It's a Spy vs. Spy World

Chapter 29

 The next two weeks passed without much incident majorly due to the fact that Rick, Bridget and I were on lockdown, but also because training Rick was terribly boring. Not to mention time consuming. Although I have to admit things were definitely looking up for him. As I'd already gathered in the first week he was here, much of the textbook stuff came easily to him. Rick could memorize anything and everything: names, codes, dates; information of all kind and he wasn't half bad at languages either. With Bridget's help and many intense flashcards sessions he had managed to learn not only Russian but could get by in Farsi as well. He truly lived up to his genius expectation. However, with so much success there was bound to be failure somewhere in the mix. Ricks failure lay in the physical training. He was getting better, no doubt about that (he could beat majority of the fifteen year olds at hand to hand, a fact that made him ecstatic) but he wasn't yet up to our age standard. And it wasn't like we didn't train enough. I swear we trained at least twelve hours a day. With nothing else to do that's all I had left. I found that I actually started to enjoy our training sessions. Just the thought of that gave me a weird feeling, enjoy and Rick were rarely used in the same sentence especially if the sentence is being delivered by me.

 Other than training Rick the only other note worthy thing was that Caesar was away for much of those two weeks. I figured it ha to do with investigating what was happening but I couldn't be sure. Obviously I wanted to snoop around and find some stuff out but there was a close eye on me at most times of the day and this left me no room for snooping. And it was killing me.

 I hated being out of the loop. The main problem was that I didn't know what was going on but could tell that there was something going on. Caesar doesn't just leave for no reason and they don't just keep students on lockdown for fun. Luckily classes had just started and so we weren't missing any test missions yet. It's weird to think that I was beginning to be thankful for little things like that. One day, a Saturday, our day off although it was an alternate week so there was no free day outside HQ, a bunch o us AITs were hanging out in the common room. There wasn't much to do besides think of things to do, most of which ended up in challenged of some sort so even though the twins were just playing a simple video game the competition was intense. But it isn't just any ordinary video game that they like to play, it's a game that Breaker developed that is like a game replica of our SAT class. It's really quite cool, you can make your own character and everything and it has every plan that we work on in class, and even though I hate video games I have to admit its a great simulation. So the gang was just lounging around since there was still plenty of time to finish homework and there was nothing else to do.

 Bridget and Rick were sitting close by at a table still doing flashcards and studying but Rick seemed to be distracted by the game. The rest of us were watching as the Phoenix twins tried to pulverize each other in cyberspace. I was bored to say the least, so maybe that's why I challenged Rick to a game even though I hate video games.

 "Hey Rick. Want to play a round? That is, if you're in the mood to get your ass kicked by me in the fake world too." I smirked at him and knew he would except. He had no choice. The others smiled as some other competition besides the twins entered the game.

 "You're on Jessi." he said getting up from his seat and I noticed Bridget roll her eyes. She thought that pointless competition was just that: pointless. On of the twins passed me a controller and the other have his up to Rick. They got off the couch and let Rick and I take our seats. We looked at each other and smiled. For some reason I really enjoyed competing with him. It made me feel full of adrenaline and I liked that feeling. Then we both turned back to the screen. Now, ill admit I kind of suck at video games but there was no chance I was worse than Rick at something so I was pretty confident. The twins and hattie were explaining the game to Rick while I made my avatar. She looked wicked cool, decked out in the best gear, breaker had done a really good job with the graphics and stuff too. I had never really played this game before but I knew the gist so I figured I be fine. Rick made his character which looked hilariously similar to him. Then we started.

 So I was really crappy the first round. Whatever, it was only because I kept hitting x instead of that circle button. It didn't matter I would get the next round. It didn't help that everyone was cheering on Rick and loving that I was losing. I started to grind my teeth when I lost the next two rounds.

 "Best five of seven!" I said. Rick won some more. It was so embarrassing, I didn't even have a round. He looked over and smirked at me when he got to five rounds. I glared at him but I was trying not to smile, even though I was losing I was having fun, especially when I would try to screw Rick up by shoving him and grabbing at his controller although nothing worked. He was still beating me.

 "Best seven of ten?" I challenged an he accepted with a wicked gleam in his eye. When he beat me for the final time my jaw dropped along with my controller. My friends clapped Rick on the back and laughed. I thought it would be more humiliating to lose to Rick but really it was just funny.

 "Hey Jess! We finally know what your weakness is!" Benji said and they continued to hoot with laughter at my terrible video game skills.

 "Alright, alright. Rick beat me ha-ha. But let's make this more interesting." I turned to Rick and everyone else fell silent.

 "You're not going to challenge me to another round are you?" he smirked.

 I glared at him, "No. But I will challenge you to some real life hand to hand." his eyebrows raised at the challenge then furrowed as he contemplated whether he felt like dying. I guess his high from beating me so much in the virtual world blurred his judgement because he just grinned at me.

 "You're on Jessi." our friends cheered a little and the Phoenix twins grabbed Rick and started dragging him away to their dorm.

 "C'mon Ricky we live got to make sure you are ready for this. Wouldn't want you to die when you've only been here less than a month." they were acting like his coaches. I laughed. Rory (I think) turned and spoke to me "Half an hour. Meet you in the gym." he smiled and I nodded.

 Hattie threw her arm around my shoulder than and started leading me away as well. "This should be interesting."