Capturing Ella

Chapter 21 - Joe

At midday, everyone who was at base was reported to turn up to the forest training centre for some team building work – no doubt because Ella was here. I found out why Susan, the boss who had arranged this little team building exercise, was so fond of Ella. Both her and Michael were hired temporarily to help on the case of a mass murdering Savant just under nine years ago. Susan's youngest brother was the fourth victim of this mass murder, and the youngest brothers identical twin was next on the hit list. Ella and Michael had combine their gifts and managed to stalk down the mass murderer to his exact coordinates only minutes before his next murder, and the twelve year old Ella had managed to knock him out. A dwindle, twelve year old girl had knocked out a forty-eight year old muscle machine just by freezing the fluid in his lungs and reducing the temperature of the tissues around his heart, causing him to pass out within seconds. Susan was forever grateful because both Michael and Ella had saved her brother getting murdered in the exact same way as his twin.

We all stood, about thirty five of us, by the forest training centre in the middle of the woods to the right of the main headquarters. This is where the fitness tests were done when you first had to pass – you had to do this circuit seven times, running 3.6 miles in between each lap. If you gave up, you were out. You had twelve hours to do it. It was completely visible, but it was that determination to keep going was the thing they were looking for. The circuit started off with 1.5 mile run, which was had skipped, before a series of obstacles. An 8 foot wooden wall you had to jump over, ropes, draw bridges, zip wires, rock climbing walls and climbing frames. Anything you could image was in the two mile stretch of obstacles; many of them were in the tree top. Even though there was safety netting under them all, as you had no safety ropes you were completely screwed if you fell.

'As you are all aware, we are on code red for operation Lions beak,' Lions beak was the code name given to the markings on the wall, and included all the information about the American's research as well as ours. 'Ella Benedict has flown over from America earlier today to help us all find the source of these messages, so we're going to do a bit of "training" to get our minds focused. However, we don't want it to be dull and boring so in random drawn pairs, you're all going to complete this course together. You have to work as a team in order to pass at the end, if not; we have paint ball guns being armed by the admin team. You must cross each check point at the same time. Not only that, you can pick the music you want to listen too all the way around.' Susan explained, as people started laughing and quietly talking. It was off for Susan to be this nice and this up for everyone bunking off work whilst still getting paid.

Ella quickly walked up to the starting platform and pulled out a name of the hat Susan held to her. She had stripped off her jeans and my jumper (!!) and was now in some Nike running tights and a baggy shirt, all of it in black. It made it slightly easier to notice how pale she looked despite having a very slight tan. As she picked the name, I prayed it would be me. I would love to do this course with her. Please be me.

'Jake, son, get your bum up here.' Susan called, and I was so jealous. Jake, my married brother, got to have the pleasure of doing this with her? I knew it was nothing and they were just really good friends that had been talking quite a bit in the last few months since she first came over, but I craved to have that closeness to her. I wanted that more than anything and I screwed it up because I probably slept with her one night. Think before you drink, kids.

Both of them looked through the list of songs, talking to each other and laughing before finally settling on one. Ella circled the song, as Jake put on the tracking tag around his ankle, bending down to do Ella's for her as she was handed the iPod to put the music on. They both jumped down off the little platform Susan was standing on with her megaphone to the rudimentary start line – a spray painted red line across the front. A few moments later, Fall Out Boy's latest album started blaring out of the speakers, starting with "Uma Thurman"