Chapter Three: The Royal and General
She had been forced to make up a story for Jack when she got home. Jack didn't ask many questions after Alex had begged her to "just help me already before I bleed out all over the carpet".
The bank called the following morning.
Alex had been struggling to slip her backpack on in a way that didn't rub against her recent battle wound.
"This is John Crawley. Do you remember me? I'm personal manager at the Royal and General Bank. We were wondering if you could come in." It was a statement not a question. They were telling her to come in. Not asking her.
"Come in?" Alex asked trying to buy herself time to find a way to think herself out of it.
"This afternoon. We found some paperwork of your uncle's. We also need to talk to you about your own position." There was something vaguely threatening in the man's voice. Was this about the bullet she hadn't managed to completely dodge?
"What time this afternoon?" She asked.
"Could you manage half past four? We're on Liverpool Street. We can send a cab-" He started.
"I'll be there." She said. "And I'll take the tube." She hung up on him.
"Who was it?" Jack asked.
Alex was beginning to worry. Jack wasn't getting her wages because Ian was dead and Alex wasn't able to access the account until she reached either 18 or was emancipated. She only had her own money to buy food and pay for the running of the house. Worse still, her visa was about to expire. Soon she wouldn't even be allowed to stay in the country.
"Just the bank. I have to go in this afternoon."
"Do you want me to come with."
"No!" Alex answered hastily. If she was going to be shot at she didn't want Jack in the line of fire. "I'm going to take the tube from school." She quickly covered.
She hurried back upstairs and stuffed a pair of jeans and a dark blue shirt into her backpack. There was no way she was going there in a skirt. Especially after she had nearly been shot in the neck by a bullet last time she went anywhere vaguely near anything of her uncle's. She was late but she showed the teacher her bandaged leg and he let her off the hook.
Alex arrived at the Royal & General Bank just after four-twenty that afternoon. She had changed her clothes in the girl's lavatory before riding her bike to Tom's house and taking the tube that was only three streets down from there.
The Royal & General occupied a tall, antique-looking building with a Union Jack fluttering from a pole fifteen floors up. There was a brass plating with the name of the bank near the door. She knew she was making a mistake. But either she went to them or they came after her. She'd rather have Jack out of firing range. After all she was shot at last time. She would have a permanent scar as soon as it healed. She unconsciously reached up to touch the bandage.
She shook her head and entered the building.
On the seventeenth floor, the chairman of the bank was watching a closed circuit TV with a rather potato headed woman.
"So she came." He muttered to himself. He wasn't sure after Yaxley* had managed to clip her when he shot at her, he was supposed to miss entirely but his aim had been shake. He had been subsequently demoted to a paper pusher until he went for remedial training.
"That's her?" The middle aged, potato headed woman asked. She was dressed in a gray suit like Blunt but was also sucking on a peppermint. "Are you sure about this, Alan." she asked.
He nodded. "Quite sure. You know what to do?" He asked the driver who was also in the room.
The driver was standing uncomfortably, slightly hunched over. His face was chalky white and had been since Alex had kicked him in the junkyard. "Yes sir" he managed to say.
"Then do it." Blunt ordered not taking his eyes off the TV screen.
Alex was sitting on a leather sofa, uncomfortably waiting for John Crawley who she had asked for at the front desk. She didn't like the feel of the leather. She had used to like it but for now it was only reminding her of how close she had come to being crushed alive in the car crusher.
The room she was in was bland. It could have belonged to any bank, hospital, concert hall or cruise liner around the world. It had no personality of its own.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Alex. Have you come straight from school?" He asked appearing once again quietly. Alex had barely even heard him approaching from his back left side. She had tensed slightly as he stood behind her injured neck and vaguely wondered if he had noticed the minute tensing.
She nodded lightly. She had changed out of her uniform so that wasn't going to answer her question for her.
"Let's go up to my office." Crawley said. "We''ll take the elevator."
Alex barely hid her flinch at that idea. Being stuck in a small room with a person who could kill you there without people even knowing didn't sound very good to her.
She none the less followed as ordered. She didn't know that a fourth camera was hidden in the elevator along with an heat sensor that would detect cold metal- something like a gun or knife. The camera had passed the information down that she was unarmed and the elevator can continue to its destination undeterred.
"Here we are." Crawley smiled and herded Alex into a long corridor with wooden floors and the same artificial lighting as her school had. The doors were separated by brightly colored abstract paintings and as she passed one she blinked as she saw a shape take form an M and an I and a weird shaped lower case "b" that was curved like a number instead of a letter. She blinked and it was replaced by a slanted building that was falling down. She shook her head. MIb (Men In Black) what was she thinking. This place didn't look like it housed any aliens and why would they even bother to bring her here if they were just going to wipe her memory?
As they passed the next door Alex stopped. Each door had a nameplate and this one was labeled 1504: Ian Rider.
Crawley nodded sadly. "Yes this is where your uncle worked. He will be much missed."
"Can I go inside?" She asked unconsciously wrapping a finger with a little piece of hair that had escaped her ponytail.
"Why would you want to do that." He sounded surprised but the look on his face was definitely faked. So they wanted her to check out the room. But why?
"I'd be interested to see where he worked." Alex lied fluently. It was one of the many skills her uncle had taught her. Instead of scolding her for lying when she was younger he scolded her for not lying well enough.
"I'm sorry." Crawly fake sighed. "The door will have been locked and I don't have the key. Maybe some other time." He waved her toward the door next to Ian's, this one labeled 1505: John Crawley.
They went into the room. It was large, square, and bare. It had a desk and a chair, a couple of black leather sofas, a mini fridge in the corner and a couple of print outs on the walls. A boring office for a boring executive.
"Please, Alex. Sit down." Although it was worded politely enough it was obviously an order from a man that was used to giving them and having them followed. She perched on the very edge of one of the sofa cushions. It wasn't comfortable but she'd rather be able to run if she had to.
Outside the window a flash of red caught her attention. The Union Jack was billowing in the breeze just outside the window.
"Can I get you a drink?" He asked
"Do you have Coke?" Alex asked allowing herself an indulgence. Her favorite drink was Coke, but she rarely let herself have it. She felt it made it taste better when she went without it for a long time in between drinks but that was just her.
"Yes." Crawley opened a can and poured it into a glass and handed it to Alex. "Ice?" He asked politely.
"No, thank you." Alex returned equally as politely as she took a sip. It wasn't Coke. It wasn't even Pepsi. She recognized the sweet, slightly cloying taste of supermarket Cola and wished she'd asked for water instead. She hid a grimace easily.
"So what do you want to talk to me about." Alex asked setting the glass down on the side table.
"Your uncle's will..." He started but was interrupted by the phone ringing.
"Excuse me." He asked as he picked up the phone and spoke for a few moments then hung up again. "I'm very sorry Alex. I have to go back down to the lobby. Do you mind?"
"Go ahead." She said leaning back on the sofa slightly to indicate that she'd stay put.
"I'll be about five minutes." With a final nod of apology, Crawly left.
Alex waited several seconds then dumped the rest of her Cola into the fake potted plant and stood up. He went back to the door of 1504 only to find that Crawley hadn't been lying. Of all the days to forget bobby pins. Defeated she headed back into Crawley's office. As she entered the flag waving caught her attention again.
She would've given almost anything to be let into Ian Rider's office for five minutes, alone. Someone obviously thought there was something important enough to break into their house and steal all work related papers. Maybe whatever was in Ian Rider's office would tell him why. What exactly had Ian been doing to get murdered?
Alex moved over to the window and looked out. As she had thought earlier, the flag was situated between Crawley's office and Ian's office. This seemed too good to be true. She hesitated. The jump would be dangerous to be sure, but it wasn't impossible, it wouldn't even be all that difficult. She did harder things in gymnastics but of course in gymnastics she had a net to catch her if she fell. If she fell here they would have to scrape her off the sidewalk. It was a stupid idea. It wasn't worth thinking about.
She opened the window and crawled out. It was better not to think about it at all and just do it.
Alex lowered herself onto the ledge outside of Crawley's office and clung with his hands behind him clutching the windowsill. She breathed deeply one more time then jumped.
A camera across the road caught the action and fed a live show back to the seventeenth floor, Mr. Blunt's office.
"The girl's extraordinary." Blunt chuckled humorlessly.
"The girl's quite mad." The woman rebuked.
"Well, maybe that's what we need."
"You're just going to sit here and watch her kill herself."
"I'm going to sit here and hope she survives."
Alex had miscalculated the jump. She missed the pole by an inch and would've fallen to her death if she hadn't grabbed the Union Jack on her way down. She wound her hands into the material more securely and with great pains pulled herself up so she could climb onto the pole itself.
She didn't look down. And she sincerely hoped no passersby looked up. She crouched then flung herself to the next window. She landed perfectly and carefully pulled the window open (she had only just now thought of the horrid possibility that the window might've been locked too) and slipped into the office.
She looked at her watch. She only had about three minutes of the five that Crawley said he would be gone. She hurried over to Ian's desk and glanced at the pictures and felt a small stirings of triumph. She had been right, Ian was more sentimental then he pretended. There were two photos. One of her as a seven year old wearing a karate outfit with her orange belt. The second was of her and Ian dressed in scuba gear off the coast of the Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe from last summer.
She turned away from the pictures and opened the desk quickly she found several folders she skimmed. Her photographic memory memorizing it all, she would go over it later. There was one on Poisons, one on assassinations, one on interrogation, one on counter terrorism, one on the transport of uranium across Europe and finally one labeled STORMBREAKER. She flipped it open and flipped through several pages before she heard the door click as it was unlocked she flipped more rapidly trying to get as much of it in her memory as possible. She would process the information later tonight, probably when she was asleep.
The door opened and two men walked in. One was Crawley. The other was the man from the junkyard she had kicked. She wasn't surprised that the men weren't surprised. Just as she had thought. Crawley had wanted her to see in here.
What he probably didn't realize was she had photographic memory and would remember everything she even glanced at.
"This isn't a bank." She accused. Sliding the folder closed softly hoping they wouldn't be able to tell where she had read to. "Who are you? Was my uncle working for you? Did you kill him? Why did you have one of your men shoot me at the junkyard?"
"The shooting you was an accident on the part of the agent involved. He has been demoted. As for the rest of your questions, I'm not authorized to answer them."
The man that had been kicked by Alex raised his gun. She quickly took in that it was a different model than he had last time. She dropped the file and stood hurriedly stepping around the chair and back.
"What are you going to-" Alex started as she tried to back away.
The man fired. It made a spitting sound completely different from that of a real gun. And she felt something slam into her chest, completely different than the feel of the bullet that had hit her in the neck/shoulder juncture. She looked down and saw a feathered dart sticking out from her chest. She felt her eyes slid closed first then her legs buckled and she twisted and fell backwards into nothingness.
'They used a tranquilizer on me' was her last thought before blackness completely claimed her.
A/N: So what do you guys think? Review please?
* Guess where this name comes from.