I already finished up a huge chunk of this story but as I said before, it isn't beta read. I was hoping someone could explain to me a bit about the British health care system. I did some research but I always end up in business websites, I'm hoping someone could give me first hand experience on how it works. Someone who reviewed mentioned that there are inconsistencies there, hoping to fix it soon.

Sorry this took a while. I did finish chapter 5 and 6 as well but didn't have any means to post this since I had no laptop. I'm torn between finishing this up or finishing my other fic unforeseen circumstances this break. I also ended up starting another story from one of the spyfest prompts. Never finished it so I didn't want to post it but I'll probs post it as its own story when I finish both stories. Do tell me what you think I should be finishing first.

Anyway, enjoy!

Mike went back to work that Monday. For some reason or another, he was lauded with a hero's welcome.

"What the hell." Mike could only mutter as one office mate showed him a copy of the London Herald. "Who did you interview for this?"

Mike Howell was identified as the one who helped Rosalie Persse escape through air vents by mother , Nora Persse.

As Mike recalled the events of a few days ago, he realized, of course she wouldn't know. He thought back to the girl's grandfather, Howard Tanner. He was the only one who had gone deeper to the vaults with them and had seen Alex's heroism.

Why didn't he say anything about Alex?

What about the way Alex had confronted the two hostage takers? Everyone had seen that. They for sure had seen him forced out of the vaults by the two. He had saved Nora from being the one executed at the least. No mention of him?

"It says here you're the one who deactivated the bomb."

"You know I don't even know how to deactivate a bomb right? " Mike said as he grabbed the morning London Herald from his office mate.

Right there in black and white, Mike Howell was found by the elevators along with the bomb the two hostage takers had threatened to detonate. Sources say he was the one who deactivated said bomb.

Sources? If Mike didn't feel sick that day, this was what was going to make him sick. Sources was a lazy word in his opinion. It was a pet peeve to see it in papers since he was a religious practicer of the good habit of citing sources. That was just the surface. What made it a million times worse was knowing that those "sources were all wrong. Mike did not know how to deactivate a bomb. As he once again recalled the bomb, he remembered Alex. He could vouch that Alex had deactivated the bomb before Mike had found his lifeless body beside it. He felt his chest tighten as he saw that scene again in his head. He was quick to recover.

"Gordon…" Mike started. His voice softer and slower than a while ago, a symptom of recalling just that scene. "There was another boy there. When they found me… I think he deactivated the bomb."

"A boy? You must be kidding me. Sure young boys are into video games but no one would know how to deactivate a real bomb." He laughed as he slapped Mike on the back.

"What makes you think I would know how to deactivate a bomb."

"It's the PTSD, you probably forgot."

Mike couldn't even think of what sources Gordon could have been reading to make that conclusion but he just kept the newspaper, returned to his desk and turned on the desktop

Howard Tanner.

That old man had given his whole name. Mike could easily do a quick Facebook search.

It came out.

From Brighton, England

Lives in London, England.

What made it all the more obvious was his profile picture. A close up of his familiar face, beside him was his smiling granddaughter Rosalie Persse.

The last thing he was thinking about at that moment was respecting someone's privacy. Why the hell, didn't Howard speak up about Alex. Why didn't anyone talk about him in the first place?

Before composing his message, he had looked through the article once again. They had interviewed Nora, they had interviewed Howard. Lauren the bank teller had been interviewed as well. No mention was made of how exactly the final moments before their rescue went about. No one had mentioned the blond hero in a muddy soccer jersey as if they had all agreed that that kind of fourteen year old was just too unrealistic.

Mike remembered though.

Hey, you remember me from the incident a few days ago? Hope you're doing okay but I wanted to ask about your interview with the London Herald.

He logged off quickly and went back to work, he could check it again lunch time. It was back to work.

Howard had replied faster than he expected and the two had agreed to meet for a light dinner just a few tubes away from both offices.

They found themselves in a small fish and chips bar in Sloane square that night. Mike was once again scanning through the article he had read that morning.

"You didn't mention Alex when they interviewed you about the incident." He was quick to the meat of the topic.

"You read the article.. ."

"Of course I did. "

"Believe me I spent a good amount of time talking about that young boy but in the end, I wasn't the one who wrote the article. Everyone I talked to after, save for the other ones who got trapped in the bank, acted like the boy was never there."

"So you wouldn't know if he made it out alive?"

"Like I said, it's as if he never existed."

Mike rested his face on his hands and sighed, holding back tears of what felt like confusion, frustration and anger, balled into one.

"The media ignored everything all of us have said about the young boy. Most of us have tried to ask the medics who worked there about the boy. No one knew. If it wasn't for my daughter I probably would have thought the boy was some hallucination."

"He's not. You remember him, I remember him. But for some reason, no one else acknowledged that he was actually there. Hell. Why does it say here that I was the one who saved your granddaughter!"

"I wanted to correct it actually. I emailed the newspaper about it and haven't gotten a reply yet. My daughter knew it was Alex. I had told her that night even before the newspaper called us in for an interview. "

"Then what happened to him?"The question could have been almost considered redundant. Howard did not even bother to hide his shared confusion. They were both lost. They could have even been lulled at that point.

Transparency

It was past 10 pm when Mike arrived home in his parents house. The fruitlessness of his own investigation was already getting in his nerves. He was desperate for any sign of progress, His body started to look for it in the small things. As he arrived in the house, he was opening doors way too wide, taking the stares two at a time. These actions were almost involuntary. All Mike knew was that he had gone straight into the bedroom and opened his laptop.

James was on the bed beside his. "You're not even gonna change?"

"There's just something I need to check out."

He's a teenager, of course he'd have Facebook. Mike had thought to himself. He had no last name to search. Alex was a glaringly common name for boys and girls.

He started by searching all news outlets that had released stories about that incident. His name had popped up once or twice. Lauren Oakland. Nora Persse. Howard Tanner. Same names, no mention of an Alex.

Common last names in England.

Could Mike actually look through all these names on facebook? Was he that desperate?

Alex was wearing a Chelsea football jersey when he had first seen him. He was a football player. He could be from Chelsea. He did a few searches on the football clubs high schools around London, a little more focused on those in Chelsea.

There were other Alexes but not the one he had met in the bank a few days ago.

That Alex wasn't a regular in any football club.

It was 12am when he was starting to give up. He stared at his Facebook screen. All he needed was a last name. If he didn't have a last name, Facebook was useless.

It didn't stop him though Alex. He clicked enter and watched as Facebook loaded the list of Alex's he probably knew.

High school friends.

University friends.

He had friended them a long time ago. The one he was looking for wasn't a friend on Facebook. He scrolled down to see a familiar picture of a boy in ski gear with an older man beside him that looked to be his father. He looked much younger in that photo but Mike recognized those serious brown eyes well enough.

Alex Rider.

Mutual friend with James Hale.

"No way." Mike muttered. His hands were trembling as he clicked on the name.

He scrolled down through the photos on his timeline. If James Hale was tagged on the photo, he had access to it as well. There were pictures from a school trip, from a football game .

James Hale was with Tom Harris and Alex Rider.

There was a picture of three of them, muddy after a football game. Same serious eyes, same blond hair, hell it was the same Chelsea football jersey.

This couldn't wait until morning.

"What do you want." James had said irritably as he pushed himself out of bed.

"You know this boy?" Mike asked as he practically shoved the laptop in front of his cousin.

"Why are you on my friends Facebook profile?" He asked, after a few seconds of buffer time.

"You know him…" Mike asked again, his eye widened along with his smile. "James, I wanna talk to him."

"You should've joined our football game last Friday then, he was there."

It took a minute or so to register.

Last Friday was the game. Last Friday was also the incident.

He remembered Alex in his muddy football jersey. He put two and two together.

So Alex had come from that football match

"He suddenly disappeared halfway through the game but for sure you could have caught him earlier. "Why do you wanna talk to him anyway? I don't think you'd be interested in anything about Alex. He's s normal kid, mediocre grades."

"Mediocre grades huh..." Mike repeated. In reality, mediocre grades were not his immediate concern. He had instinctively repeated those two words while looking through Alex's timeline or at the least, what he could see from a mutual friend account. The account hadn't been memorialized. Mike felt a glimmer of hope. "Oh, I'm very interested in Alex." He closed his laptop. "He's in school?"

"Not today."

"Did they saw why?"

"He's sickly so he's always absent. Apparently he's in the hospital now with a severe case of meningitis and ulcers so he won't be in school for a while."

Mike did not know whether to question the "severe case of meningitis and ulcers." As his voice started to crack though, he knew he needed to give himself time to process this. He looked away and fell back on his bed. "Let's continue this tomorrow morning."

Alex was okay. Alex was alive.

Mike pressed his face on the pillow as he felt the tears well up in his eyes.

Was it normal to be crying about something like that?

Tell me what you think!