Deadlock (28 page)

‘And so, Natalya,’ Furan said, ‘once again, it is just you and me.’

Wing and Shelby were just finished ushering the last of the captured Alphas into the elevator leading up to the Glasshouse’s entrance when a familiar voice came from behind them.

‘You weren’t thinking of leaving without me, were you?’ Laura said.

Shelby spun around and saw her friend walking slowly down the balcony towards them. She ran towards her and hugged Laura tight, tears of relief rolling down her face.

‘You know we would never leave without you,’ Wing said. ‘We were just about to come back for you and Nigel.’

‘God, it’s good to see you,’ Shelby said. ‘Are you OK?’ She held Laura by the shoulders and inspected her face. She was pale and thin and there was a slightly haunted look to her eyes. Something about her was different, somehow she was not the same girl that Shelby had last seen all those months ago.

‘I’m fine, but we have to get out of here,’ Laura said. ‘I don’t have time to explain, but if Otto’s plan doesn’t work we’re in big trouble.’

‘Oh, Laura, honey,’ Shelby said, her voice trembling suddenly. ‘I don’t want to have to tell you this now, but Otto’s dead.’

‘No, he’s not,’ Laura said. ‘The person you saw fall wasn’t Otto.’

Shelby looked at her friend with a frown, suddenly worried that her mind might be more damaged than she had realised.

‘Laura, it
was
Otto,’ Shelby said, shaking her head. ‘We all saw him.’

‘I’m sorry, Laura,’ Wing said. ‘Shelby is right. There is no doubt.’

‘Just listen to me,’ Laura said. ‘That wasn’t Otto. It was a duplicate of him, a clone of some sort called Zero. Otto is down there right now with Furan, but she doesn’t know it’s him. He’s going to try to disable the kill-switch.’

‘You know how crazy that sounds, right?’ Shelby said.

‘Of course, I do,’ Laura replied. ‘But crazy is what we do, remember. Otto’s trying to buy us enough time to get everybody clear in case he can’t disable the switch.’

‘Then we have to go and help him,’ Wing said, feeling a sudden surge of hope. ‘With our suit helmets on we should be safe from the gas, even if Furan releases it. We might be able to save him.’

‘No,’ Laura said, ‘you don’t understand, Wing. That’s what we discovered when Otto interfaced with the security system. Furan modified the design. The kill-switch doesn’t release gas, it fills this whole facility with fuel vapour and then ignites it. It turns the Glasshouse into the largest fuel air bomb ever built. If he can’t disable the switch this place will go up like a nuclear bomb.’

‘We still have to try and help him,’ Wing said.

‘What we have to do is trust him, Wing,’ Laura said. ‘He’s counting on us to get everyone to a minimum safe distance and if we’re going to do that, we have to go now. Think, what would he tell you to do?’

‘Get everyone to safety,’ Wing said with a nod.

‘Exactly,’ Laura said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Behind them the elevator doors opened and Franz stepped out, looking worried.

‘The Leviathan is on its way to the collection point,’ Franz said. ‘I am needing help guiding the other Alphas through the minefield safely.’ He looked at the three of them with a frown. ‘I am so glad you are being safe, Laura, but where is Nigel?’

‘He’s on his way, Franz,’ Shelby said, ‘but right now, we have to get the hell out of here.’

‘We’re out,’ Shelby’s voice crackled in Raven’s ear. ‘Leviathan’s on its way in for pickup.’

‘Let the boy go,’ Raven said, nodding towards Nigel, standing nearby.

‘Allow my men to restrain you without resistance and I’ll let him leave,’ Furan said calmly.

Raven stood there for a moment, as if weighing her options before lowering her rifle and throwing it to the ground. Slowly she raised her hands in surrender.

‘I’m not stupid, Natalya,’ Furan said. ‘The swords too, throw them away.’

Raven slowly drew the twin katanas from the crossed sheaths on her back and tossed them across the floor towards Furan with a clatter.

‘You, cuff her,’ Furan said to the man standing on her left. He advanced cautiously towards Raven, pulling a set of restraints from a clip on his belt. He walked behind her and brought her hands down behind her back, cuffing them together.

‘On your knees,’ the guard said.

‘Now, let him go,’ Raven said with a nod towards Nigel as she lowered herself to the ground.

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Natalya,’ Furan said with a smile. ‘He’s far too valuable for that.’

‘I’m sorry, Nigel,’ Raven said. She had known it was unlikely that Furan would honour her end of the deal, but the harsh truth was that it might have been enough to buy the freedom of the other captives. She could only hope that Diabolus would forgive her.

A couple of Furan’s guards went over and grabbed Nigel as Furan walked towards Raven.

‘And now, my dear, you’re going to tell me everything you know about G.L.O.V.E., Nero and his precious school,’ Furan said with a smile.

‘You of all people should know I’ll tell you nothing,’ Raven said.

‘Oh, you will,’ Furan said, beckoning someone from the shadows nearby.

Raven’s eyes widened in surprise as she recognised the boy in the dark suit.

‘Otto!’ she gasped. ‘But that’s impossible.’

‘Oh, this isn’t Malpense, Natalya,’ Furan said. ‘This is my version of him. An improved second draft, shall we say. We call him the prototype and he’s going to reach inside that pretty head of yours and take everything from you. Only then, when you have betrayed everything you care about, will I kill you.’

Raven looked at the corpse lying on the floor just a few metres away from her and then back at the perfect duplicate that was walking up behind Furan.

‘You think that’s an improved version of Otto?’ Raven asked. ‘Well, I’ll give you two reasons why you’re wrong. Firstly, Otto was cleverer than any copy you could possibly create and secondly, he has blue eyes.’

Furan felt the muzzle of a pistol press into the back of her skull.

‘You know what they say – a copy’s never as good as the original,’ Otto said, as Furan’s men levelled their guns at him. Otto moved slightly to keep Furan between them and himself. ‘Now, tell your men to drop their weapons and release Nigel and Raven or I’ll remove everything inside
your
head.’

‘Oh, well played, Mr Malpense,’ Furan said, ‘but I fear that you are not quite as good a gambler as you think.’ She held up the kill-switch. ‘You know as well as I do that I’m holding the winning hand. This device is shielded against your abilities, as you’ve no doubt realised by now. You kill me and we all die and there’s not a thing you can do to stop it.’

‘Oh, you’re quite right,’ Otto said, putting his free hand on her shoulder, ‘that trigger is shielded, but you’re not.’

Otto reached out with his abilities, using every last iota of the new power he had felt unlocking within himself since he had cracked the Disciple’s encryption. Time seemed to suddenly slow to a crawl, he could feel the electrical impulses travelling through Furan’s nervous system, flickering at the edge of his awareness. He felt her arm, as if it was his own, for the briefest instant, and suddenly he knew how Zero had been able to do what he did. He ordered the nerves in Furan’s hand to contract the muscles into an iron grip and her hand clenched. Furan felt the horrible sensation of losing control of her own body as she realised that she could not release the trigger, even if she wanted to.

‘Kill them!’ Furan screamed. ‘Kill them all!’

Her men raised their rifles just as a white blur dropped towards them at phenomenal speed from overhead. Wing’s adaptive forcefield generator fired with a deep, almost subsonic thump, cushioning his landing amongst Furan’s men and sending them flying in all directions. He leapt to his feet, scooping up one of Raven’s swords from the ground and engaging the crackling energy field that ran along its edge. Raven turned her back to him and he sliced through the cuffs binding her wrists with one clean swing, tossing the sword to her as she whirled back around to face him. One of the guards scrambled to his feet and Raven cut him down as Wing sent another flying with a kick to the chin. Raven picked her other sword up from where it had fallen and sprinted towards the other stunned guards as they staggered to their feet. A few seconds later, they were back on the ground, but this time they would not be getting up again.

As Raven finished her men, Furan lunged towards Otto, taking advantage of his focus on controlling her grip on the trigger. She twisted the pistol in his hand and he gave a pained yell as she wrenched it from him. As Raven and Wing turned towards her she spun around behind him, the hand that was holding the trigger snaking around his throat, her forearm crushing his windpipe as she pressed the pistol to his temple.

‘Don’t move,’ Furan yelled at them both.

‘Give it up, Furan,’ Raven said, walking towards her, the blades of her katanas crackling. ‘It’s over.’

Furan tried to release the trigger on the kill-switch, but her hand still would not obey her.

‘You think I’ll let you take me alive?’ Furan said. ‘You should know me better than that, Natalya. No, today I die and so do you.’

She pressed the pistol hard into the side of Otto’s head and squeezed the trigger.

A hundred metres above her Franz did exactly the same thing.

The neural shock pulse hit Furan square in the centre of her forehead. Otto gasped as he felt her grip go slack around his neck, grabbing her hand as she fell and holding it firmly closed around the kill-switch.

Far above them Franz watched through the scope as Raven, Wing and Nigel ran over to Otto, Raven pulling a field dressing from a pouch on her armour and using it to strap Furan’s hand closed around the trigger. He let out a long deep breath.

‘That’s for kidnapping my friends.’

chapter thirteen

Nero watched as Furan’s unconscious body was carried up the Leviathan’s loading ramp on a stretcher, the kill-switch still bound tightly within her hand.

‘Secure her for transport to H.I.V.E.,’ Nero said to the crewmen carrying the stretcher. ‘I’ll deal with her later.’

He walked down the ramp as Otto, Raven, Wing, Nigel and Franz headed over towards the giant aircraft resting on the ice.

‘Well done,’ Nero said. ‘I could not have asked for more from any of you.’

‘You have Franz to thank,’ Otto said with a smile. ‘We’d all be dead without him.’

‘It is being the lucky shot,’ Franz said with a dismissive wave of the hand.

‘There was nothing lucky about it,’ Raven said.

Laura and Shelby were waiting for them inside the cargo bay as they walked up the loading ramp.

‘See, I told you they’d all make it back in one piece,’ Shelby said with a grin as Wing came up to her and hugged her.

‘Am I forgiven?’ Wing asked.

‘’Course you are,’ Shelby said. ‘I didn’t mean what I said back there.’

‘So you don’t think I’m a . . . what was it . . . suicidal idiot any more?’ he asked with a smile.

‘Oh, you’re still an idiot,’ Shelby said with a grin, ‘but I forgive you for being one. Anyway, all you had to do was free-fall inside a building – me and Laura had to get this lot through a minefield.’ She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the rescued Alphas who were milling around the far end of the cargo bay, looking excited, tired and confused in equal measure. ‘That was fun.’