by Greg James
‘Sergeant Chambers is one of the Cleaners who was with us when we went to deliver Magpie to his secret holding location,’ explained Flora, ushering them inside. ‘So she missed Knox’s mind-control broadcast. Massive stroke of luck to have her on our side – because the reason she was on the Magpie mission is that she is O-I-C-R-R-P.’
‘Oh, I see … ?’ questioned Hilda.
‘O-I-.C,’ Flora corrected. ‘Officer In Charge of.’
‘Officer In Charge of … Recommended Retail Pricing?’ asked Hilda incredulously.
‘No, of course not.’
‘Roasted Red Peppers?’
‘The Rogue Relocation Programme,’ broke in the woman behind the desk.
‘Ah,’ said Hilda. ‘Yes, that makes more sense.’
‘Carry on, Sergeant,’ instructed Flora.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ replied Sergeant Chambers, searching for a folder. ‘Any Rogues considered not to be a threat to general society were given the opportunity to enrol in the Rogue Relocation Programme,’ she explained as she looked. ‘Provided they undertook not to engage in any plotting, scheming, world-domination planning or similar nefarious activities, they were allowed to live out their lives quietly in secret locations of their own choosing.’
‘Only the Rogues who posed a real threat to ordinary people were locked up in Shivering Sands,’ Flora explained. ‘We’re not monsters, after all. Not like Knox.’
‘So you’re saying that Nektar was part of this programme?’ asked Hilda.
‘Correct,’ answered Sergeant Chambers, pulling a folder out from the bottom of a pile. ‘Ah, yes – here we are.’ Hilda skewed her head to read the upside-down writing on the file: CODENAME HONEYPOT.
‘We apprehended the subject not long after his escape,’ the sergeant continued. ‘And under questioning it turned out that he had never really wanted to commit particularly evil acts. There was another Rogue working alongside him with far more dastardly plans. But he would never give us his name.’
‘And now we know it was Knox!’ Hilda realised.
‘Precisely so. It was Knox who wanted to take over the world. Nektar’s original plans appeared to be …’ She leafed through the folder. ‘Here we are … Getting into people’s ice creams, buzzing about in the tops of bins, building papery houses in people’s attics and –’ she traced a finger down the page – ‘ah … spoiling people’s picnics. Nothing especially evil, you see. So we allowed him to enrol in the RRP.’
‘And … you have his address?’ asked Hilda breathlessly.
In reply, Sergeant Chambers pulled out the last sheet of paper from the folder and handed it to her across the table.
‘We have his address,’ she confirmed.
16
The Beekeeper
The green grass that coated the hillside was bathed in mid-morning sunshine, dappled in places with the shadows of thin beech trees. Here and there a strip of chalk showed through, where tree roots had eaten away the sandy soil. A winding path led roughly upwards and, near the top, the roof of a cottage was visible above a tall hedge. A thin stream of smoke trickled from the chimney into a dazzling, clear sky.
‘Not a bad place for a former supervillain to retire,’ decided Hilda as they started off up the path.
As Nellie and Hilda climbed, puffing and sweating in the heat, they began to notice more and more bees, hovering and darting between clusters of flowers. The air was filled with the drowsy sound of their buzzing.
There was an arched opening in the hedge, and a firm metal gate barred their way. They peered through the bars to a neatly tended garden beyond. Fruit trees were dotted around amongst flower beds and lavender bushes that were even thicker with bees than the ones out on the hillside.
‘Over there,’ said Nellie softly, pointing.
Beyond the clumps of lavender, several large wooden beehives stood in neat rows against the hedge. And moving between them was a stooped figure in overalls and a large beekeeper’s hat with netting around the brim. The figure was holding a small canister that emitted a stream of pure white smoke. It was singing a song in a droning voice, and as they strained their ears they began to make out some of the words …
‘Oh, I’m just a bumble,
Mustn’t be humble,
Just a buzzy, buzzy bee.’
‘You have got to be kidding me,’ said Hilda before she could stop herself. The figure straightened, spinning on the spot.
‘Who’s there?’ said a high-pitched, whining voice. ‘Zzzzz … buzz off! No callers, no tradespeople … no … picnics! Bzzz! No! In the bin with you!’
‘We come in peace!’ fluted Hilda in the friendliest, least wasp-startling voice she could muster.
The figure approached them through the lavender bushes, the bright purple flowers releasing intense bursts of scent as his overalls brushed against them.
‘They said I would be left alone,’ Hilda could hear him muttering as he came. ‘Alone, yes … alone with my fuzzy, buzzy friends.’
The figure stopped on the other side of the gate and lifted the beekeeper’s net from its face. Nektar was still wasp-like, with bulging black eyes and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. But somehow his face had lost its expression of anger and hatred. It was hard to judge his exact emotions from the huge, multifaceted eyes, but Hilda almost felt he seemed … calm.
Retirement suits him, she thought to herself.
‘What do you want?’ snapped Nektar, before peering at them more closely. ‘Wait a minute, bzzz. I know you, don’t I?’
‘We mean no harm!’ said Hilda quickly. ‘We just want one, simple thing, and then we’ll leave you in peace! Promise!’
Nektar was growing more and more agitated. His air of waspy Zen was dissipating like the vapour from the smoker he still held in one hand. ‘I do know you,’ he hissed. ‘Bzz! Picnic! Horses! You’re the horse summoner! Gah! Sting-sting-sting. Mini sausages! Bzzz!’
‘Please calm down,’ pleaded Hilda – which, as you may know, is the worst possible thing to say to anybody who is having difficulty calming down. All they do is grow even more agitated and tell you not to tell them to calm down.
‘Gah! Hummus! Don’t tell me to calm down!’ shouted Nektar (told you), his mandibles gnashing in fury. ‘You kicked me, you did! Bzzz! Right off the top of my tower!’ Venom had begun to drop from the stingers on his wrists, which is never a good sign when you want someone to tell you their password.
‘To be fair, you were trying to take over the world with evil mind-control technology,’ reasoned Hilda, which was another bad move. Retired people never like to be reminded of mistakes they may have made during their years of employment.
‘Pasties! Gah! Bzzz! Mini eggs!’ he screamed, hopping from foot to foot like a tender-toed lizard on a hot day. Abruptly he turned his back and began to scurry away from them through the lavender, muttering to himself once again. ‘Live in peace, they promised me, yes, peace. Tzatziki. Peace with my little honey munchers, yes. Tartan rug.’
‘It was Nicholas Knox all along, wasn’t it?’ said a new voice. Hilda turned. Nellie was gripping the bars of the gate, looking at Nektar intently.
He stopped and turned back. ‘Knox … ?’ he said hesitantly.
‘He was the properly evil one, wasn’t he?’ Nellie went on. ‘You just didn’t like picnics very much.’
‘I don’t like them at all!’ snapped Nektar. ‘Silly outdoor dining! Silly miniature versions of normal foodstuffs. They should be spoiled! Spoiled with buzzing!’
‘Yes, yes,’ soothed Nellie. ‘Silly old picnics. I don’t like them either.’ (This was a lie; Nellie loves nothing more than a picnic, but she felt the subterfuge was justified here for the greater good.) ‘But Nicholas Knox has gone on to do some really evil stuff. While you’ve retired here to live with your bees …’
‘Fuzzy buzzies,’ said Nektar fondly.
‘Your, erm, fuzzy buzzies, yes. Knox has taken over the whole country! He’s made himself President and … and … he’s comin
g for anyone with strange powers … including you! He could come and take you away.’
Nektar was edging back towards the gate. ‘Away?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘Away from the …’
‘From the fuzzy buzzies. Yes!’
‘You must stop him!’ said Nektar decisively. ‘You, curly girl. Make your horses go all big and kick his smug face off. Bzzz!’
‘That’s certainly the plan,’ Hilda confirmed. ‘But we need a teeny, tiny favour from you first. We need to know what your password was for the Ribbon Robotics computer system.’
Nektar stopped edging. ‘Passwords are private!’ he hissed. ‘Pork pie!’
‘Passwords are indeed private,’ agreed Hilda, who had a firm grasp of online safety. ‘But this is bit of a world-saving situation.’
‘Password is embarrassing!’ said Nektar, looking rather shamefaced.
‘I’m sure it’s not,’ said Nellie gently. ‘And it’s the only way to stop Knox. The only way to stay with your lovely fuzzy buzzies.’
‘Very well,’ said Nektar, his antennae drooping sadly. ‘I shall tell you.’
‘I hate picnics?’ asked Murph incredulously later that day in Mary’s bedroom. ‘That’s his password: I hate picnics?’
‘No!’ Hilda replied. ‘Number one, capital H, at-symbol, T, E, P, number one again, C, N, I, X.’ She handed him a piece of paper with the password written on it: 1H@tep1cnix.
Murph sighed. ‘He really is a grade-A banana brain, isn’t he? He wasn’t going on about me being his son again, was he?’
‘Oddly enough, he didn’t ask after his long-lost son Mark this time, no,’ laughed Hilda.
‘Your name isn’t Mark!’ giggled Mary, who was sitting at the table by the window. ‘That’s why that’s funny!’
‘Let’s get this down to Lara,’ said Murph quickly. ‘It should allow her access to that twisted Cobblepot file, or whatever it was called.’
1H@tep1cnix …
ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD
ACCEPTED …
FILES DECRYPTING
‘Yes!’ exulted Lara Lee, punching the air as the screen filled with images, diagrams and complicated-looking equations.
‘That’s the mind control helmet!’ exclaimed Murph, as a rotating 3D image appeared in the corner of the screen. PROJECT COPPERGATE, read a large title in green letters at the top.
‘Knox is a brilliant scientist,’ admitted Lara grudgingly. ‘He has managed to isolate a frequency that interferes with normal human brainwaves. These helmets he’s designed are basically transmitters. And he’s using a slightly weaker version of the same frequency to make anybody who watches his daily broadcasts trust whatever he says.’
‘How come that new frequency is weaker?’ Billy wanted to know. ‘Is he losing his touch or something?’
‘It’s all about proximity,’ Lara explained. ‘Think of his mind-control waves as like listening to music. Wearing one of his helmets is like listening to it through really, really expensive noise-cancelling headphones.’
‘Cool,’ said Billy, who had always wanted some of those.
‘Well, if you think brainwashing the entire population is cool …’ sniffed Lara. ‘Anyway, if the helmet is like headphones, the transmission over everyone’s screens and TVs is more like listening to music on a speaker, from a long way away. The sound can get distorted – things can get in the way.’
‘Things like the Cy-bomb,’ said Hilda excitedly.
‘Exactly,’ confirmed Lara. ‘Now I have his original files, I can work out how his mind-control frequency is put together. If we get the Cy-bomb close enough to his transmitter – and if I’ve programmed it correctly …’
‘Which you will …’ said Nellie, quietly and supportively.
‘Which I will,’ smiled her mum, reaching out and giving her hand a squeeze, ‘then the control waves will be distorted. Suddenly people who’ve watched his broadcasts won’t have this overwhelming compulsion to trust what he says.’
‘And they’ll realise the truth!’ said Hilda. ‘He’s not trying to help society, he’s not pointing out a danger by telling everyone about Heroes, he just wants power for himself because he’s an evil, no-good, power-crazed, shiny-shoed, slimy-haired …’
‘Smooth-talking, smart-suited,’ added Billy, before realising those both sounded a little too complimentary. ‘Stinky-kneed, fat-eared …’ he went on.
‘Mind-controllin’, Hero-trollin’, number one villain guy,’ sang Hilda in conclusion.
There was a polite smattering of applause.
Lara grinned. ‘Well, he’ll never break your spirit, that’s for sure,’ she told them fondly. ‘It’ll take a while, but I’ll crack this frequency and program the Cy-bomb. And then …’
‘We’re going to overthrow the Government!’ said Hilda. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that!’
Murph shot her a kooky smile. He couldn’t think of many better people to have by your side when you were planning to invade the Presidential Palace with the entire armed forces ranged against you to face down a highly dangerous and completely deranged mad scientist who had mind-controlled the entire country.
‘Right,’ he said casually. ‘Shall we go and get ready, then?’
17
The Trial of Iain Iain Flash
Nicholas Knox grew more and more impatient as the weeks went by. Lara Lee and Carl were still working on the Cy-bomb. Knox’s brainwave frequency had turned out to be even more sophisticated than they had first assumed.
The Super Zeroes were growing impatient too. The leaders of the Rebellion allowed them to attempt a few missions, but frustratingly, Knox’s forces always seemed to be prepared.
‘It’s like they knew we were coming!’ raged Murph after yet another aborted mission.
They had been trying to infiltrate Witchberry Hall, the former HQ of the Heroes’ Alliance, to see if any Heroes were being held in the cell block there. But as soon as they had got anywhere near, they had seen a phalanx of black Alliance helicopters patrolling the skies and turned round in alarm.
‘I’m getting more and more worried about all this,’ complained Hilda. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say we had a mole!’
‘Mole?’ asked Mary.
‘Yes,’ said Hilda, ‘you know, a mole! A spy!’
‘Ah,’ said Mary, looking pensive. ‘A spy mole. Yes. Very worrying.’
‘Curly-haired girl suspects something,’ said Kopy Kat to Nicholas Knox later that night. ‘She suspects me of being … a shrew.’
‘A mole,’ corrected Nicholas Knox, sighing to himself. Knox thought, not for the first time, that it really was very irritating having a sidekick. He’d been a sidekick himself, of course, twice over. But surely, he thought, he could never have annoyed Nektar or Magpie this much.
He almost sympathised with them for a moment, before collecting himself. Those fools didn’t deserve sympathy. They had never wanted to see the bigger picture. Nektar had only wanted to use his scientific gifts to spoil picnics. What in the world had become of him? And Magpie … His lip curled as he remembered the man in black. He had possessed ambition, certainly, but only confined to the world of Heroes. And he had also underestimated Kid Normal and his friends. What had that miscalculation cost Magpie in the end? All his powers. Where was he now? Who knew? A weak and powerless old man.
Knox snorted quietly to himself. Only he had the vision to see the world of Heroes for what it was. A chance to turn people against each other. A chance to create chaos. And chaos was a ladder – a ladder he’d quickly climbed right up to this Presidential Palace. And as for Kid Normal? He had him right where he wanted him.
‘It’s simple,’ he told Kopy Kat. ‘Just point the finger at someone else. You know my methods. Apply them. Sow disagreement. Sow doubt. Turn them against each other.’
Kopy Kat gave him the thumbs up. She knew exactly what to do.
*
‘Mr Flash?’ said Hilda incredulously.
All five Super Zeroes were sitting
in Mary’s bedroom that night, wrapped in duvets, the remnants of a pizza on the floor between them.
‘Yes,’ Mary confirmed. ‘He was asking me all about that last mission. There’s definitely something weird.’
‘You know,’ mused Murph, chewing on a crust reflectively, ‘I always thought all that stuff about living wild in the woods was a bit fishy.’
‘It would certainly explain a lot,’ said Hilda.
‘We’ve got to do something!’ said Billy. ‘He could be selling us out to Knox!’
‘We will do something,’ decided Murph. ‘First thing in the morning.’
The following morning, Mr Flash stood in front of the leaders of the Rebellion and the Super Zeroes in the ice-cream kitchen, his face magenta with rage.
‘YOU HAVE GOT TO BE CRACKLIN’ WELL KIDDING ME!’ he sputtered. ‘Are you lot of brain-dead barnacles actually suggesting that I’m working for that oily Knox bloke?’
‘You were mind-controlled using his technology before,’ Murph reminded him. ‘It might have left you … more suggestible.’
‘Suggestible?’ roared Mr Flash furiously. ‘I’ll suggest you in a minute, Cooper. I SUGGEST YOU TAKE YOUR FOOTLIN’ ALLEGATIONS AND SHOVE THEM––’
‘That’s enough, Mr Flash,’ snapped Mary’s mum. ‘I’m afraid we can’t take any chances. You can consider yourself under arrest. Sergeant Chambers!’
The Cleaner grabbed Mr Flash by the arm, and the teacher allowed himself to be led away. ‘BUT I’M INNOCENT, FOR FELICITY’S SAKE!’ they heard him bellowing as he was propelled across the courtyard. ‘I’LL PROVE IT TO YOU! HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE ME!’
‘Right,’ said Lara Lee in a businesslike manner. ‘We’ll soon get to the bottom of this. Well spotted, Mary.’ Mary beamed with pride. ‘You might have saved the whole Rebellion there.’
‘They swallowed it – hook, lime and sneakers!’ exulted Kopy Kat later on. ‘Flash has been taken to prison, and I am free as birds.’