Virus Attack (20 page)

For a few hours nothing seemed to happen, except
the thrusters continued to fire on and off. Basilisk correctly assumed that the shuttle was positioning for reentry.

Then the Buran started to shimmy violently and the villains could feel the gentle pull of gravity tug at them. Viral regained consciousness just as gravity took hold and he slammed to the floor on his back.

“What's happening?” he asked groggily.

“We're heading back to Earth. Hold on tight!”

It was the most blissful, wonderful experience Toby could remember. And then Pete had woken him up from the deep slumber. Toby forced an eye open and was greeted by harsh sunlight. He yawned and wished that he could roll over in a warm bed and sleep for an entire day.

“Where are we?”

“You've slept all night. We're here.”

Immediately after they had been picked up in Kazakhstan, Mr. Grimm had declared that they were heading straight to Mongolia, the current location of Hero Foundation headquarters, to face Basilisk in the final showdown.

Toby was excited at the prospect. He felt as though he was entering a mystic world where all his questions about Hero.com would finally be answered. The FAQ guide on the site had been lacking, and he guessed that not many people bothered asking questions.

Midway through the flight, Mr. Grimm had announced that Basilisk had succeeded in taking the
Foundation's satellite off-line. The technicians who had been working night and day to restore Hero.com had toiled for nothing.

There would be no cavalry arriving to help now.

It was up to them.

The only powers left were the ones they had overdosed on the day Basilisk had inserted his virus into Hero.com. And they wouldn't last very long either.

Toby was lost in his thoughts, only becoming aware several minutes later that he had been staring at Emily, who was trying to sleep. He looked away guiltily, only to find that Pete was looking straight at him with a stony expression.

Toby tried to break the atmosphere with a smile. “Can't sleep, man?” Pete shook his head, but didn't say anything. “Look, about what you said earlier, us not being a team … “

“We're a lousy team and you know it.”

“What? We're great, we work well together—”

“Maybe in your mind we do. You don't let us go on the Web site when we want to. You were against a team name, costumes,
everything
that I suggested.” The bitterness in his voice was unmistakable.

“That's not true!” protested Toby, although he could see Pete's point all too clearly. “Besides, we need a leader to keep the group—”

“Nobody voted you leader. You know what unelected
leaders are called? Dictators. We learned that in class last week, if you remember.”

Toby was at a loss for words. His best friend was attacking him, and worse, he knew his best friend was right.

“I'll be better off on my own. Like when you all left me with Basilisk.”

Toby closed his eyes. He knew this was the core of the problem. “Pete, honestly we had no idea … we were stupid to leave you alone.”

Pete's voice rose, causing Emily to stir in her sleep. “Yeah, you were! But I should thank you. That's when I learned that I have to look out for myself and not count on my friends or my
family
!” He spat the last word out, and a new wave of guilt passed over Toby. With all that had happened, they'd had no time to talk about Pete's parents' divorce. Toby opened his mouth to reply, but Pete had already turned his back on him, pretending to sleep.

Toby sighed. It wasn't so much the breakup of his superteam that bothered him; it was the fact that his friends were all changing, becoming more distant. Worse still, he suspected it was his own fault. While he thought he was protecting his friends, he was in fact causing harm.

He thought back to Mr. Grimm's words about the world needing balance. They were starting to make sense.

When Pete finally woke him up, Toby found they
had landed on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere. In fact,
airstrip
was too kind a word. It was just a flat piece of rock-strewn desert. Mountains rippled in the heat haze to the south.

“We're here,” said Mr. Grimm.

“Where is
here
exactly?” Toby asked.

Mr. Grimm walked with them to a Toyota Land Cruiser.

“Climb in. We don't have much time. ‘
Here
' is the Gobi desert in Mongolia.”

The air-conditioned interior of the 4x4 was a relief after the short sweltering steps they had taken. Before the car doors had even shut, the Gulfstream jet had taxied around and was accelerating for takeoff.

“Don't believe in waiting, do they?” Pete mumbled.

“Why wait in such an inhospitable place? Believe it or not, it's the winter here at the moment,” said Mr. Grimm as they jounced across the landscape. His expression still hadn't changed, nor had he reacted to the heat outside or the frigid air-conditioning inside the vehicle. “It's warmer than usual, but at night, temperatures have been plummeting to about minus thirty degrees.”

Toby and Pete exchanged knowledgeable looks. They had survived in the snowy plains of Antarctica. The Gobi desert was a piece of cake by comparison.

“Why is the Hero Foundation headquarters here?” asked Emily staring out at the bleak landscape.

“It's not normally here,” Mr. Grimm said cryptically. “But due to recent events, this was the best place to hide it. Isolated, remote, and unlikely to be stumbled upon by civilians during a time of clandestine war.”

Everybody frowned, but Lorna was the first to ask. “What do you mean, war? Who's at war?”

“We are, against the villains overthrowing society. Things are now completely out of control.”

Toby shook his head. Despite their adventures so far on Diablo Island, in the Mexican jungle, and fighting for their lives on a space shuttle, they had not paid much attention to the rest of the world. It was changing. Pete summed it up eloquently.

“Well, darn. We'd better get a move on then!”

Mr. Grimm pointed ahead. “It seems we've arrived.”

The Buran shuttle shook with fury as it blistered through the atmosphere. Searing flames caused by air friction tore across the black heat tiles on the underside of the craft.

Inside, the g-force pinned everybody to the wall. Everybody except Basilisk, who was hovering in the center of the payload bay.

“We're entering the atmosphere,” he snarled. “At least we'll have air to breathe!”

Before the others could object, Basilisk hurled an energy blast at the cockpit door, ripping a hole clean
through it. He flew inside, oblivious to the g-force. The three crew members were pinned to their seats, only their eyes swiveled toward the villain. They had been lulled into a false sense of security by the villains' lack of effort at reentering the cockpit. And now, at a critical stage, one had regained his strength.

Irenus Markov was piloting the craft with an airplane-style control stick. He jerked it to one side. The shuttle lurched to port and Basilisk crashed his head against the overhead instrument panel. The supervillain responded by yanking Markov from his seat with such force that his restraining harness snapped.

“No!” bellowed Commander Mather. “You'll kill us all!”

Basilisk's petrifying gaze bored into the Russian. Markov screamed and fought to escape, but within seconds his movements failed as his skin turned to stone. Basilisk applied pressure—and the man's petrified body crumpled to dust. The remaining crew stared at Basilisk with open mouths.

“Now land us where I tell you!” shouted Basilisk.

“We can't,” said Mather in a small voice. “You just killed the
pilot
!”

Basilisk hesitated. He'd let rage control him and now he'd killed the wrong guy. He stabbed a finger at Commander Mather.

“You can fly this. Land at these coordinates.” Basilisk spun easily through the air and typed on a computer
terminal. Seconds later a map of the world appeared, complete with flight trajectories to enable them to land where he had indicated.

With little choice, Mather took control of the aircraft. The g-force had lessened and he had to fight to keep the shuttle's nose above the horizon. It had to glide to earth without the aid of engines to control it.

Basilisk climbed into the vacant pilot's seat and watched as the earth formed around him. The commander angled the shuttle around, matching the computer's trajectory perfectly.

“Good. I should warn you. There is no runway to land on.”

The commander shot him a look of hatred. “Then you'll still kill us all. The ship is not designed for off-roading!”

“That is not my problem.”

Commander Mather stared at the freak, then calmly said something in Russian to Rebecca Syms. Basilisk assumed it was all part of the sequence, since they had been taking off and landing in Kazakhstan. He did not notice Mather or Syms tightening their harnesses. Seconds later Mather reached under his seat and yanked a handle.

Basilisk had no idea the single word Mather had spoken translated as
eject
.

The commander stared at Basilisk. “Now it
is
your problem.”

His seat ejected through the roof with a bang. Syms followed seconds later—followed by three more explosions from the payload bay as the unconscious mission specialist and both tourists were also ejected.

The ejector seats had been under the sole control of the commander and he was able to eject the crew and passengers safely. The ejector seats had parachutes and tracking beacons built in, so the unconscious trio would land safely and be found quickly.

Basilisk stared at the controls in disbelief. He had only ever flown his own invention, the SkyKar, and that had been destroyed weeks ago. He briefly considered simply flying to safety, but then remembered Worm and Viral couldn't fly—and he still needed them for the final phase. If they died now it would have all been for nothing.

“You two! Get on the flight deck now!”

He pushed forward on the stick to level the aircraft with the horizon—but the altimeter seemed to descend even more quickly. Viral and Worm entered the cockpit at a run.

“What happened?”

“The crew ejected and left us to die,” Basilisk said bitterly. It was never pleasant to be on the blunt end of selfishness.

Viral propped himself against the engineer's console—with the seats gone he could do little else. He stared at the ground, which seemed to be filling up too much of the view outside.

“Can you fly?”

Basilisk hesitated. “Personally: yes. If you mean an aircraft: no.”

Worm indicated that he wanted Basilisk's seat. “Let me try.”

“You?” Basilisk exclaimed, swapping places with the little man.

“You've angled the nose too much and put us in a dive. It has to be just above the horizon, like this.”

Worm pulled back on the stick—too hard. The shuttle lifted almost vertically up and lost so much speed that engine stall warnings bleeped across the cockpit.

“Push back!” screamed Viral as he was thrown against the wall.

Worm pushed forward and the shuttle's nose dropped below the horizon—and suddenly they were plummeting to the ground. He pulled back and managed to level out. Basilisk had gripped the instrument panel so hard his superstrong fingers had left dents in it.

“The controls are more sensitive than when I last flew,” said Worm by way of explanation.

“When did you last fly?” asked Basilisk, unsure if he wanted to hear the answer.

“It was a Sopwith Camel biplane back in—”

“The First World War?”

Viral gripped the console. “Oh my God! You learned to fly
just after
they invented the airplane!”

Vital seconds passed and nobody dared speak. Basilisk looked at the computer display and noticed they had drifted from their trajectory. He tapped the screen.

“This red line is us. Keep it matched with the blue line.
Carefully!
”

Worm gently realigned the aircraft. Basilisk had to admit he was picking up basic flying pretty well.

“We should be decelerating,” said Worm. “Where are the flaps?”

They hunted around the controls—most of which were labeled in Russian, with a few makeshift paper labels handwritten in English—hardly high tech. None of them said
flaps
. Worm was so wrapped up in squinting at the labels that he didn't notice the mountain peaks rise up in front of them.

Viral pointed a finger, but couldn't speak. Now he knew what terror felt like and swore to himself that he'd abandon his villainous ways if only he got out of this alive. Worm looked up, just in time.

WHOOSH! The Buran rolled onto its side and shot through the twin peaks at such a speed that the displaced air caused avalanches on both mountains.

He leveled out again, but the altimeter was revolving like a crazy clock. Ahead the air was arid and dry. Basilisk glanced at the computer screen and was surprised to see that Worm had kept them pretty much on course. The landing zone was just ahead—but was rapidly becoming a crash zone.

“We need to lose speed quickly!” shouted Basilisk. “The landing zone isn't far.”

Viral spotted a control on the engineer's console, labeled with a handwritten note. “Got it! It says parachute!”

Basilisk spun around. “Don't—!”

Too late. Virus mashed the button. He didn't know that the parachute is deployed only once the shuttle is safely on the runway to slow it down.

An explosive charge at the rear of the shuttle blew a panel away and the parachute unfolded. Since the shuttle was still airborne, the effect was as though the spacecraft had reached the end of a tether and was flipped backward.

The Buran corkscrewed through the air as the parachute expanded and became twisted because of the aircraft's motions. Dozens of alarms sounded in the cockpit—Viral was thrown around as if he were trapped in a washing machine. Basilisk remained hovering, so the rotating room did not affect him, and luckily Worm had
just
strapped himself into the pilot's chair.