Give me Alex Rider’s politics teacher just being absolutely…astounded by the amount of knowledge this kid has on not only the socio-economic climate of literally every freaking country but the most freakishly good instincts of how each new politician that comes along is going to fare. It’s at the point he now has a secret cabinet of sticky notes on Alex’s off hand comments of each new public figure because God Dammit he always turns out to be right.

Give me Alex’s Riders politics teacher who stands up for him against others in the staff room because his essays provide the freshest viewpoints he’s seen in over 20 years. Ethics, politics, morality, social structures, negotiations, public figures, military influences and ulterior motivators; Alex Rider handles each topic with a grace and insight he hasn’t seen since university. Quite frankly he doesn’t know whether to be impressed or terrified. He settles on curious.

Give me Alex Rider’s politics teacher who’s family served in the army, who recognises the shadows of war in those dark brown eyes even if he can never understand why. The only one that seems to notice that seeing Alex’s controlled, efficient steps through a boisterous crowd of school children is like watching a ballet dancer glide through a swarm of drunk seagulls.

Give me Alex Rider’s politics teacher who let’s the poor kid take a nap in class or snack when he wants to (partly because 50% of the time he looks ready to drop) but mostly because deep down they both know there’s nothing that he can teach him here. Alex had an already pretty unusual and impressive grasp of foreign affairs before his uncle died and in the years since then? Well, he’s pretty sure Alex speaks more languages fluently than he has fingers.

Give me Alex Rider’s politics teacher whose subject gives him more of a glimpse into his talents than most people are allowed to see; who takes one good look at his extra little piece of the puzzle and thinks yeah. This kid is brilliant.

My favourite personal theory for Alex Rider that could semi-realistically be cannon and fits a lot of fic the fandom has made is that Alan Blunt arranged Ian’s death and only blamed it on Yassen.

- My most important evidence is that Blunt is simply a Bastard and the real villain in the whole series. I will not elaborate.

- Ian’s death would have been highly beneficial to Blunt when Alex was old enough to be sent on missions, but young enough to be impressionable and controlled while being indoctrinated into the agency. If Blunt had caught wind that Ian was training Alex all he would have to do was remove Ian and the boy was his.

-Semi-related to that point, Ian may have been pretty abesent but he 100% did not leave Alex’s custody with the bank. He would have known there was a chance of being killed in a mission and had better contingency plans for that. Blunt faked the documents which a 14 year old Alex would not have been able to argue with.

-Blunts actions towards Alex and easy control over him also suggest he’s been watching him for a while (possibly just due to his bloodline) but nevertheless would have had time to plan it all out.

-Next is that the multiple shots to the car don’t fit Yassen’s style and although Ian isn’t the same as John or Alex, I still feel Yassen killing Ian wouldn’t have been as simple as that. By blaming Yassen though, Blunt would have been preventing Alex from getting in contact with him and covering up about his family history right from the start. The Assasin was also an easy scapegoat for why Ian’s death would have looked a little too clean.

- We see that by the end of the series, Blunt methods are too extreme even for MI6’s own employees suggesting he was 100% capable of pulling off something like this.

-Even more, writing Yassen and Alex getting on so well when Yassen literally killed his uncle is something I’ve seen the fandom struggling with a lot. The whole narrative that Yassen killed Ian doesn’t really fit well to readers (especially knowing his past with Alex’s father) and it’s one of the main obstacles that stops them being closer in canon. I feel like they’re so similar to each other and the family like dynamic the fandom creates around them is just so fitting, Blunt blamed Yassen to avoid anything like this manifesting

-Final point, did I mention Blunt is a bastard? If not, Blunt is a Bastard and would 100% do something like this

I just love the idea of people finding out about all the crazy stuff Alex Rider has done.

Shot the priminister? Obviously

Been in a shoot out on Air Force one? Average Monday

i need another scene like this in s3 pls give us s3

valaks:

Mrs. Jones: You want to use Alex again?

Blunt: Yes, of course he’s one of our best agents

Mrs. Jones: He’s a child

Blunt: He’s successful

Mrs. Jones: He dropped a barge on a conference center, shot the prime minister in the hand, snowboarded down the mountain on an ironing board, and joined a terrorist organization

Blunt: Yes, but he successfully did all of that

freesirius4life:

Yassen: If you hurt Alex, you will answer directly to me. And remember, whatever crimes I do to you will go unsolved.

Blunt: Fear is not in my vocabulary.

Yassen: No, but it’s in your eyes.

Innocenti Bugie

Read on AO3

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Alex squinted in the light of the setting sun as he waited for Tom and James to join him outside the school gates, so that they could walk home together. Unusually, this term their timetables weren’t the same, so while Alex had been struggling to concentrate through Macbeth in English (seriously, whose idea was it to do Shakespeare as the last lesson of the day?), Tom and James had been in PE, slogging around the fields doing cross country. All of them were sporty, but none of them liked cross country, especially when it had been raining all day and the fields were muddy and slippery. And, in the middle of January, it was always muddy and slippery.

“Are you Alex?”

The sun shining into his eyes meant that he hadn’t seen the group of men walking towards him until it was too late.

“Who are you?” Alex didn’t like the way that they had closed in on him. They were inching closer to him with every second that passed. He was outnumbered and soon he would be completely surrounded; even now, he wouldn’t be able to slip away without them being able to reach out and grab him. He definitely wasn’t going to confirm that he was who they thought he was.

“Your uncle sent us. He asked us to pick you up from school.”

That immediately sent more alarm bells ringing. Firstly, Ian was away on yet another business trip so it would have been Jack sending someone (and not ten someones!) to pick him up. Secondly, Alex was sure that anyone Ian asked to pick him up from school would have referred to him as ‘Ian’ not ‘your uncle’; they would have known that Ian hated being called that, wouldn’t they? Thirdly, Alex had never met them before and he thought it extremely unlikely that Ian would send a group of complete strangers to pick him up. And fourth, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, but something didn’t seem quite right. There were too many things that didn’t add up.

“I’m not allowed to go with strangers,” Alex said hesitantly, although even as he said it he became aware of the fact that he was completely surrounded now. He also realised that he had basically confirmed that he was who they were looking for. He could have kicked himself! The men had formed an almost solid circular wall around him; he was trapped. And he wouldn’t be able to take all of them in a fight. “Maybe I should just wait in reception while you-”

“-No,” the only man out of the whole group who had spoken so far cut in. “Your uncle said it was urgent. You have to come with us.”

Five. They were trying to rush him and not give him time to think. This was really very not good. Whatever happened, Alex knew that he mustn’t get in the car with them.

“I’ve just remembered, I need to talk to one of my teachers about some work I didn’t understand,” he said, backing away towards the school, but the men remained static and Alex walked straight into the man standing directly behind him.

“You can ask tomorrow,” the man said, grabbing his arm and pulling him towards the car.

“Hey! Get off!” Alex shouted. Maybe if he made enough noise, one of the adults in the school would hear and help him. It was the end of the day and there should still have been quite a few students and parents milling around but, inexplicably, Alex was on his own. A hand was clamped over his mouth before he could scream or shout though, and he was bundled into the backseat of the car.

“I’m sorry, Alex. We need to get you somewhere safe. And quickly.”

“What do you mean ‘safe’? Safe from what?” Alex shouted, even as he heard the doors lock and the car drive away with a squeal of the tires. “I don’t feel safe.”

He looked out of the window just in time to see Tom and James’s shocked faces as the car drove past. Alex mouthed ‘help’ and hoped his friends would understand. They stared at the car for another second before running back towards the school. The school had CCTV cameras; surely they would call the police and be able to give them a description of the car that he had been shoved into.

“We’ll explain properly when we arrive at the safe house. Your uncle is meeting us there.”

“What about Jack?”

“He’ll be there too.”

Well that settled it. Whoever these people were, they definitely hadn’t been sent by Ian or Jack. If only phones were allowed at school, he could have texted or called someone to say he needed help. But he was stuck in this car with three grown up men, with no way of telling anyone that he was in trouble and, he reflected glumly, they would have no way of tracking where he had been taken either. His only source of hope came from the fact that Tom and James had seen him. They knew that he had been kidnapped. Only that and the fact that, if it came down to it, Alex could possibly escape from the three men in the car with him with some well-timed karate strikes, were the only things stopping him from completely freaking out. There was a second car in front of them and a third one behind… if they managed to get him to wherever they planned to take him, Alex would be horribly outnumbered again and he wouldn’t be able to take out all ten of the men before the element of surprise wore off. This was really, really bad. He had to escape before they arrived at their destination.

They were heading out of the city and Alex was looking out of the blacked-out window, trying to work out how he could escape when the car in front of them suddenly went out of control and crashed. The men in the car with Alex immediately became uneasy, looking around and shouting.

Then Alex registered that there had been the sound like the crack of a whip, there was a hole in the glass of the windshield and the car had suddenly sped up. The driver was slumped against the window. Was he unconscious? What was happening? The driver’s hand slipped off of the steering wheel, pulling it around as it fell. The car turned violently and Alex was thrown against the door.

“Quick, with me,” the man in the back with him shouted, grabbing Alex’s arm before throwing his door open.

“I’m not going with you!” Alex shouted, pulling his arm away.

But the man had tumbled out of the door before he’d waited for Alex’s reply. Alex quickly looked out of the back window and saw the man rolling along the road, only narrowly avoiding being run over by the car behind them. He looked back around just in time to see the passenger in the front seat dive out of the car too. That just left Alex and the driver who was unconscious or something, and whose foot was jammed on the accelerator, in the car.

Alex dove forwards, leaning through the gap in the two front seats and grabbing hold of the steering wheel. He stared in horror at the cars coming towards them. They were on the wrong side of the road! And he had no way of getting over to the right side, thanks to the railing that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and now separated the lanes of traffic.

He tried desperately to pull the man’s leg off of the accelerator but it was no use. The angle was too awkward and he wasn’t quite tall enough to reach properly from where he was. If he wasn’t also steering, he might have been able to manage it… but right now there was nothing he could do other than try to avoid the oncoming cars.

He glanced in the rear view mirror and saw a motorbike coming up behind him. Whoever they were, they were catching up to the car incredibly quickly. Were they coming to try and help him? Was it the police? Alex desperately hoped that the answer was ‘yes’, although it looked like the bike was just going to drive right past him.

And it did; the motorbike sailed straight past the car, but, Alex noticed, there was no sign of the driver as it overtook him. At the same moment, there was a thud as though something heavy had dropped onto the roof of the car, and the motorbike crashed into a road sign. Everything was happening far too quickly for him to keep up. Just focus on the road.

Almost instantly, that became impossible. A man with piercing blue eyes thudded down onto the bonnet, blocking his view out of the windshield.

“Open the door please, Alex.”

Alex screamed.

“Get out of the way! I can’t see! And I don’t know who you are.”

“Ian asked me to keep an eye on you.”

“That’s what they said! Move! I can’t see!”

“Alex,” the man began but was cut off by more holes appearing in the windscreen.

Then Alex understood. They were bullet holes! What?!? No! Surely he was wrong! People couldn’t be shooting at them, could they?

“Hold on.” The man just seemed mildly irritated rather than concerned or scared, and Alex saw him pull out his own gun! And then he started shooting.

“Alex, open the door please,” the man asked again.

Why was he so calm? Why did he have a gun? Why were people shooting at them in the first place? Why had he been kidnapped? And was this man really on his side? Had Ian really sent him?

“Get out of the way! I can’t see!” Alex shouted again. Right now, his main concern was that he would crash into another car simply because he couldn’t see out of the window. He swerved sharply to avoid a car that suddenly appeared in front of them. Car horns were blaring all around him, as though the drivers thought Alex was both responsible for, and could do anything about his current predicament.

“Alex. Please open the door.” There were more gunshots. “I can’t help you unless you open the door. Ian asked me to look out for you.”

“Why?”

“This would be a much easier conversation to have not through the windscreen of a car, Alex.”

“Just get out of the way!”

The man was shooting his gun at the car behind them again. At the people who had taken him from school and who were now shooting at him!

“Alex! The door! Now!”

Everything seemed to happen very quickly but in slow motion after that. Something in Alex decided that he trusted this man… well, maybe not completely, but more than the other people. Maybe it was because he was shooting against the people who had kidnapped him from school. Maybe it was because ‘Ian’ had sent him not ‘his uncle’. Whatever it was, Alex reached forwards and managed to open the car door. What he didn’t see was that there was a car coming towards him and it crashed into the door, ripping it off of its hinges and sending it hurtling into the windshield of the car behind them. The sudden rush of air almost threw him back into the seat, but he managed to hang onto the steering wheel and keep the car under some semblance of control.

Now that he had leant further forwards to open the door, Alex was in a better position to attempt to move the driver’s foot off of the accelerator, and managed to get it onto the break. The car slowed so violently that Alex was almost thrown through to the front of the car, but he managed to stop himself when his legs and hips slammed into the passenger seat. Then, and Alex had no idea how it had happened (after all, he hadn’t seen the car lose control after the door went through the windshield), the car that had been chasing behind them almost seemed to have jumped over the top of them and was now rolling down the road in front of them. Finally, the man on the bonnet had pulled the driver out of the drivers’ seat, swung himself through the gap where the door had been, and took control of the car.

Alex sank back into the seats, trying to catch his breath, and looked out of the rear window. The road was in complete and utter carnage. Had he made a mistake in trusting this man? Only time would tell. For now, all Alex could do was sit back and let the man drive them wherever he intended to take him.

“Are you alright, Alex?” the man asked, glancing in the rear view mirror. “Excellent driving. And impeccable timing in opening the door.”

It was taking Alex all of his strength to keep his composure and not freak out. The realisation of everything that had just happened was catching up with him and he could hardly believe it was real.

“Where are you taking me?” he demanded instead of answering the man’s question.

“Past this barricade of bad guys. Then I’ll stop and deal with them. And then I’ll take you to a safe house where Ian will meet us.”

“They said that too,” Alex muttered. He had barely finished speaking before they entered the tunnel and a sudden thunderous hammering sound reverberated through the car. Alex looked out of the window and saw flashes of light. It took a few seconds for his brain to comprehend that machine guns were being fired at the car! Just as quickly as it had started, it stopped; they were through the tunnel and the man was stopping the car with a squeal of the brakes.

“Get out of the car, Alex,” the man said, opening the door for him and guiding him to the front of the car. “And stay here in front of the bonnet. I’ll be back in a minute.” He headed back towards the tunnel and the ‘barricade of bad guys’, his own gun ready to fire in his hands.

Well, Alex certainly wasn’t going to stick around here. Whatever was going on, he wanted nothing to do with it. He took off at a run. He ran without knowing where he was going, but the main thing was putting as much distance as he could between himself and all of the men with guns. After a few minutes, he realised with relief that he knew where he was. There was a café just a couple of roads away where he and Jack went semi-regularly and he knew the staff. They would help him.

When the staff saw him, they knew that something was wrong and sat him down with a hot chocolate and a piece of cake. He briefly explained a little of what had happened - he didn’t really want to think about it too much - and they called the police. Alex found that he was too high on adrenaline to either eat the cake or drink the hot chocolate that they had given him.

He was sitting at a table in the corner, waiting for the police to arrive, his legs bouncing and heart still hammering in his chest. He could hear everything that was happening, like he suddenly had super hearing. The almost constant tinkling of the bell above the door as the customers came and went. The shrill hissing of the coffee machine. The chatter of the customers. The clink as someone put their mug back on its saucer. The sound of footsteps. How much time had passed since he had been standing outside of school waiting for James and Tom? How long would it take the police to arrive?

“Hi Alex,” a man said, sitting down in the seat opposite him. He looked up and gasped. It was the man from the bonnet of the car. Alex gulped. “Maybe I didn’t make it very clear, but we need to stick together for a little while.”

Before Alex could say anything, he heard the tinkle of the little bell above the door again and knew, without looking but by the way one of the waitresses had moved forwards and nodded in his direction, that the police had arrived. Worse than that, he knew that something bad was about to happen. He was right. As quick as lightning, the man had grabbed his wrists and pulled them into handcuffs behind his back. Alex cried out in shock as he was pulled out of his seat. He was spun around so that he faced the café, his back held against the man’s chest. One of the man’s arms pinned Alex to him… the other was holding the gun again. He fired a couple of warning shots into the wall. Alex flinched. His breathing was rapid and shallow. A few of the customers screamed. Alex’s heart was pounding. He was terrified. The knot of anxiety and dread twisted in his stomach again. Why was this happening?

“Easy. Easy,” one of the police officers - a kind looking woman - said. “Let the kid go.”

“The kid is my hostage. If anyone follows us, I’ll shoot.”

He pulled Alex backwards through the kitchen of the tiny café and out the back into the loading area. A fancy sports car was waiting for them there. The man shoved Alex in and was about to climb in himself when the officer who had spoken inside arrived at the back door.

“…getting into a-”

There was another gunshot. Alex only just registered that this time the man had shot the policewoman! The officer collapsed to the ground and the man crouched beside her, saying something that Alex couldn’t hear. Then he got up and climbed into the car. He strapped both Alex and himself in and then drove off.

“You… you shot the police!”

“They would not be able to keep you safe.”

“That’s their job!”

“Not against these people.”

“Who are you?”

“I am a friend of Ian’s.”

That stunned Alex into silence. Ian didn’t really have many friends and he definitely didn’t have friends who had guns! So this man was lying. He had to be. And that meant that Alex had to try and escape. He took a few deep breaths and focused his mind on his immediate problems.

The first one to deal with was the handcuffs. Luckily, thanks to Ian’s childhood obsession with learning magic tricks (Alex had found his old stuff once and Ian had insisted on demonstrating and getting him to have a go), he had a plan. One of Ian’s favourite tricks had involved escaping from handcuffs and he had taught Alex the secret to picking the lock. He was still wearing his school backpack and there was a random paperclip that he’d put on one of the straps after fidgeting with it in class once. He could use that to pick the lock and get out of the cuffs!

It was quite awkward getting the right angle as the bag as well as the cuffs restricted his movement andhe had to make sure that the man didn’t see what he was doing, but Alex soon managed to grab hold of the strap. The paperclip wasn’t there! Was it on the other side? …No. It must have fallen off at some point during everything that had happened that afternoon! Alex ran his hands over the straps another couple of times to make absolutely sure that the paperclip was gone. It was. Then he remembered that there was another one on one of the zips where the little handle had fallen off. That would be even more awkward to get, but Alex persevered; he would not let this man take him without putting up a fight.

After what felt like an eternity, although the clock on the dashboard told him that it had only been a few minutes, Alex finally had the paperclip in his hands. Unlocking the cuffs would be child’s play compared to what he had just had to do to get it!

In just a few seconds, the cuffs fell away from his wrists and Alex unclipped his seatbelt, grabbed the door handle and threw himself out of the car. Except he didn’t fall. The man had moved impossibly quickly and grabbed the handle of his backpack with one hand.

“Alex!”

But Alex had already worked his arms free of the straps and thudded onto the road, his arms protecting his face and rolling over and over as he slowed down. Thankfully the speed limit on the road they were on was much slower than the one before so he hadn’t leapt out of a car going sixty miles per hour, unlike the men who had taken him from school. He had barely come to a stop when he heard the screech of tires as the car stopped. Then there was the peculiar whirring, whining sound of the gears in the engine as the car reversed back down the road towards him at speed. Alex looked up and saw trees lining the road. He ran. Hopefully he would be able to lose himself amongst them, especially in the dark of twilight that had fallen as night had began to properly draw in.

He was through the tree line before the car had reached him again but Alex didn’t stop to look behind him. He ran, stumbling over tree roots and other debris in the dark. His school shoes weren’t designed for running through woods, and he slipped twice on the muddy ground, only just managing to keep himself upright. He risked a glance around. The sight that met his eyes was not comforting. The man had followed him through the trees and was catching up to him. He didn’t even look like he was running! And if Alex had seen him, he had almost certainly seen Alex. He was already running as fast as he could. His heart was pounding. He was sweating. His school uniform, complete with blazer, shirt and tie, was also not designed for running in, but that was the least of his worries. Alex ignored his discomfort and focused on one thing; he had to get away.

Could he climb a tree to escape? The man would know where he was but he wouldn’t be able to make him climb back down. Then he remembered the gun. The man could just shoot him and if he fell from too high a height… okay, climbing a tree was not an option.

Before he could make a decision, he was tackled to the muddy ground.

“Get off me!” he shouted, trying to get the man off of his back.

“I’m trying to keep you safe, Alex,” the man growled, wrenching Alex’s hands behind his back. The cold metal of handcuffs closed around his wrists again and his stomach dropped like a stone. He had lost count of the number of times he had felt that sensation that afternoon.

“It doesn’t feel like it! I don’t feel safe.”

“Whether you feel safe or not, you are much safer with me than you are without me.”

Throughout the brief confrontation, and even with his hands cuffed behind his back, Alex had been struggling, trying to get away, but it was no good. The muddy ground was too slippery for his school shoes to get enough purchase to get back to his feet. He was stuck. The man’s grip on his arm was too strong to break free from but that didn’t stop Alex from dragging his feet and struggling as much as he could once he had been pulled upright. And he realised with a touch of panic that he had managed to lose the paperclip… there would be no getting out of the cuffs this time unless he found something else that he could use to pick the lock. He doubted that there would be anything in the car that he could use; this man seemed to know what he was doing in taking him. Alex had caught him by surprise once. He doubted that he would get a second opportunity.

“If you don’t stop struggling, I will just carry you back to the car.”

But Alex did not stop struggling - he didn’t want to go with this man! - but he was good to his word and after a couple more seconds hoisted Alex up over his shoulder as easily as though he were as light as a feather. He was able to walk as quickly as if he weren’t carrying Alex and he soon saw how the man had managed to catch up to him so quickly.

“Just let me go!” Alex was wriggling and struggling as much as he could, not that the man seemed to notice. With his hands cuffed behind his back, there wasn’t much else that he could do to try and break free. The way he was being held meant that he couldn’t even kick the man! The man did not reply.

They soon reached the car again and this time Alex was strapped into the back seat in such a way that he couldn’t move his hands. As the man closed the door, Alex saw him flick the switch to turn on the child lock. Even if Alex did manage to get free of the cuffs again, he would not be able to get out of the car without climbing through to the front. There would be no escape this time. His stomach felt like it was tying itself in knots and his mind was racing to the worst case scenarios. What was going to happen to him?

After driving for a while longer (from where Alex was sitting, he couldn’t see the clock on the dashboard anymore, so he wasn’t sure exactly how long it had been, although the sun had set completely and they were driving in the dark, so Alex guessed that it must be at least 5pm), the man pulled into a residential estate. He turned onto a side road and Alex briefly saw the road name in the beam of the headlights; Kingfisher Avenue. Alex didn’t recognise the name. He had absolutely no idea where they were. The man clicked a button on a little remote. The feeling of dread increased as Alex realised what the remote was; it must be for a garage. The man would be able to pull up inside and close the door before he let Alex out of the car… there wouldn’t be the slightest opportunity to escape.

The man turned the car onto a drive and Alex saw that he had been right. The garage door was open, like a mouth ready to swallow them. He heard the whine of the motor as the garage door closed behind them, sealing them in.

“Now,” the man said, turning around in his seat, “I can either uncuff you when we get inside the house or, if you are going to cause problems, I can leave your hands in the cuffs.”

“I’ll behave,” Alex lied.

The man just smiled and nodded before getting out of the car, helping Alex out and leading him into the house. Alex got a horrible feeling that the man knew that he was lying. And the fact that the man didn’t seem bothered by the prospect of him trying to escape again was not a cheering one. If the man didn’t care, he must be sure that the house was secure. Not that it would stop Alex from looking and trying, but he knew that this would be an incredibly hard battle to win, although it would be fractionally easier if his hands were free.

Alex watched as the man locked the door to the house before unlocking his handcuffs. It was one of those doors which needed an actual key to unlock it, rather than being able to turn a knob, and the man took it and put it in his pocket. Unless Alex found a way to pick the lock or steal the key from under the man’s nose, the door was not going to be an option. A quick glance around the house didn’t seem very promising either. There weren’t any obvious ways to get out now that the door was locked and there was something off about the house. It felt just slightly too small and the view out of the windows (albeit patchy in the pools of light given off by the streetlamps) didn’t match up with the bits of the street that Alex had seen outside. After a few moments, Alex had the words to describe it. It was like a house had been built inside of a house. So if none of the windows opened onto the outside world and the door they had just come through was the only door he could leave through, the situation was worse than he could possibly have imagined.

“You could at least tell me your name,” Alex muttered sourly.

“It’s Yassen,” the man said with a smile.

“You said you were Ian’s friend but he’s never mentioned you.”

“That is… not surprising. His employers would not be happy if they found out.”

“Why would the bank care? Other than, you know, Ian being friends with a mad man who shoots police officers.”

“The police are not equipped to deal with the people who are looking for you. I am.”

“Oh yeah? Because you’re so much more powerful than literally hundreds of police officers?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to Ian.”

“I’m afraid you can’t at the moment. But he will be here later.”

“Where’s Jack?”

“You are the one who was in danger. I’m sure Ian will bring her later.”

Hmm. This man - Yassen, if he had given him his real name - did know that Jack was a woman, then. He must have been more thorough in his research.

“She’ll be worried that I haven’t come home from school. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“By now the police will have identified that it was me who took you - there were three security cameras in and around the café. That will complicate matters for them. It is for Ian to explain to you what is going on.”

“‘Complicates matters’ how? Who are you?”

“Again, that is for Ian to explain.”

“So while we wait for him to show up you expect me just to sit quietly and ask no questions and behave like I haven’t literally been kidnapped?”

“Technically I stopped you from being kidnapped.”

“From where I’m standing, I was kidnapped twice.”

Yassen tilted his head slightly as though to say ‘fair point’. “I don’t expect you to sit here quietly, Alex. You are free to do anything you like in the house. What I cannot allow is for you to leave or contact anyone.”

“So not ‘anything’, then,” Alex countered, more bravely than he felt. “And for the record, I don’t trust you.”

“Noted.”

*Earlier that afternoon*

Hunched behind the steering wheel of his car, Ian Rider was sweating, although not from the heat. He was in Tangier, investigating a drug smuggling ring; there were reports that they had got their hands on something more dangerous than cocaine or heroin… something that would annihilate a city’s population if it was introduced into the water supply. Part of his brief was to identify their suppliers and their intended recipients, but he didn’t care about that anymore; the CIA also had an agent investigating and Ian had a new priority.

He was on his way to the airport to leave the city. He’d received an anonymous tip that the Triad was going to kidnap Alex, as revenge for his involvement in stopping their recent attempt to blackmail the British government. Ian shuddered to think what their plans for Alex would be once they had him. So he was leaving. The trouble was that once he was in the air, it would take him three hours to fly back to London, but by then, it would be too late. If he didn’t do something now, Alex would be gone.

Even as he raced to the airport, Ian rang MI6.

“What do you mean you ‘can’t spare any agents right now’?” he demanded angrily.

“We do not know where this… suggestion that Alex might be targeted has come from. It could be a distraction to divert resources to enable something else to happen. We will alert the police but unless more substantial evidence is provided, I cannot authorise anything further. I also cannot authorise you to leave Tangier.” Blunt was certainly living up to his name today. When he and John had first met the man, they had joked about how well his name suited him. Today, Ian wished he was anything but.

“Well I’m already on my way to the airport and you are not stopping me,” Ian snapped. “And this is the Triad, Mr Blunt. They’ll take out the police easily and they won’t care about the number of casualties.”

“Unless you can provide more evidence, Rider, I cannot justify moving resources.”

“What about Alex?”

“As I said, we will alert the police. And we will monitor the situation.”

Ian heard the click as Blunt ended the call. He swore. Of course Blunt wouldn’t take a threat on Alex seriously. Making a snap decision, Ian pulled out the secure phone that MI6 didn’t know about and made another call.

“You’re in London at the moment, aren’t you?” he said as soon as the call was answered.

“I am.”

“I need you to pick Alex up from school. I got an anonymous tip that the Triad is going to make a move on him and Blunt won’t do anything.” Ian reached the air field and was climbing into his waiting helicopter. “I’m flying home but it’ll be three hours before I get there and by then it’ll be too late.”

“I’m leaving now. I’ll take him to safe house three.”

“Thank you, Yas.”

Ian felt the tension in his stomach ease ever so slightly knowing that Yassen was on his way. It felt like hours passed as he sat behind the controls waiting, the seconds ticking by impossibly slowly, until he was given permission to take off. Ian ran through his final pre-flight checks, making sure that everything was in order, and then manipulated the controls and rose into the air.

He tried to focus on the flight, on only the instruments that were important to keep him safely in the air. He tried not to keep looking at the clock. It didn’t work. It felt like time was distorting and his journey was taking so much longer than it should have done. It was like time was taunting him. What felt like half an hour was apparently only five minutes, according to the clock. Why was it taking so long?

He was less than half way through his agonisingly long journey, flying over Spain, when he received a message from Yassen letting him know that he had Alex at the safe house. He breathed out a sigh of relief. Alex was safe.

The rest of the journey passed relatively quickly after that. Now that he knew that Alex was safe, time couldn’t taunt him with how slowly it was passing. His imagination couldn’t run wild with what the Triad could possibly be doing to Alex, either, and Ian was able to breathe without the constricting band of anxiety crushing his chest. Soon enough, the familiar skyline of London appeared ahead of him. His radio crackled back into life and he received his instructions and flight path for landing in Liverpool Street.

Great, Ian thought. The conversation with Air Traffic Control had reminded him that a conversation with Blunt was in his imminent future, and that was exactly what he didn’t want, especially after contravening his direct orders. But he confirmed the directions back to Air Traffic Control and soon touched down on the helipad on the roof of the MI6 offices. John Crawley, the ‘Personnel Manager’ was waiting for him. If he hadn’t already known from Yassen that Alex was safe, this would have confirmed to him that the Triad had, indeed, made a move on Alex.

“Mr Blunt and Mrs Jones need to speak to you,” Crawley said, his face impassive.

“What’s wrong? Is Alex okay?” He had to play his part, at least until he had decided what to do. Or Yassen decided for him.

Crawley didn’t answer but led him to the lift.

“John? What’s happened to Alex? Is it the Triad?”

“I don’t know anything, Ian. I’m sorry. All I know is that they wanted to see you as soon as you arrived.”

The lift doors opened. They didn’t have far to travel down, but they travelled in silence.

“I hope Alex is okay,” Crawley said as Ian walked out of the lift.

Ian nodded before steeling himself to walk into Alan Blunt’s office. Although he expected that this meeting would be to tell him that Alex had been kidnapped, there was always the chance that Blunt would throw a curveball and he needed to be prepared for that. He knocked on the door and entered without waiting for permission.

“What’s happened to Alex?” he asked before he’d even closed the door.

“Please, sit down Ian,” Mrs Jones said.

Neither she nor her boss looked entirely comfortable. Ian thought he could see the tiniest hint of something, remorse maybe, on Blunt’s face. Perhaps the man did have a heart then, buried somewhere deep beneath the surface.

“I’m afraid Alex was taken,” Blunt said as soon as Ian had sat down. “We were monitoring the CCTV outside the school. A group of ten men ambushed him and dragged him into a car. We have identified two of them as being known members of the Triad and are working on identifying the others.”

Ian let out a slow breath.

“Unfortunately,” Mrs Jones said, picking up the narrative, “someone else was involved too.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were following the cars on CCTV and putting together a team to intercept them and pick Alex up. However, someone else beat us to it. He took out all of the Triad members in the cars and then drove off with Alex.”

“Who took him?”

“Yassen Gregorovich.” Ian swore softly under his breath.

“Has he made any demands?”

“There’s been no communication from him yet. After Gregorovich drove away with Alex, they disappeared for a few minutes between cameras but we were then alerted by an emergency call to the police that Alex had shown up in a nearby café. He’d managed to escape but Gregorovich arrived a few minutes after Alex and took him as his hostage. We are still trying to find where he took him.”

Ian swore again. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, holding his head in his hands. At least he knew that Alex was okay. That Yassen wasn’t his enemy and that he would keep Alex safe. But Blunt and Jones did not, so Ian kept up the act for their benefit. It would not be good if they found out about his and Yassen’s friendshipassociation.

Ian stood up abruptly and began pacing the room.

“Rider-” Blunt began.

“If you’re planning on telling me to ‘calm down’, just don’t,” he snapped. It was Blunt’s fault that this was all happening anyway; if he’d listened in the first place and arranged for some agents to pick Alex up, Ian wouldn’t have had to get Yassen involved.

Just then, there was a knock on the door and Crawley stepped in.

“We’ve had a message from Gregorovich.” He hurried over to the desk, holding a laptop.

Send Ian Rider alone, unarmed and without any method of communication to the car that is waiting outside. Wire £1 million. The end of the message showed the bank details for the account Yassen wanted the money paid into.

Ian immediately put his MI6 issued phone and gun on the desk and removed his watch - the three things currently on his person that MI6 knew about and which went against Yassen’s demands. By leaving them here, they would be unable to follow him, which was exactly what he wanted.

“Rider-” Blunt began again.

“-If you are about to say anything that goes against his demands and will therefore put Alex in even more danger than he is currently in, don’t bother.” He took a deep breath. “I am going. I am going to go alone and unarmed. You will arrange the wire transfer.”

“We can’t let you go into this without backup, Rider.”

“And if you send me in with backup, Gregorovich will kill Alex.”

“And what will he do to you when you arrive wherever he’s sending you, without backup?”

“If he wanted me dead, he could have arranged that easily enough. He sent a car here. He could just have easily come himself and shot me when I left the building. He could also have come here and taken me by force. You know as well as I do that there’s nothing he can do to me there that he couldn’t have done anywhere else. Now arrange the transfer.”

Five minutes later, Ian climbed into the back of the car that was waiting for him, idling on the curb outside of the bank’s entrance. There was a blindfold on the back seat beside him. The car also had a darkened screen between the front and back seats, so Ian couldn’t see the driver although, in the darkness of the evening, Ian wouldn’t have been able to identify them anyway.

“Put it on,” the driver ordered, the instruction coming through a speaker in the upholstery on the roof of the car.

Ian quickly complied and the driver set off. He sat quietly in the back, knowing that it was quite a drive from Liverpool Street to the safe house. After they had been driving for some time, he felt the car slowing down and the jostle as they pulled onto the drive. They were here.

“Get out and knock on the door,” the driver instructed.

When Ian took the blindfold off, he saw that they were in the garage. Yassen’s car was already there. He went over to the door and knocked. Yassen answered and let him in.

“What happened to you?” Ian whispered as he took in the mud caked onto Yassen’s clothes. He wanted to double check that MI6 had held up their end of the bargain without Alex overhearing, but Yassen’s appearance had momentarily distracted him from his original opening question.

“Your nephew,” Yassen replied with a smile. “He is quite the escape artist.”

Ian smiled. Alex was certainly proficient in the art of causing trouble and had managed to escape from Yassen! That was quite an accomplishment for a twelve year old without any proper training. “Have they sent the money?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Keep it for Alex,” Yassen said with a smile. “I don’t need it and, anyway, he’s the only reason I have it.”

Ian smiled back. “See. You do have a heart!”

“Tell anyone and you’re dead,” Yassen joked back.

“As if I would!” Ian retorted, mock offended. “Alex?” he called, and a very dishevelled looking Alex came out of the living room. His blazer and trousers were muddy and ripped, and his school shoes were scuffed too. “Are you okay?” he asked, pulling him into a hug.

“Yeah I’m okay,” Alex said, before whispering into his ear. “Is that man really your friend?”

“Yes, he is.”

Alex seemed puzzled by this. He looked from Ian to Yassen and back again. “Umm. You do know he has a gun, right.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“And he shot a policewoman.”

“You shot a policewoman?” Ian asked incredulously.

Yassen just shrugged. “She would have followed us. And it went straight through the muscle. No bones or arteries.”

Ian sighed. He supposed it would have been too much to hope for no one innocent to get hurt, but a through and through bullet wound was a much milder injury than it could have been. He focused his attention back on Alex. “You’re filthy. What happened to your uniform?”

“He tackled me in the woods,” Alex said, glaring pointedly at Yassen.

“You dove out of the car.”

“You handcuffed me and dragged me out of the café.”

“You ran away from the car when I told you to stay put.”

“You kidnapped me.”

“I stopped you from being kidnapped.”

Ian had listened to their back and forth in silence but now he spoke. “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened?” he suggested, leading Alex over to the sofa and sitting down.

After Alex had finished telling his story, during which neither Ian nor Yassen had interrupted (although Ian had been delighted when he found out precisely how Alex had managed to escape from Yassen - clearly those ‘childhood magic tricks’ had been worthwhile lessons to pass onto his nephew, as had subtly ensuring that Alex had an accessible paperclip on him at all times), he looked at Ian. “Can I have a hot chocolate?” he asked with a cheeky grin. “And Yassen said you’d explain.”

“Yes you can have a hot chocolate,” Ian replied with a smile. “And explain what?”

“Why those people kidnapped me. Why Yassen has a gun. Why you’re friends with him.”

“Ah,” Ian said, knowing that this had to have been coming but dreading it all the same. “They all have very big and complicated answers, Al… I’ll explain as much as I can, but first I’ll make your hot chocolate.” He looked at Yassen who had taken a seat on another sofa. “You want one?”

“I’ll have a coffee, thanks.”

Alex followed him into the kitchen and watched curiously as he flicked the kettle on and then got a saucepan out of a cupboard and the milk out of the fridge.

“Have you been here before?”

“Yes.”

Alex nodded as though he had expected the answer. Then he examined Ian for a moment, as if he were deciding whether or not to ask another question. “Are you a spy?” he blurted out.

Ian nearly dropped the bottle of milk that he was pouring into a saucepan.

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, I got kidnapped today. Twice. And you’re here instead of the police when I’m supposedto be a hostage. You’re friends with my hostage taker and he has a gun. And the secrets. And you’re away a lot. And you get hurt a lot. This house… also you practically dropped the milk when I asked.”

Ian thought for a moment. Alex was only twelve - that was far too young to know what he did for a living. But, at the same time, he’d already worked it out. And it wasn’t like keeping him in the dark had kept him safe today… maybe it was time to tell him… enough to be able to keep him safe, or safer, anyway. If he knew, at least he wouldn’t get taken by surprise like he had been today. And he would know what types of people he was up against if anyone tried anything. He sighed.

“Okay, Alex. When I’ve made our drinks, I’ll tell you.”

“So you are a spy?” Alex asked again, this time with a triumphant tone to his voice. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Go and sit with Yassen.”

Alex begrudgingly walked back into the living room. Ian stood at the hob, stirring the milk until it was heated through and then adding the chocolate to melt.

He took it off of the heat and made Yassen’s coffee while the hot chocolate thickened up a bit. Then he poured it between two mugs, added some squirty cream that he found in the fridge, some mini marshmallows and grated a little more chocolate on top. Was he making them overly decadent to give himself a few more precious seconds to work out what he was going to tell Alex, and how? Yes… but it was going to be an extremely fine balance between telling him enough of the truth to answer all of his questions and not traumatise him… without just an ‘I’ll tell you when you’re older’ answer for everything.

“Oh yeah that’s an ‘I’m a spy and now I have to tell you about it’ level hot chocolate,” Alex said with a grin as he walked back into the lounge. Sometimes he reminded Ian of John so much that it hurt.

He set the tray down. A glance at Yassen told him that the assassin was very much looking forward to seeing him squirm under Alex’s questioning. That was something else that John had passed on.

“Okay,” he said once he had handed out the drinks and sat down on the sofa. “To answer your question in short; yes, I am a spy.”

“That’s much cooler than being a banker.”

“Being a spy isn’t like Bond, Alex,” Ian said with a soft smile.

“So what is it like?”

Ian thought for a moment. “Well, there’s a lot of paperwork that they never show Bond doing.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“Yes it is. In films like Bond, the spies jump from one mission to the next. It’s all excitement and adventure and action. But in real life, a lot more happens behind a desk. Yes there are missions, but they aren’t all explosions and high speed chases.”

Alex looked at him quizzically for a moment. Ian could tell that he wasn’t satisfied with his answer and was deciding whether to press the point or move on.

“So what was today about?”

“The people who took you from school are part of an organisation called the Triad. I stopped them from doing something bad that they wanted to do a little while ago, so they decided to kidnap you.”

“To get back at you?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Alex sipped his hot chocolate. “And you asked Yassen to stop them?”

“I asked Yassen to pick you up from school and look after you.”

“Why him? Do you work together?”

“I trust him. I trusted that he would protect you. And my boss said he wouldn’t do anything without more evidence and I wasn’t in the country, so Yassen was the only other person who was close enough to help.”

“So you don’t work together?” Alex asked suspiciously.

“Not officially, no.”

“What does that mean? ‘Not officially’.”

“It means that our bosses don’t know that we sometimes work together when we happen to be in the same place.”

“Or that you’re friends?”

“That’s right.”

“So they wouldn’t like it if they found out?”

“Not really, no.”

Alex seemed to ponder this as he drank some more of his hot chocolate. Ian really hoped that Alex wouldn’t continue with this line of questioning much longer. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could continue to sidestep what Yassen did for a living. If twelve was too young to find out that he was a spy, it was definitely too young to find out that he was friends with an assassin, and that he trusted him with his life.

“Is that why you said that I was your hostage when you took me from the café?” Alex asked, turning to face Yassen.

“Yes.”

“So people wouldn’t think that Ian asked you to get me?”

“Yes.”

“How did you find me in the café? I mean, you weren’t following me when I left.”

“I put a tracker on you,” Yassen said nonchalantly.

Alex’s mouth gaped open.

“It was a precautionary measure. Other members of the Triad could have taken you while I was dealing with the ones who took you from school,” Yassen explained. “I needed to know where you were.”

“Huh. So getting out of the car and running through the woods was pointless too?”

“Yes. Although I… did not expect you to get out of the handcuffs and jump from a moving vehicle.”

“Yeah, well from where I was sitting, it was a better option than going with you.”

“Evidently.”

Alex turned to face Ian again. “How long have you been a spy, Ian?”

“About seventeen years.”

Ian could sense the new direction that the conversation was going and he didn’t like it. A few seconds ago, he would have been delighted to think they were moving away from Yassen, but he realised with sickening horror that they were barrelling towards John and Helen… and that was an even worse conversation… the truth about their deaths… Scorpia… and that circled back to Yassen anyway! A glance at Yassen told him that the assassin was just as uncomfortable with the almost certain line of questioning that was to come.

“So… when my mum and dad died, you were a spy?”

“Yes.”

“Did they know?”

“Yes, they knew that I was a spy.”

“Why don’t you talk about them?”

Ian sighed and took a deep breath. “Because it makes me sad, Alex. Your mum and dad were the closest people I had in my life. They were my best friends. Even now, I look at something and think your dad would like it. Or I see something and I know it would have made your mum laugh. Or I say a stupid joke but your dad isn’t around to hear it and laugh with me. I see plays advertised at the theatre and I think we should buy tickets but then I remember that they aren’t here to go with me anymore. And it makes me angry. Because they had so much to look forward to. They had you and their whole lives to be with you as a family and it got taken away.”

Alex looked at him quizzically again but Ian couldn’t work out what he was thinking this time.

“Does Jack know?”

The sudden jump away from John and Helen took Ian by surprise. Maybe Alex had sensed his unease. Maybe he understood that once that conversation started, there would be no coming back from it. Maybe he wondered whether he was ready to hear it. Whatever the reason, Ian was glad that they weren’t going to have that conversation today.

“That I’m a spy?”

Alex nodded.

“No. She doesn’t.”

Alex nodded as though he had expected the answer.

“So… what happens now?”

“Well, we need to go home soon. But first we need to talk about what’s going to happen next. I don’t know if my bosses will want to talk to you, Alex, to get your version of events. If they do, I want you to tell them that Yassen brought you straight here from the café.”

“Tell them I kept you handcuffed and blindfolded in a room and that you didn’t see anything,” Yassen added.

Alex nodded as he took in all of this information. “And, I guess don’t tell them that you told me that Ian sent you?”

“Best not,” Ian agreed. “They would probably think that he was lying to you to get you to go with him, but it’ll be best not to tell them anyway.”

“Okay. So he shot the people who took me from school. Then I ran away and he grabbed me from the café, and brought me here.”

“You’ve got it.”

“I’ve got some more questions.”

“I’m sure you do, but I’m afraid they’re going to have to wait, Alex,” Ian said, ruffling Alex’s mud splattered hair. “We have to get home and I have to let my boss know that we’re both okay.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“Not much,” Ian admitted. “That I arrived and Yassen confirmed he got everything he asked for. Then he got you out of one of the rooms, and drove us home.”

Alex examined him. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“Not exactly like this, no. But I have lied about Yassen before. Now finish up your hot chocolate and we’ll get you cleaned up a bit.”

Alex did as he was told and Ian wiped away his hot chocolate moustache before they got ready to leave. Ian was grateful that he’d had the foresight to keep a spare school uniform in the safe house. There would have been no way that it could go unnoticed that Alex was covered in mud when he hadn’t been at the café. Finally, Ian took a paperclip from the desk and put it back onto the zip of Alex’s backpack; MI6’s analysts would certainly be eagle-eyed enough to pick up such a tiny change in detail if they happened (or were instructed) to look.

“Here, put these on,” Yassen said when they stepped into the garage, holding out two blindfolds.

“Whyare we being blindfolded and handcuffed again?” Alex asked. “We already know where we are.”

“My bosses will be on the lookout for us,” Ian explained. “If they find the car on CCTV and see that we aren’t blindfolded, they’ll know something’s up.”

“Oh. Makes sense.”

Newly handcuffed and blindfolded again, Yassen helped them both into the car. None of them said much on the journey. Ian knew that he and Yassen would need to talk soon, but it could wait until Alex wasn’t around. His nephew might now know that he’s a spy but he definitely didn’t need to know much more than that. Not for a while at least.

“I’ll drop you off on the other side of the river,” Yassen said after they had been driving quietly for a while. Ian would have guessed that they were nearly home and what Yassen had just said confirmed it.

“Thanks, Yas.”

The car came to a stop and Yassen opened the door to let them out. He pressed the key for their handcuffs into Ian’s hand and drove off again before he had time to uncuff himself. He quickly unlocked Alex’s too and they began the short walk home.

When they arrived at the house, Ian saw that Yassen had been right not to drop them off at the door. There were two agents waiting outside, and he had spotted several others in unmarked vehicles just on their short walk. Presumably others had been stationed along the other access roads to the house; if Yassen had driven up to the house, they would have closed in and attempted to capture him. MI6 would have gotten involved in a high speed pursuit across London and Yassen would have gotten away. That was the more likely outcome of the two, anyway.

One of the agents opened the front door to let them in and Jack almost ran to greet them. She had been going frantic with worry, and pulled Alex into her arms before he’d got both feet inside the house. In the busyness of the moment while both Alex and Jack were distracted, one of the agents told Ian that they’d be remaining on guard and would let Blunt know that they had arrived home, but that he was to ring the office as soon as he could.

He waited until Alex was in bed and Jack had gone to have a bath with a glass of wine to calm down before he picked up the phone.

“We’re home,” Ian said once the phone was answered.

Ian heard Crawley breathe a sigh of relief at the other end of the line. Although the agents on guard had already let Blunt know that he and Alex were home, Ian knew that Crawley wouldn’t have been able to relax until he heard from him himself. “What happened?”

“Not much. He checked me for bugs and confirmed that he’d received the money. Then he brought Alex and let me check that he was okay, blindfolded and cuffed me and shoved us back into the car. When he let us out, he just put the key for the cuffs in my hand and drove off. By the time I’d unlocked mine and taken my blindfold off, he was gone, so I unlocked Alex’s cuffs and took off his blindfold and then we walked home. He dropped us off on the other side of the river. Presumably he guessed that there would be agents waiting at the house.”

“How’s Alex?”

“Shaken and he’s got a few bruises. But he’s okay.”

“We’ll need a statement from him.”

“Not tonight, John. He’s already in bed and he’s been through enough for today.”

“Bring him to the police station on Kings Road tomorrow at 10am. We’ll debrief him there.”

The next morning was sunny with barely a breeze disturbing the frosty tree branches. A glance out of the window told Ian that there were still agents guarding the house. That eased the knot of anxiety in his stomach a little; he might know that the ‘threat’ from Yassen was actually non-existent, but the threat from the Triad was still very real and there was every possibility that they would try to get to Alex again.

Crawley had already informed the school what had happened yesterday and that Alex wouldn’t be in today, so Ian let him sleep in for a while - they didn’t have to be at the police station until 10:00, and it would only take ten minutes to get there. He, on the other hand, had been up at the crack of dawn and had already been debriefed by Blunt and Jones.

Alex made his way downstairs just before 8:30. He picked at his breakfast but Ian knew he hadn’t really eaten anything. He hadn’t been able to eat much either. Neither had Jack. They sat quietly at the dining room table, the ticking of the clock on the wall the only thing breaking the silence before Alex headed upstairs to get ready. By 9:30, Alex had showered and dressed and they were ready to leave. At 9:45, Ava, the agent who had been stationed inside the house, walked into the dining room.

“It’s time to go. There’s a car waiting outside.”

Ian grabbed his and Alex’s winter coats off of the rack in the hall - both of them had been designed by Smithers and there was a bulletproof layer hidden inside each of them, not that Alex knew about it - and they both also put on hats, gloves and scarves before stepping out into the frosty January air. Alex grumbled that they were wrapping up so well when they were going by car, but he did as he was told anyway. Ian was glad of that - their woolly hats had also been a present from Smithers; they too were bulletproof, and he wanted Alex to have as much protection as possible. Only his and Alex’s legs were completely exposed, but Ian still hurried Alex to the safety of the armoured car as quickly as he could. Jack was reluctantly staying home and waved them off from the doorway.

They climbed into the car, and Ian recognised their driver. Wayne Fairclough was one of MI6’s top evasive drivers. Ian would have pitied anyone who tried to make a move on them while they were driving today if it hadn’t meant that they were targeting Alex. And at least MI6 were now taking the threat seriously.

They pulled up outside of the police station and Ian counted five agents posing as innocuous citizens as he got out of the car. Even with the agents and the bulletproof clothing, Ian felt horribly exposed as he walked behind Alex, protecting his nephew’s back, as they walked inside.

“Good morning. You must be Ian and Alex?” Crawley asked when they entered the police station.

“Yes,” Ian said and Alex nodded.

“If you’d both like to follow me.” Crawley led them through to an office on the ground floor. “Can I get either of you a drink? Tea? Coffee? A glass of water?”

“Could I have a coffee please?” Ian asked as he sat down on the sofa beside Alex. “Milk, no sugar,” he added, as though Crawley didn’t know how he liked his coffee.

“Of course. Would you like anything, Alex?”

“No thank you,” Alex said quietly.

“Okay. Let me know if I can get you anything at any point.”

Crawley left to get Ian’s coffee, leaving the two of them alone for a couple of minutes. Despite not being in an interrogation room, Alex was obviously uncomfortable. Perhaps the prospect of lying about what had happened the day before was getting to him. Or maybe he was just intimidated by being in the police station.

“It’s okay, Alex,” Ian murmured soothingly. “They just want to find out what happened yesterday.” He had deliberately interpreted Alex’s nerves as the latter of the two options, knowing that there were cameras in the offices; he wouldn’t put it past Blunt to be watching them even now, before the ‘interview’ began.

Crawley soon returned with his coffee and a cup of tea for himself.

“Okay, are you ready to start?” he asked Alex.

Alex nodded.

“I’m going to turn on the camera, just so we’ve got a record of our conversation.”

Alex nodded again.

“Before we start, I want to reassure you that you aren’t in any trouble, Alex. We just need to get a statement from you for our reports. So, can you tell me what happened yesterday, Alex?”

“I was leaving school,” Alex began nervously. “I was waiting outside for my friends to join me because we walk home together and a group of men came up and surrounded me. They said I had to go with them… that Ian had sent them. I didn’t believe them and I didn’t want to go with them but they dragged me into a car.”

“Do you remember how many men there were?”

“Umm… there were three in the car with me - the driver and a passenger in the front and someone in the back with me.”

Alex closed his eyes and scrunched his face up as though he were trying to remember. Ian saw his fingers twitching too as he mentally counted the men who had surrounded him. Alex really was very good at this; he’d told Ian yesterday that there were ten men, and he knew from his conversation with Blunt and Jones that he had counted correctly. Ian wondered whether Alex’s nerves were, at least in part, an act too.

“Maybe there were eight or nine in total,” he said after a few moments.

Crawley nodded. “And what happened when you were in the car?”

“They were driving me down the road when something happened. There were three cars; one in front, I was in the middle one and another one behind. The car in front of us crashed suddenly. And then… I don’t really know what happened. Our car sped up and the man in the back and the front passenger both jumped out. They tried to get me to jump out too but we were going so fast… The driver was unconscious or something and we were on the wrong side of the road so I grabbed the steering wheel and tried to avoid all of the cars driving towards us. I couldn’t get his foot off of the accelerator so we just kept going.” Alex’s voice had become more panicked as he recounted the events of the day before, and Ian leaned across and held his hand. Alex glanced at him and Ian smiled supportively.

Crawley poured Alex a glass of water from the jug on the table behind him and nodded again, encouraging Alex to continue. He took a sip of the water before he did.

“A man jumped off of his motorbike and landed on the bonnet of the car. He started shooting at the people who took me from school… like, he had a gun and just started shooting it! And he kept telling me to open the door so that he could help me.”

“Did you open the door?”

“Eventually?”

“Why did you open the door for him?”

“I don’t know. He was shooting at the people who took me from school. I guess I just figured that meant that he was on my side.”

“And what happened after that?”

“Umm,” Alex said, pausing to think. “It all happened very quickly… oh he drove through the tunnel and … and people with machine guns fired at the car. Then we stopped on the other side. He told me to wait in the car but I didn’t want to and I ran until I saw a café. They called the police but then

A Day to Remember (Twice!)

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It was an unusually sunny day for the beginning of March. Ian almost found himself relaxing as he drove through the English countryside towards London and home, despite the fact that he still had to write his report before his mission was complete. He might not have discovered the exact virus that Herod Sayle intended to unleash with his Stormbreaker computers, but that didn’t matter now. Ian had found the computer code and added a kill switch; when the system was activated to release the virus, it would shut down, locking the virus safely away until the computers were recalled and it could be disposed of by MI6. He’d also been able to add his laptop as a remote source writer. Even if his code was discovered and removed, he’d be able to add it back in. And, provided the traffic when he arrived in London was no worse than usual, he would be home in time to have dinner with Alex and Jack and still write his report before the end of the day.

As he pulled onto the drive and grabbed his bags out of the boot, Ian took a deep breath and smiled. The clean air of Cornwall, with the ever present smell of sea salt in the air, had been nice, but the smell of the pine tree hedge, which really needed a trim before the birds started their breeding season (he didn’t remember it being so overgrown when he’d left for Sayle Enterprises), intermingled with the cherry blossom and the flowers that were just beginning to bloom was home. And, like the icing on a cake, he was home in time for dinner, just as he had hoped he would be. Often, he got home so late at night that he ended up skulking into the house silently so that he didn’t disturb Alex and Jack as they slept. He might even suggest they got a takeaway for dinner if Jack hadn’t started cooking yet. He unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway and saw Jack just leaving the kitchen, holding two steaming mugs in her hands.

“Hi Jack,” he greeted jovially.

Smash!The two mugs dropped to the floor, spilling tea everywhere. Jack’s jaw almost seemed to join them, her mouth open wide, as though she were in shock. All of the colour drained from her face in the time it took Ian to blink just once.

“Everything alright?” Ian asked, dropping his bags in the doorway and rushing forwards to help her, pieces of the ceramic crushing beneath his boots. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

Jack just stared at him, eyes wide and barely breathing.

“Jack?” Alex called from upstairs. “You good?”

She didn’t reply but continued to stare at him in what, if Ian didn’t know better, he would have called disbelief. Her strange reaction to his arrival stopped him from calling back up to Alex to say that he’d sort it. He couldn’t understand it - he often showed up unannounced after going on a mission, so why was she so surprised to see him?

“Jack, what’s wrong?” he asked at the same time as Alex called again. This time, Ian heard his nephew walking down the hallway from his bedroom to the stairs. Well, he could help get Jack to a chair and then they could work out what was wrong.

Alex came bounding down the stairs but came to an abrupt halt when he skidded around the corner and saw them.

“What..?” he breathed. Like Jack, Alex seemed shocked to see him.

“Alex?” Ian asked, looking back at his nephew and suddenly unsure what he had walked into. Alex, almost unconsciously it seemed, had prepared himself for a karate strike. His knees were slightly bent, lowering his centre of gravity, his arms were raised and tensed and there was a dangerous look in his eyes. And now that Ian looked at him properly, he saw that something was seriously wrong. He had been so concerned about Jack and whether she was going to faint on him that he hadn’t looked at his nephew properly when he first came down the stairs, but now he did. This was not the same boy that he had left three weeks ago. Somehow, he was older. Significantly older. And his eyes… they were so much darker than Ian had ever seen them.

“Alex?” he said again, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Before Ian knew what was happening, Alex sprang into action. He crossed the space between them incredibly quickly, jumping over the shards of broken mugs like they weren’t there, and striking out with his arms and legs in such a flurry that it was all Ian could do to back away towards the lounge and block the attack.

“Get out of here, Jack!” Alex called behind him, not losing his focus on Ian or letting up with his kicks and punches.

“Alex? What-” but before he could ask what was going on Alex let out a yell of rage.

“-Who are you working for?”

“What?” Ian was beyond confused at this point. All he could try to do was calm Alex down and then work out what was going on. He was still blocking and dodging all of Alex’s attacks, but his nephew was a strong and experienced fighter. And somehow, he seemed much stronger than he had been when they had sparred almost a month ago, almost like he had done much more intensive fight training… and had used it… outside of training fights. He wasn’t allowing any opportunities for Ian to strike back (not that he particularly wanted to) and was moving with such speed and ferocity that it took Ian by surprise. It felt like he was fighting an enemy on a mission who would very happily kill him if he got the chance, rather than Alex.

“Why him? Of all people, why him?” Tears were streaming down Alex’s face but it did not stop his attack from being effective. He was focused and disciplined and didn’t even seem to have noticed the tears.

“Alex? What are you talking about?”

They were completely in the lounge now and Ian had to avoid coffee tables, sofas and chairs along with Alex’s attack. Suddenly, he was on his back. One of Alex’s strikes had knocked him down and before he could make a move to get out of the way and back to his feet, Alex had pinned him down.

“Did you really think this would work? That you could disguise yourself as him and sneak into the house unnoticed?”

What the hell was Alex talking about?

“If you wanted that to work, you’re two years too late,” Alex snarled. He might have the upper hand right now but Ian was stronger and more experienced than him. He made his move and now he was the one pinning Alex to the floor.

“What do you mean, Alex?” he asked gently. “What do you mean two years too late?”

“Ian died two years ago,” he spat out but Ian could hear the defeat and sadness in his voice too. “If you wanted to pretend to be Ian, you should have done it years ago.”

Ian froze. Why did Alex think he was dead? And that he’d died two years ago! Alex took advantage of his lapse in concentration and Ian suddenly found himself on his back again.

“Who sent you?” Alex growled.

“Nobody sent me,” Ian said truthfully, his mind racing at a hundred miles an hour trying to make sense of what Alex was saying and work out what to do.

“I will not ask again. If you tell me the truth, I might consider letting you just go to jail rather than some MI6 black site where the sun doesn’t shine.”

No. Alex had just said MI6. Why would they be coming? Alex didn’t know anything about his work, he couldn’t, but he had definitely just said MI6.

“How can I prove to you that I am Ian?”

“You can’t.”

“There must be something.”

“There is nothing you can say because I know that Ian is dead. He died two years ago. And, anyway, I didn’t know enough about him for you to be able to say anything that only I would know.”

That broke Ian’s heart but he had been an agent for long enough to be able to suppress his own feelings. He took advantage of Alex’s distraction and flipped him on his back again.

“Maybe you can’t think of anything right now, but I will prove to you that I am who I say I am.”

Before either of them could do or say anything more, Ian was grabbed from behind and pulled off of Alex. He’d been so focused on his nephew that he hadn’t heard them coming up behind him. His hands were jerked behind his back and he felt the cool metal of handcuffs closing around his wrists. Whoever they were, they had arrived at the house almost impossibly quickly.

“Is Jack okay?” Alex asked, picking himself up off of the floor and dusting himself off.

“She’s fine. Fox is with her. How are you? Who’s this?” The man was clearly a soldier. The SAS liked to use animal code names. How had Alex called soldiers, possible SAS soldiers at that, to the house, so quickly? There had been no introductions but Alex clearly knew and trusted them… more than he currently trusted Ian… what the hell was going on?

“That’s good, thanks Wolf. Yeah I’m okay. I don’t know who he is but-” Alex lent forward and whispered into the man’s ear. Ian couldn’t hear what he said to the man but he could guess, based on the sudden hardness and change in his expression and the glare that he cast in his direction.

“We will find out who you are and who sent you,” the soldier said coldly. “But you definitely chose the wrong disguise and you will pay for that.”

Ian said nothing. He was used to threats and knew that it would be no good to try and persuade them that he really was who he said he was, not at the moment, anyway. The truth would out, in the end. The main question he had was why they thought he was dead in the first place.

“Alex-”

“-Nope. You’re done,” the man called ‘Wolf’ said, interrupting him and signalling to the two soldiers who were holding his arms and stopping him from moving.

That was the only warning he got before he was swung around and marched through the house. It was not worth the fight to break free right now. He was forced out of the house and down the drive towards a car waiting on the road. Jack was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s even got the same car that Ian had.” Alex must have followed them to the door and seen his car on the driveway.

“It’s the same car, Alex!” he protested, earning him a hard shove in the back, but Ian dug his heels in and managed to turn himself around to face his nephew.

“The last time I saw the real version of that car, Ian’s car, I nearly died in it,” Alex replied quietly but there was an edge to his voice that Ian had never heard before. “It was littered with bullet holes and Ian’s blood was all over the driver’s seat, and it was crushed in a car compactor while I was still inside it. I only just got out.”

Ian was too stunned by Alex’s shocking revelation to say or do anything as he was dragged down the drive, shoved into the car and driven away. He had so many questions! How could Alex be 'remembering’ all of that? His death, when he was here and very much alive! His bullet ridden and blood stained car, when the car was on the drive! And why had Alex said that two years had passed? He’d only left for Sayle Enterprises three weeks ago! There was no way that any of that had happened but… something had happened and Ian was determined to find out what it was.

Alex watched as Snake and Eagle shoved the fake Ian into the car and drove away before he retreated back into the house. Jack was in the dining room and he folded himself into her arms. The man could have chosen any day to walk into his house looking like Ian. Any other day and Alex might have coped just a little bit better. But today? Today was the second anniversary of Ian’s death, so naturally Alex had been thinking about his uncle more than usual. And then to go downstairs and literally see him standing there! For a second, he had thought he was hallucinating or seeing Ian’s ghost before reason had kicked in.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I will be. Are you?”

“A little shaken but I’m fine. It really was just like he was walking through the door.”

“I’m just glad he’s gone now.”

“They’re taking him to Liverpool Street to question him,” Ben cut in. Alex had noticed him standing in the room, but Ben was much more like a friend to both him and Jack and neither of them minded him being there.

“Thanks Ben.”

Alex stepped back into the hall and, for the first time, surveyed the mess that had been left behind. He had been lucky to avoid all of the broken pieces of ceramic when he’d attacked the man; he’d barely noticed the smashed mugs when he’d first come down the stairs. All he had seen was Jack, deathly white and leaning against the wall looking like she was about to faint, and Ian. The fake Ian had been so close to her that he could have done anything, and all Alex had been able to think about was getting him away from her. It was only now that he saw that his favourite mug had been smashed; it was one that Ian had bought for him when they had gone to Disneyland when he was eight. It always reminded him of a time when life was simpler. When he had Ian and Jack and knew nothing about MI6. And aside from that, it was just a nice mug. He always felt incredibly British when he thought about the fact that he had a preference on mugs based on how they felt in his hands and how much tea they could hold. Like so many things from before Ian’s death, the mug was gone but, Alex couldn’t afford to dwell on that right now.

“How did you guys get here so quickly?” he asked, looking away from the carnage in the hallway and turning back to face Ben.

Alex had finally been given an emergency beacon that wasn’t just for a mission. Mrs Jones had decided that he had perhaps made too many enemies and they might try and retaliate. So when Alex had come to his senses and realised that it was a real person standing in his hallway, not a hallucination or a ghost, he’d promptly pressed his transmitter three times to signal a home invasion before he attacked.

“We were on our way to a briefing,” Ben explained. “We were only about five minutes away from you when you activated your beacon and, as we were by far the closest support to you, Mrs Jones rerouted us.”

“I’m glad it was you guys,” Alex admitted. He needed the familiar and friendly faces today.

“He even had a key!” Jack breathed.

“What?”

“He let himself in with a key.”

Alex glanced at the door and sure enough, a set of keys was hanging from the lock. He walked forwards, his legs moving of their own accord.

“How the hell did he get these?” he wondered aloud as he examined the key ring.

“What do you mean, Alex?” Ben asked gently.

“This is the exact same key ring that Ian had.” And even as he said it, he knew that it was true. There was one thing that made Alex sure. One year, Jack had taken him to the Lego store for his birthday; when they were at the tills, Alex had seen a suit-wearing Lego figurine key ring and he’d bought it for Ian. The thing that made Alex sure that this was the exact same figure that he’d given his uncle was the face. Ian had had it on his keys for a long time and the face on the little figurine had worn away. And Alex, in the ever present optimism of childhood, had decided that he’d draw a replacement on. Looking at it now, he shuddered. The face that his younger self had drawn was horrific but it was definitely the same face that he was looking at now. He took the key out of the lock and held the keys in his hand for a moment before making a decision. He stepped out of the house and unlocked the car on the driveway.

“Alex? What are you doing?”

“I just need to make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

“Well,” he said, pausing and turning to face Jack and Ben as he tried to compose his thoughts to be able to explain. “Ian was driving when he was killed and he had to have had his keys with him. So whoever this man is, he can’t have taken the keys from the car or by breaking into MI6 and stealing them because then he’d have known that Ian was dead and used a different disguise. And nobody would have been able to replicate that awful face I drew, so they have to be the same keys! They have to be Ian’s! So why did this man choose Ian as his disguise if he knew that he’s dead? It doesn’t make sense.”

He turned and began walking towards the car again, his body growing heavier with every step. He didn’t particularly want to get into the car again - the last time he had, he’d nearly been crushed - but he had to know. He had to know how this man had Ian’s keys and an exact replica of his car but didn’t know that Ian was dead… or why he decided to use Ian’s face despite the fact.

“Alex!” Ben called, running down the drive towards him. “I know you want answers but it would be better to wait. We don’t know if the car is a trap.”

“What, like I open the door and it explodes in a ball of flames?” Alex’s mouth went dry at the thought. He’d been tricked into thinking that it’d happened to Jack once; he didn’t really want to find out what it actually felt like.

“It’s a possibility.”

Alex almost wanted to groan in frustration but he knew that Ben was right. It wasn’t worth the risk.

“I’ll check the car over and then, once I’m happy it’s safe, you can have a look, alright?”

“Thanks Ben.”

“Come on. I’ll make us all a drink, and then I’ll get to work and you can make a plan.”

“Yeah, okay,” Alex agreed with a sigh.

When they reached the door, a holdall and jacket that had been dumped on the floor caught his eye.

“Did he bring these in?” he asked, looking up at Jack. She nodded.

Alex quickly closed the front door behind them, grabbed the bag and coat and carried them into the living room. If he couldn’t examine the car, he was definitely going to have a look at these.

He emptied the contents onto the floor and began to pore over them. There was nothing in the holdall that stood out to him. It was just black t-shirts, black trousers, underwear and toiletries. Alex tried not to notice that the toiletry bag was identical to the one Ian had had… nor the fact that the man and his clothes smelt exactly the same as he remembered Ian smelling (that had been almost more of a punch to the gut than seeing someone walking around with Ian’s face), but everything he discovered lingered in his mind, floating around like irritating flies that buzzed around and refused to leave him alone. Like he was collecting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but didn’t have enough to put the outline together, let alone complete the whole image! There was a laptop too but, seeing as he would be unable to log in to it, Alex didn’t waste any time examining it. He moved on to the jacket and in the inside pocket, he found a wallet. His fingers trembled slightly as he opened it.

Inside were the usual credit cards, loyalty cards, some loose change and a receipt from a petrol station just outside of Port Tallon. Alex checked the date and took a shaky breath. It was dated two years ago. It was from the day before Ian was killed! He put it to one side to examine properly later and a photograph in the wallet caught his eye. It was of him and Ian from their first skiing holiday. He thumbed it out of its slot and turned it over. On the back, written in Ian’s handwriting, was the date of their holiday and a sentence that made him catch his breath. A’s first solo run! Alex was sure that this was Ian’s handwriting; either this was an excellent forgery or this picture really had once been Ian’s and he’d been proud enough of Alex that he’d commemorated the occasion andkept it with him as a reminder.

He’d never considered his uncle to be a sentimental man. Hell for the last two years all he’d been told was that Ian had only been training him to take his place as an agent! But if this genuinely had been Ian’s, then there was some level of care and attachment there. And suddenly, Alex remembered the photograph that had been on Ian’s desk in his office in Liverpool Street when he broke in, back when he’d still believed that Ian was a banker. Perhaps Ian had cared for him, even if he had been training him. Both photos were reminders of skills that he’d been taught, after all. Alex was about to put the photo and wallet down when he noticed another photograph that had been hidden behind the first. It was of a man and a woman holding a baby and beaming from ear to ear. These were his parents; the baby had to be him. He gently prized this one out of the little pocket too and just stared, enraptured, for a moment. He’d never seen a photo with the three of them in it before! He could feel the indent of writing on the back of this photo too, but he stared at the photo for a little while longer before turning it over.

The note on the back of this one was in different handwriting. One that he’d never seen before but still felt like he recognised. With all our love, always x. Alex almost wanted to cry. His parents must have had this photo taken just before their move to France. And they had given Ian a photo with all of their love. If the plan had worked, they would probably never have seen each other again…

“Alex?” The call pulled him out of his train of thought.

He looked up, tears welling in his eyes, and saw Ben standing in the doorway.

“I’ve checked the car. It’s clean.”

“Thanks. Can you take me to Liverpool Street? After?”

“Well,” Ben began uncertainly.

“I want to talk to Blunt or Jones. To start with, anyway.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am. Thanks Ben.” Alex put both the photographs back into the wallet and pocketed it before picking up the car keys again.

A flood of memories hit him as he opened the car door. The crash of the claw and motion as it picked the car up and dumped into the crusher. The smell of oil and diesel as the car broke apart. The smash of the glass and the feeling as it fell down onto him and into his hair. His heart racing as he clambered desperately through the car to the rear window… Alex shuddered and took a few seconds before he forced himself to push those memories aside for now. He needed to be analytical, to examine every inch of the car and not let his emotions cloud his judgement.

He was looking around the backseats when he found it. So far, all he’d found were the usual things you’d expect to find in a car; the map as backup in case the Sat Nav failed, a first aid kit, sunglasses, de-icer, a half empty bottle of water. But in the back, tucked down the side of the rear passenger side seat, where he had always sat when he was too little to join Ian in the front or when he, Ian and Jack had all been going somewhere together, was a small plastic object. It had fallen into the gap where the plug came out of the upholstery and must have been forgotten about, until now. He pulled it out and examined it. It was his old Tamagotchi. He’d completely forgotten that he’d owned one until he looked at it, but now he remembered being so upset when he’d realised that he’d lost it. He could only have been about eight at the time and he and Jack had searched the house for hours with no success. But now he looked at it, at the scratched and half peeled stickers where he’d tried to remove them, and knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was his.

Everything that he was finding was throwing up so many more questions and providing absolutely no answers. He would just have to find them for himself. He walked back to the door where Ben and Jack were waiting.

“Okay, I’m ready,” he said to Ben before turning to Jack.

“I’ll be waiting in the car,” Ben said, and Alex knew that he was purposefully giving them some time alone.

“Are you sure about this, Alex?” she asked.

“Yes. I need answers, Jack. I need to know how he managed to get so many of Ian’s things. I need to know how I saw Ian’s car get crushed two years ago, yet it’s here without a scratch.”

“Are you sure that’s his car? It could just be the same model and they switched out the licence plates?”

“No, it’s definitely his. I found this in the gap between two of the back seats,” he said, holding up the Tamagotchi.

“Wait, is that?”

“Yes. It’s my old Tamagotchi. It’s got the same peeling stickers and everything.” He let out a sigh. “I don’t know, Jack, but this, the keys, photos that definitely came from his wallet… I just don’t understand how so many details can be correct but also not making sense, and I need to find out.”

“I know,” she said, pulling him into a hug. “I can come with you, if you want?”

“No, thanks, Jack. I’ll be okay. I don’t even know if anyone will see me but I’ve got to try. Are you going to be okay?”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said with a quick smile. “You go do what you need to do. Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”

“It’s not that I don’t want you there, Jack, but I want to keep you as far away from them as possible. I don’t want them to do anything to you, too!”

Alex and Ben drove to Liverpool Street in silence. Alex could tell that the older agent was worried about him but couldn’t think of anything to say to ease his nerves, so he said nothing. Alex was glad of that. So many thoughts were swirling around in his head that it was as much as he could do to try and process them himself, let alone hold a conversation. The whole situation was too hard to explain until he knew more, anyway. They pulled into the underground carpark and Ben led him over to one of the lifts.

“Are you sure about this, Alex?” Ben asked.

“Yes.”

“Alright,” he replied with a resigned air and swiped his card to call the lift.

Ben led him along the corridor and into Mrs Jones’s office, not that Alex needed his help. He would have been able to find his way to the office blindfolded.

“Good evening, Alex,” she greeted from her seat behind the desk.

“I need to see the file you have on my mother,” Alex said without greeting or preamble.

“I’m sorry?”

“Before my mum and dad married, Blunt had her investigated. There is a file with everything in it and I need to see it.”

“Alex, what is this about?”

“I just need to see it.”

“Why?”

“Mrs Jones,” he said as politely as he could but his patience was wearing incredibly thin. “I have done so much for you and I haven’t had so much as a penny in thanks. You have blackmailed me, manipulated me, and straight up forced me to go on suicide mission after suicide mission. I think that should give me some authority to see the file you have on my own mother, but, if it isn’t, I think the fact that I have just been attacked by a man who looks identical to my dead uncle might be. Not just that, he’s instant that he is my dead uncle and absolutely nothing about the entire situation makes sense. I’m getting answers and this is where I am starting.”

“Very well, I’ll see what I can do.”

Alex nodded and sat himself down in one of the plush grey chairs that sat against one of the walls. Sitting in the chair in front of the desk would give her power and Alex absolutely refused to do that.

“It might take some time, Alex. Perhaps-”

“-I’ll wait,” he growled. He was not going to allow her to fob him off and send him away.

“If you insist,” she said nonchalantly and began typing away at her keyboard.

Ben sat down on the seat next to him and they waited in silence while Mrs Jones worked. For all the attention she paid them, they might as well not have been there. About half an hour later, there was a knock at the door.

“I’ve got the file you requested, Mrs Jones.”

“Thank you, William.” Mrs Jones took the file from her assistant and placed it on her desk. Clearly, if Alex wanted to look at it, he would have to join her.

Alex threw himself into one of the chairs in front of her and pulled the file towards him but Mrs Jones put a hand on it, stopping him before he could open it.

“What are you looking for, Alex?”

“Who says I’m looking for anything?”

“Clearly you’ve known that this file existed for a while - I won’t ask how you knew when today is the first I’ve heard of it - but you need something today.”

“Or, perhaps, seeing my dead uncle walking around, even if it was just a disguise, has reminded me that I know practically nothing about my parents. Maybe I decided that enough is enough and I want to know more about my mother because aside from the fact that she was a nurse I know practically nothing. Maybe I just want to know where I came from.”

“Alex. I am breaking the rules by letting you see this file. Tell me the truth.”

“Is it so hard to accept that I just want to know more about my mum? I know that you won’t give me Ian’s file, or my dad’s, and even if you did, it would probably all be redacted. This just has who my mum was. What she did. Who her friends were. I just want to know more about her.”

“Very well,” Mrs Jones conceded, taking her hand away and letting Alex open the file.

Thankful that he’d managed to avoid telling her the real reason, Alex gazed down at the first sheet of paper. It just had basic background information; her height, weight, eye and hair colours. It also had her birthday, home address and where she worked. He’d known that she was a nurse. He hadn’t known that she had worked at St Dominic’s, the very same hospital where he’d been treated several times in the past. Had any of the doctors or nurses who’d treated him worked with her? Would any of them be able to tell him about her? Alex made a mental note to look into it at some point in the future and carried on reading. There was more on that first introductory page than Alex had ever known about her, and he was only just beginning to scratch the surface.

He slowly made his way through the file, keeping an eye out for anything handwritten, but learning so much about who his mum was and what she did. Finally, as he neared the end of the file, Alex found a copy of a letter that she’d written to his dad. There was so much love crammed into that small page that Alex’s heart almost felt like it was going to burst. And the handwriting matched the inscription on the back of the picture. Alex wasn’t an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it was good enough to reassure him that the photo in 'Ian’s’ wallet had indeed been given to the real Ian by his parents a long time ago.

But what did that mean? If the wallet, or at least the photos, had been Ian’s, how had the man gotten hold of them? It was the same question with the keys and the Tamagotchi. If someone had gone to this trouble to set up a disguise, why hadn’t they realised that Ian was dead? Or, if they had, why had they decided to continue with it, knowing that he would be discovered almost immediately?

Alex’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door and someone coming in.

“Mrs Jones, I’ve got an update on the… oh hello, Alex old chap, I didn’t see you there.” Smithers had become unusually uneasy upon seeing Alex sitting in the room.

“Hello Smithers.”

Mrs Jones and Smithers exchanged tense glances, and Alex knew that what Smithers had come to say was about the man who’d broken into Alex’s home.

“Could you wait outside for a moment please, Alex?” Mrs Jones asked.

“No.”

“Alex-”

“-No, Mrs Jones. This man broke into my home. I deserve to know what you’ve found out about him.”

“Oh, very well,” she replied exasperatedly. “Please go on, Smithers.”

The gadget master cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I, um, I ran some tests…”

“And..?”

“I think it would be easier to show you.”

“Very well.” Mrs Jones stood up to follow Smithers and Alex stood up too. So did Ben.

“Alex, old chap-”

“-Forget it, Mr Smithers. I’m coming.”

The tension as the four of them walked silently to Smithers’ office was palpable.

“He isn’t wearing a facial disguise and I can’t see any signs of plastic surgery. He does just look and sound like Ian. And he’s done his research - he knows who I am and where he is. So I took the liberty of doing a DNA test to see if our mystery man is recorded anywhere on our system, and that’s where things get interesting. There was a match.” Smithers had looked increasingly uncomfortable as he’d been talking. “This is the DNA of the man you apprehended, Alex,” Smithers said, tapping away at his keyboard and bringing up the DNA string.

“Okay,” Mrs Jones said. Clearly, like Alex, she was unable to see the relevance.

“And this-” Smithers said, again tapping at his keyboard “-is the record for the DNA match on our system.” He paused for a moment. “The DNA match is for Ian Rider.”

There was silence for a few moments as everyone tried to take in what Smithers had just told them before Alex broke it.

“How can that be Ian? You told me he died two years ago!”

“I don’t know,” Smithers began but Mrs Jones interrupted.

“Ian was killed, Alex. I hate to say it but I saw his body. We did all of the necessary tests at the time. We did DNA analysis and matched fingerprints and did retinal scans. The man who died on his way back from Cornwall was Ian Rider. We knew that before we sent the police to tell you.”

“Well clearly you got it wrong! Either you’re wrong now or you were wrong then! Because they can’t both be Ian!”

“There’s something else,” Smithers said. “Obviously, we questioned the man downstairs… he’s insistent that he has just come from Cornwall… from Sayle Enterprises… but he is also acting as though it istwo years ago. Either he’s a very, very good liar or he is telling the truth and has no knowledge of the past two years.”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know, Mrs Jones. That’s the thing. I just don’t know.”

“What happens now?” Ben asked.

“We need to find out the truth.”

“And how exactly are you going to do that?” Alex exclaimed. “You’ve done all of the tests! What else can you do?”

“I don’t know just yet, Alex, but we will find out.”

“No. You know what? That’s not good enough. You have ruined my life since before I was born. I am not going to stand around and watch you mess it up again. Let me talk to him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Alex.”

Alex laughed humourlessly. “To be honest, Mrs Jones, right now I don’t care what you think. Let me question him.”

Alex was surprised both by his own assertiveness and by the fact that Mrs Jones conceded without more of a fight, but he was glad of that. He hadn’t wanted to use all of his remaining energy arguing with Mrs Jones. Although, now that he was walking along the corridor to the interrogation room where 'Ian’ was being held, with her, Ben and Smithers, his stomach began to churn. He was about to come face to face with the man who was using Ian’s face as a disguise and he didn’t like the thought of it one bit.

“We’ll be watching next door,” Ben said softly. “And if you want to leave, you can. Just get up and walk out, okay?”

Alex took a deep breath and nodded before he opened the door and walked into the interrogation room. He sat down stiffly and examined the man who sat, cuffed to the table, before him.

“Alex?” he said softly.

“Who are you?” Alex asked coldly.

“I’m Ian. I’m your uncle.”

“My uncle was killed two years ago. Who are you?”

“Alex,” the man said, manoeuvring his hands in the cuffs to try and hold Alex’s and trying to look him in the eye. But Alex pulled his hands away, clasping them in his lap and staring at them to avoid the man’s gaze. He could barely deal with being in the same room and speaking to someone who looked like Ian, let alone whatever the man was trying to achieve by physically reaching out. He supposed the answer was probably emotional manipulation if the man was a fake. And if it was Ian then it could either be that, given that his uncle had been training him for intelligence work all of his life, or, perhaps, a more genuine attempt at a connection if he had ever cared for him at all. Either way, Alex was not going to deal with it. Not right now. The man cleared his throat and pulled his hands back, seeing his reaction to the movement. Alex glanced up and saw the pain in his eyes before the man began to speak again. “I don’t know what’s happened. I don’t know how it has happened, but I promise you that I am Ian.”

“What did Jack get me for my ninth birthday?”

“What?”

“You want to prove to me that you’re Ian? Well then, I’m going to ask you some questions. What did Jack get me for my ninth birthday? You should know the answer to that. Ian was actually there for that one.”

“What happened to you?”

“Just answer the question or I will leave and I won’t come back.”

“She got you a DVD,” 'Ian’ said after a moment’s thought. “Spy Kids - it has just come out and you loved it. The three of us watched it on the sofa after your party.”

“What did Ian always say to me when we started something like climbing a mountain or when he helped me with difficult homework?”

“The first part’s the worst part,” 'Ian’ said with a sigh.

Well the man was two for two on some of the more private questions that Alex had been able to think of. Questions that he didn’t think anyone would have been able to discover the answers to before impersonating him.

“Where’s the spare key kept?”

“Behind a fake brick in the front wall of the house.”

“Ian left a map of the mine tunnels in his room in the Sayle Enterprises compound. Where?”

“How do you know that?” the man whispered, his eyes widening with shock.

“Answer the question.”

“How can you possibly know the answer to that question?” 'Ian’ breathed, his eyes filling with tears. “What the hell did you do?” he shouted at the blacked out window where Alex knew that Mrs Jones, Smithers and Ben were watching.

“Just answer the question. Where did Ian hide the map?”

'Ian’ took a deep breath before he looked Alex straight in the eye and answered. “I tucked it in the canopy at the top of the bed. Alex? How do you know that? What did they make you do?”

“Exactly what you trained me for. You must be thrilled,” Alex said coldly, standing up and walking to the door. He had his answer - this man was Ian. He could be the only person who knew where that small, seemingly insignificant piece of paper had been hidden.

“What do you mean?” Ian shouted, losing control of himself for the first time that day. “Alex! What do you mean? What did they do? Alex!”

But Alex had reached the door and closed it behind him, cutting off Ian’s shouts. He took a few deep breaths before he opened the adjoining door to join the others.

“Are you okay Alex?” Ben asked. Mrs Jones and Smithers were still watching Ian through the glass. He was the only one looking at him.

He shook his head slightly in response. “I will be,” were the words he said out loud, though.

Alex looked through the glass. It was a jarring sight. His uncle had always been calm and collected. Alex couldn’t recall him ever losing control like he was now. But the thing was, Ian wasn’t thrashing about, the metal of his cuffs cutting into his wrists and causing blood to drip down his arms and onto the table. He was sat completely still, staring at the glass with a look that Alex had never seen in his eyes before. It chilled Alex to his core and he was just grateful knowing that it wasn’t being directed at him. He was certainly glad that he wasn’t in Mrs Jones’ shoes.

“Did he get the answers right?” Mrs Jones asked, looking at Alex now.

“Yes. Every single one of them.”

“Shall I take you home, Alex?” Ben asked softly. “Let them ask him more questions and investigate a bit more?”

“No. I want to stay.”

“Alex, I don’t think-”

“-I don’t think you get a say, Mrs Jones. I’m staying.”

She examined him for a few moments. She must have decided to let him stay without putting up a fight because she nodded and left the observation room, entering the interrogation room a few seconds later

“Mrs Jones,” Ian said coldly. “I wondered when you were going to grace me with your presence.”

“Ian.”

“Where’s Blunt?”

“He’ll see you later.”

“Ah. I’m not a priority then, I see.”

“Ian. We need to know what happened.”

“Well, as I’ve already explained numerous times today, I drove home from Sayle Enterprises and went home. Except apparently two years have passed since then for everyone else, and you all think that I died. And, if I’m understanding correctly, you decided that the appropriate response to my 'death’ was to use Alex? To send him in my place instead of one of the hundreds of trained, adult agents that you could have used? Did you really think that I would have left that compound if the virus was still a threat? Obviously I couldn’t tell you exactly what I’d done over an unsecured line but in what world would I have left if there was still a threat?”

Alex took a deep breath. This was Ian and if he was telling the truth (and why would he be lying right now?) then the Stormbreakers had not been a threat when MI6 had sent him to the compound. They had used him and he’d nearly died and it would all have been for nothing if he had!

“I need to ask you some questions.”

Ian threw his hands in the air as far as the cuffs would allow and huffed in exasperation.

“I can’t tell you anything more, Mrs Jones.”

“You see, Ian,” Mrs Jones said, leaning back slightly in her chair and crossing her right leg over her left; to look at her, she could have been having a coffee with him in a café, not interrogating him. “We saw your dead body two years ago. You were driving home from Cornwall, that part’s true, but you were ambushed by Yassen Gregorovich with a machine gun and he gunned you down. I saw your body, littered with bullet holes, and you were dead. So the question is, how can you be here now?”

Ian’s eyes darkened and narrowed slightly as she said Yassen Gregorovich’s name. Something she had said did not sit well with him but Alex had no idea what it was. Was it to do with Yassen killing him or something else?

“Did Alex see?”

“Did Alex see what, Ian?”

“Did he see the body?”

“No.” Alex saw Ian slowly let out a breath in relief. “Very few people did,” Mrs Jones continued. “But we did enough tests to establish that it was Ian’s body. So, how can you be here?”

“I don’t know Mrs Jones. I only know what I’ve told you and what you’ve just told me. Now I have a question for you.” He didn’t wait for her permission before he asked. “What the hell have you done to Alex? You sent him to Cornwall but it wasn’t just that, was it? How many times have you used him? And what did he mean 'what I trained him for’?”

“That’s four questions.”

“Well then, four answers.”

“You aren’t exactly in a position to negotiate Ian, are you?”

“Who said I’m negotiating? But if you’re not going to tell me, let’s see if what I’ve guessed is an accurate summation of the truth, shall we?”

Mrs Jones gestured as if to say 'go ahead’ so Ian continued.

“When I 'died’, you decided that using Alex was a good idea. You sent him to Cornwall, straight into Herod Sayle’s hands. But, looking at him, I’d say it didn’t end there? Am I right? I’d guess that you’ve been using him for the last two years. How many missions have you sent him on?” Ian swore and ran a hand through his hair as best he could with the cuffs. “He’s fourteen years old! Did you ever stop to think about the damage you were causing?! And why the hell does he think that I was training him?”

Ian paused for a few moments, waiting to see if Mrs Jones would respond, before he spoke again. “Do you have nothing to say?”

“He has saved so many lives-”

Ian scoffed. “-Is that how you can sleep at night?” he asked incredulously. “You justify it with the lives that he saved? Well, I guess that and by saying that you were only following Blunt’s orders? Right?”

“Ian-”

“-No. I’m done. You’re going to uncuff me and I’m taking Alex home. Do you understand?”

“I don’t have the authority to release you, Ian. We still need to find out what happened before we can let you go.” She stood up and walked over to the door.

“This is ridiculous. Let me go.” Ian’s voice was low and serious.

“I’m sorry, Ian.”

Mrs Jones walked back into the observation room where Alex and Ben had been watching.

“Alex, you should go home. Daniels can take you. No one else is going to talk to him tonight.”

“I want to stay.”

“Go home, Alex. I’ll send a car to pick you up in the morning and you can stay all day. But there is nothing else to do today. Go home and get some rest.”

Reluctantly, Alex allowed Ben to lead him out of the room and down the corridor to the lift. Only once they were in the car and on the road to Chelsea did Alex let out a deep breath that he hadn’t really realised that he’d been holding.

“Are you okay, Alex?”

“No.” He could be truthful with Ben, he knew that. “I just don’t understand, Ben. Ian was killed two years ago so how can he be here now? And if he was telling the truth… that the Stormbreakers weren’t going to be a threat after he left the compound, then everything they made me do…”

“I don’t know, Alex,” Ben said gently, pausing while he focused on the road for a moment. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know. But if he’s here, regardless of how or why, isn’t that a good thing?”

“To be honest, I don’t know, Ben. He was training me my whole life to become a spy, just like him… I don’t even know if he liked me, let alone loved me.”

“Look, Alex, obviously I never met him before but, from the brief glimpse I saw just now, I didn’t get the impression that he was training you. It didn’t look like he was just saying it for effect or to get you to believe him. It looked to me like he was telling the truth and was horrified when he realised what Blunt and Jones have made you do. All I’m saying is, let him talk to you before you make your mind up, okay? No matter what you’ve been told by Mr Blunt or Mrs Jones or anyone else, he is the only person who actually knows what his intentions were. Try and sleep on it and I’ll pick you up in the morning, alright?”

“Yeah, okay,” Alex agreed with a weary sigh and leaning his head against the window, gazing sightlessly out at the London streets. In fact he hardly noticed when Ben pulled up outside his home.

“I’ll come in with you.”

“Thanks.”

Jack had seen them pull up and was running to greet them before Alex was even out of the car.

“Oh Alex!” she whispered, pulling him into a warm hug. At least he knew that Jack loved him.

“Let’s get inside,” Ben suggested, guiding the two of them towards the front door.

Walking into the house, there were no traces of the broken mugs and spilled tea, his fight with Ian earlier, nor of his frantic search through Ian’s holdall.

“I’m sorry for just leaving you to deal with all the mess earlier, Jack.”

“You don’t have to apologise for that. Not to me,” she said, pulling him into another hug. “You went where you had to go.”

“So who was that man?” she asked a few minutes later when they were all sitting in the lounge with a cup of tea. Ben had ordered them a takeaway. Despite how late it was, they all felt like they needed one.

“It was Ian,” Alex said simply. “I don’t know how or why but it’s definitely him.”

“But he..?”

“For us he died two years ago. For him, he left Sayle Enterprises earlier today and those two years never happened. It makes absolutely no sense but he was telling the truth, I’m sure of it.”

“Wow! I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. So what happens next?”

“He’s being kept at Liverpool Street tonight,” Ben told her. “He’ll be questioned again tomorrow, I presume by Blunt this time and possibly others. Ultimately, I guess it’ll be up to Blunt what happens after that.”

“I’m going back tomorrow, Jack.” Alex felt like he should give her some warning.

“Well then, I’m coming too.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. If you’re going, I’m going.”

Alex did not sleep well that night. Nightmares of Sayle Enterprises and the maze of mine shafts and swimming through the submerged tunnel flooded his brain. Each time, he was caught or got lost or ran out of air part way. Each time, Alex woke up breathless and in a cold blooded sweat.

When the first light of morning finally broke, he went downstairs for breakfast, out of habit not because he actually felt like eating anything. One look at Jack and he guessed that she hadn’t slept much better than he had.

“Are you sure you want to go, Alex?” she asked as they both pushed their breakfast around on their plates. She’d made them both scrambled eggs on toast but neither of them had much of an appetite. The prospect of going back to Liverpool Street would have been enough on its own to stop him eating but the thought of seeing Ian again made it ten times worse.

“No. But I’m going. I’m sure that he really is Ian but I don’t know if anyone else is. And I don’t understand how he can be here. I think that’s bugging me more than anything. I mean, life wasn’t exactly great with him gone and MI6 using me as and when they liked but… oh, I don’t know, 'simple’ isn’t the right word…”

“I don’t know what the word is either, but I know what you’re saying,” Jack said, pulling him into yet another hug.

“Are you sure you want to come?”

“I could very happily spend the rest of my life with neither of us going back into that building. But I’m not going to let you go through this alone, Alex. No matter what they might try and do to me.”

“Thanks, Jack,” Alex breathed.

Sitting in the back of Ben’s car on the drive back to Liverpool Street, Alex began to question his wisdom in coming back today. His palms were clammy, his heart was pounding and at times it felt like he couldn’t breathe. At the same time, he knew that he wouldn’t have been able to just sit at home, waiting for news.

“Good morning, Alex,” Blunt greeted as they stepped out of the lift and into the corridor where Ian was being held. He had been waiting for them and the thought almost made Alex shiver. “And Miss Starbright…” Alex could tell that he was not impressed that she was here.

“She’s staying,” Alex told him.

“Very well,” he conceded and Alex did not like how quickly he had accepted it.

“We’d like you to ask him some more questions.”

“Why?”

“Just ask him some more things that only your uncle would know.”

“I got my answer in four questions yesterday.”

“He doesn’t know that, though,” Blunt countered inscrutably.

Alex paused, feeling like he was walking into a trap. “Fine, I’ll go and ask him some more questions,” he agreed after a moment.

“We’d like you to wear an earpiece too. We have some questions that we’d like to ask him.”

Alex was surprised at this. Why was Blunt sending him in with his questions instead of going himself or sending Mrs Jones or Crawley?

“Why me?” he asked suspiciously. “What exactly are you trying to do? Find out if he is who he says is, or hope that he makes one mistake so that you can use it as your excuse to lock him up for the rest of his life?”

Blunt did not reply and Alex knew that he was not being given a choice. After a couple of moments of silence, Blunt turned and walked away down the corridor towards the room where they were holding Ian. With a glance to check that Jack and Ben were still behind him, Alex followed. The soft sound of their footsteps along the corridor was more comforting than he cared to admit, even to himself. There was an agent on guard outside the door now; he waited until Blunt, Ben and Jack had gone into the observation room before he opened it to let Alex in.

Ian was still cuffed to the table, sitting exactly as he had been the evening before. To look at him, you wouldn’t know that he’d spent the night here. Alex wasn’t even sure if he’d have slept, but Ian looked exactly the same as when Alex had first seen him yesterday afternoon.

“Morning,” he greeted stiffly, sitting down in the chair opposite his uncle.

“Is it?” Ian replied.

“Have you eaten?”

Ian laughed. “No.”

Alex turned to face the glass. “Seriously?” he asked. “When you kept me here, I was given a proper spread! And arguably, I’d done something worse than disappearing for two years.”

“We’ll organise some food to be sent in,” Mrs Jones said through his earpiece.

When he turned back to face Ian, there was something calculating in his uncle’s eyes.

“Alex? What did you do?”

“We aren’t here to talk about me.”

“You might not be, but apparently I’ve missed two whole years of your life and I’d like to know what I’ve missed,” he whispered.

“No. You really don’t,” Alex replied softly. He cleared his throat and refused to look Ian in the eyes. “Describe the room you stayed in at Sayle Enterprises. Where was it in the compound? Furniture? Pictures on the walls?”

Ian gave a resigned sigh before he began to answer.

“It was in Sayles’ house. Quite a large room - the 'blue room’ they called it - at the end of the upstairs corridor. The furniture was old mahogany; a four poster bed with a canopy draped over it, a desk with a chair, and a wardrobe. There was a Picasso on the wall next to the door to the bathroom. I put a bug on the back of the canvas so that I could check whether anyone had been in the room while I was out. The window looked out onto the fountain.”

Well those details were all correct. Alex was surprised to learn that it had been his uncle who placed the bug rather than Sayle, but didn’t comment on it.

“Tell me about the mine. What you found there.”

Ian told him. He described the graffitied entrance, the tunnel collapse, and which tunnels he’d had to use to go around it. He spoke of the submerged tunnel and how he’d used SCUBA equipment and fixed a guideline from one end to the other. How the other side of the submerged tunnel allowed him to access the hidden construction line of Sayle Enterprises.

“Do you think you’d have been able to swim the tunnel without SCUBA gear?” This was more for his own curiosity than proving to them that this was Ian.

He paused and thought for a moment. “Probably. It was quite a distance but, with the guidewire, I think so.”

“What did you have sent to the box at the post office?” Alex didn’t actually know the answer to this but it didn’t matter. Either MI6 sent him the information, or they’d be able to find out what was sent if they deemed it important enough.

“It was just some books. I worked out that Sayle was planning to use the Stormbreakers to release a virus and I was trying to work out what it might be.”

“Did you find out?”

“No,” Ian admitted. “There weren’t any samples in the compound while I was there. But I do know that it would have wiped out most of the population… which is why I neutralised the threat before I left,” he added, glaring at the window and slamming a hand onto the table, making Alex jump.

“They left it until the last minute to bring the virus in. Yassen Gregorovich brought it a couple of days before the launch.”

Ian swore softly under his breath. “Did you meet him?”

“I’ve already told you. I’m not the one answering questions.”

“Alex, please,” Ian whispered.

“Stop!” he said in a tone of voice that he hoped sounded serious. “I’m not talking about it, so you can stop asking.”

There was a knock on the door and a man walked in with a tray of food. He put it on the table and left again without saying a word. Alex examined the breakfast that had been brought for Ian. There were a couple of individually wrapped pastries, a cereal bar and a glass bottle of orange juice. Ian glanced at the tray too, but made no move to pick anything up.

“To be honest, I’m not feeling very trusting of them right now,” he said in a low growl, staring at the blacked out window again. “And even if I was, I’m not hungry.” He turned back to face Alex. “I feel sick thinking about what’s happened to you.”

“If you want me to stay, stop. You don’t have to eat but stop trying to get me to tell you what happened.” Alex took a couple of deep breaths before he continued. “Who do you play Mario Kart as?”

The sudden change of pace took Ian by surprise, but only for a second.

“Yoshi. On the Mach Bike.”

“And who am I?”

“Luigi. In the Nostalgia 1 Kart.”

“And Jack?”

“When she plays, she’s Daisy if we’re using your account and she’s unlocked. Otherwise she’s Princess Peach. But she doesn’t like playing with both of us at the same time.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re too competitive,” Ian said with a reminiscent laugh.

“Ask him what office number was his.” This time it was Blunt’s voice that came through his earpiece.

Alex asked the question.

“1504.”

“And what is outside your office window?”

“There’s the flagpole between mine and Crawley’s office? Is that what you mean?”

“It is.”

This went on for quite a while, his own questions being interspersed with ones that Blunt or Mrs Jones or someone else fed him through his earpiece. Some of them Alex also knew the answer to and others he had no idea what they were talking about, but he tried to keep his face blank either way.

“Okay. That’s it for now, Alex,” Mrs Jones said through the earpiece. “Take a break for lunch.”

Alex was glad for a break. He was exhausted.

“We’re stopping for lunch,” he said as he stood up.

“Just tell me one thing before you go.”

Alex paused, waiting for Ian to ask his question.

“Obviously you’re wearing an earpiece today, or you’ve been prepped with questions. Were you wearing one yesterday? Or given questions to ask me then, too?”

“Why does it matter?”

“It matters because if you were then they might not have involved you in any missions since… well since I 'died’. For you anyway. If you were wearing an earpiece, then you could have been fed questions about Sayles compound that another agent found out the answers to.” He ran his hands through his hair awkwardly again. “It matters because it’s the difference between you being used as an agent, and you just living your life while adults who have signed up for this and are trained are sent on missions.”

Alex turned away and walked out of the door without giving his uncle an answer. He couldn’t bear to tell him the truth but he didn’t want to li