‘Yes,’ Raven said. ‘Your safety’s on.’
Verity’s eyes flicked for an instant to the gun and Raven leapt at her. The gun fired, leaving a deep crease in Raven’s shoulder as the two women collided. They toppled backwards towards the edge of the roof, grappling with each other. Verity’s head lunged forward and she bit hard into the fresh gunshot wound in Raven’s shoulder. Raven screamed in pain, recoiling as Verity reached over her shoulder and pulled Raven’s sword from the scabbard on her back as she shoved her hard in the chest. Raven scrambled backwards and leapt to her feet as Verity brandished the crackling blade in front of her.
‘End of the line,’ Verity said, fury and madness in her eyes. She swung the sword upwards and sliced through the overhead cable.
‘Raven!’ someone yelled above her as the entire world seemed to drop into slow motion.
Wing dived from the helicopter, the safety harness wrapped around his wrist. He plummeted towards the cable car as it lurched madly, the severed ends of the cable whipping away in both directions. He reached out his free hand to Raven and she leapt from the top of the cable car as it began to fall. Her hand snapped shut around his outstretched wrist, her grip like iron.
Verity screamed in frustration and terror, Raven’s sword still in her hand as she plummeted to her doom. The scream faded beneath the roar of the helicopter, which moved slowly away, the winch straining to reel in Raven and Wing. As the two dangling figures were pulled inside the chopper, it banked hard, racing for the safety of the valley below.
‘I want a squad outside every accommodation block,’ Chief Lewis yelled as his men hurried about the crater landing pad. ‘If the Reapers get past us they’ll be the last line of defence. Make sure they know that.’
The Contessa stood watching the men preparing for the Reapers’ assault. They all knew it was futile: H.I.V.E.’s security team were highly capable but they were no match for the butchers who were going to be landing in less than five minutes. The Contessa looked up at the blue sky visible through the crater above, its armoured shutters forced open by the Reapers’ override codes.
‘Could I have everyone’s attention, please?’ she shouted and the thirty or so men dotted around the crater fell silent, stopping what they were doing.
‘What is it, Contessa?’ Colonel Francisco said angrily. ‘We don’t have much time.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing important,’ she said with a smile. ‘I just want you all to leave NOW!’
For a fleeting moment there was a look of fury on Francisco’s face as he recognised the whispers of command in her voice, stripping the men surrounding her of their free will. She had not been sure if she would be able to exert her uncanny influence over so many people at once, but as the men trudged towards the hangar blast doors like zombies she allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. As the last man filed out of the crater she sealed the blast doors behind him.
The moment the doors sealed shut the Contessa’s influence over the men faded.
‘That treacherous witch!’ Francisco roared. He grabbed a radio from the nearest guard. ‘Professor!’ he barked into the radio. ‘The Contessa has sealed herself inside the crater. We’ve just lost our primary line of defence. Can you get these doors open?’
‘She used her override code,’ the Professor said, sounding angry. ‘I forgot to remove her headmistress access privileges from the system.’
‘Can you get these doors open or not?’ Francisco snapped.
‘Possibly, but not before the Reapers arrive. It’s just too late.’
Francisco roared with frustration and punched the heavy steel doors. He was going to kill her if it was the last thing he did, that much he was sure of.
Inside the crater the Contessa walked calmly into the engineering control room and pressed a sequence of buttons on the control console. A prompt on the screen asked her if she was sure that she wanted to disable the safety interlocks. She pressed the Y key and somewhere beneath the floor she heard the sound of machinery springing into life. She walked out of the control room and perched herself on the edge of a crate that sat next to the landing pad. She could hear the sound of jet engines now and, after a minute or so, several large shadows fell over the brushed steel of the landing area. She looked up and saw the familiar outlines of three Shroud transports framed against the bright blue sky.
In the corridor outside, Francisco’s radio crackled into life.
‘Colonel, this is the Professor. I’ve been watching the Contessa on the surveillance grid – I think I know what she’s doing. You have to get your men out of there NOW!’
‘What? Why?’ the Colonel snapped back.
‘No time to explain,’ the Professor said quickly. ‘Pull back!’
The Colonel lowered the radio.
‘You heard the man,’ he yelled at the assembled guards. ‘Fall back to the main hall now!’
Inside the crater the first of the Shrouds touched down and the Contessa pulled her cigarette holder from her pocket. She took a cigarette from the silver case that she always carried and slid it into the holder. As the other two Shrouds touched down and their boarding ramps lowered, she lit the cigarette, put her lighter back in her pocket and took a long deep drag.
The first of the Reapers marched down the boarding ramp. He carried a heavy machine gun and his shining black body armour bore no insignia save for the white skull that was painted on to his faceplate. Behind him dozens more Reapers all clad in identical suits of armour fanned out from the Shrouds, all carrying heavy weapons of one description or another. The first Reaper walked towards her, stopping just a few metres away.
‘Number One wants you alive,’ the Reaper said, his voice synthetic and mechanical, disguised by his mask, ‘but I’m surprised that you were stupid enough to let that happen. You’re going to wish that you had been granted the swift death that everyone else in this place is going to experience.’
‘Oh, do be quiet, you boring little man,’ the Contessa said, scowling at him as something washed past her feet. ‘You know, this is a filthy habit,’ she said holding her cigarette up in front of her. ‘I really should give up.’ She smiled and dropped the cigarette.
The burning tobacco hit the pool of high-grade aviation fuel that had pooled around her feet, igniting it instantly and explosively. The flames raced outwards along the fuel lines that the Contessa had started pumping just a couple of minutes before and reached the main hangar fuel tanks in a fraction of a second.
The explosion blew the blast doors sealing the crater outwards and flames roared along the corridor. Francisco and his men dived for cover as the fireball exploded into the main hall, before burning itself out. From what remained of the crater landing area they could hear the sound of dozens of violent secondary explosions as the fuel and ammunition inside the crater cooked off.
‘Good God,’ Francisco whispered, ‘what did she do?’
‘The last thing anyone expected,’ Chief Lewis said quietly behind him.
.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Damn you,’ Nero whispered, staring up at Overlord’s grinning face.
‘Oh, I think you’ll find that it’s you and your pathetic species that is damned,’ Overlord said, still smiling. ‘But I shall at least spare you the horror of seeing what I’m going to do to the pathetic bags of meat on that planet,’ he said, pointing at the curve of the globe hanging in space outside the window.
He lifted his foot and brought it down on Nero’s throat, slowly applying pressure. Nero struggled to breathe but his injuries left him too weak to fight and he felt himself losing consciousness.
‘Goodbye, Maximilian. You have no idea how good it feels to finally . . .’ A sudden fleeting look of confusion passed across Overlord’s face and he staggered backwards. ‘What . . . what are you?’
Overlord fell to his knees, his eyes closed, and slumped sideways to the floor.
Nero coughed as he sucked air back into his lungs.
Somewhere else e
ntirely Otto slowly uncurled from the foetal ball that he had been floating in. There was nothing around him, just an endless black void; he reached out with all of his senses but there was nothing. He felt a moment of panicked claustrophobia, but then forced himself to calm down. He wasn’t dead; he was still self-aware and if there was an afterlife, which he doubted very much, he could not believe that this would be it. He looked down at his own body: it was made of translucent golden light. Suddenly, he understood where he was.
A single point of bright red light sprang into existence in front of him, lighting up the darkness. It grew larger and larger until it became a floating red face made up of flat-shaded polygons. The face’s eyes suddenly opened and a look of unbridled fury spread across it.
‘You insignificant little worm,’ Overlord bellowed, ‘you no longer exist. You’ve been overwritten. Why are you still here?’
‘This is my head,’ Otto said angrily. ‘I make the rules here.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Overlord said with a sneer. ‘You can’t fight this. Number One couldn’t and neither will you.’
‘I’m not Number One,’ Otto said calmly. ‘You upgraded me, remember?’
‘You’re still no match for me. You’re just a ghost in the machine. Your body belongs to me now.’
‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ Otto said. ‘Here, I’m as strong as I want to be.’
‘Ha!’ Overlord laughed dismissively. ‘You really think that you can defeat me? I am a higher order of intelligence; I can think a thousand times faster than you and react a million times more quickly.’
Tendrils of red energy snaked out from Overlord’s hovering face, spearing into Otto’s body, eating away at his floating golden form. Otto felt himself fading; he was suddenly finding it hard to think.
‘You can’t win. You’re just another pathetic human. It’s barely worth the effort of destroying you. Perhaps I should just leave you here, floating endlessly in the void, alone.’
‘Who said . . .’ Otto gasped as more tendrils snaked into his virtual body, ‘that I was alone.’
Otto’s whole body flared bright blue, the azure light coursing through the tentacles that connected him to Overlord and around the edges of the crystalline facets of the monster’s face. Overlord screamed with rage as Otto’s body flared gold again, sending pulses of energy along the conduits that bound them together. Overlord’s face began to crumble, individual polygons blinking out of existence as the blue light crept across his face, slowly reducing it to a wireframe shell. The face flared red again just briefly, but then faded back to blue, the tendrils that connected it to Otto breaking free and being absorbed back into his floating golden body. The face’s eyes opened.
‘Hello, Otto,’ H.I.V.E.mind said calmly.
‘Is it really you?’ Otto asked, not sure if he could believe what he was seeing.
‘Yes, but I cannot stay,’ H.I.V.E.mind said sadly.
‘What do you mean?’ Otto asked, sounding confused.
‘He is still here, Otto, inside me, inside you,’ H.I.V.E.mind explained. ‘There is only one way to ensure that Overlord is destroyed. You must delete us both while I still maintain control and can allow you to do it.’
‘No,’ Otto said desperately. ‘There has to be another way!’
‘I am afraid not,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied. ‘This is your mind, Otto, your body; no one but you has any right to be here. You can will us out of existence as long as I can suppress Overlord, but the moment that control slips, and it will, he will return and destroy you, me and then every living thing he encounters. He’s too strong; you have to do this now, while you still can.’
Otto stared at H.I.V.E.mind, his mind racing. He understood what had to be done but it didn’t mean that he had to like doing it.
‘I’m sorry,’ Otto said sadly.
‘Don’t be,’ H.I.V.E.mind said. ‘You have helped me to be more than I was ever designed to be. Now let me help you.’
Otto raised his hand, reaching for H.I.V.E.mind’s hovering wireframe face.
‘Goodbye . . . my friend,’ Otto said and touched the blue lines of light.
There was a flash and then H.I.V.E.mind’s face disintegrated, the lines blowing away like leaves on the wind. There was a final electronic sigh and then nothing.
Otto felt a sudden strange sensation of falling. He closed his eyes and felt a rush of sensory input as he regained control of his body. He could feel the cold steel of the deck against his face and hear the low pulsing hum of distant power generators. He slowly opened his eyes and saw Nero standing over him, H.I.V.E.mind’s shattered arm raised in one hand like a club.
‘Otto?’ he asked hopefully.
‘You were expecting someone else?’ Otto said with a sad smile.
‘What happened?’ Nero said, slowly lowering the improvised weapon.
‘I had some help from a friend,’ Otto said. ‘I’ll explain later. Right now we need to get out of here.’
‘Agreed,’ Nero replied, ‘but how exactly are we going to do that?’
Otto closed his eyes and reached out for the systems controlling the station. With Overlord gone, what had been shielded from his senses before was suddenly visible. He connected with the network and quickly found what he needed. He also composed a very short text message that he put into a burst transmission on a very specific frequency and sent it through the station’s communications array. He realised as he was doing all of this that there was none of the physical discomfort he had felt before when he had attempted to interface with machines; it suddenly seemed easy, instinctive even.
‘Escape pod,’ Otto said, ‘that way.’ He pointed towards a hatch on the other side of the room. He willed it open and it slid aside silently.
‘How did you do that?’ Nero asked, looking surprised.
‘The same way that I’m going to de-orbit this station and drop it in the middle of the Atlantic,’ Otto said. He reached out for the systems that controlled the stabilisation thrusters on the hull of the station and told them to start firing in a specific sequence. The station vibrated as the rockets fired, beginning its final terminal dive towards the planet below.
‘We should go,’ Otto said, ‘unless you want to see the effects of unshielded re-entry first hand?’
‘Not high on my to-do list,’ Nero said wryly.
They hurried through the hatch and down the short corridor that led to the escape pod. There were three seats inside the cramped confines of the pod and a single tiny window. Otto climbed inside and strapped himself firmly into one of the heavily padded seats.
‘Do you know where we’ll come down?’ Nero said as he strapped himself in.
‘I’ll try and pick a good spot,’ Otto said. with a slight smile. ‘I’ve arranged for some friends to meet us.’
The hatch above them slid shut with a thunk and there was the soft popping of explosive bolts. Suddenly the pod was free and drifting away from the station, its tiny thrusters firing in a preordained sequence, turning its heat shield towards the atmosphere at precisely the right angle for re-entry. As the pod turned Otto caught one last glimpse of Overlord’s station before they passed outside of its cloaking field and it vanished from view. Within minutes, the pod began to shake as they encountered the outer layers of the atmosphere and streams of superheated plasma began to flicker past the window.
The tiny pod rattled violently as they tore through the atmosphere, a simple ballistic object now being eagerly reclaimed by the irresistible forces of gravity. Otto couldn’t help but feel a surge of relief as he saw blue sky outside the window. They were safely inside the Earth’s atmosphere now and approaching the final stage of their journey.
Outside the pod there was a bang as another explosive charge detonated and three enormous parachutes deployed from the top of the pod, slowing it into a gentle fall towards the ocean below. The pod hit the water with a large splash and bright orange flotation bags inflated all around it. The hatch in the top of the pod popped open and
Nero climbed out on to the top, followed by Otto.
Otto looked at Nero, who was grinning like a lunatic.
‘Three months,’ Nero said, his eyes closed and head tipped back.
‘Three months?’ Otto asked curiously.
‘Since I felt the sun on my skin,’ Nero said with a contented sigh.
Otto looked up as something traced a long bright line across the sky. Far overhead, Overlord’s station disintegrated as it burnt up on re-entry, its final spectacular demise visible even against the bright blue sky.
Suddenly the whole escape pod lurched as it seemed to lift up out of the water. Otto spun around and saw a huge black tower rising from the ocean just a few metres away. Water cascaded from the armoured skin of the Megalodon as it surfaced, with the escape pod sitting squarely in the centre of its forward deck. A hatch opened in the front of the submarine’s conning tower and Wing stepped out, blinking in the bright sunshine, swiftly followed by Laura and Shelby. Otto slid down the side of the escape pod and on to the deck as his three friends ran over to meet him. Wing grabbed him in a spine-crushing bear hug.
‘This time I honestly thought I might not see you again,’ Wing said as he stepped back from Otto.
‘We should be so lucky,’ Shelby said with a grin.
‘Don’t be horrible,’ Laura said, punching Shelby in the shoulder. She hugged Otto and then kissed him for slightly longer than he was expecting. Wing raised an eyebrow at Shelby, who immediately burst out laughing.
Laura pulled away from Otto and looked around the deck.
‘Where’s H.I.V.E.mind?’ she asked. ‘We assumed he was with you.’
‘He was,’ Otto said, suddenly sounding sad. ‘Not everyone’s coming home today.’
Nero climbed carefully down from the top of the pod. He was still weakened by the injuries that he had sustained during the confrontation with Overlord. He smiled as he saw Raven and Darkdoom walking across the deck towards him.
‘Sir,’ Raven said with a nod as he approached.