Fifteen year old navy shirt Joshua Asker rolled over. The sun was up, but he couldn't face his day. He had Physics first, and he had forgotten he was supposed to do three pages out of his exercise book for homework. This meant a week of repainting the lines on all the rugby and soccer fields on CHERUB campus. Joshua sighed. If he didn't go downstairs now, he'd miss breakfast. Hopefully if there were some bacon and pancakes left, he could eat himself into hoping the day would improve.

As Joshua stumbled into his clothes, he ran into his handler Kerry Chang.

"Hi Joshua."

"What's up miss?"

"I just got word from James. He wants to see you first thing this morning."

Joshua smiled. A meeting with James means only one thing; he's going on a mission. Not only can he bunk his homework, but this might finally be the mission to get him the black shirt he'd been working towards for five years.

"You didn't do your homework, did you?"

"How'd you guess?"

"I don't know how many times I've seen that look. You know, I could inform Ms Hill that you didn't do your homework..."

"No, that's fine."

"OK. Now get this room cleaned up a bit, go get some food before it all goes, then head over to James' office." Joshua immediately complied by making his bed.

Within about an hour, Joshua had managed to clean his room and get the last rasher of bacon. After gobbling down what he could, he headed over to James' office. As was normal for him, however, he stopped in the small memorial room for CHERUBs and staff that died in the line of duty. While there were a small handful of names on the Roll of Honour, he only had eyes for two.

Ewart Asker: 1976-2010

Zara Asker: 1970-2010

As hard as he tried, Joshua could never remember them.

When he was just six, both his parents had been kidnapped by two former members of a white supremacist group CHERUB had managed to bring down. When the hut they were held captive in as stormed by paratroopers, one renegade had started firing shots into the building with no direction whatsoever. While he had managed to take down the kidnappers, Zara and Ewart had also died in the shootout.

Since the death of his parents, Joshua and his younger sister Tiffany had lived full time on CHERUB campus. While they were orphans like all the other cherubs, occasionally their status as the children of the former chairwoman of CHERUB led to problems with their peers.

But not today, as Joshua left the room and entered the mission preparation building and headed for James Adams' office before knocking on the door.

"Come in," was the call for Joshua's favourite person on campus. James was his godfather, and had been like an older brother to him. One of the best days of Joshua's life was when he heard James had taken a job as a CHERUB mission controller a few months ago. Joshua opened the door and entered.

"Hey, kid. How's it going?"

"Not bad."

"Doing your homework?"

"Um..."

"Kerry told me."

"Oh. So you know."

"James can't talk. He never did his homework anyway." Until now I hadn't realised James had a guest. And not just any guest. That face was one I knew very well. The long blond hair, the beard and the pierced eyebrow...

"You're Dave Moss!"

"The only one. Good to meet you, Joshua."

"I have every Demon Vipers CD! My sister is an ever bigger fan. She has posters of you all around her room."

"That's nice to know."

James cleared his throat. "What very few people know about Dave is that he is also an ex-CHERUB. He's doing a big concert at Wembley tomorrow, but he's worried about the security of his hotel, what with all the crazy girls. So he's asked CHERUB for a favour to test the security and since I owe him my life, I volunteered you for the job."

"Great." While it was awesome to meet Dave Moss, Joshua was also a bit sad that it was nothing more than a security check. That's not gonna be a black shirt mission.

"You in?"

"I guess so."

"Good. You get to leave for London in Dave's tour bus. Once you get there, follow the instructions on this map," as James hands him a folded up map, "and make sure everything is OK. To sweeten the deal, you can take four friends with you. After you're finished, you go to the concert."

"We get to go to the concert?" Joshua realised this was a sweet deal.

"Backstage passes, kid."

"Oh...my...God..." This mission was gonna be great. So what if it's just a security check? Not many of the biggest missions got you backstage passes to a Demon Vipers concert. They'd be the talk of campus for weeks.

"Okay mate, you got half an hour to get your crew together, get any equipment you think you might need and meet in the campus carpark."

"I'm on it." Joshua got up to leave.

"Hey Joshua." Joshua stopped. "If you pull this one off, I got something else waiting for you when you get back. A big mission."

"How big?"

"Let's just say it's the kind that can make or break a CHERUB career." Make or break. The kind of mission that could either get Joshua his black shirt, or kill any remaining chance he has for one. As Joshua left to gather his crew for the security check, he couldn't help but think about what could lie in store when he returned.