So I was rereading Snakehead the other day, and this popped out at me. It wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it, so here it is. And believe me, I know, I should be working on Repercussions. By the way, has anyone seen the Reader Traffic thing in the login section? It's really cool.
Note: the word 'faggy' is used in a derogatory way, but it definitely does not reflect my opinions. It's a part of his character.
Many thanks to my beta, CunningMascara, without whom, this story would suck. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Alex Rider or any other characters from Anthony Horowitz's stories. I am simply borrowing them.
"The CIA attempted to recruit a teenage agent to combat drug syndicates operating out of Miami. The boy was killed almost immediately. The experiment has not been repeated." Rider, A. Case File. TOP SECRET - CAD eyes only!
The air was hot, humid and still, the Miami sun beating down on his neck. He passed a group of bikini-clad women and winked, causing them all to giggle. As he turned onto a side street, Matt Andrews couldn't help but think that he probably had the best job in the world. Any excuse to get away from Middle-Of-Absolutely-Freaking-Nowhere, Virginia, and this excuse was better than most.
His parents had died a few years ago in a boating accident, and Matt had been adopted relatively quickly after that, by a single woman named Myra that ran a craft shop called Crafts in Action. Or at least, that's what she told him she did. A month ago, he had been surprised to come home from Jeff's house to find her wrestling a gun away from a large, bald man, and winning. It was hard to hide the truth after that.
The sun was only beginning to set when he opened the door with his key – Myra insisted that it always stayed locked "just in case" – nonetheless, he was awaiting a tirade, not having told her that he and Jeff were hanging out and playing video games. She always made him call, and he hadn't, and he knew she was going to be pissed.
"Myra?" he called out, a little anxiously. "I'm home…"
But he didn't hear a response, which made him wonder if he had been extremely lucky. Sometimes she had to stay late at work, and didn't get home until eight or even later. If today was one of those days then he could avoid a tongue lashing and squeeze in a couple hours of Halo. Dropping his backpack in the hallway, where Myra always told him not to put it, he made his way to the answering machine in the living room. He had a cell phone, but Myra was constantly losing the number, so she just stuck with leaving him messages at home. Crossing his fingers, he entered the living room.
He stopped cold at the door. Myra was there, and so was another man, easily six inches taller than Matt's 5'9" frame. He was bald, and holding a pretty lethal looking blade, which he was struggling to hold at Myra's throat. With a grunt, Myra shoved his arm away and threw a punch, which landed on his nose with a loud crack. He dropped the knife, and Myra kicked it away, going in for the kill. The man was on his hands and knees, so Myra kicked him in the stomach, making him drop onto the floor, before she hit the side of his head. He stopped moving immediately, and Myra took a deep breath.
"Matt," she said, calmly, not even looking in his direction, "could you go in the third drawer in my bathroom cabinet and grab those plastic ties for me, behind the shaving cream?"
He gaped at her for a few seconds before he made his way to the bathroom, head spinning. What the hell had that been?
All of the times she had disappeared without warning, coming back pale, and with the occasional bruise, had been explained away as conventions, artists coming together to share their work and inspiration, but now it was fairly obvious to him that she had been doing intelligence work. That street festival in Asheville, North Carolina, home of some of the strangest (Myra had dutifully called it "quirky") art he'd ever seen? She had really been in Cuba, posing as a reporter but really searching for any possible new missile bases. The time she went on that tour of Europe – Paris, Rome, all that? He found out she had been undercover the whole time, in order to smoke out an art thief. The list was fairly long, and Matt kicked himself for being so stupid. Myra was very obviously not an artist.
Soon after the incident with the gun, Myra had sat him down and explained to him that she worked for the CIA, which he thought was possibly the coolest thing ever. She also started saying that they were looking for a teenage agent, and would he be interested? His life before Myra provided the perfect background, funnily enough. He had been taken by his admittedly wealthy parents to karate lessons since he'd been old enough to pronounce it, he had gotten certified in SCUBA diving the moment he was old enough, gone on ski trips to their Aspen house in the winter. He spoke Spanish and French pretty fluently, and was learning Portuguese in school. He played soccer in the fall, he swam in the winter, and he was the captain of the lacrosse team in the spring. It was a little surreal to him that all of this stuff put together meant that he was prime real estate for a teenage spy.
A week after that he was training with the most elite of American spies, in a location nicknamed The Farm, and they were the ones that told him that he wasn't the first. They told him the rumors of a teenage British superspy, with the luck of the devil and the perfect record to prove it. The combination of mud, sweat and testosterone had made him explode. Why hadn't they told him? Didn't want to pressure him, did they? Or maybe they thought he couldn't compare. Well, screw that. He was going to prove to them that he was better than any faggy English kid. He pushed himself further than any of his sports could have ever prepared him for, and soon he was only seconds behind fully-grown men when they raced. Every spare moment was spent in the weight room, meals were skipped to redo obstacle courses with a stopwatch handy, crunches were done in excess both every morning and every night. By the time he was finally called in to be briefed, he was in better shape than most of the military recruits being sent to Iraq.
He was disappointed, however, with his first mission. All they needed him to do was to infiltrate a gang in Miami and tell them where they were getting their drugs. Supposedly it was dangerous, but that was no consolation. He had expected something a little...grander. Something more mysterious, something closer to James Bond, if he was honest with himself. Rumors were flying around Camp Peary that the British wimp had already been on four missions, maybe more, all of them on a huge scale. Matt wanted to show him up, even if the kid would never know his name.
So that was how he found himself, less than a month after he had watched his petite guardian take on a hit man and win, wandering the streets of Miami, looking for someone to sell him some crack.
He was staying in a motel in a seedier section of the city, not far from the airport but in a completely different world. The day before he had approached a dealer, and, after a significant amount of cash had changed hands, he thought he might be on his way in. He told them he wanted to sell, and they had pointed him in the right direction. He was going to meet a distributor that night at a popular club on South Beach, and hopefully within a few days he would be in the network of dealers. He had been a little concerned about gaining entrance to the club, but sixteen wasn't too far from eighteen, and he had money if the need arose.
To be honest, he was already bored out of his mind. Sure, Miami was a gorgeous enough city, but he wasn't required to actually do much. The money he was giving to the distributors had been marked with very minor traces of radiation, allowing the CIA to follow it to what they hoped would eventually be the gang leaders, and the banks that were supporting them, willingly or otherwise. Matt wasn't even sure why they needed a teenage agent to do it in the first place – a twentysomething would be less conspicuous, in this case. Maybe they were testing him. Well, he sure as hell wasn't intending on failing.
He was mulling over all of this, lying on top of his seedy motel bed with his hands behind his head, when the door slammed open. He shot up and scrambled for the gun that was strapped in a holster on his left ankle, but it was too late. By the time he had even taken it out, four guns with silencers attached were pointing at his head.
His eyes snapped from person to person, and then to the door, and then back to the five people standing in his room. He slowly lowered his gun, trying to remember what he could of negotiation tactics. Man, did he regret skipping that in favor of an empty weight room right now!
A woman – the only woman, if his eyes were working correctly – stepped forward. She was beautiful, with thick black hair and caramel skin. Her beauty was diminished, however, by the scar that ran from the corner of her mouth down, forming one side of her face into a permanent frown.
"Matthew, Matthew, Matthew," she began, no trace of an accent present in her voice, though she looked Hispanic. "What a disappointment you have turned out to be."
Matt narrowed his eyes, but did nothing, unwilling to make any sudden movements. The woman laughed.
"We find spies very easily in my line of work, Matthew. Certainly your bosses told you that much?"
When he didn't respond, she laughed again. "This is the third time they have tried, and quite unsuccessfully, might I add, to plant these tracking bills."
A cold chunk of ice had settled somewhere between his stomach and his throat, making it harder to breathe. Now his eyes were darting between the four men with guns, and the adrenaline in his system was frankly begging for something to do. Without an ounce of rational thought, he shot up, and managed to knock one of the guns out of a man's hand. He punched the man in the face, hearing the satisfying crack that meant his nose was likely broken. When that man went down, clutching his face, he turned his attention to the others, who had all managed to get much closer to him in the few seconds he had been up.
Before he had a chance to do anything but blink, however, a shot rang out, loud and clear. Matt looked around wildly for the source for a split-second before he saw the woman, standing with a gun aimed levelly at his chest, looking satisfied. It took him another second to connect the dots.
He looked down, where he was startled to see red blossoming right in the center of his breastbone.
He fell backwards onto the bed, the pain finally hitting him. It felt like someone had just punched him, but harder than any human could possibly punch. The air was leaving his lungs, and as he tried to take in another breath, he could smell something burning.
He blinked, and the woman was standing over him again – when had she gotten there? – smirking. He could make out some words, "...know better...us now...? ...so sorry...couldn't be helped... Never told you...other agents? ...number three..." but her words were coming in like a fuzzy AM radio station and his vision was beginning to blacken at the edges.
As the blood leaked out of him, forming a crimson circle on the bed, Matt couldn't help but think that that British kid must have had some damn good luck. If this...was the way...that all spying was... he was going to need it.
Matt Andrews died annoyed.