Aftershock Read Free Page A

from birth to act as a physical host to an insane artificial intelligence. Thankfully, since the final destruction of Overlord several months earlier, he no longer had to worry about that horrific possibility but he still carried the hardware around inside his skull that would have made it possible. The organic super computer implanted in the centre of his brain made him capable of near instantaneous comprehension and perfect recall. It was something which he had always taken for granted and he sometimes forgot that his friends probably still found it slightly odd.
    ‘I’d happily swap all the suffering that this thing in my head has caused for having to do a bit of revision, believe me,’ Otto said with a sad smile.
    ‘We all know that, my friend,’ Wing said, putting his hand on Otto’s shoulder. ‘None of what happened with Overlord was your fault.’ Their final encounter with the psychotic artificial intelligence had cost the life of their friend and fellow Alpha student, Lucy Dexter, a loss which they all still felt acutely. ‘I must admit though that I too, like Shelby, find the prospect of this Hunt intriguing.’
    ‘Yeah, well, it’s all well and good for you wannabe ninjas,’ Otto said with a smile. ‘Some of us actually don’t find the idea of being chased through the wilderness by Raven and a bunch of G.L.O.V.E. goons particularly exciting.’
    ‘That’s OK, you can act as a diversion,’ Shelby grinned. ‘The ten minutes that it takes Raven to catch you will be ten minutes she’s not searching for me. I want that twenty-four hour record and every little helps.’
    ‘And the selfless spirit of teamwork continues to burn brightly at H.I.V.E.,’ Otto said. ‘You know, it’s actually quite moving.’
    ‘Hey,’ Shelby said, ‘it’s not my fault you’re the slowest zebra.’
    ‘Speaking of helpless prey . . .’ Wing said as they rounded the corner leading to the classroom. At the far end of the corridor Laura was walking out of an office with her head bowed as a woman in an orange jumpsuit handed her Blackbox back to her. The woman was Chief Dekker, H.I.V.E.’s new head of Security and someone who was rapidly becoming a major headache. She was tall and painfully thin with short grey hair and eyes that always seemed somehow to be watching you. She had been appointed after the untimely demise of H.I.V.E.’s former head of Security, Chief Lewis, and she had been a thorn in their sides ever since her arrival at the school. She had made it abundantly clear that Otto and his friends were right at the top of her to-do list and that was proving to be a rather unpleasant place in which to find oneself. She scowled at the Alphas before closing the door to her office as Laura walked towards them, looking shell-shocked.
    ‘What did the Wicked Witch of the West want this time then?’ Shelby asked as Laura approached.
    ‘Oh, just the usual,’ Laura replied, sounding rather shaken. ‘Where have I been, where am I going, let’s just check that on your Blackbox, shall we? You know.’
    ‘Geez, what’s her problem with us exactly?’ Shelby said, sounding angry. ‘It’s not like we’ve done anything to deserve this . . . well, not done anything recently at any rate.’
    ‘She does seem to rather have it in for us. I can’t imagine why,’ Otto said.
    ‘I suspect that it may have something to do with the fact that we have been directly involved with the near destruction of H.I.V.E. on at least four separate occasions,’ Wing said matter of factly.
    ‘Yeah, I suppose that might have something to do with it,’ Otto replied with a crooked smile.

    Otto lay on his bed in the quarters that he shared with Wing reading a book called International Banking: Supervillainy for the Twenty-First Century . To a casual observer it would have looked like he was just searching for a certain place in the book as he flicked through it, turning the pages at the rate of two per second. The strange truth was