Chas and Spud heard the tapping of dog nails on the floor before they saw him. Chas stood out in the middle of the hall and called out:
"Here Sam! Here doggy doggy doggy!"
Sam growled and ran at him, teeth bared. He came within snapping distance of Chas' leg when Spud rugby tackled him and bore him fiercely to the ground.
"Now pay attention to me, you horrible traitorous fleabag. You're going to show us where Nics is, and you're going to help us get out of here. Or, I swear on my granny's motorbike, I'll snap your neck like a dry twig."
The threats must have worked, because Sam whined, and cringed.
"Where is Nics?" Chas asked him.
"W-w-w-with Mr Cuckoo, o-o-of course," came a familiar voice from behind him.
The sound of a gun being cocked echoed in the bare corridor.
"T-t-t-turn around very slowly, please," said Jeremy. "And let go of Sam."
Both men did so, holding their hands up in the air. Sam slunk over to Jeremy's side.
"D-d-don't you know that it's not nice to be cruel to animals," Jeremy asked them reproachfully.
"He betrayed us," said Chas simply.
"He played us for fools," Spud elaborated. "Makes friends with us, helps rescue us from a very sticky situation indeed, only to turn around and hand us over to a complete and utter raving psychopath!"
"Don't talk about Mr Cuckoo that way!" exploded Jeremy, his hands shaking.
Sam looked up at him, and barked softly.
"Y-y-y-you're right, you're right," said Jeremy, lowering his voice. "T-t-they're trying to make me angry, s-so they can gain advantage. Well, it won't happen."
"Was that what we were doing," Spud asked Chas, who shrugged. "I thought we were just telling the truth."
"W-w-where's the second disk?" asked Jeremy.
"I hid it," said Chas. "If you want it, get your mutt to sniff it out."
Sam growled, and Jeremy placed his free hand on Sam's head to comfort him.
"N-n-now, that's not very polite. It's not Sam's fault, you know."
"What," said Spud. "Did the devil make him do it then?"
Jeremy grinned humourlessly.
"Not quite. Walk with me."
He waved the gun at the two men, pointing them towards the far end of the corridor. As they walked, he talked.
"T-t-there's a certain twisted s-s-symmetry to the whole thing. It's all about a ghost who isn't.
"T-t-t-that b-bloody woman, the one who killed my grandfather, w-well, she had a partner. A Mr. J. Bradford. An agent, like her. But one who was a little looser when it came to l-looking the other way while vital security information was suddenly miraculously turned into cold, hard cash.
"She found out, just after the mission where she s-s-stole the second disk. And she was going to expose him. S-so he did her in. But he couldn't get the disk, it was lost.
"S-she didn't go down easily, s-she cost him his eyes. A-and later on, when he got older, he slipped quietly into a coma, where he's been ever since.
"Or that's what people think..." Jeremy finished smugly.
"So, the devil didn't make Sam do it," said Spud. "His master's spirit did."
"W-well done," smirked Jeremy. "You're not as stupid as you look."
"I get that a lot," mumbled Spud.
Chas broke in. "And in return for the disk, and us, Mr J. Bradford (not entirely deceased) gets a brand new shiny clockwork body, am I right?"
Jeremy grinned even wider.
"Excuse me for asking," said Chas. "But what is it you get out of all of this anyway? When you're the only non-clockwork thing on the face of the planet, isn't it going to make life a bit awkward?"
Jeremy's face closed down like a trap.
"Enough chitchat!" he shouted at them as Sam growled. "I'll get everything that I could ever want when this plan is complete! I'll get my revenge!!"
He waved the gun at them again, and directed them through the double doors at the end of the corridor, into the main room of the laboratory.
The set-up inside hadn't changed. The machine with the big red button and the LED display still stood off to one side, the two beds with their padded restraints still stood in the middle. Nics sat on one of them, kicking her legs and looking very glum. The gold collar was snug around her neck, though from the look of the red skin around it, she'd been trying to pull it off.
A single row of golden clockwork dragons ringed the beds, all their red jewelled eyes were watching her unblinking. She looked up when she heard the footsteps.
"Oh, Chas," she said, despairing. "Why did you come back? You at least could have been safe!"
"Hush, babes," he told her. "Couldn't leave my best bird behind, now could I?"
She smiled at him, with a hefty dose of sorrow. Jeremy snapped an order, and the ring of dragons opened up. Chas and Spud were ushered into the ring, another order, and the line of dragons closed ranks again.
Jeremy and Sam then disappeared behind one of the arcane machines, leaving the three friends alone, except for the dragons.
Just then a cardboard pizza box on a parachute came floating through the air to land neatly on Spud's lap. A waft of steam came from it, bringing the tantalising smell of fresh pizza.
"Brilliant," he said. "I'm starving!"
He opened up the pizza box and offered some to the other two.
"Just pick off the bits of banana if you don't want them," he told them, before shoving one particularly large piece into his mouth.
Nics declined, looking slightly ill, but Chas accepted with gusto. In no time at all the two lads had devoured the pizza, leaving only the greasy box behind.
"Right," said Spud, wiping the pizza grease and some of his face paint off on the back on his hand. "Orders received and understood. I know what to do now."
"Brilliant," said Chas. "What are you going to do then?"
"Stop Mr Cuckoo and save the world of course," Spud told him.
"And how exactly are you going to do that then?" asked Chas.
"Um... well, that's the bit they didn't exactly give a lot of detail on..." trailed off Spud.
Chas rolled his eyes, and put one comforting arm around Nics. She looked up at him and smiled, accepting his touch.
"You're still alright?" she asked him.
"Yeah," he said. "Well, except for the whole being taken prisoner by an evil genius thing."
"You're not upset about... you know... clockwork?"
He looked her straight in the eyes for a moment, then gently but firmly pulled her chin up and kissed her, very thoroughly.
They didn't come up for air for several minutes. Spud looked embarrassed. He probably blushed, but it was hard to tell underneath all the makeup.
"Jeez... get a room..." he mumbled after a minute.
The couple unlocked their lips and glared at him.
"Sorry..." he mumbled, even lower.
Chas cuffed him affectionately on the arm.
"Let's get our heads together and plan a way out of this mess," he said.
And so they did.
No comments:
Post a Comment