“It is a person,” Otto said, reaching out with his senses, trying to connect to the security network.
“No, Malpense, it is not,” Furan said angrily. “It is just like you, an organic machine, but a machine nonetheless. And just like you it was built for a very specific purpose. You were created to provide an organic shell for Overlord to inhabit, but this version has a quite different, much more imaginative purpose.”
“He is attempting to interface with the security network,” the boy said. “I have blocked his abilities.”
“Good,” Furan said. “We wouldn’t want anybody escaping, would we? No, Malpense, you won’t be rescuing anyone today. In fact, all you have really done is sign the death warrant of every one of Nero’s students that remains in this facility. If you are here, then that means Nero sent you, and that in turn means that this facility has been compromised. Fortunately the prototype was able to extract the exact nature of the message that Miss Brand sent, and how it could lead someone to this location. That gave us just enough time to evacuate everyone from the facility save for a handful of my best men and the captured H.I.V.E. students that you came to rescue. I’m told that the extraction of the information from Miss Brand was difficult and extremely painful.” She walked over to Laura, who flinched away from her, tears trickling down her cheeks. “The prototype’s abilities are something of a blunt instrument, I’m afraid. They cause no lasting physical damage but the psychological effects can be quite permanent. I would, however, like to know who came with you. I’m assuming that whoever came here with you is wearing one of these clever little suits and that makes it rather hard for me to know just how many of you breached the facility, but you know, don’t you? I’ll bet you even know where they are. Shall we find out?”
“I’m telling you nothing,” Otto said defiantly.
“Oh, but you will, Malpense,” Furan said with a vicious smile, “whether you want to or not.” She turned to Otto’s doppelgänger. “Hollow him out. I want everything—who he’s here with, details of H.I.V.E., Nero’s weaknesses, everything. When you’re done, dispose of them. Understood?”
“Understood,” the boy replied.
“Good.” She turned to Heinrich. “When it’s done, escort the prototype to the escape tunnel. We all need to be inside before I can trigger the switch.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Heinrich replied.
“Good-bye, Mr. Malpense, Miss Brand,” Furan said with a smile. “We won’t meet again.”
She walked out of the room and the boy known only as the prototype came over to Otto.
“You know, it’s odd,” the boy said, “to look at an inferior version of yourself. Ironic really that they call me the prototype and yet you were the first of us, the blueprint as it were. I’m faster, stronger, cleverer, superior in every way and so it is fitting that I should replace you.” He turned to Heinrich. “Give me the keys to their cuffs.”
“Why?” Heinrich asked.
“Let me put it another way,” the prototype said, closing his eyes. A momentary look of confusion shot across Heinrich’s face and then he winced, crying out in pain, his hands flying to his head. He staggered backward, blood starting to trickle from his nose. He grunted once and then pulled the pistol from the holster on his hip and with a look of terror on his face he slowly began to raise the pistol to his own head. The prototype smiled and Heinrich pulled the trigger, his lifeless body crumpling to the ground. The boy walked over to the twitching corpse and pulled the keys from Heinrich’s pocket. “They call me the prototype, but I have a name, they just don’t know it. My name is Zero.” He walked over to Laura, smiling at her as she backed away from him with terror in her eyes. She felt the glass wall at her back as he approached. “I understand why he feels the way he does about you—your mind was quite delicious. Such a shame I had to break you.”
“Leave her alone,” Otto said, running across the room toward the twisted copy of himself.
“On your knees, Malpense,” Zero spat at him and Otto felt a stabbing pain lance through his skull and his legs gave way beneath him. “Do you not understand yet? They have no idea what they’ve created. Overlord made us to be more than these pathetic mewling creatures. We are superior, the next step in human evolution. That stupid witch Furan thinks she can control us, but she has no idea what we’re truly capable of. Unfortunately, for now at least, we need her, but when the time comes and she and the Disciples have outworn their usefulness to us, we will destroy them and anyone else foolish enough to oppose us.”
“What do you mean us?” Otto said, his skull still ringing.
“You will never know,” Zero said with a smile, as he unlocked Otto’s cuffs, “because I’m going to make you kill her”—he nodded toward Laura—“then I’m going to extract every last iota of information from your head and then I’m going to make you kill yourself and there’s not a thing you can do to stop me. Here, take my gun.” Otto winced as he felt himself losing control of his body, searing pain shooting through his head. “Now point it at me,” Zero said with a smile. Otto felt his arm rising, leveling the weapon at the other boy. “Now all you have to do to save her life is pull the trigger—if you can.” Zero continued to smile as Otto focused every scrap of will to try and just squeeze his index finger on the trigger, but no matter how hard he tried he could not.
“I think I’ve made my point,” Zero said. “If Furan had the slightest inkling of the true extent of my power she would kill me in an instant, but the time is coming when I won’t have to hide anything anymore and the whole world will kneel before us.”
“You sound just like Overlord,” Otto growled.
“Well, you know what they say, Malpense,” Zero hissed, bringing his face within inches of Otto’s. “Like father like son. Now get up!”
Otto got to his feet, feeling the same sense of powerless rage that he had experienced when he had been under the control of the Animus, forced to watch while something else took control of his body.
“Point the gun at her forehead,” Zero said and Otto involuntarily leveled the weapon at Laura. Tears were rolling down her face.
“You know, I still have one thing you will never have,” Otto said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, really,” Zero replied, “and what exactly is that?”
“Friends,” Otto replied.
I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS! A voice suddenly bellowed from somewhere inside Zero’s head.
Otto felt the other boy’s control slip for an instant and he turned and fired the pistol. Zero dropped to his knees with a look of bewildered surprise on his face.
“How?” the boy whispered before collapsing forward on to his face.
“You’ll never know,” Otto said, feeling H.I.V.E.mind re-enter his head, as the last breath rattled from Zero’s body. “Thank you. You saved both our lives.”
He was corrupted; there was no alternative, H.I.V.E.mind replied.
“I’m so sorry,” Otto said, taking the keys from Zero’s hand and undoing Laura’s cuffs. “I couldn’t stop him.”
“It’s all right,” she said, taking a deep, ragged breath. “I know what he could do, he . . .” She burst into tears and Otto hugged her. “I’m sorry,” she said after a minute. “I just couldn’t.”
“Shhh,” Otto said. “No one can imagine what you’ve been through, but it’s over. We’re getting you out of here.”
We need to find Furan and ensure she does not activate the facility’s kill-switch, H.I.V.E.mind said.
“I know,” Otto said, looking down at Zero’s corpse, “and I have an idea how we might be able to do just that.”
“Got it,” Shelby said as the door to the single locked dormitory block hissed open. The lights inside flickered on as the doors opened and Wing and Shelby stepped inside. As they recognized the faces of the people in the bunk beds that lined the room they deactivated their thermoptic camouflage systems and both pulled off their helmets.
“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” a fami
liar voice asked from one of the beds.
“Hey, Nigel,” Shelby said with a grin. “Guys, we all need to get out of here as quickly as possible. I’m sure you’ve all got a million questions, but they’re going to have to wait. Right now, we need to move.”
There was excited chatter from all around the room as the surviving H.I.V.E. students started to put on their Glasshouse uniforms as quickly as possible. Suddenly, from outside there was the sound of shouting and gunfire somewhere nearby. It lasted for about thirty seconds and then stopped. A few seconds later Raven walked quickly into the room and removed her helmet. She looked slightly out of breath.
“We need to move. There was a whole squad of guards out there and there are probably more on the way,” Raven said.
“How many are still outside?’ Shelby asked.
“There was a squad, Shelby,” Wing said.
“Oh,” she replied, “gotcha.”
“Point being that now they know where we are and we don’t know how long we’ve got till more of them turn up,” Raven said, “so let’s go.”
She drew the swords from her back and looked back through the doorway.
“Clear, move it!” she snapped. The H.I.V.E. students who had been prisoners of the Glasshouse for months did not need much more persuasion, all running for the doors.
“Hey, Penny,” Shelby said as she saw her face in the crowd. She hardly recognized her without her distinctive pink hair. “Where’s Tom?”
“He didn’t make it,” Penny said, her face impassive. “I’ll explain later.”
“I’m sorry, Penny,” Shelby said. “I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not your fault,” Penny replied, “so don’t worry about it.”
Shelby saw the look on her face and just nodded. It could wait.
“You have no idea how good it is to see you guys,” Nigel said, grinning at Wing and Shelby. “I have to admit there were days when I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Never give up hope, my friend,” Wing said. “I am very glad you are still alive. After you were shot and then abducted, we feared the worst.”
“Nigel, where’s Laura?” Shelby asked, scanning the crowd.
“She’s in one of the isolation cells upstairs,” Nigel replied.
“Do you know which one?” Shelby asked, frowning.
“Yeah, I can show you,” Nigel said.
“We’ll get her on the way out,” Wing said. “Don’t worry, we’re not leaving without her.”
“Okay, now all we have to do is get you out of here. Your dad is going to be tearing his hair out,” Shelby said.
“Very funny,” Nigel said, running his hand over his own perfectly smooth head. “In fact, I think it was your amazing sense of humor that I missed the most, Shelby.”
“It’s all in the timing,” Shelby said as the three of them ran for the exit.
“Wait!” Raven snapped as the assembled students approached the doorway. “Another patrol coming, six men.”
A few seconds later the guards ran through the doorway, weapons raised. Shelby stood in front of the two dozen H.I.V.E. students, her hands raised.
“Don’t move!” the lead guard snapped, leveling his rifle at Shelby.
“Not moving,” Shelby replied, “just two questions.”
“Really, what might they be?” the guard said with a sneer.
“If I was to say, ‘Look out, behind you!’ would you actually turn around?” Shelby asked.
“No,” the guard said. “What’s the next question?”
“What’s the absolute worst you’ve ever had your ass kicked?”
What followed was a demonstration of the most brutally efficient way to take down six heavily armed men with nothing put two pairs of astonishingly well-trained hands and feet. Raven and Wing moved so fast that not one of the squad of mercenaries even got a shot off. As the last of the men collapsed to the floor with a pained gurgle, Nigel summed up the feelings of the entire group with one well-chosen word.
“Whoa.”
“Okay, coast’s clear,” Raven said. “Let’s move.”
The H.I.V.E. students followed her out of the room and over toward the staircase that led up to the next level.
Shelby looked down at the unconscious guard she had been speaking to just a couple of seconds before with a grin.
“Should have looked behind you.”
Anastasia Furan scowled as she heard the gunfire from the dormitory level, just a few floors below them. She reached into the pocket of her long flowing black coat and pulled out a small hand-held trigger mechanism. She pressed the trigger and held it in as a red light lit up on top of the unit.
“Fire only on my command,” Furan said to the half-dozen men surrounding her. She looked over the balcony and saw a familiar figure leading the freed H.I.V.E. students to cover on the other side of the training area at the bottom of the school. “Hello, Natalya,” she said under her breath. To get to the entrance of the escape tunnel that she had added to the original plans for the facility, she and her men would have to go directly past Raven’s position. Faced with almost anyone else she would have relied on the skill and experience of the men surrounding her to get her safely to the exit, but with Raven she knew it would not be enough.
“Natalya!” Furan yelled and Raven’s head snapped upward, fixing her with a look of unbridled hatred. A young blonde girl in gleaming white body armor identical to the suit that Otto had worn aimed a futuristic-looking rifle straight at her. Several of Furan’s own men drew a bead on the girl and Raven slowly extended a hand, pushing the girl’s rifle barrel down toward the floor. “We’re going to play a game, Natalya,” Furan continued. “It’s called ‘guess what I’m holding.’ ” She held up the trigger mechanism and Raven’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you that something extremely unpleasant will happen to everyone in this facility if I let go of this switch. All of which puts us at something of an impasse. So let me make it very simple for you—”
Suddenly Furan was interrupted by a scream from far overhead and a body in white armor dropped past Furan and smashed into the floor of the training area below. There was a gasp from the girl with the blonde hair as she recognized the limp form lying broken on the floor, the boy’s snow-white hair now streaked with red. A tall boy with long dark hair, wearing identical armor, unslung his rifle and brought it up, leveling it at Furan with a look of pure fury on his face. She recognized him as one of the few of Nero’s students that had escaped her attack on their training exercise.
“No, Wing!” Raven shouted, clearly trying to keep her own fury in check. “You’ll kill us all.” The boy stared at Furan. The expression of pure unadulterated hatred on his face made her wonder for a moment if he might just kill her anyway.
“Natalya is quite right, young man,” Furan said. “Now why don’t you all lay down your weapons and move over to the far side of the training area and allow us to leave? That is the only way that any of you are going to make it out of here alive.”
“You expect me to believe that, Furan?” Raven yelled. “The minute you’re safely out of here you’ll trigger the device.”
“Oh, my poor dear little Raven,” Furan said. “That’s your problem, you see. As long as I have this trigger I hold all the cards and you really have no alternative but to trust me.”
Behind her the elevator from the upper levels pinged and the prototype walked toward her, buttoning up his suit jacket.
“Good work with Malpense,” Furan said. “A little overdramatic perhaps, but it certainly made a point. Where is Heinrich?”
“He’s on his way,” the prototype replied. “He’s purging the datacore.”
“Well, he needs to hurry up. This is going to be a very bad place to be in a couple of minutes. Stay out of sight—I don’t want anyone reporting your existence back to Nero.”
The prototype simply nodded and Furan turned back to Raven.
“So, what is it to be, Natalya?”
Down on the training floor Raven’s mind raced—they were rapidly running out of options. She glanced at Otto’s body, lying just a few yards away, trying to ignore his staring lifeless eyes.
“Okay,” Raven yelled back at her. “Let these students you have held hostage go and I will not harm you or your guards.”
“Now why on earth would I do that, Natalya?” Furan shouted back at her.
“Because, if you do, I will surrender to you and you may do whatever you wish to me,” Raven replied. “You’ll still have the kill-switch to ensure my cooperation.”
“No!” Shelby gasped. “She’ll kill you.”
“She’ll kill all of us if I don’t,” Raven said quietly. “Don’t worry, I can look after myself.”
A smile spread across Furan’s hideous, scarred face.
“An offer that is simply too delicious to refuse, Natalya,” she said. “I accept.”
“I want to know they’re safe before I surrender to you,” Raven said. “We have people on the surface. I won’t give myself up to you until I know they’re safe.”
“Very well, they may use the elevator to travel to the upper levels. From there they must make their own way to the surface. I’m sure one of your clever little infiltrators there can show them the way,” Furan replied. “The Darkdoom boy stays though.” She pointed at Nigel. “To ensure your cooperation.”
Raven glanced at Nigel and he gave a quick nod, swallowing nervously.
“Agreed,” Raven said.
“Disengage the security checks on the elevator and open the main door,” Furan said, turning to the prototype standing in the shadows behind her. He nodded and closed his eyes for a moment.