Gems

Chapter 1

"I thought we killed this guy! Who was in charge of making sure he was dead?" I yell over the loud banging of gunshots.

    I look at Blue, already knowing it's him. I can feel the rest of the group's eyes on him.

    "What?" He defends himself. "He wasn't breathing!"

    "Well obviously you were wrong. Very, very, very wrong. Now we're going to die." Alex tells him.

"We're not dead, yet." Em yells at us from the desk she's hiding behind.

"Yeah. Yet." Alex argues back. "I'll bet 10 bucks we're going to die."

"Are you guys seriously arguing over whether or not we killed the man that is going to kill us?"  I yell back at them, gunshots still flying past us.

"No Amy, we're arguing about if we are actually going to die." Alex turns to me.

I roll my eyes at him. Without warning a burst of flames throws us forward, destroying the wooden desks that now lay in splinters on the floor. I cough, sitting up. Adrian walks through the ruble over to us.

"Oh hey! Adrian, my favorite terrorist. How's it going?"

His foot connects with my chest and he harshly pushes me back into the burning wood.

"You and your friends have been quite the set back." his voice is filled with anger.

"Oh why thank you so much." 

"Dang it, Alex I owe you ten dollars." Blue sighs.

"You're such an idiot. If we die you can't give him the money." I tell them.

"Oh yeah." Blue realizes.

"Dang it." I hear Alex say next to me. 

"How are you our lead tech agent, Blue, and you can't remember that when you're killed you die." 

Adrian looks between us, clearly confused.

"I can't believe you guys bet on our lives." I sigh.

"It's good money Amy!" Alex raises his voice.

"We already make good money for killing lunatics!" I yell back.

"What are you doing!" Adrian's booming voice cuts us off.

"Distracting you. What does it look like?" I smile at him.

Em comes up from behind him. He whips his head around. She places the barrel of the gun on his chest.

"Surprise." She smirks.

    The bang of the gun echos through the building and Adrian's body falls, limp on the ground.

    "Yay." Blue lays his head into the debris.

    Em puts two fingers to his neck, checking for a pulse. She nods at us.

    "Ok let's get back to dad. He'll be waiting."

    We stumble out onto the busy sidewalk, people glued to their phones, the blazing sunlight burning our eyes. People look up from their phones to stare at us.

"Get into the car." I rush everyone. "Blood and ash is not discrete. Police will be here soon."

I herd them into the black car. Alex leans forward talking to James, our driver.

"You know where to go." Alex tells him.

He nods. "Is he actually dead this time?" I can't see his face but I know he's smiling.

"Ha. ha. Very funny." Blue tells him, his voice overflowing with sarcasm.

I smile and lean into Alex. He puts his arm around me, sinking further into the seat, and I let myself sleep.

***

I wake up to the unfamiliar silence of the car engine coming to a stop.     I lift myself from Alex's arms. The sky begins to dim as the day is coming to an end. I walk through the halls of Base. The floor is lined with white marble and the walls painted a dark grey. I can tell our worn down and burnt team looks out of place from the groups of trainees in the hall. A booming voice comes through the hall speakers.

    "Team: Gems, squad:1, please report to the main sector."

"That's us." Em sighs.

Gems, the name of our team. Each of us were named after gemstones after we were recruited. We were all orphans, happening to live under the same roof. No names, no families. I don't remember how it all happened. We grew up together like siblings although we really weren't. We were not officially adopted, well some of us weren't. Technically Blue and Alex were adopted by the couple who runs the S.O.S camp in Australia. They trained for about a year with them before they were sent back up here for being assigned to the team. Although dad basically raised them.

We were all named after Gems because dad has a weird thing for them. Blue was named after blue topaz, Em was named after the emerald, Alex was named after alexandrite. My name, Amy, comes from Amethyst. We were the first out of 5 teams to become trained and operational, the start of what we now called S.O.S, Secret Operational Security. To the rest of the world we don't exist.

We slide open the large doors to the main sector. The room is a large circle with the same white floors and grey walls. A large circular table sits in the center, chairs surrounding it.

"Wow, you guys look terrible." Dad laughs at us.

"Thank you." I curtsy.

He laughs again.

"We have a new mission for you but it's not operational until next week." He explains to us.

"Alright." Em starts. "What is it?"

    "A rogue operative is executing attacks on our training facilities. There has only been minor casualties but we need to stop them before they can kill anyone else."

"So you want us to kill them for killing our soldiers." Blue clarifies.

He nods. "Percicley."

"What was his team and squad?" I ask him.

"Team: Runaways, squad: 4" He tells me.

"Of course it is! Why am I not surprised." Alex exclaims.

"You sound pretty surprised." Em smiles.

Alex shoots her a glare. She laughs.

"Alright..." Dad starts, but his assistant, Carol, rushes into the room.

"Sir, we have just heard word that there are suspicions about a group that may be illegally mining and importing red diamonds."

Red diamonds. Discovered in 2075, 7 years ago. It's so rare and so expensive that it was the cause of the most crime ridden 7 years in history and our most busy 7 years, our team became operational only 2 years after its discovery. Gangs, criminals, anyone bad, were stealing and smuggling it out of the country. Based on past experiences, rich criminals are not fun to work with. So, the world agreed to make it illegal to mine, import, export, and even have red diamonds.

"We'll deal with that another time. They have already received the next assignment." He pushes away the warning.

If I didn't know better, I would say that he was almost worried that this was discovered. I throw away the thought and continue asking questions about the current assignment.

"Where are we going." I ask.

"Paris."

"Paris. We have a training facility in paris?"

"Yes."

"Huh."

"When do we ship out?" Em asks.

"Wednesday, next week." Dad answers.

We all nod.

"Well, go clean up." Dad tells us. "You're leaving a trail of blood and dirt on the floor."