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monoliths that had once housed H.I.V.E.’s benign caretaker artificial intelligence were open, cables and components lying scattered on the floor around them.
    ‘Erm . . . hello, Professor,’ Laura said, looking around the room with a slightly confused expression. ‘I was told that you wanted to see me.’
    ‘Yes, yes, come in,’ the Professor said with a smile, tossing an unidentified component over his shoulder on to a large pile of similarly discarded pieces. ‘I have a rather knotty problem that I thought you might be able to help me with.’
    ‘Really? What’s up?’ Laura asked, suddenly curious.
    ‘Well, I’m sure that you must have noticed all the recent disruptions to H.I.V.E.’s systems, and I was hoping you might be able to give me a hand in tracking down whatever’s causing them.’
    ‘Of course, I’d be happy to help,’ Laura said with a smile. ‘What do you need?’
    ‘Well, there seems to be some sort of rogue process chewing up the central core’s computational resources, and I’m having a devil of a time tracking it down,’ the Professor said, scratching his head.
    ‘Erm . . . I assume that Doctor Nero doesn’t mind me helping you?’ Laura asked slightly uncomfortably. ‘It’s just that after the incident with the library computers he gave me rather a clear warning that I shouldn’t try accessing the school’s core systems again.’
    ‘Yes, that was rather unfortunate, but I’m sure he won’t mind, given that I’ve requested your help and also that you are perhaps the most skilled systems analyst on the island – after myself, of course.’
    ‘If you say so,’ Laura said, blushing slightly at the compliment.
    ‘Take a look at this graph of system resource usage,’ the Professor said, gesturing at a tablet display that lay on the floor a couple of metres away. Laura picked it up and studied the data. There was no doubt about it – all the technical glitches that H.I.V.E. had been experiencing coincided precisely with sudden massive peaks in the amount of processing power that the school’s systems were using. There didn’t really seem to be a pattern in the spikes on the graph, but it was clear that something was draining huge quantities of computational power.
    ‘Any idea what processes were running during these spikes?’ Laura asked, still looking at the display.
    ‘That’s the curious thing,’ the Professor said with a slight frown. ‘As far as I can tell, there’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary that could be causing it.’
    ‘A bug, perhaps?’ Laura asked. ‘There’s no new code that could be malfunctioning?’
    ‘My code does not contain bugs,’ Professor Pike said, sounding irritated.
    ‘Of course not,’ Laura said earnestly. She had personally, in secret, fixed a few of these non-existent bugs in H.I.V.E.’s systems software, but she decided that telling the Professor that was probably not a very good idea right now. ‘Do you mind if I have a bit more of a root through the logs?’ she asked.
    ‘Help yourself,’ the Professor said, ‘but do please try not to break anything.’
    Laura thought that was a bit rich, given the state of the room, but chose not to say anything. Instead she grabbed the correct cable from the piles on the floor and plugged the portable display into one of the exposed interface sockets on a nearby monolith. As she began to run a series of diagnostics she found herself thinking about H.I.V.E.mind. The AI had sacrificed itself to save the lives of not just everyone at H.I.V.E. but perhaps even the whole planet. Otto had never discussed the exact details of what had happened, but he’d told his friends enough for it to be clear that H.I.V.E.mind had died a hero. But knowing that did not change the fact that Laura still missed the AI. Sometimes she felt a bit foolish for being so sentimental over what was really just an incredibly advanced piece of software, but when it came down to it, that was all any of them