CHERUB: Knight

7: Training

George's new room in the junior block was a little childish, with a big trunk for keeping toys in and red and green wallpaper, but he didn't mind because it reminded him of his old room. He didn't have too many belongings so his half of the room wasn't particularly full, and the other half was totally empty.

There was a knock at the door so George opened it, even though there were no locks on the doors anyway.

"Hi, are you George?" a carer said with a friendly smile. "I'm Miss Darcie, I'll be looking after you while you're here."

"Hi," George replied, smiling back. "When will I get a roommate?"

"There's someone scheduled to move in tomorrow, assuming all goes to plan. He's the same age as you so you should get along really well," Miss Darcie said. "The good news is that you're exempt from lessons until he gets here, because we're going to start you both off together."

"Okay, thanks," George said, liking the idea of an extra day off lessons.

"I've got your timetable though. Basic training starts in sixty-four days and you've got to get as much into that time as possible. Medical tomorrow." She smiled in a way that made George begin to worry.

With the prospect of a day off the next day, George got drawn into PlayStation marathon until gone midnight, guiding QPR to a respectable fifth place out of ten. The carers yelled at them after that because they were throwing crisps around and George found himself back in his room by one in the morning and he fell asleep straight away, looking forward to a lie-in and possibly some leisurely FIFA the following morning in the recreation lounge while everyone else was at lessons.

Unfortunately he was rudely awakened at eight when the door was flung open.

"Wakey wakey!" Miss Darcie yelled happily, stepping over and whisking away the duvet. "Time to get up!"

George could only manage a groan as he rolled over and buried his face in the pillow.

"You're pencilled in for a medical at nine; we moved it forward so you'd be around to meet your new roommate when he's back from Oxford," she said happily. "You've got an hour to shower, dress and have breakfast before making your way to the medical building."

"But Miss, I was up late and I can do all of that in half an hour," George complained.

Miss Darcie pulled the pillow away from his face and smiled her evil smile. "I noticed that you were up late, which is precisely why I'm waking you up. The sooner you learn to follow the rules here, the easier your time will be. Now out of bed or you'll really be punished."

The medical was a nightmare. George didn't really feel too tired, but running around on treadmills and having injections and all this kind of thing was just tiresome.

"You'd better not complain," Nurse Beckett warned when he was sitting in a chair trying to catch his breath. "Most kids who come here have to go through all of this as an orange shirt. You're lucky that we were able to do lots of the painful bits while you slept last night."

George considered an hour of exercise painful, especially when it was followed by a trip to the dentist and then a round of injections, but he didn't say anything.

After all that, George had a large lunch in the cafeteria, guzzling chips and two bacon butties while trading banter about the PlayStation battle the previous evening. He noticed that some of the red shirts who had been on campus since they were five or six were the loudest, even daring to crush a ketchup-covered chip into the sweatshirt of a grey shirt who had told them to shut up. More recent arrivals seemed to be quieter, which suited George because it didn't take long for the Arsenal and Chelsea lot to unite in their criticism of Queen's Park Rangers. Once he was done eating, he was in no hurry to get back, so he just sipped at a glass of orange squash and listened in to the conversations the other red shirts were having. The oldest of them were mostly telling each other horror stories from basic training and complaining about how little time was left until they'd be stuck with nobody but fearsome training instructors for company.