Higher Institute of Villainous Education by Mark Walden Read Free Book Online Page B

H.I.V.E. seems to know that the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach.’
    ‘Or about two centimetres to the right of their sternum,’ Otto replied, smiling at Laura. Wing chuckled and shook his head. The American girl put her fork down and sighed.
    ‘What I don’t get is how they’ve managed to keep this place a secret for so long. I mean there’s hundreds of people here who we’ve seen already, and from what it said in that movie H.I.V.E. has been going for nearly forty years. Surely somebody would have spilled the beans about all this by now?’ She picked up her fork again and carried on nudging the untouched food around her plate.
    ‘There are ways to keep the big secrets for a very long time, my father is often saying,’ Franz offered, tipping up his bowl to capture the last morsels of his lunch. ‘Perhaps he was talking about the big secret that he was once a student here himself, or that he was going to send me to this terrible place.’ He waved at the walls around him.
    Laura looked puzzled. ‘That’s the thing that I can’t understand. Why would my mum and dad agree to this? I’m not some kind of junior super-villain and I can’t see them approving of all this, it’s just too weird. I mean it’s not like some bloke turned up on our front doorstep and said, sorry to bother you, Mr and Mrs Brand, but if you don’t mind we’d like to abduct your daughter and train her to take over the world with all the other little megalomaniacs.’
    ‘Well, somebody must’ve signed you up,’ the American girl said. ‘If my mom and dad sent me here then you can bet there’s a good reason. They always said I’d go to the best school that they could find, so I guess this must be it. My dad was always telling me that nothing was too good for his Shelby.’
    It struck Otto that Shelby’s parents may just have been looking for a school that would keep her under lock and key for a few years in a secure location a very long way away from them. Still, there was something about Shelby that bothered Otto. He had always been unnaturally good at spotting a liar and something about her just didn’t ring true. He suspected she was hiding something, as if the unpleasant persona she displayed was an act. He resolved to keep a slightly closer eye on her and see if he could get any closer to the truth.
    There was one other question that had been bothering Otto. Who had picked him? Somebody had to have selected him for this, and even now was footing the bill for his new life at H.I.V.E. The problem was, he had no idea who or why. Just one more question to add to the rapidly lengthening list, he thought.
    ‘My mum will have signed me up,’ said Nigel. ‘She’s always wanted me to follow in my father’s footsteps. She was always saying that one day I’d learn to be like him. I suppose this is what she was talking about.’ He didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of becoming Darkdoom Jr.
    ‘Well, I suspect we’ve all done something to earn a place at H.I.V.E.,’ said Otto. ‘It’s just a question of figuring out what it was.’ He was almost certain that the events of the last few days explained his own presence on the island, but he was curious to know what special characteristic marked the others out as H.I.V.E. recruits.
    Laura looked slightly uncomfortable with this topic of conversation and Otto suspected that, despite what she had said, she too probably had a pretty good idea about whatever it was that she’d done to deserve a place at H.I.V.E.
    Wing was staying strangely silent throughout this, and Otto wondered what it was about him that had attracted H.I.V.E.’s attention. For the moment, at least, it wasn’t something he appeared to want to share with the other students.
    ‘What about you?’ Franz pointed his fork at Otto. ‘What have you done?’
    Otto had feared that this might come up, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to share that with the others right now. He