CHERUB: Dark Sun

by Robert Muchamore

  After injecting enough sedative to keep Zhang under for six hours, Greg hitched up the boxers and rolled Zhang on to his back again. George weighed half as much and showered twice as often, so it was a much more pleasant experience rolling him off the beanbag and injecting his buttock as he lay flat on the floor.

  Greg tucked a pillow under George’s head before looking uneasily towards Andy. ‘Two down, one to go.’

  ‘The tricky one,’ Andy noted, as he pulled a green cylinder and a gas mask out of his backpack before heading down the hallway behind Greg.

  Dr Lydon was probably asleep, but she wasn’t sedated like the boys and would wake with a start before they got anywhere near sticking a needle in her butt. She had to be taken down in a two-stage process, the first of which involved a powerful knock-out gas.

  Greg approached first, quietly opening the bedroom door and stepping into the gloomy room. If Dr Lydon had been awake, he’d have pretended to have walked into the wrong room on the way to the toilet, but the doctor was dead to the world after her double shift at the hospital.

  ‘Clear,’ Greg said, as he backed out.

  Andy tightened the straps of the gas mask behind his head and leaned into the room holding the pressurised cylinder. He pointed the nozzle up at the ceiling over the double bed and pressed the trigger to release a gentle mist. Job done, Andy backed out and swiftly pulled shut the door.

  ‘Give it four minutes for the gas to clear out of the air,’ Greg said, looking at his watch as Andy pulled off his mask and tucked it back inside his pack, along with the gas cylinder.

  After an anxious wait crouching in the hallway, Andy burst noisily into Dr Lydon’s bedroom. He flicked on the light and stumbled on to the bed. This was a deliberate strategy: if the gas hadn’t worked for some reason, he’d get yelled at for waking George’s mum but she’d hopefully think nothing of it apart from some hyped-up kid bursting through the wrong door.

  In many ways this was the trickiest part of the whole operation, so Andy was delighted to find himself sprawled over Dr Lydon’s legs, with the mattress bouncing but the doctor’s body completely limp.

  ‘Gimme a needle,’ Andy shouted, as he ripped off the duvet.

  The boys were slightly freaked out as the bedding landed on the floor. They’d both been through CHERUB training and were capable of all sorts of remarkable feats, but it was still a shock seeing one of your mate’s mums sprawled naked and unconscious over the bed in front of you.

  ‘I feel like a right perv,’ Greg confessed, as he rolled Dr Lydon on to her front.

  ‘Snap some pics with your camera phone,’ Andy grinned. ‘That’ll freak Georgie boy out when he wakes up.’

  ‘Be serious,’ Greg said, snorting with laughter as he swabbed Dr Lydon’s skin with a sterile wipe before Andy plunged the needle into the back of her thigh.

  Greg threw the duvet back over the doctor before following Andy out into the hallway. He’d flipped his phone open to dial their mission controller.

  ‘John,’ Andy said cheerfully. ‘Phase one’s in the bag. Everyone’s sedated and we’re about to move into Kurt Lydon’s study.’

  8. WINDOWS

  Kurt Lydon’s study was locked, but that’s not a major problem for a CHERUB agent. Greg opened the door easily, using a straight pick attached to his lock gun. Two bedrooms had been knocked together to create Kurt’s workspace and thirty thousand pounds had been invested in specialised computer equipment.

  Two powerful Dell workstations hummed away inside a special cooling cabinet and there was a huge inkjet plotter for making blueprints. One wall shelved thick books with titles like Advanced Molecular Thermodynamics and Mathematical Modelling for Turbulent Plumes and Jets. Pride of place went to a pair of 30-inch ultra-high-resolution LCD panels, worth over ten grand apiece. Beside Kurt’s regular keyboard and mouse was a multi-buttoned spaceball controller, designed for manipulating 3D images on screen.

  Andy had spent hours practising with an identical system on CHERUB campus, but still felt intimidated as he sank into Kurt Lydon’s high-backed office chair. He tapped the space bar and was pleased to see that the computer was only in standby, but the screen demanded a password.

  Greg was already on the case. He’d sneaked into the room on an after-school visit two weeks earlier and installed a hardware keylogger between the keyboard plug and the USB port on the back of Kurt’s main computer.

  Keyloggers contain memory chips that record every keystroke entered into a computer. When the logger got back to the MI5 lab it would hopefully reveal all sorts of information that Kurt had typed over the previous fortnight, but all they needed right now was Kurt’s main password.

  Greg pulled a tiny laptop out of his backpack, plugged in the keylogger and sat on the floor while the machine booted up.

  ‘We haven’t got all night,’ Andy moaned.

  ‘Keep your wig on,’ Greg teased. ‘These tiny laptops aren’t very powerful. It takes a couple of minutes to boot up and there’s diddly squat I can do about it.’

  Andy hated waiting around. Missions were OK when his mind was occupied, but he had a nervous disposition and waiting always made him start thinking about stuff that could go wrong.

  ‘OK,’ Greg said when he’d finally accessed the keylogger data. ‘First session, last Friday week. Capital A R then lower case i s t o t l e followed by a hash, a percentage sign and the numbers five, three, one and eight.’

  Andy was relieved that Windows accepted the password. ‘Never would have guessed that one,’ he gasped, as the desktop and taskbar appeared on screen.

  The screen was specifically designed for high resolution work, which left the dozens of tiny icons looking like specks amidst the huge expanse of screen. Greg put his laptop on the carpet and passed Andy a ring-binder and CD-rom from his backpack.

  Andy placed the silver disc in a tray and let the Dell swallow it. A dialogue box popped up on screen and he clicked OK to install a forensic program designed by the security services, known as Window Breaker. The program froze time, ensuring that no time and date stamps were left when files were altered. It also enabled a back door into the Windows operating system that bypassed most Windows security protocols.

  The second program on the CD was a Trojan horse. Once installed, MI5 would be able to access Kurt’s computer, remotely reading his files and monitoring all activity. The instant the program was installed, Kurt’s anti-virus software flashed up a warning. Andy had fully expected this and the third program on the CD dealt with it by installing a patch that made the anti-virus turn a blind eye to the unwanted software.

  ‘OK, that’s the software installed,’ Andy smiled. ‘You’d better start hunting for the dreaded backups.’

  Andy planned to spend most of the next three hours altering Kurt’s centrifuge design so that it wouldn’t work. Greg had to search the office and the rest of the house and overwrite any backup copies he could find with a doctored version of the original stolen file.

  But this left MI5 with two major headaches. First, if Kurt looked back at any previous versions of his work for any reason he’d realise that the files had been tampered with. Second, there was no way of knowing whether Kurt had stashed an extra backup under the floorboards, at a friend’s house, or even in a safety deposit box on the other side of town.

  All MI5 could do about this was cross their fingers, not let Lydon out of sight and move swiftly to arrest him if he began to suspect that he was under surveillance.

  ‘Remember,’ Andy said, ‘it’s a twenty-gigabyte file, so it won’t fit on a memory stick or a DVD. You’re only looking for backup hard drives.’

  Greg sounded slightly irritated. ‘I know, Andy. I read the briefing too.’

  He started off by running a search on the hard drives of Kurt Lydon’s twin servers as Andy opened Lydon’s AutoCAD software and found the latest version of the centrifuge design. The 3D model comprised over three thousand parts and even on one of the fastest PCs available it took nearly two minu
tes to load.

  Once Andy was sure that he’d opened the right file he plugged a portable hard drive into the USB port on the front of the machine and made a duplicate copy. MI5 would study this file to establish how quickly Kurt was progressing with his simplified design.

  By the time this was finished, Greg had overwritten a file on the other PC and began searching drawers and shelves for backup drives.

  Andy now had to enter the alterations that would sabotage Kurt’s redesign work. A hundred and forty-three parts had to be changed, and each one required up to a dozen individual alterations.

  It was impossible to remember all of these, so one of Lydon’s former colleagues had made a checklist, complete with detailed instructions, screenshots and even printouts of specific menus within the sophisticated software. It was delicate work: one decimal point in the wrong place could leave an obvious flaw in the design that would make Kurt Lydon suspicious and blow the whole operation.

  Andy put one hand over the spaceball and another over the keyboard before muttering ‘Concentrate,’ to himself.

  He opened the ring-binder and started to read: Alteration one, locate part spacer bearing seventeen. Andy navigated expertly with the spaceball, finding the part using the search tool, zooming in and then changing the display properties so that the wire frame outline of his target part was the only thing on screen.

  Select the fourth and sixth sprocket holes. Alter the thread properties from one sixteenth of a millimetre to one eighteenth of a millimetre. Rotate the object in relationship to the Y-axis within the main design by point zero seven of a degree.

  It was brain numbing stuff and it wasn’t helped by Greg humming as he rifled noisily through a filing cabinet.

  ‘Dude,’ Andy said fiercely. ‘Shut up.’

  Greg didn’t appreciate the tone, but he’d seen the complexity of Andy’s instructions and didn’t envy his task. ‘Sorry mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll be done searching here in a minute anyway.’

  *

  Two hours later, Andy sat at the giant screens rubbing tired eyes. Greg took a mouthful of Pepsi and popped a couple of M&Ms in his mouth. Greg had inspected the family PC and George’s laptop, but the only centrifuge design he’d found was an original stored on a backup hard drive on top of a kitchen cabinet.

  To speed Andy’s task, Greg now stood alongside with the ring-binder, reading his instructions out loud. The operation wasn’t going badly and they were ahead of schedule, but the task required absolute concentration and it was three hours past when they’d normally be in bed.

  ‘Alteration one hundred,’ Greg said, sounding slightly triumphant because they’d finally progressed to a three-digit number. ‘Open the sub-model of the motor unit G and alter the specification of the insulation…’

  Greg didn’t finish because his phone started to vibrate. It was their mission controller.

  ‘How’s it going?’ John asked.

  ‘Not too shabby,’ Greg said. ‘It doesn’t look like Kurt’s too thorough about backing up his data and we should be finished inside an hour if we’re not interrupted.’

  ‘Out of luck on that score, I’m afraid,’ John said. ‘They’re triangulating the position of Sophie Lydon’s mobile phone in the control room on campus. She called for a cab a while back and it looks like she’ll be home in six to eight minutes.’

  Greg glanced at his watch and saw that it was only half-past one. ‘Didn’t you tell me that the club was open till three?’

  ‘It might well be,’ John said. ‘But you don’t have to stay till closing time. Don’t get discouraged, you’ve got all the equipment and we made plans for an interruption. Wait until Sophie goes to sleep, then use the gas and the needle, like with her mother.’

  ‘I know the plan,’ Greg said reluctantly, before tapping Andy on the shoulder. ‘We’d better clear out.’

  ‘Bloody Sophie,’ Andy complained, as Greg snapped his phone shut. ‘Would have been so much simpler if she’d waited till we were done.’

  The two boys stuck all their stuff back inside their packs, hurried back into George’s bedroom and threw their sleeping bags out on the floor. Andy was tense, but he couldn’t help but see the funny side of Zhang’s loud snoring.

  It was less than ten minutes, but it felt like ages before Sophie’s key rattled in the front door. She hurried down the hallway and used the downstairs toilet, before staggering upstairs, barefoot, with a bottle of Highland Spring water in one hand and her black heels hanging from the other.

  Andy peeked out of the open doorway and saw that Sophie was drunk. Her head bopped to a tune in her mind and she was murmuring the line of a song to herself, over and over.

  Instead of heading into her own room, Sophie ratcheted up the tension by poking her head inside George’s open door. Greg and Andy closed their eyes and kept dead still.

  ‘Ahh, the little geeks are sleeping,’ she muttered to herself, before giggling.

  Sophie started to back out, but noticed Andy’s bag of M&Ms and a half-drunk can of beer on the carpet.

  ‘Mummy won’t be happy if she sees that, little brother,’ Sophie grinned, before tilting the can to take a swig.

  Andy and Greg weren’t sure if the can was drugged or alcohol-free, but it didn’t really matter because they needed to get on with the operation and couldn’t wait two hours to put Sophie to sleep.

  The beer was warm and flat, so Sophie spat it out in disgust. Greg opened one eye slightly, and saw Sophie’s painted toenails on the carpet just a few centimetres away from his face.

  ‘I’ll teach you to mess with Mr Rabbit,’ Sophie slurred.

  Smiling mischievously, she poured Andy’s M&Ms on to the carpet near the doorway and then crunched them under her heel. Once they were nicely mashed she tipped the remainder of the beer on to the brightly-coloured mess. Even if the liquid dried up by morning, a multicoloured stain and the distinctive smell of beer would remain.

  ‘Talk your way out of that one, Georgie boy,’ Sophie said quietly.

  She gave her bum a jubilant wiggle and laughed drunkenly as she staggered out and grabbed the handle of her bedroom door, but it was still locked from earlier.

  Greg and Andy realised the same thing at the same time: George’s mum had hidden the key so that the boys couldn’t get back into Sophie’s room. The only way Sophie could get into her room would be to ask her mum where the key was and if Sophie went into her mum’s room and found that she wouldn’t wake up she’d scream the house down.

  9. PLANS

  There was a lot at stake: a corrupt scientist, a centrifuge design worth millions, the chance to infiltrate the highest levels of the Dark Sun network and the opportunity to stop some crazed dictator or terrorist getting their hands on a nuclear bomb a few years down the line.

  Greg and Andy hoped some scenario from their training would leap out with a solution, but all they felt was blind panic as Sophie headed drunkenly down the hallway towards her mother’s bedroom.

  ‘Try unlocking her door,’ Greg whispered to Andy, as he darted out into the hallway. ‘Hey Sophie. What’s up?’

  Sophie put a hand on her hip and looked at Greg as if he was something nasty on the bottom of her shoe. ‘Piss off back to bed,’ she tutted.

  ‘I saw what you just did with the M&Ms,’ Greg warned. ‘I had one eye open the whole time.’

  Sophie shrugged. ‘My mum’s never gonna believe you.’

  ‘She might,’ Greg said, as he stopped walking half a metre from Sophie. He didn’t have a clue what to say, so he blurted the first thing that came into his head. ‘I might forget all about it if you give us a quick snog.’

  Sophie tutted incredulously. ‘In your dreams, pervert.’

  ‘Come on,’ Greg said. He was about the same height as Sophie and he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Just a quick Frenchie.’

  ‘EUGHH!’ Sophie shuddered, before giving Greg a two-handed push. ‘Touch me again and I’ll knock your block off.’

  Down the hallway, And
y turned his body so that Sophie couldn’t see what he was up to as he worked on her door with the lock gun. Sophie felt intimidated as she backed up towards the chest near the staircase: Greg was only twelve, but he looked strong and she knew that he’d seen off two Year Ten boys.

  Greg sensed Sophie’s fear and took a step back. ‘I’m only messing,’ he said. ‘I’m not gonna hurt you.’

  ‘Ta-da!’ Andy said, from down the hallway, throwing the lock gun back into George’s room as he pushed Sophie’s door open.

  ‘Sorted,’ Greg smiled, as he looked down the hallway. ‘Now you don’t need to wake your mum up.’

  But the booze in Sophie’s bloodstream made her paranoid and Greg’s attempt at blackmail, followed by a sudden eagerness to please, was totally creeping her out. The instant Greg turned to look back at Andy, she grabbed a vase off the cabinet at the top of the stairs.

  Greg saw it move out the corner of his eye, but Sophie was fast and brought the vase down hard over the back of his head. It didn’t break over his skull, but slipped from Sophie’s grasp and shattered on the wooden acorn at the top of the stair rail.

  ‘Keep your hands off me, weirdo,’ Sophie screamed, as she followed up with a remarkably well-aimed Karate kick.

  Even two years of the best combat training can’t protect you when you’re taken by surprise. Greg doubled over and groaned with pain as Sophie stormed down the hallway towards Andy.

  ‘Where’s the key?’ Sophie demanded. ‘I swear, if you guys have touched anything inside my room…’

  ‘There’s no key,’ Andy said. ‘I just know how to pick locks.’

  ‘You’re so full of it,’ Sophie screamed. She felt confident after flattening Greg and gave Andy an almighty shove.

  ‘Gimme my key,’ Sophie shouted, as she launched a full fledged assault by trying to knee Andy in the stomach.

  Unlike Greg, Andy saw it coming. He sidestepped Sophie’s flying knee, which was a good job because she was hefty and it hit the passage wall so hard that it made a dent in the plasterboard.