Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Kris Alexandros: The Next Step

I couldn't go to hospital until I had done right by all my friends.

While I was testing my determination, my cell phone rang again. I reached out to grab it from where it had fallen, and sent it skittering across the metal grille I was lying on. I panicked, thrashed out with the other arm and just about managed to grab the fragile device before it tumbled over the edge of the fire escape to the alley below. The walkway was just far enough from the wall that there would have been enough space for my phone to fall down between. Now I had two hands on the phone, stopping it sliding between the grating in two different directions, and I didn't have a free hand to shift my own position, or to pull it any closer. If I moved my fingers away from where they were right now, I was sure the phone would fall.

Then it started to ring, a sad little bleep-bloop that sounded somehow scared. I knew that was silly, but I imagined it was the sound of the phone begging to be saved. I moved my hand as quickly as I dared, pivoting around a single fingertip so that the device couldn't slip away from me. It was a struggle, both because I wasn't in a position to reach it easily, and because I was lying on a hard metal walkway, my legs angled up the stairs, on already bruised muscles. It was like every step I took since the fight in Brassic Bar had needed the creation of new words to describe the agony.

I didn't actually mean to answer the call this time. I knew I should, because it might be a friend in need of my help, but I was more concerned with not losing the phone at that point. But my finger must have touched the right button, because I heard a tinny reproduction of Dwayne's voice.

"Kris! Are you alright?"

"Can't talk!" I spoke loudly, hoping the microphone would pick it up, but the pain in my chest turned the sound into a breathless wheeze. At arm's length, I didn't know if the phone would pick it up at all.

He said something else, but I couldn't make out the words. I realised with a panic that the others might be trying to arrange a meeting place, and I was the only one who knew about the upcoming showdown between Landry's men and the Russians. I couldn't let my friends get caught in the crossfire there.

"Don't go to..." I gasped, then took a deep breath that felt as if I was being stabbed in the lungs and tried again, "Enemies are waiting in the club room! Don't go to the room. Tell the others!" By this point I had two fingers hooked around behind the phone to stop it moving, and some of my others between the metal grille of the walkway. I risked pulling myself a little closer while I took a breath, and the little precious piece of technology slipped so easily out of my hand, hopping over my fingers and tumbling through the air. "I'm sorry!" I gasped, not sure if I was apologising to Dwayne or to the phone itself. But my left arm moved almost by reflex, whipping out and slapping my phone as it leapt like a salmon over the low protrusion at the edge of the stairway.

My phone sailed through the air, bounced off the wall and shed some pieces of what I could only hope was decorative casing. And clanged to a halt on the fire escape one level down. I breathed a sigh of relief, and pulled myself up against the handrail to regain my footing. Walking was hard, still, but I'd been in pain so long that it was almost starting to fade into the background. It probably took me more than a minute of careful limping to get my phone back, and I had to slowly lower myself to my knees rather than bending, and when I looked at the screen I saw that Dwayne had hung up. It was still illuminated though, so I could count myself lucky that the device was more resilient than I was.

There were police everywhere now, and the crowds of students were thinning. Some of the police were armed, too, and they were telling everyone to get off the avenues and quads. All lectures cancelled, everyone go home. They were calling it a state of emergency, some kind of terrorist incident. I wasn't sure where they'd reached that conclusion, as the only incidents I knew of had been two of Spenser's men waving guns around. Then again, two separate shootings on campus, on the same day, could give the impression that it was somehow organised.

"Avoid the A732," I heard someone shouting, "If your road home is near Keller Park, you should stay on campus. The university security are trying to find safe spaces. We need to empty public spaces until it's safe, but all roads between Keller Park and the army barracks are closed, reserved for emergency vehicles." The voice carried on shouting, trying to be heard over the crowd. It wasn't just campus, there were suburbs of Lanchester town closed off as well. Maybe it really was terrorists, perhaps they'd blown up a bridge or something, but I found it hard to believe. Right now, I was more disposed to the idea that the factions fighting over the Box were gradually escalating their rivalry. A fire fight could easily have turned into a state of emergency, in the eyes of the police and National Guard who had no idea what was going on.

It seemed I was in an alley behind Brassic Bar, I'd guessed correctly that room had been in the Exam Schools. Right upstairs from the bar, where they could drag me without attracting too much attention. There were narrow passageways, some roofed over, between most of the university buildings, even though most buildings were now connected to their neighbours either above or below ground level so that it was unnecessary to go outside much. Most people used the three pedestrian Ways that led from one end of campus to the other, and the Avenues that branched off them at various Quads, but if you knew what you were doing it was quite possible to get most of the way across the campus without using any of the main thoroughfares. So as the police rounded up stray students, reassured them that this was just a routine precaution and everything would be fine, I ducked and weaved through narrow spaces full of Dumpsters and back entrances, heading back towards Mendeleev Building.

I had no intention of going up to the club room now. But two levels down was practically a maze, I'm sure that wouldn't be a good place for guerilla warfare unless you knew the place very well. Therefore Rasputin would be smart enough to have his men concentrated in ambush on the very top floor or on the roof, and Landry was only expecting to find us in the club room, so he would have gone straight there. Two levels down, in the maze of the Chemistry and Human Sciences rooms, I could lurk around, wait for my friends, and warn them before they went up to the danger zone. And if I was lucky, I could find an unlocked storeroom that might contain a first aid kit. Maybe even a lab coat, which would be the answer to my prayers right now.