a/n: the last chapter sucked and the amount of reviews that I got for it clearly showed what you guys thought of it. I was thinking about other things that night and was unable to concentrate on Alex Rider. I hope you don't hold it against me, every author writes a real horrible something once in awhile. So, to make up for it, I am writing a super good epilogue and it's up fast. Hope you guys will all still read the sequel and, if I have time, I will rewrite the last chapter. Review! –Steph
Disclaimer: Everything recognizable belongs to Anthony Horowitz.
Dirty Little Secret
Epilogue
Alex's POV
Four years in the future (Alex is eighteen and in his senior year ((or last year)) of high school)
"Urie!" I turned around at the sound of my name being called across the schoolyard.
Yes, that's me, Urie Ross. No one has said the name "Alex Rider" in four years; it's always been Urie or Ross and the occasional Cub from Wolf and the others at "camp". Alex Rider doesn't even exist anymore; he's just someone from the past, a boy who lived in London with his American nanny and was MI6's "super spy". Now that same boy has a mother, father, uncle, aunt and cousin. He lives in America in Scottsdale, Arizona and has new friends. Now, Alex Rider is Urie Ross.
Sometimes, it is hard to believe that that was actually apart of my life. But, the constant presence of MI6 and the scars that cover my body are a constant reminder that I will never be completely free of it all. It is only a matter of time before everything catches up with me, again.
I haven't been wasting my time though. Blunt had been true to his word and I have been taken back to training every vacation I get. My friends just think that I am visiting family or vacationing.
"Jeff, hey," I call back to my friend and walk towards him.
Jeff has been my best friend since I moved to Scottsdale four years ago. He was the one that first talked to "the new kid from London", which was basically how I had been labeled. Later on, he admitted that he had only talked to me at first because he had heard that we play "some mean soccer" in London. Jeff was a big time soccer jock, he played center and he had already gotten loads of scholarship offers for college. I had been convinced, by Jeff, to try out for the soccer team. I played right-wing.
"Where did you go for vacation this time?" Jeff asked once I had reached him. Today was the first day back from spring break.
"I was in Boston visiting an old friend." Well, it was partly true. I had detoured to Boston to see Jack on the way back from England.
Jeff looked at me briefly before returning to bouncing his trusty soccer ball off of his knees. "Cool," was all he said. I heaved a sigh of relief. As much as I do miss my old friends, I was glad that they weren't around. No one here questioned my absences more then once. What ever I said was just assumed as the truth. It probably helped that I very rarely disappeared in the middle of the school year but everyone here was just more laid-back.
Even though I technically wasn't myself anymore, it was easier to be someone that resembled myself here.
I snickered as a group of sophomore girls started to giggle nearby. They kept glancing over at Jeff. Jeff was completely oblivious and just shook his dark brown hair away from his eyes which just made them giggle even more.
"You really have to stop that," I told Jeff pointedly.
Jeff looked up from the ground; he had been dribbling his soccer ball between his feet. "What?" he asked in confusion, his eyebrows knitted together.
I jerked my head ever so slightly in the direction of the giggling sophomore girls.
Jeff glanced at them and then looked back at me, he shrugged. "That's not all for me, you know," he said calmly as he began his toe touches (a/n: that's what we call them on my team), that was when he kind of jogged in place and touched his toes to the top of the ball lightly and briefly.
Before I had a chance to reply, the bell rang across the yard. It was the warning bell that meant we had five minutes to go to our lockers and get to homeroom. Jeff kicked his soccer ball up into the air and caught it deftly.
&
I trudged down the stairs to the locker room to get changed for gym class.
While I did enjoy gym I hated the changing portion of the period. Upon first arriving at Scottsdale Academy (a/n: no relation to TP school, if you read TP otherwise just ignore this), my school, I had changed in the bathrooms but soon enough that rose unnecessary and unwanted questions so I just had to change by my locker. And with soccer practice and the hot Arizona sun… everyone's seen my scars by now.
I wound my combination into my gym locker lock and it clipped open. The yellow metal door swung open and I took out a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. I tossed my jeans into my locker and pulled on the shorts. I put my Nikes back on a retied them.
I shrugged of my shirt and glanced down. I really was a mess. There was the bullet wound and surgery scars on the left side of my chest and down my stomach. There was the bullet would to my shoulder and then the scar of the place where the man had cut me on my upper left arm and many other scars, some bigger then others but all still painfully present. My wrists had heeled mostly from where the wire had dug into them but a few scars had remained.
Someone whistled and I froze.
"That must have been some bike accident, Urie," one of my other soccer friends, Brendan, said, glancing at my scarred chest. He was the goalie on our team.
That's what I had told them, to explain the scars I mean. I said that I had been in a bad bike accident back in London and had crashed into a barbed wire fence, among other things. "I was crazy when I was younger," I said simply as I quickly pulled my gym shirt on over my head.
"Yeah, like stunt man crazy," Denny, defense on the soccer team, snorted from behind me. "Were you like a serious cutter or something, Urie? Looks like you slashed yourself up with a knife."
Well, he got the knife part right but it hadn't been I that had inflicted the damage. "A barbed wire fence can do that to one," I said dryly. "But I am not now, nor have I ever been, a cutter," I added quickly incase they had misinterpreted my comment about the barbed wire fence.
The conversation was dropped there and we all headed up to the gym. The gym teacher, Mr. Andale, told us to sit in our gym spots. I thought it was semi amusing that we were all seventeen and eighteen and still had assigned seats.
Soon enough, Mr. Andale announced that we were playing a soccer scrimmage that day in class. That earned a big cheer from me and all the other guys of the soccer team. Other kids groaned, the majority of the starters on the varsity male team were in this class, me, Jeff, Denny and Brendan included. We could get a bit competitive at times.
"Form two equal teams," Mr. Andale commanded us before turning back to pumping a soccer ball full with air.
I formed a group with Jeff (center), Denny (defense), Brendan (goalie), Ryan (midfield), Spencer (defense), JT (midfield), Casey (left wing) and Matt (defense). We took a couple of other kids who had no interest in playing on our team because we already had a full team, me being right wing.
We walked out onto the playing fields. The grass was carefully manicured and watered daily so that it stayed fresh and green. Mountains rose high in the distance and a few lone saguaro cacti lay off to the side. The hot Arizona, early April sun beat down on us powerfully. The intensity of the sun had been odd at first after the mostly cloudy days in London but I had quickly adjusted. Here, the sun shone almost three hundred sixty-five days a year and I found that I didn't miss the cloudy, overcast and rainy days of London.
We were just standing around talking; waiting for Mr. Andale to finish whatever it was that he was doing so that we could start the game when Denny spoke up, "Hey, who's that?" he pointed over to the fence that separated the playing fields of Scottsdale Academy from the sidewalk and road.
We all turned to look towards where Denny was pointing. There was a man walking along the fence, not a big deal normally but there weren't many people that walked around here during the day. Which led me to suspect two things: 1- MI6 was looking for me or 2- Scorpia had found me again and of course there was always option 3- It had nothing at all to do with me. Option three was undoubtedly the most unlikely.
It was a toss up between one and two until the person angled his head slightly in my direction. The sun caught his face and I almost laughed aloud.
Of course.
I should have known.
Wolf.
He always has turned up in the most unorthodox ways. He could have, say, waited until the end of the school day to find me, but that is not how Wolf operates. No, instead he finds me in the middle of a class where there are other people around and watching.
"Damn," Mr. Andale swore softly. He was looking around for something. Finally, deciding that it was not there he looked up at the rest of us. "Who wants to go get the bag of pennies I left over by the fence?" he asked us all. He pointed over to the fence, just a little ways in front of where Wolf currently was.
"I'll go get them, Mr. Andale," I called back quickly before anyone else got the chance, risking sounding to eager and being classified as the teachers pet.
"Alright, Ross," Mr. Andale peered at me, "hurry up."
I took off at a sprint in the direction of the fence. I didn't look at Wolf as I bent down to pick up the red mesh back that was stuffed full of colored sports pennies. Wolf was still a bit away from me so I bent down and pretended to pick up some pennies that had fallen to the ground.
As Wolf passed me, he slowed down the tiniest bit possible and said softly, "After school, outside, Six Monkey's," and he continued on his way down the sidewalk.
Six Monkey's was a store that served at MI6'd head quarters here in Arizona. Apparently, someone wasn't too creative. The name never did fail to amuse me. They'd tried to copy of America's CIA in having their location be places with a name that started with 'C' the next word 'I' and the last with an 'A'. I really think that MI6 should just accept that the United States might be better then them at one thing and not embarrass themselves, and me, by trying to imitate them.
I was able to conclude that Wolf was meeting me outside after school and taking me to Six Monkey's.
"Ross! Hurry it up over there!" Mr. Andale yelled over to me. I could practically see Wolf laughing as he walked away.
I picked up the bag of pennies and ran back over to my class.
We killed the other team in soccer, no secret there. I won't even note the score; the other team doesn't need the embarrassment. But really, how good can a couple of amateurs do against the whole starting side of the schools varsity team? At least someday they would have a good story to tell their kids. They could say that they played soccer against one of the United State's Official Soccer Team players, which would be Jeff. He was just that good. Varsity wasn't good enough for him. Of course, they'd just leave out all of the embarrassing details while they told the story.
After school, I descended the front stairs with Jeff. The first thing that I saw was a gleaming, black BMW with tinted windows. Several people were looking at it curiously. I could just see it, this would be the day that all of the questions started again.
Wolf was standing by the side of BMW. His sharp eyes found and landed on me.
I continued at my same pace down the stairs, knowing that Wolf wasn't one to be noted for his patience and I wasn't eager to ruin the fairly good life that I had going for me here.
Wolf made a great show of looking at his watch.
"The guys and I are going to play a game later," Jeff said suddenly, referring to soccer I believe since that is just about the only game he plays… besides foosball, "do you want to come with?"
I was tempted to just say yes and ignore MI6, something that very few people, or no one, have ever done. But, Wolf was watching me and there was no way in hell that he would let me get away.
"Sorry, I can't," I shrugged. "Have somewhere to go."
"Cool," was all Jeff said. Sometimes being best friends with Jeff had its perks. He never questioned me more then need be. He always just took what I said for the truth, at least I thought he did.
"See ya tomorrow," I waved as I jogged down the stairs and head purposefully in the direction of BMW.
"See, ya, man!" Jeff called after me. I lifted a hand and gave a backwards wave.
"You took your time," was the first thing that came out of Wolf's mouth.
"I'm here now, aren't I?" I faced him. "Let's go." I jumped into the back of the car quickly and Wolf got into the front passenger side. He signaled with his hand for the driver to start doing his job, driving.
About twenty minutes later, we arrived at the Six Monkey. I walked inside the "store" and immediately found the air conditioning to be turned on full blast. I almost laughed, poor Blunt and Mrs. Jones, they weren't used to the intense Arizona sun. I thought that the temperature inside the office was a bit on the extreme side though.
Wolf led me through the main store, which held a collection of ridiculously expensive artwork that no one bought. Some people stopped to look, but almost no one bought. MI6 could care less about that though.
Wolf followed me into an office that resembled some of the ones that I had seen in the London headquarters greatly. There was the long mahogany office table, black speaker phone, television hooked to the wall in the corner and a faux tree in the corners. I sat down in one of the comfortable leather office chairs uninvited.
Blunt and Mrs. Jones looked up as they heard me sit. Blunt continued whatever work he had been doing but Mrs. Jones closed her folder, put the cap on her fancy fountain pen and pushed them both aside. She folded her hands on top of the table's glossy surface and smiled kindly at me.
"Hello, Urie, how are you today?" she asked me brightly. I found that she was always more cheerful nowadays that she had her family back. Blunt on the other hand… well I was still working on him. It didn't escape my realm of knowledge that she called me Urie and not Alex though.
"I'm good, thanks, and you?" I asked politely. Jack had drilled good manners into me as I grew up. I don't really know what she was thinking but she did it anyway.
"Just lovely," she noted with a smile.
"Good day, Urie," Blunt finally looked at me. "It's good to see you again."
"You too, Mr. Blunt."
There was silence after all of the pleasantries had been exchanged.
Blunt cleared his throat and shuffled his papers around.
"Did you need me for something?" I knew that I was stating the obvious, but I felt that they needed some prompting and urging in the right direction before they to started talking. I had no doubt that they wanted to use me for another mission now. I waited patiently for one of them to start talking.
"Well, Urie," Blunt began, "you have worked for us for four years and you have contributed more to MI6 then many of our other older and more experienced agents. You've saved the world, as clichéd as it sounds, more times then Superman. MI6 relies greatly on your services. In these past four years you have done several jobs for us, not terribly difficult of dangerous but, now we have something bigger to ask of you. Urie, we have another mission for you…"
a/n: it's short but there was only so long I could have certain things go on for before it got boring. And that was where I wanted it to end. Well, this marks the end of Dirty Little Secret! The sequel will be up in the fall. Thanks to everyone that has reviewed this fic! Review! -Steph
