Rogue

by Mark Walden

  ‘I like crazy,’ Shelby said with a grin. ‘Crazy works for me.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Lucy said. ‘Let’s go.’

  The three of them made their way quietly along the tree line until they reached a point near the dirt road leading to the camp that was out of sight of the main gate.

  ‘I hope you’re right about this,’ Shelby said as she watched the road.

  ‘If I’m not, we’ll find out when they start shooting us,’ Lucy replied.

  ‘That’s not terribly reassuring,’ Laura remarked, slightly nervously.

  ‘Shh,’ Shelby interrupted. ‘Here they come.’

  Four guards were walking along the road towards them, heading back to base having finished their patrol. When they were just twenty metres or so from where the girls were hiding, the three of them stepped out of the bushes, hands raised in surrender.

  ‘All three of you, on your knees, hands behind your head,’ the lead guard barked, his rifle pointed straight at them. The girls did as they were instructed.

  ‘This is who we’ve been looking for?’ one of the other soldiers asked. ‘Three teenage girls?’

  ‘I’m calling it in,’ the lead guard said. ‘Cover them.’

  One of the others levelled his rifle at them as the leader raised his radio.

  Lucy took a deep breath. ‘Don’t use the radio,’ she said, her voice filled with sinister echoes and whispers. ‘Your commander told you to just take us to the detention area.’

  The four soldiers looked confused for a second, and then the leader lowered his radio and began to walk off along the road leading to the base.

  ‘Come on,’ Shelby said, as the four soldiers walked away. ‘Time to make like prisoners.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Laura asked as Lucy got unsteadily to her feet.

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ Lucy said with a weak smile. ‘I’m not going to be able to do much more of that though. I’ve never tried using the voice on more than one person before.’

  ‘Now she tells us,’ Shelby said as the three girls caught up with the guards, taking up position just in front of them and doing their best to look like recently captured intruders.

  ‘I was reasonably sure that it would work,’ Lucy said. ‘I just hope that we don’t run into anyone too smart.’

  ‘What happens if we do?’ Shelby asked as they approached the main gate.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Lucy replied.

  ‘Next time,’ Shelby muttered, ‘we’re going with the ventilation shafts.’

  Otto placed his hand on the security console and felt for the network nodes that would connect him to the internal surveillance system. Two dead guards had been found outside the base’s secondary entrance, and the fact that one of the men had been missing his access card suggested that whoever had taken it must already be somewhere within the facility. It was not difficult to connect to the system and he felt a strangely comforting sense of familiarity as the feeds from the cameras all over the base flooded into his mind. For a normal human the sudden influx of muddled imagery would have been overwhelming, but for him it simply coalesced into a three-dimensional model, with all of the people that were searching for the intruder moving around it in real time. He focused on the faces, comparing them one by one to the facility’s personnel records, looking for a face that did not fit. It would have been an impossibly painstaking task for anyone else, but Otto worked quickly, narrowing down his search. In just a few seconds he isolated a figure hurrying down the corridor towards the detention area and realised that it was a face that did not fit. Otto felt another tingle at the base of his skull as he studied the unknown man’s face, as if there was something familiar about him that he could not put his finger on.

  Wu Zhang

  Otto recoiled from the security console, unnerved by the sinister voice he had heard inside his head, a voice filled with hatred and rage. He shook his head as he felt a bizarre sensation, almost like something was bursting inside his skull. It passed after a moment or two and he took a long, deep breath. These glitches were becoming tiresome, he thought to himself. He would need to speak to Dr Creed about getting them stopped permanently.

  He picked up his pistol and radio from the table nearby, sliding the gun into the holster on his hip and raising the walkie-talkie to his mouth.

  ‘This is Otto,’ he said. ‘Our intruder is on the detention level. All squads move to intercept.’

  Cypher ran into the detention area.

  ‘I think I just saw the intruder!’ he yelled at the guard sitting at the desk inside. ‘Come on!’

  The guard leapt up out of his chair and followed Cypher out of the room.

  ‘Where?’ he asked, looking up and down the corridor.

  ‘Here,’ Cypher said calmly, and put his pistol to the back of the other man’s head. ‘Where’s Wing?’

  ‘Wing?’ echoed the guard, his eyes suddenly wide.

  ‘The boy who was brought in earlier – where is he?’ Cypher asked.

  ‘Cell four,’ the guard replied nervously.

  ‘Show me,’ Cypher demanded.

  He followed the guard down the short row of cell doors until they reached the final one.

  ‘Open it,’ Cypher said, keeping his gun trained on the nervous soldier as he unlocked the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ Cypher said with a smile, and knocked the guard out with the butt of his gun. He stepped over the unconscious man and opened the cell door. Wing looked up as the door opened, the frown on his face replaced almost instantly by an expression of utter astonishment.

  ‘Father?’ he gasped in disbelief.

  ‘Wing,’ Cypher said with a smile, ‘it is good to see you again.’

  ‘But you’re . . .’

  ‘Dead, yes, I know. Surely by now you have realised that in this line of work that is rarely a permanent state of affairs,’ Cypher said. ‘Nero lied to you. He thought it better that you did not know that I had survived.’

  ‘Perhaps he was right,’ Wing said, the look of astonishment suddenly replaced by an angry frown. ‘I did not mourn you.’

  ‘Nor would I have expected you to,’ Cypher replied. ‘I know that you have every reason to hate me, but I never wanted this life for you.’ He gestured at the walls around them. ‘Running from one battle to the next, never knowing who you can and can’t trust. Your mother would have given anything to keep you away from this world of treachery and death.’

  ‘What right do you have to speak of what she would have wanted,’ Wing asked angrily, ‘after everything you have done? She would have hated Cypher. I am only glad that she never saw what you have become.’

  ‘As am I,’ Cypher said sadly. ‘You will never know how much I loved your mother. That is why I have to save you from this life that Nero would have you lead. You are all I have left of Xiu Mei, and I will not let you be another sacrifice on G.L.O.V.E.’s altar.’

  ‘That is my choice to make, not yours.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Cypher said, ‘but that is a conversation for another time. For now we should be focusing on getting out of here without getting killed.’

  ‘You may do as you wish. I am not leaving without Otto,’ Wing said firmly.

  ‘Oh, we’re going to take care of Mr Malpense too,’ Cypher said. ‘Don’t you worry about that. Whether you like it or not, we have a better chance of getting out of this place alive if we work together.’

  Wing said nothing for a moment or two, weighing up his options before giving a small nod.

  Cypher gestured towards the open door and he and Wing hurried out of the detention centre. They were halfway down the corridor when a familiar figure rounded the corner ahead of them.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Otto said, pointing his pistol straight at them. ‘Drop the gun.’

  Cypher hesitated for just a moment, but then several more armed guards ran into the corridor behind them and he had to accept that they had nowhere to run. He let his pistol fall to the floor. Otto kept the pair of them covered
as he lifted the radio in his left hand.

  ‘I’m on the detention level,’ Otto said calmly. ‘We have our intruder.’

  The H.O.P.E. security technician opened the door and just had time to gasp before the butt of his comrade’s rifle smacked into his face and he toppled backwards unconscious.

  ‘Good boy,’ Shelby said with a grin, patting the mind-controlled guard on the shoulder. The girls hurried into the security facility and Lucy opened the door to the storage room inside.

  ‘Get in there and sleep,’ Lucy said, and the four guards who had led them in through the concealed door behind the waterfall walked obediently into the cramped space and collapsed to the floor. Lucy took a long deep breath, reaching out for the wall to steady herself, her face pale. Shelby quickly closed the door on the tiny room in which the four men were now taking their involuntary unscheduled nap.

  ‘You did great,’ Laura said, putting her hand on Lucy’s shoulder.

  ‘Yeah,’ Shelby said with a grin. ‘Your grandma would have been proud.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good thing,’ Lucy said with a weak smile. The truth was that if there was one person she did not want to end up like it was the Contessa. Her grandmother may have ultimately given her life to save H.I.V.E., but her actions prior to that were a catalogue of betrayal and deceit. It was not a path that Lucy wanted to follow.

  ‘Let’s see what we can find out about this place,’ Laura said, sitting down in front of one of the terminals in the room. She cracked her fingers and started typing rapidly on the keyboard. ‘Better lock the door,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I’m just going to give a friend a quick call.’

  Shelby gave Lucy a puzzled look, but she just shrugged; they’d both known Laura long enough to realise she knew exactly what she was doing when it came to computers.

  ‘Come on, pick up,’ Laura said under her breath. A few seconds later the monitor lit up with the glowing blue face of H.I.V.E.mind.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Brand,’ H.I.V.E.mind said calmly. ‘I am pleased to see you are unharmed. May I enquire as to your precise location?’

  ‘Honestly?’ Laura said. ‘I have no idea. We were stuck inside the passenger compartment of a Shroud the whole way here. We’re in the middle of a rainforest somewhere, but that’s as much as I can tell you.’

  ‘I am running a network back-trace,’ H.I.V.E.mind reported, ‘attempting to isolate your current position.’

  The AI fell silent for a moment as he tracked the path that the connection was taking through the impossible maze of international data transmission.

  ‘Location isolated,’ H.I.V.E.mind reported. ‘I have reported your coordinates to Colonel Francisco and his strike team. Doctor Nero wishes to speak with you.’

  H.I.V.E.mind’s face was replaced with the much more worried looking one of Dr Nero.

  ‘Miss Brand,’ he said, ‘are you all OK?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ Laura said. ‘Cypher killed the pilot and destroyed the Shroud though.’

  ‘He will pay for what he has done – you may rest assured of that,’ Nero said with a look in his eye that sent a shiver up Laura’s spine. ‘For now I am more concerned with your safety. We have a strike team on the way – can you get to a secure location and wait for retrieval?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Laura replied. ‘We’re inside the H.O.P.E. facility at the moment. Getting out again could be more difficult than getting in.’

  ‘H.I.V.E.mind will stay connected to their network for as long as possible in order to assist you in your efforts to escape. Well done, girls – without your assistance we might never have been able to locate that facility.’

  ‘We’ll let you know if there are any developments,’ Laura said.

  ‘Understood, Nero out.’

  Nero’s face disappeared and was replaced once again by H.I.V.E.mind.

  ‘I have accessed the video surveillance system and I believe I have located Raven,’ H.I.V.E.mind said. ‘She is being held in a room that is quite close to your current location. If you are able to free her, it may help to facilitate your escape.’

  ‘What’s between her and us?’ Shelby asked quickly.

  A two-dimensional map of the facility appeared on the screen, highlighting their location and Raven’s position relative to theirs. Several red dots were visible on the map in the corridors between those two points.

  ‘The red marks are guards,’ H.I.V.E.mind said. ‘I will endeavour to provide a diversion that is sufficient to clear your path to Raven. I will be somewhat limited in what I can do, due to the fact that it would be a trivial task to sever my connection to this network if my presence within it was discovered.’

  ‘Which is his way of saying he’s gonna be sneaky,’ Shelby said with a slight smile.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to use the voice again for a while,’ Lucy said, frowning. ‘The last thing you need is to be dragging around my unconscious body.’

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Laura replied. ‘H.I.V.E.mind, we’re ready when you are.’

  ‘Very well,’ H.I.V.E.mind said. ‘Let us begin.’

  Colonel Francisco watched the seemingly endless green blanket of the forest canopy roll past beneath the Shroud’s nose. There was no sign of any kind of landing pad for the helicopters they were hunting, and he was feeling increasingly frustrated. He knew how easy it would be to hide a base in this kind of terrain – they might fly right over it and never even realise.

  ‘Assault Shrouds forming on us to port and starboard,’ the pilot reported.

  Francisco looked out of the window and saw the latest generation of drop ships taking up formation alongside them. He had lobbied hard for Nero to invest in armed Shrouds, and these new birds were certainly that. He was grateful for the reinforcements they carried in their bellies too. There was no way of knowing what they might be flying into and the more guns he had the happier he would be.

  ‘H.I.V.E.’s calling,’ the co-pilot said, tapping his earphones.

  ‘Put them on screen,’ Francisco replied.

  Nero’s face appeared in the centre of the Shroud’s control panel.

  ‘We have coordinates for your target,’ Nero said quickly. ‘Relaying them to you now.’

  ‘Got them,’ the co-pilot said after a couple of seconds. ‘Transferring them to the nav system.’

  Francisco waited impatiently as the Shroud’s computers calculated a path to this new destination.

  ‘We’re ten minutes out,’ the co-pilot said after a few seconds.

  ‘Expect stiff resistance when you get there,’ Nero said. ‘H.I.V.E.mind is connected to the base’s network, and he tells me that there are a substantial number of troops defending it.’

  ‘They won’t know what hit them,’ Francisco said with a grim smile.

  ‘I have no doubt of that, Colonel, but be aware that our knowledge of these coordinates is down to the fact that the students Cypher kidnapped have infiltrated the H.O.P.E. facility. I want Trent taken down hard, Colonel, but we also need to make sure that Miss Dexter, Miss Brand and Miss Trinity are not caught in the crossfire.’

  ‘Understood,’ the Colonel replied. It did not matter how long he had been a member of H.I.V.E.’s teaching staff – he was still constantly amazed at some of the students’ ability to put themselves in the most dangerous places at the worst possible times. ‘Do we have locations for the rest of our people?’

  ‘We’re working on it,’ Nero replied. ‘Raven, Wing and Otto are there somewhere, we’re just not sure exactly where yet.’

  ‘And Cypher?’

  ‘It would appear that he’s there too,’ Nero said with a frown, ‘though his safe retrieval is of secondary importance. If you can’t take him alive, I won’t be lying awake at night worrying about it.’

  ‘Roger that,’ the Colonel said with a grim smile.

  ‘Let me know when you’re on site. Nero out.’

  The Colonel put on a set of headphones.

&
nbsp; ‘Francisco to all Shrouds, transmitting new target coordinates – activate cloaks and move to engage. All tactical teams prep for drop – we’re going in hot.’

  The three assault Shrouds banked in formation, turning towards their new target.

  The guards outside the interrogation room jerked to attention as Trent’s voice crackled over their radios.

  ‘This is Trent. We have an escaped prisoner attempting to steal the helicopter in the hangar bay – all units move to intercept immediately.’

  ‘Roger that,’ one of the guards said, and the pair of them ran off down the corridor towards the stairs leading up to the concealed landing pad.

  Shelby poked her head around the corner at the opposite end of the corridor.

  ‘All clear,’ she said. ‘That was a pretty good impression, H.I.V.E.mind.’

  ‘Sebastian Trent’s voiceprint is stored within my database,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied over the radio she was carrying. ‘Recreating it is well within my capacity.’

  ‘Tell me you can do Nero as well,’ Shelby replied with a grin.

  ‘Now is hardly the time for such frivolity,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied, his voice a perfect copy of Nero’s.

  Shelby chuckled ‘We’ve missed you, big blue’.

  ‘Come on,’ Laura said, hurrying. ‘Who knows how long we’ve got before those guards realise it’s a false alarm.’

  The three of them ran down the deserted corridor, stopping when they came to a heavy steel door.

  ‘Is this it?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Yes,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied, ‘but I cannot unlock the door remotely.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ Shelby said, dropping down in front of the lock and pulling two pins from her hair. The high-security lock gave way after just a couple of seconds.

  ‘You know, you’ve got to show me how to do that one day,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Trade secret,’ Shelby replied with a wink, opening the door.

  Raven looked up as the three girls entered the room.

  ‘How the hell . . . ?’ She said, looking amazed for a second before smiling and shaking her head. ‘Never mind. I suppose I should be getting used to this kind of thing by now. Could you give me a hand with these?’ She lifted her hands as far as the cuffs that secured her to the chair would allow. She looked in bad shape – there was a large livid bruise on her jaw and her shoulder was soaked in blood from a vicious-looking wound.