Operation: Bury Your Dead – Bullets Crossing the Delaware
Hey all! Just so we're all clear, there isn't an office building on Church street between Front and 2nd. Roberts' is a made up company, because it would be grossly misrepresentative of me to use a real company for the role Roberts Industries plays. Oh, you thought it was just a random, convenient office building did you? Well then. Forget I said anything.
=)
Oh, and if anyone can tell me where the "Damsel in distress" quote is from, you'll earn a great big e-cookie! Its rather doctored, because the exact line wasn't really appropriate in the context, but if you know what I'm talking about, you'll catch the spirit of it.
Without further ado, here is the next chapter of Bury Your Dead!
…..
"So tell us my friend, what is the ace up Levi Kroll's sleeve?"
"It is Rider," the Australian said. "Rather, the older Rider."
"What have they done?" Yassen demanded.
"Ian Rider was captured by Scorpia two years ago, as you will well recall," the Australian said, nodding to Yassen.
"Ian, the patriot and the prodigy, the younger brother of MI6's godly double agent," the Australian said with a bitter laugh. "Kurst destroyed him. He and Dr. Three have been working together to develop a form of opiates that confuse the mind, muddle the truth, but are not harmful to the body in the long term. Ian Rider is angry at the world because Scorpia wants him to be. Kurst planted the ideas in his head, subtly manipulating him. Ian Rider is their ace. They've fed him pretty much the same story we fed you-" the glance towards Yassen was neither apologetic, nor even remotely remorseful.
"So he's been brainwashed?" Yassen asked skeptically.
"In a sense," the Australian answered.
"And Ian Rider has been buying missiles, and meeting with crime lords all over the world," Zaaiman whispered. "While we were all looking in the wrong direction, they've been planning this – this –" Zaaiman faltered, and looked from Yassen to the Australian.
"What exactly is this?" Zaaiman asked.
"They're building an army," Yassen said, answering for the Australian. "By now, they'll have explosives, missiles and guns enough to finish the British royal navy, and then take us on as an afterthought."
"How can one man do so much damage?" Zaaiman asked. "How is this even possible?"
"He was completely under our radar," the Australian said. "And Scorpia is an organization that has been defending itself for a long time. Kurst and Kroll are devious bastards."
"Let us not forget that Ian is a Rider," Yassen put in. "And he is extremely angry, regardless of whether or not that anger is well founded."
"Is there a way to reverse the effects of Rider's imprisonment?" Zaaiman asked. The Australian shrugged.
"I doubt a paltry thing like reason will save him now," he said. "Perhaps if he were to be weaned off their drugs, he might begin to recover himself, but it is possible the damage that has been done in his brain is irreversible. Knowing Zeljan and Levi, it is the kind of thing they would do. And even if it was reversible, it doesn't matter anymore. He was only a pawn to Scorpia, nothing more. It's likely they'll try and kill him themselves as soon as he's played his part."
"So we need to fight them?" Zaaiman wanted to clarify.
"No," the Australian said. "Rider was allowed to escape and maintain both his hate for Scorpia, as well as for MI6. That was necessary for what they were planning – he couldn't seem one-sided, or he would give up the game and tip us off before they were ready."
"Rider will not go after Scorpia," Yassen said, comprehension dawning. "He's a Rider – which means his revenge for his brother will be paramount."
"And if Scorpia has told him MI6 killed John," Zaaiman said, catching on, "he'll go after them, not us. He'll use the weapons and connections he's made to destroy MI6."
…
"Yedit," Alex was staring at the picture, trying not to panic outright. He was at least able to force his voice to remain calm, which was a relief.
"Yes?" she asked, looking up from cleaning her scope.
"Why exactly are you in the States?" he tried to sound neutral. "I thought most of what you do involves dealing with terrorists whose home countries refuse to extradite them."
"Mossad," Yedit began with a long suffering sigh, "believes that many lives would be lost needlessly in an attempt to capture this man, and the government of the United States agrees. He is not a citizen of their country, and he has ties to many criminal organizations inside their borders. They are willing to look the other way to allow us to do our job. There is also the fact that at the moment, the United States is finding it very politically dangerous to remain open allies of Israel."
"So why does Israel care about some British terrorist?" Alex asked. Maybe there was a hint of bitterness, of anger there, that he couldn't quite suppress, but Yedit didn't seem to pick up on it. She seemed more annoyed with his questions than anything else.
Clearly, a woman who was never cited for playing well with others as a kid, Alex mused. Though its not like I didn't know that already.
"He has ties to Hammas, and we connected him to several shipments of weapons into Chevron," Yedit answered exasperatedly. "Why do you care?"
"Did they tell you his name?" Alex demanded, all pretence of neutrality and distance abandoned.
"Ian Rider," Yedit said. "Its on the…"
Comprehension dawned on her face, and she closed her mouth sharply.
"Rider," she said finally. "Not your father?"
"Uncle, actually," Alex tried to make it sound almost joking. "Returned from the dead, it seems."
Yedit exhaled heavily, clearly making her decision, even as Alex did the same, but without the sigh. He knew instinctively what Yedit would choose. And he knew, in the same instant, that he wasn't going to be able to let her carry out the mission she had been given. Ian might have gone off the deep end, but Alex wasn't going to sit by and watch him die. Be murdered. It wasn't going to happen.
"It doesn't change anything," she said. Her tone was light, almost conversational, but her eyes and body language told Alex that she was going to take her mission seriously, and she would evade any attempts he made to foil it. "Sorry. The job is the job."
"Even if it was bloody MI6 that drove him off the deep end?" Alex hissed.
Yedit's frown deepened slightly at the raw anger in Alex's question. She ran a hand through her hair, agitated.
"Tell me it's not true," she said. It sounded more like an order than a request. "I was ready to give you the benefit of the doubt, but…"
"Well, it is true that I'm being hunted as a traitor," Alex said bitterly. "Whether or not I actually did anything traitorous is another question entirely, and seems to be a matter of subjective perception."
Yedit snorted, and gave him a meaningful look that told him that if he wanted to keep his life, he was going to elaborate. Amazing how much the assassin could express with a single glare. Maybe because it was due to the fact that she wasn't exactly verbally expressive, Alex wondered. Or maybe he was spending far too much time around assassins. That could be it.
"For example," he said, "I would not equate getting kidnapped by a group of terrorists, escaping only because another group of terrorists came along, and then getting caught in the crossfire of a massive criminal pissing match with treason, but then again…"
Yedit visibly relaxed at Alex's admission. She had been starting to wonder if she was going to have to be responsible for bringing in a teenager – one of the few people who had believed her in a similar situation, no less. She exhaled deeply.
"On the other hand, what I'm about to do… impeding a Mossad officer on assignment, and allowing a known fugitive and terrorist to escape… yeah, that's probably treason, no matter which way you look at it."
Alex tried to make the words sound lighthearted. Yedit's hand immediately tensed on the barrel of her sniper rifle, on edge at once.
"And it probably doesn't help my case that the fugitive in question is my uncle, and had me kidnapped two days ago," Alex continued.
"What makes you think that I'm going to let you interfere with my job?" Yedit asked skeptically.
"Oh, I don't think you're going to let me," Alex said confidently. "On the other hand, I do think that of the two of us, I'm going to be the one who wins. No offense, but I think, if you were to compare our track records, I'm rather ahead of you."
"Says the boy that was in the hands of the enemy while I was doing damage control, " Yedit snapped wearily.
"An insult from the so-called agent who blew our cover at the first chance she got, and managed to get the both of us captured for her trouble," Alex muttered mutinously.
The two glared at each other.
"So where does this leave us?" Alex asked.
"Well, I guess each of us will take the path they believe to be right, and may the better agent win," Yedit said ruefully. "I am sorry that I have to be the one to take you in though, Alex."
"You seem very confident you'll win," Alex said.
"I always do," Yedit replied, and finished assembling her rifle with a final sounding click.
Alex decided that it wasn't worth disputing the point any further. He wasted another minute watching the boats passing by, and trying to guess which one was sheltering his uncle and a mafia dealer. He needed to time his attack just right…
Alex heard the sound of the assassin moving behind him, a fleeting sound that was his only brief warning before she attacked. That fleeting moment was enough, however. Alex swung around and slammed his fist into where he knew Yedit would be. It made contact with what Alex thought was her shoulder, but it didn't seem to do much.
Alex kicked out desperately; he was either going to bring the mossad agent down quickly, or not at all. And loosing wasn't really an option. Yedit grabbed his foot and twisted, hard, forcing Alex to turn or break his ankle. He kicked out again, forcing her to release him, but he still landed painfully on his back.
Winded but not down, he was on his feet at once. The two agents circled each other, looking for an opening. Alex raised his fists to his face, staying in a combat stance, ready for any blow Yedit might send his way.
"Not bad," the assassin acknowledged.
Alex didn't respond – he couldn't bother wasting his beath. He kicked out, hoping to catch Yedit off guard, and force her onto the defensive before she could attack. She moved out of the way deftly, and then circled in. Alex was forced onto the defensive as he blocked and dodged blows and kicks thrown out by the assassin. Alex didn't feel as thoroughly outclassed as he had while fighting Nile in Venice, but it was close. Yedit was fast, strong, and had a whole lot of experience.
Fortunately for Alex, he also had a great deal of practical experience, and he was far more resourceful than any teenager had the right to be.
Alex grabbed the barrel end of Yedit's sniper rifle and swung it around. It slammed into Yedit's neck and shoulder, and forced her to stumble backwards in order to regain her balance. Alex was about to grab the weapon again, hoping to throw it out the window – it would be obvious enough to force Yedit to abandon her mission – but Yedit had already recovered. She was on him in a second, wrestling the rifle away from him. The assassin threw Alex down, and he hit the desk hard.
Alex lashed out, half blind, but his blow seemed to have connected. He scrambled over the side of the table, looking for anything else he might be able to use as a weapon.
Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be anything immediately apparent at hand, and Yedit was already in front of him.
She grabbed his wrist and swung him around, throwing him into the large bay window. Alex heard glass crack as his head slammed into it, and winced. It hurt like hell.
Alex could feel the floor swaying precariously underneath him, and knew he was a few seconds from passing out.
"Sorry Alex," Yedit said, breathing heavily. Alex knew he growling something that was nasty and rather profane, but he couldn't remember what. And Yedit never heard it, because at that moment, the window shattered as the sound of a bullet being fired rent the air.
Alex balanced precariously next to the window, swaying alarmingly. For a second, it looked like he was going to fall, but he crumbled to a heap on the floor. There was glass everywhere, and Alex could feel some of the bigger pieces digging into his skin. He couldn't bring himself to care about the blood that was staining the carpet, or the fact that he was going to have to get up at some point and run for his life.
Yedit hissed some Arabic curse, and rounded on Alex, pulling him up by the collar of his shirt, staying out of view of the window.
"Who is shooting at us?" Her voice was harsh, cold, every bit the assassin she was.
"Don't… know…" Alex managed to croak. He wheezed, and blood sputtered out of his mouth.
That's probably not a good thing, Alex thought. He forced his head back into the game, hoping against his rotten luck that he didn't have a concussion.
"Alex, I will only ask you one more time," yedit warned him, shaking his shirt violently. Alex broke down into another round of coughing, spewing blood onto his shirt.
It's bright red, Alex registered with a certain amount of relief. It was too red to be from a wound in his stomach. The blood was just from a cut in his mouth, probably from getting hit across the face.
"I don't fucking know!" Alex snapped, trying to wrench himself out of the assassin's grip.
Yedit glanced over the edge of the shattered window, and cursed again. She pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and dialed one handed, keeping Alex pinned down with her other hand.
The assassin spoke rapidly in Hebrew into the phone, a scowl darkening her features. She snapped it closed when she was done, not waiting to hear what the person on the other end of the line said.
"I haven't told my director about finding you," Yedit said, returning her attention to the teenager. "Whether or not my next call is to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency depends entirely on the next words out of your mouth. So I will ask you again, who shot at us?"
"I don't know," Alex sad clearly.
"I don't have time for this," Yedit muttered, running a hand through her hair. Alex stirred, trying to pull himself into a sitting position, but Yedit rounded on him at once.
"Move and I'll shoot you," she told him.
"Who sent Mossad the tape?" Alex asked, glaring at her. "Who cleared your name? I didn't have to use my only gadget to make sure you weren't implicated."
Yedit met his eyes, and Alex saw the uncertainty there. He felt kind of bad for pulling her strong sense of duty in two different directions, but he really couldn't afford getting caught like this.
The mossad agent looked up at the ceiling, muttering to herself in Hebrew. Alex realized that she was praying again. He wanted to say something snarky, like reminding her that god wasn't exactly going to appear with advice for her, but he knew she was weighing his case in her mind, and he knew that mouthing off was probably not a smart thing to do.
"God forgive me," Yedit said. She raised the gun again.
"Go sit over by the other wall," she ordered. "Hands on your head. Move, and I'll shoot you through the leg."
"So this is how it's to be?" Alex asked, slowly complying. Every movement pulled at something painful, but he kept at it.
"Please be quiet Alex," Yedit said. Alex heard the wavering indecision there. It had been a really close call, he knew. But he never had a chance. Yedit had one priority in her life, and no debt – not even to him, for saving her career, and probably her life – could stand up against it. Nothing could.
"This is Agent Yedit Shalom, from Mossad," Alex heard her say behind him, and he knew that she was talking into her phone.
"I have Alex Rider," she said. "At Roberts Industries, in Philadelphia, on Church Street between 2nd and Front, on the 34th floor. You might want to hurry."
Alex heard the phone click shut, and he turned around, sitting against the wall.
"Sorry," Yedit said, and she actually did sound sorry when she said it.
Alex saw her move around, collecting her sniper rifle and the scope for it, setting it back in place on the table, moving with precise speed.
"You're not still going to carry out the hit?" Alex asked, unable to contain his incredulity.
"Yes, I am," Yedit said, focusing on the scope as she assembled the weapon. "And if you attempt to impede me again, you will be unconscious when I hand you over to the American authorities."
The bullet came without warning, the gunshot slamming into the desk right next to Yedit's hand. She jumped back, but she went back to her weapon and fired twice in rapid succession, in the direction she thought the shots had come from.
…..
Across the Delaware, Ian Rider smirked to himself as he saw the Israeli assassin jump out of the way. He was rather concerned – he thought he had caught a glance of another person in there as well, but he wanted to scare off the assassin.
It had been easy enough to feed the wrong information down the grapevine, knowing that there were people with their ears to the ground looking for something, anything, on him. Making it known that he was meeting half an hour earlier than he actually was gave him time to deal with the fallout, and still make his meeting with the wealthy mafia leader.
There was a part of him that wondered why he hadn't shot the Israeli assassin. But even looking into the scope of her weapon, Ian saw a younger woman, not quite an adult, and envisioned Alex in her place.
It was the strangest feeling that possessed him, making him move the weapon just a few inches down and to the left, catching the desk next to her hand. For a moment, he had feared for the accuracy of his scope – his weapon was only precise up to about 1,000 feet, and the shot he had to make was twice that. He had exhaled in relief (and wasn't that strange?) when the shot had landed where he had intended it to, slamming into wood, rather than flesh and bone.
It was lucky he had ducked after shooting, because a bullet flew over his head a second later. Ian waited until he had finished a count of one hundred before standing again. He had heard two shots, but only seen one bullet…
The answer was embedded in the concrete fence that ran around the roof of the building. Ian ran his hand over the bullet hole, whistling. The woman had fired on instinct, with seconds to shoot, and had come very close to killing him.
Sentimentality or not, he knew he would have to kill her if he ever was facing her again. That was painful – she was someone's Alex, someone's child-become-spy – but that was just too bloody bad. Ian would do what he needed to, no matter how painful it was.
Ian Rider was subject to a whole host of disorienting and strange emotions these days – all consuming anger was his almost constant companion, but flashes of other feelings (better feelings, part of his mind whispered) seemed to be surfacing, fighting with the drive towards revenge that consumed him.
Blunt and Jones would die because they had killed John, and that was it.
But they hadn't killed John, or had they? It had been the Russian bastard that had done that, who had fired the bullet that killed his brother. Hadn't it?
Ian felt an acute pain sear through his head. It didn't make any sense! Why was he angry with MI6 if Scorpia had killed John, and taking him captive, had tortured him?
It just didn't make sense.
Ian reached into his pocket. Neither did his recent, drug related dependence (how many times had to worried, feared, that Alex might get into something just like this at school?), but the white pill he downed without so much as a gulp of water eased his headache, allowed him to stop thinking. It allowed him to view the confusing parody of his anger without having to understand.
And more importantly, it allowed him to escape the shame he felt, knowing that he was abusing drugs after spending so long telling his nephew not to. When he was lucid, his addiction brought him to the urge of physical illness. The sheer intensity of his need was frightening and disturbing.
But it just hurt too much to keep thinking anymore. It was so much easier, so much better, to just give in for once. No more snarky comments at the bastards holding him captive, no more sneaking around, no more withholding information, no more secrets.
So easy.
…
"So, have you found your silver bullet yet?" Walsh asked Jack. He had insisted on taking her to dinner after a long day of pouring through legal texts with the Supreme Court justice. They were seated in some swanky restaurant (Walsh having ignored Jack's pointed glare and the whisper that she liked fast food as much as fancy food).
"Nothing yet," Jack sighed. "The problem is that the law is so intentionally vague, its almost ridiculous. How on Earth can Britain, or the United States, or France, or the Netherlands, or Japan or any other of the civilized countries in the world accept international resolutions that are so equivocal about children being soldiers?"
Jack sighed. She wanted to punch something in frustration. She had spent hour after hour flipping through massive tomes on international and national law, using a combination of written and electronic sources to try and find something – anything - that could help Alex. So far, she had come up with nothing, and the hateful helplessness she felt every time Alex left was creeping back up on her.
"I'm sure there will be something," Walsh said bracingly. "There has to be. And the longer Alex stays on the run, the less likely it is he'll be found. Statistically, 48 - 72 hours is our benchmark for criminals on the run. Normally, I would be saying this negatively, but I think in this case, its something working in our favor."
"I hope so," Jack said. "I don't want to lose Alex."
"You're extremely devoted to him," Walsh observed.
"I've been the major parenting figure in his life since he was a toddler," she said. "Ian was hardly there most of the time, and so I ended up with the job of raising him."
"It must have been difficult, to give up a legal career for taking care of a child that wasn't even your own," Walsh said.
"Not really," Jack said. "I had given up law the day I decided to go to Europe. I was studying art and philosophy, because those were the two least practical subjects I could think of. I guess I was kind of in limbo, and I never minded taking care of Alex. Do you have kids of your own, Donny?" Jack asked. The detective shook his head.
"Never married," he said. "I never got the chance – one minute I was in high school, the next I was in the marines, and I'm working late most nights at the station, so my social life is pretty limited to the people I work with."
"And dating on the job is a big no-no," Jack agreed. She sympathized – how many times had she thought about Ian in a way that was far less appropriate for a live-in housekeeper/babysitter/friend to be thinking of him?
But Ian was dead, and those thoughts were more pain than she was really ready to embrace. There had been nothing there, anyway, no matter how much Jack (and sometimes, she had to think, even Ian) wanted there to be.
"You're not working late tonight," Jack observed playfully.
"No ma'am," Walsh said.
"A girl might think that you were trying to put the moves on me," Jack replied. She was surprised.
"Miss Starbright, that girl would be absolutely correct," he said seriously. Jack giggled. "You see, I have thing for damsels in distress," Walsh leaned forward and whispered it like it was some state secret or something, and Jack had to burst out laughing, muffling the sound with her hand so that they didn't disturb the other patrons.
"Isn't that a little bit sexist?" she asked.
"I wasn't aware that affirmative action applied to romantic notions," Walsh said, keeping a straight. "But if you want it to be, it can be an equal opportunity fetish."
"You're rather silly for a police officer," Jack said when she finally caught her breath."
"Can you blame me for acting like a teenager with a crush, when the object of my adulation is so beautiful?" he asked.
Jack turned bright red.
…
The MI6 agents were at the office building within minutes. They were already cleared to go up to the 34th floor. Four of them took the elevator while the other four secured the stairway and the building perimeter.
The agents on the 34th floor moved through the rooms. They knew they were looking for a teenage boy, the sixteen year old agent of MI6. They all had been told as little as physically possible – like any agent, he was scared and desperate and dangerous, but they knew almost nothing else.
When they finally made it to the conference room that had been intended as a snipers perch, they found an unconscious young woman, wearing a pant's suit, and a whole lot of blood. It was very clear a fight had taken place there, a rather violent one at that. Multiple bullets at the scene confirmed that.
The two teams confirmed that the teenage agent wasn't hiding on any of the other floors, and blood on the stairwell seemed to suggest that he had gone down that way and vanished into the crowd before the MI6 agents had gotten there. Given the amount of blood he had lost, they knew they were very close behind – perhaps only by minutes. Alex would need to seek help, or someone would notice the teenager covered in blood, wandering the streets, at some point, and he would be found.
The woman was identified as an agent within minutes when they called back to their headquarters in Britain. Very soon, Alan Blunt and Tulip Jones both knew that Alex Rider had eluded capture yet again.
It took Alan Blunt almost no time to issue his orders. The team was to remain hot in pursuit of Alex Rider. They would find him, despite Mrs. Jones' protests that Alex was never going to come easily so long as he thought he was going to be treated like a criminal ("At this point, we don't know if we shouldn't be treating him like a criminal," Blunt said reasonably. Mrs. Jones had flinched, partly from the coldness in Blunt's words, but also from the hiss of anger that her mind provided in the voice of John Rider).
And the search was back on.
…
"What happened?"
Ben felt the strong urge to flinch at the sound of Levi Kroll's voice. He had recovered physically from the beating the man had given him, but just looking at the man made him feel like he wanted to run as far as he could in the opposite direction.
The ten members of the team that had been assigned as extra protection for the drugs that had been moved through Somalia that morning were standing at attention in front of Levi Kroll. The leader of the time had given his report on the incident, but the Scorpia board member didn't seem satisfied with the answers that he had been given.
"Who saw the shooters first?" he asked.
"We all did sir," the team leader said. "Or we all heard them, rather. The whole street did."
"But they were shooting from the roofs," Kroll said blankly.
"Yes sir," the man said. "Daniels saw the shooters on top of one of the buildings, and went after them."
Ben flinched at that. He had really hoped to remain under the radar. Part of him insisted that his mission entailed getting into as good a position as possible in order to get as close as he could to sensitive information that would destroy Scorpia.
Another part of him pointed out that the less he could give MI6, the better the likelihood he would be able to leave the organization alive.
"So you spotted the shooters," Kroll said to Ben.
Ben had spent a great deal of his free time trying to imagine how his former teammates would react to his knee-jerk reaction. He didn't know which would be worse – Wolf's insensitive reminder to 'grow a pair', or Snake's pity.
Knowing that he would despite both was enough for Ben to keep his spine straight and his face blank as he stared back at the Scorpia executive.
"Yes sir," he said carefully.
"So it seems even old dogs can be taught new tricks," Kroll said, with a smile that was almost predatory. Ben bit back the scathing reply he wanted to give, and kept quiet, wondering if Kroll actually had a point to all this.
"Still, you showed good initiative in the field," Kroll said, "and that is something Scorpia does not ignore."
And Kroll left it at that. Ben breathed a sigh of relief – he would be lying to himself if he said that even being close to Kroll caused his heart to race without cause. It was rather inconvenient, especially since Ben was sure that Kroll knew exactly how nervous he made the SAS man turned spy turned (or so he thought) traitor.
Ben made up his mind then to escape at the first possible opportunity and bunk whatever MI6 wanted. They hadn't given him any explicit orders anyway, so nothing he did could actually be considered as disobedience.
Knowing that he was going to break free within the near future was an immense comfort. All he had to do now was keep his eyes open, and stay alive long enough to get that chance.
…...
"Mr. Rider, the last time we spoke, you were trying to kill me," Felix Dawns drawled, taking a sip of champagne.
"I try and kill a lot of people," he said. "But, fortunately for you, my homicidal rage is not directed towards you, but my former employers."
"Interesting," Felix said. "That sounds like there is a very interesting side story to it."
"Not even a little," Ian said. "Actually, its rather boring, compared to some."
"So please tell me why I should not have you shot immediately?" Felix asked casually. "You are after all, a former spy, rather unpredictable, dangerous, and forever trying to play every side at the same time. Your profession is most… distasteful."
"Well, I came a very long way to call in a rather small favor," Ian said.
"What favor would that be, I wonder," Felix commented. Ian raised his eyes pointedly, and Felix went pale.
The room was dark and smoky, filled with the slightly cloying smell of incense. The only light came from flickering candles, surrounding the room with an eerie glow. Flexi woke up slowly, his mind thinking slowly through the haze of drugs.
Tall figures moved around, chanting in a low, guttural language that was unfamiliar to the small boy. Their faces and bodies were obscured by dark red cloaks.
Strange symbols decorated the walls around, and Felix tried to turn his head, and found his movement to be severely limited. He was tied to a table, naked from the waist up.
No, not a table, Felix slowly realized. An altar.
It was like something out of a bad horror movie, except that this was real. Horrifyingly, absurdly real.
His heart began to race with that knowledge, adrenaline helping to sweep the cobwebs from his mind. The changing grew louder and faster, the moving figures turning into a red blur that made Felix dizzy just to look – and then one of them broke away from the frenzied circle, raising a knife high above his head, positioned to pierce Felix's heart with a single blow; the child closed his eyes, beyond screaming or crying or calling for help…
And then a gunshot was fired.
"Nobody move, MI6!" a strong clear voice called. The chanting stopped at once, and Felix gave a sob of relief, seeing one of the hooded figures holding a gun on the rest. It was smoking slightly.
Ian Rider moved forward, one hand still holding the gun on the cult members. The other cut Felix free with a Swiss army knife.
"You okay kid?" he asked. Felix nodded, feeling out of breath, too cowed to talk.
"Help is on the way, just sit tight," Ian told him.
The child rescued from a cult meeting in a dark corner of London vanished later that night, and he wasn't found for over a decade – the next time Ian saw the boy he had rescued, it was on a cruise ship in the Prince William sound, while trying to track down a mafia leader.
"You are calling in that for a matter of revenge?" he demanded.
"Well, I doubt I'll live long enough to collect otherwise, and what I'm asking is sufficiently dangerous that you can consider us square, if I do manage to survive."
"And if I consider you shooting at me to be payment enough?"
"We can always try again," Ian said humorlessly.
"You seem to be bereft of a weapon at the moment," Felix commented.
"Am I?" Ian was smirking, and Felix wanted nothing more than to wipe that irritating smile off the man's face.
"Don't be coy," Felix snapped.
"I am no such thing," Ian agreed. "However, I want to ask you again, because at some point or other, you do need to learn this lesson – are you sure I'm not carrying a weapon on me at the moment?" Felix stared at him, and then nodded, wide-eyed.
"Would you stake your life on it?"
There was no response. Instead, Felix took a large gulp of champagne to calm himself, and to steel himself to get down to the matter at hand. He very much doubted Ian would shoot him – there was, after all, a world of difference between shooting at someone, and shooting someone. And besides, when it came to it, he did owe Ian Rider a lot. If this was how he wanted to be repaid, then Felix would do so gladly, a hundred times over.
"So why, Ian Rider, have you sought me out, after all these years?" the mafia leader asked.
"I'm rather interested in that myself," a younger male voice said from the doorway.
Both men turned to see Alex standing there, soaking wet, trembling slightly from the cold. His eyes were narrowed in anger, and his lips were pursed, as if he was biting back something really foul he longed to say. Every bit of his body language told Ian that he was desperate and angry, which were two very bad combinations when mixed with weapons.
Or they could be very good ones, depending on whether or not your intention was to die in a blaze of fire and steel, Ian mused.
But the eyes of the two men were drawn not to the teenagers face, which belonged on some avenging angel, but to the gun that he held in his hands, raised to eye level, pointing directly at them.
"Hello Alex," Ian said. "I'm glad to see you survived Yassen Gregorovitch."
…..
A/N: So its not a cliffhanger per say, which is rather unusual for me these days.
So, any theories? What is the function of Roberts Industries? Will Ian be saved? How will the final war play out between Scorpia and the usurpers? Who will win? Will Jack and Walsh fall in love? What is Alex planning to do with that gun?
All interesting questions, all unanswered (except of course, for the first and last of them).
What are your thoughts?
~InK
