by Mark Walden
‘Damn it,’ Raven whispered, feeling his neck for a pulse but finding none. She had seen this once before when she had been interrogating one of Trent’s lackeys. Some sort of micro-explosive device implanted in the skull that could be triggered remotely. She would get nothing more from Khan. She glanced at the laptop display and was frustrated to see that he had not finished entering his password. She might be able to crack the system, given enough time, but judging by the wailing sirens she could hear, time was one thing she did not have. She closed the laptop and picked it up before walking over to the shattered office window. Leaning out over the dizzying drop to the street far below, she saw the flashing lights of several police cars gathered around the entrance to the building. Getting out was probably going to be considerably more difficult than getting in.
‘You seem to have attracted rather a lot of unwelcome attention,’ a familiar voice suddenly said in her comms earpiece.
‘Checking up on me, Max?’ Raven said with a tiny smile.
‘Let’s just say that I happened to be in the area,’ Nero replied. ‘Can you get to the roof?’
‘Yes, why?’ Raven asked with a frown.
‘I just thought you might need a lift,’ Nero said.
‘On my way,’ Raven said quickly, running out of the office and along the corridor that led to the building’s stairwell. She took the steps three at a time and flew out through the service door on to the roof. A sudden gust of wind kicked up the fine sandy dust all around her and then a rectangular patch of darkness opened up in the air directly ahead. Standing in the temporary gap in the Shroud drop ship’s cloaking field was Dr Nero, a hand outstretched. Raven grabbed his hand and pulled herself up into the invisible aircraft’s passenger compartment. The hatch closed, sealing the Shroud’s cloaking field once again and it departed as silently and invisibly as it had arrived.
‘I wasn’t expecting a ride home,’ Raven said, raising an eyebrow as she sat down opposite Nero, carefully placing Khan’s laptop on the seat next to her.
‘We’re not going home,’ Nero explained. ‘Diabolus wants us in Sydney.’
‘Is something wrong?’ Raven asked, sensing Nero’s concern.
‘It rather looks that way,’ Nero replied. ‘It’s been some time since he’s called the ruling council together for a face-to-face meeting. He wouldn’t give me any details when I spoke to him, but I doubt he would have summoned us like this without good reason.’
‘I don’t see why I need to be there,’ Raven said, sounding slightly irritated. ‘My time would be better spent continuing the search for Trent.’
‘Diabolus is quite aware of that, Natalya,’ Nero replied. ‘He would not ask for you to attend if there was not something specific he needed you for. Have you made any progress in tracking Trent down?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Raven admitted. ‘It seems that Khan designed some sort of hidden facility for Trent, but he was killed before I could get any more out of him.’
‘Killed?’ Nero asked with a frown.
‘Neural kill switch, just like that banker in Switzerland,’ Raven replied with a sigh. ‘There was nothing I could do. The plans are on his computer, but he didn’t manage to unlock it before the device in his skull was triggered. I could probably get into the system, but it would be safer to let the Professor look at it back at H.I.V.E. I don’t want to inadvertently trip any fail-safes that might delete the data.’
‘Curious,’ Nero said, glancing at the laptop. ‘Why would Trent need to have plans drawn up by Khan? H.O.P.E. has the backing of the world’s governments – surely he could construct any new facility he required without having to secretly enlist the assistance of someone like Khan.’
‘Clearly he wanted to keep it quiet,’ Raven said. ‘It would hardly be the first time that Trent has acted secretly to further his own agenda. Frankly I’m amazed that none of H.O.P.E.’s governmental overseers has realised yet that he has been using them to achieve his own goals.’
‘Never underestimate a politician’s capacity for ignoring what’s going on right under their nose,’ Nero replied with a wry smile, ‘a characteristic that G.L.O.V.E. has had good reason to be extremely grateful for over the years.’
‘Still, you would have thought by now that someone might have noticed that H.O.P.E. was just as much of a threat as G.L.O.V.E., if not more so,’ Raven said.
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ said Nero.
‘My training did not include dead languages, I’m afraid,’ Raven said with a slight sigh.
‘“Who watches the watchmen?”’ Nero said with a grim smile.
‘Aah, Miss Brand,’ Professor Pike said as Laura walked into the room that had once been H.I.V.E.mind’s central core. The scene that greeted her was one of utter chaos. Several of the white monoliths that had once housed H.I.V.E.’s benign caretaker artificial intelligence were open, cables and components lying scattered on the floor around them.
‘Erm . . . hello, Professor,’ Laura said, looking around the room with a slightly confused expression. ‘I was told that you wanted to see me.’
‘Yes, yes, come in,’ the Professor said with a smile, tossing an unidentified component over his shoulder on to a large pile of similarly discarded pieces. ‘I have a rather knotty problem that I thought you might be able to help me with.’
‘Really? What’s up?’ Laura asked, suddenly curious.
‘Well, I’m sure that you must have noticed all the recent disruptions to H.I.V.E.’s systems, and I was hoping you might be able to give me a hand in tracking down whatever’s causing them.’
‘Of course, I’d be happy to help,’ Laura said with a smile. ‘What do you need?’
‘Well, there seems to be some sort of rogue process chewing up the central core’s computational resources, and I’m having a devil of a time tracking it down,’ the Professor said, scratching his head.
‘Erm . . . I assume that Doctor Nero doesn’t mind me helping you?’ Laura asked slightly uncomfortably. ‘It’s just that after the incident with the library computers he gave me rather a clear warning that I shouldn’t try accessing the school’s core systems again.’
‘Yes, that was rather unfortunate, but I’m sure he won’t mind, given that I’ve requested your help and also that you are perhaps the most skilled systems analyst on the island – after myself, of course.’
‘If you say so,’ Laura said, blushing slightly at the compliment.
‘Take a look at this graph of system resource usage,’ the Professor said, gesturing at a tablet display that lay on the floor a couple of metres away. Laura picked it up and studied the data. There was no doubt about it – all the technical glitches that H.I.V.E. had been experiencing coincided precisely with sudden massive peaks in the amount of processing power that the school’s systems were using. There didn’t really seem to be a pattern in the spikes on the graph, but it was clear that something was draining huge quantities of computational power.
‘Any idea what processes were running during these spikes?’ Laura asked, still looking at the display.
‘That’s the curious thing,’ the Professor said with a slight frown. ‘As far as I can tell, there’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary that could be causing it.’
‘A bug, perhaps?’ Laura asked. ‘There’s no new code that could be malfunctioning?’
‘My code does not contain bugs,’ Professor Pike said, sounding irritated.
‘Of course not,’ Laura said earnestly. She had personally, in secret, fixed a few of these non-existent bugs in H.I.V.E.’s systems software, but she decided that telling the Professor that was probably not a very good idea right now. ‘Do you mind if I have a bit more of a root through the logs?’ she asked.
‘Help yourself,’ the Professor said, ‘but do please try not to break anything.’
Laura thought that was a bit rich, given the state of the room, but chose not to say anything. Instead she grabbed the correct cable from the piles on the floor and plugged the p
ortable display into one of the exposed interface sockets on a nearby monolith. As she began to run a series of diagnostics she found herself thinking about H.I.V.E.mind. The AI had sacrificed itself to save the lives of not just everyone at H.I.V.E. but perhaps even the whole planet. Otto had never discussed the exact details of what had happened, but he’d told his friends enough for it to be clear that H.I.V.E.mind had died a hero. But knowing that did not change the fact that Laura still missed the AI. Sometimes she felt a bit foolish for being so sentimental over what was really just an incredibly advanced piece of software, but when it came down to it, that was all any of them were. There was one small ray of hope. Not long before his disappearance Otto had told her that he had felt an uncanny sensation when he had used his abilities, almost like someone else was in his head, giving him additional strength when he needed it most. Laura couldn’t help but hope that it was some lingering echo of H.I.V.E.mind that lived on inside him. Otto would probably have told her that she was just being stupid, of course, but it did at least offer some small comfort.
Suddenly something caught Laura’s eye and she quickly tapped a series of commands into the tablet.
‘Professor,’ she said, still staring at the display, ‘I think I’ve got something here.’
Professor Pike carefully put down the disconnected components that he had been examining and walked over to Laura.
‘What is it, Miss Brand?’ he asked.
‘Well, I was comparing the processor load timeline with the network storage capacity graph and . . . well . . . see for yourself,’ Laura said, handing the display to him.
‘I really don’t see what . . . Hold on a minute,’ the Professor said, pulling his glasses down from the top of his head and looking more carefully at the screen. ‘There’s a correlation.’
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Each of the activity peaks exactly matches a dramatic drop in server storage capacity. Something’s eating disc space.’
‘Very clever,’ the Professor said with a smile. ‘I was just about to check that.’
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say that somewhere in the network there’s something growing,’ Laura said, looking puzzled. ‘The problem is that I can’t find any data on the network that matches the size of the space that’s being taken up.’
‘Yes,’ the Professor said, looking equally confused, ‘but there’s no way that anything could be hidden from us. My clearance level should mean that it’s impossible for any data to remain concealed, especially something as large as this appears to be. Thank you, Miss Brand. This suggests several avenues of potentially useful investigation.’
‘Do you want me to dig any deeper?’ Laura said hopefully.
‘No, no, you’ve been most helpful, but you should get to your classes,’ the Professor said, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll let you know if there’s anything else you can help me with.’
Laura opened her mouth to protest, but the Professor already had the faraway look on his face that he got when he was mulling over a particularly interesting technical challenge. Better to leave him to it for now and offer her help later, if it was needed. She picked up her backpack and hurried out of the room, heading for the Stealth and Evasion training area. It wouldn’t do to be late. Ms Leon had notoriously little patience for tardiness.
Laura was so busy thinking about the problem with the school’s systems that she almost walked straight into the two large figures who came round the corner just ahead of her.
‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ one of the two huge boys said with a sneer.
‘Sorry,’ Laura said quietly, and tried to make her way past. Block and Tackle were two of the most notorious bullies in the school, typical members of the Henchman stream and certainly not people Laura wanted to deal with at that precise moment in time.
‘Sorry’s not good enough,’ Block said. ‘Who do you think you are, just wandering around, not looking where you’re going? You could get hurt that way.’
‘Look, just leave me alone, OK?’ Laura said impatiently. She and her friends had had more than one run-in with these two and she knew it was unlikely that they’d back off if she just asked them politely.
‘You gonna make me?’ Block said, looming towards her, a nasty edge to his voice.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ Laura said, taking a step backwards.
‘Trouble? Hah!’ Tackle laughed. ‘Fanchu’s not here to protect you now, and in case you hadn’t noticed, your boyfriend’s missing too.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend!’ Laura snapped, feeling her cheeks grow hot.
‘Yeah, he’s probably rotting in some prison cell somewhere,’ Block said, poking her in the shoulder, ‘or dead. Either way, you’re never gonna see him again.’
Laura felt a combination of grief and anger as she looked at the smug expressions on the two boys’ faces.
‘Shut up!’ she shouted, all the feelings she had bottled up since Otto’s disappearance welling up inside her. ‘Just shut up!’
‘Awwww. I think we upset her, Mr Block,’ Tackle said with a broad grin. ‘I think she’s gonna cry.’
‘I wouldnae give you the satisfaction,’ Laura said angrily, fighting to control her emotions.
‘Hey!’ a voice shouted from behind Laura. ‘Ugly and uglier, leave her alone.’
Laura turned to see Lucy striding down the corridor towards them with an angry look on her face.
‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?’ Lucy snapped. ‘Not that you’d be able to find anyone as grotesquely swollen as you two steaming sacks of lard.’
‘Lucy, it’s all right,’ Laura said quickly.
‘No, it’s not all right,’ Lucy said, walking up to Block and jabbing a finger into his chest. ‘You two think you’re real big men, huh? Picking on a lone girl. You want to know what I think?’
‘Yeah,’ Block said with a nasty growl, ‘why don’t you tell me? Might be the last thing you get to say for a while. Hard to talk with your jaw held together by wire.’
‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ Lucy said with a sudden nasty smile. ‘You know what they say about bullies like you? All you really need is a hug.’
Twisted into Lucy’s voice were what sounded like dozens of sinister whispering echoes, and as she finished speaking Block and Tackle’s faces went blank for just the briefest of moments. Then, without warning, Block turned to Tackle and they hugged each other.
‘Come on,’ Lucy said with a broad grin, ‘let’s leave these two to it.’
‘I thought you didn’t like doing that,’ Laura said, glancing over her shoulder and looking at the two boys locked in an affectionate embrace. Lucy had inherited ‘the voice’ and its ability to control the minds of others from her grandmother, Contessa Maria Sinistre, but she was usually reluctant to use it. In this case she’d clearly decided to make an exception.
‘I don’t normally,’ Lucy said with a grin, ‘but sometimes . . . well . . . let’s just say that it’s hard to resist. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off . . . in an hour or two.’
By the time they reached Ms Leon’s class they’d almost stopped laughing.
.
Chapter Three
The Shroud soared over the Harbour Bridge and past the famous white curving structure of the Sydney Opera House, banking towards the gleaming skyscrapers of the downtown area. There it dropped into a hover and slowly descended through what looked like a solid roof but was in fact an elaborate holographic projection. The Shroud touched down gently on the hidden landing pad and a few seconds later the hatch opened with a hiss, the loading ramp dropping to the tarmac with a mechanical whirr. Diabolus Darkdoom was waiting at the bottom of the ramp to greet Nero and Raven.
‘Diabolus,’ Nero said, shaking his friend’s hand.
‘Max, Natalya, welcome to Australia,’ Darkdoom said with only a small smile. ‘It is good to see you both again. I only wish we were meeting under happier circumstances.’
‘What’s wrong, Diabolus?�
�� Nero asked, genuinely worried by Darkdoom’s uncharacteristically dark mood.
‘It’s probably easiest if I show you,’ Darkdoom said, gesturing at the doors leading out of the concealed hangar. ‘The others are already here. Let’s get started, shall we?’
Raven exchanged a puzzled look with Nero as they followed Darkdoom across the hangar – it was unlike Diabolus to be so evasive. The three of them walked in silence down a couple of corridors until they arrived at a pair of frosted glass doors engraved with the G.L.O.V.E. emblem. The doors hissed apart as they approached and they walked through to find a large conference room containing a long oval table around which sat the other members of the G.L.O.V.E. ruling council. Along one wall of the room was a full-height window that gave a stunning view of the Sydney skyline. As Nero took his place at the table he could not help but notice that two of the seats were conspicuously empty. Raven quietly went and stood against the wall behind Nero, studying the faces of the other members of the council seated at the table. They all looked as if they were feeling the same mixture of curiosity and anxiety as Darkdoom went and stood at the head of the table, his back to the window.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, looking around the table, ‘thank you all for coming at such short notice. As you know, I am reluctant to force us all to gather in person like this, but there is a matter that requires our immediate attention. I am sure you have noticed that two of our number are not here today. There is, unfortunately, a very good reason for that. Over the past week both Jonas Steiner and Madame Mortis have been assassinated.’
Diabolus paused for a moment, noting the looks of astonishment on the faces of his fellow council members.
‘Towards the end of last week Steiner’s private jet crashed in the Bavarian Alps. A catastrophic failure in the plane’s navigation system and autopilot caused the plane to fly straight into the side of a mountain. However, it has become increasingly apparent that this was not just a case of equipment failure, but rather a deliberate act of sabotage.’