The Child by Alaina Fulkerson, Maggie Morris (philippa perry book .txt) 📖

two ERI agents and brought me here. Two days ago I was living a normal life. When my dad told me my family came from a long line of spies I thought he lost his marbles. But now, I’m determined to-” I stopped listening having the feeling something was off. Then I realized it, there was a  very cute 6 year old boy standing near the doorway.

    “No!” I jumped up onto the table and stood in front of Sally to protect her from the bullet coming her way. Now I was glad I wore this combat suit. I ran to disarm the boy when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a grenade. I kicked the grenade out of his hand, caught it, and easily disabled it. He took off running into the hallway. Sprinting, I caught up to my intruder and knocked him out. “El, Vi, take him!” El and Vi are my two bodyguards that don’t really guard me but they get rid of the people I knock out. I jogged back into the meeting room to check on Sally. Once she saw me she said, “Make that three times Monica has saved me from an ERI agent.” With the meeting over Sally and I left to go to the training barracks.

    “From now on you are going to spend most of your time here, training. One day I want you to be able to do what I just did. Now throw me a punch.” She very weak heartedly punched me in the side. I encouraged her to go harder on me and received a deathly blow to the stomach.

  “Good job, now wherever you go, whenever you go anywhere, always wear a bulletproof, fire proof, combat  suit. That way if you get shot unexpectedly or someone tries to throw you in a fireplace you won’t die. You should have four thousand six hundred thirty nine of these in your closet.”

 Sally looked at me in wonder, “Do I really have four thousand six hundred forty nine of those?”

I rolled my eyes, “Thirty nine, but no. You have several million, do you think I would give you less than a million?” Seriously, this girl needed a jar of smarts very badly.

 “Cool, when do I start training?”

When did she think she would start? She would start now of course.

Sally

I am dripping in sweat. I didn’t know training would be this hard. First Monica is making me practice disarming opponents. I am never going to be able to do the whole leg kick thingy. Monica made me react the scene from the meeting. She pulled out a gun and before she had time to shoot me I had to run up to her kick the gun out of her hand and knock her out. It’s hard work. The gun she is using has no bullets in it but I am still wearing a combat suit, just in case. After probably a million pathetic attempts I finally kicked the gun out of her hand.

    “Good job, Sally. Although by now you and everyone else is probably dead. Let’s try it again, this time I’m sending in an actual agent with a real gun and bullets. Remember your hands and neck are not covered by the suit so protect them.”

  Wait….. WHAT?!?!?!?! An actual gun with real bullets in them? This is my first day in training, and I don’t want to die already. I can’t go fast enough and I can’t protect my hands and neck. This is IMPOSSIBLE!

 “Ok let’s get started, Sally, I’m going to put you in  room full of spies, only one is sent to kill you. Your job is to find out who, disarm them, and knock them out. Please, don’t kill anyone, they are all our spies.” With a wink Monica shove out the door and into a meeting room.

Immediately I spotted a 7 year-old in the crowd of people that walk into the room. My instincts tell me to attack her, so I run up and shove her onto the ground. Feeling proud of myself for finding her so quickly, I punch her  face. The little girl starts bawling, her pigtails now stand with blood from her nose. I start blushing madly. I mean, I thought she was a spy, I mean she is so cute, she can’t not be an ERI agent!

   Suddenly, I hear a clicking sound. I spin around.

That was the sound of a gun being loaded, I think.

When I see no one pointing a gun at me, I automatically am frustrated. Why do they have to make it this hard?!?! It’s my first day of training, not my last! A bullet  pounded off my suit and I looked down at my arm where a black mark was forming.

 I look down again at the mark, trying to determine where the bullet was shot from. I see a slight skid mark on the overhead pipe work that angles left. So the shooter must have been on the right side of the room. I did this in a matter of seconds. I feel proud, knowing that I learned a lot in just a few hours. I now drag myself up scan the faces of the agents. They all seemed shocked, except for four. Obviously decoys. Next I look at their posture. Again, more decoys.

I finally realize that each one of these agents have a job, look guilty, smile, look like you did it, have the wrong posture, but all of them have one thing in common, trick me. Now for my last scan I look for the least guilty person, the most shocked, the most oblivious. Within a half second I spot a man, 6”, 2’ at the most. I walk casually over to him.

“This stuff is pretty crazy right? I mean it’s my first day here and already I’m being shot at.” Before he has time to take out the gun again, I use my signature move. The whole ninja kick spin thing. It hits him in the neck, way off from where I was aiming, He seems shocked that I knew it was him. The man gets up and stumbles towards me.

“Nice try sweetheart, but you’re going down.” The man swings his arm into my stomach.

I take off my heels and stab him with them. Then I take a folder filled with paperwork off the desk and bash his head with it. Just for good measure kick him in the stomach.

Monica

“I’m sorry Monica. She was just so cute I thought she had to be an ERI agent. I mean how was I supposed to know that it is Take Your Child to Work Day?”

I sigh. “I guess there was no way of knowing but next time make sure you do a full analysis before you start killing, ok?”

Sally nods solemnly. Suddenly giddy with excitement, “But did you see how fast I figured out who did it. I didn’t even get shot, well unless if you count my arm. I was all like bam-pow-huuuuy wah. Then that guy was like, ‘YOU’LL NEVER DEFEAT ME’ and I was like, oh ya? I just did.”

Smiling I walked Sally down to her room, my ear ringing from all of Sally’s Action Tales: From Inside The Protectors’.

Imprint

Text: Alaina Fulkerson
Images: Bookrix
Editing: Maggie Morris
Translation: Duolingo
Publication Date: 05-16-2016

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To Maggie for helping me through all of those days when I had writer's block. Also to everyone who reads this. Last but not least my beautiful family who has always supported my wildest dreams.