"Well that was an interesting chapter." Wolf said dryly, "Does anyone mind if I read next?"

At the lack of protest he picked up the book and turned to the beginning of the next chapter.

"Heaven For Cars"

"Cars go to heaven?" Eagle asked stupidly.

"No."

"Then why does the chapter title say that?"

"I don't know, do I?" Wolf snapped.

With Hammersmith Brigde just ahead of him, Alex left the river and swung his bike through the lights and down the hill towards Brookland School. The bike was a Condor Junior Roadracer, custom-built for him on his twelfth birthday.

"So, it's a good bike then?" Snake asked.

"The best." Alex muttered thinking fondly of his old bike.

It was a teenager's bike with a cut-down Reynolds 531 frame, but the wheels were full-sized so he could ride at speed with hardly any rolling resistance.

"That means nothing to me." Jack sighed.

"Same here." Wolf grunted. They would never understand teenagers' affections for metal and rubber.

He spun past a Mini and cut through the school gates. He would be sorry when he grew out of the bike. For two years now it had almost been a part of him.

Alex sighed, mentally agreeing with the book. He really had loved that bike, it was the best thing he'd ever gotten for a birthday.

He double-locked it in the shed

"Aw, is little Cub scared someone will steal his bikey?" Wolf smirked.

"Yes." Alex said bluntly, ignoring the sarcasm in Wolf's voice.

and went into the yard. Brookland was a new comprehensive, red brick and glass, modern and ugly.

"You seem fond of your school." Ben said wryly.

Alex could have gone to any of the smart private schools around Chelsea, but Ian Rider had decided to send him here. He said it would be more of a challenge.

"That man." Jack muttered.

The first lesson of the day was maths.

"I always hated maths." Ben grinned, "I used to get so many letters home because I'd fallen asleep."

Alex snorted.

When Alex came into the classroom, the teacher, Mr Donovan, was already chalking up a complicated equation on the board.

"Yay, equations!" Eagle cheered.

"You are a right nutter, you know." Alex commented.

It was hot in the room, the sunlight streaming in though the floor-to-ceiling windows put in by architects who should have known better.

"They really should have." Alex said.

"You're talking to a book, Kid." Snake said.

"Yes, but these are technically my thoughts from one time or another, so I am really talking to myself." Alex trailed off.

"And that's so much better." Jack smirked.

"Whose side are you on?"

As Alex took his place near the back, he wondered how he was going to get through the lesson. How could he possibly think about algebra when there were so many other questions churning through his mind?

"Don't dwell on this Alex." Jack moaned.

"You already know what happens, Jack."

Well mostly. He had never actually told her that he had gone to the breaker's yard.

The gun at the funeral.

"Totally James Bond." Jack muttered sarcastically.

The way Blunt had looked at him.

It had been a very disturbing funeral.

The van with STRYKER SON written on the side. The empty office. And the biggest question of all, the one detail that refused to go away. The seat-belt. Ian Rider hadn't been wearing a seat-belt.

But of course he had.

"Of course, psychic now, are we Alex?" Wolf said sarcastically.

Ian Rider had never been one to give lectures. He had always said Alex should make up his own mind about things. but he'd had this thing about seat-belts.

"Oooo, what sort of thing?" Eagle snickered, waggling his eyebrows.

"You are disgusting." Jack said snidely.

The more Alex thought about it, the less he believed it. A collision at a roundabout. Suddenly he wished he could see the car.

"No I don't."

"What was that?" Jack said, her glare piercing Alex, and chilling K-Unit's bones.

At least the wreckage would tell him that the accident had really happened, that Ian Rider really had died that way.

"Lovely thoughts for a kid to have." Snake said darkly.

"Alex?"

Alex looked up and realised that everyone was staring at him. Mr Donovan had just asked him something. He quickly scanned the blackboard, taking in the figures. "Yes, sir," he said, "x equals seven and y is fifteen."

The maths teacher sighed. "Yes, Alex. You're absolutely right. But actually I was just asking you to open the window."

This seemed to amuse the big bad soldiers, as they all howled with laughter at the unfortunate mistake. Alex just huffed in annoyance.

Somehow he managed to get through the rest of the day, but by the time the final bell rang, his mind was made up. While everyone else streamed out, he made his way to the secretary's office and borrowed a copy of Yellow Pages.

"You better not be doing what I think you're doing Alex Rider!" Jack yelled.

"That depends on what you think I am doing." Alex said more bravely than he felt.

"What are you looking for?" the secretary asked. Jane Bedfordshire was a young woman in her twenties, and she'd always had a soft spot for Alex.

"Breakers' yards..." Alex flicked through the pages. "If a car got smashed up near Old Street they'd take it somewhere nearby wouldn't they?"

"Don't you dare go looking for that car!" Jack snarled.

"You do know this is all in the past don't you?" Fox said but upon seeing Jack's glare he hastily changed his tune, "But you are absolutely correct, that was a bad thing to think Alex."

"I suppose so."

"Here..." Alex had found the yards listed under "Car Dismantlers". But there were dozens of them fighting for attention over four pages.

"Is this for a school project?" the secretary asked. She knew Alex had lost a relative, but not how.

"Sort of..." Alex was reading the addresses, but they told him nothing.

"what were you expecting : 'Hello Alex, your Uncle's car is here if you want to have a look?" Wolf said.

"It would've helped a bit." Alex said ignoring the sarcasm.

"This one's quite near old street." Miss Bedfordshire pointed at the corner of the page.

"Wait!" Alex tugged the book towards him and looked at the entry underneath the one the secretary had chosen:

J.B. STRYKER
Heaven for cars
J.B. Stryker, Auto Breakers
Lambeth Walk, LONDON
Tel: 020 7123 5392
call us today

"Crap. Please tell me you didn't go?" Jack pleaded. Alex avoided her eyes.

"That's in Vauxhall," Miss Bedfordshire said. "Not too far from here."

"I know." But Alex had recognized the name. J.B. Stryker. He thought back to the van he had seen outside his house on the day of the funeral. STRYKER SON. Of course it might just be a coincidence,

"There's no such thing as a coincidence." Alex hissed.

but it was still somewhere to start. He closed the book. "I'll see you, Miss Bedfordshire."

"Be careful how you go." The secretary watched Alex leave wondering why she had said that.

Eagle gasped in horror.

"What's wrong Eagle." Fox asked, he was used to dealing with Eagle's strangeness.

"They're controlling our minds!" He shrieked.

"Who?" Alex asked curiously.

"Them."

Seeing that it was unlikely that they'd get anything more from Eagle, they all turned their attention back to the book, although they still felt slightly creeped out.

Maybe it was his eyes.

"What's wrong with my eyes?" Alex yelled, staring Jack in the eye intently.

"Nothing is wrong..."

"But?"

"They're very serious, for your age."

Dark and serious, there was something dangerous there.

"I suppose that's ok then." Alex conceded.

"I'm sure the book is thrilled with your approval." Wolf snarked.

Then the telephone rang and she forgot him as she went back to work.

J.B. Stryker's was a a square of wasteland between the railway tracks running out of Waterloo Station.

"You actually went." Jack said in despair.

The area was enclosed by a high brick wall topped with broken glass and razor wire. Two wooden gates hung open, and from the other side of the road Alex could see a shed with a security window and beyond it the tottering piles of dead and broken cars. Everything of any value had been stripped away and only the rusting carcasses remained, heaped one on top of the other, waiting to be fed into the crusher.

"Lovely place." Eagle perked up.

"How on earth is it lovely?" Jack snarled.

"I-I don't kn-know?" Eagle stuttered.

There was a guard sitting in the shed, reading the Sun. In the distance, a crane coughed into life, then roared down on a battered Ford Mondeo, its metal claw smashing through the window to scoop up the vehicle and carry it away. A telephone rang somewhere in the shed and the guard turned round to answer it. That was enough for Alex. Holding his bike and wheeling it along beside him, he sprinted through the gates.

"Idiot! Foolish, reckless, immature, stupid..."

"Idiot?" Supplied Fox as he watched the redhead's angry tirade.

He found himself surrounded by dirt and debris. The smell of diesel was thick in the air and the roar of engines was deafening. Alex watched as the crane swooped down on another of the cars, seized it in its metallic grip and dropped it into a crusher. For a moment the car rested on a pair of shelves. Then the shelves lifted up, toppling the car over and down into a trough. The operator sitting in a glass cabin at one end of the crusher pressed a button and there was a great belch of black smoke. The shelves closed in on the car like a monsterr insect folding in its wings. There was a grinding sound as the car was crushed until it was no bigger than a rolled-up carpet. Then the operator threw a gear and the car was squeezed out, metallic toothpaste, being chopped up by a hidden blade. The slices tumbled onto the ground.

"Nice descriptions, they really helped calm us down Alex!"

Leaving his bike propped up against the wall, Alex ran further into the yard, crouching down behind the wrecks. With the din from the machines there was no way anyone would hear him, but he was still afraid of being seen.

"Someone please spot him and put an end to this idiocy." Jack cried.

He stopped to catch his breath, drawing a grimy hand across his face. His eyes were watering from the diesel fumes. The air was as filthy as the ground beneath him.

"See!" Jack said throwing her arms in the air.

He was beginning to regret coming

"I told you so!" Jack said.

"Actually...never mind."

but then he saw it. His uncle's BMW parked a few metres away separated from the other cars. At first glance it looked absolutely fine, the metallic silver bodywork not even scratched . Certainly there was no way this car could have been involved in a fatal collision with a lorry or anything else.

"Huh?" Wolf said.

But it was his uncle's car. Alex recognized the number plate. He hurried closer , and it was then he saw that the car was damaged after all.

"So there was an accident after all?" Snake asked.

"It was no accident."

The windscreen had been smashed, along with all the windows on one side. Alex made his way aound the bonnet. He reached the other side. And froze.

Ian Rider hadn't died in any accident. What had killed him was plain to see even to someone who had never seen such a thing before. A spray of bullets had caught the car full on the driver's side, shattering the front tyre, then smashing the windscreen an side windows and punching into the side panels. Alex ran his fingers over the holes. The metal felt cold against his flesh. He opened the door and looked inside. The front seats , pale grey leather, were strewn with fragments of broken glass and stained with patches of dark brown. He didn't need to ask what the stains were. He could see everything. The flash of the machine-gun, the bullets ripping into the car, Ian Rider jerking in the driver's seat...

"You are one morbid kid." Wolf shook his head.

"What would you think if you'd just saw your uncle's blood all over his car!"

But why? Why kill a bank manager? And why had the murder been covered up? It was the police who had brought the news, so they must be part of it. Had they deliberately lied? None of it made sense.

"Damn straight." Fox sighed.

"You should have got rid of it two days ago. Do it now."

The machines must have stopped for a moment. If it hadn't been for the sudden lull, Alex would never have heard the men coming. Quickly he looked accross the steering-wheel and out the other side. There were two of them, both dressed in loose-fitting overalls. Alex had a feeling he'd seen them before. At the funeral. One of them was the driver, the man he had seen with the gun. He was sure of it.

"An armed man? Hide Cub!" Snake yelled.

Whoever they were, they were only a few paces away from the car, talking in low voices. Another few steps and they would be there. Without thinking , Alex threw himself into the only hiding place availabe, inside the car itself. Using his foot, he hooked the door and closed it. At the same time, he became aware that the machines had started again and he could no longer hear the men. He didn't dare look up. A shadow fell across the window as the men passed. But then they were gone. He was safe.

"You should probably get out the car now." Eagle suggested

And then something hit the BMW with such force that Alex cried out,

"Why on earth did you not mention this to me Alex!" Jack screeched.

"You would have worried!" Alex argued.

"Rightfully so. You could have died."

"I know, but I didn't!"

"That is not the point Alex and you know it." Jack said furiously.

"Sorry to interrupt, but can we get back to the book please." Wolf said.

his whole body caught in a massive shock wave that tore him away from the steering-wheel and threw him helplessly into the back.

Jack paled. She had come so close to loosing him.

"Damn cub, you sure got yourself into a pickle didn't you?" Eagle muttered.

"You aren't helping Eagle." Alex snarled, watching Jack's unnaturally green face.

At the same time, the roof buckled and three huge metal fingers tore through the skin of the car like a fork through an eggshell, trailing dust and sunlight. One of the fingers grazed the side of his head any closer and it would have cracked his skull.

"What?" Jack screamed.

"Jack, please just calm down." Alex pleaded, if there was one thing he couldn't cope with it was over emotional women.

Alex yelled as blood trickled over his eye.

Alex winced, that really had annoyed him. He felt uneasy having his vision impaired.

He tried to move, the was jerked back a second time as the car was yanked off the ground and tilted high up in the air.

He couldn't see. He couldn't move. But his stomach lurched as the car swung in a wide arc, the metal grinding and the light spinning. It had been picked up by the crane. It was going to be put inside the crusher. With him inside.

Jack raced out the room and up the stairs. Alex scrunched his nose up at the sound of retching.

"Weak stomach?" Jack offered walking back into the room.

He tried to raise himself up, to punch through the windows. But the claw of the crane had already flattened the roof, pining his left leg, perhaps even breaking it. He could feel nothing. He lifted a hand and managed to pound on the back window, but he couldn't break the glass, and even if the workmen were staring at the BMW, they would never see anything moving inside.

"Why is it always you?" Jack sighed

His short flight across the junkyard ended with a bone-shattering crash as the crane deposited the car on the iron shelves of the crusher. Alex tried to fight back his sickness and despair and think of what to do. Any moment now the operator would send the car tippig into the coffin-shaped trough. The machine was a Lefort Shear, a slow-motion guillotine. At the press of a button, two wings would close on the car with joint pressure of five hundred tons. The car, with Alex inside it, would be crushed beyond recognition. And then the broken metal- and flesh- would be chopped into sections. Nobody would ever know what happened.

Even the SAS men and Ben looked queasy at the idea of a child being killed and no one ever knowing what had happened. He would have turned into one of those mysteries, the police searching everywhere, Jack appealling for information on TV. Perhaps even MI6 would be searching due to his family. It was all too realistic.

He tried with all his strength to free himself. But the roof was too low. His leg was trapped. The his whole world tilted and he felt himself falling into darkness. The shelves had lifted. The BMW slid to one side and fell the few yards into the trough. Alex felt the metalwork collapsing all around him.

Alex shuddered, that had been the first ever time he had been worried that he was actually about to die. Suprisingly he found that the rumours weren't true and his life hadn't flashes before his eyes.

The back window exploded and glass showered around his head, dust and diesel fumes punching into his nose and eyes. There was hardly any daylight now, but looking out of the back, he could see the huge steel head of the piston that would push what was left of the car through the exit hole on the other side.

"And you with it." Snake said, too quietly for anyone to hear.

The engine tone of the Lefort Shear changed as it prepared for the final act. The metal wings shuddered. In a few seconds' time the two of them would meet, crumpling the BMW like a paper bag. Alex pulled with all his strength and was astonished when his leg came free.

"Run Cub Run!" Eagle squawked.

Wolf glare at the most crazy member of his team.

"Control yourself Eagle, you are not on holiday!"

It took him perhaps a second one precious second-to work out what had happened. When the car had fallen into the trough, it had landed on its side. The roof had buckled again just enough to free him. His hand scrabbled for the door-but, of course, that was useless. The doors were too bent. They would never open. The back window! With the glass gone, he could crawl through the frame, but only if he moved fast.

Jack sighed in relief, she knew Alex was fast, and he was sitting here right next to her.

The wings began to move. The BMW screamed as two walls of solid steel relentlessly crushed it.

"How did you escape this one Alex?" Ben asked dryly.

"As best I could, with the circumstances."

More glass shattered. One of the wheel axles snapped with the sound of a thunderbolt. Darkness began to close in. Alex grabbed hold of what was left of the backseat. Ahead of him he could see a single triangle of light, shrinking faster and faster. He could feel the weight of the two walls pressing down on him. The car was no longer a car but the fist of some hideous monster snatching at the insect that Alex had become.

"I'm sure your English teacher would be proud." Snake smirked.

"I'm not! That teacher is a nutter honestly. I mean she's all 'Alex put more imagination into this, a three year old could do better!' and then she goes and says 'Do you ever pay attention I swear your imagination will ruin you, I said realistic not teenage spys running around saving the world.'" Alex huffed.

With all his strength, he surged forward. His shoulders passed through the triangle, out into the light. Next came his legs, but at the last moment his shoe caught on a piece of jagged metal. He jerked and the shoe was pulled off, falling back into the car. Alex heard the sound of the leather being squashed. Finally, clinging to the black, oily surface of the observation platform at the back of the crusher, he dragged himself clear and managed to stand up.

"Oh thank God!" Jack said.

He found himself face-to-face with a man so fat that he could barely fit into the small cabin of the crusher.

Ben swore loudly, causing Jack to glare at him.

The man's stomach was pressed against the glass, his shoulders squeezed into the corners. A cigarette dangled on his lower lip as his mouth fell open and his eyes stared. What he saw was a boy in the rags of what had once been a school uniform. A whole sleeve had been torn off and his arm, streaked with blood and oil, hung limply by his side. By the time the operator had, taken this all in come to his senses, and turned the machine off, the boy had gone.

"Yes! Get out of there Alex!" Eagle and Jack cheered.

Alex clambered down the side of the crusher, landing on the one foot that still had a shoe. He was aware now of the pieces of jagged metal lying everywhere. If he wasn't careful, he would cut open the other foot.

"I doubt that would help your situation." Wolf commented.

His bicycle was where he had left it, leaning against the wall, and gingerly, half hopping, he made for it. Behind him he heard the cabin of the crusher open and a man's voice called out, raising the alarm. At the same time a second man ran forward, stopping between Alex and his bike. It was the driver, the man he had seen at the funeral.

"Crap, he was armed." Snake groaned.

His face, twisted into a hostile frown, was curiously ugly: greasy hair, watery eyes, pale, lifeless skin.

"Sexy." Jack said. Immediately all the others choked.

"What do you think . . ." he began. His hand slid into his jacket. Alex remembered the gun and, instantly, without even thinking, swung into action. He had started learning karate when he was six years old. One afternoon, with no explanation, Ian Rider had taken him to a local club for his first lesson and he had been going there, once a week, ever since. Over the years he had passed through the various Kyu-student grades. But it was only the year before that he had become a first-grade Dan, a black belt.

Wolf stared at Alex as did Eagle and Snake, why hadn't they been made aware of this fact.

When he had arrived at Brookland School, his gentle looks and accent had quickly brought him to the attention of the school bullies; three hulking sixteen-year olds. They had cornered him once behind the bike shed.

"What! Why wasn't I told!" Jack protested.

"Nothing happened Jack."

The encounter lasted less than a minute. The next day one of the bullies had left Brookland, and the other two had never troubled anyone again.

"That doesn't sound like nothing to me." Fox chuckled.

Now Alex brought up one leg, twisted his body around, and lashed out. The back kick Ushirogeri is said to be the most lethal in karate. His foot powered into the man's abdomen with such force that the man didn't even have time to cry out. His eyes bulged and his mouth half opened in surprise. Then, with his hand still halfway into his jacket, he crumpled to the ground.

Alex noticed that he was getting wary glances and smiled internally.

Alex jumped over him, snatched up his bike, and swung himself onto it. In the distance a third man was running toward him. He heard the single word "Stop!" called out. Then there was a crack and a bullet whipped past. Alex gripped the handlebars and pedaled as hard as he could. The bike shot forward, over the rubble and out through the gates. He took one look over his shoulder. Nobody had followed him.

Jack smiled slighty, Alex really had the luck of the devil.

With one shoe on and one shoe off, his clothes in rags, and his body streaked with oil, Alex knewhe must look a strange sight. But then he thought back to his last seconds inside the crusher and sighed with relief. He could be looking a lot worse.

The book was placed on the table and everyone looked at Alex.

"I was curious." He said.

"Curious? Curious! You almost died because you were curious? Alex curiousityis listening at the door during Adult's conversations or doing research on some famous guy, that is being curious albeit a bit nosy. You however were stupidly reckless."

Alex listened quietly to her tirade till she stopped.

"Sorry." He said, stung by her harsh words.

Please read

Sorry about the delay, my laptop is broken and I don't know when I'll get a new one. Sorry for any mistakes I typed this up on my iPod. I am really sorry and I hope you can forgive me.

Vote on the poll as I am needing some advice please.

Disclaimer: I don't ownAlex rider