Virus Attack

SPOILER ALERT

by johnroshanIf you haven't read Virus Attack, don't read any further unless you want to know what happens.

Virus Attack is the second installment of the Hero.com series by Andy Briggs. It is the counterpart to the plot-intertwined anti-series companion Dark Hunter, the second in the Villain.net anti-series. It follows rookie heroes Toby and Lorna Wilkinson (the Wilkinson siblings), Pete Kendall (the Professor), and Emily as they battle archfiends Basilisk, Worm, Viral and Trojan, established villains who attempt to bring down the power-dispensing Hero.com website through a computer virus.

Synopsis
Basilisk, the villain so named for his vision ability to turn others into stone, is wounded and trapped on an island fast liquidating into stone due to volcanic activity. He is stuck on the fast-destabilizing island due to the events of the previous book, Villain.net#1:Council of Evil, due to betrayal by his anti-heroic protege, Jake Hunter. Another villain, Worm, suddenly materializes from the ground, to which the injured Basilisk sarcastically replies: 'Am I dead, Worm? Because I know you certainly are!'. Unimpressed by his rhetorics, the antiquated Worm reveals his personal history: how his incarceration by Commander Courage (Eric Kirby) left him cryogenically frozen since World War II, until his recent release (speculated to be due to global warming). He taunts Basilisk for his pathetic state, and mockingly threatens to bring the stone-inducing fiend to the Council of Evil, to which Basilisk lambasts him as a 'glorified bounty hunter', ironically lamenting how 'the mighty have fallen'. Worm, insulted, is then convinced by the loquacious Basilisk to take revenge on old foe Eric Kirby by bringing down Kirby's lifelong brainchild, the HERO.COM website and HERO foundation, via the use of a computer virus. The vengeful Worm, further persuaded by Basilisk's offer to guide him in 'the technological age', reluctantly agrees to the adoption of a 'sidekick' (which causes Basilisk to wince in irritation), and materializes both of them into the ground, in the nick of time.

The duo then proceed to recruit Trojan, a shadowy, caped female villain with the capability of atmospheric manipulation, and together, the trio board the 'Nematode', Worm's antiquated ship, in 'rescue' of the last puzzle piece for the execution of their hacking operation: Viral, an infamous rogue ubiquitous for his ability to synthesize organic viruses. Proceeding to Diablo Island, they successfully enact the jailbreak, freeing Viral from his quarantined prison cell, before allowing Viral to demonstrate his devastating powers of viral synthesis. He murders the Diablo Island guards with a single sneeze of ebola (black viral clouts), and the quadruplet of villains then proceed to enact their diabolical plan.

They enter one of the mainlines areas of the HERO foundation HQ servers, and using a combination of Worm's phasing and Viral's virus-synthesis ability, successfully create a computer virus for insertion into the computer server mainframe, albeit with slight difficulty. At this point in time, all downloaders tragically encounter a 'server down' message, with the only four non-Prime heroes left being the original quartet of rookie heroes, Lorna, Pete, Jake and Emily. Now stuck with limited and glitching abilities, the quartet of bickering superheroes then proceed to stop the new threat emergent from the usual villainous activity: the ambitions of the four rogue villains to enter and destroy the HERO foundation HQ itself. After a long chain of events, the heroes find themselves face-to-face with HERO.COM HQ founder, Eric Kirby, an aged, lithe and calculating man who aids them in the defence of the HERO foundation HQ. An epic battle ensues, with great collateral damage that allows the battle to swing to the villains' side, causing Basilisk to smash Pete through multiple canisters of raw power liquids. With his powers newly enhanced through innumerous power transfusions, Pete then proceeds to defeat the quartet of villains soundly, before falling unconscious.

At the close of the novel, with Pete in hospital, and Jake Hunter already concocting his self-beneficial plans for Pete's newfound 'super superpowered' status, Toby, Emily and Lorna are seen at Pete's bedside, with Jake's entrance. Toby expresses shock at Lorna's acknowledgment of Jake to be her new love interest, but little does he know what havoc the 'Dark Hunter' shall wreak in the future to their lives...