AN: Hi there, friends! Oh my gosh wasn't the Olympics amazing! I was so impressed with Team GB's performance! We beat Russia, France, Germany, even Australia that is pretty exceptional for us! I think having a home crowd advantage helps though! Okay then thank you to … (drum roll please!) … Zammiexoxo (Don't we all love a good Zammie story!), zammie101 Guest (Thank you for reviewing!), IamMe03 (why yes you are! Okay that was cheesy), popularoutcast12 (I'm sort of a popular outcast, I'm friends with pretty much everybody but I'm not amazingly pretty or have a boyfriend), goodelover23 (Goode is good), Photogirl5 (I am not photogenic in any way shape or form!), Glass and Paper (interesting name you have there), KITTYKAT Guest (I called my friend Kit Kat because her names Catriona), A. Nonymous (Thank you for reviewing and Bex and Grant will come up in obviously Bex's chapter!), The One You Never suspected (no she didn't don't worry! Thanks for the review), I am the chameleon (my next update is … now!) ,
Gallagher Academy: The Final Stand
Chapter 21: Tina Walter's POV
There's a skill to gossiping. Okay maybe it sounds like I'm exaggerating it but sometimes the art of persuasion is the only thing that has gotten me out of tough situations. People find it annoying sometimes; I know Macey did when she first met me. She hated my guts but as time went on we grew really close – it just took longer for her and everyone else. And I'm glad of her friendship, she's fiercely loyal and that's a good characteristic to have.
There's a reason I gossip – and no it's not to ruin people's lives, I'm not that kind of person. It's a sort of diversion. If the conversation or even battle is going wrong then that's it, I just whip out a piece of information concerning them or someone close to them and like that they're eating out of the palm of my hand and I'm saved. I'm surprised no-one realised - except Mr Solomon. But then again this is Joe Solomon we're talking about; he's the one who taught us everything, he's the one who realised Kim Lee's speciality (stalker).
Everyone has something on their side Cammie is a pavement artist, Bex is strong (physically and emotionally), Macey is great at honey-potting, Liz is a genius, Courtney has explosive energy when it is needed, Anna, Mick and Eva have pure determination to see something through and Kim is a stalker (god, that sounds so wrong!). I have nothing but pure powers of persuasion.
This was one of the first times that this was completely useless.
As I jogged around the Gallagher Academy grounds heading towards the mansion's paved main entrance, I kept my eyes peeled open wide for signs of any danger. Looking up I couldn't help but sob at the sight of the mansion – my home – being blown to pieces. Wide, gaping holes stared back at me and at the sight of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women being slowly drained of life was heart-wrenching. A subtle movement caught my gaze and I watched as a Gallagher Girl handed over another life-less Gallagher Girl to yet another before diving her hand back into a box. I watched her entranced for a second or two before she took her hand out of the box and leant back against the wall, chucking a small green item out of the hole. A bomb. She'd been disabling a bomb. Only seniors' could do that. Then who had been the girl helping her? Who'd died? Was it one of my close friends?
I started running towards her when she leaned up suddenly and then screamed. I looked down from her undistinguishable face to her chest. She'd been shot in the chest, too close to her heart for my liking. I screamed, when she cried out in agony. She tried to stand and run away but she was shot again. She stumbled around a bit and then toppled off the edge of the floor. Down and down to the ground below.
"EVA!" a voice screamed, I turned and saw Macey McHenry and Kim Lee run towards the tumbling body from different directions. It was Eva. Eva had been shot twice, and then fallen 6 metres onto pavement. She landed solidly, no bounce/cushion on the un-forgiving ground at all. Kim got to her first and shook her shoulders, followed by Macey and then I. She was bloody all over her body, her arm bent at an awkward angle. I didn't want to look at her like that so I concentrated on her face, her once beautiful face.
Her mouth was open in a silent, unfinished scream and her eyes were crazed and wild. Her matted hair splayed out behind her like the sun's rays. She tried to move her mouth and I snapped out of my horrified trance-like state.
"Listen to me Eva, can you hear me?" I said desperately at her unregistering face. She moved her lips by millimetres but not even a decibel of sound came out. I swallowed back a lump in my throat, beside me Kim was sobbing and Macey's own silent tears were streaking on to Eva's legs.
"Okay, Eva. You're going to have to stay awake just a little bit longer. Just keep your eyes open for a bit longer. It's alright."
I tried muttering comforting words to her but nothing was working. My once persuasive voice was not working. Point blank. Her eyes were fast becoming unseeing, the dewy life being sucked out of it.
"No, no, no Eva! Stay with us. Don't go," my voice was no longer calm but rather bawling at her. She was my room-mate. What would Gina say? Or Courtney? We were the fearsome foursome! That couldn't be made into a trio! The many times we'd spent staying up late at night talking in our small dorm room came flashing like light bulbs in my mind and I clutched Eva to me harder. I wanted to turn back the clocks, I needed a time machine.
Eva started to close her eyes, her mouth making more undetectable whispers. I screamed at her now.
"NO! Open your eyes … open your EYES! Stop it Eva, STOP IT!" She didn't hear me, and if she had she most certainly couldn't stop it. She was beyond help – even she had given up trying to fight it. I bawled into her blood-stained shirt. Some part of me thought it was all one sick and twisted joke she was playing on us. But the sound of gun fire and bombs in the background banished that theory. This was real, all too real. And I don't think anyone of us would ever get used to it.
"It's not funny," I whispered under my breath for Eva's ears only but Macey was the one to respond.
"It's not a joke." And like that I came undone. I let go of my once whole and healthy friend and grabbed hold of Kim and Macey instead. We sat there for a while clutching each other, supporting each other like each one of us was a crutch for the next. There was nothing left for us in that corpse that lay at our sides. Whatever organs and genetics that body had, it was no longer Eva. Eva was long gone.
The hug was broken by both Macey and Kim at the same time. They both suddenly sprinted away. Macey whipped around as she sprinted towards the centre of the grounds screaming over her shoulder.
"Run!" Run. Run. But it was too late to react to those words because the next second I was being picked up by a set of muscly forearms.
"You move and I kill you, princess," the guys gravelly voice sneered, like sandpaper on a baby's skin. Aiming a gun at my head with one arm, he lifted me through a throng of Circle of Cavan Agents and I remained motionless as they laughed at me, jeered at me, mocked me. Kicking me in the shins and spitting on me. The man lowered me down and shoved me onto all fours – his gun still aimed at my head. Something told me he'd have no second thoughts about killing me, instead he'd relish in it. Enjoy his victim's pain.
He looked up at a woman's silhouette standing motionless about 10 metres away, her back turned away from me.
"HEY! Joanna, you've not done much harm this fight," he pulled me up by my hair onto my knees, crying in agony, "this one's yours for the kill." The woman turned around slowly and her features came into view to reveal my beautiful, strong, brilliant mum.
I gasped in shock at first and her face must have mirrored my own. Except when I got over my shock and looked at her with a murderous glare, hers was still horror stricken. She walked forward – gun in hand I noticed – until she was less than a metre away.
"You b****! How dare you!" I spat in her face. My guard kicked me hard in the small of my back and I whimpered.
"BE QUIET, YOU FREAK!" He bellowed at me but my mum cut him off.
"No! Let her speak," she said calmly, pain evident in her eyes. If looks could kill she'd be on the floor. She'd been lying to Dad and I all this time, she'd been one of them? Hell, she'd been lying to the CIA and her country! My rage bubbled over and I screamed at her, my betrayal evident in my words.
"How could you call yourself my mum! The one I would depend on, when in fact you're out slaughtering people! You're one of them! You … you … you've been killing my friends? And then you'd act like nothing had happened! You're a traitor, a piece of s*** and a disgrace to the CIA and the whole of the USA! Hell! If this is who you really are I don't want to be your daughter!" The guard tightened his grip on my hair, yanking it further upwards but I refused to even so much as grimace, I continued to glare at my twisted mother.
She was shaking now her lower lip trembling. She wasn't dealing with the anger at her being a traitor, no she was dealing with the heart-shattering pain of Eva – my best friend - being killed as well . 'She worked for the organisation that killed her' I thought. 'She could have been the one that shot her' it whispered evil words of my own doing, giving me the courage to lash out at her face, clawing every bit of her I could see. But the minute I tried the Guard yanked on my hair pulling me backward, yet I continued to scream in protest trying to get to my mother.
She tried to open her mouth to respond but I cut her off.
"Go on then, get on with it. SHOOT ME!" I started laughing like a maniac, daring her with my eyes. She opened her mouth.
"Tina, please -," she said begging me but there was no way I was letting her explain why she was so 'sorry'.
"Shoot me." I said simply. She raised her gun and I let one single tear roll down my cheek, I was going to die at my own mum's hands. I closed my eyes and tilted my head to the sky waiting, bracing myself for the pain. I winced when I heard the barrel explode. Once, twice, Thrice, Four times … Six times. Wasn't once enough? Did she really despise her daughter that much? And then I realised I wasn't bleeding. I felt a thud behind me and then my hair was released. I opened my eyes to see my mum lowering her gun and throng of dead Circle of Cavan bodies around me.
"What the?" my mum said quickly but a loud clang to the head and she was slumped on the floor as well to reveal the grim face of Cameron Morgan. I grinned at her.
"Down not dead," she said grinning in response. I raised my eyebrows and got up to run with her.
"Who else is down?" I asked her, somehow knowing she would have an answer.
"Abby's down not dead, Joe's injured, Grant's on the floor but I don't know …" she said quietly at the end trailing off her sentence.
"Eva's dead," I said quietly and her head whipped up as she stopped running, staring at me. I didn't though I couldn't not now I had a rhythm going. Not now my best friend had died. Not now my mum was a traitor, I was always going to be running away from problems. I was scarred for life.
Straight ahead I saw Courtney on the floor and so I ran straight for her, intent on telling her about Eva – she had a right to know. But when I got to her and offered her my hand, the mission went right out of the window. She looked exhausted and vulnerable, the last she needed was being told of her best friends killing. So I put on a brave smile and pulled her to her feet and we took off running. Things were going so well – taking down Circle of Cavan Agents – I almost forgot about what had happened. Almost. We worked together and I came to suddenly realise how much like family my best friends were. I was concentrating so hard I didn't realise Courtney wasn't right behind me until a huge, deafening roar came up. I looked around as Circle of Cavan Agents ran around like they were mad. Obviously more than half were still fighting taking as many as possible. But still a large chunk were running around like headless chickens. I watched as Courtney was punched in the face accidently as a man ran past, she lay on the floor unconscious. There goes my emotional escape.
I turned around just in time to see a high-heeled boot slice in front of my face.
"HEY!" I screamed at the owner of the boot, to see it was my mum … ex-mum.
"Are you trying to kill me?!" I asked her but she merely pointed to the man with a gun that now lay on the floor.
"Tina," she said desperately "I need to explain!" I shook my head covering my ears with my hands and tried to back away.
"No, you've done enough, I thought I made it clear. I don't want to be near you!" She grabbed my hands and yanked them to my sides.
"Listen to me!" she screamed "I was threatened!" I shook my head.
"That's not good enough."
"My old co-worker blabbed to the wrong person. They found out my cover and threatened me by saying they'd kill you and Dad if I didn't join! I never would have signed up otherwise but I couldn't take the risk!" she was begging me, she might have well been on her hands and knees. I looked into her eyes; no dilation. Damn! She wasn't lying! This just left me even more confused. To gain some form of trust and admiration by her new co-workers she would still have had to have gone on missions with the Circle of Cavan, she still needed to have killed. And she's a good liar. How do I not know she's feeding me more lies?
"It got so bad that in the end I talked it over with the Director in Washington. He told me to join and act as a double agent for the CIA." She looked at me waiting for my response, her hands still like an iron grip on my shoulders.
"How do I know I can trust you?" I asked, and she gave me a small smile.
"I'm your mother, you can always trust me," I opened my mouth but she finished her sentence before I could interrupt. Sensing how confused that made me. It was too easy an answer, I rubbish excuse.
"But, if you've got even some form of sense then that won't be a good enough answer for you. So if you don't trust me good" and she rushed off back into the crowds. My mind reeled to a make sense of her words – I certainly didn't trust her yet – and then I smiled as I what my mum had said dawned on me. It was the first ever spy-related compliment I'd ever gotten from her.
Okay then, thank you for reading and I'll try and update soon! We're onto the big guns now! Macey, Cammie, Bex, Liz and Zach! Then one maybe two chapters and we're done. Okay now please review! I was so happy with the amount I got last time! Please okay, then woop!