Not that any one would ever believe me, but I found it lying in the middle of the road on the way home. In a more stable state of mind I would have left it there, or handed it in, but I was out of my head on... well the exact cock tail of drugs in my system that night escapes me now, but I must of been out of my head on something.
So I picked it up and I took it home.For a while it just sat on the book case, but something about it kept drawing me to it. At first the markings were secondary, I'd just run my fingers over it, caught between the smoothness of its surface and the sharpness of its edge.
I didn't even notice how much time it was taking up until I got a call from one of the Mass crowed, worried that I hadn't been in for over a week. I made a conscious effort to put it away and get out of the house, only to catch myself trying to reproduce its shape in dribbles of massage oil on the belly of some unfortunate who was complaining of being bored.
I made my excuses and left.
Kr'tn and Slip appeared the next day, short of funds so wanting a BPN and not willing to take no for an answer. I slipped it into my pocket without even realizing I had done so until I was in the APC. Some how it never even entered my thoughts to leave it behind.
The BPN was some green out in the middle of nowhere, a survey team had stumbled on some buildings that didn't appear on any of the recent Mort maps so Department of Architecture, Construction and planning wanted it mapping and cataloguing. Wasn't exactly my favourite type of job but the others seemed enthusiastic. After all the survey team hadn't run into any problems.
Though I remember thinking as they air lifted us out that next time Slip said "How hard can it be" I should just shoot him in the head there and then and save myself the trouble later.
Both the gossip columns and the combat screens got a good deal of mileage out of that one. Especially when Iona called Kr'tn a 'fecking waste of space' live to third eye. What did she expect. She should at least give him credit for remembering to grab an oyster in the panicked bug out, even if, unfortunately, it was Marcus's personal one rather than the one with the mapping system attached to it. We still got the payment, even if it did take us a week with the camera footage to reconstruct the maps rather than just being able to hand over the slug on arrival.
Though if I am being honest I wasn't on form that day. I should have spotted in inconsistencies between the reports and the initial set up we found.
But I was distracted.
Some how even in the hottest firefight I knew It was there. I could feel it some how. When I closed my eyes it was spinning in front of them, like some image burnt onto my retina. When the horns of that… well what ever it was… came through the wall at me I wasn't thinking about the squad. I wasn't even thinking about saving my own skin, unlike Slip who, as usual, vanished quickly enough. It was the thought that I had to get It out of there.I'll admit it, that scared me.
When I finally got home I locked it into the apartment safe, and resolved to forget about it before it got me killed.
I think it stayed in there may be 45 minutes.
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