Higher Institute of Villainous Education Read Free Page B

table, was a woman in a long black dress and fur coat. Her appearance was as unusual as everything else that Otto had seen so far that day. She had a skeletal face, with thin, almost translucent skin that was stretched tight across her cheekbones. She wore a monocle in her left eye and was holding aloft a long, thin cigarette holder, only lowering it occasionally to tap the smouldering tip into an ashtray on the table in front of her. The most immediately striking thing about this woman though was her hair. It was quite simply enormous, like a huge curved ebony sculpture. This was a hairstyle that would require an architect, not a hairdresser. It was a monument to hairspray, vast, immobile, indestructible. She seemed amused to see them, smiling in a way that suggested she was in on a rather good joke that everyone else in the room was unaware of. As the last of the group entered the room she placed her cigarette holder in the ashtray and addressed them.
    ‘Please come in, children. Sit anywhere,’ she said, gesturing to the seats around the table. They spread out around the conference table and found themselves seats. Otto quickly chose a chair about halfway down the table and waited while the others found their own places. Wing settled down next to him.
    ‘So you are this year’s Alphas, are you?’ she said as the last few settled into their seats. She smiled again; the faces around the table all watched her expectantly. ‘My name is Contessa Sinistre, but I am known to everybody here as simply the Contessa, and it is my great pleasure to be the one who will introduce you to your new life at H.I.V.E. We will begin our tour today with a very short film, after which I will take some of your questions. Let us begin.’ The Contessa had an Italian accent – her voice was soothing, almost musical, and some of the group seemed to relax visibly as she spoke.
    The lights in the room dimmed and a screen whirred down from the ceiling at the opposite end of the table from the Contessa. Displayed on the screen was the same symbol depicting a fist smashing down upon the globe. The symbol faded away to be replaced with an image of the island they had just flown over with the smouldering, apparently active volcano at its centre. A voiceover began in an American accent.
    ‘Welcome to The Island, an undisclosed tropical location that plays home to H.I.V.E., the world’s most unique and prestigious educational establishment. Founded in the late 1960s by Dr Nero as a training ground for the leaders of tomorrow, the Higher Institute of Villainous Education has an illustrious history. Now in its fourth decade of operation, the Institute represents a state-ofthe-art training facility, fully equipped to better prepare YOU to rule the world of the future.’
    The image changed to a cutaway diagram of the interior structure of the island. It was immediately clear to Otto that they had only seen a fraction of the facility as a whole. This diagram, if it was accurate, showed miles of passages and caverns leading off in all directions from the entrance cavern area. This area seemed to be the central hub of the structure, which would make sense if the crater through which they’d flown in was the only way in or out. There certainly didn’t seem to be any other obvious exits displayed on the diagram. H.I.V.E. seemed to Otto to be a strangely appropriate name. The film continued.
    ‘Dr Nero’s motto has always been ‘‘It takes the best to produce the worst’’, and so he has made it his goal to assemble the finest teachers and trainers from around the world and provide them with the facilities they need to get the job done.’
    The film cut to a fast-paced stream of images showing classrooms, laboratories, firing ranges, a huge tank with several shark fins breaking the surface of the water, rows of computer workstations and finally, Otto noted with pleasure, what looked like a vast and extremely well-stocked library.
    ‘Life as a student