CHERUB: Knight

20: Buy

The digital alarm clock beside George's bed read 04.16 when his door was unlocked from the outside and the light flicked on.

George let out a groan and covered his eyes, squinting over to see who was disturbing him.

"George, man, get up," Michael said, whipping away the duvet. "I'm in a hurry."

George sat up and scratched his belly, his eyes finally adjusted to the light. "Why are you here at... quarter past four?" he asked, checking the clock.

"Blame your idiot friend Rex," Michael said, shaking his head derisively. "That little prick told me he'd be up for coming with me today and picking up the drink, but he landed himself detention and laps so he's stuck on campus."

"Yeah, he got way behind on homework," George said, pulling on the same grey t-shirt he'd worn the previous day. "What do you need me for?"

"You're coming with instead. You'll get ten bucks if you give me a hand today," Michael told him. "All I need is help with carrying and navigation. Lose the t-shirt though, nothing with the logo on it for outside operations."

George rolled out of bed and swapped his t-shirt for his QPR shirt which wasn't much cleaner. "Sounds good."

"Get a move on, I'm ten minutes behind schedule already because of that bottler next door."

There wasn't time for a shower or teeth cleaning, so George just blasted himself with deodorant and pulled on his boots.

George had a feeling of adventure as he rode the lift down to the ground floor with Michael and they walked through the darkness towards the vehicle park. There was nobody around and being with the powerfully-built older agent made George feel pretty cool. He wished that Rex could see him.

"Alright, I've already prepared one of the unmarked white vans. You're gonna ride up front and use my phone to work out the route," Michael said, strolling through the reception area and finding the keys to a battered Transit. He passed George his phone and a sheet of paper with the address on it, and the two boys headed for the nondescript van parked up with six others.

"We should be back on campus in three hours before anyone realises we're gone. The desk isn't staffed until eight so that's our deadline, although if we get delayed we can always bluff," Michael said as they climbed into the front seats. "The bit that's gonna take the time is unloading."

"How are we gonna get it all up to Rex's room?" George asked as Michael adjusted the seat and pulled away from the parking space.

"I've got an equipment trolley hidden in one of the maintenance cupboards. We'll load it up and take it up in the lift. It'll look red-hot suspicious, but it's safer to do it in one go and keep our fingers crossed than to do multiple trips," Michael said, pulling the big steering wheel around as he left the car park and headed for the front gate. "Now let's have those directions, I don't wanna make a wrong turning and have to reverse this thing."

The wholesalers was about thirty miles away, but CHERUB campus is surrounded by country roads and villages with 30mph limits, so the route took them nearly fifty minutes. Michael pulled the van into a goods entrance and donned a baseball cap with a weird logo. The sun was rising so he'd slipped on sunglasses to further change his appearance.

"Yo," Michael said as he pulled up next to a twenty-something who had a nasty spray of zits on his forehead and a clipboard in his hands. "Here to pick up the delivery, I phoned yesterday?"

"Yeah, we're expecting you," the guy said, pointing to an entranceway with stacks of boxes inside it. "That lot's yours. Just need a signature."

As Michael scrawled an illegible mess onto the form, the employee peered into the van and across as George.