Disclaimer: Unfortunately, still no.

So, what did we do with all of our super spy skills when we swept the room and found bugs everywhere from in the light bulbs to in our shoes? Absolutely nothing. Except make sure we didn't say anything interesting in the dorm rooms. It was surprisingly interesting. And I found out that Grant knew a suprising amount about basketball stats. It must have been driving Cammie crazy.

The next day during CoveOps class Cammie and her roomates were whispering somthing. I didn't try to listen to the conversation. I could pretty much guess what was being said.

Meanwhile I twidled my thumbs and waited for Solomon to show up. When he did he said "Assets." He pushed up his shirt sleeves and walked to the chalkboard. "Define the term Ms. Alvarez."

"An asset is an individual recruited and utilized by an operative to gain covert information." Eva recited. That girl talks like she swallowed the textbook. Did we have textbooks for this class? Whatever, the point is that Solomon ignored her.

"Listen up and listen well." Like one of us might not have been paying attention. "The most important thing any of you will ever do is make people trust you." Oh man, was he preaching to the quire on that one. "You will become someone you aren't in order to befreind someone you hate." You mean how I survived the first twelve years of my life living with my mother?

Solomon studied each and every one of us in turn, and I might have been imagining it, but I think he studied me for a little bit longer. Well I had already certified that he knew about my mother. He probably knew he was telling me my life story. "We develope assets ladies and gentelmen. We find people who have information that we want and we take it. Or we persuade them to give it to us. We find traitors." He paused. "We lie."

If it hadn't been a serious talk I would have emploed the phrase No shit Sherlock. As it was I looked at Cammie instead and saw her vaguely queasy expression. I thought that maybe she was in the wrong line of work if this was making her queasy, but then I saw Bex mouthing: Phase Two.

Oh good God in heaven. Iv'e never asked you for anything before, in fact I'm pretty sure you don't exist. But if you're up there, could you please let me know what phase two is before it gets to the point where it might kill me? Yeah, sure with my luck, it was more likely that I would be smited then given any help.

As soon as we exited the class I motioned to Grant that we neaded to talk. He tore himselfe away from Bex and came over. "What?" He asked looking impatient.

"Did you not see any of what Bex was mouthing during class?" I asked incrediously.

"Should I have?" now he sounded confused.

"Well I figured with the amount of time you spent starring at her face you would have noticed her lips moving."

"Yeah yeah yeah because your focus is always 100% when Cammie's-" then he was cut of by my elbow driving into his stomache. He wound up making a sort of half chocked sound instead. When he could breath again he said "Okay fine what was British Bombshell mouthing that I missed because I was staring at her beautiful emerald green pools of eyes. And her-"

"Do I need to elbow you again?" I asked cutting him off.

"No"

"Good. She mouthed, 'phase two'. For your information."

"What do we do?" I really do hate it when people say that to me. You know, because of the whole aforementioned leadership thing. But in this case I actually had a plan.

"Well, we know they have a plan, but we don't know what it is. So we stay ready for anything and see what pans out so we can make our own plan."

"So basically, were winging it."

I glared the glare that I normally reserve only for people I really hated. "Have you got a better idea?"

So that was how I wound up preparing for every eventuallity I could think up for the next day and a half. Of course following the laws of universe, the only eventuality I wasn't preppared for was the one that actually happened.

She approached me when we exited the tea room.

"Hey Gallagher Girl," I flashed her a smile while privately thinking I-know-what-you're-doing-&-you-dont-know-I-know. "What can I do for you?" Might as well just let her say whatever she was going to say.

She took a breath and lightly composed her face. "Mr. Smith says our midterm papers have to be a joint project. And my mother said that I should make an effort to 'embrace the collaborative nature of this experience'."

Not bad Gallagher Girl. I could almost believe her. If I hadn't known she would be trying something. At least this could turn out to be amusing for me. And if she was leading up to what I thought she was leading up to this would be very interesting. I could at least not make it any easier for her.

"And you want to embrace me?" Not an awful thought. That part of my brain didn't seem to be able to say much else on the subject. I had learned to just try to ignore it.

"Only in the academic sense. Look do you want to do this project or not?"

Why the hell not. At the very least I could have a very akward and potentially entertaining date. With Cammie. Oh crap, I actually liked her. Shoot me now. There is no way this can end well. I thought. But before I could say something really stupid Cammie said "So?"

"Sure Gallagher Girl," I walked halfway down the hallway and waited until there was a class of girls between us before calling "It's a date!"

I had to have a little fun right?

I made my way to the library that night and wound up arriving before Cammie. I didn't even want to think about what Bex, Macey, and Liz were putting Cammie through for this 'date'. Whatever it was, it was probably only legal in Europe and shouldn't be legal anywhere.

I took a table at the back of the library and put out down my back pack. You can give soemone all the training in the world. It will not change the fact that textbooks are heavy.

Cammie entered exactly 2 minutes and 37 seconds later. She looked pretty, and fairly normal. In fact this was the first time I had ever seen her wearing jeans. Still I couldn't help but feel a little more aware of the fact that this was technically a date. "Hello Gallagher Girl." That seemed to be all the sound my throat could accurately produce at the moment.

She came and sat down accross from me. "So," her voice cracked a little. "What should we start on?"

"I don't know." This was her party so to speak. Her mission. I wasn't going to do the work for her. Besides when you play dumb, sometimes people will explain things to you.

After 2 minutes of silence she spoke again. "Zach." I looked at her. "So, I was thinking we could look at the impact of propaganda in third world economics."

Personally I thought that we could probably just type that into Google, plagerize, hack the site, take down the original article, and we would still get full credit for it because we had been good enough to pull of the hacking. But instead of saying that I just said, "That's what you were thinking?"

"Yes,"

She looked like she was waiting fo rme to either say something or look away, but I did neither. I just let myselfe look at her. It felt vaguely like I was slipping off of a cliff (believe me. Iv'e done it), but this didn't feel exactly the same. Because, when you start slipping off a cliff, there's always the chance that you will be able to find something to grab onto. This didn't feel like I was facing anything that I could stop. The only thing I could see facing me was a very long fall with a very hard landing that might or might not kill me.

"So... I guess we should outline the report and maybe summarize our notes and-"

I cut her off. I thought that maybe if I could cut off this whole experience, maybe the slipping feeling would be cut off to. Gallagher Girl. Is there something you want to ask me?"

"No." She lied easily. Then we went back to our books.

Silence is weird. It can stretch for ages and never bother you, or it can crush you like a freaking anvil. This was one of the anvil silences. I pretended it didn't bother me, and eventually Cammie broke it.

"So-" She started but never finished. Apparently she didn't actually have any idea where she was going with that.

"So..." I let my words stretch out longer to try and lift part of the anvil.

"So what do you think of the Gallagher Academy?"

Well akward conversation was better than no conversation. Besides, any where was better than Blackthorne. This place was like a cinderella fairly land compared to Blackthorne. "Oh, it's swell."

More silence for a while until two 8th grade girls passed through the library giggling and whispering. Cammie went up e notch higher in my books when I saw Cammie studiously ignoring them. "You handled that pretty well," I said with a nod toward the whisperers.

"Well I've had some practice, i guess. Besides, sticks and stones." Oh how true. If giggling broke spies, the government would go through them faster than toothpicks.

She turned a page in her note book and efter another long moment of silence I decided enough was enough. "I gotta say," I laced my fingers behind my head and tipped back on two legs of the chair. "I'm a little disapointed."

"Disapointed!" She cried out. Thus came the climax of my quest to elevate her blood pressure.

I laughed. 'Yeah, Gallagher Girl. I thought you had a reputation for being... proactive." That was putting it mildly.

"Yeah? Well what would you do if everyone thought you had breached security?"

I leaned forward again and let the chair legs reconnect with the floor. "I would probably find out everything that I could about anyone who was...new?" I said it like it had only just occured to me when really I had known it for a long time. "Who maybe didn't have an alabi on the night of the ball? I might even try to get close to anyone I suspected." I leaned closer to her which I only realized after I did it that it was a bad idea. "I might even bug their rooms if I got the chance."

"Hahaha." She fake laughed.

"But you wouldn't do any of that would you Gallagher Girl?" I said standing.

"Of course I-"

I dropped the bug I had found in the electric outlet onto the table, then before I could stop myselfe I leaned in and whispered. "I'm not all bad Gallagher girl." it was true. My dad had been a lovely guy. It was just too bad he had married Satan. I grabbed my jacket and started to leave. "Of course I'm not all good either."

I started walking and then called. "Thanks for the date!"

A/N: Review review review! I'll post more tommorow!