The blinking LCD alarm clock on his bedside table beeped incessantly, alerting him to the fact that it was 6:30 am. Its positioning perfectly facilitated what followed next, which was a swift fist to mash the off button from the fully awake boy.
Huey hadn't slept. Not that that was anything new to him. Insomnia had often plagued him but it had never been so bad that he, at some point, couldn't simply will himself to engage REM sleep. A certain thought sequence had kept him from resting but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. Closing his eyes and trying to remember what had stopped his sleep was the closest thing the boy had gotten to resting.
Although now he was up and fully alert, a slight weariness was evident on his eyelids, tugging at his mind but refusing to silence the beat that pounded mercilessly through his psyche. Something was wrong. A memory chimed from a far corner of his brain, so far in the distance that he would have guessed it was from earliest childhood at first, but a moments' probing proved that notion incorrect. No, he was older than that.
For a moment, Huey struggled to grasp the context, the string of memory the scene pulled at. He dug for the mental roots of the connection, but again he came up only feeling stressed and tired. On one hand it seemed so unimportant. Everything before four years ago when he joined CHERUB lacked importance to him but on the other hand, he knew on an intellectual level he should feel something for it- anything at all.
He closed his eyes as the mental pounding worsened. It was insidious, the pain. It had started to creep up on him whilst he was searching for the slippery memory. It sparked in the middle of his skull, flickering like a near-extinguished match in the middle of a forest floor. The ache wouldn't stay so silent.
As Huey moved stiffly across the carpeted floor of his bedroom towards the bathroom across the corridor, his bare feet sinking into it slightly, he searched for the thread of some emotion that might link him to the impenetrable mental safe that contained his earliest memories but all he could find were still frames from the dreams he had been having, nothing of any substance and he could only regard the thoughts with a form of detached interest. It disturbed him. The more he probed his own mind, the more the tendrils of headache flared angrily before finally exploding with the force of nitro-glycerine.
He doubled over once he got into the cream tiled bathroom and his hands gripped the edge of the washbasin as the pain flooded his system. His knuckles were beginning to match the pale colour of the bathroom as he reflexively applied more force to it in an attempt to alleviate the pain coming from his head or at the very least, focus his mind on some other part of his body.
"Huey? Are you okay in there?" Gabriela had just woken up, that much was evident in her voice. Huey had to stifle the urge to scream as he pulled himself away from the sink and the comfort that throttling its marble edges had provided as he walked over to open the door. In double the time it would have usually taken for him to become composed, his mask came down once again.
"Oh don't worry." Huey replied softly as he leant against the doorframe with one hand propping him up, the other hand clenched behind his back. "Everything's fine."
He flashed a smile to reassure her.
She wasn't convinced.
"Why are you up so early? You don't have to leave for school for another-" She looked down the corridor to the clock positioned under the window. "-hour and a half."
Huey laughed. He hadn't intended to but laughter was often a response to extreme amounts of pain. He could feel the blood pooling in his palm and trickling through the gaps between his fingers.
"Well one must look their best when trying to chum up to the daughter of a member of a drug cartel's inner circle." He bit down lightly on his tongue to show that everything was okay. On the inside, he was exhibiting large amounts of self control not to bite it cleanly off.
"So you're definitely targeting Maya then?"
They had discussed, the previous evening, on how best to infiltrate the home of Manuel Estevado. Intelligence gathered in the days prior to their arrival had suggested that the son, Luis, was gay and given that he was the eldest child, it was put forward that he might be more knowledgeable about his father's "less than legitimate" work and would therefore prove a better asset to invest time into.
Huey had stated that he had no problem with pretending to be gay for the duration of the mission. Why should he? It was no different to what he did day in, day out. One mask switched for another, ultimately meaningless. However, he foresaw a problem that the "relationship" would cause when it came to the father.
Manuel probably had no clue about his son's sexual orientation and given that Colombian drug cartel members weren't exactly known for their acceptance and liberality, Huey decided to go down the path of least resistance and work his way in with the daughter, Maya.
"Yeah. I think that my chances of getting in with Estevado would be lessened somewhat if he found out that I'd turned his son into a homosexual." Huey replied. "They aren't particularly tolerant, those armed gangsters. Now if you don't mind..."
Gabriela smiled as he closed the door on her. He let out a sigh. It was far too difficult to keep himself composed during that conversation and it shouldn't have been. Huey didn't like being vulnerable. Unclenching his hand, he could see the four crescent moon shapes that had been cut into his palm, blood dribbling from each of them. Even in all of this, his heart beat accelerated any higher than the normal, repetitive thud that resonated in his ears.
He sighed and turned the hot water tap, the red label on the brass camouflaging the layer of blood he left. The sound of rushing water filled the bathroom. Water fell from the bath spout and pounded the pristine white tub. After a while, the running water took on a rhythm of its own, but he was certain it was only in his mind as the beat of the pouring water matched the beat of the throbbing just behind his eyes and in his left forearm and hip. It matched the beating of his heart. In the dark recesses of his mind, he wished it wasn't quite so slow. Even as he leaned down to plug up the drain, the tempo was steady. Maybe Basic Training at CHERUB had really done its job. After that, everything else seemed easy. Perhaps it was more than that. He needn't dwell on it. Not now. He had to focus.
As if having an out of body experience, he stripped naked, each layer of previously clean clothing thrown into a pile. Reddish streaks of half-dried blood marked them now. Huey stopped for a moment to stare at the clothing. The blood could've belonged to anyone but the sanguinary DNA was his. He didn't know why this affected him in such a way but it was another few seconds before he snapped out of it, his gaze wandering to the now full bath.
A sigh followed by a quick check of the water's temperature preceded him planting one foot and then the other, lowering himself into the once-clear liquid. Only submerged up to his waist, the water had turned a murky pink colour, partly due to the blood coming from his hand and partly due to the injury he had sustained on a UWTC exercise a few days before the mission. The single cut that ran down his left thigh was his reminder to push off from a wall the next time he chose to jump out of a window. Well, he was by no means the worst off from that particular exercise, injury wise but the now reopened leg wound still stung.
Until he began to settle into the body-saturating heat he wasn't aware of the soreness and stiffness in his muscles. It was deep but it would go. To himself he thought that by the time school began, it would reach a crescendo, the aching from dull to sharp and then by nightfall, it would disappear entirely.
Closing his eyes, he sank further into the rising water, resting the nape of his neck against the cold rim of the tub. It was a startling contrast, but refreshing just the same. The silence, only permeated by the now muted surge of water against water, went on for nearly forever before Huey extended a foot and pushed against the faucet dial, extinguishing the flow. Without the sound of the running water, the bathroom seemed somehow exponentially louder but it was the noise in his brain this time that was the culprit. Like Lady Macbeth, he was plagued by a bloodstain no amount of soap, white wine, or turpentine would remove. He'd already crossed the line though, and in crossing it he discovered the line barely existed in the first place. It was as visible as tissue paper and as fragile as well.
He'd be caught out saying that the stain lingered on his very soul. Impossible, though, for his soul was not present. It was dead, as dead as his family, as dead as his faith in those around him. It was memorialised solely on a typed page in the CHERUB personnel files clipped to a grainy passport picture. It was a face and a smile that no longer belonged to him. His soul was gone, taken away with a name that was once his and sent to the heavens in an accidental spark. His life was a story and was partly a lie, but so was everyone else's at CHERUB. Whether they knew it or not, no one was who they thought they were.
"There is no such thing as innocence."
It was a thought that rang in his head time and time again. Everyone was guilty for something. Huey was special, maybe, but he was not innocent.
Pushing up with his legs, he righted himself, sliding along the slick bathtub bottom. He reached out a hand and plucked the bar of soap from the dish, unwrapping it from its pristine packaging with soaked fingers. The sharp and jarring sting of soap against open, still-weeping wounds trapped his breath in his chest but it meant life. He scrubbed mercilessly at his body until his fingernails were again pristine and the edges of his cuts were pink and raw. The water, however, was clouded and tainted to opacity. He'd probably have to scrub it out. With great care, Huey climbed from the bathtub and patted himself dry with the towel that hung from the peg on the wall. After this was done, he rummaged around in the bathroom cabinet for a while, removing a bottle and a yellow tube. Inside the bottle was bleach, which he poured into the bath water a moment after pulling the plug, the happy duck logo on the bottle antonymous to Huey's stern face.
Inside the tube was superglue, which he squeezed onto his leg injury whilst holding the skin together. The alcohol in the glue burned for a moment, but it evaporated and dried fast. He always preferred glue. It was less painful and quicker than stitching and didn't require looping a thread through a tiny hole. It was to be used whenever possible. On a base level, Huey wished that the edges of his core could be so easily patched together- that the gap in his mind that served as a stinging reminder of what was missing could be just so easily closed.
"Now's not the time to think of that."
His hand shot out and he took a peek, twisting the tub faucet in order to rinse it out. The bone-deep ache that had enveloped both his mind and body was silenced.
It was 7:30 when he finally pulled himself out of his bedroom. Gabriela was already at the table, nibbling on a slice of toast that she held in her left hand as her right tied her hair up in a loose ponytail.
"Well don't you look nice." She said as she looked up from the stack of papers splayed on the kitchen table. She pinched his cheek affectionately with her non-toast filled hand. "Quite a handsome son I've got, eh?"
Huey didn't respond verbally to her physical contact, only smiling to her before cutting some fruit into a bowl.
"So." He said, his rate of chopping not decreasing even as he tore away his gaze to stare at Gabriela. "What will you be doing while I'm busting my hump at school?"
"Mmmph." She removed the toast from her mouth. "Sorry. I'll be liasing with the head of the taskforce going up against the cartel. The information that you'll hopefully be able to get will help them build up strong evidence against Calacito and then, all things going to plan, we'll be getting out of here and they'll be able to run a successful sting operation."
"Okay. If I do my job right, I won't be back until later tonight." He replied as he picked at the fruit in his bowl. "Here's hoping I won't get suspended on my first day.
"So long as you make good inroads with the Estevado children and don't do anyone any lasting damage, I don't think that it will matter too much whether you get suspended or not."
"Heard you loud and clear." Huey couldn't shake the feeling that Gabriela was more nervous about this than he was. He put it down to her being a relatively junior Mission Controller and thought nothing more of it. He stood from the chair and picked up his messenger bag. Slipping on his loafers at the door, he stepped outside into the dark January morning. "See you later, mother dearest."
Gabriela sighed. The toast wasn't enough for her and she opened the fridge, picking at her half eaten dinner from the evening before. Gabriela headed back toward the house's spare bedroom that would serve as a mission control hub, the plastic container containing her left over microwave meal squeaking irritatingly in her hand. At the moment, she felt as though it would be more appropriate to fill a cereal bowl with Ritalin and eat it with a spoon. Her nerves were aflame, and so was her stomach.
On CHERUB campus, there existed a computer accessible only by the chairman. It was on this computer that a file that contained some extremely sensitive data was stored; a list, maybe five or six names long. Huey's name was on there, just under Ramsay, Jack and above a Shepard, Philip. Many CHERUB agents were exceptional, there was no doubt about that but there were some for whom their exceptionality was rivalled only by their potential for "less than condonable" actions. In layman's terms, it was the agent watch list, the ones that CHERUB had to be careful with.
When an agent is requested for a mission, their name is cross-checked against this file. If it just so happens that a Mission Controller has chosen a watched agent for a mission, they are given the pleasure of being briefed by the Chairman and the agent's handler for the best part of an hour and then read each intricate part of the personnel file before they choose whether to keep that particular agent.
Having read his file, she felt sorrow for the boy when it came to the events leading up to his recruitment but this was transformed into something else when she went through the transcripts of his psychologist sessions. The boy seemed like a shell; intelligent, no doubt but ultimately someone going through the motions of life with no real goal. At the same time, he was destructive. Incredibly so.
The thing that had stuck in Gabriela's mind was the instructor's report from a recent UWTC exercise that Huey had participated in a week prior. On it, he had feigned weakness to lure members of the opposite team to his position in a solitary attic, filled the room with smoke from four grenades, and shimmied down from the window before unloading the contents of his rifle into the room. The opposing force hadn't expected the entrance to be booby-trapped to not open from the inside and were caught unawares as Huey had proceeded to decimate them, making special note to shoot the smoke grenades attached to their belts in an attempt to perpetuate the plumes of smoke filling the room. This also had the unfortunate effect of burning many members of the team, leaving them with injuries that had inundated the medical staff on campus.
Before Huey, Gabriela had never even heard of the watch list but after having gone through the arduous briefing process, reading his personnel file and meeting the boy, she could understand why it was so imperative that those on the list never learned of it, lest they joined forces with one another.
The idea that perhaps she was taking part in the use of someone who was being manipulated for use by the British Intelligence Service swam into her head. That struck her as odd. Every child recruited had a choice whether or not to join up so why should he be any different?
Maybe it was something to do with that watch list and the knowledge that CHERUB were using children to protect a society would never accept them but she had to remind herself it was a necessary evil. She had to trust CHERUB's judgement and had to trust Huey. She had placed her confidence in the wrong people before and she had suffered for it. She needn't think about it though, it was way back when she had been a cherub and the only thing that had mattered was getting one up on your mates' shirts.
She peered out of the bedroom window and watched Huey assimilate into the morning pedestrian traffic as he walked down to the corner where the street met the main road. She could only hope that her faith in him was well placed.
Thoughts on the story so far?
Praise, rage or critiques, all are welcome.