Code Name X

5-The greatest criminals of the 26th century are on washing up duty

"People change people. The secret of life." - Cory Matthews, Girl Meets World

Hacker

Ever since I was a kid I've found it almost impossible to sleep. I used to blame it on my brother snoring, but even though he's not here to blame,  I still can't. I learnt to love the dark, and if I was a sentimental sort of person, I'd say it was my friend.

But I don't go in for that kind of crap.

That first night, I couldn't help wondering what the hell I was doing there. Maren had said that surely anything would be better than prison, but I couldn't agree. To be perfectly honest, I felt like a slave to this 'resistance'. No matter how much I hated this world, I would never do something as stupid and insane as blow up one of the highest-security buildings in Europe. It was madness and would definitely get us all killed.

But I'd learnt the hard way that sometimes you've just got to grin and bear it. All I had to do was wait until we'd carried out their plan and then I could go. Leave and never look back.

Maybe I could go to England again. Or I could go east, to Asia. Anywhere that wasn't here, because I was done with Germany. I'd wasted four years of my pathetic life here, and I needed a change.

6/11/00

The next day they started training us. There were the things you learnt in school like fitness and running (my worst bloody nightmare) and technological science (like I needed that). Then there was the army training.

The first thing we did was shooting practice. Pierre was teaching us, and no one was happy about it. We all hated him. For obvious reasons.

He stood up in front of us. "In real life, circumstances will not be ideal when you shoot to save your life. You'll be tired and probably injured. So be prepared. You will be much worse out there than in here."

Shit, he was more pessimistic than me.

"Also, no glasses Joshua."

He looked taken aback. "Dude, unless you want me to accidentally shoot you, I'm keeping them thanks."

"It's better to practise without them."

"In the middle of a fight, if I lose my glasses I'm as good as dead. Without them," he took them off to check. "Yeah, without them the ground is blurry."

"Alright then."

He actually turned out to be a pretty good shot. He hit the target pretty much dead centre every time, but when Esme dared him to try without his glasses he was nearly a metre off.

For some reason (with the exception of Maren and Cameron) the younger kids seemed to have the best aim. None of them seemed to know why (although I could have sworn Iris was lying) and Ben seemed pretty pissed off. Personally, I didn't really care.

We were eating some unspeakable crap for lunch. "You know, I bet Pierre never had to 'shoot to save his life.'" Esme said, stabbing at her plate. "He's just talking nonsense."

"No, he has." Maren suddenly broke in. "Sure, I don't like him and he's a bastard, but he's saved a few lives."

"How do you know?" Ben asked curiously.

But she clammed up and refused to say anything more, so I think everyone just assumed she'd heard it somewhere.

I don't think anyone else saw her wince as she lifted her arm, like there was a memory of an old wound.

13/11/00

It was about a week later. Apparently we had to 'make ourselves useful' so I'd been put on washing up duty with Maren and Cameron. Yay.