CHERUB: The Syndicate

26: Sprint

The date at the end of March was rained off, so the CHERUB Olympiad took place on a warm day at the beginning of April, and kids who misbehaved in the week leading up to it found themselves polishing old silver trophies with the names of CHERUB agents from thirty years ago engraved on the base. All agents not on missions or injured were required to take part in two individual events and a team event, which were all split into age categories. George was competing in the under-13s bracket, and without much idea of what he was good at, he put himself in for the javelin, a swimming race and the 4x100m relay so that he had a spread. Boys and girls competed in the same events because there weren't enough Cherubs to divide everything into two.

All lessons were suspended for the day so that the kids and staff could spectate, and some portable grandstands with garish orange seating had been set up around the athletics track.

"Welcome, everyone," Zara said, standing on a podium and speaking through a loudspeaker. Next to her was a trestle table groaning under the weight of a variety of sporting cups and shields waiting to be awarded. "Competitors, you should have received a timetable of your events, and everyone else, you're free to move from place to place to see any events you like. We've got events on the athletics track, in the pool and in the dojo, so make sure you take everything in. We'll be starting with the long-distance races shortly, so please get comfortable!"

Everyone laughed and started looking at paper programmes that had been handed out with the day's timetable. Cherubs are naturally competitive so most of the talk revolved around who would win each event, and a pair of enterprising navy shirts had set up an illicit betting service which was attracting wagers of up to twenty pounds, mostly on the under-20 age bracket which had mostly black shirts in it.

The first two of George's events were in the morning, which meant that as soon as he'd placed a disappointing seventh in the javelin, he had to rush over to the swimming pool to get changed and shower ready for the 100m freestyle. Despite his vow never to touch a swimming pool again after the water training he'd endured the previous year, as he warmed up on the side of the pool and eyed up the three others he was competing against, he had to admit he was quite excited. Letty waved at him from the sparse crowd that was gathered along the poolside and he waved back before one of the trainee instructors signalled for them all to take their places. George pulled his goggles on and tried to remember the right way to turn when he reached the other end, but the whistle went before he'd had much of a chance to think about it.

George's main focus in the race was to stay swimming in a straight line, which was surprisingly hard. He didn't know where the others were, but when he hit the other end he pushed off and swam underwater for a second before surfacing and heading for the finish. The full-length pool at CHERUB had pressure pads for accurate timing, but they'd been on the fritz for as long as George had been there and it was too difficult to get security clearance to repair them, so the timing were done by the instructor with a stopwatch. Keeping this in mind, George pushed hard until he was in range of the finish and then reached out, grabbing the tiles at the edge of the pool before taking some deep breaths.

He hauled himself out onto the side and Letty handed him a towel, which he used to wipe most of the water off.

"We couldn't tell who won," she said, using a second towel on his hair, "but you were definitely in the running. When did you get so fast?"

"We had a pool at our house in Australia," George grinned. "Used to swim lengths most days."

"Lucky," Letty tutted, whipping him with the towel and making him yelp. "Kept that little fact secret, didn't you?"

In fact, George had come second by thirty milliseconds, but he still felt pretty proud of himself. He received a plastic silver medal with '2nd' printed on it, but the winner got an even tackier-looking one in gold, so it wasn't so bad. Plus, it gave him gloating rights over Rex, who hadn't got a medal in any of his events.