Dark Sun (2 page)

Greg swept his backpack off his desk and

headed for the door. ‘Less panic, more running,’

he suggested.

‘This is so bad,’ George shuddered.

As Zhang belted outside into the corridor Greg grabbed George by his collar and yanked him towards the door.

‘Calm down, you’ll be OK,’ Greg said. ‘But we’ve got to start running,
now
.’

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By the time George and Greg got out into the hallway, Zhang had already made it to the main staircase, thirt y metres away. He’d hoped to get down to the first f loor and hide out in a classroom there, but he had no chance because the t wo big Year Tens were already bounding up from the ground f loor.

‘There’s the fat one!’ Thomas Moran shouted.

‘You wait till I get my hands on you.’

Zhang’s shoes squealed on the corridor tiles as he saw Greg and George belting out of the classroom in the opposite direction.

‘Guys,’ Zhang yelled desperately, running as fast his chunky legs would allow. ‘Guys, wait up!’

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2. LAKE

The British countr yside is dotted with secret government installations: nuclear research facilities, weapons dumps, communications monitoring

centres. CHERUB campus was in the highest securit y categor y, surrounded by governmentowned forest and marked on maps as an artillery firing range.

Anyone ignoring the warning signs and driving up the approach road towards campus’ solid black gates would be greeted by guards armed with Heckler and Koch machine guns. You couldn’t even view campus from the air because the sky overhead formed part of the protected airspace around a military airbase five kilometres to the east.
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If you
had
been allowed to overf ly CHERUB

campus you’d have seen a set of buildings similar to those you’d find at a wealthy boarding school, surrounded by sports pitches and outdoor tennis courts. More unusual were a banana-shaped building bristling with satellite dishes, four helipads and beyond a large oval lake a wooded area, containing an assault course and an outdoor shooting range.

The weather was glorious and more than half the kids on CHERUB campus had taken their lunch outside to eat by the lake. Some kids cooled off with a paddle, but swimming was presently banned because it might dist urb the family of ducklings living on a muddy embankment near the lake’s centre.

Twelve-year-old Lauren Adams lay on the lawn near the lake’s edge, toes curled in the grass, surrounded by daisies and using her arm to keep the sun out of her eyes. She’d managed to get her favourite sushi box from the canteen before they ran out and the sun made her whole body feel wonderfully warm, but she was still depressed because she was in trouble and it wasn’t her fault.
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A fair-skinned boy called Andy Lagan sat on the grass next to Lauren. He put his Manga down and tapped her arm. ‘Zara’s here,’ he said grimly. ‘Better start putting your boots on.’

Lauren wanted time to freeze so she could stay on the warm grass for ever. ‘God,’ she moaned, sweeping blades of grass off her soles as she sat up. All cherubs wore a military st yle uniform during school hours: a T-shirt with CHERUB logo – the colour of which depended upon your rank – olive combat trousers with zip-off legs and light weight black boots. As Andy pulled his grey T-shirt over his chest and started moving uphill, Lauren hurriedly pulled balled-up socks out of her boots.

‘You’d better shift,’ Andy shouted back at her.

‘Zara’s gonna be in a right mood.’

Zara Asker stood on a tarmac path fift y metres uphill. She had one hand on her hip and leaned on one of the electric carts that staff used to move around campus. Zara was thirt y-seven years old; she wore a f lower-print dress and still carried some of the weight from the birth of her second child a year earlier.

Belying her mumsy appearance, Zara held one of
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the most senior jobs in British Intelligence. As the chairwoman of CHERUB, she was a headteacher and a spymaster rolled into one. Zara was usually popular with the kids in her charge, except when it was time to dish out punishments.

Lauren rushed to join Andy and six other

CHERUB agents up on the path, with her boot laces dragging behind her. There was a boy and girl in their early teens, but the main clump comprised four grey-shirt boys aged ten and eleven. They were all mates and their unelected leader was the spiky-haired Jake Parker.

‘Right you lot, line up,’ Zara said stiff ly, before eyeballing Jake’s soggy trousers and ketchup-stained shirt. ‘Is
that
how you present yourself to the chairwoman?’

Lauren couldn’t stand Jake and enjoyed his discomfort as he hurriedly tucked in his shirt. ‘Sorry, Miss,’ Jake said meekly. ‘I dropped my hot dog.’

Zara zoomed in and inspected the stain. ‘Make sure you soak the shirt in detergent before you take it down to the laundry.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ Jake nodded. Zara could be a bit random when she dished out punishments and
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the eleven-year-old was relieved to have received nothing more than laundry advice.

But the chairwoman hadn’t finished with them yet. ‘Before I start, have any of you got anything you want to say?’ Zara asked.

The eight uniformed agents looked sheepish and tried to avoid catching the chairwoman’s gaze. Lauren wanted to say that it was Jake and his three mates who’d caused all the trouble, but she was smart enough to know that it would only make things worse: Jake would throw the accusation right back at her and it would descend into a slanging match that would make Zara even madder.

Zara adjusted the strap of her summer dress and gave a deep sigh. ‘You eight are all qualified CHERUB agents,’ she said. ‘From black shirts like Lauren to some of you younger boys who are still awaiting your first mission. But no kid gets inside CHERUB campus unless you’re from the brightest t wo or three per cent of the population. Then we put you through the wringer: language training, espionage training, combat training and physical training. In other words, the eight of you are amongst the most outstandingly capable people of
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your age anywhere in the world. And that’s why I’m so disgusted by what happened this morning.’

Zara reached inside the electric buggy and retrieved a crumpled paper aeroplane from the passenger seat. It was made from a giant sheet of cartridge paper. It had
I’m So Bored Airlines
written along the side and a crudely drawn penis on the tail.

‘This was just one of eleven paper darts I found in that classroom. Along with hundreds of paper balls, boot-prints all over the tabletops and damage to a Venetian blind where some idiot appears to have tried to swing off it.’

Lauren struggled not to smile: one of the few high points of her morning had been watching Jake trying to recover a paper aeroplane stuck up high bet ween the blind slats, only to crash off the tabletop and bang his head on the window ledge while desperately grabbing at the blind to save himself.

Zara continued, ‘What makes this worse is that you behaved like this in front of a guest speaker. I
know
it’s hard to concentrate when it’s as hot as today, and perhaps a ninet y-minute lecture on
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preserving DNA evidence isn’t particularly exciting. But Mr Donaldson travelled all the way up from MI5 headquarters in London to speak with you and I assumed you were all mature enough to behave yourselves without a staff member looking over your shoulder.’

Andy raised his hand tentatively. ‘Miss, not all of us were involved.’

Zara’s eyes bulged. ‘I saw the size of the bootprints on the desktops, Andy. Mr Donaldson made it clear that the four younger boys were primarily responsible, but none of you four older kids intervened. Even if you didn’t think you could control the situation yourselves, you could have walked down the hall to another classroom and brought the situation to the attention of a staff member. You’re trained CHERUB agents. How can you expect to be sent out on missions to fight terrorists and drug dealers when you haven’t even got the brainpower to deal with a couple of lads getting out of hand during a lecture?’

Lauren was irritated by these comments.

Zara had once been a CHERUB agent herself, but she’d clearly forgotten the unwritten rule that
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cherubs didn’t grass each other up.

‘You’re all getting identical punishments,’ Zara announced. ‘Seven pounds fift y pocket money deducted to pay for the damaged blind and you’re going to be spending the rest of this sunny afternoon doing physical training on the assault course with Miss Speaks.’

The eight cherubs groaned, but only Jake was dumb enough to mouth off.

‘That’s bull,’ he yelled. ‘When was the last time people had to run the assault course just for messing in class? Laps of the athletic track maybe . . .’

Zara swooped down so that she was looking Jake straight in the eye. ‘You mucked around in front of a campus guest, causing me personal embarassment. Outside lecturers are a vital part of your ongoing training and they won’t want to come here if you behave like that, will they?’

‘No, Miss,’ Jake said, adopting a surly
if you say
so
voice.

‘I don’t like your tone, Jake Parker,’ Zara said, now getting really angry. ‘Seeing as you’re so keen on punishment laps, you can also run twent y a day
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for the next week. Your smart mouth also just cost you an extra month’s pocket money and got you grounded in your room for the next two weekends.’

Jake’s head shrivelled bet ween his shoulders. Lauren enjoyed seeing him suffer: it seemed like the least Jake deserved after costing her seven fift y and an afternoon of gruelling training on the assault course.

‘Miss Speaks is waiting,’ Zara shouted, pointing dramatically towards the wooded area beyond the lake. ‘All of you start running to the training compound before I
really
lose my temper.’

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3. MOVES

‘Move it,’ Greg shouted, grabbing George by his collar.

‘I can’t,’ George gasped. ‘Got a stitch.’

They’d run down the long second-f loor corridor and on to the back stairs, which were off limits to pupils unless there was a fire drill. Zhang was overweight and kept falling further behind, while the t wo Year Tens closed relentlessly.

Greg gave George another pull, tugging him off the landing. ‘Through the sixth-form block and we’ll be in the canteen,’ Greg explained.

‘They won’t be able to touch us in there: it’s full of teachers.’

The sense of hope gave George some energy and
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he leaned over the banister and started moving down as quickly as he could.

‘You’re so unfit,’ Greg moaned. ‘You should take up jogging or something.’

Zhang had caught up by the time they’d reached the bottom of the staircase, but Thomas Moran and his mate Johno were now just a single f light of stairs behind them.

Greg turned left towards the sixth-form annexe, but he was horrified to find the doors locked. Through the safet y glass he saw the soft chairs and furniture all piled up and white sheets spread over the carpet tiles. A sign on the door spelled their doom:

The sixth-form block is getting a lick of paint!

Reopens September 2007

Have a great summer!!!!

‘Dammit,’ Greg shouted.

‘We’re puppy food,’ George gasped.

Out of options, Zhang led the trio back towards the staircase. Thomas Moran had reached the bottom, but Zhang used his bulk to plough through
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and start running down the short corridor that led to the sports hall.

The f loor was covered with dried-out mud trailed in from the playing fields and the air smelled like BO. The corridor ended at a

T-junction, with double doors leading into the gymnasium directly ahead, a pink corridor leading left to the girls’ changing room and a blue one going towards the boys’.

The gym was always locked at lunchtime and Zhang shoulder-charging t he doors made no difference to that. The smell grew even worse as they reached the boys’ changing rooms. The air was steamy and rogue pieces of kit scattered the puddled f loor. There was a communal shower at one end and a putrid-smelling toilet block at the other.

Greg and George ran in and headed towards the showers. They’d been in here a hundred times before but they glanced around, hoping against hope that there was a fire door or some other exit they’d never noticed before.

‘Dead end, boys,’ Thomas Moran whooped,

smashing his huge fist into his palm as Zhang
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slammed the door of a toilet cubicle and bolted himself in.

‘Be reasonable,’ George begged, holding out his hands as he backed up to the showers with Greg.

‘It was meant for my sister. If you let me off I’ll pay you t went y pounds, first day of next term. I swear on my life.’

At the opposite end of the room, Johno’s sizeten Nike blasted the cubicle door, not only breaking the lock, but ripping off the hinges on the opposite side too. Zhang howled with pain as the door crashed down on his head.