Chapter 20 – This Is Wrong

"Sleep, Alex."

Yassen's voice betrayed the strain he must have felt, aggravation and tiredness creeping through his usually impeccable manners and tingeing his accent ever so slightly Russian.

Alex fidgeted instead, but quietly. Tiny chinks of light illuminated equally tiny areas of the container where metal walls didn't quite meet the metal ceiling, throwing the rest of the container into an even starker darkness. It was a sickly kind of light – fluorescent and vaguely yellow – and Alex hated it. Hated the container; hated this stupid situation. How had his life come to this? Hadn't he been happy, once? He supposed he must have been to a certain extent, as most children are… and hadn't Ian been happy? He turned to roll onto his side, but stopped as his ribs protested. Of course, that option wasn't that much better, so he fidgeted a bit more to distract himself from that line of thought. One of the chinks of light rippled as the man underneath it sat up in a graceful move, entirely incongruous to the setting.

"We have only so many bandages, Alex. Desist your wriggling. You will reopen your wounds."

Alex stopped.

Ian had been happy, he decided. He hadn't been ready, he knew this now – ready to have a child, to quit his job, to be responsible – but he had tried. If only it had been enough. Ian's position as the 'fun uncle', never really taking a fatherly stance, always there with some fun new activity or skill to learn but never getting beyond a stilting, awkward kind of relationship emotionally… maybe if it had been different, he never would have gotten so attached to their housekeeper, wouldn't have needed her to stay past the time she could have reasonably been expected to leave, could have protected her from this mess. Jack…

"Alex."

Alex jolted out of his thoughts with a start. He'd been picking at the cut on his hand, an awful anxious habit of his he couldn't seem to break, and the bullet trail from his escape was now once again bleeding sluggishly. Yassen's hand was on his, gently prying it off and away from the ragged mess that he'd created. Tired and un-medicated, Alex felt his skin shiver in apprehension. Through some kind of high created by morphine and adrenaline, he'd managed to set aside his instinctive fear for this man, but right now–

"You're too close-" he managed to choke out, before dry heaving. The other man snatched his hand back as if burnt and stuttered in place as he appeared to deliberate between attempting to comfort the boy and leave him be. With the delay, and Yassen's proximity, in the front of his mind, Alex could almost feel hives break out along his skin.

"I don't–please –just get away!" Alex breathed out, his voice almost reaching a screech towards the end. Yassen scrambled to the other end of the container, a sight that would have made Alex laugh at any other time but now, as Alex tried to calm his breathing.

'Tried' being the operative word.

Okay, think. It's not like he's shown himself to have any designs on you, nefarious or otherwise. He's been cordial – friendly, even. Alex breathed deeply through his nose and out through his mouth. In, out. He's had plenty of opportunity to take advantage of me, so far, and he hasn't. In. That's got to mean something, right? Out. I mean, here I am, stuck in a small enclosed space with a world-renowned assassin –in, out, in, out–And I'm still alive! And well, or, well, mostly well – that is to say, no new injuries, and–

A whirring sound; a clunk; a slight drop in his stomach as the container is lifted into the air; the total absence of his stomach as he realises that there can be no escape: these are the things it takes for Alex Rider to have a panic attack.

The walls are suddenly closing in. Yassen's uncharacteristically diminutive figure is looming. The whirring of the crane is reminiscent of so many close calls in his past; the shifting shafts of light seem to come as if through prison bars. He can't escape. There has always been a way out. In every situation in his life, there was been A Way Out: an undiscovered exit, a lax guard, some asshole who wants sexual gratification and would be stupid enough to lose control to get it. Here, there is just a trapdoor and a rapidly closing window of time in which to use it.

The lurching of the container stops, and with an almighty jolt, the window closes.

The container is down.

There is no escape.

His thoughts circle dangerously. He's only vaguely aware of the symbolism of his hand gripping at the scar over his heart, more concerned with the frankly alarming pace that it's beating at. Despite the emotional haze, one thought cuts through to the forefront of his mind. It's hazy, but it's the best he can do as he feels more than sees his vision start to grey out.

One simple stab in the leg, and the auto-injector does the rest.

Yassen looks vaguely alarmed, he manages to note somewhere in the recesses of his mind – he'll probably consider the implications of that later. Right now, he just focuses on maintaining his breathing and trying to ignore the thoughts swimming and circling, swimming and circling, swimming and…

His thoughts aren't doing much of anything now. It feels like… An analogy for it would be, perhaps, if you imagined your brain was made of tiny boxes… and the box of it that held Alex The Spy in it… Well, it didn't exactly disappear… but it certainly made it seem less important. Checking that his breathing was holding steady (it was), he finally relaxes.

"Sorry," he mumbles at length, still not making eye contact with the assassin a metre or so away from him. "So it turns out that I'm not really over that whole 'somebody tortured me, maybe it was you, maybe it wasn't' thing. And maybe being in an enclosed space with you isn't such a good idea when I'm not high on drugs or adrenaline or endorphins or shit." He steadfastly avoids looking at Yassen as he speaks, staring instead somewhere into the far distance between the chemical toilet and a crate of inflatable lilos. His nose wrinkles as the acid from the pool of bile on the floor hits him, causing him to add: "Sorry about the mess."

Yassen looks struck.

"I didn't-"

"So you say. And I'll get over it." Alex looks somewhere in between Yassen's eyebrows in order to feign looking him in the eye. He's not sure if he falls for it, but equally he's not sure if he cares. "Until then, how many of those morphine packs do you have?"

"Your father–"

"–Would not want me to be incapacitated by panic attacks, and would approve of me using whatever means necessary to overcome them for the good of my mission, which, by the way, happens to be escaping England both safe and sane. Don't talk to me about my father."

Yassen visibly grit his teeth.

"You didn't know your father."

"And neither did you." Those angrily hissed words echoed throughout the container. "You loved him and he betrayed you. How did that make you feel? How do you think I feel?!" The silence was deafening and emotionally charged but for the rasp of Alex's breathing. "Then let me have this!"

A minute must have passed, if not more, before the bag of supplies was thrown his way. It fell to the floor by Alex's feet, its contents clattering out onto the floor of the container. Bandages, a few clothes, three more shots of morphine… no gun – not that he blamed Yassen for that particular decision. Snatching up the injector tubes, he began secreting them away in the many pockets of the cargo shorts Yassen had provided him with.

Excitement momentarily over, he started to properly feel the drug's effects, as if someone was wrapping his brain in cotton wool. He lay back down on his cot, suddenly rather sleepy.

A voice interrupted him as he began to doze.

"I thought you were better. I thought you had more self control."

Alex snorted, and mumbled a reply.

"I'm a spy, not an assassin. I hide my emotions, not kill them off completely."

He didn't expect a reply, and didn't stay awake to hear one.

A/N: So I got a really angry review (just kidding, I thought it was hilarious) which said:

"You said "Action is coming up, and soon..."

Well I was wondering what your definition of "soon" was because it has been more than a YEAR since you updated."

…to which I was like SHIT, brah, has it been that long?!

So, like, I wrote a thing. T'aint action, but it's a thing.