Deadlock (7 page)

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Laura replied with a sigh. ‘Just took another beating in the pit. It’s nothing. How are you feeling?’

Nigel had taken several months to fully recover from the gunshot wound he had suffered when the Disciples ambushed the Hunt. In truth, he had been lucky to survive but he still looked thin and he tired quickly.

‘Better every day,’ Nigel said. ‘The doctor said that I should be ready to start with physical training in a couple of weeks. Though looking at you I’m not sure that’s actually a good thing.’

‘Yeah, well no one hates you the way they do me,’ Laura said, glancing across the room at the table where the other captured H.I.V.E. Alpha stream students all sat together, eating in silence. Within just a couple of hours of arriving at the Glasshouse, Furan had gathered them together to explain the situation they now found themselves in. She had made it clear that escape was impossible and that any attempt to prove otherwise had only one punishment: immediate summary execution. Just when Laura had thought that things could not get any bleaker Furan had then, with obvious pleasure, explained to the other H.I.V.E. students that the reason they were in such danger was because of Laura’s treachery. She had neglected to mention that the only reason Laura had betrayed the school was in a desperate attempt to save the lives of her parents and newborn baby brother, who were being held hostage by the Disciples. From that point, her life had been a living hell; on one side were the existing Glasshouse trainees, who hated all of the captured H.I.V.E. students, and on the other were her former classmates, who now blamed her for not only their capture but also the deaths of many of their friends. The only people that still spoke to her were Nigel, Tom and Penny, all of whom had been present when Laura’s betrayal had first been exposed. They were the only ones that understood the nightmarish position that Laura had been put in and even they had still found it hard to forgive her. She knew how they felt; she still had not forgiven herself.

‘I’ve tried to explain what happened to people,’ Nigel said quietly, ‘but most of them don’t want to hear it. It’s going to take time.’

‘Oh, I don’t expect anyone to forgive me,’ Laura said, pushing the grey slop on her tray around with her plastic spoon. ‘Even you, Nigel.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s not your call,’ Nigel said with a tiny smile. ‘I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I know you, Laura, and I know that you’d never have given them the information they wanted if you’d known what the consequences would be. We’ve got to try and stay positive if we’re going to have any hope of surviving this place.’

Tom and Penny walked past Laura and Nigel and sat down opposite each other at the far end of the table. The last traces of Penny’s exuberantly pink hair had vanished weeks ago, to be replaced by her natural shade of dark brown and she too bore the marks of the Glasshouse’s training – a fresh pink scar on her neck from a recent defeat in a ‘mock’ knife fight. Tom glanced over at Laura and gave a small nod as their eyes met. The pair of them had barely spoken to Laura since they had arrived at the Glasshouse, partly because they did not want to incur the wrath of the other captured H.I.V.E. students, but also, Laura suspected, because they too blamed her for their current predicament.

‘I understand that, Nigel,’ Laura replied, a sudden look of deep sadness in her eyes, ‘but what if there’s no one coming for us? What if they can’t find us? What if they don’t want to?’

‘You can’t think like that,’ Nigel said, shaking his head. ‘You know they won’t give up on us, Nero, my father, Otto and the others, so we mustn’t give up on them.’ He paused, glancing at the guard who was wandering across the room towards them. ‘That witch Furan wants nothing more than to break us and so we mustn’t lose faith, because if we do, she wins.’

‘This is an . . . unexpected development,’ Nero said with a slight frown. Across from him, on the opposite side of H.I.V.E.’s main conference room table, sat the semi-transparent holographic projections of Raven and Otto. ‘I was pleased to hear that Senator Ronson had met with such an unfortunate
accident
, but assuming that what he told us was true, and we have no reason to suspect otherwise, we may now only have one remaining clue as to the whereabouts of Furan and our students.’

‘The Architect,’ Otto said.

‘Exactly,’ Nero replied.

‘Is he even real?’ Raven asked. ‘I mean, I’ve heard the stories, just like everyone else, but I always thought they were just that . . . stories.’

‘Oh, I can assure you he is quite real,’ Nero said with a sigh. ‘Indeed, we have a certain amount of, shall we say,
history
.’

‘So just who is he?’ Otto asked. ‘And why is he so important?’

‘As you are well aware, Mr Malpense, there are times when members of our fraternity find themselves in need of elaborate but well-hidden facilities.’

‘Every good villain should have a secret base,’ Otto replied, with a slight smile.

‘Precisely,’ Nero said with a nod, ‘but it is phenomenally difficult to construct that kind of project in total secrecy. Quite aside from discreetly obtaining extremely large quantities of construction materials, one must also recruit a skilled workforce who can work quickly and efficiently in often extremely hostile environments and can also be relied upon to keep the nature of that work absolutely secret.’

‘So say, for example, you wanted a school built inside an active volcano and didn’t want anyone finding out about it, he’s the man to call.’

‘Yes, though he was actually only partially responsible for the design of this facility,’ Nero replied. ‘Which is also part of the reason I’ve not had any contact with him in recent years.’

‘And now he’s working for the Disciples,’ Raven said.

‘Oh, he doesn’t work
for
anyone,’ Nero replied, ‘he works for whoever has the most interesting project to offer him. He is not the sort of man who would trouble himself worrying about which side he was working for. That neutrality is part of the reason that he has managed to survive in our murderous little world for as long as he has.’

‘So he’s not a Disciple, but he’s not part of G.L.O.V.E. either,’ Otto said. ‘So why would he help us?’

‘I’m not sure he will,’ Nero said with a sigh. ‘In fact, I rather suspect that he won’t. Especially if you mention my involvement.’

‘So where do we go from here?’ Otto asked.

‘If I had his location, perhaps I could
persuade
him to tell us where to find Furan,’ Raven said.

‘Thank you, Natalya,’ Nero said, shaking his head, ‘but I’d rather it didn’t come to that. He may not want to meet me, but there is someone that he would talk to. Get ready to move. I’ll contact you later.’

He cut off the connection and Otto and Raven’s holographic projections flickered and vanished. Nero stared into space for a moment, lost in thought, before tapping a command into the touch screen embedded in the surface of the table in front of him. A few seconds later, another glowing figure coalesced out of thin air on the other side of the table.

‘Hello, Max,’ the tall, bald man said, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘Hello, Diabolus,’ Nero said with a smile. ‘I have a favour to ask. I need you to talk to an old friend.’

Anastasia Furan felt a cold fury building inside her as she read the report on the mysterious aviation accident that had claimed the life of Senator Matt Ronson. She had been instrumental in steering his rise through the political ranks and now all of that appeared to have been wasted effort. While it would not have been the first time that a member of their shadowy world had occupied the White House, it would have been extremely useful for her future plans if she had been able to dictate the response of the United States government once those plans went into full effect.

‘How did this happen?’ Furan said angrily. Her entire head was covered in horrific twisted burn scars, such that there was no longer any trace of her once great beauty. She wore gloves, a long black coat and a high-necked black blouse that covered every other square centimetre of her skin.

‘We’re not sure,’ the nervous-looking man standing on the other side of her desk said. ‘Our sources within the American intelligence services have told us that they are just as puzzled about what happened. Somebody took out Ronson’s security detail and the two pilots and then it appears that they crashed the plane into the ocean with the senator still on board. They found floating debris from the crash this morning, but they’re still searching for the plane’s flight recorder. They should know more when they find it. Whoever did this, it was a suicide mission, so they’re working on the assumption that it was an act of terrorism at this point.’

‘You’re assuming that whoever was responsible was on board when it crashed,’ Furan replied. ‘And why did the secret service logs show Ronson’s wife and child as having left the hotel for the airport and yet they were later found unconscious in their room.’

‘As I say,’ the man replied, ‘there are many unanswered questions.’

‘First our cell leader in London is pushed in front of a train and then someone steals a data slab from our field office in Chicago. Raskoff may have insisted that there was no sensitive data on the device that was stolen, but I fear it may be more than a coincidence that within a week our American cell commander is dead too. It looks to me like someone has declared open season on senior members of our organisation and I think I know exactly who that is.’

‘Nero,’ the man replied.

‘Yes,’ Furan said with a nod. ‘I expected reprisals after we attacked his beloved students, of course, but I did not think they would be this effective or brutal. I knew he would send Natalya after us, but there’s more to it than that. I want our best men on this. I want to know how they got to Ronson and I want to know where they intend to hit us next. Project Absalom is at too critical a stage for us to be distracted by this now. Increase the security details on our senior commanders and brief them fully on the threat. Make sure that any sighting of Raven is reported immediately. She will not catch us out so easily again.’

‘Understood,’ the man replied with a nod and walked out of her office.

Furan stood up from her desk and walked over to the far wall where a portrait of her late brother, Pietor Furan, hung. She stared at the picture for a few seconds before reaching out and laying a hand on the canvas.

‘Soon, Pietor,’ she said softly, ‘soon you will be avenged.’

The young man ran across the crowded office, carrying a single sheet of paper. He stopped at an office door on the other side of the room that bore the words ‘Robert Flack, Director of Operations, Artemis Section’. He knocked once on the door and a few seconds later a voice shouted for him to come in.