Escape Velocity

by Mark Walden

  H.I.V.E.mind strode over to the door and wrenched it open with a screech of tearing metal. Otto stepped into the room just as the emergency generators kicked in and the dim lights in the cell flickered back on. He deactivated his camouflage generator and flipped up the mask on his helmet. Dr Nero’s face turned from bewildered surprise to amused recognition.

  ‘Otto Malpense,’ he said with a single raised eyebrow, ‘isn’t today a school day?’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s much point telling you that you shouldn’t be here,’ Nero said with a tired smile. He looked pale and gaunt but fire still burnt in his eyes.

  ‘We have to get you out of here, sir,’ Otto said, taking off his backpack and opening it.

  ‘Easier said than done, Mr Malpense,’ Nero said quietly.

  ‘You should have more faith in us, Max,’ Darkdoom said as he entered the cell, lifting the mask on his own helmet.

  ‘Diabolus,’ Nero said. If he was surprised to see him there was no sign of it. ‘I suspected somehow that rumours of your demise were exaggerated.’

  Otto pulled the carefully packed thermoptic camouflage suit from his pack and passed it to Nero.

  ‘You need to put this on,’ Otto said quickly. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  Nero nodded and stripped out of his orange inmate’s jumpsuit, quickly getting into the camouflage suit.

  ‘You’ll need this too,’ Darkdoom said, passing him a helmet. Nero pulled it on and Darkdoom quickly attached the umbilical cords that connected it to the rest of the suit.

  ‘We have company,’ Wing said as he walked into the cell. ‘A full squad of guards. I am glad to see that you are well, Doctor Nero.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fanchu,’ Nero said. ‘Still taking care of Mr Malpense, I see.’

  ‘The guards are coming,’ H.I.V.E.mind said as he too stepped inside the cell.

  ‘Tell me, Otto,’ Nero said, a look of disbelief on his face as he stared at H.I.V.E.mind’s new body, ‘is there anyone you didn’t bring?’

  ‘Explanations later. It’s time to complete the vanishing act,’ Darkdoom said before Otto could reply, snapping the masks into place on his and Nero’s suits. ‘You can’t catch what you can’t see.’ With that he pressed the activation studs on both Nero’s and his own suits and they both vanished from view. ‘The suit will conceal you in both the visible light and infra-red spectrum. Do not move unless absolutely necessary,’ Darkdoom explained.

  Nero said nothing, just nodded. Otto scooped the discarded jumpsuit up from the floor and stuffed it into his pack before activating his own suit. Wing and H.I.V.E.mind were the last to flicker and then disappear, just seconds before a guard appeared in the doorway of the cell.

  ‘Nero’s gone,’ he shouted back down the corridor to the other members of his squad. ‘He has to be on this level somewhere – spread out and find him.’ The sound of running feet faded into the distance as the other guards began their search.

  The guard took one last look at the bare interior of Nero’s cell and then began moving from cell to cell along the detention block, his gun raised, carefully checking for any sign of his quarry. Silently, Wing followed the guard out of the cell, just a few paces behind him. The guard reached the open cell at the rear of the block where Wing and H.I.V.E.mind had left the two unconscious guards just a minute or so earlier. He spotted the slumped bodies of his comrades and reached for the radio attached to the webbing on the front of his uniform. Just as he was about to speak Wing struck, delivering a neat chop to the man’s neck, sending him slumping forwards on top of his unconscious companions.

  Wing returned to the cell and gestured for the others to follow him. The group of phantoms walked silently through the cell block and straight between the two new guards who were stationed at the checkpoint by the entrance. The energy field that had sealed the detention block remained deactivated. It had required too much power to run under the emergency generators, just as Otto had known it would. They crept along the corridor leading away from the detention area in total silence.

  The hard part was over, Otto thought to himself as he checked the ever diminishing level of his suit’s batteries. Now they just had to get out.

  ‘Right, we’re leaving,’ Raven said quietly.

  Laura packed up her computer and silently followed Raven and Shelby back down the stairs from the power control room. As they walked briskly across the generator room towards the exit, two figures appeared in the concrete archway. Raven cursed quietly in Russian as the two tall blonde-haired twins clad in identical suits of white leather armour walked slowly into the room.

  ‘It appears there’s no one here,’ Constance said.

  ‘But appearances can be deceptive, can’t they?’ Verity replied with a wicked smile. She reached to her belt and removed a silver cylinder from an ammo pouch.

  ‘I do so love hide and seek,’ Constance said, also taking one of the devices from her belt and walking slowly forward into the room.

  Raven held her hand out, fist closed, to Laura and Shelby. Neither of them dared move a muscle.

  ‘Coming! Ready or not,’ Verity said evilly and both of the twins rolled the cylinders they were holding across the floor. Raven held her breath for a moment as both cylinders discharged with a sharp electrical crackle.

  For a brief, hopeful moment nothing happened, but then the same message popped up on the helmet displays of all three suits.

  WARNING!

  THERMOPTIC CAMOUFLAGE SYSTEM DISABLED

  Raven said nothing as her cloaking field flickered and died. She just removed her helmet, tossed it to one side and drew the twin swords from her back.

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to this,’ Constance said with an evil grin.

  ‘We both have,’ Verity said as she pressed a button on the baton that she was holding and it telescoped out to six feet in length in the blink of an eye, surrounded by an arcing blue energy field. Constance activated her baton too and the pair of them advanced cautiously on Raven and the two girls, their crackling staffs twirling.

  ‘Stay back,’ Raven said calmly to Laura and Shelby. ‘I’ll handle this.’ She thumbed the controls on the hilt of her katanas, switching them to their sharpest possible setting. Laura and Shelby obediently backed away as Raven adopted a defensive stance, blades crossed in front of her.

  Constance and Verity swung simultaneously, one striking high, the other low. Raven leapt into the air, somersaulting over their heads as their staffs swung at suddenly empty air. She swung one blade backwards as she landed behind the twins, a killing blow aimed straight at Verity’s neck but Constance moved like lightning to block the swing with her own staff. The two weapons clashed in a shower of sparks, sending Constance staggering backwards and knocking the sword from Raven’s hand. The blade pinwheeled through the air before landing tip first and embedding itself six inches into the concrete floor, its energy field crackling.

  ‘You’re not the only one with a capable weaponsmith,’ Verity said with a grin as she advanced on Raven again. Raven’s empty hand still tingled from the shock that had coursed through it when the two weapons had clashed. Whatever the field surrounding the twins’ staffs was, it was clearly more than a match for her own blades. She had to finish this quickly. The twins were fast and well trained: they would wear her down if this fight went on too long. She gripped the hilt of her remaining sword with both hands and raised it above her head, the blade parallel to the floor.

  The twins advanced again, raining down a withering shower of lightning-fast blows and forcing Raven on to the defensive, her single sword moving in a blur, blocking each strike, waiting for the barest hint of an opening. Raven grunted as she blocked a vicious overhead swing from Verity, but the blonde assassin had struck too hard, the force of the recoil from Raven’s blade leaving her off balance for the most fleeting of moments. Raven struck, hooking her katana inside Verity’s staff and delivering a vicious kick to her stomach in one fluid motion. The staff spun from Verity’s hands,
clattering away across the floor as she staggered back, winded, gasping for air.

  Raven did not slow down, diverting all of her attention to Constance as her sister struggled to recover. She struck quickly and powerfully against Constance’s increasingly desperate blocks, driving her backwards, ignoring the painful shocks that ran up her arms each time the charged weapons clashed. Sensing an opening, Raven stepped quickly forward, too close for Constance’s long staff to be effective, and hooked her foot inside the other woman’s ankle, tripping her. Raven followed through as Constance fell backwards, driving the point of her sword through her shoulder and into the concrete beneath, pinning her to the floor. Raven let go of the sword and grabbed the staff as Constance fruitlessly tried to block her. She ignored the pain as the staff’s energy field crackled around her hands and pushed the staff downwards towards Constance’s throat. Constance pushed back but the fresh wound in her shoulder weakened her and the staff pressed down remorselessly on to her windpipe, searing her skin and denying her breath. Constance’s eyes bulged and she made a strangled choking sound.

  ‘STOP!’ Verity screamed.

  Raven looked up to see Verity with her forearm tight around Shelby’s neck. With her other hand she held the crackling blade of Raven’s abandoned sword to the girl’s throat. Raven eased the pressure on Constance’s throat slightly but did not release her.

  ‘Let my sister go,’ Verity snarled, ripping Shelby’s helmet off, ‘or the brat dies.’

  Raven stared back at Verity. She had no doubt from the look on the woman’s face that she would carry out her threat if she did not comply. Not only that, but Laura stood frozen with fear, closer to Verity than she was to Raven; if she tried anything it would probably cost both girls their lives. Raven released her hold on the staff and stood up quickly, backing away from Constance, who immediately sucked in ragged gasps of precious air.

  ‘Let her go,’ Raven said, raising her hands.

  Verity moved slowly towards her sister, still holding Raven’s sword just millimetres from Shelby’s throat. As she reached Constance she shoved Shelby to her knees in front of her and pulled the blade from her sister’s shoulder. Constance pushed herself slowly to her feet and picked up the staff that only moments before Raven had been pressing down on to her throat. Blood was trickling from the wound in her shoulder.

  ‘You’re dead,’ Constance spat as she advanced on Raven.

  ‘Not yet,’ Verity said quickly. ‘Trent wants her alive . . . for now.’

  Raven could see from the rage flaring in Constance’s eyes that she very badly wanted to ignore Trent’s instructions.

  ‘When he’s finished with you, you’re mine,’ Constance hissed and swung the staff, hitting Raven hard on the side of the head. She fell sideways to the floor, unconscious.

  Verity turned back to the two girls as Laura crouched down beside Shelby, pushing the hair back from her friend’s face.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Laura whispered and Shelby just gave a quick nod.

  ‘Now, is one of you going to turn these generators back on,’ Verity said, levelling Raven’s sword at the pair of them, ‘or do I have to start cutting?’

  Otto crept past the H.O.P.E. control centre, on his way back towards the ventilation system access point. There was something odd about the room now. Before it had been a bustling hub of activity, but now it was abandoned. All of the terminals were still active, but the numerous seats dotted around the room were empty. He didn’t imagine that it was standard procedure to evacuate the control centre for a simple power failure. Something wasn’t right.

  Suddenly a squad of guards rounded the corner at the far end of the corridor, but instead of continuing down the passage they stopped and spread out, blocking it completely. Otto felt a cold sensation of dread in his stomach as Darkdoom gestured for them to head back in the other direction. Otto ran through the plans of the facility in his head and quickly realised that there was no other way back to the ventilation system other than to go straight through those guards. As the maze of tunnels and chambers slowly rotated in his mind’s eye he was startled to suddenly feel Wing’s hand on his chest. Otto looked ahead down the corridor as the other end was blocked by another squad of guards, standing line abreast, their weapons raised. If those guards stayed where they were they’d have no option but to sit here until the batteries in their suits ran out.

  Movement at one end of the corridor caught Otto’s eye and the guards blocking the corridor parted for a moment to let a familiar figure through.

  ‘I know you’re here, Nero,’ Sebastian Trent said as he slowly walked along the corridor towards them. ‘I thought you’d like to know that we’ve caught your pet assassin and her two little assistants. I was hoping Raven might have proven to be slightly more of a challenge but she was taken disappointingly easily. Now, are you going to switch off those annoying suits of yours or am I going to have to do it for you?’

  Otto felt a chill run down his spine as Trent raised his hand. He recognised the small silver cylinder that he was holding – the last time he’d seen one it was in the MI6 car park, where it had disabled his and Raven’s suits. He had a sudden horrible sinking feeling that they had been played for fools and that this was just the jaws of the trap snapping shut.

  ‘Have it your way,’ Trent said with a smile and tossed the cylinder into the middle of the corridor. There was a crackle and Otto felt his heart sink as he and the others flickered back into plain sight. The guards at both ends of the corridors tensed, their weapons levelling at these new, suddenly visible targets.

  ‘Helmets off now!’ Trent barked and Otto reluctantly did as he was told.

  ‘Maximilian and I have become firm friends over the past few months, but it is nice to finally make the acquaintance of you three gentlemen,’ Trent said, sounding infuriatingly smug.

  Hold on, Otto thought to himself. Three?

  ‘Otto Malpense, Wing Fanchu and – what an unexpected pleasure – the clearly not-as-dead-as-he-is-supposed-to-be Diabolus Darkdoom.’ Trent smiled unpleasantly as he walked towards them. ‘I do hope you’ll all join me for a chat. We have so much to talk about.’

  Trent beckoned the guards over and they quickly moved to restrain the intruders, snapping on handcuffs and pushing them roughly towards the control-centre door. Otto tried to resist the temptation to smile as the guards shoved him into the room. Trent may have captured four of them but the fifth member of their team was significant by his absence.

  Otto’s modifications to his cloaking device had worked. H.I.V.E.mind was nowhere to be seen.

  Ms Leon ducked back into the shadows as she heard voices approaching. She had managed to get all of the way to the Contessa’s office undetected and there was no way that she was going to get caught now, not when she was so close.

  ‘I just don’t like this,’ the Contessa said as she walked down the corridor towards Ms Leon’s hiding place.

  ‘It is not our place to question Number One’s instructions,’ Phalanx One replied, ‘as you well know.’

  The pair of them swept past, still caught up in their conversation. If they had spotted Ms Leon they gave no indication of it. The Contessa pressed her hand to the palm reader next to the door to her office and the door hissed open. The Contessa and Phalanx One strode in and Ms Leon realised that this might be the best opportunity she would get. She bolted for the door as it began to close again, nipping inside through the rapidly narrowing gap in perfect silence. The Contessa and Phalanx One were still distracted by their conversation as she slipped into the shadows and hid beneath a high-backed leather armchair in one corner of the room.

  ‘So now we just sit and wait for the call,’ the Contessa said, sounding frustrated.

  ‘Exactly,’ Phalanx One replied. ‘I hope you are not having second thoughts about this, Contessa.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ the Contessa said, the slight hesitation in her reply suggesting that she was not being entirely honest. ‘It just seems so . . . I don’t kno
w . . . wasteful, I suppose.’

  ‘Our opinions are not important,’ Phalanx One replied coldly.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ the Contessa said, her voice tired. ‘Just do what we’re told.’

  Ms Leon frowned. She had no idea what the two of them were talking about but she knew she didn’t like the sound of it.

  ‘Get in there!’ the Phalanx operative barked, shoving Nigel roughly in the back. He staggered forwards into the accommodation block, which was filled with Alpha-stream students.

  ‘Is that all of them?’ the other Phalanx operative said.

  ‘Yes, headcount and names confirmed. That’s the lot.’

  ‘OK, seal her up.’

  The operative punched a sequence of buttons on the panel next to the door and the heavy blast doors slid into place, sealing the accommodation block tight.

  The Alphas gathered in small groups, all talking among themselves, probably trying to work out what on earth was going on. It wasn’t that unusual for the accommodation blocks to be locked down, but it was unheard of for the streams to be separated out like this.

  ‘I am having the bad feeling about this,’ Franz said plaintively.

  ‘Yeah,’ Nigel said quietly, ‘I know what you mean.’

  Concealed within an air-conditioning vent far overhead, a large white gas cylinder sat with a single green light flashing on the valve that sealed it.

  .

  Chapter Eleven

  The squad of guards marched into the control centre with Shelby and Laura in front of them, both handcuffed. Behind the guards were the twins that Otto had seen before in the MI6 building, dragging the unconscious body of Raven between them. Otto noticed that they each had one of Raven’s swords tied to their belts.

  The twins tossed Raven roughly to the floor. Nero ignored the guns trained on him and hurried over to her, rolling her gently on to her back and cradling her head in his hands. She was bleeding from a nasty cut to her temple and as he pushed her hair away from the wound she moaned gently but her eyes remained closed.