Either Or

"Virgin Atlantic Flight 20 to San Francisco has begun boarding. Will all passengers please proceed directly to gate three."

Alex registered Edward Pleasure's voice telling him it was time to go. He clutched his backpack, feeling strangely empty-handed, though he had everything he needed. Everything else that he'd wanted to keep from his home in Chelsea had been packed in a crate already. He imagined it stamped in large red letters with its destination, AMERICA. There had been other stuff, including the furniture, but the furnishings weren't what had made the place home.

He followed Edward silently towards the boarding gate.

For the past couple of weeks, Alex had been waiting in a safehouse – a manor house in Egypt owned by MI6 – while Mrs Jones made all the arrangements. For the first few days, he'd hardly ventured from his temporary bedroom. Even the agents guarding the place had left him alone. It had given him a lot of time to think, and far too much time to remember Jack.

It was a dusty, oven-like Saturday when Sabina had called him about a week ago, rushing to tell him that her father, Edward, was flying to Cairo to pick him up and bring him to their home in San Francisco. At that point, he'd have followed along with almost anything, but now as they walked down the corridor to board the plane, he felt his steps building with resolve.

It was going to take time, but he had plenty.

Sabina laughed as Alex tried, unsuccessfully, to make the Pleasures' Labrador, Rocky, sit for his meal. "You can't do it like that – he hasn't been trained. He doesn't know how to sit."

Alex looked at her with a straight face. "You mean he's never once touched his arse to the ground?"

"Only when he's lying down."

"Well, this'll be a doubly-exciting learning experience for him, then." He raised the bowl of food a little higher, and brought it towards Rocky's nose.

Sabina broke down in giggles and Alex had to concede when Rocky, inspired, managed to manoeuvre himself such that he brought the bowl to the ground without spilling any bit of the food.

"Virgin Atlantic Flight 20 to San Francisco has begun boarding. Will all passengers please proceed directly to gate three."

Edward Pleasure was waiting for him to follow, to leave on a plane for a new home in America, with a new family. He felt adrift – the house at Chelsea had been emptied, and he hadn't even seen the house in San Francisco. Sabina had told him about it, of course, in the short moments before and after speaking to her father to organise this move… but there was a difference between imagining and seeing a place in person.

With white knuckles gripping his backpack, he tried to breathe slowly. Every muscle in his body was tensed like a deer in headlights, impeding him from any movement towards the gate.

"Come on, Alex." Edward spoke gently, sympathetically, but Alex could hear his impatience. People around them were beginning to stare.

Alex shook his head minutely, staring at his hands, unable to look at his friend's father. He swallowed, but that didn't help. He couldn't do it. "You go," he managed.

"Alex," Edward knelt in front of him, catching his gaze. "It's alright, if you need a little time. I can book a new flight…"

"Go," Alex said again.

Edward remained where he was. "Where will you stay –"

"Chelsea's not sold yet."

"Who will take care of you?"

His breath hitched.

"You'll be by yourself in that house," said Edward, not unkindly.

"Jack hasn't always been there."

"This is the final call for Virgin Atlantic Flight 20 to San Francisco…"

Mr Pleasure looked towards the gate, then back at Alex. He let out a long breath. "If you're sure…"

"Go."

Alex watched Sabina's father walk towards the gate, and before he knew it he was alone.

Staring at the ceiling, Alex listened to Sabina chatter on the phone about her new dog, a golden retriever named Bella. They were training her at puppy preschool, and so far she'd learnt to come when called, to sit, and to fetch. He'd always wanted a dog when he was younger, but Ian hadn't wanted another thing to take care of, and even when Jack –

"And how about you?" Sabina asked. "Here I've been going on, and you haven't said a word!"

He put a smile into his voice. "I'm good. Doing better. Bit boring, actually, which is why I let you –"

"You 'let me'? Why, I–!" She couldn't quite muster enough mock outrage to cover her concern, but she continued, a steady voice in his ear, as he tried to relax.

"…What if you got a dog?"

He brought his attention back to her. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, 'what do I mean?' I mean – what if you got a dog?"

"But what for?"

He could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "What do you get a dog for, you dumbass? For a furry friend. And 'cause they're cute."

Alex stifled a wry smile. "I don't know if I could be trusted to look after a dog all on my own…"

"Your own? No-one's come to take care of you, yet? Alex –"

It was a topic they always came back to, but they hadn't talked for months and he cursed himself for slipping. "No, I mean –"

"Never mind. Forget about it. I'm sorry to bring it up." Sabina paused. Alex didn't respond. "Look, I've got school tomorrow, and homework…"

"Goodbye," Alex said, firmly.

"…Bye."

He let the phone drop to his side, and he closed his eyes. He had to fall asleep. Tomorrow Mr Jones needed him for another mission, and he needed his mind clear.

Sometimes Alex wondered what life would have been like if the Pleasures hadn't taken him in. In moments of quiet, he found his mind drifting back to Mrs Jones and Blunt – it almost seemed like a dream, that crazy year he'd worked for MI6.

Sabina and her parents occasionally brought it up, but lately they'd been asking about other stuff instead, like schoolwork and holidays. It was only when he awoke, gasping, sweat drenching the bedsheets, that they returned to watchful silences and tiptoeing conversation.

Rocky helped. Ostensibly, he was the family's, but they'd chosen him after researching service dogs, and he slept most often in Alex's room.

But with school, and making new friends – although he'd sometimes thought he never would, still tangled in the effects of that horrific year – and with Sabina there to listen, and to support him, he gradually overcame the pall of… everything. Of losing Jack.

Once, he wrote her a letter. Sabina had gotten the idea from one of the many psychiatric books for which she had a newly-discovered avidity.

Dear Jack

He had to take a deep breath in and out, and relax his hold on his pen. There was a lump in his throat that didn't go away even when he swallowed. As he wrote, his eyes prickled and his hand shook, ruining the writing, and he remembered Jack teasing him for his messy scrawl. As if hers had been any better.

Somehow, he managed to get through it, saying more to her than he ever would have, were she still alive. Everything he wished he'd said. Even more, besides. …I wish you could have met Sabina… I still haven't talked to Tom…

At the end, he folded the letter up, and put it in a box where he'd stashed the yoyo and zit cream from Smithers, and some coins from the places Ian had brought him.

And then, after wiping his eyes to make sure they were completely dry, he stepped lightly down the stairs to his new family.

Alex didn't have time to think about what-might-have-beens, except when he was lying in hospital, and even then, he made sure he was either in too much pain or too doped up to ruminate.

But at three o'clock in the morning, with all the lights off except for the nightlight above his bed for the nurses, when the painkillers were wearing off just enough to wake him and add an edge to his nerves, he would think about everything and worse, everyone.

On missions, sometimes, he saw people his own age – had to interact with them, had to pretend to be one of them. And while before he'd acted as himself, just at a new school or going on a holiday with a person he'd just met, now it felt like he was putting on an act: Alex Rider, the teenager. Grinning, cocky, football lover.

Blunt was gone, but Mrs Jones, his pepperminted successor, commended him on his new professionality.

Sometimes when he felt like venting – and he couldn't between missions, because who would listen, and wouldn't that be a fun lecture from Jones – he made Jack's loss part of his story. Except now she was a sister, or a cousin, or a childhood friend. Other people had lost relatives, too. And talking about it could make him feel better for a breath.

Mostly, he talked to his memory of her and told her everything he couldn't share with anyone else: his fears for his missions, his worry that he couldn't do it and that he'd get caught and killed.

But when the panic got too much, leaving him breathless and dizzy, like he was going to die right there, her image vanished, leaving him alone in the safe house, or in the hospital bed, or staring at Jones as she told him about the new mission that was vital to Britain's ongoing safety.

And then the moment would pass, always recovering but never quite the same, and he soldiered on. Or spied on.

"Why don't you call Tom?"

Taking his eyes off the loading screen, Alex stared at Sabina. She was deliberately not looking at him.

"I was just thinking, he was your best friend…"

"You're my best friend, Sab."

"Thanks," she smiled. "But still – I know he was your best friend before I came along. Even when I did. It's stupid of you –"

"You're calling me stupid?"

"Yes! And stop interrupting me. It's stupid of you to never speak to him again just because –"

"Because he was shot at, because of me?" He caught her look. "Sorry."

"It wasn't really because of you. It wasn't your choice for any of that to happen – you couldn't have known it would happen. And besides, he helped you in Venice and everything…"

The game finished loading.

Alex and Sabina turned back to their controllers and the TV screen, but Alex's mind remained on Tom. "I'll think about it." He caught Sabina's stifled smile out of the corner of his eyes.

Alex hadn't been back in London – properly back, not just for a day or two of recovery – since… since he'd taken a flight to Cairo. Moving into his new flat (clean and smart, ready for the residents to temporarily project their own personalities like cats marking their territory) he mused that the city had simultaneously stayed the same, and yet changed in an intangible way that meant he would never be able to return to the place of his childhood. Maybe that was a good thing: it meant he wouldn't be distracted with nostalgia and could treat this mission like any other.

That he knew the major landmarks, routes, and customs like his own body was just a helpful addition.

"You a Londoner yourself, then?" the landlord had asked him as he showed Alex around the unit. He was an employee of the Bank, handling only accommodation, and eager for gossip about his mysterious and ever-changing residents.

Technically Alex should have reminded the man of the official secrets act, but experience made him smile and shake his head. "Grew up in the West Country, myself, but my parents were from London. Went to school with a lot of Londoners, too, so I guess that's it."

The man nodded sagely. "I knew I could hear something West in your accent."

Alex was too professional not to roll his eyes. He let the man help him with his belongings – "A United fan, then?" – and promised to drop in and have dinner with the man's family sometime.

The next day, he went to uni. He caught glimpses occasionally of people he'd come into contact with on various missions: the international student who had almost caught him with a bear's blood on his hands (the mind-controlled pet of a forest-living megalomaniac), the parkour enthusiast he'd pushed off a wall while trying to escape an out-of-control crane. None of them would recognise him, even if they'd had closer contact.

Neither would his new friends.

Meeting Tom again, even with Sabina's encouragement, Alex didn't know how to act: like nothing had changed at all, or like everything had changed. Everything pretty much had changed, but that didn't mean they had to act like total strangers, did it?

It felt stupid asking how Tom had been since they last saw each other. Like something thirty-year-old mothers said to each other over coffees and bagels on the weekend. So instead, he went in with a big grin and asked if Tom had beaten anyone up recently.

"Oh, just the neighbourhood supervillain. Haven't you heard – MI6 realised I was the better of us all along and practically begged me to join."

It was a testament to Sabina's incessant rehabilitation effort that Alex was able to take the joke without flinching. "Oh yeah," he said, "Well I've recently turned to the dark side, myself – I have a faithful minion dog and everything!"

As they went from the train station, ignoring the bus in favour of walking, it seemed that although almost everything had changed, they hadn't.

Alex had reached the phase in his mission that he recognised in his experience as the penultimate. He had used his newfound contacts to help him meet his target, and had set the Professor up to first recruit him, and then – if all went to plan – Alex would encourage him to defect.

The Professor would be taken away, of course. MI6 could never trust a defector not to turn back, so after draining him of information, he would be moved somewhere more convenient. To a plane with a fuel leak, potentially. They had several coincidences in mind.

As for his classmates, they would be sorted into those also as inconvenient, and those able to be used in the future. If they decided they didn't want to help, MI6 was even less lenient in their blackmailing of legal adults, concession cards notwithstanding, than of teenagers whose uncles and fathers and mothers had been spies.

Alex's landlord had stopped trying to visit, and now tried to shield his kids whenever Alex returned to the flat, sometimes with his new friends. Jones had told Alex that the man had made several concerned calls over the state of their potentially-treacherous agent, but 'MI6 knew Alex was cleverer than that'. MI6 understood that anything Alex did, it was for the success of the mission.

It was rare that Alex felt his heart race anymore, but this morning as he waited outside the classroom to catch the Professor on the way out, his fingers were cold and his lips numb, despite the central heating. He never would have said that anyone deserved to be murdered without a trial, but he almost looked forward to the news of the man's death. Alex's final conversation with the man would be singularly relieving.

But that wouldn't be for a while yet.

The students passing through the corridors took no notice of Alex. He was just another student, waiting for a class, or perhaps just taking a break. It was the lull between the start of term and before assignments started piling on, so the air smelt of coffee without the sickly sweetness of energy drinks. He'd almost enjoyed the classes, the mundanity of paying attention to something completely other than his mission; taking notes for an exam, rather than because his life depended on it. Even the group projects had been an experience in interacting with completely normal people and their harmless eccentricities.

He smiled at nothing in particular, and felt an odd thrill when a group of girls smiled back at him. He quickly brushed it off.

An unexpected movement from the classroom door had his attention back on his task. Raised voices overcame the muffling of the thick wood, sending other students subconsciously scattering. One of the students – Alex had identified him as too volatile to be an asset – stormed out the door.

He glanced at Alex as he exited. "Well, I know what you're doing here," he sneered and strode off.

The students outside with Alex, now safely positioned out of sight of the door, stared. Alex was used to it, after shooting a woman with a stolen bow and arrow in the middle of a city… after using a snake to strangle conjoined twins.

One face, in particular, caught his attention.

Jones hadn't told him Tom was a student at the same university.

They were across the corridor from each other, but it was quiet enough that anyone would have heard whatever they said. What could they say? Too much had changed, too much time had passed.

In the end, Alex didn't have to say anything.

Tom turned around and walked the other way. Alex felt his shoulders relax as he glanced around again for the Professor. He didn't want Tom involved. This defection was vital to Britain's ongoing safety and Alex needed his mind clear.