by Ally Carter
The wind blew through the complex, howling between the buildings. I glanced down at the monitor on my wrist to make sure I was still moving in the direction of the solitary blinking dot. But this time the red dot was no longer alone.
I started to speak—to call out for my friends—but then I felt fingers clamp over my mouth. An arm was around my waist. And before I could take a step or throw a punch, I heard the hum of rappel-a-cord running through pulleys, and felt my feet leave the ground. . . .
And the next thing I knew, I was flying.
“Cam,” the voice near my ear whispered as we touched down on the roof of the building next to where I had been standing moments before. Wires ran between the surrounding rooftops. Harnesses and rappelling gear lay at my feet. And, on my wrist, Liz’s old watch was blinking like crazy.
Without stopping to think, I stepped back into my attacker, tried to flip him over my head, but he countered his weight at that precise time, stopping my momentum. “It’s me. It’s Zach,” he whispered, as if that were going to make me feel better.
A searchlight swept over the complex, beaming through the dark night, and automatically Zach and I dropped to the building’s roof, laying ourselves flat as the light sliced above us.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t throw you off this building right now,” I said, but the crazy thing wasn’t that I meant it; the crazy thing was that I didn’t want to mean it—that I wanted to believe in Zach; I wanted to like him and trust him and know that he knew the real me and liked me anyway.
I lay perfectly still, feeling the rough bite of the gritty tar paper on the palms of my hands.
“Give me one good reason why—” I started again, but Zach rolled toward me. His arm fell around my shoulders as his body pressed against mine.
“I’ll give you two,” he said, just as two armed guards walked around the corner in the exact same place I’d been standing moments before.
We lay in silence for twenty seconds, listening to the footsteps fade before I pushed myself away from him. “What’s going on, Zach?” For the first time, I knew exactly what to say to him, and I wasn’t afraid to say it.
“Who was that man in town?” I felt my fury rise. I cinched his arm behind his back and rolled him onto his stomach. “How did you find this place? Who is down there, and what are they going to do with the list?”
“Well, first of all, ouch,” he hissed, but I didn’t release the pressure. “Second, I came back to school after you ditched me in town with Jimmy—”
“Josh!” I snapped.
“I came back to the school after you ditched me— thanks for that, by the way. Then it’s all Code Black again and you and your whole class were gone. We figured you’d tracked us, so we tweaked the signal so we could follow your tracking mechanism. And here we are.”
“Who’s we?” I asked, gripping his arm tighter.
“Seriously, Gallagher Girl, that hurts like a—Ow!” I twisted harder. “Grant, Jonas, some of the juniors. They’re here, too. They’re out there with your girls.”
I looked over the side of the building and started to call a warning through the comms unit in my ear, but that one second of distraction was too much. Zach rolled. Then I was the one with my hands pinned.
“Cammie,” he snapped, “look at me.” I struggled and kicked, but he held tighter. “Gallagher Girl,” he said gently, looking at me with the eyes of the boy who had almost kissed me—the guy who knew what it felt like to lose a parent. I’d spent a whole semester trying to find the real Zach, and that night, more than ever, I needed to know what was real and what was legend.
“You lied.” My voice was soft, almost bruised. “I know you lied in town, Zach. I know you’ve seen that man who was on our tail.”
“That’s what this is about?” Zach exhaled a laugh. “You ditched me in town and organized a war party because I lied about knowing that guy?”
“No, I organized a war party because someone knocked Mr. Mosckowitz out and stole the Gallagher Academy alumni list!” I snapped. I could see terror register in Zach’s eyes as he processed what was at stake. The pressure on my arms lessened. He wasn’t holding me down anymore; he was just holding me.
And then something seemed to snap inside of Zach. He pulled my right hand in front of my face. “Here. Look at it.” Until that moment I’d forgotten about the ring on my finger. “Or better yet, look at me. Watch my eyes, Cammie. I’m not lying.” His pupils were even; his pulse was steady; and the truth ring stayed perfectly still as Zach explained, “I’d seen that guy with Dr. Steve before and didn’t want to blow his cover. I had no idea he was a threat. I thought he was on a training op or . . . I don’t know . . . checking up on us or something. I didn’t think it was a big deal.” He shifted his weight and moved beside me. “I didn’t think it was worth explaining in front of . . .” he trailed off, and I finished.
“Josh and DeeDee.” I shook my head, trying to make sense of it all.
“We’re not the bad guys, Gallagher Girl,” he said gently.
More than anything I wanted to believe him. “Then who is?”
Zach let go of my wrists and pointed into the darkness. “Him.”
And then one of the doors to the building across from us opened. I saw four armed guards walk out, and in the fleeting moment before the door closed, I heard a faint “Excellent,” and saw the face of Dr. Steve.
“Chameleon,” Bex said in my ear. “Did you see that? Did you see who is in that big building? It’s—”
“Dr. Steve,” I finished for her, and before I could say another word, I heard Eva cry, “Chameleon! The boys— they’re here!”
“I know, Chica,” I said, using Eva’s code name. “Zach’s with me.”
“He is?” It was Liz. She sounded giddy.
“So that means Tina doesn’t have to sit on Grant?” Eva asked.
“No. Tina needs to get off Grant.” (Tina didn’t sound at all happy about it.) “And bring him to the roof of the building on the northwest corner.” I studied the boy beside me. “They’ve got some explaining to do.”
For the next sixty seconds I heard my classmates making their way through the dark grounds, whispering to each other through the comms units as they cleared corners and ducked out of the sight of guards. The Gallagher Girls were coming, but for some reason, there, in the moonlight, with my sisterhood riding on everything I said and did, I found myself looking at Zach.
A few weeks ago, he warned me that I wouldn’t want to sleep in his school, and now a semester’s worth of cryptic messages and subtle hints had come down to this.
“What’s going on, Cam?” Bex asked, as my classmates appeared beside me. She glanced at Zach. “Want me to throw him off the roof?”
“Only if he doesn’t tell us what the Blackthorne Institute is and why one of their teachers is out to destroy the Gallagher Girls.”
“What do you mean? You know what our school is,” Grant said, as if the answer should be obvious. But it wasn’t.
Their rooms were freaky clean; there was no trace of them in any record anywhere. They weren’t like us— I’d known it all along. But Zach was the one to finally say, “You’ve got your cover. We’ve got ours.”
“What’s that supposed to—” I started, but Zach cut me off.
“You’re Gallagher Girls,” Zach snapped as the mist turned into rain. It streaked down his face, but he didn’t blink; didn’t back down. He just stepped closer and said, “We’re the stepchild no one ever talks about.”
I thought about the military precision of their suites; the new uniforms; the way Zach had stood in the library and told me that he was neither all good nor all bad, and I knew there was more to the story.
“Then what—” I started, but the creak of rusty hinges cut me off; light sliced across the dark lot below as two armed guards left the building across from us and started to patrol the grounds. The question that had seemed so important moments before faded from my mind, and instead I said, “He c
an’t get away. That list can’t get away.”
“It won’t.” Zach’s words brought me back to another night when the Gallagher Girls stood in the same spot, on our way to rescue a hostage and a package.
This time the stakes were higher.
Zach walked to the edge of the roof and attached a rappelling harness to a cable that skirted down between the buildings, then reached for my hand. “We’ve got to go now, Cam.” His gesture was like that of a gentleman asking a lady to dance. Madame Dabney would have been proud. “Do you trust me?” he asked, and I realized I had come full circle.
Months before I’d stood on that same roof with a different boy and leaped into the darkness toward my destiny.
But this time I wasn’t jumping alone.
Zach and I touched down on the stretch of grass that ran between the buildings, thankful for the rain, the clouds—for every trace of darkness Mother Nature could spare as I crouched low and ran through the space between the buildings.
“What are you doing?” Zach hissed, but I was already banging on the metal door that stood between me and Dr. Steve. “Hey, can one of you guys come give me a hand with this?” I asked in the most manly voice I could muster.
Zach looked at me like I was crazy, but then the door opened and I pulled one of the guards out by his collar. Shocked and dazed, he didn’t even realize what was happening as I knocked him out with one punch and slapped a Napotine patch on his forehead just to be on the safe side.
“Nice one,” Zach said. “Did you learn that in P&E?”
“No. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
I studied the man who lay on the ground in front of us. The last time I’d seen him he’d been leaning against a 1957 Cadillac that stood parked along the Roseville town square. There was no telling how many operatives Dr. Steve had helping him—I didn’t want to think about the odds. I dragged the man to the tall weeds twenty feet away from the door and helped Zach go through his pockets.
“Comms,” I said, pulling an earpiece and microphone off the sleeping man’s body. Zach inserted the earpiece while I peered through the dusty windows.
Dr. Steve was pacing the metal room. Crates lined the walls of the massive building, towering from the concrete floor to the tall ceiling.
“Guys,” I whispered into my comms unit. “I’ve got a visual on the subject.” At least four guards stood near Dr. Steve. Every few steps he’d stop and pat his pocket as if making sure it hadn’t been picked. “Maintain your position until we give you the all clear.”
Zach leaned close to me. “They’ve got at least fifteen guys.”
“What do you hear?” I asked. Zach held up a finger to shush me. A dark shadow crossed his face as he listened to what the enemy was saying. “What is it, Zach?” I demanded. “What’s going—”
“Cammie, listen to me,” Zach said. “I don’t know where he’s going, or what Dr. Steve’s planning to do with that list, but . . .” Zach trailed off. His gaze left mine, and for a second it seemed to linger in midair, dwelling on some distant constellation. “. . . I think I know how he’s getting there.”
He turned me to face west, where a small red light was blinking, growing closer.
“Guys,” I whispered through my comms unit as the plane dipped lower on the horizon, “we’ve got a change of plans.”
We were outnumbered and outsized. I heard the plane’s landing gear groan as it started down, and saw the silhouettes of men exiting the building. This was not the time for a careful assault.
Bex jumped from the roof, flattening one guard, then swept a leg out and knocked a second one off his feet in one smooth motion. “They’re here!” the man yelled out as he fell. But it was too late.
The buzz of rappel-a-cord through pulleys filled the air. For a moment it seemed to be raining Gallagher Girls. All around me fists flew, kicks landed. Zach touched the earpiece he’d stolen from the fallen guard and yelled to Bex and Grant, “Three guys are coming around the south side of the building—go!” And in a flash, they were off.
Liz had taken refuge in the cab of a forklift.
“Cammie, I need a weapon!” she called to me.
I’d knocked a guard to the ground and was struggling with a Napotine patch, but still managed to reply, “You’re sitting in one!”
“Right,” she said, and started looking for keys or a control switch—anything to make the big machine move.
She must have given up, though, because the next time I saw her she was jumping from the cab, landing on the back of a guard who had been chasing Eva. The man spun around as if he couldn’t quite imagine what had happened, and Liz squeezed tighter.
The plane touched down at the end of the runway. Through the rain, I saw the man in the blue jacket.
I moved toward him, feeling that things had gotten even more personal, but then the man Liz was gripping shook her free, and she went flying through the air, flattening the man in the blue jacket without throwing a single punch.
All around Dr. Steve the guards fell, one by one. To my right I saw a big burly guard go after Liz, but Zach lurched between them, taking a fist to the side of his face. He stumbled backward, then caught my eye. He held his face with one hand and gestured to Dr. Steve with the other.
“Go!” he screamed, and I ran.
The plane had reached the end of the runway; its propellers still spinning, a blur of water and light as the boys’ teacher—our traitor—dashed through deep puddles and damp grass, bearing the straightest possible course toward the waiting aircraft—toward freedom.
I didn’t think about my aching feet or growling stomach; I didn’t hear the terrible thoughts that filled my head. I just put one foot in front of the other and ran until I stood just feet away from Dr. Steve and the waiting plane. I could tell by the look on his face that nothing about that moment seemed “excellent” to him.
“I think you’ve got something that belongs to us,” I said. My voice was steady and calm, maybe because of training, or nerve, or the sight of Bex inching along the ground, crawling through the tall weeds that rimmed the tarmac, until she was poised by the plane’s back wheel. “You’re not leaving with that disc,” I said, feeling myself start to sway despite the adrenalin that coursed through my blood.
“Oh,” Dr. Steve said, as behind him the stairway to the plane began to descend. “I believe you’re just a little . . .” He panted. “. . . too . . .” He drew another deep breath.
“Late.” But this time Dr. Steve didn’t speak—he couldn’t speak—because, take it from someone who has been the recipient of Rebecca Baxter’s choke holds, breathing is hard enough.
Dr. Steve crumpled to the ground, and Bex went with him. The disc fell from his pocket, and I grabbed it. “You’re not taking that anywhere.” For the first time, I felt my energy fade. “You’re not getting on that plane.”
And then a voice behind me said, “That’s right, Ms. Morgan, he’s not.” And I knew something was either very right. Or very wrong. But the one thing that was certain was that nothing was what it seemed.
I fully expected Mr. Solomon to tell me to get out of the way because he was there with an elite special forces unit from Langley. I thought he’d handcuff Dr. Steve or at least grab the disc and fly it away to safety. Instead he stepped lightly out of the plane and said, “Are you okay, Dr. Sanders?”
“You,” I said, barely recognizing my own voice. “You did this?”
“Well,” Joe Solomon said, “I had some help.”
And then my mother came to join him.
I looked at the two of them, a thousand emotions brewing inside of me as my mother smiled at us and said, “Good job, everyone.”
Even Dr. Steve managed a smile. Well . . . as much of a smile as a guy in serious agony can muster.
“Rebecca?” Mom said. Bex loosened her grip. (She didn’t totally let go, though.)
Mr. Solomon looked at his watch. “Forty-two minutes,” he said. “Not bad.” He turned and called into the darkness. “What d
o you think, Harvey?”
Mr. Mosckowitz stepped into the plane’s open doorway— Mr. Mosckowitz who had worn a fake mustache; Mr. Mosckowitz who I had single-handedly tricked into untying me during my midterm final last fall; Mr. Mosckowitz, who was maybe the least seasoned field operative of the entire Gallagher Academy staff, smiled and bounced on the balls of his feet.
“Hi, girls,” he said brightly. “How’d I do?”
Oh. My. Gosh.
The rain grew lighter around us. The pounding of my heart began to slow, and I felt my fears wash away and then get replaced by an emotion that I couldn’t quite name.
“It . . .” I stumbled. “It was . . . a test?”
“Our job isn’t to get you ready for tests, Ms. Morgan,” Mr. Solomon corrected. “Our job is to get you ready for life.”
I saw spotlights flash, felt the dim sky growing brighter and brighter, until the mist that hung in the air formed a massive rainbow over the abandoned buildings, the dark, empty lots. I watched the lights come on—in a lot of ways.
“So you wanted to see if we could do it for real?” Tina asked.
“No,” my mom said. “We had to see if you could do it”— she looked at the boys and then at us—“together.”
Our teachers turned and started through the rain toward the waiting vans while, behind us, the plane began to taxi down the runway, its lights fading in the distance. I should have been happy. After all, the secrets of my sisterhood were safe, and I’d just aced my CoveOps final.
Then Mr. Solomon’s voice called to us in the distance, “Oh . . . and welcome to Sublevel Two.”
There are tests for which even a Gallagher Girl can’t study—no notes, no flash cards—just questions you have to answer every day; problems you must solve. I think it’s probably true for any life—much less a spy’s life—but that night as I lay in bed, listening to the play-by-play in the common room down the hall, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe the biggest test of the spring semester wasn’t really over. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d really made the grade.