Chapter Five: Double-oh-Nothing /RTI

For the nth time in the last hour Alex ran her hand through her dramatically shorter hair. She then forced her hands down and clasped them together in her lap and peered through the privacy window of the Rolls-Royce she was riding in. The driver was Crawley. She had been alternating between running her hand through her hair and glaring at the "personal manager" for the past hour.

Finally giving it up as a bad job, her glare obviously wasn't scary enough, she slumped back into her seat and closed her eyes. Oh the joys of long car trips that lead you to your eventual demise. Of course she could be exagerating but she doubted it considering the things she knew about SAS selection. Only about thirty out of two hundred make it to the end.

Not to mention the hardest part of training consisted of RTI (resistance to interrogation) which can last up to 36 hours. She knew instantly she wouldn't last that long. She would have to find a way to escape if she had to go through it. After all, she was a spy not a soldier. She wouldn't be expected to stay caught when she was caught. Plus if she were caught and interrogated it would be more likely for the interrogators to figure out she was a she. That wouldn't be good for anyone involved. Especially her.

She dozed off and on, waking when the Rolls-Royce hit a particularly hard bump or dip, then dozing back off again.

"Rider." Crawley called. Alex woke instantly. She was used to getting up at odd times. Her uncle had used to do it, well she knew why now. He was training her. She slid out of the car carefully ruffling her hair into casual disarray that most boys used. The she checked her reflection discretely in the tinted windows out of the corners of her eyes. Finally she decided that was as good as it was going to get.

Alex followed Crawley as he led the way to her new training officer, then left her with him. She stood straight waiting for the sergeant's judgement.

"I'm not one to question orders, but if I was I would ask what the bloody hell they were thinking sending me children. Do you know where you are boy? This isn't a vacation camp! This isn't dis-ney-land!" The man broke the word into its three syllables and spit them out like they left a bad taste in his mouth. "They've given me twelve days to give you training that should take fourteen weeks. That's not just mad. That's suicidal." He growled.

Alex stayed quiet. She knew better than to speak without permission. She stood at attention waiting for anything he was going to throw at her.

He glared at her waiting for her, or she supposed him to speak, she was after all playing a boy and boys were more likely to back talk than girls.

He glared at her once more before nodding a short sharp gesture she would've missed if she hadn't been watching him closely.

"Nobody has a name here. I have no name. You have no name. You will be referred to as Cub for the duration of your stay. You will refer to me as Sir. You'll be with K Unit. If anyone asks you what you're doing here you'll tell them nothing. Some of the men will resent you being here. Some of them will be hard on you. But you will just have to deal with it. I can make allowances for you, you're a boy not a man. But if you complain, you'll be binned. If you cry, you'll be binned. If you can't keep up, you'll be binned. Between me and you boy this is a mistake and I want to bin you." He was right up in Alex's face now but she kept her face impassive but attentive as she stared straight ahead waiting for a dismissal.

After she was dismissed she joined K Unit and as the Sergeant had said they weren't pleased to have her there. Alex had a sinking suspicion that they would like her even less if she was accidentally revealed as a girl.

There were four of them, all in their mid twenties. They had obviously already bonded as a team and there just wasn't any room for a "bloody schoolboy". They were sitting in companionable silence until she entered.

One of the men, was short and muscular with close cropped black hair and dark brown eyes, he would've been handsome if not for the fact his face was slightly off center due to the fact his nose had been broken in the past and he had a fierce glare on his face. This was the leader. Wolf. He had been reassembling his 9 mm Browning High Power pistol when she walked in. "So who do the bloody hell do you think you are?" He demanded. His voice had a slightly foreign accent. One she didn't recognize.

"Cub." She said bluntly hoping the lack of emotion would make her voice sound lower. If not she could just pass it off as puberty by having her voice break every so often.

"A bloody schoolboy! Do you work with Special Operations?" He persisted.

"I'm not allowed to say." She said as she made her way over to the only free bunk. She sat down. The mattress was just as hard as the frame underneath and despite the cold there was only one thin blanket on the bed. She would be sleeping in her clothes then.

"Look what they sent us. Double-oh-Seven? More like Double-oh-Nothing!" He scoffed at her avoidance of the topic. Unfortunately the name stuck. Double-oh-Nothing was what they called her and always in a cruel babying voice.

The other men in the unit didn't talk to her much at all but they certainly made it clear she wasn't welcome. She was shoved, pushed, prodded, and poked as far away from the group as they could get her without getting in trouble. She ended up not having to hid to take her showers away from the men, it was simple. But she was still cautious.

The other members were Fox, Snake, and Eagle. Both Snake and Eagle smoked. Snake was thin, fair haired and Scottish. Fox was black haired, blue eyed, and would've reminded Alex of Tom if he weren't towering over Alex and glaring at her all the time. He spoke with a Liverpudlian accent and his features were oddly squared. Eagle was a tall and wiry person. Taller than anyone else in the group. His hair was somewhere in between dirty blonde and brown and was cropped messily around his face. He had baby blue eyes that would've looked kind if they hadn't turned to ice every time he looked at her. She figured the rest of the unit, besides Wolf that is, were angry mostly because she made Wolf angry. And when Wolf was angry no one was happy.

Alex allowed herself to be ostracized from the group. It made it easier to hide her gender.

She followed on the fringes of the group, always there yet not a part of it. She learned to read maps, perform first aid, and radio communication. She also was lumped in unarmed combat. And even with her proficiency in Karate and Judo she was knocked to her ass more times then she cared to count. Most of the time it took everything she had to force herself to get back up. She sometimes managed to get a good hit in but she was used to holding back against others at her gym and the rest of the soldiers weren't and they didn't even try to hold back.

She was forced to run through an assault course she lovingly named "the playground jungle gym from hell". The first time she tried to run through she had slipped off a rope into a pit of freezing slime and was forced back to the start by an angry sergeant. The second time she actually managed to make it all the way through, and her time was twenty-five minutes. She managed to cut that down to sixteen point five minutes after a week of running the thing. Gymnastics had helped somewhat but not nearly enough. Secretly she was proud of herself. Even Wolf only managed it in twelve and he was the fastest in the unit.

She was forced on long hikes with a twenty-two pound backpack on her back and forced to keep pace with her impatient unit mates. Most of the time she ended up trailing several meters behind only to get yelled at by the sergeant when she arrived later than her group. One day after a particularly long hike the worst happened.

She was woke up in the middle of the night. A man grabbed her shoulder and yanked her out of bed. He was wearing a cliche bad guy outfit, ski mask and fatigues and his eyes held no compassion at all. She struggled and lashed out trying to work herself into a position to fight. A second "bad guy" came over and grabbed her one arm while the first guy took the other and they dragged her out of the cabin into the freezing cold drizzle. She was dressed in sweatpants and a too large t-shirt and she was barefooted. Her feet were dragged in the cold Wales mud and she vaguely wondered if she was going to get a cold before forcing herself to focus.

The camp had been taken over during the night. That's not possible. If it was taken over the sergeant would've raised the alarms. So it wasn't a forced take over. RTI. Shit! RTI, she wasn't even supposed to get that training. At least she didn't think so. She let her eyes flick around her taking in everything and was surprised to see Wolf being dragged the opposite direction from her looking frightened. He was in boxers and a white t-shirt and also barefooted. This was bad.

She was dragged into an old barn and forced into a single rickety chair stationed under a single bare light bulb. Were these guys trying to break all the cliches?

"Tell us your name." The one in front of me ordered as two others held me in the chair.

"Cub." Alex answered blankly.

"Your real name."

"Nothing." She said bluntly.

"What?" He demanded.

"We have no names." She repeated sergeants words from what seems like a life time ago.

"Looks like we have a smart ass here. And a bloody schoolboy too. What's a bloody schoolboy doing here?"

"Being asked stupid questions." She bit back cheekily. He snarled and then slapped her hard across the left side of her face. The sound echoed in the quiet.

"Don't worry. We have plenty of time to break you of that habit." He sneered. "After all, trash shouldn't talk back to its superiors."

"Then why are you talking." She bit out carefully making sure her tongue stayed clear of her teeth this time. She had managed to bit the tip of her tongue with his last slap. This time the slap came from the right side and she let her head follow through with the momentum.

"Keep running your mouth boy. It'll only make breaking you that much more enjoyable." he sneered at her before looking to the goons on either side of me. "Take him and dump him with the others."

Alex was quietly pulled to her feet and as the group passed the asshole that slapped her, Alex spit at him. The mixture of spit, blood, and phlegm hit him on the chest. He looked like he was ready to slap Alex again but her guards pulled her away quickly. She was thrown unceremoniously into a room with three other people.

"You're a mouthy little shit. We're going to enjoy teaching you manners as well as getting you to spill your guts." One guard sneered down at her. She sneered back and spit at his feet. "And you lack the needed amount of brain cells to do either."

Eagle, Fox and Snake looked up at the fifth unorthodox member of their team in surprise. They only knew Cub as the silent, take-everyone's-shit-and-not-do-anything-about-it member.

The man merely slammed the door shut behind him. Alex heard a bolt slide home.

"This is RTI right?" Alex asked.

"Yeah." Eagle spat. "We tell them anything besides our code names we're binned."

"Who are they?" Alex pressed.

"Green Jackets." Snake answered this time. "They're a local unit. They hate our guts- because they know we're the best. So they really take pleasure in beating the shit out of us."

Damn. British soldiers attacking British soldiers. This was so fucked up.

"We talk, we get thrown out. That's exactly what they want." Snake continued.

"But it's just an exercise, right? They won't cause serious harm will they?" She asked desperately hoping that was the case.

"You think I just slipped?" Fox asked and she noticed the blood on his teeth. He had obviously been punched in the mouth and his lip had gotten caught in between his teeth.

"They can do what they like. One of us winds up in a hospital they can say it was an accident." Snake interjected.

"And accidents happen." Eagle spat in disgust.

The group sat in tense silence for ten minutes then the door was opened up again and Wolf was thrown in. His top half was wet and he had a bruise on the side of his cheek. She idly wondered if a bruise had formed on her skin yet. After all she was hit on both cheeks.

"Those pigs." He rasped sounding horrible. They must've dunked him. Alex realized, held him underwater for a long time before letting him come up for air and asking him the question again. "Those lousy, stinking..." Slowly he pulled himself off the floor. "They laid into me." He sounded surprised. "They were really enjoying themselves."

"Did you tell them anything?" Eagle asked.

"Of course not." Wolf's eyes focused on Alex. "What about you Cub? I bet you told them. I bet you blabbed." He sneered.

"No, I didn't. In fact I went so far as to insult the stupid bastards so they would forget what they were doing." Alex said angrily reaching up to touch her sore face. She winced at her own touch. That was going to bruise phenomenally. Wolf had hated her from the start and had never even given her the benefit of the doubt.

"But you will...and if you blow it, we all blow it because we're a unit and only takes one of us to talk for all of us to get kicked out of here." He sneered ignoring most of what Alex had said.

Alex turned away from him in disgust. "Now what?" she demanded of the rest of them.

"They let us sweat. It might be an hour, or a few minutes but eventually they'll be back for us." Fox said.

Alex ignored him and began searching the room thoroughly. The door was made of a solid metal sheet, fitted into a metal frame and bolted from the outside. The room had a few rotten shelves, a couple of rusting canisters. And there was a single barred window looking out toward the barn where the interrogation had been held. Then she began examining the floor. There was a trench in the middle, square and about half a meter deep. There was a circular plate at the far end and it took Alex several seconds to figure out what it was. A manhole cover.

"What's this?" She demanded.

Wolf ignored her as usual but Fox turned to follow her line of sight.

"There's a drain. Can you help me get the cover off?" She demanded again.

Wolf scowled. "Do you think they'd stuff us in here if there was a drain big enough for us to escape out of."

The drain was too small for a full grown SAS man. However, Alex was a still growing, teenage girl.

"You're adults." She stated simply.

Fox followed his thought process. The Green Jackets had never had to keep a teenager in this place.

Fox and Eagle helped pry the heavy lid off. The tunnel that was revealed was narrow, filthy and dark.

She was starting to wish she hadn't suggested this. But, for the good of the team, and her own secret, she would have to.

"Can you get through?" Fox asked.

She nodded knowing her voice would break if she spoke.

"Here." Snake said, he had produced a small pocket flashlight, and he flicked it on. "You're lucky I always sleep with this in my pocket."

Alex nodded. He must use it to get to the bathroom in the dark. She though to herself.

She took a deep breath and knelt beside the opening. She felt a bit of doubt make its way into her careful facade. Could she really fit?

The Wolf spoke. "Good luck." he said. It was the only thing he had ever said to Alex that wasn't full of contempt.

That made her decision for her. She took a deep breath and slid into the opening. She army crawled herself through the narrow tunnel and was glad that she hadn't started developing in the hips yet or she would've gotten lodged in the narrow space. She breathed evenly feeling claustrophobic in the small dark space. The tunnel was wet and slimy, which made it easier to crawl. The flashlight was clamped between her teeth so she had her hands free to help pull her along the pipe.

She willed herself forward even as she felt nausea building. She had never known herself to be claustrophobic but now she knew she was. She forced a swell of panic back and pushed on. Not letting herself wonder if there wasn't a way out.

When she reached the end she twisted trying to find the way out and nearly panicked when she remembered it took two full grown SAS men to lift the first manhole cover. She took another deep breath and shoved upwards there was a slight movement as the manhole stirred. She shoved again using all the muscle she had built up and with a soft grating sound as it was pushed slightly aside. A wave of fresh night air entered the enclosed space and she pressed the manhole cover aside, letting in a sliver of moonlight. She flicked the switch on the flashlight and slipped it a pocket, she would give it back when she got the rest of her unit free.

She waited listening for any sign of movement before pushing the manhole the rest of the way off and peeking out. There was no one insight. Everyone had disappeared for the moment. She looked down at herself and grimaced. She must look like the monster from the black lagoon. Green slime slid down her clothes and pooled at her feet.

She was in front of the building where the rest of the SAS men were being held and she could see right away it wouldn't be a simple case of unbolting the door. It was padlocked as well. She didn't have anything to pick it and if she broke it she would alert the Green Jackets before they could get away.

Her attention was drawn to a vehicle parked a slight distance away. It was an ugly thing. A rectangular green box perched on six thick rubber wheels. It was the only place with real lighting. Alex hurried over to it crouching slightly even though if any of the men would've bothered to look out all they would've seen was the space above her head.

One window was opened and she allowed herself to eavesdrop on the conversation going on.

"Let's go get back to them." One man exclaimed eagerly.

"Finish your tea. We have all night." The leader replied.

"Let's use the bath." A third voice said "Fill it up with freezing water and try half-drowning the bastards."

"What about the kid. I say we start with him. He'll be easy to break." The first voice said.

"Yeah break his neck." Another different voice replied. A burst of laughter followed this remark.

If anyone had been watching Alex they would've seen anger flash in her brown eyes. But, of course, no one knew Alex was there and that was probably for the better.

She pushed away most of her anger and focused on a way to get rid of the Green Jackets. The break of the vehicle was made of a lever with a button, and a pin that held everything in place. She quickly pulled out the pin but the button was so stiff she had to use both hands and press down on it with the top half of her body weight. There was a loud click as the lever was released. She lowered the lever gently then leaned against the neutral vehicle and with a little shove it began to roll merrily down the slope.

She hurried over to the lock and used a piece of metal and a little leverage to snap the lock off the door. Then opened it.

Wolf was the first one out and he looked around. "Where did they go?" He demanded.

"I think they sloped off." Alex let the pun roll off his tongue knowing Wolf wouldn't have a clue about what he was talking about.

They went back to their bunks for a nice couple hours of sleep only to be woken the next morning by an angry sergeant.

"What did you do!" he yelled angrily. "Two broken legs, a broken collarbone, eleven cracked ribs, and a severe concussion!" He shouted at the group at large. "What did you do?" He yelled.

"Cub?" Wolf turned to look at the youngest member of the unit.

"I didn't do anything. The Green Jackets obviously didn't check their breaks well enough and they just rolled down a hill." Alex denied looking as wide eyed and innocent as a guilty person can be.

"Kitchen Duty. For a week. All of you." The sergeant bit out angrily.

As soon as the sergeant was out of sight the rest of K Unit turned to glare at Alex. She suppressed a sigh. Looks like any chance of respect just went down the tube. She slipped away and went to shower quickly. She finished in five minutes and slipped into a bathroom stall to change. She quickly slipped on her regulation uniform and made sure she looked like a boy still.

She did. She slipped out of the bathroom carrying her dirty clothes with her. She could wash them later.

Four days later she was carrying her weighted backpack with no rations and cursing Alan Blunt in eight different languages, under her breath. She was also cursing Wolf under her breath but not nearly as often as she was cursing Blunt.

Alex was currently doing a survival hike with her unit. Who had gotten far ahead of her some hours ago. Of course, they only had eight hours to complete the course. Allowing for her age, she had been given twelve hours to complete the course. The other members of K Unit had 55 lb bags. Her bag only weighed 22 lbs. If not for the caffeine and sugar tablets she would've crashed a long time ago. Eleven hours on your feet can do that to a person.

This had all started about 26 hours ago. K Unit had been scheduled to go through the Killing House. K Unit had already gone through the house twice minus Cub who was able to watch them on the closed circuit TV that ran through the entire killing house. This was her first time going through the house.

She had mostly been shoved to the back of the group like always but watched the group work almost religiously. It would probably save her life someday, with her current luck. They were just about to exit. Snake, the technician of the group, had just disabled the alarm on the window and had signaled to Wolf that he was done. Fox and Eagle had just knelt to deal with a trip wire when Wolf told them to leave it.

We headed to the window. Snake went first. Then Fox and Eagle. Alex would've been the last one out but just as she reached the window Wolf turned to look at her.

"Tough luck, Double-oh-Nothing." He whispered his voice sounding almost kind then he lashed out with a palm strike to the sternum. She was knocked off balance and twisted trying to avoid the trip wire but it was a hopeless case. She felt the wire collapse under her wrist and then the whole world exploded. There was a blinding flash of white light and a deafening boom, as the shock wave of the stun bomb shuddered through her body.

She curled into a ball covering her head and waited for it to disappear. Only when it did everything else went with it. The light seemed to have taken all the natural light as well, leaving her mostly blind and deaf. That went away soon and she was forced to listen to the Sergeant yell at her.

Sergeant had come and demanded answers but Alex didn't have any for him. It's not like the Unit would believe Wolf would endanger the whole group just for revenge. And it wouldn't do anything in the long run but get her in trouble.

Sergeant had unfortunately caught Wolf smiling and had forced this hike on the Unit as punishment.

She felt the gravel crunch under her feet and was surprised to see a figure in the distance. She hesitated a second before recognizing it as the sergeant. He had just finished lighting his cigarette and was slipping a book of matches back into his pocket.

She stumbled the last couple yards and stopped in front of him.

"Eleven hours, five minutes. Not bad Cub." Sergeant spoke. "But the rest of your unit was here hours ago."

Bully for them. Alex thought angrily but didn't say anything out loud.

"They're up there." He pointed to a sheer wall behind him and Alex felt her throat tighten. No way. She had been rock climbing before with Ian, but never without safety gear and never when she was so exhausted.

"I can't do it." the words were easy to say. They had been a long time coming.

"I didn't hear that."

"I can't do it, sir." she repeated looking straight in his eyes.

"Can't isn't a word we use here." He said.

"I don't care. I just can't do it. I'm not suicidal. I've never climbed a wall like that in the dark, in the rain, with no safety equipment, while I'm exhausted. It's asking for me to fall and break my neck." Alex fell silent after her not so small rant, waiting for the ax to fall, but it didn't.

"Listen Cub. We know what really happened in the Killing House. Wolf forgot about the CCTV." He spoke ignoring her rant.

"Then why-"

"Did you make a complaint against him, Cub?" he cut her off.

"No, sir."

"Do you want to make a complaint against him, Cub?" he asked.

She hesitated for a second before replying. "No, sir."

"That's good. Now that wall isn't as impossible or as dangerous as it looks." His finger traced a suggested path to the top. "K Unit is up there, and they've got cold survival rations. You don't want to miss that."

Alex took a deep breath and walked towards the wall, stumbled and reached out to steady herself on the Sergeant. "Sorry sir." She apologized as she continued toward the wall.

It took her nearly twenty more minutes to reach the top and as the Sergeant had said they were waiting. They were all sitting in between three tents. Two were for two men and the last, smallest was for her.

Snake looked up from his tin of cold stew. "I didn't think you'd make it." his voice was kind, and for once he hadn't called her Double-oh-Nothing.

"Nor did I." Alex admitted softly.

Wolf was crouched over a small pile of tinder trying to make a fire with two flints. But the sparks made were much too small and the nest of newspaper and twigs was much too wet. Eagle and Fox were looking on disappointed.

"These might help." Alex threw the book of matches she had pick-pocketed from the Sergeant down in front of them.

They looked up at her curiously but she just entered her tent.

She was only in the tent for half an hour before she was forced once again to share her teams company.

"How did you get these?" Wolf demanded, his voice was softer than usual though.

"My uncle taught me to pickpocket, before he died." Alex admitted flinching at the fact she had admitted her uncle died. She had been trying to deny in to herself ever since she had heard the news.

"Who'd you steal them from?" Eagle interjected.

"Sergeant. He didn't even notice. He probably won't either. Because they're not really that valuable and they're small he'll assume they fell out of his pocket and were buried in the mud somewhere on the trails. That and he'll never suspect a kid could steal something of his." Alex said the heat of the small fire relaxing her muscles for the first time in twelve hours.

"What makes you think we won't tell him?" Wolf demanded.

"Because. You forgot about the CCTV when you pulled your stunt and I didn't lodge a complaint against you even though the Sergeant knows it was you." Alex shot back and Wolf went pale realizing his mistake.

"What stunt?" Fox demanded.

"What CCTV?" Snake demanded, his accent was heavier now, obviously from anger.

"It's sort of obvious." Eagle interjected. "Wolf obviously set of that grenade in the Killing House escaped and let Cub take the brunt of it." he looked disappointed in his unit mate.

Wolf looked down not answering.

Alex settled down. The awkward silence was killing her slowly. Wolf would be angry at her. He would probably try to get her back for letting his unit know what he did.

She was right. The next two days of her life were worse then the hell they had been up to that point. She was enormously glad she was getting out of there soon. On the third day after their survival hike they were shoved into a plane. The units were going parachuting. Everyone but her. Thank god.

They were nearing the drop site and Alex noticed Wolf's face had been getting steadily paler. Then they were there. The assistant pilot tapped the first pair on the shoulders. Then soon it was the last pair's turn. Wolf would be jumping alone because she wasn't jumping. He looked more than pale now. He approached the open door and hesitated. Something had spooked him about this jump. He looked like he was trying to collect his courage but they didn't have time. The assistant pilot wasn't looking at them at the moment but he could turn around any time. If he saw Wolf there he would be binned.

Alex stood and quietly approached him. He wasn't going to jump. She lashed out with a solid kick to Wolf's back that sent him flying out the door, surprise evident on his face before he managed to turn himself around and pull the cord to slow his decent.

"What are you doing there?" The assistant pilot yelled when he noticed Alex by the door. "Just stretching my legs!" Alex yelled back over the wind.

The rest of the trip was quiet with Alex sitting in the same seat she had been in at the beginning of the trip.

A/N: Well I think that's enough for one chapter. Tell me what you think. The RTI chapter was based on the bonus chapter of Stormbreaker and you can find it on the internet.

P.S. Don't expect another chapter this long for a while (or ever). My hands hurt.

Please review!