H.I.V.E. — Mark Walden

You have been selected all of you - the worst, the most cunning, the most mischievous minds from around the world-selected to become part of an institution like no other.

Otto Malpense may only be thirteen years old, but so far he has managed to run the orphanage where he lives, and he has come up with a plan clever enough to trick the most powerful man in the country. He is the perfect candidate to become the world's next supervillain.

That is why he ends up at H.I.V.E., handpicked to become a member of the incoming class. The students have been kidnapped and brought to a secluded island inside a seemingly active volcano, where the school has resided for decades. All the kids are elite; they are the most athletic, the most technically advanced, and the smartest in the country. Inside the cavernous marble rooms, floodlit hangars, and steel doors, the students are enrolled in Villainy Studies and Stealth and Evasion 101. But what Otto soon comes to realize is that this is a six-year program -- where leaving is not an option. Can Otto achieve what has never been done before and break out of H.I.V.E.?

HIGHER INSTITUTE OF VILLAINOUS EDUCATION