'Time's up,' Amy said. 'Better luck next time.'

'But I got them,' James said tetchily.

'I know,' Amy said. 'But you weren't supposed to leave any traces behind. It was a good idea to move the pa.s.sword-protected doc.u.ments, but you should have put them all back where they belonged and deleted the new folder you created ... Ready for the next one?'

'My head's spinning,' James said. 'Can't I have five minutes' break?'

Amy gave him an evil grin. 'You don't deserve a break after that sorry performance.'

She tapped the reset b.u.t.ton on top of the clock, then flipped up the lever to set it ticking.

25. DIGGING.

James made such a hash of the laptop-hacking test, Amy kept him upstairs in the mission preparation room until gone nine o'clock for extra tuition. He got ratty with her as his brain stubbornly refused to accept any more information.

When they got downstairs to the dining hall, the kitchen had finished serving. There was a fridge stocked up with sandwiches and microwave meals, but James had been looking forward to a proper dinner before his return to Luton and Zara's dodgy cooking.

James slammed the door of his bedroom. He was in a stinking mood. He packed his hacking textbooks and some odd bits in a backpack, then stripped to his boxers and went to take a pee before getting in bed. There was a muggy smell as he got near his bathroom, like the smell trainers get after a couple of hours on a muddy football field. It spooked him a bit. His imagination toyed with dead rats and leaking sewage as he leaned in warily and flipped on the light.

'What the h.e.l.l ...'

It was Lauren, propped on the toilet lid in her filthy training kit. Her hair was cropped, she had a nasty scab down her face and all the cuts and bruises you'd expect after a month of basic training.

'What's going on?' James asked.

'I messed up,' Lauren said miserably. 'And I'm in so much trouble,'

She did a ma.s.sive sniff, followed by a howling noise. Then she broke into five minutes of the most desperate bawling James had ever heard. He tried to give her a hug, but she wouldn't let him anywhere near her.

'Lauren,' James pleaded, 'I want to help you, but I can't until you tell me what's happened.'

Lauren seemed to see the sense in this and looked up from the floor.

'I ... I ... hit,' she sniffled, unable to control herself.

She stood up and draped her filthy arms around James' back. Her kit stank of mud and sweat.

'Calm down and sit on my bed,' James said gently, rubbing his sister's back.

He stepped backwards out of his bathroom, with Lauren flopped over him. It felt like dancing with a drunk. When he got near his bed, James peeled off Lauren's arms and she slumped on to the corner of his mattress.

'I hit him,' Lauren sniffed.

'Who?' James asked.

'Mr Large.'

James sat down beside her. 'I doubt he even felt it, Lauren. He's ten times your size.'

'He felt it all right,' Lauren said, salvaging a touch of composure.

James reached over to his bedside table and got her a tissue.

'Bethany injured her back yesterday morning,' Lauren explained. 'We were on the a.s.sault course. I was helping her as much as I could, but she was still slow. We finished the course miles behind the other kids. Mr Large started shouting his head off! You two are worthless. You're not fit to be cherubs. You're not even fit to eat your own puke. He got two spades and told us to start digging our own graves.'

It was a standard torture from Mr Large's repertoire. James and Kerry had got it a couple of times when they were in basic training. Large made you dig a ma.s.sive hole, then fill it in. If he decided you weren't fast enough, he'd make you do it again.

'It's so tough,' Lauren said. 'I managed, but my back and shoulders were killing me. Bethany had a bad back to start with, so you can imagine how she was after two hours' digging. Large made me stand to attention at the edge of my grave until Bethany was finished. She kept slowing down, until she could barely drag her shovel. She begged Mr Large for a drink, so he got that ma.s.sive fire hose and drenched her with it. By the time he'd finished, the water was up to her knees. She was crying and sobbing, covered from head to toe in really thick mud. Then he started kicking the mud she'd already dug up back into the hole.

'It was. .h.i.tting her in the face and he screamed at the top of his voice: You're too weak, little girl. You'll never make it. Why don't you quit? It made me so angry. I was so sick of his stupid voice. I just got this urge to make him shut up. Then I realised I still had my spade on the ground, right in front of me.'

'You didn't,' James gasped.

'When Mr Large turned around, I took this ma.s.sive swing with it and whacked him behind the knees to knock him over. The first time only made him go wobbly. He started turning towards me and I was so scared. I thought he was gonna kill me, so I whacked him again. As he went down, he caught his head on a rock and got knocked out.'

James couldn't help smiling. 'You knocked out Mr Large! That's pure cla.s.s.'

'It's not funny, James,' Lauren moped. 'I'm probably gonna get expelled. I thought I'd killed him for a minute. There was all blood coming out of his head. I was so afraid, I ran out of the training compound and didn't stop. I wanted to speak to you before anyone else, so I went to my room and phoned you. Zara said you were on campus, but I'm not allowed upstairs to mission preparation, so I waited for you in here.'

James pondered for a few moments.

'First things first,' he said. 'You better wash up, then we'll have to find Mac and sort this whole mess out.'

'Do you think they'll boot me out?' Lauren asked.

'I hope not,' James shrugged. 'But laying out a teacher ... Let's just say it's not gonna go down too well.'

James found some of his smaller clothes for Lauren to wear after she got out of the shower. When they got down to the ground floor, Mac's office was locked. They asked the receptionist on the front desk.

'Mac usually heads home at about eight,' he explained. 'But one of the training instructors got injured and I think he's still over at the medical unit. I can ring his mobile if it's urgent.'

'I think you'd better,' James said.

The receptionist had a short conversation before putting down the receiver.

'Mac's coming over ASAP,' the receptionist said. 'I don't know what you two have done, but judging by the tone of his voice, I wouldn't want to switch shoes with you at the moment.'

A few minutes later, Mac rolled up the gravel driveway outside in one of the golf buggies the staff used to move around campus.

'This way,' he said stiffly, striding through reception.

He pulled a great bunch of keys out of his jacket and unlocked his door.

'Sit at the desk.'

James nervously sank into one of the leather chairs at the big oak desk. Lauren looked ready to start crying again.

'So, young lady,' Mac snapped. 'Would you be so kind as to tell me why my senior training instructor is lying in the medical unit with a serious concussion and eight st.i.tches in the side of his head?'

'I'm really, really sorry,' Lauren grovelled. 'He made me so mad. Poor Bethany could hardly stand up and Mr Large wouldn't leave her alone.'

'If Bethany was injured, she should have quit,' Mac said. 'It wasn't your business to interfere.'

'So what are you gonna do to her?' James asked.

'I don't like expelling people,' Mac said. 'But if I don't expel a cherub for a serious a.s.sault on a member of staff, then what exactly do you get expelled for?'

'I know what Lauren did is wrong,' James said. 'But it's not like she walked into a cla.s.sroom and belted a teacher for no reason. She was knackered and she was watching one of her friends get tortured by a raving lunatic. Everyone wants to take a swing at Mr Large at some point during basic training. It's just unlucky Lauren happened to have a spade nearby when the thought crossed her mind.'

'Hmm,' Mac said, covering a tiny smile with his fingers. 'I suppose there's an element of truth in that. If I did expel Lauren, though, we'd send her to a good school and set her up with a foster family near campus so that you could visit her at weekends.'

'I don't care if she only lives across the street,' James said. 'If she goes, I'm going with her. We were separated after our mum died and I don't ever want that again.'

'Recruiting cherubs is tricky,' Mac said, 'and I don't want to lose either of you two. But if I allow Lauren to stay, she'll have to accept a stiff punishment; otherwise, we'll have every kid on campus taking pot shots at the training staff.'

'Please let me stay,' Lauren begged. 'I'll do whatever you want and I'll be so good, I swear.'

'James,' Mac said. 'Do you have any thoughts on how we should make Lauren suffer?'

James looked uneasily at his sister.

'It's obviously got to be the worst punishment going,' he said. 'And it'll have to last the whole two and a bit months until she can restart basic training.'

'Agreed,' Mac nodded.

'What about cleaning toilets and changing rooms?' James said. 'Everyone always says that's really horrible.'

'Not hard enough,' Mac said, sweeping the idea away with his hand. 'Kids get toilets and changing rooms for swearing or skipping lessons. It's unpleasant, but all it boils down to is pushing a mop and squirting disinfectant.'

'Worse than toilets, then,' James said, trying to work out how Mac had twisted the situation around so that he was trying to think up some awful punishment for the person he was supposed to be helping out.

'Well,' Mac grinned. 'It just so happens, I did have an idea. There's a drainage problem in the wooded area on the far side of campus. The fields keep flooding because the ditches have gradually become blocked up with silt. I reckon someone Lauren's size would take a couple of months to clean them all out. She'll have to work hard, every day before and after school, plus all day on Sat.u.r.days and Sundays. How do you like the sound of that, Lauren?'

'I've got to be punished,' Lauren said, nodding meekly. 'If that's what you want, I'll do it.'

'Ditches it is,' Mac said, clapping his hands together. 'And I'll be putting you on final warning, Lauren. That means if you do one more thing wrong, you'll get kicked out. And I mean every tiny thing. Run in the corridor, you're out. Miss a homework a.s.signment, you're out. Get to cla.s.s late, you're out. For the next three months, you're walking on eggsh.e.l.ls. Your behaviour must be immaculate. Is that understood?'

Lauren nodded.

'And there's one more condition,' Mac said. 'For you, James.'

'For me?' James gasped.

Mac nodded. 'You've talked me into giving Lauren a final chance. In return, I want something from you. If Lauren breaches her final warning, I want you to promise that you'll stay at CHERUB.'

James thought for a couple of seconds. 'But you'll put her with a family nearby so I can still see her when I'm not on missions?'

Mac nodded. 'That seems reasonable.'

'I suppose, then,' James said.

It seemed pretty convenient, the way Mac had found the perfect punishment for Lauren. James suspected Mac had worked everything out in advance. The expulsion threat was a ploy to make him and Lauren squirm.

'And of course, Lauren,' Mac grinned, 'once you've cleaned out those ditches and start your second attempt at basic training, I'm sure Mr Large will wreak his own special revenge.'

Lauren slept in James' room. The bed was a double, but the two of them still cuddled up in the middle. Lauren woke early and didn't seem too miserable, considering that the next five months of her life looked like being a living h.e.l.l.

'Have you got a diary?' she asked.

'It's in my desk,' James said, still buried under his duvet.

Lauren used the diary to work out that it was one hundred and seventy-four days until she finished her punishment and basic training. She took a sheet of paper and began writing the numbers from 174 down to zero in her neatest writing.

James poked his head out of his covers. 'What are you doing, Lauren?'

'Making a countdown chart. For the next hundred and seventy-four days, I'm not gonna whinge or cry about anything. I'll take this piece of paper everywhere I go. However bad it gets, all I'm going to think about is how many hours it is until I can tick off the next number. In one hundred and seventy-four days I will pa.s.s basic training. I swear it, on our mum's grave.'

James scrambled out of bed.

'No way,' he said angrily. 'You can't swear something like that on Mum's grave. Some things are out of your control. What if you get injured, or sick?'

'I won't,' Lauren said sternly. 'If something hurts, I'll close my eyes and think about the piece of paper in my pocket.'

'It's a good idea to focus your mind,' James said, sliding his legs into a pair of tracksuit bottoms. 'But try and be realistic. There are quite a few kids who've taken three or more attempts to get through basic training. You could be setting yourself up for a big disappointment.'

Lauren stood in front of James and barked an order. 'Slap my face.'

'Yeah, I'm really gonna hit you,' James said, shaking his head with contempt.

'I'll show you I can take it,' Lauren said. 'As hard as you like.'

'Give us a break, Lauren. You realise we could have lain in bed for at least another half hour?'

Lauren lunged forward, grabbed hold of James' nipple and gave it a savage twist. James rolled backwards on to his bed, howling in pain.

'What the h.e.l.l did you do that for?' he shouted.

'Slap my d.a.m.n face,' Lauren shouted back.

'You really want to see how tough you are?' James raged. 'Fine. Maybe I'll knock some sense into you.'

There was a sharp crack as his hand hit her face. It was more painful than Lauren had expected, but she stifled her groan and toughed it out with a thin-lipped smile.

'One hundred and seventy-four days,' Lauren said. 'Believe it.'