S.T.I.N.K.B.O.M.B. (24 page)

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Archie cleared his throat. ‘Well, I. . . er . . . it’s funny but. . .’

‘Everyone knows the quickest way to Gamma Sector is in the lift. It takes you straight to the observation gantry overlooking the Transmutator itself. Then you can just take the stairs down
to the operations platform, which is where Doctor Doom will be preparing the control deck for his ultimate experiment. Otherwise you’d have to go through bio screening and security, and you
know what a headache that can be.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Archie nodded. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘Well, we’re all on the same evil team, right?’ the guard laughed.

Maintaining a dignified pace Archie headed towards the elevator, followed by Finn.

When the lift doors slid shut Archie leaned against the mirrored side and blew out hard.

‘Well, that was close,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said Finn. ‘It’s lucky you knew they’d renamed all the sectors or we’d have been in serious trouble.’

As the lift glided smoothly upward Archie called Barney to update him on their progress. ‘Yankee to Zulu,’ he whispered. ‘Come in, Zulu, do you read?’

There was a long pause before Barney’s voice came into Archie’s earpiece.

‘This is Zulu.’ He sounded strange. ‘The clawed man has an unbreakable grip.’

‘This is no time for codes,’ Archie said sternly. ‘What is your status?’

‘I was given away by what I had hidden.’

‘Seriously, Barney, cut it out.’

‘The ant is strong but its weakness is sugar.’

‘Barney!’ Archie waited but there was no reply. ‘Barney!’

Silence.

The lift doors slid apart and two large figures dressed in white stepped into the elevator as Archie and Finn stepped out. They found themselves on a small metal balcony about
fifteen feet above the glossy white floor of a huge rectangular room. The gantry ran along three sides of the room, excluding the far wall, and a gangway spanned the width of the room, connecting
to another balcony directly opposite.

The footbridge passed above a large leather chair positioned behind a banked U-shaped control deck covered in knobs and dials. An imposing figure dressed in black was standing in front of the
console with his square shoulders hunched and his hands behind his back like a bodyguard. Sitting in the leather chair about thirty metres away was a stout figure in a round-necked suit.

Archie could see that one half of his skull appeared to be covered in green scales, and although the front of his head was completely bald a tangle of grey hair sprouted wildly from his crown. A
bulbous eye protruded from the scaly side of his face and every now and then a fat sticky tongue forced its way out of his mouth.

‘Doctor Doom, I presume,’ Archie whispered to himself. ‘We meet at last.’

‘
I’m
not Doctor Doom.’ Finn frowned and jabbed a scaly finger at the figure below. ‘
He’s
Doctor Doom.’

The room was brightly lit by numerous fluorescent tubes hanging from the roof and a holographic map of the world was projected on to the glass wall behind Doom’s control deck.

The other three walls of the room were covered by banks of metal cabinets crammed with flashing lights, buttons, endless switches and a baffling variety of instrumentation. Archie guessed they
housed the electronic operating systems of Dr Doom’s experimental apparatus.

As Archie and Finn edged along the gantry they were able to get a better view of the monstrous contraption that occupied three quarters of the space inside the room. At its centre was a giant
glass dome filled with swirling smoke that glowed orange, its crest almost reaching the height of the balcony. Four thick silver ducting tubes fed from the upturned bowl, looping way above Archie
before feeding down into large glass cylinders positioned vertically around the equipment at equal intervals. Archie thought he whole thing looked slightly comical, like some child’s model of
a spider missing a few legs, but as he crept closer he saw what was in the cylinders and he was gripped by terror.

Three of the vertical tubes contained
people.
With wires stuck to their temples, chests and wrists. They stared out of their glass confines as if in some sort of trance. Archie continued
round the gantry, studying them one at a time. The first cylinder housed a blond teenage boy Archie recognised as Henry Ulrik and the next contained Karl Schumaker. As the third tube came into view
Archie caught his breath.

‘Look,’ Finn whispered. ‘There’s Richard Hunt.’

‘You know my father?’ Archie asked.

‘Your father? I don’t think so,’ Finn replied. ‘But I pulled that man out of a car once. I can’t remember how he got there, but he was at the bottom of the sea.
Come to think of it, I don’t know why I was there. I suppose being able to breathe underwater has its uses every now and then.’

Archie was mesmerised by the sight of his father inside the glass cylinder. He looked weak and vulnerable, and Archie realised that he had been subconsciously reassuring himself with the notion
that his father was indestructible. After all, Richard Hunt had survived countless war zones – what harm could one mad scientist do? But now it was obvious his father was only human, and just
as helpless in this scenario as Doom’s other victims. Archie hated Dr Doom for reducing him to such a feeble-looking specimen. What must he have been through to end up like this? Even his
father’s eyes looked full of something Archie had never seen before. They were full of fear.

‘This can’t be happening,’ Archie muttered. ‘We have to stop this experiment, Finn. Otherwise it’ll mean total disaster.’

‘I know,’ Finn replied. ‘It’ll never work with your father in cylinder two.’

Archie turned to look at his friend, who was still transfixed by the scene below. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The transmutation doesn’t work with grown-ups,’ Finn said, as if stating the obvious. ‘That’s why all the criminals’ clones are such freaks. Doom’s
plan only works on kids.’

His heart pounding, Archie turned and studied the captives. He remembered reading that Henry Ulrik was sixteen years old although he looked much younger now, strapped up and cocooned in glass.
He couldn’t recall Karl Schumaker’s age but he had always assumed, mostly because of his beard, that he was well into his twenties. Archie could see now that the goatee on Karl’s
chin was distinctly wispy, the sort of fluffy growth sported by some of the boys in Year Twelve who were desperate to demonstrate their masculinity. It was apparent that Karl was certainly no older
than Ulrik and quite probably younger.

By contrast Archie’s father looked haggard. He was pale and thin, his silver hair reinforcing his age.

As Archie ducked low behind the railings of the balcony his mind started to race. The original coded message on Doom’s website had warned that
Police will take care of Hunt this
afternoon
, which could refer to Archie just as much as his father. Gemma had mentioned the MI6 theory that Doom was using the SPADE database to harvest individuals with particular abilities for
his experiment, and both Archie and his dad had scored highly. Archie thought about the text message Dr Doom had sent him and one phrase stuck in his mind.

On the face of it Doom had meant that Archie’s presence would have been an unwelcome hindrance, but what if he’d meant that Archie coming to his hideout was the
final thing, the final
ingredient
, he required to complete his experiment?

‘He never meant to kidnap my father at all,’ Archie whispered, taking a deep breath. ‘All the time I thought I was tracking down Doom he was actually reeling
me
in,
using Dad as bait . . .’

‘Sorry?’ Finn asked.

‘I feel so stupid,’ Archie mumbled to himself. ‘I thought he was showing off but he
wanted
me to solve his riddle and find his hideout. He’s been playing me all
along.’ As Archie silently rebuked himself for being so naive he realised that all was not yet lost. So what if he’s been leading me into a trap? he thought. As long as he doesn’t
know I’m here, I’m the one with the upper hand.

Suddenly the room rang with the sound of a harsh eastern European voice blaring from ceiling-mounted loudspeakers.

‘Hello, Master Hunt!’ The figure in the leather chair was leaning forward and talking into a microphone. ‘It’s so nice of you to drop in on us unannounced. We found your
friend wandering about and my soldiers are
taking care of him
as I speak.’ A long corpulent cackle was followed by some laboured gasps before Dr Doom continued. ‘Do you see what
I did there? The phrase
taking care of him
could have one of two very different meanings. We might well be offering him lavish hospitality
or
, equally, we might be torturing him to
within an inch of his pathetic life. I’ll leave it to you to decide which.’ Archie squeezed his hands into fists as he imagined his friend suffering at the hands of Doom’s
mutants. Meanwhile, the sound of smug laughter filled his ears for another thirty seconds. ‘Anyway, I reviewed the CCTV footage from the security suite and saw you disabling one of my guards
so there is no use hiding any more. Besides, I want to help you – you must be scared being all alone in a strange place.

‘I know you are listening to me so pay close attention to what I am about to say. Don’t worry I am a reasonable person, Master Hunt, and I would never force you to do anything
– I am simply going to let you make your own choice. Either you show yourself in the next thirty seconds or I will kill your father. That’s all. Your time starts now.’

Filled with panic, Archie considered the impossible choice facing him. If he gave himself up he would be playing right into Dr Doom’s hands. Then who would stop him from completing his
evil experiment and pressing ahead with his quest for world domination? And even if Archie did hand himself in, he knew there was no guarantee his father would be safe. But then again, he
couldn’t hide up here on the gantry and do nothing while some mad scientist executed his father.

‘Ten seconds, Master Hunt!’ boomed Doom’s voice.

Frantically Archie pulled off his hood and unzipped his boiler suit.

‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . time’s up, Master Hunt.’

‘OK, OK,’ Archie yelled. ‘I’m coming down – just don’t hurt my dad.’

Dr Doom watched the slight figure in the hoody and jeans slink down the metal staircase with his head bowed in defeat. His hood was pulled up as if to hide the disgrace he felt at being publicly
paraded before the people whose lives had depended on him. As he shuffled despondently across the operations platform he made no eye contact with Richard Hunt or either of the other two human
guinea pigs. He passed the huge glass dome and slouched towards the evil mastermind’s control console.

‘Well, well, Master Hunt,’ Dr Doom chuckled. ‘It’s a pleasure to finally meet you at last.’

Archie smiled grimly. ‘The pleasure is all yours,’ he muttered.

‘Now, now, Master Hunt,’ Doom teased. ‘Let’s not be a sore loser. Admit it – I won fair and square.’

Archie swallowed. ‘Whatever you say.’

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ Doom announced grandly. ‘I am your evil enemy.’

‘I know you’re evil,’ Archie replied. ‘And I know you’re my enemy. Tell me something I don’t know.’

Not your
evil enemy
,’ Doom spat. ‘Yuri Villenemi.’

‘All I can hear is
your evil enemy
,
your evil enemy
,’ Archie said blankly, enjoying Doom’s frustration.

‘Look, I am Professor Villenemi!’ screamed the evil mastermind. ‘And my first name is Yuri.’

‘OK, keep your hair on,’ Archie retorted, as confidently as he could. ‘What’s left of it anyway.’

‘You won’t be feeling quite so clever when I have finished with you,’ Villenemi promised.

‘Shall we get on with this then?’ Archie asked. ‘The suspense is killing me.’

‘Not so fast, Master Hunt,’ Villenemi soothed. ‘I have been waiting for this moment for many, many years. Before I enjoy my triumph I want to show off – for quite a long
time. I will brag to you about my incredible master plan in great detail so that you will understand just how brilliant I am. Now that I have you right where I want you I intend to savour my
victory, safe in the knowledge that you have absolutely no chance of stopping me – none whatsoever.’