The assault course was hell. Megan understood why they were made to do it straight away; it really kick-started the training course.
Luckily, Rosie had three older siblings who had all done the same assault course every day for 100 days. She showed Megan all the tricks; how to climb through the muddy tunnel quickly, how to cut the swim across the lake in half, how to pick a course over the jagged rocks and how to make it the whole way across the bog on the rope swing.
Megan and Rosie really worked well together and they finished the course a full ten minutes before everyone else. As they were showering off the mud under the freezing spout, Oscar and Max came jogging up.
"Whew!" panted Oscar. "They really mean tough, don't they?" Rosie nodded. Megan looked at Max.
"You okay?" she asked. He nodded silently. Mr Walsh came running up behind Maddy and Cara as they clambered over the tree trunks at the end of the course.
Ronan Walsh was not a small man. His legs were as thick as tree trunks, and his head was larger than a bowling ball. A beefy moustache adorned his tubey lips, and he had a habit of twirling the ends around his fingers so they always pointed upwards.
He had always had a mean streak in him; he had been a cherub himself when he was younger and was always the bully of the group. Taking the head training instructor job was perfect for him; he got to bully innocent ten-year-olds for three hundred days a year.
"Right, my little pumpkins! I think it's time for …. Oh, let's see …. Some physical exercise! NOW I WANT ALL OF YOU, AND I MEAN ALL OF YOU, OUTSIDE THE TRAINING HUT DOING TWENTY PUSH-UPS!" Walsh roared.
So far, training hadn't been too bad. But it was only the first morning, and Megan knew that much, much worse was to come.
After exercising until they were nearly puking, the trainees started lessons. They had survival, karate, language, weaponry, computing, espionage and lessons which everyone called 'gadget stuff' because nobody really knew what they were.
The trainees were each assigned a new language. Megan and Max had always been good at languages and they were fluent in three already. To their delight, Megan, Max, Oscar and Rosie all got Mandarin Chinese as their new language. Maddy, Cara and Freddie got Russian, and Jess, Tyler and Reuben got Greek.
Megan enjoyed learning Chinese; she'd always wanted to speak a language from the Far East. By their third lesson, however, she was less enjoying the fact that every lesson was spent wet, cold and covered in mud. This was because their language lessons came first thing, five days a week, straight after assault course and physical exercise.
After a week, Megan felt as though she'd been in training for months already.