Chapter Thirteen – "Do You Think"

Unsurprisingly, it was Fox who awoke first albeit with a rather unprofessional jolt followed by a groan as he clutched at his head; his vision was fuzzy, almost watery, and his brain felt heavy.

"What the-"

That was when he smelt it.

"Fuck." His head snapped to the side when he heard a moan coming from his left, and he responded in kind as he felt a wave of wooziness hit him. He could see Snake waking up through the mists of confusion surrounding them both.

"Urgh," the other man ground out. "What happen-" He stopped mid-sentence, his hand halfway to his head as he breathed in quickly. "Do you smell that?"

Fox nodded, somewhat alarmed. Snake struggled to his feet, battling his body, which wanted nothing, more than to lay down and sleep right now, all the while uttering curses under his breath.

"Fox," he stated, voice groggy yet scarily urgent. "Help me wake up the others."

ARARARARAR

Alex didn't recall when he'd fallen asleep again, two thousand miles away in a plane en route to who knows where, but when he awoke he found that he was, sadly, no longer hopped up on morphine. He wouldn't admit it aloud – if MI6 heard a whiff of this, they'd call it addiction, which it wasn't – but he was rather fond of the detached, floaty feeling it gave him. He'd fallen asleep on his back this time, and he could feel the somewhat open wound on his back sticking to Yassen's sweater. He was not looking forward to explaining that to the man.

He rolled over on the sofa, the leather sticking to his legs annoyingly as he manoeuvred himself into a comfortable position, a feat that was proving nigh impossible with all of his various injuries. He heard a chuckle in the distance and automatically snapped to alert, jolting his cracked rib in the process. He hissed and clutched at his ribcage; the chuckle returned and come closer as did the man it belonged to. The couch dipped slightly as Yassen perched next to him and placed a hand gently on his upper back to steady him. It came away sticky and reddish-brown. He looked at it disconcertedly, and Alex, still clutching his ribs gingerly, looked up at him with no small amount of panic.

Yassen forced a gentle smile onto his face – which, Alex thought, looked incredibly out of place there – before trying to calm Alex down.

"It's a dark colour anyway. That'll wash out."

Alex had never been more scared… or confused. What his mind was telling him about this man – what he remembered – was entirely different from what he was experiencing right now. Yassen had been nothing but kind to him during this trip and he didn't know what to think about it, other than the fact that it must've been an act, and he had no idea to what end the part was being played. Surely the fact that he'd been intimidated and hurt during his stay with SCORPIA would be a greater incentive for MI6 to work quickly and cough up the cash to set him free from their clutches… and yet here he was getting the VIP treatment. He shrunk even more under Yassen's gaze and the man, sensing this, looked away with the smallest hint of a frown on his face.

"You'd better get some more sleep," he told him, getting up off the couch again. "We've another four and a half hours or so until we arrive."

Alex somehow managed to work past his thick tongue and throat dry with terror to squeeze out a few words.

"Arrive where?"

Yassen turned to regard him with a queer look before turning and continuing on to the cockpit.

"You know where."

ARARARARAR

"Stay close to the ground," Fox had warned his teammates as they'd been awoken and, while at the time it had seemed irrelevant, K-Unit were now seeing the sense in his words as they ran, crouched, through the halls of this seemingly endless labyrinth. The gas leak had pervaded the entire facility, making it impossible to remain conscious above a certain height, which was lowering slowly but surely all the time. They'd been going through this maze for at least an hour before Snake vocalised what they were all thinking.

"Where the fuck is the exit to this place?"

Eagle stopped short in the middle of the corridor.

"Guys," he began slowly. "This is a staircase."

Wolf looked at him like he was mentally impaired.

"Yes…?"

"We're underground."

"Good of you to notice."

Eagle stared at him, eyebrows raised and hands splayed.

"It's… a staircase."

Snake was the first to cotton on.

"Ah." He coughed into his hand awkwardly, the lack of oxygen making him woozy. "But… we can't get up there with this gas leak."

Eagle tutted and looked to the side, lost in thought.

"There's no way we can," Fox muttered fatalistically. "It'd be suicide."

Wolf stood up suddenly, before regretting it and dropping to the floor again.

"God, guys," he groaned, "This is weak." He leaned in to them, conspiratorially. "Now, it could get us all killed, but… I have an idea."

"What?"

"Duck."

That said, he pulled out Anton's discarded gun from earlier and fired a round into the air.

ARARARARAR

Bianca Bonifacia was many things: beautiful, wealthy and cunning – all the things necessary to become a successful member of the underworld – but she was not by any means patient. However, today she was having patience forced upon her courtesy of one Alex Rider. Why, you might ask, was Bianca Bonifacia talking to Alex Rider, of all people?

Bianca Bonifacia was the leader of SCORPIA.

Let's backtrack a tad, shall we?

Bianca had been waiting not so patiently for the arrival of Alex Rider for about 9 hours in the short term, a week since she had authorised his capture in the medium term and slightly more than two months in the long term since he first left them. She was, by this point, more than slightly antsy about the whole affair, and couldn't wait to get a chance to question the boy. Their means of getting him back to base had been… unorthodox, to be sure, but Bianca had never had any problems with flouting convention, which brought her to this highly unusual, not to mention unproductive, situation. She was seated opposite Alex Rider, who was likewise sat across from her, a modern metal and glass desk separating them. She valiantly ignored the fact that he was dressed in no more than a pair of boxers and an oversized jumper, just as she ignored that he was slowly but surely bleeding out all over the white fabric of the chair he was sitting on. Her interior designers would never learn. Yassen Gregorovitch was elsewhere in the compound, but while he was out of sight he was definitely not out of mind. Alex's thoughts rested almost entirely on this mysterious figure, trying to meld the two images of him in his head. As such, he nearly missed Bianca's first question to him.

"-rust your journey was pleasurable?" he caught, and thanked whatever deities watching that he hadn't missed anything important. Quite used to the formalities that most modern-day villains still liked to uphold, he answered her courteously.

"Yes, thanks. Yassen was nothing but civil during the passage."

Bianca nodded at him with a vacantly seductive smile aimed at him purely from routine; she had expected nothing else of him.

"Excellent." She crossed her legs, showing off more of her smooth, tanned legs than Alex considered as being strictly professional. "On behalf of all of SCORPIA, I'd just like to tell you that we're all so glad to have to back, Alex."

Alex smiled at her again, albeit more tightly. Of course you are, Alex thought. Why wouldn't you be when you could get a small fortune out of the British Government for my return? Regardless, he kept up his external image as Bianca uncrossed her legs.

"Now, Alex," Bianca began, uncharacteristically patient, after it became apparent that Alex wasn't going to be exactly forthcoming with information, "I'm afraid I've other things to do right now – you were rather later than I expected you after all – so we'll have to put off our talk, but rest assured: we will talk." She smiled at him again, sultry and pleasing and utterly fake, and Alex felt a coil of dread pang in his stomach. She stood up, said "Yassen will show you to your room," and that was that.

ARARARARAR

Roughly four thousand miles away in the beautiful Welsh countryside, the world was tranquil and serene as usual; the fields were lush with grass dotted with clover and cowslips, the mighty oak trees shaded the ground from the surprisingly abundant sun and a few clueless sheep lounged on the ground-

"What the fuck were you thinking?"

-sped skittishly away from the four disgruntled and somewhat singed SAS soldiers pouring out of what appeared to be a shed offset to the side of said field. The shortest, yet most heavyset, of the men squared his shoulders and inhaled deeply as if preparing to shout back. However, he exhaled with a heavy sigh and paused before replying.

"Not much, actually."

Fox just gaped, trying, and failing, to form words to voice his disbelief. Wolf took this chance to tack on another sentence to his already damning statement.

"It worked, didn't it?" He looked around at his companions before declaring hotly, "Besides, I'd like to have seen any of you come up with anything else! I wasn't about to die from asphyxiation from a stupid gas leak. I wanted to go out with a bang."

Struck by the absurdity by this statement, the rest of his team was rendered speechless for at least 10 seconds.

"Was that-" Snake choked out, disbelieving. "Was that a pun?"

Wolf stared at him, wide-eyed, before grinning back at him jovially.

"Man, I ought to punch you for that."

Eagle proceeded to do just that.

None of the men mentioned their current state of undress, or the threatening nature of the looming clouds, or Cub's absence, or the fact that it was getting late and when the sun set it would get bitingly, achingly cold; instead they decided on a direction to head off in and started walking. They needed to find society, and quickly. Cub's safety could rely on it.

ARARARARAR

It had been with no small amount of dread that he'd followed Yassen obediently but cautiously to what he thought was to assuredly be his inevitable doom. It was therefore with no small amount of confusion that he was led into a perfectly acceptable medium-sized room decorated entirely in various shades of cream, off-white and eggshell (all of which Jack had at one point in his life guaranteed him were entirely different) and outfitted with furniture definitely not befitting the life of a captive. He noticed Yassen was speaking to him, and pulled himself back into the real world, berating himself for zoning out when in the presence of a very dangerous, very skilled assassin.

"You've been moved since your last stay here," he heard Yassen say, and just clamped down on the urge to roll his eyes. That much is obvious, he thought, considering the last time I was here I was either in a fucking cell or your bedroom. He maintained his calm, zen exterior, though, and listened indifferently. "Bianca thought to get clothes ordered in for you in your size, which you could no doubt use, but not before a shower. The bathroom's through here," he gestured at a door set into the far wall, "and personal effects, toiletries and such can be found in the cabinet." He stopped and turned to see Alex staring at him blankly. "Yes?"

Alex swallowed dryly, and nodded at the other door in the room next to the bed.

"Where does that door go?"

Yassen stared back at him, and they maintained awkward eye contact for a few seconds before Yassen spoke.

"My room."

With that he left, calling over his shoulder that he'd have someone bring him food and water.

It wasn't until he'd bathed, eaten and changed – it wasn't until he'd lain down on his wonderfully soft, almost familiar, bed – that he stared up at the ceiling and wondered in total bewilderment as he resignedly drifted into a restless sleep: What the fuck is going on here?

Confused yet? You should be.

I find myself getting into my pajamas earlier and earlier these days. I just bought a new PJ top from bravissimo with a proper inbuilt bra for sleepy-times, and I kid you not, I could do gymnastics in this thing. Which I kinda have been. I've been bouncing around in it to test it out (which my neighbors loved, I'm sure). SO much support. Moreso than my usual bras, so I find myself getting home from college at 5 and being like "Is it too early to wear my PJs? PFFTno. Never too early."

MY CHOICE OF UNDERWEAR ASIDE, did you like it? Are you totally mindfucked yet? If you want any kind of clarification you can always ask me I guess, or you could just sit there and stubbornly not review. Your choice...

Pink Floyd is awesome, by the way.