“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.
“Good,” Nero said, as the door to his office opened again and Raven walked in. “I leave you to make your decision. I expect an answer within twenty-four hours. Natalya, would you escort Miss Brand to the communication center—there is one more thing I would like her to see before she makes her decision.”
Laura stood up and followed Raven out of the room. Otto felt his heart sink as he saw the look on her face. He feared that he already knew what her decision would be. He got up to leave.
“I need to speak to you about something else, Otto. Please remain seated.”
The door to his office closed and Nero got up from his chair, walking over to the fireplace that was carved into the rock wall, above which hung a portrait of a woman that Otto did not recognize, but who he had always been curious about.
“I listened to the recordings of your initial report,” Nero said, turning to face him. “There were elements of it that were extremely disturbing, to say the least. You mentioned that the boy called Zero hinted that there were more clones like him somewhere.”
“I can’t be certain,” Otto said, “but he kept referring to ‘we’ and ‘us.’ At first I thought he was talking about me and him, but I think there was more to it than that. Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” Nero replied.
“Did you ever find the facility where I was born?”
“No, unfortunately, I’m afraid that was a secret that died with Overlord,” Nero replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Because Furan mentioned that they were re-creating his work,” Otto said, “and to do that they would, I’m sure, need access to the original lab. Professor Pike once told me that there was no way that the device inside my head could be manufactured with current technology. He said that it was a computer that would have to be grown, not built, and that we were decades away from even being able to attempt it.”
“So you think the Disciples are using the technology that Overlord developed?” Nero said, frowning.
“Yes, but that’s not what really frightens me,” Otto said. “What frightens me is that I don’t think they have the faintest idea what they’re creating. I think they’re tinkering with Overlord’s technology without fully understanding it. Zero was, physically speaking at least, the same age as me, which implies that they’re accelerating the growth of these clones. That’s why they’re not absolutely perfect copies of me, why Zero’s eye color was wrong, for example. Those aren’t the defects we need to worry about though. The defects we need to worry about are up here.” Otto tapped the side of his head. “I was brought up like a normal child. I’ve always wondered why Overlord would do that. Why didn’t he just keep me in a cage somewhere until he needed me? Perhaps he knew something that the Disciples don’t—that something goes wrong if people like me, with my abilities, don’t mature naturally.”
“You’re suggesting that they would turn out like this Zero character?”
“Exactly,” Otto said. “I was barely able to survive an encounter with one of them. Normal people would be powerless to oppose them. If there are more of them out there, they could be the most dangerous foes we’ve ever faced. We have to find that lab, wherever it is, and shut it down. We have to shut it down now.”
Laura followed Raven through H.I.V.E.’s communication center, which was filled with technicians working on screens and talking into headsets. There was a large screen at the far end with a flattened map of the Earth displayed on it covered in red dots. Arcs were traced over these dots, plotting the trajectories of satellites as they orbited the planet. At any other time Laura would have been itching to get her hands on some of the technology in the room, but at that precise moment her mind was still reeling, trying to fully comprehend the offer that Nero had just made to her.
“In there,” Raven said, gesturing to a small darkened room with a single seat in it. “I’ll be right here. You have ten minutes.”
Laura sat down in the seat with a confused frown as Raven closed the door behind her. A few seconds later a large high-definition screen flared into life just a couple of yards in front of her with the G.L.O.V.E. globe and fist logo in the center of it. Beneath the logo was the single word: Connecting . . .
She waited for a moment and then the screen flickered before resolving into the image of her parents, Mary and Andrew Brand. Laura gasped as she she saw them and the baby that her mother was cradling.
“Laura, darling,” her mother said, bursting into tears and reaching out to touch the screen. Laura touched her mother’s hand and she too began to cry.
“Laura, honey, are you okay?” her father said, fighting to control his emotions like a good Scotsman and putting an arm around his wife. “They told us that something bad had happened to you. Are you safe now?”
“Yes,” Laura said, regaining her composure with a sniff. “I’m fine, don’t worry. Are you all okay?”
“Aye,” her mother said, “though we wouldn’t have been if it weren’t for that woman called Raven. She saved us from those awful men who kidnapped us, and took us somewhere safe. I’m not supposed to say where we are.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Laura said. “Don’t worry. You can trust her—the people who are protecting you are the same people who are training me.”
“Is this the school that the Raven lady told us about?” her father asked. “I probably shouldn’t have said that—she told us it was a secret and everything.”
“It is, but I don’t think she’ll mind you telling me,” Laura replied with a smile. She looked at the baby who was staring at the screen with obvious fascination. “Hello, little brother.” She fought to hold back the tears again as he smiled back at her.
“This is Dougie,” her mom said, picking up his tiny hand and waving it at her. “Your dad thinks he looks like him, of course, but I think he looks just like you. I can’t believe how much you’ve grown. When you left you were still my little girl, but now you . . . you’re a young woman.”
Her mother started to cry again and Laura struggled to hold back her own tears.
“Aye,” Laura said. “I’ve grown up a bit since then, Mom.”
“Laura, I just wanted to say we’re sorry,” her father said. “When that man came to the house three years ago and told us that you had to leave with him or be arrested . . . we didn’t want to do it, but he told us you could be facing twenty years in prison. He showed us the proof, he played us a recording of a conversation between the Americans and MI6. They turned up the next day. If we hadn’t let them take you . . .”
“Dad, it’s okay,” Laura said. “I’m fine. I understand what you did. I admit, it took me a while to understand it and this place took a bit of getting used to, but I’ve got friends here and I’m being trained to do amazing, unbelievable things. I just miss you, that’s all.”
“We miss you too, darling,” her mother said. “We just want the best for you, as long as you know that.”
“Of course, I do, Mom,” Laura said. “Now tell me all about wee Dougie.”
A few minutes later Laura walked out of the room and Raven walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You okay?” Raven asked.
“I’m fine,” Laura said with a sad smile. “Promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“You’ll keep them all safe, won’t you? Whatever happens.”
“Of course I will,” Raven replied.
“Then that’s all I need.”
Robert Flack walked back into his office followed by Agent Simons.
“Well, that was unpleasant,” Flack said with a sigh as he sat down behind his desk.
“I take it the President wasn’t very happy,” Simons said.
“I think that might be something of an understatement,” Flack said, removing his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Apparently he had to agree to attend one of the Italian Prime Minister’s parties to apologize for the mess we caused in Venice.”
“Oh dear,” Simons said, sitting down opposite Flack with a manila folder in his lap.
“Apparently the first lady’s even more unhappy about that than the President,” Flack said, “and when she’s unhappy heads are known to start rolling. Tell me you’ve got something that’s going to brighten up my day.”
“Maybe,” Simons said. “What do you want first—the good news or the bad news?”
“Bad news, Simons,” Flack replied. “You always lead with the bad news.”
“Okay.” Simons pulled an image of Darkdoom captured from the Italian CCTV footage from the folder. “We’ve drawn a blank on this guy. Our only lead was the MI6 link, but the Brits gave us nothing. Whatever they know about him, they’re not sharing. In fact, and this might sound a little weird, the guy I spoke to at Vauxhall Bridge, well, he sounded nervous when I pressed him.”
“So much for the Special Relationship,” Flack said with a frown. “Tell them we’ll remember how helpful they were next time they need a drone strike. Okay, what else?”
“Okay, slightly better news.” Simons pulled an image of Raven from the folder.
“Aaah, our ghost,” Flack said. “Tell me you have something on her.”
“No name I’m afraid, but we ran her through the full archive—took a while obviously, and we found this.” He handed Flack a memory stick, which he plugged into his laptop. On the screen there was security-camera footage of the woman in the photo talking to an older man. They were standing by a railing overlooking a city.
“Is that Rio?” Flack asked.
“Yup,” Simons replied. “Keep watching.”
Flack watched as the man and the woman exchanged a few words and then the woman threw something to the ground and the pair of them were obscured by a cloud of billowing smoke. When the smoke cleared the woman was gone and the man was standing on his own looking bewildered, with the bodies of six armed men lying on the ground around him.
“I remember this,” Flack said, “the terrorist attack on the statue of Christ the Redeemer.”
“Yeah,” Simons replied, “except it wasn’t a terrorist attack. That was just the story that was fed to the press. It was a failed hit and our ghost was the target. She took out the hitters and got clean away.”
“So she’s a professional,” Flack said.
“Certainly looks that way,” Simons replied.
“Who’s the guy she’s meeting?”
“That is one Esteban Guttierez,” Simons replied. “He was taken in for questioning following the incident, but he claimed that he did not know the woman and that she was a complete stranger.”
Flack rewound the recording to the moment that the woman and the man first met and froze the frame on the man giving the woman an affectionate hug.
“Sure look like friends to me,” Flack said. “We have a lead on this Guttierez guy?”
“He vanished shortly after the incident,” Simons replied.
“Someone take him out?”
“I don’t think so,” Simons said, shaking his head. “This guy was a freelance contractor. Specialized in resolving difficult situations.”
“We ever use him?” Flack asked.
“Yeah, couple of times during the eighties and nineties,” Simons said. “I think he might have arranged his own disappearance.”
“Okay, let’s find him and pull him in,” Flack said. “At this point he’s the only lead on this woman and I think she’s a major player. Anything else on the girl they met in St. Mark’s Square? The one they pulled out of the canal.”
“No, nothing,” Simons said. “It’s like she didn’t exist before she attended architectural college. Wherever she was before that, she was under the radar.”
“I don’t like this, Simons,” Flack said. “There are too many unanswered questions and I’m getting sick of telling the President ‘we don’t know.’ ”
“There is one piece of good news,” Simons said, handing him the final piece of paper from the folder. “The forensics boys have been working on some of the documents we managed to pull from the building that blew up in Venice just before the incident in the canals. We still have no idea who the building belonged to. We’ve got guys on it, but you know what the Italians are like. However, we managed to get a pretty clear image reconstruction from one of the burned documents.”
He laid an image of a badly burned schematic on the table. It looked like the cross-section of a building hidden inside a mountain, but most of it was too badly damaged to make out. What he could make out was a single word in the bottom left-hand corner that was just legible.
“Okay,” Flack said, “what the hell is H.I.V.E.?”
Nero watched as the ground crew prepped the Leviathan for takeoff, the engineers rushing around the giant aircraft, detaching fuel lines and checking diagnostic readouts on their tablet displays. The large double doors at the top of the stairs leading down to the pad rumbled apart and Darkdoom and Nathaniel walked into the giant cavern. One of the flight crew ran up to Darkdoom and offered him his tablet which he scanned as Nero’s father walked down the stairs toward him.
“Well,” the old man said with a smile, “time to be off. Thank you for your hospitality, Maximilian. I’m glad that your rescue mission was a success.”
“We wouldn’t have been able to do it without you,” Nero replied. “You’re sure I can’t persuade you to take a more active role in G.L.O.V.E. again?”
“Oh yes, quite sure. This is a young man’s game, Maximilian,” Nathaniel said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“What are we both doing still playing it then?” Darkdoom said with a grin as he approached.
“I often wonder that myself,” Nero said. “You will keep him out of trouble, won’t you?”
“Oh, I’m sure that Diabolus can look after himself,” Nathaniel said.
“I was talking to Diabolus,” Nero said, raising an eyebrow.
“Of course,” Darkdoom said, “you know I’m committed to caring for the homeless.”
“Oh, very funny,” Nathaniel said, hitting Darkdoom in the leg with his stick. “Less of your cheek, young man, or I might just contact young Nigel’s mother and tell her exactly where he’s been for the past few months. I understand you kept it from her. I wonder how she’d react to the truth?”
“Given the choice between the Disciples and my ex-wife,” Darkdoom said with a sigh, “I’ll take the Disciples. Rather less dangerous.”
“Do you have any plans to set up a new office?” Nero asked Nathaniel as they made their way over to the Leviathan.
“In time, yes,” Nathaniel said with a nod, “but it will take a while to find or build the right place, so in the short term I’m taking Diabolus up on a rather intriguing offer.”
“Really,” Nero said, “and what might that be?”
“A new Megalodon,” Darkdoom said, “except bigger and better.”
“This is what happens when someone doesn’t have enough toys as a child,” Nero said, rolling his eyes.
“It’s really quite an ambitious project,” Nathaniel said. “Not quite my usual thing, but it should be fascinating to work on.”
“Why do I get the feeling that you two working together is going to end up causing trouble?” Nero sighed.
“No sense of adventure this one, Diabolus,” Nathaniel said, pointing his stick at Nero. “That’s always been his problem.”
“I’d better get onboard and make sure that all the preflight checks are complete,” Darkdoom said, as they reached the bottom of the Leviathan’s landing ramp.
“Thank you for your help, Diabolus,” Nero said, offering his hand to his friend. “I won’t let anything like that happen to Nigel again.”
“I know that, Max,” Darkdoom said, shaking Nero’s hand. “Furan may be out of the picture, but the Disciples are still out there and they’re just as dangerous as ever. I can’t think of anywhere Nigel would be safer than right here.” Darkdoom gestured at the rocky walls of the cavern. “Se
e you soon, old friend.”
Nero and Nathaniel watched Darkdoom walk up into the belly of the Leviathan.
“Good-bye, Maximilian,” Nathaniel said, putting his hand on Nero’s shoulder. “I’m sorry that we have not spoken more in recent years—we should rectify that in future.”
“We should,” Nero said with a nod.
“Anyway, mustn’t keep Diabolus waiting,” Nathaniel said, turning and heading up the loading ramp. He was halfway to the top when he stopped and turned around. “Your mother would have been very proud of what you’ve built here, Max. You should be too.” Nathaniel turned and walked up into the cargo bay and the loading ramp whirred shut. Nero retreated to the entrance stairs as the Leviathan’s engines roared into life and the huge hangar doors that sealed off the crater above slowly began to rumble open. Nero watched the Leviathan slowly lift off the pad.
“I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for, Diabolus,” Nero said to himself with a wry smile. “I really do.”
Otto sat, lost in thought, on a sofa in a quiet corner of the library with a book sitting unread on his lap. He always retreated there when he wanted time to think in peace and he had a lot to think about at the moment. He hadn’t really spoken to anyone about how deeply his encounter with Zero had disturbed him. After Sebastian Trent had used the Animus fluid to control him and turn him against his friends, Otto had always sworn that he would never let anyone do that to him again. With the destruction of Overlord he had thought that maybe the threat that he might lose control again was finally gone, but Zero had used him like a puppet. The thought of there being more clones like him out there terrified him. That wasn’t the only thing that was bothering him though. He was just as concerned about the offer that Nero had made to Laura, purely because he was ninety percent certain he knew exactly what her decision would be. His Blackbox, the device that H.I.V.E. gave to all pupils to use as a combined communicator and PDA, vibrated in his pocket and Otto pulled it out. A moment later the screen lit up with H.I.V.E.mind’s face.