Recap: MI6 have promised Alex they will stop using him (at least until he's grown up) if he goes on one more mission for them.

Many homeless people have disappeared over the last few months and dead bodies with strange wounds have been turning up. It's Alex's job is to pose as a teenager who recently ran away from home and is now living on the streets. He will try to find out what exactly is happening and who is behind the odd goings-on.

But first…

Gadgets

Alex Rider smiled to himself, feeling a little glimmer of pride at how easily he had managed to find Smithers' office by himself. Sure, there had been someone following him at a discreet distance the whole time to make sure he didn't go anywhere he wasn't supposed to, but it was his good memory and sense of direction that had led him to the right place.

He raised his right fist and lightly tapped on the door. There was no response.

Was Smithers somewhere else then, not in his office? But surely someone would have warned him that Alex would be paying him a visit?

Alex knocked harder, but once again there was no reply. He waited a moment, wondering if he should go ask someone for help. He glanced up and down the corridor he was in. No sign of anyone, not even the man who had been keeping an eye on him.

There was always a chance that Smithers was in there but simply hadn't heard Alex's knocks…

With a sigh, Alex did the inevitable and tried the door handle. It wasn't locked and as he pushed the door gently open, he froze like an urban fox caught in the sudden dazzling light of a torch.

The door opened, not to the office as he had expected, but onto a tropical rainforest.

For a second Alex was completely disoriented. A quick glance behind him showed the same nondescript cream wall that had been there the last time he looked. Cautiously, crouching slightly in preparation for fight or flight, Alex stepped lightly into the office-jungle.

Immediately, he found himself in a small clearing, surrounded by all sorts of foreign looking tropical plants. He could hear the sounds of the rainforest as well, from the chirrups and calls of a multitude of different insects, to the distant cry of what might have been a monkey, or perhaps a bird.

'Hello?' Alex whispered, then, feeling annoyed with himself at that, he said it again but louder. Without moving from where he was, he turned this way and that, trying to spot Smithers, or anyone at all for that matter. Every few seconds he looked back through the open door, just to reassure himself that he was still in the head quarters of MI6. Or at least, by all rights, that Alex should be.

Just when he was thinking of retreating back out of there, a strange thing happened.

Smithers' head suddenly appeared. Just his head, nothing else. It was a lot lower down then he would have expected too, about chest height. Alex stared at him in amazement and in relief as well. At least he had found the person he was looking for, even if it under strange circumstances. Not that Smithers was the sort of person to do things in a normal way…

'Hello old chap,' The Gadget Master boomed in his usual jovial fashion. 'How are you?'

'Umm...a little confused to be honest…' Alex confessed, shrugging his shoulders and looking around to try and show that it was the whole leafy vegetation thing that was puzzling him.

Smithers smile grew wider. 'Touch a leaf.'

Though Alex knew Smithers would never intentionally hurt him, he still hesitated a moment before reaching out to touch the nearest plant. To Alex's surprise, his hand went straight through it. He waved his hand up and down through it several times, just to check that his first impression had been correct. Every time his hand slipped through what appeared to be a perfectly solid bit of foliage without the slightest resistance. Alex grinned. 'What is all this? A hologram?'

'Something like that,' the older man's head agreed, nodding. 'Top secret though, so I couldn't possibly show you it or tell you how it works.' He winked at that.

Then his head moved slightly to the side and a second later, Alex heard something go 'click' and then hum slightly before the tropical plant life around him flickered out of existence, taking its jungle noises with it.

In just a moment, Smithers office returned to being just that; an office. All that was left of the greenery was two large plot pants in the middle of a large desk. Smithers was sitting at the desk, peering through the plants. Now that all the fake ones had gone, Alex was able to see the large rounded shoulders and torso of the man sitting there so he no longer looked like a disembodied head.

The Gadget's Man straightened up, and with a grunt, put the plants on the floor next to his desk before turning back to Alex, still beaming up at him.

'So what did you think of that? Was it convincing?'

'It was brilliant!' Alex replied in genuine awe, 'I really thought I had ended up in a rainforest for a second there!' He didn't mention that it had all reminded him a little too much of the real life version of Feathered Serpents that he had once been forced to play. Some of the parts of that game had had similar settings, though they had been done with prosthetics mainly, not illusions.

'Of course, the lighting is all wrong in here and so is the humidity…' Smithers mused to himself. 'But that could be easily fixed.'

Alex nodded vaguely in agreement.

Then the rather over weight man leaned forward slightly and changed tact, 'Anyway, we're not here to talk about that little invention of mine, but gadgets.' Smithers could make the word 'gadgets' sound like some sort of holy relic or mysterious treasure.

'I heard you were going to be living on the streets for a while,' He continued, 'meaning I couldn't exactly give you a Nintendo or I-Pod, now could I?' Despite the fact that this made prefect, logical sense, Alex still found himself feeling slightly disappointed.

'I had to work with things that were a bit more basic…step back will you, my boy?'

Alex did so, retreating hastily away from nothing in particular.

Smithers put a hand under his desk and flicked a switch, causing the solid front section of his big, tinted glass and silver desk to slide smoothly forward. Smithers used the edge of the desk to propel his large bulk and the swivel chair beneath it, backwards slightly, before reaching into a pocket and bringing out a small remote-control. With practised ease he used it to make the swivel chair sidle around the desk, to the side of the large compartment that had just opened up from under it.

Alex watched as the other man reached towards the large slide-out compartment. It had a solid black top that didn't appear to have any sort of visible handle to it. Somehow though, Alex wasn't so surprised when Smithers' arm appeared to melt straight through it. Another illusion.

'Now lets see what we've got for you…Aha!' Smithers pulled his arm out, holding in his podgy hands a small white plate covered in... 'Biscuits!'

'Biscuits?' Alex stared at them warily. He knew by now not to underestimate anything the Gadget Master showed him, even if it was something as simple as these. What would they do? Explode? Send messages back to MI6? Track his location? They looked harmless enough, circular, plain on one side, covered in chocolate on the other. They looked pretty generic to Alex, until he spotted the loopy writing on the plain side, saying 'Smithers'. So they were definitely something to do with the man in front of him…

When the plate was thrust under his nose, he couldn't help flinching slightly, which made Smithers chuckle. 'Go on, take one, they're quite safe and very tasty, if I do say so my self.'

Under Smithers' watchful eye, Alex reached out and picked one up. Its texture was normal to the touch, its smell was normal, its weight was normal (not that Alex was an expert on biscuit weights), and after a tentative bite, he discovered it tasted perfectly normal as well.

'Gum arn they?' Alex looked up at Smithers, who was trying to talk despite a mouthful of biscuits.

'I'm sorry,' There was a pause while the gadgets man swallowed. 'Good aren't they?'

'Ah, yes. But what do they do?'

'Well, despite looking perfectly normal, just five of these biscuits are enough food to last a grown man all day. Sure, you would be a little hungry when you go to bed, but you could live off these successfully for years. They have everything your body needs to operate properly, packed into a couple of mouthfuls of food. You'll need water though, they certainly can make you thirsty by the tenth or so… Anyway, we originally designed them to try and end world hunger, but unfortunately it turns out they are just too rich, the poor under-nourished little children's bodies just couldn't cope with them and their parents fared little better, so we're back to the drawing board on that one I'm afraid.'

At that, Smithers put the plate down on his desk and leaned forward in his chair. 'Luckily for you though, your digestive system should have no problem dealing with the biscuits, and if you're going to be living on the streets for a while, you're going to need all the food you can get! There are certain tablets you could use of course, but three or four packets of biscuits stuffed into a back-pack are much less conspicuous then a dozen super-tablets that haven't yet been released to the general public.'

'No, I can't imagine many homeless people carrying those around,' Alex agreed dryly.

'So biscuits it is!'

He reached under the illusion and brought out five packets of biscuits, which he then dumped on Alex's lap. Picking one up, Alex could see that though it was clearly a made up brand with Smithers name on it, even the packaging itself looked just like that of any other brand,with just enough differences to stop them breaking copyright laws.

He turned the packet over and studied the underside. The ingredients list and all the nutritional information required by law was there, though Alex had a feeling that if they were as amazing as Smithers claimed, the information must have been faked. Though just a small thing, Alex bet that even less significant things had led to spies being caught out in the past, and he certainly didn't want that to happen to him. Again.

'Right, next, sleeping bag and clothes.' Once again he stuck his hand through what appeared to be perfectly solid tinted black glass, this time pulling out several items.

'This,' Smithers held up a bulging compact black bag, 'is the latest in sleeping bag technology. Its filling, while no thicker then normal, well exceeds the insulating abilities of all other makes. It regulates your body temperature and stops you freezing or over heating in conditions twelve times more extreme then Dupant Thermolite Micro can manage. Everything is covered in a layer of our latest improvements on Gore-Tex, making the sleeping bag waterproof but perfectly breathable, and the outside is made of a tight weave with nanotubes incorporated into the design.'

Alex nodded vaguely as though he was following; his class had been told about Gore-Tex in Year 9 science but couldn't remember much about it, and he had never heard of Dupant Thermo-whatever, but he thought he might have come across the word 'nanotubes' somewhere before…in connection to nanoparticles perhaps? Hadn't Scorpia used nanotechnology to try and kill all the children in England?

Alex was distracted from his train of thought when the black pack was thrust into his arms, quickly followed by several items of clothing, 'Um, what—'

Smithers answered the question before Alex even got the chance to finish asking it.

'You'll need these to look the part. Luckily for you, Alex, your cover story is that you're new to living on the streets, so you're allowed perfectly clean clothes to wear, at least to start with. You won't be able to carry around more than a couple of changes of clothes with you as anymore would just be too bulky. These clothes are pretty ordinary looking, nothing designer or particularly fashionable of course, but they will keep you warm and repel grime to a certain extent, but living on the streets for any length of time will unfortunately lead to an unavoidable slip in hygiene levels, of course.'

Alex rolled his eyes, 'Great.' But he had lived through similar situations before when he'd been sent to investigate the Snakeheads in India, so he was sure he would be able to cope, even if he would much rather just stay clean.

'Both pairs of trousers have a tracker system implanted in them. I was going to implant one in the sleeping bag instead, but it was decided that trousers are less likely to be stolen.'

Then Smithers leant back once more and fished out a slightly tattered looking skiing coat. 'We went for the whole 'Worn but reliable' look here, but make sure you keep your hands on this jacket, it contains the only weapon I was able to get away with, as well as being as knife resistant as we could get it in the circumstances…'

Which Alex took to mean, 'if you get stabbed it will probably still kill you, and hurt like hell even if it doesn't.'

'It's also capable of sending out a strong electrical pulse into anyone who might come into contact with it. So, if you're in a fight, make sure you're wearing this coat. The way it works is, you see this little button here?' He pointed to what looked like the rubber covering of a button that fastened up a small pocket, on it was a small logo engraved in the shape of a lightning bolt, just the sort of thing other skiing jackets had that usually referred to its make.

'It's fingerprint sensitive. If it ends up somehow swivelling around as you move, nothing will happen. If you move it around slightly clockwise though, it will give anyone who touches the coat an electric shock. The further you turn it, the worse the shock. Careful though, it can be turned up high enough to possibly kill someone if you use all its power up in one go. Whatever happens, it won't hurt you though, you're safely insulated inside it. That said though, some of my lab technicians did report some rather nasty static shocks off of it… But I'm sure you'll be fine!'

With that, Smithers dumped the coat on top of the other clothes and reached through the hologram one last time. 'And finally we have the bag you'll need.' It was a battered looking back-pack, the type a lot of people used in school, especially the younger students, despite the fact that the bags tended to completely dwarf them.

'It contains a high-powered torch, some first aid equipment like plasters and bandages, a bit of money, a couple of bottles of water, enough room for all your clothes, and…ah, yes! And a mobile phone. The phones' history, saved text messages, dates and pictures all match up with your assumed identity.'

He handed over the rucksack and Alex stuffed the clothes into it, along with the envelope Mrs Jones had given him containing his cover story.

There wasn't room for the sleeping bag, but the little black shell it went in had a long cord attached that he could tie onto a thick loop of plastic attached to the bag for just that reason.

Sitting back, Smithers tried to think of anything else he needed to give the young spy.

'I think that's everything…' He mused to himself, and then coming to the conclusion that that was right, he clapped his hands together and said more loudly, 'Yes, that's everything I've got to give you my boy, hope you get a chance to try out the new I-Phone I've created on your next mission. I've named it the SpI-Phone and it's certainly got the apps to live up to the name…'

Alex didn't have the heart to tell him that, hopefully, this would be his last ever mission, and simply shook his hand in farewell, said his goodbyes and left with his gadgets, though he felt that super-duper thermal underwear didn't exactly count as a 'gadget' at all.

I removed the obnoxiously long AN that was here before but just want to mention instead that my original beta reader for this fic was With the What Now. Without her help the editing process I'm doing now certainly would have been a much lengthier one!