Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Marco Schmidt: Retreival

Monty leaned closer to the intercom box as she spoke: "I'm looking for Mirabelle. We've been worried about her, and I just wanted to check she's okay."

"Uhh, sure," the static hiss from the speaker stopped, and a door further along the corridor opened. A girl with frizzy brown hair and dressed for the gym walked towards us, peered through the little glass pane in the door, and then reached for the lock.

"Mira's friends?" she shrugged, "It's number seven, the one with no name on the door.

"Thanks," I muttered as we filed past her, "I hope she's alright." I wasn't feeling quite comfortable in the situation myself. The girl seemed kind of detached, cold. She didn't ask who we were, or where we knew Mira from, and she didn't express any concern over her neighbour's well being. If there was some feud between the girls on this floor, or this Mirabelle got into trouble enough that someone looking for her wasn't out of the ordinary, then her disappearance might have nothing to do with us after all. I wasn't sure if I should be shocked or relieved by that thought.

I pushed open the door. The room was bare, no personal effects of any kind. The only things in the room were a desk, bookshelves, and a bed, all broken into pieces. The mattress was slashed, and stuffing and stray springs littered a streak across the floor. Slivers of wood were scattered around, and everything in the room was broken. Even the bin full of shredded paper had been dumped out, the bottom torn off. Maybe they'd wanted to check there wasn't a secret compartment in there, or maybe whoever had done this just wanted to show off their need for violence.

I gasped, surprised the room had changed so much in just an hour or so. A second shocked intake of breath beside me was Monty. The neighbour hadn't come with us to the door, she was just waiting at the end of the corridor. That's when I knew something was very wrong, because there was no reason for that girl to still be there. She could just as easily have come to pry into her neighbour's business, or if she wasn't concerned she could have gone back to her own room. The door was still open, between her and us.

There was no reason she would stay there. This room and her own were in the same direction, so whatever she intended she should have been walking towards us. Whether she trusted us or not, whether she cared about Mira or not. There was no reason for her to stay back there, almost like she was trying to stay out of the way.

"It's a trap!" I hissed. Almost at the same moment, my suspicions were confirmed. There was a rectangle of light outside the two doors that were open, diffuse sunlight highlighting an area of the carpet after passing through the rooms. Outside this room, that little patch of light on the carpet and the far wall contained two silhouettes, moving slightly as me and Monty turned. The light by the other door had figures in it too, moving towards the door.

My instinct was to run towards the end of the corridor, to get out of there before we could find out who those guys were. Just looking at their shadows, I don't know how, I could read the body language well enough to see three guys, well muscled and well armed. But they were between us and the door, and if they were expecting us at all, there was nothing to stop them shooting. Even if we got past them, they could turn and fire after us, which would put the unnamed neighbour in harm's way. She'd probably been menaced enough, if these guys were anything like the fake CIA we'd encountered before.

I couldn't do that. I reached for Monty's wrist, but stopped myself before I grabbed her; she'd been through enough in her life, and I had no right to make life-or-death decisions for her when I wasn't even sure of the right thing to do. I darted into the room, into the trap, and started kicking at the pile of shredded paper. If they were waiting to ambush us, there was a chance however slim that they hadn't thought to sort through all the pieces, and hadn't found the key.

I struck gold; twenty seconds. They'd broken apart every stick of furniture (and I could only guess that the damage had been done by the guys now pouring out of the next room), but they'd assumed the waste paper was a distraction, a middle-finger salute from whoever had taken Mira away. They hadn't seen it as a hiding place, or their cursory inspection hadn't found the thing they were looking for.

Or it was the bait to keep us here while they gathered their forces outside, that was always possible. But I didn't know who they were, or why. The world was going crazy and it seemed there were at least two groups after the Box, and I had no idea how they were related to each other, or what other politics there might be between them. My best guess in that instant was the girl's family – surely they would be out doing everything in their power to get her back – and whoever else wanted to kidnap or harm her for their own nefarious ends. Now one of those groups, I could get behind helping. But I didn't know who was who, there was no way to find out, and we didn't have time to think.

My brain was running in overdrive as I explored the room. We had seconds, maybe less. There was a flatbed truck outside the window, and we were only one level up, so that might be a safe distance to fall. Monty wasn't a gymnast, though, and I wasn't at all sure she'd make the drop in any state to keep running.

"Here!" I barked at her, "On three!" I tossed the key to her and pointed, grabbing one of the biggest bits of the bookcase at the same time. I darted back towards the door, throwing the latch on just as heavy footsteps arrived outside. I counted to three loudly, as much to psych myself up as anything, and I knew they could hear me. I assumed the window would be locked, and I didn't want to waste time looking for the key, so I just charged forward swinging a heavy chunk of timber in front of me.

I hit the truck bed just as I heard the crash of the door bursting open behind us. Splinters of glass rained around me like powder, fortunately not the sharp kind. I knew how to fall properly, at least, and the boxes in the back of the truck collapsed to take some of the impact, but the shock was still jarring and it took me a second or two to stand again. By the time I turned around there was a man standing in the window. Black shirt, black beret, face twisted by a scowl, and a gun in both hands. Maybe one of the Russians, I didn't wait around long enough to hear his accent.

I could have sprinted across the avenue to another building, but he would have had a clear view of me the whole way. Instead I dropped off the tailgate and got as close to the wall as I could. Luckily this was one of the buildings that made a cheap sheltered walkway by having the upper floors overhang slightly, so they couldn't get a clear view of me from above.

"Split up!" I yelled, knowing they would be able to hear me but not having any better ideas, and then turned left and ran along close to the wall. It wouldn't take them long to come out of the building, so I ran hard. Not a sprinting pace, but a slightly gentler gait that I could keep up for four hundred metres if I really pushed myself.

I rounded the corner, vaulted the benches around and between a small group of trees, and I was on Coulton Way. There were fewer places to shelter, but there was a wide, glass-roofed strip here to shelter students queueing for the campus theatre hall in the inevitable rain. It wasn't much, but was supported by a dozen concrete pillars decorated with all kinds of notices and advertisements. Those would provide shelter until I could get deeper into the crowds, I could duck from one pillar to another to try to avoid being seen.

I really hoped those men were all pursuing. I'd gambled on the fact that they'd all been lying in wait in the neighbour's room, where there was likely only room for three or four men at most. That meant that if they wanted to chase somebody, splitting up would leave them without enough men for either group to be effective.

I could see the scene in my mind's eye now, playing out just as I'd planned. I could only hope that was actually the case. Three men burst into the room, and saw pieces of artificial glass settling among the debris from the shattered furniture. One looked out of the window, and saw me rolling to a stop on the ground below. They might get a shot off before I was too close beneath them, but I only needed to be lucky once. I'd imagined one guy leaping out after me, while the other two dashed back to the stairwell and out of the main doors.

As the room was quiet again, in the image in my mind, Monty crawled nervously out from her hiding place. The bed on its own was so badly damaged that anyone hiding beneath it would be clearly visible, but the shredded mattress provided a space with less visibility. I just hoped that two items that wouldn't be able to hide a person individually might give them no reason to search, especially if they thought they were in hot pursuit of a fleeing target. I had to hope that she'd be able to slip away unnoticed, and maybe get back to her house with the key in time.