Right, so, here's the deal. This is my first ever fic, Alex Rider orientated or otherwise. I've got a good idea where it is heading, but it's a bit rough, I think it's better that way, I like filling in the gaps as a go. Anyway, this is probably quite an unoriginal fic but it's sole purpose is stress relief from my GCSE's. Which brings me to another point, updating is going to be very irregular, because revision, breathing, eating and sleeping all have to come first. Also, it took me three weeks to edit this chapter, after I had wrote it which also took a substantial block of time, so it's a long process even when I have the time. Finally, I suck at punctuation and I am only mediocre at spelling, I have been over it several times but if you do spot something, please let me know so I can rectify it. Oh, and enjoy.

Disclaimer: I own no rights over Alex Rider, he wouldn't sign the damn contract...

Chapter One

3:07 am.

The neon numbers punched out of the darkness, the only illumination in an otherwise dark room.

Wolf glared at the spiky green numerals that seemed to float in the darkness, as if it was their fault for his early waking.

It wasn't of course. Wolf could definitely pin the blame for that on the person who was banging, loudly and repeatedly, on his front door. But it still felt good to glare at something.

He sat up, and pushed off his bed covers, cursing. Whoever it was, they were going to feel the brunt of his annoyance.

It wasn't that he was not used to waking up early, in fact with his employment, he was probably a better morning person than most, but still on his down time it was nice to sleep in to a more respectable hour.

Wolf swung his legs over the side of the bed, and sat for a moment, as if hoping for the constant banging to cease. It didn't. Whilst the perpetrator wasn't scoring points with Wolf's better nature, he had to admit that they had persistence.

He flicked the switch on his bedside lamp and winced as what seemed to be an unduly bright quantity of light flooded the room. He heaved himself to his feet, shuffled forward a few steps and stooped to retrieve his shirt that he had cast onto the floor before getting into bed.

Pulling his shirt over his head, he yawned and then looked around for his jeans. He spotted them, abandoned on his chest of drawers.

As he dragged them on, he felt a flare of disbelief that even after the time he had taken to wake up, get out of bed and get dressed, whoever was at his door still hadn't given up.

Wolf decided that he'd better hurry up and answer before the whole apartment block was woken up.

He made his way out of the bedroom and down the hall, past the various rooms, flicking on the occasional light as he did. He was a mere metre or so from the front door when the knocking suddenly stopped. He froze.

For a moment he considered turning around and going back to bed, but curiosity compelled him to walk the last few steps to the door. He drew back the chain and reached for the door handle.

The door swung inwards and he manoeuvred around it, opening it to its full extent. Light poured into the hallway, illuminating a figure slumped across from his door.

Wolf blinked. The figure seemed small, crumpled against the off-white plaster wall. He narrowed his eyes, attempting to make out any features, but they were obscured by shadows, out of the range of the light that shelved from his doorway.

His annoyance melted away, replaced by confusion and something like concern. He turned to his left and opened the small cabinet, built into the wall at about eye-level, next to the front door. There were several lines of hooks inside the cabinet, upon which, a multitude of keys hung, but a LED Lenser Pro Series P3 torch dominated one side.

He took hold of the chunky, black, aircraft aluminium torch and thumbed the plastic, moulded button on one side. A 0.33-watt beam leapt from his hand and he turned back to the hallway, directing the beam at the face of the collapsed figure.

The face was pale in the torchlight, as white as the waning moon that Wolf had seen from his bedroom window before drawing the blinds that night. The face was young and male.

Webs of sweat glistened delicately, as if painted by a fine brush across the boy's skin. A shadow of bruises mottled his left cheek and black rimmed his left eye, like Indian's paint. A trickle of blood, in a shade as deep as Wolf had ever seen, ran from a cut above his right eye. His hair was mussed, and matted on one side. The torch beam picked out yet more blood.

Wolf slanted the torch beam downwards, moving forward and it fell upon the boy's torso. He was wearing a Chelsea football shirt. Worryingly, a large dark patch was growing on the front of it.

The torch beam accented something metallic to the side of the figure. Moving the beam a few inches in that direction showed Wolf that it was the buckle of a canvas shoulder bag.

Wolf quickly swept the light back upwards.

That face. It was deeply familiar, even half masked with blood and bruising. Wolf's mind worked overtime, connecting the dots.

The torchlight flickered and then died. He shook the torch viciously and the batteries rattled uselessly inside. He swore and stuck it into the waistband of his jeans.

Moving forward, he swiftly took the boy into his arms. He felt lighter than Wolf would have expected. The SAS man straightened up. One of his hands supported the boy's back. The shirt there felt damp.

Wolf grabbed hold of the shoulder bag and then swung around and hurried into his apartment. He kicked the door shut behind him.

For the first time, the boy's face was brought into sharp relief by the strong artificial light. Wolf felt a jolt of shock as recognition hit him, a big red screaming lorry of it. Gears clunked inside his head, he could practically hear the whirring of clogs as a reel of questions rapid fired through his mind.

But training kicked in, and ignoring the questions that the boy's identity raised he took the boy into his living room and placed him gently onto his couch, dropping the shoulder bag to the side, out of his way.

He immediately set to work, hands working deftly at the buttons of the boy's shirt. Adrenaline caused his hands to shake slightly and a few times the discs of plastic slipped through his fingers, but he soon had the shirt undone and he carefully eased it off the boy, leaving him naked from the waist up and exposing the damage that had been inflicted to his torso.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the blood that continued to pulse from several wounds under the boy's ribcage. For a moment he was staggered by the sheer amount of it but he quickly brought himself under control, and began to asses the injuries.

There was a scar near the centre of the boy's chest, very nearly over the top of where his heart should be. It looked to be a few months old, black and ragged, it was evident that it had been left by a bullet. The skin around the scar was discoloured, red, black and blue; it looked as if the boy had been hit with a mallet. Whereas the scar was old, these bruises were recent.

Feeling his concern heighten, Wolf continued to look the boy over. There were red marks on his shoulders where someone had been holding him with considerable force, and his wrists were bruised and swollen, evidently a result of him struggling against some sort of restraints. The wounds underneath his ribcage, despite the amount of blood that was seeping from them, didn't seem to be too deep.

Wolf gently took hold of the boy and tilted him forward so that he could get a look at any damage on his back. The sight that greeted him, made him swear softly. The boy's shoulder blades displayed an impressive collection of sickly yellow and black bruises and the rest of his back was as blood smeared as the front, with apparently identical injuries.

For a brief moment, Wolf wondered if he should call an ambulance. The boy's state seemed to be deteriorating, he was loosing a lot of blood, his pallor seemed to have somehow whitened a couple of shades and he was obvious in a state of deep unconsciousness.

But somehow, he sensed that calling an ambulance wasn't the right call to make. He didn't know why the boy was here, or how he was here, but there must be a reason. No, he wouldn't call an ambulance. He would sort this out on his own.

Sickened, but knowing that now wasn't the time for squeamishness, Wolf lowered the boy back down onto the couch and then hurried out of the living room, across the hallway and into the bathroom.

He returned a few moments later with a mass of towels and sheets slung over one arm and carrying a bucket half-filled with cold water with the other. He set the bucket down by the couch and dropped the towels and sheets next to it.

Dropping to his knees, he took one of the smaller towels and dipped it in the water. Once it was saturated he wrung it out and then delicately began to dab at the blood that covered the boy's torso. There was a wooden bead necklace strung around the boy's neck. Wolf brushed it out of his way.

The blood coming from the wounds was no longer coming out at such a furious pace. Now that the boy was, thankfully, unconscious, his heart was no longer in overdrive and so the rate at which the blood was being pumped around his body had dropped, meaning that it had more chance to congeal and clot around the wounds.

Several towels later and Wolf had removed enough of the blood to inspect the wounds more thoroughly. There were three of them. Each were about fifteen centimetres long, side by side, perfectly symmetrical, and deliberate.

Wolf recognised them for what they were. Whip marks. He felt sick. It looked like the kid had been worked over with a sjambok or something equally nasty.

He took a deep breath and then began to carefully manoeuvre the boy onto his front so that he could clear up his back. Once he had successfully manhandled the boy into an appropriate position he set to work. As expected, the wounds inflicted to the boy's back were identical to those on his torso.

Once Wolf had finished he rearranged the boy's position once again, so that he was now led on his back. Wolf cleaned as much of the blood from the boy's face as he could and then took a few of the clean sheets and spread them over the boy. For a moment he stared down at the young face. Then he stood up.

He took hold of the bucket, the contents of which had taken on a burned orange tinge and carried it back into the bathroom. He poured the discoloured water into the bathtub, watching as it swilled down the plughole and then rinsed out the bucket with bar soap and warm water. He left it in the tub to dry and made his way back into the living room to collect the bloodied towels and sheets.

Once he had deposited them into the washing machine, he switched on the kettle and then began to rummage in his cupboards for some strong painkillers. He managed to extract a half-filled bottle of Zydol capsules that weren't yet past their use-by date, and shook two into his palm. He filled a glass with water and took it into the living room, placed it down on the coffee table and dropped the two capsules down beside it in readiness for the boy's waking.

He then returned to the kitchen and made himself a cup of black coffee. He took a huge gulp of the scalding liquid; barely feeling its burn. Deep in thought, he remained in the kitchen for a few moments, nursing his hot mug and then he proceeded back into the living room, sank into an armchair and prepared himself for a long wait.

Dawn had long broken by the time the boy awoke. Wolf was sore from sitting for so long, hunched over, his eyes fixed on the boy's face.

For the first hour or two he had been restless and had traipsed around the flat, made several more cups of coffee and attempted to pursue a dog-eared newspaper from… whenever.

But for the past few hours, as the sky lightened, blazed red and then faded to the dishwater grey of winter days, he had merely sat, his attention fixed on the youth. A few times, the boy had stirred, suggesting that he had at sometime made the transaction from being unconscious to being merely, but deeply asleep, but he was only now awakening.

At first he simply shifted, as his awareness returned slowly to him, prising him out of his dream-scape and alerting him to the fact that he was lying on unfamiliar ground. And then, quicker than Wolf could blink, he had snapped up into a sitting position, eyes wide and alarmed, fully conscious.

"Hey, Cub." Wolf said softly, trying to capture the boy's frantic attention, but not to alarm him. The kid turned his head slowly to look at him; his chest was rising and falling rapidly, his eyes hazed slightly with pain.

Catching sight of Wolf his expression cleared. The pain and surprise vanished, to be replaced with a resigned and passive expression. Wolf suppressed a shiver as he took in the boy's eyes. They were eyes that belonged to a man at the edge of his life, driven to destruction by events outside of his control. Those eyes were hauntingly out of place on such a young boy.

"Take the painkillers Cub, you're going to be sore." Wolf suggested, at a loss of what else to say. Cub held his gaze for a few more moments and then turned his attention to the glass and two capsules on the coffee table. He picked up the pale green capsules, considered them for a moment and then tossed them into his mouth, following them with a mouthful of water.

Then, once again, he zeroed his focus onto Wolf. For someone who had just woken in a strange house, shirtless and battered, he was surprisingly dispassionate. He had yet to say a word, didn't seem to be able to summon the will to inspect his own wounds.

"What the hell happened, Cub?" The question came out rougher than Wolf had intended but then again he felt justified for being a little brusque. It wasn't everyday that someone you barely know turns up at your door, sporting whip marks and looking like he's just done five rounds with Muhammad Ali.

Cub broke his gaze, but not fast enough for Wolf to miss the confused mixture of emotions that flooded his eyes. When he turned back, he was once again composed and expressionless. "Scorpia." he answered, short and sweet.

For a moment, Wolf didn't quite have an answer for that. The single word that had just passed the kid's lips raised a whole load of new questions. Wolf suddenly began to wonder just how deep the shit that this kid was in was. He hadn't heard a lot about Scorpia, but he knew that they were a large, ruthless and extremely successful terrorist organisation, and despite their recent defeats by some MI6 agent, the kid was lucky to come out of any confrontation with them as lightly as he had.

"You know, that's not really much of answer." He responded finally, praying that the kid wasn't going to play his cards too close to his chest.

Wolf knew and hated the MI6 stereotype. If Cub had picked up any MISO habits, Wolf had to accept that this was going to be a challenging interview, and he wasn't sure that he was up to that sort of mental challenge, not when the only reason he was functioning was due to several, strong, undiluted helpings of caffeine.

"Does it really need explaining?" Cub asked his voice tired but firm. Wolf could have groaned, it looked like the kid wanted to do it the difficult way. Maybe he ought to call Fox, he was MI6 now, perhaps they had some sort of code.

Hell, maybe he should try and get hold of MI6. Surely Cub was their responsibility after all. That would be nice. Hand Cub over to the higher ups, happy in the knowledge that he'd receive some damn good medical care, and let them deal with any repercussions.

Wolf would have done his part, and with any luck he'd never have to see the damn kid again. This wasn't his crap to get caught up in. He'd done more than necessary already. He should congratulate himself; he'd passed the out-of-the-blue-emergency test. Now it was time for the professionals to step in.

But even as these thoughts ran through his mind, Wolf knew that he couldn't turn Cub over to MI6 until he had some answers. Something bad had obviously happened last night, it didn't take a fool to realise that, and Cub had turned to him instead of the more obvious and appropriate MI6 or even just a damn hospital. That must mean something, and even if Wolf had to needle it out of the boy bit by tiny bit, he'd find out what.

And besides, SAS training had taught him that the most important element of being part of a SAS unit is team loyalty. Without it, you'd just fall apart. And like it or not, as unorthodox and irregular as the situation was, Cub was part of his unit. And to see him in this state and not at least try to find out why would be unforgivable.

Anyway, there was something bothering Wolf. Something Cub couldn't deny and perhaps something that might open the conversation a little and convince the kid to talk.

"When did you get shot?" He asked, settling back in his seat, tone casual, posture relaxed, as if he were asking what Cub wanted for his birthday.

The boy stared at him for a moment, obviously confused that Wolf had dropped the subject of Scorpia so fast. "A few months ago." He answered reservedly.

"Hmm. About the time you got appendicitis was it?"

"Yeah…" Cub responded vaguely.

"How did that happen?"

"Classified."

Wolf let out a breath. "No, Cub. You are a member of my unit, and by being the leader of said unit, I have a right to know what happened."

Cub was silent for a moment, obviously trying to weigh up the situation. Finally, he rubbed his eyes and gave a short half-answer. "I got shot outside the front of the Headquarters of MI6."

Wolf couldn't be surprised. With Cub, anything was possible. "It looks pretty close to your heart. How did you survive?" He asked.

"I got lucky. Listen, is it really that important. I can think of several more relevant matters that need sorting right now," Cub stated dryly, in a blindingly obvious attempt to change the subject. Wolf decided to let it drop, for now.

"Okay, answer me this. How did you know where I live?"

"Ben. He gave me a list of emergency contacts. You were on it."

"Ben… You mean Fox?"

Cub nodded.

"How do you…" Wolf cut himself off. "What are you doing here?"

"I need your help." The answer was blunt but Wolf could see something like desperation creep into the kid's expression. Wolf felt sympathy well up inside him.

Cub was only a kid, at a guess Wolf would say he was seventeen, and he shouldn't be like this, so emotionally warped. Wolf felt a little ashamed at how he treated Cub in training. Back then, he had thought of him as a drain on the unit's ability, a black mark on their credibility, but having seen Cub in action at Point Blanc he had found new respect for him. He was glad to have taken bullets for him. But his obvious skill did not change the fact that he was far too young for this lifestyle.

But then Wolf quashed down his pity, knowing Cub he wouldn't want it and there were probably more pro-active things he could be doing for him. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

"Listen Cub, if I'm going to help you, I need to know what's going on."

"It's complicated."

"Try me."

Cub hesitated. "Last night, some Scorpia operatives turned up at the house where I live." His voice was toneless, his eyes level and drilling into Wolf's.

"They did this." He indicated his bruised and lacerated torso. "They told me that it was just the beginning." Cub paused and sighed. "I need to get out of the country. I need to leave before anyone else gets hurt."

"Why don't you go to MI6 Cub, they can help you better than I can." Wolf's tone was gentle and Cub's reaction surprised him.

"No!" The boy said, voice impassioned and harsh. "Now that she's gone there is nothing to stop them. MI6 can't find me." His gaze was intense, Wolf felt tempted to look away. "If they find me, it's all over."

Wolf didn't know which part of that statement was more worrying. Now that she's gone… What was Cub talking about?

As he comprehended these words cold realization began to hit home, he felt as if his stomach had turned to stone.

"Who was with you last night?" He didn't care much that his voice had taken on an alarmingly serious tone; he needed to know what was going on.

Cub paled as he realized that he had given away too much. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. His skin glistened with new sweat.

There was a clatter in the hallway as the postman shoved the morning post through Wolf's letterbox.

"Stay there," Wolf growled at Cub, standing to go and retrieve it. He wasn't quite sure where the boy was likely to go, or what the odds were of him listening to him anyway, but he couldn't think of anything else to say.

Stretching his tense and aching muscles, Wolf padded out into the hallway. The post was, as always, distinctly uninteresting. There were several bills, a few crinkled flyers advertising various offers on nondescript merchandise… He tossed the bulk of it into the wastepaper basket and put the rest into the drawer of the little desk that he kept by the door.

Leaning back against the front door for a few moments, Wolf took a few seconds to organise his thoughts. He was a good leader, instinctual and fast acting in the worst of combat situations… but this, this wasn't his sort of thing.

For god sakes, why was Scorpia even interested in the boy?

With a stifled groan he forced himself to re-enter the living room.

"Do you want a shower?"

Cub blinked at him. "Err, yeah thanks," he said confusedly.

"Give me a sec, I'll try and find some clothes that might fit you."

"One step ahead of you," Cub proclaimed, leaning over the sofa and grasping hold of his shoulder bag.

"At what point, after being half beaten to death, did you think it was a good idea to pack a sleep-over bag?"

"What makes it a bad idea?" Cub answered nonchalantly as he stood up.

Wolf shot him a half enquiring look but decided to drop the subject.

"The bathroom's though here," he said pointing in the general direction. "I suggest you don't use soap, at least from the waist up, because it'll sting like hell. And pat dry rather than rub or you might start bleeding again. Don't worry if you do get blood on anything, it's had worst."

"Right."

Wolf nodded briskly, and watched as Cub traipsed into the bathroom. The door shut behind him and Wolf heard the lock click into place. A few moments later came the sound of running water.

Wolf let out a breath, stood indecisive for a few moments and then allowed his feet to walk him to the windowsill. He reached for the phone and dialled from memory.

He studied the bleak winter sky as he listened to the dialling tone. There had been a hard frost overnight; the panes in the window were scored with icy tendrils. The sky had whitened and was leaden with swollen grey clouds. It was going to snow.

"Hey, Dominic… Yeah, it's me, listen I need you to come over…"