Week 10.3 – Caveat’s Crib

Previously: Digger and Twain were trapped in Caveat Maledictor’s mansion in the act of robbing it, while Carpe Noctem hauled a protesting Caveat into the air. And now…

Caveat flailed, hanging ten feet in the air, arched backward from the ring at his waist. “Put me down, damn it!”

“No,” Carpe said. “You might as well just relax and enjoy the ride. Stick, are you coming?”

“Well, I’d like to, but…” He looked dubiously at Caveat, who was struggling to pull himself upright.

“Just give me your hand,” Carpe said. She grabbed Stickus’s upraised hand and soared into the sky.

Caveat pulled himself to a sitting position and held onto Carpe’s arm to stay upright. “Damn it, Jetta, this isn’t your business!”

“Shut up and put your mask on,” Carpe said. “It’s going to get hard to breathe in a second. Stick, I hope you can hold your breath a long time, cause otherwise this is going to suck.”

Caveat barely managed to pull his emergency respirator on over his face mask before Carpe hit the gas, accelerating quickly to almost supersonic speed. Luckily, the protective polarized lenses built into his mask would protect his eyes from injury. He looked back at Stickus, who had one hand over his mouth and his eyes squinted shut. He looked miserable. Not to mention the hair; Stickus’s hair was a little longer than collar length, pulled back into a short ponytail. It would be a tangled mess by the time they reached Fairfield.

***

Twain paced anxiously in the corridor where he was trapped in front of the door to the study where Digger was trapped. Digger was cursing up a storm in there. “Any ideas on how we might get out of here?” he shouted through the metal barrier.

“Hey, I can get out of here anytime I want,” Digger’s voice said, accompanied by the sound of the Driller Beam Generator powering up.

“But you’d kill me in the process.”

“Don’t think I’m not considering it,” Digger said. The whine of the Driller faded. “Just saying I have options. How long do you think we have before Caveat shows up?”

“What’s the big deal?” Twain asked. “You kicked his ass in that alley, right? When he shows up, just kick it again.”

“The alley was schoolyard stuff,” Digger said. “Nothing personal. We’re in his house. He’s going to take that a lot more seriously.”

“Are you saying you can’t beat him?”

“I’m saying one of us might end up getting seriously hurt,” Digger said, “which isn’t what I signed up for when we started this gig. So this crystal attaches to that cup?”

“If I figured it out correctly.”

“What do you mean, ‘if?’”

“This is not an exact science,” Twain said. “We’re talking about old legends, ancient documents. They’re not written like an instruction manual. Even worse, these legends were in Chinese, which, I’m not great with Chinese.”

“Didn’t even know you spoke Chinese,” Digger said.

“Barely any,” Twain said. “But I can read a bit, and I think I’ve got it worked …”

The metal security door began to clank back into the wall. “That was fast,” Twain said.

Caveat has avoided a long motorcycle ride. Will that make things better or worse for our duo? Join us tomorrow for the next exciting episode to see what happens next!

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