Content/ArmouringUp

It was the screeching that got her attention. Her curiosity piqued, Zoey wandered over to the apartment’s minimalist workshop room to find out what was going on. Inside, Chris was leaning over the grinder, doing something to a diamond-shaped chunk of scrap metal. Behind him was a big pile of sandbags and wooden poles that she didn’t remember seeing before. Chris’s trademark boxing hoodie was pulled over his head, shadowing his face, but his hunched body language told her that he wasn’t looking for company. Still… “What are you doing?” she interrupted him. Chris paused for a moment, then carefully lifted his trainer off the grinder’s foot-pedal. The whining noise abruptly cut off as, his eyes still lowered, he turned to face her. “We got lucky,” he muttered. “What?” “Shouldn’t have won that one. The big zombie should have got us, and the boss guy still got away. Not good enough.” “So what are you going to do about it?” she asked, wondering where he was going with this. “I’m making something,” Chris replied quietly. He lifted up the palm-sized piece of metal he had been working on, its two tapered points catching the light disconcertingly. From the change in the metal’s colour along each triangular spike, he had been grinding their sides to a vicious edge. “What are you making?” In response, Chris reached down and tapped the workbench in front of him. A pool of inky blackness spread out from his hand into a ragged foot-wide hole. With his other hand, he sharply flicked the double-pointed spike downwards so that it disappeared through the portal. Behind him, the spike shot back out of another hole that had appeared in the ceiling, and span through the air. Zoey winced as it thumped directly into the centre of mass of the sandbag pile, which she now realised vaguely resembled a human torso. The spike’s point embedded itself deep in the canvas and coarse sand began to spill across the wooden floor. Then, for the first time, he raised his head and met her eyes directly. His expression was cold, but something about it reminded her of a cornered animal. Desperate. “I’m making options,” he said.