Rogue (4 page)

‘I wasn’t expecting a ride home,’ Raven said, raising an eyebrow as she sat down opposite Nero, carefully placing Khan’s laptop on the seat next to her.

‘We’re not going home,’ Nero explained. ‘Diabolus wants us in Sydney.’

‘Is something wrong?’ Raven asked, sensing Nero’s concern.

‘It rather looks that way,’ Nero replied. ‘It’s been some time since he’s called the ruling council together for a face-to-face meeting. He wouldn’t give me any details when I spoke to him, but I doubt he would have summoned us like this without good reason.’

‘I don’t see why
I
need to be there,’ Raven said, sounding slightly irritated. ‘My time would be better spent continuing the search for Trent.’

‘Diabolus is quite aware of that, Natalya,’ Nero replied. ‘He would not ask for you to attend if there was not something specific he needed you for. Have you made any progress in tracking Trent down?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Raven admitted. ‘It seems that Khan designed some sort of hidden facility for Trent, but he was killed before I could get any more out of him.’

‘Killed?’ Nero asked with a frown.

‘Neural kill switch, just like that banker in Switzerland,’ Raven replied with a sigh. ‘There was nothing I could do. The plans are on his computer, but he didn’t manage to unlock it before the device in his skull was triggered. I could probably get into the system, but it would be safer to let the Professor look at it back at H.I.V.E. I don’t want to inadvertently trip any fail-safes that might delete the data.’

‘Curious,’ Nero said, glancing at the laptop. ‘Why would Trent need to have plans drawn up by Khan? H.O.P.E. has the backing of the world’s governments – surely he could construct any new facility he required without having to secretly enlist the assistance of someone like Khan.’

‘Clearly he wanted to keep it quiet,’ Raven said. ‘It would hardly be the first time that Trent has acted secretly to further his own agenda. Frankly I’m amazed that none of H.O.P.E.’s governmental overseers has realised yet that he has been using them to achieve his own goals.’

‘Never underestimate a politician’s capacity for ignoring what’s going on right under their nose,’ Nero replied with a wry smile, ‘a characteristic that G.L.O.V.E. has had good reason to be extremely grateful for over the years.’

‘Still, you would have thought by now that someone might have noticed that H.O.P.E. was just as much of a threat as G.L.O.V.E., if not more so,’ Raven said.

‘
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
’ said Nero.

‘My training did not include dead languages, I’m afraid,’ Raven said with a slight sigh.

‘“Who watches the watchmen?”’ Nero said with a grim smile.

‘Aah, Miss Brand,’ Professor Pike said as Laura walked into the room that had once been H.I.V.E.mind’s central core. The scene that greeted her was one of utter chaos. Several of the white monoliths that had once housed H.I.V.E.’s benign caretaker artificial intelligence were open, cables and components lying scattered on the floor around them.

‘Erm . . . hello, Professor,’ Laura said, looking around the room with a slightly confused expression. ‘I was told that you wanted to see me.’

‘Yes, yes, come in,’ the Professor said with a smile, tossing an unidentified component over his shoulder on to a large pile of similarly discarded pieces. ‘I have a rather knotty problem that I thought you might be able to help me with.’

‘Really? What’s up?’ Laura asked, suddenly curious.

‘Well, I’m sure that you must have noticed all the recent disruptions to H.I.V.E.’s systems, and I was hoping you might be able to give me a hand in tracking down whatever’s causing them.’

‘Of course, I’d be happy to help,’ Laura said with a smile. ‘What do you need?’

‘Well, there seems to be some sort of rogue process chewing up the central core’s computational resources, and I’m having a devil of a time tracking it down,’ the Professor said, scratching his head.

‘Erm . . . I assume that Doctor Nero doesn’t mind me helping you?’ Laura asked slightly uncomfortably. ‘It’s just that after the incident with the library computers he gave me rather a clear warning that I shouldn’t try accessing the school’s core systems again.’

‘Yes, that was rather unfortunate, but I’m sure he won’t mind, given that I’ve requested your help and also that you are perhaps the most skilled systems analyst on the island – after myself, of course.’

‘If you say so,’ Laura said, blushing slightly at the compliment.

‘Take a look at this graph of system resource usage,’ the Professor said, gesturing at a tablet display that lay on the floor a couple of metres away. Laura picked it up and studied the data. There was no doubt about it – all the technical glitches that H.I.V.E. had been experiencing coincided precisely with sudden massive peaks in the amount of processing power that the school’s systems were using. There didn’t really seem to be a pattern in the spikes on the graph, but it was clear that something was draining huge quantities of computational power.

‘Any idea what processes were running during these spikes?’ Laura asked, still looking at the display.

‘That’s the curious thing,’ the Professor said with a slight frown. ‘As far as I can tell, there’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary that could be causing it.’

‘A bug, perhaps?’ Laura asked. ‘There’s no new code that could be malfunctioning?’

‘My code does
not
contain bugs,’ Professor Pike said, sounding irritated.

‘Of course not,’ Laura said earnestly. She had personally, in secret, fixed a few of these non-existent bugs in H.I.V.E.’s systems software, but she decided that telling the Professor that was probably not a very good idea right now. ‘Do you mind if I have a bit more of a root through the logs?’ she asked.

‘Help yourself,’ the Professor said, ‘but do please try not to break anything.’

Laura thought that was a bit rich, given the state of the room, but chose not to say anything. Instead she grabbed the correct cable from the piles on the floor and plugged the portable display into one of the exposed interface sockets on a nearby monolith. As she began to run a series of diagnostics she found herself thinking about H.I.V.E.mind. The AI had sacrificed itself to save the lives of not just everyone at H.I.V.E. but perhaps even the whole planet. Otto had never discussed the exact details of what had happened, but he’d told his friends enough for it to be clear that H.I.V.E.mind had died a hero. But knowing that did not change the fact that Laura still missed the AI. Sometimes she felt a bit foolish for being so sentimental over what was really just an incredibly advanced piece of software, but when it came down to it, that was all any of them were. There was one small ray of hope. Not long before his disappearance Otto had told her that he had felt an uncanny sensation when he had used his abilities, almost like someone else was in his head, giving him additional strength when he needed it most. Laura couldn’t help but hope that it was some lingering echo of H.I.V.E.mind that lived on inside him. Otto would probably have told her that she was just being stupid, of course, but it did at least offer some small comfort.

Suddenly something caught Laura’s eye and she quickly tapped a series of commands into the tablet.

‘Professor,’ she said, still staring at the display, ‘I think I’ve got something here.’

Professor Pike carefully put down the disconnected components that he had been examining and walked over to Laura.

‘What is it, Miss Brand?’ he asked.

‘Well, I was comparing the processor load timeline with the network storage capacity graph and . . . well . . . see for yourself,’ Laura said, handing the display to him.

‘I really don’t see what . . . Hold on a minute,’ the Professor said, pulling his glasses down from the top of his head and looking more carefully at the screen. ‘There’s a correlation.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Each of the activity peaks exactly matches a dramatic drop in server storage capacity. Something’s eating disc space.’

‘Very clever,’ the Professor said with a smile. ‘I was just about to check that.’

‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say that somewhere in the network there’s something growing,’ Laura said, looking puzzled. ‘The problem is that I can’t find any data on the network that matches the size of the space that’s being taken up.’

‘Yes,’ the Professor said, looking equally confused, ‘but there’s no way that anything could be hidden from us. My clearance level should mean that it’s impossible for any data to remain concealed, especially something as large as this appears to be. Thank you, Miss Brand. This suggests several avenues of potentially useful investigation.’

‘Do you want me to dig any deeper?’ Laura said hopefully.

‘No, no, you’ve been most helpful, but you should get to your classes,’ the Professor said, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll let you know if there’s anything else you can help me with.’

Laura opened her mouth to protest, but the Professor already had the faraway look on his face that he got when he was mulling over a particularly interesting technical challenge. Better to leave him to it for now and offer her help later, if it was needed. She picked up her backpack and hurried out of the room, heading for the Stealth and Evasion training area. It wouldn’t do to be late. Ms Leon had notoriously little patience for tardiness.

Laura was so busy thinking about the problem with the school’s systems that she almost walked straight into the two large figures who came round the corner just ahead of her.

‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ one of the two huge boys said with a sneer.

‘Sorry,’ Laura said quietly, and tried to make her way past. Block and Tackle were two of the most notorious bullies in the school, typical members of the Henchman stream and certainly not people Laura wanted to deal with at that precise moment in time.

‘Sorry’s not good enough,’ Block said. ‘Who do you think you are, just wandering around, not looking where you’re going? You could get
hurt
that way.’

‘Look, just leave me alone, OK?’ Laura said impatiently. She and her friends had had more than one run-in with these two and she knew it was unlikely that they’d back off if she just asked them politely.

‘You gonna make me?’ Block said, looming towards her, a nasty edge to his voice.

‘I don’t want any trouble,’ Laura said, taking a step backwards.

‘Trouble? Hah!’ Tackle laughed. ‘Fanchu’s not here to protect you now, and in case you hadn’t noticed, your boyfriend’s missing too.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend!’ Laura snapped, feeling her cheeks grow hot.

‘Yeah, he’s probably rotting in some prison cell somewhere,’ Block said, poking her in the shoulder, ‘or dead. Either way, you’re never gonna see him again.’

Laura felt a combination of grief and anger as she looked at the smug expressions on the two boys’ faces.

‘Shut up!’ she shouted, all the feelings she had bottled up since Otto’s disappearance welling up inside her. ‘Just shut up!’

‘Awwww. I think we upset her, Mr Block,’ Tackle said with a broad grin. ‘I think she’s gonna cry.’

‘I wouldnae give you the satisfaction,’ Laura said angrily, fighting to control her emotions.

‘Hey!’ a voice shouted from behind Laura. ‘Ugly and uglier, leave her alone.’

Laura turned to see Lucy striding down the corridor towards them with an angry look on her face.