A/N: Here's chapter 12! My gift to you guys: a long chapter! It's the longest one I've written yet! So, anywho, Enjoy! :

(Cammie POV)

I jumped up from the table and raced out of the Grand Hall. The rest of the gang followed and found me pacing in a small hallway a few feet away. I blocked them all out, all of the background noise and frantic conversation as Bex and Liz tried to calm Macey down. What had Mrs. Goode said? I leaned my forehead against the brick wall, straining to think back and remember. She had been upset. James, the agent hired to do her dirty work, had gone too far, gotten a little too excited. I almost died that day. I was placed in a rundown infirmary with yet another machine hooked up to my body monitoring me. Everything was so fuzzy…

..:: l| FLASHBACK |l ::..

-Almost killed her…..I need her alive…hasn't broken yet. Stubborn

Beep…. Beep…. Beep…..

Like her father… lights swirling, fuzzy voices…

Beep…. Beep…. Beep…

Whispers… Roseville… Ambassador Winters visiting…

Beep… Beep… Beep…..

Get the boy. Preston. Roseville…Bring him to me.

Beep… Beep… … … …

She's flatlining! Get Doctor-

… … …Beep… … … …..Beep… Beep.

Get the boy. Get the boy. Get the boy-

..:: l| REALITY |l ::..

I pushed myself away from the wall and turned to face my friends. Grant and Jonas had joined them at this point. They were all standing in a group arguing, but I wasn't quite sure what about. Bex had Grant in a headlock, squeezing harder every time he yelled at her. Macey was in a heated argument with Zach, both of them pointing and waving their arms wildly around. And Liz was standing silently next to Jonas. They looked torn between laughing and running.

"Should we do something?" I heard Liz mumble to Jonas. He shrugged. "What would we do?"

I watched in amusement a moment more as Grant passed out and fell to the floor. Bex looked like she was close to grabbing Zach next. I decided I should intervene soon.

"Guys." Talking to a brick wall. "Guys." I sighed in frustration. I didn't want to resort to these tactics, but…

"HEYYYYYYYYYYY!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. That got their attention. I smirked.

"What the heck is going on?" I asked incredulously. Grant came to, moaning and rubbing his neck. Bex smiled proudly.

"Cammie, what do you mean 'Preston's in trouble'?" Macey burst out. "You can't just let a little bit of info like that out and then LEAVE!"

"I'll explain everything later, after classes. We'll meet in our room," I said quietly, subtly looking towards the groups of girls sailing out of the Grand Hall. Macey nodded. We split up in groups and went to our classes.

-:-:-:-

"Okay," I began again after classes, once we were behind closed doors. We had taken temporary refuge inside our room and collapsed in various spots on the floor. I sat against my bed, with Zach on my left and Macey staring daggers on my right. Bex was lying on her bed, hanging off the edge so she was upside down. Liz, Jonas, and Kyle were all across from me.

"A few weeks ago I overheard a conversation between Zach's mom and James." Zach's face was blank. To everyone else in the room he looked completely normal. But when I said "James" I felt him tense up, saw the pain in his eyes. I took a breath and told myself to water it down. "It was a whispered conversation, and I didn't hear all of it. But I remember a few key phrases. 'Roseville. Ambassador Winters visiting. Preston…..Get the boy. Bring him to me.' That's all I overheard. But it's enough. Ambassador Winters isn't an agent of the Circle, but he IS affiliated with them. They're planning on taking Preston while he's here." I sat back and watched the varying reactions pass over my friends faces. Kyle looked mildly confused. Macey, angry. Grant, Liz, and Jonas were sitting quietly. But it was Bex who worried me. Bex looked….excited? I eyed her nervously. "Bex?" I asked. She looked up at me, not even attempting to look innocent.

"All right guys! What are we waiting for?" She hopped off the bed and walked over to her closet. "Let's go kick some bloody Circle butt!" Bex kneeled down and started rummaging, tossing random items behind her. Liz ducked as a crowbar whizzed over her head and collided with Grant's stomach. My hand flew out and caught a large hot glue gun seconds before it hit Kyle's head.

"Bex!" Macey called, diving to the side to avoid all Bex's equipment raining through the air. Bex stopped momentarily and looked up, holding two coils of black rope, a blowtorch, Napotine patches, and a box of uncooked spaghetti. "We have to have a PLAN, Bex! We can't just go running around randomly!"

"Macey's right. We'll figure out which toys we'll bring later. First we need to research and plan" I looked towards Liz and Jonas. They simultaneously smiled and looked towards each other. Bex instantly looked bored, letting her gear drop back down to the floor in front of the closet. Liz grabbed her laptop and started searching, her brow furrowed in concentration.

"They'll be here in 13 days, on the 19th," Liz said, her eyes never leaving the screen. I nodded thoughtfully.

"Well that gives us some time to plan," Grant said, having just gotten his breath back a moment before.

"Why do they want him?" Kyle spoke up suddenly. Everyone looked at him in surprise. "Why do they want this 'Preston' guy?" I paused, dumbfounded. Never really thought about it.

"I don't know," I said slowly. "Do you, Zach?"

Zach's forehead wrinkled, his face thoughtful as he thought for a moment. "…No clue."

I'll admit, for a moment, I was really, really tempted to rub that in his smug little face. A lot. But I'm a bigger person than that. So I refrained. Barely. But I consoled myself by temporarily stealing his smirk.

"Well, let's face it. The Circle is not exactly known for their tendency to let us know what they want," I said dryly. I straightened up and decided to take charge. Turned back to Liz. "Okay, we're gonna need details on their visit. Their itinerary, detailed information on the places that they will be staying at or visiting. Blueprints of the buildings and background histories of everyone near them." Liz smiled excitedly and nodded as fast as she could. She hopped nimbly to her feet and walked out of the room with Jonas right behind her.

I turned to Macey. "You can be our disguise queen. Find us lots of disguises and costumes." Macey got a very scary glint in her eye, running off before I could stop her. "Appropriate disguises and costumes!" I yelled after her. Zach smirked. I glared.

"Once Liz and Jonas figure all of that out, we'll have to figure out what our next move is." I looked over towards Kyle skeptically. "And we'll have to double up on your training." He smiled bravely, looking slightly nervous at the same time. Zach looked over toward Kyle. I elbowed him in the side under his ribcage, effectively wiping the smirk off his face.

-:-:-:-

Two Days Later, (Saturday, September 8th)

"Okay!" I spread my feet for balance and crossed my arms over my chest. I was standing in the P&E barn with Kyle and Zach. We were on a mission to continue Kyle's training and turn him into a spy in less than two weeks. "We'll start out easy. For warm-up, we're going to start by running 7 miles." I ignored the look of unease that quickly appeared on Kyle's face. "We'll go slow!" I promised brightly. We started off at a snail's pace, but I quickly sped us up, encouraging him to run as fast as he could. In the end….We'll just say that running is not his strength. We ran back to the barn. I stood calmly with Zach while Kyle panted, discussing what to work on next.

"What's he good at?" Zach asked.

"I don't know!" I huffed. "I only knew him for like a day before we came here!... Wait a second." I paused, feeling an imaginary light bulb blink on over my head as I remembered that day. "He's really good at Kajukenbo!" I whispered excitedly. "He took agents down almost as quickly as I did!" We nodded in agreement. Hand-to-hand combat was up next. I started first. We sparred for a little while, practicing. I taught him dozens of new techniques, and he caught on quickly. I bowed out a while later, sitting back and watching Zach and Kyle fight. They kept at it for a while. It was amusing to say the least.

"You're pretty good," Kyle ducked a punch and sent an uppercut toward Zach's face. Zach sidestepped it easily, sending a roundhouse kick back in retaliation. His foot connected with Kyle's chest. Kyle fell down hard, but jack-knifed to his feet instantly. Kyle faked a punch to Zach's right side, surprising Zach with a hard punch to the gut instead. They stopped for a moment and stood there.

"You aren't horrible," Zach deadpanned. I rolled my eyes. Boys…. I hopped to my feet.

"All right guys, I'm going back to my room." I headed back inside the school. Walking back to my room, I made a detour to Mom's office. I knocked softly on her door.

"Mom?" I called as the door swung open. She wasn't there. I walked inside and sat on her couch for a moment, looking around. I hadn't fully realized how much I missed being in here with her. I smiled, comforted by the room. Glancing to the side, I saw a picture of us. It had been taken right earlier this spring. I hadn't ever seen it in her office before though. I stood up restlessly and walked over to her desk. A thought suddenly occurred to me. I bent over and looked under her desk in the secret drawer that she kept her files in. I pulled it out and found the picture and files that I had taken from the Circle base. I realized just then that I'd never actually looked at them. They both had the same outer label: Gallagher. I opened up the first one. It was a file on me, everything the Circle had compiled about me. I glanced through it. They didn't have anything important on me. I looked over to the second file and frowned. This one was on Ioseph Cavan. It had the wrong label on it. I flipped through it. There wasn't much there that I didn't already know. I was about to put it back into the drawer, when something caught my eye. A family tree. I read the names listed. It wasn't until I got to the end that my breathing increased.

Andrew Cavan. Edward Cavan. Thomas Cavan. Elizabeth Cavan-Winters. Timothy Winters. Winters?!

My eyes widened. Preston was Ioseph Cavan's descendant?!

A/N: CLIFFIE! sorry :) please leave a review and let me know what you think!