The group came to an abrupt halt, immediately on guard at the sudden shots fired, and in seconds Wolf was off, jogging over to where Alex stood, back to the course checking over the gun in his hands.
He looked up as the man neared, tilting his head in hesitant curiosity at the serious expression.
"I gave you a heads up." he drawled humorlessly, turning his attention back to the gun.
"Just wanted to know if there's going to be more, or if that's it." Wolf craned his neck looking down to where the assassin was, shooting off a few more shots as he neared the end.
"Is that a paintball gun as well then?" turning his attention back to the spy, nodding to the gun.
"No." sunlight glinted off of the sleek black ceramic grip of the compact handgun as Alex turned it over in his hands.
"This one's real."
"The rifle too?"
"Standard issue L96."
"And it was loaded?"
"Not the whole time."
"Is it an SIS thing? What, just getting through the assault course not action packed enough for you?" Wolf scoffed, ribbing in sarcastic banter.
Alex snorted, letting his arms drop, holding the gun loosely at his side.
"Something like that." he muttered amusedly.
"But to answer your question-" Alex took a quick glance behind him, picking up on his mentor's quiet footsteps on the cold hard dirt.
"There's going to be more actual live fire."
"Empty a clip and reload." Yassen ordered, cutting the conversation short, replacing the paintball pistol into the empty holster on his thigh, giving the signal to start before darting back to get a vantage point of the entire course, following the spy with hawk-eyed focus.
Alex flew forward reaching into the side pocket on the left to grab a clip, reloading and locking with surprising ease.
Much more so than he had with the rifle, quickly readjusting his grip to accommodate the rope.
He climbed swiftly, dropping lightly on the other side, firing off two successive shots, landing within the two bright orange spots; one at the base of the monkey bars and the other halfway up on the end post.
He didn't hesitate biting down on the top of the chamber, freeing up his hands to swing through the bars, kip-swinging off of the last bar.
He grabbed his gun mid-air, tuck and landing, firing off another six shots in a zigzag in front of him before twisting to shoot the three shots that were hidden on the opposite side of the monkey bar posts, still moving forward.
He dropped into a crouch skidding at level with the balance beam, hitting another target toward the front bottom of the beam's first leg.
The momentum allowed him to jump up, using his free hand to vault him onto the beam itself.
He rushed forward, dismounting with half a turn to land backwards into a squat low enough to put himself in a vantage point to get the two targets on the end leg before springing up again to rotate back forward.
With thirteen down he had four more to go.
He sniped one of the pegs of the crawl tarp.
Three.
He caught two additional targets on the back of the pegs near his feet, forcing him to roll over and shoot from his back.
One.
He crawled out, chancing a glance back, spotting the last target close to the end more than likely to be overlooked as he crawled over.
Sneaky bugger.
He made the shot, emptying the magazine mid run toward the last hurdles, reloading, locking, and shooting at the tricky spot on the bottom edge of the hurdle, jumping it with considerable fluidity.
He fired off another three, side by side on the back of the trunk shaped hurdle, vaulting the other two to land into a roll.
He flicked the safety on as he stood back up, panting, gulping down air.
"You missed two."
Alex huffed in disbelief looking genuinely affronted.
"How…?!"
"On the ground in the gap between the first wall. The other one is in front of you right now." he gestured, mouth set thin, to the wooden border running around the course. And lo and behold, there it was, an obnoxiously bright orange target half buried behind a patch of wild grass.
Alex grimaced in chagrin.
He couldn't argue. It was definitely visible enough for him to have noticed.
He should have noticed.
"Fair enough…"
"Estimatedly, your time has not changed. Not too bad but you can do better."
Alex nodded.
Yassen Gregorovich seldom ever complimented anyone, this was the closest to praise he'd get from the man and in all honesty, he never really knew how to react.
"Oi-Cub!"
He heard Wolf's heavy footfalls coming up behind him.
"Yeah?"
"It's Fox." he held the two-way out.
"Urgent. It's secure."
Alex gingerly took the radio, pushing down the sudden wave of unease in his gut.
"Ben?" he clicked off, waiting for a response.
"Alex, I swear to god-please, please-" Ben emphasized sharply
"-for the love of all that is good, tell me you haven't tampered with your car's GPS."
The tone was uncharacteristically agitated, and it had the younger spy on edge as the adrenaline began to flood.
"What are you ta-"
"Just answer the damn question! Did you or did you not mess with your GPS?!"
"Not recent-Oh…"
"Oh?!" Ben hissed, cursing under his breath sounding genuinely distressed.
"'Oh' as in how long ago?!"
"After Paris."
"Paris? As in two years ago Paris...?"
He didn't bother to give a response. He'd already said enough. Ben knew.
"Christ-Alex-" the older spy took a sharp breath.
"MI5's vice head, Garret Feaux, he's been MIA for the past five days."
He felt his mouth go dry.
Things were about to get very very serious very quickly. He could already feel it.
"They found him dredged up under Albert Bridge near Battersea Park."
"Oh…?"
"A lot of the cameras weren't working, but some grunt at GCHQ managed to find footage of Feaux walking out of a chips shop getting jumped five days ago. Can't make out the suspect but you can see the smallest bit of the back of the car he got shoved in."
"And they think it's mine."
"They saw the car pass through an electric gate that required a key card. It's been tampered with as well. They found what made it malfunction. So they put an alert on any similar occurrences two days ago and Beacons came up flagged late last night. That's why they took your car."
"I haven't touched anything except for the GPS. I didn't mess with any other tech." he replied sharply.
"Yeah, well they found an EMP prototype from Smithers' lab not just in the hidden compartment in your dash, but inside of an added compartment. One that Smithers denied building in."
He felt a wave of dizziness wash over him as Ben's words slowly registered.
"And a passport. One that wasn't issued by 6. It's not registered anywhere in any list. Not here or abroad."
"Why would I even want to kill Feaux? I've got nothing against 5. And I've only ever met the guy like twice? And that was in passing at the intel summit."
There was a stretched pause before Ben answered, working to reign in the emotion. To keep things neutral.
"Thirteen days ago, when you were declared found, Feaux skipped over the Head-Baghat, and went straight to 6's internal investigations and submitted a formal investigatory request saying that he had some sort of evidence against a senior agent. As far as we know, he has submitted some sort of evidence but it's been bumped up to a full lock down. Not even Matthews is allowed to see it until they finish their investigation."
Alex swallowed thickly, taking a shaky breath waiting for Ben to continue.
"As of an hour ago, your status has been indefinitely suspended and you've been put under Mobilis Protocol. So for the time being, don't say anything. Don't do anything. Just keep your head down and stay put, alright? I'm with the Sergeant right now, but I've been called back to HQ so I've got to leave for now but I'll try to keep you updated. Yeah?"
Alex grunted an affirmative before clicking off.
Breathe.
Breathe.
"Fuck!"