The Recruit

28. Detail

It was two months since training. Serena had done a mission, come back, and gone on another. She was so superior about it, Ash could have thumped her. Shauna was in Brazil. Brendan had disappeared with Clemont. Gary was away for days at a time. Brock went off one morning promising that this mission was going to earn him his navy shirt. Ash was still at CHERUB and felt like a lemon.

Misty was the only one who hadn't been away. She spent hours on the eighth floor in one of the Mission Preparation rooms. Ash still got to swim with her four times a week. He was good now. Four hundred metres front crawl, keeping his body under the water and tipping his face to the side to breathe without lifting his head out of the water. He never got scared and Misty said his stroke was almost perfect.

Ash and Misty were putting their uniforms back on. All they'd done was swim lengths together, then sit on the poolside and talk for a bit.

"That was our last lesson," Misty said.

Ash had known it was coming for ages, but that didn't stop him feeling bad. He liked hanging around with Misty. She was funny and always gave good advice on stuff.

"Is your mission starting?" Ash asked, sitting down to lace up his boots.

"In a couple of weeks," Misty said. "I need to devote all my time to it."

"I'll miss having lessons with you. You're a brilliant teacher."

"Thanks, Ash, you're sweet. You should go swimming with Serena when she gets back. You swim as well as she does now, probably better."

"She'll be too busy rubbing my nose in it about her mission experience. I saw Korrina again yesterday, she still says there's no mission for me."

"I can confess now," Misty said. "I had you suspended from mission activity."

"Because of swimming?" Ash asked.

Misty went in her swimming bag and got out a plastic card. Ash had seen people swipe them in the lift to get up to the secure part of the main building where missions were planned.

"This is yours," Misty said, handing it across.

Ash broke out smiling. "I've got a mission with you?"

"Yes," Misty said. "I put in some work on this job before you even came here. When you arrived, I realised we looked alike. Kinda similar hair colour although I need to dye mine brown or darker then now for just a bit for this mission, similar build. I knew you could pass as my little brother. We set you up with Serena so you had the best chance of passing training. I wasn't happy when I heard you started a fight with her and nearly got thrown out."

"Don't remind me," Ash said. "I was so dumb."

"You're lucky Serena didn't retaliate. All she had to do was flip you up and break your arm and you would have been out of training. Nobody would have blamed her either."

"I was on top of her," Ash said. "She couldn't get up."

Misty laughed, 'If you got on top of Serena, it's because she let you. She could squash you like an egg under her boot if she wanted."

"Is she that good?" Ash asked.

Misty nodded. "She must like you a lot to let you off like that."

The eighth floor was exactly like the accommodation floors below: a long corridor with rooms off either side. Entering the Mission Preparation room meant swiping your security card and staring into a red light while the blood vessels in your retina were scanned for identification.

After the hi-tech entry, Ash expected something flash inside: a map of the world with a bank of computer screens above it or something. It was actually a bit of a dump. Old computers, chairs with sponge bursting out of cushions and metal cabinets covered with stacks of files and papers. The only good feature was the view over campus.