A/N: Sorry for the late update. Again. This chapter is ridiculously long, so I hope that makes up for the wait a little. I have some doubts about the reunion scene... but hey, it was never going to be all peaches and cream, right? They all still have a lot of issues to work through.
Also, THANK YOU VERY MUCH to anyone who reviewed the last chapter, or the other fic I put out! If you reviewed both, I'm probably already in love with you and writing you creepy love ballads...
Jk. But really, reviews make my day. And they feed the plot bunnies - they need to be kept on a healthy diet, after all.
Disclaimer: Alex and co. belong to Anthony Horowitz.
Chapter 9
The sky above was dark and angry as the Jeep rolled through Brecon Beacons.
Alex had said nothing throughout the entire journey, which had to be a record even for him. He'd only nodded at the driver – a quiet but fairly friendly MI6 operative – when he'd climbed into the passenger seat back in London, and now the navigation system was telling them that there were only four miles to go.
Despite everything, Alex was starting to feel nerves tingling beneath his skin. Twice he'd caught himself biting at his thumbnail, a nervous habit he thought he'd grown out of. Several times his mind had wandered into forbidden areas – what happens after, if this doesn't work? – but he'd shaken those thoughts off as quickly as they'd come.
There was no after. This was his endgame.
So, basically, there was no point thinking about it at all.
"Here you go."
The driver pulled to a stop, crunching gravel beneath the tires.
"Thanks," Alex replied, trying for a smile as he pushed open the door. He'd been a fairly rude passenger, after all.
"Be careful, kid," she said solemnly, and suddenly the smile became a hell of a lot tighter.
Swinging his duffel bag over his shoulder, Alex jumped down from the Jeep and watched it rumble away, back into the folds of hills that trademarked Brecon Beacons. The choice of car had surprised him – he'd only asked for anything that wasn't black.
Turning around, Alex surveyed the camp from a distance. It looked shockingly normal, even quiet for an early afternoon. He supposed most of the soldiers were in training. As he watched, a group of two of three sprinted across the open space between the cabins. They didn't notice him at all.
Then another small group exited of the Sergeant's office, and they did notice him. In fact, they were heading directly towards him.
K Unit, thought Alex with a heavy heart.
He knew what he had to do now. It was actually this part of the plan that was worrying him the most. Whatever suspicions he might be harbouring about MI6's true intentions – hell, about his own – he knew K Unit were the good guys, through and through.
But it needed to be done.
Alex hefted the bag onto his shoulder and started out towards them.
"Jesus Christ."
"I don't think he had anything to do with it," Alex muttered, but before he could otherwise react he was pulled into a crushing embrace.
His mind went blank. He supposed, in retrospect, that he should have prepared for this. As it were, he patted Snake awkwardly on the back while avoiding the eyes of his other teammates – especially Wolf.
Thankfully, Snake released him a moment later. Eagle looked as thrown as a kid who'd just found out Santa wasn't real, but he still stepped forward to grasp Alex's hand and clap him on the back. A spiral of pain shot through his shoulder. Alex suppressed his wince.
"We thought you were dead," said Snake. His voice sounded strange, oddly emotive for the reserved man.
"Well, I'm not. As you can see."
He gestured and tried half-heartedly to smile, but they didn't buy it. A small crease appeared between Snake's eyebrows. He and Eagle exchanged a look.
"Cub…" Eagle began. "What the hell happened to you? I mean, I'm glad that you're back, I really am. It's a fucking miracle if you ask me. But how did… I mean, did you…?"
Alex blew out a long breath, glancing around the camp. Part of it was genuinely checking for eavesdroppers; most of it was his new-found determination to look anywhere but Wolf.
"Look, I can't talk about this—"
"Are you kidding—"
"—not here, at least."
Snake and Eagle looked a little taken aback. Alex felt the pool of bad bad bad feelings at the pit of his stomach stirring, and swallowed hard.
God, he wished he didn't have to do this to K Unit.
But he did. So, like he'd already resolved, there was no point thinking about it.
"Cabin 4?" Eagle suggested. "It's not soundproof or anything, but no-one would come and check on us. Nobody knows you're back yet, 'cept for the Sergeant."
Alex nodded, storing that information away in his head. So the other soldiers were in the dark. It was good, at face value – the less people he had to drag into this mess, the better – but it also made Alex wonder whether there was just a little too much security in this place. He needed to be able to contact Klaxon, when the time came. And the time was drawing ever closer.
Sending him one last look of concern, Eagle and Snake departed for their cabin. Alex moved to follow them, but a hand caught his shoulder.
Wolf.
The man hadn't said a word throughout the entirety of their awkward reunion. Slowly, Alex raised his eyes and met Wolf's. They were guarded, and almost unreadable. Almost.
"What did you do to your arm?" asked Wolf, throwing the words to the ground like a challenge.
"What do you mean?"
"You're right-handed," Wolf stated. "You're carrying that bag with your left."
Alex felt an unexpected rush of something he couldn't quite place; anger, but something darker and stickier too.
"I got shot," he enunciated clearly, looking directly at Wolf.
He didn't quite flinch, but his eyes flickered. Alex felt another rush, and this time it was undeniably of satisfaction. Snake and Eagle might be plastering smiles onto their faces, but Alex and Wolf remembered. The last time they'd spoken, Wolf had all but driven him onto that bridge.
Things were far from over between them.
Alex wrenched his arm out of the man's grip with far more force than necessary, and followed after Eagle.
"Well?"
Sitting on his bunk, one leg jiggling up and down, Snake looked up. "Well what?"
"What do you think?" said Eagle, pacing restlessly. "He seemed... different, didn't he?"
Snake let his gaze wander to the door of the cabin, where Cub and Wolf were yet to appear.
Cub: the fifteen-year-old enigma who had fallen off an assault course, been kidnapped and disappeared without a trace, only to reappear six days later without a single scratch on him, as far as they could see. Snake was having trouble believing his eyes.
But then again, Snake wouldn't soon forget what they had learnt in that file.
Slowly, he shook his head. "No."
"No? What d'you mean?"
But before Snake could answer, the door burst open, letting a wave of cold air into the cabin as well as Wolf and Cub. Suddenly a speck on the wall opposite Snake became incredibly interesting.
Eagle, on the other hand, cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. Eagle would.
"So. We, er, we don't want to push you, Cub, but-"
"No, it's okay." Cub sat down, running a hand through his hair. "What do you want to know?"
No-one replied immediately. Where to begin?
"Are you okay?" asked Snake, medic's instincts kicking in. "You took a serious fall back there, kid."
Cub nodded. "Yeah. MI6 patched me up."
"MI6?" said Eagle quickly.
"Yeah." Cub nodded again. "After I... well, long story short, I got taken to a compound—"
"By who?" queried Wolf, who finally seemed to have found his voice.
"Old enemy," Cub said shortly. "You wouldn't know them. But the point is, they made mistakes. Simple ones."
"Like?"
"They only left one guy on the door. Didn't bother locking their guns away either."
"So you escaped?"
"Basically, yeah."
There was a silence. Snake felt his eyes narrow. He knew that they'd let their imagination run a little wild, over the last few days, about the scenarios Cub could have been dragged into, but this? The kidnap-and-escape story; an "old enemy" coming back to bite?
This was just too run-of-the-mill.
Snake leaned forward, and phrased his next words carefully. "So how exactly did they manage to infiltrate the SAS, Cub?"
There. It was the subtlest of changes, but Cub's face closed off, as if a tiny switch had been flicked, plunging him into defence mode.
"Yeah," Eagle backed him up. "It freaked us out. We thought the system was fool proof..."
Cub shrugged. "I guess nothing's fool proof, right?"
"But it's supposed to be," said Snake adamantly. "It would be really useful it we knew how they did it."
Out of the corner of his eye, Eagle was watching him. Snake steadily ignored him, but he could feel the question in his gaze.
Are you analysing him?
"I don't know," Cub admitted. "I didn't really want to stick around to ask questions." He coughed into his sleeve slightly, as if literally stifled by the tension. "So... what's happened since I've been gone? What happened to the tripwire course? Did they close it down?"
"As soon as you fell," Snake confirmed, letting him change the topic of his "enemies" unobstructed. Now that Cub was back, they'd have plenty of time to quiz him on that. They didn't want to bombard the kid with too many questions at once.
"The whole camp's been crazy," Eagle was saying. "Agents, guards, the lot."
Cub did not look surprised. Snake watched him closely. His hands were clasped together, gripping just a little too tightly, and – was that tension in his shoulders usually there?
He didn't know about the rest of his unit, but Snake wouldn't soon forget what they'd found out from that file. Cub had a bullet wound over his heart. Those things didn't heal quickly. And that went without mentioning the psychological damage that had to be there.
"You know, Cub, I'm surprised you're up on your feet so soon. Lion only got out of the infirmary the day before yesterday."
For the first time, Cub looked caught off guard.
"Lion? What did he have to do with it?"
"You didn't know? R Unit - Lion and Hare - jumped into the lake after you fell."
Cub stared. "Why?"
"Because they didn't want you to fucking drown," Wolf growled.
"But it was the middle of November," said Cub, rather insistently. "That lake must have been—"
"Freezing." Snake nodded, curious as to why the kid seemed so surprised. "That's why Lion was in the infirmary for so long. One of your… your kidnappers knocked him out in the water."
Cub looked troubled, but let the matter drop. For a minute or so there was silence; the tension grew thick enough that Snake could have cut it with a knife.
This wasn't exactly how they'd imagined their reunion with Cub to go.
It was Wolf who spoke next.
"So when are you going to start telling us the truth, Cub?" he asked. It didn't escape Snake's notice that he was leaning against the wall where their emergency rifle was propped up, muscled arms folded across his chest.
Cub's eyes narrowed. "I am telling the truth."
"No, you're not. Do you think we're stupid or something?"
Cub muttered something under his breath, and Wolf straightened his back.
"What was that, Cub?"
Cub looked up, and for the first time there was anger in his eyes. "I said, I think you've got some serious trust issues to work through there, Wolf."
Wolf shook his head in disbelief. "You little shit. After everything we went through—"
"And what was that exactly?" Cub interrupted. "Sitting around here, thinking up questions to interrogate me with when I crawled out of that hellhole without being tortured or killed?" Wolf tensed. Snake's eyes darted between them – Cub was striking all the right nerves. "Do you know what I thought, Wolf, when I woke up in that place? I was scared as hell. I was tied down, with cuts and bruises all over me, and two of my fucking ribs were broken. But I thought, 'It's okay. K Unit will come and find me.'"
Alex stood up. "Where the hell were you, Wolf? What exactly were you doing, aside from stealing my file to invade the only bit of privacy I had left?"
Wolf opened and closed his mouth several times. Snake's heart was thumping painfully. He had already calculated where this was going, and he didn't like it. Wolf was either going to get angry and start throwing punches, or be completely humiliated, and probably also start throwing punches. Snake looked to Eagle for support, but he was staring at Cub like he was seeing a whole new person.
"We needed to know—" Wolf tried, but Cub cut him off.
"No. Bullshit. If you'd needed to know anything, you would have been told."
"Cub—"
"Let's clear some things up, shall we? Wolf, I don't think you've ever trusted me. Not the first time I was here, not when I kicked your ass out of that plane – not even at Point Blanc, am I right?"
"He had his reasons, kid," Snake said softly.
Something in Cub's composure snapped. Anger twisted his features – the sort of raw, hateful anger that Snake never would have expected to see in the kid.
"Yeah?" said Cub, far too quietly. "You think you're the only one who's lost friends, Wolf?"
Wolf's mouth fell open. Eagle looked up sharply, clearly trying to work out whether Cub was implying what he thought he was.
"Yeah, that's right. I know all about T Unit."
Snake's eyes flitted from Cub to Wolf. Wolf had gone visibly pale; in fact, he looked ill. There was an awful feeling in Snake's gut, a helpless sort of dread that made his heart pound in his chest but paralysed his limbs.
Snake didn't know what to do.
Everything's falling apart again, he thought. Just like in Afghanistan…
Just like on the tripwire course…
"How long?" Wolf managed to say. It sounded as if something was stuck in his throat.
Cub didn't break his gaze. "Since the start."
Wolf lurched forward. Snake and Eagle reacted on instinct, like they'd done before, each grabbing hold of an arm each and yanking him back. They couldn't stop him yelling, though.
"You son of a bitch!" Wolf howled. "You motherfucker! Do you know what we did for you?! DO YOU?! We searched for hours when you fell of that fucking bridge – I would have torn that assault course apart piece by piece to get your ungrateful ass back here!"
Alex looked away. "You were right not to trust me, Wolf. I lied to you, alright? I lied from the start."
"Why?"
"I'm a spy. It's in my nature."
"So what were we?" Snake asked hollowly, contemplating the boy in front of him with open disgust. "Just another mission?"
Alex shrugged. "Look, I'm sorry. You're decent guys. I get that. But everything that's happened since I fell… it doesn't change anything. You were right, back on the tripwire course, Wolf. I'm MI6. I'm never going to belong here."
Eagle practically snarled at him. "Then why did you come back?"
"Because this is the safest place in the country, and people are trying to kill me."
"You just—" Eagle cut himself off, shaking his head. "Christ. I can't do this."
Snake glanced over at his teammate. To his surprise, he saw that Eagle was practically shaking with anger. If this went on much longer, Wolf wouldn't be the only one trying to throw punches at Cub – and Snake couldn't restrain them both.
And so Snake, ever the pacifier, stepped between them.
"Okay, show's over, guys." He turned to Wolf. "Come on, mate. Hitting him isn't going to solve anything."
"Isn't it?" Wolf growled.
"No, it bloody well isn't!" Snake wasn't nearly stupid enough to push Wolf in the chest, but he took a few steps forward. "We all know what happened last time we pushed the kid too far," he hissed, careful to avoid placing any blame on Wolf directly. "Let's just – let's just get out of here, okay? Get some fresh air. We could all do with some of that."
"Yeah," Eagle piped up. "Come on, Wolf, this isn't helping."
Snake spared his teammate a glance – he was running a hand through his hair, looking shaken, but most of the anger seemed to have seeped out of him.
Good. He needed Eagle's help right now. Wolf was still glaring at Cub, hands balled into fists.
And Snake himself… he couldn't even look at the kid.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
The next minute passed in a blur. Snake practically dragged Wolf from the hut, breathing hard, and threw him out of the door so hard that Wolf actually rubbed his arm.
"What the fuck, Snake?"
"You—" Snake rounded on him, prodding a finger at his chest. "You need to get a hold of your bloody anger!"
"I agree," said a cool voice. Rook stepped out from behind the cabin, eyebrows raised. "Are they always like that? Wolf and the kid? I mean, it was rather entertaining, but if that's what it's going to be like for the next—"
Snake had to shove Wolf back when he lunged at the man. Rook stumbled back a few steps, looking disgusted but shaken.
"This is what I mean, Wolf!" Snake cried. "What the hell is going on with you?"
Wolf pushed Snake's hands away. "What's going on with me? Are you kidding me? Did you hear Cub back there, or are you fucking deaf now?"
"Leave him alone," said Eagle, running a hand through his hair.
"Like you weren't dying to smash his face in too, Eagle," Wolf snarled. "I saw you back there."
But Eagle looked genuinely confused. "I don't get it. I thought we'd prepared for this. Were you just bullshitting, all those times you were said your were sorry for what happened on the tripwire course?"
"What?"
"You said you regretted it. Telling him he wasn't a part of the unit and all that. You've been tearing yourself apart for the last week, haven't you? But then he comes back, and you go and say exactly the same thing—"
"Because he's a liar! He's a spy!"
"We already knew—"
"Don't give me that. We knew he worked for MI6, yeah, but we didn't – we didn't know that he knew."
The look on Wolf's face was crushing. If Snake hadn't been extraordinarily mad at him, he would've felt immensely sorry for the guy. Wolf had Afghanistan the hardest.
"No. The kid's been playing us this entire time… I won't have him back in our unit."
At this announcement, Snake tried to jump into the argument, but Rook beat him too it.
"It's probably escaped your notice," said Rook, "but how are you – I mean, we – supposed to accommodate him in the unit, anyway? We have four soldiers already now."
"You can go screw yourself," said Eagle, apparently abandoning all pretences of liking Rook. The guy had been a complete bastard from the moment they'd left the Sergeant's office. "I'd rather have Cub than you."
Despite everything, Snake almost smiled. His mood was broken, however, when Wolf spun around and drove his fist into the wall.
"Ah!"
Eagle swore. Snake pushed past Rook, almost wearily, to examine the damage. Wolf was breathing heavily, cradling his bloody hand. There was an impressive dent in the plaster of the cabin, now smeared with red.
"Feel better now?" Snake said coldly.
"Go to hell."
Snake prised apart his fingers, glaring at Wolf when he winced. "I don't think anything's broken. Except your control over your temper, that is. Come on."
"Come on where?"
"We're going to the infirmary before you kill something. Okay?"
Anger was practically radiating off of Snake. He set off in the direction of the infirmary, marching Wolf alongside him, without even looking back at Rook. Unsurprisingly, Eagle left too.
When they were gone, Rook rolled his eyes. Crawley had said that K Unit would be... distanced from him, but frankly, this was ridiculous. There was no way that they would be able to manage deployment at this rate. They would be lucky to reach their next period of leave without completely falling apart.
But, he reminded himself, they didn't actually matter. K Unit were only a mild inconvenience in this operation. No, Rook had been placed here for one reason, and it was sitting inside the cabin right now.
Alex Rider. The agent who had shattered Scorpia...
Rook was tempted, extremely tempted, to go inside. See the enigma for himself. But that was against his orders. Besides, if Rider recognised him – well, anything could happen. They had only met briefly on Malagosto, but Rider would remember. Rook was certain of it.
His feet squelched into mud as he paced around the cabin. His paycheque was in there. Maybe even his freedom, if the higher-ups were exceptionally pleased. Rook reached into his pocket and drew out an iPhone, then dialled a memorised number. It was too risky to save.
"What is it?" a grainy voice answered. The reception out here was awful.
"He's here, sir," Rook announced. "Rider's back at Brecon Beacons."
There was an intake of breath on the other end of the line, then the muffled sound of intense conversing. Rook waited patiently, a triumphant smile on his lips.
"You'd better not be wrong about this, Roman," the voice warned. "I was told he was being kept under Jones's surveillance."
"Then it's your mole who's wrong, sir. He's right here in front of me."
The man sighed irritably. "But why would he go back to that place? He has no reason. Is it that unit of his? Do they need to be… dealt with?"
Rook frowned. He hadn't actually considered why Rider had returned. He had just assumed that is was MI6's orders. But he knew one thing.
"I don't think it's because of K Unit," he replied slowly, thinking as he spoke. "They're already arguing and he's only been back—"
"But that could be a ploy," the voice countered, sharp as a knife. "To distract them. To get them to leave him on his own, so he can… so he can do… so he can do something." The voice sighed again, managing to make a single exhale sound incredibly angry. "I almost wish I had Jones's experience with children, if it would allow me into Rider's head. That was something I was never quite able to do…"
Rook shifted uncomfortably. He wanted to hang up. His end of the deal was a pardon for his crimes in Scorpia and a large wad of cash, not dealing with his boss's inferiority complex.
"…but that doesn't matter now. This time tomorrow, the reign of Mrs Jones will be over. I need you to keep a constant watch on Rider until we can bring him in, Roman. Do you understand me? I want you with him all hours of the day. He's more cunning than he looks."
I'm sure he is, Rook thought irritably, except I haven't actually seen him in a year.
He was getting sick of this.
"Of course. Permission to hang up now, sir?"
"Yes, whatever. Oh, and Roman?"
Rook forced himself to remain civil. "Yes? Sir?"
"Don't be sarcastic. I can put you back under lock and key as easily as I did last June. Remember that."
Alan Blunt hung up, his parting words sending a chill down Rook's spine. Could he do that? Revoke his part of the deal?
He had the power, Rook realised, too late. He was in the middle of the most secure compound in the country, surrounded by SAS soldiers.
If he tried to escape, he was a dead man.
Then he would just have to keep his cover, wouldn't he? And keep an eye on Rider. That was imperative. Rook had a nasty feeling that the little bastard was going to try something – and if he did, it would fall on Rook the hardest.
Alex hated this.
As he sat on his bunk, listening to K Unit squabbling outside, he tried to devise a scale to indicate just how much he hated this.
As a person, Alex didn't hate a lot of things. He wasn't one of those people who detested rain or Mondays or supporters of their football team's rivals. It just happened that he'd come across a lot of people and situations worth hating, in his brief years.
MI6 were definitely on that list. His enemies too, he supposed, though his feelings towards them were less straightforward. He despised the ones which had been personal – Ash, Rothman, Razim – without remorse. But the others, he'd mostly just been scared of. He'd had to be scared, to keep himself alive, but now that most of them were dead… Alex didn't have the energy to hate them. Fear and hate were often intermingled with him… he was scared of torture, captivity, and dying.
But he hated this: having to deceive the soldiers he'd spent so many months with. Sure, they'd treated him like trash, but who in his life hadn't? And unlike with everyone else, there had been a sort of unspoken acceptance of him in the SAS camp. He had appreciated that.
And now he was listening to them, fighting bitterly, because of him.
"You need to get some control on your bloody anger!"
"This is what I mean, Wolf!"
"He's a liar! He's a spy!"
"I won't have him back in our unit…"
Absently, Alex checked the clock beside Wolf's bed. It was only half past four, but the sky was already darkening a little… he just needed to wait for nightfall, and then he could leave. He'd decided that it needed to be tonight. Because if he stayed here any longer, honestly, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to go through with it.
Alex had tried to convince himself that his reluctance was completely logical, that it was because K Unit had trusted him, tried to save him, and had clearly been tearing themselves apart with guilt for having bullied him onto that bridge. But the truth was that there was a tiny, selfish part of Alex that enjoyed being at Brecon Beacons.
He hadn't even realised it himself until he'd left, but he'd been in his element here. After Cairo, it had been the shock he'd needed, the unrelenting training that kept his mind and body distracted enough to block the last few months' events out.
Jack. Scorpia. Even the Pleasures – they had all faded like a bad dream; the nightmares that had plagued him in America had stopped.
But now it was all crashing down around him. Alex closed his eyes against the sound of shouting outside, massaging his temples.
Focus on the goal, said a firm voice inside him, which sounded vaguely like Ian's. Keep your eyes on the target. Don't look back. Only look around you when it is vital.
Alex wished it were that easy.
But he knew, logically, that it was what he had to do. His mission was to destroy Klaxon – and after all, hadn't they been the ones to disturb the fractious peace he'd found at Brecon Beacons? This was more than his last mission. This was revenge.
The voices outside had quietened. Alex quickly stuck his head out of the door – and a smudge of dark red on the whitewashed cabin wall caught his eye.
Blood. It didn't take too long to figure out what had happened, and his eyebrows rose a little when he did.
K Unit had some serious issues that they needed to work through, and not just Wolf either. He'd seen the way they'd all reacted when he'd mentioned T Unit. Alex felt a little guilty about that lie; the disastrous story of K Unit's last deployment was something he'd stumbled across yesterday, whilst flicking through their files in hospital.
Tearing his eyes away from the bloodstain, Alex scanned the cabin's surroundings. They were gone – probably taking Wolf to the infirmary, if they had any sense.
Retreating back into the cabin, Alex pulled a pen and scrap of paper from Snake's chest of drawers. It was almost twilight; dark enough to avoid being noticed, hopefully, but with just enough light left to find his way out of the camp. Frankly, Alex was sick of yo-yoing back and forward between MI6, the SAS and Klaxon. He was getting the job done, and then he was cutting loose of all of them, if he was still alive by the end of it.
The note he left was short. It was also another lie. But K Unit wouldn't have a reason to doubt that his "meeting with the Sergeant" was anything other than – well, a meeting with the Sergeant. Before he left, he rifled through Snake's medical supplies for a flashlight, then lingered for a while, deliberating between the pocket knife and handgun. He eventually took them both, reasoning that he needed the protection, and almost believing himself.
By the time Alex slipped from the cabin, it was almost nightfall. The lights were blazing in the mess hall, and the infirmary was a smudge of white behind a cluster of trees. Brecon Beacons' long shadows would hide him well. Alex decided to take the western exit of the camp; it was the most problematic, with a thick wire fence, but it was least likely to be guarded by-
WHAM!
Alex went flying. His thoughts were knocked - literally - from his head as something insanely powerful collided with him.
The world tipped. Alex's head exploded with dizzying stars.
And then he hit the ground, and was brought straight back to earth.
Alex's injured shoulder screamed in pain. He yelled out before he could stop himself, then bit down hard on his lip. The metallic taste of blood singed his tongue. On the hazards of his vision, a dark shape loomed above him, and Alex reacted entirely on instinct. He was barely even aware of his leg shooting out, but all of a sudden a weight thudded to the ground beside him, letting out a yelp of surprise.
Adrenaline finally kicked in and Alex jumped up. While his assailant was down, he landed another swift kick to the man's stomach, and one to his groin for good measure. Then his hand was at his waistband, and the gun was in his hands, pointing at the guy's throat.
"Really?" Alex hissed, too angry to worry about being quiet. "Wasn't kidnapping me once enough for you people?"
The guy only groaned. Cautiously, Alex stepped around him, then stuck out a foot to roll him over crudely.
Huh. Not a face he recognised. Dark-haired, and handsome in an offhand sort of way. Alex had half expected it to be one of the SAS soldiers - there was definitely a leak in the SAS somewhere, for Klaxon to have managed an infiltration like they had...
...but was this man genuinely a Klaxon spy? As Alex stared down at him, tendrils of doubt started spreading, from a part of his brain that refused to accept that one of Klaxon's elite agents could be beaten so easily. He spun out the scenario in his mind: Alex had been sneaking around, at night, alone, just a week after the camp's biggest breach of security in its history. And if the guy hadn't seen his face in the darkness, he would have only seen an intruder, rather than a teenager...
Putting the gun down, Alex backed away quietly. He might just have viciously attacked a naive new recruit.
But he hadn't knocked the guy out, so there was no harm done, really.
Except that his shoulder was now throbbing with pain, and he still needed to get out of the actual camp. Alex had a fair idea of where to go - if he'd interpreted Klaxon's message correctly - but he'd only been to the place once. He had no desire to get lost in this bloody National Park and wander off the edge of a cliff.
Just as Alex was about to start climbing the western fence, a familiar voice floated out from behind him.
"Shark?"
Alex paused. For a split second, he was torn. Did he really want to go through this again?
Then, slowly, he turned around.
"Sorry. Not Shark."
Hare's face drained of colour as if he'd seen a ghost.
"Cub?"
Alex sighed. This routine was becoming monotonous. "Yep."
"But you're…" Hare visibly struggled for words. An unexpected feeling of discomfort settled in Alex's gut – the man looked, frankly, scared of him. A far cry from the sturdy soldier he'd come to recognise around the camp.
It unnerved him.
"They told me you tried to get me out of that lake," Alex said quickly, before Hare could get another word in. "So, er. Thanks."
Hare shook his head. It was too dark to really see, but Alex definitely glimpsed something crushingly sad pass across his face. "I failed, kid."
"I'm here, aren't I?"
It was meant to sound reassuring, but instead Hare's brow creased in a frown, curiosity and confusion crossing his face. Alex's heart sank as he realised what he was going to have to do - for the second time in one night.
He struck out with lightning speed, before Hare could ask the obvious question, driving the heel of his hand straight into a pressure point in the soldier's neck. Hare crumpled instantly, the look of surprise already melting from his face. Alex grabbed onto his jacket, stopping him from hitting the ground too hard, and then hooked Hare's arms under his own to drag him across the dewy grass. He was lucky, in a morbid kind of way, that Hare was one of the slighter soldiers, but he was still SAS, and Alex was clutching his shoulder by the time he'd manoeuvred him to the nearest cabin. It was the shooting range.
The backdoor was locked, but not bolted. Alex made quick work of the lock with a sharp thread of wire, and let out a breath of relief when the door made no sound.
It felt ten kinds of wrong, leaving Hare sprawled across the cold floor in the dead of night. Knocking the poor guy out had been bad enough. Fuck, he hated this. Biting his lip, Alex located a row of switches and flicked one on experimentally. A long, dim wall light that ran the length of the hall shuddered into life, filling the room with a low hum.
There. At least when Hare came to, he wouldn't be in total darkness.
But how long did that leave Alex?
Not long, surely. Hare would wake up eventually, or else someone would notice the light. Either way would land Alex in a high security MI6 cell by tomorrow morning, stomping out his plan before it had even begun. He slipped out of the same door and closed it behind him, reminding himself that this was the hardest part. Once he was out of here, he just had to... well, destroy the organisation. But that wasn't exactly a new experience for Alex. Maybe it was time to test whether he really did have the luck of the devil.
He managed to get over the fence unobstructed this time, dropping to the ground on the other side in an area of thick trees and mud slopes. Reluctantly, Alex fished the flashlight from his pocket. His confrontations with Hare and the new recruit - whoever the man had been - had set him back. There was no way he could navigate the forest in total darkness.
Setting out at a steady pace, Alex let his mind drift back to Klaxon's letter.
There are ways of reaching us...
Even at the heart of your organisation.
At first, Alex had thought they'd meant MI6. But no: they were smarter than that, and so was he.
About a month and a half into his stay at the SAS camp, K Unit had been sent on a week-long excursion exercise. Alex had seen more of Brecon Beacons in that week than in the whole of the rest of his time there, and it had been… different, to say the least. They'd separated to cover enough ground, and although he'd come back from that exercise with so many cuts and bruises that he'd reeked of antiseptic for days, Alex had actually enjoyed the time alone.
And, if he was honest, he'd liked the danger. Out in the open, with no teammates and no hawk-eyed supervisors, Alex could be as reckless as he wanted. Excitement had buzzed under his skin. Scaling a cliff without bothering to tie off the rope? Who cared?
Adrenaline was one hell of a drug.
Their last rendezvous had been particularly unique: a wide round stone with compass points and engravings dating back to the 1700s. Or something like that. The fact that Alex had remembered most clearly was that it marked the heart of Brecon Beacons, to the exact metre.
It was well into night by the time Alex found the right path. They must have discovered that he was missing by now, but his journey had so far been undisturbed. Alex followed the dirt track for what seemed like hours, eyes aching from scanning the ground in front of him, constantly, as he walked. He definitely should have taken the sleeping opportunities in the hospital more seriously.
When Alex approached the clearing, a shiver ran down his spine. He stepped out of the foliage warily, shoulders tensed and ears pricked for the slightest sound of movement. The flat circle of dirt looked unimpressive by moonlight, although the stone landmark had an eerie glow to it. Alex found his feet drawing him to it. As if in a dream, he reached out and brushed it with his fingertips...
There.
The hairs on the back of Alex's neck shot up. He spun around, drawing the gun, and came face to face with the intruder. This time, there was no doubt in his mind: this was the Klaxon agent.
The man sauntered towards him, clapping slowly, mockingly, and smirking. Alex let the gun follow its target, never breaking eye contact.
"Well, aren't you a clever little schoolboy?" the man drawled. He was dressed in simple black clothes, with an SAS combat jacket slung over them. Frowning slightly, Alex realised that he had seen him somewhere before...
The pieces fell together, and Alex's eye widened. "You?"
The man nodded, smile widening. "Me."
It was the instructor: the one who had sent K Unit across the tripwire course. Alex's grip tightened on the gun.
"You're Klaxon?" he asked, voice cold.
He was angry, and mostly at himself. He'd known there was a leak in the SAS somewhere, a leak that had given Klaxon direct access to that godforsaken assault course. The instructor - Temple? - was new. A replacement for Jackson, who'd fallen out in Brecon and sustained concussion, with no memory of the accident... Alex should have worked it out long before now.
"I'm Yellow," said the agent.
"You got a primary colour?" Alex laughed mockingly. "Must be someone important."
The man's mouth twisted.
Easily provoked. Interesting.
It was then that Alex heard it: not so far above him, the deep thrum of air being whipped by rotating blades. His ride was here.
Alex started to walk, mirroring Yellow's steps, circling like a vulture and never dropping the gun.
"Where are you taking me?" he demanded.
"Where you signed up to go."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
Yellow rolled his eyes upwards.
"Nobody's kidnapping you this time, Rider," he replied with a note of boredom in his voice.
But Alex wasn't giving up that easily. The helicopter's blare was practically deafening now, but he ignored it.
"And last time?" he shouted. "The chase on the plane – it was a test, wasn't it? It was a set up."
"Of course it was a fucking set up!" Yellow snapped, irritation ringing through the white noise. "If White wanted you dead, he would have shot you in the head, not the goddamn shoulder!"
Alex was silent for several moments. This was it. Decision time.
Stay or go?
In his peripheral vision, the helicopter touched down, landing in the windswept clearing with wonky grace. In his mind's eyes, faces flashed, old and new, each one attached to a memory of crushing guilt.
Steadily, Alex lowered the gun. Neither one of them spoke, but it was an agreement. Yellow climbed into the helicopter first, hoisting himself up with strong, deft movements, throwing a few words to the pilot that were drowned by the noise. When he offered his hand to help Alex up, he took it.
And then they were rising, gliding up through the cutting cold air, the ground shrinking below them at an alarming rate. The trees melted into one dense streak of black. The SAS camp became a doll's house, tiny and fragile in the distance.
Inside the helicopter, there were too many wires and pieces of loose equipment for Alex to care about. He simply located a seat and strapped himself in.
Alex looked out of the window just once – long enough to see the cluster of gold and brown cabins be swallowed by darkness – before turning away. It was going to be a long night.
A/N: Shit just got real.
...Aaaand, we're halfway through the fic. Whoa.
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Ally xoxo
