Random Alpha Force fact 4: In Untouchable all of Alpha Force gets seriously injured in some way except Alex. E.g. Hex shot, trapped inside the container full of gas then drugged, Paulo shot in the arm, Amber nearly drowned under Hex's drugged body, Li nearly gassed to death…
Chapter 4: Arson
It was a few weeks later. John had still not had a good opportunity to kill the three teenagers. But now something had come up. He had overheard the girl – Li he thought she was – suggesting that they meet up in the weekend. These kids wouldn't live to see another day.
The café was crowded. It was a typical London winter – fog and snow – and it seemed as though the entire population was in that one building. Alex wondered yet again how Hex stood it here. The Londoner was bent over his palmtop as usual, sitting at the last free table.
"I'll order", offered Li. "What do you want?"
Alex and Max flipped through the menu.
"Ummm…soup of the day", Max said.
Alex nodded in agreement. It wasn't as if he wasn't used to this weather, but it didn't mean he had to like it.
Without looking up, Hex seconded that.
"So four soups of the day, sirs?" asked Li, trying and failing to imitate a posh waiter.
Alex and Max nodded while Hex grunted, not wanting to be disturbed.
Soon Li returned, balancing a tray on which lay four buns and four bowls of chicken and mushroom soup one handed.
"Please tuck in sirs", she continued with her extremely bad imitation.
Without further ado, three of the four started eating hungrily. Hex carefully stowed away his palmtop in its protective case and then started eating ravenously too.
Alex was about halfway through the delicious soup when his sharp nose smelt a familiar smell over the odor of Chicken and Mushroom soup: burning.
"Hex! Do you-"
Hex nodded. "I smell it too. Get out! Fire!" he suddenly yelled at the top of his lungs.
Customers were running everywhere, panicking. Li grabbed the one nearest to her and told them to keep calm, and to get outside.
Alex got Max and told him to get to the assembly point, and to bring as many other people out with him.
Hex disappeared into the burning kitchen. He had a long record of running into burning objects – in their adventure in the desert he had run into a burning truck.
The hacker pushed out the protesting staff through the back door that was becoming closer to being engulfed in flames every moment.
They had all escaped, but then the doors burst into flames in perfect synchronized timing.
Now he was trapped, with the wall of flame coming closer every second…
Li, Max and Alex were together in the emergency assembly point, amidst the crowd of people. They were looking for Hex.
Li was starting to get a little worried. Surely he'd be out by now? And where had he gone anyway? Surely not into the kitchen? Hex would never do such a thing.Unbidden, a picture rushed into her head. Hex running into the burning truck in the desert.
Alex obviously was thinking the same.
"Déjà vu", he said.
"What?" asked Max frustratedly. "What are you talking about?"
Alex explained about the truck and Hex running into it, but not when or where or why it had happened.
"I only hope he's managed to get out of there alive…"
Hex frantically looked about the kitchen, trying to find somewhere, something that could save him.
His photographic memory went into overdrive, scanning through the files to see if he had read anything about fires and surviving them.
He knew that some people made firebreaks to survive bush fires, but that was in the wild for goodness sake. Not in London!
And then he remembered something that he had read about an Australian family who had sheltered in a water tank while the bush fire roared around them. It was a slim chance but it was his only hope.
But where?
Then he spotted it. A huge sink with water in it in the middle of the room was a quarter full of dirty dishes.
Stopping only to wrap his palmtop in a Ziploc bag Hex dived into the dirty water. Not a moment too soon.
The heat was terrible, but at least he wasn't being fried to a crisp. These Australians were geniuses.
Finally the heat stopped. The fire must have burnt itself out.
Shakily, he got to his feet.
Alex, Max and Li had nearly given up. Li was sobbing gently and Alex and Max were also on the brink of crying for Hex, who had played the hero one time too many.
Suddenly Li felt a tap on the shoulder. She spun around.
There, wearing his all-too-familiar smug smile stood Hex.