The Overlord Protocol

by Mark Walden

  ‘Stop!’ Raven yelled and Cypher raised a hand, halting the robot.

  ‘Last chance,’ Cypher hissed.

  Raven laid her swords on the ground and pulled on the tiny chain round her neck, snapping it and holding it up in front of her. The amulet depicting the black half of the yin-yang symbol spun slowly, glinting in the harsh white lights of the room.

  ‘Give it to me,’ Cypher said, holding out his hand. ‘Try anything and Nero dies.’

  Raven walked slowly forward and placed the amulet in Cypher’s outstretched hand.

  Nero grimaced, partly from the pain of his restraint and partly because it was over.

  Cypher had won.

  The captain stepped into the lifeboat, the expression on his face one of pure impotent rage.

  ‘That’s everyone, lower away,’ one of the sailors said and the mechanical winches whirred, lowering them to the ocean below. As the lifeboat hit the water the outboard motor kicked in and the tiny vessel raced away from the huge black ship.

  There was a thunderous roar as all of the missile launchers on the deck fired at once, the missiles streaking up into the air, drawing long white vapour trails in the sky. They had travelled no more than a mile when Laura’s new targeting instructions kicked in and all of the missiles veered off on looping trajectories that sent them screeching back towards the ship. Seconds later all of the missiles slammed into the hull of Cypher’s ship, just above the waterline, the huge blooming fireballs fatally gutting the enormous vessel from prow to stern. For a few long seconds the massive ship fought against the millions of gallons of seawater that were now cascading into her hull but then she started to list, tipping precipitously to one side. There were a series of secondary explosions within the ship as magazines and fuel supplies went up, and the huge vessel finally died, the hull ripping as she split in two with a hideous shriek of tearing metal and disappeared quickly beneath the waves.

  John Reynolds sat down at his desk, placing his coffee carefully on the mat that his wife insisted he used. He had a couple of minutes before dinner and he just wanted to check his online auctions and see how the bidding was going. He flicked his monitor on and was confronted with a blue screen. This wasn’t the normal error screen, though – it had no text. He hit a couple of keys on the keyboard and moved his mouse but nothing happened. He let out a sigh, got up from his chair and walked out of the room.

  ‘Will!’ he shouted. ‘What have I told you about playing your games on my computer!’

  What he didn’t notice was the busily flashing activity light on his internet router.

  ‘Move back over there with the others,’ Cypher instructed.

  Raven slowly walked backwards towards Otto and the Professor, not taking her eyes off Cypher for a moment.

  Cypher walked forward, the two giant assault droids following him.

  ‘I think we have delayed quite long enough,’ Cypher said, pulling a chain from around his own neck. Otto immediately recognised this second amulet, the white half of the yin-yang symbol that had belonged to Wing. He felt a sudden rush of anger as he realised that Cypher must have taken it from his friend’s corpse. That was why Cypher had attacked them in Tokyo and that was why Wing had died.

  ‘I have waited a long time for this,’ Cypher said, and brought the two halves of the amulet together. There was the briefest moment of silence and then the amulet began to glow with a bright red light.

  Nero watched with a combination of curiosity and dread. He did not know how Cypher had managed to acquire the other half of the amulet, but given the trouble that Cypher had gone to he had to assume that whatever the amulet did it was not something good.

  ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble for a necklace, Cypher,’ Nero said through gritted teeth, his shoulders burning with the pain of being held by the assault droid.

  ‘Oh, my dear Nero,’ Cypher said, triumph in his voice, ‘do you really mean to tell me that you’ve had this in your possession for all this time and you didn’t know what it was? You fool, this isn’t just jewellery – it’s the key to the world. The Overlord Protocol.’

  Nero went cold. He had thought he was the only person on earth who had even known of the existence of the Protocol, and that it had been destroyed long ago. Now he knew that not only had it survived but it was in the hands of perhaps the most dangerous man he had ever known. How had Cypher learnt of its existence?

  ‘You can’t use it,’ Nero said desperately. ‘Surely you know that?’

  ‘Oh, I can and I will. This network hub is all that I need. Soon I will –’

  Cypher stopped as the assassin droids that were positioned all around the circumference of the room began to twitch and jerk unnaturally. One by one the smaller black robots collapsed to the ground in sparking heaps. The pair of giant assault robots seemed unaffected, their heads swivelling as their glowing red sensory arrays tried to make sense of the scene around them.

  ‘What?’ Cypher half shouted, spinning around desperately as his soldiers fell before him. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small comms device.

  ‘Cypher to Kraken,’ he spat. ‘Cypher to Kraken, come in, Kraken.’

  But there was no response from his ship, a ship that unbeknown to him was currently sinking towards the ocean floor.

  ‘What have you done?’ Cypher yelled at Nero. ‘Where is my ship?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Nero replied with a twisted smile. ‘Perhaps things are not going quite as well as you imagined.’

  ‘You think you can stop me by destroying that ship?’ Cypher spat angrily. ‘The control net for my assassins may have been on board but my two assault droids can function quite independently of those systems. You have achieved nothing.’

  Otto saw a flicker of movement behind the second assault droid and a figure suddenly vaulted into the air, one of Raven’s crackling black blades in each hand. Otto’s eyes widened, his jaw dropping open in disbelief. He heard Raven gasp.

  Wing landed squarely on the shoulders of the giant robot, driving both blades down into the top of the machine’s head. The giant robot dropped Nero instantly, flailing uselessly at Wing, its systems already dying before collapsing into a heap of broken scrap metal.

  Wing landed gracefully in front of the destroyed machine, a look of pure rage in his eyes.

  ‘I believe you have something that belongs to me,’ he spat, advancing on Cypher.

  ‘The boy! Unit one, take the boy,’ Cypher yelled, pointing at Otto, and the surviving robot moved with frightening speed, swatting Raven aside, sending her flying into the central hub with a sickening crunch, and picking Otto up by the neck with one hand, hoisting him into the air.

  ‘Drop the swords,’ Cypher spat at Wing, ‘or your friend dies.’

  Otto tried to yell to Wing, to tell him to attack, but he could barely breathe with the pressure on his throat, much less shout.

  Wing looked for a moment as if he might cut Cypher down where he stood but then he looked at Otto, fighting for breath, his feet kicking desperately at the air, and he lowered the swords.

  ‘Drop them, NOW!!’ Cypher demanded. Otto let out a strangled gasp of pain as the grip on his throat tightened still further.

  Wing felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Do what he says,’ Nero said quietly.

  Wing let the swords drop to the ground.

  Behind his mask Cypher smiled, turning to the network hub behind him.

  ‘If any of you move, the boy dies,’ he said angrily.

  ‘You’ve lost, Cypher,’ Nero said calmly. ‘Let the boy go, you know that you’ll never get out of here alive.’

  ‘You still don’t understand, do you, Nero?’ Cypher replied. ‘I don’t need to go anywhere, I have everything I need right there.’ He pointed at the central network hub. ‘Once the Protocol is active no one will dare to oppose me, including you.’

  Nero knew he was right. If he did manage to activate the Protocol then he would be unstoppable.

  ‘No
w,’ Cypher said, holding up the glowing red amulet and stepping towards the hub, ‘if nobody minds, I have a planet to take over.’

  The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  ‘Actually, H.I.V.E.minds.’

  The glowing sensory array on the giant robot’s face flickered from red to blue and the machine dropped Otto, whirling around, its huge fist swinging straight at Cypher’s head. Cypher reacted quickly but not quickly enough, the robot’s giant fist striking a glancing blow to his mask, smashing it completely. Cypher fell to the ground, clutching his face as the giant machine loomed over him.

  Otto glanced at the display on the hub. H.I.V.E.mind’s personality matrix was restored – it had worked.

  ‘You are not welcome here,’ the giant robot said with H.I.V.E.mind’s voice.

  Cypher slowly stood up, his hands dropping from his shattered mask, his true face finally revealed.

  ‘Father!’ Wing gasped, his voice filled with shock.

  ‘Wu Zhang,’ Nero said in a stunned voice. ‘You’re dead.’ It was a statement of fact, not a threat. The man who Nero had assumed had died all those years before, the man who had been the co-creator of Overlord, now stood before him, blood trickling from a long gash on his forehead, a look of insane rage on his face.

  ‘Stay back, all of you!’ Cypher screamed, pulling a small device with a trigger mounted on the side from his jacket, ‘or we all die along with everyone else in this cursed place.’

  The giant assault robot took a single step towards Cypher.

  ‘H.I.V.E.mind, stand down,’ Nero ordered, and the robot froze in its tracks.

  ‘If I release this trigger it will detonate a device attached to the geothermal power core of the school,’ Cypher said, pulling the shattered mask from his head and dropping it to the floor. ‘I am leaving with the Protocol, or this whole place goes up.’

  Nero doubted very much that Cypher was bluffing. Destroying the power core would unleash the power of the volcano – the school and everyone in it would be killed in a catastrophic eruption.

  ‘Why have you done this?’ Wing asked, his voice trembling with shock.

  ‘I have done what had to be done,’ Cypher said. ‘Someone has to stop them.’

  ‘Stop who? What madness is this?’ Wing asked, walking slowly towards his father.

  ‘Why don’t you tell them, Nero? Why don’t you tell them what you and Number One are doing? They may think that I’m insane, but whatever I have done pales in comparison to what you have planned.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Nero said honestly. ‘I don’t even know who you are. Are you Cypher, or Wu Zhang, or Mao Fanchu? Do you even know any more?’

  ‘I will stop you,’ Cypher spat back, ‘or die trying.’

  ‘No one else is dying today, Father,’ Wing said, and ran at Cypher. He struck him at a full run, knocking the detonator from Cypher’s hand. Otto dived forward, arms outstretched, reaching for the tumbling device. Wing’s momentum carried him and Cypher over the safety rail that ran along the gantry and they both tumbled, flailing, into the air.

  ‘No!’ Nero yelled, running forward to the rail and looking down. Cypher lay in a twisted heap on the ground far below, but there was no sign of Wing. Suddenly a hand appeared on the edge of the gantry and Wing hauled himself up. Nero reached down and pulled the boy back over the safety rail.

  ‘It is over,’ Wing said as he half fell to the ground.

  ‘Erm . . . not quite,’ Otto said, holding up the detonator that he had caught.

  Nero’s face went pale as he saw the flashing words displayed on the device.

  Detonation Sequence Initiated.

  Nigel was just finishing tying up the snoring Colonel when he heard a bleeping from behind him.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Franz said, staring at the disc attached to the central geothermal control column.

  ‘What?’ Nigel asked urgently, as he tied the final knot.

  ‘I am thinking that this countdown is meaning that someone has activated this device,’ Franz said quickly.

  Nigel felt a chill run down his spine.

  ‘How long have we got?’ he demanded, standing up.

  ‘Ten,’ Franz replied quickly.

  ‘Ten minutes? Ten hours? What?’ Nigel said urgently as he ran over to Franz.

  ‘Nine,’ Franz replied nervously.

  ‘Get out of the way!’ Nigel screamed, pushing Franz aside. He yanked the device from the column, all concerns about anti-tampering devices gone from his head, and ran towards the walkway over the lava below. He glanced down at the digits on the device, saw four seconds remaining and hurled the device as far as he could over the edge.

  The bomb tumbled through the air and dropped into the lake of molten rock, one second left on the timer as it disappeared into the seething magma and was utterly consumed.

  Nigel waited for a catastrophic explosion, but nothing happened. He did not want to think about what would have happened if they had not been there. Franz came and stood beside him, looking down into the boiling pit below.

  ‘Will this be making us heroes?’ he asked curiously.

  .

  Chapter Nineteen

  Laura and Shelby walked slowly into the network hub room, which was by now a scene of total chaos. They had handed the Contessa over to Chief Lewis when they’d arrived back on the island and he had taken her away to the detention centre, but not before telling them where they could find Otto and Wing. As Laura looked around the room at the scattered remains of the dozens of deactivated assassin droids she realised that they didn’t really need to ask where to find those two – you usually just had to follow the trail of debris.

  Otto stood next to Wing on the central platform looking down at the floor far below littered with black monoliths. Directly beneath them a medical team was lifting Cypher’s body, covered in a white sheet, on to a stretcher.

  ‘I’m sorry, Wing,’ Otto said softly.

  ‘Do not be,’ Wing replied in his usual calm, measured tone. ‘I do not know who that man was.’

  Otto looked at his friend with concern. Otto had been an orphan his entire life so he didn’t really know what it meant to have a family, but he suspected that Wing must have felt the effects of this whole ordeal rather more than he was letting on.

  ‘I’m just glad you’re alive,’ Otto replied.

  ‘Yes,’ Wing replied with a slight smile, looking away from the scene below. ‘At least now I know why Cypher went to so much trouble to keep me that way.’

  ‘Why did he do this, Wing?’ Otto asked with a frown. Clearly he had been after the two halves of Wing’s amulet for some reason, but he had no idea what the Overlord Protocol was and, judging by the frustrated expression on Wing’s face, his friend knew little more.

  ‘I do not know,’ Wing replied. ‘He told me nothing of his plans.’

  ‘Are you two OK?’ Laura said as she and Shelby approached the two boys.

  ‘We’re fine,’ Otto smiled. ‘I’m glad to see you two in one piece too. I understand you even managed to deliver the Contessa to the detention centre.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Shelby grinned. ‘We’re not gonna have to worry about that treacherous old witch any more.’

  Laura quickly looked round the room again.

  ‘Where’s Nero?’ she asked. Otto pointed down at the floor of the chamber far below, where Nero was following a stretcher being carried out of the room by a medical team.

  ‘Is that . . . him?’ Laura asked, looking at the body hidden beneath the white sheet.

  ‘Yes,’ Wing replied evenly. ‘We no longer need to worry about my father.’

  ‘Your father?’ Shelby said with confusion. ‘I thought it was Cypher?’

  The look that Otto shot at Shelby spoke volumes.

  ‘Oh, Wing, I’m so sorry,’ Laura said, her voice filled with concern. No one should have to go through what he had gone through over the past couple of days, but this was surely almost too much to endure.<
br />
  ‘Do not be sorry,’ Wing replied, a hard edge to his voice. ‘I am not.’

  Raven walked up to them, a crooked smile on her face. The medics had checked her over after the massive blow she’d taken from Cypher’s giant assault robot and given her a clean bill of health, though she felt as if she could sleep for a week.

  ‘I thought you might like to know that Chief Lewis has just informed me that it was Mr Darkdoom and Mr Argentblum who were responsible for disarming Cypher’s explosive device,’ she said. ‘Apparently Mr Argentblum has been particularly keen for everyone to know that he single-handedly took down Colonel Francisco.’

  All four of the students looked at Raven as if she’d just told them that the school was under attack by flying monkeys.

  ‘I’m just telling you what they told me,’ Raven said, her smile getting bigger.

  ‘Otto, could you come over here for a moment?’ the Professor said, beckoning Otto over to the central hub.

  ‘Come on,’ Otto said, grabbing Laura’s arm. ‘There’s someone who I’m sure will be pleased to see you.’

  Laura looked puzzled for a moment, but as Otto led her towards the hub a broad grin spread across her face. Hovering in the air was H.I.V.E.mind, and he was smiling!

  ‘Hello, Miss Brand,’ H.I.V.E.mind said, the smile broadening as she approached.

  ‘H.I.V.E.mind, you’re back,’ Laura said with delight. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Much better, thank you, Miss Brand. I am feeling much more myself.’

  Otto quickly explained to Laura how it had been the last-minute intervention of the AI that had saved them.

  ‘So you’re a hero now?’ Laura said with a chuckle.

  ‘That would appear to be the case,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied. Laura was sure she caught a hint of embarrassment in his tone.

  The Professor looked up from the nearby terminal and beckoned Otto over.

  ‘Ah, Otto, could you have a quick look at this for me,’ he said. ‘I want to start work on reverse engineering these assassin robots and I was wondering if you could just finish up here for me so I can get on with it.’