The story so far: Alex has been working for an independent contracting company after the events of Scorpia Rising, keeping in contact with the Pleasures and going about his life as an independent almost-adult. His last mission involved the reappearance of assassin Yassen Gregorovich, who had previously been assumed dead, and a drug dealer. After a botched attempt by Alex to communicate with the captive assassin, Yassen took Alex and a member of his team hostage, later releasing the hostage and shooting the American drug dealer. Alex is now tied up in a car heading towards a Russian mobster called Dead Dog.
"All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first." ~James Thurber
"I'm going to kill you."
Yassen glanced in the rearview mirror, switching lanes smoothly as he neared his destination. "Is that the wisest thing you could say to the man holding you hostage?"
Alex smiled. Overnight he had transformed from a scared kid back into the competent spy he had been for many years. Through the passenger window billboard signs, written in English, advertised cheap, fun, sexy Russian ladies. "I didn't know how I was going to react when I first saw you pop up on the radar," he said conversationally, his voice just a little too high. A child waving eagerly through the window of a battered blue car smiled at everything in her sight, and a shudder snaked quickly through Alex's body. He continued on his proven path of dealing with hostage situations undeterred, however, reaching for a show that he was making a crack in the assassin's shell. Air Force One served as a constant reminded that even Gregorovich had emotions – the creeping horror of realizing that Ian's murderer was trained by Alex's father clung too tightly to raw emotion to mask, and Alex fully intended to use his own emotions rattle his captor. "But now I know. I'm going to disarm you, point a gun at you long enough for you to know it was me that murdered you, and then I'm going to shoot you. Preferably in the gut; the most painful death for a murderer."
"I wasn't aware that in the time since we last met, you turned into a psychopath. I promise you I'll keep the fact in mind."
Again the teenager smirked. "You do that."
The car ground to a halt; Yassen put the gear in park. "Oh, a waffle joint. Menacing. Was the bouncy castle taken by a bald man in a wheelchair, stroking a cat?"
"You wanted breakfast." Yassen pulled the key out of the car, and unfastened the handcuffs. "I trust threats aren't in order?"
"I've heard them all already, yeah. They usually go something along the lines of you'll kill everyone in the place if I scream for help, then trap me in an iron maiden for a couple of weeks while I slowly bleed to death?"
"You'd die of thirst before bleeding to death, but yes, the general idea remains."
Alex stepped into the heat of the sun, stretching. His arms had been screaming for relief from the cramped position they were forced into for hours, but the cuffs hadn't even been tight enough to leave red marks.
Except for the menu being printed in Russian, the atmosphere and running of the waffle house reminded Alex of the IHOP across the road from headquarters back in America. After being waved to an area of the restaurant and settling into a four person booth, Yassen made no further attempt to communicate with Alex, pulling a book out of a small black backpack he had brought in.
"So how does Steve Jobs biography relate to killing people, exactly?" Alex asked, raising an eyebrow. There was no response forthcoming. Sighing loudly, stuck between pursuing a plan of annoying Yassen into mistakes through acting like a petulant child and creating progressing threats of violent deaths, neither of which seemed a viable option, Alex half-heartedly examined the mostly empty room. His hope for rescue, as he was well aware, rested almost entirely on his team tracing him down somehow. Verbal threats or petty annoyances weren't going anywhere, but he saw no other use of him time. At the very least, his childish actions would convince Yassen that Alex wasn't enough of a threat to be treated with the full prisoner 'privileges' that an older militaristic type might receive, leading to more of chance of escape. But more than zero still wasn't much.
A waitress came and went, taking their order from Yassen in a rapid exchange of unintelligible syllables. "Asking what I wanted wouldn't have really taken much of an effort, you know," Alex commented after he was sure the waitress was out of earshot, not ready to deal with finding the one waitress who spoke English.
The meal came and the two ate silently, Alex staring blankly into space. Yassen paid and they returned to the vehicle, Alex walking in front. Nearing the car, he slowed his pace. They had parked far enough from the restaurant that a scream for help would be obscured by the clamor of traffic from the adjacent highway. A gaggle of bushes obscured the view. Behind the parking spots a thin scattering of trees stood, with another section of busy highway right beyond.
Alex stopped beside the passenger door, and turned to face the assassin. He reached for the door, and paused. "So remind me again, why I'm not fighting back?"
"Alex, get in the car," Yassen said quietly.
"Right," Alex said, and punched Yassen in the stomach. Then he turned and ran into the trees. The Russian took a step back before following. Youth backed up Alex, but experience and pure strength propelled Gregorovich in pursuit. Alex hadn't gotten twenty meters before he was knocked to the ground.
Rolling onto his back a second before a kick aimed at Alex's head landed, he threw his hands up in defense, softening the blow. A gun had appeared in Yassen's hand in the brief struggle, and it was hidden in the waist holster again. Alex scrambled backwards through dry leaves, pushing himself up onto his elbows before pushing himself straight up. He attempted to sprint again, and was met with Yassen grabbing the back of his shirt as he passed. Releasing him long enough to grab Alex by the hair, he dragged the struggling teenager back to the car.
Alex gritted his teeth against the pain, reaching out to grab onto Yassen's arm, pulling it off of him.
Yassen slammed the teenager against the pavement, and knelt down so that his hand was cradling Alex's throat. "That was exceptionally foolish."
"What, my last ditch effort to prevent finding myself dead within a day?" Alex wheezed, the hand constricting his throat just enough that he could feel the pressure.
"Yes, and warning me beforehand." Yassen increased the pressure tenfold, squeezing tightly. Alex struggled, clawing at the ground as he gasped like a fish out of water for air. Violent and indigo spots danced across his vision as the oxygen flow the brain ceased. A field of black threatened to claim his vision as his thoughts grew hazy, as if he'd been drugged. Seconds before fully passing out, Yassen stood up, releasing Alex. "If you aren't buckled into the passenger seat within a minute I will shoot you in the knee."
"Fuck you," Alex muttered. Without the strength or will to fight, Alex wrestled back the pull of gravity, dragging himself off the ground and staggering into the car. His head pounded, feeling like a ton of bricks had just collided into it. Leaning back into the seat, exhaustion claimed him.
But he had learned something. Whoever Yassen was taking him to, he didn't want Alex shot.
Hundreds of reports found themselves recycled daily through the desks of the men and women working behind the scenes of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. A few of those reports somehow left the piles to be sent to upper level heads. Responsible for domestic intelligence affairs, as well as counter intelligence, surveillance, and security, the organization dealt with terrorist attacks annually. So to make the top dogs pay attention, big names had to be involved. Names like international celebrities, such as Ron L. Hubbard, Damien Cray or the Pope, or big name politicians like Obama or Putin. Or spies and the terrorist organizations that kept them in business. Scorpia and Al Qaeda, The Gentleman. And suddenly, Alex Rider.
Darkly a heavyset balding man glared at the piece of paper. "So you're telling me this kid, Rider, saved our president?" he asked, his heavy voice occupying the room.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Pavlovskii," said a suit.
"And now he's missing behind our borders, according to some US based military company. Americans, think they own everything, as if we can just give them rights to tromp through the country, looking for their missing member. As if we have the time or energy to waste looking for this fucking kid, with a suicide bomber in St. Petersburg last weekend and the corruption charges in the election. And now suddenly the damn president is claiming we need to help find this kid because of a personal favor that supposedly every single member of this country owes the kid. He's not even 18, and not even really American. Combine a Brit and an American and what do you get, Maslov?"
"I don't know, sir."
"A self-entitled, waste of energy brat." Behind his desk, Pavlovskii shook his head with disgust. He reached for a cigarette before pulling back – dealing with the wife berating him for the guilty pleasures of life was the last thing he wanted at the end of today. "Tell the president that I'm sending my top agents to find the lucky bastard. And someone, please get me access to the rest of this kid's fucking files!"
"And sir, what about the assassin they reported? And what are we doing with the Americans? They did enter our country under pretense."
"Lock 'em up until I have a chance to talk to them. Make sure there isn't any nasty business – we don't need to deal with an international incident as well. Transparency and all that. As for Gregorovich, get him alive. The Russian government has some questions for him."
AN: I did say the updates would be sporadic. Also, I apologize for my many grammatical mistakes, and less than perfect writing – looking through past chapters I see more than a few errors – but this story is really a writing practice I have for when I'm not much in the mood for a fully-fledged short story , so I rarely polish what I've written. I probably shouldn't release less than perfect work, but since I don't have the time to both write my own short stories, participate in the rest of my life, and go through the laborious practice of writing and rewriting chapters, it doesn't happen.