'Greetings, Grandmaster. Remember your old friend? I'm now truly the mastermind. You have something that belongs to me. But fear not - the days of SKUL are over, for now, KORPS is rising'."

The six agents all look around at each other, grave looks on their faces, as the final sentence of the message continues to echo through their ears:

"KORPS is rising. KORPS...is rising."


"The last time I saw one of these KORPS insignias, I was working down here, in our old MI9 war room. We used to call this place the Bunker. At the height of the secret world war with KORPS, we had 150 agents working here, with over 200 similar bases in other countries. Even then it was a close-run thing."

The five spies look around the bunker, Maddie's curiosity being fully fuelled by all of the history contained inside of the hidden underground base. Frank decided to bring the team down here as soon as possible after hearing the strange message on the Grandmasters laptop. It's not like Maddie's complaining. She finds all of this MI9 history pretty cool. Who wouldn't?

Dan taps his knuckles on the side of the bunker, a loud metallic noise sounding in response, "Titanium?"

"Correct." Frank nods, "This place is a fortress, right underneath MI9 HQ."

"Whoa... Dinosaur alert!" Tom smirks over at a very old computer; Maddie finds the sight of it amusing herself. It's lightyears behind the kind of technology that MI9 have at their disposal nowadays, "How old is this stuff? Did a caveman sit here?"

"That was my desk!" Frank chimes in defensively, walking over to his old desk and looking at some of the files still sat there, "Ah, the circle mystery! A ton of old KORPS junk I collected, all marked the same way. Never did find out why. Probably just how they marked their trash."

Zoe reaches forward and pulls a photo of Frank and a girl from the side of his old computer, "This girl you're with looks a lot like Stella."

"Frank, was Stella your girlfriend?"

"Focus, please!"

"What? Like how you were spending all your time down here focusing on Stella?" Maddie smirks, Frank shooting a stern look in her direction, "Hey, you can't get annoyed at me for telling the truth!"

"Forget all of that. We need to focus on KORPS!"

"We get it." Dan sighs, clearly bored by the whole situation, "KORPS was a big deal. But come on, they're really just the old version of SKUL."

"And look what we did to SKUL. Bosh!"

"You're not getting it at all. Look..." Frank walks over to one of the walls and flips a switch, revealing a small crime board centred around SKUL, "This is SKUL. And this..." He flips another switch, revealing another crime board quadruple in size dedicated to KORPS, "This is KORPS."

"Whoa!"

"Whoa doesn't even begin to describe it. This operation makes the Grandmaster look as intimidating as that bunny of his." Maddie looks over at Frank, "If KORPS are really back, like the message on the laptop said, we are in big trouble."

"And I'm telling you it's not possible!" Frank replies sharply, "I saw them destroyed. They're never coming back."

"But Frank, surely we need to consider all of the possibilities. I hate to say it, but surely there's a chance that somebody could have revived KORPS." Maddie responds in a steady voice, "Perhaps an enemy leader."

Frank shakes his head, "That's not possible. The Grand Master was the only enemy leader to escape in the final days of the war with KORPS."

"How do these two fit in?"

The others direct their attention towards Dan, who is pointing at two names on the KORPS crime board, "The bosses. That's the Master Mind and his deputy, the Crime Minister."

"The Master Mind? Like the voice we heard on the recording?"

"It did sound like him, but no." Frank says dismissively, "It can't have been. These two are both dead."

"Why are you so sure they're dead?"

"Just trust me. I was there. Whoever this new lot are, they cannot be KORPS."

"Then who?" Aneisha asks.

"Some copycat group." Frank replies quickly, "The question is, who would have enough knowledge and resources to create a convincing fake of a global organisation like KORPS?"

Maddie can't help but dwell on those thoughts herself. Could it be a copycat group just pretending to be KORPS? That would be the ideal answer. Yes, it may still be hard to take this supposed 'copycat KORPS' down, but surely it would be much better than taking down KORPS itself. SKUL dwarfs KORPS in comparison to it's size and magnitude of operations, and it took MI9 years to take down SKUL. Whilst she'd love to believe that Frank is right and that KORPS have been completely wiped out, it sounds far too good to be true.

"This area is off-limits!"

Maddie jumps up at the loud shout, relaxing only just when she sees that it's Stella. Maybe a bad guy would've been less terrifying. An angry Stella is not somebody that anyone wants to deal with.

"Trying to hide the evidence?" Tom smirks, holding up the picture of Stella and Frank in his hand.

Frank quickly snatches the picture from him and turns to Stella, "Stella, I haven't said a word."

"I don't care about ancient history!" Stella snipes back, "I've got a massive PR disaster on my hands right now. The last thing I need is you poking your nose into restricted areas!"

"What happened?"

Stella puts the laptop that's in her hands down and opens it up, revealing video feed from a local news channel,

"It was a tip-off that led MI9 agents to this house, where they arrested 126-year-old grandmother Phyllis Humm for running an illegal international prize-fighting club. Mrs Humm was also accused of being the current heavyweight champion. Following a gruelling investigation, Britain's oldest woman was released with an apology. An embarrassing day for MI9. This is Jenny Lane reporting."

"No wonder she's in a bad mood."

Aneisha smirks, "Yeah, and I thought it was cos Frank dumped her."

"I want all of you out of here at once!" Stella says harshly, turning back to them briefly as she begins to head back out of the bunker, "And he didn't dump me. I dumped him!"

"So she was Frank's girlfriend."

"Frank. I have just one question about all of this." Maddie turns to look over at Frank, who looks back at her in waiting for her question, "How long were the two of you dating?"

Stella comes back into the bunker, looking at the agents sternly, "Everybody out, now!"

"Somebody's bitter about the breakup."


Maddie walks down the school corridor with Dan, Aneisha and Tom, only half listening to what Aneisha is saying about what Frank had told them. She knows that she should listen to what her team has to say, but she's too busy thinking about it all for herself. She really wants to think that it's just a copycat group, but that seems far too easy. She may not have been an agent for that long, but she does know that something as big as a large scale evil corporation can't be as simple as this. It just can't.

"Uh-oh..."

Maddie snaps out of her thoughts as Aneisha pulls a clipboard away from Melissa Allbright, the student council president, who is seemingly trying to get Zoe to sign up to some extracurricular clubs, "She's not interested."

"I am!" Zoe responds enthusiastically, "It's great, I've never done any of this stuff before."

"You don't know how lucky you are!" Aneisha scoffs, looking down at the clipboard and reading through some of the clubs that Zoe is signing up to, "Gardening Club, Chess Club, Ping Pong Team, Potato Awareness Group, Advanced Abseiling, Brass Band, Jazz Band, Choir - that ought to be banned. You're about to sign up to 23 clubs!"

"Zoe, that's insane!" Maddie gasps, shocked that the girl is so enthusiastic about so many things, "You'd literally have to be a complete and utter maniac to join all of these clubs!"

"I'm in all those clubs!"

Maddie gestures to Melissa, "That proves my point." She looks over at Dan, "What time is it?"

Dan glances down at his watch, "11:28. Why?"

Maddie's eyes go wide in panic. She supposed to be in Biology in 2 minutes, and that's on the other side of the school! She says a quick goodbye to the others before sprinting down the corridor and towards the science block, weaving in and out the growing crowds of students. She runs outside and around to the science block, pulling the door open as the clock ticks to 11:29. She rushes upstairs to where her classroom is located, stumbling through the door as the bell rings through the corridor. She lets out a sigh of relief when she gets to stop running. Yes, her attendance isn't the greatest for obvious reasons, but it doesn't mean that she likes to be late for the lessons that she actually has the opportunity to attend.

"Miss Morgan." Maddie gulps and turns towards the person saying her name, her stern science teacher Mr Phillips, "If you'd do us all a favour and take a seat, perhaps we can start the lesson."

Maddie nods back and crosses the room over to her seat, sitting down at her desk as Mr Phillips turns to the whiteboard and begins to write down the date and title. As Maddie begins to recline back into her chair and get comfortable, she feels a familiar buzzing in her blazer pocket and inwardly groans. She's got to run again?! Sighing, she tentatively raises her hand to ask to be excused, quickly racking her brain for an excuse. She can't use the toilet excuse again. She's used that far too many times already.

"What is it, Miss Morgan?"

Maddie looks over at the teacher, stumbling over her words as she uses the first excuse that comes to her head, "I-I have a dentist's appointment, sir."

"Have you got a note?"

"No, sir."

"Then I guess that the dentist will have to wait." He turns back to the board and continues to write, "Copy the phrases on the board about photosynthesis quickly. Then turn to pages 171 and 172 of the textbook and answer questions 1-9."

Maddie groans and leans back in her seat once again. She has to get out of this class! If not for the fact that she has to get down to HQ, but for the fact that it's so boring. She already understands photosynthesis. She understood the entire concept after three lessons in Year 7. But, of course, since it's on the exam syllabus, the school is persistent on re-teaching it over and over again until everybody understands it. Maddie understands that the lessons work like that so that everybody can improve over time, but, oh boy, is it a drag for her!

Twenty minutes or so pass when there's a knock at the classroom door. Maddie instantly looks towards the door, smiling when she sees that it's Frank stood there with a bucket in hand, "Sorry to disturb your lesson, Mr Phillips. I need to borrow Maddie."

"May I ask why, Mr London?"

"It's her turn to be the caretakers helper for the afternoon." Frank lies convincingly, "The scheme was originally planned for Year 10's and 11's only, but Mr Flatley thought that it would be a nice idea to expand the program."

Mr Phillips seems unconvinced, which doesn't go unnoticed by Frank, "Oh, and of course, Mr McNab came to the same conclusion when he heard about the scheme."

Maddie smirks. If there's one person that intimidates even Mr Phillips, it's Mr McNab. Mr McNab intimidates everyone. Mr Phillips quickly turns towards Maddie, "You may go with Mr London."

Maddie nods and quickly rises from her seat, grabbing her bag and rushing towards the door. The second the classroom door closes, Frank begins asking Maddie questions, "Where have you been?"

"I'm sorry! Mr Phillips wouldn't let me out without a note! That guy is brutal!" Maddie sighs, quickly switching to a more important topic of conversation, "What's going on?"

"I'll tell you everything when we're down in HQ."

Maddie realises that they isn't a point of trying to get anymore answers until they're down in HQ, so she silently follows Frank through the school and down into HQ. Tom is already sat down there at his computer station, a packet of Rich Tea biscuits at his side as per usual, "Where have you been?"

"I got a bit held up." Maddie responds quickly, moving to talk to Frank at the centre table, "So, what's going on?"

"MI9 have identified an anomaly at one of our secret storage facilities - Vault 12."

"Oh, you mean the place that MI9 keep captured super weapons and other things of that manner?"

Frank groans and looks between Tom and Maddie, "How do you both know about this?"

"Well, I'm going to assume that Tom hacked into the security and I know because I do my research." Maddie replies, "I'd be a bad spy if I didn't know about the organisation that I'm working for."

"Well, anyway, due to the emergence of these new KORPS wannabes, MI9 have upgraded the alert level to amber. I've sent the others to check out what's going on. I'm sure it's nothing, though."

"Okay, what do you want me to do?"

"Help Tom monitor the security footage of the facility and check the data that the team send back. They've already started sending data back."

Maddie nods and walks over to the compute station, sitting down beside Tom and attaching a communicator to her right ear, "You guys there?"

"We're here, Maddie." Aneisha replies, "But where have you been?"

"I'll explain later. Just keep scanning for anomalies and sending the data through."

Another reading comes through and Frank is quick to respond to the team, only glancing at the reading before giving his orders, "OK, team. The readings are fine. Head back to base."

"Hold on." Maddie says suddenly, "Send that last one back through again."

A few seconds pass before Dan speaks into the communicator, presumably because he is rescanning the area, "The heat's up 0.2%."

"That's only just outside the margin of error - let's call it a day." Frank says dismissively.

"Frank, it could be something more. Why would the heat signatures of a secure MI9 facility be up?" Maddie looks over at Tom, "Tom, what do you think?"

"The room's 125 cubic metres and kept at a constant temperature of 22 degrees. To raise the temp 0.2%, you'd need a 500-watt, three-bar heater or exactly..."

"Three human bodies." Maddie mumbles, readjusting her communicator and speaking with a hint of urgency, "Guys, three people are in there! I don't know how, but they are." She looks back over at Frank, not wanting to give orders without his consent. It's not her place.

Frank taps on the side of his own communicator, "Team, find out who's in there."

Maddie takes her own communicator off and places it on the desk, crossing over to the centre table and standing across from Frank, "Who do you suppose it is?"

"I don't know."

"I know you don't want to think about it, Frank, but is it possible that it's KOR-?"

"It's not KORPS!" Frank's shout makes Maddie jump back, something that he immediately looks apologetic for, "Look, when the team catch whoever's in there, we'll soon find out who they are and who they work for." Frank moves his hand up to his communicator, "Great work, team. Well done."

"They got 'em?" Maddie asks, Frank nodding back, "That's good. So, no harm done, then. Right?"

"I wouldn't say that exactly." Both Frank and Maddie look over at Tom, who is flipping through the security feed of the facility worriedly, "One of the other rooms got hit too. They took the Global Vaporiser."


"I was in on the interrogation. The operatives you caught wouldn't talk."

After the others returned, Frank had gone to MI9 HQ where they operatives' interrogation took place. Around about an hour later, he returned, but sadly not with positive news.

"Well, we know who they work for. It has to be KORPS."

"We've been through this!" Frank yells harshly, "I don't know who we're fighting but it is not KORPS."

"Frank...TORSO, SKUL, KORPS - we've seen them, fought them." Dan explains, "We've even captured two of them. We've got their badges, their uniforms and we've heard the Master Mind's voice. Why won't you even consider the possibility this is KORPS?"

"Because I was there!" Frank lowers his voice to a calmer tone to continue his explanation, "I led the MI9 team in the final battle with KORPS. One of the enemy's super weapons blew up. The explosion was so great they had to identify the Master Mind using DNA. They never even found the Crime Minister's body. I was the only person to get out of that building alive."

"But, Frank, isn't it possible that...?"

"Hang on." Zoe interjects, "The only one? What happened to the rest of the MI9 team?"

"I lost a lot of friends that day. If KORPS weren't totally destroyed, then they died for nothing."

"Something just doesn't add up." Maddie looks over at Tom, "Tom, can you pull up a map of the facility on the monitor for me?"

Tom swipes a map of the facility up onto the large monitor at the end of HQ and moves to where Maddie is stood, the two of them analysing the larger map again to see if there's something that they missed. The room is silent for a few moments until Tom suddenly gasps and zooms in on the access panel at the front of the facility, "Right there! The only way to enter that floor hatch in Vault 12 is with internal MI9 access."

"There was evidence that the bad tip-off about Mrs Humm came from inside MI9 too. I thought it was just a mistake."

"Could a traitor inside MI9 be behind all this? Who'd know enough about KORPS to pull it off? Except for Stella and me, of course." Frank says, his last sentence coming out a bit more rushed than the others, "Still, it doesn't make sense."

"Imagine if the press got hold of this traitor thing as well as the Mrs Humm thing."

Maddie nods gravely, "Stella would not be happy about that."

"It already has."

Aneisha opens up a laptop that's on the centre table and goes to a live video feed of the same news reporter that reported the Mrs Humm controversy,

"A missing super-weapon and MI9 in crisis. We've just learned that this looks like an inside job. I'm just going to try and get a word with this MI9 official."

Stella walks out of the MI9 head offices, clearly not in the mood to have an interview with the nosey reporter, when the reporter in question approaches her seeking answers,

"Excuse me? How do you feel about calls for MI9 to be withdrawn from security at tomorrow's World Leaders Conference?"

"It's business as usual."

"How can you carry on when you can't even trust your own operatives?"

"No comment."

"This has been Jenny Lane reporting."

"That reporter really winds me up."

Frank shrugs at Aneisha's comment, "She's just doing her job."

"I don't like it." Dan says dismissively, "If we've got a traitor inside our organisation, how do we know that they won't be in Stella's security detail at the conference?"

"We don't. But I'm sure Stella can handle it."

"We should give her some covert back up," Zoe suggests, "Just to be on the safe side."

"I agree with Zoe. I know that Stella's capable, but if she doesn't know that something's coming, she won't stand a chance." Maddie says, "What do you say, Frank?"

Frank nods, directing his attention first to the three older field agents, "You three are going to need disguises if you're going to blend in during the conference. But, with all due respect, Maddie, I don't know if you can pass as a world leader. They tend to be a bit, well, older."

"I can walk around the perimeter of the conference room and look out for any suspicious activity. The others can let me know if anything changes."

Frank nods again, "Okay. Let's go then, team."


"You in position, Maddie?"

Maddie looks around the area, ensuring that no one else is in sight, before responding down her communicator, "In position, Dan. What's going on in there?"

"Nothing just yet. I'll keep you posted on what's going on and let you know if anything changes drastically."

The communicator cuts off and Maddie puts her back into her pocket; she leans against the wall with a sigh. She knows that she could be waiting awhile before anything happens (if anything happens at all), so there's not much of a point of staying fully alert if nothing's going on. It's not like anyone's there to tell her otherwise.

She stands there for a few more minutes when suddenly her communicator begins to buzz. She quickly reaches into her pocket and pulls it out, pressing it to her ear and becoming fully alert, "What's going on?"

Dan's voice sounds through the communicator, his breathing laboured and hitched. He must be running, "We've got trouble. Floor 7. Can you get up here?"

Maddie looks over at the sign above the nearest stairwell. Floor 4, "I'll be there in a second. Hold on!"

She pockets her communicator again and runs for the stairwell, hastily running up three flights of stairs up to Floor 7. She reaches the correct floor within a few moments and darts her eyes between the two corridors either side of her, spotting Zoe's red hair through the glass panes of another set of doors. She sprints towards the doors, pushing them wide open when she reaches them, and finds that a man dressed in a black suit is beginning to run in the opposite direction. Another suited man is unconscious on the ground whilst Dan and Zoe are surrounding that nosey reporter, whose face is stricken with panic.

"Dan! What's going on?!"

Dan shouts out orders without even looking back at her, him and Zoe seemingly already trying to help the reporter in some way. Maddie doesn't really have time to ask what exactly they're doing, "Go after him!"

"On it!" Maddie yells back, already running at breakneck speed towards the escaping man. She pushes through the next set of doors just in time to see the man run into the next set of stairs at the end of the corridor, which she sets as her next target. She speeds herself up as much as she can as she continues to pursue the man, gaining some ground on him as the two of them race up the stairs. They run up a considerable amount of stairs until they reach the roof, the two of them stumbling out of the door breathlessly. The man takes a few steps away from Maddie and gets into a defensive stance, although he is still panting and is clearly exhausted.

"Look, we're both tired and there's clearly no way out of here, so why don't you just call it quits and tell me who you work for?"

Maddie's not exactly sure what she's expecting, but she's not totally surprised when the guy smirks and moves into a more stable stance, clearly not considering her suggestion at all. Maddie, now having regained most of her breath, moves into a fighting stance of her own, "Okay then. I guess we're not going with my plan. I guess we're going to have to go with Plan B."

He swings first, his muscled right fist aiming for the side of her face.

She ducks out of the way. A hit to the face and he's won. She can't let herself get taken down that easily.

He's clearly on the offensive. He lashes out once again, this time aiming to punch her in the gut. She kicks out at his chest, sending him back and away from punching her.

She knows that she can't keep avoiding or blocking all of his attacks. That's not how fights work. She has to fight back herself. She has to knock him down. Blocking may immobilise him for a few moments, but it's not enough to knock him down and make him stay there.

She swings this time around, her fist connecting with his shoulder blade. He yells and stumbles back, bringing his right hand up to his wounded shoulder. He looks mad now. Very mad.

She expects him to lunge his fists forward again. It's all he's done so far. So when he kicks at her right leg, knocking her clean off of her feet and onto the gravel covered roof, she completely unprepared for it.

She hisses in pain when she feels the rough gravel scrap against the side of her face, almost making the burning sensation in her right leg feel mute. It's not a nice feeling, to say the least. Her head is pounding so much that it hurts, and a sickening sensation of nausea mixed with exhaustion hits her like a freight train.

"Maddie!"

They're on either side of her, both of them pulling her up by one of her arms. She wipes some of the gravel off of the side of her face, not too surprised when the hand that has just been pressed to the side of her face comes away red. She looks around, frantically scanning the roof for the suited man, "Where did he go?!"

"He was already gone when we got up here." Zoe replies, "Did you not see where he went?"

"N...no." Maddie brings her hand up to the side of her still throbbing head, "I think I might've passed out. The last thing I remember is him knocking me down. I hit my head quite hard."

"C'mon. Let's get her back to MI9."

Maddie glances up at her brother, her head throbbing even at the slow movement of her head, "No, Dan, no. You have to go after him. You have to find out who he works for."

"We can do that later. Right now our priority is getting out of here and back down to Aneisha. Now, come on."