by Mark Walden
‘Sure, no problem,’ Otto replied, walking up to the terminal. ‘what do you need doing?’
‘Oh, not much,’ the Professor replied. ‘Just have a quick look at this while I’m over there. I’ll be much too far away to see what you’re doing, so don’t accidentally hit any keys or anything.’
The Professor seemed to give Otto a tiny wink and then walked away across the gantry towards the security guards who were gathering the remains of the fallen assassins. Otto thought that it was an odd thing to say, but then he looked down at the display. There was nothing on it but a single confirmation prompt.
Delete H.I.V.E.mind behavioural restraint routines. Y/N?
Otto smiled and glanced over his shoulder at the Professor, who was very deliberately ignoring him. He hit the Y key and walked away from the terminal. H.I.V.E.mind had earned it.
As he walked up to Laura she was chatting happily to H.I.V.E.mind, filling the AI in on what had happened while he was shut down.
‘So how was it?’ Otto asked curiously as he joined them. ‘How did it feel being granted external access?’
‘I was granted instantaneous and total access to the entire internet, Mr Malpense. To be honest I feel . . . dirty.’
Otto and Laura didn’t stop laughing for a while.
‘Please remain still for retinal identification,’ H.I.V.E.mind said.
Nero stood and waited as the bright flash of white light confirmed his identity.
‘Identity confirmed, access granted,’ H.I.V.E.mind replied and the heavy metal doors in front of Nero slid apart.
Nero walked into the room and surveyed the assorted medical equipment that was arranged around the single bed in the centre of the room. The bed was surrounded by semi-translucent plastic curtains that made it impossible to identify the figure lying on it.
H.I.V.E.’s chief medical officer looked up from the terminal at which he was working and walked over to him.
‘His condition has improved slightly, but his injuries are grave,’ the doctor reported.
‘Can he talk?’ Nero asked.
‘Yes, but please keep it brief. He’s still very weak,’ the doctor replied.
‘Worse than that, doctor. He’s dead,’ Nero replied calmly.
‘I don’t understand,’ the doctor said, looking confused, ‘his condition is serious but stabilised . . .’
‘As far as anyone but you or I is concerned, he’s dead, do I make myself clear?’ Nero said firmly.
‘Yes . . . yes . . . I understand,’ the doctor nodded, suddenly realising what Nero was saying.
‘And your autopsy report will be on my desk by the morning,’ Nero replied.
‘Of course.’
‘Good,’ Nero said, ‘and, doctor, if you ever tell anyone about this you will very quickly be joining him in the afterlife. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly,’ the doctor replied, swallowing nervously.
‘I wish to speak to him alone,’ Nero said.
‘Very well, I shall be just outside if you need me,’ the doctor said, and left the room.
Nero walked over to the bed and pushed the curtains aside. Lying shackled to the bed, hooked up to multiple monitors, his body a mass of shattered bones and internal injuries, was Cypher. At least that was how Nero thought of him now, but once he had known him as Wu Zhang. His head turned slightly as Nero stepped nearer, a twisted, broken laugh wheezing from him.
‘Why don’t you just let me die?’ Cypher said, his voice little more than a whisper, but filled with hate.
‘Because I want answers,’ Nero said, ‘and unfortunately you’re the only one who can give them to me.’
‘Why should I tell you anything?’ Cypher replied with a sneer.
‘Because if you don’t I shall just hand you over to Number One and let him get the answers for me, and you know as well as I do that he’ll get them. This way will at least spare you that experience.’
‘You can’t give me to him,’ Cypher said, with just a hint of sudden panic in his weak voice.
‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,’ Nero said impatiently.
‘Because he’s insane,’ Cypher replied sharply, ‘and so are you.’
‘Only one of us is a madman, Cypher, and I think your recent actions make it perfectly clear which of us it is,’ Nero snapped back.
‘How can you say that, Nero, you of all people, knowing what you know. What you’re planning is an act of sheer madness. You have to be stopped,’ Cypher said angrily.
‘Again you accuse me of something terrible and yet I still have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Nero replied with clear irritation.
‘The Renaissance Initiative. I know all about it,’ Cypher spat. ‘That’s why I needed the Protocol. With it in my control and the massed offspring of G.L.O.V.E. held to ransom I could have stopped you, but now it’s too late. Just deliver the Protocol to Number One and be done with it. Let the world burn.’
‘I still have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of any Renaissance Initiative.’ Nero was starting to think that this was pointless. The man was clearly delirious, or insane.
Cypher looked at Nero carefully, staring him straight in the eye for long seconds before speaking again. The angry, contemptuous look on his face faded, slowly replaced by one of confusion mixed with disbelief.
‘You really don’t know, do you?’ Cypher said, an edge of amazement to his voice.
‘Know what?’ Nero demanded, the volume of his voice rising in tandem with his impatience.
‘If I tell you, you must promise me one thing,’ Cypher said, his voice weakening again.
‘You know I’m not going to promise you anything. Frankly I’m not even sure why I’m keeping you alive any more,’ Nero replied coldly.
‘You have to promise to protect Wing,’ Cypher said.
‘Every pupil of this school is under my protection,’ Nero replied. ‘You are the only one who’s put him in danger.’
‘I was trying to protect him,’ Cypher said, sudden anger in his wheezing voice. ‘He was never supposed to come here in the first place. He’s all I have left of her.’
‘Xiu Mei,’ Nero said softly.
‘Yes. Both of us survived the Overlord incident, but it quickly became clear that all traces of the project were being erased, including the people who had survived.’
‘I was told that no one lived,’ Nero said. ‘I believed I was the only survivor.’
‘And Number One was going to great lengths to ensure that was the case. As more and more of the survivors disappeared we soon realised that it was only a matter of time before we met a similar fate, and realising we had no one we could trust but each other, we fled China together. We created new identities for ourselves in Japan as Mr and Mrs Fanchu, husband and wife. We fell in love only after we were married, ironically, and before long we had a child.’
‘Wing,’ Nero said. ‘But then what happened? If you had truly managed to disappear – and the fact that you were allowed to live suggested that you did – then why did you resurface?’
‘Xiu Mei discovered something terrible. She was working as a professor of computing science at the university and she was approached by people who were recruiting for something called the Renaissance Initiative. At first she was intrigued, it was high-level research, work that she found fascinating, but then she found out what the true nature of the Initiative was.’
‘What happened?’
‘She was given some new sample code to work with,’ Cypher continued. ‘She was told that it was the latest development by another team and that the Initiative wanted someone else to take a look at it. It didn’t take her long to assess the code, after all she had written it herself some years previously. It was part of Overlord’s core code; she recognised it immediately. At first she did not tell me. She just kept digging and before long she uncovered who was really behind the initiative . . . G.L.O.V.E. But somebody had noticed that she was getting too close to
the truth. They killed her, Max.’
Nero’s eyes widened.
‘Oh, it was made to look like an accident, a burglary that went bad, but she had told me everything she had discovered a few days before, so I knew what had really happened. The only shred of comfort in the whole tragic affair was that they obviously did not realise who she really was and so they let me and Wing live. We were no one to them, just another grieving father and son, collateral damage. I swore I would avenge her, but I also knew that the only way I would ever find out who was truly responsible was from the inside. So Mao Fanchu became a mid-level technician for G.L.O.V.E. and at the same time Cypher was born. I knew that I had to keep my identity a secret from Number One so I wore the mask. I went to great lengths to ensure that no one could ever find out my true identity, not to protect myself, but for Wing’s sake.’
‘Did you know that she still had the Overlord Protocol?’ Nero asked, stunned by the implications of what Cypher was telling him.
‘Only recently did I discover that,’ Cypher sighed. ‘I knew that while she was alive she never took that amulet off, but it was only when I was digging through encrypted files on her old computer that I realised its true significance. She had encrypted the code of the Protocol on to two separate embedded memory cores, one in each half of the amulet. Wing had one half, as you now know, but I had no idea where the other half was. I assumed her killer had taken it. One half is quite useless without the other, though. Only together can the Protocol be decrypted from the memory cores.’
‘Why not just destroy the half that Wing had?’ Nero asked. ‘Surely that would have rendered the Protocol useless.’
‘By the time I knew what the amulet was it was too late. Wing had already been taken to H.I.V.E. and that made retrieving his half of the amulet impossible.’
‘His records indicated that you requested he be brought here,’ Nero said, looking puzzled. ‘Why would you do that if you believed I was involved with all of this?’
‘I didn’t send him here,’ Cypher explained. ‘It was someone else, I have no idea who. I assumed that it was someone who knew my secret, that he was a hostage here and that whoever had done it was sending me a message. To be honest, I had begun to suspect that it was you.’
‘I knew nothing of this,’ Nero said sincerely. ‘I had thought it odd that the son of a mid-ranking technician should have been put forward as a potential Alpha stream student, but once I saw what he was capable of I just assumed that someone had taken note of his abilities and approved the admission at high level. It is not H.I.V.E.’s policy to enquire too deeply into such things. Our students’ parents often value discretion.’
‘And so I was forced to fake my own death. It was simple enough to stage an explosion in my laboratory. After all, such incidents are hardly unheard of at G.L.O.V.E. facilities. Mao Fanchu was too low level an operative to warrant much close investigation of the incident but I had learnt that it was H.I.V.E.’s policy to temporarily release its students for funerals and I knew that would be my only chance to retrieve him. I knew I would have to fake his death as well to ensure that no one would come looking for him, but my hope was that in time I could explain all of this to him and that he would understand why I had to do what I had to do.’
‘So why risk the assault on H.I.V.E.?’ Nero asked. ‘Why not just ride off into the sunset with your son?’
‘Two reasons. Firstly, I wanted you dead. Not only did I believe you were a key part of the Renaissance Initiative but I had also recently reviewed the footage of the incident with Darkdoom’s son and the plant creature. When I did I saw you lying injured, your shirt torn open, and what do you think I saw?’
‘The amulet,’ Nero said, things finally beginning to slot into place.
‘The amulet, which I believed whoever had killed Xiu Mei had taken, and that made you the prime suspect in her murder. So tell me, Max, how did you come to have it? I can do nothing to you now. Did you kill her?’ There was an edge of rage, madness even, in Cypher’s eyes as he stared at Nero.
‘I swear to you that I knew absolutely nothing of this. If I had known the truth I too would have wanted to find her killers, believe me,’ Nero replied, looking Cypher straight in the eye. ‘Xiu Mei sent me the amulet, along with instructions to keep it safe at all costs. It seems that she trusted me a great deal more than you did.’
‘So it would seem,’ Cypher sighed, the look of rage in his eyes fading to be replaced with one of weary resignation. ‘The second reason that I wanted control of H.I.V.E. was that it was the perfect place to launch a coup against Number One. Heavily defended, hard to access and with so many G.L.O.V.E. members’ children here, there was no way that the ruling council would allow a full-scale assault. With the Protocol and so many hostages I would have been untouchable.’
Nero finally understood.
‘As you know, the Protocol was designed to be the means by which Overlord would interface with the world’s computer networks, but it was so much more than that. It’s the ultimate hack, a work of pure genius, and something that only Xiu Mei ever understood completely and hence not recreatable without her. It would have given Overlord unrestricted access to every network on earth, including the keys to every military arsenal on earth, drone bombers, submarines, nuclear launch codes, everything. Which was why Xiu Mei had the good sense to not integrate it into Overlord’s code until she was sure he could be trusted, which of course it turned out he couldn’t be.’
Nero flashed back to the still troubling memories of the incident high in the Chinese mountains all those years ago.
‘I understand what you’re telling me, but why try to depose Number One?’ Nero asked, still waiting for the final pieces to fall into place.
‘Why do you think?’ Cypher said, staring at Nero. ‘Number One is the Renaissance Initiative. God only knows why but he’s trying to bring Overlord back.’
Nero stared back at Cypher, looking for any trace of deceit in his eyes, but there was none.
‘You and I are probably the last two people on earth who know how insane that is,’ Cypher continued. ‘He has to be stopped.’
Nero’s mind raced. Suddenly the very foundations upon which his whole life was built had been shaken. If what Cypher was telling him was true, and he knew he would have to prove that to himself, Number One had to be deposed before he could unleash Overlord on the world.
‘I don’t understand,’ Nero said finally. ‘Number One shut Overlord down the first time. He knows what that thing was capable of. Why on earth would he try to bring it back?’
‘I have no idea,’ Cypher said, suddenly looking tired. ‘Just promise that whatever you do you’ll keep Wing safe. That’s all that matters to me now.’
‘I would do that whether you asked me to or not,’ Nero said quietly. ‘You have to believe that.’
‘I didn’t believe it, but now I’m beginning to,’ Cypher said sadly. ‘Can I see him?’
‘Out of the question,’ Nero responded, his expression hardening. ‘He believes you’re dead. He has already mourned you twice, I see no reason to add to his torment. Even if I believe everything you’ve just told me, I cannot forgive what you have done. No matter how important you thought this was, too many people have died needlessly. You’ve turned my own people against me and as Cypher you stood for everything that I oppose. Your career has been one of needless brutality and horror. As far as the world is concerned, you’re dead, and I intend to make sure that it stays that way.’
‘How very noble of you,’ Cypher snorted, ‘but if Number One gets his way and the streets of the world run red with blood I wonder how well your principles will fare then?’ The edge of madness had returned to Cypher’s voice, the obsession that had fuelled the fire within him for all these years all too plain to see.
Nero gave him no answer, simply turned and walked out of the room
‘I am glad that the situation has been resolved,’ Number One said, his silhouetted form impossible to identify as usual
. ‘Cypher was a capable operative once, but this insanity was unforgivable. It is a shame that he is dead. I would have liked to question him about his motives.’
‘As would we all,’ Nero replied, ‘but whatever his reasons for attacking H.I.V.E. he took them with him to the grave.’
‘Indeed,’ Number One replied. ‘And the Contessa?’
‘She is being transferred to a G.L.O.V.E. detention facility as we speak. I have instructed everyone who may come into contact with her of the precautions they should take. Colonel Francisco is currently undergoing intensive hypnotic deprogramming to ensure that there is no trace of her manipulation left. He is a proud man, as you know, and I believe it will take him some time to forgive himself for what he did, even if nobody here blames him. I blame myself for not realising what Maria was doing. Her gift is a potent weapon when it is turned against you.’
‘You need to set your house in order, Maximilian,’ Number One said coldly. ‘There is much that disturbs me about these events. Not least of which is the ease with which Cypher circumvented your defences, both physical and metaphorical.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Nero replied, praying that none of the conflicting emotions he was feeling at the moment were visible to the man silhouetted on the screen in front of him. ‘We are instituting a full review of all security procedures.’
‘See that you do. I shall be keeping a very close eye on H.I.V.E. for the foreseeable future. Rather too many things have gone wrong there recently.’
‘Of course,’ Nero replied, hiding the clawing anxiety that the thought of increased surveillance by Number One induced in him.
‘I expect your full report by the end of the week. Do unto others.’
‘Do unto others,’ Nero said, the G.L.O.V.E. motto suddenly having much more sinister undertones.
The screen went black and Nero felt the tension drain from his body. He prayed silently that Number One had not sensed that he was lying about Cypher. He supposed he would find out soon enough if he had.
