend of Cassandra Pipestone.

The building was like most of the other university residences. A front door with a large number of buzzers beside it. The door was supposed to be locked until you buzzed someone to be let in, but the residents had found visitors' habit of pressing every button until the door opened too annoying, so had somehow disabled the lock. It was the same in just about every residence building, the architects thought having to buzz guests through two doors provided extra security, but nobody actually found it worth the effort.

Up a narrow flight of stairs, that seemed to be concrete slabs fixed to two rails looping round the stairwell. About the oldest style of decor on campus, meant this building was one of the original ones put up in the seventies. On the third floor we found another door, with eleven buttons to press to summon various residents. Half way down was the name Mirabelle, and Ferrari pressed the button a few times before guessing that she wasn't home.

"You said she's not been to some society meeting, right?" she asked, "And missed at least one class as well?"

"Yeah. At least, that's what Cassandra said."

"Then we've got every reason to be worried. I didn't want to try this, pretty sure I'm breaking any number of rules just by owning it, but I think the situation justifies taking a closer look." She pulled something from her pocket as she spoke; a key. I had no idea how she would have managed that; but then she'd said earlier that she had a friend in university security who owed her favours. It must be a pretty big favour if she could get a master key for one of the residences. Next to the stuff I'd seen lately, this was small beans. I couldn't be surprised anymore.

The key opened the door without any trouble, and we walked down the corridor until we found the right room. I was staying a step or two behind her, almost without thinking about it. She still had the daisho on her hip, and I was sure I'd seen at least one more blade hiding under her jacket. She would be a lot more effective than I was if anyone leapt out to ambush us. Embarrassing to realise, but my biggest worry at that point was that I might end up in the way.

"Mira?" she called, and knocked on the door. Once, and twice. There was no reply. While we waited, I glanced up and down the corridor. Nearly every door had a sheet of paper pinned to it, a person's name printed in large letters and all kinds of clipart. Signs, an easy way to get to know your neighbours, had become a kind of college tradition. Only one door along here didn't have a sign, and that was the one we were standing in front of. On instinct I leaned forward and pushed at the door. It swung open easily.

Inside, the room looked like any room on campus. It looked just like mine had at the start of the year. One single bed, with a folded duvet and two pillows on top. One desk, one cabinet with drawers, one cheap plastic office chair. One desk lamp and one waste paper basket, filled to overflowing with destroyed documents. There were no books on the bookshelves, no posters on the walls, no clothes in the open closet, and no shredder to explain the text confetti in the bin. The whole room looked like it was ready for somebody to move in, apart from the mass of paper in the bin.

Ferrari took one look around and swore; a foreign word I didn't know, but there was no mistaking the meaning. Someone had searched this room and removed everything they thought might be of interest to us. I went over to the shredded paper, and found that it was packed down so tightly I could barely lift the bin.

"Whoever they are, they're professionals," Ferrari commented, "No suspicion from the neighbours. The shredded paper is a clear red herring, probably a load of textbooks or something. And it's a threat, a clear sign that she hasn't just up and left on her own."

"Yeah, I don't like this," I admitted, "I think we've ended up dealing with some really bad people. You think this is that Spenser's men? I mean, Cassie recognised one of them as the guy who'd given her instructions."

"What did she say, again? This is clearly serious now, so I want to know everything I can." I just nodded, and repeated back what Cassie had told me as best I could. She nodded, occasionally asked questions that I couldn't answer because I hadn't thought to put them to Cassie. I tried not to think that I might never get a chance to ask those questions, that a girl I barely knew from some society could have died because she'd gotten too mixed up in our problems. I tried to remind myself that she'd known about the Box before we had, if her story was true, that we'd both been thrown into something that was more serious and deadly than we realised.

But all my reassurances didn't help. The things I could say to myself didn't make me feel better at all.