Recap: Alex's vampire side is now under control, thanks to some medicine that has come into being at a suspiciously fast pace. But it now means that MI6 deems Alex Rider to be safe enough to start his reintegration with the rest of society, but since they still wouldn't trust him to be anywhere near the general public, they are instead sending him to an SAS camp in The Lake District. Which of course, he's going to just love…

Here Comes Trouble

Wolf slammed the door behind him and sat down heavily on the nearest bed in the cabin, which just happened to be his own.

One pair of eyes watched him curiously but two others didn't even bother looking up. For a few seconds no one said anything, until Eagle spoke up. Without looking up from the battered paperback book he was reading, he removed a cigarette from his mouth and asked, 'So, what did the sergeant want then?'

Finally having received the right dramatic cue, Wolf spat, 'Cub!', while waving around a thin file above his head.

Calmly, as though he wasn't surprised, Eagle took another drag on his cigarette, turned the book upside down so he wouldn't lose his page and finally looked around at Wolf. His blank face and impenetrable dark-grey eyes giving away nothing of what he was thinking. As usual.

'So he's gonna pay us a visit, is he?'

'Yes! They're sending him here to train. With us. again!'

Osprey glanced up from the gun he was cleaning with a rag so grubby that was probably just spreading the dirt around rather than getting rid of it.

He was a large, muscle bound man, with an arrogant look to his face and a lot more brains and charisma then first impressions might convey. He was the sort of person who others had always wanted to hang out with at school, not for his lovely personality, but because people thought that being associated with him made them seem cooler and stronger than they really were. This strange sort of gravitational pull he had that had started in the playground at primary school was still in effect to this day.

'Cub... You've mentioned that name before, right?'

'Yeah,' replied Eagle. 'He was the kid that Special Ops sent to train with us for a week or so...hmm, about a year ago. That was back when we were training at Brecon Beacons but were still SOD of MI6, not SAS. But Wolf can probably tell you more about him, can't you? Didn't you say you bumped into him again?'

The only man who hadn't said anything so far spoke up now. He went by the codename of Tiger and there was something about him, though impossible to quite pinpoint, made the name seem very appropriate.

'A kid? What the hell do you mean? How old are we talking about here?'

'Uh...' Wolf opened the file he was still clutching and pulled out the three pages stapled together inside so that he could read them.

'Says here he's fifteen. Must have been fourteen then last time round. Christ, didn't realise he was that young, did you, Eagle?'

'Yeah, I did,' came the short reply.

Wolf frowned. Eagle was always like this; he never minced his words and hardly ever seemed surprise. It was as though he had been able to see into the future all his life, and by now had got pretty bored of the talent.

Trying to straighten out the facts, Tiger said, 'So you're telling me that MI6 sent a fourteen year old boy to Brecon Beacons for a few days?'

'Pretty much.' Wolf replied.

'Ha! His parents probably used a load of money and special connections to get him in. They must have been real pissed off when he gave up,' Osprey smirked.

That was a stupid theory, and one that made Tiger laugh. Osprey hated being laughed at and if it had been anyone else they would have been in real trouble. But this was Tiger and the two of them had been good friends for a long time now, always sticking up for each other, usually at the expense of someone else.

'No,' Eagle stated bluntly. 'That's completely and utterly illegal. No amount of money could get an under-age kid into SAS. You have to be sixteen just to join the army, remember? As for special connections, well, you'd have to be royalty.'

Wow, thought Wolf. Eagle rarely came out with so many words in a row. Not that he was thick, just that he liked to find out what everyone else knew on a subject, before revealing he'd been holding all the aces all along.

'But special operations sending a kid here isn't illegal at all? Anyway, he didn't give up, Os,' Wolf pointed out quickly, using Osprey's nickname. 'MI6 called him back in for some reason or other.'

'What would MI6 want with some little brat?' Osprey snorted derisively.

'Beats me.' Eagle shrugged, 'As I said, Wolf knows more than me. You said you ran into him again, didn't you?'

'Yeah,' Wolf nodded. 'One of the strangest things I've ever seen. And it wasn't so much as running he was doing, more like snowboarding down a mountain..On an ironing board.'

Osprey and Tiger exchanged incredulous looks and Eagle smiled slightly to himself. Wolf made a surprisingly good story teller.

'An ironing board?'

'Yep. It was my first assignment as part of the SAS, Fox and Snake had already gone their own ways by then and Eagle was on a different assignment. We'd been told to keep an eye on the bottom of this mountain in France you see. There was some sort of academy at the top of it which MI6 suspected was connected to some kind of dodgy stuff goings on. You know what it's like with them. We were told that an agent of theirs had managed to infiltrate the academy. We all thought he must be posing as a teacher or guard.

'We'd been there just a few hours when a couple of Land Rovers appeared. They were acting suspiciously but before we could do anything about them, we spotted someone heading down the mountain side. Fast. Actually, more than one person, he was being chased. But by the time the ground levelled out he had managed to get rid of them, and they had been on snowmobiles and armed with guns by the sound of it! Man did they make impressive explosions when they crashed! I'm surprised neither of them caused an avalanche.

'Well, none of us were in any doubt that the guy racing towards us must be the agent we had been sent to look out for, and there he was, doing all the work for us. But then those damn Land Rovers came out of hiding, the men inside armed with machine guns. We should have dealt with them while we had the chance, but how were we supposed to know what was going to happen next? The agent saw the danger before we did and then suddenly this train went past in front of him and he somehow managed to use his momentum or something to actually land on top of the speeding train! Got him out of the way of the bullets, but unfortunately for him the train curved around a bend and he didn't! Went flying off it and luckily for him he was caught by some fencing that, you know, sort of reduced the impact when he finally hit the ground...on his head. Though I guess he wasn't so lucky that the fencing had been topped by barbed wire…

'The Land Rover men got away quickly and we were left with what we thought was a dead special operations agent. But surprisingly he was still alive, and more surprisingly he was just a kid! Most of the others had been at Brecon Beacon when Cub was, but I don't think anyone else recognised him though; he had his hair cut a lot shorter.

'And then, as the ambulance took him away, someone held up the snowboard he had used, except it obviously wasn't a snowboard, it was an honest-to-God ironing board!'

Tiger laughed to himself as he tried to imagine someone snowboarding down a mountain on an ironing board.

'Well that sounds weird,' Osprey muttered grumpily.

'It was,' Wolf confirmed. 'He was all right and managed to be... persuaded to return to the academy to show us the location where a load of rich peoples' sons had been locked up. In fact, it was when I was trying to save his arse from some big ugly weight lifter type women...' Here Osprey let out a snort of disbelieving laughter. Wolf had to save this Cub kid from a woman? 'that I ended up getting shot,' Wolf concluded as he gestured vaguely towards his arm, where he had been hit by the bullet.

Changing the subject slightly, Tiger asked in a nonchalant way, 'So...what does this teenage agent guy look like?'

Wolf shrugged. 'Ah, blondish?'

With a sigh Eagle stood up and headed over to the shorter, darker man. 'There's a picture attached to the file, isn't there?' Wolf glanced down.

'Oh yeah, there is.' With that he offered the paper up to Eagle, who took it and retreated back to his bunk.

Wolf had already skimmed through what little information was given in the file. A good chunk of information was simply listed as 'classified', which annoyed the unit's leader but didn't surprise him. MI6 wasn't about to make all the sensitive information on their little pet spy available to just anyone, now would they?

Both Osprey and Tiger scowled at the way Eagle was given the information first instead of one of them, especially since it was Tiger who had asked about the boy's appearance to start with. Then again, their leader had known the other man for longer then the two of them. Still, they were supposed to be a unit, weren't they?

'Yup, fifteen years old, atheist, (well doesn't sound much like a religious guy anyway), British Caucasian, (same old, same old), heterosexual, (bet he gets lots of girls...)' Eagle muttered to himself as he read, then in a louder, jokey voice he told Wolf, 'Says here he's straight, hard luck mate!'

Wolf, who had had a string of girlfriends and was in no way interested in members of his own gender, threw a boot at Eagle's head.

While the two of them began to fight over the offending article of clothing, Tiger took the opportunity to snatch up the file and return to his bunk with it.

It was the picture that Tiger was most interested in. Oblivious to the scuffle that had broken out in front of him, he studied the photograph. It was obvious from the direction of the boy's gaze that he had been aware of the camera, and from the slight frown on his face that he hadn't wanted his picture taken. It seemed pretty recent as well, as Cub appeared his full fifteen years at the very least. (In fact the photo had been taken just a day or two ago by Victor Stone.)

It showed a serious looking boy who, as Wolf had said, was blond, with brown eyes that seemed just a little strange in a way Tiger couldn't quite put his finger on. Perhaps it was just the angle the picture had been taken at, or something reflecting into his eyes, or even just the effects of the lighting. His skin seemed pale and completely void of the spots and marks that people his age, particularly boys, spent all their time battling with. Without conscious thought, Tiger reached up a hand and brushed the skin along his own hair line. Though the spots there there were barely visible, he still felt self-conscious of them. He felt slightly jealous of Cub already. Why should the boy have perfect skin when he himself had been plagued by mild acne as a teenager, something he had only begun to grow out of a few years ago? It had, in his view, ruined his good looks at the time. He was proud of his handsome face, coppery brown hair and bright blue eyes, and getting lots of spots had terribly effected his self esteem.

As Wolf growled at Eagle to grow up and give him his boot back, though in much stronger language than that, Tiger continued to study the photograph in his hands. The boy appeared to have relatively long eye lashes and a nice bone structure, but his slim lips and slightly chiselled looks meant that he could never been mistaken for a girl.

The more Tiger looked, the more he saw that he liked. At the SAS camp he was surrounded by large men as strong or stronger then him. They weren't his type at all. He had been bullied very badly as a child, and those bigger and more powerful than himself held no attraction for him. He always had to be the one in charge in a relationship. The dominant one. Whether it was a man or women that he had set his eyes on this time, for both sexes held their own appeal to him. He preferred slim, pretty, young, blonde women who knew how to look after a man and who would do all they could to impress him. And when it came to men he still liked them slim, pretty, young and blond, but liked it much better when they had never had a boyfriend before, or even better, when they were in denial that they could ever love another man. It made the chase so much more fun. But which ever gender, once they had properly fallen for him with his charm and good looks, he would soon grow bored and go in search of new conquests.

And now it appeared that among these ugly weeds, a young and delicate rose was about to make an appearance.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Adore the petals of the rose but watch for the serpent beneath.

Once again Alex Rider was being grossly underestimated by someone with dark intentions, at their own peril. He was no 'delicate rose', he had survived far too much to ever be classed as 'delicate' and as for a 'rose', weren't roses well known for their sharp thorns? And of course, Alex was not some naive and vulnerable child for Tiger to toy with, he was in fact the true top predator, not Tiger or any other solider here. No matter how tough they were, it was the boy soon to join them who was far more dangerous then any of them.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Alex stifled a yawn. He had been sitting in this car with its blacked-out windows for around six hours now, with just one brief stop at a service station, and was now thoroughly bored. He wanted to ask how much longer it would take to reach their location up in the Lake District, but there was a partition between him and the driver in front, similar to the ones in taxis, but much. Anyway, the driver didn't seem like a particularly chatty man. Serious and silent seemed to be the default setting for government men with dark glasses and guns tucked away were they think no one can see them.

With a sigh Alex leant back and rested his head against the tinted window that allowed him to see about, but blocked him from sight. Though they were still on a main road, the surrounding countryside was starting to get hillier and craggier as they drove along, making the teenager assume that it couldn't be a great deal longer before they finally got there.

It felt so strange being trapped away on his own like this, but surrounded by life on all sides as other people in their own cars made their way about their normal lives. Even stranger had been driving through London, with its roads and pavements bustling with life. These people enjoying the mild spring weather had no idea that Alex was passing so close to them, now trapped as a creature they didn't even believe existed. For them nothing had changed, for him everything. He was classed as a threat to their very existence, and if anything went wrong at the SAS camp he would never be allowed to mingle with them ever again. Victor Stone had made it very clear as he explained the situation to Alex, a smug smile on his face. If he hurt anyone, anyone at all while he was there, he would be deemed unfit to associate with the human race. He would be put down. From what 'Vicky' said, it was obvious that if he had been any other 15 year old boy, they would have never given him a chance. Vampires were the enemy, something to be studied, kept hidden from the public, experimented on if they could, and then killed. But he was Alex Rider, and it was their fault this had happened in the first place. Maybe letting him live on as a distorted, freakish version of himself was their way of apologising. Or perhaps they simply thought that he could be an even better weapon for them now, if he could control the vampire blood lust inside him now. But if he was going to bite every neck he saw, what use would he be then? They might as well cut their losses and kill him off...

Alex found a strange conversation play through in his mind as he imaged what the neighbours would say if he died.

'Did you hear about the Rider kid?'

'Oh yes, terrible business, hit and run accident they say'

'Yes, though no seems to have actually seen it happen. Apparently he was involved in some sort of drug gang. I bet it was one of their enemies that did it!'

'Really? Well then, I don't understand why that Jack women was so upset, its not as though she was even related to that delinquent child.'

'No, and I expect she will be off back to America after his funeral is out of the way, nothing more to keep her here.'

'Well! The rumour goes that she has to leave after the funeral, her visa expired years ago!'

'Really? Bloody foreigners! I also heard from somewhere or other that she had a big argument with a man at the funeral place. Wanted an open casket, but they wouldn't allow it.'

'I should hope so too, disgusting idea, I have never understood the appeal of having a dead corpse out on display, especially one that's been in an accident'

'A bit strange though, I mean, I've never been to an open casket funeral, but why would they not allow it? What have they got to hide?'

But as long as he was on his best behaviour, he should be fine, right? Not really... sure, he would live, but MI6 had him well and truly caught. He had considered running away once he got to the camp, but it appeared they had already thought of that, and so had told Victor to inform him that if he ran away, killed anyone, or gave away what he was, his life would be pretty much forfeited. They couldn't risk having him around if he was anything less then perfect.

To help him stay in control they had supplied him with enough medication to keep a whole army of vampires calm, or at least that's what it felt like to Alex. But it reassured him. If he did have to escape for some reason or other, he would be able to stay in control for quite some time with all the Parabiteamol he had, both in liquid and tablet form.

Harry Pain had taken the time to carefully explain the dosages to him. He must take two teaspoonfuls of the bottled medicine when he first woke up, at midday and just before he went to bed. However, the power balance was still shifting inside him, so this was only a basic precaution. If he felt himself slipping into predator thoughts, or being much stronger than he was used to, or thinking of blood too much, he would have to swallow at least two of the tablets as soon as he could. However, he should avoid taking more then three or four within one hour. They weren't entirely sure what the affects were. They were unlikely to kill him, but the more he suppressed the vampire side of himself, the more vulnerable he would become to the medicine's side-effects.

Closing his eyes, Alex looked deep within himself. Like a rotten tooth right at the back of his mouth that he couldn't help poking at, Alex could feel the sleeping power hidden within him. It was a strange sensation, being able to feel all those possibilities, all that danger right in the corner of his mind. Every time it made him flinch away, but like a painful tooth he didn't seem to be able to leave it alone. He felt as though he was baiting a sleeping lion, but as long as he stuck with the medicine, surely there was no reason for that side of him to wake up?