Aftershock Read online

  Nero turned and walked off the stage as the students dispersed to their first lessons of the day amidst a buzz of excited chatter. Raven was waiting for him at the side of the stage. As usual, she was wearing a black bodysuit that was covered in pockets and pouches filled with various items of lethal equipment. Sheathed across her back, attached to her tactical harness, were the twin crossed katanas that rarely left her side. She was widely regarded as the world’s deadliest assassin but, more importantly to Nero, she was also his most trusted ally.

  ‘Natalya,’ Nero said with a smile as he approached, ‘is everything set for our trip to London?’

  ‘Yes, but do I really have to wear that outfit?’ Raven asked with a frown.

  ‘You can hardly attend the opera dressed as you are, my dear,’ Nero said.

  ‘I suppose. Did Wright tell you what it is that he wants to discuss?’

  ‘No, but I can make an educated guess,’ Nero said with a slight sigh. ‘I know this meeting may be pointless but Joseph served G.L.O.V.E. loyally for many years. I should at least hear what he has to say. I owe him that much.’

  ‘It could be a trap,’ Raven said.

  ‘Which is why I’m bringing you along,’ Nero said with a smile. ‘Besides, I haven’t seen Don Giovanni in years.’

  ‘As if we don’t have enough to worry about with the exams,’ Otto said with a sigh as he walked along the corridor leading to the Villainy Studies department with Wing and Shelby. ‘Now we have to go and play hide and seek with Raven in some godforsaken corner of the planet as well.’

  ‘I think it might actually be quite fun,’ Shelby said happily, ‘and I don’t know why you’re getting so worried about the exams, computer brain. Can’t you just, I don’t know, download the entire library or something?’

  Otto did, in fact, have something of an unfair advantage over his friends when it came to studying. He had, after all, been genetically engineered from birth to act as a physical host to an insane artificial intelligence. Thankfully, since the final destruction of Overlord several months earlier, he no longer had to worry about that horrific possibility but he still carried the hardware around inside his skull that would have made it possible. The organic super computer implanted in the centre of his brain made him capable of near instantaneous comprehension and perfect recall. It was something which he had always taken for granted and he sometimes forgot that his friends probably still found it slightly odd.

  ‘I’d happily swap all the suffering that this thing in my head has caused for having to do a bit of revision, believe me,’ Otto said with a sad smile.

  ‘We all know that, my friend,’ Wing said, putting his hand on Otto’s shoulder. ‘None of what happened with Overlord was your fault.’ Their final encounter with the psychotic artificial intelligence had cost the life of their friend and fellow Alpha student, Lucy Dexter, a loss which they all still felt acutely. ‘I must admit though that I too, like Shelby, find the prospect of this Hunt intriguing.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s all well and good for you wannabe ninjas,’ Otto said with a smile. ‘Some of us actually don’t find the idea of being chased through the wilderness by Raven and a bunch of G.L.O.V.E. goons particularly exciting.’

  ‘That’s OK, you can act as a diversion,’ Shelby grinned. ‘The ten minutes that it takes Raven to catch you will be ten minutes she’s not searching for me. I want that twenty-four hour record and every little helps.’

  ‘And the selfless spirit of teamwork continues to burn brightly at H.I.V.E.,’ Otto said. ‘You know, it’s actually quite moving.’

  ‘Hey,’ Shelby said, ‘it’s not my fault you’re the slowest zebra.’

  ‘Speaking of helpless prey . . .’ Wing said as they rounded the corner leading to the classroom. At the far end of the corridor Laura was walking out of an office with her head bowed as a woman in an orange jumpsuit handed her Blackbox back to her. The woman was Chief Dekker, H.I.V.E.’s new head of Security and someone who was rapidly becoming a major headache. She was tall and painfully thin with short grey hair and eyes that always seemed somehow to be watching you. She had been appointed after the untimely demise of H.I.V.E.’s former head of Security, Chief Lewis, and she had been a thorn in their sides ever since her arrival at the school. She had made it abundantly clear that Otto and his friends were right at the top of her to-do list and that was proving to be a rather unpleasant place in which to find oneself. She scowled at the Alphas before closing the door to her office as Laura walked towards them, looking shell-shocked.

  ‘What did the Wicked Witch of the West want this time then?’ Shelby asked as Laura approached.

  ‘Oh, just the usual,’ Laura replied, sounding rather shaken. ‘Where have I been, where am I going, let’s just check that on your Blackbox, shall we? You know.’

  ‘Geez, what’s her problem with us exactly?’ Shelby said, sounding angry. ‘It’s not like we’ve done anything to deserve this . . . well, not done anything recently at any rate.’

  ‘She does seem to rather have it in for us. I can’t imagine why,’ Otto said.

  ‘I suspect that it may have something to do with the fact that we have been directly involved with the near destruction of H.I.V.E. on at least four separate occasions,’ Wing said matter of factly.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose that might have something to do with it,’ Otto replied with a crooked smile.

  Otto lay on his bed in the quarters that he shared with Wing reading a book called International Banking: Supervillainy for the Twenty-First Century. To a casual observer it would have looked like he was just searching for a certain place in the book as he flicked through it, turning the pages at the rate of two per second. The strange truth was that he was actually reading. It was just one more side effect of the unusual abilities that he been born, or, more accurately, engineered with. Wing, meanwhile, was sat at his desk, looking slightly frustrated as he studied his notes from one of their recent Science and Technology lessons.

  ‘Anything I can help with?’ Otto asked, noticing the look on his friend’s face.

  ‘I am finding the mathematics of atmospheric re-entry rather perplexing,’ Wing replied with a sigh.

  ‘I told you,’ Otto replied, ‘just start with the simple stuff, Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation and its application to orbital dynamics.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Wing replied, rolling his eyes, ‘the simple stuff.’

  ‘Want a hand?’ Otto asked again.

  ‘No,’ Wing replied firmly, shaking his head. ‘You will not be able to help me in the exams. I must try to understand this for myself.’

  ‘OK, let me know if you change your mind,’ Otto said. He was just starting to feel slightly guilty as the exams approached. He might find them trivially easy, but he knew that all of his friends were getting extremely stressed at the prospect of the looming tests. There was a beep from the door and Wing got up and pressed the unlock button beside it.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ Laura said. ‘You busy?’

  ‘Hey,’ Shelby said, striding past her, ‘they’re never too busy for us, right?’

  ‘Our lives wouldn’t be complete without you,’ Wing said with a wry smile.

  ‘Awww, you’re so cute,’ Shelby said, giving him a peck on the cheek.

  ‘What’s up?’ Otto asked as Laura walked inside and closed the door behind her.

  ‘Well, I’ve had an idea but it’s something that I’d need some help with so I just wanted to run it past you guys and see what you thought,’ Laura said.

  ‘Sure,’ Otto replied. ‘What have you got in mind?’

  ‘Well, just like the rest of you, I’m getting really sick of the hard time we’re all getting from Chief Dekker at the moment and I reckon that it’s time we took her down a peg or two.’

  ‘Go on,’ Otto said, putting down his book and leaning forward, suddenly interested.

  ‘So I was thinking about the fact that she’s been put in charge of security for the exams and it struck me how it might be rea
lly, really embarrassing for her if someone was to, I dunno, borrow the exam questions.’

  ‘Laura Brand, that is one of the most dishonest and devious things you have ever suggested,’ Otto said. ‘I love it!’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ Shelby grinned.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Wing said with a slight frown. ‘Wouldn’t that be cheating?’

  ‘It’s called securing a tactical advantage,’ Otto replied quickly. ‘With the added bonus of rubbing Dekker’s nose in it. Only problem with that is the exam papers are stored in H.I.V.E.mind’s core memory which is the most secure data storage in the school.’

  ‘How do you know that’s where they are?’ Shelby asked.

  ‘Well,’ Otto replied, looking slightly shifty, ‘I might have already . . . erm . . . considered this possibility myself and made some very gentle probes of the network to see if I could find the exam papers, you know, lying around anywhere.’

  ‘I am surrounded by dishonourable people,’ Wing said with a sigh.

  ‘Hey, honeycheeks, this is the Higher Institute of Villainous Education,’ Shelby said. ‘That’s kinda the point.’

  ‘The problem is that ever since I had H.I.V.E.mind as a passenger up here,’ Otto tapped the side of his head, ‘I can’t access anything other than the school’s most basic network layer without old wireframe-head knowing. I have no idea how we’d get access to his core memory without him noticing. I even tried just asking him for the exam papers because he still owes me for letting him ride around inside my head a few months back. He told me that even if he wanted to he couldn’t. He’s under direct command from Nero to keep the examination papers secure within his own core memory. I doubt it’s a coincidence that’s the one place that Nero knows there’s no way I can get at them.’

  ‘I might have a way round that,’ Laura said with a smile, ‘but we’re going to need some equipment that could be difficult for us to get our hands on and at least two more people to help out.’

  ‘If only we knew someone who specialised in procuring hard to obtain items,’ Shelby said with a grin. ‘Come on, tell Aunty Shelby. What do you need?’

  Dr Nero did not turn as the door to the private box opened behind him. He did not really want to be distracted from the final moments of his favourite opera. There was something that appealed to Nero about Don Giovanni’s shameless refusal to repent his wicked ways as he was finally dragged down to the underworld. When the time came, Nero imagined that he would probably feel just the same way.

  Joseph Wright, the former head of G.L.O.V.E.’s British operations, sat down in the seat next to Nero’s.

  ‘I’m sorry I could not get here earlier – something came up,’ Wright said quietly. ‘I hear that this new baritone is quite talented.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Nero replied, not taking his eyes off the stage. ‘What can I do for you, Joseph? While I must admit that spending an evening in London is always a pleasure, I got the impression from your message that you had something rather urgent to discuss.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Wright replied. ‘I wanted to see if I could make one last attempt to persuade you to stop this madness and reinstate the former members of the ruling council while there is still time. I understand that the events of the past few months have been difficult for you, as they have been for all of us, but I still believe that there has to be another way.’

  ‘If that is all you brought me here to discuss then I fear we have both made a wasted journey,’ Nero replied. ‘My decision to disband the council was final. I have no intention of changing my mind.’

  ‘Please, Max, listen to reason. Do you really believe that all of the members of the council are simply going to walk away from their former lives? They have too much invested in G.L.O.V.E. for that. They’re angry, Max, and they’re not, generally speaking, the sort of people who try to resolve their problems peacefully.’

  ‘I am quite aware of the way in which my former colleagues usually deal with these situations,’ Nero replied, ‘and that is part of the reason that I have replaced them. The ruling council was designed to act as a mechanism to control the worst impulses of our villainous brothers and sisters and in that it largely succeeded, but we both know that G.L.O.V.E. was dying. We had become too set in our ways, too comfortable with our power. We were blind to what was happening around us as Overlord and his Disciples rose to power and it very nearly cost the lives of every human being on this planet. G.L.O.V.E. had to change: it needed new blood, new leaders who would understand the dangers of such complacency.’

  ‘With you in charge,’ Wright said, a slightly bitter note in his voice. ‘That’s very noble of you, Max.’

  ‘For now,’ Nero replied, still watching the concluding ensemble of the opera. ‘But I have no desire to stay as the head of the council for any longer than is absolutely necessary. As soon as the new members of the council have a little more experience and I have identified which of them would be best suited to replace me I will step down. I do have a school to run after all.’

  ‘A school that trained every single member of the new ruling council. Do you understand what that looks like to the people they replaced? Try to look at it from their perspective.’

  ‘What are you asking me for, Joseph, an apology? For me to change my mind?’ Nero asked, turning and looking Wright in the eye for the first time.

  ‘No, I know you too well for that, Max. I just hoped that I could make you see sense before this situation gets any worse. I can see now that I was wasting my time.’ He stood up to leave. ‘Goodbye, Max.’

  Nero sat in silence as the opera finished, applauding as the cast took their final bow. He had suspected that this was what Wright had wanted to discuss with him and he was quite aware of the events his refusal to change his mind may set in motion. In some ways it was inevitable but it did not make the prospect of open conflict between G.L.O.V.E. and the former members of its own ruling council any more pleasant.

  He made his way down from the private box and through the foyer of the Opera House before stepping out into the cool night air of Covent Garden. As usual in London the streets were still busy even at this late hour.

  ‘I wish you’d let me sit in the box with you,’ Raven said as she came and stood beside him. She was wearing a stunning black cocktail dress, as different as one could imagine from her usual uniform.

  ‘I appreciate your concern,’ Nero replied with a slight smile, ‘but I think that might have made Joseph rather nervous.’

  ‘Good,’ Raven replied with a frown, ‘he should be nervous. He practically threatened you in there.’

  ‘We knew it might come to this, Natalya,’ Nero replied as a black executive saloon car pulled up to the kerb. ‘Now we just have to wait and see what they do next.’ Nero ushered Raven to the waiting car and they both climbed inside.

  ‘Take us to the rendezvous point,’ Nero instructed the driver. There a Shroud, one of H.I.V.E.’s stealth dropships, was waiting to transport them back to the school.

  ‘Do you really think it’s wise for us to wait for them to make the first move?’ Raven asked as the car made its way through the busy streets.

  ‘I will not be the one to declare war,’ Nero said, shaking his head. ‘Perhaps conflict is inevitable but I won’t be the one that starts it.’

  ‘It could make us look weak,’ Raven said.

  ‘Let them make their move and then they will see how weak we are,’ Nero replied.

  Raven recognised the steely determination in Nero’s voice, the very same determination that had propelled him to the head of the most powerful criminal organisation on Earth and then kept him there.

  ‘Why are we slowing down?’ Raven asked the driver as she felt the car suddenly decelerating.

  ‘Road’s blocked, Miss,’ the driver said, pointing to the road ahead where a lorry was unloading cardboard boxes on to the pavement. Raven stared at the men unloading the lorry and felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as one of them glanced at their car for just
a moment too long.

  ‘Get us out of here!’ Raven snapped.

  The driver hesitated for a moment and then saw Raven’s expression. He threw the car into reverse and hit the accelerator just as two high-sided vans pulled into the road behind them, blocking them in. The doors in the side of the vans slid open and half a dozen men in black body armour leapt out raising assault rifles.

  ‘Get down!’ Raven yelled as the soldiers behind them opened fire. The car rattled and shook as the high velocity rounds struck it. The car was armoured, of course, but there was still a limit to how much damage it could take before it was disabled. The driver threw the car into a forward gear and floored the accelerator, aiming for the narrow gap between the lorry ahead of them and the parked cars that lined the streets on either side. Raven saw one of the men reach into a box on the pavement. He pulled out a long tube-shaped object, placing it on his shoulder as he turned towards their speeding vehicle. There was a bright flare from the rear end of the tube and a missile shot down the street and struck the front of the car. The explosion flipped the car over and it landed with a sickening crunch on its roof, sliding to a halt thirty metres further down the road, its whole front end now little more than a twisted shell of burning metal.

  The gunmen from the two vans walked slowly towards the burning remains of the vehicle. The point man signalled for the other soldiers to spread out around the car as he approached the passenger door. He knelt down and carefully peered inside. He immediately saw that the passenger compartment was empty and the door on the other side was ajar. There was the sudden clinking sound of something metal hitting the road behind him and he spun round just as the flashbang stun grenade detonated. He dropped to one knee, trying to regain his composure as bright swirling blobs of colour filled his vision, his retinas temporarily overloaded by the overwhelmingly bright flash from the explosion. At first there was nothing but ringing in his ears but that slowly cleared, replaced by startled screams and snapped bursts of what sounded like uncontrolled panic fire from his own team. He rubbed his eyes as things slowly came back into focus. A blurry figure strode towards him holding a pair of long, thin objects glowing with purple light.