Chapter 2- the 1st test

Petra was sitting up in bed reading a book on Russian warfare, written in Russian of course. She looked over at Harry, who was laying with his back to her. The other three were snoring away. She heard a faint metal scraping above her head. Harry stirred. Rats, Petra thought, wonderful. There it was again- a long, scraping noise like something being dragged in the ceiling. The air vent. The fan above Petra's bunk was not moving. She held her breath to listen. She could swear she heard distant voices, foreign. She tried to make out the language, but it was too quiet. Carefully, she crept out of bed and pressed her back against the wall. She thought about waking the others, but spared herself from the embarrassment. Paranoid Petra, they're coming to take you away.

Petra allowed herself a few minutes before she moved away from the wall. She moved her bed closer to the center of the room. She could see an entrance grate to the air shaft. Putting her trunk on top of the mattress, Petra climbed up and pulled the hinged grate open. The opening was still about a foot above her head, so she grabbed the sides of the shaft and pulled herself up into the hole. She looked down one tunnel, but it was too dark to see anything. The air vent was just wide enough for her to maneuver through, and she was able to turn herself around to look down the other end. Then she saw it. The little, red, blinking light. She crawled down the shaft, about 10 feet, before she could find what the light signaled. It was a digital timer, flashing bright red numbers, counting down from five minutes. In the red glow, she could see the timer was strapped to what appeared to be a pipe bomb.

Petra scrambled backwards towards the opening, then stopped. She went back, grabbed the bomb, and climbed back down into the room. She ran over to Harry's bed, shaking his shoulder, the bomb in her left hand.

Harry turned over towards her, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "What time is it?" He asked, his voice groggy with sleep. His eyes focused. "Petra, what on earth?" He saw the item in her hand, and leaped from his bed. "Bloody hell!" he yelled, backing away from her. "Where did you get that?"

The others were starting to wake up. They sat up, perplexed at Petra and Harry, looking like they were having a Mexican standoff.

"It was in the air shaft," Petra explained. "I think we've been infiltrated by terrorists. And we have exactly-" she looked at the timer- "Three minutes, forty seconds to get rid of it." At that, the other three were on their feet, scrambling for the door.

Edward tried the door handle. "Shit, it's locked!"

"Throw it back down the air shaft," the other rugby boy- Stephen- said to Petra. "Maybe we can toss it far enough that it won't hit us."

"No," Harry said, "We can't endanger anyone else who might be in other rooms. We're going to have to disarm it."

Everyone looked at Edward, who stared, panicked, back at them. "Can you do it?" Petra asked.

Edward took the bomb carefully from her and set it on the floor. Two minutes, fifty-five seconds.

Harry and Stephen tried heaving their bodies against the door. Stephen was yelling for help. The other girl- Lisa- was grabbing all of the blankets from their beds. "Here," she said, handing them out to Petra and Edward. "They're made from flame-retardant material."

"Edward, all you've done is stare at the thing like a fucking fish," Petra said. "Can you disarm it or not?"

"There's a kill-switch, but it may also be a trip wire to set off the damn thing."

"If you could put a percentage on it?"

"Fifty-fifty."

"Shit. We have to get out of here."

Harry stopped trying to break the door down. He was out of breath. "How?"

Petra pointed to the air vent. "We can climb through-"

"Wait, bombs don't have digital timers," Edward interrupted, "That only happens in the movies. This may not even be a real bomb." He looked around at the others. "Do you think this is part of our training?"

"Do you want to stay and find out?" Harry asked. "C'mon, we all need to get up into the air shaft."

Lisa was the first to heave herself into the opening, followed by Edward and Stephen, each of them wrapped in their blankets. Petra and Harry stood on the bed, looking up into the dark hole. Harry out his hands on Petra's waist. She slapped his arm and pushed herself away.

"What are you doing? Don't touch me!"

"I'm trying to help you so we don't die in an explosion!"

"I don't need your help!" Petra jumped up, grabbed the edges of the opening, and lifted herself up with the grace of a gymnast. Harry jumped up behind her. The others seemed to be about twenty feet ahead of them, about to turn a corner. Petra tried to remember how much time they had left. She hadn't looked at the timer before she went into the vent.

"Where's your blanket?" Harry asked from behind her.

Shit.

Petra crawled on her hands and knees as quickly as she could.

Suddenly, a loud boooom shook their surroundings. The others had made it around the corner. Petra started forward again when Harry pulled her towards him, shoving her body flat and lying on top of her, pulling the blanket around both of them. Before she could protest, she heard a gust of wind and felt a blast of heat- flames from the explosion escaping through the vent. Harry's face was pressed against Petra's cheek. She could feel his breath on her neck.

After the flames died down, Petra quickly crawled from under Harry and continued down the shaft. She didn't turn around to make sure he was ok. She caught up with the others, who had stopped when the bomb exploded.

"Are you guys ok?" Edward asked.

"Fine. Keep going," Petra said.

Eventually, they found another air vent opening into another room. When Lisa kicked the grate out, they could see a large, black cushion about twenty feet down. "You've got to be kidding me," she said to herself, then let herself fall down into cushion. One by one, they landed softly. Gawain was standing near them, waiting.

"Congratulations on completing your first test."

Everyone was speechless and out of breath.

"Lisa, great job on noticing the material the blankets were made out of," Gawain continued, walking down the line to each of them. "Edward, you were also quite observant about the mechanics of the bomb, although the kill switch would have, in fact, rendered the bomb inert. Stephen, Harry, good teamwork." He reached Petra on the end. "Petra, excellent discovery of the bomb. We had an extra feature on it that would start beeping if no one found it, but you were much quicker than we expected. However, you seem to have a problem working with the other members of your team."

"With all due respect, sir, they are not my teammates. We are all competing for one position."

"Yes, but that position includes working alongside other Kingsman agents. They are to be your family. You can't do this alone." He stepped back to address the whole group. "I won't keep you up any longer. Wake up call in-" he looked at his watch, "Three hours. There's another barrack west of here you'll find with spare beds. Dismissed."