CHERUB: Dark Sun

by Robert Muchamore

  As Sophie groaned and clutched her agonised knee, Andy hooked his foot around Sophie’s standing leg and swept it from under her. Andy stepped back, leaving Sophie glowering up at him from the floor.

  ‘I was trying to help,’ Andy said, trying to calm her down. ‘Why don’t you just go to bed, eh?’

  But Sophie was having none of it and she lunged forward and tried wrapping her arms around Andy’s waist. Meantime, Greg was back on his feet. He felt an excruciating pain as he took his first step, but he ignored it as he sprinted down the hallway and dived into George’s bedroom.

  Sophie was much heavier than Andy, but her Karate skills were limited to a few self-defence classes and Andy soon straddled her waist, pinning her arms to her side.

  ‘Please calm down,’ Andy said. ‘You’re drunk. You’ll feel better if you get in bed and try going to sleep.’

  ‘I want that key,’ she screamed. ‘I don’t want you little idiots in my room.’

  Greg burrowed down the side pocket of Andy’s pack and grabbed one of the syringes. Out in the hall, Sophie spat and wriggled, even though Andy had her hopelessly pinned.

  ‘Get off me,’ she yelled.

  ‘As soon as you calm down,’ Andy yelled back. ‘It’s a misunderstanding. I haven’t got any key, I swear.’

  Greg crouched down behind Andy. He put the syringe between his teeth, before grabbing Sophie’s foot and twisting it around so that it was flat to the floor.

  ‘I’ll kill you both,’ Sophie screamed, now close to tears. ‘Lemme go.’

  Andy felt bad because Sophie was really upset, but she was going so crazy that he knew he’d only have to pin her again if he let her up.

  Greg took the needle and jabbed it into the flesh between two toes on Sophie’s right foot. She felt something, but Andy’s torso blocked her view so she had no idea what it was.

  It took half a minute for the sedative to start working. Sophie stopped thrashing about and her body started to relax.

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ Andy gasped breathlessly, as he tried to stand up.

  But the mixture of nightclub cocktails, panic and sedative hadn’t done Sophie any good. As Andy lifted his weight off her stomach, she sat upright and spewed bright green vomit into his lap.

  ‘Ahh shit!’ Andy gasped, heaving at the smell of the puke dripping off his thighs as Sophie crashed back on to the carpet, dead to the world.

  It’s easy to choke when you’re unconscious and Andy’s first-aid training kicked in. He plunged his hand into Sophie’s mouth and made sure that her airway was clear, before standing up and rolling her into the recovery position.

  ‘Who’d want to be a spy?’ Andy complained, clutching the strained muscles down his left side as he stepped back from Sophie. ‘How come you never see James Bond covered in some drunk bird’s puke?’

  Greg wasn’t listening because he had his own problems. He leaned against the wall, inspecting his right heel. He’d ignored the pain when the adrenalin was flowing, but now realised that he’d sliced his foot open on a chunk of the broken vase. What’s more, he’d left a trail of blood all along the hallway carpet and into George’s room too.

  Andy inspected the mess: blood, puke, beer, broken china, half a bag of crushed M&Ms and even a dent in the wall. ‘George’s old lady’s gonna love this when she wakes up in the morning.’

  Andy and Greg were both in pain, but they’d been through worse in CHERUB training and were both determined to pull off their mission.

  Greg looked up and smiled at Andy, then mimicked the gruff voice of a CHERUB instructor. ‘This is tough but cherubs are tougher,’ he said.

  Andy laughed, but that made the torn muscles in his stomach hurt even more.

  ‘I’ll take a shower and nick a clean pair of shorts from George’s wardrobe,’ he said. ‘You find a bandage or something to stop your foot from bleeding. Once we’re cleaned up, we’ll drag Sophie on to her bed.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Greg nodded. ‘Then what?’

  Andy glanced at his watch. ‘It’s only one forty-five. Nobody will be waking up for at least three hours, so we go back into Kurt’s study, make the last forty-three revisions to the centrifuge design and then turn in for whatever’s left of the night.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ Greg nodded, as he started hobbling towards the bathroom.

  10. RAGE

  Earthquakes are measured on the Richter scale, tornados on the Fujita scale, and there’s an Explosivity Index for volcanoes. Andy and Greg weren’t sure what scale was used for enraged mothers, but whatever it was George’s mum hit the top level when she woke up at half-past seven that Saturday morning.

  ‘Get your arses downstairs,’ Dr Lydon screamed, as she yanked George out of a gentle slumber. Being gassed had left her with a bad headache, which made her mood even worse. ‘Mind your feet, there’s broken china all along the passageway.’

  She’d seen the carnage in the hallway, but only learned of the busted hedge when she threw open George’s window to clear out the smell of beer and pizza.

  ‘No more sleepovers, ever,’ she screamed. ‘This is way beyond a joke.’

  Apart from the hedge, everything had been fine when George and Zhang dropped off to sleep. George was stunned when he saw the state of the hallway.

  ‘It wasn’t me!’ he protested meekly.

  Across the hall, Sophie emerged with her hair pointing in a thousand different directions, still dressed in her black dress and stockings, but now accessorised with dried-out vomit. ‘What’s all the noise?’ she moaned. ‘I need sleep.’

  ‘Sleep,’ Dr Lydon screamed, as George and Zhang scrambled down the stairs in a state of complete panic. ‘Young lady, nobody in this house is getting sleep until every speck of this mess is cleaned up.’

  Sophie tutted. ‘Don’t blow your stack, Ma. It’s not my fault if the geekboys decided to get drunk.’

  ‘That was you!’ George’s mum shouted, pointing at the puke on the carpet. ‘It’s all down your dress. Get down to the kitchen and grab the cleaning stuff from under the sink.’

  ‘You’re so sexist, just because I’m a girl.’

  ‘Oh don’t you worry,’ Dr Lydon hissed. ‘George is doing his share of the cleaning too, and you’re both paying for the damage out of pocket money and birthday money. And that includes new carpets if we need ’em, so you’d better scrub hard.’

  Down in the kitchen Zhang was helping himself to Coco Pops and seemed to find the whole scenario quite amusing. ‘Pity you’re not coming to China with me, Georgie,’ Zhang laughed. ‘It’s about the only place you’d be safe from that crazed mother of yours.’

  George was less concerned with Zhang’s teasing than with the breach of trust by his new friend Greg.

  ‘I’ve had loads of sleepovers before, and nothing like this has ever happened,’ George yelled. ‘What the hell were you guys playing at?’

  Greg tried to act innocent. ‘Your sister came home drunk and couldn’t get into her room. Andy knows how to pick locks so he tried to help, but Sophie went psycho when we opened her door.’

  George wasn’t sure he believed this. ‘What about the massive stain on my carpet? That must have been you guys, and why’s Andy wearing a pair of my shorts?’

  ‘Because your dumb-ass sister threw up all over me and then passed out,’ Andy said.

  At this point Sophie came storming in and started grabbing sponges, cloths and a bottle of carpet shampoo from under the sink. ‘You’re helping, George,’ she steamed. ‘None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for your idiot mates.’

  ‘You were drunk,’ Greg shouted. ‘You went crazy. You smashed a vase over my head.’

  ‘Because you groped me,’ Sophie shouted back.

  ‘I didn’t grope you! And we saw you rubbing beer and M&Ms into George’s carpet to get him into trouble.’

  ‘That’s such a lie,’ Sophie shrieked.

  Greg knew he had her. ‘Then why’s the bottom of your foot all green and r
ed?’

  Sophie didn’t move, but George closed in and demanded to look.

  ‘Show me,’ George yelled.

  Sophie refused to lift her foot and when George tried to make her she smacked him around the back of the head. George immediately sank his teeth into his sister’s arm and two seconds later the two siblings were rolling around on the floor between the washing machine and the dining table, beating the living daylights out of each other.

  ‘STOP IT,’ George’s mum screamed, dragging Sophie off her brother as she stormed into the kitchen. ‘I’m not joking! You’re both cleaning that mess up.’

  Sophie huffed and grabbed the cleaning stuff off the floor, but George tried a different tack and burst into tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ George howled. ‘Please don’t punish us. Please don’t ruin the whole summer holidays.’

  Dr Lydon was having none of that. ‘You’re thirteen years old,’ she sneered. ‘Act like it. You think I’m gonna fall for that little act?’

  To emphasise her point Dr Lydon grabbed a plastic dustpan out of the cupboard and whacked her son across the back of the legs.

  ‘Get upstairs and start helping your sister,’ she roared.

  It was only about the third time Dr Lydon had ever hit one of her kids and George was so stunned that he bolted upstairs like someone had shoved a rocket up his butt.

  With her own kids out of the way, Dr Lydon turned and scowled at Greg, Andy and Zhang, who all sat around the dining table. She was still holding the dustpan and clearly would have been happy to smack the pores off their faces. Unfortunately for her, parents are only allowed to be horrible to their own kids.

  ‘Call your parents,’ the doctor growled. ‘I want you three out of my house – and don’t ever expect to come back.’

  George’s mum then turned on her heel and steamed up the staircase. ‘I don’t hear any scrubbing up there,’ she shouted.

  Once she was out of earshot, Zhang rattled the cereal box on the table. ‘Anyone for Coco Pops?’ he asked cheerfully, as Andy pulled out his mobile to call John.

  ‘My uncle’s gonna meet us at the bottom of the road in ten minutes,’ Andy said, when the call finished. ‘We might as well go now, before the dragon lady comes back downstairs.’

  ‘Damned good sleepover if you ask me,’ Zhang smirked, as he topped up his bowl. ‘Normally I just kick George’s butt on the X-box until I get bored, then I hold him down and fart on his head. But having you guys here, trashing the house and everything, has made a real nice change.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll go to your house next time,’ Greg smiled, as he stretched his fist across the table and touched Zhang knuckle to knuckle.

  ‘Nice meeting you, Zhang,’ Andy said, as he did the same. ‘Have a good month in China.’

  The two CHERUB agents grabbed their packs and headed out of the back doorway. Andy was hurting all down his left side and Greg limped on his cut foot as they walked down the gravel driveway and turned on to the street.

  ‘I’ve got a massive egg on my head where Sophie hit me with the vase,’ Greg complained.

  ‘We’re like a couple of old men,’ Andy said. ‘But at least I can go back to calling you Rat now. This whole Greg thing is confusing.’

  Greg had grown fond of Zhang and George and felt a touch sad. Now the mission was completed, CHERUB would invent some excuse why he had to move away and he’d never see either of them again. On the upside, Greg hadn’t been near his girlfriend Lauren in two months and there’d be a mad party on campus when he turned thirteen in a couple of weeks’ time.

  ‘Feel sorry for old George,’ Andy noted. ‘It wasn’t deliberate, but we totally stitched the poor guy up.’

  ‘He’ll survive,’ Greg laughed. ‘We got the job done and that’s what counts.’

  EPILOGUE

  March 6th 2008 – World Book Day

  The grass was stiff with frost, but the kids walking across CHERUB campus were happy because they’d all been allowed out of lessons to attend the opening ceremony for a new building. The two-storey structure was an eco-friendly design, with straw-insulated walls and a dramatic, curved, glass frontage.

  The little red-shirt kids showed their enthusiasm by running in circles outside the main entrance, jumping up and down and generally going nuts. Older kids were more reserved, hanging back with their mates and trying not to show any enthusiasm in case it didn’t look cool.

  Lauren Adams led one of the biggest groups. Her boyfriend Rat (AKA Greg) walked alongside with his arm around her back while Andy walked with Lauren’s best friend Bethany. Lauren’s older brother James was behind with his best friend Bruce and a couple of his other mates bringing up the rear.

  ‘It’s freezing,’ Chairwoman Zara Asker said, once the crowd around the new building had settled. ‘So I’m gonna keep my speech short. We have a lot of special facilities on CHERUB campus, but our previous library was demolished to make way for the new mission control building. Today is World Book Day, so it gives me extra delight to officially declare the new CHERUB campus library open for business!’

  There was a gentle bout of clapping as two of the smallest red-shirts walked up to a ribbon stretched across the main door, each holding one side of a pair of giant scissors. The crowd laughed as the ribbon refused to cut until it was held tight by two members of staff.

  With more than two hundred people filtering through the doors, it was several minutes before Lauren and her friends made it inside.

  ‘Pretty swish,’ Lauren said, as she looked up at the library’s high-tech curved-oak ceiling and wavy glass frontage. There were desks and reference books on a gantry up above. At the far end was a refuge for little kids, filled with cushions and beanbags, in the middle of which was a five-metre-long pirate ship complete with a line of reading hammocks, an antique ship’s wheel and white sails with the CHERUB logo printed on them.

  The opposite end was designed for older kids, with armchairs, sofas and tables. An espresso machine provided coffee or frothy hot chocolate and there were baskets of muffins, croissants and fruit. Signs on the wall above the food said: Please take a free drink and eat our freshly-baked muffins while you read. We can also offer fifty punishment laps to anyone who takes food or drink into the main library!

  Because of the sheer numbers of people, Lauren’s group had to fight its way through just to get near the lounge area.

  ‘It looks pretty swanky,’ James Adams said, as he stared at the ceiling. ‘But I’ve never really seen the point of books. I mean, if they’re any good you just have to wait a couple of years and it gets turned into a movie.’

  Lauren tutted. ‘Just because the last book you read was about a hippo learning to tell the time.’

  ‘And he never finished that,’ Rat giggled. ‘James still gets the big hand and the little hand mixed up.’

  By this time, Lauren had reached the edge of the lounge area, but there was a horrendous queue to use the coffee machine, all the seats were taken and there were even kids perching on the coffee tables.

  ‘It’s only ’cos it’s new,’ Lauren’s best friend Bethany noted. ‘Come back in two days and there’ll be four people in here.’

  ‘It’s really nice though,’ Andy said thoughtfully. ‘I mean, I’d rather sit here and read or do my homework than be alone in my room, and it looks like they’ve spent a bundle on new books.’

  There was a loud crack and a couple of screams at the other end of the room. Everyone looked around and saw one of the masts snapping on the pirate ship.

  ‘Timber!’ James shouted.

  ‘Well,’ Lauren sighed. ‘Whoever designed that clearly underestimated the destructive power of two dozen sugar-fuelled red-shirts.’

  While chaos ensued at the opposite end, with staff rushing in to untangle yelling red-shirts from the sails on the broken mast, James spotted an empty table in the main part of the library and pointed towards it. ‘We’re never gonna get in the lounge. Let’s go sit over there.’

  James a
nd Lauren led the way, but Rat stopped following when he spotted a familiar face on the front of a newspaper.

  ‘Andy, check this out,’ Rat yelled, as he held up the picture on the front page. ‘Kurt Lydon.’

  Andy came rushing over as Rat started reading the article:

  BRITISH SCIENTIST AMONG TWENTY-

  TWO ARRESTED IN SWOOP ON NUKE

  TRAFFICKING NETWORK

  A British nuclear engineer was one of twenty-two suspects arrested in Brussels at what police describe as the annual conference of a secretive nuclear trafficking network known as Dark Sun.

  Fifty-four-year-old Kurt Lydon from Milton Keynes is a uranium enrichment expert who specialises in the design of gas centrifuges used to make fuel for atomic weapons.

  The joint operation was organised by British, French, American and Belgian intelligence services and follows the explosion at a prototype uranium enrichment facility in a remote area of Nigeria three weeks ago.

  Lydon is thought to have been the mastermind behind the design of the Nigerian centrifuge. Despite the explosion, which was initially picked up by radiological monitoring equipment on board an American spy satellite, Nigerian authorities continue to distance themselves from the explosion and have described Dark Sun as a ‘terrorist organisation with no connection to the democratically-elected government of Nigeria’.

  An MI5 press officer described last night’s arrests in Belgium as a ‘colossal blow’ to those countries who are seeking to buy nuclear technology.

  As well as the twenty-two arrests, it is believed that the multinational two-year surveillance operation has also led to the recapture of stolen documents, nuclear material and the seizure of eighty million euros in bank accounts belonging to members of the Dark Sun network.

  In Britain, police have sealed off Kurt Lydon’s Milton Keynes home and uncovered a ‘state of the art’ computer-aided design facility from which Lydon is believed to have made designs for the Dark Sun network.

  Lydon’s wife, a surgeon at a Milton Keynes hospital, and his two teenaged children are staying with relatives. When contacted, Dr Lydon refused to make any comment on the search or the arrests.