Zach watches as Bex's eyebrows furrow and she makes small circles on the frozen, stone floor of the train station with one booted foot. He can't exactly interpret what she's thinking, but for once he has a fair idea of what it's like to be close to the Chameleon, and he doesn't like it. He's never had this vivid a moment about not being able to reach what he can't have. For once, Zachary Goode is desperate.
His own mind is swirling with the image of Cammie – his Cammie – whizzing past on the opposite side of that scratched and grimy train window. Zach closes his eyes and savours the image even though shock was evident on her features. He thought he would never see her again because she was supposedly dead.
"Where are they going?" he questions Bex, causing her head to snap upwards.
With a small shrug of her shoulders, she replies, "I…I don't know. I can contact Lerner and find out; they'll be so bloody far away it probably won't even make a difference."
"Then we need to get a surveillance team tracking them. Liz, Jonas, do you think you can find them?"
Jonas raises a dark eyebrow. "Is that an insult?"
"Well…" Bex begins hesitantly, "Lerner doesn't know where they are… He says that their comms unit is acting up…"
The four of them are hidden in a deserted tunnel, any and all sounds echoing off the mouldy, damp walls.
Frustrated, Zach runs a hand furiously through his knotted hair. "Got anything, Jonas?" Jonas could hear a slight twinge of desperation and longing in his best friend's low voice.
With a small, and almost sad, shake of his head, Jonas replies, "No, but Liz is just running a scan—"
"I've got something!" his fiancée interrupts urgently. "Thank goodness for security cameras!"
They all crowd around Liz's high-tech, easily-disguised laptop, watching the screen with increasing trepidation. On the five-by-five inch screen is the rather fuzzy picture of two recognisable people. If Zach weren't a spy, he wouldn't notice the way the two mutter almost indistinguishably to each other out the corners of their mouths as they pretend to take photos of each other in front of a stone, formal-looking building.
It's clear they are trying to get some good shots of the building itself; obviously to pore over them later.
"Where is this building?" Zach asks immediately.
Liz clicks the cordless mouse and then types madly away on the tiny keyboard. "I'm just running a scan. It'll tell us the rough estimation of the building at the very least. Why do you need to find Cammie so quickly?"
Zach hoped someone wouldn't raise this question; he knew it would be difficult to answer. Then that answer would lead to more and more questions, most of which probing his allegiance and who his contacts are. He didn't even want to think about being interrogated by Rebecca Baxter; just the thought made him shudder slightly.
"I…I miss her…And I need to talk with her."
He can tell none of the others fully believe him, but he doesn't care, he has far more important things to deal with at the moment.
"Okay, I've got a location!"
"Everyone take a comms unit – they're encoded so no one can hack them. I'm really hoping we won't need to split up, but everyone knows hope doesn't get you far in our profession." Liz hands Bex a small box of tiny, skin-coloured earpieces.
As everyone appends them to their ears, Bex says to Zach so that no one can hear, "I know you're lying – we all do – and I'm not going to let it go."
Zach just shoots her a look of pure innocence, but Rebecca Baxter is a trained spy and sees past the fake expression easily. She rolls her eyes and holds back an attempt to claw Zach's eyes out of their sockets. She knows she could easily do it, considering the materials in the room she could complete her easy task in twenty-eight ways without having to take more than three breaths.
"We're on the next train, okay?" calls Liz as they walk back to the bustling train platform. Each and every one in the group was wrapping their bulky, warm jackets closer to their reptilian-like skin (due to the dire cold) to preserve body warmth.
When the train finally screeches to a halt five minutes and thirty-eight seconds later, the four of them discreetly board it, not one of them actually carrying a ticket. Once the doors close, they breathe a collective sigh of relief and make an attempt to situate themselves comfortably on the itchy, dark-green seats.
"We've got to get to Druzhby Street and find the Royal Russian Network," Jonas informs everyone, looking up from the small computer screen.
Frowning, Zach inquires, "Why are they at a bank?"
Everyone turns to face Bex, who scrunches up her nose in annoyance. "Do I really have to explain? It'll take ages!"
"We need to know, Bex," says Zach, sitting up in his seat by the horribly scratched and nowhere near transparent window. "Plus, we have quite a while before the train stops at the station we need."
With an irritated sigh, Bex rubs her eyes and tucks her greasy, dirty, brown hair behind her ears. "So you all obviously know there are seven continents. Someone – a very sick someone – decided years back that it would be fun to build seven massive nuclear bombs and place them at strategic points on these continents, so as to cause as much devastation as possible. And—"
"Let me make a conjecture," interrupts Jonas, causing Bex to send an annoyed and frustrated look his way, "There is someone out to set all of them off, and the Sinkers – or whatever you called that organization – are trying to stop them."
Bex slowly nods her head in partial annoyance at the fact he decided to interrupt her at the beginning of her speech, when he was one of the ones who wanted to know. She says through gritted teeth, "Just one correction, Jonas dear," her voice thick with British accent and bitterness. "There's more than one terrorist group after her."
"Her?"
"Cammie. She holds the key – even if she doesn't realize where the answers lie – to the whole mission, thus, yet again, she is being targeted."
The group falls silent; everyone pondering the many, many possibilities of where the answers lie.
Only when the door connecting the train carriages open and a blue-suited lady enters does everyone jerk out of their reveries and stiffen. She's a ticket collector.
She says in Russian, "Tickets, please." Her voice is as heard-set as her mouth – which forms a thin line.
Shifting in their seats, no one moves to find their tickets; they needn't bother, there's nothing to find. The ticket collector, sensing this, prowls forward, a scowl on her face. "Let me take a wild stab in the dark: you're stowaways? Four lawbreakers looking for some thrills?"
Although she speaks fluent Russian, Bex, Liz, Jonas, and Zach have no trouble understanding her, or her mood; she's incredibly aggravated.
"Ow!" cries Liz as all four of them slam into the freezing, concrete floor of the next station the train stops at.
Even Zach is amazed at how strong the ticket collector is; she's like a female version of the Hulk. He gathers his feet beneath himself and stands upright, dusting off his clothes before lending Bex a hand which she condescendingly rejects.
"I don't need your help, Zachary."
He just shrugs at her hard words and turns to Jonas. "You got a GPS?"
Jonas puts his hand to his heart and blinks a few times to establish he was being sarcastic. "Do you have arms?"
"He won't soon if you guys don't hurry up," Bex threatens, whose arms are firmly folded across her chest, keeping her furry jacket closed.
"Are you sure this is it?"
Increasingly frustrated at their lack of faith, Jonas rolls his eyes. "I'm certain."
"How can you be certain?"
Exhaling slowly, his breath appearing in front of him in a white cloud of fog, Jonas points to the obviously recently attached brass sign out the front of the modern building they had seen on the computer screen earlier.
The Royal Russian Network
Proudly erected in 1998
BRANCH: Moscow, Russia
"Oh."
Liz, who has been unusually quiet throughout the whole afternoon, speaks up, albeit quietly. "Should we go in? Do you think they're here?" Jonas slips his hand into hers and squeezes it gently.
Zach swallows at the sight of the affectionate gesture and turns his head in the opposite direction. He misses doing that to Cammie a lot more than a spy is supposed to miss something in the emotional sense.
Bex pushes past the lovebirds and walks confidently into the building, a welcome gust of heated air blowing her matted hair behind her. Inside, she takes off her gloves and quickly and inconspicuously surveys the room's exits and lack of windows. As soon as she has an escape-route firmly set in her mind, she approaches the front desk with a polite smile gracing her tired features.
"Can I help you?" the well-groomed, sleazy-looking man behind the granite reception desk asks, surprisingly, in perfect in English.
"Umm." Bex clears her throat. "I'm Renita. My friends and I have accidentally split up with two others in our group and we were wondering if they came in here."
Zach has to refrain from raising an eyebrow. He's sure he could have asked the same thing Bex did in a far less conspicuous manner.
The sleazy man taps a long, manicured finger on his chin, thinking. "I think… Yes, yes, there was a married couple in here. They've just left, I'm afraid. They met with one of our accountants briefly before departing a few minutes ago."
"Did you happen to see which direction they left?" Bex masks her British accent with an American one in case she seems even more out of place.
After another pause, in which the man thinks, Bex gets her answer.
"I thought I heard them say something about going back to their accommodation, but I couldn't say for sure…"
With hardly enough time to say a proper thank you, all four rush out onto the freezing, yet still reasonably busy, street.
Bex briskly sets off down the opposite direction of the street from which they came. "I know where they are."
Those words were the best things Zach has heard all day, especially after hearing Cammie – the girl he loves – has pretended to be married to some guy she's only really just met. Zach never thought it would happen, but he's jealous.
Bex pauses beside a very plain, uninteresting car and glances all around her. No one appears to be looking, so she pulls a strangely-simple, silver key, which she then pushes into the car's lock. After sixteen seconds, Bex pulls out a fully-formed, hard key which now fits the car in front of her.
With a thankful glance at Liz, Bex unlocks the car and ushers everyone inside. Once all limbs are safely in the car, Bex zooms off like a madman, completely disregarding any road rules of Russia.
"Bex…Uh, B-Bex," stutters Liz. "Can you slow down?"
"No."
Zach, who is sitting in the passenger seat, turns to face Jonas. "Did you bring any Napotine patches specifically made for Bex?"
Apologetically, Jonas replies, "Sorry, only packed the extra-strong ones made for Macey."
Fourteen minutes later, the car skids to a terrifying halt out the front of a disgusting, run-down hotel.
The thing is – it's on fire.
From now on things start to pick up a little. I just realised how BORING my story is. Ugh, I don't know why you guys stick with it!
But I pinky, dinky promise that the action starts from now!
Okay, so this chapter was SO awful, that is until I sent it to Moe. She's totally awesome. And she's my beta. Give her a clap - her work is amazing! I swear, she improved this chapter so much.
Also, how many chapters do you, the reader, want? I feel like this is dragging out for too long. I don't know...
Question number two: chammie or zammie? Completely up to you. (personally, I prefer zammie, but, hey, I'm not in control of it. Oh, wait, I AM. Heh.)
I am already typing up the next chapter (In which I will reveal the results of my poll - so go on and vote!) and it should be coming your way very soon!
So go my little munchkins! It is your duty to review and bash my story all you like!