A/N: Thanks to all those wonderful people who reviewed the last chapter and who have kept me going---literally, I live for reviews (and chocolate, but whatever…). And here, dear followers, is the promised chapter! My apologies on the length of the delay, I was much needed at home (kept very busy) plus I have needed to do a ton of research…I never said it was for this fic, though, did I? Still, I hope you enjoy it. Please review and tell me your views on it. And now, proceed! A very, very big thank you to Marie Elaine Cullen whose fics are amazing and very good reading! Thank you so so so much for kicking my butt and making me write more (stuff research!)

Chapter 11

Captured!

Not for the first time, Alex thanked his extra senses and scrambled to his feet, trying to see where the threat was.

As he finally stood upright, the firing ceased. Wolf slowly got up from his prostrated position on the ground.

"What the hell just happened?" he asked quietly.

"This is just a lucky guess," said Alex, seriously, "but I think we might have been shot at."

Wolf opened his mouth to say something, but was cut short by the figures emerging from the forest.

They seemed to appear from thin air, or detach themselves from trees, as if they had been one with the tree. Every person there dressed in camouflage and carried a gun.

Before Alex had blinked, they had surrounded him and Wolf. Alex surveyed the situation from a remote place, almost as if he was an observer on the outside rather than part of the whole picture.

Admittedly, it did not look good. At all.

Wolf had no idea what exactly he was up against, and he doubted that either of them would be able to take out this number of men, separately or together.

"Who sent you here?" said Alex calmly, knowing he most likely wouldn't get an answer out of the various men, but trying anyway.

It came as no surprise then, that none of them replied to his question.

Instead, one of the men stepped forward with a raised fist, another soldier - assassin – taking his place almost immediately, filling in the gap so that there were no escape routes.

Said man was of small stature; his hair was a dark brown, bordering on black. He possessed a crooked nose that had obviously been broken and reset many times.

As soon as Alex saw the raised fist, he dropped into a defensive Karate stance, purely on instinct.

Said person had no idea how well Wolf was taking in the whole situation, but he supposed not very well. Wolf didn't care much for surprises – one of the few things he'd learned during his first jaunt to Brecon Beacons.

Alex subtly shifted his weight to his back foot as the man came closer, prepared to lash out with a roundhouse kick to the stomach.

Suddenly, he felt an unexpected pain sprout in his lower left leg.

Alex cursed himself for his own inattention. While the man had been coming closer, Alex had been concentrating so hard on reading his actions that he'd almost forgotten the other men until now.

Moving slowly, so as not to jar his leg too much, Alex put his hand to it – and knew immediately why none of the men were moving in on him or Wolf.

He only confirmed his suspicions when he glanced down at it, taking in the feathered end of the tranquilliser dart that protruded from the back of his calf.

Alex started to feel drowsy; they must have out a large dosage in for it to take effect so quickly.

But said teenager would not go without a fight.

Alex struggled with his eyelids, willing them open in defiance.

Beside him, he saw Wolf crumpled on the ground, obviously out cold.

The man that had served as a decoy earlier was standing over him.

Alex heard someone murmur something that didn't quite reach his ears. The decoy man's response was perfectly clear though, his fist was raised again.

"He's taking too long."

Alex barely had time to note a subtle hint of a Russian accent in the man's voice before the fist came down and everything dissolved into a swirling black nothingness.

Alex began to ache. He wasn't sure when it started, all he knew was that it was everything.

The ache strengthened at the back of his skull, throbbing like there was no tomorrow.

A very real possibility, come to think of it.

Alex heard himself groan, a noise that roughed against his throat; leading him back to the land of the living.

In a futile effort to dispel the ache, Alex slowly shook his head from side to side. Although the pointless exercise didn't do much towards making the ache go away, it did help him focus a bit better on his current situation.

Alex listened for anything useful, but all he heard was boots marching on the floor, heavy breathing and muffled cursing.

Alex opened his eyes…and immediately shut them against the bright light.

Slowly, he opened them again, squinting against the light, which Alex soon determined to be electrical lights hanging from the ceiling. Moving electrical lights.

That was a little unusual, Alex thought fuzzily.

It was at that moment that said person fully regained consciousness, and became aware of the fact that he was being dragged, on his back, along what looked like a corridor by his wrists. Or rather, the handcuffs around his wrists.

Wincing at the newly recognised burning ache in his shoulders, Alex tried to look around him to see if there was any distinguishing marks on the walls or ground, or anything that might give away where he was.

Unfortunately, the only things in sight were two white walls, concrete floor and a white ceiling from which hung the electrical lights. In other words, he was being dragged down a white corridor.

Not that he'd actually expected to find anything useful, really.

Slowly, the lights slowed down until they stopped moving altogether. Alex also felt the ache in his shoulders and wrists alike beginning to fade, something he was glad of, even though his gut feeling told him that this wasn't good.

A couple of minutes later, said person's wrists were dropped on the ground and a face appeared above Alex's.

"Hey!" said the face, which Alex now determined to belong to one of his dragger-alongers. "He's awake!"

"He can't be!" called an answering voice coloured with disbelief. "It was guaranteed not to wear off for another 15 minutes."

"I'm telling you, somehow this kid is awake and he's staring at me like he knows what's going on," said Face, as Alex decided to call him, despite the fact that he was wearing a balaclava that didn't show his face.

"Knock him out again," called his partner, Disbelief.

Face stared at Alex and Alex stared back, giving him one for one. Suddenly Disbelief's footsteps were heard as he walked up behind Alex.

Mentally sighing, Alex deduced that Disbelief wasn't the best at stealth exercises.

Two seconds later, as Disbelief's fist crashed into Alex's cranium, said person deduced that he had found Disbelief's strength---knocking people out.

And with that cheerful thought, Alex sped down a black tunnel until it swallowed up all the light. (1)

K-Unit And Various Other SAS Units, Including Sergeant, In A Different Cell, In A Different Part Of The Same Building As Alex, On The Border Of Wales And England

"Why?" the man slammed his fists into the metal bars of the cell for what seemed the hundredth time. "Why?" he reiterated.

"Calm down, Wolf. Shouting and hammering on the bars isn't going to help," said Snake from his position on the floor.

"I dunno," said Leopard thoughtfully. "Wolf looks like he's having fun. Maybe we should all try that?"

Which earned him a death glare and a low growl from a certain team-mate that looked scarily like his namesake at the time being.

Ben rolled his eyes. "Wolf, stop making so much noise, Leopard stop egging Wolf on and Eagle! Please stop pacing---it's driving me insane. Much better!"

Eagle, serious for once, did as Ben asked and sat down with an audible thump.

"Sorry, but this sucks! We're locked up in a cell; currently we have no way to tell where we are, how far away we are from civilisation, how to escape and we have absolutely where Cub is!"

And with that speech, Eagle slumped against the wall, his brow furrowed.

Ben knew that he shouldn't say what he was about to, that he needed security clearance to tell them what he was about to, but he didn't care. They were locked up and had no idea if they were even about to survive the next 24 hours. Ben figured that this was an exceptional circumstance.

"I'm sure Alex is fine, wherever he is," Ben said softly from his cross-legged seat on the ground.

He immediately had the attention of all his teammates.

"Now is not the time to tell us that you're a physic, Fox," said Snake, who was very concerned for said teenager.

Sighing, Ben explained. "Alex would probably kill me if he knew that I was telling you this, after all I'm not supposed to, but since you seem to need reassurance that he will be fine, I'll tell you.

"The first time I saw him in Australia, I couldn't believe my eyes. He looked so different from the boy we had seen here."

Ben's eyes took on a far away look as he reminisced. "Anyway, I saw him once more, from afar. After that, the next time I saw him was at a Thai kick-boxing match to the death. And he was doing fine, he was holding his own against a giant of man; in fact, he beat him. Actually, it was only after that that he needed my help. So you see," Ben said, bringing his attention back to K-Unit, "Alex will be fine."

"Yeah," said Snake, a little impressed. "But in case you hadn't noticed we're in a slightly different situation here."

"Fine then," Ben said, annoyed that his friends didn't trust him enough to take him at his word. "Don't believe me. But I know that Alex is fine."

The Safe House on the Border of Scotland and England, in an Office

"We have just received a fax, sir. They have successfully captured Alex Rider, sir," said a middle-aged man.

Levi Kroll spun his chair around. "Excellent. Send my highest regards and inform them that I shall be there to interrogate the boy presently."

The middle aged man bowed and walked towards the exit.

"Oh, and Adam? Prepare a moving cell for the young lady. She'll be going with us."

In a cell, at the opposite end of the Safe House where the SAS men and Alex are currently being held hostage

When Alex woke from his second fist assisted trip to unconsciousness, he was by himself; inside a nice little concrete cell.

And he meant little.

It measured six of Alex's feet by eight. Alex was sure of these measurements, as he'd spent the last 5 minutes and 26 seconds pacing the room. He'd been counting on both halves.

The first thing Alex had done, after waking up, was to sit up---or attempt to, at any rate.

The bright stars that flashed in front of his vision like hundreds of lightbulbs blowing out all at once, made it rather hard to think, and see, straight.

Groaning slightly, Alex managed to sit up and the progress to getting on his feet, with the assistance of the wall.

After examining the cell, including the door, Alex deemed escape not likely. All four walls and the floor were made of solid concrete; there wasn't even the tiniest crack in the wall. The door, on the other hand, seemed to be as wide as an elephant and made of titanium, from what Alex could tell, with various locks and tricky mechanisms located on the other side of the door. The only way he was going to get out of here without the Scorpia men, or hired by Scorpia men taking him, was if he knew how to apparate.

Unfortunately, this skill eluded Alex, and so he remained locked up in his comfy little chamber.

Sighing, Alex leaned his back against the wall, tipped his head back and slid to the floor.

He was much stronger now, even the 5 and a half minutes of movement helped ease his aching muscles, making them stronger, more obedient to Alex's will and less likely to fall out from underneath him.

Alex sat on the ground and tried to figure out the whole situation.

It was obviously Scorpia, and evidently they wanted something from him, or the SAS, seeing Wolf was captured also, or at least Alex thought so.

Wolf…Alex wondered if he was okay, or even still alive. Scorpia weren't exactly renowned for keeping SAS collectibles and useless items. Either or.

And speaking of Wolf, I wonder where the rest of K-Unit is? Alex thought. I hope they managed to get away. Who am I kidding? This is Scorpia! They are perfectionists; they know every single detail. Well, considering, almost every detail.

Alex brought his legs up to his chest and wound his arms around them, binding them to his torso.

Sighing, Alex rested his head on his knees, face towards the door and waited for whatever, or whoever to come for him.

(1) This happened to me once when I nearly fainted after breaking three bones in my foot. The edges of my vision went black and I swear it looked like a really long black corridor with a really bright spot of light in the middle. It was at this point that my Mum threw a cup of water over my head and everything came back to its normal colour.

Ok, me again. I very, very sincerely regret to inform you that updates will be few and far between for the rest of the seen future. I haven't updated in a while and I know that I said that I was going to be updating more regularly, but that was before my Mum decided to haul us of on a tri to America (Not that I'm complaining---you have very nice weather and good food and almost everything else that rainy Britain doesn't.) Which, I'll admit, I was happy to go on.

Until I realised that my only Internet access was one hour a day, usually about three times a week max. You can imagine the depth of my pleasure about that factor. Almost as big as my brain (for those of you unaware of the current state my brain is in let me assure you that a pea looks ginormous.) Anyhow, I have major writer's block on this, actually it was going to be longer, but I had quite a bit of research to do for the rest of it so I decide to screw that and post this!

Thanks for reading, let me know your opinion on this atrocity and review please,

Raksha Child x