Be My Fool

Chapter Nine

D: I don't own Alex.

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Hello! :) Yes, I'm back and I've managed to write and upload the rest of the updates to the chapters. If you haven't went back and read them, you will need to read it before you continue otherwise you might be a little lost... or, at least, just chapter 8. Thank you guys for sticking with me, and I hope you don't hate me!

Now, continue with the story! :D

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"Oh my God, Jen, do something!" Chloe screamed, kneeling down next to the tunnel.

I ran over too, looking down the dark slide, "What the hell am I supposed to do? Grow a set of ladders out of my backside?"

"Guys, shut up and stop arguing! How are we gunna get them out?" Farah knelt down next to us, eyes wild with panic, before calling down, "Leah?! Tulip?! Are you okay?"

There was a moment of silence before we heard coughing, and by the sounds of it – it wasn't very far down.

"Y-yeah," more coughing, "We're okay guys!" That was Tulip.

Leah groaned, "Speak for yourself woman! I think I've fractured my bloody back!"

"Oh stop being a cry-baby and use your phone as a light so we can see!"

We all laughed nervously, and I called down, "Is there a way back up guys? Or should we go get someone?"

"No-no, just let us take a quick sweep of the area and then we'll get back to you!" Leah yelled up, "If we can't find an exit then just throw a sheet or two down so we can climb back up!"

"What?" Chloe asked us, confused – and I couldn't blame her, it was hard to think when we were half-relieved and half-still-panicking.

"She means to tie knots into the sheets and tie the sheets together, so they can climb up it," I explained, pulling Chloe back and making her sit on the bed while Farah stared anxiously at the tunnel.

There was a moment of silence before I spoke up, not liking it, "What's it like down there guys?"

"Oh, it's just lovely down here," Leah's sarcastic voice carried up the tunnel easily, and we all laughed, "Yup, I think I'm coming down here for the summer!"

"Oh shut up, you know what I meant," I replied, grinning as the others laughed again.

"Well, it's kind of hard to describe..." Tulip called up, "It's mainly made of dirt, but there are a few plugs in one corner and a carpet in the middle... It's a circular room, we think, but we can't find an exit yet."

There was a slight pause before Farah spoke up, "Does anyone else get the feeling that the exit's hidden too? Y'know, like the entrance is?"

"No, because I've found it!" We heard Leah's voice yell, "It leads out in the other direction though!"

I shared a look with Farah, since Chloe was currently out of it and before we knew what we were doing we were going down to join them – and Chloe stayed behind as guard, if they came around or whatever (which would probably never happen) or to go get help if we hadn't made it back in over two hours.

I slid down first and tumbled over as soon as I hit the bottom, where dust rose from the dried out, mud floor. Standing up, I called for Farah to come down, and moved away from the exit of the slide. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but at least they had found a lamp and had lit it so we had a little bit of light.

I looked around in awe at the... cave? As Tulip said, it was circular room carved into the earth however with a "modern corner" that looked a few years old – it had a computer, and a few spare plugs on the side with wires coming through the walls. Tulip was currently booting up the computer, and Leah was buried in papers. There was a giant trunk next to a bed, made from wood and a thin mattress, and then lots of papers scattered around on the floor. There was a fine layer of dust from the mud on everything, so it was obvious that whoever used to come here hadn't been for at least a few months. There was also a tap of some sort near the bed, with a few pots and pans plus a mini stove. A box lay next to it, most likely with dried food in it, and that was it. It was fairly big, but it was crammed in with a lot of stuff which made it seem a little smaller.

However, one thing I did notice is that no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find the exit anywhere.

"Uh, Leah?" I asked, pacing around the room slowly, "Where's that exit you were talking about?"

"Oh, yeah!" She leaped up from the chest and pointed under the bed, "It's there, so we need to shimmy under to get through."

I nodded and looked over at Tulip, "Tulip, we can come back later but for now we need to figure out how to get back."

She blushed but grinned and walked over, "Okay, fine, but as long as we get to come back – this place is amazing!"

I rolled my eyes slightly, but I can't admit that I was intrigued as well. Farah had already opened the hatch and we shimmied in after her. Going last meant that I had to use my foot to close up the hatch behind us, which was no easy task but it did seem designed to be able to do that.

The tunnel we were in was made of some sort of metal, and was starting to go steadily upwards – which is why there were rungs on the top so we could climb up. It was bigger than the last tunnel, but it still didn't help when we were breathing harder as we were so tired. However, Farah did eventually get to the top and then we were out in the night. She had to heave the metal cover a bit, since it was so unused, however we did get out... Into the middle of nowhere.

Shutting the metal hatch, it looked just like the rest of the ground – mud and leaves. Which meant that we had to find our way back the other way, because we wouldn't be able to find it again.

"Well, there is a path, and it's our best hope to getting back," Tulip stated, pointing to the road-path.

I nodded, "Okay but let's just walk near it, we don't actually want to be on it."

"Yeah, that'd be a little hard to explain to the Sergeants. 'Well, you see sir, we found a secret hide-out in our dorm and we followed it out this way and that's why we're out at midnight!' I'm sure they'd understand fully," Leah said, sarcastic as always, but we laughed quietly anyway.

As we headed off, the only thing I could hear were the leaves crunching as we stepped on them and the occasional whistle of the wind, brushing against the trees. It wasn't that cold because of the clouds, which I was grateful for because I didn't want to be walking around in my pyjamas in the freezing cold – however it didn't stop our breath making clouds as we breathed.

Walking quickly, and without talking, we reached the end of our dorms soon enough and we crept back to our dorm before barging in and starting to giggle like maniacs. I guess it was the nerves of getting caught, but we always seem to do it when we're nervous. Chloe was asleep, but when we barged in she ended up falling onto the floor which made us laugh even more – which didn't help since we were trying to be quiet.

After that, we silently took off our socks (that were probably now ruined forever) and checked for leaves before crawling into bed.

We were going to be so tired in the morning.

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I was right. We were so tired, in fact, that we were fifty eight minutes late. And given that this is the SAS, we would have been dead sixty times over if their looks could kill.

It all started out like this...

"Wake up lovelies, we've got a big, big day ahead of us!" Eagle yelled as he walked past, and I lay blinking in my bed.

I was just so tired, that after 5 minutes of trying to get up I gave up and went back to sleep thinking, "just for a minute, then I'll get up".

So, fifty minutes later I woke up to Leah screaming at us all to get up because we were 'so dead'. I didn't understand at first but when the message got through, we'd never moved faster in our entire lives.

And so, it ended like this (where we are now):

We stood in line, waiting silently for Wolf to explode. His vein was pulsing, bigger than ever, and he was sitting 'calmly' on a chair in the mess hall while playing with a knife. And even though this was terrifying, I had the urge to start giggling again – like last night. It was not a good habit to get into.

Then suddenly, he flung the knife into the wall – in between mine and Leah's head. Tulip, Chloe and Farah squealed a bit and I had to admit I jumped about 5 foot into the air, and my heart beat was now going a million miles per hour.

"You brats are so lucky that I can't give out extreme punishments," he growled, his eyes flashing with anger, "But since I can't do that because you're just children," he sneered out the word before standing up, "You lot can clean an entire storage cupboard out..." and, looking at our shocked faces, he decided to add "Each!" at the end of it.

Tulip cleverly stepped on Leah's foot before she could say anything and he dismissed us to go up to the shooting range where the others were.

As we escaped, Farah sighed loudly, "Well, it could have been a lot worse."

I nodded along with Tulip and even though Leah and Chloe didn't like it, they knew that we'd gotten off extremely light.

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People were too busy trying to assemble and reassemble guns when we entered and it only just occurred to me as I was walking in what was bugging me so much: why were they letting 15 year old and 16 year old kids learn how to use a gun? Before I could talk to the others about it though, Eagle had bounced over and started pointing us over to our different groups.

We had been split up into different 'classes' of skill. They hadn't told us what 'class' we were in, but you could sort of guess how well they thought you were by the standard of the people you were with. We were split up into three groups; Farah and Chloe into one, Tulip and Leah into another and that left me by myself. I wandered over to my group and relaxed a little to see a friendly faces. Sophie, Ella, Sam and Nate were there who I got along well enough with and there was also Erik, Will and Oliver who I didn't know too well.

I grinned as I watched Nate try to figure out how to assemble his gun again, "You're not very good at this, are you?"

He looked up and grinned back, "You finally decided to show up then? Here, this is yours."

Ha handed me some sort of Ruger and I tried to remember what my dad had taught me, "Yeah, we slept in 50 minutes late on purpose because we wanted to spend more quality time with Wolf."

Laughing, he barely noticed the fact that I had nearly disassembled the gun already. I decided to slow down a bit; I didn't need any more attention after this morning... especially the wrong sort. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled again and I shrugged my shoulders back to try and get rid of it. It was the same feeling of being watched like the day before. And yet, when I look around, nobody is looking at me. It was starting to fray my nerves, and having frayed nerves with a gun was not a good combination. Maybe I should tell Chloe... she might understand more than the others.

A hand waved in front of my face and I started slightly before noticing it was just Nate, "..-en? Hey, you in there?"

"Oh, what, uhm, yeah?" I blurted, blushing as per usual.

He gave me an odd look before turning back to assembling his gun, "I was asking how you knew how to assemble a gun, since you'd completely missed the beginning of the lesson. Then you sort of blanked out for a little bit there."

I smiled, trying to ease the discomfort, "Yeah, sorry, I was a few thousand miles away there. And I learned from my dad, he was in the army."

"Oh yeah, I forgot," his smile wavered and I made a motion with my hand as if to say 'don't worry about it'.

I coughed slightly to break the silence, while finishing assembling the gun, "You need any help?"

He shook his head and grinned, holding it up just as he finished, "I may have taken longer, but I haven't done this before. I'm pretty proud of myself!"

"Yeah, well, pride won't get you anywhere boy," Bison had been listening in from behind us and glared at him, "Can you shoot at a target yet? Damn well not. Could you use it to protect you yet? Bloody damn well not. So quit your yappin' and concentrate!"

He stalked away and Alex rolled his eyes before turning back to look at me, "They've just been making us dissemble and reassemble these things all morning; you honestly haven't missed much here. We don't even know what type of bloody gun this is!"

Looking around, he lowered his voice before continuing, "It's bloody pointless this, how is this supposed to help us?"

I knew from the moment the words left his mouth somebody had been listening, and from the way a hand clamped down on his shoulder, I knew he was in trouble.

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**[[16th March 2012]]**