CHERUB: James' Choice
By Alex
James woke up to the rain pattering on his window. He got out of bed and went for a piss in the bathroom. Walking back into his room, after kicking an old t-shirt out of the way, he picked up the phone and listened to his messages. There was a message from Zara, "Meet me in my office as soon as possible, It's urgent", in the soothing but slightly distorted voice of the chairwoman of CHERUB through the answer phone. "Bollucks" thought James, this usually meant bad news, but he couldn't recall anything he'd done that merited a trip to the Zara's office. Even so, he pulled on his black Cherub t-shirt that he only used for when he was in trouble, so it was pristine. He also pulled on a pair of his cleanest combat trousers and boots, and began the short walk to the Director's office.
"Hello James", said Zara, warmly, promptly shaking his hand as he entered, "We have a new mission for you."
"Sure, sign me up" said James, enthusiastic because he was nearly 18 now, and would soon be leaving Cherub.
"Don't be so hasty James, we want you to think about this before you rush into it, and I know that you value your potential missions, because you don't have many left in your time at Cherub, and we will be sad to lose such a great agent, but we want to know you will be fully committed to this mission, if you wish to accept it."
"Do go on", said James calmly.
"Okay then. Well, we've got a reasonably easy mission for you here. I'll give you the full mission briefing later, but I'll give you the basics now, just to make sure you want to do it. As I'm sure you know, burglaries are extremely common around London, and usually the people who commit them are alone, with one single goal in mind and that is to enrich their lives by breaking into other people's houses and stealing expensive things such as electronics, or jewellery. Usually these crooks that work alone are fairly easy to catch, because they make mistakes and occasionally foul up jobs, or leave obvious evidence lying around. But recently the amount of burglaries has increased dramatically and the police are finding it harder and harder to catch the culprits. Due to a recent tip-off from a trusted source, we have found a 'company' that specialises in theft and takes orders from buyers to whom they sell the stolen goods. Your job is to infiltrate this organisation and find out who the big players are behind it. But there is one thing…"
Sounds good, but what's the problem?" asked James.
"The organisation belonged to your mother."