A/N: Hey! This chapter has been sitting in my doc manager for almost a week, but I don't know how much farther I'll get this week because somehow my eyelashes got stuck to my left eye today and now half my vision is blurry as heck. There was also an accident in the biology lab involving heating cracked glassware over an open flame, my lab partner not paying attention, and my bare arm, now covered in cuts and HCl burns. Gotta love that bio life :')

Reviews are always welcome :)

The feeling didn't fade; in fact, it worsened as the next few weeks dragged on with an excruciatingly slow pace. Once again, the authorities were mystified with Galen Troy because he had simply disappeared. No one seemed to have any idea where he went, and no one seemed inclined to find out beyond the circle of CIA and FBI agents that Alex was working with. He was starting to doubt that Troy would ever be found - usually if someone was missing for this long, they weren't coming back.

Alex was half-tempted to think that Troy was dead, killed by one of his former associates or someone he had put in prison during his tenure at the CIA, but his gut knew better. That unshakable certainty that danger was coming didn't show any signs of abating.

When Ben Daniels and Wolf had arrived a few days back, Alex hadn't seen them. They'd gone straight to a hotel in downtown D.C, met by Mr. Blakemore and Sebastian, and were apparently setting up surveillance around Christie Dome's apartment. Since then, Alex had run into Ben once, congratulated him on the birth of his son, and tried to get away as soon as possible. He liked Ben Daniels but felt guilty every time he saw him.

Ben had dragged Alex out of the burning theatre when Alex had been shot and burned, risking his life and fatherhood. When Alex survived, he knew that he would forever be indebted to Ben.

He tried not to let his thoughts distract him from training; he'd thrown himself back into the krav maga, figuring that if he could get his body to cooperate with that, any other kind of combat would be easy. He'd already gotten distracted once and had paid the price mid-flip when his arm had banged painfully onto the deck outside.

Danielle and Catie seemed to be getting on rather well; they were always laughing about something, at any rate, especially when one of the twins attempted an ambitious backflip on the back porch and ended up headfirst in one of the bushes, pride damaged, but otherwise okay.

"They like you," Alex had said to Danielle, teasing her. "Boys do stuff like that to impress you."

"Do they offer to babysit a girl's younger sister if they like her?" Danielle had replied, grinning at Alex.

He hadn't returned to the topic. How could he explain that he was just trying the be . . . well, he didn't know what, exactly, so he didn't bother trying to explain.

Other than laughing at the antics of Catie's twin younger brothers, Danielle and Catie found plenty to do - Danielle was welcomed into Catie's group of friends, which Alex had so far managed to strategically avoid in order not to bring any more questions upon himself, and frequently went out with them to do things around the city. As glad as Alex was that Danielle was having fun and making friends -if he was being honest, she seemed happier here than she ever had in London- he would have preferred if her social life didn't prompt people to ask about his.

One day, Catie finally succeeded in dragging him out to see the museums on the Washington Mall, which Alex remembered from the last time that he was there, and he had accepted Ben Daniels' invitation to meet at one of the restaurants in the area. That way, he wouldn't have to try and find transportation into the city some other time.

Alex was struggling with being a tourist; he felt like he should be doing something useful, something for the case . . . Danielle had said that he was being obsessive, and she probably had a point, but he couldn't help it. The urge was like an itch. He couldn't relax.

"Stop being a spy and look at art," Catie said, elbowing him as they wandered through a permanent exhibit of 13th century Byzantine icons.

"Ssh," he muttered.

She wandered over to one of the icons, mounted on the wall with a placard beneath it that gave a short description of the work and the artist. The painting itself was done on some kind of organic panel with oranges and burgundies; the subject was a woman in a dark blue robe who stared off to the side of the image with a chilling expression of profound sorrow.

"Look." Catie pointed to a line of italicized text on the placard, and Alex moved closer to read it. "The Master of Franciscan Crucifixes. No one knows the real name of the painter."

"Huh."

She tugged the cuffs of her ivory blouse over her hands, bundling her long black coat in her arms. "It's cold. Let's go to another gallery."

Alex stared at the icon now that he was closer. The woman's eyes were piercing, incredibly detailed for 13th century art.

The placard opened with a quote: "The woman who weeps, for the one she loved most has been killed."

Alex hurried after Catie, seeing her disappear through the door into another gallery, as he felt a cold vise close around his lungs and arms, like chains.

Something bad was going to happen.

He could feel it.

Alex could tell that Catie loved D.C. because she hadn't stopped smiling ever since they arrived. The tension was gone from her posture and her shoulders slumped, relaxed. She blended into the crowd of college students and federal contractors on lunch break, sitting at an outdoor table at one of the streetside cafes with an air of childish excitement. Her hair hung loose around her face, blowing gently in the faint breeze. Her eyes danced as she stared off into the streets packed with people and cars, sharp in look but vacant in sight.

Sitting across from her, Alex scanned the street for Ben Daniels, who was supposed to meet them at the cafe for lunch.

Catie leaned forward with her elbows braced against the table. "The guy behind our table is watching you."

Alex picked up his glass of coke - on ice, as was the odd American preference - and glanced at the wavy reflection in the glass of the table behind him.

The man wore wraparound sunglasses and a blue and white striped running jacket. His hair was white but not indicative of age; he was either albino or used a substantial amount of bleach for disguise.

"Should we leave?" Catie asked softly.

Alex shook his head. The jogger was probably completely uninterested in them. Having done an extensive check for surveillance before sitting down, Alex was confident that they weren't being followed or observed. He knew that Catie was nervous too, even if she did her best to hide it around the twins and Agnes. She was most likely imagining things, allowing her mind to run away down paranoid streets . . . Alex could empathise.

He had managed to calm the roaring intuition down to a dull murmur, an irritating thought that nagged at his mind but was easily suppressed.

Being with Catie was fun; she was an excellent tour guide, in good humor, and possessed a wealth of random trivia about the city's history ("My Dad was a history professor. It's in my blood.") She flung her hand out to point at various things and sights, like a kid trying to soak in the suddenly evident intricacy of the world around her.

Across the road, a familiar figure caught Alex's eye when a lean, dark-haired man started towards them in jeans and a long-sleeved polo.

"Hey, Alex," Ben Daniels said.

He looked tired, with heavy circles smudged under his pale blue eyes, but happy. Alex briefly shook his hand, returning his greeting, and introduced Catie, who leaned forward to shake his hand with a practiced smile.

Ben sat down at the round table and ordered a coffee. "Alex, we have the records from the last time MI6 worked with Massoud. It involved petrol exploitation."

"Should I be surprised?"

"Fuel lines through Saudi Arabia were running mysteriously dry. They had been rerouted in small pipes, called leeches, that funneled the fuel to a nearby refinery."

"I heard about that," Catie said suddenly. "Dad was ranting about it."

Ben nodded pensively. "I'd bet he was."

"Does that have anything to do with why he was killed?" Alex asked.

"Don't know."

"Do you know about OPEC?"

"The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries." Ben gave him an odd look, as if Alex had said something decidedly unintelligent.

"No, the theory on it."

"Alex thinks that the dead man was here to encourage Senator Janice Fields to remain on the Senate Committee for energy and advocate for a greater dependence on foreign oil," Catie blurted. "OPEC could jack up tariffs and make a fortune off American money." She impatiently pushed her hair behind her ears and stared down at the table, suddenly seeming shy.

Ben stared at her for a few awkward moments, apparently at a loss for words.

"Yeah," Alex said slowly, staring down at the glass cupped in his hands. "She explained it pretty well."

"Well." Ben cleared his throat. "That explains what Sebastian meant when he said that the senator had recently moved to a bigger house in a D.C. suburb in Maryland."

Another house - that was why Alex had found the security to be so easy to bypass when he biked to her house, or what he thought was her house, a few weeks ago. The online directory probably hadn't been updated if the senator was still moving or had done so recently.

That would've been nice to know before I got shot at, Alex thought to himself, irritated that he either hadn't checked her address thoroughly enough or that the thought of her moving residence hadn't even occurred to him.

"She must have gotten a nice fee for her efforts," he said.

"Yeah," Ben replied, "And I don't think that's all she's getting. We tracked a few wire transfers into the Swiss account that your informant mentioned. Six figures, if not more."

"I suppose there's no chance of finding the source?"

"Nope. You know the banks."

Unfortunately, Alex did. The Swiss didn't particularly care who kept money within their borders as long as it entered and exited with hefty interest rates. In fact, anonymity was in the best interests of their banking systems, as Switzerland was loathe to extradite any criminals or evidence to the rest of the West. Rumors had been circulating in the intelligence community for decades about hordes of plundered Nazi art and antiques stored in Swiss vaults, unreachable due to their statutes on ownership and time-sensitive storage.

"That's a shame."

"We'll have to get her on video evidence or find another paper trail." Ben gave a heavy sigh, once again sounding much older than his twenty-six years. "Alex, can I have a word?"

Catie started to stand up but Alex beat her to it, placing his hand on her shoulder. "Stay here. We'll go."

"Be careful," she muttered, but her face was sincere.

Ben shouldered his way through nearly a block's worth of foot traffic, Alex following, until they stopped in front of a storefront advertising couture clothing with elegant mannequins in the window.

"How are you?" Ben asked.

Alex stepped out of the flow of traffic and leaned against the window, pulling the collar on his jacket up against the chilly air. "Fine. Is that suddenly confidential?"

"Any trouble with the other thing?"

"What 'other thing'?"

"The thing that happened last time you were here."

Alex's stomach contracted as if Ben had stabbed him with a serrated knife. Truthfully, he hadn't thought about the incident ever since he'd arrived in America; after all, Washington D.C. was very different from Chicago, and Alex hadn't had much opportunity to dwell on anything outside of immediate concerns. "Haven't thought about it."

"Right." Ben's face was skeptical; he crossed his arms, waiting for Alex to elaborate.

Alex shrugged. "I really haven't. There's been a lot to do - the case, the break in, having Danielle come, helping Catie with her siblings."

"The break in?"

"Did they seriously not tell you? Troy broke into the Blakemore's house."

"What?"

"Stop shouting, someone will look over." Alex scuffed his shoe along a seam of mortar in the bricked footpath.

"Were you home?"

"Well, that's how I know it was him. He was apparently parked outside for a while. Catie saw him and freaked out. As soon as he got out of the car, I recognized him."

Ben suddenly looked even more tired than he already did. "I assume you did something stupidly valiant, like send her away and hide?"

"Pretty much."

"Alex, this isn't a game."

"I know that!" Alex snapped, finally losing patience. "Do you think I don't? You think I like being stuck at some stranger's house while everyone else runs around and solves crises that affect me more than anything else?" He shook his head and stepped back, distancing himself from Ben. "God, this is why I hate you people."

With an exasperated eye roll, Ben huffed out a sigh. "First of all, I pretty much guessed that you hated it. Secondly, that's what I wanted to tell you in the first place: I'm leaving the Agency. This is my last stint with Jones."

Alex was getting ready to launch another tirade, but Ben's words quickly derailed his thoughts. "You're what?"

"London isn't the place to raise a kid, and Arthur deserves a father who's guaranteed to come home every evening." Ben spoke casually even though his shoulders were squared and his jaw set in a stubborn jut. He was serious.

"How's the kid?" Alex asked.

"He's fine. Gwen's sister is in town for a while to help out."

"Where would you go?"

"Gwen likes Somerset."

"Hell. Good luck."

A pained grimace crossed Ben's face. "Alex, you need to get out of MI6 as soon as you can."

"What more can I do? They've already burned me."

"Just be careful. If they can't have me, they'll get you." Ben shook his head in a spontaneous, involuntary movement. "Anyways. What's up with you and Catherine?"

"Catie," Alex subconsciously corrected him. "And, nothing. Why?"

"She seems to like you."

He laughed hollowly. "Nothing that's reciprocated. She's nice, but. . ." She could never understand me, really. I could never reach her, or anyone. Besides, I've known her for, what, three weeks? I know about her, but not her. . . 'cause that makes sense. Whatever.

"Well, she's a cute kid. You don't have to be so isolated - trust me, that never helps."

Alex resisted the urge to glare at his married friend - what did Ben know about isolation, he'd met his wife almost as soon as he had returned from tour - and shrugged casually. "You said it yourself. She's a cute kid."

Before Ben could say anything else, an unintelligible shout rang out from the vicinity of the cafe. Seconds later, a tumultuous horde of people was fighting to get away from the patio, yells and shouts muffled by the scuffling of feet on brick. Several people sprinted out into the street, raising panicked faces back towards the cafe. Drivers slammed on their breaks, car horns screeching protests at the blatant violation of the unspoken yet understood order of city life.

In the middle of it all at a table close to the street, Catie Blakemore was slumped forward against the tabletop, her shoulders hunched up, arms dangling by her sides.

She wasn't moving.

Alex sprinted down the narrow footpath between the storefronts and the median filled with trees and lampposts that lined the street. Several people pushed him out of the way in their haste to get away from the cafe. Someone's elbow dug into his stomach, right where the bullet scar was healing, and Alex temporarily lost his breath as he fought the urge to double over.

Worst-case scenarios filtered through his head as he fought his way through the crowds to Catie's prone body. A shooting. A stabbing. Broken neck - no, her head wasn't tilted at all. No one stopped to help her. Why hadn't anyone stopped to help her?

As soon as he reached her Alex grabbed her wrist to find her pulse and felt it flicker dimly against his fingers like feeble wings. Her head lolled back when he took her by the shoulders, lifting her face away from the hard surface. He gently cupped her forehead with one of his hands, guiding her head onto his shoulder as he lifted her body into his arms.

Catie's eyelids were shut, not even fluttering, her face devoid of any muscular response to the stimuli around her. Somewhere, a bright light flashed, visible even in the broad sunlight.

The intuition that warned of danger crescendoed into a raging scream inside Alex's mind as he stood in the middle of an empty cafe and looked around for Ben. He couldn't silence the voices that told him that danger wasn't approaching, it was already here, and the evidence of that was lying unconscious in his arms.

"Let me see her," Mr. Blakemore growled to the unfortunate nurse who had the responsibility of manning the reception desk at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where the ambulance had laboriously plowed through lunch-rush traffic to deliver a comatose Catie Blakemore to the ICU. The trauma physician had found an ugly gash on the back of her head from where someone had bludgeoned her with a heavy object.

"So, what happened?" Danielle asked Alex, who stood a few feet behind Mr. Blakemore with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

"Someone yelled 'bomb' in the cafe," Alex said, reciting what the news agencies who'd picked up the storey had claimed. "Everyone panicked. In the confusion, someone hit Catie."

He didn't tell her the rest of what he thought, that it was his fault, his fault, his fault for leaving her alone. She was an easy target, especially having been seen with him. Maybe that jogger was watching Alex, waiting for the opportunity to strike. Maybe the unconscious one should have been him.

With a dull smile, Danielle wound her hand through one of his arms and gently tugged him towards one of the chairs. "It wasn't your fault, Alex. If anything, whoever did it would have waited and gotten both of you, maybe even killed someone."

"I should have known," he muttered. "I've had this - this feeling, for weeks that something bad was coming. And now Catie's . . .hurt." Or worse.

"She's not going to die." Danielle gazed at him, completely serious. Her honey-colored eyes searched his. "She'll live."

He sighed, a sigh that caught in his throat somewhere between recurring self-loathing and crippling fear. "I hope so."

"You really like her," she said softly after a pause.

"No. She's innocent, this isn't her problem, but she's probably just collateral damage to whoever did this."

"Right," Danielle murmured, but she didn't sound convinced.

Alex scoffed. And that's why you don't like people, idiot. They become weapons. Then they get hurt.

Catie Blakemore had the strangest sense of waking up underwater as ribbons of twilight flickered across her vision like sunlight on water. Her thoughts were dull and viscous, slowly churning to keep pace with her pulse, which roared in her . . . well, she couldn't feel her ears. Or her hands.

Or anything at all.

First came the hit, and then she was falling . . .

Had Alex come?

Was she dead? No, not dead . . . there was nothing here, no heaven or hell, no afterlife, unless her consciousness was drifting aimlessly through a yet-undiscovered fifth dimension.

No, she wasn't dead.

She realized that her eyes weren't open. The unusual coloring was all in her head, some image her brain conjured up, perhaps to make this state of living-yet-unliving more bearable.

Suddenly, thinking became painful, like a thousand tons of concrete were chained to each fragment of a thought that passed through her mind. Her head spun as if she needed to breathe but no air was coming.

Something pricked her - her mind, because she couldn't feel any other part of her body - that felt disturbingly like a viper's fang, a pinprick of pain in her consciousness.

Then, slowly, the twilight dissolved into blackness.

Catie stopped thinking.

There was a field of golden grass in front of her, sprawling towards the horizon with no end in sight. The blades rustled around her legs, though they made no sound, as Catie stood up to her waist in a field of gold.

Somehow, she knew that there was a forest behind her.

She turned around and saw that the forest was dying: trees withered, twisting into grotesque, gnarled shapes, and the branches were black. Not black like walnut shells, but the kind of black that looked like melting tar.

I must be dreaming, she thought with what felt like a gargantuan effort.

The grass closest to the forest was not gold but bronze, tarnished with patches of rust. It made a path towards a section of the treeline that had been carved out, reaching farther into the gloomy wood. In that patch of cleared-out ground was an ancient throne made of marble that had cracked in several places, though the arms and back were gilded with elegant swirls of gold. The throne was beautiful even in its decay, even enhanced: made beautiful by corruption.

Still ensconced in the eerie silence of the dream, Catie slowly picked her way through patches of dying grass. She felt a great fatigue, as if she was going to pass out at any moment, and tried to lean against the side of the broken throne. Instead of feeling solid marble, her hand was cold.

Very cold.

She sat down, pulling herself up.

Alex was coming. He would come back for her, wherever her mind was, he would reach her.

Not because he loved her - no, Catie wasn't foolish enough to imagine that - but because he had a sense of duty that would compel him to help her.

She just had to wait.

Something rustled, flickering in the grass in the corner of her eye, but she didn't pay much attention to it as she stared at the sunless horizon, waiting for someone to come and take her out of this dream.

Then the vine appeared, growing out of the grass, ugly and brown like the bark of a dead tree. It touched her wrist and kept growing, coiling around her arm until it was stuck fast against the arm of the throne.

Catie struggled and thrashed, but the vine kept tightening - she could feel it now, squeezing the bones in her arm - and suddenly it wasn't a vine but a snake, an ugly brown viper staring at her with two beady eyes.

As she watched, paralyzed, its mouth unhinged, revealing two long, curved fangs glistening with venom.

One fang pricked her arm.

The dream shattered, flying apart like a smashed mirror, and Catie found herself staring at the twilight once again.

Something rippled across her vision, the outline of a person, as if she were underwater and the surface was just a few inches away . . . she strained desperately, trying to get there, but nothing happened.

Then the voice came, impossibly soothing.

"Tell me about Alex Rider."

Catie thought for a moment.

Thinking was hard.

Thinking hurt.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She tried to speak but wasn't sure if she succeeded.

"You can trust me. It's okay."

"I don't believe you."

"Why is Alex here?"

"He's going to come for me."

"Oh, silly girl. They all think you're in a coma. Terrible, the kinds of things that can happen to unconscious patients. . . well, no matter. Relax. We can talk until you fall asleep."

The viper bit her again, a pinprick of silver in her consciousness, and again, Catie let her mind settle into the comforting delirium of sleep.

"Sometimes the patients can dream," said the doctor, who had introduced himself as Nathan von Spakovsky, a specialist in the care of comatose patients. "And sometimes they can hear, so the best thing that you guys can do is talk to her."

"Do you know when she could wake up?" Mr. Blakemore asked. They were waiting outside the room where Catie was, as a nurse was currently in there hooking up Catie's IV and other monitors.

"Well, whoever hit her was pretty strong. They got her good. Her body will naturally put her out for a day or two; after that, it's all up to her."

"She will wake up, right?" asked Vince, anxiously polishing his glasses with the hem of his t-shirt. Beside him, his twin brother stared stoically at the door that concealed their older sister.

Dr. von Spakovsky gave him a sympathetic smile. "So far, all the signs are good. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much research done on comatose patients. All we can do is give them the best care available . . .which brings me to my next point: A physical therapist will come in twice a day to do exercises with her - move her legs, arms, et cetera - so she doesn't lose too much muscle tone during the course of her sleep. She has an IV for hydration and we'll see about feeding tubes in the coming days if she's still out."

"Thank you," Mr. Blakemore said.

Dr. von Spakovsky shook his hand. "If you need anything else, please let us know."

Alex startled as the door to Catie's room swung open and a nurse emerged clad in pink scrubs. Her dark hair was pulled back, but something about her face looked decidedly familiar even though Alex was certain that he had never seen her before. She was holding a large syringe, tip pointed up towards the ceiling.

"What's in there?" Alex asked, motioning towards the hypodermic needle.

"Cyclobenzaprine," the nurse replied with a smooth smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "It's a muscle relaxant. Don't want the asthma acting up."

Alex nodded and, as the nurse left, stepped into Catie's room. He felt like he was intruding on a family affair, but Agnes of all people had insisted that he come. Even now, she reached out with one small hand and squeezed his, staring wide-eyed at Catie.

When he looked at Catie, a chill ran down his spine.

She was the image of serenity with her face relaxed into a calm, blank expression and her spine molded against the curve of the mattress. Her auburn hair spread out on the pillow behind her head, safely out of the way of the breathing tube in her nose and the electrodes strapped to her heart. Another pulse monitor was clipped to her finger with a long cord running to a screen that displayed all the readings that the machines were taking from her body: heart rate, the strength of her heartbeat, blood pressure, and a dozen others that Alex couldn't decipher. She had been dressed in a hospital gown, pale blue, and someone had pulled the sheets up to her waist so they wouldn't interfere with the monitors.

If not for the gentle rise and fall of her chest, instigated by the ventilator, Catie would have looked very, very dead.

Mr. Blakemore stared at his eldest daughter with hardened eyes that glistened with something disturbingly like tears. Alex could tell from watching him that the FBI agent was going to throw himself into the case for Galen Troy and for the Arab to find whoever did this to his child. Of course, Alex was planning on doing the same thing.

Catie was innocent. She had no place in this.

She didn't belong in the hospital, unconscious on a bed in the middle of a lonely ward.

"I'm going to call your mother," Mr. Blakemore said, reaching out to clap Nic on the shoulder.

Nic and Vince nodded in tandem as he stepped out of the room with his phone already pressed against his ear. Vince played with his glasses again but Nic, having nothing to fidget with, tried to smooth down his coppery hair and stared dumbly at his older sister.

Alex felt Agnes squeeze his hand again, and she pointed towards Catie's left arm, which sat limply against the bed.

"Alex, Catie is bleeding."

"What?" his voice was raspy. Clearing his throat, he asked Agnes to show him what she meant.

Agnes tugged him over to the side of the bed and gently placed one of her small fingers near a spot on the inside of Catie's arm just above her elbow. Sure enough, there was a tiny speck of blood there. Alex knew he should recognize it - the type of bleeding looked so familiar - but he couldn't focus his thoughts enough to remember what caused such a wound.

"She probably got that during the panic," he said quietly.

"Didn't the doctor say to talk to her?" Nic asked loudly, too loudly, and promptly snapped his mouth shut. His face flushed.

Alex nodded. "Yeah. You guys should do that."

"Where are you going?" Agnes asked, concern creasing her brow in a manner very reminiscent of Catie.

"I need to call my sister."

In the fog of the days that followed, a crude schedule started falling into place: Alex would wake up early, get something to eat, and go into Blakemore's office, usually with Ben. There they would sit in front of computer screens and stare, frame by frame, at footage taken from security cameras in stores near the cafe in search of Catie's assailant. The crowds of panicked people who reacted to the false bomb alarm made focusing on Catie's table a daunting task, hence the necessity to go through each of the ten frames per second of footage.

After three days of this, Ben finally found something.

"Alex. Look at this."

Alex shoved his chair back and hurried over to look at Ben's screen. The image was grainy and heavily pixelated, but it showed the jogger from the table behind Alex halfway out of his chair.

Ben clicked the mouse.

The next frame showed the jogger brandishing some object -where he had gotten it from, Alex couldn't tell - and lunging towards Catie, who had turned to see what the commotion was about.

In the frame after that, the object connected with Catie's head.

The next showed her slumped over the table.

The jogger had melted into the crowd of people escaping the fake threat of a bomb, and by the end of the footage, no one was left in the cafe except for Catie.

"Who is he?" Alex asked, slamming his fist against the desk.

Ben hit a few keys on the keyboard to zoom in on the last image of the jogger's face, but the enhanced size only made the image more grainy. "I'll ask someone here to try and get this clarified."

"Fine. I'm going to get Sebastian to take me to Christie Dome's flat. Maybe the man who hit Catie is the man who killed the Arab."

Ben absently nodded, clearly thinking about something else. "Alex, is there anything going on between you and Catie?"

"No." Without waiting for Ben to respond, Alex went over to Sebastian's desk and asked him for the car.

"I'll go with you," Sebastian said, unusually grim. "You're not licensed here."

Biting back an impatient retort, Alex waited on edge for Sebastian to get the keys so that they could leave.

The door to Christie's flat was ajar when Alex stepped off the lift on her floor. No sound came from within; in fact, the entire hall was silent.

"That doesn't bode well," Sebastian muttered, straightening the lapels of his jacket as he strode towards the door and nudged it open with his elbow. Creaking on rusty hinges, the door swung further inwards until, with a soft thunk, the bottom edge hit something.

Alex knew what he would see even as he pushed past Sebastian and stepped inside the flat, where he had only been once before. Sure enough, a shiny black stiletto was visible from behind the door, lying kicked out parallel to the ground but not attached to a foot.

"Alex, wait-" Sebastian began, but gave up when Alex ignored him and squeezed in through the gap between the door and the jamb.

There was a single shoe, which he'd already seen, but no sign of anything else . . . he stepped further into the silent flat, and that was where the body was.

Familiar dark hair was flung back across the white marble tiles, streaming from a pale face half-concealed by a single arm flung across the eyes. The woman wore a dark business suit, somewhere between grey and black. One of her shoes was missing, but Alex already knew that. She was lying on the floor, evidently having fallen, but she had not been killed on the ground.

A puddle of blood pooled under the back of her head and stained the front of her blouse, difficult to see in the dim lighting.

"They cut her throat," Sebastian said, having followed Alex into the flat.

Alex nodded stiffly.

Christie Dome was dead.

When the twilight dissipated again, Catie found herself sitting on the throne with the serpent lashed around her arm. Why is this my only dream?

This time, when the snake bit her, the dream didn't shatter like it had before.

"Tell me about Alex Rider." The voice was back. "Then you can wake up."

"Why can't I wake up?" Catie tried to ask. She never could be sure if she was talking or not.

There was no response.

Then she understood. "Because you're going to kill me."

"Relax. You're safe with me."

A fuzzy shape writhed in front of her eyes, making her dream of the throne and the field waver for a moment. Catie strained, reaching for that image . . . but she couldn't get there.

She couldn't wake up.

Silently crying out in frustration, she fell back against the broken chair. She was trapped. Trapped in her coma. Trapped, trapped, trapped.

"Sorry it had to be done this way."

A/N: So, just a note - the dream/altered reality scenes with Catie are heavily inspired by those of Rose Brier in Waking Rose by Regina Doman (one of my favorite books, the ending makes me cry)

Review Replies

Format Freak - it's kind of funny, because I hated criticism up until I realized that having someone critique your english papers before hand is an excellent way to not fail AP lang. Yes, Catie and her siblings have had a lot of disruptions, but no worries; Catie's part, so-to-speak, is pretty much over. Her main function as a character right now is to be in a natural (or perhaps it's not natural..) state of unconsciousness so Alex is forced to actually do spy things. And yes! That's how I would write an essay on Sleeping Beauty - I had to read the original Grimm tales for English this year, but sadly no essay was involved. Thank you!

19sweetgirl96 - Thank you so much! You're awesome :) I'm so glad you're liking this!