by Mark Walden
Raven shrugged. ‘It’s just a scratch. You have more pressing concerns.’
‘Doctor Scott does not need my assistance with this stage of the surgery,’ the doctor replied, ‘and scratches do not, generally speaking, look like they need quite so many stitches.’
‘Maybe later, Doctor,’ Raven said, picking up Khan’s laptop from the seat behind her. ‘I need to get this to Professor Pike now. It may provide us with a clue that will help us to find the people who did this.’
If it did, the best medical care in the world would not be able to save them. She intended to make quite sure of that.
The black limousine pulled into the abandoned warehouse and several men in dark suits got out. They were all carrying compact sub-machine guns and they scanned their surroundings with practised efficiency. The driver of the car walked to the rear door and opened it, giving a courteous nod to Lin Feng as he stepped out.
‘I’m glad you could make it,’ Carlos Chavez said, emerging from the shadows nearby, flanked by two of his own guards.
‘I am not sure it is wise for us to meet like this under the current circumstances,’ said Lin Feng. ‘I assume that you have heard about the attack on Darkdoom.’
‘Yes,’ Chavez said, ‘that is part of the reason I wanted to see you. I think that we need to discuss exactly what this means for G.L.O.V.E.’ He gestured for Lin Feng to follow him a short distance away so that their conversation would not be overheard. They both knew just how dangerous it would be if someone unsympathetic to their position was to learn of this conversation.
‘Go on,’ Lin Feng invited, unwilling to be the first to lay his cards on the table.
‘I would not want to assume too much, but I am fairly sure that I am not the only one who has become unhappy with Darkdoom’s leadership,’ Chavez said quietly.
‘If the rumours are to be believed, that is a situation that may not be of concern for very much longer,’ Lin Feng replied. ‘Indeed, it may already be time to start to consider who should replace him.’
Chavez looked at Lin Feng, trying to see what the other man was thinking. ‘I, for one, do not think that we can afford to wait and see how this plays out,’ he said carefully. ‘With H.O.P.E. coming after us all so aggressively, we must have strong leadership at all times.’
‘I take it you have an alternative suggestion?’ Lin Feng said quietly.
‘That is why I wanted to meet with you,’ Chavez replied. ‘I need to know if I would have your support if I were to put myself forward as a candidate.’
‘I see,’ Lin Feng said. The truth was that it was exactly what he had wanted to hear. Chavez had climbed to power in his own region through a combination of brutality and low animal cunning, and while that might be enough to ensure his place on the council, it did not mark him out as someone with the finesse required to run G.L.O.V.E. But that was precisely what made Chavez so useful. This fool could act as Ling Feng’s stalking horse, drawing the fire of the other members of the ruling council. He would let Chavez make his clumsy bid for power, and when the dust had settled from the chaos that would inevitably follow, he – Lin Feng – would step in and pick up the pieces.
‘I would not object to such a suggestion,’ Lin Feng continued, ‘but you know as well as I do that Nero would never tolerate it.’
‘Nero has his own problems,’ Chavez said impatiently. ‘If it were not for the fact that he cannot even control his own students, we would not be in this situation in the first place.’
‘It would be a serious mistake to underestimate him,’ Lin Feng replied. ‘Even with the problems he currently faces, he is not the sort of man you want as an opponent.’
‘I know that,’ Chavez said, ‘which is exactly why we need to weaken his position.’
‘And how exactly would you hope to do that?’ asked Lin Feng, raising an eyebrow.
‘By exploiting his greatest weakness. Darkdoom’s capture or kill order still stands. Regardless of his current condition, he is still the only person who can countermand it. Nero will go to any lengths to retrieve the Malpense boy without harming him. We, however, are under no such restrictions. If we can eliminate Malpense before Nero can mount a rescue attempt we will seriously undermine his credibility with the council while simultaneously strengthening our own.’
‘Or we may wake one morning to find Raven standing over us,’ Lin Feng replied.
‘Which is why, before we do anything else, we need to remove that particular piece from the board,’ Chavez said.
‘Eliminate Raven? Easier said than done.’
‘But not impossible,’ Chavez said with a small smile.
.
Chapter Five
Laura groaned as the morning alarm buzzer went off in her and Shelby’s quarters. She’d managed to get only four hours’ sleep after her late-night meeting with Nero and the Professor, and the full day of lessons that loomed before her was not a pleasant prospect. Shelby walked out of the bathroom at the rear of the room, towelling her hair dry and already wearing her black Alpha stream jumpsuit.
‘You look like death,’ Shelby said cheerily as Laura reluctantly climbed out of bed.
‘Thanks for that,’ she groaned.
‘So where’d you get to last night?’ Shelby asked.
‘I made a bit of a breakthrough with tracking down the source of the gremlins in the school’s systems,’ Laura said, rubbing the back of her neck. ‘I had to update the Professor.’
‘You get it fixed?’ Shelby asked, hoping for a short answer.
‘No, not yet,’ Laura replied, ‘but we’re getting there.’
The truth was that Laura really wasn’t sure how much they had achieved with such a limited understanding of exactly what was behind the problem.
‘You better get a move on,’ Shelby said with a grin as Laura slowly shuffled towards the bathroom. ‘Who knows what’ll be left if Franz hits the breakfast buffet before we do? You’ll need to eat something – we’ve got Political Corruption this morning.’
Laura groaned again. As she walked into the bathroom the door hissed shut behind her. Shelby was busy doing her hair in the mirror when she heard a startled shriek. ‘Still not fixed the showers then,’ she said with a grin.
‘Did you find anything?’ Raven asked as she walked into the cluttered workshop at the rear of the Science and Technology classroom.
The Professor looked up from the laptop on the workbench in front of him and stared at Raven for a moment like he didn’t know who she was. A moment later he seemed to zone back in and focus on her properly.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Professor said with a slight frown. ‘What was that?’
‘The laptop – did you find anything on it?’ Raven said, gesturing at the computer.
‘Oh, yes, but it was quite well protected.’ He pulled a small square of grey putty-like material from the pocket of his lab coat. ‘Though I think that much C4 is rather excessive. It was rigged to blow on the third incorrect password entry. That would have made retrieval of any data from the hard drive problematic. Heaven only knows what you’re supposed to do if you’re a poor typist.’ He slipped the explosive back into his pocket.
Raven was suddenly rather glad that she had not tried to hack into the machine herself. Khan might have been paranoid, but you had to admire his dedication to computer security. There had been enough explosive concealed inside the laptop to destroy a tank.
‘Anyway, it’s quite safe now,’ the Professor continued. ‘I’ve just been looking at the first few files that seem relevant to what you’re searching for.’
Raven stepped behind him and looked over his shoulder at the display. On the screen were a number of architectural drawings. She was no expert, but the lack of any exterior windows suggested that the facility was probably hidden below ground.
‘It looks like a fairly standard operations base,’ Raven said, frowning. ‘You could build that anywhere. We need something that gives us a locational clue. Is there anything like that?’
‘Nothing immediately obvious,’ the Professor said with a frown. ‘Hold on – what’s this?’
He opened another file and inside were a series of images of scanned receipts for construction materials. All the scans had large black blocks obscuring any indication of where the materials in question had been ordered from or were being delivered to. Khan had gone to great lengths to ensure that nobody would be able to identify the location of the facility easily. The Professor continued to scroll through the images, hoping that one might have been missed or that there might be some other clue that would give them an indication of where Trent was hiding.
‘Stop,’ Raven said. ‘Go back.’
The Professor pulled up the image that he had gone past a few moments before.
‘There,’ Raven said, pointing at the screen. ‘What’s that?’
Just visible at the edge of the scanned document was a tiny mark. It looked like something had been trapped on the glass of the scanner when the image had originally been captured. The Professor centred the screen on the object and zoomed in. The tiny speck became a blurry black blob. He quickly tapped at the keyboard and the resolution improved ten-fold. Now they could both make out a distinctive organic shape to the object.
‘What is it?’ Raven asked.
‘Some kind of spore or seed, by the looks of it,’ the Professor said, examining the image carefully. ‘If I were you I’d show it to Ms Gonzales. She might be able to tell you more.’ Ms Gonzales was the head of H.I.V.E.’s Biotechnology department and an expert on all kinds of plants. ‘I’ll copy it to a thumb drive for you.’
The Professor quickly inserted a compact memory stick into the port on the side of the laptop and copied the image on to it before handing it to Raven.
‘Do you really think this might help with finding Otto?’ the Professor asked as Raven turned to leave.
‘I don’t know,’ Raven replied, ‘but it’s the only lead we’ve got.’
‘Are you OK?’ Wing asked as Laura sat down at the table in the dining hall.
‘If one more person asks me that, I’m going to smack them in the mouth,’ Laura said irritably.
‘Ignore the grumpy Scot,’ Shelby said with a grin as she sat down next to her. ‘She didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘Coding into the wee small hours again?’ Lucy asked as she took a seat on the other side of Laura.
‘Actually, no,’ Laura said. ‘I was trying to help sort out the gremlins in the school’s systems. I can give you all the technical details if you want.’
‘No,’ all three of the others said in perfect unison.
‘Luddites,’ Laura said with a slight smile. Otto would have wanted to know every last detail. Just one more reason why she missed having him around.
‘Morning,’ Nigel said, sitting down with his breakfast tray. ‘Gosh, Laura, you look terrible.’
Shelby placed a calming hand on Laura’s wrist as she saw the knuckles on her clenched fist whiten. Franz sat down next to Nigel with a rather confused look on his face.
‘I am thinking I must be seeing things,’ Franz said. ‘I am walking past Block and Tackle just now and they are . . . well . . . hugging each other.’
Laura gave a quick snort of laughter.
‘I thought you said it would wear off in a couple of hours,’ she said, grinning at Lucy.
‘Well, it kinda depends on how intelligent the individual is, so . . .’
‘What did you do?’ Shelby asked, looking from one to the other with a raised eyebrow. Laura quickly recounted the details of her encounter with the two bullies the previous day.
‘Awwww, that’s so sweet,’ Shelby said with a broad grin. ‘Young love.’
‘A truly horrifying mental image has just formed in my head,’ Wing said with a frown. ‘I am only glad that I did not have to witness what you have just described in person.’
‘Do you think you could use that voice of yours to give tall, dark and handsome here a sense of humour?’ Shelby asked Lucy with a grin.
‘There are limits to even my powers,’ Lucy replied with a chuckle.
‘I suspect that I am once again being mocked,’ Wing said, the tiniest of smiles tugging at one corner of his mouth.
‘You know we all love you just the way you are, Spock,’ Shelby said quickly, and Laura and Lucy both started laughing at Wing’s slightly wounded expression.
All six of them were still laughing and joking as Dr Nero walked up to the table with a serious expression.
‘Nigel, could you come with me, please?’ Nero asked quietly.
‘Yes, sir,’ Nigel replied, looking slightly puzzled. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘If you could just come with me I’ll explain,’ Nero said. Nigel got up and followed Nero out of the dining hall.
‘What’s that all about?’ Shelby asked as she watched them walk away.
‘I’m not sure,’ Laura said with a slight frown, ‘but I have a horrible feeling it’s something bad.’
‘Where did you find this?’ Ms Gonzales asked as she looked at the enhanced image of the mysterious object that Raven and the Professor had found amongst Khan’s scanned documents.
‘That’s not really important,’ Raven said slightly impatiently. ‘What’s important is where it came from.’
‘It’s hard to say. It’s obviously a seed pod of some kind,’ Ms Gonzales said with a frown. ‘Let me run it through my system.’
Raven watched as she started to run the image through the huge catalogue of different plant species that made up H.I.V.E.’s botanical database.
‘This might take a minute or two,’ Ms Gonzales said, watching the screen as her system worked to identify the mysterious seed. Raven looked around the hydroponics facility. It was not a part of the school that she had occasion to visit very often, but it was an impressive structure nevertheless. Stored within the geodesic dome were a huge variety of plants, many of which had unique properties. Some were kept for their medicinal uses, but a far larger number of the collected species were cultivated for their more nefarious purposes. From past experience Raven knew that some of the world’s most exotic poisons could be extracted from the plants that Ms Gonzales grew here, though she normally had more interest in their practical application than their natural history. The whole unit had had to be rebuilt a couple of years ago after the mutated plant monster that Nigel Darkdoom had inadvertently bred had run rampant through the school. Since then Ms Gonzales had worked hard to restock the facility, and now one could hardly tell that anything had happened at all.
‘There,’ Ms Gonzales said, sounding pleased, ‘we have a match. Dorstenia brasiliensis, or Contrayerva as it’s more normally known. It’s a small herb that grows wild throughout the Amazon rainforest. The name comes from the Spanish word for antidote – it’s been used by the local tribespeople as a treatment for snake and insect bites for centuries.’
‘And it only grows in the Amazon?’ Raven asked quickly.
‘It can be found in other parts of South America, but it is found most commonly in the Amazon, yes,’ Ms Gonzales replied. ‘I hope that’s helpful to you.’
‘Yes, thank you, Ms Gonzales,’ Raven said. It was a slim lead, and one that still left Raven with an impossibly large area to search, but at least now she had some idea where in the world to start.
‘It’s not like I have any intention of ever going into politics,’ Shelby said as she and the others walked down the corridor towards their first lesson of the day.
‘I know,’ Lucy said with a sigh. ‘I mean, we’re all being trained to be villainous, but even if you’re truly evil you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.’
‘Hey, guys,’ Laura said, looking ahead, ‘is that who I think it is?’
Raven was hurrying up the corridor towards them.
‘Now there’s someone we haven’t seen in a while,’ Shelby said quietly. All enquiries about Raven’s absence had been met with the same response – that she was ‘on assignmen
t’. It did not take a genius to work out just what that assignment might be. If anybody was capable of finding Otto, it was her. They watched in silence as she rushed past them.
‘Here, take this,’ Wing said, handing his Blackbox to Shelby as Raven disappeared round a bend.
‘Where are you going?’ Shelby asked as Wing set off after Raven. Whatever he was planning, he clearly did not want to be tracked via the homing beacon in his communicator.
‘To see if I can get some answers,’ Wing called back over his shoulder.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Shelby said, taking her own Blackbox out of her pocket.
‘No.’ Wing stopped. ‘I wish to speak to Raven alone,’ he said firmly.
Shelby knew better than to argue with Wing when he had made his mind up and she watched in silence as he hurried off the way Raven had gone.
‘I hope he knows what he’s doing,’ Laura said as Wing disappeared from view.
‘If anyone can get some info out of the ice queen, he can, I guess,’ Shelby said with a shrug. Raven had been giving personal combat training to Wing almost since they had all first arrived at the school, and if any of them could claim to have some sort of bond with her, it was him.
‘Guys,’ Lucy said, nodding towards the other end of the corridor. Nigel was walking slowly towards them, looking like he was in shock.
‘Nigel, what is being wrong?’ Franz asked gently as his friend walked up to them.
‘It . . . it’s my dad,’ Nigel said, his voice cracking. ‘He’s been shot. The medics have just finished operating on him. They’re . . . they’re not sure if he’s going to make it.’ He gave a soft sob and started to cry.
‘No . . . Oh, that’s terrible, Nigel,’ Laura said, hugging him as the tears trickled down his cheeks. ‘What happened?’
‘Doctor Nero wouldn’t tell me,’ Nigel sniffed. ‘He just said that it could have been much worse and that they were doing everything they could for him. They won’t even let me see him.’
