Aftershock (15 page)

‘They do make a lovely couple,’ Shelby said with a grin. ‘I’ve always said they were made for each other.’

‘Transfer complete!’ Laura yelped delightedly. She handed the cube back to Shelby who turned and looked down through the opening in the shaft. Directly beneath them on the chamber floor far below Wing stood waiting.

‘OK, big guy,’ Shelby said, ‘heads up.’

She dropped the cube through the opening and it plummeted towards Wing. Wing watched as it tumbled towards him, totally focused. He caught the cube in a single fluid motion that ensured it was not jarred by the sudden deceleration and ran back towards the storage core that Shelby had taken it from barely thirty seconds before. He slid the cube back into the monolith but it did not insert fully, the rest was up to Otto. On the gantry above Otto closed his eyes again and accessed the storage maintenance controls. The cube slid smoothly back into the black slab and Otto deleted the maintenance log that recorded the fact it had ever been removed. Otto opened his eyes and smiled – the countdown in his HUD showed a minute remaining on the camouflage system’s battery. More than enough time for them to get out.

‘OK, Wing, we’re good. Let’s go!’ Otto yelled down to his friend. He aimed his grappler at the opening overhead and fired, reeling himself in the moment the dart hit home. He looked down as he climbed into the opening and saw Wing aim his grappler up at them. He fired and the dart shot past Otto and into the shaft wall. A split second later, in the instant before Wing could start his ascent, the laser net lit up again with a flash, severing Wing’s grappler line instantly and trapping him beneath its lethal glow.

‘No! Damn it,’ Otto snapped, ‘what happened? Laura, signal Nigel and tell him to cut the power again.’

Otto watched as the countdown in his HUD dropped below forty-five seconds.

‘OK,’ he said, looking at the girls, ‘I think we have a problem.’

chapter seven

‘Step away from the switch,’ the security guard said, his Sleeper pointing straight at Tom.

Nigel and Penny watched in horror from the control room above as Tom stepped away from the circuit-breaker which the guard had just forced him to reset.

‘What do we do?’ Penny whispered.

‘I have no idea,’ Nigel replied. ‘We just have to pray that the others got out in time.’

At that instant an incoming transmission request from Laura flashed up on Nigel’s Blackbox and he hit the receive button.

‘Nigel,’ Laura said quickly, ‘what’s going on? The laser net just reactivated with Wing on the wrong side of it.’

‘We’ve got a big problem here,’ Nigel explained. ‘A guard’s just come in and caught Tom. The guard forced him to reset the circuit-breaker. There’s nothing we can do.’

‘Weren’t you watching the patrols?’ Laura asked irritably.

‘I was,’ Nigel moaned, ‘but then I had to throw all those switches and I got distracted. I’m really sorry – I should have been paying more attention.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Laura replied, ‘we just need to get the grid turned off.’

Down on the floor of the Power Core, the guard reached for the radio attached to his belt.

‘I’m going to call this in,’ the guard said. ‘Don’t move a muscle unless you want to spend the next few hours unconscious.’

The guard hit the transmit button on the walkie-talkie.

‘This is Evans in the CPC. I’ve got a . . .’

The guard’s eyes widened in horror as a screaming, black-faced demon leapt from the shadows and hit him like a truck. He collapsed backwards under Franz’s weight and as he landed flat on his back there was a muffled zap sound as his Sleeper discharged. Franz rolled off the unfortunate guard who had just accidentally rendered himself unconscious with his own weapon.

‘Be throwing the switch,’ Franz said as he climbed to his feet. ‘Quickly.’

Tom blinked once in astonishment before rushing over to the circuit-breaker and throwing it back into the off position.

Up in the control room Nigel grinned at Penny.

‘You know, we are
never
going to hear the end of this.’

‘Come on, guys,’ Otto said under his breath as he looked down through the opening in the ventilation shaft. The battery counter on his HUD ticked below ten seconds. Wing had exactly the same charge remaining and the moment the batteries failed and the thermoptic camouflage disengaged he would be easy prey for the sentry guns on the walls. Otto did not like to think what the consequences would be if Nero realised what they had been doing. He watched the counter, feeling helpless.

Five . . .

Four . . .

Three . . .

Suddenly, the glittering laser net above Wing’s head vanished. Wing reacted instantly, aiming the grappler on his other forearm at the small opening far overhead. Otto scooted back from the opening as the grappler bolt struck the ceiling of the shaft. The battery timer hit zero and the camouflage systems in his suit disengaged and Wing became visible as he flew into the air and shot up the line towards the opening. As he reached the shaft and pulled himself inside, four of the sentry guns began to track his emerging thermal signature. They rotated into position just as Wing’s feet disappeared into the shaft. The sentries scanned the area slowly, looking for any trace of the phantom contact before giving up and returning to their standby positions.

‘That was
too
close,’ Otto said, letting out the breath that he’d been holding for the last thirty seconds.

‘May we return to boring again now,’ Wing said with a small smile.

‘Absolutely,’ Otto replied with a grin. ‘But first we need to return these suits to the storage room. Laura, signal Nigel and the others and tell them to restore the power down there.’ Laura nodded and pulled out her Blackbox as Otto set to work securing the ventilation grille back in place. If they were going to get away with this they would have to leave no trace of their presence.

‘How long have we got on the security camera loop?’ Shelby asked.

‘Fifteen minutes. Plenty of time.’ Otto replied.

H.I.V.E.mind awoke as the power flowed back into his primary systems. He waited as the core dump was uploaded back into his system and his memory returned. He reviewed his last actions before the unexpected power outage. He had been checking an inconsistency in the footage from the school’s security cameras. H.I.V.E.mind studied the captured frame of a security guard walking past the cameras. Something about it had caught his attention. He noticed the watch which was clearly visible on the guard’s wrist. The time on the watch did not tally with the time-stamp on the footage. There was the possibility, of course, that the guard had simply not set his watch correctly so H.I.V.E.mind searched the footage from the other cameras. There did not seem to be any other inconsistencies but he could not shake the sense that something was not quite right. It was a perfect example of what separated a true artificial intelligence from being simply a very powerful computer; the ability to feel and then to act on those feelings instead of just coldly processing the data that was presented to him. He tapped back into the live feed from the camera network and studied it carefully. There was something layered within the datastream but it was almost impossible to make out exactly what it was. He began slowly to break the stream down and analyse it. It was time-consuming work but he soon began to see a pattern emerging.

Otto hit a button on the Hackbox and the door to the storage room slid shut and locked with a solid sounding thunk. They had changed back into their standard issue black Alpha stream jumpsuits and still had plenty of time left to get back to the accommodation block before the hack on the security cameras expired. Nigel, Franz, Tom and Penny were waiting for them.

‘Everyone OK?’ Otto asked.

‘Yeah, we’re fine,’ Nigel replied, ‘though we did leave an unconscious guard in the Power Core.’

‘I am being forced to use my elite combat skills to take him out,’ Franz said with a serious expression.

‘Do you think he’ll be able to ID you?’ Otto asked with a slight frown.

‘He got a look at me but it was dark in there and I reckon from the look on his face that the only thing he’ll actually remember from the whole experience will be Franz flying at him,’ Tom replied.

‘You need to get that stuff off your face, Franz,’ Otto said, ‘before that guard wakes up and describes the person that attacked him. You’re not going to be exactly difficult to pick out of a line-up at the moment. Good work in there – you really saved our bacon.’

‘It was nothing,’ Franz said with a dismissive wave. ‘Sometimes the pure killer instinct takes control and I am becoming just an unstoppable weapon. Yes?’

‘Yes, well, anyway . . .’ Otto said, trying hard not to laugh. ‘You guys get back to your rooms. Laura and I have to get rid of some incriminating evidence.’

Laura pulled the Hackbox from her backpack and they headed over to one of the waste disposal chutes in the wall nearby. She quickly encrypted the parts of the H.I.V.E.mind core dump that they needed and then copied the file from the jury-rigged device on to her own Blackbox. With the data secure Otto triggered the Hackbox’s self-destruct routine. The device began to spark and hiss as its internal circuitry was reduced to molten slag. Otto dropped the smoking device into the chute. Even if it were retrieved, which was unlikely, there was now no way that it could be traced back to Otto and his friends.

‘All that work and now it’s just trash,’ Laura said with a sad smile. ‘Seems like a bit of a waste to be honest.’

‘We can build a better one,’ Otto replied, ‘and it’s preferable to Nero catching us with it. There’s going to be a security sweep when they find that guard in the Power Core and you can bet that we’re going to be top of the list of suspects. Best to just get rid of it.’

‘Aye,’ Laura replied, ‘at least we got what we needed.’

‘More than we needed actually. I had a quick look at the files and that core dump included a full copy of H.I.V.E.mind’s source code. I don’t know about you but I’ve always wanted to have a poke around in that and find out what makes him tick. You even managed to get a copy of the operational plans for the Hunt.’

‘Did I?’ Laura asked, sounding surprised. ‘I was just frantically copying everything as fast as I could. I wasn’t really paying attention to what the files were.’

‘You did great,’ Otto said with a smile. ‘Come on, we’d better get back to our rooms before that guard wakes up and they start turning the whole school upside down searching for whoever knocked him out.