CHERUB, the next-gen.

Chapter 36: Pamela's POV

That old man gave me the creeps. Lucy seemed oddly fine with him around but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was weird about him. Also, his English was perfect. Because I was thinking about this so much, I couldn't get any sleep. I glanced over at Lucy's small sleeping form and sighed. She murmured something in Hungarian, her native language, aside from Russian. What would life be like if none of this had ever happened, if our circumstances were different? If our parents didn't get murdered or accused we would have never met Reid and would've never found out about cherub. Instead of sleeping together in the middle of nowhere, we could be having a sleepover at my house and eating overly buttery popcorn while watching 'Ten Things I Hate About You' or some shit like that. Do I like it this way, or do I want my old life back? I fell asleep before I thought up an answer.

I woke up feeling a slight breeze on my skin. It felt good. Opening my eyes, I gazed at the multitude of stars. Frowning, I tried to shake Lucy awake. "I love you too Tae" Tae? Who.. I shake my head "Lucy!" "huh?" she replies wearily. "Look up at the sky and tell me what you see." Lucy replied, "I see millions of stars." "What does that tell you?" She pondered for a minute. "Well, for one, there are no clouds in the sky, and it's night, so that brings me to the fact as to why would you wake me up!" Hah, she took the bait, well sort of. I was silent for a minute, then spoke "think about your answer." she grumbled and rolled over. "Leave me alone. I was having a good dream" "I bet" I replied and she turned to look at me. "What's wrong with you, just let me sleep" "wrong with me?" I was shocked that she hasn't figured it out yet. "What's wrong with you! Haven't you realized that we don't have a roof or walls surrounding us anymore!" "what?" she fully turned around to look at me. "A roof..?" she mumbled. I could see the gears turning in her head. Suddenly she shot up. "Oh my god!" she panicked while I lay back down chuckling. "You're an idiot." not hearing my very truthful comment, she kept wandering around to look for our vanished cabin. "What the hell?" she kept saying that to herself. "How can a cabin just up and disappear? This makes no sense." I agreed. Honestly, I didn't know where the fuck our cabin was, or where we were for that matter. The stars were so bright which was concerning because when we arrived here yesterday, we were under some thick foliage. She came back to her sleeping spot and collapsed. "I'm exhausted" then passed out. "I feel like it's not a good idea to be sleeping out in the wild," I said to myself. But there is no helping it, so closing my eyes, I try not to think about what kinds of animals that can attack me.

"Pam" someone was shaking me. "Huh?" I replied. Opening my eyes I saw Lucy sitting next to me but she looked odd. I sat up, "are you okay" I look closer and asked out loud, "are you still asleep?" She spoke again "hurry, or we'll miss the train" "what" I chuckle a bit then look at my watch, but it was broken. I grabbed her hand and looked at hers. I breathed in sharply. We only have two hours to complete our mission, or else all of this training that we've gone through has been for nothing. Shooting up, I shake her awake. "We need to go now" bleary-eyed, she looks at me, "how much time do we have?" I start to shove stuff into the bags. "Not enough". Quickly, we planned out our route and set off. How will we get there in two hours? I thought. The quickest way was three hours, at the least and who knows what might be in our path. Stupid cabin stealers, I bet it was Frank, and he's going to make us fail.

An hour in and we're sweating more than usual, mostly because we've been running. Coming to a sudden halt, I accidentally smacked Lucy in the face to try and stop her. "What the fuck" she said while holding her face. Ignoring her, I looked straight ahead. "We have a slight problem." she walked up beside me and gasped. "This is awful". The ground going downhill was littered with dead trees spanning for miles. The trees were so densely packed that it looked near impossible to get through. I didn't realize how bad deforestation was in Borneo. It seemed like someone chopped down all the trees then got lazy and didn't bother clearing them, except for a few patches here and there. "Sarge didn't say anything about this". I said aloud. "Didn't tell us about random hermits either..." She squatted. "As expected from his pea sized brain." I chuckled then brought my hand up to shield the sun. "We need to do something though". She got up and sighed, "we're going to have to go straight through, going around would take too long." "I hate people" I mumbled then set off down the hill.

Not even halfway through I lost focus and misstepped. Trying to balance my self I leaned too much to the left and the weight of the bag made me fall which caused my leg to go through a spiky gap. "Jesus fuck!" I shouted as pain shot through my leg. The wood was drawing blood from my hands as I was trying to pull my body back up. I look back to see Lucy scrambling towards me. "Are you okay? What happened?" She asked in earnest while taking off my bag and holding out her hand. "I don't know" I was shaking. Usually, I don't react that badly to a scrape or sprain but I think the stress of this mission, the heat, and exhaustion were finally getting to me. Everything started to blur as I took her hand and let her drag me out. "Pamela" Lucy held my face, "is it that bad?" I shook my head and wiped my eyes. "Ah stop" she said and took my hands away. "Your smearing blood all over your face," she said while pulling out a slightly dirty tissue from her pocket. Silently she cleaned my face then sat back on her heels. "Breath," she said. "We're almost there, no need to rush." "But the ti-" she cut me off. "Don't worry about that." "It's useless, I'll never make it, and all I'm doing is dragging you down with me." "Are you saying you want to give up?" No, I didn't want to, we've come too far. Looking down, my throat caught and I stayed silent. As if she read my mind, she put her hand on my arm, "of course you don't. So I need you to get up and finish this with me. We've worked so hard to get here and we're not about to just throw all that away." I looked at her, what did I ever do to deserve this beautiful munchkin? "Come on, up we get" she pulled me to my feet and looked at my leg. My left pant leg was ripped and slightly bloody, but other than that it didn't look too bad. "Can you walk?" She asked. Thinking I was fine, I put my full weight on it. Surprise surprise, I gasped and fell onto Lucy. "I guess that's a no" she replied, then gave me my bag. "You can lean on me, but let's get going". I nodded and did what she said. Slowly but surely we picked our way through and when reaching cleared spots, went as fast as our hobbling would allow. We barely saw any animals through here and I'm starting to see why. The air quality somehow seems different, no protection, no food, no.. Lucy stopped and I looked at her. She was pouring sweat, her face and neck and shirt were literally soaked like she just went swimming. "Um, are you okay?" I asked. She grunted a yes. "Just gimme" she pants "a sec". That's when I realized that I've been putting my full weight on her this whole time because I got distracted. I leaned off her and she swayed. "I'm so sorry" I nervously laughed. She waved a tired hand, "no it's okay, I'm fine" she pointed to the tree line, "almost there anyways. Reluctantly I put my arm around her shoulder but made sure I wasn't leaning too much on her. Finally on flat ground again, we made our way into the forest. "How much time do we have?" I asked out loud. She showed me her watch. "Twenty minutes" I sucked in a breath. To help Lucy out I started to lean on the trees which was easy because they were quite close together.

With one minute left we stumbled our way into a cleared area. My lower leg was throbbing and suddenly my right leg gave out. Lucy whipped around to see me crash to the ground. "Shit," we said simultaneously. "My legs just stopped working" I looked at her, furrowing my brows. "I seriously can't move". The cabin was just a few meters ahead. "Agh" She ran her hands through a knotted ponytail then walked towards me. "What are you doing?" I asked her, genuinely confused. "Hold on to my neck." She said while popping a squat down in front of me. "You're not carrying me!" I said, "you won't be able to do it." "Watch me", and with a grunt she scooped me up from the ground. "Lucy.." she was swaying quite a lot and I was quite sure she was going to drop me. Ignoring the looks I was giving her, she kept shakily walking. The pain was shooting up my leg and I bit my lip till it bled to keep me from distracting her. "Almost... there" she puffed. With I swear to you, thirty seconds left she lifted her foot and banged the door open. Our entrance made a loud crash and everyone in the room turned to look at us. I honestly wonder what they were thinking because we definitely were quite a sight.