I do not own any of the characters in this story... they all belong to Anthony Horowitz... well, except for the guy on the bike... oh and the bush assassin... I made them up
Alex Rider was riding his really awesome bike home from school one day thinking about how life for him was okay right now because he wasn't doing any pesky spy missions and he could finally have some down time to catch up on all his homework.
It was summertime, if one could really call it summer in London, but he had to go to school anyway because he missed a whole bunch of days for his spy missions, only the school doesn't know he's a spy… which is interesting because when he gets arrested and the police-guys pull up his record he immediately comes up as "Special Status" or whatever, but his school still thinks he just has a majorly weak immune system or something (they're gullible).
Anyway, he was on his way home from school when all of a sudden a man tried to shoot him, but Alex didn't die. Because just as soon as the bullet would have ripped through his scull, he was hit by a car. But he didn't die, because the car wasn't a car at all, but another bike! And the bullet that would have killed Alex (but didn't) scraped past the man's shoulder.
The man that was on the bike that crashed into Alex at the exact moment that he almost got killed by the bullet (but didn't) was now very angry, because he was already having a bad day, and well, getting shot in the shoulder doesn't usually make for a dramatic improvement (I don't actually know this, since I have never been shot in the shoulder, but I am speculating. If you are reading this and have been shot in the shoulder, feel free to offer input).
Just as Alex was struggling to his feet, the man who got shot in the shoulder picked up Alex's bike and threw it into the middle of traffic (using his arm that hadn't gotten shot).
But it was rush hour and traffic was not moving very fast so Alex was able to safely retrieve his bike from the middle of the street. The bike was unharmed. Then the man who had gotten shot in the shoulder got very angry and jumped back on his bike and rode out into the middle of the street straight at Alex.
But Alex was to fast for him and pulled a wicked awesome karate move with a Japanese name on him and then hopped onto his own, undamaged bike and rode away.
Meanwhile the guy with the gun was sitting in the lone bush on the side of the highway. Only, it wasn't a real bush, it was a custom-made assassin bush with a compact seat and lots of compartments for bullets and different types of guns and stuff. The whole apparatus was actually much larger than the bush itself, but since the bush was actually a hologram it didn't really matter.
The problem was that the high velocity of the bullet had severed the hologram's projector. As the assassin tried to fix it, he realized that the people that had made it probably should have taken that into account when making it and made a mental note to check the warrantee that had been emailed to him when he'd bought the bush off eBay.
When Alex got to his house, Jack was out buying groceries and there was a message on the machine. He listened to it. It was some guy looking for a Mark. Alex didn't know a Mark. He erased the message. It was rather exciting.
He was hungry, so he decided to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He was in the middle of discovering that they were out of jelly when the phone rang. Alex immediately dropped what he was doing and went to the phone. He paused before picking it up, overcome by an ominous shadow of apprehension. What if it was MI6?
He picked it up.
"Hello? Is there a Mark there?" asked a deep and mysterious voice.
Alex sighed with what was a mixture of relief and disappointment. "No. There is no Mark here. Stop calling me."
"You will be very sorry."
"I'm sure," Alex responded, bored. He heard a click. He assumed they had hung up, but then he heard another click. Then another. His spy-instincts immediately kicked in and he threw the phone as far away from himself as he possibly could, and then ducked down behind the counter.
BOOM!
The phone blew up.
Alex smiled to himself as the phone started ringing again. It was actually a magnetically reconstructing phone that Smithers had given him. It was not the first time it had blown up, nor was it the most exciting. The first time Alex had had it to his ear. His head had blown up.
Thankfully, he had a magnetically reconstructing head. Smithers had given him that as well.
The phone rang again, jolting him from his reverie.
He picked it up, less hesitantly this time. MI6 wasn't going to call. He needed to stop being paranoid and move on with his life and he knew it.
"Alex."
It was MI6.