CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FROM THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
Axel Brayburn couldn’t sleep.
He knew he needed rest. Tomorrow he was going on the most important mission of his life. But thinking about that mission was keeping him awake.
Over a year ago, his father, Matt, had gone to fetch a takeaway meal and had never come home. The police had found his empty car upside-down by the side of the road, without a scratch on it. None of the searches had ever turned up a single hair. Months had gone by without any news, but Axel and his mum, Nedra, had never given up hope. His dad had to be alive, somewhere.
Now Axel knew they had been right all along. His dad was alive – and being held prisoner by a mysterious, sinister group called the Neuron Institute. Axel had briefly met their leader, a pale man called Professor Payne who had all the charm and personality of a praying mantis.
Axel’s alarm clock was a round plastic moon that lit up from within. Glowing green numbers showed the time was a minute before midnight.
Tomorrow, Axel and his shape-shifting robot friend BEAST would try to rescue his dad. It sounded simple when you put it like that. But Axel still didn’t know what sort of enemies he was going up against, and he wouldn’t know until Agent Omega arrived in the morning with the mission briefing.
He tossed and turned in the dark.
Not knowing what he was heading into was worse than knowing, somehow. His sleepy brain kept conjuring up all sorts of horrors. Professor Payne was a scientist. Maybe he made monsters. Perhaps there really would be radioactive dinosaur wasps this time. Or shark-spider hybrids, scuttling across the walls with mouths full of razor-teeth. Maybe they would fail, and his father would never come home …
Axel rolled over and groaned into his pillow. This was like Christmas, except instead of presents, the morning would bring a surprise package full of deadly danger.
‘AXEL?’ whispered BEAST from across the room. ‘ARE YOU OKAY?’
‘Can’t sleep,’ Axel mumbled.
‘CAN I HELP?’
‘Dunno.’
‘SHOULD I TRY DOING THE OCEAN THING?’
‘Sure. May as well.’
So BEAST tried his best to sound like the sea, because that always calmed Axel down. He made the whooshing sounds of waves crashing on the shore and sometimes added the sounds of seabirds. He was careful not to do the lonely cry of a humpback whale because the one time he’d done that, it had come out louder than a car alarm and he’d woken up the entire street by mistake.
It worked. Soon Axel was snoring gently.
BEAST watched him while he slept, just in case.
The next day dawned grey and cold.
Once, Axel’s secret den under the house had felt like a private fun room, somewhere to go and relax or play games with BEAST. But now, with everyone gathered around with serious faces and the most important mission of his life ahead of him, it felt more like an army command centre.
Agent Omega had arrived before Axel was up. He sat on the sofa, cradling a huge mug of coffee. Beside him sat Rusty Rosie, their loyal friend, and Axel’s mum. BEAST stood off to one side. He looked worried, but then, he often did.
‘You ready, Axel?’ Agent Omega said softly.
Axel nodded.
‘Okay. We all know why we’re here. This mission has only one goal. Rescue Matt Brayburn from the Neuron Institute and bring him home. Luckily, Axel and BEAST have got some experience in rescuing people from dangerous places.’ Omega smiled slightly.
The Omega Operation, Axel thought. He means the time BEAST and I tried to break him out of the Grabbem base. We barely escaped with our lives!
‘So the same steps as last time?’ he asked.
‘You got it. Get in, find a terminal, hack it, find out where your dad’s being kept. Think of last time as a dry run.’
‘BEAST KNEW HIS WAY AROUND LAST TIME,’ said BEAST, twitching his antennae nervously.
‘Good point,’ said Nedra. ‘We’d all heard of Grabbem Industries, but not these new guys. What even is the Neuron Institute?’
‘First, let’s look at where they are.’ Omega took a device like a TV remote-control from his pocket, pointed it at the table and pressed a button. A 3D image appeared in the air before them, showing a castle perched high on a bleak mountain.
‘Seriously?’ Rosie said. ‘With a name like that I thought they’d be in some fancy science lab, not Dracula’s Castle.’
‘Look closer,’ said Omega, and zoomed the view in. They all saw the gloomy castle was covered with strange devices. Cables threaded up and down the walls. There were huge screens hanging over the courtyards and satellite-dish-like devices on the tower-tops. The windows glowed purple and orange, and vents jetted clouds of steam out into the cold mountain air.
‘The Neuron Institute specialises in one thing,’ he said. ‘Fusing man with machine. The story says they’ve been doing it since Victorian times, right here in the same spooky old castle. Some twisted freak called the Baron von Donnerstein started the trend over a hundred years ago. They’ve gotten much better at it since then.’
‘I was wrong. It’s Frankenstein, not Dracula,’ Rosie snorted. Then she saw the look on Nedra’s face and said, ‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘No problem,’ Nedra said.
But Axel had had the same thought, and he needed to say it out loud.
‘That’s why they’ve got my dad, isn’t it? They’re doing experiments on him. Are they making him into a cyborg?’
‘We don’t know,’ Omega said. ‘And we need to find out.’
‘But they could be, right?’
‘I won’t lie to you. Your dad might be … different now. You’d best be ready for anything.’
‘I don’t care!’ Nedra said savagely. ‘I don’t care if he’s changed into some … some horrible machine! I just want him home where he belongs and that’s what’s going to happen!’
‘Let’s focus on the mission,’ Agent Omega quickly said. ‘Castle Donnerstein is in eastern Zamobia, in the forest of Eisenbern. Axel, BEAST and I will fly there in the MOT-BOL.’
Axel was pretty glad about that part. The MOT-BOL might look like a floating metal jellyfish, but it was a comfortable way to travel.
‘DO WE NEED TO FIGHT?’ asked BEAST.
‘Fight if you have to, but try to hide as much as you can,’ said Omega. ‘Every single person who works for the Institute is a cyborg, with built-in weapons. Then there’s the War Borgs, the real heavy-hitters, built for the battlefield. So be careful.’
‘So where are they keeping my dad?’ Axel asked.
‘We don’t know for sure,’ Omega admitted, ‘but we do know where he isn’t. The Undercroft, the bit under the castle. Dungeons. Abandoned cellars. Spiders the size of dinner plates. You get the gist. Seems they walled that bit off years ago and never go down there.’
‘Why?’ asked Rosie.
‘They’re afraid to. There’s meant to be a monster in the Undercroft. Something so horrible even Professor Payne is scared of it. Your dad’s got to be in the upper section, where the labs and computer rooms are.’
Everyone looked at each other in a worried way until Axel felt he had to say something. ‘What about apps?’ Apps let BEAST change himself into different forms to do different jobs.
‘I’ve prepared HECKFIRE, GALAHAD, SHADO and a new one, JACKHAMMER. In case yo
u need to do any heavy demolition work.’
‘Cool!’
‘There’s one more new app. It’s called PHOENIX,’ said Agent Omega, but he sounded unhappy.
Axel frowned. ‘What’s it do?’
‘It’s only to be used in an emergency. And you can’t use it, Axel. Only BEAST can.’
Axel looked at BEAST. ‘Tell me!’
‘ONCE PHOENIX IS ACTIVATED, IT CANNOT BE STOPPED,’ said BEAST. ‘IT OVERLOADS MY CENTRAL POWER CORE AND TURNS ME INTO A BOMB.’
Nedra gasped. Axel felt himself turn pale. ‘It’s a self-destruct?’
‘YES. BEAST WILL NOT USE IT UNLESS HE HAS TO, AXEL. TO SAVE YOUR LIFE. OR THE LIVES OF YOUR LOVED ONES.’
‘Don’t talk like that!’ Nedra yelled. ‘You’re going to win. And you’ll all come home together, safe and sound. I know you will!’
But even as she spoke, Axel seemed to feel a cold wind blowing out of the future from somewhere lonely, sad and far away. He had the strangest feeling this was going to be the last mission he and BEAST would ever go on together …
‘GROUNDED? YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!’
Axel’s arch-enemy, Gus Grabbem Junior, was red in the face. Not the jolly red of Santa’s cheeks or a plump tomato, but the angry, swollen red of a boil about to burst. It made you feel that if you just pricked his nose lightly with a pin, his head would explode and plaster you from head to toe with steaming nastiness.
Mrs Grabbem stood at the edge of the chaos that was Gus’s room. He had spent the past ten minutes tearing the place apart, flinging piles of clothes out of cupboards and ripping up comic books, so it was even more of a mess than usual. She stood her ground like an orange lighthouse in the face of a storm.
‘It’s for your own good, my treasure.’
Gus picked up an electric guitar and swung it into the TV over his bed. Mrs Grabbem flinched and shut her eyes as sparks and fragments of glass flew.
Her son dropped his arms and stood gasping for breath. Two wet green trails of snot connected his wide nostrils to his upper lip.
The Green Elevens, thought Mrs Grabbem. Haven’t seen those in a fair few years.
‘Your father and I have discussed it and he’s come round to my point of view,’ she said. ‘We can’t have you racing around the world getting into trouble any more. It’s just too risky.’
‘THERE’S NOT A SCRATCH ON ME!’ Gus howled.
Mrs Grabbem kept her voice level. ‘And we can thank our lucky stars for that. The number of vehicles you’ve crashed, Gussie! You could have been killed.’
Gus sank to his knees and grabbed two fistfuls of his own hair. ‘What am I meant to do, stuck here in this place by myself? I’ll go out of my miiiiind.’
‘You have plenty of toys and games to keep you amused,’ snapped Mrs Grabbem, who was losing patience. ‘Heaven knows your father and I buy you enough stuff.’
Gus looked around at his wrecked room and shrugged.
Mrs Grabbem took that as surrender. ‘Good boy. Dinner’s at six. I’ll send someone to clear up this mess.’
‘Guess I’ll see you at six, then,’ Gus muttered. ‘Unless you want to come up and yell at me some more.’
‘That will do,’ Mrs Grabbem said firmly, and shut the door.
Left alone in the chaos of his room, Gus felt strange. He didn’t even want to break anything anymore. He realised he felt sorry for himself, and couldn’t understand why. The answer was floating just out of reach – if he could only grasp it.
He did have a lot of stuff. His mum and dad were unthinkably rich – multi-bulti-billionaires who could have anything they wanted. And they had bought him a spectacular number of presents. He had a game collection that would be the envy of any kid on the planet. So why, Gus wondered, did he feel so empty inside?
He thought of Axel, and his eyes narrowed. Maybe that was what he needed to focus on. Revenge. After all, it was Axel’s fault that he was grounded. Hadn’t it been Axel and his stupid stolen BEAST robot that had kept wrecking his plans?
Yes. That had to be it. He grinned a wicked grin at the thought of ripping BEAST’s arms and legs off and making Axel watch. The more Axel cried, the more fun it would be. It would be even better than all the times he’d beaten Axel in Tankinator Arena, the online game they both played. Axel had been AX-MAN, and he’d been BAGGER_63. Maybe he should remind Axel of that, rub his nose in it some more.
But how? He was still grounded! He clenched his fist.
If only there was some way he could hunt Axel down without ever leaving the mansion. Some remote-controlled device, maybe. Or a hunter-killer drone. Or a super-powered clone of himself …
An idea hit him like a lightning bolt. For a second he stood speechless, amazed at his own brilliance.
‘Oh, man,’ he said to himself. ‘I’m a genius.’ And he went bounding out of his room. He sprinted to the lift at the end of the corridor. Buttons offered a choice of any floor he might wish to travel to in the huge underground factory complex that lay below the Grabbem mansion. He slid the whole button panel upward, found the secret control for the Experimental Projects level, and pressed it.
As the son of the company’s owners, Gus had a special platinum keycard. It could get him into any room in the entire place, no matter how secret.
Or how dangerous.
The sign on the door read TOP SECRET – AUTHORISED PERSONS ONLY!
Gus clicked his keycard into the slot and the door slid open with a sinister hiss.
The lab beyond was dark. Only the cool blue light of the computer screens showed the outlines of furniture in the room. From the far end came a different kind of light, a bubbling frenzy of ripples. That must be the Operating Tank, Gus thought.
He felt a wild excitement to be doing this forbidden thing. Of all the Grabbem projects he’d ever heard of, this was by far the most expensive. He’d never be trusted with it normally. If his parents found out he’d borrowed it, he wouldn’t just be grounded. He’d be disowned – sent to a military boarding school, probably.
‘Come on, come on,’ he whispered. ‘Where is it?’
He crept further into the back of the lab and turned a corner. A shape loomed out of the darkness. Before he could stop himself, Gus let out a terrified little squeal, the sort a piglet might make if it had just jumped out of a plane and realised it had left its parachute behind.
Then his fear gave way to awe. It was a gleaming metal figure, like an angel, complete with folded wings, but the face was a snarling, sharp-fanged demon mask.
Whoever had designed this thing had meant to strike terror into the heart of its enemies.
Out of sheer bravado, Gus grasped it by its cold metal hand. ‘Why hello there, Project TT-93. I understand you’re called the Titanium Terror.’
The angel didn’t respond.
Gus turned his attention to the luminous, bubbling cylinder nearby. The Operating Tank. He thought back to his father’s last-but-one Big Tour, when he’d been showing his allies around the base:
‘This is a highly sensitive project for us,’ his father had said. ‘It’s our first dip into virtual reality. Imagine you need to send someone to do an important job, but you can’t risk sending a human because they might get injured. So you send a robot, right? But robots aren’t smart like humans. They can’t think on their feet. What you need is a human mind in a robot body! And that’s what we’ve got here. The pilot climbs into the Operating Tank, and the clever little computers send his nerve signals through to the robotic angel. Ta-daaah! You get to become an indestructible robot warrior without leaving the safety of the lab! Then, when the mission’s over, you just disconnect and go have a shower. Job done.’
Shaking with excitement, Gus stripped down to his grubby underpants. He climbed up the ladder and lowered himself into the Operating Tank. The fluid wasn’t even cold like he’d expected. An oxygen mask clamped on to his face.
‘Please hold still,’ crooned a computer voice. ‘Scanning nerve signals.’
Gus felt a tingle all over. He closed his eyes …
… and opened them.
He was looking through robot eyes. He saw a doughy, pale boy floating in a tank. That’s me, he thought. He looked down at his robot body and flexed his robot hands.
‘I can fly,’ he said, and the harsh electronic voice that came out of his mouth startled him. ‘I can fire energy beams. I can drop bombs. And I can’t be killed. Guess what, Axel. I’m coming for you!’
‘ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, AXEL?’ said BEAST.
‘Huh?’ Axel, who had been looking out of the MOT-BOL window for the past few hours, snapped back to attention.
‘YOU ARE VERY QUIET. ARE YOU MEDITATING BEFORE WE GO INTO BATTLE?’
Axel shook his head. ‘I was just thinking about everything that’s happened since you came to our house that day, all those weeks ago. It’s been crazy. Going on missions, getting into danger. But I’ve loved it.’
‘BEAST LOVED IT TOO. WHATEVER HAPPENS, WE WILL ALWAYS HAVE THE GOOD TIMES.’
‘Don’t you two go soft on me, now,’ said Omega. ‘We’ve got a fight coming, and we all need to be on top of our game. Stay focused on the here and now, and trust one another. You with me?’
Axel nodded. ‘I’m with you.’
‘Good man. We’ll reach the Forest of Eisenbern in ten minutes. Stay alert.’
The MOT-BOL whirred through the sky at maximum speed. Soon they passed above a mountain range sprinkled with frost and snow, surrounded by a blanket of dark green forest that looked like moss from this high up.
‘There’s the castle!’ Axel said. ‘What are those metal things on the turrets? They look like satellite dishes.’
Omega frowned. ‘Scanners, probably.’
‘They’re turning. Pointing at us. Maybe they’re some kind of scientific –’
‘Incoming fire!’ Omega yelled.
From the tips of the ‘scanners’ came thumping blasts of solid light that lit up the mountainside with unearthly colours. Agent Omega heaved at the controls, but the MOT-BOL hadn’t been built for combat and it steered like a brick. One of the blasts fizzed overhead, but the rest slammed home.
Castle of Cyborgs Page 1