Heathrow Airport was as busy as ever, with several planes queuing up to take off. Hannah had just settled into her seat alongside Sophie and was about to slip in her headphones when she was disturbed by the characteristic chime of the PA system. 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, due to an emergency landing, our scheduled take off slot has been pushed back about half an hour which would make our arrival time in Santerem, Brazil 10:15 am, roughly 45 minutes behind schedule,' he explained in a consoling voice. 'The crew will be serving some light refreshments shortly, we'd like to apologize on behalf of British Airways for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.'
There were a series of groans throughout the aircraft but Hannah and Sophie smiled to each other gleefully. Ninety five days of basic training with little rest had left the pair exhausted beyond belief and they were looking forward to a good twelve hours of shut-eye on the flight. After wolfing down extra snacks they'd mooched off the stewardess' cart, the pair snapped on the sleep masks they'd found in their seat-back pockets. The girls were dead to the world a few minutes after take-off.
Hannah woke up with a start with Jacob desperately nudging her shoulder. 'What?' she asked while lifting up her sleep mask. 'I didn't want to wake you but they announced that they'll be serving breakfast soon, we land in a couple of hours and knowing the instructors, this is probably the last cooked meal we'll get for the next four days,' he replied in an apologetic tone. Hannah smiled, 'That's the most sensible thing you've said all training,' she teased. Jacob wanted to tell her to shove it but thought better of it when he noticed the scar across her lip, still feeling guilty about the incident two months ago.
Despite her many protests, Hannah managed to nudge Sophie out of her slumber just as the stewardess with the food cart approached their row. 'Full English or Continental?' she repeated for the hundredth time, smiling cheerfully at the kids. After three months of watery, barely warm training soup; the trio had tears in their eyes as they devoured their fry-up and coffee. 'Oh my god,' Sophie moaned gleefully between bites of her bacon while Hannah ate carefully around her sausages and bacon.
Hannah offered Sophie the meat on her plate but she just patted her stomach and shook her head, 'As good as that was, I don't think I can have another bite,' she said. Hannah turned to Jacob, 'I don't eat meat, would you like mine?' she asked. Jacob eagerly grabbed the plate, tilting the sausages and bacon into his own making Hannah giggle. He stabbed his plastic fork into a sausage and took a massive bite. 'You never told me you were a veggie,' he said while still chomping down vigorously. Hannah scowled at him and gave wrist a playful slap. 'Don't talk with food in your mouth, you'll choke and it's also totally disgusting,' she said scornfully.
Jacob rolled his eyes and interrupted with a cheeky 'Yes mum' before allowing Hannah to continue. 'I don't like to eat meat, but I can't exactly ask the training instructors for veggie options,' she explained. Jacob nodded, 'Well, thanks again for the food,' he said while wolfing down the rest of it. Hannah turned to face Sophie to notice her smiling knowingly. 'What?' she asked as she gave her friend a puzzled look. 'Oh nothing,' Sophie replied coyly.
'Oh my god, this is ridiculous,' Sophie whined. The eight trainees and three instructors were drenched in sweat within two minutes of leaving the refuge of the air-conditioned airport. 'I can't imagine hiking for four days in this humidity,' Hannah said, nodding in agreement. 'Won't have to imagine for long,' Jacob scoffed while following the girls into a mini-bus that had been rented for the exercise. As soon as everyone was on board, Hidetaka started the engine and head off on a pre-set course out of Santerem.
'Listen up!' Bruce yelled, fighting to get his voice heard over the monstrous diesel engine. He turned in his front seat to face the rested trainees, 'This is the first time we're doing survival training in the Amazon rainforest and while I'd be happy to let you all figure things out using your briefings, the chairwoman has asked me to go over some safety considerations in plain old English,' he explained. 'The Amazon is home to the greatest diversity of living things anywhere, there's everything from harmless birds to piranhas that'll gnaw your flesh off in seconds.'
'While the exercise is set-up in a somewhat controlled and mapped area of the rainforest, there are a few things we'd like you to be on the lookout for,' he continued before holding up a large picture of a nasty looking spider. 'This little furry fella is the Brazilian wandering spider, their venom is just as venomous as a black widow, but they deliver ten times as much venom in each bite.' Hannah and Sophie both gulped. 'These spiders are extremely aggressive, so instead of scurrying away when provoked, they'll stand up on their back legs and come at you,' Bruce paused to make sure everyone was paying attention. 'If you get bitten by one of these, press the button on your tracking bracelet and there'll be a chopper with anti-venom heading to you in minutes. Failing to do so will lead in a fever, paralysis, asphyxiation and eventually death.'
'Does everyone understand?' he asked. The eight Cherubs nodded, while passing around the picture of the vicious spider. Throughout the journey to the starting point, Bruce warned the trainees about several other things to lookout for in the rainforest. Less than an hour after Bruce had given the special instructions the bus veered off the paved road onto a narrow dirt track surrounded by vegetation. After a few close calls with low hanging branches, Hidetaka stopped the bus in a small secluded clearing.
'Right then,' Bruce boomed from the front, 'Everyone off the bus.'
The trainees begrudgingly clambered out of the bus, each of them knowing that what lay ahead was probably the most difficult part of their training and hoping that the 96 days of hell had prepared them enough for it.
'Stand in your groups and unpack all your equipment on the floor for inspection,' Bruce said, once everyone was out of the bus.
Bruce made sure that the trainees stood to attention while Hidetaka and Roberts made their way through each pair's equipment to make sure it didn't contain any contraband items. After they had discovered several airline packs of nuts and other snacks, Bruce was practically foaming at the mouth as he ordered the eight trainees to empty out their pockets and drop to the floor for push-ups.
Everyone was quite rested after the bus ride and while the push-ups weren't a burden, the cherub's knew that this would cut into the time they had to complete the survival exercise. After fifty push-ups, Bruce let the trainees up and told them to discard any equipment they didn't absolutely need before packing it back up in their day-packs.
One of Zara's last big projects as chairwoman was to expand the reach of Cherub through negotiations with several high ranking intelligence officials around the world. She pitched Cherub as an elite division of the MI5 to conceal the fact that all of the agents were under the age of eighteen. This heightened Cherub operations around the world, with the most experienced agents working on operations involving large multinational crime syndicates. This caused the language lessons during basic training to be updated to teach new agents two languages that suited their appearance rather than just one. Agents were required to be fluent enough to hold simple conversations in both languages by the end of basic training.
Keeping with traditions, the briefings Bruce handed out to the trainees were a mix of the two languages they had learned during the past three months. Hannah had been assigned Russian and Ukrainian as with golden blonde hair and slight hints of Kerry's Asian lineage, she could easily pass for an Eastern European. Sophie, on the other hand, was as close to a typical English girl as any, with light eyes and auburn hair. She was assigned French and German much to the jealously of the other trainees, as most of their languages didn't make use of the Roman alphabet.
The groups quickly scanned through their briefings, not wanting to spend too much time planning as it was already past noon. 'Looks like we have to find our camp site for the night, supplies for the next couple of days will be provided there,' whispered Sophie, not wanting to give the other teams a leg up. Hannah nodded while detaching the included map from her briefing. Sophie followed her lead, detaching her map before scanning it for clues.
'This map is bloody useless, they've stripped out all the names,' Sophie complained. Hannah noted that her map had nothing but the names of the various rivers and clearings albeit in Russian. She grabbed Sophie's map and put the two maps next to each other. As she did this, the girls noticed a couple of groups setting off in different directions, already having figured out where to go.
'Okay, so we're here,' Hannah pointed on her map, then used a pen to mark the location on Sophie's. The girls continued this strategy and spent time completing Sophie's map rather than having to constantly look at both throughout the short hike. The duo set off as soon as they were done, noticing that they were the last to leave. 'We might not make it in time,' Sophie warned as they left the clearing along a narrow dirt track.
'Argh, these damn bugs!' Sophie yelled, swatting at the horde of dragonflies hovering around her face. 'We should take a dip in the river,' Hannah suggested. 'What good is that? I don't want to be covered in leeches as well as bugs,' Sophie sneered. 'Human sweat contains salt and minerals that these insects feed off, they're attracted to it,' Hannah explained while making her way down to the bank of the creek they were trailing, Sophie in tow.
Hannah dropped her pack on the floor, took off her sweaty light blue training t-shirt and jumped in. After diving under the surface a couple of times, she thoroughly rinsed off her t-shirt as well. 'How do you know all this?' Sophie enquired, while copying Hannah and cleaning out her t-shirt as well. 'Both my parents finished their basic in Malaysia, I remembered from one of their stories that they had to do this several times to keep the mosquitoes away,' Hannah said.
'Well, I guess there are a few perks that come with being the daughter of the chairwoman,' Sophie mocked. 'Don't start,' Hannah warned, holding up a finger. 'Anyway, what they didn't have though, was this magic invention,' she continued, while unfurling a long white piece of fabric from her pack
'I noticed this when Bruce was hell bent on turning out our packs, It's super absorbent PVA cloth,' Hannah explained. She then rolled her soaked t-shirt into the cloth before wringing it out over the creek. When she was done, she noticed that aside from a bit of dampness, the t-shirt was good as new and slipped it back on. 'You're a genius!' Sophie exclaimed, making Hannah blush a little.
The girls walked along the creek for as long as possible, taking a couple more trips to the bank to clean up over the three hour hike. 'We need to head deeper into the jungle, have you got enough water?' Hannah asked, examining her map. 'Yeah, I'm good,' Sophie replied, 'the clearing shouldn't be too far away now, right?' Hannah shook her head, 'It's not far from here, but there's no trail. We'll have to hack our way through if need be.'
Hannah slid out her machete from it's sheath fastened around her waist as the pair made their way further into the jungle. 'Looks like we have to keep north-northeast until we hit the clearing,' Sophie said, studying the maps. Hannah nodded, hacking furiously at the toughest of the vines to clear a path.
Before long, the girls found themselves in a small clearing surrounded by tall trees. 'Well, this is it,' Sophie said, taking in her surroundings. 'I can't see any supplies,' Hannah noted, peering between the tick enclave of trees all around her. 'Oh my god, what if we're in the wrong place?' Sophie questioned, holding the map in front of Hannah.
'It's gotta be here,' Hannah said, pointing at their location on the map. 'Look around, there's gotta be a bag of supplies here somewhere,' she continued. Sophie aimlessly walked around the clearing while Hannah started hacking away at an unusually tick set of vines blocking a path out of the far side of the clearing. It took her a good dozen strikes to get through the thickest of the vines.
'This is hopeless,' Sophie whined from the other side of the clearing. Hannah sighed when she found nothing behind the vines and wiped the sweat off her forehead with her sleeve. She was drenched in sweat after only a few minutes of searching in the excruciating heat but continued furiously hacking away at nearby vines, 'It has to be here somewhere,' she thought.
Consumed entirely by her desire to find the supplies, she had shut Sophie's whining out and didn't her approach. 'This can't be it, we must've taken a wrong turn or something,' Sophie complained, Hannah's shoulder. That was enough for Hannah to snap. 'Shut up and help me, you ungrateful cow!' she yelled, glowering at Sophie.
Sophie stared at the ground between her feet, her eyes tearing up. 'I didn't ask you to quit,' she mumbled meekly.'Sophie - I didn't-,' Hannah stammered reaching for Sophie's hand to console her. Sophie reeled away at the touch leaving Hannah's stomach in knots.
Hannah had known Sophie since the minute she stepped on campus. Being best friends for four years, they'd gotten into some ferocious rows but neither had held a grudge longer than a couple of minutes. Hannah cursed her bad temper as she began forming her apology, 'Sophie I'm really sorry,' she pleaded. 'I don't blame you for anything, I just don't know what came over me.'
Sophie nodded, rubbed the tears out of her eyes and moved forward to hug Hannah. 'It must be the heat,' Sophie whispered. Hannah didn't dare say anything, fearing that she'd make the situation much worse as the girls hugged. Sophie grabbed the machete from Hannah's hand as she stepped out of the embrace. 'It must be here,' she said confidently this time, using the sharp hatchet to forge a path forward.
Hannah stared up, still feeling like an absolute idiot when she noticed a small object that looked out of place in the tree-line above. 'Sophie!' Hannah called out while trying to figure out a way to climb her way to the object. Sophie burst out laughing when Hannah pointed it out to her, 'Right where the map said it would be,' she spilled out between bursts of infectious laughter.