Title: Tomorrow Comes Today
Summary: One month into a mission, Alex Rider was declared MIA. Two months after that, he was declared dead. But no one would ever forget that Alex Rider's luck of the devil had kept him alive, against the odds, for over two years previously…
Rating: T for violence/abuse
Disclaimer: The disclaimer in the preview is completely untrue. As of three days ago, I now own a copy of Scorpia Rising. I bought it for $8.99 at Target. Now I just need to get the other four I'm missing...

A/N: Phew! This chapter certainly took a lot of work... a lot of research. When I planned this, I didn't realize how many time zones I crossed. I even confused myself trying to get them right. So, for your convience and so I don't confuse you as much as I confused myself, I put the times in both the local time and in Paris time since that's where the mission was centered. (Paris time is CEST.) Not to mention finding the perfect places for this to go down...
Anyway, a special thanks to those who reviewed last chapter! I see reviews in my inbox and secretly do a little happy dance! =) ...And then sit back down at my computer and start working on the next chapter... Therefore, this chapter is written by yours truly, but brought to you by Blissful Winter, Mythomagic-Champion, MonssterUnderYourBed, and a Guest. =)

Chapter Three – False Hope

10:15 AM (CEST) – Un Foyer Pour La Guérison

"What are you saying? That André is missing?" Ben spat in French at the man who stood before him. "Isn't it your job to make sure such things don't happen?"

"Je suis désolé, Monsieur Favre," the man spoke calmly. "We are doing all we can to find him, I assure you. I'm afraid I must apologize for the lack of security we had in place; the night guard fell asleep, and, somehow, André managed to disable the alarm." He shrugged causally as if this sort of thing happened every day – and, Ben reflected, it probably did considering why Alex had been sent here in the first place. Ben had to wonder if this man was in on the whole thing and this was simply a perfect act or if the man truly knew nothing about what was going on. "Monsieur Bouchard has already left with a few other men to conduct a search of the area. As I said, we are doing everything in our power to find him."

Ben sighed, running a hand through his hair. This was not supposed to be happening; having him nearby had only been a standard precaution – he wasn't supposed to have been needed. And how, he pondered, had they managed to whisk Alex away before he had arrived? Surely he should have seen something as he arrived as it would have taken time to subdue Alex after he sent the signal. Maybe he had been knocked unconscious and unable to alert him until now? But they certainly would have searched his person and taken anything he had on him away so he still couldn't have sent that signal – twice – barely over ten minutes ago. So much didn't add up! "Merci beaucoup (Thanks a lot)," he muttered as he turned away. "I need to make a phone call." Without another word, he walked out the door.

As soon as he was outside, he headed straight for his car, all the while dialing Mrs. Jones on his secure cell phone line. She picked up as he sat down in the driver's seat and started the ignition.

"Jones."

"We've got a problem. Alex is missing."

Silence. "Then you didn't make it in time?"

"No. He's already gone. Wait; how did you…?"

"Alex sent a signal to me as well. I knew if he was trying to get a hold of me, then we had a problem. Though I'd sincerely hoped it was not needed, I went ahead and dispatched a few other agents your way. Fortunately, we already had two of them in France for a different reason; they should be making contact with you within the hour." He heard static as the Head sighed on the other end of the line. "Though I'm not sure how much help that will even be unless someone tries to access his phone…"

"Well, if that happens, I'm sure I'll need all the help I can get."

10:33 AM, Paris Time (CEST) – 42,000 miles above the Atlantic Ocean

Monsieur Bouchard smiled to himself. Brilliant! His every step was going according to plan! He had just received a call from his contact that Alex's guardian was aware of his charge's disappearance, but it was too late for him to do anything to get Alex back! And the fact that Alex's phone would soon be emitting a tracking signal for MI6 to follow only made the situation that much better! Normally such a fact would disturb a person, but not Monsieur Bouchard. No, he had already known what would happen if he tampered with the phone. That was why he had left it with the man who had fueled his jet in Dakar, Senegal, when they had landed in the airport there to refuel before continuing on to Buenos Aires. He was paying the man well for his silence as well as to hold onto the phone for a few hours before seeing if he could hack the password. Not that he needed anything in it… But all of this would only benefit him later in the game.

He glanced over to where a still-sedated Alex slept, one hand handcuffed to a metal bar in the wall. 'All in good time,' he smiled to himself. 'All in good time!'

1:17 PM, Local Time (CEST) – Ben's Hotel Room

Ben paced the small space available in the room. He couldn't possibly sit still at the moment, fear and worry grating evenly on his nerves, steadily wearing his fuse shorter and shorter.

"Ben, please," one of three other agents in the room begged, "stop pacing before you wear a hole in the floor."

Ben stopped momentarily to glare icily at the man before continuing his back-and-forth path. "If I sit, I'm going to go crazy wondering where in the world he is, Peter! We don't know where he is, where he is going; we don't even know if he left the country or is still in it since the private airports won't even tell us if they've seen anyone matching the descriptions we gave them! Heck, he could be half way to – to Atlantis for all we know! I think I have the right to pace!"

"Uhm… You do realize that Atlantis is a fictional place, right?" another of the agents asked uncertainly.

Peter turned to the second, younger man. "I think that's kind of the point he's trying to make, Chris."

"Oh. Right. I knew that."

"Uh-huh. Right."

"I did!"

"Sure. I believe you," Peter returned sarcastically.

Before Chris could retort once again, a steady, high-pitched beeping filled the small room, drawing all of the agents' attention.

"Uh… What's that?" the last agent asked, even as Ben's eyes bugged out of his skull.

He spun around in mid stride, immediately heading for his laptop set up on a table in the corner. "That," he answered, "is hopefully a lead, Trevor!" As the other three agents crowded around, Ben toggled the touch pad to wake up the computer. As soon as he had typed in the password, a program pulled itself up on the screen, revealing a world map with a red light blinking in one corner of Africa. "There! …So he did leave the country, the scumbag! Alert Mrs. Jones; we're going to need a flight to Dakar, Senegal, and fast!"

11:42 AM, Local Time (4:42 CEST) – Approximately 20 Minutes from Buenos Aires

Alex stirred slightly where he lay on the floor. Man, did his head hurt! …Actually, if he thought about it, just about everything hurt. He pried his eyes open, blinking in the dim light that met them. Where was he? This certainly didn't look like his room at Un Foyer. He closed his eyes again and drew in a slow, deep breath, collecting his thoughts. He remembered now: The over-heard phone call, the files in the desk, the chase through the main building, being sedated. That would certainly explain why his head hurt, and he was sure that they had been none-too-gentle in getting him to – wherever it was he had been taken. He took another slow, deep breath and, opening his eyes again, glanced around, taking in his surroundings. Carpet under him. A well-furnished, long room around him. If he listened hard, he could just make out voices from behind what he assumed was a closed door by how muffled the sound was. And… that whooshing noise. It seemed familiar, but he was having trouble placing it.

Damien Cray stood facing Alex, a gun in his hand, ready to fire. Yassen was already down, dying, and he was about to be next.

Alex gasped at the brief flashback as the sound suddenly registered: He was on a plane! He groaned. No quick escape from this one.

"Ah, you're awake, I see."

Alex sat up slowly – his head spinning slightly despite his best effort – to find that Bouchard had entered the cabin. He glared at the man before him. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me where we are?"

"Argentina. We'll be touching down in Buenos Aires in about twenty minutes before continuing the last leg of the journey by boat. And if you agree to cooperate and not try to run, I won't have to sedate you again."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "You'd really take the word of a spy?"

Bouchard chuckled. "Of course not. I'm not that stupid, thank you very much. You'll still be handcuffed, under the guise of us transporting a criminal. It's a private airfield and a private marina so no questions will be asked, anyway, but it's always good to have a backup plan. But if you aren't going to cooperate and will try futilely to escape, then I will be forced to sedate you again. I don't want to have to, believe it or not, but I will."

Alex sighed inwardly. He definitely didn't want to be sedated again, that was for sure, and he certainly didn't have a choice but to go with this man. Maybe if he agreed… "I'll cooperate," Alex agreed slowly, "but only if you answer a few questions."

Bouchard sat down on a sofa opposite the spy. "Couldn't hurt, I suppose. Fire away."

"If you knew the whole time, why didn't you just sedate me when you snuck into my room that first night and take me away then?"

"I thought that would have been obvious. It was so much more fun to watch you at work, pretending to be someone you're not. You really are quite good, I have to admit; you certainly live up to your reputation."

"That phone call. You knew I overheard, didn't you?"

He nodded. "I made sure you did. I knew you wouldn't be able to resist."

"It was faked then?"

"Oh, no! It was quite real, I assure you! You see, Alex, we have a plan that we set in motion just a few months ago – a plan that cannot fail!"

"Like I haven't heard that one before… And it was always right before I foiled it."

Bouchard frowned slightly. "Well, this time you won't be, because you just happen to a part of this plan of ours."

"Who is this 'we' you keep referring to anyway?"

"Ah, that is for me to know, and you to find out!"

"Will you at least tell me what this plan is then?"

"I suppose you'll find out eventually, anyway. We are working to build the ultimate army."

"By stealing away teens with mental problems?" He raised an eyebrow. "Certainly doesn't make sense to me."

Bouchard chuckled. "Most of them don't want to live anyway. Therefore they make the perfect weapons because they don't care if they live or die. After we train them, they will fight for us fearlessly."

"What would keep them from just giving up in a battle?"

He smirked. "We have our ways."

Alex sighed. He obviously wasn't going to get more than that. "Why me?"

He laughed. "Now that really is asking the obvious! We want you to work for us, of course!"

"Doing what?"

"What else?"

Those two, simple words sent a chill down Alex's spine. "You want me to work as an assassin. Well, I won't! I don't kill people. End of story."

"Relax, Alex; we don't want you as an assassin – at least not yet. We just want to bring down MI5 and MI6. You have information. We want it. And together we can accomplish so much!"

"Even if I had valuable information – which I don't, by the way – I wouldn't tell you. I'm no traitor to my country."

"Hm. Well, we'll see how you feel after a few months. You've been tortured before, Alex, but I promise you've never been through what awaits you when we arrive at our final destination."

"I've been whipped, burned, and shot. Somehow I don't think you can do much worse."

He smirked evilly. "Like I said: We'll see about that."

4:19 PM, Local Time (6:19 CEST) – Dakar-Yoff-Leopold Sedar Senghor International Airport, Senegal

"What do you mean, you can't help me?" Ben growled at the poor woman who sat behind the main security desk in the airport. "This is a matter of international security!"

"Ben, you need to calm down," Trevor stated from behind the disgruntled agent, who spun around rubbing his forehead with a hand in frustration. Stepping forward, he quickly conversed with the woman in French. She nodded politely at him and spoke a few words in her native tongue before standing and walking through a door marked for employees' only.

Ben turned to Trevor, pointing a finger in the direction the woman went. "What just happened here?"

He shrugged. "Her English isn't very good; she just misunderstood you. Anyway, she doesn't have enough clearance to help us out, so she went to get the head of security."

Ben sighed exasperatedly. This was just not his day… or week… or month, for that matter.

After what seemed like an eternity – but was actually only about five minutes, the head of security came through the same door that the woman had exited through moments before. "My name is Duval," the man stated in perfect English. "Madame Leon says this is a matter of international security?"

"Yes," Ben stated stepping forward, completely in control once again. "I'm Agent Daniels. The men behind me are Agents Chadwick, Adair, and Trask." As he spoke he reached into his coat pocket and produced his ID card, the other three agents following suit. "We're from MI6 Special Ops. We have reason to believe that someone we are looking for has passed through your airport in a private jet. We were hoping to learn where it may be headed?"

The man – Duval – studied the agents' IDs for a moment before returning them and sitting down in the vacant desk chair in front of a computer monitor. "Where was the plane coming in from?"

Ben sighed. At least this man was willing to cooperate. Unfortunately… "We aren't exactly sure. Probably from somewhere around Paris – maybe a private airfield."

Duval raised an eyebrow. "You do not know?"

"No. Look, the man we're hunting has another MI6 agent hostage. He disappeared near Tours, France, and we know that they didn't leave the county by ground, but that's all we know."

"Then how do you know they came through here?" he asked skeptically, crossing his arms in front of him.

This was going nowhere, Ben realized, and in the meantime, Alex was getting further and further away, he was sure. He hadn't intended to tell this man more than he already had, but it looked as if he would have to give more to get anything. "We received a signal from a tracking device. Unfortunately, it's still broadcasting from this airport. I doubt the plane is still here, for obvious reasons, so we need to know where it went, and why the signal is still coming from here."

Duval continued to stare at Ben for a moment, as if contemplating whether or not to believe his story was true. Then, he slowly nodded. "If it was a commercial flight, we might have far more difficulty. But, since it was a private jet, we might have some luck, seeing as we have far fewer of those come through. From France you say?" At Ben's curt nod, Duval began to type quickly on the computer keyboard. "It will take a moment to search the system. If you have an approximate time, that would help to narrow the results."

"Well," Ben mused, "I would say somewhere between four o'clock this morning and noon today. But since Paris is two hours ahead of here, that would make to sometime between two o'clock and ten o'clock this morning here."

He entered the information given and, a moment later, the computer beeped with the results. Duval's eyebrows rose marginally. "Well, there was one private flight that came through this morning from Tours, France. Stopped to refuel. But someone messed up," he spoke, his voice turning to venom. "Someone forgot to log where the plane was taking off for."

Ben slammed his fist into the counter top. "Damn it!" he spat.

"Don't lose hope yet," Duval spoke. "I know the worm that fueled the plane. He also would have been responsible for the log since it was a private flight that hadn't previously filed a flight plan with us but one that requested a landing as it was coming in. Not smart enough to at least make something up, not smart enough to leave his name off. We can still find out."

"Not if they paid him off," Trevor supplied. "If the price was high enough, your worm might not have even asked."

"Well," Duval stated, "there's only one way to find out!"

1:23 PM, Local Time (6:23 CEST) – Buenos Aires

Alex dutifully stepped onto the vessel waiting to carry him away to who knew where. As he had promised, he hadn't tried to escape – but that was only because even he had to admit when there was no chance for a getaway. It was one of those times, however, that he was glad he knew Spanish; he had filed away in his memory where exactly he had been taken in Buenos Aires just in case the opportunity arose that he would be able to send for help. He could at least get them in the right direction that way. Not that he thought anyone would actually be looking. Mrs. Jones never worried about that, after all. It didn't matter that he had sent for help; he was alone, on his own, just like he always was.

He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that if he was going to get out of the messes MI6 put him in, the only one who could do that was himself. Because no one else would ever be there. He didn't like it, but that was just the way it was. That was the way it would always be. At least, until a mission actually killed him. He sighed. Maybe, just maybe, this would be the one.

4:36 PM, Local Time (6:36 CEST) – Dakar Airport, Senegal

Ben slammed his hand into the table making the man on the receiving end cringe. "I said, tell me where that plane went when it took off again, damn it!" Ben had been allowed to interrogate the man alone in a sound proof room in the security office. Unfortunately for Ben, the man who had refueled the plane didn't speak English very well, forcing Ben to resort back to French.

"Je dit vous, je ne sais pas! (I tell you, I don't know!)" the man repeated. "I refueled the plane and left. That's all I know!"

"You didn't see it take off?"

"No. The man – he paid me to fuel and not watch what direction he took off. And to take the phone, hold on to it for a while, and then try to get in. I don't know why. He paid me well to do it for him so I didn't ask questions. I refueled. I left. I didn't watch."

Ben rubbed at his forehead with his hands. No. This wasn't happening! The trail couldn't be cold already… He had promised Alex that he would be there for him, and now it was looking like he was about to let the teen down. It seemed to Ben that everyone was always letting Alex down, was never there when he needed it most; he couldn't let that happen again!

"Besides," the man continued quietly, "if this man is as smart as you make him out to be, even if I had watched him take off, he could have turned and gone a different direction after he was out of sight. Even if I had seen, it wouldn't be of any help. Je suis désolé, Monsieur." I'm sorry, sir.

Ben turned away, defeated. As much as he didn't want to admit it, the man had a point. Bouchard could have said he was going to Brazil and, as soon as he was out of the air space above the airport, turned and headed for Australia. At least twelve hours, by his estimate, had elapsed since Alex was taken and still they were no closer to finding him than they were before they had flown to Dakar. There had to be something; surely, there was something he had missed! Some clue – some hint of any kind – of where that man had taken Alex. Without turning back to face the man, he asked one last time, "Are you sure you don't know where he was going? Did he say anything that might give us a clue?"

The man was silent for a moment before replying. "Je ne sais pas. All he said was he needed to refuel before a long flight and to take the phone; paid me well to hold on to it for a few hours, then try to break in. That he would pay more if I didn't watch when he left. That was all he said."

Ben half-heartedly slammed his fist into the door in front of him. "Damn it!" he whispered. Sighing, he straightened up and opened the door. As he left, he spoke quietly, defeated, "You're free to go."

He rejoined his comrades back by the security desk. They all stood from where they were sitting, all asking without speaking a word.

"It's a dead end," Ben spoke emotionlessly. "The trail is cold. We have no lead. We have no plan of action. We have nothing."

Peter's eyes grew wide. "You can't be serious!" he breathed.

"Deadly. Alex is MIA, and we have nothing to go on. It's over."

6:02 PM, Local Time (10:02 CEST) – King Edward Point, South Georgia Island

Alex watched as the dock slowly came into view and shivered. He wasn't sure where exactly they had ended up, but it was much colder here than it even had been in Buenos Aires the previous day when he had stepped off the plane. Wherever they were now, it must have been even further south.

As the cold winds blew, chilling him to the bone, it wasn't just his body that felt iced over. As far south as he must be, there was absolutely no hope of anyone finding him. As it was, the place looked almost uninhabited, and he highly doubted that anyone who might possibly live here would be willing to help him. Before there had been at least a small spark of hope. Not anymore.

This really would be the end of him, he realized with a shudder. It was all over now.

"Here I lie forever
Sorrow still remains
Will the water pull me down and wash it all away
Come and take me over
Welcome to the game
Will the current drag me down and carry me away
Suddenly the light begins to fade

"HOPELESS
I'm falling down
FILTHY
I can't wake up
I cannot hold on
I will not let go
WORTHLESS
It's over now
GUILTY
There's no way out
I cannot hold on
I will not let go"

~Breaking Benjamin: Hopeless

A/N: So there you have it! Alex is far from home, Ben is out of clues. And you get a hint of the second edge of this double-edged sword, so to speak. ;) Thanks for reading, and don't forget to review! =)