Enemy Invasion Read Free Page B

removed his hand and pressed the on button. The screen flickered into life and Windows started to boot. Jonesey threw an arm around him.
    “You’re a genius! A complete freak, but a genius!”
    Hack shushed him. “Keep it down!”
    “Sorry, Tony Stark! ” Jonesey said as he closed the laptop. “Forgot it has to be a big secret!”
    “Have you looked at the net recently? Beijing is talking about registering kids with virus-related powers. So is Washington. I think that’s who’s been watching me. Some
government organization.”
    “Chinese? American?”
    Hack shrugged. “Who knows?”
    Jonesey snapped his fingers and turned to his desktop PC. “Check this out,” he said, and brought up a series of saved images and web grabs. “Been doing some research for
you.”
    Hack leaned in as his friend flicked through the pages in rapid succession: images of military personnel walking alongside a group of teenagers, a grainy photograph of an aircraft carrier,
satellite photos of a base in a desert, and endless blog entries on the subject of the fall virus, kids with superhuman powers and an organization calling itself HIDRA.
    “HIDRA,” he read aloud. “What’s that?”
    Jonesey sniggered. “Stands for Hyper-Infectious Disease Response Agency. Can you believe it? The UN created it ten years ago to investigate virus outbreaks. It was intended as a scientific
operation, but it got taken over by the military pretty fast. This guy’s name keeps coming up.” Jonesey flicked to an image of a hard-faced man with a crew cut so short he was
practically bald. The man looked directly at the camera – blue eyes flashing with a kind of fury. “Major Bright. He used to work for HIDRA but went rogue – sounds like a real
lunatic. HIDRA arrested him for crimes against humanity or something, but he disappeared six months ago, presumed dead. Word is he’s alive but in hiding. There’s, like, a gazillion
conspiracy blogs about this guy and HIDRA.”
    Now Hack laughed. “Yeah. All rumour, hearsay and pure fiction.”
    “No smoke without fire,” Jonesey said. “In fact—”
    He stopped as a commotion broke out near the escalators. One of the stallholders was screaming at a stranger dressed like an American tourist. The stallholder had snatched a pair of sunglasses
from the man’s head and brandished them in the air. There was some kind of micro-device attached to one arm – a camera? The stallholder thought so.
    “You like to take pictures, huh? You spying on me? Who you from?”
    The tourist held up his hands and backed towards the escalators. The stallholder and his friends had other ideas, however, moving in to block his escape route.
    “I said, who you from?” the little man said, jabbing a finger in the tall American’s chest.
    Hack and Jonesey watched this from the cubicle opening. “Another corporate spy,” Jonesey said with a shake of his head. “We speed up their systems, fix glitches in their
software, then they come down here and try to steal our tricks. Goddamned big business. And they call us pirates!”
    “I don’t think that’s what this guy is after.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because I’ve seen him before.” Hack hadn’t been sure at first because the clothes and haircut were different, but now he was: the “tourist” was the coat guy
he’d seen four times on the MTR underground system. “I’m out of here.”
    He moved to the back of the stall, planning to jump the cubicle wall and exit via the emergency stairwell just a few metres away. If he was lucky, the fake tourist wouldn’t even notice him
leave.
    “Wait!” Jonesey said, grabbing his arm. “What about tomorrow night? The IFC infiltration, remember?”
    IFC infiltration – typical Jonesey, making everything sound like a stealth mission. Hack had almost forgotten his promise to help with the Goodware Inc. issue.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I should be laying low. I’m going to keep my head down in Tai-O