Rogue by Mark Walden Page B

mouth,’ Laura said irritably.
    ‘Ignore the grumpy Scot,’ Shelby said with a grin as she sat down next to her. ‘She didn’t get much sleep last night.’
    ‘Coding into the wee small hours again?’ Lucy asked as she took a seat on the other side of Laura.
    ‘Actually, no,’ Laura said. ‘I was trying to help sort out the gremlins in the school’s systems. I can give you all the technical details if you want.’
    ‘No,’ all three of the others said in perfect unison.
    ‘Luddites,’ Laura said with a slight smile. Otto would have wanted to know every last detail. Just one more reason why she missed having him around.
    ‘Morning,’ Nigel said, sitting down with his breakfast tray. ‘Gosh, Laura, you look terrible.’
    Shelby placed a calming hand on Laura’s wrist as she saw the knuckles on her clenched fist whiten. Franz sat down next to Nigel with a rather confused look on his face.
    ‘I am thinking I must be seeing things,’ Franz said. ‘I am walking past Block and Tackle just now and they are . . . well . . . hugging each other.’
    Laura gave a quick snort of laughter.
    ‘I thought you said it would wear off in a couple of hours,’ she said, grinning at Lucy.
    ‘Well, it kinda depends on how intelligent the individual is, so . . .’
    ‘What did you do?’ Shelby asked, looking from one to the other with a raised eyebrow. Laura quickly recounted the details of her encounter with the two bullies the previous day.
    ‘Awwww, that’s so sweet,’ Shelby said with a broad grin. ‘Young love.’
    ‘A truly horrifying mental image has just formed in my head,’ Wing said with a frown. ‘I am only glad that I did not have to witness what you have just described in person.’
    ‘Do you think you could use that voice of yours to give tall, dark and handsome here a sense of humour?’ Shelby asked Lucy with a grin.
    ‘There are limits to even my powers,’ Lucy replied with a chuckle.
    ‘I suspect that I am once again being mocked,’ Wing said, the tiniest of smiles tugging at one corner of his mouth.
    ‘You know we all love you just the way you are, Spock,’ Shelby said quickly, and Laura and Lucy both started laughing at Wing’s slightly wounded expression.
    All six of them were still laughing and joking as Dr Nero walked up to the table with a serious expression.
    ‘Nigel, could you come with me, please?’ Nero asked quietly.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Nigel replied, looking slightly puzzled. ‘Is there something wrong?’
    ‘If you could just come with me I’ll explain,’ Nero said. Nigel got up and followed Nero out of the dining hall.
    ‘What’s that all about?’ Shelby asked as she watched them walk away.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ Laura said with a slight frown, ‘but I have a horrible feeling it’s something bad.’

    ‘Where did you find this?’ Ms Gonzales asked as she looked at the enhanced image of the mysterious object that Raven and the Professor had found amongst Khan’s scanned documents.
    ‘That’s not really important,’ Raven said slightly impatiently. ‘What’s important is where it came from.’
    ‘It’s hard to say. It’s obviously a seed pod of some kind,’ Ms Gonzales said with a frown. ‘Let me run it through my system.’
    Raven watched as she started to run the image through the huge catalogue of different plant species that made up H.I.V.E.’s botanical database.
    ‘This might take a minute or two,’ Ms Gonzales said, watching the screen as her system worked to identify the mysterious seed. Raven looked around the hydroponics facility. It was not a part of the school that she had occasion to visit very often, but it was an impressive structure nevertheless. Stored within the geodesic dome were a huge variety of plants, many of which had unique properties. Some were kept for their medicinal uses, but a far larger number of the collected species were cultivated for their more nefarious purposes. From past experience Raven knew that some of the