/AN/ This thing here was inspired by my trip to Cambridge today. It was raining and I got so bored that i actually wrote something *le gasp*. Anyway, if you enjoy it please leave a review - even one word makes me a very happy person, and I'll probably write another chapter :)) /

Alex had never particularly liked long road trips; the South Eastern motorway in England was a maelstrom of road rage and greasy old men with BMWs and superiority complexes. Needless to say, the thought of a three hour long trip to Cambridge with his year didn't exactly fill Alex with excitement.

Ironically the reason for said trip was because his year had been invited to a lecture on, what would you know, the British intelligence services. It seemed that recently, for some reason, they wanted to start attracting some new recruits. Of course Brooklands snapped up the invitation in the name of CV fodder. Many of Alex's fellow year 11s still had little direction in mind for their studies and with their year 12 options coming up, the school wanted to give the students as many career ideas as possible.

And that was how Alex had begrudgingly found himself wedged between Tom and a misty window on a stormy afternoon, travelling at about 5mph in heavy traffic. The coach smelled musty and about an entire loaf worth of crumbs were scattered about the floor. The scene on the road annoyingly reminded him of Cairo and Alex suddenly regretted taking a window seat. Once again the bus lurched forward, only to come to a grinding halt again after ten metres. Alex checked his watch. They were definitely going to be late.

Beside him, Tom groaned with boredom. He had been fidgeting for the past hour and Alex was beginning to get annoyed.

"Remind me again why I came on this trip Alex."

"I don't know, I'm pretty sure you said something about missing double physics."

"Ugh, on second thoughts don't remind me. We're still getting homework you know! What's the point? We've already done our GCSEs, what more do they want?" Tom huffed dramatically and sank down on his seat until his back was flat against the bottom of it and his neck was at a ninety degree angle. It didn't look particularly healthy.

Alex snorted at his friend's antics before turning back to his previous task of counting the streetlamps as they went past. So far he had counted 347.

"Alex?"

"Mhmm." He hummed in response.

"Are you alright?" Tom's voice was unnecessarily low. The volume in the coach was only just below deafening.

"That was random. What do you mean by that?" Alex asked bluntly without turning around.

"Well I guess I thought you might be worried or something. I didn't think you'd even want to come on this trip seeing how they treated you and all. If this talk is being made by someone who knows you, couldn't your cover be broken?"

"Tom, you're high."

"No," Tom was slightly more forceful now, "really. What if they use you as some kind of case study? Or if someone there recognises you and says hi because they're an idiot and…" He trailed off as he noticed Alex's incredulous glare.

"Tom. If anyone was stupid enough to do that, they wouldn't even be working for MI6 in the first place. Literally the whole business revolves around secrecy and lies and if an employee has so little self-control that they just have to say 'hi' then I will be seriously worried about who Mrs Jo- the head is recruiting."

"See! Even you slipped up just now! I now know the first two letters of the head of MI6's name."

Tom seemed genuinely excited about this information and Alex had to remind himself that his "job" probably seemed like one big, secret adventure to Tom. Any information was highly treasured by him, even if it was something that could probably be found out online.

"You're my best friend Tom. I can relax around you because I know I can trust you not to blab. This speaker on the other hand, will be on his best behaviour because it would be a bit of a problem if they accidentally let government secrets fall into the hands of a bunch of school kids. Anyway, I'm supposed to be some kind of top secret enigma. My existence has been kept so tightly under wraps that I'm more of a rumour than anything with the lower down operatives. And they will probably be the ones giving this speech. We'll be lucky to even get one of their hired stalkers."

"I thought that's what you are."

"My point exactly."

Tom looked unconvinced but chuckled anyway. Alex made a convincing argument but Tom knew that his fellow classmates could latch on to any information and analyse it to death. Even a nod to Alex could be picked up and then the theories would start flying.

"What do you think they'll even say to us that requires an entire lecture hall in Cambridge? Apparently there are going to be other schools there as well."

"I'm not really sure. It'll probably be something along the lines of "great salary", "rewarding work", "serve your country" and "become a better you" if they're including army stuff. They'll no doubt leave out the "become a target both inside and out of your country", "get shot at random times", "be scared for your life 24/7" and "your boss is an asshole."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you're talking from experience."

"No actually. My boss is a lovely old lady who makes me cookies each time I finish a mission."

"Really?"

"No Tom." Alex rolled his eyes. "I swear, I thought you'd be able to sense my sarcasm by now. It's been nearly five years!"

Tom's hand went up in mock surrender. "You're a convincing liar, my friend."

"That's my job." Alex retorted brightly.

A pregnant silence ensued between the two and the bus continued its halting journey along the M11.

Blaring car horns became the soundtrack to the journey and Alex found himself wishing that he had Spotify of his phone. He and Tom amused themselves for a while by playing with snapchat filters and taking sneaky mugshots of the people around them before one extremely sensitive girl caught them and proceeded to screech at them for a good five minutes.

Eventually the traffic decided to ease off until the coach was finally travelling at a reasonable pace. Of course this was the moment one unfortunate boy decided to pipe up and calmly announce that he was about to throw up.

Instantly the bus became a war zone. Teenagers were clambering over each other in a deadly race to get to the back of the bus, away from Unfortunate Charles and Alex found himself caught up in the scrabble, despite sitting two rows from the back. He was roughly pulled out of his seat and firmly planted on the crumby floor and he firmly believed that he was about to die. When somebody started screaming, the driver took it upon himself to pull over into a slip road just in time for Unfortunate Charles to rush out and paint the tarmac.

A chorus of "Eww" and "Gross" went up from the spectating students and then the excitement was over. Everybody stood up and filtered back to their seats and Alex was pleased to find out that he was still with the living. He was less pleased however to find out that somewhere in the fray his right shoe had fallen off. Five seconds later he was even less pleased to see his shoe form a lovely arc through the air and land directly in the middle of one of the many fields bordering the motorway.

"Bloody hell, can't I catch a break?" he muttered to nobody in particular.

He looked left. Tom was settling back into his seat and most of the teachers looked like they were trying to become part of the chairs they were sitting in. He looked right. Unfortunate Charles was being fussed over by the coach's resident nurse and the rest of the students were taking a wide berth. The shoe thief was nowhere to be seen.

There's no point making a scene. I can just nip out, get the shoe and hop back in before they even notice I'm gone. They'll almost definitely take a register before leaving again so even if I'm not back it'll be fine. It's only about 300m and a fence, I'll be back in no time.

Silently he drifted towards the front of the bus where the door was still open. The driver was also outside, "checking something" although it looked more like he was recovering from a near heart attack.

Once outside, Alex carefully jogged across the slip road towards the fence. There was a lot of glass on the tarmac along with skid marks. Swiftly, he hurdled the fence collected his shoe and turned back just in time to see the bus begin to pull away.

Instead of panicking, Alex just mentally face palmed. Of course this would happen to him! He scrambled to yank his shoe on as quickly as possible then sprinted back to the slip road, this time jumping over both an angry resident sheep and the fence whilst making as much noise as possible and waving his hands hoping that someone would notice. Of course, Alex's luck of the devil only ever helped him in life or death situations and his efforts proved futile as the bus pulled back onto the main road and carried on its merry way without him.

Alex animatedly slumped down to the damp grass and looked back at the angry sheep.

"I guess it's just you and me now buddy."

The sheep obviously did not agree and promptly bleated at him then turned around and waddled out of sight behind a low hedge.

Alex sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He had a number of options: one, he could sit here and wait for somebody to realise he was missing and turn the coach around to get him, two, he could call Tom and get the same result, or three, he could find his own way there.

Unfortunately, options one and two both had major drawbacks. Firstly, it was exceptionally hard to turn around on the motorway due to the major lack of regular roundabouts and that annoying little fence that separated the hither and thither sides of the road. Secondly, Alex wasn't on particularly good terms with the school, owing to his regular, badly explained time off and, as they put it, general delinquency. Any more major blights on his record would more or less mean expulsion and wouldn't MI6 love to be able to use that against him? No. He had to find his own way to the lecture hall.

Quickly Alex sent Tom a brief text explaining his plan and emphasising the importance of keeping his absence as low key as possible. All he got in response was a "you're mad" but Alex took that as a sign that he was okay with it.

He was currently near Duxford, comfortably close to Cambridge by car, only about eight miles away, but there was no way Alex would be able to get there by foot. He was considering trying to hitchhike but then he thought better of it. He'd either be stabbed by the person who picked him up or he'd be waiting at the side of the road all day. He supposed that he could walk to the nearest town and nab a bike but even that would only shorten his journey time slightly. Then an idea hit him. It was stupid. It probably wouldn't work. He'd possibly die. But he was Alex Rider and if anyone could pull it off it was probably him.

It was only three minutes before Alex saw his opportunity trundling towards him. An open back truck filled with scaffolding and metal scraps and sporting bright red lettering that spelled "Cambridge" provided the theoretically perfect ride. It was a fair way off but was travelling at a reasonable speed. Alex guessed that it would pass him in about a minute. That gave him forty seconds so think of a way to get on.

In the end Alex didn't have the heart to herd a sheep onto a busy road like he originally planned. He didn't think he could live with himself if the plan didn't go well and the sheep ended up as roadkill. Instead he made the split-second decision to just jump for it. Alex didn't know whether he was feeling particularly suicidal today or if it was just the best that he could come up with, but he only had ten seconds left to decide and he wasn't coming up with anything better any time soon.

This is madness.

He took a few paces back for a run up.

You are going to die.

He judged the timings.

Or at least get seriously injured.

He ran.

Oh my God you're actually doing it.

He jumped.

You are an idiot.