Aftershock (31 page)

Otto walked across the hangar bay towards the waiting Shroud with a backpack slung over his shoulder. Nero stood beside the loading ramp.

‘You have everything you need?’ Nero asked as Otto approached.

‘Yes,’ Otto replied, ‘as long as you’re sure that the school doesn’t need what you’ve given me more than I do right now.’

‘Professor Pike assures me that we will be fine,’ Nero replied. ‘Be careful out there, Otto. It’s more dangerous than you might imagine at the moment.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Otto said with a smile. ‘I’m sure I’ll find someone to watch my back.’

Nero stuck out his hand and Otto shook it.

‘The school will not be the same without you, Mr Malpense.’

Otto nodded and walked up the ramp. Nero watched Otto disappear from view as the ramp whirred shut. He walked away as the Shroud’s engines increased in volume and the aircraft lifted off the pad and soared upwards and out of the crater, leaving H.I.V.E. behind.

Nero gestured for the other members of the G.L.O.V.E. ruling council to be seated as he walked into the conference room.

‘Thank you all for making the journey to be here today. I know it’s unusual but we have something extremely important to discuss. You are all graduates of this school, in fact, you are all graduates of the Alpha stream specifically. That is, in large part, why I selected you to make up the new ruling council after the events of Zero Hour. It was not a question of trust or loyalty, it was because you were the best. All of you are therefore familiar with the exercise known as the Hunt. You have all taken part in it at some point and you are all familiar with the special place it has in the history of this school. It is my sorry duty to inform you that two days ago the Disciples ambushed those taking part in the Hunt. So far the toll of those dead or missing presumed captured stands at sixteen support staff and thirty-eight Alpha students. Almost the entire year of Alphas has been wiped out.’

There were gasps of shock and dismay from the others round the table.

‘When we last met I told you that we had no choice but to wait for the Disciples to make their move. They did. Now the time has come for retribution. I am not talking about punishment or reprisals, I am talking about the wholesale destruction of the Disciples once and for all. We are going to wipe this scum from the face of the Earth. Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake, as of now we are at war. This is one of the most serious tests of strength that this organisation has ever faced and we will
not
falter in the face of it. We will need to give our fullest support to one another and also call on the support of our allies. With that in mind I have asked a veteran member of this organisation if he would, despite his reluctance, retake his seat on the ruling council. A man whose own son’s name is on the roll of the dead and missing after this atrocity. Diabolus.’

‘Thank you, Max,’ Darkdoom said, his holographic image appearing in the seat at the far end of the table. ‘I always swore that I would not return to being a full member of this council but the time has come for all of us to put aside what we want and do what we must. I don’t know if my son is alive or dead but I do know one thing. I know that I’m going to make damn sure that the people responsible are going to pay. I don’t care what it takes, they
will
be held accountable.’

‘Thank you, Diabolus,’ Nero said. ‘You should all know that this happened because of a leak within H.I.V.E. That leak has now been . . . plugged. The person responsible was someone we trusted, someone who had served G.L.O.V.E. for many years. I do not want to start a witch hunt within our organisation, but at the same time we have to be aware of the possibility that there are other traitors in our midst. Be vigilant.’

Nero punched a button on the console in front of him and a holographic globe appeared, floating in the middle of the table.

‘Here is what we are planning for the first wave of attacks . . .’

Mary and Andrew Brand sat holding each other, as their baby son Douglas slept in his mother’s arms. They had no idea how long they’d been kept there in the darkness but it seemed like a long time since the group of armed men had broken into their house and abducted them. They had undergone a long and terrifying journey in the back of the van with bags over their heads before a man in a mask had taken their photograph and then just locked them here in this bare concrete room with a bucket for a toilet and one meal a day. They had no idea why they were there.

There were heavy footsteps outside and they heard the sound of the door unlocking. The lights in the room came on and two men entered wearing black ski masks. They were both carrying pistols.

‘Get the kid,’ one of the men said. ‘Minerva wants him for the Glasshouse.’

‘What about them?’ the other man asked, waving his pistol at Mary and Andrew.

‘We don’t need them,’ the first man said, cocking the hammer on his pistol. ‘They’re expend—’

The two men both gasped as glowing purple blades burst simultaneously from the centre of each of their chests. A moment later the blades disappeared again as both men toppled to the floor to reveal a figure standing behind them in a skin-tight black bodysuit and a black mask, a glowing purple sword in each hand.

‘My name is Raven,’ the figure said. ‘I’m a friend of your daughter. We have to go . . . NOW!’

two weeks later

Otto walked out of the tube station and on to the street. People bustled around him but he was slowly getting used to being back in a big city after the comparatively small community he had been part of at H.I.V.E. What was harder to ignore was the constant hum of all of the digital devices and networks that surrounded him, day and night. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and looked inside. He was getting low on cash but that wasn’t a problem. He walked for a couple of minutes until he found an ATM on a slightly quieter street. He waited as the woman who was using the machine completed her withdrawal before he stepped up and placed his hand on the numeric keypad. He closed his eyes for the briefest of instants and connected to the machine. First he bypassed the security routines inside the rudimentary computer that ran the machine and then he erased the hard drive inside it that was recording the faces of everyone that used it. He waited as the machine counted his money and then took the several hundred pounds it gave him. For Otto, it was like taking candy from a baby. He walked away down the street, stuffing the money into his wallet.

Don’t you ever feel like a bully treating those poor machines like that?
H.I.V.E.mind said inside his head.

‘Oh, come on,’ Otto replied, ‘it’s not like they’ve got feelings.’

As far as you know.

‘What is this? The digital brotherhood or something?’ Otto asked with a grin.

You may laugh but then you don’t know how close the internet is to becoming self-aware.

‘The internet with a personality, now that
is
a scary thought.’

Suddenly the Blackbox in Otto’s pocket began to vibrate. He pulled it out and examined the screen.

‘Looks like we’re on,’ Otto said.

I am decrypting the data packet now,
H.I.V.E.mind replied.
There appear to be three separate Disciple cells active within the London area at this time. Should I prepare infiltration parameters for review?

‘Yeah, let’s see who the first lucky Disciple we’re going to pay a visit to is,’ Otto said as the information began to flow into his brain.

On a rooftop nearby a figure pulled a black mask over her head and then drew a glowing purple blade from the sheath on her back. Beneath her mask a smile spread across her face as she watched Otto head off down the street.

‘Now it’s our turn,’ Raven said quietly to herself. ‘Let’s go get ’em, kid.’

She leapt from the rooftop and disappeared into the night.

fifteen years ago

Natalya ran across the rooftop and sprang into the air, smashing through the skylight and dropping to the tiled floor of the room below. She drew the two swords from her back and waited. Moments later armed guards began to flood into the room. Natalya dropped a cylinder billowing smoke to the floor and exploded into action. She couldn’t see the guards through the billowing white fog but she didn’t need to. They were slow, clumsy and noisy. She tracked their movements as they stumbled around her and closing her eyes, she danced. Her swords sang as they swept through the air, moving faster and faster, finding their targets flawlessly. The screams of the guards as they fell just drove Natalya to move faster and strike harder. In seconds it was over, the smoke slowly cleared and she stood alone in the centre of the room, surrounded by a dozen bodies. She knew that her target was close now. She sprinted up the nearby staircase and stopped outside the intricately carved wooden doors at the top. She pressed her ear to the wood, listening for any sound from within but she could hear nothing. She slowly turned the handle and eased the door open. In the room beyond there was a single high-backed chair facing a roaring log fire. Natalya walked silently across the floor towards the chair.

‘Hello, Natalya,’ Anastasia Furan said, getting up out of the chair and turning to face her. ‘Or would you prefer Raven?’

‘Madame Furan,’ Natalya said, sliding the swords into the crossed sheaths on her back and dropping to one knee, head bowed.

‘You have passed your final test, my dear,’ Anastasia said, walking towards her. ‘This is the moment you have been trained for. Do you feel ready?’

‘I want nothing more,’ Natalya replied.