Hunt and Power. Stephen Hayes

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СКАЧАТЬ in the box. I’d never seen her naked either, of that I was certain. In fact, while I thought about it, I couldn’t remember what she’d looked like when she’d been naked in the box. Was that because I’d been too preoccupied to take in the details, or was it because I wasn’t supposed to know?

      I thought very hard, and most of it started to added up. I’d never seen her naked, but I had felt rather a lot of her body during one of the obstacles guarding the Sien-Leoard Crystal. She was unconscious at the time, and I hadn’t been up to anything dodgy, but I’d been forced to feel a bit of her body to help bring her around. There were also several instances where she had pressed herself against me, which probably came into effect as well. I also knew that she was pretty strong, given that she had lifted me off my feet; only a foot or so, but that was still something. In reality, there was no way she could be strong enough to tackle a dozen Tommys at once, or throw me that high into the air. The box must have taken my thought that she was strong and exaggerated it.

      As for the bikini, I could only assume that I must have caught a glimpse of her swimming, but I honestly couldn’t remember it. She had probably been a good distance away. But then an image came to the fore of my mind that I had completely forgotten about: I had seen her before. Before she got in the pool during that afternoon activity the previous week, I had caught a glimpse of her standing with Amelia, also in a bikini, and even then I had admitted to myself that she was pretty damn hot! I’d completely forgotten about that in the wake of far more vivid memories of Lena.

      So everything inside that box had been taken from my mind; that made sense, except for one thing. If all that was true, why was I able to use that stunning device? I was fairly sure it was the sort of thing the Hammersons would use, but I’d never seen it before. Why had I been allowed to use it? Why had I even been allowed to even see it?

      This preoccupation lasted all the way home, and by then, the only conclusion I’d reached was that perhaps the last person to use the box had dropped the stunning device in there, and it just wanted to present it as another temptation.

      * * *

      The first people I saw when I got in the house were William and Carl. They were watching television in the Playman lounge room and commenting on how much it had changed since the ‘70s. It was good to have my grandfather and James’s grandfather back in the family; I had always wondered about them and had imagined them to be like Dad and Charlie. Dad and Charlie had changed a bit too; they just seemed so much happier than usual, as though the rest of the world’s troubles could go to buggery as far as they were concerned. I was happy for them, but I was finding the experience rather awkward.

      Mum and Marge seemed to feel the same way, because they kept insisting that the pair of them do something constructive with themselves now that they’d been given a second chance at life. The rest of us considered it pointless to attempt to persuade the authorities to accept that two people who had been dead for thirty years were suddenly back among the living. So far, they had spent all their time hanging around the house, just trying to adapt to the twenty-first century, although I had overheard them talking about making contact with the Woodwards. Clearly they hadn’t forgotten what it was like in the Woodward Army, and thought it would be good to get back to something they knew and were comfortable with. That was probably the best they could do since we no longer lived on a farm.

      “Hello there, John,” said William when he saw me heading for the stairs.

      “Hi—er—grandpa,” I said uneasily. Never having known a grandfather before, I wasn’t exactly sure what I ought to call him. I was tempted to just say William, but figured that would be disrespectful.

      The two of them chuckled, and I had a feeling they knew what I was thinking about. “You got it, mate,” said Carl. “Had a good day?”

      “Yeah, not bad,” I said. “Bit boring, but that’s school for you.”

      “Yeah, but you have to go all the same,” said Carl, looking back at the television.

      “I’ll see you at dinner,” I said, continuing for the stairs. “Loads of homework.”

      “Yes indeed,” said William pompously. “Study hard, and then you can play hard.”

      I smiled in spite of myself and went upstairs, enjoying the idea of having the place to myself for once. Peter was still in detention—his was three hours today. James was probably with Erica again—no hesitation in spending loads of time with her now that he had cleared the initial barrier of his hesitation. I guessed the girls were next door, because Nicole’s room was silent as I went past. I would have liked to use this time to look up stuff about the Light Crystal, but my mountain of homework was weighing heavily on my mind as I settled in front of the computer. I struggled with myself before opening my bag and pulling Mrs. Parker’s horrible exercises from it. This was going to take an eternity … or at least it would have, if I didn’t have the Light Crystal.

      Before I set to work on the Maths, I did what I always did when starting up the computer: check emails, check Facebook, and check the girls’ rooms for activity. What the girls did not know was that Peter, James and I had set up a network of wireless microphones, allowing us to listen to what was going on in the two rooms without them being any the wiser. At least until they found the microphones. The network had only been in place a few weeks and so far, and we’d learnt very little from it. In fact, all I could remember learning was the knowledge that Amelia had the hots for Marc.

      Nicole’s room was silent, as I had thought, and the girls were, as I had suspected, in Felicity and Jessica’s room. It seemed at once that homework was in order because Lisa and Natalie were there as well, and it sounded like they were working on the history of magic projects. I plugged headphones in and continued to listen to them while setting to work on my Maths homework.

      The project was desperately dull, and only a few questions in, I decided I would use the Light Crystal to get through it a little quicker. I understood what I was doing, but there was just so much there that at this rate, I would take all night. I gripped the crystal and, remembering how my previous two requests had been made, thought to myself, I wish I could get through this Maths homework quicker. I felt it go warm, as it had the previous times it had worked, but I couldn’t see any difference to my Maths homework.

      Almost instinctively, I knew what had to be done. I picked up my pen and began writing. What I was writing, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I was writing faster than I had ever written in my life. Within minutes, I had done several pages, and by half past 4 I was done. I looked back over my work (I still called it my work, given that I had written it) and found I had answered all the questions, complete with working, though I’d hardly known what I was doing. Almost all of them were correct, bar a couple, which I had to fix up, but this was even better; at least that made it look more authentic.

      Feeling considerably more cheerful, I put the work back in my bag, making a mental note to do the same for Peter when he got home; he didn’t have a chance of getting it all done tonight, with how late he was going to be. Then I leaned forward and rested my head against the computer screen, my exhaustion finally catching up with me. I wasn’t sore from the day’s experiences, but I certainly was tired. Perhaps it was a sort of mental exhaustion, because even though I hadn’t brought any aches, pains or broken bones with me out of the box, I’d worked very hard to get through it. The voices of the five girls next door were still in my ears, but I had hardly paid them any attention. I focused dimly on what they were saying for a moment, but when I realised it was still homework, I gave up and allowed myself to relax.

      I couldn’t recall dozing off where I sat, but I must have done, because the next moment I was being roughly shaken. I looked up and saw James standing over me, looking amused at the СКАЧАТЬ