Sunday, July 8, 2012

Crook Q Part 24

Nic's face closed, like a gate with a portcullis and drawbridge. He answered in a sheepish voice, "Death bothers me. Too much to hand over a weapon like Red Rain to tyrants. But I am still without contact from the underground organization. Which leads me to this awkward position."
Ephesus had never heard Nic speak in so many sentence fragments. He must really be off his guard.
Just then the communicator hummed to life and the speaker chimed, "Representative of the United to speak with you."
Nic strode over to the communicator. "Hello Mister Representative. Please tell me how you got such a long last name?"
Dark laughter echoed back from the speaker. "Oh Nic, you amuse me." Nic's face froze. He could guess that the representative must have some advantage over him now to dare act like that. Nic decided to keep up the game. "And you me. Isn't our relationship splendid? Pity that I'm locked in here and you're free out there. Oh wait, no one out there is free. My bad."
The laughter grew. Ephesus whispered to everyone in the room, "Is he drunk?"
Nic muted his microphone. He turned to his prison mates, "He's drunk on power. I just want to know where this power came from." Turning on his microphone he continued, "Mister Representative, may I ask why you called?"
They heard him swallow his laughter than attempt to drop to a regular tone, "Ah yes. I was calling to receive an update on your progress on Red Rain."
Nic answered, "It's coming along."
The representative answered, "Oh I'm glad of that. You know, the paperwork for your removal is coming along well, too. Convicts are easy to get removed. Of course, if Red Rain is done first, I can just shred the papers..."
Nic still wondered what was going on. "Sir, I assure you that Red Rain will be armed and ready soon. My team of scientists have solved our initial dilemmas," he winked at Ephesus and mouthed "kitchen," and then continued, "and we anticipate a breakthrough any moment soon. Dr. Smyrna has worked out several potential decay chains and we are working with titanium to charge the heavy ions so as to harness the electromagnetic forces within the atoms to build a powerful acid. Then work will begin on the base design..." he was cut off.
"No. Then you'll be removed."
"Excuse me?"
"Nic, unless we see something real, something that works, we will just end your game."
"Your threats are not intimidating," but the paleness of his face and the twitching of his mustache gave away that he was just hoping to out-game the representative.
"Oh Nic, you just don't understand the stakes involved, for yourself, and for others."

1 comment:

  1. *happy sigh that her constant blog-stalking was finally rewarded* :D

    Wow, this is more dire than I thought too... which is awesome.

    And Ephesus's quips are making me laugh.

    ReplyDelete