'Women of the Gallagher Academy, who comes here?' my mother, Rachel Morgan, the headmistress of my school, The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, asked as she stood up to the podium at the welcome back dinner.

'We are the sisters of Gillian.' Every student at the school replied as they stood at the tables.

'Why do you come here?'

'to learn her skills. Honour her sword. And keep her secrets.' Even the new

students knew the school pledge.

'To what end do you work?

'To the cause of justice and light.'

'How long will you strive?'

'For all the days of our lives.' We ended the ancient pledge and sat as my mother began a short speech.

'Welcome back to Gallagher. You are now back with all your sisters.' At this, there was a murmur of students whispering little facts from their breaks to each other. 'This year holds more facts to be learnt, skills to be taught and experiences to be had. Freshmen, welcome to the biggest challenge of your lives. You have all been specially chosen to be our students, so I'm sure you can handle it. You will be having you student "twins" with you for the first two days of classes. They are seniors and will go to all you classes with you and help you adjust to Gallagher. Sophomores, some time this year will be your major assessment, being an actual mission. You will find out more about it later, but, if I were you, I would start preparing myself for it. It will test you more than you can imagine.'

As she talked to the Sophomores, they all glanced at us, the Juniors. We had been through it last year and some of us barely passed. We just smiled evilly back at them.

'Juniors, you, perhaps, have the most exciting news for this year. Starting tomorrow, you will all be on long-term missions. That's all I can say for now.' My mother grinned at us and glanced back down at her notes. 'Finally, seniors, other than the job of being "twins" to the freshmen, your year will be filled with final touches on your skills, as well as some unexpected surprises.'

Everyone was slightly terrified by this news. Especially the Juniors. A long-term mission? Seriously? This would be exciting yet, I guessed, extremely difficult.

'Ladies?' after waiting for our attention, she continued. 'Once again, welcome back to Gallagher. Enjoy your year and be ready for the unexpected.' She smiled before walking to her seat and sitting.

As I sat, staring at my food, I looked around and noticed one thing. Every Junior was staring at me.

'Come on, Cammie! Spill!' Tina Walters said, almost jumping out of her seat in excitement.

'What are our assignments going to be?' Anna Fetterman added.

I looked around and sighed. This happened every year. Everyone expected me, Cameron Morgan, daughter of the Headmistress, to know everything; to be "in the loop." Too bad I hardly ever was. Except for that time that I hid in the vents above my mother's office and listened in to her and Mr Solomon talking bout one of our class assignments, but that doesn't count. That only happened once.

'Cammie, do you know anything?' Liz almost whispered to me. Elizabeth Sutton was one of my best friends. She shares my room, along with two other girls. Unlike most of the Juniors, she wasn't on the Covert Operations track of study, preferring the Research tracks.

'No, Liz, I don't.' I turned to Tina, our resident gossip. 'Just like I didn't know about Blackthorne coming to Gallagher, or Mr Solomon coming to teach us.'

'You sure?' Tina asked once more.

I just sighed and turned away. 'So, Bex, movie marathon tonight?'

'Of course! I was thinking of Jason Bourne. What do you think?' You see, Bex is one of my other roommates. She, like me is on the CoveOps track. Also, she's from England and has an even stronger British accent then last year. Every year, the night before school begins again, we have a movie marathon, as we would soon be swamped with homework.

We ate our gourmet dinner(did I mention that our schools cook used to be the head chef at the White House?) and recounted every detail of our holidays to each other before being excused from the dining room and starting our movie marathon.