‘How you doing?’ Shelby asked Otto as she sat down next to him. They had been in flight for more than an hour and he had barely said a word to anyone.
‘I feel like an idiot,’ Otto said, staring at the deck. ‘How could I have not seen what was happening?’
‘Come on,’ Shelby whispered, shaking her head. ‘There was no way that any of us could have known what Laura was being forced to do.’
‘I don’t know why she didn’t just tell us.’
‘Because she was frightened,’ Shelby replied, taking Otto’s hand. ‘She couldn’t do anything that might endanger her parents and her baby brother. If she’d told us or even Nero, how could she know that the Disciples wouldn’t find out.’
‘Oh, I’m pretty sure that they’d have found out,’ Otto said with a sigh. He had told no one about Laura’s final words to him. There was only one person he was going to give that information to and he was going to deliver the message in person.
Dr Nero watched as the assault Shroud touched down on the crater landing pad. The loading ramp whirred into place and Otto, Wing, Shelby and Franz walked down it, closely followed by Raven.
‘Welcome back,’ Nero said. ‘I am truly sorry that you have all had to endure such an ordeal. Rest assured that the people involved will suffer for what they have done. Our retaliation will be swift and decisive. I will also not give up on all of the students who have been captured by these people. I cannot tell you how long it might take but I can tell you that we will not rest until they are returned.’
‘Doctor Nero, I need to speak to you in private,’ Otto said. ‘It’s extremely important.’
‘Of course,’ Nero replied with a slight frown. ‘Please wait outside my office, Mr Malpense, I shall be there shortly. The rest of you should return to your quarters and get some rest. I think it’s fair to say that you’ve earned it.’
‘What do you need to see Nero about?’ Shelby whispered as the four of them climbed the stairs leading up from the landing pad.
‘I need to tell him about Laura,’ Otto replied.
‘I thought we weren’t going to tell anyone,’ Shelby said.
‘I have to,’ Otto said firmly, ‘because it’s the only way he’ll believe what else I’m going to tell him.’
‘Which is?’ Wing asked.
‘I promise I’ll fill you in later,’ Otto replied. ‘I know what I’m doing, trust me.’
Back in the hangar Nero walked over to a quiet corner with Raven.
‘You said on the radio that there was something we needed to talk about,’ Nero said, ‘though I still don’t understand why you couldn’t have just told me then.’
‘Too many ears open nearby on-board the Shroud,’ Raven explained. ‘Max, I know who’s running the Disciples. I met her a few hours ago in Siberia, or, to be more precise, I met her again.’
‘What is it, Natalya?’ Nero asked with a frown, noticing her worried expression. ‘Who is she?’
‘Anastasia Furan,’ Raven said, looking Nero straight in the eye. ‘She’s alive.’
‘But that’s not possible,’ Nero replied, his eyes widening in shock. ‘We both saw her die, Natalya.’
‘She survived. God only knows how but somehow she survived.’
‘As if this situation wasn’t bad enough already,’ Nero said, shaking his head.
‘I want to go after her, Max,’ Raven said. ‘This is unfinished business and I intend to be the one to finish it.’
‘I understand how you feel, Natalya, you know I feel the same way,’ Nero said, ‘but this is no longer an isolated skirmish between G.L.O.V.E. and the Disciples. This situation has escalated and we need to consider our next move carefully. I need you here for now. There is a war to be fought and you are one of G.L.O.V.E.’s most powerful weapons. I promise you that when the time comes, when the axe drops on Anastasia Furan, you will be her executioner but for now I cannot afford to lose you to a personally motivated mission of revenge. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Raven said with a nod, ‘but, you are right, this is personal for me, in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine. I cannot . . . I will not wait for ever. I want blood, her blood, and I want it soon.’
She turned and walked away. Under other circumstances he might have felt a vague sense of pity for anyone that Raven hated with such a passion but Anastasia Furan was someone he too would never be able to feel anything but hatred for. She had murdered the one woman that he had ever truly loved and for that he could never forgive her.
The helicopter touched down on the ice sheet with a bump, its twin rotors slowing as the rear boarding ramp descended. A pair of Disciple soldiers shoved Laura, Tom and Penny down the ramp. The icy wind cut through even the insulation of their environmental suits, their exposed hands and faces stinging with the cold. They trudged towards a concrete block, shrouded in ice with a heavy metal slab set into it. As they approached the slab slowly rumbled down into the ice to reveal a steel-lined lift carriage beyond. They were followed into the elevator by Anastasia Furan and two more Disciple troops who were carrying Nigel’s stretcher. Once they were all inside, a set of internal doors closed and the lift began to descend. After a minute or so the lift stopped and the internal doors slid open once again. Suddenly they were hit by the noise of hundreds of voices as they walked out on to a concrete walkway that ran all the way round the outside of the massive circular chamber in front of them. A man in a white coat ran up to Nigel’s stretcher and began to examine him.
‘We need to get him to medical immediately,’ the man said.
‘Will he survive?’ Anastasia asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the medic replied. ‘It looks like he’s bleeding internally. We’ll do our best.’
‘See that you do,’ she replied with a frown. ‘This boy is strategically valuable and he’s no use to me dead.’
‘You need to get that hand looked at too,’ the doctor said.
‘I am quite aware of that, doctor,’ she snapped.
As Anastasia and the doctor talked, Laura walked forward and peered over the waist-high concrete wall and down into the vast chamber below. The drop to the large open area at the bottom must have been at least a hundred metres and down there, far below, she could see tiny figures running assault courses and sparring. Every floor of the structure was ringed by an identical walkway, all lined with doors and regularly patrolled by armed guards. Hanging from the centre of the ceiling above them was a multi-storey glass structure that was occupied by what looked like a high-tech control centre. From where Laura was standing the whole place looked very much like a prison.
‘What is this place?’ Tom asked as he and Penny looked down into the pit.
‘This is the Glasshouse,’ Anastasia said with a cold smile, ‘the most sophisticated operative training facility on Earth and also your new home. Here you will be honed into weapons, those of you that are strong enough at least. Those who are weak, those who fail, will perish, as they should.’ She turned towards the waiting soldiers. ‘Guards, take the girl with the leg wound to the medical centre and escort Miss Brand and the boy to their new accommodations.’
The soldiers stepped forward and grabbed Laura, Tom and Penny and marched them away. Anastasia looked down into the training area of the Glasshouse and found herself thinking about the previous facility that had gone by that name. She thought of the flames consuming the building around her and unconsciously she reached up and touched the scars that covered her face. Seeing Raven had brought back many unpleasant memories. Natalya had been both her greatest success and her most disappointing failure. The next time that they met she would be made to pay for everything she had done, that much was certain. This was, after all, just the first stage of a much larger plan and by the time she was finished G.L.O.V.E. would lie in ruins and the world would be hers for the taking.
Several floors below a guard shoved Laura in the back, pushing her inside a tiny, cramped cell with a toilet, a sink and a thin mattress on a concrete slab.
‘Get changed into these,’ the guard said, pointing to the boots, grey combat trousers and white T-shirt that lay on the bed inside the cell. ‘I’ll be back in five minutes to take whatever clothes you’re wearing now for disposal.’
The door to the cell slammed shut and locked with a click. Laura slowly stripped out of her Alpha jumpsuit and put on her new uniform. When she had changed, she sat down on the bed and picked up her H.I.V.E. uniform, staring at the silver fist and globe badge on the chest. As she looked at the badge she began to cry, feeling for all the world like she might never stop.
‘Now what was it that you wanted to discuss, Mr Malpense,’ Nero said as he sat down behind the desk in his office. He gestured to the seat on the other side of the desk.
‘No, thank you, I’d rather stand,’ Otto said. ‘I need to talk to you about how the Disciples discovered the location of the Hunt.’
‘We have been investigating precisely that in your absence,’ Nero replied. ‘It appears that Cole Harrington may have been working for the Disciples and that after he stole the information from H.I.V.E.mind he transmitted it to them. We subsequently found a hidden covert transmitter in his quarters but before we could question him any further about what he had done he took his own life.’
‘There’s only one problem with that story,’ Otto said with a frown.
‘And what might that be?’
‘It’s complete rubbish,’ Otto replied calmly. ‘Harrington never transmitted that information. He never even saw the location of the Hunt. He didn’t even steal the data from H.I.V.E.mind.’
‘Then who did?’
‘I did,’ Otto replied. ‘I stole H.I.V.E.mind’s source code but only because a core dump was the only way to get a copy of the examination papers. We were all tired of the hard time that we were getting from Chief Dekker and Laura suggested that we get our own back on her by stealing the examination papers. We knew that she had been placed in charge of security for the exams and we figured that getting the questions and giving them to everyone would make her look stupid.’
‘I see,’ Nero said. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, I managed to get my hands on the core dump but then Harrington and those two morons, Block and Tackle, jumped us. Before I had a chance to retrieve the exam papers I was forced to use my abilities to copy the data from Laura’s Blackbox to Harrington’s so that it would look like he was the one who’d stolen the data. I didn’t feel too guilty about it considering he was planning to kill us so that he could sell H.I.V.E.mind’s source code to the highest bidder. Looking back, I should have realised that there was no way he could have known about the core dump, including H.I.V.E.mind’s source code, unless someone had already told him that was what we were planning to do. The same person who had told Laura that if she didn’t put this whole plan into motion and get the location of the Hunt for the Disciples, they would murder her family. The person who sent Harrington after us to give her a cover for getting rid of Laura. There was just one thing that they didn’t allow for. They didn’t realise that H.I.V.E.mind would figure out what was going on and trigger the security alarms. Before they could kill Laura and me, since I was the only witness, the alarms went off and they were forced to act as if they were just reacting to the security alert. At the time I thought that they’d managed to get to the accommodation block incredibly quickly – H.I.V.E.mind had triggered a school-wide alarm, so there was no way anyone could have known exactly where in the school the problem was. Raven only knew where to come because H.I.V.E.mind told her that the door to the accommodation block had been opened. Do you remember who it was that opened the door? Who got there before anyone else? The person who put this entire plan into motion and then presumably killed Cole Harrington to cover her tracks.’
‘Dekker,’ Nero whispered.
‘Bingo,’ Otto replied. ‘Laura told us that she had been dragged into Dekker’s office just before she came up with the plan to hack into H.I.V.E.mind. I’m willing to bet that it was then that Dekker showed Laura evidence that the Disciples had her family and told her that if she didn’t do exactly as she was told that they would be killed. Dekker’s run this whole thing. We stole the data, Laura gave the data to Dekker, Dekker sent the information to the Disciples.’
Nero pushed a button on his desk. A moment later Raven’s voice came over the speaker.
‘Raven here.’
‘Could you come to my office immediately please – there is something that we need to urgently discuss.’
Nero looked at Otto, his expression furious.
‘Do you realise what your actions have caused?’ Nero asked. ‘An entire year’s Alpha students, bar six, missing or dead. A massacre! You must realise how serious the punishment for everyone involved with this will be.’
‘Yes,’ Otto replied, ‘but neither Laura nor I knew what was being planned. If we’d known, even for a second, what was going to happen, of course we would never have done this.’
‘Who exactly was involved with the theft of H.I.V.E.mind’s source code?’ Nero asked angrily.
‘Just me and Laura,’ Otto lied. ‘It was a hack, a very clever hack, but we were the only ones involved. That was why Dekker and the Disciples choose Laura – she’s the best hacker in the school. If anyone was going to be able to somehow hack into H.I.V.E.mind’s central core it was her. They also knew she was vulnerable, because they knew she had family.’
The door to Nero’s office hissed open and Raven walked into the room.
‘What’s going on?’ Raven asked with a frown.
Nero quickly explained to Raven everything that Otto had just told him.
‘So how long do you want me to make it last before I let Dekker die?’ Raven asked angrily when Nero had finished.
‘She doesn’t die before I know absolutely everything she does about the Disciples,’ Nero replied.
‘Understood,’ Raven replied.
‘There is something else I wish to discuss with you,’ Nero said. ‘There is the small matter of Mr Malpense’s punishment for his involvement in this situation. I fear that I have only one option even when your past service to this school and G.L.O.V.E. is taken into consideration, Otto. There is, however, something you may do to make amends in some way for the chaos that your actions have caused. Here is what I propose . . .’
Otto walked into accommodation block seven and saw Wing, Shelby and Franz waiting for him on their usual hang-out sofa. He didn’t quite know how he was going to tell them what Nero had just decided.
‘Hey,’ Shelby said, ‘how’s it going?’
‘I’ve told Nero about Laura,’ Otto said, sitting down, ‘and I’ve told him that Laura and I were the only ones involved with the raid on H.I.V.E.mind.’
‘It is not right that you should shoulder the blame for that alone, my friend,’ Wing said, frowning. ‘I would rather we had all taken our share of the responsibility.’
‘Wing is right. We are all being involved, Otto,’ Franz said, nodding.
‘Yeah, stand together, fall together and all that stuff,’ Shelby said.
‘It’s a nice idea, guys, and I appreciate the sentiment,’ Otto said with a sad smile, ‘but I don’t think there’s much point in us all getting expelled.’
‘What do you mean?’ Wing asked, sounding shocked.
‘I’ve been expelled,’ Otto said, looking down at the floor. ‘I’m leaving immediately. I just came to say goodbye.’
‘Oh God, no, Otto,’ Shelby said, ‘that’s not fair. You didn’t know what was going on. It wasn’t like we helped the Disciples deliberately. It wasn’t even as if Laura had any choice. What was she supposed to do – just let them kill her entire family?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Otto said. ‘I get the feeling that the person who really caused all this is about to have a really, really bad day.’ He explained quickly to his friends about Dekker’s involvement in the whole affair.
‘I always knew there was something funny about that witch,’ Shelby said angrily.
‘Yeah, well, Raven’s been sent to ask her a few questions so I think it’s safe to say that she’s going to get what she deserves,’ Otto said. ‘Look, I haven’t got long. I just wanted to tell you all not to worry about me, I’ll be fine. This isn’t the end. I’ll see you guys again. It’s a pretty small world for people like us.’ He stood up and looked around the accommodation block. ‘You know, I never thought that I’d say this but I’m going to miss this place.’
‘Come here,’ Shelby said, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him hard. ‘Who on earth am I going to squabble with now? Take care of yourself, Otto.’ She stepped back, her hand to her mouth and tears in her eyes.
‘Be having good luck, Otto,’ Franz said, shaking his hand. ‘You have been a good friend, I will be hoping to see you again soon.’
‘Me too, Franz,’ Otto said with a smile.
Wing stepped forward and put his hands on Otto’s shoulders. ‘You are not just my friend,’ Wing said, ‘you are my brother.’ He pulled Otto towards him and hugged him so hard that Otto was afraid he might break his spine. ‘And brothers are always together in spirit. Nothing can change that.’
‘Feeling’s mutual, big guy,’ Otto replied, ‘feeling’s mutual.’ He pulled away from Wing and gave the three of them a broad smile. ‘Gotta go, Shroud’s waiting.’ He turned and walked towards the exit without looking back.
‘Otto, Laura, Nigel, the whole of our year of Alphas, all gone,’ Shelby said, fighting back tears as she watched him go. ‘What are we going to do, guys?’
‘What we always do,’ Wing said, taking her hand. ‘Survive.’
‘Hello, Max, what can I do for you?’ Diabolus Darkdoom said.
‘Diabolus,’ Nero replied, ‘I’m afraid I have to give you some very bad news. Nigel has been captured by the Disciples.’
‘What?’ Darkdoom said, looking stunned. ‘Where is he? Was he hurt?’
‘He was shot, Diabolus,’ Nero said sadly. ‘His current condition will, I’m afraid, depend very much on how quickly he received medical treatment. Diabolus, there’s something else you should know. He was captured by Anastasia Furan.’
‘That’s not possible,’ Darkdoom said, shaking his head, ‘Anastasia is d—’
‘That was precisely my reaction as well,’ Nero sighed. ‘Raven was face to face with her – there is no doubt it was her. It appears that she is now at the head of the Disciples.’
‘Do you have any idea where Nigel is being held?’
‘No, I’m afraid not but I do have an idea how we might be able to find out.’
‘Really? How?’ Darkdoom asked.
‘I’ll brief you later,’ Nero replied. ‘I’m just putting things in motion at the moment.’
‘How did this happen?’ Darkdoom asked, sounding bewildered.
‘The Hunt was ambushed by Disciple forces after its location was leaked to them by Chief Dekker.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Darkdoom gasped. ‘Dekker worked for me for nearly fifteen years. I trusted her completely, that’s why I recommended her to you.’
‘Raven is questioning her, Diabolus, but the evidence we have so far appears damning.’
‘Good God, Max,’ Diabolus said, shaking his head, ‘she could have been feeding them information for years for all we know. She knew everything about my organisation.’
‘It might help to explain how the Disciples got their hands on the thermoptic camouflage technology. Their forces were using it when they ambushed the Hunt.’
‘This is a disaster, Max,’ Darkdoom said, looking suddenly tired. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘Just one thing,’ Nero replied.
‘Wake up, Dekker,’ Raven whispered in her ear as she cracked a tiny stimulant capsule under her nose.
Dekker woke up with a start, struggling against the straps that held her to the chair she was sitting in. She saw Raven standing in front of her with a nasty smile on her face. Without hesitation she crunched her back teeth down hard on the hidden compartment in one of her molars. She closed her eyes again and waited. A few seconds later she opened her eyes as she realised nothing was happening.
‘Looking for this?’ Raven asked, holding up the tiny capsule that she had removed from Dekker’s mouth while she slept. ‘Oh, you don’t get off that easily, Dekker. Now why don’t you tell me everything there is to know about the Disciples.’
‘Go to hell,’ Dekker snarled.
‘You know, I was actually hoping that would be your response. OK, girls,’ Raven said, pulling the twin blades from the sheaths on her back, ‘looks like we’ve got a long night ahead of us.’
Otto walked across the hangar bay towards the waiting Shroud with a backpack slung over his shoulder. Nero stood beside the loading ramp.
‘You have everything you need?’ Nero asked as Otto approached.
‘Yes,’ Otto replied, ‘as long as you’re sure that the school doesn’t need what you’ve given me more than I do right now.’
‘Professor Pike assures me that we will be fine,’ Nero replied. ‘Be careful out there, Otto. It’s more dangerous than you might imagine at the moment.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Otto said with a smile. ‘I’m sure I’ll find someone to watch my back.’
Nero stuck out his hand and Otto shook it.
‘The school will not be the same without you, Mr Malpense.’
Otto nodded and walked up the ramp. Nero watched Otto disappear from view as the ramp whirred shut. He walked away as the Shroud’s engines increased in volume and the aircraft lifted off the pad and soared upwards and out of the crater, leaving H.I.V.E. behind.
Nero gestured for the other members of the G.L.O.V.E. ruling council to be seated as he walked into the conference room.
‘Thank you all for making the journey to be here today. I know it’s unusual but we have something extremely important to discuss. You are all graduates of this school, in fact, you are all graduates of the Alpha stream specifically. That is, in large part, why I selected you to make up the new ruling council after the events of Zero Hour. It was not a question of trust or loyalty, it was because you were the best. All of you are therefore familiar with the exercise known as the Hunt. You have all taken part in it at some point and you are all familiar with the special place it has in the history of this school. It is my sorry duty to inform you that two days ago the Disciples ambushed those taking part in the Hunt. So far the toll of those dead or missing presumed captured stands at sixteen support staff and thirty-eight Alpha students. Almost the entire year of Alphas has been wiped out.’
There were gasps of shock and dismay from the others round the table.
‘When we last met I told you that we had no choice but to wait for the Disciples to make their move. They did. Now the time has come for retribution. I am not talking about punishment or reprisals, I am talking about the wholesale destruction of the Disciples once and for all. We are going to wipe this scum from the face of the Earth. Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake, as of now we are at war. This is one of the most serious tests of strength that this organisation has ever faced and we will not falter in the face of it. We will need to give our fullest support to one another and also call on the support of our allies. With that in mind I have asked a veteran member of this organisation if he would, despite his reluctance, retake his seat on the ruling council. A man whose own son’s name is on the roll of the dead and missing after this atrocity. Diabolus.’
‘Thank you, Max,’ Darkdoom said, his holographic image appearing in the seat at the far end of the table. ‘I always swore that I would not return to being a full member of this council but the time has come for all of us to put aside what we want and do what we must. I don’t know if my son is alive or dead but I do know one thing. I know that I’m going to make damn sure that the people responsible are going to pay. I don’t care what it takes, they will be held accountable.’
‘Thank you, Diabolus,’ Nero said. ‘You should all know that this happened because of a leak within H.I.V.E. That leak has now been . . . plugged. The person responsible was someone we trusted, someone who had served G.L.O.V.E. for many years. I do not want to start a witch hunt within our organisation, but at the same time we have to be aware of the possibility that there are other traitors in our midst. Be vigilant.’
Nero punched a button on the console in front of him and a holographic globe appeared, floating in the middle of the table.
‘Here is what we are planning for the first wave of attacks . . .’
Mary and Andrew Brand sat holding each other, as their baby son Douglas slept in his mother’s arms. They had no idea how long they’d been kept there in the darkness but it seemed like a long time since the group of armed men had broken into their house and abducted them. They had undergone a long and terrifying journey in the back of the van with bags over their heads before a man in a mask had taken their photograph and then just locked them here in this bare concrete room with a bucket for a toilet and one meal a day. They had no idea why they were there.
There were heavy footsteps outside and they heard the sound of the door unlocking. The lights in the room came on and two men entered wearing black ski masks. They were both carrying pistols.
‘Get the kid,’ one of the men said. ‘Minerva wants him for the Glasshouse.’
‘What about them?’ the other man asked, waving his pistol at Mary and Andrew.
‘We don’t need them,’ the first man said, cocking the hammer on his pistol. ‘They’re expend—’
The two men both gasped as glowing purple blades burst simultaneously from the centre of each of their chests. A moment later the blades disappeared again as both men toppled to the floor to reveal a figure standing behind them in a skin-tight black bodysuit and a black mask, a glowing purple sword in each hand.
‘My name is Raven,’ the figure said. ‘I’m a friend of your daughter. We have to go . . . NOW!’
two weeks later
Otto walked out of the tube station and on to the street. People bustled around him but he was slowly getting used to being back in a big city after the comparatively small community he had been part of at H.I.V.E. What was harder to ignore was the constant hum of all of the digital devices and networks that surrounded him, day and night. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and looked inside. He was getting low on cash but that wasn’t a problem. He walked for a couple of minutes until he found an ATM on a slightly quieter street. He waited as the woman who was using the machine completed her withdrawal before he stepped up and placed his hand on the numeric keypad. He closed his eyes for the briefest of instants and connected to the machine. First he bypassed the security routines inside the rudimentary computer that ran the machine and then he erased the hard drive inside it that was recording the faces of everyone that used it. He waited as the machine counted his money and then took the several hundred pounds it gave him. For Otto, it was like taking candy from a baby. He walked away down the street, stuffing the money into his wallet.
Don’t you ever feel like a bully treating those poor machines like that? H.I.V.E.mind said inside his head.
‘Oh, come on,’ Otto replied, ‘it’s not like they’ve got feelings.’
As far as you know.
‘What is this? The digital brotherhood or something?’ Otto asked with a grin.
You may laugh but then you don’t know how close the internet is to becoming self-aware.
‘The internet with a personality, now that is a scary thought.’
Suddenly the Blackbox in Otto’s pocket began to vibrate. He pulled it out and examined the screen.
‘Looks like we’re on,’ Otto said.
I am decrypting the data packet now, H.I.V.E.mind replied. There appear to be three separate Disciple cells active within the London area at this time. Should I prepare infiltration parameters for review?
‘Yeah, let’s see who the first lucky Disciple we’re going to pay a visit to is,’ Otto said as the information began to flow into his brain.
On a rooftop nearby a figure pulled a black mask over her head and then drew a glowing purple blade from the sheath on her back. Beneath her mask a smile spread across her face as she watched Otto head off down the street.
‘Now it’s our turn,’ Raven said quietly to herself. ‘Let’s go get ’em, kid.’
She leapt from the rooftop and disappeared into the night.
fifteen years ago
Natalya ran across the rooftop and sprang into the air, smashing through the skylight and dropping to the tiled floor of the room below. She drew the two swords from her back and waited. Moments later armed guards began to flood into the room. Natalya dropped a cylinder billowing smoke to the floor and exploded into action. She couldn’t see the guards through the billowing white fog but she didn’t need to. They were slow, clumsy and noisy. She tracked their movements as they stumbled around her and closing her eyes, she danced. Her swords sang as they swept through the air, moving faster and faster, finding their targets flawlessly. The screams of the guards as they fell just drove Natalya to move faster and strike harder. In seconds it was over, the smoke slowly cleared and she stood alone in the centre of the room, surrounded by a dozen bodies. She knew that her target was close now. She sprinted up the nearby staircase and stopped outside the intricately carved wooden doors at the top. She pressed her ear to the wood, listening for any sound from within but she could hear nothing. She slowly turned the handle and eased the door open. In the room beyond there was a single high-backed chair facing a roaring log fire. Natalya walked silently across the floor towards the chair.
‘Hello, Natalya,’ Anastasia Furan said, getting up out of the chair and turning to face her. ‘Or would you prefer Raven?’
‘Madame Furan,’ Natalya said, sliding the swords into the crossed sheaths on her back and dropping to one knee, head bowed.
‘You have passed your final test, my dear,’ Anastasia said, walking towards her. ‘This is the moment you have been trained for. Do you feel ready?’
‘I want nothing more,’ Natalya replied.
‘Very well, but before I give you your first mission I want to ask you something.’
‘Of course. Anything,’ Natalya replied.
‘Tell me, Natalya, do you still want to kill me?’
‘Very much,’ Natalya replied, head still bowed.
‘Then why do you not cut me down now, on this very spot?’
‘Because it would change nothing,’ Natalya replied.
‘Would it not give you satisfaction?’
‘I feel no satisfaction in killing. I am an instrument, a tool, a weapon. If it is not you wielding that weapon then it will just be someone else. You talked to me many years ago about the illusion of choice. You were right – you have taught me well.’
‘Then truly you are ready,’ Anastasia said with a smile. She picked up a large manila envelope from the table beside the chair and unsealed it, pulling a black and white photograph from inside.
‘This is your target. He murdered someone I loved very much, many years ago. He is an elusive and dangerous man and that is why his execution must be swift and merciless.’
‘Of course.’
‘His name,’ Anastasia said, handing Natalya the photograph, ‘is Maximilian Nero.’
