Rogue by Mark Walden Page A

grin.

    ‘Did you find anything?’ Raven asked as she walked into the cluttered workshop at the rear of the Science and Technology classroom.
    The Professor looked up from the laptop on the workbench in front of him and stared at Raven for a moment like he didn’t know who she was. A moment later he seemed to zone back in and focus on her properly.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ the Professor said with a slight frown. ‘What was that?’
    ‘The laptop – did you find anything on it?’ Raven said, gesturing at the computer.
    ‘Oh, yes, but it was quite well protected.’ He pulled a small square of grey putty-like material from the pocket of his lab coat. ‘Though I think that much C4 is rather excessive. It was rigged to blow on the third incorrect password entry. That would have made retrieval of any data from the hard drive problematic. Heaven only knows what you’re supposed to do if you’re a poor typist.’ He slipped the explosive back into his pocket.
    Raven was suddenly rather glad that she had not tried to hack into the machine herself. Khan might have been paranoid, but you had to admire his dedication to computer security. There had been enough explosive concealed inside the laptop to destroy a tank.
    ‘Anyway, it’s quite safe now,’ the Professor continued. ‘I’ve just been looking at the first few files that seem relevant to what you’re searching for.’
    Raven stepped behind him and looked over his shoulder at the display. On the screen were a number of architectural drawings. She was no expert, but the lack of any exterior windows suggested that the facility was probably hidden below ground.
    ‘It looks like a fairly standard operations base,’ Raven said, frowning. ‘You could build that anywhere. We need something that gives us a locational clue. Is there anything like that?’
    ‘Nothing immediately obvious,’ the Professor said with a frown. ‘Hold on – what’s this?’
    He opened another file and inside were a series of images of scanned receipts for construction materials. All the scans had large black blocks obscuring any indication of where the materials in question had been ordered from or were being delivered to. Khan had gone to great lengths to ensure that nobody would be able to identify the location of the facility easily. The Professor continued to scroll through the images, hoping that one might have been missed or that there might be some other clue that would give them an indication of where Trent was hiding.
    ‘Stop,’ Raven said. ‘Go back.’
    The Professor pulled up the image that he had gone past a few moments before.
    ‘There,’ Raven said, pointing at the screen. ‘What’s that?’
    Just visible at the edge of the scanned document was a tiny mark. It looked like something had been trapped on the glass of the scanner when the image had originally been captured. The Professor centred the screen on the object and zoomed in. The tiny speck became a blurry black blob. He quickly tapped at the keyboard and the resolution improved ten-fold. Now they could both make out a distinctive organic shape to the object.
    ‘What is it?’ Raven asked.
    ‘Some kind of spore or seed, by the looks of it,’ the Professor said, examining the image carefully. ‘If I were you I’d show it to Ms Gonzales. She might be able to tell you more.’ Ms Gonzales was the head of H.I.V.E.’s Biotechnology department and an expert on all kinds of plants. ‘I’ll copy it to a thumb drive for you.’
    The Professor quickly inserted a compact memory stick into the port on the side of the laptop and copied the image on to it before handing it to Raven.
    ‘Do you really think this might help with finding Otto?’ the Professor asked as Raven turned to leave.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Raven replied, ‘but it’s the only lead we’ve got.’

    ‘Are you OK?’ Wing asked as Laura sat down at the table in the dining hall.
    ‘If one more person asks me that, I’m going to smack them in the