The Trip

Chapter 10:

Alex stood facing the wooden door to the barracks. He went over his cover story a few times in his head to familiarise himself with it and to make sure he could answer any questions on the subject with ease.
After standing outside the entrance for what felt like hours, the 15 year old took a deep breath and slowly opened the door trying to make as little noise as possible. Once again luck was on his side. The door opened soundlessly allowing him to sneak over to his bunk without alerting anyone of his presence. Everyone in the room was engaged in their own conversations so no one noticed that he had returned.
This enabled Alex to get in his bunk undisturbed and meant he could go to sleep in peace without having to answer any incriminating questions. Before closing his eyes, the fair haired boy turned over so he was facing his best friend. He realised he hadn't spoken to him since the incident and decided he would explain everything to him in the morning once he woke up.
With this thought still lingering in his head, Alex closed his eyes falling asleep almost instantly after his head hit the thin pillow.
*Tom's POV*
I couldn't sleep. After an hour of tossing and turning I decided it was useless to stay in bed so I got up. By doing so, I came to the conclusion that I must have drifted off at one point as the bunk next to me was no longer empty and was now occupied by Alex and I don't remember him returning.
Having nothing better to do at 2am, I walked over to one of the tables in the far corner of the room where some people were talking and sat down. I listened to some of their conversations and realised they mainly consisted of theories about Alex. This went on for a while before I finally joked "I didn't realise Alex was so popular!" A few people laughed at my feeble attempt of a joke while other looked at me confused.
"Neither did I." I heard a familiar voice behind me.
*Back to the story*
After sleeping for a few hours Alex awoke. This was normal for him. During his missions he had little time to rest and had consequently trained himself to survive off little sleep.
The boy decided that he might as well get up as he knew that he would not be able to get back to sleep on that uncomfortable mattress. He heard mumbling in the corner of the room and realised a small group of students were gathered around a wooden circular table talking to each other in hushed voices trying their best not to disturb people around them who were trying to get some sleep to prepare for their first day of training.
He silently approached the table and paused for a minute listening to the conversations about him. He sat next to Tom unnoticed until he announced his presence by responding to one of the jokes his friend made.
He watched as the people surrounding the table jumped up in shock upon hearing his voice. "Stop doing that!" Tom said repeatedly hitting Alex's arm. "You scared us all."
Alex just smirked as he realise that everyone was now staring at him. After a few minutes of deafening silence one dark haired boy asked "how did you get such an amazing time on the assault course? Especially considering you are always ill."
Alex took a deep breath before saying "the Sergeant just informed me that something happened to the timer causing it to stop at 8 minutes 34 seconds even though I had not completed the course yet. It turned out that I actually achieve a time of 14 minutes 5 seconds."
The boy who asked looked at him skeptically but nodded his head indicating he would drop the subject.
Alex sighed as he thought 'that was close. Hopefully people don't have too many questions tomorrow.'
(A/N - I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has being reading my story so far. I really appreciate it)