Hey guys. This will be a SLASH Alex Rider fanfic so if you dont like then please dont read and go to whine and moan about it.

Summary sounds awful but give it a go.

Time setting: a little odd, sorry. It's basically a year or so after Eagle Strike, so he's 15, and Scorpia, Ark Angel etc have no yet happened. Any problems, feel free to yell at me that Im doing it wrong.

Prologue

The University Medical Hospital for central Moscow dealt with hundreds of patients every day. The ER saw the Moscow public pour in every hour with broken bones, fractured skulls, accident at home or at work, or injuries acquired at home or work which certainly weren't accidents. There were car crash victims, young girls with their futures ahead of them who have OD'd over a broken heart, elderly couples who had saved up enough money together to get the bus to the hospital for their medication. There were certainly sad cases. Some, however, took your breath away. They were a violent punch to the solar plexus. Unfortunately, in such a critical situation, the last thing a doctor or nurse wants to do is be knocked out by them. Some nights changed their lives forever.

Tonight was one of those nights. Outside the sliding glass doors, the rain pattered against the streets of Moscow lightly. The night sky was teased with rainclouds, the moon half hidden. There were two nurses behind the desk that night, handling new admissions. They moved swiftly and efficiently in the silence, the only noise to break it being the mutterings of waiting patients and the purr of the air conditioner. Nurse Katya Ivanov was in her last hour of her shift and was imaging what to have for dinner as she sliced clipboards into their appropriate positions.

The two nurses heard the whisper of the doors opening before any of the other patients registered it. The sight took a moment to sink in. The man was in his late twenties, not that it was too easy to tell. The right side of his face was covered in the dark thickness of blood. It was in his eyes, trickling down his nose, but it didn't deter him. His clothes hung heavy on his solid frame, gushes of water streaming from the seams joining the puddles forming at his feet. He was carrying a boy in his arms. He could have only been fourteen or fifteen, with the same red covering his abdomen and torso. His arms hung down, his head rolled back and eyes closed. There was no way to know the colour of his hair, only that the amount of blood had matted it completely. The splatters on the white floor were lost in the gasps of the waiting patients.

The nurses had done this before, and they wasted no time in calling for the ER doctors and stretchers. By this point the young man had dropped to his knees, the boy still balanced in his arms. Whatever strength he had left seemed concentrated in his grip, his fingers digging like vice into the material of the boy's shirt and jeans.

"Sir, can you tell me what happened?" the nurse asked as she landed on her knees in front of them, the material of her scrubs soaking up the blood.

The man seemed unable to make sense of his words. But he talked nonetheless, softly, shaking his head. She realised he was talking to the boy. His gaze were fixed on the still figure, his eyes as red as the blood that seemed to physically stick him and the boy together. Nurse Katya heard the clatter of the stretchers arriving behind her, the familiar presence of her longstanding colleague Dr Petrova kneeling next to her.

"I've got him," she heard him say, in that soft and firm voice she'd heard him use on all of his patients, from kids who needed a shot to incidents like these. Somehow he got his arms under the boy's legs and his shoulders, gently pulling him from the man's tight grip. He lifted him up, his lab coat doused in the blood already. He lay the boy's prone body on the stretcher, hands reaching in at every angle to secure him, fix the oxygen mask, staunch the bleeding. The man on the floor had stopped talking. Katya realised very quickly that his eyes were closed, that his body had gone lax. An orderly caught him before he slumped to the ground, and she saw his fingers uncurl completely, finally relaxed. Behind her, the double doors banged open as the ER opened up for the boy.

But it didn't seem that the man was going to make it that far. He was whispering again, eyes still closed. Up close she could see that his injuries were gunshot wounds; the bullets had done their damage and were slowly sapping him of life as his blood continued to seep into his shirt.

She caught his whisper as she ducked her head again to check his breathing; one word, "Safe." He paused and swallowed, his breathing wet, "As long as he's safe."

Minutes later, as she stood from the pool of blood and watched the doctors shake their head, she wished she had reassured him that that was true.

"How's the boy?"
"Bad shape. Two gunshot wounds, one to the abdomen and side. Serious head wound. They're calling the OR, he needs emergency surgery."

Katya rubbed at her arms, feeling in limbo. There were plenty of nurses and ER doctors in there with the boy; her friend she had been at the front desk with her joined her at the double doors to the ER theatre 1, watching. "What happened to the man who brought him in?" she asked, not sure if she really wanted to know.
"He died. They didn't even have time to get him on a stretcher. He must have been walking around for a while after he was shot. God only knows how he managed to carry the boy here."
The double doors swung back open and Dr Petrova's faced appeared; he looked pained, "We need some help in here."
Katya immediately followed her old friend, into a wall of shouts and screams.
"Get off!" the boy was shouting, arms barely restrained by another doctor desperately trying to calm him, "Son if you don't let us sort you out we-"

"Get off me, get off me, stop!" he screamed, his leg finally wrenching free an orderly's grip. His heel struck out with alarming strength and accuracy, hitting the orderly square in the ribs. He made a great 'oof' sound and crumbled backwards.

"Get off, get off, you don't understand, you need to let me go!"
"Everything's going to be fine," someone assured him, but he wasn't listening.
"They'll come here!" he cried, still writhing, still bucking to get the gripping hands off him, "They'll come here, you have to let me go!"

His face was pale under the blood, dark eyes wide and panicked. Tears started to mix into the smears of blood as he grew more and more desperate.

"We need restraints," Petrova sighed, looking like he hated having to make the decision, "He's going to hurt himself or one of us if we're not careful."
"Stop it, stop, you have to let me go! Get off me, they'll come here, they'll come here I have to stop them! Listen to me!"

The boy's yells could be heard from the entrance to the ER. The people in the waiting room averted their eyes to the floor, trying not to look over at where the body of the man who had carried the boy in had laid just moments before. No-one noticed the figures in the doorway, not with the boy's screams in their ears and the blood on their minds.
The four black-clad figures made their way with heavy boots but quiet footfall up to the ER entrance doors. One had a head sprouting with dreadlocks of extraordinary thickness, with a swollen bruise on his upper lip and a gash running just underneath his eye. The second had the knees ripped out of his black suit trousers, and walked as though his ribs hurt him. The third had perfectly coiffured hair and a big, toothy smile which he flashed briefly to a passing nurse. The fourth was the tallest of the group, long gangling limbs barely covered by his trench coat. Each carried a semi-automatic under their coats. They shouldered their way through the double doors, and all four set their eyes squarely on theatre 1 where the panic seemed to radiate from. They dipped their hands inside their coat, and stretched out their hands to push open the doors...

Yup, no Alex involvement yet, but there will be next chapter.