Chapter 1

It was Saturday. Quite obviously, the best day of the week. And what a week it had been. Never before have I received so much homework in one week. I swear, it's like they expected us to have all this free time, or maybe they were making up for having no homework over the summer.

It was the first week back and Bex and I were in the gym, working off some steam. We had spent hours last night finishing that homework, and we still had work to do. We started right after our last class, worked through dinner and then late into the night before collapsing into a pile on the floor. But of course, since we were on the floor I woke up way too early and couldn't fall back asleep so I woke up Bex and we told Mace and Liz where we were going then went to the gym.

Punches were flying, kicks hitting flesh, and quite honestly it was the best part of the week! We even scared some little 7th graders out of the gym. So quite honestly, I was in a wonderful mood! We had been down there for about...thirteen hours. We headed down to the gym at around, 5:30 (early, I know) and had been down there ever since, only stopping to eat a granola bar or two from our gym bags. Anyway, dinner was in about an hour and we were starving!

"I can't feel my arm." Bex whined.

"I can't feel my anything." I countered. Training with Bex was always body numbing. Kinda like studying with Liz.

"I bet I have more bruises than you." She challenged with a gleam in her eye.

"No way, I definitely have more bruises." I said confidently.

She snorted. "It's entirely possible, you are very boney you know." She said teasingly.

"Well I think I automatically win, because you gave me a cut." I said defiantly.

She thought it over. "Okay, fine you win this round."

I grinned triumphantly but with a thought it was wiped from my face. "So I win at getting injured?" I asked her dangerously.

She grinned at the realization. "Yeah, I guess you do."

"Oh joy." I said pushing her into the wall before sprinting down the hall. "Beat you to our room!" I exclaimed as she picked herself off and shot down the hall after me.

We dodged Gallagher Girls as we sprinted down the hall. Half way down the next hall Bex caught up to me and stuck a leg out to trip me, I jumped over it and pressed her up against the wall to slow her down. She reached over and yanked on my hair, pulling into the lead but I regained some ground (and rolled my ankle) when she narrowly avoided running into an older student.

We were neck in neck as we neared our dorm. We switched constantly, never really knowing who was in the lead. It was a close call. Or, it would have been if Liz hadn't opened the door and stepped out into the hall sending us both into a frenzy trying to avoid running into her.

"There you are!" Liz exclaimed throwing her arms up as Bex and I ran in practically fell to the floor trying to stop ourselves in time.

"What do you mean 'there you are' you know exactly where we were." Bex said as we leaned over heaving, trying to catch our breaths.

"Well, we didn't think you were going to be gone that long!" Liz exclaimed "If we had known, we would've come to find you!"

"And when we didn't show you just...what? Decided we would show up eventually? It sounds like it's pretty important." I asked teasingly, flexing my ankle.

"Well, we were too busy planning and freaking out." I looked up at her.

"Planning AND freaking out? What the heck happened while we were in the gym?" I asked intensely curious.

"Yes." Liz said simply.

"Liz, do me and Cam a favor here and explain what happened." Bex said excitedly.

"Okay, well you guys left really early this morning to work out, but the rest of us just slept." I noted her use of the phrase 'rest of us' meaning it wasn't just her and Macey. "So we woke up a few hours after you guys left and there was a note on the floor of our room, and the crazy part is we didn't hear anyone enter the room like at all so we were a little freaked. Anyway the envelope has all of our names on it so we open up the note and all it says is "Roof. 8 pm." So Macey and I deduce that it's probably from Solomon for some extra kind of homework thing that they need me to run tech for so we decided to go ask the other girls about it. Subtly, of course.

"So we go to breakfast, and the first person who approaches us is Tina who was asking for you and she told us that she, Kim, Courtney, Mick, Eva, and Anna all got one. No one know's what's going on and of course she thought you would so we told her how you couldn't possibly know and she left us alone. I'm surprised she didn't come looking for you guys, she looked pretty intent on getting answers." Liz finished breathlessly. She inhaled deeply then coughed as she tried to exhale. "You guys smell awful." She said plugging her nose.

We grinned and leaned in closer to her. "What do you mean Lizzie?" I asked innocently.

She gagged a little and ran into the room yelling for Macey. Bex and I grinned at each other and followed her into the room.

"Macey, I'm not kidding, it's like a dead skunk!" Liz was complaining to Macey as we entered the room.

"Hey Mace." Bex said as she walked over to give her a hug.

Macey made a disgusted noise before covering her mouth and nose. "Shower. Now, both of you."

"Awww but Maaaceeeyyy." I fake complained as I grabbed my shower bag and a change of clothes.

"I'm not kidding Baxter, move it." She ordered and Bex jokingly straightened and saluted her. We laughed and exited the room to go to the bathroom down the hall.

"So Bex, what do you think that note was about?" I asked as we walked leisurely down the hall.

"Something exciting, I'm sure, but until I get some food into me, I can't think." She whined

I laughed a little then held back a gasp of pain as I stepped on an uneven floor board with my injured ankle. I rotated it slightly as we walked, trying to release the tension. Bex (thankfully) didn't comment.

"I think we still have snacks back in our dorm" I commented as we entered the communal bathroom.

"We'd better." She replied as we walked past the stalls to the showers.

Now, Gallagher is a seriously prestigious boarding school, meaning we're all incredibly lucky enough to have bathrooms attached to our bedrooms. Unfortunately the bathrooms have absolute horrible water pressure and you never know what color the water will be. After a few decades of the this, one of the old Headmistresses decided enough was enough and put in communal bathrooms. Now, we have several modern and wonderful bathrooms on each floor, and the bathrooms near the gym and on the floors with dorms have showers. There aren't enough showers for every girl to be able to shower at one time so sometimes showering can really suck, luckily for us, Bex and I were the only girls using the shower at that time.

We picked showers next to each other, the farthest from the entrance on the left. We hooked our towels right outside the door, hung our waterproof bags on the hooks inside the door and closed the curtain.

Bex likes to shower fairly quickly, but I love long showers, so most of the time, when we're in a hurry, Bex will challenge me to see who can finish first. This was one such time.

"I bet I can shower in less than 3 minutes. Macey style shower." She challenged.

"I bet I'll be done before you." I replied with an eyebrow raised and an idea in my head.

"Doubt it. Ready, set, Go!" She yelled and we both ran into our showers. I had stripped in seconds and had the water turned on to the correct temperature quickly. I didn't waste any time. I had scrubbed my head and placed conditioner in before we hit a minute. From the noises coming from Bex's stall I had assumed she was in the same place as I was, but here was the tricky part.

A Macey style shower involved conditioning for a minute and a thirty second face mask, as well as two body scrubs. To take up less time, you put in the conditioner first, then put on the face mask, then while those sit you use the body scrubs. My plan to set Bex back was to throw off her conditioning. If you happen to get soap in your hair while you're using your body scrub, the conditioning doesn't count and you have to start again. It's harrowing to try and keep your hair out of the way and Bex was a master at it, so to ruin the conditioning, I was going to squirt body soap over the top and get it in her hair. I would have one shot.

After completing my first body scrub, I grabbed my regular body soap and gripped it with 2 hands. I looked at her legs under the stall and managed to guess where she was standing. I calculated how much force I would need to use and then squeezed the bottle, hard, launching a glob of soap over the top of the stall. Her cry of anguish let me know of my success. I had managed to land it on her head 57 seconds into her conditioning.

To prevent her from doing the same to me, I quickly began to rinse out my hair and the quickly applied the second body scrub. I finished with plenty of time to spare as I wrapped my towel around my body before crossing to a dry stall to change. I took my time changing and putting lotion on. Once I was changed I walked over the mirrors and took out my wide tooth comb, just in time to see Bex stalk out of her stall, completely clothed, but angry.

"You win this time Morgan, but I want a rematch." She said as she joined me.

"I look forward to it." I said cooly.

We made steely eye contact then started chuckling, all forgiven.

"So, food?" I asked hopefully as we finished combing our hair.

She looked at her sopping hair wistfully before nodding yes.

We grabbed our things, ran a towel through our hair once so it wouldn't drip and made our way back to our dorm room.

We flung open the door and threw our things to the side as we crossed for the box that had our snack food.

"You're hair is wet." Macey commented from where she lounged with Liz on her bed.

"Dang Mace you're getting really good at this whole observation thing." Bex said sarcastically as she dug into a bag of pretzels.

"You should dry it." She commented without even looking up from the computer.

"We will, but Bex's stomach was growling loud enough to wake a bear in the middle of winter, so we decided to eat something first" I said as I shoved a handful of M&M's into my mouth.

"What'cha lookin at?" Bex asked around the pretzels in her mouth.

"Trying to figure out where we're going tonight?" I asked.

"Yeah. Liz even recruited Kim and Courtney to help. They're working from their rooms using Liz's wireless connecter thing." Macey answered.

"I'm almost desperate enough to ask you guys for help." Liz murmured under her breath.

"Why not ask us for help? If we got all ten of us working on it, it would be much easier." Macey commented.

Liz paused and rubbed a hand over her face. "Go get the other girls. We're going to need to be in the same room so we can dish out commands. I'll setup the wireless network."

We leapt to our feet to get the other girls. Macey took Bex to go get Courtney, Kim, Mick, and Anna. They were all in Kim's room.

"Cam, go find Tina and Eva. If I'm right, they'll be down in Eva's room." Macey said grabbing Bex's arm.

"Aye aye captain." I saluted and sauntered down the hall, shaking my hair out as I went.

I turned the corner and ran right into Tina and Eva.

"Hey Cam!" Tina exclaimed when she saw me.

"Hey Tina, I was just coming to find you two," I said gesturing to Eva. "Liz wants us all to work on figuring out where we're going tonight."

"Really?" Eva asked surprised

"Yeah, we figured if we all worked on it we could figure it out pretty fast." I replied.

"Cool, well, we should go get our laptops. Come with us?" Tina asked.

"I'd love to" I answered stepping into the space she opened between herself and Eva.

"Awesome." Eva said linking arms with me.

"You know Cam I have this really epic hair dryer that would have your hair dry in less than thirty seconds." Tina said confidently.

"No way." I said disbelieving.

"Try it for yourself if you don't believe me. By the time we can find our computers, your hair will be completely dry." She challenged.

I thought about it for a minute then nodded as she opened her dorm door. "Alright, I'll take you up on that challenge."

"Good. It's over there on the dresser." She said gesturing across the room to where the magical hair dryer lay.

"Okay, ready?" I asked when I reached the dryer.

Tina and Eva nodded from where they stood by the door.

"Go." Tina said with a nod and I whipped it on.

Sure enough, by the time they had found their laptops (almost a minute later, Eva's was buried under a mountain of stuff) my hair was completely dry.

"That is incredible." I said staring at the machine in wonder.

"I know right. And you'll notice your hair is incredibly soft." Eva commented.

"And hardly tangled. That thing is a miracle worker. It's saved us more than once." Tina finished, leading us from her room down the hall.

"My mom found this guy in some nowhere town who alters regular dryers so that they work better. I can send him yours if you'd like." She offered.

"Yeah, that would be incredible."

"I can have it back to you in less than a week. This guy gets like no business for some insane reason. My mom probably paid him off."

We turned the corner and saw an impatient Bex waiting in front of our dorm room door.

"There you are!" She yelled. "Hurry up!"

We picked up our pace and ran the rest of the way to the our dorm.

"We've been waiting for you three. Eva, Tina, give your laptops to Liz to hook up. We already did yours Cam." Bex ordered as we approached the door.

I nodded my thanks and winced a little. Unfortunately, Eva noticed.

"You okay Cam?" She asked.

"Yeah, I just rolled my ankle earlier and it's a little sore." I waved it off.

"That can be really damaging to your joints. My dad taught me how to help it though, it will make your ankle feel much better and it will keep it from being too seriously painful. It's like a weird muscle strengthening voodoo thing. It will take like ten seconds, if you want." She explained.

"Well...if you think it will help." I said timidly.

"Oh totally, I do it all the time to my own ankles. They're super weak."

"Hey Tina!" Courtney called

"Tina, take my laptop to Liz?" Eva asked and Tina nodded before grabbing the two laptops and taking them to the line of girls in front of Liz's bed.

Eva turned to me, the question still in her eyes.

"Sure, if you can that would be nice." I said shyly.

"Of course, let's go sit on your bed."

I surveyed the room and saw the other eight Gallagher Girls in our room. It was weird having all these people in our room.

"Hey Cammie." Anna said as she came to sit next to me and Eva.

"Hey Anna!" I replied. I'd come to really like Anna. We were pretty similar and had been paired in more than one Cove Ops assignment.

"Hey Anna." Eva said.

"Hi Eva." Anna replied

"So you really think we can figure it out?" Anna asked

"Yeah, definitely." I replied confidently.

"Do you think they realize that we're gonna figure it out in an hour and 12 minutes anyway?" She asked with a small smile.

I giggled a little "I don't think they care. Liz is like a bloodhound on the scent. She won't stop until she's found what she's looking for. She can be like that sometimes."

"Okay Cam, let me see your ankle." Eva said pulling me away from the conversation with Anna.

"What happened to your ankle?" Anna asked as I pulled my leg up in between me and Eva.

"Nothing major, just rolled it earlier." I waved my hand like it was no big deal.

Eva place her hands on my ankle, gently applying pressure. "You know that can be very damaging." Anna remarked.

I smiled a little. "So I've heard."

Eva changed where she applied the pressure a couple of times and rolled my ankle around in my joint a couple of times.

"Done." She announced placing her hands on her lap.

"Seriously?" I asked amazed.

"Try walking on it." She said with a smile.

I hopped off the bed and stood on one leg. Barely a twinge "Wow." I said amazed. "Thanks Eva!" I exclaimed reaching over to give her a hug.

She laughed. "Any time! Just remember, it's still injured it just doesn't hurt, so be careful. Not feeling pain can be a dangerous thing, believe me."

"Alright girls, lets do this! Everyone get your laptops!" Kim exclaimed over all the conversations. Anna and Eva went to go get their laptops and I situated myself on my bed.

We all ended up in wonky places across the room. Eva and Anna were on my bed with me, Courtney and Kim were with Liz on her bed, Tina was with Macey on her bed and Mick was with Bex lounging on her bed.

"Now, this might get intense, Cam will you lock the door?" Liz asked. As she began to explain I quickly shut and locked the door.

"Okay, you all know how to hack and you're all pretty good, this shouldn't be too difficult, but just remember this is the Gallagher main base and what we're doing here could get us in trouble so we can't leave any tracks and we can't trip any wires. Everybody clear on that?" Liz asked seriously and we all nodded. She continued.

"Good. Courtney, Kim and I are going to lead the way to make sure we're getting the information we want. Bex, you and Mick are going to clear away the destruction we leave in our path. Macey, you, Anna, and Tina are going to disable any traps and reset any trip wires that we accidentally hit. If an alarm goes off, warn us. If that does happen we have exactly fifty seconds to get out of there. Cam, you and Eva are going to wipe our trail. Everybody clear on what they're doing? Any questions?" I raised my hand. "Cammie?"

"What are we going to call this?" I asked with a innocent smile.

Liz just rolled her eyes. "Any real questions?"

"Hey, that is a real question." Macey defended.

"Yeah, we always name our operations." Bex agreed "Let's do something with Sanskrit!" She exclaimed.

"Why Sanskrit?" Courtney asked mystified.

"We all completed the Sanskrit lang extra cred assignment over the summer." Macey said like it was obvious.

"Almost everything we do now is in Sanskrit." Bex continued.

"FINE!" Liz exclaimed. "We'll call this set up...Adya." She finally named it. "Now, let's get this done." She said twisting her hair into a bun on the top of her head and we all followed her example.

"Everyone ready?" Kim asked and 9 bun headed girls nodded.

"Let's go." Liz ordered and we began.

We actually got it done rather quickly. It was a comforting feeling to be in the world of hacking. No one had to speak, each involved in their own task, and a mere twenty minutes later, our mission was a success.

"Oh. My. Word." Liz squeaked out silently.

"What?" Mick asked.

"Everybody get out, we've got the info downloaded. Cam, Eva, make sure we don't leave tracks then get out yourselves." Kim continued.

Less than a minute later we were all out of the web and we all turned to stare at our leading team.

"Well?" I asked breaking the silence.

Courtney, Kim, and Liz looked at each other then Liz looked out at us and said the one sentence that brought our mental sanity crashing down.

"We're going to Blackthorne."