Deadlock (24 page)

Laura woke up with a start, her heart racing and her breathing heavy. She swung her legs over the side of her bed and sighed, raising her hands to her head and rubbing her temples. She had been dreaming about Tom and the look of shock on his face as Anastasia Furan had gunned him down. She suddenly realised that it was identical to his expression when he had realised for the first time that she had betrayed him and the rest of their friends to the Disciples. She had tried to tell herself that it wasn’t her fault, that none of them could have predicted the swift brutality with which Furan would respond, but the truth was that the plan had been hers and if she had not suggested it in the first place, Tom would still be alive. All that they could now hope was that his sacrifice had not been for nothing. She had thrown her message in a bottle out into the digital sea and they just had to pray that somebody would find it. The cold white light in the middle of the ceiling of her cell suddenly lit up and Laura squinted against the unexpected brightness. A moment later the door swung open and the doorway was filled by the bulky form of one of the Glasshouse’s security guards.

‘On your feet, get dressed,’ the man said, gesturing to the clothes that sat on the concrete shelf across the room. ‘Furan wants to see you.’

Laura felt a cold knot tighten in her gut as she pulled on the grey camouflage combat trousers and black boots that made up the uniform that she and all the other trainees wore. There was only one reason that she could think of for Furan to summon her in the middle of the night like this.

‘OK, get moving,’ the guard said, as Laura finished lacing up her boots. She walked out of her cell on to the empty landing outside and the guard shoved her in the back, forcing her towards the stairs that led up to the central control spire. The facility was silent, but for the soft hum of the camera drones floating around the central area and the incessant hum of the ventilation system. She walked up the stairs, her mind racing. She knew full well what the punishment would be if Furan suspected that she had tried to smuggle a message out of the facility. The guard reached a pair of glass doors and waited as a walkway extended towards them from the central spire, locking into place with a soft thud as the doors opened. Laura followed him, across the walkway and up a staircase that led to another pair of doors with a sign saying ‘Central Command’ above them. He punched a code into the keypad next to the door and then gestured with his weapon for her to head inside as they hissed open. He did not follow her.

‘Good evening, Miss Brand,’ Anastasia Furan said, turning to face her as she entered the room. ‘I thought it was time you and I had a little chat.’ Heinrich stood next to her with an expression on his face that chilled Laura’s blood.

‘You would be surprised how often the staff here ask me why I have kept the H.I.V.E. students we captured alive,’ Furan said, walking towards her, a nasty smile on her ravaged face. ‘The truth is that sometimes I wonder that myself. Certainly, some of you have abilities that may prove useful to us in the future, but the majority are weak, poorly trained and undisciplined. The fact of the matter is that, for now at least, you are useful to me. Some would assume that it is because I believe that Nero and those other fools in G.L.O.V.E. wouldn’t risk a direct assault against me while I hold so many of his precious students hostage. That is, of course, nonsense. I know Nero all too well. There is only one reason that he would not have attempted to rescue his students and that is that he has no idea where you are. No, the real reason I let you and your friends live is that it gives me enormous pleasure to think of the torment that it causes him. Knowing that his students are in my hands and that he has no control over what I do to them is doubtless more than he can bear. The only reason that you, or any of the rest of his brats, still draw breath is because I know it causes him pain.’

She walked up to Laura and took her chin in her hand. Laura could feel the cold metal of the cybernetic machinery that had restored mobility to Furan’s hand, her grip painfully strong.

‘You see, I am something of an expert on pain, Miss Brand,’ Furan hissed at her. ‘I know how to cause it, I know how to direct it and I know how to use it. The only reason I didn’t execute you when you first arrived here was because the torment you felt, given all that you had done, was so exquisite that it simply had to be savoured. I realise now that perhaps that was an overindulgence. It would have been simpler to just put a bullet in the back of your head and be done with it. I know all about what you did, how you hacked into one of the camera drones. What I don’t know is why. So I’m going to give you a simple choice: tell me now what you did and I will grant you a quick clean death; refuse to tell me and I will make you wish that you had simply never been born. I trust I make myself perfectly clear.’

Laura’s mind raced. She had hidden the message well, it was coded in such a way that as soon as it was transmitted from one source to another it erased itself. The fact that Furan and her technicians weren’t able to tell that there had been a message transmitted at all told her that they knew no more than that she had simply accessed the drone. They had no idea what she’d done with it. That could only mean one thing: the message was no longer inside the Glasshouse. All of which meant she couldn’t allow Furan to find out what the message was and that it might enable someone to track it back to its point of origin. If she did, she’d evacuate the facility and the last chance that anyone might have to find them would be lost. She had to play for time, no matter the cost.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Laura said, not having to fake the fear in her voice.

‘The hard way it is then,’ Furan said. ‘If you won’t give the information willingly I will simply take it from you.’

She gestured to one of the guards on the far side of the room and he opened the door behind him.

‘I’d like you to meet someone, Miss Brand,’ Furan said. ‘We call it the prototype, but you know it by another name. It is going to make you tell me everything you know, whether you like it or not.’

A figure walked into the room through the open door and Laura gasped.

‘Oh God no,’ Laura whispered, her eyes wide with shock, ‘that’s impossible.’

chapter eleven

‘Five minutes to drop point,’ the Leviathan crew member shouted as Otto, Wing, Shelby, Franz and Raven all checked each other’s kit one last time.

‘OK,’ Raven said with a nod, ‘you all know what we have to do. No unnecessary risks. If Furan realises what’s happening and hits the kill-switch, all of this will have been for nothing. Slow, careful, quiet. Any questions?’

‘What should we do with Furan?’ Wing asked. ‘Capture or termination?’

‘Leave that to me,’ Raven said. ‘We have plans for her.’

Otto saw the expression on her face and decided at that moment that he never wanted to be someone that Raven had ‘plans for’.

The four of them pulled on their helmets with their featureless white faceplates as Raven walked over to where Nero and Darkdoom stood watching on the other side of the Leviathan’s cavernous cargo bay. Otto waited as the ISIS armour’s systems fired up one by one.

THERMOPTIC CAMOUFLAGE SYSTEM . . . ONLINE

VARIABLE GEOMETRY FORCEFIELD SYSTEM . . . ONLINE

MULTI-SPECTRAL TARGET ACQUISITION SYSTEM . . . ONLINE

GRAPPLER SYSTEM . . . ONLINE

ELECTROMAGNETIC ADHESION SYSTEM . . . ONLINE

‘I suppose it is being too late now for one last trip to the bathroom?’ Franz asked, swallowing nervously.

‘All set?’ Darkdoom asked Raven as she approached.

‘Yes, good to go,’ Raven replied. ‘Any final instructions?’

‘No,’ Nero said. ‘Just get as many of them out alive as you can, Natalya.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Raven replied, ‘we’ll get them out, all of them.’ She placed a hand on Darkdoom’s shoulder and he gave her a quick smile. They all knew what Darkdoom had been through, knowing that his son was in the hands of a psychopath like Furan.

‘Thank you, Natalya,’ Darkdoom replied, ‘but we should also prepare for the possibility that some of the students may not have survived the past couple of months. We all know what Furan is capable of.’

‘You’re still sure you want her taken alive?’ Raven asked Nero.

‘Assuming that is possible, yes,’ Nero said with a nod, ‘but do not hesitate to terminate her if you have to. I won’t have any of our people put in any further danger, understood?’

‘Yes,’ Raven replied with a frown, ‘though I’m still not sure why you just don’t have me finish her and be done with it.’

‘That would be too quick and easy, Natalya,’ Nero said, shaking his head.

‘It wouldn’t have to be – I’m actually quite good at slow and difficult,’ Raven replied.

‘Oh, I am aware of that, Natalya,’ Nero said with a smile. ‘Trust me, I have something quite different in mind for Anastasia Furan, but you should rest assured that by the time I’m finished she will wish I had let you do things your way.’

Raven had seen many disturbing things in her life and very few of them had ever sent a chill running down her spine. The look on Nero’s face at that precise instant was one of those few. She gave Nero a quick nod and walked back over to the other side of the bay, where Otto and the others were preparing for the drop.

‘Do you really think we’ll take Furan alive?’ Darkdoom asked as they watched the assault team move towards the Leviathan’s giant cargo-bay doors.

‘I doubt it,’ Nero replied, ‘but if they do I am going to make sure she pays the full price for everything she has done. We should head up to the command centre.’

The pair of them climbed up the stairs as the lights above the cargo-bay door changed from red to amber, indicating they were only thirty seconds from the drop zone. Otto and the others lined up facing the giant loading ramp and waited, the final seconds before the jump seeming to last an eternity. The Leviathan crew members on either side of the ramp clipped their safety lines on to the bulkhead.

‘Ten seconds,’ one of the crewmen barked, slapping his hand down on the large button that controlled the cargo-bay doors. The ramp began to lower and a sudden flurry of snow flew through the widening gap. Beyond the snow, which was illuminated with an eerie red light by the bay’s night drop lighting, there was only blackness. The crewman held up five fingers, then four, three . . . two . . . one. The light above the ramp turned green and the five members of the assault team ran down the loading ramp and threw themselves into the blackness.

Otto had almost forgotten how disorientating a night-time drop could be. There was a moment of visceral animal panic as his senses failed him and he struggled to right himself, but then his training kicked in and he extended his arms and legs, allowing the drag of his spreadeagled body to bring him into a controlled free fall. He looked to his left and right, the head-up display in his helmet automatically highlighting the position of his squad mates around him as they plunged towards the ice sheet far below.

‘Engage thermoptic camouflage,’ Raven’s voice crackled in his ear. Otto gave his armour the verbal command and the tiny holographic generators that covered the surface of his suit fired up, rendering him practically invisible to the naked eye. The systems in his suit would allow him and his squad mates to see each other, but to every one else they would be little more than ghosts. Otto watched the altimeter in his helmet as it whirred down towards zero and he heard the familiar high-pitched whine of the variable geometry forcefield generators charging. This was the bit he really hated. He had once asked Professor Pike what he should do if the forcefield landing system didn’t work. The Professor’s advice, to close his eyes and focus on a nice memory, had been less than reassuring. The soft voice of the suit’s on-board systems began to verbally update him.

‘Five hundred metres.’

‘Four hundred metres.’

‘Three hundred metres.’

‘Two hundred metres.’

‘One hundred metres.’

‘Fifty metres.’

‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . firing.’

Otto couldn’t help but close his eyes as he saw the flat white expanse below rushing up to meet him and then a split second later the forcefield engaged and it felt like he was hitting a giant invisible air bag. He winced at the deceleration g-force, calculated as it was to bring an object of his mass from terminal velocity to a standstill in the minimum safe amount of time. There was, unfortunately, a big difference between ‘safe’ and ‘comfortable’. He brought his feet beneath him, feeling for a moment like he was treading water and then his boots hit the ice. He looked around him, taking in his surroundings, and was relieved to see that the rest of the team appeared to have landed safely.

‘Sound off,’ Raven said. One by one each of them called out as they moved towards her location. Otto’s HUD told him that they were only five hundred metres from their target. There was, as expected, no sign yet that anyone had noticed their arrival.

‘OK,’ Raven said, releasing the Sandman from the strapping on her chest plate, ‘let’s get moving.’

They followed her as she led them across the ice towards their target and Otto was relieved when his suit began to highlight metallic poles planted in the snow ahead of them. This matched Nathaniel’s description of the outer layer of the Glasshouse’s security: standard infrared motion detectors.