DEAD RINGER

A few days later, Alex found himself sitting opposite Alan Blunt in the faceless office in Liverpool Street, with Mrs. Jones twisting another sweet between her fingers. It was 1 May, a bank holiday in England – but somehow, he knew that holidays never came to the building that called itself the Royal & General Bank. Even the spring seemed to have stopped at the window. Outside, the sun was shining. Inside, there were only shadows.

"It seems that once again we owe you a debt of thanks," Blunt was saying.

"You don't owe me anything," Alex said.

Blunt looked genuinely puzzled. "You have quite possibly changed the future of this planet," he said. "Of course, Grief's plan was monstrous, crazy. But the fact remains that his…" He searched for a word to describe the test-tube creations that had been sent out of Point Blanc. "…his offspring could have caused a great many problems. At the very least, they would have had money. God knows what they would have got up to had they remained undiscovered."

"What's happened to them?" Alex asked.

"We've traced all fifteen of them and we have them under lock and key," Mrs. Jones answered. "They were quietly arrested by the intelligence services of each country where they lived. We'll take care of them."

Alex shivered. He had a feeling he knew what Mrs. Jones meant by those last words. And he was certain that nobody would ever see the fifteen Grief replicas again.

"Once again, we've had to hush this up," Blunt continued. "This whole business of … cloning. It causes a great deal of public disquiet. Sheep are one thing – but human beings!" He coughed. "The families involved in this business have no desire for publicity, so they won't be talking. They're just glad to have their real sons returned to them. The same, of course, goes for you, Alex. You've already signed the Official Secrets Act. I'm sure we can trust you to be discreet."

There was a moment's pause. Mrs. Jones looked carefully at Alex. She had to admit that she was worried about him. She knew everything that had happened at Point Blanc – how close he had come to a horrible death, only to be sent back into the academy for a second time. The boy who had come back from the French Alps was different from the boy who had left. There was a coldness about him, as tangible as the mountain snow.

"You did very well, Alex," she said.

"How is Wolf?" Alex asked.

"He's fine. He's still in hospital, but the doctors say he'll make a complete recovery. We hope to have him back on operations in a few weeks."

"That's good."

"We only had one fatality in the raid on Point Blanc. That was the man you saw falling from the roof. Wolf and another man were injured. Otherwise, it was a complete success." She paused. "Is there anything else you want to know?"

"No." Alex shook his head. He stood up. "You left me in there," he said. "I called for help, and you didn't come. Grief was going to kill me, but you didn't care."

"That's not true, Alex!" Mrs. Jones looked at Blunt for support, but he didn't meet her eyes. "There were difficulties…"

"It doesn't matter. I just want you to know that I've had enough. I don't want to be a spy anymore and if you ask me again, I'll refuse. I know you think you can blackmail me. But I know too much about you now, so that won't work anymore." He walked over to the door. "I used to think that being a spy would be exciting and special … like in the films. But you just used me. In a way, the two of you are as bad as Grief. You'll do anything to get what you want. Well, I want to go back to school. Next time, you can do it without me."

There was a long silence after Alex had left. At last, Blunt spoke. "He'll be back," he said.

Mrs. Jones raised an eyebrow. "You really think so?"

"He's too good at what he does … too good at the job. And it's in his blood." He stood up. "It's rather odd," he said. "Most schoolboys dream of being spies. With Alex, we have a spy who dreams of being a schoolboy."

"Will you really use him again?" Mrs. Jones asked.

"Of course. There was a file that came in only this morning. An interesting situation in the Zagros Mountains of Iraq. Alex may be the only answer." He smiled at his number two. "We'll give him a while to settle down and then we'll call him."

"He won't answer."

"We'll see," Blunt said.

Alex walked home from the bus-stop and let himself into the elegant Chelsea house that he shared with his housekeeper and closest friend, Jack Starbright. Alex had already told Jack where he had been and what he had been doing, but the two of them had made an agreement never to discuss his involvement with MI6. She didn't like it and she worried about him. But at the end of the day, they both knew there was nothing more to be said.

She seemed surprised to see him. "I thought you'd just gone out," she said.

"No."

"Did you get the message by the phone?"

"What message?"

"Mr. Bray wants to see you this afternoon. Three o'clock at the school."

Henry Bray was the head-teacher at Brookland. Alex wasn't surprised by the summons. Bray was the sort of head who managed to run a busy comprehensive and still find time to take a personal interest in every pupil who went there. He had been worried by Alex's long absences. So, he had called a meeting.

"Do you want lunch?" Jack asked.

"No thanks." Alex knew that he would have to pretend he had been ill again. Doubtless MI6 would produce another doctor's note in due course. But the thought of lying to his head-teacher spoiled his appetite.

He set off an hour later, taking his bicycle, which had been returned to the house by the Putney police. He cycled slowly. It was good to be back in London, to be surrounded by normal life. He turned off the King's Road and pedaled down the side road where – it felt like a month ago – he had followed the man in the white Skoda. The school loomed up ahead of him. It was empty now and would remain so until the summer term.

But as Alex arrived, he saw a figure walking across the yard to the school gates and recognized Mr. Lee, the elderly school caretaker.

"You again!"

"Hello, Bernie," Alex said. That was what everyone called him.

"On your way to see Mr. Bray?"

"Yeah."

The caretaker shook his head. "He never told me he was going to be here today. But he never tells me anything! I'm just going down to the shops. I'll be back at five to lock up – so make sure you're out by then."

"Right, Bernie."

There was nobody in the playground. It felt strange, walking across the tarmac on his own. The school seemed bigger with nobody there, the yard stretching out too far between the red-brick buildings, with the sun beating down, reflecting off the windows. Alex was dazzled. He had never seen the place so empty and so quiet. The grass on the playing-fields looked almost too green. Any school without students has its own peculiar atmosphere, and Brookland was no exception.

Mr. Bray had an office in D block, which was next to the science building. Alex reached the swing-doors and opened them. The walls here would normally be covered in posters, but they had all been taken down at the end of term. Everything was blank, off-white. There was another door open to one side. Bernie had been cleaning the main laboratory. He had rested his mop and bucket to one side when he'd gone to the shops – to pick up twenty cigarettes, Alex presumed. The man had been a chain smoker all his life and Alex knew he'd die with a cigarette between his lips.

Alex climbed up the stairs, his heels rapping against the stone surface. He reached a corridor – left for biology, right for physics – and continued straight ahead. A second corridor, with full length windows on both sides, led into the D block. Bray's study was directly ahead of him. He stopped at the door, vaguely wondering if he should have smartened up for the meeting. Bray was always snapping at boys with their shirts hanging out or ties crooked. Alex was wearing a denim jacket, T-shirt, jeans and Nike trainers – the same clothes he had worn that morning at MI6. His hair was still too short for his liking, although it had begun to grow back. All in all, he still looked like a teenage delinquent – but it was too late now. And anyway, Bray didn't want to see him to discuss his appearance. His nonappearance at school was more to the point.

He knocked on the door.

"Come in!" a voice called.

Alex opened the door and walked into the head-teacher's study, a cluttered room with views over the playground. There was a desk, piled high with papers, and a black leather chair with its back towards the door. A cabinet full of trophies stood against one wall. The others were mainly lined with books.

"You wanted to see me," Alex said.

The chair turned slowly round.

Alex froze.

It wasn't Henry Bray sitting behind the desk.

It was himself.

He was looking at a fourteen-year-old boy with fair hair cut very short, brown eyes and a slim, pale face. The boy was even dressed identically to him. It took Alex what felt like an eternity to accept what he was seeing. He was standing in a room looking at himself sitting in a chair. The boy was him.

With just one difference. The boy was holding a gun.

"Sit down," he said.

Alex didn't move. He knew what he was facing, and he was angry with himself for not having expected it. When he had been handcuffed at the academy, Dr. Grief had boasted to him that he had cloned himself sixteen times. But that morning, Mrs. Jones had traced "all fifteen of them". That left one spare – one boy waiting to take his place in the family of Sir David Friend. Alex had glimpsed him while he was at the academy. Now he remembered the figure with the white mask, watching him from a window as he walked over to the ski-jump. The white mask had been bandages. The new Alex had been spying on him as he recovered from the plastic surgery that had made the two of them identical.

And even today there had been clues. Perhaps it had been the heat of the sun – or the fall-out from his visit to MI6. But he had been too wrapped up in his own thoughts to see them: Jack, when he got home – "I thought you'd just gone out"; Bernie, at the gate – "You again!"

They had both thought they'd just seen him. And in a sense, they had. They had seen the boy sitting opposite him now. The boy who was aiming a gun at his heart.

"I've been looking forward to this," the other boy said. Despite the hatred in his voice, Alex couldn't help marveling. The voice wasn't the same as his. The boy hadn't had enough time to get it right. But otherwise, he was a dead ringer.

"What are you doing here?" Alex said. "It's all over. The Twin Project is finished. You might as well turn yourself in. You need help."

"I need just one thing," the second Alex sneered. "I need to see you dead. I'm going to shoot you. I'm going to do it now. You killed my father!"

"Your father was a test-tube," Alex said. "You never had a mother or a father. You're a freak. Hand-made in the Alps … like a cuckoo clock. What are you going to do when you've killed me? Take my place? You wouldn't last a week. You may look like me, but too many people know what Grief was trying to do. And I'm sorry, but you've got fake written all over you."

"We would have had everything! We would have had the whole world!" The replica Alex almost screamed the words and for a moment Alex thought he heard Dr. Grief somewhere in there, blaming him from beyond the grave. But then the creature in front of him was Dr. Grief … or part of him. "I don't care what happens to me," he went on, "just so long as you're dead."

The hand with the gun stretched out. The barrel was pointing at him. Alex looked the boy straight in the eye.

And he saw the hesitation.

The fake Alex couldn't quite bring himself to do it. They were too similar. The same height, the same build – the same face. For the other boy, it would be like shooting himself. Alex still hadn't closed the door. He threw himself backwards, out into the corridor. At the same time, the gun went off, the bullet exploding millimeters above his head and crashing into the far wall. Alex hit the ground on his back and rolled out of the doorway as a second bullet slammed into the floor. And then he was running, putting as much space between himself and his double as he could.

There was a third shot as he sprinted down the corridor and the window next to him shattered, glass showering down. Alex reached the stairs and took them three at a time, afraid that he would trip and break an ankle. But then he was at the bottom, heading for the main door, swerving only when he realized that he would make too easy a target as he crossed the playground. Instead he dived into the laboratory, almost falling head first over Bernie's bucket and mop.

The laboratory was long and rectangular, divided into workstations with Bunsen burners, flasks and dozens of bottles of chemicals spread out on shelves that stretched the full length of the room. There was another door at the far end. Alex dived behind the furthest desk. Would his double have seen him come in? Might he be looking for him, even now, out in the yard?

Cautiously, Alex poked his head over the surface, then ducked down as four bullets ricocheted around him, splintering the wood and smashing one of the gas pipes. Alex heard the hiss of escaping gas, then there was another gunshot and an explosion that hurled him backwards, sprawling onto the floor. The last bullet had ignited the gas. Flames leapt up, licking at the ceiling. Then the sprinkler system went off, spraying the entire room. Alex tracked back on his hands and feet, searching for shelter behind fire and water, hoping that the other Alex would be blinded. His shoulders hit the far door. He scrambled to his feet. There was another shot. But then he was through – with another corridor and a second flight of stairs straight ahead.

The stairs lead nowhere. He was halfway up before he remembered. There was a single classroom at the top, used for biology. It had a spiral staircase leading to the roof. The school had so little land that it'd planned to build a roof garden. Then it'd run out of money. There were a couple of greenhouses. Nothing more.

There was no way down! Alex looked over his shoulder and saw the other Alex reloading his gun, already on his way up. He had no choice. He had to continue, even though he knew that he was soon going to be trapped.

He reached the biology classroom and slammed the door shut behind him. There was no lock, and the tables were all bolted into the floor; otherwise, he might have been able to make a barricade. The spiral staircase was ahead of him. He ran up it without stopping, through another door and out onto the roof. Alex stopped to catch his breath and see what he could do next.

He was standing on a wide, flat area with a fence running all the way round. There were half a dozen terracotta pots filled with earth. A few plants sprouted out, looking more dead than alive. Alex sniffed the air. Smoke was curling up from the windows two floors below and he realized that the sprinkler system had failed to put out the fire. He thought of the gas pouring into the room and the chemicals stacked up on the shelves. He could be standing on a time-bomb! He had to find a way down.

But then he heard feet on metal and realized that his double had reached the top of the spiral staircase. Alex ducked behind one of the greenhouses. The door crashed open. Smoke followed the fake Alex out onto the roof. He took a step forward. Now Alex was behind him.

"Where are you?" shouted the double. His hair was soaked and his face contorted with anger.

Alex knew his moment had come. He would never have a better chance. He ran forward. The other Alex twisted round and fired. The bullet creased his shoulder, a molten sword drawn across his flesh. But then he had reached his replica, grabbing him around the neck with one hand and seizing hold of his wrist with the other, forcing the gun away. There was a huge explosion in the laboratory below and the entire building shook, but neither of the boys seemed to notice it. They were locked in an embrace, two reflections that had become tangled up in the mirror, the gun over their heads, fighting for control.

The flames were tearing through the building. Fed by a variety of chemicals, they burst through the roof, melting the asphalt. In the far distance, the scream of fire engines penetrated the sun filled air. Alex pulled with all his strength, trying to bring the gun down. The other Alex clawed at him, swearing – not in English, but in Afrikaans.

The end came very suddenly.

The gun twisted and fell to the ground.

One Alex lashed out, knocking the other down, then dived for the gun.

There was another explosion and a sheet of chemical flame leapt up. A crater had suddenly appeared on the roof, swallowing up the gun. The boy saw it too late and fell through. With a yell, he disappeared into the smoke and fire.

One Alex Rider walked over to the hole and looked down.

The other Alex Rider lay on his back, two floors below. He wasn't moving. The flames were closing in.

The first fire engines had arrived at the school. A ladder slanted up towards the roof.

A boy with short fair hair and brown eyes, wearing a denim jacket, T-shirt and jeans, walked to the edge of the roof and began to climb down.