“Bingo,” Otto said. “We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen.”
He closed the case and lifted it from the shelf, wincing as he heard a soft click from underneath the case and an instant later felt a burst of encrypted data fire through the vault’s security system, triggered by the pressure switch that he had just inadvertently released. There was nothing he could do to stop the signal as it set off a building-wide alert. Otto cursed under his breath, taking the black glass object out of its case and slipping it into one of his belt pouches before running back out of the vault.
“Looks like Raskoff left out one tiny little detail of the security system,” Otto said into his throat mic. “I think I’ve probably just set off every alarm in the building.”
“Understood,” the woman’s voice replied in his ear. “I’m on my way out. See you at ground level.”
“Roger that,” Otto said. “I’m . . .”
His voice was drowned out by the roar of automatic gunfire as several uniformed security guards burst in through the door on the far side of the room and opened fire. Otto sprinted across the room, the servers behind him exploding in a shower of shattered metal and plastic as they were shredded by the hail of bullets. One of the guard’s rounds found its target, hitting Otto between the shoulder blades, winding him and knocking him off his feet. He slammed into the ground with a crunch amid the smoldering remnants of the ruined server units.
“Ballistic damage sustained, ISIS systems compromised,” a soft synthetic voice said in Otto’s ear, as he struggled to catch his breath. “Thermoptic camouflage system offline, ablative armor damage sustained, negative ballistic penetration. System reboot in progress.”
Otto winced as he pushed himself up onto his knees. The suit had stopped the bullet, but there was no telling how badly damaged it was without running a full diagnostic. He glanced at the display on his forearm and saw that the reboot of the suit’s systems was going to take at least another twenty seconds. Ducking for cover as more gunfire tore into the wall behind him as the security guards advanced toward him, Otto knew he didn’t have twenty seconds. He had to get out of there now.
Otto’s mind raced, complex calculations balancing time and velocity dancing through his head as he unclipped a cylindrical object from his combat harness. He glanced at the reboot countdown one last time and then tossed the flashbang grenade toward the approaching guards, leaping to his feet as it detonated with a blinding white light and deafening thunderclap. Otto ran toward the window, taking advantage of the guards’ momentary disorientation and reached out with his mind for the four tiny explosive charges that he had placed on the window a few minutes earlier. With a tiny mental nudge he triggered their detonators, shattering the window just before he hit it. He dived through the shower of glass and felt his stomach lurch as he launched himself into the void, seeming to hang in the air for an instant before plummeting toward the street far below. Otto watched as the blackened asphalt of the street raced toward him at terminal velocity. He closed his eyes a split second before impact.
He was just five yards from the ground when the ISIS suit rebooted, its variable geometry forcefield generators firing with a soft thumping sound, instantly slowing his descent and reducing Otto’s impact with the ground from undoubtedly fatal to merely painful. He hit the street with a crunching thud and lay there winded for a moment before picking himself up from the ground with a pained groan and staggering to his feet. He reached into the pouch on his belt, hoping that the object he had stolen just a minute earlier was still intact. If it had been damaged by his impact with the ground then all of this would have been for nothing. He gingerly pulled the rectangle of black glass from his belt pouch and examined it. Mercifully it still appeared to be in one piece.
“Are you okay?” a voice behind Otto asked. “That looked like a pretty rough landing.”
“Yeah,” Otto said as Raven approached. “We have to get to the car—we’ve only got a couple of minutes before they figure out what we’ve taken and shift their quantum encryption key.”
Raven gave a quick nod and they both ran toward a multistory parking structure. Otto glanced over his shoulder as he heard raised voices behind them. On the other side of the street, security guards were pouring from the building that he had left in such dramatic fashion. One of the guards spotted Otto and Raven running into the parking structure and yelled to the others, pointing across the street. Otto and Raven ran past the exit barrier, heading toward the sleek black sports car that was parked just inside the entrance. Otto ran around to the passenger side as Raven climbed into the driver’s seat and hit the ignition button in the center of the dashboard. The car sprang to life with a throaty roar and Raven floored the accelerator, sending the low-slung machine rocketing straight through the flimsy wooden barrier and out onto the street beyond. She spun the steering wheel and sent the car into a power slide as the security guards who were sprinting toward them opened fire. The bullets didn’t even dent the shining skin of the car, much less penetrate it. Raven accelerated hard and the car surged forward, weaving through the traffic ahead of them as Otto opened the glove compartment in front of him and pulled out a jet-black tablet device. He pushed the black glass rectangle into a slot in the base of the tablet and its screen flared into life, displaying a logo that looked like a stylized image of a circle of barbed wire with a progress bar that was slowly filling beneath it.
“Come on,” Otto said impatiently as the sound of sirens started to come from somewhere behind them. As the progress bar slowly filled he could feel only the same incomprehensible buzz of encrypted data coming from the tablet that he had sensed around the vault door a few minutes earlier. The progress bar finally vanished and the barbed-wire logo disappeared to be replaced by a screen displaying an image of a stern-faced man with gray hair and cold blue eyes wearing a dark blue suit with a Stars and Stripes pin in his lapel. Otto’s eyes flicked to the name beneath the photo and an instant later the screen went black and the tablet began to emit a high-pitched whine. Without hesitation Otto stabbed at the button to lower the car’s window and flung the tablet out through the gap. A split second later there was a flash and the concussive thump of high explosives detonating as the tablet destroyed itself in a ball of fire that would have torn their vehicle to shreds.
“Did you get it?” Raven snapped. “Do we have a name?”
“Yeah, but I’m afraid that things may have just become slightly more complicated,” Otto replied.
The screaming sirens of the police cars pursuing them were now getting louder as more patrol cars joined the chase from side streets behind them. Raven frowned at the sight of a road block forming a few hundred yards ahead of them.
“Complicated we can handle, but for now it’s time we disappeared,” she said, hitting a button on the steering wheel.
The driver in the lead police car gasped in amazement as the black sports car in front of them seemed to flicker for a moment and then vanished, as if it had never been there at all.
“Hey, guys,” Shelby said, flopping down in the seat next to Wing and Franz in Dr. Nero’s office.
The three of them were now all that remained of their year’s Alpha stream students after the Disciples’ merciless assault on the H.I.V.E. training exercise known as the Hunt just a couple of months earlier.
“Good morning,” Wing said with a smile. “I missed you at breakfast. Where were you?”
“Worried I might be seeing somebody else, big guy?” Shelby asked with a wink.
“No. Should I be?” Wing asked with a raised eyebrow.
“ ’Course not,” Shelby said with a grin. “Who could ever match you, hot lips?”
“Shelby, I have asked you repeatedly not to call me—”
“How about the smooch-meister then?” Shelby replied quickly. “I actually think I might prefer that to be honest.”
“This is being too much information,” Franz said under his breath, rolling his eyes.
“If you must kno
w where I was this morning,” Shelby said, “Professor Pike never misses breakfast and I was just taking advantage of that fact to . . . erm . . . visit his office.” She produced a sheet of folded paper from the pocket of her black uniform jumpsuit. “I know his memory’s probably not that great these days, but he really shouldn’t just write his master server access passwords down like that.”
“And he just left that lying around, did he?” Wing asked with a slight frown.
“Yeah, just lying around . . . in his safe,” Shelby said with a mischievous smile, “but if you’re going to rely on such basic security you’re really asking for this kind of thing to happen.”
“I am thinking this is how we usually are starting the whole getting into unbelievably serious trouble thing,” Franz said with a resigned sigh. “Normally I am enjoying the whole shooting and exploding and nearly dying thing as much as anyone, but I am wondering perhaps if there is any chance that I might be being allowed to sit this one out for once?”
“No way,” Shelby said. “We’re like the three musketeers now. All for one and—”
“Yes, yes,” Franz said, “I was afraid you were going to be saying something like that.”
The fact of the matter was that the three of them had become almost inseparable after they became the only remaining Alphas in their year. It had not been easy coping with the loss of their closest friends and the suspicious gossiping whispers of their fellow students that inevitably followed. Nobody would have dared say anything to them directly, but they had become all too used to hushed conversations that stopped as they approached and curious glances in their direction. Everyone else avoided them, as if they were just a lingering reminder of the tragedy that had befallen the school. None of their fellow students seemed to think about the loss that the three of them had suffered as well. They rarely spoke of it, but the death or capture of their fellow Alphas by the Disciples and then the sickening realization that it was all due to the fact that Laura, one of their closest friends, had betrayed them, had been a shattering blow. There were many consequences of that betrayal, including the perhaps fatal shooting of Nigel Darkdoom and Otto’s subsequent expulsion from H.I.V.E.
“Dare I ask what exactly you’re planning to do with the password?” Wing asked.
“It’s a surprise. Tell you later,” Shelby whispered as the door hissed open and Dr. Nero walked into the room.
“Good morning,” Nero said, sitting down behind his desk. He placed his hand on a panel on the desktop and a millimeter thick tablet slid out from a concealed slot. He tapped at the surface of the tablet and studied the screen for a few seconds. “I see that you have all completed the assignment that I gave you at the end of our last tutorial. Good—now we can move on to the more advanced types of corporate manipulation and examine the use of political donation as effective leverage.”
Nero had taken personal charge of supervising the three remaining Alphas after their return to the school, even though it would probably have been easier to simply fold the three of them back into the next year’s Alpha stream. It seemed that he was determined that their training in the villainous arts would not be compromised by all that had happened. On the other hand he might just have wanted to keep an especially close eye on the three of them, given their reputation for attracting the wrong kind of trouble.
Nero proceeded with the Villainy Studies lesson for another hour with the three students opposite taking notes on their own tablets and asking the occasional question.
“Excellent,” Nero said, as the tutorial drew to a close. “You all seem to have a good grasp of the use of the multinational corporation as a tool for global villainy. Do you have any other questions?”
“Just one,” Wing replied, looking Nero in the eye. “Is there any news of the fate of our fellow students yet?”
“I thought that we had already covered this, Mr. Fanchu,” Nero replied. “I understand why you are so keen to know more of our pursuit of Anastasia Furan and the rest of the Disciples, but it would be at best inappropriate and at worst dangerous for me to discuss the details of ongoing operations. You will just have to trust me when I say that we are doing everything we possibly can to track down the students they abducted and rest assured that when we find them—and we will find them—I intend to make sure they pay in full for every single drop of blood that they have spilled. All I need you three to do is have faith in the abilities of our operatives and concentrate on the remainder of your education.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what you said last time,” Shelby said, “and after everything we went through it seems just as unfair as ever that we’re being kept out of the loop. They have our friends and—”
“I suggest you think very carefully about who it is you’re talking to, Miss Trinity,” Nero said, interrupting her with a sudden cold edge to his voice, “or you shall discover just how unfair I can be. I will give you any information that I deem appropriate at a time that I deem appropriate. And that is the end of this discussion. Do I make myself clear?”
For a moment Shelby considered arguing the point further, but there was something in the expression on Nero’s face that had made her mouth go slightly dry.
“Yes, sir,” she said quietly.
“Good,” Nero replied. “Now, for tomorrow’s lesson I want you to have read and made notes on the first three chapters of Pavel’s Criminal Organization Structural Theory, one of the finest villainy management theory books ever written. Dismissed.”
Nero turned his attention back to the tablet on his desk as Shelby, Wing, and Franz filed out of his office.
“Well, that was going nearly as well as the last time we were asking what was going on with the Disciples,” Franz said with a sigh as they walked down the corridor.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Shelby replied. “I think we managed to irritate him even more this time. It’s not like we’re asking for specifics; we just want some idea if they’re getting any closer to finding them. I don’t think that’s too much to ask under the circumstances.”
“Perhaps the truth is that there is no progress to report,” Wing said. “And that is why the question irritates Nero so much.”
“It is times like this that I am missing Otto,” Franz said. “He would simply be using his computer brain to steal information from Dr. Nero’s computer. Much simpler.”
“Yeah,” Shelby said. “I wonder what he’s doing right now?”
“Oh, you know Otto,” Wing said with a slight smile, “I’m sure he’s keeping out of trouble.”
“Tell me you’re joking,” Raven said as she sat down opposite Otto.
“I can think of a lot of words I’d use to describe the situation, but funny isn’t one of them,” Otto replied.
“We go through all that to get the identity of the local Disciple cell commander and now you’re telling me that it’s Matt Ronson.”
“United States Senator Matt Ronson,” replied the floating blue wireframe head of H.I.V.E.mind that was being projected from the silver ring lying on the table.
“Presidential candidate Senator Matt Ronson,” Otto said, rubbing his temples. “And you know what that means.”
“A full Secret Service security detail,” Raven replied with a sigh, “and he’s the only person who might be able to give us any clue where Furan might be hiding.”
“We don’t even know that for sure, but the only way we’ll find out is if we ask him a few friendly questions,” Otto replied. “And unlike the cell leader in London, let’s see if we can ask those questions before he ends up under a train.”
“I thought we weren’t going to mention that again,” Raven said with a slight frown.
“Just making an observation,” Otto said with a crooked smile. “Any idea how on earth we’re going to pull this off?”
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Raven replied, shaking her head.
“Well, he’s on the campaign trail at the moment,” Otto replied, “which means that the first thing we n
eed to work out is when and where to go after him. Once we’ve figured that out we can start to think about how we’re going to get past his security detail.”
“I’m going to have to talk to Nero,” Raven said with a sigh. “I’ll need to clear it with him before we go after a target this high profile. I think I can already imagine his reaction.”
“Better now than later when he might just have won the election,” Otto said. “If you think he’s going to be a hard man to get to at the moment, just imagine what it would be like trying to reach him once he’s comfortably settled in the White House.”
“Point taken,” Raven replied. “I don’t imagine that Nero’s going to be pleased at the prospect of a senior member of the Disciples in the Oval Office. We have enough to worry about at the moment as it is, without adding that into the mix.”
Otto stared at the silver ring that was projecting the hovering image of H.I.V.E.mind and then at the discarded ISIS armor on the bench nearby. He suddenly felt the familiar prickle of an idea forming.
“I think I may have an idea of how we can get close enough to him to get what we need, but I’ll need some components from Professor Pike and some tinkering time,” Otto said, staring out of the window.
“Draw up a list and I’ll pass it on to Nero when I report in,” Raven replied with a nod. “The sooner we get this done, the better.”
Laura Brand pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, before staggering back to her feet, the sharp metallic taste of blood filling her mouth.
“Too slow,” the girl standing opposite her said with a nasty smile, “always too slow.”