CHERUB: Dark Sun - Robert Muchamore Page 0,14

back lawn.

Zhang wasn’t hurt and Greg laughed as he helped him up, but George was freaking out over the state of the hedge.

‘My dad’s gonna slaughter me,’ George gasped.

Greg grabbed the main chunk of the broken hedge and rested it against the intact pieces on either side. ‘Good as new,’ he grinned.

‘It’s not funny you guys!’ George moaned, as he crouched over and picked up leaves and snapped branches scattered over the lawn.

A torch flickered on in the garden next door and an old woman’s voice came from behind the fence. ‘What the devil’s going on out there?’

‘Miss Hampstead,’ George gasped, as he started running around the side of the house.

‘Go back indoors, you nosy old bat,’ Zhang shouted.

‘She’s Sophie’s godmother: practically family,’ George whispered. He gave Zhang a shove before looking up towards his bedroom window. ‘Andy, get downstairs and open the front door before she shines that light over the fence!’

Andy smiled thoughtfully out of the window. ‘I might do,’ he grinned.

Andy laughed as the other three scrambled up the driveway, yelping as chunks of gravel dug into their bare feet. When they got inside George looked up the stairs nervously, half expecting the racket to have woken his mum up.

The boys muffled their giggles as they headed up the stairs, but Zhang held his hand over his mouth to stifle a huge yawn.

‘Man, I’m knackered all of a sudden,’ Zhang complained, stepping back into George’s bedroom and crashing backwards on to the bed.

‘Know what you mean,’ George nodded, as he caught the yawn. ‘That beer’s given me a headache.’

‘Can’t take your drink,’ Greg teased, as he looked at his watch and saw that it was ten-fifteen. It was ninety minutes since George and Zhang had taken their first mouthful of drugged beer and the sedative was kicking in right on schedule.

‘We never got around to Virtua Tennis,’ Andy said, as George slumped on to a leather beanbag. ‘You guys up for it?’

Zhang had his eyes closed and George waved his hand in front of his face. ‘You start off, I need a few minutes’ rest.’

Greg loaded the tennis game into the X-box and turned the hi-fi volume down low as he grabbed one of the wireless controllers. The two CHERUB agents played half-heartedly. Andy won the first set on a tiebreak, but there were no protests or celebrations.

Instead, Andy leaned across the bed and pinched Zhang’s cheek, while Greg crept across the carpet and jabbed George’s thigh with his big toe.

‘Sleeping like babies,’ Greg said. ‘Get the kit.’

Andy unzipped a pocket on the side of his backpack and pulled out a plastic wallet. It looked like a packet of felt-tips, but instead of pens it contained twelve identical syringes filled with a fast-acting sedative. The sedative in the beer worked for less than two hours and it was hard to tell exactly how much they’d drunk. George and Zhang had to be injected with something more powerful to ensure that they didn’t wake up.

Even the gentlest of injections can turn into a small swelling and a bruise which looks obvious on open skin, so Andy had to inject an area of the body that’s hard to inspect.

‘Show me some butt,’ Andy grinned.

Greg rolled Zhang on to his belly and pulled down the back of his boxers.

‘Gross,’ Greg choked, gagging and turning away. ‘It’s skidmark city down there.’

Andy tried not to breathe as he pulled Zhang’s buttock upwards and wiped a patch of skin with a sterile wipe. He then dug the needle into the fold where Zhang’s flabby bum met the back of his thigh.

After injecting enough sedative to keep Zhang under for six hours, Greg hitched up the boxers and rolled Zhang on to his back again. George weighed half as much and showered twice as often, so it was a much more pleasant experience rolling him off the beanbag and injecting his buttock as he lay flat on the floor.

Greg tucked a pillow under George’s head before looking uneasily towards Andy. ‘Two down, one to go.’

‘The tricky one,’ Andy noted, as he pulled a green cylinder and a gas mask out of his backpack before heading down the hallway behind Greg.

Dr Lydon was probably asleep, but she wasn’t sedated like the boys and would wake with a start before they got anywhere near sticking a needle in her butt. She had to be taken down in a two-stage process, the first of which involved a powerful knock-out gas.

Greg approached first, quietly opening the bedroom door