Dangerous at Night - Part 1 - Sarah Survives a Tragedy
Dear Loyal Readers: Please join me for an extended tale of young Sarah Morrison's adventures in the British Security Service.
Prologue
The London tabloids called her survival miraculous. Helen held the tiny bundle in her arms on the way home from emergency services and grieved for her brother and his wife, who were instantly killed when a lorry collided with their car in dense fog. The baby girl, only six months old, was found unhurt in a field next to the motorway.
"Sarah," she whispered, "God didn't want to take you. I will do my best to be a good aunt and mother."
Chapter One - A Nighttime Foray
Sarah was on her third practice night out. It was her first event with opposition.
The tiny ground floor apartment had an entrance opening on an unlit mews. She was completely clothed in black, her face covered by a mask. A route was plotted to Regent's Park through a maze of alleys, and she moved rapidly to the park. The hour was well past midnight. She worked from one hidden place to another without detection. The park was closed, but she went over a wall with ease and dropped into the shrubbery on the far side. Her visit here last week, on a dismal, dripping night, had been the most fun ever. She had even flitted around a patrolman sitting at his station watching a forbidden television set.
Tonight, the task was to set off one of the kiosk video alarms and elude the pursuit which resulted. She had done a daytime reconnoitre and picked one near the north gate and the Zoo. Her escape route was to stay out of the leafy lanes near the wall, which were armed with motion detectors, until she could take a straight run at a section and bound up and over the top. Things were going swimmingly, with the two patrolmen who had come out of the Hub lagging behind, until she dropped over the wall. Instead of landing on the cobblestoned walk outside, she found herself in the arms of her mentor, Jeremy.
"Nicely done, Sarah. You would have gotten well away if I hadn't guessed the technique you would use tonight."
She struggled in his arms, but he wasn't letting go. "Let me down. You aren't supposed to oppress the recruits."
He leaned against the wall with her still in his arms, which felt fine. She teased, "Are you going to kiss me? Are we just on a late night date?"
He growled, "I have a hot girlfriend, which you know very well, and am going to marry her in the summer. I can't be kissing any old female who leaps over the wall with stolen property."
Sarah did know Carrie and liked her a lot. "Your Carrie is a great woman, but kiss me anyway. Go home and confess and say I grabbed your head and planted my lips on you and..."
It was not a peck. It was warm and wet and lasted several seconds. Then she was gone, dashing down the street in the dark, back to her little apartment.
Chapter Two - Excitement at School
Helen and her husband, William Morrison, adopted little Sarah as soon as the authorities permitted it. They had their own daughter, Mary, who was three years old and loved little Sarah, who became Sarah Morrison. It was never explained how she was unharmed in the field next to the accident, but Helen was religious and attributed it to divine intervention.
Once they were in school, Mary and Sarah saw less of each other, playing with their age group friends. So, it didn't show too much that Mary was on the slow side, and Sarah was incredibly bright. But a few bullying incidents at school taught Sarah that it was not a good idea to be smart in front of others, so she adapted by becoming deferential to everyone, and always offering to help with chores before others. Helen went out of her way to be kind to the little girl, and one day after Sarah cleaned up a terrible mess in the kitchen from making a birthday cake for Mary, she nicknamed her the Adorable Mouse. The name stuck, and from then on, through all of her school days, Sarah was known as Mouse, or AM for short.
One morning, the year she was fourteen, Sarah was called to the headmaster's office during recess. This was not according to Sarah's notions of being invisible, and she was worried. The headmaster, whose name was Nathan Auerbach, invited her to sit in the chair across from his desk. On one side was her English teacher, Miss Carolyn Anthony, and on the other side a gentleman she did not recognize. Her anxiety only increased when she was introduced and discovered he was the Deputy Superintendent of all the schools in the surrounding district of north London.
Nathan had only spoken to Sarah once or twice in the whole five years she had attended his school. "Young Sarah," he spoke firmly, staring directly into her frightened eyes, "I am afraid there is no easy way to say this. You have been found out!"
Sarah was desperately thinking of disappearing down a rabbit hole, like Alice, when Miss Anthony pressed on her arm, "He is teasing!"
"Nathan," she said, "the poor girl is frightened to death. Please be kind."
From that moment on, life improved dramatically. The Headmaster said, "I am sorry to be so dramatic. I didn't mean to be cruel. The reason you are here is that your scores on the last set of systemwide tests were the highest in the school. In any grade."
He paused to let that sink in, and continued, "I've asked your teachers if there is an explanation, if by chance you have found a way to cheat on the tests. They assure me that you were not cheating. They reason that you have been hiding your light under the bushel basket, so to speak, in order to avoid any conflict or bullying with your classmates."
He looked at her carefully, trying to maintain a smile, and waited for an answer. Finally, she looked up at him with a fiercer frown than he had seen on a girl of her age, and said, "Yes, sir. My classmates do not have the desire for learning that I have, so I spend spare time on extra assignments, which I never turn in, and in the British Library Reading Room, which is only a few minutes by Underground."
