Wolf made Tom an egg sandwich that next Monday for breakfast. The boy smiled gleefully and dug in with the gusto quite common to kids his age. He wondered how much longer he would have to wait for the kid to be well enough to start remembering things. Tom hadn't said much over the weekend but he also hadn't played with his paperclips. Snake had bought his customary box of colored paper clips and while Tom had started to string them together-red, blue, green, yellow-he had not finished.

In fact, he had actually spent most of Saturday on Snake's laptop looking through his Facebook. Wolf thought it was an odd thing to do considering Tom was, well, Tom.

"That girl is nuts*," Tom had spoken up suddenly, his head cocked to one side as if he was trying to figure out whatever it was he was reading. Both soldiers had taken an immediate interest. If Tom thought someone was doing something odd, it had to be something very odd indeed. Wolf had even leaned over to read the screen.

"Really?" he said after reading the full series of messages on Tom's newsfeed. "She got a tattoo of his face after just a week together?"

"Seriously?" Snake asked, just as amused.

"Yes," Wolf said and handed the laptop over for him to read. "How do you know that girl?"

"Just from Facebook really," Tom said. "I think I've spoken to her once in real life." Wolf smiled at that. While Wolf wasn't sure if Tom should be spending that much time on Facebook, he wasn't going to begrudge Tom something normal.

And of course, on Sunday Wolf had told Snake about Tom's prank. Snake had been anything but amused. In fact, he had actually been angry.

"That little shit," he'd seethed, just quiet enough so that Tom wouldn't overhear them in the next room. "Do you have any idea how much time I've spent trying to figure out ways to help him and it wasn't even real? Are any of his other phobias fake?"

"No," Wolf said, amused despite himself. "But he said he wasn't afraid of bald people anymore."

"Hmph," Snake replied. "Just try to keep me up to date with what's happening with him. You seem to be the only one he ever wants to talk to."

"I will," he promised.

Now as he watched Tom devour an egg sandwich with obvious glee he was pretty certain that Tom's attachment to him could easily become more detrimental than helpful. Wolf would eventually be transferred and Tom would most likely be given another set of handlers. There was no telling how the boy would react to that and in all honesty, Wolf was terrified to bring it up. If he brought it up, he didn't want Tom to use it as an excuse not to open up to anyone.

"Feel up for school today?" he asked and was pleasantly surprised when Tom bobbed his head up and down.

"Yeah," he said. "I was talking to Tammy on Facebook and she invited me to study with her during lunch."

"Who's Tammy?" Wolf asked. Tom had never talked about any of his friends or classmates. The only thing he'd ever said about his family was to mention his parents' horrible divorce.

"She was my lab partner last term," the kid told him and Wolf nodded.

"Do you like her?"

"Not really," Tom said and then looked up in surprise. "I mean, not like that. She's a friend. Just a friend. Sort of."

Wolf smirked and did his best not to laugh. Underneath all the terrible nightmares and phobias, Tom was still a teenaged boy.

"Alright," Wolf said, eyeing the boy's uncomfortable look with humor. "Let's start getting out of here."

00000

The school still hadn't found someone to replace the tutor and they had come to the point that they could no longer do Tom's school work together. Wolf didn't really understand chemistry that well and so they had spent their morning in the conference room doodling, talking, and staring at the ceiling. It had been the most pointless morning Wolf had recently been forced to endure.

"What time is lunch?" he asked Tom for what was probably the third time. He couldn't remember.

"Soon," the boy replied engrossed in whatever he was drawing. He didn't seem to mind Wolf repeating himself every few minutes or so.

"Can I ask you something?" Tom finally said. He looked at Wolf with an intense gaze. A gaze Wolf wasn't used to getting from this kid.

"I suppose," Wolf gripped. "As long as it's interesting."

"When were you in training?"

"What?" the soldier asked, not expecting that line of questioning.

"When were you in training?" Tom repeated. Wolf considered telling him that he wasn't supposed to say which was likely true considering that he was on an official assignment and therefore not supposed to give personal information. In fact, Mrs. Jones had made it a point to tell him not to give personal information to anyone involved with this detail.

But this was Tom and he was finally talking and asking his own questions and logging back into Facebook. He didn't see the harm in answering that one question.

"Almost a year and a half ago," he told him. "Why?"

"Your name," Tom mused, "well, your code name sounds familiar. I've heard it before."

"Where?" Wolf asked interested. He had been suspecting for some time that Tom's memory was starting to come back to him piece by piece. The kid had mentioned deja vu before.

"Somewhere," Tom mumbled. He was staring off into space and Wolf didn't dare call his name or try to snap him out of it. The kid was concentrating really hard at something just beyond his conscious and Wolf wanted to know what it was. "On a plane."

"On a plane?" Wolf asked, surprised by the answer. "From a passenger?"

"Yeah," Tom replied. "He was a passenger. He told me something else too."

"What?"

"I don't know," Tom said, blinking, the memory gone. "Whatever it was it was important to him though."

"Do you know who it was?" Wolf asked. Tom shook his head. "Can you remember what he looked like?"

"No, I lost that."

Wolf knew that was the end to conversation. Tom didn't have anything left to tell him but Wolf was going have plenty to tell Snake later that night.

00000

Tammy turned out to be a nice enough girl. She came to the conference room with her lunch and her chemistry book and notes. Around bites of egg sandwich she helped Tom go through some of his chemistry worksheets. She was smart.

Blond hair that wasn't styled and didn't lay flat, brown eyes, and sharp tongue, she was the type of girl who Wolf wouldn't have thought capable of dealing with someone as damaged as Tom. But she was good with him. She went through everything patiently but wouldn't let him give up.

When it was time for her to go back to class Wolf followed her into the corridor.

"You were really good with him," he told her just outside the conference room. He had shut the door to make sure Tom didn't overhear.

"I had a big brother in the army," she told him. "He has PTSD too."

"Oh," Wolf replied not really knowing what to say to that. The girl just smiled at him.

"It's alright," she said. "I didn't really know Tom before but I'm probably the only person in the school who isn't afraid of him anymore."

"What was he like?" Wolf asked. "Before?"

"Really funny," she said without even thinking. "He had this way of making people laugh without ever saying a word. He could just make a silly face and everyone would practically die with laughter. But he was never funny at someone else's expense. He always said that was lazy comedy."

Wolf smiled. Yeah, that sounded like the boy he knew. Even just a little.

"What about friends?" he asked. "What do his closest friends think?"

Tammy gave him a strange look. It was the type of look that said he had missed something. Something important.

"What?" he asked.

"You really don't know do you?" she asked. "Tom didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"About Alex?" Wolf shook his head, waiting for her to continue and she did despite the fact the bell was ringing and she was late for class. "Alex was Tom's best friend. They were like brothers. Tom disappeared a little bit after Alex did but only Tom came back. Everyone's saying that Alex is dead which is creepy considering."

"Considering what?"

"That Tom is living in Alex's house," she replied and Wolf was shocked. He had assumed the place had been an MI6 safe house. Who was Alex?

"Where are Tom's parents?" he asked hoping she would know.

"I've only heard rumors," she warned him but told him anyways. "Tom's mom had her rights taken away. Something about extreme neglect. His dad didn't want the responsibility of taking care of someone so damaged. And they say the big brother doesn't want anything to do with any of them."

"How do the students know all this?" he asked suddenly realizing that Tammy had a lot of information for someone who hadn't been close friends with Tom.

"People talk," she shrugged. "Especially about Alex."

"Why?"

"He had a reputation," she told him. "He was always disappearing and showing back up with bruises or broken arms. He would disappear for weeks at a time and the only person who seemed to know anything about it all was Tom. The gossips were interested and stuff like that gets around."

Wolf nodded and thanked her. Tammy left to go back to class but the soldier just kept standing in the hallway. Because he was fairly certain that he had figured out this Alex kid. He can't believe he hadn't figured it out before. But he was almost certain that this Alex was the same kid he had known as Cub.

The soldier couldn't believe he hadn't pieced it together before. Tom's hints that he was friends with an SAS member; the fact that Tom kept asking if Wolf knew his friend; and now there was the fact that this SAS friend had told Tom Wolf's codename.

He had heard the kid's name only once before but he had never used it. Never cared to use it. And now all he needed was proof. Going to the front desk where Ms. Bedfordshire was sitting he greeted her kindly.

"What can I help you with?" she asked politely.
"Do you have a yearbook?" he asked. "From last year perhaps?"

"Yes," she said and pulled one out from a cabinet behind her. She handed it to him and immediately went searching through the class photos. It took him a minute but he finally found a picture of this Alex kid. He looked just as Wolf had remembered him. Blond, good looking, and athletic. Just a normal kid.

Cub was the friend that Tom had lost.

Cub was the reason all of this had been done to Tom. And if Tom was correct, Cub didn't even know.

"Do you know an Alex Rider?' he asked and Ms. Bedfordshire's face darkened a little.

"Of course I do," she said. "Or at least I did. Went off the rails that one."

"What happened?"

"Well, his Uncle died. That was the only family Alex really had and after the funeral he just started dissapearing a lot. Sickness, they said. I called it rehab." Wolf had to fight down the urge to correct her; to defend Cub. He may not have liked Cub, ever really, but the kid certainly didn't deserve to be talked about like that.

"Where is he know?" he asked, hoping that she knew and that the location wasn't the local graveyard.

"America last I heard. Friends of the family took him after his last guardian died."

"His last guardian died?" he asked, shocked. Did death just follow this kid around?

"Yes," the woman told him. "Quite sad too. She was a very wonderful lady."

Wolf nodded and then handed her the yearbook back. His mind was reeling. What had Cub been working on that would have caused such devastation to his best friend? And why had Scorpia chosen to kidnap Tom? If they had wanted to use him against Cub they would have told him about him. But Tom had remembered that his friend hadn't known he was there.

Rounding the corner to the hallway that led to the conference room Wolf stopped suddenly when he saw Tom at the end. He was standing in front of the window looking intently across the playing fields outside to a line of trees and blocked the school from the road.

Coming to stand behind the kid Wolf peered out as well. There was a figure standing just at the treeline. He was in a red jacket, blue jeans, and trainers. Wolf couldn't make out his face and his hair was covered with the hood of his jacket.

"Do you see him too?" Tom whispered and it pained Wolf to note that he sounded half terrified.

"Yes," Wolf said. "Who is he?"

"Can't you tell?" Tom asked no longer whispering but still very quietly. "It's him."

"Who's him?"

"My friend."

That was all Wolf needed before he was running out of the front office to the front door. He ran to the side of the building but when he turned the corner that figure was gone. He looked at Tom through the window but the boy didn't look worried.

In fact, he was smiling.

00000

*This is an actual Facebook thread. Google "girl get's boyfriend's face tattooed on arm after one week". It's technically an internet prank but it was hilarious nonetheless.