Alex stood, a little overwhelmed at the choice before him. It was Jack's birthday in a few days' time, and he had decided to buy her a houseplant (or several smaller ones) but he hadn't expected there to be so much choice in the garden centre. There were succulents and cacti that needed much less attention than normal houseplants, or there were orchids or hyacinths or plants that he'd never heard of like bromelia. Some plants that flowered, some that were just green, others with different coloured leaves.

Deciding that Jack needed all the help that she could get to keep the chosen plant or plants alive, Alex settled on a cactus or succulent of some variety. After a long period of indecision and reading about the various plants in front of him, he chose a selection of Sempervivums (which he planned to plant in a terrarium), an Echeveria 'Blue Frills' and a Kalanchoe blossfeldiana. Happy with his decision, Alex wandered around the garden centre, picking up the various bits he needed to assemble a terrarium, and then headed for the café.

He knew from experience that the lemon drizzle cake that they sold was outstanding (two years ago, he might have described the cake as 'to die for', but that had almost been a reality for him too many times to now say the words so flippantly), and the rest of the cakes were just disappointing, so he was very happy to see a slice behind the glass screen as though it was waiting just for him. There were a couple of people in the queue in front of him but otherwise the café was quiet on this Wednesday afternoon, and he waited patiently for his turn to order, trying to decide where it would be best to both make up the terrarium and store the plants until Jack's birthday, when-

"A pot of English breakfast tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake please." The man in front of him was ordering, and the words cut through Alex's thoughts. His years working for MI6 meant that even when he wasn't properly paying attention to his surroundings, his subconsciousness was still taking everything in, even if it wasn't intentionally. And then it was his turn to order. He smiled brightly at the waiter on the other side of the counter.

"Hello. Do you have any more lemon drizzle cake?" he asked.

"I'm afraid that was our last slice."

"Oh, okay," he said, trying not to sound too disappointed. "I'll just have a coke, please."

As he stood in the queue waiting to pay, Alex couldn't help feeling annoyed with the man in front of him. He knew it was irrational - people could order whatever they liked and he had been in the queue first - but Alex had been looking forward to the cake the entire time he was browsing the plants, and just having a coke wouldn't make up for it.

It was as the man in front of him made small talk with the waitress at the till that Alex realised that he felt like he knew the man, but wasn't sure what it was about him. He hadn't seen the man's face, and anyway, his experience with MI6 had taught him that you couldn't take a person on face value of their appearance; there were many ways that a person could change how they looked to disguise their identity. There was nothing obvious in his voice or posture or mannerisms that might have given Alex a clue either.

So he just waited patiently in line for his turn to pay for the coke that he had ordered. It was as the man turned to pick up the tray holding his tea and cake that was being passed to him that Alex saw his face for the first time. It couldn't be him! Alex had watched him die; how was he here?

Yassen Gregorovich was grinning at him, and it occurred to Alex that the assassin had known he was behind him the entire time that they had been standing in the queue. He waited while Alex paid and was given his coke before making his way towards a table clearly meaning for Alex to join him, so he followed and sat on a chair at the circular table.

"You probably don't remember the last time we sat at a table like this, do you?" The assassin spoke the words so casually and without any introduction for how he was still alive that Alex was speechless.

"What?" was all he managed to say in response.

"I'll take that as a 'no' then," Yassen said, methodically removing the teapot, teacup and slice of cake off of the tray and placing them on the table. Alex noticed that he had picked up two forks, and was now proffering one for him to take. He took it but wasn't sure what the Yassen was suggesting. Was he offering to share his slice of cake with him?

"The last time we sat around a table like this was at the aquarium," he explained. "You were about four and a half years old and had become separated from Ian, so I helped reunite the two of you. You absolutely loved the sharks, Alex."

Alex was too gobsmacked to say anything and Yassen paused to take his fork to the lemon drizzle cake, and then pushed the plate a little towards Alex who warily did the same. The cake was as good as he remembered, and the two of them sat silently for a few moments as they ate.

"Wait? You knew Ian?" The sugar from the cake seemed to have kicked his brain back into working order so that he was able to do a little cognitive thought.

"Yes, I knew Ian. He was the closest person I had to a family for a very long time. I trusted him with my life and I know that he felt the same, even if we were rarely on the same side of the fight."

"But... you killed him?"

"No, I didn't."

"But on the rooftop after Stormbreaker you said-"

"-I never confirmed anything, little Alex. If I recall correctly, all I said was that 'I kill a lot of people.' At the time, it would have done more harm than good to tell you the truth. You had been told that I had killed your uncle and you believed it. I felt that if I could at least push you away from MI6, if I could keep you safe and out of my world, then you hating me and thinking I killed your uncle would be a price worth paying."

"But-" Alex began, but stopped abruptly as Yassen suddenly stiffened in his seat.

"Were you followed here?" he asked, seriously.

"I don't think so," Alex replied, not daring to look around in case it drew attention to them. Yassen was sat with his back to the corner of the café so that he could see everyone coming and going, but Alex was sat opposite Yassen with his back to the room and couldn't see anything. There weren't even any windows in this corner that he could use to get a vague reflection of the scene behind him. He got his phone out, as though he were checking to see if he had received any new messages, but angled it so that he could see into the café.

"The two men by the hot meal station," Yassen advised, and Alex shuffled his position so that he could see.

"I don't recognise them," he said after studying them in the small reflection on his phone.

"Neither do I, but something is about to happen." Alex trusted the man's instincts - you didn't survive for as long as Yassen had as an assassin without incredible intuition, and listening to it when it warned that something was wrong.

"What do we do?" Alex asked. Twenty minutes ago, he probably would not have put this much faith in the assassin, but after hearing the story he had just begun to tell and remembering what he had told Alex on Air Force One, he was perfectly happy to be on the same side as Yassen for once. And if what the man said was true, then Ian would have trusted him to have his back, and he had been an actual trained spy with years of experience compared to Alex's two.

"Right now, we do nothing. We pretend that nothing is wrong, and only act if they act first. For now, come and sit next to me and pretend you're showing me something on your phone."

Alex nodded and moved seats. This had been supposed to be a nice, quiet shopping trip to get Jack's birthday present, and it had ended with shocking revelations about his past from a man he had thought dead and the potential for things to go down if these men were looking for one or both of them and decided to act.

Clearly in an effort to pretend that they had noticed nothing, Yassen pushed the rest of the cake towards Alex and began to pour his tea. To anyone else, it would simply look as though the man had decided that it had brewed enough, but Alex knew that the scalding hot water could be used as a make-shift weapon if the men came after them. Predictably, it seemed to Alex, the men did indeed act. He saw Yassen tense his hold on his teacup, but he looked up politely as the men approached.

"Can we help you?" he asked, without a trace of malice in his voice, but Alex could detect the underlying 'leave whilst you still can' message that he was conveying. Evidently, the men did not pick up on the subtext of Yassen's words.

"Yeah, you can." From those three words, Alex knew that they were going to cause a scene. At least they had eaten the cake before everything went down. Everything happened very quickly; one moment he and Yassen were sitting on their chairs, the next the men in front of them had pulled out guns and fired them, he had been pulled to the floor underneath the table and he heard screaming. Thankfully, the only people in the café were him, Yassen, the two staff members and an elderly couple who were sat at the far end of the room. Alex was hit by a sense of deja vu but he had no idea why being pulled to the floor underneath a table amidst gunshots and screaming was such a familiar feeling.

Yassen was crouched on the floor next to him, looking completely calm and composed and not as though a couple of men had just taken out guns in a garden centre café and threatened him with them. He had taken out his own gun, and swiftly shot the two men in the kneecaps, causing them to collapse to the floor in pain. With a whispered "stay here and out of sight" to Alex, Yassen left the safety of the cover of the table and quickly disarmed their two assailants. At least Yassen seemed to actually care about his safety and wellbeing, even if it did mean that he was being treated like a child.

It wasn't long before Yassen was back, having cleared the rest of the café. He had ordered the two members of staff and the elderly couple to leave and call the authorities and they had not needed to be told twice before they bolted. Having taken out the immediate threat, he now properly checked Alex over to make sure that he was okay, which other than being bewildered at the sense of deja vu, he was. Then, he got up to confront their attackers. They were both lying on the floor, blood pooling around their knees and were clearly in a lot of pain. From his position underneath the table, Alex could also see a spray of what must have once been Yassen's tea. He hadn't even seen the man throw it!

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

Neither of the men spoke or moved, but suddenly there was a hissing sound and the room seemed to be filling with smoke; the smoke was billowing out from underneath their clothing and Alex realised that it must have either timed to go off, or someone else had a detonator to set it off. Yassen, crouched over the two men, was engulfed almost instantly and Alex heard him thud to the floor as he unintentionally breathed in and succumbed to what was presumably knock-out gas (Alex didn't think it would be poisonous as their two attackers would have been killed too). Being further away from the men and the smoke, Alex had time to take a deep breath before it reached him. He knew that he could hold his breath for more than two minutes and he was sure that he would be able to get out of the café, even with the added strain of getting Yassen out too.

The smoke stung his eyes, but he ignored it as he made his way over to Yassen. He almost wanted to laugh; half an hour ago, he had thought that the assassin was responsible for killing his uncle and propelling him into the world of MI6 and also dead and now he was questioning his whole life. If what Yassen had told him was true, Ian had trusted him with his life and he and Alex had actually met before the Stormbreaker fiasco. But now was not the time to think of such things; he had to focus on getting himself and Yassen out of the garden centre and to safety.

Grabbing the man by the arms, Alex began to drag him across the floor toward the door. Once they were outside, they would be out of the reach of the gas. His lungs ached with the effort of holding his breath and the exertion of getting Yassen out of the room too. The smoke had filled the room now, so he couldn't see anything but kept walking in what he hoped was the right direction. He didn't know how much further he could go on, but he refused to leave the assassin behind. Eventually, he felt the door handle against his back; his sense of direction had been spot on, and he put Yassen down to open the door.

Gasping and grateful to be able to breathe in the clean air outside, he took one more deep breath and turned back to the door so that he could get Yassen out of the café. And that was when someone grabbed him and he felt the sharp prick of a needle jabbing into his arm. He wrestled against the hands of the people who were now holding him in a vice-like grip, but it was no good. They were too strong for him to be able to get out of their grasp, and whatever they had injected him with was draining his strength. His legs buckled and he fell to the ground, just seeing two sets of dirty black boots before everything went black.