Nero thought again about the recent aberrations in H.I.V.E.mind’s behaviour and he could not help but wonder if the decision to place so much responsibility for the running of the school in the hands of an artificial consciousness was wise. H.I.V.E.mind had originally been installed only after exhaustive months of testing to ensure that his more rudimentary architecture would not allow him to exhibit any kind of emotion. Even then the AI had exhibited strange behaviour during Malpense’s escape attempt and he asked himself whether if he still shouldn’t just shut the school’s AI down for good. Despite Professor Pike’s repeated assurances to the contrary he could not take the chance of a repeat of the events that had taken place in the frozen mountains of northern China. If H.I.V.E.mind showed even the slightest hint of any other unexpected behaviour he would order the machine destroyed immediately. Silently he prayed that it would not come to that.
.
Chapter Six
Otto attacked the plate of steaming food with gusto. The in-flight catering on the Shroud had been non-existent and he hadn’t realised how hungry he was until Agent One had placed the plates of freshly prepared local food in front of Wing and himself. The dining room was decorated in a modern style but there were no obvious indications that this was a G.L.O.V.E. safe house. It looked just like any other large, well-appointed Tokyo apartment. The huge floor-to-ceiling windows along one side of the room gave a spectacular view of Tokyo’s night-time skyline, the garish rainbow of neon lighting on display almost overwhelming the eye. Raven, Agent One and Agent Zero stood in the kitchen area that was separated from the dining space by a long counter. They were engaged in a whispered conversation, their expressions serious.
‘Looks like Raven and the Binary Brothers are discussing what sort of leash we’re going to be on tomorrow,’ Otto said quietly, not looking up from his plate.
‘A very short one, if I’m any judge,’ Wing replied with a slight smile.
‘I wonder how many places like this they maintain around the world,’ Otto said, gesturing vaguely at the walls around them with his fork.
‘One in every major city, at a guess,’ Wing replied. ‘One thing we know about G.L.O.V.E. is that they like to be prepared for any eventuality.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ Otto said, ‘what exactly did your dad do for G.L.O.V.E.?’
‘To be honest, he never discussed the specifics with me. As a rule I spoke to him very little after my mother died. He withdrew into his work, became obsessed with it, really. He never had time for discussing anything with me, let alone the details of his work.’
‘But you knew that he worked for G.L.O.V.E.?’ Otto said quietly.
‘Yes, although I did not know that was their name until I arrived at H.I.V.E. I knew that he was involved in something clandestine and that he was not working for the government.’
Suddenly Wing looked lost in thought.
‘I’m sorry, Wing,’ Otto replied with a slight shake of his head. ‘I shouldn’t be so nosey, you don’t need to be talking about this at the moment.’
‘No, it’s all right,’ Wing replied. ‘My father was a different man after my mother died. With her gone he shut himself away from the rest of the world, including me. I think that perhaps in some ways I grieved for them both back then.’
Otto may never have known his own parents, but still he thought he understood what Wing meant.
‘Lao, the old man who maintained the grounds of the house was the nearest thing I had to a father after that,’ Wing went on. ‘He was the one who really trained me to fight. My mother had seen to it that I received combat training from a very young age. She never said exactly why, but she always told me that it was important. After she died, and with my father lost to his work, Lao took me under his wing and taught me how to defend myself. I was still receiving normal lessons from tutors who came to the house, but I was not really interested in them, I just wanted to learn how to fight. I do not know where Lao received his training, but from then until my arrival at H.I.V.E. he taught me all that he knew.’
Wing did not seem upset by this discussion, rather he seemed to be becoming more relaxed as he spoke, almost as if it was a relief just to talk to someone about it. There was a sudden sound of laughter from the kitchen area and Otto looked over to see Raven nodding to the two agents with a broad smile. She walked over to the table.
‘Well, gentlemen, I can see that you enjoyed your meal,’ she said, surveying the empty plates that now sat in front of the two boys, ‘but we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow so I suggest that you both try to get some sleep.’
‘Do we get a bedtime story?’ Otto asked cheekily.
‘Oh yes, of course. I think we’ll have one of my favourites; it’s called The Little Boy and the Tranquiliser Dart Gun.’ Raven smiled in a rather unsettling way.
‘Does it have a happy ending?’ Otto replied, looking Raven straight in the eye.
‘There are no happy endings, Mr Malpense. Surely you’ve realised that by now.’
Laura sat in the darkness – not just a lack of light, but its total absence. Something flickered in the gloom. At first it was just a fuzzy outline but gradually it drifted into full focus, a glowing letter X hanging in the air. Laura tried to reach for the letter but it hung just a few centimetres beyond her reach. Suddenly more glowing white letters and numbers started to appear in the darkness surrounding her. At first they seemed to drift aimlessly in the air, as if disturbed by some invisible breeze, but as time went by they began to move more quickly. Soon the darkness was gone, replaced by a whirling mass of glowing white characters that surrounded Laura on all sides. She felt herself move, drawn towards the large shining X that had been the first symbol to appear. As she moved towards it, the X grew impossibly large, its light flooding the darkness. Closer and closer she drifted to the massive letter and, as she reached out to touch it, she could see that the X itself was made up of millions of tiny characters, all swarming across its surface. Some unseen force tugged urgently at Laura, trying to pull her away from the giant glowing symbol, but she resisted, reaching out again to touch the mysterious symbol. As her fingers made contact she felt a shock of cold and her eyes widened.
‘Fractal encryption,’ she whispered. ‘Of course.’
Suddenly Laura was awake, staring up at a rather unhappy-looking Shelby.
‘Brand, it’s four in the morning, and much as I normally like to listen to you spouting techno babble do you think you could at least save it for the daytime?’
Laura didn’t reply. She leapt out of bed and raced over to Shelby’s desk.
‘You know, you’re not getting any less weird here,’ Shelby said as Laura switched on her computer.
‘Fractal encryption, Shel,’ Laura said excitedly as she pulled up the file containing the mysterious transmission she’d intercepted. ‘I can’t believe I was so dim, it’s so obvious.’
‘Yeah, obvious,’ Shelby said, rubbing her eyes. ‘Just what I was thinking.’
‘If I can just adapt my existing decryption algorithm –’ Laura’s hands flew across the keyboard.
‘Is that like sleeping?’ Shelby asked hopefully.
‘Watch and learn,’ Laura said with a grin and hit the return key. For a couple of seconds nothing happened but then slowly, character by character, the successfully decrypted message materialised on the screen.
‘Oh my God –’ Laura gasped.
‘We have to get this to Nero now,’ Shelby said, suddenly looking very awake.
Shelby and Laura ran down the corridor towards the teachers’ accommodation wing.
‘H.I.V.E.mind,’ Laura said into her Blackbox as they ran. Nothing happened. ‘H.I.V.E.mind,’ she tried again, but still she got no response.
‘What’s wrong?’ Shelby asked urgently.
‘I can’t raise H.I.V.E.mind on my box,’ Laura said, an unmistakeable note of concern in her voice. She had a horrible feeling of creeping dread. Something was very wrong and it wasn’t just the de
crypted message that they’d both read a few minutes earlier.
‘Well, we’re nearly there, anyway,’ Shelby said. They turned down another corridor and stopped suddenly as they found their way barred by two shadowy figures. One of the two figures stepped forward, his features suddenly illuminated by the lights in the ceiling of the corridor. Laura and Shelby recognised the face of Block immediately. He was one of the students from the Henchman stream and Otto and Wing had already had several run-ins with him over the past few months. Now the other person stepped into the light and neither girl was surprised to see that it was Block’s constant companion, Tackle. The pair of them were notorious throughout the school for representing the worst thuggish excesses of the students that were usually to be found in the Henchman programme.
‘Hey, guys,’ Laura said cheerily, but the quick nervous glance that she shot at Shelby spoke volumes. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’
The two boys just stared straight at the two girls, their faces expressionless.
‘What’s the matter?’ Shelby said. ‘It’s not like you two to not have something to s—’
Laura shoved Shelby to one side as Block raised his arm, pointing the sleeper, one of the stun pulse weapons that H.I.V.E.’s guards were normally issued with, straight at them and fired, the weapon’s distinctive zapping sound loud in the quiet corridor.
The pulse distorted the air as it whistled through the space that had been occupied by Shelby’s head a split second earlier.
‘Run!’ Laura yelled as Tackle raised his own identical weapon and fired at the two girls, missing them but hitting one of the lights in the roof, which exploded in a shower of sparks. The two girls turned and fled down the corridor with Block and Tackle in silent pursuit.
Laura sprinted down the first turning off the main corridor. She ran through the mental map of the school that she had built in her head over the past months, trying to remember where the nearest security station was. They had to get help and fast. Clearly whoever was responsible for sending the message that she had decrypted was determined to make sure that they did not share its contents with anyone else. Suddenly Shelby slowed as they passed a familiar set of doors.
‘Quick,’ Shelby said, slapping at the entry panel for the door, ‘in here.’
Two more stun pulses impacted harmlessly against the wall as the girls dashed through the door and into the darkened room. Block and Tackle showed no signs of abandoning their pursuit, sprinting after the two girls in silence.
The corridors in this section were even more dimly illuminated. Like many sections of H.I.V.E., this area was running at reduced power outside of normal school hours and the two boys slowed slightly as their eyes adjusted to the gloom. As they rounded the next corner they saw Laura, pounding fruitlessly on the locked door at the other end of the corridor.
‘Shelby, open the door, it’s locked behind you. I can’t get through,’ she shouted desperately, but the door remained firmly closed. Tackle began to advance down the corridor towards Laura, but Block put a hand on his chest and grinned. Clearly he was going to be the one to deliver the coup de grace. Still grinning he walked slowly down the corridor towards the trapped girl.
Laura began to pound on the door with even more urgency.
‘Shelby!’ she shouted. ‘They’re here, you’ve got to open the door, please . . . oh God . . . please, open the door!’
Laura turned to face Block as he stalked down the corridor towards her, Tackle just a few steps behind him. There were tears in her eyes, fear written clearly across her face.
‘Oh no, please . . . don’t hurt me, please,’ Laura pleaded desperately as Block raised his sleeper. He took one more step and there was a tiny almost inaudible click.
‘Sucker,’ Laura grinned as the floor beneath Block fell away and he disappeared from view, tumbling into the icy water below with a large splash.
Tackle’s expression changed from triumphant to confused to enraged in the space of a second as his friend disappeared from view. He raised his own weapon, pointing it straight at Laura on the other side of the gaping hole in the corridor floor.
Shelby dropped silently from the gloom of the ceiling behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Tackle spun round to face her and Shelby launched a single, powerful straight-legged karate kick to his nose. He dropped the gun and staggered backwards, blood pouring from his nose, and fell, arms wheeling, into the waiting pit trap.
‘Nice moves,’ Laura said with a grin as she stepped forward and looked down into the pit, where twenty feet below the two thugs were vainly trying to scale the smooth walls, thrashing about in the icy black water.
‘Yeah, well, Wing’s been showing me a thing or two,’ Shelby replied.
‘Has he now?’ Laura said with a grin, raising an eyebrow at her friend.
‘Can it, Brand! We’ve got a day to save, remember,’ Shelby shot back, her cheeks reddening ever so slightly.
‘Of course.’ Laura stepped back a couple of yards and took a running jump over the gaping hole in the floor; it wasn’t a hard jump to make, you just had to know to make it in the first place. She’d been banking on the fact that Block and Tackle wouldn’t realise that they’d chased them into the Maze and that if they did they wouldn’t know about the trap that had claimed Laura on her first run through. It seemed that her gamble had paid off.
The two girls ran back towards the entrance of the Maze and suddenly the area was brightly lit as the normal illumination came back online. Standing in the entrance was a welcome figure.
‘Colonel Francisco!’ Laura shouted, as she recognised H.I.V.E.’s head of Tactical Education. ‘We have to speak to Doctor Nero, something terrible’s going to happen.’
‘That’s very perceptive of you, Miss Brand,’ the Colonel replied with an evil grin. He raised his hand – he too was holding a Sleeper. He fired once and Shelby collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
‘You –’ Laura gasped. They had known that a teacher was probably involved with whatever was going on and now she knew who that teacher was.
‘Goodnight, Miss Brand.’ The Colonel pointed the fat-barrelled gun at Laura.
‘Francisco!’ A familiar voice rang out from behind the Colonel. It was the Contessa.
‘You can’t stop me, Contessa,’ Francisco said, levelling the gun at the other teacher now.
‘Put down the gun.’ The Contessa’s voice suddenly took on a different tone, like a hundred separate voices whispering in unison. The effect on Francisco was immediate; with an expression of confused fury on his face he bent down and placed the gun on the floor.
‘Now sleep,’ the Contessa continued.
It was as if Francisco had been hit with a Sleeper pulse himself. He collapsed unconscious to the ground and lay still. All of the students at H.I.V.E. knew about the effect that the Contessa’s voice could have, but Laura had never witnessed its true power before.
It had all happened in just seconds. Laura bent down and checked Shelby. She was unconscious but her breathing was regular. Based on their past experience of Sleepers she would be fine – she’d just have the mother of all headaches when she finally woke up.
‘Is she all right?’ the Contessa asked, kneeling beside the unconscious girl.
‘I think so,’ Laura replied, looking at the Contessa. ‘I have to see Nero now.’
‘I am fairly sure that after this he will be keen to see you too,’ the Contessa replied, flipping open her own Blackbox. ‘H.I.V.E.mind, instruct security to dispatch a team to corridor epsilon nine. Colonel Francisco has just assaulted a student and is to be taken into immediate custody. I also need a medical team, the student in question has been hit with a stun pulse.’
‘Understood,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied. Whatever it was that had stopped H.I.V.E.mind from responding a minute before had clearly been resolved. The timing seemed a little too convenient for Laura’s liking.
‘Now, just what is it that you have to tell Doctor Nero so urgently?’ the Contessa asked.
Laura looked tired and frightened.
‘I think something very, very bad is going to happen . . .’
‘It is fortunate, Miss Brand, that I am an early riser,’ Dr Nero said as he settled into the seat behind his desk. ‘I think you’d better tell me what happened.’
Laura obediently repeated the story of how she’d intercepted the secret transmission and how she’d cracked the encryption. She then went on to describe the events of just a few minutes earlier and Francisco’s failed attempt to stop her from telling anyone what she’d discovered.
‘You are lucky that the Contessa was there,’ Nero said, glancing at his fellow teacher, who now stood to one side of the desk.
‘H.I.V.E.mind had alerted me to a disturbance in the Maze,’ the Contessa replied. ‘At first I thought it would just be students breaking curfew, but it quickly became obvious that there was rather more to it than that.’
‘And Francisco has been safely taken into custody, but we appear to have lost Mr Block and Mr Tackle,’ Nero said, scanning one of the screens mounted on his desk. ‘Now, Miss Brand, would you like to explain to me what this mysterious message is that one of my most loyal and long-serving teachers was so keen to stop you from sharing?’
Laura pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket on which she’d copied down the decrypted message. She handed it to Nero and he read the message aloud.
.
++Transmission Start++
Package has left H.I.V.E. Destination Tokyo safe house. Execute attack plan at first opportunity.
++Transmission End++