.

Chapter Eight

Otto felt as if a giant hand had picked him up and thrown him off the roof of the building. Raven clung on to him with a grip like iron as they tumbled towards the ground, burning debris from the upper floors cascading past all around them.

Raven knew that she only had one shot. She stretched out one arm and there was the distinctive sound of the high-pressure discharge of a grappler bolt. The line snaked away from them through the air before the bolt hit the side of a building on the other side of the street. She had no idea if the grappler would be able to hold them both falling at this speed, but it was the only chance they had.

The line snapped taut and Raven let out an involuntary cry as her arm took the full weight of both her and Otto, her grip on the boy slipping slightly with the shock. They swung inwards now towards the mirrored-glass frontage of the building opposite the safe house. The reel of the grappler screeched and smoked in protest at the enormous overload that it was enduring. Raven knew that they were travelling too fast – if they hit toughened glass at this speed it would kill them just as surely as if they had hit the ground. Raven braced herself for the inevitable impact as they swung, but at the final second she saw that the enormous explosion on the other side of the street had partially shattered the glass of the windows. She twisted desperately, swivelling her back towards the glass, shielding Otto.

The impact knocked the wind from her completely, but the window smashed into a million pieces as they hit. Raven released the grappler line and she and Otto were thrown across the office in which they had landed, sliding to an undignified halt amongst the scattered office equipment and furniture.

Raven sat up. Her shoulder felt as if it was on fire, and she ached all over from her fight with the ninjas, but she was in one piece. She looked urgently around the room. It was deserted – it was still too early in the morning for any workers to have arrived.

‘Malpense!’ she shouted. He was nowhere to be seen.

There was a groan from behind her and she turned to see Otto sliding out from underneath a fallen cubicle divider.

‘Are you OK?’ Raven asked, moving over to him and checking him for any obvious injuries. He seemed to be unharmed but it was not just his physical state that she was worried about.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ Otto replied, his ears still ringing from the explosion. He felt as if he was going to be covered in bruises, but he was alive at least. That was more than he could say for his best friend. The memory of the look of horrified surprise on Wing’s face as the bullet struck him cut through the fuzz of shock that seemed to fill Otto’s head. The sound of screaming and countless sirens drifted through the broken window as bits of burning paper and debris continued to flutter past outside.

‘We have to get out of here,’ Raven said firmly. ‘I know that it’s difficult, but we have to keep going a little longer. We have to get to safety and report what just happened.’

Otto nodded. Raven pulled Otto to his feet and held him by both shoulders, looking him straight in the eyes.

‘I promise that I’ll make Cypher pay for what he’s done, but to do that we have to get away from here right now. I need you to focus, Otto.’

Otto didn’t feel like he had enough strength to take another step, but he knew that Raven was right. He felt a cold, hard ball forming in the pit of his stomach. He would not stop now, not until he had avenged Wing.

‘Let’s go,’ Otto said. He may not know anything about who Cypher was or why he’d done this, but he did know one thing . . . he was going to pay.

‘Anything?’ Nero asked impatiently as the communications officer worked frantically at the console.

‘Still. Nothing, sir. I can’t raise the safe house or any of the agents, they’ve just gone dark.’ The technician shook his head as he spoke.

H.I.V.E.’s communications and surveillance department was abuzz with activity. Ever since Laura had presented the decrypted message to Nero, there had been desperate efforts to establish what exactly was going on in Tokyo, but so far they had met with little success.

‘Sir,’ a voice was raised from the other side of the room, ‘I think I have something. I’ve piggybacked us on to the feed from a Chinese surveillance satellite – the angle’s not great and there’s a five-minute lag on real-time, but it’s the best coverage we’re going to get.’

‘Putting it on the main screen,’ the technician continued as the huge central display that was mounted on the wall flickered into life.

At first there was nothing unusual about the imagery; it appeared to be just a normal feed from a satellite camera that was trained on the G.L.O.V.E. safe-house building, but it quickly became clear that there was something very wrong.

‘There,’ the Contessa said, pointing at the screen as three tiny figures burst on to the roof from the stairwell and ran towards the far side of the building. ‘Freeze and enhance.’

The grainy picture froze as H.I.V.E.mind worked silently to enhance the quality of the image. As the pixellation was reduced, the identities of the three people on the roof became clear.

‘That’s Malpense, Fanchu and Agent Zero,’ the Contessa continued, scanning the pictures for any further clue as to what had happened, ‘but who are they?’

The three tiny figures that had run on to the roof were now being pursued by half a dozen people, who were pouring out of the stairwell. Again the team worked to enhance the quality of the images, but there was little that could be made out of these black-clad figures other than the fact that they were clearly pursuing the two boys and the agent. Nero’s frown deepened.

‘Picking up a lot of chatter on the Tokyo emergency services bands,’ another technician reported, staring into the middle distance as he focused on the stream of excited Japanese voices that filled his earphones. ‘There’s some kind of disturbance in Shinjuku, something to do with an explosion.’

On the main screen Nero watched with a sense of mounting horror as a helicopter popped into view over the side of the building. There was no audio to drown out the gasps that came from around the room as Agent Zero folded to the ground – they all knew an execution when they saw one. Nero was filled with a sense of helplessness; this was the past, there was nothing that he could do about it now but watch, and the role of passive observer did not suit him well.

‘Oh no,’ the Contessa said as a figure stepped down from the helicopter that had just landed on the roof.

Nero’s eyes narrowed, and he felt white hot anger rising inside him. He did not need image enhancement to recognise this man.

‘Cypher,’ Nero spat. ‘I should have known.’

Nero and the Contessa watched, appalled, as the events of just five minutes before played out on the screen in front of them. They watched as Fanchu approached Cypher and Malpense was pinned down by two of the mysterious figures that had pursued them on to the roof.

They saw Cypher raise a pistol; there was a tiny flash and Fanchu crumpled to the ground.

‘No!’ Nero shouted. Cypher had just executed one of his students in cold blood. It was a declaration of war, plain and simple, and the audacity of an attack like this in broad daylight meant that Cypher wanted everyone to know it.

‘Look, there,’ the Contessa said suddenly, pointing out another figure that was scurrying to cover behind one of the numerous vents and machine plants that dotted the roof. Nero immediately recognised this new arrival. There was only one person on earth who moved quite like that: Raven.

They watched as Raven launched her attack. Cypher was running back to the helicopter as she attacked the two men restraining Malpense and for the first time Nero felt a sense of hope. A couple of the technicians yelled their approval as they watched Raven neatly dispose of the two assassins, but, as they fell, something strange happened. Raven ran towards Malpense, threw herself at him and knocked them both flying towards the edge of the roof. Then the picture whited out. At first it looked like they’d lost the feed to the satellite, but as the picture faded back in it became immediately apparent that the incredibly sensitive cameras of the orbital spy platform had been overwhelmed by the intensity of the massive explosion that engulfed the entire roof.

The safe house was gone. Cypher’s helicopter climbed into the air out of the frame and vanished, leaving nothing but a scene of total devastation. There was no way that anyone could have survived.

Nero suddenly felt very old. In the space of two minutes he had watched a trusted G.L.O.V.E. operative, two of his best students and Raven all die at the hands of one man. Nero could not begin to guess what might have driven Cypher to carry out an attack like this. Whatever his twisted motivation, it was enough to mean that he did not fear the inevitable reprisals from G.L.O.V.E. that such an act would bring.

‘Get me Number One,’ Nero said to the communications technician. Cypher was about to learn what it meant to cross Maximilian Nero.

Otto clung on to Raven for dear life as she pushed the screaming motorbike to go faster and faster, weaving through the snarled-up traffic of downtown Tokyo. He tried closing his eyes to make the journey less hair-raising, but every time he did the blackness was filled with the startled expression on Wing’s face as Cypher’s bullet struck him. Otto decided that the cars shooting past only inches away were less disturbing.

Slowly the flow of traffic decreased as they continued their breakneck journey east through the city. Otto had no idea from where Raven had acquired the bike but he suspected that its previous owner had little idea that they had ‘borrowed’ it. Raven had simply vanished into the crowd when they had left the building in which they’d made their less than graceful landing, having ordered him to stay put. She’d roared up to the kerb on the big silver bike a couple of minutes later, jammed the only crash helmet on his head and told him to hang on. From then till now he doubted that their speed had dropped into double digits more than a couple of times.

They seemed to be heading into the docks. The skyscrapers and shops that had been lining the streets were replaced by towering columns of shipping containers, and enormous cranes looming ominously overhead. Raven shot through a checkpoint that led into a fenced-off area of the port, and a security guard gesticulated wildly at them as they weaved through the automated barrier he controlled. Raven gunned the engine and sent the bike roaring between the rows of neatly stacked containers, turning this way and that, tracing an impossible-to-follow path through the steel maze.

After a minute or two they neared a row of dilapidated-looking warehouse buildings and Raven finally slowed the bike down. She steered towards a loading ramp that led up to a heavy steel shutter. Pulling a small box from a pouch on her belt, she pressed a button. The shutter rolled upwards and Raven gunned the engine again, sending the bike flying up the ramp and into the darkness within. As soon as they were inside, Raven brought the bike to a screeching halt, the back wheel sliding round and leaving a neat semi-circle of molten black rubber on the dusty floor. She pointed the control at the shutter again and it quickly rolled back down into place. Raven cut the engine, the sudden silence filled only with the gentle ticks and creaks of the rapidly cooling engine.

Raven climbed off the bike and Otto pulled off his crash helmet.

‘OK, we’re safe, for now,’ Raven said, pulling her Blackbox from her belt. The device was dead, as it had been since the moment the attack on the safe house had started. ‘We need to report back to H.I.V.E. We have to let them know that we’re still active,’ she continued, walking away towards one of the separately enclosed offices that lined the far wall. The warehouse looked like it had been abandoned for years. A patina of dust covered everything and what few containers lay scattered around the place had not been disturbed for a long time.

‘Are you sure we’re safe?’ Otto said, following Raven towards the offices. ‘We were supposed to be safe before, but Cypher seemed to know exactly where to find us. What’s to say that he doesn’t know about this place?’

‘Because, Otto, until precisely thirty seconds ago, there was only one person in the world who knew about this place, and that was me.’ Raven had been trained to make sure that she always had a back-up plan and this was just one of several sites around the world that she had set up for just such an eventuality. Not even Nero knew that this place existed.

‘I hope you’re right,’ Otto said quietly. An hour ago he would have believed Raven completely, but it was becoming clear that they were up against an enemy that had resources far beyond what was normal.

Raven punched a series of numbers into a keypad next to one of the office doors and it opened with a deceptively solid clunking noise. Otto followed her into the office and it quickly became clear that, as was so often the case with Raven, there was a lot more to this simple building than met the eye. One end of the room was filled with a well-stocked armoury – guns, knives and other harder to identify pieces of equipment hung from wall mountings. The rest of the room was filled with practice combat dummies, chart tables, computers and several large display screens. If you intended to stage your own private little war, this would be the place from which to run it.

Raven busied herself about the room, switching on computers and checking the building’s security grid. After a few seconds she nodded and turned to Otto.

‘OK, the perimeter’s secure and it doesn’t look like anyone followed us. I need to contact Doctor Nero, but let’s check you out first.’ Raven walked over to Otto and took his chin in one hand. She looked into his eyes and turned his head first one way and then the other.

‘No sign of concussion,’ she said matter of factly, ‘but that cut needs dressing.’

Otto put his hand to his hairline and looked at the blood that came away on his fingertips. He hadn’t even realised he was bleeding. Raven steered him into a nearby chair and then fetched a small medical kit from amongst the array of equipment at the other end of the room. She sat down opposite him and tipped a few drops of antiseptic on to a cotton swab.

‘You know that there was nothing more you could have done, right?’ Raven said as she dabbed carefully at the cut with the cotton swab.

Otto winced slightly as the antiseptic stung his wound.

‘It would have been hard for me to have done any less,’ Otto replied quietly. ‘I just let him execute Wing right in front of me.’

‘You couldn’t have stopped him, Otto. I couldn’t have stopped him in that situation, so don’t blame yourself,’ Raven continued, pulling a small butterfly suture from its packet and carefully applying it to Otto’s forehead. ‘There, how does that feel.’

Raven leant back. She was covered in small cuts and burns herself but she seemed far more concerned about Otto.

‘Who is he?’ Otto asked, looking Raven straight in the eye.

‘Who?’ she asked carefully as she returned the sutures and antiseptic to the first-aid kit.

‘You know who I mean. Cypher, who is he? Why did he do this?’ Otto replied quickly.

‘I know that you’re just going to think I’m being cryptic, Otto, but the honest answer to both of those questions is that I genuinely don’t know,’ Raven said, sitting back down opposite him. Something in her expression told Otto that she was being straight with him.

‘So what do you know about him?’ he asked.

‘Not very much, I’m afraid,’ Raven replied. She looked slightly uncomfortable, as if she was not sure it was something they should be talking about. ‘He and Nero loathe each other, I know that much. Some of it’s because Cypher keeps lobbying Number One to close down H.I.V.E., but I think there’s more to it than that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Doctor Nero is one of the longest-serving members of G.L.O.V.E., he genuinely believes in the League, he thinks that it serves a vital function. The way Doctor Nero sees it is that without G.L.O.V.E., all of its members would still be out there committing acts of villainy but there would be nothing to restrain them. G.L.O.V.E. is not a charitable organisation by any stretch of the imagination, but it does serve to keep the more violent or lunatic excesses of its members in check. Nero believes that without G.L.O.V.E. there would be anarchy . . . or worse. He explained it to me once, he said that villains create doomsday weapons, but G.L.O.V.E. makes sure that they never actually use them. After all, what’s the point of taking over the world if the world is nothing but a scorched ball of ash?’

‘And Cypher doesn’t agree, I take it,’ Otto replied. He knew that Raven was only telling him all this to try to distract him from thinking about what had just happened, but Otto needed this information. Know your enemy, that was rule number one.

‘Every scheme that Cypher has come up with since he joined G.L.O.V.E. has had one thing in common . . . people die, sometimes a lot of people. Cypher doesn’t care about style or subtlety, he’s a smash-and-grab artist.’

‘Everything that Nero isn’t,’ Otto observed.

‘Exactly. But what’s worse is that he’s also been so spectacularly successful. Nero may disapprove of his methods but as long as he kept boosting G.L.O.V.E.’s coffers the way he did his actions were tolerated.’

‘Until today,’ Otto said quietly, looking down at the floor.

‘Until today. Whatever he may have done in the past, he has never acted openly against another G.L.O.V.E. operation. There’s no way that Number One will put up with his actions – he’s a dead man walking.’ The cold edge in Raven’s voice was unmistakeable. It was fair to assume that she intended to make sure of that herself.

‘And nobody knows who he really is?’ Otto said.

‘No. Some G.L.O.V.E. operatives do maintain secret identities, but that’s usually just to keep them under the authorities’ radar. Cypher’s different, though. Nero suspects that not even Number One knows who he is. We’ve spent a great deal of time trying to find out more about him but it seems that every trail leads to another dead end. Believe me, I’ve been the one following those trails often enough to know how frustratingly elusive he can be.’

‘So why throw all of that away?’ Otto said, looking puzzled.

‘I have no idea,’ Raven said, standing up and moving to one of the computers in the middle of the room. ‘He must know that an attack like this will incur the wrath of Number One, so whatever he’s up to has to be worth taking that risk.’

Otto had learnt enough about G.L.O.V.E. and its mysterious leader to know that retaliation for an attack like this would probably be swift and brutal.

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Otto said, frustrated. ‘What could he hope to achieve with this? Does he really hate Nero and H.I.V.E. so much that he’d throw everything away just to assassinate you and a couple of students? Why did he take Wing’s body? What possible reason could he have for any of this?’

‘I don’t know, Otto, but don’t worry, I intend to find out. If nothing else, what happened today proves one thing,’ Raven said as she keyed a string of commands into the computer.

‘What’s that?’ Otto said, also standing and moving across the room towards where Raven was working.

‘I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but a couple of weeks ago somebody made an attempt on Doctor Nero’s life. Suffice to say that it failed, but the assassins that were used self-destructed in a similar, if less spectacular, way to our friends on the roof. I had suspected that Cypher was involved, but this proves it.’

‘So this is all part of something bigger,’ Otto said thoughtfully.

‘It has to be,’ Raven replied. ‘No offence, Otto, but Cypher would not take this kind of risk without there being a bigger pay-off than getting rid of a couple of H.I.V.E. students. The school itself has a higher annual attrition rate than that . . .’

Something gave a tiny tug inside Otto’s head. There was something about this whole situation that didn’t make sense and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, whatever it was. Otto knew that the best thing to do was ignore it. Whatever it was it would come to him in time, it always did, and there was little point trying to hurry the process.

Raven turned from her terminal and turned to face Otto. ‘I need to call Nero and let him know that we made it out and who was responsible,’ she said as she got up and walked across the room to a communications terminal. She keyed in a number of commands and the machine began working, not just connecting her to H.I.V.E. but doing it in such a way that it would be next to impossible to calculate their location by backtracing the transmission. She watched as the carrier signal bounced from country to country, creating a spider’s web of digital evidence that could not be disentangled. Finally the word ‘Connecting’ appeared and after a couple of seconds was replaced with Nero’s face. He looked tired and angry, but as he saw who was on the other end of the line the tension and fatigue seemed to melt from his expression.

‘Natalya,’ he said with a smile, ‘not for the first time, rumours of your demise appear to have been unfounded.’

‘It’ll take a better man than Cypher to put me in the ground,’ Raven replied. The slight smile on her face was at odds with the ice in her tone.

‘Yes, we saw what happened. Did anyone else make it out?’ Nero asked.

‘Malpense is here with me. He’s OK, some cuts and bruises but otherwise in one piece.’

‘Fanchu?’ Nero asked. He’d seen what had happened on the roof but he had to be sure.

‘Dead, Max, as are Agents One and Zero. Cypher executed the boy without hesitation, there was nothing I could do. The agents both gave their lives trying to protect the students, but they took us completely by surprise. We never stood a chance.’

‘I have no doubt that you did everything you could, Natalya,’ Nero replied, looking suddenly angry again. ‘I want Cypher found and stopped, by whatever means necessary.’

‘Understood,’ Raven replied. ‘Am I acting under executive mandate?’

‘I will be speaking to Number One very shortly,’ Nero said. ‘I expect him to grant us full executive privilege under the circumstances, but as soon as I have final clearance I will contact you. I also want Malpense returned to H.I.V.E. immediately.’ Nero did not relish the prospect of explaining to Number One that Otto had once again had a brush with death. The sooner the boy was safely returned to the school the better.

‘Then we’ll need transport,’ Raven replied. ‘The Shroud was in the hangar when the safe house went up. We’re going to need a replacement.’

‘Of course, I shall dispatch one immediately,’ Nero replied. ‘Do you have a target location yet?’

‘Not yet, but I’m working on it,’ Raven said, glancing at the monitors nearby. ‘As soon as I have a location for pick-up I’ll let you know.’

‘Very well, keep me posted,’ Nero instructed, ‘and, Natalya . . .’

‘Yes,’ Raven responded.

‘Finish this,’ Nero said coldly.

Laura sat next to Shelby’s bed in the infirmary. Her friend was still unconscious from the Sleeper pulse that Colonel Francisco had hit her with but the doctors had assured her that her friend would be OK and that it was only a matter of time until she woke up. Laura thought about the news that she was going to have to give Shelby and she fought to control the urge to start crying again. Wing was gone, snatched away in a split second by the brutal actions of a madman, and she was going to have to break the news to Shelby. Laura bit her lower lip; she was surprised there were any tears left but as she thought of Wing’s smile, a rare and wonderful thing that she would never see again, she was overwhelmed by grief, and fresh, hot tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘Hey, Brand.’ Shelby’s voice was croaky and tired. ‘I never knew you cared.’

Laura looked up in surprise and saw Shelby looking at her with mild amusement.

‘How are you feeling?’ Laura replied, wiping the tears from her eyes and giving a weak smile.

‘I’m fine, but what’s up with you?’ Shelby replied, sensing that there was more to Laura’s mood than was immediately obvious.

‘Something terrible has happened,’ Laura replied, her voice cracking slightly, ‘the message, we were too late . . . it’s Wing . . . he’s dead.’

The smile vanished instantly from Shelby’s face, replaced by a look of horror.

Laura told Shelby everything – the attack on the safe house, the arrival of Cypher and finally Wing’s execution on the roof. She talked quickly and quietly, afraid that if she slowed or paused that she would again succumb to the empty swirling grief in the pit of her stomach. When she had finished she looked up at Shelby and saw the same hollow disbelief in her friend’s eyes that had been in her own when Nero had told the same story to her earlier. Shelby’s mouth moved, as if trying to find words, but none would come and she began to cry.

Laura pulled Shelby towards her and hugged her, her friend’s heaving sobs as painful as her own.