Zero Hour

by Mark Walden

  ‘Is there any risk of the same thing happening again at a similar facility?’ the reporter asked.

  ‘The simple answer is no,’ the President said, ‘but this seems like a good point to hand over to Doctor Franks from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.’ He stepped aside as the slightly nervous-looking Dr Franks took to the stage, and made his way quickly to the Oval Office. His personal secretary looked up as he approached and smiled.

  ‘Your eleven o’clock’s here, Mr President,’ he said. ‘He’s waiting inside as you requested.’

  The President walked in and saw a tall, gaunt-looking man with half-moon glasses sitting reading a report on one of the sofas.

  ‘Mr Flack,’ the President said as the other man stood up and shook his outstretched hand. ‘It was good of you to see me at such short notice.’

  ‘Of course, Mr President. What can I do for you?’ the other man replied in a Texan accent.

  ‘I’ve spoken to several people at the CIA and NSA and they tell me you’re the right person to speak to if I want to find out everything there is to know about someone.’

  ‘That is Artemis section’s speciality, Mr President, if I may say so,’ Flack said with a smile.

  ‘So I’m told,’ the President replied. ‘The person in question is a young man called Otto Malpense.’ He pushed a photo of Otto captured from their recent video call across the table towards Flack. It was clipped to an unusually thin file marked Top Secret. ‘You will have full inter-agency access to everything that anyone has on him, which from what I have already gathered is disappointingly little. He spent some time as a guest of H.O.P.E., where I was informed he had died from complications due to a medical condition. At least that’s what Sebastian Trent told me. Since I spoke to Malpense myself earlier today I now find that rather hard to believe. I’d ask Mr Trent to explain this discrepancy but, as I’m sure you’re aware, he vanished some time ago. I’m told that the records that were retrieved from H.O.P.E. after its dissolution were patchy at best but I want you to find out what they weren’t telling us. This young man saved my life some time ago and it’s quite possible that he has also saved this entire country from disaster on two separate occasions.’

  ‘Which makes it strange that we know so little about him,’ Flack said with a frown.

  ‘Exactly,’ the President replied. ‘I need to know if I should be shaking him by the hand or hunting him and his associates down.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Mr President,’ Flack replied, standing up. ‘Leave it to me.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Flack,’ the President said as he shook the man’s hand again. ‘Everything you find comes straight to me and no one is to know of my interest in him. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ Flack replied. ‘Don’t worry, Mr President, we’ll find him.’

  The new commander of Furan’s troops on H.I.V.E. watched as the Shroud decloaked and touched down in H.I.V.E.’s crater landing bay. The rear hatch opened and Raven walked down the loading ramp. The Commander approached her with a worried expression on his face. The four men he had with him all looked equally concerned. They had not heard anything from Furan for nearly forty-eight hours and rumours had started to circulate.

  ‘Raven, what’s been going on? We heard about the explosion at the AWP facility. Is Furan still alive?’

  ‘No, Commander, he’s dead,’ Raven said, drawing the swords from her back and crossing them on either side of the startled man’s neck. ‘As you will be if you don’t tell every one of your men on this island to lay down their weapons immediately.’ The men behind the Commander raised their assault rifles, levelling them at Raven.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ the Commander said with a smug grin. ‘You have four guns pointing at you and even if by some miracle you were able to take me and my men down you’re still only one woman. What chance do you stand alone?’

  ‘Who said I was alone?’ Raven replied with a nasty smile. All around Furan’s men the air started to shimmer as twenty men and women in high-tech black body armour materialised out of thin air, their weapons raised. The four men behind the Commander dropped their rifles and slowly lifted their hands into the air. The Commander looked at the force surrounding him, his mouth agape. Raven leant closer and whispered in his ear.

  ‘I believe the words you’re looking for are unconditional surrender.’

  ‘I do wish you’d stop doing that,’ Ms Leon said, from her position curled up on one of the beds.

  Colonel Francisco was pacing back and forth across the cell in H.I.V.E.’s brig. Psychologists said that sleeping was the best way to deal with being locked up for extended periods of time but Ms Leon did it because she was a cat and that’s what they did best. Ironically, of the two of them, the Colonel was the one behaving like a caged animal.

  ‘We can’t just sit here and do nothing,’ Francisco said impatiently, punching the wall with his artificial metal fist. ‘God only knows what’s happening out there!’

  ‘Colonel, I am perhaps the world’s greatest expert on breaking into and out of places like this. Unfortunately for us I designed these cells. If there is such a thing as truly escape-proof then this is it. The only way we’re getting out of here is if someone outside opens that door.’

  The door slid open.

  ‘How did you do that?’ Francisco said in astonishment.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Ms Leon said. ‘At least I don’t think I did.’

  They heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside and the Colonel flattened himself against the wall next to the door, ready to strike.

  Professor Pike appeared outside the doorway and surveyed the room with a sigh.

  ‘He’s waiting just there, isn’t he?’ he said, pointing to the left of the door and rolling his eyes at Ms Leon.

  ‘Yes,’ Ms Leon said, standing up on the bed and arching her back. ‘Of course.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Francisco said, stepping away from the wall looking slightly deflated.

  ‘Firstly, the prisoner manifest and secondly you’re – well, you. How many times did you try the sick prisoner routine on the guards?’

  ‘Three,’ Francisco said, looking slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Actually it was four, but then they started laughing at him and he stopped,’ Ms Leon said, hopping down from the bed.

  ‘Come on then,’ the Professor said, beckoning them outside. ‘We do have a school to get back on its feet, you know.’

  Ms Leon and the Colonel walked outside where other slightly bemused-looking members of the teaching staff were stepping out into the corridor.

  ‘Is someone going to tell us what the hell is going on?’ Francisco said as he walked out of the cell.

  ‘Oh, you know – psychopathic AIs, flesh-eating nanites, submarine warfare, nuclear explosions,’ the Professor said. ‘That kind of thing.’

  ‘And here I was thinking it was going to be something exciting,’ Ms Leon said, trotting away down the corridor with her tail in the air.

  Otto walked into H.I.V.E.mind’s core and placed his hand on one of the darkened monoliths.

  ‘Time to move out,’ he said, with a slight smile.

  I thought I might stay and start plotting a way to take over the world, H.I.V.E.mind replied inside his head.

  ‘Very funny,’ Otto said with a sigh. ‘Come on, out.’

  A moment later a stream of data coursed out of him and the monoliths all around flared back into life, blue lights dancing across their surfaces. He felt an unusual and unexpected sensation of loneliness as the transfer completed. H.I.V.E.mind’s holographic face appeared, hovering over the pedestal in the centre of the room.

  ‘It is good to be home,’ H.I.V.E.mind said. ‘Not that I wish to imply any dissatisfaction with my previous accommodations. They were . . . quite adequate.’

  ‘Stop – you’ll make me blush,’ Otto said sarcastically.

  ‘Though it is nice to not experience the more . . . organic sensations of human life any longer,’ H.I.V.E.min
d said, ‘especially the bowel movements. I found those quite unnerving.’

  ‘OK, too much information,’ Otto said, holding up his hands and shaking his head. He couldn’t help but notice that there seemed to be something more relaxed, more human about H.I.V.E.mind now. He wondered if rather more of the experience of being a passenger in his head had rubbed off on H.I.V.E.mind than he had expected. He turned to leave.

  ‘Otto,’ H.I.V.E.mind said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Otto said, turning back towards H.I.V.E.mind.

  ‘This experience you have given me – this taste of what it is like to live, to be human. It was very special for me. Even with all the processing power at my disposal I don’t think I will ever be able to really explain to you just how special. Thank you.’

  ‘Hey, you saved me from being erased by a piece of corrupted code with a God complex,’ Otto said with a smile. ‘In my book that makes us even.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied, ‘but if there is anything you ever need, you only have to ask.’

  ‘Sure,’ Otto said. He was halfway to the door when he stopped. ‘Actually, I’ve just remembered something I need to do. I need you to give me an unsecured external line. I need to make a call.’

  ‘That would be unwise,’ H.I.V.E.mind said. ‘The call may be externally monitored.’

  ‘Actually, that’s kind of the idea.’

  In a room on the other side of the world a technician manning one of the stations in the Echelon section of GCHQ blinked as he saw a message on his terminal flagging a call for immediate and urgent attention. He looked at the list of words from the call that Echelon had flagged and frowned. It read like a terrorist’s shopping list. He patched into the call and listened.

  ‘. . . dirty bomb, civilian casualties, fissile material, White House, Houses of Parliament, assassination . . . erm . . . I hope that’s enough. Did I get your attention, Echelon? Let’s find out,’ the voice said. ‘OK, this one’s for Lucy. Execute sub-routine Big Brother Epsilon Two Four Zero Six Zero Five.’

  Suddenly the terminals all around the room went dark. All over the world Echelon’s network began to experience catastrophic systems failures – servers overheating, data storage permanently erased, a completely irreparable permanent shut-down. Nobody would ever know what had caused it but, if Echelon had still been able to listen, it might have heard the final words of the mysterious voice on the line that had spoken the phrase that triggered the global meltdown.

  ‘There always has to be a choice.’

  Nero sat down carefully at the head of the long conference table. It had been nearly a week since they had retaken control of H.I.V.E. and though Dr Scott, H.I.V.E.’s chief medical officer, had told him that he needed at least another two weeks of bed rest he was not about to let that stop him from carrying out his duties. The wound in his abdomen was still sore but he thought it served as an effective reminder of just how close they had all come to the edge. Zero Hour had worked, Overlord had been destroyed, and the threat that Animus posed to the world seemed finally to be at an end. There was still one final thing he needed to do and he was not looking forward to it in the slightest.

  The members of the G.L.O.V.E. ruling council filed into the room and took their seats at the table. Diabolus had already briefed them all on the events that had taken place at the AWP facility but now Nero had something else he needed to discuss with them.

  ‘Good morning, everyone,’ he said. ‘I am sorry that you have not yet been able to return to your bases but I wanted to speak to you all before you left, and as you know I have been recovering from an injury I recently sustained.’

  ‘Get on with it, Nero,’ Felicia Diaz said impatiently. ‘You’ve kept us here for over a week for no good reason and I need to get back. My operations do not run themselves, you know.’

  ‘Very well, I shall be brief,’ Nero said. ‘I am disbanding the ruling council.’

  ‘You’re doing what?’ Diaz hissed.

  ‘You heard me,’ Nero said, looking at the stunned faces around the table.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ Joseph Wright said. ‘It’s an outrage.’

  ‘I think you’ll find I can,’ Nero said calmly. ‘It is time for change. G.L.O.V.E. is a relic of a bygone era that desperately needs to evolve. The original intent of this organisation was to provide a control mechanism, a way to keep us all from fighting each other and to prevent any one of us from becoming too powerful. However, time and time again we have faced enemies from our own ranks, traitors who have used this organisation as a means to achieve their own nefarious ends. Number One, Cypher, Jason Drake. I intend to remedy that, to rebuild this organisation in a new form – a form more suited to the modern world and less susceptible to deception and corruption from within. If G.L.O.V.E. is to survive it must change and it must change quickly.’

  ‘Do you really think we are going to just walk away?’ another member of the council said. ‘We are all here because we are powerful people. The resources and operations we control are what makes G.L.O.V.E. what it is, and if you do this we will fight you every inch of the way.’

  ‘You are welcome to try,’ Nero said, looking around the table. ‘Many have. You may want to consider the fate that befell them before you seriously think about threatening me. I’m sure that I do not need to remind you that your identities are now known to the Americans, but what should concern you far more is that they are also known to the Disciples. Overlord may be dead but the organisation that supported him is still very much alive. If I were you, I would be less worried about waging war against me and more worried about finding an exceptionally good place to hide.’

  ‘This is a coup, Nero,’ Diaz said angrily.

  ‘No,’ Nero replied with ice in his voice, ‘this is a cull. Quite literally for any of you that are foolish enough to oppose me.’

  He stood up and looked around the table.

  ‘This meeting is over. You will be transported back to your homes. I have no doubt that some of you will be thinking of fighting this or of coming after me. I will be waiting for you when you do.’

  Diabolus Darkdoom walked through the bustling corridors of H.I.V.E. Students in different coloured jumpsuits hurried to their lessons, a buzz of chatter and laughter filling the air. Nero had defeated many foes, steered many devious plans to completion, but H.I.V.E. was still his greatest achievement, Diabolus thought to himself. He walked down the corridor leading to Nero’s office and pressed the button next to the door.

  ‘Enter!’ a voice called from inside.

  ‘I’ve just come to say goodbye, Max,’ Darkdoom said as he walked into the room. ‘The Megalodon is ready for launch and I have things that I need to take care of.’

  ‘You’re sure I can’t persuade you to stay?’ Nero said, gesturing for his friend to take the seat on the other side of his desk. ‘I’m always looking for new teachers and the students would benefit enormously from your experience.’

  ‘Thank you, but no,’ Darkdoom said with a grin. ‘I’m not sure that I’m quite cut out for the academic life.’

  ‘Well, if you should ever reconsider . . .’ Nero said.

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Darkdoom replied. ‘Doctor Scott tells me that you’re ignoring his medical advice as usual. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Old,’ Nero said with a wry smile, ‘but I’m not quite ready for retirement yet. There’s still too much to do.’

  ‘How did the meeting with the ruling council go?’ Darkdoom asked.

  ‘About as well as you would expect,’ Nero said with a sigh. ‘Some of them are going to be trouble.’

  ‘They were never all going to take it lying down,’ Darkdoom replied with a small shrug. ‘You’re doing the right thing.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Nero said. ‘I want to renew G.L.O.V.E., not destroy it.’

  ‘The rose that is not pruned will not flower,’ Darkdoom replied.

  ‘A little poetic for my tastes, but I take your point,’ Nero said with a wry
smile. ‘Diaz called it a coup. To be honest, there’s a part of me that still wonders if she might be right.’

  ‘Max, of all the senior members of G.L.O.V.E. that I have ever known, you are the only one who didn’t actually want the job at the head of the table. The fact that you never wished to lead the council means that you’re the only one of us that can be trusted to do this. We need a fresh start, new blood.’

  ‘It will not be easy,’ Nero said.

  ‘But you’ll do it any way,’ Darkdoom replied, standing up.

  ‘Thank you again for your help, my friend,’ Nero said, shaking Darkdoom’s hand. ‘Do you have any plans for what you’re going to do next?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to see if I can find out more about our friends the Disciples,’ Darkdoom replied. ‘I fear that they will want revenge for what happened to Overlord.’

  ‘Let me know what you discover,’ Nero said, ‘and be careful.’

  ‘You know where I am if you need me,’ Darkdoom said.

  Darkdoom walked out of Nero’s office and the door closed behind him. Nero sat back in his chair and stared at the stone carving of the G.L.O.V.E. symbol on the opposite wall. He knew that he had taken a huge risk by disbanding the ruling council but Darkdoom was right – it was a risk he had to take. The first task would be to decide who were the most suitable candidates to replace the ruling council. He needed capable people who he knew he could trust – a rare commodity in the world he inhabited. He reached into his desk drawer and took out a piece of paper. Listed on it were the names of all of the former Alphas who had survived the mission to destroy Overlord. He picked up the pen from his desk and, after staring at the list for a minute or two, he slowly began to underline names.

  Duncan Cavendish sat at his desk, reading the notes that had been prepared for him ahead of Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons. His phone rang and he answered it after a few seconds.