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  ‘I want this door taken down,’ the commander said. ‘Get a demolition charge set up.’

  ‘Yes, sir, it’ll take a few minutes.’

  The commander walked back down the road towards the two transport helicopters that had brought him and his troops up the mountain. Minerva waited as he approached.

  ‘We should be inside shortly,’ the commander reported.

  ‘Good, the longer that beacon is transmitting the more likely it is that G.L.O.V.E. forces will detect it. We cannot afford a direct confrontation at this stage,’ Minerva replied. ‘Nero must be weakened first.’

  Minerva and the commander watched as two of his men worked quickly to attach shaped charges to the metal door. After a couple of minutes they both hurried back towards the helicopters. The man holding the remote detonator looked at the commander and he gave a quick nod.

  ‘Fire in the hole!’

  ‘How did this happen?’ Nero asked angrily. ‘Why wasn’t he searched more carefully when he was detained?’

  He and Chief Dekker watched as two security guards carried a sheet-covered body on a stretcher out of the detention block.

  ‘I’m sorry, Doctor Nero,’ Dekker replied, ‘it never occurred to me that he might have some sort of suicide capsule. It must have been smuggled to him by his Disciple contact. We know that they had equipment brought into the school for him by his contact. We found a covert transmitter hidden in his quarters. It seems that there was an awful lot about Cole Harrington that nobody knew.’

  ‘What about his accomplices, the Henchman students?’ Nero asked. ‘Are they working for the Disciples as well?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe so,’ Dekker replied. ‘I think they were just unwitting pawns. In their case, very unwitting. I don’t think either of them would even be able to spell “Disciple” much less leak information to them.’

  ‘That still means that there is somebody inside the school who is working for the Disciples,’ Nero said with a frown. ‘It has to be somebody that has permission to leave the island or they wouldn’t be able to get this equipment in the first place. Which means that we’re either looking for a member of the teaching staff or someone on the support staff. Either way we’re going to have to try and flush them out. We can’t afford a traitor in our midst, especially at the moment.’

  ‘I shall start conducting interviews with everyone who has been off the island in the last six months,’ Dekker said. ‘This isn’t going to be easy. That’s a lot of people when you consider how many of the teaching and support staff have taken leave during that period.’

  ‘I suggest you start immediately, Chief. We have no time to lose.’

  ‘Understood. I will schedule the first interviews for this afternoon.’

  ‘Good. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to head back to the control room to see if there have been any developments in the search for Raven and the surviving Alphas.’

  Nero walked out of the detention centre and headed up the corridor towards the control room, his mind racing. Things were moving too fast. He was used to dealing with casualties in his line of work but he had never found it easy to accept the death of one of his students. The fact that the Disciples had murdered or captured almost an entire year of Alpha students was unbearable. Despite that, he knew that he had to stay focused. If he dwelled too much on the scale of the unfolding tragedy in Siberia he would be of no use to anyone. Raven and the remaining Alphas were still out there somewhere and he would do absolutely everything in his power to ensure that they were returned to the school unharmed. He walked into the control room and one of the communications technicians hurried over to him.

  ‘Doctor Nero, we’ve just received a transmission from Colonel Francisco,’ the tech said quickly. ‘They’ve picked up a Shroud distress beacon in the mountains to the north of their current position. They’re trying to get a fix on its location now.’

  The Disciple troops picked their way through the twisted remains of the metal doors in the mountainside and headed down the tunnel beyond with the commander and Minerva just behind them. Enough of the lights in the ceiling were working for them to see that this was clearly a military facility of some kind. There were rooms that were unmistakeably barracks and mess halls. The Disciple troops moved slowly and carefully, alert for any sign of booby traps or an ambush. They knew that they could take no chances, especially considering the prey that they were hunting. Eventually they arrived at the control room at the end of the passage. The soldiers took up defensive positions around the room as the commander and Minerva looked down through the huge window at the bizarre scene below them.

  ‘A slice of apple pie in the heart of the motherland,’ Minerva said. ‘I had heard of such places existing but I had never seen one before today. I expect the Americans had an artificial Russian town just like this hidden away somewhere too.’

  ‘It may be a fascinating relic of the cold war,’ the commander said, ‘but it is also a problem. They could be anywhere down there.’

  ‘Then I suggest you start your search immediately, commander,’ Minerva replied. ‘There is no time to waste.’

  ‘OK. We’ll head for the town square first,’ the commander said, addressing his men, ‘then conduct an expanding sweep search from there. Let’s move out.’

  The commander headed out on to the gantry and followed his men down the stairs to the cavern floor. They made slow but steady progress down the main street towards the centre of the town, checking carefully for any sign of a trap.

  ‘How far to the beacon?’ the commander asked as his men reached the town square.

  ‘It seems to be coming from the church,’ his comms officer replied, waving a small electronic device back and forth in front of him.

  ‘OK, I want four-man fire teams there, there and there,’ the commander said, pointing to positions around the outside of the square. ‘Overlapping fields of fire. I want this square to be a kill box.’

  His men moved quickly towards the strategic locations he had picked out. The commander knew that just because the beacon was in the church it didn’t mean that Raven and the H.I.V.E. students would be but, he was certainly not going to take any chances at this stage. He needed to deactivate the beacon before G.L.O.V.E. could use it to pinpoint their location.

  ‘OK, let’s see if we can find that thing and turn it off,’ the commander said. ‘Ma’am, I suggest you wait here.’

  Minerva gave a quick nod and the commander led the rest of his men across the square towards the church. They were halfway to the church when there was a monstrous roar from the direction of the fire station on the other side of the square. The commander and his men slowed, trying to identify where the sound was coming from. Suddenly, in an explosion of splintered wood, the doors on the front of the fire station’s garage exploded outwards as a tank smashed through them.

  Inside the tank Wing pressed hard on the accelerator pedal, sending the giant armoured vehicle roaring towards the startled group of soldiers in the middle of the square. The troops scattered in all directions as the tank bore down on them, a couple of them squeezing off pointless bursts of fire from their rifles, the rounds pinging harmlessly off the tank’s armoured skin.

  ‘Keep them away from the church,’ Otto yelled from the command seat in the turret. Wing swung the tank towards the church doors, blocking the way as Otto brought the main gun to bear on one of the fire teams that the Disciples had set up at the edges of the square.

  ‘Now, Shelby!’ Otto yelled over the growl of the giant diesel engine. ‘Fire!’

  It had only taken Otto a minute to read the thick operations manual that he had found inside the tank, though it had taken slightly longer to try to show the others how the systems they would be operating worked. He doubted that any tank crew had been trained in half an hour before but thankfully it had been designed and engineered to actually be very straightforward to operate. What Otto was slightly less confident of was whether or not the fifty-year-old vehicle’s main we
apon was still functioning correctly.

  ‘Woohoo!’ Shelby yelled as she pulled the trigger on the main cannon’s firing controls and the whole tank rocked with the recoil. On the far side of the square the building behind the Disciple troops’ position exploded in a cloud of dust, shattered masonry and woodwork flying in all directions. Otto rotated the turret, towards one of the other Disciple positions. The men scattered, running for cover.

  ‘Franz, give me a sitrep,’ Otto said into the throat mic of one of the communicators that they had obtained from the soldiers in the woods the previous day. High above the square, in the church tower, Franz scanned the streets below with an ancient pair of binoculars which he had taken from the tank earlier.

  ‘There is being one group heading down the road east of you,’ Franz said as he watched the Disciple troops fleeing through the streets, trying to hide from the armoured monster that had suddenly attacked them. ‘And there is being another group who are heading south towards where Raven is waiting.’

  ‘OK, we’re heading east,’ Otto said, almost feeling sorry for the men who were fleeing south. ‘Wing, take us through the drugstore.’

  In one of the adjoining streets the commander led his men away from the square at a run. They were not equipped to take down a tank – they needed to retreat and regroup. He had seen other vehicles that had been left around the town during some long-forgotten military exercise but it had never occurred to him for a moment that there would be anything as deadly as a tank. Suddenly the ground beneath his feet began to tremble and then the tank exploded through the wall just in front of him, burying several of his men. He and the rest of his men turned and ran as the tank’s turret rotated towards them. There was a thunderous boom and the wall ahead of them exploded. Several of his men went down as the commander ducked into an adjoining alleyway, running for his life.

  To the south some of the remaining Disciple soldiers were gathered in the backyard of one of the houses that made up the sprawling suburbs surrounding the main square.

  ‘What do we do?’ one of the men said, sounding panicked. ‘We can’t fight that thing. We don’t have any anti-armour weaponry.’

  Raven somersaulted off the roof of the house behind them and landed just a couple of metres from the startled soldiers, a glowing katana in each hand.

  ‘That’s the least of your worries,’ she said with a nasty smile.

  In the church tower Franz watched the purple blades slashing away for a few seconds before he lowered his binoculars, looking distinctly pale.

  ‘You know,’ he said to himself, ‘I am really wishing that I hadn’t been watching that.’

  Amidst the chaos unfolding in the streets below Franz did not notice a figure dressed in black hurrying across the square, dashing from cover to cover, heading for the church doors.

  Inside the tank, Wing wrenched on the controls and sent the tank smashing straight through a brightly coloured, timber-clad house as he continued his pursuit of the fleeing remnants of the Disciple forces.

  ‘Fire!’ Otto yelled and Shelby pulled the trigger. The shell struck the rear of one of the abandoned military trucks that had been parked in the middle of the road ahead of the Disciples troops and it flipped up into the air before slamming back down on the road in a cloud of smoke and fire.

  ‘OK, forget the Ferrari,’ Shelby shouted, a massive grin on her face. ‘The day I get my driving licence, I’m getting one of these things.’

  ‘I’m not sure they’re that easy to buy second-hand, Shel,’ Otto yelled back, ‘but, yeah, I do know what you mean.’

  Back inside the church, Tom and Laura levelled their rifles at the door at the far end of the aisle as the handle slowly turned. A woman with a veiled face, dressed all in black, walked into the church.

  ‘Don’t move!’ Tom yelled at the woman. ‘You take one more step and we shoot.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to shoot me, young man,’ Minerva said. ‘You see, the organisation I represent would not take kindly to anything happening to me. They might hurt all sorts of people if that were to happen. They might even be people that you care for, isn’t that right, Miss Brand?’

  ‘Drop the gun, Tom,’ Laura said, turning and pointing her rifle at his head. ‘I don’t want to kill you but I will if I have to.’

  ‘Laura,’ Nigel gasped, ‘what on earth are you doing?’

  ‘The only thing I can. Now drop the gun.’

  Otto aimed the tank’s cannon at the handful of remaining Disciple troops as they backed up against the cavern wall. There was nowhere for them to run. Suddenly Franz’s voice crackled in his earpiece.

  ‘Otto, come in, Otto,’ Franz said urgently.

  ‘What is it, Franz,’ Otto replied.

  ‘There is someone who is wanting to be speaking to you,’ Franz said, sounding frightened.

  ‘What do you mean, what’s going on, Franz?’ Otto asked.

  ‘Hello, Mr Malpense,’ a dry, rasping voice said in his ear. ‘My name is Minerva and I would very much like you to surrender immediately to my troops. If you don’t I’m going to execute all of your friends who were hiding in the church one by one while you listen. Do not make the mistake of thinking this is a negotiation. I expect to see you shortly.’

  The line went dead. Otto sat there for a moment, his mind racing, trying to formulate some kind of plan but he realised there was nothing he could do. Whoever this Minerva was, she suddenly held all the cards.

  ‘Guys,’ Otto said, suddenly feeling a sense of creeping despair, ‘they’ve captured the others. We have to give ourselves up.’

  The Disciple commander shoved Otto roughly in the back, pushing him towards the centre of the square where his friends were already kneeling in a line with their hands on their heads.

  ‘Ahhh, Mr Malpense, so good of you to join us,’ Minerva said as the commander forced him down on to his knees.

  ‘What happened?’ Otto said, looking at Tom.

  ‘Why don’t you ask her?’ Tom said bitterly, nodding towards Laura, who was standing nearby, staring at the ground.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Otto asked, genuinely confused. ‘Laura, what’s he talking about?’

  ‘Tell him, Miss Brand,’ Minerva said. ‘Tell him what a fool he’s been. Tell him how you were the one that gave us the location of the Hunt. Tell him how you tricked him into obtaining that information for us. Tell him everything.’

  ‘Laura,’ Otto said pleadingly, ‘what’s she saying? That can’t be . . .’

  Otto fell silent as he realised that this was exactly what he had already begun to suspect. That someone within their group had betrayed them. But it couldn’t be Laura, it just couldn’t. No matter how he tried to deny it, deep inside he knew that it was true. He thought back to Laura persuading him that hacking into H.I.V.E.mind would be fun and how she’d been so relieved that he’d managed to discover the location of the Hunt when she’d thought they’d lost everything. But more than that he knew it was true because he could feel his heart breaking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Laura sobbed, still staring at the floor. ‘I had no choice.’

  ‘You had no choice?’ Otto shouted, suddenly angry. ‘What do you mean, you had no choice?’

  ‘They have my family!’ Laura shouted back at him, her voice filled with anger and despair. ‘My mum, my dad, the baby brother that thanks to H.I.V.E. I never even knew I had! I MEAN I HAD NO BLOODY CHOICE! They were going to kill them.’ She began to cry, tears rolling down her face. ‘They were going to kill them all unless I did exactly what they told me.’

  ‘Oh God, Laura,’ Shelby said, tears in her eyes too. ‘Oh hon, please tell me you didn’t do this.’

  ‘But I did, Shel. This is all my fault,’ Laura sobbed. ‘All those people died because of me. I had no idea what they were planning. If I’d known, maybe I wouldn’t have . . . I dunno . . . maybe I’d have been able to stop all this. Now I don’t think I can live with all this blood on my hands.’

  ‘Laura,’ Ot
to said, ‘look at me.’

  Laura looked at him, her bright green eyes red with tears.

  ‘This isn’t your fault, you didn’t kill anyone . . . they did.’ Otto pointed at Minerva. ‘And I promise you, no matter what, we’re going to make them pay for every last drop of blood they’ve spilled.’

  ‘Such optimism, Mr Malpense,’ Minerva said coldly, ‘but I fear that the only way you are going to have your revenge on me is if you come back and haunt me and I’m afraid I don’t believe in ghosts. Don’t worry though I’m not going to kill all of your friends. Miss Brand has earned a reprieve with her exemplary service and young Mr Darkdoom is worth far more to me alive than dead. These two,’ Minerva gestured towards Tom and Penny, ‘I don’t know these two. It seems they had nothing to do with the destruction of Overlord so I am minded to spare them. Especially when they are such promising candidates.’

  ‘Candidates?’ Tom asked. ‘Candidates for what?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll see, my dear,’ Minerva hissed, ‘you’ll see.’ She motioned to the commander of the Disciple forces. ‘Take these four to the transport.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the commander replied, hauling Laura to her feet. She twisted out of his grip and ran to Otto, hugging him.

  ‘It was Dekker,’ Laura whispered in his ear. ‘Dekker works for the Disciples. I love you.’ The soldier pulled her off Otto and dragged her away at gunpoint. Another two soldiers lifted Nigel on to a stretcher. Tom and Penny followed along behind with their own armed escort.

  ‘I know you’re here,’ Minerva suddenly shouted to the air. ‘I know you’re watching, Raven. Surrender now or I put a bullet in his skull.’ She pulled a pistol from inside her coat and levelled it at Otto’s head. ‘You have five seconds. One . . . two . . . three . . .’

  Otto felt his heart sink as he saw Raven step out from the shadows of one of the buildings destroyed by their tank. She walked towards them, her hands raised in the air.