Chapter 21 – Joe

At midday, everyone who was at base was reported to turn up to the forest training centre for some team building work – no doubt because Ella was here. I found out why Susan, the boss who had arranged this little team building exercise, was so fond of Ella. Both her and Michael were hired temporarily to help on the case of a mass murdering Savant just under nine years ago. Susan's youngest brother was the fourth victim of this mass murder, and the youngest brothers identical twin was next on the hit list. Ella and Michael had combine their gifts and managed to stalk down the mass murderer to his exact coordinates only minutes before his next murder, and the twelve year old Ella had managed to knock him out. A dwindle, twelve year old girl had knocked out a forty-eight year old muscle machine just by freezing the fluid in his lungs and reducing the temperature of the tissues around his heart, causing him to pass out within seconds. Susan was forever grateful because both Michael and Ella had saved her brother getting murdered in the exact same way as his twin.

We all stood, about thirty five of us, by the forest training centre in the middle of the woods to the right of the main headquarters. This is where the fitness tests were done when you first had to pass – you had to do this circuit seven times, running 3.6 miles in between each lap. If you gave up, you were out. You had twelve hours to do it. It was completely visible, but it was that determination to keep going was the thing they were looking for. The circuit started off with 1.5 mile run, which was had skipped, before a series of obstacles. An 8 foot wooden wall you had to jump over, ropes, draw bridges, zip wires, rock climbing walls and climbing frames. Anything you could image was in the two mile stretch of obstacles; many of them were in the tree top. Even though there was safety netting under them all, as you had no safety ropes you were completely screwed if you fell.

'As you are all aware, we are on code red for operation Lions beak,' Lions beak was the code name given to the markings on the wall, and included all the information about the American's research as well as ours. 'Ella Benedict has flown over from America earlier today to help us all find the source of these messages, so we're going to do a bit of "training" to get our minds focused. However, we don't want it to be dull and boring so in random drawn pairs, you're all going to complete this course together. You have to work as a team in order to pass at the end, if not; we have paint ball guns being armed by the admin team. You must cross each check point at the same time. Not only that, you can pick the music you want to listen too all the way around.' Susan explained, as people started laughing and quietly talking. It was off for Susan to be this nice and this up for everyone bunking off work whilst still getting paid.

Ella quickly walked up to the starting platform and pulled out a name of the hat Susan held to her. She had stripped off her jeans and my jumper (!) and was now in some Nike running tights and a baggy shirt, all of it in black. It made it slightly easier to notice how pale she looked despite having a very slight tan. As she picked the name, I prayed it would be me. I would love to do this course with her. Please be me.

'Jake, son, get your bum up here.' Susan called, and I was so jealous. Jake, my married brother, got to have the pleasure of doing this with her? I knew it was nothing and they were just really good friends that had been talking quite a bit in the last few months since she first came over, but I craved to have that closeness to her. I wanted that more than anything and I screwed it up because I probably slept with her one night. Think before you drink, kids.

Both of them looked through the list of songs, talking to each other and laughing before finally settling on one. Ella circled the song, as Jake put on the tracking tag around his ankle, bending down to do Ella's for her as she was handed the iPod to put the music on. They both jumped down off the little platform Susan was standing on with her megaphone to the rudimentary start line – a spray painted red line across the front. A few moments later, Fall Out Boy's latest album started blaring out of the speakers, starting with "Uma Thurman"

'Three, two, one, go!' Susan said, as everyone cheered as both of them ran towards the wall, jumping up and climbing up its nearly flat surface in a few skilled motions, sitting on top before jumping down together. I had seriously underestimated how physically fit Ella was in order to do all of this. There was some tall giants at this place – I was considered one of them – so they made the obstacles higher. I mean, that wall was just under twice her height and she completely nailed it. So did Jake, to be fair.

An hour or so later, I finished the course. My partner turned out to be no fun at all and every time I mentioned to him something, a topic to discuss he told me to be quite and focus on the "mission" at hand. Even though it wasn't a mission but was actually meant to be fun. But he kept running off around the corners, meaning we kept getting shot by the receptionists and my previous black jeans and dark blue shirt have now coloured paints splattered up it and I could feel the tingling sensation under my clothes of the bruises that will arise in the next few hours. But as we crossed the finishing line two and a half odd miles from the start line. Everyone who was called before us was sitting around on the grass, sunbathing in the abnormally warm temperatures of July. I jogged up to Quinn, who went a few rounds before I did.

'Took your time,' Quinn gently said, hugging me to his side as he did. By the looks of it, he had only got shot with a paintball once, the pink colour spreading us his arm where it had splattered. 'Who'd you get?'

I simply tilted my head to the guy I had to do it with, who had stopped to do press ups on the floor. Unbelievable.

'Yeesh, you had a good time then. Have you seen Jake? I thought he would still be around here, they must have finished it like half an hour ago.' Quinn said.

'I have no idea, he wouldn't've wondered off without us,' I said and Quinn nodded looking around. Quinn looked towards the toilets, where we could just see Jake coming out, with his arm around Ella. Ella however didn't look too good, and was very pale and looked incredibly small and hunched over. Quinn and I jogged over to them both as Ella hugged herself making herself slightly smaller.

'You alright?' I asked Ella, but it seemed more of a free-for-all question as I spoke, but I kept my eyes firmly on Ella. She had managed to loose most of her colour and almost manage to blend into the light grey of my jumper that she had put on again over her running clothes.

'Ella's not feeling too good,' Jake said gently, hugging her gently. He waved Michael to come over, who was covered in paint where either he kept running off in front of the person he did the course with, or vice versa. He came over but only to give me a dirty look, compared to my brother who had his arm arounds her.

'What's up?' Michael asked.

'Ella been sick, four times if we're being precise. She should probably go home,' Jake said. 'I can drive her home if you want?' Jake told Michael but Ella just shook her head.

'Nope,' she whispered struggling from Jake's grip.

'She won't let anyone else drive her home, that's why I brought her car to work. But she's in no fit state to drive.' Michael said.

'I'm fine,'

'Ella, hun, stop.' Quinn said to her.

'I'll get a train, it's fine. It's only one change from Guildford to that station in town, I'll be okay.' Ella mumbled.

'You don't know the way to the train station, we're not just going to let you go explore Guildford when you're throwing u everywhere. I knew you wasn't well, I should have taken you home the second you landed and I shouldn't've let you do this either,' Michael told her, and she just shrugged.

'I didn't know I was your dog you could order around,' she snapped back, but hugged herself again.

'I can take her to the train station,' I said, and Michael shot me the evils again. He opened his mouth to say something witty, but Quinn butted in before he could.

'None of us know the way, Joe does. Just this one time, it might be best – for Ella's sake,' Quinn explained to Michael. Thankfully for us, Quinn's gift can occasionally leak out and calm people down to the point of persuasion, and as it was leaking out now. Michael shrugged.

'Okay, but I swear if you touch her, you'll have to deal with me,' Michael said coming over and standing in front of me.

'Oh yeah, and what would you do? Put him in some chicken nuggets, come on Michael grow up a bit.' Ella muttered under her breath and Jake started laughing. I guess when Ella was ill she turned into a sharp, witty dark humoured shit who just couldn't be bothered to take anyone's shit. Fair enough, really. If I just got off a nine hour plane journey, straight into a helicopter from Glawsgow to Guildford, before doing a two miles obstacle course all whilst feeling sick before throwing up four times I wouldn't want my brother's older protective speech. I tried not to laugh and just nodded.

'I won't touch Ella,' I simply said as Jake carried on laughing, hitting Ella on the arm gently as she smiled again.

'Okay, I'm just going to get my backpack I'll be back out in a second,' Ella said, hugging herself and slowly walking back towards the rear entrance to the main headquarters as the rest of us milled around.