Alex Rider threw his bag onto the floor and himself onto the bed. He lay there for a few moments, silently staring at the ceiling. After a week of after school detentions, Alex was feeling thoroughly fed up. Especially as it wasn't his fault that he hadn't handed in the history essay for the third time this term.

Alex sighed as his thoughts turned to the new girl who had showed up on Monday. Ellie was funny, smart and stunning, so it wasn't really surprising that Alex wasn't the only one who had taken to her immediately. Whenever you saw Ellie, Jason White or one of his idiotic friends was never far behind.

Ellie, however, didn't seem at all interested in a single one of the boys in Alex's class. She was obviously used to having too much male attention and would easily shake anyone off that got too close.

In fact, the only things that Ellie really seemed to be interested in were loud rock music and any kind of sport. She was fantastic at pretty much everything, beating Alex in all the cross country races, and out running anyone who came near enough to tackle her when they were playing hockey.

Ellie's real name was Elinor Clarke, but on the first day she had introduced herself to the form as Ellie, so that was what everyone called her.

"Alex I'm home!" Jack's familiar voice interrupted Alex's steady flow of thoughts. Alex jumped, and leapt up quickly from his bed, before replying "Hey Jack!"

Pausing to look in the mirror on his way downstairs, Alex realised how muscular he'd become since starting to work for MI6. He'd never really noticed it before, until he'd come back from Australia, after the rocket crash landed. Thinking of his latest mission made Alex feel a little sad. He hadn't spoken to his friend Paul Drevin since going up into space, but MI6 had said that he was now living in an orphanage near Miami.

It was MI6's fault that Paul no longer had a father to live with. They had stuffed up Paul's life, just like they had stuffed up his. A sudden spurt of anger made Alex turn on his heals. Instead of heading downstairs, he silently tip-toed up the stairs that lead to his dead uncle's old office. Alex wasn't really sure why he was going up here, but a sudden instinct had told him to. He knew that his uncle had a thing about secret hiding places, and suddenly Alex wanted to know more about his involvement with MI6. Maybe it would make him hate them a bit less.

As Alex walked through the door into the room which, as a child, he had been forbidden to enter, he felt a small shudder run through his body. Alex rarely went in here, even though the door was never locked like it always used to be. The room had been emptied shortly after his uncle's death, by someone from MI6 who had come to the house, presumably to remove any evidence of his Ian Rider's involvement in MI6.

Alex began to gently tap on the walls, searching for a bit that sounded hollow. He used the same technique as he did when doing a thorough check for bugs, or hidden cameras in a room. Alex had almost finished his check of the first wall when he caught his toe on something sharp. There was a ripping noise as whatever it was tore a hole through his sock. Alex gave a gasp of pain, and glanced down at his foot. It was bleeding slightly, but that wasn't what had grasped his attention.

Sticking up from the edge of the carpet was a nail. Alex's heart started thumping slightly. Without stopping to think that the nail would have been a far too obvious hiding place for his uncle to stash secret documents about his work, Alex leaned down excitedly, and tugged at the nail. At once the carpet pulled up, revealing a loose floorboard underneath. Alex yanked it up, and on his second attempt the floorboard came free. Holding, his breath, Alex stared down into the small hole underneath. It was empty. Obviously the man who had searched the house had found the hiding place. Alex moaned in frustration.

There was no point. How could he have ever thought that he would find something in this room? Alex turned to leave the room, promising himself that he wouldn't come back, or get his hopes up again.

Pausing in the doorway, Alex took one final glance around the room. And noticed that part of the wall on the opposite side of the room to where he had been stood before was hanging open. Surely it hadn't been like that before, or Alex would have noticed it when he had first walked in. Stepping cautiously back into the room, Alex sighed at how quickly he had broken the promise to himself. It angered him how everything to do with MI6 was so twisted.

At the same time however, Alex was excited, and when he knelt down and pulled the flap fully open his heart started thumping so hard that someone could have been using it as a bass drum. He realised that the loose floorboard was just a cover, and that something he had done – most probably pulling on the nail – had triggered this small flap in the wall to open.

Alex stared at what he had uncovered. It was a small, grey keypad, with a large green button that read 'Enter'. Obviously you had to type in a code to get in. Alex's heart leapt. He had discovered the secret code that his uncle used for many important things just a couple of years earlier. 2539. Alex. Those were the keys that each letter of his name was on, on a standard mobile phone.

Taking deep breaths to control his excitement, Alex leaned forward and carefully tapped in the code, before pressing the 'Enter' key. A faint 'click' from somewhere above him told Alex that that he had got the right password. Standing up, Alex took a good look around, before noticing that yet another flap had opened in the wall just above his head, this one opening out into a small safe. Standing on tip-toe, Alex pushed his hand inside, and felt a rush of adrenalin when he felt the distinctive shape of an A4 file.

Pulling it out, he just had time to glance at the front cover before he heard Jack calling up the stairs.

"Alex, where are you?"

Slamming the file back into the safe, Alex ran out of the office and down the stairs. Jack was stood at the bottom, watching him curiously.

"What were you doing up there?" she asked.

Alex replied without really thinking about the answer.

"I thought I heard a noise or something earlier, so I went up to check but it was probably just the pipes".

"Right." From the way Jack responded, Alex could tell that she didn't believe him, but his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking about what he had seen on the front of the file. He had only caught a glimpse of it, but that had been enough. Enough to be able to read the name that was printed on the front in bold letters.

Elinor Roseanne Clarke.