by Mark Walden
‘What you are describing sounds like a seed program,’ Cypher said as the Professor finished outlining their discoveries. ‘We would sometimes use them to build elements of core code that were too labour-intensive to be written by hand. Though I must admit that it is the first time that I have ever heard of a program going to such extraordinary lengths to hide its output. I will look at what you’ve found,’ he said with another sly smile, ‘but there is a price.’
‘You’ll do it or I’ll have Chief Lewis come down here and shoot you,’ Nero said angrily. He found Cypher’s arrogance infuriating.
‘Threats, Max?’ Cypher said with a grin. ‘Empty ones at that. If you kill me, where does that leave you? No, I think you might just have to give me what I want – if you want my help, that is.’
Nero fought to control his growing frustration. The fact of the matter was that Cypher was one of the only people in the world, possibly the only person in the world, who could help them solve this riddle. He had been instrumental in the creation of the Overlord AI, and while that project had been a near catastrophic failure, he was still the only person he knew who had any experience of this kind of technology.
‘What do you want?’ Nero asked through gritted teeth.
‘I want to see Wing,’ Cypher said, sudden and surprising sincerity in his voice.
‘If you do this, I will . . . consider it,’ Nero said after a few seconds’ thought.
‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Cypher asked.
‘Because you have my word and that is more than someone like you deserves,’ Nero said as calmly as he could. Cypher stared at Nero for a few seconds, as if trying to read something in his face.
‘Let me see what you have found,’ he said, holding out a hand.
The Professor passed the tablet display to Cypher and he began to study the glowing screen. As he looked at the code that the Professor and Laura had found, his expression changed from one of smug amusement to one of confusion and then, finally, shock.
‘You have to take me to your network core now,’ Cypher said, looking up from the display, his face suddenly pale.
‘Why on earth would I do that?’ Nero asked, feeling a prickling sense of unease as he saw the look in Cypher’s eyes. The infuriating arrogance was gone and in its place was fear.
‘Because this,’ Cypher said, jabbing a finger at the display, ‘is Overlord code.’
Chief Lewis, head of H.I.V.E. security, was having a bad day. The security system had been reporting periodic outages all morning, and it seemed like a member of staff or student was reporting a minor malfunction or problem every other minute. His Blackbox started beeping and he pulled it from his pocket. It was a priority call from Nero.
‘What can I do for you, sir?’ Lewis asked as Nero’s face appeared on the device’s screen. Nero looked worried, and that was never a good thing.
‘I want a full system shutdown,’ Nero said urgently.
‘What’s happened?’ Lewis asked quickly. A full shutdown would disable all of H.I.V.E.’s electronic systems except those that would actively endanger the school if deactivated, such as the ventilation and the controls for the geothermal power core. It was not something to be done lightly, but Lewis was aware that Nero already knew that. The Chief glanced at the location code at the bottom of the screen. Only Lewis, Nero and Dr Scott, the chief medical officer, knew who was secured in that particular room. If alarm bells had started ringing in Lewis’s head before, now they were being joined by wailing sirens.
‘Do you need me to send a team down there, sir?’ Lewis asked.
‘No, I need you to shut the damn system down NOW!’ Nero snapped.
‘Yes, sir,’ Lewis replied, knowing that Nero was not someone who panicked for no reason.
He hurried over to the shutdown panel on the other side of the room and was just pulling his access card from his pocket when all around the room the technicians who were monitoring the security system started coughing and then slumping forward on to their workstations. Lewis just had time to realise what was happening before the tranquilliser gas that was pouring through the ventilation system reached him and he collapsed unconscious to the floor.
On screens all over the room a single phrase appeared, flashing red.
SCHOOLWIDE LOCKDOWN INITIATED.
‘The interaction between financial institutions and those in political power is often overlooked as a potential vector for the spread of corruption,’ Ms Tennenbaum said, gesturing towards the large interactive display on the wall of the classroom. ‘While one should never dismiss traditional bribery techniques, it is also important to remember –’
Suddenly alarm sirens began to wail in the corridor outside and the graphic depicting the flow of funds between banks and political parties was replaced by the single word LOCKDOWN. A murmur of surprised conversation broke out all around Shelby, Lucy and Laura as their fellow Alpha students reacted to the sudden interruption.
‘Now what?’ Shelby said quietly as she watched Ms Tennenbaum pull out her Blackbox and look at its dead display with obvious confusion.
‘Probably just another glitch,’ Lucy said with a sigh.
‘I’m not sure,’ Laura said with a frown. ‘The security system hasn’t been affected before. This looks more serious.’
Ms Tennenbaum replaced her Blackbox in her pocket and looked back up at the chattering students.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, could we have some quiet, please?’ she said, holding her hands up to appeal for silence. ‘I’m afraid that you all have to return to your accommodation blocks. You will need to wait there until the lockdown has finished. Quickly now, please.’ She had no idea what was causing the alert – all of the communication systems were down – but like all the teachers at H.I.V.E. she had been well briefed on the procedure to follow.
‘You don’t think this has got anything to do with . . . erm . . . absent friends?’ Shelby said, nodding towards Wing’s empty seat.
‘I don’t know,’ Laura said. ‘It seems like a bit of an overreaction if it is.’
All around them their fellow Alphas gathered up their belongings and headed for the door. Laura, Lucy and Shelby joined the group as they filed out of the classroom, Ms Tennenbaum in the lead, and began walking down the corridor to their accommodation block. As they made their way along the passageway they were passed by several H.I.V.E. security guards, all clearly in a state of some agitation.
‘I don’t like the look of this,’ Laura whispered to the other two girls as yet another squad of guards ran past.
Shelby looked down the corridor ahead and then glanced back over her shoulder.
‘Hey, guys,’ she said to the other two, ‘slow down a bit.’
Laura looked at Shelby with a slightly puzzled expression as she started to drop back from the other students.
‘What are you doing?’ Laura hissed.
‘I don’t know about you,’ Shelby said quickly, ‘but I’m not getting buttoned up in one of the dormitories until I’ve got a better idea what’s going on. I probably don’t need to remind you, but the last time we did that we almost got eaten by a giant Venus flytrap.
‘Erm . . . you might need to remind me,’ Lucy said, looking genuinely confused.
‘Long story,’ Laura said. ‘Shel, we’ve got no idea what’s going on. It could be even more dangerous out here than in the accommodation blocks, for all we know.’
Ms Tennenbaum walked round a bend in the corridor, with the rest of the class following obediently behind. Shelby glanced over at a dimly lit side corridor.
‘Come on,’ she said, and pulled Laura and Lucy towards the shadowy passageway. Laura opened her mouth to object, but suddenly the memory of being locked in their room while the tendrils of Nigel’s mutated plant monster smashed down the door popped into her head, and she reluctantly followed.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Laura said with a sigh as Shelby opened a door leading into a darkened classroom.
‘
Nope,’ Shelby said with a grin, ‘but that’s never stopped us before, has it?’
‘You might not think it’s so much fun if Nero runs a headcount and realises that we’re missing,’ Laura said as they heard the sound of more heavy-booted feet running past in the corridor outside.
‘I figure we’ve got a while at least,’ Shelby said, holding out her Blackbox. Laura looked at the slim PDA. It was completely dead. She pulled her own unit from the pocket of her uniform and realised that it too was deactivated. Normally when a headcount was called, every student had to let their Blackbox perform a quick retinal scan to prove that they were where they were supposed to be, but there was no way that could happen if the units had been shut down. It only increased her suspicion that this was more than just another systems glitch.
‘I need to get to the computer core,’ Laura said quietly. ‘The Professor might need my help.’
As if to reinforce Laura’s gut instinct, the lights in the ceiling flickered and went out. A few seconds later they came back on, but they were dimmer than before.
‘Wouldn’t we be better just waiting here?’ Shelby asked with a frown. ‘At least until we’ve got a better idea what’s going on.’
‘Have you noticed how warm it is in here?’ Laura asked.
‘Now that you mention it, it is getting a bit stuffy,’ Lucy said.
Laura walked across the dimly lit classroom and held her hand up to one of the vents mounted in the wall. There was nothing, not even the slightest breeze.
‘The ventilation system’s down,’ she said, now starting to get genuinely worried.
‘So we have to do without air-conditioning for a few hours,’ Shelby said. ‘No biggy.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Laura said quickly. ‘The ventilation system is part of the school’s low-level systems. It can’t be shut down just like that. If it’s failed, we could be looking at a cascade failure.’
‘And that’s a problem because . . .’ Lucy asked.
‘That’s a problem because the geothermal power plant is part of the same systems layer. If that fails, the volcano that we’re all sitting on top of might erupt. Things might be getting warm right now, but I have a horrible feeling that if someone can’t fix this, it’s going to get a whole lot hotter.’
Nero pounded on the heavy metal doors that sealed them inside Cypher’s cell. There was no response from the other side. He pulled his Blackbox from his pocket and looked at it again, hoping against hope that it might have come back to life since he’d last looked at it less than a minute before. The Overlord AI was trying to rebuild itself within the school’s computer system and he – the head of H.I.V.E. – was caught in this room like a rat in a trap.
‘Can you hack these doors?’ Nero asked the Professor.
‘No,’ the Professor said, finishing his examination of the walls surrounding the entrance. ‘It would hardly be an effective prison for someone like our guest over there if I could.’
Cypher sat on the bed, a deep frown on his face, as he continued to study the code that had been retrieved from H.I.V.E.’s network.
‘This is worse than I thought,’ he said eventually. ‘The pace of reconstruction on this code has increased exponentially over the last couple of days. No wonder you’ve been experiencing more system errors – Overlord could be just hours from activating. I’ve tried to trace the problem back to its source, but all I can determine is that the system was infiltrated by the seed code on this date.’ He handed the display to Nero.
‘This is just a couple of days after we returned to the school following our confrontation with Number . . . with Overlord,’ Nero said. ‘You mean to tell me that this code has been running on our network since then?’
‘Yes,’ Cypher replied with a sigh. ‘It would have been undetectable for months though. It is only during the final stages of the reconstruction that the code would have required a large enough portion of your processing resources to cause the systems problems you’ve been experiencing. I fear that it is no coincidence that we find ourselves trapped like this.’ Cypher gestured at the rocky walls that surrounded them. ‘Someone – or more accurately something – is trying to keep us from stopping the final stages of the reconstruction.’
‘We have to get out of here,’ Nero said angrily. ‘We’re the only ones who know what’s happening out there. Only we can stop this.’
‘Agreed,’ Cypher said, ‘but unless you happen to have heavy cutting equipment concealed somewhere about your person, it would seem that we are stuck here for the duration.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ the Professor said suddenly. ‘How stupid of me to forget. I have a key to this door.’
‘A key?’ Nero asked, sounding bemused. ‘What do you mean?’ The only way to unlock the door was via the retinal scanner, and that was out of action.
‘Well, not a key as such . . .’ the Professor said, reaching into one of the many pockets on his lab coat. He pulled out the block of plastic explosive that he had extracted from Nazim Khan’s laptop.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ Nero asked, staring at the small grey block in the Professor’s hand.
‘Yes, and it should be enough to get us out of here,’ the Professor said with a broad smile.
‘Do you make a habit of walking around with high explosives in your pocket?’ Nero asked, sounding slightly bemused.
‘Oh no . . . well, not very often anyway. I was planning to drop this off in one of the secure storage lockers, but I got rather distracted by our trip down here,’ the Professor replied.
‘Do I really need to point out that this is a rather small room?’ Cypher said, eyeing the block of C4 in the Professor’s hand warily.
‘Oh, we shouldn’t need to use all of it,’ the Professor said, frowning slightly. ‘The problem is that we don’t have a detonator.’
‘We could rig something with this,’ Cypher said, holding up the display panel he’d been studying.
‘Yes, of course, the battery should produce enough voltage to trigger a detonation,’ the Professor said happily. ‘And if I shape the explosive charge carefully enough, the blast should be largely directed at the door.’
‘Largely?’ Nero asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Oh, it should be quite safe . . . erm . . . I think,’ said the Professor with a slightly nervous smile.
‘Do it,’ Nero said. ‘We have to get out of here now, and this looks like the only way.’
He watched as the Professor broke off half the block of plastic explosive and started to mould it by hand into a semi-cylindrical shape. He then placed the long tube along the seam down the middle of the steel doors, their weakest structural point.
Meanwhile Cypher ripped the back panel off the tablet display and pulled the long narrow battery free of the casing. Then he pulled the cable that led to the light beside his bed away from the wall and handed one end of it to the Professor, who inserted it into the charge on the door.
‘Help me with this,’ the Professor said to Nero, pointing to one of the heavy bookcases that lined the walls. Between them they clumsily manoeuvred it across the room and placed it in front of the door. With luck it would shield them from some of the blowback when detonation occurred.
‘Good,’ the Professor said, assessing their hurried handiwork. ‘Now I suggest we all take cover behind the bed.’ Nero and Cypher tipped the bed on to its side, and the three men all crouched down behind the limited protection that the mattress and bed frame provided.
‘Cover your ears and take a deep breath,’ the Professor said, holding the two exposed copper ends of the electrical cable over the battery terminals. Cypher and Nero did as instructed, and the Professor touched the cable to the terminals.
It felt like a giant hand had swatted the mattress they were hiding behind against the wall as the concussion wave from the explosion hit it. Nero was momentarily stunned, but quickly regained his composure and pushed the mattress off the three of them as the room filled with the smell of burnt pa
per. On the other side of the room there was nothing left of the bookcase except large jagged pieces of the dark wood embedded in the scorched mattress that had shielded them. Burning pages from the books that had filled it drifted slowly towards the floor. As the smoke slowly cleared Nero saw that the steel doors that had sealed them inside the room were twisted outwards, the blackened metal sufficiently deformed to make a hole just big enough for a man to crawl through.
‘Good job, Professor,’ Nero said, helping the older man up from the floor. ‘Are you all right?’
‘YES, IT WAS BRIGHT, WASN’T IT?’ the Professor shouted. ‘AND QUITE LOUD!’
Nero realised that detonating the device had not allowed the Professor time to protect his ears as he and Cypher had been able to.
‘We don’t have much time,’ Cypher said, coughing as he got slowly to his feet. ‘I suggest we get moving.’
Wing’s eyes opened as the Shroud’s landing gear hit the ground with a soft thud. He had not been sleeping, only meditating, and he was instantly alert to the sounds around him. He heard Raven come down the ladder and then move around the cabin for a minute or two. He could not decide whether he should reveal himself to her, now that they had apparently reached their destination, or if it would be best to follow her discreetly. But the choice had already been made for him.
‘You can come out now,’ Raven said. ‘Slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.’
Wing stood up from his hiding place behind the equipment crates, his hands in the air. Raven had discarded her normal black leather outfit in favour of grey urban-camouflage combat trousers that were tucked into black military boots and a black vest. He was secretly rather pleased by the astonished look on her face.
‘What on earth are you doing here, Wing?’ Raven asked with a mixture of surprise and anger. She lowered the black-bladed sword, deactivating the purple energy field that surrounded it.
‘How did you know I was here?’ Wing asked, lowering his hands.
‘Elevated CO2 levels in the hold,’ Raven said, holding up the Blackbox in her other hand. ‘You can be as quiet as you like, but you still have to breathe. Now I’m going to ask you again – what are you doing here?’