Disclaimer: I like to think this is more exciting than the OG books, but alas, I do not own Alex Rider.
Chapter 43: Holding Pattern
Something felt off. The lock was supposed to respond instantly. It always did.
The hairs on the back of Alex's neck prickled. This wasn't right. "Wait—!"
Nico glanced back at him, pushing the door open in the process.
Too late.
There was a far off click.
Something wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
A wave of concussive force slammed into Alex, followed by heat, sound, pain.
He was knocked off his feet.
Darkness.
"-lex!" A hand shook his shoulders, rousing him out of his – sleep?
Alex reached out blindly, feeling like the world was spinning around him. "Stop…" He mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut tight. Nausea. Disoriented.
The hands shook him once more, then all but pried his eyes open. Cameron's image swam before his eyes.
And there was smoke.
Smoke.
And fire.
And heat.
And ringing.
Ringing.
Ringing.
His head hurt. His ears hurt.
Everything felt muffled and that high pitched ringing – Didn't. Stop.
Cameron roughly pulled him to his feet – he was on the ground? – and Alex swayed.
Dizzy.
Off balance.
"-m'on!" Cameron's voice sounded soft, far away. "Ge- ou- here."
Alex turned his head, trying to process the words. The world tilted dangerously around him. Cameron's grip around his waist the only thing keeping him upright.
The colors smeared and blurred through the smoke.
Nico?
Where was Nico?
What—?
Cameron slung Alex's arm across his shoulder, giving more support from underneath. Started pulling him away with stumbling steps.
Away from what?
Alex blinked rapidly, trying to focus. Trying to bring things back under control.
To see.
Familiar patchwork tile was under his feet.
The apartment.
They were at the apartment.
Alex tried to look again, but the movement – Cameron's dragging, his head's motion – made him feel sick.
Too draining.
He needed to close his eyes.
Cameron was talking to him, from far away. Underwater.
Alex groaned as his head pulsed in pain. Once he noticed it, it was there to stay.
Just like the ringing.
The everlasting squealing of alarms in his head.
"-work with me."
The words filtered through his consciousness. Louder this time.
He wasn't being much help. Making Cameron do all the work.
Alex sluggishly tried to convince his legs to move, one stumbling step in front of the other. The voluntary movement jarred his entire body, making his head pound even more. "Wha' happen'd?" His own voice sounded strange. Muffled. Yet louder at the same time.
His eyes pickled and he fought to keep them open. To try to make sense of the world around him.
Smoke.
Right.
Fire.
Bright.
Burning.
Death.
It was like all his senses were coming back online one at a time.
Fiery pain was starting to drift up his arm, touching nerve endings that he had forgotten about.
Something was seriously wrong.
Cameron kept dragging him, jostling head, arm, body. "-Jacobs—take care-"
It was like the volume was being turned on and off. Disjointed words here and there.
A step jostled everything just wrong and Alex inhaled sharply, coughing on the smoke. Feeling like he was dying.
It was too much.
He just had to follow Cameron.
His limbs felt like jelly. Uncoordinated. Not attached properly.
He slit his eyes open, but the colors, lights, and darkness blurred together into an unrecognizable mass.
Alex jerked out of Cameron's grip, just barely recognizing that the nausea was going to win. His good arm barely caught his stumbling fall as he vomited onto the ground, heaving, feeling like his eyes were going to burst out of his head. And the pounding. The ringing. It only got worse.
He was so tired.
Where…
What…
Cameron yanked him up from the ground, none too gentle, and nearly carried him away. "-not safe-"
Right.
This wasn't right.
There was light. Heat. Fire.
"-plosion?" Alex mumbled, trying to piece everything together. Nothing fit right.
Cameron's grip tightened.
Was that a, yes?
"'ico?" Because Nico was here somewhere. He had been just in front of him.
Cameron kept moving, carrying more than dragging when Alex's legs refused to respond.
There were details. He knew what had happened.
They had… been out.
At the stupid fountain park.
Mickey was at the apartment.
They were coming home.
An explosion.
And Nico had been right in front of him.
Alex knew the pieces went together, but it was too much. The world was spinning. He needed to… needed to…
Hands shook him. "-lex!"
It was dark.
His limbs felt heavy and weighted down. Uncooperative.
The sheets felt cool under his fingertips and were the only sign from external input that let Alex know he wasn't moving. That the spinning was all in his head. His head that was pounding and ringing persistently.
He laid there – on a bed? – trying to make sense of the sensations, the aches, the pains. Suppressing the groan of pain, Alex pulled an arm up to rub at his face.
His skin hurt.
"Alex?" A hand brushed his arm. Cameron. "Come on, time to wake up."
Alex squinted an eye open, pleased to find that the room was mostly dark. The lamp in the corner was almost too much for him.
But that wasn't…
The events of the past evening came back to him in a rush.
Fire.
Smoke.
Explosion.
Pain.
This was not their apartment. "Where…?" The question grated in his throat. Raw. He had been choking on smoke at one point.
"We had a back-up safehouse set up," Cameron said softly. His voice sounded rough as well. "How's your head?"
Alex squinted, trying to corral his thoughts. "'urts."
"Think you can manage both eyes for me?"
Grudgingly, Alex let both eyes open. The room was slightly blurry, out of focus, and he deliberately looked away from the lamp.
Cameron leaned closer peering at him, before running a hand along the side of Alex's head. "I'm not Jacobs, but you've probably got a concussion." Alex winced as Cameron prodded a particularly tender spot. "There's quite a lump here."
Alex figured as long as he didn't turn his head, he'd be fine. It did explain the woozy, spinney feeling to the entire world. "'kay."
That earned a short huff from Cameron. "Think you can manage some questions?"
Alex tried to shrug, but it only really served to set the room spinning even harder. It was a good thing he was already lying down.
"Right then, name and age?"
"'lex Rider, 16."
"What city are we in?"
Alex wracked his brain. Last he knew… "Lima, San Isidro."
Cameron gave him a small smile. "Dizzy, nausea, and sensitive to light?"
"Yeah…" He breathed out a sigh. Maybe if he just pretended it wasn't there…
"How about hearing? Seems normal?"
Alex swallowed. "Earlier, was muffled. Now just… ringing."
Cameron grimaced. "Yeah, the ringing's pretty intense for me too. Noise trauma is… sometimes transient. Ringing might be here to stay though."
That was the last thing he needed. He wanted to shake his head to disrupt the sensation, anything just make. It. Stop.
But he had been so close.
Whoever had set up the explosion had almost succeeded in their objective.
The others.
Nico had been the closest.
"The others?" Alex asked, because they couldn't be… it wasn't possible that…
"Jacobs went with Nico to the hospital," Cameron hesitated, before letting out a long sigh, face creased with grief. "The entire apartment went up in the explosion – gas leak, according to the news – and… there's been no sign of Mickey."
Of course there wouldn't be.
Because Mickey would have had to be dead for someone to set the explosion in the first place.
It was all a matter of time before they found a body.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
It wasn't a freak accident.
Someone had planned it and killed Mickey in the process.
They were after him.
Everyone thought he was safe in the city, but clearly that was a lie. They were coming after him no matter what. Even without MI6 inadvertently leaking his location, Alex had no doubt that the Puppet Master was hot on his trail.
It would only be a matter of time before they took another step.
He had been lulled into a false sense of security.
He had thought that working out the puzzle, while keeping the unit happy with his presence was the best option. The best way to get them back to their normal lives.
It had only succeeded in killing someone.
Maybe two.
His chest hurt.
"Hey!" Cameron poked him in the shoulder and glared fiercely at him. "Stop it. We all knew what we were getting in to. I'm not about to let those bastards win, okay?"
But they had won. Mickey was dead. Nico was probably close to death if they had taken him to a hospital. Their identities wouldn't stand up to that type of scrutiny.
Alex rolled to the side, trying to get out of Cameron's direct line of sight, not entirely sure what his plan was. He needed to get out. But pain rolled up his arm, shooting all the way to his shoulder, and left him gasping for breath. Rolling back onto his back didn't make it stop hurting.
"Woah, woah." Cameron's hands caught his, inadvertently tugging just where it hurt. "What? What's wrong?"
"A-arm…" He tried to pull his arm closer to his chest, but Cameron pulled it away and rolled up his sleeve. He prodded first at the wrist, then slightly higher. The second spot had Alex jerking away and hissing at the pain.
It didn't help anything.
"You might've broken it," Cameron said, letting him have his arm back.
Might've? Alex highly doubted that it wasn't broken. He had had enough broken bones in the last year to know what it felt like.
Not the worst, but certainly bad.
"Keep it elevated and I'll get you some ice." He pushed up from the chair beside the bed and turned toward the door. "We can't really… we can't go to a hospital. It's not safe."
Not unless you're on death's doorstep.
Alex swallowed carefully. "Nico?"
"Nico had to…"
And there it was. Confirmation. Nico was worse off than the rest of them – and Alex knew he had a concussion and broken bones. But Nico had been closer. He had taken the brunt of the explosion, right from the door. "How bad?"
Cameron ran a hand over his face. "I… I don't know." He took another step away, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. "I'll get you some ice and paracetamol. I know you don't like taking meds, but… you need to be able to function a little bit. And I'll see if we have anything to splint your arm. That's probably the best we can do."
Alex let his arm curl over his chest, but he didn't bother arguing. He wasn't going anywhere, anytime soon. Not with his head pounding and the world spinning with the slightest movement.
He would have to take the time to regroup.
Replan.
There would only be so much time before the Puppet Master hunted down his new location. Wouldn't stop from taking out people he considered friends until they had what they wanted.
Him.
He was done being the reason others ended up dead.
The unit deserved their lives back – but they also deserved to live. And with him around, that just wasn't going to happen.
They stayed at that safehouse for three days and the calendar ticked into November. Pushing seven months of being on the run. Nearly ten months since being kidnapped in the first place.
Time felt unreal.
The first two days, Alex spent resting in bed. Getting up and walking around only resulted in extreme dizziness and nausea. He fought it down long enough to grab food from the kitchen, though if he hadn't managed, Cameron probably would've brought him something.
It was somewhat like living with a ghost.
Just what he had always wanted.
Cameron was a shadow of his former self, but he somehow, still had the mission objective ingrained into his brain. Keep Alex safe.
Alex wasn't about to tell him that he was going to fail on that mission objective as well, very soon.
He had no intention of sticking around for any longer than necessary. Every moment he spent recovering was a moment that the Puppet Master was drawing closer. He would have to make his move away – and perhaps do something drastic – to get them off of the unit's backs.
What was left of them…
The loss of the apartment meant that loss of everything Alex had had. All the information he had collected. Every little connection he had made. Only what he had had on his person had survived the blast – he was just lucky he had taken to carrying around the music player whenever he left the apartment. It had survived with minimal damage, a long crack running down the side of the screen, but Alex knew better than to take it for granted.
It wouldn't last forever either.
The third day though, the world felt more real. His head still pounded if he turned too quickly, but the worst of the ringing had faded away. Only really bothered him at night. He could think and plot for more than a few minutes at a time, slowly building his plan.
For Cameron's sake, he needed to get away. Soon.
Alex stumbled out to the small kitchen, feeling much steadier on his feet than he had the past two days, squinting into the light.
Still light sensitive. He would need to find sunglasses at some point.
He sat down at the table and took the meds that Cameron handed him wordlessly. The morning routine. After so many months, it was surprising that someone else fell into the okay to take meds from category.
Out of everything, his arm was probably the worst off – and the most likely to cause problems the moment he ditched. It was wrapped tightly with a makeshift splint, but nothing would protect his arm like a cast. Or even a real brace. But he didn't have either of those.
"We need to move today," Cameron said, setting a mug of tea down in front of Alex. "And Jacobs should have left a message for us."
Alex kept his gaze on the mug, but nodded. He didn't dare look at Cameron, not when he could feel the exhaustion in the man's every word. Alex doubted he really slept at night, too keyed by the fact that they were alone in the house. If Alex weren't feeling completely terrible all the time, he might have volunteered to take a night shift – but he doubted that Cameron would trust him that much.
With reason.
Alex had no doubt that the moment he left, he would be in a similar situation. It wouldn't be safe to no sleep with one eye open, but it also wasn't sustainable. He would have limited time before it became too much.
His options would be limited.
"I left a pair of jeans and a shirt next to the shower for you."
Alex nodded. It would be good to shower. He shuddered to think of the smoke and dust that were all but baked into his current set of clothes.
It would also be good for leaving. He needed at least another day of recovery before setting off, but there was always the chance that Jacobs would rejoin them. It would be much easier to get away from just Cameron.
"Hey," Cameron rested a hand on his shoulder. "We just need to regroup and figure out a new approach." He sounded like he was more trying to convince himself, than Alex. "You were making headway, weren't you?"
Alex just bobbed his head and let his eyes slide closed. He could manage another day of just existing. His head hurt, his arm throbbed, and the lights were too bright.
One more day…
"Just… don't do anything foolish, kid. Nico," Cameron's voice caught for a moment, "He would want you to stick around."
Nico's not here to say that though, is he? The words stuck in his throat, but it was the truth. Nico was severely injured – he was so close to the blast – and Mikey was dead. That left Cameron and Jacobs. It wasn't fair to keep stringing them along. They needed to go back to their lives, not die because he wanted information.
Alex drank his tea in silence, mulling over what his next steps would be.
A/N: What's this, another update? Y'all, I'm hitting personal milestones, so you're getting the results of my rewards to myself. So what foolishness do you think Alex is going to attempt?