CHERUB: Dark Sun - Robert Muchamore Page 0,2

Tens were already bounding up from the ground floor.

‘There’s the fat one!’ Thomas Moran shouted. ‘You wait till I get my hands on you.’

Zhang’s shoes squealed on the corridor tiles as he saw Greg and George belting out of the classroom in the opposite direction.

‘Guys,’ Zhang yelled desperately, running as fast his chunky legs would allow. ‘Guys, wait up!’

2. LAKE

The British countryside is dotted with secret government installations: nuclear research facilities, weapons dumps, communications monitoring centres. CHERUB campus was in the highest security category, surrounded by government-owned forest and marked on maps as an artillery firing range.

Anyone ignoring the warning signs and driving up the approach road towards campus’ solid black gates would be greeted by guards armed with Heckler and Koch machine guns. You couldn’t even view campus from the air because the sky overhead formed part of the protected airspace around a military airbase five kilometres to the east.

If you had been allowed to overfly CHERUB campus you’d have seen a set of buildings similar to those you’d find at a wealthy boarding school, surrounded by sports pitches and outdoor tennis courts. More unusual were a banana-shaped building bristling with satellite dishes, four helipads and beyond a large oval lake a wooded area, containing an assault course and an outdoor shooting range.

The weather was glorious and more than half the kids on CHERUB campus had taken their lunch outside to eat by the lake. Some kids cooled off with a paddle, but swimming was presently banned because it might disturb the family of ducklings living on a muddy embankment near the lake’s centre.

Twelve-year-old Lauren Adams lay on the lawn near the lake’s edge, toes curled in the grass, surrounded by daisies and using her arm to keep the sun out of her eyes. She’d managed to get her favourite sushi box from the canteen before they ran out and the sun made her whole body feel wonderfully warm, but she was still depressed because she was in trouble and it wasn’t her fault.

A fair-skinned boy called Andy Lagan sat on the grass next to Lauren. He put his Manga down and tapped her arm. ‘Zara’s here,’ he said grimly. ‘Better start putting your boots on.’

Lauren wanted time to freeze so she could stay on the warm grass for ever. ‘God,’ she moaned, sweeping blades of grass off her soles as she sat up.

All cherubs wore a military style uniform during school hours: a T-shirt with CHERUB logo – the colour of which depended upon your rank – olive combat trousers with zip-off legs and lightweight black boots. As Andy pulled his grey T-shirt over his chest and started moving uphill, Lauren hurriedly pulled balled-up socks out of her boots.

‘You’d better shift,’ Andy shouted back at her. ‘Zara’s gonna be in a right mood.’

Zara Asker stood on a tarmac path fifty metres uphill. She had one hand on her hip and leaned on one of the electric carts that staff used to move around campus. Zara was thirty-seven years old; she wore a flower-print dress and still carried some of the weight from the birth of her second child a year earlier.

Belying her mumsy appearance, Zara held one of the most senior jobs in British Intelligence. As the chairwoman of CHERUB, she was a headteacher and a spymaster rolled into one. Zara was usually popular with the kids in her charge, except when it was time to dish out punishments.

Lauren rushed to join Andy and six other CHERUB agents up on the path, with her boot laces dragging behind her. There was a boy and girl in their early teens, but the main clump comprised four grey-shirt boys aged ten and eleven. They were all mates and their unelected leader was the spiky-haired Jake Parker.

‘Right you lot, line up,’ Zara said stiffly, before eyeballing Jake’s soggy trousers and ketchup-stained shirt. ‘Is that how you present yourself to the chairwoman?’

Lauren couldn’t stand Jake and enjoyed his discomfort as he hurriedly tucked in his shirt. ‘Sorry, Miss,’ Jake said meekly. ‘I dropped my hot dog.’

Zara zoomed in and inspected the stain. ‘Make sure you soak the shirt in detergent before you take it down to the laundry.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ Jake nodded. Zara could be a bit random when she dished out punishments and the eleven-year-old was relieved to have received nothing more than laundry advice.

But the chairwoman hadn’t finished with them yet. ‘Before I start, have any of you got anything you want to say?’ Zara asked.

The eight uniformed agents looked sheepish