#alex rider fanfiction
“I thought you were off tonight,” came Ben’s amused tone.
Well, that was fast.
“See, about that,” Alex said, kneeling down to hook his arms underneath the man’s armpits. “I am , except this party’s about to get lit and not in the good way.”
“Explain like a normal person or I’m hanging up.”
Lil Lupin
Febuwhump is over and we all survived (mostly) intact. Unfortunately this is not a comprehensive Febuwhump post. There were too many good fics and while I could go down and summarize all of them Lil Lupin did the Lord’s work by handling that for us On the discord server. The one person who didn’t get a summary was hers so here we are taking a look at Among the Lotus.
Lupin, to be casual, is a talented author with roots in the fandom dating all the way back to her first fic - Ask No Questions in 2009. ANQ was a landmark fic in the fandom, still is one of the top 10 most popular fics on fanfiction.net All of this is necessary to establish that Lupin is an extremely gifted author with a long history of good fanfiction and the writing chops to back it up.
Her latest fic, Among the Lotus, follows through on this. It’s an absolutely heart wrenching fic of two people who fate has twined together but reality is bent on tearing apart. Writing a summary is extremely difficult because it would give away the game on it which is an absolute tragedy. You guys will just have to take me at my word that this fic has some neck breaking twists and turns and leaves you wanting for more. Breathtakingly gorgeous writing and an incredibly creative premise make this Febuwhump fill ache in all the best ways.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/29674071
Don’t forget to check out her other works which are similarly stunning
The mystery of how Alex had gotten here was another problem. Last he remembered, he had been with several MI6 agents debriefing after the crash of Air Force One then he had been bundled into a car allegedly to go back home and now…he took stock of the barren interrogation room again. He doubted he was with MI6 and he had thoroughly crushed Cray and his plan which left very few options of who could have known about the operation and have the resources of stealing him out from under his handlers.
The door opened seamlessly cutting off his thoughts and of fucking course things couldn’t be easy could they? He mused taking in the tall, blonde that strode purposefully into the room then froze when he registered just who was sitting in front of him.
“Oh hey, Dad , fancy seeing you here.”
He didn’t know why he was surprised, Ian had told him his father was “in the field”. Alex hadn’t known what that meant and Ian had refused any attempt of Alex to ask with ‘It’s better for both of you not to know. If you got caught Alex…’ at first he had been offended that Ian had thought he would break so easily under torture. And then he had actually been tortured and he appreciated the small mercy.
“Alex?” It occurred to him that he had never seen his Dad look afraid before - angry, sure, but afraid? John Rider was too prideful for that. Turned out, he didn’t want to see his normally cocky and exuberant Dad scared. The fact that Alex was currently sitting tied to a chair in what was obviously an interrogation room and with his Dad as a potential interrogator probably didn’t help. Combined with the fact that his father had no idea that he was being brought here, wherever that was, and there was no way that could even be remotely considered a good sign.
“What are you doing here?” He hissed, voice tinged with anger. There was the Dad he knew and loved sometimes.
Like any big character in the fandom, Yassen Gregorovich has been taken in many directions. Each author seems to have their own “version” of him and Cthulhu has one of the best honed over years of writing fantastic multi chapter stories involving him. Her Yassen is sharp and dynamic across the many different circumstances he finds himself in under her pen. But for all that he changes, he keep his very practical and lethal edge which is a rare treat that goes far in upping the stakes and tension in her fics.
Cthulhu is most well known for Bad Cards, a multi chapter Outsider POV look into Alex and Yassen’s relationship in the field through the lens of a failed mission. But you would be doing yourself a disservice if you stopped there. She has multiple fics that explore their relationship in new and exciting ways - The Handler takes a look at Yassen’s less than impressed views on Alex and the many handlers MI6 gives him, Under Siege gives Alex’s perspective on just how much larger the intelligence world is using painfully real details with a lovely little twist.
All that said, one of her latest projects has captured a piece of my heart and so I wanted to share it with the rest of the fandom as well. A Dream of Retold Lives is yet another fic where saying too much would take away the delicious mystery of it as you are thrown into the same amount of confusion as Alex and really everyone in this strange new world. It’s a creative premise executed beautifully to bring a lingering sense of fear and foreboding. Much like the rest of her works, it is a masterpiece and one that deserves more attention than it has gotten but from such a strong author that can be said about much of her work.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/27739957/chapters/67896766
Also check out her pseud Cthulhu has Chaotic Stories for more heart stoppingly good fics!
Summary: The conversation between Alex and Yassen on the rooftop after Yassen has killed Herod Sayle, but from Yassen’s point of view
A/N: The sections in italics have been taken directly from Stormbreaker I wanted to keep their conversation the same but add in Yassen’s thoughts from his point of view.
“You’re Yassen Gregorovich,” Alex said.
Yassen nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“Why did you kill him?”
“Those were my instructions.” A lie. “He had become an embarrassment. It was better this way.” That part at least was true.
“Not better for him.”
Yassen shrugged, but was very impressed with the fact that Alex was a) not visibly distressed by the sight of Herod Sayle being murdered before his eyes, and b) not intimidated by Yassen enough to stop his sassy comebacks. In many ways, he was just like his father and the thought made a pang of some unidentifiable emotion run through him.
“What about me?”
He ran his eyes over Alex. “I have no instructions concerning you.” Another lie. His instructions had been explicitly clear. ‘KILL ALEX RIDER’. He remembered the words that he had read on his computer screen just a few hours ago.
“You’re not going to shoot me too?”
No. Absolutely not. Yassen would never kill Alex, or allow him to be killed if he could stop it.
“Do I have any need to?”
There was a pause as Alex seemed to consider the question.
“You killed Ian rider. He was my uncle.”
Yassen’s expression didn’t change but he was surprised. Ian Rider was dead. That must be how the boy had been unlucky enough to end up getting involved. And Alex thought that he had been the one to pull the trigger. It wasn’t true; no amount of money would have been high enough to make him kill Ian, just like he had defied his orders to kill the youngest Rider to cross his path.
His mind worked quickly. He didn’t know who had killed Ian Rider, but right now that didn’t matter. Right now the only thing that mattered was the fourteen year old boy standing in front of him, and preventing him from going on another mission.
He shrugged again. “I kill a lot of people.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it was also definitely not an admission or contradiction to the assassination that he was being accused of.
“One day I’ll kill you.”
That broke his heart. The pang of emotion that he had felt earlier now rushed through him like a tidal wave, and although Yassen Gregorovich was unable to identify it specifically, he knew all of the words that could have been used to describe how he was feeling. Sadness, hurt, remorse, heartbreak, sorrow, lamentation, dejection, grief. He was feeling more emotions than he had felt in years, and it took every bit of his strength and training to keep his face neutral.
Hunter’s son was standing here, full of, admittedly well concealed, rage and grief that was wrongly being directed at him. In another life, Yassen would have been like an uncle to Alex, but here they were, locked on opposite sides of a war that neither of them had wanted to be dragged into. There are always casualties in war, and they were just two more statistics to be added to the final count.
If he could stop Alex from being used by MI6 in the future, their paths would likely not cross again. Yassen Gregorovich decided that it was a price worth paying if it meant that Alex would be safe and out of MI6’s grasp. Alex Rider could hate him for killing his uncle, but if it meant that Alex would find the closure that Yassen was sure that he needed to stay away from MI6, then his own feelings were irrelevant.
“A lot of people have tried. Believe me, it would be better if we didn’t meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you’re still a child.”
It was the same advice that John Rider had given him once. He didn’t look back as he turned and walked over to the helicopter. His face had crumpled the second that he had turned away, and climbing in and strapping himself to the seat, he took a couple of seconds to regain his composure. By the time he looked up at the controls, his face was back to being a blank, emotionless mask. He started the helicopter and then, just before he flew away, he raised a hand at Alex who was standing motionless on the rooftop staring at him. The boy raised a hand in return, and then Yassen flew away. Looking back at the rooftop one final time before flying away, he saw that Alex Rider had gone, leaving the lifeless body of Herod Sayle behind.
Scorpia would not be pleased that he had disobeyed their orders; he had left Alex Rider alive and unharmed, but he would be able to deal with them. He knew that they would be pleased that Sayle was dead - he had become an embarrassment and it was better that he was dealt with once and for all. No, they would not kill him, and Yassen would be able to work on the question that was, even now, gnawing away in his brain. Who had killed Ian Rider? It might take him a while, but it was a question that he would find out the answer to, and then, maybe, he would be able to reconcile with Alex.
First lines tag game
Thanks for the tag @yucasava this was a lot of fun!
Rules: list the first line of the last ten (10) stories you published. (Or however many stories you have, if you don’t have 10. I’m including collabs!) Look to see any patterns you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any. Then tag some friends.
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.
It was an unusually sunny day for the beginning of March.
The Promise (Or: Alex Rider and the Marshmallow Factory - Part 2)
Alex Rider slouched into the all too familiar tall brick building on Liverpool Street, the uneasy feeling that had settled on him when he had been called in grew more and more present with every step he took.
As he sat in the chair thinking about how he’d found himself in this situation, Alex found his mind inexplicably wondering back to one of the few science lessons he’d actually attended the previous term.
Falling.
Yassen Gregorovich pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Three Million Minutes (and counting)
Alex whooped and cheered as Ian deftly manoeuvred the surfboard through the barrel of the wave.
BANG
“Was that hail?” Alex asked uncertainly.
With his heart still pounding from his near death experience on the soaked stone pillar and water dripping off of him and pooling on the stone floor, Alex stood examining the next section of Feathered Serpent - the corridor with spears and acid river.
Alex stirred in his sleep as someone stroked his hair and softly called his name.
The ceiling tiles swam in and out of focus.
So most of the time, I establish the POV, but I do love occasionally starting a story without any clues as to whose POV it is or what’s going on (like Rider of the Secret Service & Blunt Force Trauma), especially if the character is disoriented in the story! And if it’s not immediately clear whose POV it is, then main characters are usually mentioned. I think there’s a mix of starting with the scene setting & tone or dropping straight into the action - I guess it just depends on the story which one I go for
I’m now very curious to go back and see how my openings have changed from my first fics…
I think some of you have already been tagged, but tagging @betweenseafoamandwaves@lightnings-and-stars-and-dreams@koreanbibliophilegirl@daniwib@hella-writes@morfoxx@corolune (no pressure!!) and anyone else who wants to do it
Innocenti Bugie
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!)
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
Rider of the Secret Service - Chapter 3 - Through the Frosted Glass
*Earlier that day*
Alex woke up to a delicious scent wafting up from the kitchen. He glanced at the clock on his bedside table. Why was someone cooking breakfast at 7am? On a Saturday! With a resigned sigh, Alex rolled out of bed, his sudden hunger at the smell of food outweighing his desire to go back to sleep. The rowing season had ended so Saturday mornings were once again his own to spend as he pleased. And for the most part, that had meant lying in and lounging around until mid-morning before getting on with his day.
Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he made his way down the stairs, Alex was utterly unprepared for the sight that met his eyes upon entering the kitchen. Yassen Gregorovich… flipping a pancake with a perfectly timed flick of his wrist, the pancake spinning in mid-air before landing, cooked side up, in the frying pan where it started to cook with a satisfying sizzle.
“Good morning, Alex,” Yassen greeted as he returned the pan to the hob.
“Morning,” Alex mumbled. The man’s incessant ability to always be awake no matter what time of day or night it was was infuriating, especially this early in the morning. He and Ben had volunteered (despite Alex’s protests that he didn’t need babysitting) to ‘look after’ Alex while Jack was needed at home in America for a few weeks, so the three of them had become used to each other’s habits. Yassen, for instance, was used to the fact that Alex wasn’t a morning person and, to Alex’s relief, quietly continued to make pancakes while he flicked on the kettle to make himself a cup of tea. Alex glanced around the kitchen. When he and Jack made pancakes, it usually ended with flour absolutely everywhere; over the counters, floor and often themselves but Yassen, like with most things, cooked with precision. If he had made a mess at any point (although Alex doubted that he had), it had been dealt with instantly and the kitchen was now spotless, other than the sauces, fruit and cutlery that Yassen had laid on the countertop.
Once his tea was made, Alex slumped into one of the chairs at the kitchen island. Yassen wordlessly slid a plate of chocolate chip pancakes in front of him and Alex looked up incredulously. Since he had moved in, Alex hadn’t seen the man eating anything other than porridge or granola with fruit and yoghurt for breakfast and he had rolled his eyes the last time Alex filled a cereal bowl with Coco Pops. Yassen merely replied with a look that Alex was too tired to try and decipher so, with a mumbled “thanks”, he turned his attention to the plate before him.
“So what are your plans for today?” Yassen asked once Alex had finished his breakfast and felt much more awake.
“Nothing much really. Football this afternoon and I’ve got some homework to finish off,” he said with a yawn.
Just then, the sound of the key turning in the lock and the front door opening echoed along the hallway.
“Morning!” Ben called as he came inside.
Alex and Yassen both returned greetings of their own.
“Smells good,” he said approvingly, appearing at the kitchen door.
“Where’d you run this morning?” Alex asked, taking a sip of his tea.
“Along the river. The views are much better than I normally have. Usually it’s just back alleyways and housing estates,” Ben said as he filled the kettle and flicked it on. He turned and leant against the counter while he waited for it to boil. “And Wolf messaged me. He’s being discharged this morning so I’m going to pick him up soon.”
“That’s good! I’ll come with you,” Alex said.
“Are you sure?” Ben asked, surprise momentarily flickering across his face before he regained control of himself. Alex understood why Ben was surprised; he didn’t like hospitals and although he had gone to see Wolf a couple of nights ago, he hadn’t really been comfortable for the whole time they had been there.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Half an hour later, the three of them were in the car on the way to the hospital. Alex was looking forward to seeing Wolf again but a heavy feeling had settled in the pit of his stomach, as it always did when he was faced with the prospect of a visit to the hospital, even if the patient was someone other than himself. Alex focused on his breathing. Deep breaths. In and out. And he tried to reassure himself with the fact that they weren’t even going to stay in the hospital today - they were just going to pick Wolf up and leave again. And with Yassen and Ben by his side, he was undoubtedly much safer than he had been many of the other times that he had been in hospitals… even the times that he had been assigned MI6 protection.
***
“Are you alright, Alex?” Ben asked as they climbed out of the car, trying not to show the extent of his concern for his young charge nor the fact that he could see Alex trying not to bounce with nervous energy.
“Yeah I’m okay… I’m just not a fan of hospitals,” was the reply.
“I know,” Ben said, putting an arm around him. “But Wolf’ll be glad to see you-”
“-And we’ll be out again before you know it,” Yassen added reassuringly, ruffling Alex’s hair. The two men exchanged a glance that Alex didn’t see. Now that they were spending more time with Alex, they could both see the toll that the many missions he had been forced on had taken on him, even if he was usually very good at hiding it.
The three of them made their way through the almost identical looking corridors that would have been a perfect maze but for the fact that they had visited a couple of days before and knew the way. There were signs on the walls but if you didn’t know what to look for, they would be as helpful as a plaster covering a newly amputated limb. Ben kept talking to Alex, trying to distract him from their surroundings by talking about their plans for the rest of the day.
“Hey Cub!” Wolf greeted as they entered his room, pulling Alex into a bear hug. “This is a nice surprise!”
“How’re you feeling, Wolf?”
“Great thanks. I’ve been discharged so we’re good to go.”
Ben could tell that Alex was relieved that their visit to the hospital really was going to be in and out in under five minutes; he’d relaxed a great deal compared to when they had first arrived in the car park. Ben had just picked up Wolf’s bag and they were all preparing to leave when they heard the sound.
Gunshots. Followed almost immediately by screaming.
Ben’s thoughts instantly turned to Alex. He knew that Alex had once been kidnapped from a hospital and the experience had nearly led to Alex’s death. He was trying not to show it but Ben could see that he was thinking of that night at St Dominics. There were more gunshots. They were still a distance away but they were closing in. Wolf’s room was one of the first that anyone coming up the stairs or lift would come across - the further away Alex was, the better.
“Go!” Ben said to Yassen, nodding at Alex who wasn’t really paying them any attention but was staring at the door. His hands had tensed into fists at his sides and Ben knew that he was mentally preparing for a fight. “We’ll cover you.” Wolf nodded determinedly, taking the gun that Ben offered.
Yassen nodded in understanding, his own gun already in his hand and moving to Alex’s eyeline. He spoke softly to Alex while Ben strode to the door. He opened it and peered around the frame, his gun raised ready to shoot. Their corridor was clear of gunmen but he knew that the situation could change at any moment. Yassen and Alex appeared behind him and, after a nod from Ben giving him the all clear to move, Yassen pulled Alex out of the room behind him and then pushed him in front. There was only one set of entrances to access this floor and Yassen led them away from the stairs and lift. Ben and Wolf took up their positions on either side of the corridor. They would do all they could to block off the attackers and keep Alex safe before reinforcements arrived.
***
Yassen guided Alex down the corridor. He knew that he was leading them away from their only exit routes but that also meant that he was also leading them as far away as possible from the gunmen. They arrived at an empty looking room near the end of the corridor and Yassen quickly cleared it to make sure that it was secure before closing the door behind them.
“Alex.”
“Yeah,” he replied absently, his eyes fixed on the door and his hands clenched in fists, just as they had been in Wolf’s room down the corridor.
“Alex,” he said, putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Look at me.”
But Yassen didn’t get the chance to say anything to reassure Alex as the door to the room crashed open. The earlier gunshots must have been a diversion to try and get them to split up. To take Alex as far away from the potential danger as possible and corner him… and they had fallen into the trap that had been set. Yassen still had his gun in his hand and he shot and disarmed the three men who had just stormed the room but not before one of them managed to get a shot fired at Alex. But it hadn’t been a bullet that fired from the gun. He had been shot with some kind of dart. Anaesthetic, perhaps, which made sense if this had all been part of a plan to capture him.
“Alex,” Yassen said urgently, looking into his eyes. His pupils were already blown. Not a good sign.
Alex began to sway and almost immediately his legs buckled from underneath him. Yassen caught him and lifted him onto the bed.
“You’ll be okay, Alex. We’ll look after you,” he said, trying to reassure Alex as much as himself. His words were empty though and he knew it; he didn’t actually know that Alex would be okay, given that he had no idea what he had been injected with. He felt sure that it would be something to incapacitate him to make him an easier captive but it could just as easily be poison, although a bullet would have been a much more efficient way of killing Alex if that was their plan.
He stormed back to the pile of men that he had left in the doorway. They were a mess, breathing raggedly in their pain. He had not been aiming to kill them; they would likely have important information regarding whoever had ordered the attack and could therefore be interrogated. And that information could be used to protect Alex in the future.
“What was in the needle?” he asked coldly.
None of them replied. He had no patience to play their game. His bullet had torn out one of the men’s kneecaps. He stood on it, exerting more and more pressure until the man was gasping, soundless in his pain.
“I will not ask again.”
“Our employer designed it,” one of the other men, clutching his bloody shoulder, hissed. “It activates the fear centre of the brain and subdues the target.”
Yassen resisted the urge to lash out; he didn’t need screams of agony to add to the fear that the drug was causing. Instead, he took a deep breath and imagined hitting out, the man screaming out in pain. Then he turned and walked back to Alex.
“Alex. Alex, look at me.” The teenager’s eyes had been closed but now they opened. They were completely glazed over and out of focus and Yassen saw no recognition in them.
“What happened?” Ben and Wolf had appeared in the doorway, summoned by the gunshots when Yassen had fired his gun.
“They ambushed us. The gunshots were probably used to split us up and make it easier to get Alex. I took them out but not before they shot him with something. According to him” -Yassen said, pointing at the man with the injured shoulder who was now whimpering in pain- “the drug activates the brain’s fear centre and subdues whoever is injected with it.”
The two agents swore before both rushing over to Alex’s side. He showed no more recognition that they were beside him than he had Yassen. There was absolutely nothing behind his eyes to show signs of cognitive thought. Yassen didn’t even know if he could hear them or if he was currently stuck in some kind of nightmare induced by his fears. And Alex had lived through far too many real life horrors for his brain to pick and choose from. He could be reliving any number of events that he had barely escaped from with his life. Or the drug could be causing him to be experiencing something completely new, using the fear he had felt then and layering it over a new scenario. Yassen had no idea. He didn’t like not knowing. And, most of all, he didn’t like that he had no way of helping Alex.
“How did they even know that he’d be here?” Ben whispered, more to himself than to the room.
The three men exchanged a look. None of them knew the answer to that question and that made all of them nervous. Nobody had known that Alex was going to come with Ben to pick Wolf up. So had they seen Alex at the hospital a couple of nights ago and planned an attack for if he came back? Or had they been watching the house, looking for an opportunity to make their move? And if they had been watching the house, why hadn’t Yassen or Ben noticed? But more important than answering those questions right now was getting Alex to safety.
“We have to get him out of here,” Ben said a second later, echoing Yassen’s thoughts out loud. “The gunshots might have been to separate Alex from all of us but they are probably still planning to take him when they get here.”
“Agreed. Except the hospital will be in lockdown so we can’t just walk out of here.”
The three adults stood quietly for a few moments, deep in thought as to the best way to get Alex to safety.
“What if we take him out as a patient?” Ben asked.
“That could work,” Yassen agreed, thinking through the logistics.
Just then, Alex sat up and mumbled something that sounded like ‘dying’ before he broke off into completely unintelligible words.
“If he says that and someone overhears, we will be stopped,” Yassen said, pushing his own horror at what Alex was currently experiencing aside so that he could focus on getting him to safety.
“What if he was a psychiatric patient?” Wolf suggested as he helped Alex drink some water.
So that was how Yassen Gregorovich found himself helping Alex into a straitjacket to get him out of the hospital. The boy was still completely out of it, entirely dependent on Yassen to hold him upright and move him forward. As they moved towards one of the side exits, with Ben and Wolf walking ahead of them and clearing their passage, the corridors became more and more deserted as patients hid from the danger and doctors and nurses rushed to where they were needed. Alex slowly regained some control over himself. At least, he was able to call for help a couple of times, not that anyone (other than Yassen, Ben and Wolf) heard him.
As they reached the penultimate corridor before the exit, Ben slipped into a second straight jacket. They reasoned that if Ben sounded like a psychiatric patient too, then anything that Alex managed to say in his confused state would also sound like delusions. Yassen was glad that they had taken the extra precautions when Alex shouted for help, saying that he was being kidnapped, although the terror and panic in his voice was like a punch in the gut. The drug certainly induced fear. Ben’s proclamation that he was the Prime Minister, in addition to Yassen warning the security guard that Ben had just bitten one of the doctors, completed their disguise and Yassen smiled to himself as the door was opened to allow them out. He breathed a small sigh of relief once they were in the open. They still had to get Alex to a safe house and find out what was in his system but he was out of the hospital and safe from those who wished to harm him.
“Wolf and I are going to stay and help with containment and capture. We’ll meet you at the safe house,” Ben said once Alex was safely strapped into the car. Yassen understood. They needed to know who had orchestrated the attack, why they wanted Alex and how they had found him.
“We’ll see you there,” Yassen said as he opened the door to climb into the driver’s seat.
He turned around to face Alex. There was a second of confusion, then a moment of clarity as Alex realised who he was, followed by terror. What did Alex think he was planning to do? Yassen could only imagine what his fear induced mind would concoct if he still remembered that Yassen was, primarily, an assassin. The drug he’d been injected with had made him believe that Yassen was kidnapping him and, from the looks of him, he probably thought that torture was on the cards too. Alex mumbled something that sounded like ‘Yassen… kill you too’ and Yassen wondered whether he was remembering a warning that he had once been told.
“Alex,” he said softly, trying to explain that he was safe. That he wasn’t in any danger. But before Yassen could say anything more than his name, Alex’s eyes unfocused and he knew that the boy was drowning him out, not listening to what he had to say. It didn’t stop him from talking anyway, even if it probably wasn’t resonating. As much as he hated it, Yassen knew that he would just have to wait for the effects of the drugs to wear off enough for Alex to understand. Resigning himself to an anxious drive, Yassen set off for the safe house.
Alex remained silent on the drive and didn’t do anything until they had arrived. Yassen helped him out of the car and saw Alex looking around wildly. The safe house was very secluded, with every view of the house cut off by hedgerows. Nobody would be able to see them getting out of the car. He led Alex over to the front door and as they walked, Alex opened his mouth to cry out for help. Moving quickly, Yassen covered the boy’s mouth with his hand so that he couldn’t shout and hastily led him into the house. The last thing he needed was the police arriving to find a drugged Alex who was convinced that he had been kidnapped.
He settled Alex down on the sofa and grabbed his first aid kit and a glass of water. Alex still refused to acknowledge him and Yassen didn’t know if he could hear him, but he explained what he was doing and why all the same. If Alex understood even a small amount of his commentary, he might begin to relax. He removed the straitjacket, extracted a vial of blood so that he could analyse it to work out what Alex had been injected with and then held the glass of water to Alex’s lips so that he could drink. Next, he set up a saline drip to begin flushing the drug out of Alex’s system. The test on Alex’s blood would take a while to come back with a result, so Yassen took a seat on one of the armchairs so that he could keep an eye on Alex’s condition. He was still completely out of it, despite the saline. Yassen kept talking. About some of the different things that they had done with Ben over the past couple of weeks. About Ian and John. Anything.
Ben arrived sooner than Yassen had expected him to. He checked the camera at the front of the house and saw Ben’s car pulling into the drive. The agent rang the doorbell a few moments later and, with a glance at Alex who was staring with wide unfocused eyes at the drip in his arm, Yassen got up to let him into the house.
“How is he?” Ben asked as soon as the door closed behind him.
“Not good. He’s still completely out of it and he’s had nearly a whole bag of saline.”
Ben swore. “Do you know what the drug is?”
“Not yet. The results should be back in a couple of minutes.”
“Hopefully it’s something we know and have an antidote for.”
Yassen nodded but didn’t voice his doubts. The attacker who had told him, albeit reluctantly, what the drug did had said that his employer had made it. That made it extremely unlikely that they would have an antidote, so they would just have to keep going with the saline and wait for Alex’s system to clear.
“Did you find out anything from the men at the hospital?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Not much. They were all captured and have been taken to Liverpool Street. Wolf went with them to, uh, oversee the questioning.”
An alarm went off, interrupting their hushed conversation.
“That’s for the test,” Yassen said, turning the alarm on his phone off. “He’s in the lounge,” he added as he went to check the result.
He had just glanced at the kit for long enough to see that there wasn’t one specific drug coursing through Alex’s system when he was interrupted by a shout from Ben.
“He’s gone!” Yassen swore to himself and rushed to the lounge.
Ben was right. The room was empty, a small pool of saline on the floor beside the sofa where Alex had removed it, and the patio doors were wide open.
“I’ll check the garden,” he said, taking control of the situation and moving to the doors. “Check in here. He can’t be anywhere else in the house or we’d have seen him as we talked in the hallway.”
He looked around the garden but saw nothing out of place. He hadn’t thought Alex had the strength to stand on his own, let alone get out of the house but he knew that he hadn’t been taken. There were sensors surrounding the house and grounds so that anyone approaching from outside could not take them by surprise. That also meant that Alex was still within the boundary of the gardens. Ben finished checking behind all of the furniture and joined him at the doorway, also looking into the garden.
“Alex!” Ben called out desperately, but didn’t get a response.
Rather than search all of the hedges by hand - there was nowhere else in the garden that Alex would be able to hide - Yassen grabbed his thermal imaging camera from the side and, after quickly scanning the house to make doubly sure that Alex wasn’t inside, he returned to the door and scanned the garden. It didn’t take him long to locate the teenager, lying motionless under the hedge.
“He’s over there,” he said quietly to Ben, pointing out the spot where Alex lay.
“Do you know what he was drugged with?” Ben asked softly as they made their way to Alex.
“The test found a few different chemicals but I wasn’t able to examine the results properly. Once we get him inside, I’ll be able to have another look and hopefully sort out an antidote.”
They reached the hedge. Ben pulled the branches out of the way and Yassen pulled Alex out from underneath them. He lay there, blinking in the sunshine, looking absolutely defeated. He didn’t try to struggle or resist, but just looked up into their faces.
“Ben…” he mumbled after a few moments and Yassen was glad that he had recognised the agent. If he recognised Ben, he might realise that he was safe. But all hopes that Ben’s presence might calm Alex down were dashed when he saw a flash of anger in his otherwise blank eyes and heard a word which sounded like ‘traitor’ slip from Alex’s lips. Somehow, Alex had made the connection that if Yassen and Ben were together, then Ben must have become a double agent and also be his enemy. Obviously none of Yassen’s attempts to put Alex’s mind at ease and explain that they weren’t enemies had worked.
Gently, Ben lifted Alex up and carried him back into the house. He took him upstairs while Yassen grabbed the first aid kit. They cuffed Alex to the bed, for his own safety more than anything else - if he couldn’t get off of the bed then he couldn’t try and escape and end up hurting himself - and Ben set up another bag of saline while Yassen examined the results of the blood test he had done. There were a few unidentified compounds and of those that had been identified, Yassen didn’t have all of the components that he would need to make an antidote. They would just have to wait for time and the saline to clear the drug from Alex’s system.
***
Alex woke up with a splitting headache and with no idea where he was. The last thing he remembered was Yassen making pancakes for breakfast… and maybe a car journey but he couldn’t be sure. Had that been earlier that day? He was lying on an extremely comfortable bed although, when he tried to sit up, he found that he couldn’t move. His wrists were cuffed to the bed. Where was he? What had happened? And why was he cuffed to a bed? How much danger was he in? Feeling a little like a detective, Alex looked around the room. There was some kind of drip going into his arm. The door to the room opened before he had finished his examination of his surroundings and Ben walked in.
“Back with us?” he asked hopefully.
“Ben? What’s going on?”
“What do you remember?”
“Erm,” Alex said, filling the silence while he thought. “Not very much.”
“Well if you’re not gonna become an escape artist on us again, do you want to come downstairs?”
“Escape artist?”
“Yeah you were drugged and confused and tried running away from us.”
“I promise I’m not gonna run away,” Alex said with a confused smile, proffering his cuffed wrists.
Ben laughed and unlocked the cuffs.
“Wait, who’s ‘us’?” Alex asked as he swung his legs off of the bed.
“Yassen. We’ll explain when we’ve got you downstairs,” Ben said as he sorted out the drip going into Alex’s arm.
A flash of memory appeared in Alex’s mind but it was gone too quickly for understanding to join it. His mind and body were still being affected by whatever he had been drugged with and Ben helped Alex down the stairs and into the lounge. Some more flashes came as he glanced around the room but, just as before, understanding did not come. Just as Ben helped in to sit down on the sofa, Yassen came in with a tea tray.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, concern evident in his voice.
“Alright, I guess. I have no idea what happened though.”
“We’ll be able to fill some of that in, but we don’t know everything.”
So with Yassen and Ben sharing the narrative between them, Alex began to understand some of the events from that morning. By the time they finished talking, Alex knew what had happened that day… although he couldn’t remember any of it for himself. He remembered a vague sense of fear but nothing particularly. He supposed he should be glad of that, that he didn’t have more memories of fear and pain, but it was disconcerting to have no memory of the day.
“So where’s Wolf?” he asked eventually. He had many other questions but he had resigned himself to the fact that the answers weren’t ones that Yassen and Ben could provide.
“He’s back at Liverpool Street,” Ben explained. “We captured everyone at the hospital who was involved and they’re being questioned now.”
“We will find out who was after you, Alex, and we will stop them,” Yassen promised, resting a hand gently on his shoulder, and Ben nodded in agreement.
And, for once, Alex knew that he wouldn’t be left alone to handle this by himself or only be given protection in exchange for going on a mission. Yassen and Ben would protect him, no strings attached, from anyone who tried to cause him harm. Not even Alan Blunt would have the guts to try and defy Yassen Gregorovich and expect to live to tell the tale.
Cat and Mouse
The warehouse scene from Yassen’s POV.
*Spoilers for S2 Episode 3*
Yassen Gregorovich pulled the trigger without hesitation. Simon Marriat, or Smoking Mirror as he was perhaps better known in the current circumstances, crumpled to the floor, blood trickling from the single bullet wound in his forehead and with eyes that stared sightlessly upwards. The shot had killed him instantly and he would now be unable to tell anyone what he knew about Damian Cray and what Feathered Serpent had actually been designed to do. Good. He and the journalist could have put an end to the scheme and Yassen was employed to eliminate any threats such as them.
Suddenly Yassen became aware that someone else was in the warehouse, watching him. Smoking Mirror must have been here to meet with someone and for all Yassen knew, the man had succeeded in sharing his secrets. And if not, they had certainly witnessed him kill the hacker. Yassen couldn’t let whoever it was escape. Where were they? Instinct, honed by years in the field, told him that they were somewhere over to his left. That was the same direction that the hacker had come from when Yassen intercepted him. Slowly walking forward, slipping between a couple of the metal boxes that were scattered around, his footsteps echoing in the otherwise silent space, he raised his gun. Yassen paused, looking around for any sign that would indicate where the person was hidden. Whoever they were knocked something that clanged to the floor and broke the silence of the warehouse. They were hiding behind more of the metal containers straight in front of him. Yassen fired twice, his bullets bouncing off of the metal. The person ran, leaving the scant cover of their hiding place and heading towards an empty doorway that led to another section of the warehouse.
With a jolt, Yassen realised that he recognised the coat that the person was wearing. And the height was about right. So was the hair. He had been trailing Alex Rider for long enough to be able to recognise his profile from behind. This was almost certainly him but Yassen couldn’t let him get away, just in case it wasn’t. He fired another couple of shots, each of them deliberately wide. He didn’t actually want to hit Alex, if this did turn out to be him.
Alex raced up a set of stairs and, before Yassen could follow, he reached the top and threw an open bag of concrete powder down… directly onto Yassen as he arrived at the bottom of the stairs. He was ingenuitive, Yassen would give him that. Enveloped in the powder and coughing, Yassen lost a few precious seconds but his target was also wasting a lot of energy by running as he was, clearly unarmed and without a plan. No matter how fast he was, he wouldn’t be able to outrun a bullet. Yassen climbed the stairs. He came out into a space that would have looked out onto the warehouse floor but for the plastic sheeting that draped down from the ceiling. One of the sheets was wafting slightly and Yassen knew immediately where Alex had gone. He followed.
From his new position, Yassen could hear Alex climbing another set of stairs. The metal fabric of the building was definitely working in his favour, eliminating Alex’s ability for moving stealthily and covertly, especially at speed. Yassen took the lift. He didn’t particularly like being in enclosed spaces but made an exception today. Alex was running across one of the raised metal walkways when Yassen exited the lift. Yassen saw him duck behind a metal pillar and he closed in. The figure ran again. Yassen followed. He fired off several more close shots as the boy ran into some metal mesh that blocked his path. The figure ducked down as the bullets whizzed past. Then, in a move that almost made Yassen’s heart stop beating, he climbed over the railing. He was so high up that if he fell, he would die. Yassen paused and waited until Alex’s grip was secure. Then he fired another shot. The figure let go with one hand, swinging wildly and shouting out as he tried to regain his hold. But his left hand still had a firm grip, as did his feet. He jumped back over the rail, now on the other side of the mesh to Yassen, who found himself breathing a sigh of relief. He watched as the figure ran down the stairs at the end of the pathway. Yassen followed.
He caught up with his target on the mezzanine level. Still too high up to jump from and avoid serious injury, but his target was looking over the safety wall all the same. The figure before him bolted back away from the edge, without seeing him. Yassen fired, the bullet shattering one of the windows. The figure skidded to a halt and began running back towards the wall that enclosed the mezzanine. Yassen fired again, aiming at the other side, cutting off his escape route over the wall. Alex knew that he was cornered and turned around to face him.
Despite his gut feeling that he had been chasing Alex through the warehouse, having it confirmed by seeing his face clearly for the first time throughout the whole chase was a shock. The anger and defiance in his expression gave way to acceptance as he looked back at Yassen. Clearly Alex knew who he was… what he was. How much had he been told after Point Blanc?
“Alex…” he breathed.
The boy’s expression changed from acceptance to confusion but he didn’t stay around to question why he was still alive, given that Yassen’s gun was still in his hand. He ran, climbed the wall and launched himself off of the mezzanine level. Yassen heard him grunting as he landed and scrambled off of the lorry. Alex had chosen the only safe way down from the mezzanine and had dropped onto a flatbed lorry carrying bags of construction materials. It would not have been the softest of landings but it had allowed him to escape… not that he needed to but, of course, Alex didn’t know that. Yassen ran to the wall and looked down. Alex was running away, even as he watched. From his position on the mezzanine, Yassen saw several vehicles, presumably MI6, rush into the warehouse, their tyres screaming and knew that it was time to go.
Rider of the Secret Service - Chapter 2 - In the Crosshairs
Alex was forced through a hallway and into a room at the back of the house. Before he could take in his new surroundings, he found that he was sitting down again. This was a very comfortable seat and, looking down, he realised he was on a sofa. He squinted around the room. He was in the lounge. What a strange place to torture someone! The soft furnishings and light coloured carpet must be a pain to clean.
Yassen had disappeared but now he re-entered the room with some things on a tray that Alex couldn’t see. The assassin looked… pensive? Was that the right word? He had no idea but it was the one that came to mind so it was the one that Alex decided to go with. He struggled to make the connection between the man’s expression and the name of an emotion. What had he been drugged with to make his mind so slow? Yassen was crouching in front of Alex now. When had he moved across the room from the door? Could he teleport now? No, that didn’t make any sense.
“Alex.” Why was his voice so..? Alex couldn’t find the word. Was it full of contempt? Or excitement at the prospect of killing him? Or something else? He had no idea and decided to try and ignore the assassin again but it was harder than it had been in the car. He had closed his eyes so that the man couldn’t torture him by showing him what was to come so he felt rather than saw Yassen stand up and lean over him. He was undoing the straight jacket? Well, seeing that the man had drugged and kidnapped him in the first place, he must have known that he was too drugged to be able to fight. Alex opened his eyes again - this took a lot more effort than it should have done - and saw that he was right. His arms now hung limply by his sides. Even with his utmost concentration, he could not move them. Getting out of here was going to be even harder than he originally thought…
Yassen had grasped his left arm. There was something shiny in his hand. Alex only realised it was a needle when the assassin found the vein in his elbow and pushed it in. There was some kind of tubing attached to the needle Alex realised as he followed it down with his eyes. He watched the blood flow through the tube from his elbow to a small bottle. Was the man going to drain his blood and kill him that way? That would have to take a very long time… was he vindictive and sadistic enough to do that? Alex couldn’t trust his mind to provide him with an accurate answer to that question, although he felt as though his first instinct - ‘yes’ - was probably correct. Before he could even try and process what was happening, Yassen was gone with the vial now filled with Alex’s blood and then almost immediately back with a glass of clear liquid.
“Drink.”
Why did Yassen want him to drink? So that his mind would clear a bit and he would experience the torture more clearly? So that he would actually be able to answer the assassin’s questions? So that Yassen could truthfully say that he had been entirely responsible for Alex Rider’s death? Or was it a cruel ploy to make him drink poison or something? Whatever the case, it wouldn’t be good and he didn’t want it but the glass was at his lips and he had drunk before he could stop himself. Maybe if he pretended to still be out of it, he would be able to catch Yassen off guard and escape! It was a rubbish plan, even through his still hazy mind he knew that, but it was the only one he had… so it was what he could do. He looked up and peered through squinted eyes around the room. That part… wasn’t really acting. His eyes were still sensitive to the bright light streaming in from the patio doors and he couldn’t really make out much detail of the room, no matter how hard he tried.
Yassen got up and moved back to the tray on the table by the door. Had he decided to just begin with the torture anyway? That was exactly what Alex didn’t want to happen. Instead, the man picked up something clear - maybe a bag of some sort? - and carried it over. Only now, as he watched Yassen attach the tube trailing from the bag to the one trailing out of his own arm, did Alex realise that the needle was still in. There was a name for that… he wracked his brain trying to remember. A cannula! That was the type of needle that stayed attached! Wasn’t it? It wasn’t an important detail to be able to remember, but the fact that he had been able to find the correct word (at least, he thought it was the right word) brought Alex hope. Surely that meant that his mind was clearing and he would be able to think better. Unless, of course, whatever was being dripped into his bloodstream even now would keep his mind addled. He had to get it out. But his arms wouldn’t obey him. And anyway, if he tried to take it out now, Yassen would only put it back and probably hurt him for the trouble… it would have to wait until Yassen was out of the room. But infuriatingly, the man didn’t seem to be going anywhere. He had attached the bag to something above Alex’s head so that gravity would do his work for him and was now sat on one of the other chairs in the room. Alex stared at the slightly thicker section of the tube where the drops of clear liquid were stored before they made their way down and into him.
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
It was relentless. He tried to will it to break. To slow down. Anything that would stop it from affecting him and preventing him from escaping.
The doorbell rang. Yassen seemed to spring up in one fluid motion and, with a final glance at Alex, he strode out of the room. This was his chance. He had to get out before the other person who had helped with the kidnapping - for Alex was sure that that was who was at the door - came into the room too. Alex focused all of his attention on his right hand. He could open and close it as he wished. Next was harder. He forced his arm to move. It did! Sluggishly, he moved his arm inch by inch until his hand could reach the tubing around his elbow. He pulled the drip out; the cannula was taped in place and he didn’t have time to worry about taking that out now. Focusing his attention on his legs now, Alex was pleased to find that he could stand up. Very jerkily, one foot at a time, he made his way across the room to the patio doors. He pulled the handle down. To his great surprise, the door was not locked. With one final look behind him, and seeing that he was still alone - Yassen and his visitor had not yet returned to the room, although Alex could hear them talking in the hallway - Alex ran.
‘Ran’ might have been an optimistic and kind way to describe his movements. But he moved away from the house and that was his main goal. Alex knew that he couldn’t get too far, which worried him, but if he could find a good enough hiding place then maybe he would be able to avoid Yassen and build his strength up enough to get further away. He made a beeline for the hedge. It looked like it would be thick enough to conceal him and there was nowhere else in the garden to hide. Alex had just settled himself under the hedge - he could only just about see the doors through all of the leaves and branches so hoped that he would be invisible to anyone looking in - when he heard the shout. He had hidden himself just in time. Yassen appeared at the back door and looked around with eyes that knew their surroundings well. Alex hardly dared to breathe.
Then someone else joined him at the door. This must be the person who had been with them in the hospital but Alex couldn’t quite make out their face, obscured as it was by one particular leaf and by the fact that his vision wasn’t completely back to normal.
“Alex!” the new person shouted. He knew that voice! And not just from the hospital earlier. This was the voice of someone he knew. Someone he had spent a considerable amount of time with. Alex stayed silent and motionless as he tried to work out who this person was. He didn’t think that it was someone he distrusted, but equally why would someone he trusted be working with Yassen Gregorovich? Was this how he had been captured in the first place? By someone he trusted, betraying him?
Yassen had disappeared from the doorway momentarily but now he was back with something that he held up to his face. Binoculars? Or, Alex thought with a new wave of panic, a thermal imaging camera? He watched in trepidation as Yassen began to scan the hedges around the garden. The assassin paused a fraction too long when he was facing Alex and he knew that he had been spotted.
Yassen quietly said something to his accomplice that Alex couldn’t hear as the two of them made their way down from the house towards him. Alex didn’t try to escape. He didn’t have the energy to get out of the hedge, let alone run away. He just lay there, waiting for the inevitable torture that would follow his escape attempt. Alex shrank back as light flooded into where he hid as one of the men lifted up the branches and the other pulled him out. He blinked in the bright light now that he was back in the open. Yassen and the other man were looking at him strangely - Alex was still struggling to identify emotions. He decided that it was probably anger that he’d escaped, if the assassin felt emotions as strongly as that. As far as Alex could remember, Yassen didn’t really have emotions, not strong ones, anyway. Wait! He knew the other person! It was Ben Daniels! A flood of rage flooded through him. Ben was the only person at MI6 who Alex would have trusted with his life and it turned out that the agent had betrayed him. Ben was working with Yassen Gregorovich! He had helped him smuggle him out of the hospital! And now he was here, presumably happy to either watch or even join in the torture that would be about to come.
Alex didn’t struggle or resist as he felt himself picked up and carried back into the house, his last hopes of rescue fading away. If Ben had switched sides, he would be able to divert any MI6 attention away from the house. Alex would never be found. Unless they wanted to send a message to MI6, that was…
This time, he was taken upstairs. He was laid down on a bed and before Alex could even begin to take in his new surroundings, he felt something metal close around his wrist. He tried to move his arm into his line of vision to be able to see what it was but he didn’t get very far before whatever was around his wrist stopped it from moving any further… a handcuff. By the time he had worked it out, his other wrist had been similarly restrained. And the drip was back. His situation really was hopeless.
Rider of the Secret Service - Chapter 1 - Beyond Comprehension
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Deeper and deeper.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Down into the dark.
Into blackness.
Into nothing.
Deeper.
And deeper.
And deeper.
And deeper.
Blackness closing in.
The pinprick of light getting smaller.
And smaller.
And smaller.
Fading.
Fading away.
Until there is only darkness.
Darkness and the feeling of falling.
With no idea how far he had fallen or how far he had left to fall.
Or what would be waiting at the bottom.
If there was a bottom.
Down.
And deeper.
He fell.
Then the falling sensation stopped.
It was like he was floating.
Untethered.
But that feeling didn’t last long.
Now he was shooting upwards.
The darkness still surrounded him but he was sure that he was rising.
A pinprick of light confirmed it.
It was tiny.
So tiny.
But getting closer.
And closer.
And closer.
With every passing second, closer.
The light breaking through the darkness.
It was getting lighter.
And lighter.
And lighter.
Until all he could see was light.
And then…
The room was spinning. The lights on the ceilings blurred in and out of focus. And he seemed to have double or triple or even quadruple vision. It was hard to work out.
“Alex.” The voice echoed and distorted and he had to really concentrate to understand. Someone was saying his name. It was hard enough for his mind to come to that conclusion, let alone work out who was behind it. Someone who knew his name but that was not a short list.
No words of his own came, no matter how hard he tried. Maybe they just came out as random noises. Maybe his mouth just opened and closed like a voiceless ventriloquist dummy. Maybe he wasn’t doing anything at all. He didn’t know.
Then he was sitting up. It was only when he changed position that he realised that he had been laying down before. The room was still spinning. He thought he was going to be sick. Where was he? With his vision distorted as it was, he could make out nothing useful to help answer that question.
There was a bottle at his lips. His mouth was fuzzy and the cold liquid (water if he had to guess) was very calming as he swallowed. Wait? How was he drinking? As far as he could tell, his hands were resting on the… bed? Whatever he was sitting on, anyway. The water seemed to have helped because his mind became a little (almost infinitesimally) clearer. At least he was able to reason that in order to have been lying down before, he had to have been on a bed. The room had stopped spinning too, although he thought he was still seeing everything in at least triplicate.
There was someone behind him. He saw an arm taking the bottle of water away. He wanted to protest, but the words still wouldn’t come. What was going on? Alex wracked his brain, trying to remember what had led to his being in this situation. Had he been on a mission? Had he had some sort of head injury? Was he recovering from a pre-arranged surgery? He had no idea. Although he was fairly certain that he was in a hospital, judging by the few details of the room that his brain had been able to process.
The arm was there again. He was being helped into a jacket. Right arm first. Then the left. That was when he realised that something was wrong. His arms had been crossed in front of his chest? And he couldn’t move them. He knew that he didn’t have his usual strength but he should still be able to move his arms, at least a little, shouldn’t he?
“We are leaving.”
Alex suddenly found that he was on his feet. His legs did not feel like his own as he was pushed forwards. Despite the fact that he could still not see clearly, Alex caught sight of himself in a mirror as they passed out of the room. It took longer than he would have liked to process what he had seen. And he was so focused on working out that image that he didn’t take in any of the corridors or passageways that he was forced down.
He was in a straight jacket! Dread came with understanding. Was he being kidnapped in broad daylight? The more they walked, the more Alex’s mind cleared. He had to be in a hospital. People wearing scrubs were usually found in a hospital, weren’t they? He tried to call out, to ask for help, but his mouth still refused to obey the orders sent by his brain. If any sounds came out at all, they were merely grunts and groans.
At least his vision was a little clearer now, even if his mind and body were still slow. There was a red flashing light near the top of the wall. He was sure that it was important but he couldn’t make the connection… oh, of course! It must be an alarm of some sort. Had someone realised that he was missing? Were people, even now, going to be on the lookout for him? His kidnapper would have a hard time smuggling him past security if they knew who they were looking for. Although, he realised with trepidation that the alarm going off did not seem to have deterred his kidnapper from the path that they had chosen.
“No,” he mumbled, surprised to hear that he was regaining control over his voice. “Help!” he shouted, although this time the word did not come out as clearly. He tried to struggle, to dig his heels in and cause a scene, but he didn’t have the strength. He was being propelled along by whoever was leading him forward and they did not seem to find his struggles effective in any way. He couldn’t even turn around to see who was kidnapping him. That, at least, would have given him an indication of precisely how much trouble he was in. But it was no use.
They had been walking for ages. Alex’s legs, he felt sure, would have been aching terribly if he had been able to feel his body properly. The corridors seemed quieter now. That was not good. The fewer people who saw them would mean fewer witnesses to help MI6 work out where he had been taken, and by whom. Although, didn’t hospitals have cameras? Alex looked around him. Yes! That round black blob on the ceiling looked like a CCTV camera. He thought he could see a blinking red light signalling that the images were being relayed… somewhere, presumably a security office.
He decided to try his voice again. “Help!” he cried out. That was a lot clearer than it had been before. But now there was nobody around to hear his pleas. Hospitals weren’t usually this quiet, were they? From what he remembered, they were a hive of activity with doctors and nurses travelling to visit their patients and porters moving people from one place to another. So where was everyone? A diversion of some sort must have been created, pulling anyone who might have been able to help away to a different area of the hospital. Alex felt his hopes of rescue dwindling by the second.
Oh no! Alex felt the despair quickly replaced by terror again. They were at an exit. But a security guard was standing there and he didn’t look like he was about to let anyone out. That at least gave him a glimmer of hope. He couldn’t be kidnapped if they weren’t allowed to leave! Although, what extremes would his kidnapper go to? They had clearly drugged Alex so that he would be unable to resist (Alex found himself thinking that drugs anda straight jacket was overkill). His mind preoccupied with his thoughts, he didn’t realise that they had reached the security guard until he felt himself pulled to a stop.
“I’m sorry, I can’t allow anyone out whilst we’re in lockdown.”
Alex felt the glimmer of hope burst into a roaring fire.
“I understand. However these patients need transferring to a secure psychiatric facility.”
“No, please, I’m being kidnapped!” Alex protested, pleased to find that his voice was once again his own, but even as he spoke he realised the genius of his kidnappers plan. By making him look like a psychiatric patient, the security guard would likely not believe a word that he said. The realisation came like a giant bucket of water to put out his fire. Wait… his kidnapper had said ‘these patients’. Plural. Alex looked around. There was someone else, also in a straight jacket, standing to his left. Was this a double kidnapping?
“I’m the Prime Minister!” the person to his left announced.
“No! Please! I really am being kidnapped! Help me! Please!” Alex was desperate. But he could see in the guards eyes that his pleas were only serving to further his kidnappers story.
“They are both extremely dangerous patients. The ‘Prime Minister’ just bit one of the doctors upstairs,” the faceless voice from behind explained, sounding all the world like a rational doctor who dealt with delusional patients day in, day out. “He’s known for being a biter,” he added conspiratorially.
“Oh, of course,” the security guard spluttered, his face significantly paler than it had been when they first arrived. He held the door open at arms length, wanting to keep as far out of harm’s way as it was possible to.
“No please! You have to help me! I’m being kidnapped,” Alex cried as he was forced through the open door.
It seemed that Alex’s voice had returned too late to save him. The door closed behind them and Alex felt the cool morning air close in. His breath fogged in front of his eyes as he breathed rapidly, trying to find a way of escape. But he was still mostly dependent on the person behind him for movement. He glanced to his left again, trying to see if he knew his kidnap companion. Alex was shocked to see that this man was being allowed to walk freely. And… no… it couldn’t be! He was taking off his straight jacket? He was part of it. They were working together to make Alex’s cries for help seem more delusional! Who would have come up with something like this? Desmond McCain had had him smuggled through Heathrow Airport under the influence of a drug that made him look disabled… but both McCain and Bennett were dead, so they couldn’t be behind this. His mind became shrouded in fog again before he could think any more and any detective work became impossible.
They had arrived at a car. Alex felt himself being leant against the back of the car, the metal supporting his body so that he would remain standing upright. The door opened. He was sitting inside. How had that happened? A second ago, he had been standing outside the car and now he was sitting on the back seat with the seatbelt running across his chest.
“We’ll see you there,” he heard his kidnapper say as the driver’s door opened. The shock when Alex saw the man’s face in the mirror stunned him into keeping his silence. Yassen Gregorovich. All he knew of this man was that he was a contract killer. He had killed Ian Rider. Words spoken to him once long ago floated briefly across his mind. ‘If Yassen finds out you’re working for us, he’ll kill you too.’ Panic rose within him unbidden, although he was determined not to give the assassin the satisfaction of seeing his terror. He would not let him win, even if it was a tiny victory compared with what was likely in store for him in the imminent future. The man turned around in his seat to examine him but Alex turned away.
“Alex…” but with Alex’s mind full of fog as it was, he found it surprisingly easy to drown out the threats that he had no doubt were being directed at him.
The assassin seemed to tire of the lack of response that he was getting because he turned around his seat. Alex felt the rumble as the car engine was turned on - it travelled all the way through his body. This car must be powerful, he reflected dully; the vibrations from the engine in Jack’s car didn’t run through his body like this. If anyone did realise that something was wrong with one of the ‘patients’ who had been allowed out of the hospital and chased after them, this car would be able to outrun them easily.
Who was Yassen working for? Or, potentially worse, was he working of his own volition, getting his own back for something that Alex, or his father, or Ian had done in the past? Alex didn’t have the mental energy to ponder that question too deeply, although he felt the anxiety that it invoked gnawing away inside him as they drove away.
He was too wrapped up in his thoughts to realise that they had arrived at their destination until his door was opened. Yassen lent across and unbuckled his seatbelt. Alex remembered the ‘Prime Minister’ had been a ‘biting’ patient so he decided to cause Yassen pain. This was probably the most vulnerable position that Alex would ever find him in! Ugh his brain was too slow! By the time he had worked those thoughts through, Yassen had straightened up again and Alex felt himself being pulled out of the car. How far had they travelled? Alex had no idea. Even if by some miracle he escaped, he had no idea where they were or where he would have to go to get help.
Alex was propelled forwards once more and he heard the crunching sound of gravel beneath their feet as they walked. He managed to look around. The car had parked on a hedge-lined driveway in front of a house. It was the only car. Alex knew that the observation was significant. Why? Of course! Yassen had said ‘we’ll see you there’ to his accomplice - the ‘Prime Minister’ Alex thought bitterly - who had to be coming in a separate vehicle. If there was only one car on the drive, they hadn’t arrived yet. That made the odds of Alex being able to escape slightly better… although it was him (still under the influence of some sort of drug and bound in a straight jacket) against Yassen (in full control of his mental and physical faculties and with much more experience than Alex). The odds were not good. But they were better now than they would be soon, when the other man arrived. Was it too much to hope that Yassen would underestimate him enough to allow him to escape? Maybe. But hope he would, all the same.
Alex tried to call for help again, but Yassen had seen the move and clamped a hand over Alex’s mouth before he could say anything. He couldn’t yell for help. Thanks to the thick hedges, nobody would have seen him getting out of the car. Nobody would know that he was there. Alex was propelled up the front steps of the house and as the door shut behind him, he felt sure that this would be the last place he ever saw.
On the Precipice of Darkness
BANG
“Was that hail?” Alex asked uncertainly.
No. It most definitely was not hail but how was Ian supposed to explain that they were being shot at… with a gun? A sniper rifle being fired from one of the rooftops above them, to be specific.
BANG
Another gunshot sounded as a second bullet ricocheted off of the car. Thankfully it was armour plated and packed with gadgets, but why did they have to target him when Alex was in the car? This was certainly one way for Alex to find out what he actually did for a living and definitely not one that he would have chosen.
BANG
“I don’t think so, Alex,” Ian replied, allowing a note of uncertainty to creep into his voice. “There was nothing on the forecast and, besides, there aren’t any storm clouds.” It was true. The weather was surprisingly sunny for November, with a clear blue sky, even if the air was still crisp and cool.
BANG
Ian had to think quickly. He didn’t really want to reveal his true job to Alex. Not when he was just thirteen. He subtly activated his emergency beacon and touched a hidden button on the right arm of his glasses, another gadget from Smithers. Among other things, when activated they gave him a command centre view of the status of the car, which was what he needed right now. A damage report. It was worse than he feared; the shooters weren’t targeting him. They were targeting the passenger side. They were aiming at Alex!
BANG
The windshield splintered and cracked.
“Ian!” Alex shrieked in alarm, shrinking back into his seat.
The cracked windshield looked worse than it actually was; Ian knew that it would be able to withstand a lot more damage before it became compromised enough to stop providing protection. And if it did get to that stage, there was a spare one that he could put into place. But it was too late to worry about exposing his true job now - if he didn’t act, they would both be too dead for it to matter. Ian gunned the engine, ignoring the side street that would be a perfect place for an ambush, and mounted the pavement to get past the line of cars waiting for the traffic lights to change from red to green. He also put the siren on so at least people would have a little bit of advanced warning, although a bullet ridden BMW would probably not be the emergency vehicle that they were expecting. Thankfully, the streets were relatively quiet for London at the moment so the danger to civilians was lower than it would have been at rush hour.
“This is Rider in vehicle 9H. Taking heavy fire. Need an escape route.”
BANG
“Ian?” Alex asked, a mixture of panic and confusion evident in his voice. As much as he hated it, Ian ignored him and focused on the road.
According to his glasses, there were three shooters on the rooftops above them. Pressing a button on his steering wheel, Ian heard a faint pop coming from underneath the car and saw the resulting explosion (not large enough to cause much damage) on a rooftop a few moments later. One target down. Still driving forward, Ian saw a couple of ominous looking jeeps blocking the road directly in front of them, aiming machine guns in their direction.
“Confirmed. Turn left.” The order came through from MI6. There was a tiny speaker in the arm of his glasses that allowed him to hear their instructions over a secure line. Ian followed their direction and wrenched the wheel, turning the car sharply left. Alex cried out at the sudden movement but it was drowned out by the barrage of bullets that hit Ian’s side of the car as they passed by the machine guns. Once they had rounded the corner, Ian floored it. He needed to get Alex to safety as quickly as possible. More bullets hit the back of the car, even as he sped off down the street.
There was an even louder bang as a much larger calibre bullet hit the roof of the car. Looking up, Ian saw that it had dented it. Not good. The armour plating was holding, but its effectiveness would decrease rapidly if the onslaught of bullets continued.
“Turn right at the junction.” That was the next instruction from MI6. So once again, Ian dragged the steering wheel, making the turn at the last possible moment, their speed never dropping below 50.
“Ian! What’s happening?” Alex shouted, but Ian ignored him. There would be time for explanations when they were safe. That was when Ian saw the missile launcher pointed in their direction. He swore, slamming on the breaks until the car came to a stop, his thumb ready on the steering wheel to activate the flares which should stop the missile from finding its target. Should. Ian had never had to use them to know how effective they were.
Time seemed to stretch on impossibly slowly as Ian waited for the inevitable. They were saved by the car’s built-in alert system. Ian had been waiting for the person in front of them to make a move, but they had only been a distraction. The real threat was coming from behind and even though he had checked his mirrors, Ian hadn’t seen them. He activated the flares and, at the same time, used the car’s omnidirectional wheels to move the car as far away as possible down a side street to their left. He had just turned the car the right way around to drive forwards when the missile hit the flares. The explosion was so loud and so close that it blasted through the rear windscreen. Whatever had been fired at them was extremely large artillery. With his ears ringing from the sound, Ian frantically brought up the replacement rear windscreen, also bulletproof, which thankfully hadn’t been damaged by what the car had been through thus far. Once the car was secure, Ian fired back two missiles of his own, the car having saved the coordinates of the threats and using satellites to update them if they moved. The slightly more distant explosions that followed a few seconds later sounded like music to his ears.
“Just hold on a moment, Alex. We’ll be safe soon,” he said, trying to comfort his nephew, but Alex didn’t reply. Stealing a glance in his direction, Ian saw that he had been knocked out, probably by the force of the explosion that had shattered the rear windscreen. That wasn’t good. He swore again.
“Give me a route to St Dominic’s.”
“On it,” was the reply and a moment later, the route came through. Setting the car to drive on auto pilot, Ian examined Alex’s condition. There was a deep gash on his head and blood was running down his cheek and dripping onto his legs and the floor. His pulse was strong and he was breathing deeply and steadily though, which reassured Ian a little. Grabbing the first aid kit from the glovebox, he cleaned and bandaged Alex’s wound and then checked him over for other injuries. There wasn’t anything obvious but Ian knew there could be more sinister injuries hiding underneath the surface…
The car swerved down a street and a hail of bullets from another machine gun hit the rear end of the car. Pressing another couple of buttons, Ian took control of the car again and sent another missile behind him. The person behind the machine gun disappeared in the flames and the gunfire came to an abrupt end.
“What the hell’s going on?” he shouted.
“We aren’t sure.” The reply came back almost instantly.“Backup is on the way.”
“Well in the meantime, I’m still coming under fire in a compromised vehicle and Alex is unconscious,” Ian snapped.
BANG
Almost proving his point, another bullet hit the car. At least they didn’t seem to be armed with anti-tank missiles. Armoured or not, just one of those would certainly be able to take the car out.
“Take this right, then the next left. Backup will meet you there. We’re working on the snipers too.”
BANG
Ian took the corner, engine screaming and wheels spinning, but he remained in control. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alex’s head lolling from side to side with the sudden movement as the car swerved. The logical part of Ian knew that he hadn’t actually been unconscious for very long but that knowledge wasn’t very comforting right now. Time seemed to be dragging on imperceptibly slowly but it had probably only been a couple of minutes since the explosion that had knocked Alex out, if that. Still, the longer he was unconscious, the more uneasy Ian felt. He took the left turn as he had been instructed and put his foot to the floor as he almost flew down the road. A small burst of relief flickered inside at the sight of many armed cars waiting for him just a few hundred meters away.
But out of the corner of his eye, Ian saw the flame as yet another gun was fired in their direction. It was another missile launcher. He swore and prepared the flares again. Time seemed to be moving jerkily now. As though he were in a time lapse and his brain could only process the scene every few seconds or so. It was not a pleasant feeling. Ian stabbed down on the flares and braced himself for the shockwave as the missile exploded above the car. He counted down the seconds until impact.
Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
One…
He had been able to release the flares earlier this time, however the explosion still felt impossibly close. His ears were ringing again, although to Ian’s great relief, none of the windows shattered this time. He carried on through the smoke and debris, wanting to get to the backup as quickly as he could. He had to get Alex to hospital. MI6 could deal with the rest of this mess. The tires squealed in protest as he slammed on the breaks, stopping just in front of the line of waiting cars.
“Cover me!” he shouted as he opened his door. It wasn’t strictly necessary as they were already in position with guns raised and anti-missile defence set up, but Ian knew from experience that it was always better to say it unnecessarily than regret keeping your mouth closed. Two of the agents rushed forward to cover him with bulletproof shields while he ran to the passenger side and gently lifted Alex out of his seat. The bandage was no longer pristine white. The blood was seeping through. That was not a good sign.
“This way,” one of the agents shouted in his ear. “There’s a car and driver waiting for you to take you to St Dominic’s.” Well Ian would certainly kick the driver out and commandeer the car for himself. He wasn’t in a trusting mood. But then he saw Crawley behind the wheel of the car that he was being led to. They had probably organised for a friendly face to be behind the wheel knowing that he would refuse to get in the car otherwise.
Time was still skipping and jumping and one second he was walking to the car, carrying Alex in his arms and the next he was in the back seat with Alex laid out beside him while Crawley drove them to St Dominic’s. Ian grabbed the first aid kit and began checking Alex over. His pupils dilated equally when he shined a torch into them which was a good sign but there was still no sign that he was regaining consciousness. He took off the bloody dressing and replaced it with a new one. They would remove it again at the hospital anyway but he needed to be doing something. There was no way that he could just sit idly while Crawley drove. He checked Alex over for signs of any other injuries but there was nothing obvious. Ian almost wanted to scream with the amount of time that it was taking to get to the hospital but he didn’t. Screaming wouldn’t help the situation. He looked up and saw that Crawley was speaking to him. He couldn’t hear anything. He realised now that his ears were still ringing from the explosions of the flares hitting the missiles. He shook his head, as if that would help in any way, and shouted to Crawley.
“What? I can’t hear you!”
“We’re not far away now, Ian!” Crawley shouted and Ian was relieved that he heard the words this time, even if they were muffled. The fact that he could hear Crawley shouting was definitely a good sign. It meant that his hearing should return to normal once everything had settled down. Should. But right now, Ian didn’t care if his hearing waspermanently damaged. His only concern was Alex.
The next thing Ian knew was that the car had come to a screeching halt outside of the emergency entrance. In addition to the doctors and nurses who were waiting outside, there were a couple of armed SAS units. MI6 weren’t taking any chances. As he jumped out and ran around to the other side to open the door and get Alex out, he saw another couple of armoured cars that had pulled in behind them. They must have been following them, in case the car was targeted again. He picked Alex up and laid him down as gently as possible onto the waiting trolley.
“What happened?” one of the doctors asked, looking from him to Crawley and back again as they followed the trolley being wheeled into the hospital.
“He was knocked out, I think by an explosion,” Ian said, unable to hide the worry in his voice.
“How long has he been unconscious?”
“I… I don’t…”
“About ten minutes,” Crawley interjected.
Ten minutes? Was that really how little time had passed?
“Sir, please come with me,” someone - presumably a nurse - said, taking hold of Ian’s arm.
“No!” Ian said firmly. “I need to stay with Alex.”
“You need to get checked out yourself, Ian. I’ll stay with Alex. I promise you he won’t be alone. I can answer any of the questions that the doctors ask, for now.”
“They were aiming at him, John,” Ian said, grabbing Crawley’s arm to impress how important what he was saying was. “When they were aiming at the windscreen, they were firing at the passenger side.”
“I’ll make sure he’s safe, Ian. I promise you.”
“The doctors need to run some tests so, by the time we’re done, you’ll be able to stay with him,” the nurse added.
Ian knew that they were right but he hated the thought of leaving Alex right now.
“If we hurry, we might be able to get you in the bay next door.”
Ian knew that they were making special dispensation, both because this was a private hospital so they had more flexibility and because MI6 had probably phoned ahead. In an NHS hospital, the Accident and Emergency unit was split into several sections for extremely injured patients who needed critical attention down to those with much more minor afflictions. And these sections were definitely separate. So Ian allowed himself to be led behind the trolley carrying his unconscious nephew and into the bay next door.
“Tell me what happened,” the nurse prompted.
All of the staff at St Dominic’s had been required to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they started work and Ian knew that anyone involved in today’s treatment would also be required to sign the Official Secrets Act, so he told the nurse exactly what had happened.
“I’ll just need an otolaryngologist to check your ears to make sure that there’s nothing more serious going on with your hearing but you can go and sit with your nephew until they’re ready for you,” she said after she had completed all of her checks.
Ian thanked the nurse and followed her as she parted the curtain into the next cubicle. Alex was laying there, looking tiny strapped down to a spinal board and with a collar securing his neck. He knew it was just precautionary but the sight of his nephew unconscious on the board nearly choked him. The fact that he had an oxygen mask covering his face and was also hooked up to various monitors, with wires attached all over his body did not help the image either.
“The doctors are just waiting for the CT scan. They’ll check his brain and make sure that there’s nothing else going on that we can’t see.” Ian had been so focused on Alex that he hadn’t seen that Crawley was sitting on one of the chairs beside his bed.
“Thanks, John,” Ian said as he slumped into the chair beside him.
“How are you?” he asked.
“They just want to check my ears, but fine other than that,” he replied, deliberately misinterpreting the question.
“Ian,” Crawley began.
“I’ll go over it all in the debrief, John. Right now, my only concern is for Alex.”
“I understand that, Ian. Truly I do. But you won’t be any good to Alex if you’re not okay,” he said with a pointed look.
“Thanks for your concern, John, but right now I need to be with Alex. I can process and sort through everything when I know that he’s going to be okay.”
“If you’re sure. I’ll be waiting outside if you need me.”
“Thanks,” Ian said with as big a smile as he could muster, which at the moment was just the smallest twitch of the corners of his mouth. “And thanks for getting us here so quickly,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
Crawley didn’t say anything but squeezed Ian’s shoulder gently before leaving him and Alex alone. The silence in the small bay was broken only by the beeping of the machines as they monitored Alex’s vitals. Everything looked good, as far as Ian could tell. He was definitely no doctor but he had enough medical knowledge to be able to understand the readings that the machines were giving out. A couple of minutes later, the doctor came back.
“Ian,” he greeted and Ian recognised Dr Hayward. As the hospital was one favoured by MI6, the doctor had treated Ian himself numerous times after missions and they knew each other fairly well.
“How is he?”
“Everything we’ve checked so far looks okay. We’re just going to take him for a CT scan to check his brain and make sure there’s nothing going on inside, but it should just be a case of waiting for him to wake up.”
“Thank you,” Ian said, allowing himself to breathe a slight sigh of relief.
“The otolaryngologist is ready for you too, so you go and have your ears checked and Alex can have his scan.” He must have seen the hesitation in Ian’s eyes because he added “and if you’re done before us, you can come into the radiography suite and join us.”
“Okay,” Ian begrudgingly agreed, allowing Dr Hayward to lead him over to the waiting nurse.
His consultation with the otolaryngologist didn’t take very long (as he had expected), so Alex’s scan was still going on after he was released and handed his discharge letter and a pamphlet with care instructions. He made his way up to the booth where Dr Hayward was watching with the radiographers. Crawley was there too but he slipped out when he saw Ian enter the room as there wasn’t room for them both.
“Do you want a coffee, Ian?” he asked as they passed in the doorway.
“Thanks,” Ian said with a slight nod.
Ian glanced at the pictures from the scan with slight trepidation. He felt sure that it could not be good that Alex was still unconscious, although he wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed.
“Everything looks okay at the moment,” Dr Hayward said reassuringly, seeing the look on Ian’s face.
The rest of the scan passed uneventfully and Ian walked beside the trolley as Alex was wheeled back to the bay. He was put into a private room this time, so Ian knew that it was now just a case of waiting for the scan results. That would determine the next course of action.
“Any news?” Crawley asked when he came in with two cups of coffee a short while later.
“No. Nothing yet,” Ian said as he gratefully took the large steaming cup and took a sip of the strong liquid. “What if Alex remembers?” he asked quietly, after he had sat back down in the chair beside the bed and taken hold of Alex’s hand again. The question that had been troubling him for a while now.
“How much was he conscious for?”
“Enough. He thought it was hail to start with but knew it couldn’t be when I radioed for help and he saw us being shot at.” He couldn’t say any more. It was too painful to think about right now.
“The public cover is that a film sequence was being shot in the city,” Crawley began. “Depending how much Alex remembers, the story will be that you passed the set and were then involved in a car crash. That in his unconscious state, his brain had combined the two events into one.”
Ian nodded but didn’t say anything. It would be another lie. And Alex’s life had been nothing but lies. At least, that was how it felt sometimes. Ian didn’t have time to dwell on that uncomfortable thought any longer because Alex began to stir on the bed. Ian relinquished his grip on Alex’s hand and began running his hand through his hair, as well as he could with the bandage covering his forehead, anyway.
“Alex?” he asked softly and was rewarded with a soft groan.
“I’ll get the doctor,” Crawley said and left the room.
“Don’t move, okay, Alex?” Ian said as calmly as he could. He hoped that if he sounded calm, it would keep Alex calm. “We were in an accident so the doctors just need to make sure that you’re okay.”
“Okay,” Alex replied quietly.
Crawley was back with Dr Hayward and a couple of nurses within moments and soon Alex was surrounded as they checked his vitals and the doctor asked him questions. Ian didn’t want to but he stepped back, giving them space to work. The relief that flooded through him was enormous. Alex had woken up!
“Can you tell me your name?” Dr Hayward asked.
“Alex Rider.”
“And do you know what the date is, Alex?”
“The fifteenth of November.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
Ian knew that Dr Hayward was establishing whether Alex’s mental state was impaired or not.
“We were in the car… where did Ian go?” Alex asked, suddenly panicked.
“I’m right here, Alex,” he said, quickly stepping forward so that Alex could see him. He relaxed instantly as Ian brushed a hand through his hair.
“Go on, Alex. You were in the car - do you remember what happened next?” Dr Hayward prompted.
“Umm it’s a bit fuzzy,” Alex began hesitantly. “I remember a lot of banging and loud noises.”
“It’s alright, Alex. You may find that your memory starts to come back but it’s also perfectly normal if it doesn’t. Just rest for now.” Dr Hayward took Ian by the arm and led him a little way away. “I’d like Alex to stay for observation for another few hours. He shouldn’t need to stay overnight but as he’s had a head injury, you will need to keep an eye on him for the next couple of days.”
Ian nodded. “Do you think his memory will come back?” he asked.
“It’s impossible to say. There are no certainties with head injuries; some people never regain their memories from immediately around the time where they were hurt. Others are able to remember little pieces over time, but not the whole event. Others are able to remember the whole event and this can happen quite quickly afterwards or in the months and years that follow. Unfortunately there’s no way of knowing what it’ll be like for Alex.”
Ian nodded and thanked the doctor before returning to the seat by Alex’s bedside.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“My head hurts.”
“That’s normal after a head injury,” Ian reassured him.
Just then, the door opened and Crawley beckoned him over.
“I’ll be back in a minute, okay bud?” Ian said as he stood up.
“They want you in for debrief,” Crawley said once the door closed behind them.
“No,” Ian said firmly. “They’ve got the footage from the car’s cameras and they can get the CCTV if they want another angle. I can’t add anything more than the cameras will be able to show them. Alex needs me. If they really want to talk to me, it can wait until tomorrow.”
Just then, Dr Hayward walked by and Ian caught his eye. “Is Alex allowed to eat or drink, if he wants it?”
“Yes. I’ve just received his preliminary scan results. Everything looks okay, so we can remove the spinal collar and board and get him sitting up.”
A couple of hours later, Alex was sitting up in bed and looked a lot better for having had the stiff collar and board that had prevented his spine from moving removed. He still had a bandage around his head but the wound had been stitched and was no longer bleeding. They had finished their dinner and were playing a round of the square game - they didn’t have anything other than some scrap paper and a pen so playing the silly game of connecting dots to make squares was one of the few things they could do to pass the time - when Dr Hayward came back into the room.
“How are you feeling, Alex?” he asked, examining the various monitors that Alex was still attached to.
“Better!” Alex replied brightly.
The doctor shined his torch into each of Alex’s eyes in turn.
“Everything looks fine, so you’ll be able to go once you’ve received the discharge papers,” he said, glancing at Ian. “As I explained earlier,” he continued, “you’ll need to keep an eye out over the next couple of days in case Alex’s condition changes. And Alex,” -he said looking back over to him, -“if you start feeling funny, you need to tell your uncle right away, okay?”
“Okay.”
Dr Hayward left and Ian and Alex finished their game while they waited for someone to bring Alex’s discharge papers. It wasn’t long before a cheerful looking nurse arrived with Alex’s documents.
“Here we are,” he said.
He handed Ian the letter and a few pamphlets with information for both Alex and Ian, including the signs to look out for that would suggest that his condition was deteriorating. Once he had gone, the two of them gathered up their few belongings and slowly made their way out of the room. Crawley was waiting for them.
“I’ll take you home,” he said and led them out of the hospital to the waiting car. He got into the driver’s seat while Ian and Alex both climbed into the back. Alex slept on the journey back, his head resting against Ian’s shoulder. The gentle swaying of his body as they went around corners was horribly evocative of mere hours before and it made Ian feel sick to think about it. He didn’t say much on the journey; Alex may be asleep but Ian didn’t want to risk him hearing a conversation between him and Crawley and making a connection between it and the ‘car crash’ that they had been involved in that afternoon. The car pulled up outside their home and Ian gently shook Alex awake.
“Come on, bud. Let’s get you inside?”
Alex nodded slightly and allowed Ian to guide him out of the car.
“Thanks, John,” he said before closing the car door, purposefully not allowing the agent time to say anything about a meeting tomorrow. Ian pulled his house keys out of his pocket as they walked up the garden path, and opened the front door and switched on the light in the hallway. Jack was away on holiday, visiting her parents in America, so it was just the two of them. Ian guided Alex upstairs and into bed. He fell back to sleep almost instantly. Dr Hayward had said that sleep would be good for him as it would allow his brain to heal but seeing him like this made Ian feel uncomfortable. He checked the time and resolved to check in on Alex in an hour but worry consumed him in the few minutes that he was downstairs making himself a drink. So he decided to get his laptop and set up in Alex’s room where he could keep an eye on him.
Alex didn’t stir in the couple of hours that Ian spent working in his room, using the light of his desk lamp instead of the main light. Ian had been reluctant to look at his emails and when he saw the email from Alan Blunt, he knew that his hesitation had not been baseless. The Director of Special Operations was not happy (and that was putting it mildly) that Ian had not come in for debrief but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Blunt could not understand the innate fear that Ian had felt when Alex lay unconscious in that car beside him. He could not understand the fierce need to protect him. Ian had looked after Alex since he was three months old and, although it had been incredibly difficult, he had resolved to always do his best for him. Today that meant staying in the hospital with him. Another day it would be something completely different, but Alex would always come above Blunt. Always. He had to swallow the rising feeling of guilt that it was his fault that Alex had been hurt. If Ian wasn’t an agent, Alex would never have been in danger in the first place. He span around in Alex’s desk chair and examined his sleeping nephew. Alex was okay and that was what was important. He looked so peaceful and Ian was reassured by the fact that his breathing was deep and regular. There were none of the signs that Dr Hayward had warned him to look out for, so Ian decided to pack up his laptop and go to bed. He set an alarm for a couple of hours’ time to check on Alex again.
Ian checked on his nephew multiple times through the night and each time, Alex was sleeping soundly, breathing deeply and showing no other signs that anything was wrong. Having not slept properly that night, Ian was tired when he woke up for the day but was happy in the knowledge that Alex seemed to be recovering well. Blunt had ordered Ian to go in for a debrief but he knew that he couldn’t leave Alex alone so he suggested a video call so that he wouldn’t have to leave the house. Blunt’s reply was typically brusque but he did at least agree to Ian’s request. He didn’t bother to put on a suit for the meeting but sat in his office in front of his webcam in a t-shirt and jeans. Once he had told everything that he could to Blunt and Jones, he asked the question that he really wanted the answer to.
“What have you found out?”
“Not very much,” Mrs Jones replied. She seemed to be more understanding of Ian’s actions, and he remembered that she was a mother. The fact that her children had been taken from her did not change that. “The cameras didn’t pick up any of their faces and thus far we haven’t been able to trace any of their weapons either. They had all gone by the time the SWAT teams converged on their locations,” she explained. “But we’ll keep investigating.” Ian didn’t say anything but waited for them to continue. Neither of them did.
After the call ended, Ian crept down the stairs and opened the door to Alex’s room. He was still asleep but Ian knew that it was time to wake him up now, so he sat on the edge of the bed and gently shook his arm.
“How are you feeling, Alex?”
“Okay,” Alex murmured sleepily. “A bit stiff.”
“Yeah, after being rattled around yesterday and then strapped to the board, you probably will do for a few days. Come on. You need to get up now. And hot water on those muscles will help.”
“Okay,” he groaned and sat up, stretching and yawning.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
“Pancakes?” Alex asked, suddenly much more awake and with a cheeky glint in his eye.
“Alright,” Ian replied with a chuckle. “You get up and I’ll make a start on mixing up the batter.”
That day ended up being one of the best days that they had had in ages. It was just the two of them and they were actually able to spend it together. They had fun making pancakes together and adding outrageous amounts of sugary toppings before eating them. They watched movies and played games. Ian realised with a pang that they hadn’t properly spent time together, just the two of them, in far too long. Alex was growing up quickly and if he wasn’t careful, he would miss it. They snuggled up under a blanket on the sofa after a takeaway dinner and watched another movie. Thankfully, Alex had shown no signs of any lingering head trauma and Ian realised with a sudden sadness that, provided that nothing changed overnight, he should be okay to go to school tomorrow. Then and there, Ian made the decision to keep him home tomorrow too. After all, Dr Hayward had told him to keep an eye on him for the next couple of days and Ian didn’t know when he would have another excuse to spend so much time with Alex handed to him on a plate. And it wasn’t like Alex regularly missed school. Two days now certainly wouldn’t hurt.
Another year another ship week and here is your very very late round up post. Thank you everyone for participating. We had some very talented contributions this year and I’m very happy to share them with you all.
TheAO3 collection will remain open if anyone gets inspired to create a late entry.
Enjoy the fanworks!
EXHIBITIONISM
A lover’s lament by Myulalie
The blessing is ancient and traditional, and Alex lets it wash over him as he momentarily forgets about world-threatening conflicts of interest and the dashing Russian assassin that somehow sneaked into the wedding reception. Yassen/Alex
Room Service by fredbassett
Performing for an audience isn’t Alex’s idea of a good time, but needs must when the devil drives. Story of his life, really. Yassen/Alex
April’s Fool by Suzie_Shooter
To prevent a terrorist attack Alex has to carry out a series of strange tasks set by someone identifying themselves only as ‘April Cruel’. All the challenges have to be broadcast on the internet to prove he’s carried them out. The latest one – livestream himself being fucked. Yassen/Alex
Perform Under Pressure by Polarnacht
When Alex is captured by the villain of the week, Yassen comes up with a creative solution to save his life. Yassen/Alex
Stake Out by Anonymous
Yassen Gregorovich had been… focused. His target was currently active and within sight, so he had been studying the way he moved to identify a potential weakness. This was how he explained to himself that he hadn’t noticed earlier he wasn’t alone any more, anyway. Focus.
Or: Ian Rider walks in on a very focused Yassen Gregorovich spying on a common target, and he stays to give him a hand
job.Ian/YassenSOULMATES
A lover’s lament by Myulalie
The blessing is ancient and traditional, and Alex lets it wash over him as he momentarily forgets about world-threatening conflicts of interest and the dashing Russian assassin that somehow sneaked into the wedding reception. Yassen/Alex
Kiss of Faith by platorocks
A little fluffy one-shot about one of Alex’s visits to Freddy in the Delhi Station military hospital nearly a year after the events of Nightshade. This is for all you Alex/Freddy shippers out there! Alex/Freddy
His Perfect Girl by platorocks
A little glimpse into Alex and Sofia’s sweet relationship after Sofia has been un-brainwashed, about a year after the events of Nightshade. This is for all you Alex/Sofia shippers out there! Alex/Sofia
Birthday Confessions by platorocks
Freddy Grey (fully de-programmed and living with his parents in Exeter) has his first birthday party in a long time, and Alex is spending the night with him. A fluffy little one-shot about their bedtime conversation and cuddles! Alex/Freddy
Birthmarks by galaxylentil
In which Julia Rothman believes that Hunter is her destiny.
Or: Five times she thinks about her soulmark, and one time she wishes she could stop. Julia Rothman/John
The Treaty of Vienna by fredbassett
Alex is drugged, Yassen is long-suffering. They are most definitely not soulmates. Yassen/Alex
PROSTITUTION
Paybackby fredbassett
On the streets of Moscow, 14-year-old Yasha Gregorovich needs to eat. Sometimes there is only one way to get the money he needs to buy food. Yassen/Alex
Cat Amongst The Pigeons by Suzie_Shooter
Teenage rentboy Alex is working as a sweetener at a billionaire’s weekend party. When one of his fellow hosts turns up dead in the swimming pool he’s adamant it was deliberate murder and turns to the only guest grudgingly willing to take him seriously. But this man is not all he seems either, and the first death may not be the last. Yassen/Alex
️ TIME TRAVEL/TIME LOOP ️
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream by fredbassett
Watching a man die once was bad enough, watching that same death on a yearly basis was worse. Every time, Alex wonders what he could have done differently to change the outcome. Every year, the same thing happens. Yassen/Alex
NONCON/DUBCON
The Devil’s Own Brigade by fredbassett
Alex, undercover as Julius Grief in MI6’s maximum security prison in Gibraltar, gets more than he bargained for in the showers, and receives help from an unexpected quarter. Yassen/Alex
In extremis by kelkblr
It wasn’t even Alex’s mission and he was only there pretending to be the son of the agent whose mission it was. Just reconnaissance, according to Alan Blunt. No danger at all.
One day Alex is going to stop falling for Blunt’s lies. Yassen/Alex
Powerless To Move by Polarnacht
Alex always comes to Yassen when he starts to become blurry around the edges, so Yassen can make him solid again, whether he wants to or not. They both know that there is more between them than what they are willing to admit, until a mission gone wrong pushes them to make a final decision. Yassen/Alex
No time for afterglow by Myulalie
Alex Rider infiltrates a luxurious reception in an undisclosed location in India. As guests mingle, drinking fresh water from champagne glasses, Yassen Gregorovich lurks in the shadow of the couple hosting the reception, protective and threatening all at once as the prospective murder of one of the spouses looms in the room.
By sundown, one of the hosts is widowed, and Alex is left wondering. Will Yassen retaliate after Alex interfered with his mission and if so, how? Yassen/Alex
FOOD
The Whine Cellar by fredbassett
“Yes, Alex. It was all a waste of time. And now we are stuck in an empty cellar with the doorway buried under a pile of rubble from the wholly unnecessary explosion you triggered after I saved you from the piranhas.” Yassen/Alex
Two Hungry Blackbirds by galimau
Food is love, and healing and a language all its own. Fortunately, Yassen always had a tongue for them.
Yassen and Alex’s relationship, told over three meals. Yassen/Alex
Pleasures of the Flesh by Suzie_Shooter
When Alex runs into Yassen on holiday, Yassen invites him to lunch. Three bottles of wine later, things get hot and heavy. Yassen/Alex
No time for afterglow by Myulalie
Alex Rider infiltrates a luxurious reception in an undisclosed location in India. As guests mingle, drinking fresh water from champagne glasses, Yassen Gregorovich lurks in the shadow of the couple hosting the reception, protective and threatening all at once as the prospective murder of one of the spouses looms in the room.
By sundown, one of the hosts is widowed, and Alex is left wondering. Will Yassen retaliate after Alex interfered with his mission and if so, how? Yassen/Alex
BLOOD
Blood, Sweat and Tears by fredbassett
Marcus knows too much blood when he sees it. Aranda knows when to suggest unorthodox means of keeping the casualty awake. Adams is a total manwhore, even when he’s bleeding out. Marcus/Adams (DDBS)
The Bottom of the Ocean by Polarnacht
Sometimes the need to hide his relationship with Yassen leaves Alex vulnerable and insecure, driving him to explore other options. When Yassen sees him flirt with another man, he’s determined to show Alex that he’s his and his alone. Yassen/Alex
Blood Lines by Suzie_Shooter
Sequel to There Will Be Blood, in which John Rider is not as dead as he should be and Yassen is the opposite. And quite cross about it. Yassen/Alex
PROPOSAL/MARRIAGE
PSEUDO-INCEST
Beneath the Soho Streets by fredbassett
Ian’s first undercover job for MI6 takes an unexpected turn in a Soho bar. John/Ian
The Boyfriend by Suzie_Shooter
Alex hates his mother’s new Russian boyfriend. Right up until he really, really doesn’t. Yassen knows the gorgeous blond jailbait should be firmly off limits. But knowing and resisting temptation are two separate things. Besides, someone should probably teach him a lesson… Yassen/Alex
Debts (Yassen: The Professional) by Anonymous
Alex knew debts were a dangerous thing. He didn’t have any money, but he’d seen the way Yassen looked at him.
(A ‘Leon: The Professional’ AU. If you haven’t seen the movie: a hitman takes a young orphan under his wing; said hitman is disconcerted by the orphan’s constant flirting.) Yassen/Alex
RESCUE
⛓️ BONDAGE ⛓️
La lutte futile by kelkblr
Alex can’t help looking for trouble. On holiday in France, getting over a bad break-up, he finds it. Yassen/Alex
All Tied Up and Nowhere To Go by fredbassett
Ian’s last thought before a fog descended on his mind, his knees buckled, and he dropped bonelessly to the carpet was that this should have been a simple in and out job. Ian/Yassen
DREAM-SHARING/DREAM-WALKING
All In Your Head by Suzie_Shooter
Alex has a recurring nightmare about being held prisoner, until one night he realises it’s not actually himself he’s dreaming about, it’s Yassen. But it’s just a dream…right? Yassen/Alex
AMNESIA
Total Recall by Suzie_Shooter
“I’ll never forget you.” At the time it had been meant as a threat, a scared and stubborn boy on a rooftop facing off against the man who’d changed his life for the worse. But several years on Yassen runs into Alex again to find Alex has literally no memory of him. As they work together to find out what happened they inevitably grow closer, but Yassen has to face the fact that when Alex gets his memory back he’ll also remember that they aren’t exactly friends… Yassen/Alex
️ ONLY ONE BED ️
Rest in Peach by fredbassett
Alex has come to expect more from Yassen’s safe houses, but beggars can’t be choosers. At least it has a well-stocked fridge. Yassen/Alex
Two Nights in Iquitos by galaxylentil
Yassen spent 48 hours with John Rider in Iquitos, Peru. No record of that time made it into his diary. John/Yassen
Kiss of Faith by platorocks
A little fluffy one-shot about one of Alex’s visits to Freddy in the Delhi Station military hospital nearly a year after the events of Nightshade. This is for all you Alex/Freddy shippers out there! Alex/Freddy
His Perfect Girl by platorocks
A little glimpse into Alex and Sofia’s sweet relationship after Sofia has been un-brainwashed, about a year after the events of Nightshade. This is for all you Alex/Sofia shippers out there! Alex/Sofia
Birthday Confessions by platorocks
Freddy Grey (fully de-programmed and living with his parents in Exeter) has his first birthday party in a long time, and Alex is spending the night with him. A fluffy little one-shot about their bedtime conversation and cuddles! Alex/Freddy
Bullet in a Gun
Ship:
Yalex
Rating: T
Tags: Yassen-centric, Revenge, canon typical violence, Yassen has a heart - it beats for one person only
Summary:
Yassen makes Alex his apprentice in the attempt to achieve the ultimate revenge against his old mentor, John. When Alex hesitates to turn into a killer, Yassen has to make a choice.
Read on AO3
