The Erica Files

Spy Camp (Part 3)

Author's Note: Thank you all so much for taking the time out of your day to read this and getting it up to #13 in the Spy School Tag!! I really appreciate it, and I'd love to hear from you if you're out here enjoying the story, so please leave a comment and tell me what you think!

~ * ~

What was happening with Murray was that he hadn't even been at Apple Valley in the first place and SPYDER, anticipating their every move, had used the opportunity to set up a trap.

Erica wanted to kick herself for walking straight into a trap, or, at least, for not anticipating it. She should have stayed out longer, the previous night, planning potential escape routes. Of course, SPYDER knew they were alive, they knew Murray Hill wasn't there, and they'd absolutely sent him to FunLand to lure all of them to Apple Valley to just capture them.

At least Granddad had been looking out for that stuff. And, if she was being completely honest, it was good to have a competent adult on the mission with them. She might have been good at what she did, but she wasn't so proud as to say she didn't need help. She probably would have tried to contact him if things had gotten this out of hand, but the CIA contacted him instead and saved her the trouble.

There was also the fact that having someone along who could (and quite frequently did) call Alexander was doing wonders for her mental health. The practical reasons were all well and good, but at that moment, she was feeling better than she had in ages.

~ * ~

The Civil War uniform was the single most uncomfortable thing Erica had ever worn in her life.

It was hot and stuffy and smelled weird and scratched her all over every time she made a move, but due to the situation she was in (rescuing colleagues from school from a hostage situation), she wasn't at liberty to stand perfectly still positioned such that she was making contact with as little of it as possible. So she was forced to suffer.

The hat was pretty nifty though.

And her good mood was absolutely unshakeable. They had the jump on SPYDER, and Granddad had gone out to take care of the situation at the farmhouse. Yes, he had left her behind, but his logic made complete sense, and part of being a good spy was putting aside personal glory for the good of the mission.

Ben seemed kind of keyed up and started asking questions about Cyrus, and since Erica wasn't sulking, she answered them. The atmosphere wasn't enjoyable by any means, but at least it wasn't an oppressive feeling of misery.

Well, it wasn't for her and Ben at any rate. Alexander didn't seem like he'd agree with that statement.

For all the problems Erica had with Alexander, she did feel a little sorry for him. It was hard enough to live with Granddad's judgement when you were doing almost everything right, it was probably worse by several orders of magnitude when you were living with it day in and day out and couldn't get any of it right.

Not that it excused any of Alexander's actions, just explained them.

But something about the conversation seemed to have tipped Ben off. Something about how Granddad was actual target and Erica was the bait to get him back into the field.

And then the walkie-talkie Granddad had left them with crackled to life, and he said he was going in. Erica tried to tell him to back off, that SPYDER was bigger and had planned farther ahead than they had thought, but he didn't listen to her and the walkie-talkie went silent.

Erica stared at the ancient little device in her hand. She could hardly fathom how badly she'd messed up on this mission. She'd walked into trap after trap and had been the big bait in SPYDER's whole operation and now SPYDER was going to go through with whatever it was that they were planning, and it was all going to be her fault.

If she could go back to this morning, she'd give her past self a slap on the face. Just because she was the best agent on the mission didn't mean squat if the enemy was twelve steps ahead of you. She should have been more careful! About all of it!

But maybe she could stop it, or at least part of it. Maybe there was still a chance.

She left Ben and Alexander over by the cannon and bolted off towards the farmhouse.

As she got closer, Erica saw her classmates, still up in the bedroom. So Granddad hadn't been able to make it after all.

She started calculating. They needed to be first priority. Yes, SPYDER was targeting Cyrus directly, but Cyrus had a lot more experience than they did, and SPYDER probably wasn't just planning on letting them go free.

Not to mention that if Ben was right they'd probably have already captured Cyrus at this point, and she'd waste valuable time trying to find him, assuming

But first they'd need a distraction. If she could get Ben to fire the cannon in their direction, the SPYDER agents would be distracted enough for her so sneak up to the bedroom and release the hostages.

And Cyrus was a good spy. He'd see the cannon fire and know that something had gone wrong, assuming SPYDER hadn't captured him already, in which case, he was very aware of that.

Erica dove into a bush, radioed Ben the relevant information, and hunkered down to wait.

The ensuing minutes felt like they were an eternity. Logically, Erica knew that impossible to load a Civil War era cannon in less than thirty seconds, but the stakes were so high, she could feel it in her gut, and she could feel her hope draining a little bit with every second that passed.

As bad of an idea as it was, Erica screwed up her eyes and tried to physically beam her message across the battlefield. "Please Ben," she thought, "you're the one asset we've got left."

And then, almost like he'd heard her, there was an explosion rocketing toward the farmhouse, landing directly on one of SPYDER's minivans. A beautiful, beautiful sound and sight. The SPYDER agents were thrown into absolute chaos, and Erica took advantage of all that to sneak up to the bedroom.

It wasn't too hard. All the agents seemed to have abandoned their posts, either to try and put out the fire or just to gawk at it. It was the perfect opportunity to knock them all out.

Erica grabbed her knife and started to cut them free, ticking them all off in her mind as she did so. Chip. Hank. Claire. Jawa. Warren. Zoe. They all seemed largely unharmed, but it wouldn't have made any sense for SPYDER to torture them, so that all made sense.

She shoved all of them out the door before any of them had a chance to say anything, but before she could get out of the bedroom herself, she heard something behind her. A faint little rustling. She might not have heard it over the chaos if she hadn't been so amped up on adrenaline.

She whipped around, cursing herself for not noticing the extra guard in the room, but ready to knock out, but when she saw his face, she couldn't help but stop.

Because standing in front of her was Joshua Hallal.

And he was still very much alive.

It only took her a fraction of a second of a second to realize what this probably meant, but it only took him a fraction of a second to knock her out.