Chapter the First

{Cammie}

It was a warm and sunny day at school when my life got a little more interesting. Sure, I was still a spy, but at the moment, I'd given up that bit of my life. After the last mission, I'd said I was going on hold and that they weren't allowed to contact me in any way. My sisters were so ticked off.

Anyway, it was a regular warm day at college and the loudest fire alarms I'd ever heard went off (but that was probably because they were echoing from five different buildings at once!). I looked up from my book and saw puffs of smoke coming from the dorms.

Dammit! Today was supposed to be a good day. Well, technically, every day was supposed to be a good day for me at the moment. I ran over to the buildings to see how bad the damage was and assess how long it would probably take the fire department to clear it all up.

It was pretty bad: half of the building was on fire and spreading quickly. Then I saw a girl with short, curly red hair looking at the building in horror. I ran toward her.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

She nodded. "Yes, but Katarina's still in there!" she wailed.

"What?!" There was a person still in the building and in the burning part of it as the girl's finger pointed.

Maybe, I was just sick and tired of sitting around, maybe I wasn't going to let this Katarina get hurt even more than she was (I couldn't even hear the ambulance siren's yet!), Maybe I wanted to finally do something, or maybe all three. Next thing I knew, I was inside of the burning building calling, "Katarina! Katarina, where are you?! Katarina!"

I heard a faint "Here!" and shot toward the voice. A short-ish girl with dark hair was lying on the ground in a room with a part of the collapsed wall on her leg. I helped her take the wall piece off of her leg and sort of picked her up.

I would have gotten out of the building in time had the wall decide that we weren't getting out the way that I came in. Split-second decisions – I hated making those, because they usually made me regret them fast. Well, I kinda made one right then. I jumped out of a window, with Katarina in my arms.

Gallagher Academy had prepared me for jumping out of windows, but advised to make those windows less than five levels up. That's why I'm lucky that I didn't get very much hurt and neither did Katarina. I set her down on a patch of grass and stumbled a few feet away. I felt a piercing pain in the back of my left leg. Then, everything went dark.

{Zach}

I was excited for today. Gallagher Girl had said that I could see her today, that we could go on a date and everything. That was my favorite part of today.

I was sitting on a bench, waiting for someone who had asked to meet me. Normally, not knowing who he/she was, I would have waited a while away from the rendezvous point. But, the rendezvous point was across the street from Gallagher Girl's school. Me and my stupid emotions!

Not long after I had sat down on a bench facing the school, a boy about my age came over and sat down next to me. I was about to asked him who he was and he was about to do the same, having just noticed me, when a shrill bell cut through the air.

My head snapped up – it sounded just like a code black at school. Smoke was coming from a building over to my left. Simultaneously, the other boy and I got up and ran over to the campus and entered the school's territory. We made our way quickly over to the building.

As we arrived, I saw a sort of familiar looking girl jump from the fifth or sixth level of the burning part of the building with an unconscious girl in her arms. The girl landed clumsily, she was very lucky. She set down the other girl and back away. I don't know what she did next because my gaze was fixed on the girl on the ground.

"Kat!" the boy beside me exclaimed. He rushed over to her side and started talking to her. I got closer to her and saw she was hurt. Where the heck were the fire department and police and paramedics and all them?

"Please give her some room to breathe."

I took her pulse and checked for any cuts and scrapes. She had a long cut down her arm and thin, deep scratches up and down her legs and arms. My hand went to my ear and I pressed the comms unit in my ear.

"Bookworm, I need some advice!" I whispered into the mic.

"Who doesn't?" Liz asked.

"No equipment and a girl's covered in cuts and scratches, but still breathing. What do you use to clean the cuts?"

"Depends on where you are."

"I'm at Chameleon's school, Bookworm!"

"Try the school's medics. Oh and say hi to Chameleon for me!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, Li – Bookworm. Bye!"

A guy came over and leaned down next to the boy from earlier and growled, "He said to give her air."

"Name her siblings and I'll back up, sir," he growled back.

Before a fight broke out, I grabbed the new guy by the arm and said, "If you really want to help her, get the school medics or whatever."

"Okay, but what about her?"

He pointed to the girl that had jumped out of the building. She was pretty much as bad as the other girl, except she didn't have as many scrapes and her cuts were longer and much deeper. Her hair covered most of her face and she fell at an awkward angle.

No matter what, I still recognized her – Gallagher Girl. "Same thing, but bring more people."

Then he ran off and disappeared. The other boy looked at me with the ghost of a smile on his face. It quickly faded as he looked back down to the girl at his feet, Kat.

"Thanks. I was about to pummel that guy. I'm Hale, by the way."

"No problem, I'm not a fan of fighting too much. The name's Zach."

He started to respond then looked confused at some point behind me. I turned around. For the second time in five minutes my heart stopped. Before me stood the one person I hated most in the world – my mother.

She held a gun in her hand lazily and frowned down at Gallagher Girl. I also looked at her, to make sure that she was still breathing if only just slightly. She was. Catherine bent down and whispered in Cammie's ear.

"Cammie, Cammie, Cammie, will you ever cooperate with me?" she asked.

Then, I saw something I hadn't before: a small hole in Cammie's leg. My fists clenched and I burned with rage. Quickly, confidently I got up and glared at Catherine.

"Catherine, leave her alone."

{Hale}

"Catherine, leave her alone."

The boy, Zach, was surprisingly calm considering the fact that he obviously hated the woman. His fists were clenched and he looked ready to kill someone. I wouldn't be surprised if he did kill someone.

Catherine looked up from the girl on the ground. She smiled at Zach.

"Hello, Zach! So, you got my message?"

These two were close or maybe were once. She seemed happy to see Zach and he was glaring so hard, I swear that I wouldn't be surprised if Catherine melted into the ground. A soft groan came from the ground below me and my gaze shifted.

Slowly, Kat was waking up. I could hear what sounded like fighting and shouting going on, but I couldn't look up. "Come on, Kat, wake up!" I mumbled.

A small blue-tooth earpiece type device landed in the grass next to me. I finally look up. Zach and Catherine were fighting full on. Catherine had dropped both her gun and her smile.

Zach looked at me once between punches, blocks, and kicks. "Put that [block] on and [kick] say [punch] 'Code Green [block] at [block] chameleon school, [punch] all [block] shadow brothers, [kick] chameleon sisters, and their [punch] families [punch] needed [kick] [block] now!' They'll know what it means!"

"Okay?" I answered. It sounded more like a question than a statement.

I put the ear piece in my left ear. The familiar hum of a comms unit magnified because I had one in both of my ears. A comms unit? What exactly was this guy?

"Whoever can hear me," I started, speaking into the comms unit, "there is a Code Green at chameleon school – all shadow brothers, chameleon sisters, and shadow and chameleon families are needed now! I'm told you'll know what that means."

"Who is this?" a timid, southern female voice asked.

Before I could answer, a more familiar voice said, "W. W. Hale the Fifth?" and an even more familiar voice said, "Hale, what're you talking about? You guys know what he's talking about?"

"Yes, Macey, it's Hale," I answered, disconnecting my regular comms unit.

"Peacock, did you give this 'Hale' guy a comms unit? Chameleon's going to kill you; Shadow too!" a loud British accent took over the comms.

"No, Duchess, anyway we need to go if what Hale says is true," Macey responded.

"Exactly how do we know it's true? I want Shadow to tell us that it's true he should be around there somewhere," a boy projected.

More voices agreed and started calling for Shadow, telling him to come forwards and say something about Chameleon. No one answered and we waited for what seemed like forever. Eventually, I gave up listening and looked back to Kat. She was sitting up and staring at the other girl, eyes wide.

Then, I saw it; the girl wasn't breathing (or, at least, that's how it looked to me). I searched for Zach in the crowd and found him hand cuffing Catherine to a lamp post and a picnic table.

I called out to him and when he turned to look at me and the girl, two guys ran from the crowd yelling, "Cammie!"

"Nick!" I exclaimed.

"Josh," Zach growled. When he spoke, I heard it echo. He was using another comms unit connected to the line.