A/N: Ok, so I'm a little worried about this chapter. It is essential to the plot – yes this story dies actually have a planned plot, it's not just a random collection of unlikely things – but I'm worried about the characterisation. Oh... and please don't kill me at the end! I'm not pitchfork proof and if I die you'll never find out the ending!

DISCLAIMER:

Shopping List- Tomatoes, Celery, biscuits, the rights to Alex Rider

Ok, so they had sold out. Guess that means they STILL aren't mine. Don't you just hate these shoddy supermarkets that only stock half the items on your list?

***

Alex watched in horror as Peters roughly yanked Jack to her feet. She shouldn't be involved in this. She wasn't supposed to be involved in this. He couldn't quite believe it was happening and, with pain fogging his brain, he couldn't quite react.

Then Peter's touched his knife to her throat. Slowly, almost lovingly, he sank it below her pale skin. It was a shallow cut, but Alex could feel it tearing at his insides as he saw the terror on her face. Then he saw a solitary drop of blood run down her throat. Red on white. White behind red.

Alex just saw red.

He leapt at the guard, rage and adrenaline making him immune to the torturous pain that immediately engulfed his body. He didn't bother with any of the fancy kicks or chops he had learnt in Karate; he simply barrelled into the man, knocking him backwards. He pulled back a fist and slammed it into the man's face, feeling his nose break with a satisfying crack... but the man was already unconscious. He had hit his head as Alex's weight brought him to the ground.

Alex felt himself being forcibly dragged of Peters, and a fist sink itself into his gut. He doubled over, screaming at the pressure on his wounds. The next blow caught him on the chin and sent him staggering backwards into the wall. Junkov was positively spitting with rage.

Alex raised his head. Junkov was holding a gun mere centimetres from his face. The black hole seemed to promise cruel oblivion. He wasn't ready to die yet, he realised. He wanted to escape; he needed to get Jack out and ensure that Amethyst and her son were safe. He didn't want to die.

He knew it was cowardly, but he closed his eyes. He couldn't be as strong as everyone thought he was. He couldn't look his death in the face.

A shot rang out.

Alex raised his head in confusion. He was unharmed. Instead, he saw, Junkov had fallen to the ground, his shirt slowly turning red with blood. Jack, white faced and trembling, stood behind him, Peters' black gun held tightly in her shaking hands.

***

After that, breaking out of the prison had been far easier than expected. Junkov had decided that secrecy would prove more effective than man power, and so there was only one other guard and a few locked doors for them to deal with.

In total, it took them just over fifteen minutes. Jack was still pale, still shaking, though now it was with disbelief rather than fear. Alex was loathe to return to the house in Chelsea, somehow it now seemed dangerous after Jack had been taken from within its very walls, but it was the logical place to go, first, and there was the matter of Amethyst and David, who could still be there, waiting for them to return.

The house was dark when they let themselves in, and quiet. Alex realised that he had only been gone for a little under twenty four hours. It surprised him how lifeless the house seemed after being abandoned for so short a while. The place was tidy – the mess Jack had made when she had been abducted gone. In its place there was a short note.

"Dear Alex or Jack- who ever reads this first.

I'm sorry. I loved the time I spent with you, and I know David began to see you as family, but I have no idea where you are and I have to look after my son. I don't know why you were taken, but if they were looking for us, they have come dangerously close to their target. I felt I had to leave. I know that this probably seems cowardly to you, and I would happily gamble my life to save you from whatever your fate currently is, but I cannot gamble with my sons. I hope you understand. I hope you are alive to read this.

Always yours,

Amethyst."

Alex bit his lip as he read, handing the note to Jack once he finished. Her sad, accepting smile mirrored his own feelings perfectly.

It was Jack who moved first. She crossed to the side and picked up the phone.

"Who are you calling?" asked Alex.

Jack gave him an incredulous look before replying. "The hospital," she said shortly.

Alex looked down. He was still bleeding from the cuts that covered his chest, and the makeshift bandage that he had improvised from a shirt was not doing a lot to help. He pointedly ignored the hanging flap of skin.

He grimaced in admission. He was a mess. What worried him most wasn't the excruciating pain – pain was just an indicator that something was wrong; when you knew what was wrong already, it was pointless – but rather the fact that he had relegated potentially life-threatening injuries to the back of his mind as unimportant, the fact that he had actually forgotten them. Perhaps he was more suited to this line of work than he thought.

Whether it was his sudden realisation, or whether the blood loss had finally surpassed his tolerance level, Alex didn't know, but suddenly he felt dizzy. Jack's voice grew faint, and the room started to spin around him. He put a hand on the table to steady himself, frowning as he tried to bring the room back into focus.

"Alex..." he heard Jack shout. But he couldn't see her.

He groaned, and gave up. Trying to stay awake was giving him a headache.

For the third time in just one day, Alex passed out.

***

Alex awoke in a white hospital room. The steady beeping of the monitors around him was all that told him he was alive. He guessed they had him on some kind of pain killers as he couldn't feel a thing from the neck down. Experimentally, he moved his hand. It was decidedly weird to see your own hand move and not be able to feel it, he decided.

He was distracted by someone clearing their throat from beside his bed and tilted his head. Mrs Jones, the deputy head of MI6, sat there patiently.

"Alex," she said, almost – almost- smiling. She was trying to look kind. It wasn't working.

"Mrs Jones," said Alex, nodding politely, if coolly, at the woman.

"Alex," she repeated, "I know it must be hard for you... but we need to know who did this... and why."

Alex grimaced. Of course they needed to know. They didn't care less about what happened to him, he knew, but the fact that there was a potential threat that they hadn't known about was definitely something they should worry about. He could see the next question in her eyes.

Did you say anything? Did you spill our secrets?

Alex would have spat in disgust if he thought it would result in anything except him looking like an idiot. As it was, he sneered at her and turned his head to face the ceiling again.

"It was Scorpia," he began in a low, emotionless voice. "They wanted information on Yassen Gregorovitch. For some reason they thought I would have it."

He decided not to mention the fact that he did. Apparently Amethyst and David were important, and he wouldn't trust MI6 to protect them any more than he would Scorpia.

And he didn't, at the moment, know exactly where they were. Safe, he hoped.

Mrs Jones nodded, apparently satisfied that he couldn't have said anything.

She paused, before asking the final question on her agenda.

"And have you had an opportunity to consider our offer?" she questioned.

"The job as an assassin?" he asked sardonically.

Mrs Jones winced at his harsh words, but was calm when she nodded in confirmation.

"I'll do it."

***

A/N: *holds up hands and surrenders*

Yeah I know... I'm REALLY sorry. It was too fast and kind of out of character, and possibly just a bit unbelievable (as in more unbelievable than MI6 employing a teenaged spy) but it was NECESSARY for the PLOT and if you ain't got plot, you ain't got nothing...

So... yeah... that' my excuse. Please review... even if it's just to yell at me and to tell me I can't write and to wish I had dropped off the face of the earth before this chapter had been written.