Mmmkay peeps, new story. And yes, it is a version of Gallagher Girls book 5... But don't diss me for thinking about what's gonna happen next. I know that everyone (well, mostly everyone) has tried to write a version of it, but I'll try to add some good stuff, okay? Some twists, turns, love triangles (the love triangles part is a huge, HUGE maybe-probably-not, but people seem to like those, so I'll consider throwing one in there). But yeah. So, I hope y'all enjoy.

Disclaimer- my brain is not smart enough to think of books such as these, so I'm gonna say that no, I didn't write the Gallagher Girls series, and yes, Ally Carter did write them. So yeah.

***X***

Chapter One

Cameron

My backpack, the only bag that I was allowing myself to take, was under my bed. In my head, I thought about all of the things that I packed, making sure for what felt like the thousandth time that I had everything that I needed- various disguises, (wigs, colored contacts, etc.) as well as money, airline tickets, clothes, a box of granola bars (a girl gets hungry on the road) and, most importantly, weapons. I had probably gone through that backpack a hundred times, making sure that I had everything, leaving behind anything that I didn't need.

Underneath the blankets and sheets of my bed, I wore what I thought would look halfway normal in daytime, yet would conceal me safely at night- grey t-shirt under black zipper hoodie with dark-wash jeans and black Converse. My hair, which I had asked Macey to do hours before, was in a tight French braid, and I swallowed my guilt once again at asking her, unsuspecting Macey, to do my hair so it would stay out of my face while I ran away from the school, from safety.

But by then, I was pretty used to getting rid of guilt.

I lay there for another hour or so, counting down the seconds until one thirty in the morning. My watch, which was completely normal and devoid of any tracking devices (I checked multiple times, considering the fact that Liz liked to spontaneously 'upgrade' things like that), buzzed when midnight hit, but it didn't matter; I already knew that I only had an hour and a half before I got out of Dodge.

When my watch buzzed at one thirty, the alarm going off in my head, telling me that it was time to put my plan into action, I listened for a second, making sure that all was well with my roommates. Their breathing was quiet and methodical, like a machine in constant motion, and I heard the tiny sounds that my roommates usually make when they're dreaming. Bex was grunting, her hands clenching and unclenching, and it wouldn't take more than one guess to know that she was probably dreaming of taking down plotting terrorists and evil dictators; Liz was mumbling something in her sleep, numbers and codes that no one else but her could understand; Macey was just lying there, a small smile on her super-model face, like she was having the kind of good dream that you don't entirely remember but it always kind of stays in your memory anyway. I knew them well enough by then to know that they were out; they wouldn't realize I was gone until morning.

I crept out of bed like a kid getting ready to peek at her Christmas presents before her parents woke up. My feet were quiet on the carpeted floor as I tip-toed across the room, my backpack surprisingly light on my shoulder. It seemed like that phase of my escape was done, all clear, but still, I had to take extra precautions.

I reached into my pocket, swallowing even more guilt, and quietly pressed an extra-strength Napotine patch on each of their foreheads. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, the kind of thing that would make the betrayal in their eyes even more acute, but it was necessary. Or so I told myself.

I tip-toed to the door and opened it slowly. I held my breath, hoping that the maintenance guys had recently oiled the ancient hinges.

They had, thankfully.

I shut the door behind me quietly, pressing my back against the closed door as the camera at the end of the hall made its sweep. I counted to ten, which is how long the cameras looked in one place at once, and sprinted to the end of the hall, counting down how much time I had in my head before the camera would turn my way and blow my mission. I made it to the other hall at three seconds before the camera would make its dangerous sweep and pressed against another door as the camera at the end of that hall made its sweep. I did the same thing- counting to ten then sprinting when I could- all throughout the winding halls of my school, hoping and praying that the patterns it had taken me a week to memorize would stay the same; the last thing I needed then was a surprise.

Thankfully, around the actual suites, there were no actual human guards, so I was able to maneuver my way around without any cameras or people noticing me. But then came the next phase in my escape plan; the dumbwaiter.

At the Gallagher Academy, one of the most ancient buildings in Roseville Virginia, there were shafts and tunnels, so many of them that there were probably dozens that I hadn't had a chance to discover. However, the semester before, my school had done what it was supposed to do; protect its students from enemies. Sadly though, in my case, that meant keeping me inside the school, which meant eliminating any and all ways of my escaping. The dumbwaiter, however, was the one thing that they hadn't touched. They assumed, I guess, that it wasn't big or useful enough for me to use while escaping the confines of my school.

The security staff underestimated me once again, however, because that was my ticket out.

The junior common was, back in the old days when Gilly Gallagher herself still roamed the halls and people actually had use for a dumbwaiter, a dining room for Gilly and her closest guests; thus, this was why there was a dumbwaiter there leading down to the kitchen.

It had taken me a week to plan my escape. I had had to memorize dozens of camera patterns, the best times to do everything (the dead of night was, and always will be, the best time of day to covertly escape a high security building) and the actual ways I would get around. I had wandered the school endlessly, pretending to just be restless and troubled while I was really looking for passageways that the security staff had missed. I had visited all of my favorite passageways, which were, by then, blocked by extra walls and grandfather clocks and anything else they could think of, and had gone through the map of Gallagher in my head again and again, thinking, wondering, hoping, that they had missed something. Then, on one night when I felt extra sleepless, I had sat in the common room, thinking about what to do while the entire team of guards watched me through cameras, wondering what I was going to do next. My eyes had wandered through the room in the dark a thousand times, thinking about a way out of the school, but then they fell upon what I had been hoping for; a little crack in the wall across the room, straight and small, which was one side of the door that led to the dumbwaiter, which led to the kitchen.

I had found my way out.

"Okay, here we go," I murmured as I tip-toed into the junior common room, going straight to the dumbwaiter shaft door. I had hacked into the security system earlier (a job that would have taken Liz an hour but took me about two days) and made sure that the cameras were completely turned off. It was the only place I actually allowed myself to turn off the cameras, because if I turned them all off, the security staff would get suspicious. As it was, I considered it a huge miracle that I hadn't been caught yet.

I stuffed my bag onto the small platform first, then grabbed the rope and squeezed myself onto the creaky, rotting wood, praying that it wouldn't crack and splinter and leave me nothing to support myself on but air. The wood, which was, by then, over a hundred years old, groaned under my weight, but didn't break. The rope in my hands pulled tight, and I sighed in relief as I slowly let myself down the cramped shaft, dust prickling my nose and I lowered myself lower and lower, closer and closer to the kitchen. To freedom.

For three tense, heart-stopping minuets, I slowly lowered myself through floor after floor. Secrets and dust hung heavy around me, the total blackness seeming to swallow me completely. To pass the time, I listened for any sign of the school suspecting my escape, and wondered how many huge, creepy, crawly things had made their homes in that shaft (I felt spider web after spider web being broken as I went down, but didn't bother to count how many there were).

Finally, I felt myself land on the bottom of the shaft, solid ground finally beneath my feet. I pressed my palm against the door, glad that it easily opened into the kitchen. I climbed out and slung my bag over my shoulder. The kitchen was huge and dark, full of ovens and refrigerators that buzzed and moaned like hulking, sleeping monsters. For a second, while I stood there in that dark space, I felt the old childhood fear of darkness creeping in, my mind wandering to those bad nightmares where those imaginary monsters were so much more than imaginary. But as I stood there, a seventeen year old girl who had seen more things than any seventeen year old girl should, I knew that monsters weren't just those creepy, fuzzy things you imagine in your closet; they are people, evil people, who try to hurt you and are always watching you, their eyes cold and hungry, like a predators'. I almost felt them, right then; eyes on me, like creeping, crawling bugs on my skin.

I shook my head, clearing my head of these thoughts, and reached into my jacket pocket, pulling out a tiny flashlight that Grandpa Morgan had given me years before. I turned it on, telling myself that I was being stupid, that the only things in the kitchen were shiny and pristine cooking appliances, but, instead, saw that I wasn't alone.

Standing in front of me, a sadistic smirk plastered on his shadow-ridden face, was Zachary Goode himself.

***X***

Cliff-hanger! *cue evil laugh and scary background music*

I love writing. It makes me feel so powerful. :)

Anyways, what did you think, guys? I know that it was kind of a short chapter, but when I was finished with this first chapter, it was so ridiculously long that I needed to make it into two chapters instead of one. So yeah. I hope you all liked it! As of right now, I'll probably post the second chapter tomorrow, and then we'll just see where we go from there. Truthfully, I don't actually have any other chapters besides the first one written (*nervous smile*) but I have outlines for many of them, something that I rarely do but need to do do every single time I write a story, so I hope that makes things go faster.

So, review? Please?