"That's a Circle bomb. I recognize the ticking pattern." I stated.

"Well, shit." Bex exclaimed.

Cammie's POV

We looked at each other, panic glued to our faces.

"Okay, okay, okay, don't panic. Calm down! It's gonna be okay. We just have to find the bomb, find out how long we have until it goes off, and deactivate it before it blows about 300 people to bits! It'll be okay, right?" Grant rambled.

We put on our 'are you an idiot?' face we preserved only for Grant.

"What if it goes off right now?" Bex exclaimed.

"Then we better start looking." Tristan said, determined.

"Okay. Zach. How long do the bombs have until they go off usually?" I questioned.

"Only about twenty four hours. And odds are they placed that bomb when they gave you the note." He said.

"...So we have until about 11 at night. It's currently 10 A.M. right now, so we have exactly thirteen hours! Let's get to work." Jonas calculated. We walked over to the section of the wall in the hallway where the ticking was loudest.

"How the hell are we supposed to get in there? Ram the wall down with our bulldozers we keep in our suitcases?" Macey exclaimed.

"The Circle agents and my mom must have had to gotten in there somehow. We just have to keep looking." Zach stated calmly.

Macey and Tristan went downstairs to check there, Liz and Jonas tried to look up the ticking pattern on their CIA laptops to see what kind of bomb it exactly is, Bex and Grant stayed on that floor, and Zach and I went to the roof.

We climbed up there, and the wind immediately started whipping my hair and dress around. I stumbled and Zach caught me. I looked up at him thankfully and he silently smirked a 'you're welcome'.

"I can't even hear the ticking through the wind." I shouted.

"Maybe we should try laying down and pressing our ears to the roof?" He suggested. We did just that, and I strained my ears as hard as I could, and I could barely hear the familiar tick-tick...tick. A normal human wouldn't have been able to hear it at all.

Suddenly, a loud clap of thunder and lightning illuminated the sky, and it started sprinkling.

"...Seriously. Could this day get any worse?" I complained. Zach chuckled.

"It's just rain, Cam. Now come on - I think I found a way in." My eyes lit up and I stood, skipping to where he was standing.

"...Zach." I stood over him - he was standing on a flat piece of the roof, staring at the ground triumphantly.

"Yea?"

"THIS IS JUST ANOTHER PART OF THE ROOF." We were standing on...absolutely nothing. No hidden door, no code to get IN the secret door, nothing.

"Cam, you need to calm down. We're gonna be okay." Zach took my hand and looked worriedly into my eyes.

I sighed. "I just don't want anyone to get hurt." My voice sounded so little and small-like a nine year old.

"Me neither. And this whole thing is my mother's fault. I'm always just so guilty..." He pulled me into a hug, and I wrapped my arms around his neck.

"You shouldn't. I'm serious, Zach. None of this is in any shape or form your fault. It's mine." I whispered the last part. His grip tightened.

"It's not." He argued. I shook my head, but he pulled back. "Let's not start." He said, pecking me on the lips.

"Anyways," He said, running a hand through his kind-of dripping hair. "We're not standing on another part of the roof. Watch."

He bent down and knocked a pattern-the same one the ticking was.

Knock-knock...knock. He did it six times. And suddenly, a small trapdoor sprung open. I gasped, and he looked up and smirked at me.

"How did you know to do it six times?" I asked.

He shrugged. "C-i-r-c-l-e. If you count the letters, there's six. Their passwords always have something with six in it."

I nodded. That was smart. We carefully climbed in, and it was actually a hollow, dark, dripping room inside the walls. Kind of like a secret passageway-except a lot more disgusting. Once we got in, Zach closed the hidden door. He put his arm around my shoulder for warmth.

The ticking was a lot more loud in here, and it echoed off the walls eerily, the pattern blurring together. The sound seemed to surround us, and it kind of overwhelmed me.

"There it is!" I pointed to a black thing set on a desk, with its red and blue lights blinking.

He sighed in relief. "Great. Let's go get it, before Macey has to bring out her bulldozer."

I hesitated. This kind of seemed too easy. And, as if right on time, Zach's mother stepped out of the shadows and flipped the lights on.

And we were surrounded by, oh I don't know, about thirty or more Circle agents.

My jaw dropped open in surprise. I really did think no one else was in the room.

My spy senses were still messed up from the poison.

"Zachary! My dear boy, what a pleasant surprise!" Mrs. Goode exclaimed fakely. He rolled his eyes.

"Mother dearest. It's so good to see you." He said in the fakest voice he could manage. I almost snickered.

"Oh, and Cammie. It's a shame that the poison didn't finish you off." She pouted. Zach glared.

"You know what's a shame? That you didn't trip and fall into a hole and die on your way here." A snort escaped through my lips. I pressed them together tightly and felt Zach's hand tighten on mine.

His mother rolled her eyes. "Oh, no need to be so dramatic about this, Zachary. Either way, your beloved little Cameron is going to die, whether we get her now or the bomb blows her to bits."

"Why the hell do you want her so bad? Is it just the pure joy of making me suffer? Has it become your hobby to take everything away from me?" Zach screamed. His voice echoed around the room, and I cringed.

She rolled her eyes. "Not everything is about you, Zachary. She just has some...information that we need. And after she gives it to us we'll simply finish her off-quickly and painlessly. No big deal."

I blinked. She just talked about my death as if it was just finishing a bottle of lotion. As if I was disposable and useless.

"Well what if I don't give it to you?" I spat. The Circle agents were looking back and forth at us, Mrs. Goode with her hands on her hips and a sinister sneer on her face, and me and Zach, him pressing me behind him, half-hidden.

She shrugged. "Oh, you will."

And cue the line that I have heard so many times in life it's kind of getting annoying: Get her.

Everybody sprung into action. I knew we weren't going to win-it was two against thirty-one. The best we could do was stall for time until everybody else got in here. I watched out for needles, because I seriously did not need any more mental damage than I already had. But it didn't look like they brought the poison again.

We roundhouse kicked, slapped, punched, tripped, and even bit people. But on the negative side, we also fell, got punched, got kicked, got slapped, got crushed, and my head got slammed into a wall.

Repeatedly.

With much force.

Zach pulled the guy off me and slammed his head into a wall as I crumpled to the ground.

"Yea. Not a very good feeling, is it?" Zach hissed, after knocking his head into the wall a few more times and then slapping a napotine patch on him.

"Hey. What's that noise?" I heard Macey's voice ask. I gasped. I forgot our friends were right outside this wall! I struggled to stand up as Zach protected me from the Circle agents trying to get to me.

"Mace! MACE!" I screamed, pounding on the wall.

"Cammie?" She screamed back.

"I-we're in the wall! We're being attacked by-" Suddenly, a rag that smelled strongly of alcohol was pressed over my mouth.

"What?" I heard Bex shout.

"We're in the wall! Get up to the roof, and follow the noise of our fight. Knock the pattern knock-knock...knock six times!" Zach shouted, punching the man behind me and wrenching the rag off my mouth as I gagged and vomited a bit in my mouth, on my knees.

I heard Tristan shout, "Go!" And their quick footsteps retreating. After my head stopped swimming, I went back to the fight. Zach had lots of bruises and cuts, and I instantly felt guilty.

I kicked some guy where the sun-don't-shine, but turns out that this one was a girl. She groaned a little, but didn't collapse to the floor like I expected them too. She punched my head.

Okay, people. What is it with you and my head? I already had a large wound on the side of it that was bleeding heavily. Just let it alone. I punched her back and she collapsed.

I think we were doing pretty good. We've gotten about half the agents down, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs. Goode fiddling with the bomb.

Suddenly, the door opened and my friends piled in. I sighed in relief, and I took the moment of distraction to catch my breath, panting heavily. I reached up and touched the side of my head, and my hand came away soaked in blood. My friends and I were distracting the remaining 15, and Zach came over to me and dragged me up to the roof. No one even noticed that we left.

"Cammie." He groaned. "You need to stop getting hurt."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Next time I'll run and go put on my helmet." I spat. He sighed and pressed his hand to my head, and drew it away, dripping blood. I looked at it and swallowed, scared.

"Zach," I whimpered. He ripped his shirt off and pressed it to my head, and I leaned against his arm.

"You better not fall asleep, Cammie, or I swear to god I'll..." His voice broke.

"You'll what?"

"If you leave, I'll cry." He stated. Woah. That woke me up. Zachary Goode crying? That sentence didn't even make sense in my mind. He cracked a sad smile.

"Did that wake you up?"

I chuckled. "It did, actually." His white T-shirt was completely red now, and I was getting dizzy.

I heard the shouts of the agents and Mrs. Goode when they realized Zach and I weren't in the room anymore.

"Shit." Zach said, dropping his soaked shirt and picking me up. It fell to the roof with a disgusting slosh. He sprinted to the stairs and practically tripped on his way down. He tried to go through the doors and into the hallway, but it was locked. I was slowly losing consciousness, and he knew it, too. He whipped his head around, and I heard the thundering sound of people chasing after us down the stairs.

We were trapped, and we both knew it.