"Alex! Behind you!" Lalaine yelled out. But she was too late. The bullet was fired. The damage was done.

And at fourteen and a half years of age, Alex Rider leaned his better, but not quite good, arm against the wall before sliding down to the ground. The damage was done.

"Alex!" She cried out again before a hand was placed firmly over her mouth and hands pinned her arms down while someone else tied her wrists together tightly and a sack was placed over her head.

"Lane," Alex managed to croak out as his vision began to blacken out. All he could see were feet walking past him without a second glance. He couldn't believe it. He'd failed. He hadn't been able to save her and now the damage was done.

- - -

"Alex, come on! You're going to make us late for Spanish!" Tom Harris whined.

Alex simply rolled his eyes and continued going through his locker. "If you're so concerned, than go ahead and go to Spanish," he said, a bit more in an aggravated tone than he had meant. Sighing he grabbed his text book and turned around to face his friend. Tom had a hurt look on his face, but he quickly covered it up once Alex saw. "Sorry, let's just go," he added, closing his locker and quietly following Tom down the hall.

He had been taking his anger out a lot at Tom lately. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't help it. It was complicated. Ever since Ark Angel had happened, Alex Rider had been testy. Very testy. And that was a while back ago now.

The short walk to their Spanish class was oddly quiet. Normally the two boys would be talking about their summer vacation or something. It was the second week back to school now and people were finally starting to get used to Alex actually being at school for so long in a row.

In the past school year, fourteen year old Alex Rider was blackmailed into working for British military services MI6 as a spy. Since then he'd been on six missions.

On the first, he defeated Herod Sayle in his attempt to put a virus in a line of his new computer invention, Stormbreaker, which would kill thousands of people.

The second he posed as a wealthy business man's misbehaved son and was sent to a boarding school called Point Blanc to spy on the headmaster, Dr. Grief. There, he foiled Grief's plans to clone himself as millionaire's sons to gain the money and power all for himself.

Then he was sent off to Cayo Esqueleto, or Skeleton Key, with two CIA agents Glen Carver and Belinda Troy, where the two CIA agents were killed by the same man who then wanted Alex as his son, Russian General Alexei Sarov. Sarov's plans were to get Russia back to the way it used to be, but millions would die in that path. After a terrifying ending, Alex claimed for the third time that he was done with MI6, but his natural spy nature wouldn't let him be. His curious self soon found himself meddling with the beloved millionaire Damian Cray's plans.

When no one would believe him, Alex was forced to handle Cray on his own, resulting in the near death of himself and close friend Sabina Pleasure and with the death of the murderer of his uncle, Yassen Gregorovich, and the evil mind of Damian Cray. Cray's plans to change the world may have been stopped by the young teenager, but Alex still wasn't left out of danger. Before his death, Yassen Gregorovich had claimed to have worked with John Rider, Alex's own father. In his dying words, the Russian assassin told Alex to "Go to Venice. Find Scorpia. And you will find your destiny."

And that was exactly what Alex did. After a trying time of finding Julia Rothman – head of the assassination corporation, finding out his father had worked for Scorpia, learning that MI6's own Mrs. Jones had ordered the call that killed John Rider, trying to kill the same woman, and then being told that all he learned was a lie, Alex was able to bring Julia Rothman down. And with her, her plans of killing hundreds of thousands of young school children. However, the motto of Scorpia is: Scorpia never forgets; Scorpia never forgives. On his way home finally, a sniper shot Alex, nearly causing his death.

And then that led him straight into his next mission. Voluntarily allowing himself to be kidnapped instead of millionaire Nikolei Drevin's son Paul, Alex was sent into another narrow escape ending up in him actually being sent up into space to stop the plans of Drevin (who turned out to be the enemy instead of the friend of the world Alex thought he had been). Nikolei Drevin was killed during his plans to kill others.

That had been months ago now and Alex swore to himself and to MI6 that he would never work for them again. He just wanted to be a normal kid; to go to school and hang out with friends.

But MI6 wouldn't let that be. Little did the teenage boy know that they were already making his plans to disappear from his school again.