S.T.I.N.K.B.O.M.B.

by Rob Stevens

  ‘This is no time for codes,’ Archie said sternly. ‘What is your status?’

  ‘I was given away by what I had hidden.’

  ‘Seriously, Barney, cut it out.’

  ‘The ant is strong but its weakness is sugar.’

  ‘Barney!’ Archie waited but there was no reply. ‘Barney!’

  Silence.

  The lift doors slid apart and two large figures dressed in white stepped into the elevator as Archie and Finn stepped out. They found themselves on a small metal balcony about fifteen feet above the glossy white floor of a huge rectangular room. The gantry ran along three sides of the room, excluding the far wall, and a gangway spanned the width of the room, connecting to another balcony directly opposite.

  The footbridge passed above a large leather chair positioned behind a banked U-shaped control deck covered in knobs and dials. An imposing figure dressed in black was standing in front of the console with his square shoulders hunched and his hands behind his back like a bodyguard. Sitting in the leather chair about thirty metres away was a stout figure in a round-necked suit.

  Archie could see that one half of his skull appeared to be covered in green scales, and although the front of his head was completely bald a tangle of grey hair sprouted wildly from his crown. A bulbous eye protruded from the scaly side of his face and every now and then a fat sticky tongue forced its way out of his mouth.

  ‘Doctor Doom, I presume,’ Archie whispered to himself. ‘We meet at last.’

  ‘I’m not Doctor Doom.’ Finn frowned and jabbed a scaly finger at the figure below. ‘He’s Doctor Doom.’

  The room was brightly lit by numerous fluorescent tubes hanging from the roof and a holographic map of the world was projected on to the glass wall behind Doom’s control deck.

  The other three walls of the room were covered by banks of metal cabinets crammed with flashing lights, buttons, endless switches and a baffling variety of instrumentation. Archie guessed they housed the electronic operating systems of Dr Doom’s experimental apparatus.

  As Archie and Finn edged along the gantry they were able to get a better view of the monstrous contraption that occupied three quarters of the space inside the room. At its centre was a giant glass dome filled with swirling smoke that glowed orange, its crest almost reaching the height of the balcony. Four thick silver ducting tubes fed from the upturned bowl, looping way above Archie before feeding down into large glass cylinders positioned vertically around the equipment at equal intervals. Archie thought he whole thing looked slightly comical, like some child’s model of a spider missing a few legs, but as he crept closer he saw what was in the cylinders and he was gripped by terror.

  Three of the vertical tubes contained people. With wires stuck to their temples, chests and wrists. They stared out of their glass confines as if in some sort of trance. Archie continued round the gantry, studying them one at a time. The first cylinder housed a blond teenage boy Archie recognised as Henry Ulrik and the next contained Karl Schumaker. As the third tube came into view Archie caught his breath.

  ‘Look,’ Finn whispered. ‘There’s Richard Hunt.’

  ‘You know my father?’ Archie asked.

  ‘Your father? I don’t think so,’ Finn replied. ‘But I pulled that man out of a car once. I can’t remember how he got there, but he was at the bottom of the sea. Come to think of it, I don’t know why I was there. I suppose being able to breathe underwater has its uses every now and then.’

  Archie was mesmerised by the sight of his father inside the glass cylinder. He looked weak and vulnerable, and Archie realised that he had been subconsciously reassuring himself with the notion that his father was indestructible. After all, Richard Hunt had survived countless war zones – what harm could one mad scientist do? But now it was obvious his father was only human, and just as helpless in this scenario as Doom’s other victims. Archie hated Dr Doom for reducing him to such a feeble-looking specimen. What must he have been through to end up like this? Even his father’s eyes looked full of something Archie had never seen before. They were full of fear.

  ‘This can’t be happening,’ Archie muttered. ‘We have to stop this experiment, Finn. Otherwise it’ll mean total disaster.’

  ‘I know,’ Finn replied. ‘It’ll never work with your father in cylinder two.’

  Archie turned to look at his friend, who was still transfixed by the scene below. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The transmutation doesn’t work with grown-ups,’ Finn said, as if stating the obvious. ‘That’s why all the criminals’ clones are such freaks. Doom’s plan only works on kids.’

  His heart pounding, Archie turned and studied the captives. He remembered reading that Henry Ulrik was sixteen years old although he looked much younger now, strapped up and cocooned in glass. He couldn’t recall Karl Schumaker’s age but he had always assumed, mostly because of his beard, that he was well into his twenties. Archie could see now that the goatee on Karl’s chin was distinctly wispy, the sort of fluffy growth sported by some of the boys in Year Twelve who were desperate to demonstrate their masculinity. It was apparent that Karl was certainly no older than Ulrik and quite probably younger.

  By contrast Archie’s father looked haggard. He was pale and thin, his silver hair reinforcing his age.

  As Archie ducked low behind the railings of the balcony his mind started to race. The original coded message on Doom’s website had warned that Police will take care of Hunt this afternoon, which could refer to Archie just as much as his father. Gemma had mentioned the MI6 theory that Doom was using the SPADE database to harvest individuals with particular abilities for his experiment, and both Archie and his dad had scored highly. Archie thought about the text message Dr Doom had sent him and one phrase stuck in his mind.

  The last thing I need is to have you snooping around.

  On the face of it Doom had meant that Archie’s presence would have been an unwelcome hindrance, but what if he’d meant that Archie coming to his hideout was the final thing, the final ingredient, he required to complete his experiment?

  ‘He never meant to kidnap my father at all,’ Archie whispered, taking a deep breath. ‘All the time I thought I was tracking down Doom he was actually reeling me in, using Dad as bait …’

  ‘Sorry?’ Finn asked.

  ‘I feel so stupid,’ Archie mumbled to himself. ‘I thought he was showing off but he wanted me to solve his riddle and find his hideout. He’s been playing me all along.’ As Archie silently rebuked himself for being so naive he realised that all was not yet lost. So what if he’s been leading me into a trap? he thought. As long as he doesn’t know I’m here, I’m the one with the upper hand.

  Suddenly the room rang with the sound of a harsh eastern European voice blaring from ceiling-mounted loudspeakers.

  ‘Hello, Master Hunt!’ The figure in the leather chair was leaning forward and talking into a microphone. ‘It’s so nice of you to drop in on us unannounced. We found your friend wandering about and my soldiers are taking care of him as I speak.’ A long corpulent cackle was followed by some laboured gasps before Dr Doom continued. ‘Do you see what I did there? The phrase taking care of him could have one of two very different meanings. We might well be offering him lavish hospitality or, equally, we might be torturing him to within an inch of his pathetic life. I’ll leave it to you to decide which.’ Archie squeezed his hands into fists as he imagined his friend suffering at the hands of Doom’s mutants. Meanwhile, the sound of smug laughter filled his ears for another thirty seconds. ‘Anyway, I reviewed the CCTV footage from the security suite and saw you disabling one of my guards so there is no use hiding any more. Besides, I want to help you – you must be scared being all alone in a strange place.

  ‘I know you are listening to me so pay close attention to what I am about to say. Don’t worry I am a reasonable person, Master Hunt, and I would never force you to do anything – I am simply going to let you make your own choice. Either you show yourself in the next thirty se
conds or I will kill your father. That’s all. Your time starts now.’

  Filled with panic, Archie considered the impossible choice facing him. If he gave himself up he would be playing right into Dr Doom’s hands. Then who would stop him from completing his evil experiment and pressing ahead with his quest for world domination? And even if Archie did hand himself in, he knew there was no guarantee his father would be safe. But then again, he couldn’t hide up here on the gantry and do nothing while some mad scientist executed his father.

  ‘Ten seconds, Master Hunt!’ boomed Doom’s voice.

  Frantically Archie pulled off his hood and unzipped his boiler suit.

  ‘Three … two … one … time’s up, Master Hunt.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Archie yelled. ‘I’m coming down – just don’t hurt my dad.’

  Dr Doom watched the slight figure in the hoody and jeans slink down the metal staircase with his head bowed in defeat. His hood was pulled up as if to hide the disgrace he felt at being publicly paraded before the people whose lives had depended on him. As he shuffled despondently across the operations platform he made no eye contact with Richard Hunt or either of the other two human guinea pigs. He passed the huge glass dome and slouched towards the evil mastermind’s control console.

  ‘Well, well, Master Hunt,’ Dr Doom chuckled. ‘It’s a pleasure to finally meet you at last.’

  Archie smiled grimly. ‘The pleasure is all yours,’ he muttered.

  ‘Now, now, Master Hunt,’ Doom teased. ‘Let’s not be a sore loser. Admit it – I won fair and square.’

  Archie swallowed. ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ Doom announced grandly. ‘I am your evil enemy.’

  ‘I know you’re evil,’ Archie replied. ‘And I know you’re my enemy. Tell me something I don’t know.’

  Not your evil enemy,’ Doom spat. ‘Yuri Villenemi.’

  ‘All I can hear is your evil enemy, your evil enemy,’ Archie said blankly, enjoying Doom’s frustration.

  ‘Look, I am Professor Villenemi!’ screamed the evil mastermind. ‘And my first name is Yuri.’

  ‘OK, keep your hair on,’ Archie retorted, as confidently as he could. ‘What’s left of it anyway.’

  ‘You won’t be feeling quite so clever when I have finished with you,’ Villenemi promised.

  ‘Shall we get on with this then?’ Archie asked. ‘The suspense is killing me.’

  ‘Not so fast, Master Hunt,’ Villenemi soothed. ‘I have been waiting for this moment for many, many years. Before I enjoy my triumph I want to show off – for quite a long time. I will brag to you about my incredible master plan in great detail so that you will understand just how brilliant I am. Now that I have you right where I want you I intend to savour my victory, safe in the knowledge that you have absolutely no chance of stopping me – none whatsoever.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ Archie snorted.

  ‘Well, well, I admire your fighting spirit,’ Villenemi chuckled. ‘But save your energy – I don’t want you to be too tired to enjoy what I have in store for you.’

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘Only the culmination of a lifetime of genius,’ Villenemi announced. ‘For the last decade I have been studying the science of genetic engineering. I secretly developed my techniques while I was employed by the British government but they didn’t share my passion or my vision for the potential benefits of cross-cloning. They had some ethical problem with me testing my procedures on humans.’

  ‘Some people are so unreasonable.’ Archie muttered.

  ‘They tried to lock me up but I escaped,’ Villenemi declared defiantly. ‘One female agent pursued me with impressive dedication and she nearly caught me too – but unfortunately she came to an untimely end.’ The evil professor allowed himself a devilish laugh. ‘They came after me all guns blazing and thought they’d destroyed me. But I outsmarted them and started again from scratch. Using the groundbreaking techniques I’d developed in the government labs, I created the incredible equipment you see before you.’ Dr Doom gestured grandly at the glass-domed contraption. ‘With my revolutionary Transmutator I have the power to genetically isolate and extract particular attributes from individual samples and combine them to create a single superior human.’

  ‘Your guards are far from human,’ Archie countered.

  ‘You’re very observant, Master Hunt,’ Villenemi sneered. ‘I wanted my creation to possess some characteristics that don’t occur in the realm of humans but can be found elsewhere in nature.’ Pressing a button on the panel in front of him, Villenemi mumbled, ‘Bring him in.’ The door at the far end of the room slid open and Barney stumbled on to the operations platform, his hands bound in front of him. Striding in behind him, with a long bony arm resting authoritatively on Barney’s shoulder, was the gangly stickman. He guided the boy roughly to a position just yards from the control deck where guard and captive stood side by side.

  Barney gazed around, taking in his surroundings with hungry eyes. His face was a mixture of terror and wonder.

  ‘You have already met Antony, I believe,’ Villenemi said cordially to Archie, as if introducing guests at a party. ‘He is ten times as strong as a normal man because he has been transmutated with an ant. Unfortunately he has also inherited an ant’s impossibly sweet tooth – he simply can’t help himself where chocolate is concerned. In one of my earliest experiments I cross-cloned myself with a close cousin of the chameleon in the hope of being able to blend in with my surroundings should MI6 ever catch up with me.’ Villenemi touched his face involuntarily. ‘I wouldn’t say that procedure was a total success. I have some characteristics of the reptile but camouflage is not one of them.’

  ‘In other words you failed?’ Barney taunted.

  ‘On that occasion, yes,’ Villenemi snapped. ‘But I have since perfected the process by trial and error.’

  ‘Where did you find your guinea pigs?’ Archie enquired.

  ‘While working for the British government I secretly made contacts in the criminal underworld, mixing with all sorts of dangerous characters. It was easy to pay a group of hoodlums to intercept a prison van full of violent convicts for my purposes. You’d be amazed what these desperate criminals were willing to submit themselves to given the promise of money and power.’

  ‘So all your experiments were carried out on dangerous criminals?’

  ‘Nearly all,’ Villenemi said with a smirk. ‘I had some success with these procedures but I realised eventually that the strands of adult human DNA were too brittle to be modified satisfactorily. I acquired a young boy and discovered that his DNA was much more malleable.’

  ‘When you say acquired …’ Archie probed.

  ‘OK, so I kidnapped him,’ Villenemi boomed. ‘But he was a miserable little scrap so I’m sure no one missed him. The animal quality I finally decided to include in my creation is most readily found in sea creatures and he was my first attempt at a transmutation of human and marine DNA.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Oh that’s very good, Master Hunt,’ Villenemi laughed wickedly. ‘Do you take me for a fool? I think you and I both know exactly where he is, don’t we?’

  Archie held his breath. Villenemi’s laughter subsided and he continued, ‘I know as well as you do that you captured Finn in Hamburg,’ he said smarmily. ‘I also know that an RAF Hercules was sent to fly him back to the UK for interrogation. The funny thing is they won’t get anything out of him – he can’t remember his own name some days.’

  ‘Memory can be a funny thing,’ Archie said. ‘Some things are never forgotten.’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about my specimens anyway,’ Villenemi hissed impatiently. ‘I want to talk about me, and tell you how I brilliantly devised a machine capable of genetically extracting up to two attributes from each of three separate donors, as long as the donor is a teenager, or indeed younger. As if that wasn’t mind-bendingly clever enough, I have perfected the process of ad
ding a single animal attribute to my genetic super-being. I did experiment with adding multiple animal traits but my trials just ended up creating useless blubbering masses.’

  Barney turned to Antony and whispered, ‘Did you hear what he called you? I wouldn’t stand for that if I were you.’

  With a grunt the mutant shoved Barney.

  ‘Why are you designing this super-being anyway?’ Archie asked.

  ‘This is Operation RALLY,’ Villenemi declared. ‘By creating the genetic blueprint of the ultimate soldier I am about to rally against those who rejected me. With this being’s DNA I will clone the soldier hundreds of thousands of times. Then I shall sell whole armies to any despicable warlord who happens to have a grudge against Britain – oh, and billions of pounds to spare. My made-to-measure mercenaries will destabilise the balance of world power, bringing misery to the British government in the process. By retaining the blueprint of the ultimate soldier I will dictate who possesses military supremacy in the world and I will be rich beyond my wildest dreams.’ Villenemi threw his head back and let out a laugh of pure evil satisfaction, ‘Mwah, ha, ha, ha.’

  ‘Why Operation RALLY?’ asked Archie. ‘Why not Operation ULTIMATE REVENGE or something?’

  Villenemi dropped his shoulders slightly. ‘That would have sounded a little more menacing, I agree, but we evil geniuses have to give our brainchild an acronym and I couldn’t think of one for U.L.T.I.M.A.T.E. R.E.V.E.N.G.E.’

  ‘What does RALLY stand for then?’

  Villenemi cleared his throat and said, ‘It’s the operation to Reak Almighty Lawlessness Lots, Yahoo.’

  Silence filled the huge room for a moment.

  ‘Is that the best you could do?’ Archie sniggered.

  ‘That doesn’t even make any sense, does it?’ added Barney.

  Yuri Villenemi shifted awkwardly in his seat. ‘At least the word RALLY gets the message across.’

  ‘Except you don’t spell wreak like that,’ Archie pointed out, trying to sound helpful. ‘It’s W,R,E,A,K, not R,E,A,K, so actually you’ve named your life’s work Operation WALLY. Is that the sort of message you were hoping to get across?’