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Chapter Seven

Dr Nero shuffled along the corridor, his hands cuffed behind his back and his ankles shackled. Two burly guards flanked him on either side, both with guns at the ready. They came to a frosted glass door with the H.O.P.E. insignia etched into the surface, which slid aside with a hiss as they approached. Inside, Sebastian Trent sat behind a bare metal desk; he did not look happy.

‘Please wait outside,’ he said to the guards. As the door closed behind them he got up from his seat and came around the desk.

‘Good morning, Maximilian,’ Trent said coldly. ‘I hope you slept well.’ Nero said nothing, just stared straight ahead. ‘I’ve been reading the latest reports on your interrogation; it seems that my officers have been having rather a hard time extracting any useful information from you. That is regrettable. I’m starting to think that we may have to resort to slightly more basic methods to break you. I’m sure neither of us wants that.’

Nero still did not respond.

‘So be it. I’m going to give you one last chance. I need to know details of Raven’s past associates, places that she may have used as bolt holes, anything that you can tell me about her operational habits. You can either tell me now, or the gloves come off, and believe me when I tell you that no matter how strong you may think you are there are means of extracting information at my disposal that will break you. I would rather not employ such basic methods, but I will not hesitate to use them if I must. Do you understand?’

Nero still said nothing, but a smile slowly spread across his face.

‘Did I say something amusing?’ Trent snapped, clear frustration in his voice.

‘She’s still alive,’ Nero said quietly, ‘and I’m smiling because that means you’re a dead man.’

‘And so are you if you don’t tell me where to find her!’ Trent yelled, all of his composure vanishing in an instant.

‘You’ll get nothing from me,’ Nero said, still smiling, ‘but I shouldn’t worry about finding Raven. She’ll find you.’

Trent brought his face within a couple of inches of Nero’s. There was fury in his eyes but also, Nero noted with satisfaction, just a hint of fear.

‘I’m going to enjoy hearing you scream,’ Trent whispered angrily. ‘Guards!’

The two guards came back into the room and took position on either side of Nero.

‘Take the prisoner to chamber seventeen and inform Mr Graves that he is to do whatever is necessary to extract the information I require from him,’ Trent said with a look of pure malice in his eyes.

The guards nodded and escorted Nero from the room. Trent sat back down at his desk and gave a long sigh as he fought to regain his composure. He found Nero’s smug indifference to the situation he was in maddening. He would break him if it was the last thing he did. He pressed a button on the console on his desk and within moments a voice came from the intercom.

‘Yes, sir, how may I help you?’ an efficient female voice answered.

‘Could you come through, please,’ Trent said.

‘Of course, sir, one moment.’

Trent sat back down behind his desk as a tall woman with her hair tied in a tight bun entered his office.

‘Miss Cruz, I believe that we may need to investigate alternative avenues in our pursuit of Raven. Where are the twins at the moment?’

‘They’re in Paris. They were investigating a lead on one of Raven’s safe houses there. Do you have new instructions for them?’

‘Yes,’ Trent said thoughtfully. ‘Have them travel to London; that was the last place that we saw Raven. No matter how good she is she must have left some trail. She would have been injured and desperate after Nero’s capture, so she must have had help. Someone must know where she went from there.’

‘Very well, sir, I shall issue them with new orders immediately.’

‘Good,’ Trent replied with a grim smile, ‘and tell them if they track her down that I want no mistakes this time. They are not to return until she is in the ground. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly, sir,’ she said.

Diabolus Darkdoom sat reading the tablet display on the table in front of him. Otto, Wing, Shelby and Laura also sat around the briefing room table in silence. After a few seconds Darkdoom’s eyes lifted from the display and he looked at them with a raised eyebrow.

‘Well, it’s certainly an ingenious plan but I rather doubt that you would actually be able to pull it off,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ Otto asked quickly.

‘Well, while I acknowledge that you may actually be able to get access to the Deepcore mainframe, I still do not see an answer to the most difficult challenge that you will face. Getting physical access to the servers is one thing but, as I believe I mentioned before, actually hacking into them is something my best men have described as impossible. I see nothing here that changes that assessment. Miss Brand, I am told that you are an extraordinarily capable computer expert – do you believe this can be done?’

‘I . . . I’m not sure,’ Laura said, blushing and shooting an apologetic glance at Otto.

‘It seems I am not the only one who has less than total confidence in this plan, Mr Malpense. I am inclined to think that a deep-cover infiltration is still the best, if somewhat time-consuming, route to acquiring details of Nero’s current location.’ Darkdoom sounded like he had already made up his mind.

‘I can do it,’ Otto said calmly.

‘So you say, but you offer no proof of that. An operation like this is too dangerous to rely so completely on your self-confidence alone. While you may be willing to risk your own life and those of your friends in such a way, I am not.’

Otto sat silently for a moment, as if weighing up his options.

‘How secure are the Megalodon’s systems?’ he asked, frowning.

‘As secure as it is possible to make them with current technology,’ Darkdoom replied. ‘Why?’

‘Just wondered,’ Otto said and closed his eyes.

For a few long seconds the others sat at the table in confused silence. Only Wing seemed unconcerned by Otto’s sudden silence.

‘Are you all right, Otto?’ Laura asked, sounding slightly confused.

‘Mr Malpense,’ Darkdoom said with a frown, ‘what are you . . .’

Suddenly the room fell dark and the familiar background hum of the giant submarine’s engines was replaced with perfect silence. From outside of the briefing room they could hear cries of dismay and alarm.

‘Reactor’s offline!’ one voice shouted.

‘Lost helm control; she’s dead in the water,’ someone else reported in a startled voice.

Suddenly the large monitor on the wall of the briefing room displayed a single phrase in foot-high white letters casting a ghostly glow across the astonished faces surrounding the table.

WE CAN DO THIS.

Moments later the display went dark and the lights came back on in the briefing room. From outside they could hear shouted reports of the Megalodon’s systems coming back online.

‘Now do you believe me?’ Otto said. He looked paler than usual but there was a triumphant gleam in his eye. ‘You may have a team you think can pull this off, but they won’t be able to do what I just did. You need me, and if I’m going, so are the others.’

Darkdoom looked hard at Otto for a few seconds before hitting a switch on the table in front of him and speaking to the air.

‘Captain Sanders,’ he said in a firm voice.

‘Yes, sir,’ Sanders voice replied over the intercom.

‘Set course for the English Channel, maximum speed.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

The Contessa burst into the Professor’s quarters without warning.

‘Where is she?’ she snapped, striding across the room as Professor Pike put down the book he had been reading.

‘Who?’ the Professor replied innocently.

‘Don’t play games with me, Professor. Ms Leon, where is she?’ the Contessa said angrily.

‘I’m afraid I have no idea,’ the Professor said with a smile.

‘And I suppose you have no idea what this is either?’ the Contessa said coldly, holding up the tiny relay device that Ms Leon had placed beneath H.I.V.E.mind’s core just a few hours before.

‘Oh, that’s a data relay,’ the Professor said. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘You know perfectly well where we found it, Professor,’ the Contessa spat. ‘And now you’re going tell me where I can find Ms Leon.’

‘I told you, I don’t know.’

‘Tell me where she is,’ the Contessa said, the whispers of command twining through her voice.

‘I don’t know,’ the Professor said, feeling the words leap from his lips unbidden. He was suddenly very glad that he really did not know.

‘Then perhaps you can tell me who broke into the storage vaults at exactly the same time that we were deactivating H.I.V.E.mind,’ the Contessa said, sounding even more angry.

‘Which storage vault?’ the Professor asked, feeling a sudden, welcome glimmer of hope.

‘Vault nine, which also happens to be the vault where all of your secret little projects are stored,’ the Contessa replied, ‘though I suppose you know nothing about that either.’

‘You’re quite right,’ the Professor said cheerfully, ‘not a thing. You could have checked the surveillance recordings, of course, but . . . oh . . . wait a minute, you’d need H.I.V.E.mind for that, wouldn’t you, and he seems to have gone offline.’

The Contessa looked at him for a moment, as if trying to decide what to do.

‘I tire of these games, Professor,’ she snarled. ‘I am placing you under detention until I know exactly what is going on here.’

Two Phalanx operatives walked into the room.

‘Take the Professor to the detention area,’ the Contessa said quickly. ‘Perhaps some of his co-conspirators might want to pay him a visit.’

The Phalanx operatives grabbed the Professor by the arms and shoved him roughly from the room. The Contessa looked at the disorganised mess in the Professor’s room with disgust. If there was one thing she hated it was chaos, and this situation seemed to be getting more chaotic by the minute.

Otto walked into the Megalodon’s armoury and was immediately struck by the impressive efficiency with which Darkdoom’s men were preparing the equipment they would need for the upcoming operation. Raven stood in the middle of the room, holding a thermoptic camouflage suit and demonstrating to one of the men exactly what modifications she needed him to make. She glanced up and saw Otto, giving the man a final instruction before walking over to him.

‘The equipment is nearly ready. We’re going to have fun trying to pack it all into the mini-subs, but I think we’ll manage,’ she said calmly.

‘Good,’ Otto said. ‘I hope we’ve thought of everything.’

‘In my experience there is always something you need that you don’t have, but that’s what keeps things interesting.’ Raven smiled.

‘I think this is going to be interesting enough as it is.’

‘Yes – are you sure you’re ready for this?’ Raven was studying his face carefully.

‘No, but it’s still got to be done,’ Otto replied with a slight frown.

‘Do you mind me asking what exactly you did in the briefing room?’ Raven said quietly.

‘Would you believe me if I told you that I honestly don’t know?’

‘Strangely, I would,’ Raven replied. ‘You’re quite full of surprises, aren’t you?’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Otto chuckled.

‘What about the others? I know how capable you all are, but you have such limited operational experience.’

‘We’ve had good teachers,’ Otto said with a smile, ‘and you’ve got to take the training wheels off sooner or later.’

‘If it’s any consolation I was almost exactly the same age as you when I was given my first operation,’ Raven said.

‘And how did that go?’ Otto asked, curious to learn more of Raven’s mysterious past.

‘It was a complete disaster.’ She absent-mindedly traced a finger down the long scar that ran across her cheek. ‘But in a funny way it was a good job that it went as badly as it did.’

‘What happened?’ Otto asked, his curiosity now thoroughly piqued.

‘That’s a story for another day,’ she replied quietly.

Otto was about to press for more information when Darkdoom entered the armoury and walked over to the pair of them.

‘How are we doing?’ he asked, looking serious.

‘We’ll be ready when the Megalodon arrives on target,’ Raven replied.

‘Excellent,’ Darkdoom said, surveying the equipment that lay arranged around the room. ‘Otto, I need to speak to Raven. Would you excuse us for a moment?’

Otto nodded and walked out of the room.

‘You realise how dangerous this is,’ Darkdoom said quietly.

‘Of course, but I don’t really see that we have much choice.’

‘They seem unusually capable. Nero would be proud. Malpense is especially gifted. My technicians still have no idea what he did to the Megalodon’s systems.’

‘I’m not sure he does himelf,’ Raven replied, ‘but I believe he can do what he needs to.’

‘Yes, so do I. I’m starting to understand why the Initiative have such an acute interest in him – which makes me even more unsure we should be letting him walk into the lion’s den like this.’

‘I’ll be watching his back,’ Raven replied.

‘Of course you will. But you do understand that we cannot allow him to be captured, don’t you? If there is no means of escape you know what you will have to do.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Raven said, looking down at the floor. ‘Let’s pray that it doesn’t come to that.’