The Difficulties of Self-Discovery
A/N: Okay, welcome to my first AR fic. All you need to know at this point is bold and italicised are lines from the song that shares the same name as the title. That is, this chapter was inspired by the song 'Work' by Jars of Clay. Completely skip over the section if you want- it's why I made them so separate, but I think it just adds to the story. If you want music to listen to as you read it, like I do, then this song is perfect. Anyway, please enjoy.
CHAPTER I – Work
I have no fear of drowning… It's the breathing that's taking all this work…
Alex Rider watched the bright lights approaching him with apathy. He had accepted that he would die long ago, but he never knew it would happen in such a mundane way. It's a shame, really, he would've liked to go out with a bang- maybe an explosion, or a gun-shot… but then again, he had never got what he wanted, for life or for death.
It was easy for him to watch the lights come toward him and not move. For one second, he was tempted to give up. His life wasn't worth fighting for. In the case of Alex Rider, living wasn't the easy part- dying was. And by the time he changed his mind, it was too late.
The lights were there. He was consumed by them, watching his death rushing towards him, and then there was oblivion.
He woke up, feeling an odd strength to his body. He had a vague feeling in the back of his mind saying that he wasn't meant to be here in the first place, but he ignored his gut feeling and went with what he could do about his current situation.
He looked at the charcoal grey walls surrounding him, analysing them for any exploitable gaps. Seeing a few possibilities, he then went around, tapping them, looking for a hollow area. Finding a promising area, he readied his hands and pummelled into the wall.
Black for a second, he saw in his mind's eye faded grey walls with cracks covering them. He felt the pain to his bones and tried to remember, tried to dig the feeling out of the deep recesses of his mind.
Flashing back to the present painfully quickly, he found his arms buried up to his shoulders in concrete. He gradually pulled them apart, collapsing the wall on itself with the action.
Running out of the room as soon as he was free, he was surprised to find himself in the slums of London, of all places. Scanning his memory banks, he navigated his way out of the permanently dark streets, still in his pale blue clothes and barefooted.
He wondered what the flashback was. Maybe it was part of his long gone memory?
Colliding with a passer-by, he was shocked out of his reverie when said passer-by grabbed him by his shoulder and turned him around.
"Alex?"
He responded quickly, what with his ability to near instantaneously process new information. It was an acquired skill- after all, in his profession, slow of mind equalled quick to die.
"No, Leonard, who are you?"
"Oh I'm sorry, I must have made a mistake. I'm Jack, and you just looked like someone I know."
"Really?" He heard sirens off in the distance. "I've got to go, nice talking to you." He ran in the same general direction.
A few minutes later, Jack saw the police cars racing in the same direction the teenager had run off in. "He's reminding me more of Alex by the minute."
In the meantime, 'Leonard' was entering a small op shop, searching the shelves quickly, but carelessly for clothes that would fit. After all, he couldn't stick out too much. Being remembered meant death.
He finally found some loose-ish black tracksuit pants, a large white t-shirt with a black insignia centred on his chest and a faded red cap. He walked outside in the clothes, and found himself fitting in perfectly. Matching the pace of the people surrounding him, he watched in mild interest as an unmarked police car pulled up, with a tall broad-shouldered but all the same hideous man climbing out of it.
He flashed a photo around a few times, 'Leonard' zooming in and recognizing it as himself a year ago, while he was (according to them) at school before he disappeared into the crowd.
You know, there were times when being a cyborg wasn't that bad.
I don't have a lot of prospects that can give some kind of peace
Alex was comfortable. Such an occurrence was much too rare for his age, but then again, since when was his luck dictated by age? He felt like, for once, the weight of the world wasn't on his shoulders- just the weight of the bedcovers. It had been three days according to MI9, since he had been killed in a hit and run. It was MI6's job, as his guardians to identify the body, and they did.
Of course, a mere three days later, said body disappeared from the morgue. Details were deleted from the records, a few switches of the body bags, and no-one could ever tell the difference.
And then, that particular body turned up in a top secret MI9 lab.
He became subject to a few interesting experiments that he was glad he didn't remember, coming out of the lab as some sort of super-strong, super-smart, super-fast, super-everything spy. In that time, he had lost Alex Rider, and become Prototype Alpha.
What fun.
There is nothing left to cling to that can bring me sweet release
In the three months since that particular occasion, Prototype Alpha had fully embraced his life as an MI6 operative- like he had any choice in the matter. All that remained of his old life was an accident, imprinted in his memory.
And now, in order to find out who I have been, I must find out who I am. Prototype Alpha, or Al as he had started calling himself, balked at the thought. My God, that sounded like a line from a trashy fantasy novel! Memo to self, stop letting the geeks program my vocabulary.
Al winced as someone spoke into the earpiece now ingrained in his earlobe. Plus- he got to keep in contact with MI6 on his missions. Minus- he had to keep in contact with MI6 the rest of the time.
Then there were the tracking devices, reprogrammable microchips implanted in his brain and the damn leverage of another memory wipe. Apparently he had been through three already. But then, he wouldn't know, because guess what! He couldn't remember it. Not for the first- or last- time, Al cursed MI6.
Al resolved to not roll his eyes once during this session, just to practise his self-control. After all, trying to stop himself from rolling his eyes would hopefully distract him enough to stop him from murdering Blunt.
He finally arrived at his destination, Alan Blunt's office. Al's apartments were in fact located underneath the Royal and General, for the convenience of MI6 having their own pet spy at their beck and call. If they didn't have so much damn leverage…
"What now?" he ground out through clenched teeth after entering the room. Just the sight of Alan Blunt made him mad, as any appearance of the statue implied a lot of pain and heartac… never mind, a lot of pain for him.
"Now, now, Prototype Alpha, we wouldn't want you to lose your temper, now would we?"
Al couldn't resist and allowed himself a little eye-roll, as he would've certainly died from the pressure building up behind his eyes.
"We have a situation which requires the best. Therefore, it's being assigned to you. Now, according to our sources, we have a mad scientist performing untested experiments on children taken off the streets."
Al couldn't help himself and interrupted. "What's the problem? It sounds government-approved to me." At this, Al glared at Blunt, who easily ignored the interruption and continued.
"The problem is, that more often then not, these little girls are turning up, dead on the streets. They appear pregnant- mind you, they're usually nine or ten years old- and are covered in bruises, scratches and more importantly, needle holes. The boys that have been taken are usually older- your age- and none have turned up. Our suspect is a Doctor Hannibal Young, a genius who was obsessed with immortality. Said doctor was fired when he started experimenting on humans. You will be going deep-cover and your mission will be to discover the how and the whys. When you record enough incriminating evidence, then we will go in and arrest him. Your mission will start immediately."
"Fine. Nice to know you care so much for me."
Al thought he saw an eye-roll that didn't belong to him.
Empty spaces, shadows hit by street lights; warning signs and weight of tired conversations
Al watched the scenery flashing by quickly. It was discomfiting, knowing that everything he saw was a part of someone else's life. Someone who might go to school, who might be getting a divorce, whose child is sick, and then there were the people whose existence was limited to getting up in the morning, going through the normal, average, everyday routine and going to bed at night.
And there was him. He was a fourteen year old spy who had been dead, and was now half electronic. It sounded like something out of a sci-fi novel. Everyone who he once knew thought he was dead. Everyone else didn't care.
Al finally knew the meaning of the word alone.
Maybe he thought he knew before, when he was trapped in a cell with no hope for release. Maybe when he was surrounded by a crowd who thought they knew him, when they only knew what he showed them. Maybe he thought it was when he sat up in bed, in the middle night, staring off into pitch black darkness, remembering the dreams that paraded millions of dead faces in front of him.
But really, alone was when you had nothing. No-one to turn to, no-one who cared. God, he didn't even have a memory of people caring. All he had was the dark recesses of his own mind, and people who saw him as their tool, because they saved his life when there wasn't much to save. He was utterly alone.
And he didn't want to be alone.
On the brink of this destruction, on the eve of bittersweet
Al sat in the shadowy room, waiting for his imminent death. Really, MI6 should've known better- sending a miracle of modern science undercover to a mad scientist obsessed with immortality. Not their brightest moment, for sure.
One improvement over the rest of the times Al was captured was that he didn't get tired or hungry or weak. They were all indulgences he had to make him feel more like the human he once was.
Good thing Doctor Young didn't figure that one out.
Al had to wonder, though, where he went wrong. Sure he probably could've been a little more subtle with his strength. And refusing to do what the good Doctor said was a little on the dumb side. And maybe he shouldn't have beat up that crony. All in all, Al didn't really have to wonder where he went wrong.
This was his third mission after he died.
The first two went off without a hitch, as not only had he had his earlier training in life, but when MI9 had reconstructed his memory banks, instead of giving him all those unimportant memories like family and friends and his personal history, he had gotten upgrades of his knowledge. He was master martial artist, he knew everything in the encyclopaedia and a few things that weren't, he could give you the file on every single person in every military database, he could solve a complicated mathematical equation with a glance and he could slip into different characters as easily as blinking an eye. And, no matter how much MI9 saw it as a glitch, he had retained his personality.
So, what made this mission different? They were children. Children who had never done a wrong thing in their life, children who were radiating innocence and the fact that anyone could do this sort of thing to pure innocence- well, it got up his nose. So, he made mistakes he wouldn't have made in any other situation.
And now, even with all his upgrades, he was about to die.
All the demons look like prophets and I'm living out every word they speak.
He was beyond human.
He was the future.
He was alive.
He was three billion dollars in technological and medical research personified. He was the height of nanotechnology and neurology. He was physically perfect.
All the things they said when he woke up from four days of surgery. And then there were the things they didn't say, but were hanging over his head anyway.
His life belonged to them.
He was a slave.
He was alone.
Do you know what I mean when I say I don't want to be alone
A/N: My first Alex Rider fic. I wanted to hold off writing one until I came up with an original concept, then this little plot bunny attacked and I wasn't about to let it go. I reckon it's pretty different, at least. Hope you liked it, and please tell me what you think.
The song suited the first chapter down to the ground, which is why I used it. Hopefully the next few chapters will be a little lighter and brighter, but I like the introspection of this chapter.
See ya,
Rachel.