Lurk

Chapter Twelve

“You fucking idiot!”

Smith fell into submission as the radio was knocked from his hands, the fist in question belonging to a rather pissed off Lurk. His eyes were flaring with blue-green madness, transferring some message which couldn’t be traced.

With a gulp of courage, Chalky took the matter into his own hands. “What did he do wrong?”

Stamping the transmitter with the hard heel of his boot, Lurk mercilessly cut off all outside communication in seconds. The device hissed and crackled, a burst of sparks erupting from the battery. Soon it was dead, unresponsive. Lurk backed away with a sigh. “Don’t do anything like that again, or it’ll be your body I’m handing over to the Lurkers when they find a way into this shithole.”

He stormed out of the control room with an absence of explanation. Chalky and the twins communicated a slither of sympathy for the Italian descendant, giving him the “Oh well” look to ease the tension. But Smith wasn’t frightened by the blunt threat; it was the subtle implication made on the madman’s behalf. What did he mean when they found a way in?

As the door slammed shut, the group fell back into a social paradigm. Comfortably chatting away at the sniper post, the twins unintentionally re-entered an age-old argument.

“You never did pay me that fiver, you know,” Spider smiled, spotting out a fresh straggler on the horizon. He adjusted his scope. “Unless you think you’ve still got a chance at getting a double whammy?”

Snake chuckled as he focused on the straggler that his brother had found moments before. He took it as his own, ignoring the possibility that his sharper twin may have already had his heart set on a clean shot.

In unison, they both fired.

“That’s mine!” Snake laughed, leaping up into the air with a victorious punch. “One in the bag...”

“Are you joking? I got that bastard right in the nose, I did!”

Smith took Chalky away from the sibling rivalry in a subtle gesture, and lured him over to the filing cabinet he’d discovered. Lying only slightly disturbed was the spherical container which had took the Italian aback.

“I found it just before Duster topped himself,” Smith showed no grief for the loss, and the mentioning of the dead man’s name didn’t affect his stature. “You know how to open this thing, mate?”

Chalky took the device into his hands with wary curiosity. “Hmm... Ain’t many options, are there?” he was referring specifically to the single keyhole implanted on the centre, surrounded by plain blackness. “I don’t suppose it came with a key?”

Smith searched the drawer of the cabinet, but it was bare to the bone. Damn. He kicked it shut, and gave up all hope of finding the key elsewhere. Chalky stayed optimistic, observing the ball in his hands as if he were an artist looking into the eye of beauty. Every fine detail intrigued him: the curvature of the device, the thick dust coating and overall weightless feel. What secrets did this long-ago hidden relic hold?

“Wayne’s gone back to play with his plane,” Smith said, as dryly as a man with salt on his tongue. “I might just go join him – see what’s going on in that messed up head of his.”

“Okay.” Chalky sat down in his chair, allured by the mechanism too much to divert his attention. He didn’t even know what his friend had said, but assumed it was something worth replying to with bleak confirmation.

The door clicked on Smith’s dreary departure.

“You’re a master with a spanner, Walter.”