The office blocks starched up into the illuminated sky. No clouds could be seen. It was as if a torch had been dropped into a clear blue pool, the light rippling away from it's hot source, getting less and less bright. It was summer and although it was warm, a cool breeze drifted about, making it not just bearable, but pleasant, the perfect temperature.
It was about 5p.m. and the roar of traffic could be heard all around town. Commuters were busy heading home and children were coming home late from after school clubs, so the city had a buzz about it.
There were still people cooped up inside though; mothers waiting anxiously for their children's return, perhaps already cooking dinner or talking on the phone and businessmen, still in their stuffy offices, jackets and jumpers slung haphazardly on chairs while they continued to feverously do the last of their work for a report to be handed in the next day or one they had been putting off for ages in their overcrowded rooms that occupied the tall blocks. These disgruntled men and woman would be there, in their muggy rooms, possibly under that one flickering light bulb that could go out at any minute for up to the next hour, rushing in their desperation to leave the gloomy towers that held them prisoner.
As the long awaited children arrived home, they fell into chairs with iced drinks, tired after along day in the heat of their classrooms, unwilling to do things like chemistry or maths homework, and their parents, just as tired, unwilling to make them do it. Some went outside to their garden patios, with the sun rolling over them, hot to the touch, or their metal swings, which had been sitting there, gathering the heat all day, only to go back inside and sprawl out on the shade of the house on a cool leather sofa and watch whatever happens to be on TV.
The feeling in the outside air was a continual heat, swept away by a cool wind time and time again, but inside, there was, of course, no wind, so there the heat stayed, trapped between the houses stone walls. This meant that the once settled children had to constantly move about, making them frustrated as agitation crawled into the front of their minds from the back, where it had been lurking all day.
This was the life of many ordinary people. The typical life of a stranger.
Only, there was one child that did not move.
He was a boy. And he should have been nothing more, but he was not. He sat there still as a post and watched horrors play before his eyes. Horrors that the other, pampered, children could not even imagine. Horrors that are left for misinterpreted story books and badly written jokes, meant only for the sick of mind.
Alex Rider sat in an ordinary looking office block – used for very unordinary things – and he was waiting, patiently and quietly, to be let into Alan Blunt's office. He knew what was coming and – although he had not quite worked out the details – he was dreading it, just as he always did, and, most likely, always would.
For this was Alex Rider's world. First he would get a call from the 'bank' and they would 'ask' him to come in. He would then be briefed on a mission and be told that it would be quick and easy, and, on the vague off chance that it wasn't – but of course it would be – help would be near and would arrive quickly. After his briefing, he would be sent to Smithers, who would act overly delighted and equip him with items that would not be needed on any 'quick' or 'easy' mission. He would then be sent on said 'quick' and 'easy' mission and find out that his mission was far more difficult than planned. He would see more horrors. He would be forced to call for help.
Help would not come.
He would then escape evil clutches, against all the odds. He would save many lives. He would be a hero! Only to come home and be cast aside.
Alex Rider would then sit in silence, isolated from the rest of the world, his mind plagued by horrors, and wait. Wait for the inevitable call to bring him back to Blunt's office, where he would once more be blackmailed into doing Blunt's bidding.
Alex would face the real horrors and then he would face them again and again. Whenever he closed his eyes. Whenever he went to sleep. Whenever he paused to think. Whenever he took a breathe. Whenever, always, forever.
This is Alex Rider's world. The 'glorious' world of a hero.