James Adams ran down the fluorescent lit corridor, afraid of what was behind him. He'd been hiding in a derelicte building for little under half an hour, when they arrived, shooting rounds in every direction. James expecting them sooner or later had released the three stun grenades simultaneously, hoping to distract, the oncoming force. His quick defensive tactics had proven effective as the stun grenades blinded his night-vision-goggled enemies, and he rushed down the corridor as they scrambled for their weapons. He'd picked up into a run as soon as he was clear of the opposing force, pulling out his own gun and firing three rounds behind, hoping to wound a few of the foes, maybe even buying himself a few more minutes of life. This worked better than he'd expected and was flatout down the stairs and outside in under thirty seconds.
He didn't stop running until he knew he wasn't being tracked. James looked around searching for a new hiding spot. He found himself in an abandoned town square with the remains of a statue, a couple of dead trees and what looked like a burnt out people-mover. He knew that he wouldn't stand a chance against the oncoming dangers. His own team had dispersed after being caught in a raid four hours ago at their official rendez-vous point.
"Come on, come on." James muttered as he surveyed the surrounding buildings, looking for the perfect spot for him to camp out, with good visual spots of the whole square and surrounding buildings. There was nothing, a couple of destroyed government buildings, a train station and a Woolworths that was lit up like a fireworks display. He decided against all of them and wondered about his team. Had they got out alright or were they down? He decided to radio in on his walkie talkie.
"Alpha team, this is Firefox, do you read me?" James asked anxiously, "Is anybody out there?"
A voice from the shadows replied, "I guess that was a no then." James had no idea in which direction this comment came from because it was replied with a sniggering and giggling from behind trees, the statue and what was left of the people-mover. He instinctly began to undo the safety clip on his weapon when he was hit by three rounds of paintballs, stripping him of energy and forcing him to land straight on his bottom. The unseen enemies appeared from their shadowy hiding spots to reveal, Kyle Blueman, his best friend, pointing his paintball gun at James' chest. "Put your gun down, and crawl towards Gabrielle, James. Or I will make a mark by hitting you again, and this time I will hit you where it really hurts." Kyle said grinning.
James placed his gun down, but before he could begin crawling there was a movement in the group standing behind Kyle. Bruce Norris, James' karate keen friend, protested, "You sooo didn't hit him Kyle! Look at the colour of the paint it's bright red! That's my assigned colour."
"Bruce, mate, red is my assigned colour, I will even show you," and he fired a round in to James' shoulder, revealing a bright red splash of paint that not only caused a great amount of pain but it also got paint in his mouth and nose. James keeled over to avoid watching the boys squabble and also to see how far away his gun was. Too far and way to close to Gabrielle who was focused on the argument going on a few feet away.
"But what colour is mine though.. I swear Mr. Large issued me red!" gasped Bruce, who instinctly shot James in the back, to reveal a red splodge of paint.
"Can you stop shooting me, I'm not your colour palette!" screamed James.
"Oh Mr. Large is so in for it this time. He's going down big time. Mixing up colours in a training exercise this is gonna be a show worth watching eh Kyle?" muttered Bruce triumphantly, whilst ignoring James' squeels of pain. Bruce and Kyle turned their backs for a second to talk to the rest of the group.
James took of advantage of this moment, performing a perfect swipe kick, sweeping both of the opposing boys off their feet and landing on their back. James ran forward swept Gabrielle out his way and picked up the paintball gun, aiming it at Kyle's chest. "Gotcha." James teased, grinning widely.
However at that moment the square was lit up and Mr. Large's dangerous and overly-loud voice belted out of a megaphone somewhere. "All CHERUB agents are to report to the green room for a de-brief and a chance for me to issue laps to the losers! Now!" James helped Kyle and Bruce to their feet, looking sour, as he never go to execute his revenge after being used as their rag-doll.
"Nice sweep kick back there, couldn't have expected that from what you were complaining about. Toootally thought we were creamed until the lights blinked on. I never thought I would be so happy to hear Large's psycho voice!" Bruce complimented.
"PSYCHO VOICE EH NORRIS I WILL HAVE YOU RUNNING FORTY LAPS OF THE TRACK AS SOON AS I'M DONE DE-BRIEFING YOU KIDS" Large yelled into the megaphone at which he had placed right in Bruce's left ear, making Bruce jump. "AND I WILL PERSONALLY BE SEEING TO IT THAT YOU DON'T TRY AND CHEAT YOUR WAY OUT OF IT TOO!" This left James, Kyle and the others in hysterics as Mr. Large made his way across the training compound. Kyle patted Bruce on the back who was still recovering from the shock of having his ears blown apart, and coming to the realisation that he would be missing the majority of dinner running around a track with a weightlifter watching his every move.
"I'm so screwed," muttered Bruce. "I think I'm gonna go straight there, instead of listening to that .." Bruce looked around cautiously," that nutter complain about how crap we are at shooting each other. I mean we're kids! What does he expect? Eleven year olds out fighting in the Cold War? I'm gonna go start, and if he asks where I am, tell him I expect more laps, for not being at the de-briefing." With that he turned off and began towards the brightly lit athletics track, with a limp in his step and a scowl on his face.
The training compound was a mile and a half by a mile and a half, set under cover and tonight had been set up to look like a ghost town. However there was no real brickwork, cement or tarmat, but a lot of polystyrene, plaster and the occasional slate roof. This was because this compound had to be flexible, changing from a town to a deserted mine field in a matter of days. The truth is that this training compound wasn't used to train cadets and adult special forces, this compound was to train an elite branch of the English Intelligence Agency, The CHERUB. The cherubs were a group of carefully selected orphans between the age of 3 to 17, who were given a chance to live with other orphans, to be trained by karate masters, espionage kings and famous linguists, to become spies. James Adams and his sister Lauren were two of the hundreds of cherubs, hidden from the public eye and living a life of danger, but they loved it.
James and Kyle reached the green room, to find a queue of kids lining up to record their results. James had only found one cache of equipment meaning that if his team hadn't found anymore they would be running laps with Bruce all night. However before he could begin to even look for his team, Dana Smith, a fellow cherub and a member of an opposing team confronted him with dirty look on her face.
"James Adams! I'm still seeing stars after you detonated those stun grenades. My team and I were so shocked after being part blinded that we forgot about shooting you! We didn't even know you were in there we were just looking for the cache, but it looks like you attacked us with it." Dana screamed as they shuffled up the queue. "I still have Emily Flannigan believing that she can't see through one eye."
"Hey! Dana, Dana, I was a one man team, I had to protect my arse with something, and blinding you guys was my best option." James dignified, grinning. "Besides I thought it was Kyle who was tracking me to that building. Guess I was wrong."
"ADAMS! Get over here!" growled Large. James reluctantly moveed forward to the front where Mr. Large sat a table marking down results next teams and names. "How many caches did Alpha team find?"
"Well.. I found one, and so far I've found it hard to find the rest of my team sir, we got separated during an ambush." James explained. "Have any of them reported back yet sir? I'd like to know our results."
"Separated during an ambush?! Did you even try to recover and find the rest of your team? At the rendez-vous point?!" Large snarled, not taking his eyes off the piece of paper. "Andy Lagan reported in with 2 caches and Puke reported in with one. Bethany Parker withdrew from the exercise after taking two shots to the head, with only one cache. That gives your team 5 caches, putting your pathetic attempt at second last on the board," sniggered Large. "and there are still members of the last team who've not reported in."
"Thank you sir, and for the record we were ambushed at the rendez-vous point." James said, and with that turned on his heel and walked straight out the door.
Lauren Adams and her bestfriend Bethany Parker had planted themselves on a couch in Lauren's room. Bethany was still suffering from bruising around her eye and lower jaw but she was still cheerful as they watched the end of Neighbours. Lauren had made sure to exact her revenge on Dave Moss for damaging Bethany's face. Dave was sitting in infirmary with a bruised crotch and fist-sized bruises all over his bottom and hadn't been released since the training exercise. Dave was seventeen and the fact he had picked on a ten year old girl was fairly low and he shouldn't expect very many girlfriends on campus for a while. The Neighbours end music began when a loud knock on the door erupted from down the hall. She got up and anxiously opened the door, to have James, Kyle, Kerry Chang, James' on-off girlfriend, Gabrielle and Greg Rathbone, or Rat as everyone called him, barge through her doorway carrying a DVD player, popcorn, blankets and four litres of pepsi. Shocked by the intrusion Lauren just let them all plonk themselves all over her couches and bed before yelling, "James may I please have a word with you. Now!"
"Sure thing sis. What's the prob?" James said, carefreely. "I hope it's got nothing to do with the training exercise, cause I have news, we came second last and Dana's team had to take the laps. Oh along with Bruce for mouthing off about Large, when he was right behind us." He finished this sentence and everyone burst out laughing, along with Lauren.
"No, I need to talk to you about the dirty sock I found in my bed, after our party last week. I believe it belonged to you and it smelt my whole room out. I couldn't even breathe without the aircon on!" complained Lauren, emphasising every minor detail with a sharp poke to his shoulder.
"Oh.. right that sounds like mine." James admitted, belching, allowing a gust of foul smelling air to blow straight in to Lauren's face.
Disgusted Lauren replied, "If I every find another bit of your dirty laundry in my room again I will whip your butt on the karate floor, got it?"
"Sure thing, but next time don't get your knickers in a knot and come and celebrate about wonderous victory today!" James agreed, nodding and with that he jumped onto the couch squeezing in between Kyle and Kerry, flicking the channel so they could begin the movie. Lauren moved down to infront of the couch and sat on the unoccupied bean bag next to Bethany. Apparently they were watching one of Kyle's favourites, Mission Impossible: 2. Great, she thought, another cheesy movie where Tom Cruise takes off his top and runs across the roofs of some asian buildings trying to stop the world from blowing up. At least it's not Brad Pitt and at least we're going on the summer hostel tomorrow, she thought pleasantly, grinning to herself about all the fun they would be having at the hostel.
The movie carried on well past midnight and everyone dozed off before waking up at 3am, when the phone rang, and everyone awoke abruptly, before Lauren answered to find Zara Asker's voice, the Headwoman of CHERUB, speaking to her. "Lauren, Goodmorning, I hope your party went very well but would you please kindly as your brother, Mr. Blueman and the rest of that mob to go back to their rooms, for real sleep, and make sure they're all packed, as I won't be waiting on them tomorrow morning." Zara said, pleasantly. "Goodnight! Or goodmorning!"
After repeating Zara's orders to the rest of the group they all began filing out leaving behind their mess and thanking Lauren for a great night. James and Kerry left in each other's arms, much to the disgust of Lauren and Rat kissed Lauren on the cheek, which had her so surprised, much to the amusement of Bethany. "You should have seen your face!" cackled Bethany as she landed back on the couch to resume sleeping, "It was a 'Kodak Moment'!"
"Shut up Bethany, you're just jealous of me and Rat." replied Lauren, grinning mischievously, before throwing a pillow at Bethany. This sparked up a pillow fight which ended when both girls collapsed from the exhaustion on the ground. "I'm going to bed, see you in the morning!" yawned Lauren as she climbed back into bed.
"Night." said Bethany and they were out cold in under a minute.