Chapter 34: Cleanup

Disclaimer: Alas, I still do not own Alex, but did you notice how AH stole all my ideas in 'Scorpia Rising?'

A/N: I was going to make this part of the last chapter, but it was getting kinda long, so I thought I'd cut it. And besides I'd gone for that summing-up tone in the last two scenes, but I wanted this to be a more immersive scene, so I thought if I broke the chapters here you'd read it as such. See the amount of thought I put into this stuff, guys?

So I knew all about the soppy moon-and-ice-themed romance, but it was really hard to think what to do with the bad guys. I am eternally grateful to bestobsessed and Essence of Gold (yes, my mother and sister are both on fanfiction), who helped me come up with the idea for this chapter and have been my bunny-buddies, advisors and front-line fangirls. Yay!

'How are you progressing with the clean-up, Doctor Three?' Mr Kurst asked.

As Julia Rothman's partner in Ash and Yassen Gregorovich's briefing, Doctor Three had been given the task of dealing with the aftermath of the Clara Foster operation. He looked slowly around the table at his fellow board members and cleared his throat before he replied.

'I have spoken with our client,' he said, 'and we agreed that it would be best to terminate the operation. As you know, he originally requested that Foster's death seem accidental, and there is no hope of that now. The secret services and a number of the target's own friends and acquaintances are aware of the situation; if she were to be killed, we could end up with a martyr on our hands. Our client has decided to simply let the matter rest and hope that she does not publish any more controversial poetry. It was only one book, after all; it is unlikely that her influence on the world's thinking will be very great. Besides, she is rather well protected.'

There was a pause. The faces of the board were as impassive as ever, but somehow nobody seemed willing to meet anybody else's eyes. The name of Alex Rider seemed to hover in the air of the board room, as sarcastic a putdown as any the boy himself could have come out with.

Dr Three continued. 'I have also terminated the search for Gregorovich. I consider the effort that it would take to locate a man of his resource to be disproportionate to the amount of damage he could do to us. He knew more than most agents, certainly, being a better agent himself, but 'more' is still not a great deal. He could not compromise us seriously, and I do not believe that he has any wish to do so. Ash, on the other hand, is a different matter. I am afraid that with his new skills he will be even harder than Gregorovich to locate, but our efforts continue. He remains unique; his body could provide valuable information to whatever organisation or government locates him first. If we manage to recapture him, we make be able to retrieve some of the information lost during the debacle in Scotland. Fortunately most of our research on the workings of the brain remains intact, but those teenagers managed to destroy most of the files detailing the modifications made to Ash's body, which the British research branch had not yet published to the rest of the organisation. The equipment used to perform the surgery was also burnt. With the majority of the Scottish staff in MI6 custody, we cannot hope to regain the advances they made unless we can examine the product of those advances: Ash.'

'But he remains elusive, you say?' the Australian board member asked.

'Yes.'

'Perhaps we should direct our efforts towards liberating those of our agents whom MI6 is holding.'

'Perhaps,' Kurst agreed. 'I shall look into it as a long-term project, but I am afraid it will not be an easy matter.' He turned back to Dr Three. 'And what of Mrs Rothman?'

'Oh, there is no need to worry on that front.' Dr Three rarely smiled, and when he did so now it was enough to make even Zeljan Kurst's stomach turn. 'She has been taken care of.'

At that moment there was a soft knocking on the door, and a woman stepped into the room, pushing a metal trolley with several shelves in front of her.

'Tea or coffee, gentlemen?' she asked.

'Tea would be lovely, thank you,' Dr Three said pleasantly. The other board members were staring in silence. One by one, they were gradually working out what they were seeing, but their brains were still refusing to accept what was right before their eyes.

The woman's dark, very slightly greying curls were tied back beneath a neat service cap. The face beneath them seemed to have aged by twenty years. Its old mask of powder was gone, as was the red lipstick, the mascara, the glimmer of diamonds at ears and throat. But it was more than that. The eyes had changed. The fierce, driven glitter had gone out of them, and when she moved it was not with the sudden poise of a scorpion, but slowly, carefully, as though she wasn't quite sure whether her feet would hit the ground or carry on right through it.

All in all, Dr Three could hardly blame his colleagues for not believing that she was Julia Rothman.

'Our fellow executive managed to escape from the facility shortly before MI6 arrived,' he explained. 'Her staff were not so lucky, but it seems she had contingency plans for herself. When she arrived at my office in Venice I considered shooting her, but one of our medical research teams wanted a subject. All our psychiatric research thus far has been geared towards making a mind more aggressive. Our scientists wished to know if the surgery used on Ash and Gregorovich could be made to work the other way.'

'Would you like sugar, sir?' Mrs Rothman asked.

'Yes please,' Dr Three replied. 'Three cubes.'

All eyes watched as the lumps dropped one by one into the fluted china cup.

'There you are, sir,' Mrs Rothman said, handing Dr Three the cup. She glanced around the table. 'Anyone else…?'

'Oh, uh…' The Australian jerked himself visibly back to his senses. 'Yes, I'll have coffee, please.'

One at a time, the other board members voiced their requests.

'Tea.'

'Coffee.'

'Tea.'

'Tea.'

As Mrs Rothman handed the Australian his cup, her hand shook a little.

'Are you alright, ma'am?' he asked.

'Oh, yes, thank you, I'm quite alright,' she answered. Her voice had changed too: the studied femininity backed with steel was gone; the Welsh accent was more pronounced. She looked to Dr Three and he smiled reassuringly back.

'The surgery was unprecedented and extremely invasive,' he told the room at large. 'It is possible that the doctors overdid it a little.'

Mrs Rothman took no notice of his comment. She continued around the table, handing out drinks, and then nodded and pushed her trolley out of the door again.

'I am sure we are all agreed that an operative who has failed twice – against the same agent – ' there was a collective wince – 'is ripe for retirement. And members to whom retirement is suggested become tiresome. They attempt to prove their worth and only succeed in creating more trouble. They come for revenge and make a mess. I don't like to criticise my colleges, but the idea of putting an assassin as high-profile as Gregorovich on a minor operation such as this – and pairing him with Ash, no less! – was rather unwise. It was necessary to get rid of her somehow.'

There was a silence, but nobody broke it, so Dr Three spoke again. 'I consider this outcome preferable to killing her,' he said. 'You know what it is like when somebody high up in an organisation is removed. Little things that they used to be in charge of suddenly have to be reallocated; agents and contacts who had a link to them become uncooperative or even try to make trouble. Then they have to be dealt with, and that depletes human resources…much better to, ah, persuade her to quietly step down.'

'Does she remember?' Levi Kroll had found his voice at last. He looked pale.

'The doctors are not sure exactly how much she knows,' Dr Three replied. 'The surgery is still experimental. However, I know that they placed the emphasis on, shall we say, changing her outlook, rather than leaving gaping holes in her memory, which, apparently, a subject tends to notice. As far as I can make out, she just doesn't see things in quite the same way as we do any more. As far as she is concerned, she was once a member of the board and now she is not, and it does not occur to her to wonder why. She seems perfectly content.' He gave a small, satisfied nod, steepling his fingers. 'She is still perfectly happy to discuss operational matters with me; she can even, with a little careful handling, be allowed to convey instructions to agents. We won't have any trouble from her personal contacts, as I said. And, of course, it saves our finding a secure tea lady.'

'Ahem.' Kurst cleared his throat. 'Thank you, Doctor Three. The search for Ash will continue, Foster and Gregorovich can be left to themselves, and Mrs Rothman…has been taken care of. That is all most satisfactory.'

He and Dr Three looked steadily at one another along the length of the table, and he knew that each could see past the other's poker face. The solution to the problem of Julia Rothman was an admirable one, but still he was uneasy. Criminals never trusted one another any more, and after today they would trust each other even less.

Every other member's eyes were still fixed on the door, and Kurst knew that each of them was wondering if they were seeing their own future behind the panelled wood.

Mrs Rothman stepped out into the street and looked up at the grey January sky. Chilly puffs of wind were gusting down the street, and as she watched drops of moisture began so speckle the pavement.

'Oh dear,' she said to the nearest passer-by. 'It's starting to rain.'

'The weather in this country,' he agreed, stopping beside her and opening a large, black umbrella. 'Are you crossing the street? Here, you might as well stay dry.'

'Thank you, dear,' Mrs Rothman smiled. The man offered her his arm, she stepped under the umbrella, and they crossed the road together when the light turned green.

They walked arm in arm as far as a brick bus shelter at the side of the road.

'This is where I stop,' Mrs Rothman said, stepping inside. 'Are you catching a bus?'

'No.' The man shook his head. 'I have a vehicle parked at the edge of town.'

'Really? That's quite a walk.'

'Yeah, but I like walking,' the man said, grinning. He spoke with a slight Australian accent, Mrs Rothman noticed. Now that they were no longer walking side by side and she could look into his face, she saw that his chin and mouth were covered in a thick black scarf, and that he wore the hood of his coat up, throwing his face into shadow. That was all perfectly normal for the time of year, but as she looked into his overcast eyes, they seemed to be glittering strangely. She wondered if she was having one of her funny turns. Those eyes were frightening…

Then suddenly something fell into place in her mind, and she smiled. As he took in her expression the man's face became troubled in its turn. He stared at her from beneath his umbrella, trying to make her out exactly as she had been doing to him a second ago.

Mrs Rothman chuckled. 'Don't worry, dear,' she said. 'I won't tell.'

The man frowned for a moment more, but then he smoothed his expression out and smiled. 'Thanks. It was nice to have met you.'

'You too,' she called after him as he turned and strode off up the darkening road.

He moved at a brisk walk which wouldn't have struck anyone he passed as out of the ordinary. A person following him, however, might have been surprised to find that even though it was a good two and a half miles to the town border, he never once slowed his pace, even when the road began to slope uphill. He walked on past the last of the houses, ignored the public car park and ducked through the hedge into a little stand of trees. They were almost bare now, only a few dead leaves clinging to the branches, but as he pushed deeper even the bare twigs were enough to block out most of the fading daylight, creating a dim bolthole that was soothing and safe.

The man flung off the trench coat which had made him look vaguely respectable, revealing a crumpled and travel-stained set of clothes underneath. He bundled up the coat and pushed it into a large hiker's rucksack which he had produced from beneath a cover of brambles. He shrugged the rucksack on and then rummaged in the leaf litter, pushing the brown leaves aside until he had unearthed the vehicle he had brought to town.

A hoverboard.

He didn't know what had compelled him to risk going right up to one of Scorpia's safe houses. It was a dangerous thing to do, even though he was sure he could out-strip any agent they sent after him now. Speaking to Julia Rothman had been doubly reckless, but when he had seen her in the street he hadn't been able to believe his eyes. He had had to speak to her to make sure. And he would have still believed he was mistaken if she hadn't recognised him.

In a way, though, he wasn't surprised at all. That was what Scorpia did to all its people in the end. They had killed Max Grendel when he wanted to retire. They had sent him himself after Yassen Gregorovich when they believed Yassen was no longer useful. And now Julia Rothman had become another victim of her own experiments. Yet in a way, he wondered whether he should really be pitying her. Was her past life something any person would really want to remember?

Either way, they were both out of it now.

Free from Scorpia, free from MI6, and free at last from John and Alex Rider, Ash urged his hoverboard up into the air and swept off down the dark road, into the night.