Chapter 27: Gunpoint

A/N: Eugh, I just looked at my document manager and it's hideously depleted. Sorry guys!

I can never remember what chapter I'm on with this fic. Anyway, my apologies. You ought to have had this long ago, but there was an incident with me opening an attachment with this chapter in on my emails, so as to work on it on a different computer, and I finished up and clicked save, but forgot to save it too anywhere, and closed it and lost what I'd done…which wasn't much, thankfully, but I then left it for a long time, terrified of the set-like-concrete writer's block I'd find when I tackled it again. Because nothing's worse than having something written down, exactly right, and then losing it and not being able to remember how it went, and forcing yourself to write something that you feel is sub-standard. I think it came out OK, though I'm afraid the first scene is rhythmically repetitive…it's quite hard, actually, to write a scene of two emotionless people having an emotional moment. I'm quite fascinated with Julia Rothman, actually, and keep wanting to describe the exact emotions she's faking with each sentence, along with Yassen's mental response to them, but I imagine you guys would lose patience with that if I did it for four pages…

Maybe it would help if I proofread it?

'What did you do to me?' Yassen demanded. One of his hands rested on the back of the chair, gripping it until the knuckles turned white.

'What did I do to you?' Julia Rothman asked. 'Well, nothing. Not personally, at least. I've never been much of a surgeon.'

Yassen chuckled, shaking his head slowly. There wasn't much else he could do. He sighed, straightened himself up in the chair and spun it round to face the door. Mrs Rothman stepped into the room, pulled out another chair and sat down opposite him.

'I was wondering if we might be seeing you here soon, Mr Gregorovich,' she said quietly.

Yassen tried a different line of questioning. 'Why did you kidnap Roberta?' he asked.

Mrs Rothman's eyes widened as though in surprise. 'I'm sure you have figured that out for yourself by now, Mr Gregorovich.'

Yassen nodded. It was obvious. 'You used her as bait,' he said.

'Partly,' Mrs Rothman agreed. 'We had to locate you somehow. I think your ruse of hiding with the Rider boy and his friends was quite remarkable, by the way. I was certain that it would be only a matter of time before we or MI6 managed to flush you out, but you had gone completely to ground. It was days before Ash suggested that Alex might be responsible...' She trailed off, her eyes focussed on the ground without really seeing it, thoughtful. Watching, Yassen marvelled anew at her facade. However flawless his poker face, he knew that all he'd ever really achieved towards self-concealment was an icy absence of emotion. This perfectly balanced appearance of thoughtfulness, emotion and delicate womanhood was something else entirely. John Rider had mastered it too: the art of seeming like a normal, friendly human being. And Alex, of course. Yassen wondered how much of the boy's cheerfulness was genuine, and how much of it was just an act.

Mrs Rothman spoke again, more briskly this time. 'Of course, I was incredulous at first when Ash brought me his theory. But then I started to think. It wouldn't be the first time the Riders have surprised us. It wouldn't be the first time an assassin has escaped detection by hiding in plain sight. So I had Ash do some scouting around Clara Foster's house, and he happened to spot you and young Roberta, out walking during the night.

'He told me that you talked, quarrelled and separated. Roberta began to walk home without you. You waited for some time before following.'

'She quarrelled with me,' Yassen murmured. Mrs Rothman smiled.

'Now, Ash has always been somewhat perverse. It would have been the ideal time to apprehend you, but instead he chose to follow Roberta. He picked her up just outside the doorway of Clara's house. He was quite proud of that. Of course it was a very risky thing to do – you might have taken her abduction as your cue to disappear – but he was curious, you see. He wondered whether you would come after her. And even if you hadn't, kidnapping her wouldn't have been an entirely useless action. It certainly helped to bring Alex Rider to us, and in any rate we were looking to obtain someone –'

'For use in your scientific experiments,' Yassen finished.

'You are quick!' Mrs Rothman exclaimed. 'Yes, you've been reading up on that, haven't you?' She glanced towards the computer, and for a moment Yassen saw something that wasn't thoughtful or friendly, something venomous, flashing in her eyes. 'As you saw, we found that the extremely invasive mental conditioning – surgery that completely alters a person's mind – proved successful on a Scorpia operative who was already almost on the right track – in this case Ash. We want to take it to the next level. What will the effect be on the brain of an ordinary civilian, but one with a rather fierce and anarchistic outlook? Particularly one with ties to Alex Rider, a decided member of the opposition?'

'You're going to experiment on her?'

'It's perfectly safe,' Mrs Rothman said. 'I think she'll make a fascinating subject, don't you?'

Yassen breathed in slowly through his nose, dipping his eyes to the ground to think. So Roberta was here after all. If things had gone a little differently, he and Alex could both have found what they wanted here tonight. He wondered whether there were guards outside the door, and if Julia Rothman had a hidden gun. Would it be possible to make a break for it? But for what? Where would he run? And besides, Mrs Rothman still had an answer he wanted.

'And what did you do to me?' he asked again.

This time she answered him. 'Well, Mr Gregorovich, it is quite an interesting story. You remember John Rider?'

'Of course,' Yassen replied, one corner of his mouth quirking up in the ghost of a grin, wryly. Naturally he remembered.

'It began with his death.

'Now I want you to understand, Yassen, that what I am going to tell you is not to diminish the work you have done with us. When you were brought in at fifteen years old, you were one of the most promising students I personally had ever encountered, and I believe that you would have gone on to have just as impressive a career as you have had, without any intervention, had it not been for your attachment to Rider Senior. The psychologist encouraged that friendship, you know; he persuaded the board and the principle at Malagosto that it was beneficial, and I still agree with his reasoning. The sad fact is that many people in our line of work do find it difficult to form friendships, and that can lead to a deteriorating state of mind. Depression, doubt and so forth. But you seemed perfectly happy. Cordial towards your fellow students, comfortable with your trainer, and completely ruthless.

'But then, of course, John was killed. Shot down by M16. I was very shocked myself when I heard the news and you...well, you were only nineteen, and you were distraught. You seemed to lose your focus – the psychiatrist spoke with you several times, and he reported that your whole world view seemed to have been rocked. You expressed doubt in your vocation, talked about leaving, even about ending it all.

'So the board convened. It might seem extreme, just for one operative, but you were no ordinary student. I flew down and met with you myself, and we talked.'

Yassen's eyes were icy gimlets. Of course they would have sent her, the woman, to sympathise with his nineteen-year-old self. He could imagine himself talking, and her listening, voice soft, eyes wide and concerned, carefully feeding him exactly the things she wanted him to believe...he could imagine it, but he couldn't remember.

'I don't recall,' he said.

'Ah,' said Mrs Rothman. 'No, you wouldn't. I'll explain that in a moment. But I remember very well what you said to me. I found you very engaging. You didn't want to leave, you see. This was the only life you had ever wanted, the only life you could envisage for yourself, and all your memories of security and companionship were here. You expressed disgust at your own doubts; you couldn't be rid of them, but nor did you want to be swayed by them. You told me that you wished everything could be the way it was before. And I told you about a way this might be possible. An experimental brain surgery that wouldn't fundamentally alter who you were, but might be helpful in – ah – rearranging a few things to be more as you would like them. Essentially it represses certain circuits in your brain – actions that would lead to guilt or self-doubt, for example. I explained to you that the risk of ill effects was very minimal. We had already conducted experiments on animals and a few disposable prisoners; the only doubt was whether or not it would actually work. And I was telling the truth. It worked perfectly, and you have been in good health from that day to this.'

Yassen frowned. What she was saying made perfect sense, except that try as he would, he couldn't remember the period of doubt that she had described, or the conversation, or recovering from brain surgery.

'Why don't I remember?' he asked.

'There was one thing I neglected to mention at the time. You were also our first experiment with memory modification.'

'Memory modification?' Yassen echoed. There was something uneasy stirring in the pit of his stomach.

'Yes. Our surgeons were successful in erasing all recollection of the operation or the circumstances preceding it from your mind. A ticklish business, but finally effective. The result was something like the blind spot in a person's eye: unless you try to see there, you don't notice anything amiss. Your brain simply fills in the blind spot for you, so that it seems as though your field of vision is complete. And unless someone reminded you of the incidents erased, you wouldn't notice there was any memory gap at all. You recalled sadness at your mentor's death. Nothing more.'

'Until now,' Yassen said.

'I beg your pardon?'

'During the assignment with Ash, I was having flashbacks, dreams...'

'Ah, yes.' Mrs Rothman's eyes hardened. 'Shock, I believe. The result of encountering Rider's son after fourteen years, quickly followed by your first major injury...you were shaken, I don't doubt, and that compromised the modifications that had been successful up until that point. You see, as I was explaining to you before, the power of the surgery is in its discreteness. It changes you so little that you don't notice it, but that does mean that it can be reversed in certain circumstances. It was never supposed to stand up to a violent reminder such as the appearance of a son. That is why we are hoping that the new method – the procedure which Ash has undergone – will prove more permanent. But it has its drawbacks too.' She sighed wistfully. 'So many problems. Myself, I have always found science to be frightfully tedious. Vital, of course, but so desperately complicated. Which is why I have made business my field. I do hope I've given you all the information you wanted. What? Another question?'

'Just the one,' Yassen assured her. 'The heart in the office that scared Wolf. What on Earth was the point of that?'

Julia Rothman laughed softly. 'The physical enhancements you witnessed in Ash require deep surgery,' she explained. 'The liquid you saw in the lab is a growth medium in which organs and tissues can survive while the operation is in progress.'

'I see,' Yassen nodded. He met her eyes. There was a pause, and he felt a coldness settle over the room, clinging to his skin like falling dew. He had finished asking his questions; the pretence of chat was over. Now they were coming to it.

He went first.

'You ordered Ash to kill me.'

Mrs Rothman had lost her friendly air. Her voice was flat and professional. 'We both know this business, Yassen. I considered you to have outstayed your usefulness. I'm sure you won't hold it against me.'

'And what happens to me now?'

'As I have told you already, I was considerably impressed by your success in evading us. I truly believe that, if your curiosity hadn't got the better of you, you would have got clean away. And your initial escape was quite remarkable. An enhanced agent, supposedly superior to any ordinary human being, set on you without warning, and you still survived! Not to mention managing to track the information you were seeking to this place.'

Mrs Rothman reached for the handle of the desk draw. She reached into it and pulled out a gun.

'Mr Gregorovich, it appears that I made a miscalculation. Clearly you are still capable, and I would like to welcome you back into the organisation.' She spun the gun in her hand so that the grip was pointing towards Yassen. He reached out slowly and took it.

'Excellent,' Mrs Rothman purred. 'And now why don't you go and complete your assignment?'


'How much,' Clara said, 'on a scale of one to ten, does this suck?'

'A lot,' Taylor replied, resting his chin glumly on the steering wheel of the jeep.

'I know, right? And I'm cold.'

'Yeah.' Taylor sighed, puffing out a cloud of steam, and took her hands to warm them. 'We should have gone with Alex.'

Clara drew away. 'Don't be ridiculous!' she said. Josh and Jane both looked up at the sharpness in her voice.

'I'm not being ridiculous.' Taylor's voice, too, was steely. 'I know!' he said, holding up a hand as Clara and Jane both opened their mouths. 'I know there's nothing we could do, but he's our mate. I'm not being ridiculous.'

Clara's eyes were boring into him. 'Don't do anything stupid,' she ordered.

'"Don't do anything stupid?" What stupid thing could I possibly –'

'Guys,' Josh interrupted firmly. He didn't say anything else, but his meaning was clear. This is tedious. Shut up.

There was a pause as they each accepted Josh's warning, and then Jane carefully began again.

'I understand what Taylor is saying. Of course we can't help, but it feels wrong just sitting here doing nothing. Friends should be able to help each other.'

'Yeah,' Josh said dispassionately. He leaned his head back as far as it would go and closed his eyes. 'It sucks.'

Clara, Taylor and Jane exchanged glances. They waited, but Josh didn't move. His eyelids flickered slightly over his closed eyes, and he drummed his fingers lightly on his knees with a soft scratching of woollen gloves against denim. Other than that he was completely still. Taylor shifted slightly in his seat, glancing out of the window at the dark, barely-discernible shapes of branches. Clara gave a sharp sigh as though to say, 'it's all very well for him' and looked at Josh again. Jane caught her expression, cleared her throat and spoke.

'Um…K Unit said we should be ready to drive the cars away if they come back in a hurry, right? Well, we'll need both cars…so Clara, maybe you should, um, move over to the convertible.'

'Yes,' Clara replied, in a voice that was probably too loud for the small space. They didn't all have Josh's patience. 'Good thinking. I'll do that then.'

She reached for the door handle and pulled it open. Icy air and the smell of damp leaves swirled in, and Jane and Taylor huddled instinctively away from the draught. Josh cracked one eye open and met Clara's.

'Convertible? Take my coat.'

'Thanks,' Clara said tersely, already shivering. She grabbed the heavy black coat off his knee and clambered out of the jeep, closing the door hastily behind her before too much heat escaped.

Even the few yards' walk was unpleasant. She hurried from one car to the other, wriggling into her coat and rummaging in her pocket for her keys as she went. She located them, reached her car door and bent down, trying to locate the keyhole in the dark.

'Bloody stupid excuse for something to do,' she muttered, teeth chattering. 'Why it has to be this night of all – aha!'

The key slid into the lock with a satisfying scrunch of metal on metal, and she pulled the car door open and jumped swiftly inside.

It was scarcely warmer beneath the thin hood than it had been in the open air. And horribly dark. She could still see the shadow of the jeep to her right, but that didn't lessen the uncomfortable press of the forest on the other side. Clara reached forward with one hand, keeping the other clamped firmly beneath her arm for warmth, and stabbed clumsily at the i-pod in the dock. The menu flashed up briefly, and was then replaced by a dark screen, a yellow exclamation mark and a message:

Warning: Low battery. Connect to power immediately.

'Oh, perfect!' Clara groaned in disgust, flopping back in the car seat. She glanced uneasily through the windscreen. 'Come on, Alex, wherever you are…'

She leaned her forehead against the window and peered out at the jeep. Next moment condensation bloomed up the pane as she exhaled. Clara kept her hands tucked up her sleeves and watched it slowly fade.

There was a flare of light. Taylor had found a lighter and cigarettes in the jeep's glove compartment. Watching the practised way his thumb flipped the lighter, Clara recalled other cold memories like this: a frosty morning when the bus had been late, before she'd even dreamed of owning a car. That had been before Taylor had joined the choir, when they were still enemies, but that day they'd had a truce, and Taylor had borrowed a lighter from his brothers and used it to make a tiny bonfire out of twigs and dead leaves which had to be re-lit every thirty seconds, and they'd crouched and fed it with dead leaves while his brothers huddled over their cigarettes and swore and spat on the frosty pavement…she'd wondered aloud whether the spit would freeze before the bus came, like in the Arctic where you could pour boiling water out of a kettle and watch it freeze into ice crystals before it hit the ground.

'Does it?' they'd asked. 'Does it really do that, boffin? Cool!'

Taylor lit a cigarette and bobbed it in the window, taking drawing short puffs of smoke into his cheeks and blowing them straight out again to keep it lit. She waved back at the little glowing light, and then looked out over the bonnet again.

Scrunch.

Clara sat up straighter. Surely she hadn't really heard footsteps. She was just getting strung up, letting the darkness and silence get to her.

Scrunch.

There it was again! The sounds were coming from the opposite side of the car to the light from the jeep, and they were definitely getting louder. Louder and closer. Scrunch scrunch scrunch. A person, running through leaf-litter.

She tensed, one hand on the passenger door, her heart in her mouth…and then Yassen broke through the stand of trees and slowed to a walk.

Clara threw the door open and flung her legs out, pulling herself upright. 'Yassen!' she exclaimed. He heard her at once and turned. 'Yassen, what's going on, are you O –'

She stopped. There was a pistol pointing at her chest.

'Huh?' was the most intelligent thing she could think of to say. There was a roaring in her ears, a pounding in her chest, a kind of twisting lurch in her stomach – but no real fear, not yet. She couldn't quite make sense of this real life gun, pointing at her, with nothing in between. And the idea of its being to do with Yassen's hand didn't fit either. It had to be a trick. Photoshop maybe. Because Yassen was a person who she knew, and guns…they were fiction. They didn't really happen. Not in real life.

'Yassen?' she said again, almost quizzically. And then more sharply: 'what are you doing?'

He gave a smile. It wasn't utterly devoid of humour, and that was the scary thing.

'I'm completing my assignment,' he answered.

'What?' Clara asked, in a faster, higher tone.

'You don't remember? My assignment to kill you.'

She looked at him. He raised the gun.

Her body understood that, even if her mind didn't. It jerker her backwards.

'No!' she said. 'No, wait!'

Click.

The safety catch, a small, dispassionate voice informed her.

'No, please –!'

She saw the joints flexing in his hand. And it seemed that from somewhere off to the side, she could also hear running footsteps. And hear a husky adolescent voice, roaring:

'Stop!'

She froze as a figure leapt between them, its back to her and both arms raised. Yassen stepped back smartly, bringing the gun up against his shoulder. Away from her.

She slumped against the car door.

Alex Rider.

A/N: Cor.

We're really getting into the quick of the story here. These are the scenes I've had in my head from the very beginning. So if you're still not impressed…maybe it's time to give up. If you're enjoying it, on the other hand, this hopefully means I'll be inspired to update more than once every three months. Thought sixth form has hit me like a bat out of hell…but at least I'll be trying to find time to update.

A quick note: since the start of this story, I have got to know my OCs a lot better and to bring some of them, most notably Roberta, into a more prominent role in the story, while moving others back. I have also learnt the term 'Mary Sue.' However, Clara was originally intended to be the heroine of this story, which is why these climactic chapters are focussing in a bit more on her. Hope you're all cool with that.

I just had to be typing all this spooky-darkness stuff on a night when I'm home alone and have just had a nightmare, didn't I. Lol.

True xxx

Saremisam17: Glad you enjoyed the chapter. And yes, be careful of viruses. I hope it's sorted itself out since last time. And I know Alex would probably find crocodiles scary even after all he's been through, but still…if he was the snarky boy wonder we knew, he'd have enumerated all the lethal situations he'd been in and laid out Dezzie's lameness for all to see. Because that's how he roles OK!

Wait, I think I replied to you already. But I'm going to leave this here anyway, because it's already typed and people deserve shout-outs.

Peace!

P.S: Oh my gosh I just went cold. Because you know that saving-to-emails thing I mentioned at the start? I just nearly did it again. Only with eight pages instead of three. CRIKEY, that was a close one!