The technical lab was reached via a cupboard in the kitchen, which was secretly a lift down into an underground cavern, in that traditional secret lair sort of way. The lab itself was tucked into a corner of the echoing chamber, and looked like a normal technology design and build lab. There were lab benches, and spools of wire and soldering irons and miscellaneous electronic component boards. There were oscilloscopes and multimeters and other, stranger items that looked like they were formed when a vacuum tube factory exploded, or were the contents of a Steampunk’s props box. There was also a surprisingly large collection of cogs, gears and the other innards of clocks.
Another bench had trays of test tubes and glass flasks full of coloured liquids bubbling away. Next to it was a large cabinet-shaped instrument that hummed in a minor key.
The whole impression of barely contained technological chaos was somewhat ruined by the stuffed alligator that hung from the ceiling. Especially as the alligator was wearing a party hat and had a party blower hanging droopily from the corner of its toothy grin.
There was a flock of pink plastic flamingos in one corner too.
Sitting in front of a computer terminal was another man, this one with long, greasy, dyed black hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a black t-shirt and with a spiked leather band around one hairy wrist.
“Raven,” said Richard.
The man quickly stabbed a few buttons on the keyboard, then swivelled around, the bearings on the office chair protesting. He had a straggly beard and his t-shirt bore the slogan “Keep Calm and Take Over the World”.
“Richard,” he replied.
“You’re sitting in my chair,” Richard told him. “Aren’t you supposed to be painting someplace foreign?”
“Nope,” said Raven. “Been chasing down the Ghost Bollard of Glasgow.”
“What?” said Richard.
“The Ghost Bollard of Glasgow. Appears in the middle of the road out of nowhere, right in front of a driver. Driver drives over it, it does no damage except pulling some random wires out from under the car and gives the driver a massive shock.”
“Did you find it?” asked Richard.
“Nope,” said Raven, swivelling in the chair. “I think it’s gone to Edinburgh for the Fringe.”
Richard sighed.
“Get out of my chair,” he ordered. “And stop using my computer to play Total Bioshock, or whatever shoot-em-up you’re playing at the moment.”
“Sorry, man, but you’ve got the best video card and processor in the place.”
“There’s a reason for that,” said Richard. “And that reason is not for playing computer games. Up.”
Raven quickly vacated the chair and watched as Richard took out Morwen’s mobile phone33.
“What happened to that?” Raven asked.
“It got hit by lightning, and I don’t trust it.”
“Trust it? You don’t mean to say it’s still operational?”
“Well, its owner still uses it. Let’s see what’s going on.”
“Whatever, man, I’ve got to get back. Cakes to bake, fish to fry, evil geniuses to foil. Later.”
As Raven wandered off through the shelves of miscellaneous stuff and piled high boxes, Richard pulled a wire from a pile on the desk, connected one end to the computer and hunted in vain for a port in the phone to plug the other end into. With no success, because the cover had well and truly melted.
“Ok,” said Richard to himself. “Time to do this the hard way.”
He reached out and grabbed a pair of bolt cutters.
The phone immediately started ringing with a horrible electronic squawking , and at the same time the vibrate function buzzed so hard, the phone skidded off the desk and landed on the floor, where it promptly wedged itself under a filing cabinet. The ringing stopped.
Richard put down the bolt cutters and reached for the phone, and pulled. It was definitely stuck.
He sighed, went around the corner and came back with one of those pallet lifter things, which he stuck under one corner of the filing cabinet and pumped the handle. For each centimetre the filing cabinet was lifted, the phone vibrated its way further underneath it.
Finally the cabinet was far enough off the floor so that Richard could reach underneath and grab it. The phone was as far away as it could get, but was stuck in the corner, trapped between two walls.
Richard reached in, far enough to grab it. As his fingers closed around the plastic shell, there came a sudden smell of ozone and a flash.
Richard swore, and pulled his hand out from underneath the cabinet, which fell off the lifter with a crash. He swore even more when he looked at his hand, where the shape of the phone was carefully burned black into the skin of his palm. The skin had shrunk and cracked, and underneath it there was something moving and metallic.
“Damn damn damn damn DAMN!” he said, pretty quietly for someone who’d just had several thousand volts pass through their hand.
He rummaged around in a desk drawer, and came up with a first aid kit. Carefully, favouring his burned hand, he got out a scalpel, a bandage, and a pot of flesh coloured goo and lined them up on the desk.
He whistled a downward arpeggio in D major, and from behind a pile of vacuum tubes came a small, mechanical monkey, dressed in a little waistcoat and wearing a fez34.
The monkey chattered at Richard, and between the two of them, they carefully removed the damaged skin from Richard’s hand, replacing it with a fresh covering of the goo and a nice clean bandage.
“Damn, that hurt,” said Richard.
The monkey looked sympathetic. Or as sympathetic as it could, given that it couldn’t really change its facial expression.
First aid, or repairs, or whatever it was, completed, Richard turned back to the filing cabinet, and levered it up again.
This time, instead of reaching in, he got down so he was at eye level to the phone.
“Ok,” he said. “Truce?”
“I’m not coming out until you put those pliers away,” said Sissy. “And I can’t believe you stole me! What sort of rubbish boyfriend are you?”
“I’m a very good boyfriend,” Richard replied. “I’m checking out things that are strange, to make sure that they won’t hurt my girlfriend.”
“Rubbish,” scoffed Sissy. “You’re just completely controlling and lacking in trust, that’s what I think. And after I was nice enough to send you Felindre’s address too.”
“Don’t know what Morwen sees in you,” Sissy continued, half to itself. “Must be that squishy human stuff.”
Then , louder: “Though you’re not entirely human either, are you?”
Richard really does turn an interesting shade of red when he’s emotional.
“I am a person,” he hissed. “And what I feel for Morwen is important!”
“Oooh, hit a nerve, have I?” Sissy retorted. “Shouldn’t have argued with her then, should you?”
“I was worried about her – something’s going on and I don’t want her to get hurt!”
“Um, Richard?”
This was from Tom, who had appeared behind Richard.
“Why are you talking to the filing cabinet?” Tom continued.
“I’m not talking to the filing cabinet!!”
There was an awkward silence. Tom looked around, and took in the lifter.
“Um, do you need a hand?” he asked. “Only the boss has called us both in to share what’s going on. Says our cases are linked somehow, and we need to figure out how before it all goes a bit tits up.”
Richard heaved himself up from the floor, favouring his injured hand.
“This isn’t finished,” he hissed at the phone underneath the filing cabinet. “You just stay there until I get back and we can have a proper chat.”
With a thump, he lowered the cabinet back to the floor.
Not much happened for a good fifty seven minutes. Yes, Raven came back to play his shoot-em-up game on Richard’s computer for a bit, then poked around the gizmos and do-hickeys on the desk, then attempted to move the filing cabinet, all the while watched by the mechanical monkey.
But the phone was long gone by that stage.
___
33 Thieving sod.
34 All he needed was the cymbals, and he’d have passed for an old-fashioned Victorian-style kid’s toy.
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