Chapter 2-An old friend

Alex was really scared now, he knew who the voice belonged to, even if it didn't sound the same. The voice belonged to a man called Nile. The voice turned dark,

''If you dare make any sudden moves then I will put a bullet straight into your head, and you have no idea how much that would pleasure me.''

''Couldn't you do that some other way?'' Alex asked, he was desperately trying to think what he could do to get out of the building. Slowly he turned around and looked at Nile, and gasped loudly.Nile was standing there with semi-auto 9mm pistol aimed straight at Alex's forehead. Nile used to be the type of man who would have been rather handsome, had it not been for his skin condition, which caused his black skin to turn white due to lack of pigment cells in his body.

The last time Alex had seen him, he had been trying to kill him with samurai swords, on a hot-air balloon above the Church of Forgotten Saints, but then Nile had seemingly fallen to his death when the basket caught fire and fell over 100 metres. The damage caused had left it's mark though, the right side of his face was raw flesh, his left arm was hanging limp, and there seemed to be something wrong with his ankles for they were shaking, Alex wondered how he could have survived such a great fall when his thoughts were interrupted.

'' Don't even say a single word, young man, otherwise, I will be visiting Cloud nine, but you, my dear friend, will be visiting the morgue. I must admit, I am grateful the sniper we employed didn't actually kill you, so I could do it myself.'' A slight smile creeped onto his face, as if imagining the idea of Alex dead.

Alex shivered, he knew what Nile was capable of, he could probably kill Alex a hundred ways by using his bare hands, but it would only take one, and Alex knew that.

''Put your hands behind your head. Slowly now, we wouldn't like you to make any sudden moves, otherwise my trigger finger might acidently slip, and that would be rather painful now, wouldn't it?'' Alex began to sweat heavily, he could see light pouring through the windows, the sun was rising, but if Nile had his way, there would never be another one for Alex. A few minutes passed, Nile, standing there muscles tensed looking any sort of excuse to put a bullet into Alex. Alex Rider was thinking hard, how to get out of this situation, when his nose started twitching, he could feel it coming up his throat, he was going to sneeze. Nile looked at Alex trying to hold it back, and smiled slightly, distorting his face horribly, he had made a promise if Alex moved he would die, and it looked like he was going to die soon. Alex furiously tried to hold it back, he could see Nile's disgusting face smiling, and thought to himself ' Lots of Psychopathic maniacs have tried to kill me before, so I'm not going to let this one finally manage to do it. After all, Ive been shot by ...'

It was at that point he sneezed. He couldn't hold it any longer, and he just sneezed. As if from nowhere, Alex saw a slight shimmer in the air, and twisted to the side and dived to evade it. He lay on the floor and breathed heavily, he heard something clang to the floor, and realised that Nile had thrown a Samurai sword at him, and if it hadn't been for the fact that Nile was seriously injured and, most probably, couldn't see out of his right eye, causing him to misjudge the angles, Alex should've have been dead.

It took Nile a few precious seconds to realise that he'd missed, after that he saw that Alex had got up and was beginning to run away. Nile began to run after him, he took long powerful strides to catch up, he was closing in fast on Alex, when he stumbled and fell to the floor. If this had been before Insible Sword, then Nile would have had no problem catching Alex but after he'd fallen from the balloon, Nile had broken both his ankles on impact and was still recovering from his operation, paid, of course, by the evill criminal organisation Scorpia. He swore loudly, the pain was intense. He looked up to see where the Rider kid had got to, and saw that he was just about to turn a corner, leading towards the Meeting room. Nile tried to get up, but his feet wouldn't support him, he looked around desperately to find something to stop Rider before he turned the corner. Rider was getting away fast. In the corner of Nile's eyes he saw a flash on the ground next to him, he realised what it was and picked it up, and using all the power in his right arm threw it at Alex.

End of Chapter