A/N: i never ever thought in a million years that i'd ever write a story like this, but here goes :/ for those of you who watched it, this will be very loosely based on an episode from the recent series of Spooks, the one where Lucus' old captor comes to England etc. Enjoy, and please review:)

Stockholm

Stockholm Syndrome: when a hostage has the psychological tendency to bond, identify, or sympathise with his or her captor.

Prologue:

Alex Rider hadn't slept for forty-six hours. He'd counted each minute. He could hear a clock ticking high up to his left, but the darkness in his cell was so complete, that he could see nothing. Not even his hand in front of his face, had he been able to move his arm. He was tied to a wall, in manacles like the ones he'd seen on school trips to medieval castles. His wrists were taking the full force of his weight, and his feet were high off the floor.

Every quarter of an hour, the sound they used in '6 to make suspects break, was played. He couldn't fall asleep. He felt like his sense had gone into hyper-awareness. A sound directly ahead of him, and locks being opened. Blinding white light fell over his face.

"Cub! Get down!" Wolf had been looking at Alex as he'd been shot. In the back of the head. His face was blown to pieces: an open wound of blood and brain and bone. Alex had seen the attacker, seen his cold smile, his indulgent wink, then he was gone.

Alex had let out a roar of anger and pain, and taken after Wolf's killer. None of the unit saw him go. It was chaos; a simple suspect retrieval gone horribly, terribly wrong. And now Wolf was dead. Brave, honest, loyal Wolf, murdered by a coward who didn't even have the balls to watch the soldier as he killed him. Over the heads of the panicked crowd, Alex could see the dark head bobbing between people. Letting out a low growl, Alex darted after him.

He hadn't felt a rage this strong for a long time. Sure, he used anger to complete his job as well as he did – Anger at Blunt, Jones, any other official suit that tried to tell him that he was a true patriot. Anger at Jack, for leaving him, eve though he knew it wasn't her fault. Anger at himself for letting her go, for letting himself get sucked back in by MI6. – but this was something new. This was personal. Alex fully intended to get the guy: beat him to a pulp in an alley: hurt him so bad he was begging for death: and Alex intended to like it.

There! The man slipping round a corner, into a dark and narrow passageway between tall buildings. Alex ground to halt, staring wildly into the shadows. They guy was there, somewhere in the darkness. The alleyway was a dead end; the houses too high and so entirely without any purchase for scrabbling hands to be attempted to be climbed.

Alex padded forward slowly, cautiously, training momentarily overtaking the desire for sweet, violent revenge. He was seventeen. He'd known Wolf for three years, had been working solidly with the man for one of them. Alex knew Wolf's habits, his hopes, his dreams, his hobbies, how he liked his coffee for Christ's sake! And now Wolf was gone. God, Alex didn't even know Wolf's real name. He'd always said it was inappropriate when they working together. Said he'd tell Alex when they were older, and Wolf had retired, and was sitting on the veranda of his house in the country, smoking and beer.

That fury flared up again, white and hot. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe properly. He stumbled for one fatal second, and that's when they stuck. A sharp blow to the back of the head was all it took, and then darkness swallowed him.

Alex blinked rapidly, trying to adjust his eyes to the new light source as quickly as possible. A dark figure was standing in the doorway, small and slender, but clearly male.

The man was coming closer, until Alex's eyes were just about able to make out thick dark hair, a pale, angular face, and mismatching eyes. One a brilliant blue, like the Arctic sky, and the other a dark brown. Both ice cold. The man, who could barely be called that, Alex saw – he looks younger than me! – had thin, curved lips, that even now seemed to be on the edge of slipping into a taunting smile.

Then Alex's head and eyesight cleared, and he realised.

"Hello, Rider." Artemis Fowl the Second said, "At the risk of sounding like an old cliché, we've been expecting you."