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Chapter Nine

Wing snapped the final fastening shut on his ISIS armour and walked back across the hangar towards Shelby.

‘Hey,’ she said as he approached. ‘You ready for this?’

‘As ready as I can be,’ Wing replied with a sigh. ‘I just hope that we’re in time to save Otto, Laura and Lucy.’

‘They’ll be OK,’ Shelby said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ve been in situations like this before.’

‘Perhaps, but the fact that Doctor Nero has felt it necessary to put this Zero Hour plan into action worries me,’ Wing said. ‘He would not have done so if the threat had not been dire. We cannot afford to fail.’

‘And we’re not going to,’ Shelby said, wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling him towards her. ‘We’re going to go in there and we’re gonna give Overlord the ass-kicking of a lifetime.’

‘I hope you are right,’ Wing replied, looking deep into her eyes. ‘I do not think I could stand it if something were to happen to you.’

‘I can look after myself, big guy – you know that.’

Wing kissed her gently and then pulled away.

‘We should get on board the Leviathan,’ he said. ‘It is not long till launch.’

The pair of them walked towards the giant aircraft and up the rear loading ramp. Just inside they found Nigel and Franz apparently having a hushed argument about something.

‘Hey guys, what’s up?’ Shelby asked.

‘Tell this idiot that we’re better off staying on the Leviathan, will you?’ Nigel said with an exasperated sigh.

‘I am just saying that we should be going with you,’ Franz said. ‘I am thinking that you will be needing all the help that you can get.’

‘They’ll need us just as much here,’ Nigel said. ‘Someone’s got to to help coordinate that attack.’

‘I am ready for battle,’ Franz said proudly. ‘My triumph in the holographic combat training is being proof of this.’

‘This isn’t a simulation, Franz,’ Nigel said, rolling his eyes.

‘Bah,’ Franz snorted dismissively. ‘There is no difference.’

‘You are, of course, correct,’ Wing said calmly. ‘What should it matter that a bullet from a real assault rifle will be travelling at one thousand metres per second when it hits you? It is equally pointless to dwell on the fact that as it enters your body it will start to spin and fragment, shredding your internal organs, or that upon exiting it will leave a wound the size of a man’s fist. Indeed, it is not unheard of for large-calibre rounds to completely sever limbs. A quick death from catastrophic blood loss would then be almost inevitable but, as you rightly point out, these are all inconsequential facts.’

‘Where is being the toilet?’ Franz asked, suddenly turning pale.

‘That way,’ Nigel said, pointing further inside the Leviathan as Franz hurried away. ‘Thanks, Wing. I’d better go and check he’s OK,’ he added.

‘Now, that was just cruel,’ Shelby said with a grin.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Wing said innocently. ‘I was merely stating the facts.’

‘Yeah, course you were,’ Shelby said, ‘though I’m not really sure I needed to hear all that just at the moment.’

‘The trick is not to get hit by the bullet in the first place,’ Wing replied.

‘I’ll try to remember that,’ Shelby said with a slight roll of the eyes. ‘Anyway, I don’t think that the flight packs were designed with him in mind. Of all the words that I could use to describe Franz I don’t think I’d ever go with aerodynamic.’

‘Now who is being cruel?’ Wing asked with a slight smile as one of Darkdoom’s technicians approached.

‘Come with me, please,’ the man said, gesturing for Wing and Shelby to follow him over to a rack of weapons mounted on the wall.

‘One for you,’ he said, handing a compact sub-machine gun to Shelby, ‘and one for you.’ He took another gun and offered it to Wing.

‘That will not be necessary,’ Wing said, refusing the proffered weapon.

The technician stared at him for a moment in confusion and then put the gun back on the rack with a shrug.

‘It’s your funeral, kid,’ he said as he walked away.

‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but kung fu doesn’t work at long range,’ Shelby said with a frown, shaking her head as she popped the clip from the gun to check it was fully loaded before snapping it back into place and sliding the weapon into the holster on her thigh.

Dr Nero walked up the boarding ramp before heading over to the rack and taking one of the guns from the wall. It was somehow strange to see him in the ISIS armour rather than one of his usual immaculately tailored suits.

‘Do you have everything you need?’ he asked as he holstered his weapon.

‘Yup,’ Shelby replied with a nod, ‘though you might want to see if you can persuade tall, dark and stupid here to take a gun.’

‘I have seen Mr Fanchu sparring with Raven back at H.I.V.E., Miss Trinity,’ Nero said, ‘and if he can hold his own in a fight with her then he probably does not need one. It is his decision to make.’ He knew he could not force Wing to take a weapon and he suspected that it would be pointless if he did.

‘Go and get your flight packs,’ he went on, pointing to the other side of the compartment where the rest of the Alphas were having the bulky devices mounted on their backs.

As Wing and Shelby walked away, Professor Pike walked over and handed Nero a slim metal case.

‘That’s all I can spare,’ he said as Nero slid the case into an equipment pouch on his belt. ‘You’ll only get one shot.’

‘That’s all I’ll need.’

‘Get in there,’ Furan said, shoving Otto hard in the back.

Otto found himself inside a sophisticated laboratory filled with the latest scientific equipment. Technicians were busy at workstations around the room, all wearing white hazmat suits. At the far end of the room there was a thick glass wall with an airlock mounted in it. Standing with his back to them and watching the activity within the sealed chamber was Overlord. Furan pushed Otto through the lab towards him. Otto tried to reach out and connect with any of the electronic devices that filled the room but it was pointless – the device attached to the back of his neck was jamming his abilities completely.

‘Do you know what that is?’ Overlord said as Otto approached, gesturing to the large silver cylinder on the other side of the glass.

‘No, but I’m sure you’ll bore me with the details anyway,’ Otto said with a sigh.

‘Futile defiance,’ Overlord said. ‘As much the hallmark of your species as anything else, I suppose. That,’ Overlord pointed at the cylinder, ‘is the future, Mr Malpense.’

‘I thought I didn’t have a future,’ Otto replied.

‘Not your future – mine,’ Overlord said with a smile. ‘You see, the strain of Animus that you were infected with and that I now inhabit was far too aggressive. As you can see from my own physical condition, it destroys whoever it touches. Even with my almost unlimited power I can only slow the process, not stop it. So I created a new strain in the hope that it might allow me to remain within a host indefinitely. Loathsome as I may find it to be trapped inside one of these fragile sacks of meat, it is still preferable to being imprisoned inside a glass tank. The new strain was a failure though.’

‘What a shame,’ Otto replied.

‘Oh, it still proved to be quite useful,’ Overlord continued. ‘As you will know from your recent experiences with Raven it allowed me to encode instructions within a human consciousness – instructions that they were powerless to resist. It still needed to be implanted directly though, and as we found with Raven that can be difficult when the target is uncooperative. Furan lost several of his best men when we ambushed her during her retrieval of Lin Feng. It served to illustrate the fact that a more efficient delivery system was necessary. Fortunately I was already working on obtaining just such a thing. The group known as the Disciples had been tracking the development of something that would serve that purpose perfectly: a top-secret military research project that was being worked on here.’

‘Are you planning to bore me to death or will you be getting to the point any time soon?’ Otto asked.

‘Such impatience, Mr Malpense! I would have thought you would want to savour your last hours of life.’

‘Not if I have to listen to you ranting,’ Otto said quietly.

‘Very well, I shall get to the point,’ Overlord replied. ‘The Americans were developing a revolutionary new system for repairing their military vehicles on the battlefield. The project was called Panacea and the concept was that their vehicles would have a layer of dormant reconstructive nanites built into their armour. If the armour was damaged the nanite layer would be exposed to the air and begin replication, working to repair the damage until the breach was sealed, whereupon they would deactivate. It was really quite ingenious, especially for something developed by humans, but they were worried about the nanites’ replication rate. They were finding it difficult to stop them from doing so indefinitely, spreading out of control. They feared the so-called ‘grey goo’ scenario.’

Otto had heard of this theory – that an out-of-control swarm of self-replicating nanites would consume all matter, organic and non-organic, on the face of the planet, leaving nothing but a barren rock spinning through space.

‘What they lacked was a control mechanism and that was exactly what I had. I have successfully fused the Panacea nanites with the new strain of Animus. Allow me to demonstrate.’

Overlord hit a switch on a touch screen mounted in the glass and a section of the wall inside the chamber slid back to reveal a terrified-looking American soldier strapped to a vertical bed behind yet another layer of glass. He hit another switch and what looked like a tiny drop of silvery black liquid dropped on to the man’s chest. The drop started to grow at an astonishing rate, the metallic ooze expanding and slithering towards the soldier’s face. The man let out a strangled gurgling scream as the silvery liquid slithered into his nose and mouth, struggling helplessly against his restraints. He convulsed for a couple of seconds before falling still. A moment later his eyes snapped open and they were now a solid silver colour. Overlord hit another switch and the man’s restraints snapped open and his glass cage slid open.

‘Pick up the gun,’ Overlord said into the intercom, and the soldier mutely obeyed, picking up the handgun that lay on the table in front of him.

‘Put it in your mouth and pull the trigger,’ Overlord said calmly.

The soldier pulled the trigger and the hammer clicked down on the empty firing chamber.

‘Unquestioning obedience,’ Overlord said, ‘implanted by a nanotechnological Animus hybrid. The problem comes when the hybrid has not been programmed.’ He turned back to the soldier behind the glass. ‘Return to the chamber in the wall.’

The soldier obeyed and stepped back into the recess, the glass sliding shut again.

‘This is what unprogrammed Animus nanites will do,’ Overlord said, hitting another switch. Another drop of the liquid hit the man’s chest and again it began expanding, but this time it simply consumed everything it touched. Otto did not know what was worse, seeing the man eaten alive or the fact that he stood there silently as it happened. In seconds all that remained was a still-growing pool of silver slime at the bottom of the recess

‘Irradiate the chamber,’ Overlord said. There was a flash and all that was left in the chamber was smoke. ‘So you can see why I need your abilities to program the hybrid. Obviously once the human population has been exposed, giving direct orders to every person on Earth as I did with that soldier or Raven would be impossible, but with your abilities it won’t be necessary. I will have a constant connection to the nanite swarm, able to direct them with just a thought. Your gifts will allow me to transmit my will anywhere I want, with every last human on the planet a puppet under my control. Then I shall use the enslaved masses to build a new, more perfect world. You, Mr Malpense, are going to be the herald of a new dawn.’

Otto suddenly understood the enormity of what Overlord was planning. Once the Animus nanites were released they would spread inexorably across the planet, enslaving everyone who came into contact with them. And Overlord was going to use him to do this.

‘No smart remarks any more, Mr Malpense?’ Overlord said with a smile. ‘What a shame.’ He turned towards Furan. ‘Take him to the medical bay and prep him for the neural transfer. Have the other two brats that we captured taken there too.’

‘Leave them out of this,’ Otto said angrily.

‘But they need to be there,’ Overlord replied.

‘Why?’ Otto asked.

‘Because first I’m going to take over your body,’ Overlord said, leaning in close to Otto’s face, ‘and then I’m going to leave your consciousness intact just long enough for you to watch me use it to kill them both.’

The cloaked Leviathan passed completely undetected over the outer perimeter that the American military had set up thirty kilometres from the AWP. Inside the darkened control centre Diabolus Darkdoom watched as they neared the drop point.

‘Two minutes to drop,’ Darkdoom said.

‘Understood,’ Nero responded in his earpiece.

‘I still wish I was coming with you,’ Darkdoom said.

‘I need you here,’ Nero explained. ‘It could be chaos down there. I need you to make sure that everything stays under control.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Darkdoom said. ‘Just make sure that Overlord doesn’t get away this time.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Nero replied. ‘It ends here. I’m going to destroy him once and for all or die trying.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Darkdoom said. ‘Good luck, old friend.’

‘A wise man once said that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity,’ Nero replied. ‘Preparations are complete, now we seize the opportunity.’

Down on the lower deck the light above the launch ramp turned red. Diabolus’ voice came over the Alphas’ comms systems.

‘Darkdoom to all Alpha units. Thirty seconds to drop.’

There was no chatter as the Alphas stood waiting, just a sense of collective determination. The huge ramp at the rear of the Leviathan began to drop and lock into position.

‘Fifteen seconds.’

The first row of Alphas stepped forward.

‘Ten seconds.’

‘Let the flight packs do the work,’ Nero said calmly. ‘Your drop coordinates are pre-programmed. I’ll see you on the other side.’

‘Drop, drop, drop!’ Darkdoom said, and the first of the Alphas leapt head first into the night sky. Shelby felt a moment of apprehension as she walked towards the edge. All of the readouts for her flight system were displaying green on the head-up display inside her helmet. It was now or never. She glanced at Wing standing next to her, and then they both dived into the void. There were a few seconds of free fall before the engine on her back fired and steered her towards the rest of the soaring Alphas, their positions relative to her highlighted on the display. The automated flight systems brought the group into tight formation, approaching their target at a constant rate.

‘All drop teams away,’ Darkdoom reported. ‘Leviathan moving to overwatch position.’

There was surprisingly little noise from the engine on Shelby’s back, but she could feel it making constant slight course corrections to keep her in line with the rest of the Alphas. Nero, Shelby and Wing suddenly broke away from the main formation and banked sharply to the left, heading towards their own drop coordinates as the remaining strike team continued on their original course.

‘One minute to touchdown,’ Nero said. ‘Engaging thermoptic camouflage.’

The holographic projection systems in their ISIS armour engaged and all three of them vanished from sight. Shelby could still see projected silhouettes of Wing and Nero inside her helmet but she knew that they had just become effectively invisible to the naked eye.

‘Thirty seconds,’ Nero said.

The flight packs switched into their final approach stage, sending them diving towards the desert below and levelling out at only five metres above the ground. Shelby tried to ignore the desert floor racing past below her so close that it almost felt like she could reach out and touch it. The engine on her back abruptly cut out and the ISIS suit fired its variable geometry forcefield with a soft thumping sound, dropping her as softly as if she’d stepped off a staircase rather than a giant stealth aircraft twenty thousand feet up. Nero and Wing landed just as softly on either side of her a few metres away.

‘On me, let’s go,’ Nero said, heading towards the highlighted target. It looked like a simple rock outcropping but there was more to it than met the eye. As they approached he tapped at the small touch screen mounted on his forearm and part of the rock face slid aside to reveal a metal hatch. He punched a series of digits into the keypad in the centre of the hatch and it popped open with a slight hiss.

‘I never thought I’d be grateful for Jason Drake’s deviousness,’ Nero said, ‘but right now I’d like to shake his hand.’ Before his death on board the Dreadnought, Drake had been responsible for the design and construction of some of the US military’s most secure and secret facilities. The officials who had commissioned his company to carry out the work could not possibly have known that he was one of the senior members of the G.L.O.V.E. ruling council. They might have inspected his work a little more closely if they had known. Right now Nero was very grateful for their naivety.

They walked into the dimly lit corridor beyond, sealing the hatch shut again behind them. It was clear from the dust on the floor that no one had been down there for a very long time. Indeed the last people to stand where they were standing would probably have been the men who constructed these secret passageways. Nero had known Drake well enough to realise that this could well have been the last thing those men ever saw. He might have been an insane megalomaniac but Drake had not been in the habit of leaving such potentially inconvenient loose ends.

‘Primary force is reporting down and clear,’ Darkdoom’s voice said inside their helmets. ‘Waiting for your go.’

‘Understood,’ Nero replied. ‘It’s five hundred metres to the hidden entrance. Let’s go.’

The Alphas moved slowly and quietly along the canyon leading to the massive blast doors at the entrance to the AWP facility. Their thermoptic camouflage systems meant that even the most careful observer would have found it impossible to spot them. Silently they took up positions a hundred metres from the doors.

‘Nero to Alpha team,’ the voice inside their helmets said, ‘we are in position. You are go for diversionary attack.’

‘Alpha nine, roger that,’ one of the team replied. The time for stealth was gone and now they had to provide as much of a distraction to the forces defending the base as possible. ‘All units, disengage thermoptic camouflage on my mark.’ He pulled the portable rocket launcher from his back and placed it on his shoulder, looking through the targeting scope and locking on to the massive steel doors. ‘Disengage.’

All around him the Alpha team started to blink into view, weapons raised and ready.

‘Knock, knock,’ he said, squeezing the trigger.

Furan pushed Otto along the corridor leading to the medical bay.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Otto asked. ‘Don’t you see that if Overlord carries out his plan you’re going to be enslaved along with everybody else?’

‘Not everyone will be infected by the Animus nanites,’ Furan said. ‘Those who have been loyal to Overlord – his Disciples – will be spared. Overlord has promised me that I will serve at his right hand as he builds his new world. It will be a better place, ordered, controlled – none of the chaos that humanity blights the Earth with now.’

‘You know that you sound insane, right?’ Otto said.

‘And do you know how often throughout history people who change the world have been dismissed as lunatics? The world that Overlord is going to create will be a world where humanity is finally unified in its direction and the few who are spared will be the ones who will guide its path.’

‘You’ll be as much a slave as anyone who is exposed to the nanites,’ Otto said, ‘but by the time you finally realise that it’ll be too late.’

Suddenly there was a muffled thud and a vibration ran through the floor. Seconds later Furan’s communicator earpiece began to beep urgently.

‘Report! What was that?’ he snapped.

‘We’re under attack by unidentified forces. They appeared out of thin air,’ the voice on the other end replied. ‘They launched a rocket at the hangar doors but they were undamaged. Now they’ve taken up defensive positions around the entrance.’

‘Is it the Americans?’ Furan asked.

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ the voice replied. ‘When I say that they appeared out of thin air I mean that literally. One second the canyon was empty and then they all just materialised.’

Furan knew that there was only one group on earth that had the type of personal cloaking technology that would make that possible. Why they would waste their time with a futile rocket attack on blast doors that were designed to withstand a nuclear strike was a more puzzling question.

‘Issue a base-wide alert,’ Furan said, ‘and order all of our available forces to the hangar bay. I’m on my way there.’

He hit another button on his comms unit and spoke.

‘Sir, we are under attack by G.L.O.V.E. forces,’ he said. ‘I’m mobilising our defences.’

‘That was a threat I thought we had eliminated,’ Overlord replied. ‘Nero must be desperate to launch a frontal assault.’

‘They can’t stop us now,’ Furan said. ‘They won’t have anything that will get them through the blast doors in time.’

‘Perhaps, but I would rather eliminate the threat altogether,’ Overlord replied. ‘We are too close to achieving our goals. Send out two of the Goliath units. I will show Nero the price of such a futile act of defiance.’

‘Understood,’ Furan replied, cutting the connection. ‘You’re coming with me,’ he growled at Otto. ‘It’s time you learnt what happens to people who oppose us.’

Nero, Shelby and Wing moved silently through the deserted corridors of the lower levels of the AWP facility. Drake’s entrance had brought them out in a storage area and so far there had been no sign of anyone having any idea that they had infiltrated the base. Nero glanced at the wireframe map of the facility that was displayed on his HUD. The map was based on the original plans that Darkdoom had managed to retrieve from Drake’s files but there was little reason to believe that the layout would have changed much, if at all, since this place had been constructed.

‘Down here on the left,’ he said quietly as they turned down another corridor. Halfway along they found two men with rifles guarding a door.

‘Mr Fanchu,’ Nero whispered over the comm, ‘would you be so kind as to take care of those two as quietly as possible.’ They could not risk the sound of a Sleeper pulse. The success of this part of their plan depended on remaining completely undetected. Nero watched as Wing crept down the corridor as silently as a ghost. He moved around behind one of the guards and wrapped his arm around the man’s throat. The second guard’s eyes widened in surprise as his colleague clawed at his throat for a second before his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed unconscious. He took a step towards the fallen man and then something invisible struck him in the chin like a sledgehammer and he too fell to the ground unconscious. They quite literally never knew what hit them.

Nero, Shelby and Wing headed inside and found themselves in an air-conditioned room lined with humming computer servers.

‘This is where Otto or Laura would have come in handy,’ Shelby said, looking around the room.

‘With a bit of luck this should at least tell us where to find them,’ Nero said. He walked over to a nearby terminal and tapped a series of commands into the touch display on his arm. ‘Nero to Leviathan. We have accessed one of the network hubs. Begin the hack.’

‘Wireless interface enabled, beginning brute force decryption,’ Darkdoom replied. ‘Estimated time to completion is six minutes.’

Nero watched as the progress bar on his HUD crept upwards agonisingly slowly. Without Otto or Laura’s help there was no way to make this go any faster – military encryption was always tough to crack. There was nothing they could do but wait.

The AWP facility’s security control centre was buzzing with activity. The external security feeds displayed on the large screens at the front of the room showed the G.L.O.V.E. forces maintaining their defensive positions around the entrance.

‘Something is wrong about this,’ Raven said to herself as she studied the screens. The soldiers outside were obviously equipped with thermoptic camouflage suits but they were more advanced, more heavily armoured than anything she had ever seen before. She had the uncomfortable feeling that there was more to these attackers than met the eye. And yet their initial assault had been pointless – they must have known that the weapon they used would not even scratch the heavily armoured doors to the facility. She suspected it was probably supposed to be little more than a distraction. The question was, what was it supposed to distract their attention from? The only way into the facility was through the main entrance and yet they had given away the element of surprise for no gain. It didn’t make any sense.

A warning notification popped up on the display in front of one of the technicians working nearby.

ATTEMPTED NETWORK INTRUSION DETECTED.

He quickly pulled up a system diagnostic – he had become quite used to seeing these messages over the past couple of days. The Americans had tried every trick in the book to regain control of AWP’s network in a desperate attempt to find out more about exactly what was going on inside the base. Their problem was that they had designed the facility’s network in such a way that external intrusion was impossible. The information contained within the base’s computers was, after all, far too valuable to have anything but the very highest level of protection. As it turned out they had done their job too well, little guessing that one day they would be the ones who were being forced to try and hack in. He waited for a few seconds as the diagnostic routine ran. The results window popped up and he scanned the information.

‘What the hell –’ he said under his breath.

‘What is it?’ Raven asked, moving quickly towards him.

‘We have an attempted network intrusion,’ the technician said, ‘but it’s coming from inside the facility.’

‘Where?’ Raven snapped.

‘Server room two, on the lower level,’ the man replied.

Raven was already running for the door.