Deadlock (22 page)

‘Drop it, Anastasia!’ Nero yelled. ‘Or I’ll kill you where you stand.’

Anastasia looked him straight in the eye before raising the pistol. Nero squeezed the trigger, his bullet catching her in the upper arm and sending the pistol clattering away across the rooftop.

‘Go ahead, Nero, kill me if you want, but then you’ll
never
know what happened to Elena,’ Anastasia snarled, clutching the wound in her arm.

‘I know what happened to Elena, Anastasia,’ Nero said, raising the rifle and aiming it at her head. ‘You killed her and now I’m going to kill you.’

‘You fool, Nero,’ Anastasia spat. ‘I didn’t kill my sister,
you did
.’

Nero felt a sudden sharp blow to the back of his head and he dropped his weapon, collapsing forward on to his knees, fighting to stay conscious as lights swam before his eyes. Raven picked up the fallen gun and levelled it at him.

‘Excellent,’ Anastasia said with a broad smile, climbing into the helicopter. ‘I knew you would not fail me, Natalya. Now kill him and get on board.’

‘I’m sorry, Max,’ Raven said, her finger slipping inside the trigger guard, ‘but I can’t let you kill her.’

‘Why not, Natalya?’ Nero said, looking up at her. The broken young girl he had spent so long trying to fix was gone, replaced once more by the emotionless mask of the killer.

‘Because
I
have to,’ Raven said, ‘or I’ll never be free of her.’

Raven spun around, levelling the gun at the helicopter.

‘Get us off the ground now!’ Anastasia screamed at the pilot, her eyes suddenly wide with fear, as she saw Raven turn towards her. The look on her face was unmistakeable. The pilot wrenched at the collective control and the helicopter slowly began to lift off the ground, tipping forwards and soaring out over the battlements, gathering speed. Raven took careful aim and fired. The bullets tore through the cockpit, killing the pilot and shattering the delicate instrumentation. The helicopter’s tail swung slowly around as it went into an uncontrollable spin. Raven watched with no hint of emotion in her eyes, as the helicopter spiralled towards the ground before smashing into the treeline on the far side of the castle and exploding in a giant ball of flame, debris scattering in all directions. Only then did Raven’s emotionless expression crumble as she dropped to her knees, sobbing, the rifle falling from her numb fingers and clattering to the ground. Nero knelt down next to her and pulled her towards him, holding the young girl as she wept.

‘It’s OK, Natalya,’ Nero said softly. ‘She’s gone, you’re free.’

Darkdoom burst through a door on the other side of the roof and ran towards them.

‘This whole place is rigged to blow, we have to go.’

Nero watched Raven as she stood staring at the blazing debris of the Glasshouse while the last of the rescued trainees were loaded on to the heavy military troop transport trucks on the road behind them. The trainees were under armed guard for now. Nero could make no assumptions about the Furans’ students’ loyalty. It was possible that some of them might have been as thoroughly broken as Raven was when Nero first met her.

‘We should go,’ Darkdoom said as he came and stood alongside his friend. ‘There’s no way the Russians haven’t noticed that explosion – they’ll be here in force and soon. You know, it would be a lot easier for us to disappear if we could just cut these kids loose and let them fend for themselves. Getting them out of here is going to be a problem.’

‘That’s the biggest difference between you and me, my friend,’ Nero said with a smile, looking at the trucks filled with children who had already received thorough, if brutal, training. ‘You only see a problem here,’ he gestured towards the transports. ‘I see opportunity.’

‘You and your school,’ Darkdoom said, shaking his head. ‘Do you ever think about anything else?’ He looked over at Raven. ‘Do you think she’s going to be OK?’

‘She will be,’ Nero said wih a small, sad smile, looking at the girl who had so nearly killed him. ‘Eventually.’

Pietor Furan ran through the snow towards the burning wreckage of the helicopter.

‘Anastasia!’ He screamed, knowing that the chances of anyone surviving a crash like this were impossibly slim. He flung pieces of flaming debris aside, ignoring the burns he sustained in the process, as he searched desperately for his sister. He suddenly saw an arm protruding from under a twisted piece of fuselage and he carefully lifted the smouldering chunk of metal off the body trapped beneath. Anastasia was burnt almost beyond recognition and he moaned with grief as he dropped to his knees beside her, gently cradling her limp form in his lap. He gasped involuntarily as her eyes flickered open for an instant, their whites contrasting horribly with the blackened skin around them. She took a single pained rattling breath.

‘Pietor . . .’ she whispered.

‘Hush, Anastasia,’ Pietor said, tears rolling down his cheeks as he looked at the ruin of his sister’s once beautiful face. ‘Save your strength.’

chapter ten

Nero walked into H.I.V.E.’s power control centre and immediately felt a wave of dry heat wash over him. The huge cavern was the central point of the school’s power generation and distribution network, tapping into the volcano’s limitless reserves of geothermal energy. He saw his father on the far side of the room, looking down into the bubbling lake of magma below.

‘H.I.V.E.mind informed me that you wished to speak to me,’ Nero said. ‘I can’t stay long – final preparations are under way for the assault on the Glasshouse.’

‘I know you’re busy, Maximilian,’ Nathaniel replied. ‘I won’t keep you long. This is very impressive.’ He gestured to the heavy machinery that surrounded them. ‘I really never thought that you’d be able to safely control the pressure in the magma chamber, let alone tap it.’

‘I remember your objections quite clearly,’ Nero replied. ‘As I recall, you thought I was insane.’

‘Yes, well, it appears I owe you an apology,’ Nathaniel said with a sigh. ‘It’s been too long since we’ve spoken, Max.’

‘I know,’ Nero replied. ‘With everything that has happened in the past few years, I’m afraid that I’ve been rather distracted.’

‘Yes, I can imagine,’ Nathaniel said. ‘My various contacts have kept me up to date with your activities. It has been rather a tempestuous time for G.L.O.V.E., hasn’t it?’

‘Yes, between Overlord, H.O.P.E. and the Disciples, we have been rather
busy
,’ Nero replied with a wry smile. ‘To be honest, it was a risk appointing a new ruling council, especially one made up entirely of graduates from the school. I made a lot of enemies that day and I fear that many of them may have then turned to the Disciples for support.’

‘The hard decisions are always the most important ones, Max, you know that.’

‘I know, but the Disciples are more ruthless than anyone we have faced before. The attack on the Hunt was the perfect example of the lengths they are prepared to go to. I shudder to think what they might be capable of in the future with Anastasia Furan in command. I had hoped that Overlord’s destruction would weaken them to the point of disintegration, but if anything they’ve become even more brutal.’

‘An animal is at its most dangerous when wounded,’ Nathaniel replied with a nod.

‘Yes, at the moment we need all the help we can get,’ Nero said, looking at his father. ‘The return of a founding member of G.L.O.V.E., for example. Someone with the experience to help the organisation through these challenges.’

‘I’m sorry, Max,’ Nathaniel said, shaking his head. ‘You know I swore I would never return. After what happened to your mother . . .’

‘That was not your fault,’ Nero replied. ‘I know that now.’

‘Really? Because I thought that was why we stopped talking. I assumed you blamed me.’

‘Perhaps, once, but not any more,’ Nero replied with a sigh. ‘Because now I understand the lengths that people will go to when they want to destroy you. Furan murdered my students because she knew that nothing would hurt me more. I spent days afterwards wondering if it was my fault, because I put those children in harm’s way, but the truth is that there is just one person responsible and that is whoever gave the order to attack. There’s only one way we’re going to win this war and that is to remove the head of the snake.’

‘And you don’t need an old man’s help to do that, Max,’ Nathaniel said with a smile. ‘Not when you have so many capable young people to call upon. That’s why H.I.V.E. is, and always has been, so important. If your mother had not died, you may very well never have persisted with the school. It was she who taught you the importance of restraint and subtlety in our world. Without that all we have is madness and violence. A true villain must be more than that. That lesson, and every student of H.I.V.E. that it has been passed on to, is her legacy.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Nero said, looking down into the glowing chamber below. ‘I do sometimes find myself wondering what she would do in my place.’

‘Your mother,’ Nathaniel said, ‘would have put Anastasia Furan down like a rabid dog. And that, Maximilian, is exactly what you’re going to do too.’

‘Do you think this is going to work?’ Wing asked quietly as he pulled on the white gloves of his Arctic operations ISIS armour.

‘I think we can get inside,’ Otto replied. ‘The real question is whether or not we can get back out again.’

‘Yes, that may prove challenging,’ Wing replied with a nod.

‘We may know the layout of the place, but we don’t really know what we’re going to face beyond that,’ Otto said with a slight frown. ‘We should prepare for the worst.’

‘Don’t we always?’ Wing replied, raising an eyebrow.

‘So it’s true what they say,’ Shelby said as she walked over to the suit of armour mounted on the wall rack nearby, ‘white
is
the new black. Cool.’

‘I’ve been telling you that for years,’ Otto said with a grin, running his hand through his hair.

‘Yeah, guess you won’t even need a helmet,’ Shelby replied. ‘You’ll just blend right in.’

‘I am finding this rather uncomfortable actually,’ Franz said as he pulled the armour’s greaves over the legs of his skin-tight thermal body suit. ‘It is being tight in all the wrong places.’

This was the latest version of the ISIS combat armour that had first been used in the final battle against Overlord. It provided unparalleled ballistic protection with a fully integrated thermoptic camouflage system and a variable geometry forcefield generator that allowed for low altitude combat drops without the need for a parachute. It was this system that had saved Otto’s life just a few days earlier and that would now allow them to deploy as closely as possible to the Glasshouse.