Spy School Project X: A fan teaser

Chapter 1 - HOT PURSUIT

Somewhere in the Woods

CIA Academy of Espionage summer training facility

Aka "Happy Trails"

June 20

0200 hours

I dashed through the dark forest as fast as my legs would carry me.

The sound of my attacker's footsteps grew louder by the second.

BANG! Just a few feet to my right, a tree splintered from the impact of a bullet. BANG! This time the tree directly in front of me. BANG! No splintering tree. Instead, I felt a bolt of lightning shoot through my right calf. I yelped and crumpled to the ground, tumbling head over heels until I came to a stop by smacking into a tree.

I groaned and slowly rolled onto my back, only to be looking down the barrel of a rifle instead of the tree root that I'd just face-planted into. Despite this, I couldn't help but smile weakly. "Do we have to use rubber bullets?" I asked my attacker. "I'm pretty sure paintballs would work just as well. Or maybe even nerf darts. Those don't hurt at all." Even in the darkness, I could make out the smile on Erica Hale's face.

"You do know that your enemies aren't going to come after you with paintballs and nerf guns, right? Rubber bullets just make the experience more life-like."

"And painful," I responded. "I feel like somebody just hit my leg with a baseball bat." Erica extended her hand to me. I worried that she would pull some stupid martial arts move and send me back on my butt, but I accepted anyway and she pulled me to my feet.

"Alright," Erica said. "I'll give you a five-minute head start before I come after you again."

I sighed. While every other student from the CIA's top-secret Academy of Espionage was sound asleep in their tents at "spy camp," I was being chased around at two in the morning by a rifle-wielding teenaged girl. Every summer, the CIA sent the students of the academy to the middle of nowhere to focus on survival skills rather than classroom instruction. Normally, we slept in somewhat decent cabins, but Woodchuck Wallace, the instructor at spy camp, had decided that we needed to learn how to assemble tents.

"What are the chances that you're going to be on a mission and come across a cozy deserted cabin?" He had argued. "Knowing how to live in a tent is much more practical." Although the tents weren't nearly as luxurious as the cabins, I still wished that I was asleep in them rather than running around in the dark.

There was a good reason for this, however. Even in a school that consisted of not-normal kids, I was even less normal. While most students graduated without ever going on a single mission, I had been on nine (albeit only a few official ones). I had been successful at thwarting our enemies on all of those missions, and now I had a long list of people who wanted me dead. Which is where Erica came in.

Erica Hale was the most beautiful, talented, and deadly girl I had ever met. She came from a long line of spies, and her grandfather had been teaching her the ropes since before she could walk. Back when I had first been recruited to spy school, she had thought I was a pathetic loser who would drop out within a week. Over the ensuing months, I had earned her respect, and even more importantly, her affection. Or at least the Erica Hale version of affection.

Erica and I had a complicated relationship. In the past, she had claimed that relationships were a liability and refused to even have friends. Over my time at spy school, however, she had gradually warmed up to me. At the end of our last mission, she had even kissed me and told me that she was "thinking about" dating me. That was a few weeks ago, and things hadn't really progressed since then. She was training me at two in the morning though, rather than leaving me to fend off any assassins with my pathetic fighting skills. I took this as a good sign.

"What?" Erica said, annoyed at my lack of enthusiasm.

"Can we resume this tomorrow?" I pleaded. "I just want to go to sleep right now. And I think that you just enjoy hurting me sometimes."

Erica smiled once again. "You mean today? It's past midnight."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. I'll see you at breakfast. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Erica responded. I felt giddy as I strolled back to my cabin, still not completely used to Erica's friendliness. It wasn't until I got back to my tent that I remembered how tired I was. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.