Virus Attack (3 page)

Lorna and Emily watched with concern. The boat crew were swimming normally, but Pete couldn't break the surface. It was like kneeling on a bouncy castle as he pounded the mysteriously solid water.

“I can't break through!” he yelled.

Emily suddenly understood. “Our powers are malfunctioning!”

A loud splash sent Pete reeling backward as Toby
surfaced through the plastic cases, sucking in a deep breath.

“Dude!” Pete said as he stood on the water—which suddenly collapsed under him, sending him splashing into the ocean as the laws of physics decided to wake up. He treaded water next to Toby.

“You okay?”

Toby nodded. He glanced around and saw the captain had surfaced some ways away and was frantically swimming toward his crew.

“You planning on swimming in there all night?” asked Lorna. She was grinning with relief.

Pete and Toby flew from the water to join the girls. Toby looked around the ocean and got a sense of what had happened. The water was littered with cases and the ship's crew, who were trying to distance themselves from the superheroes. Aside from other debris, there was no sign of the freighter. In the distance, a spotlight combed the water, and they heard the dull drone of an approaching coast guard vessel.

“Sinking the boat still counts as stopping it, right?” Pete asked.

“We stopped them from smuggling the pirated movies,” said Emily. “That's a successful mission.”

“Still think it's a waste of time though,” said Lorna. The others looked at her. “Well it is! You nearly died, Tobe. For what?”

“For doing what superheroes do.”

“And we get a bunch of Heroism points,” Pete added.

Lorna shook her head. “That's my point. We did what the authorities should be doing. Okay, that may be heroic but it's not the job of a
superhero
. We should be doing bigger things. Getting ourselves
noticed
.”

Toby rolled his eyes. This was Lorna's latest argument. She wanted to use the powers to get famous instead of to do a job. “We've talked about this. Getting noticed is the last thing we want. If people knew we had these powers or that superheroes even existed …” He drifted off.

“Exactly. What would happen?” said Lorna. “We might get a little fame and even get paid to do this stuff. I'd rather go on a talk show and brag about what we've done than do a paper route.”

“I agree,” said Pete.

Toby shot Pete a look. Agreeing with his sister was a huge betrayal. “We've been through this before.” Toby sighed. “There are government departments and the Enforcers out there trying to stop the public from knowing!”

“And what else are they hiding?” said Pete, eager for a conspiracy theory.

“Anyway, there's more important things to think about,” said Emily, who was tiring of the constant fighting. “Like why did our powers glitch?”

Pete shrugged. “I felt terrific. Better than ever. Except when I bounced off the water.
That
was strange.”

“They were a little
too
good,” Emily commented.

“Jealous?”

“No. I'm just saying. Don't you think your powers seemed, I don't know,
increased
, while ours suffered?”

Pete swapped a glance with Toby and nodded. “She's jealous all right.”

Emily looked away, refusing to argue. The coast guard vessel was drawing nearer. Its searchlight drifted across the sea and fixed on one of the crew, who was frantically signaling for help.

“We better get going,” said Toby. “Our job here is done.”

The superheroes rose into the night sky and headed toward home. If the coast guard crew had had sharper hearing, they might have heard the sound of arguing passing overhead as four figures shot across the full moon.

Moonlight played over the swaying heather fields of the Cornish Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, England. Powerful floodlights pierced the dark landscape and bathed the world's largest and oldest satellite earth station: England's massive Goonhilly Downs complex. Some sixty-one satellite dishes of all shapes and sizes poked toward the heavens. In the center of the
complex stood multiple buildings that housed everything from the tourist center to the control rooms. It was a twenty-four-hour operation, so even at this time of night there was a full contingent of staff on duty, but at least the external roads were quiet. A lone security jeep rolled by; the guard inside had little idea that there were intruders already within the complex.

One of the large control rooms designated to obscure the dish array was a hybrid of older decor and modern computers. The night staff lay unconscious on the floor, with one unlucky soul transformed to stone when he had tried to contact security. The telephone was still clenched in his petrified hand.

Basilisk was slumped in a chair, leaning on the central Y-shaped desk as he stared at a computer screen. After a few weeks spent formulating their plan at Worm's base, he was dismayed that he still hadn't fully recovered from his ordeal on the volcanic island. His leg throbbed, forcing him to walk with a cane. His new dark-green bodysuit hid the scars well and the deep hood of his cloak obscured his badly burned face—a face so damaged that even he no longer recognized it. His regeneration powers should have kicked in by now, but nothing had happened. It was time for a fresh regeneration—a completely new set of DNA to rejuvenate him as it had over the centuries. But right now, that would have to wait.

Worm stood across from him, examining a large
monitor displaying the site's numerous satellite arrays. Worm was bowled over by the leap in progress that had occurred during his incarceration and was taking every opportunity to marvel at it.

“Incredible,” he muttered under his breath. “Truly amazing. Who would have thought mankind could do all this and finally set foot in space without the aid of superpowers?”

Basilisk shook his head. He had done his best to bring Worm up-to-date on over half a century's achievements, but the technology was far beyond anything Worm had dreamed of. His constant exclamations of astonishment were wearing Basilisk down. Still, Basilisk had lost everything when his island was destroyed and was forced to rely on Worm. The villain's unique skills were now integral to Basilisk's plan.

Worm's powers allowed him to travel through earth, ideally soil or sand, by deconstructing himself into billions of cell particles and seeping through the ground—
in between
the very particles that made the earth seem solid. By altering his technique he could just as easily walk through tiny cracks in the walls or seep under doors to enter rooms, but there was nothing technological about his powers. The drawback was that they weren't very effective through dense material such as rock or metal.

Once they had left the island, Basilisk and Worm had spent weeks gathering equipment, such as laptops and
Basilisk's new body armor, so they could implement the ambitious plan.

Basilisk had worked with Worm to teach him how to adapt his powers to use on computers. It had been a slow process, especially with Worm's constant complaints and his threats to hand Basilisk over to the Council of Evil every time something went wrong. But eventually, under careful guidance from Basilisk, Worm was able to use his ability to send atomized fragments of his finger into a computer. His power was limited; he could only extend so far before the pain became unbearable. Scrambling his body through the dirt was easy, but the metal was denser and electronic systems had magnetic fields and electron flows yanking at his every atom—it was like swimming through a riptide that threatened to pull you apart. But his reach of a dozen inches was enough to enter the heart of a processor chip—which was nothing more than an elaborate series of digital switches. Once inside, Worm could manipulate the computer system.

Worm's short reach made Basilisk's plans a little more difficult. He had hoped they could conduct phase one from the comfort of Worm's lair. Instead they had been forced to break into the Goonhilly complex to directly access the computer system and satellite dish they needed.

Once Worm had got them inside, Basilisk was able to
locate the dish that was channeling Internet traffic for Hero.com. Whether the station staff knew it or not, the heroes' Web site was transmitting its superpowers among ordinary Internet traffic, TV signals, and radio communications. Basilisk had even managed to locate the satellite that Hero.com used, off which it bounced its communications. Needless to say, there was no official log of such a satellite and Basilisk correctly assumed it had been launched in secret.

Basilisk had tried to explain to Worm that superpowers were stored in massive vats, donated by heroes, and more recently some had been artificially synthesized. Then through a complex process of quantum physics, they were digitized and transferred via the satellite, through the Internet, and into a person. The process relied on a constant “pulse” of information being broadcast directly to the superhero, without their knowledge, no matter where they were. The “pulse” was like a mobile phone signal. It was an instruction to the hero's body on how to use the power. If the body didn't get the message, then the power would become unstable and have, hopefully, terrible consequences. Villain.net worked on the same principle.

Under Basilisk's direction, Worm infiltrated the Hero.com satellite stream and interrupted it. It was only momentary, but it proved to Basilisk that it could be done.

“I do not see what help it is to us if we do not permanently break the signal from here,” complained Worm as he pulled his hand from the computer terminal and sucked the sore tip of his finger.

“Because they will simply switch to another Ground Station.”

“Then what have we just achieved? Nothing!”

Basilisk sighed. He felt like a teenager explaining simple technology to a confused parent. “We've just
proved
my plan will work. We can interrupt the signal. Any Downloaders using their powers would have felt the effect immediately. Now we need to overload the Hero.com Web site and temporarily stop it from functioning.”

“Then we attack the Hero Foundation? Kill Courage?” Worm said with glee. He was an old foot soldier, not used to such tactical planning.

Basilisk fought to control his temper. They'd been through this almost every day.

“No. Our combined skills are not enough to bring the Foundation down.”

“I think you underestimate me,” Worm said with a hint of pride.

Basilisk looked long and hard at him. “No. No, I don't.” A long moment passed before Worm processed the insult. He opened his mouth to retaliate, but Basilisk continued. “Remember, the Web site is just a
weapon, a line of defense to stop the Foundation from being attacked. There are still the Primes, and the Foundation headquarters has its own internal electrical systems that need to be disabled.”

“I have enough weapons to launch an assault—”

“Your weapons are so old that they fall apart when you pull the trigger!” snapped Basilisk. “Now we will temporarily overload the Web site with a virus. That will buy us time, and create enough of a diversion to make the Primes go into hiding. Then we implement phase two by recruiting a couple of other villains I have in mind. They will help us take out the Hero Foundation's satellite system.”

“I don't understand.”

Basilisk took a deep breath. Had it been anyone else, he would have been shouting at the top of his lungs. He at least had to pretend that he respected Worm.

“Remember, we want to use Hero.com to fight the Council. We don't want to destroy the Web site. We need to paralyze it long enough for us to bring down the Foundation's satellite. And then, even if their technicians get the Web site back up and running, they'll have no means of distributing the superpowers.”

“Okay. I get it. I think.”

“When we get to the satellite I'll be able to pinpoint the exact position of the Foundation's headquarters.”

“And
then
we attack?”

“Yes. Phase three, we knock some heads together. They will have no heroes willing to lay their lives on the line to stop us.”

“That I understand!” Worm was practically dancing with glee. If he achieved what Basilisk was promising, then he would have powers at his fingertips equal to the Council's. And if the plan failed, he still had Basilisk—dead or alive—to hand over to the Council instead. “Then what are we waiting for? Let's do it!”

“We've been waiting for your pea-sized brain to work out what the plan is,” Basilisk mumbled under his breath as he pulled a slim USB memory stick from the depths of his cloak. He examined it as if it were a precious gem.

“Time to exercise your particular talent.”

The computer virus on the USB stick was complex by any standards, and it had taken Basilisk the last few weeks to create it. He had swiped the basic structure from several nasty viruses that had recently stricken big businesses, combined with his working knowledge of Hero.com. He had a good knowledge of the hero Web site because he'd been one of the people who had helped steal it and convert it to Villain.net.

When he inserted the virus into the Ground Station system, it had been immediately isolated by the system's antiviral software. He needed Worm to bypass that.

Worm dipped his finger into the system. He closed
his eyes, visualizing the cyber world that his atoms were navigating through. He could “see” Basilisk's virus as a lump of electrons. He literally poked the malicious code past the security software and into the system. Only then could its devastating effects run free.

The virus pinged from the Ground Station to the Hero Foundation's private satellite, and then back down to the Foundation headquarters, where it buried itself in the HERO servers before sending a pulse of corrupted data outward.

The virus was subtle, just enough to trip the Foundation's computer systems, in the same way a power surge blows a fuse. As Foundation technicians rushed to try to fix the damage, the power surge slowly rippled through the satellite system in a destructive wave that would take hours to radiate out.