Tiger hadn't had to work so hard to suppress his emotions since Elliott died.

It was paying off, he hoped, but still. God, he was a fucking mess. Lion had never looked this bad. Had never been so hurt—none of them had besides Elliott, and though he'd bled out quickly, it hadn't looked bad in the moment. Lion was one large bruise, a fucking supply closet of bandages…he looked cut apart and sewn back together.

Bear dozed fitfully in the other chair, head pillowed on his arms at the foot of the bed. Ever since Fischer had told them about Alex and his age, Bear had been on a steady decline, and this was going to be the tipping point, he could feel it. Bear internalized things. He held onto things, and they ate him from the inside—he'd been so blank after Elliott died. A gray slate of grief. And then he was so angry.

Tiger didn't know if they could survive a tragedy like this a second time.

He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his eyes as his vision blurred. He needed to sleep, but he couldn't. Even with the two guys from S-Unit outside the door, intimidating every nurse and doctor who came through, he didn't feel safe enough to sleep and leave Lion and Bear defenseless.

Tiger was a shit leader.

He wasn't being self-deprecating; it was just a fact. Once they'd formed as a unit, they'd all taken a rotation in each position, and Tiger was very well-suited to comms. He was a fine weapons expert, a shit medic, and a shit leader. He couldn't hold his temper long enough to dispel arguments, he couldn't reason with the others when their tempers were high, and he didn't have the patience or temperament to be the voice of reason. His attempts had led to more harm in their exercises than good, and he ended up switching off with Elliott early.

Bear just wasn't old enough. He was just shy of twenty-two when he joined, having worked his arse off for years in the British Army to serve as a medic, so that position was as good as his. He wasn't cut out to be a leader—as he was, anyway; Tiger thought he might make a good leader in a few years—and his attempts were always clumsy and unsure.

Ell was the second choice, after Tiger. It wasn't that he was particularly skilled in leadership or delegation, but that he had some damn charisma around him. Everyone wanted to be his friend. He'd been the guy to somehow befriend a stand-offish, closed-off transfer student that no one wanted anything to do with in Year 11, and Tiger—Sam—had been so grateful.

Not that he'd ever admit.

Then, there was Lion.

Tiger would never say it aloud—he supposed that was true of a lot of things—but he was in awe of Lion.

He had charisma that Ell had, but on another level. His decisions were quick and confident, and the things he suggested were, though sometimes a bit too cautious for Tiger, smart. He had a patience and a level of understanding that Tiger couldn't fathom for a long time—Tiger was a loner, for the most part, and he didn't appreciate being so fucking seen as easily as Lion saw. He didn't like him or trust him.

As they worked together, and Lion showed just how patient he could be, Tiger realized that anyone who didn't like Lion was a fucking alien. Or a criminal.

So, no. Tiger wasn't a leader.

Sitting at his friend's hospital bedside, watching Bear sleep restlessly, knowing that Alex had delivered himself to the wolves to keep them safe, he knew he was the only option.

So he shoved everything down, down, down, away from the sunlight, away from reality, because that was the only way he could handle it all.

Startled out of his thoughts by the buzz of his cellphone, he whipped it out, hoping against hope that it was Alex. It had been hours since he left, fucking hours of nothing but worry and the worst intrusive thoughts, but he could hope.

It wasn't him.

It was a text from Bear's dad, saying that he was on his way. A little icon at the bottom indicated that it had been sent via voice text.

He was immediately confused, at first, because he sure as hell hadn't reached out, and he didn't think Bear had either. He called from the room, ignoring the no cell phone policy for the sake of time.

"Matthew called me," Efrem said after initial greetings, the background noise indicating that he was already in the car on his way. "He told me what happened—and about his age. I'm sorry, Sam; I know you wanted to keep him away from all that."

Tiger, despite the rising agitation, felt himself deflate at the man's words. Efrem had always had a soft spot for Tiger, and Tiger knew he'd always had a soft spot for Efrem Johnson, too. "I don't know why he left," he said quietly, putting his face in his free hand.

"Yes you do, son," Efrem said gently, sympathy in his voice. "I've only met him once, but he would've given the world for you—any of you. You know that."

And Tiger knew. He did.

That stupid, reckless, fucking idiot. Dumbest, bravest man he'd ever met.

With a smile that gutted him, he laughed.

Not a man. A kid.

"I know." Tiger dragged a hand down his face and sat back, feeling so much older than he was. He barely felt like he was more than a kid himself—he was only twenty-fucking-four. Too young for terrorist organizations and corrupt government agencies and too young to be so scared for the boy caught between them.

"He's…Alex, by the way. Not Matthew. He changed everything when he came to hide."

There was a pause. "Alex," Efrem said, as if testing out the name. "I think that suits him better."

Tiger smiled again. This one didn't gut him like the other had, but it still hurt. "Me, too."

He hung up shortly after. Bear hadn't stirred.

Tiger was suddenly, inexplicably furious at Alex.

Where the fuck did this kid get off calling Efrem out, saying that Bear needed him, when he left? Where did he get off playing the hero, playing the martyr, the victim, sacrificing himself with little more than an I'm sorry and a backward glance?

Where did he get off, thinking he got to put everyone else in front of himself and they'd all be fucking grateful?

Still, even Tiger knew he wasn't as angry at Alex as he was at himself. At everyone. At their inability to leave a single kid alone.

God, he was so fucking angry.

Still, they didn't have time for angry. Tiger didn't have room for angry.

He couldn't be like Lion, but…well, he could be a leader, if he tried hard enough. If he repressed enough. He thought.

He was all they had, the fragmenting remains of L-Unit, so…he'd try.

"…and everyone at church says they hope you're okay," Evie said at the end of a twenty-minute update, on the phone with Eagle in the hospital waiting room. Eagle was pacing in the open space, holding onto far too much energy to sit down any longer. "We have a bunch of food I can bring over, if you want. I know you don't like hospital food."

Eagle smiled at the words of his girlfriend—fiancée, he reminded himself. Love of his life and light in his darkness. "Thanks, love. But I don't…really want you here right now. We're still not sure about any outside threats around, and everything we know is upside down, and I don't—"

"I know," she said softly. "I know, yeah. But I can bring it, if you need."

"I know."

She took a deep breath. He could hear the wheels turning as she searched for something to distract him, but despite how lacking in attention he usually was, his entire mind was consumed only by the situation at hand. "How Lewis?" She said eventually.

Eagle shrugged, then, remembering he was on the phone and not FaceTime, said, "Okay, I suppose. As well as can be expected. The doctors are pleased with how the swelling is going down, but they won't be able to set a date for the surgery to re-set his leg until all the transfusions are done. He lost a lot of blood, Ev."

"I know. But remember, he's in the best place he can be. They're taking care of him."

Eagle nodded, shrugging his shoulders as excess energy flooded his fingertips with nowhere to go. "I'm really struggling."

Evie paused, and Eagle knew it was killing her not to be with him. She'd always been the stronger of them. "I know, my love, but listen—Matthew—shit. No. Alex. He's going to be okay. If everything's true, he's survived this far, and he's not just going to give up now. Snake's going to be fine, he's such a fighter, Mason. He would never—"

"It was a car crash," he said by way of explanation, biting his thumbnail at the admission.

Evie was silent for a long few seconds before she finally got it, and he heard the breath leave her all at once in understanding. "Oh."

"It was a car crash."

"Oh, Mason. No, sweetheart, no. This isn't—this isn't the same."

It was a car crash, and it was drawing every trauma Eagle kept buried to the surface. Eagle could imagine it vividly, what Snake must have experienced—the fear of knowing you were going to be hit, the helplessness of knowing you couldn't stop it, the terror as metal crunched and bent around you. It became a mangled cage, a prison, and you spun or you skidded until something else stopped you.

Then came the waiting. There was a suspended moment after the motion stopped, before you knew time was moving again. Where nothing was real. Nothing was up or down, nothing was solid or fluid—you couldn't feel besides a dull pain, something that required your attention, but you couldn't focus on it just yet.

And then Eagle was aware, in pain and fifteen and so scared, because Riley, his friend, was not aware.

There was blood everywhere. Eagle hadn't seen a battlefield yet, but he knew logically that someone couldn't bleed that much and be okay.

He didn't know what blood was whose. He felt himself bleeding, but it wasn't gushing like Riley. Riley was still and his complexion was gray, usually brown skin washed out by the crimson stains and the death.

And Eagle knew that fear, knew that fear of sitting next to someone as they died while you, yourself, were trapped and so helpless.

He knew that even if Snake was doing well, it took so little to send him downhill, and Eagle was scared.

"I know it's not the same," he said quietly, stopping to lean his forehead against a cool wall. "But it feels like it."

"I know it does. Sarah said it might, didn't she? That car crashes would be a sore spot from now on. You know how to get through this, love."

Eagle did. Sarah had worked with him to develop coping mechanisms should something like this happen—car crashes were unavoidable, awful things, but Eagle's parents had been pretty concerned when he couldn't even sit through watching them on TV. He knew how to cope.

He just hadn't expected it to be one of his closest friends.

"I know," he said quietly. "I'm…yeah. I'm okay." He took a deep breath, and he could tell she didn't believe him. "Can you just…talk to me? What did you do today?"

She paused, obviously worried, but said, "Of course. Yeah. I, uh…well, I didn't sleep well, so I slept a little late this morning. I had a shift from nine to three to cover for a friend of mine, then I picked up some things at the supermarket. Got home to two casseroles on the porch, though, so I'm not sure it was really necessary. I checked the mail, went inside, turned on the tellie—"

"What was in the mail?" He asked, both glad the distraction was staving off the fear and genuinely curious.

She paused. "The results were in, yeah, but I haven't opened them, and I don't think this is what we need right now, Mason. You're worried enough as it is. If they aren't good, I don't want us to worry about it right now."

Eagle knew she was right. He knew that.

"…you're already worrying, aren't you," she said quietly.

"…yeah."

"We don't have to do this right now."

"We've been waiting three months, Evie," he said. "The timing isn't ideal, but we should know."

Both of them loved kids. Loved them. Both of them had volunteered at the youth groups at their church for a while before Eagle went into the military, and they wanted kids. They wanted kids so badly that they decided to start having sex before they were married, and as soon as Evie was pregnant, they'd set the date.

So they'd been trying. And trying.

And trying.

Eagle had decided to go ahead and propose on Christmas after they'd talked about proposing a bit earlier than they'd planned, but still, they couldn't conceive.

So they'd done fertility testing.

And the results were in.

"We deserve to know."

He heard her silence, but he knew her. She wanted to know too.

She didn't say anything, but the rifling of papers told him all he needed to know. He slumped into a seat and waited, his foot bouncing on the tile as something came over the intercom.

"Mine are…well, they're fine," she said. "I don't have a high chance of getting pregnant, but I can."

"Okay, good," Eagle said, her news easing something tight in his chest. "That's really good, babe."

"Yours are…" She paused, and that tightness returned. "Yours are…they're low, Mason."

He closed his eyes and sighed, deep and knowing, and put his head in his free hand. "Oh."

"Yeah, but…they're not negative," she said. Something desperate tinged her tone. "So it's going to be hard, but we can do it. We just need to keep trying."

Trying. Keep trying. And trying.

Evie deserved better than that.

"Okay," he said quietly, too tired and too emotionally exhausted to process the implications of those results right now.

"I love you, and you alone, and every part of you," she said unashamedly, and his breath stuttered. "This doesn't change how much I love you, or that I want to be with you every day for the rest of my life. If this is God's plan for us, then that's okay. It's still His plan for us, together."

And Eagle believed her and knew she was right.

It didn't mean it didn't hurt.

Sometime in the past couple hours, Tom had crossed the borders of manic sobbing into depression, and now, he was numb.

Jerry had been freaking out when he'd first heard how unhinged Tom sounded, sobbing without a comprehendible thought anywhere in sight, and all Jerry could do was hold him as he sobbed and beg Tom to give him something to work with.

Jerry didn't know everything, but he knew enough to know that Alex wasn't a normal kid—knew that after he'd helped his brother's best friend BASE jump into Italy? He wasn't stupid. He knew he was something more than a schoolboy.

Still, he was his brother's best friend, the kid who'd looked after him when Jerry hadn't been able to, so…yeah, of course he'd go to bat for him.

Still, when Tom muttered something into Jerry's snot and tear-soaked shirt about Alex giving himself back to MI6, a lot of puzzle pieces clicked for Jerry.

That, as improbable and unlikely as it sounded out of context, made a lot of sense.

Jerry tightened his grip on Tom as his brother sobbed, unsure of what he could do. He couldn't fix this. This wasn't a bully or some rude kid at school that he could intimidate. It wasn't their parents that he could get Tom away from, or yell at when they went too far with him. This wasn't something he could fix.

And his brother, after hours of crying, was now just staring off into space, still slumped against Jerry, and Jerry couldn't do anything.

"He can't survive this again, Jerry," Tom broke the silence with a quivering voice, curling up into an even smaller ball. "He can't—God, he was already so sad, so scared, he can't—how can they keep doing this to him?"

Jerry didn't know what "this" was, but if the numb desolation in Tom's voice was anything to go by, it wasn't good.

"…I don't know, Tommy," he said, trying to sound comforting, rubbing his brother's shoulder. "I don't know, but…Alex is a strong kid. We both know that, right?"

"He's strong," he agreed, "but he can only carry so much."

Jerry was at a loss.

He just gathered his brother close as the sobs started up again and hoped that whatever Alex Rider had gotten himself into, he could get himself out, too.

Mathias could count the number of times he'd felt such unadulterated fury on one hand.

This time outshone them all.

It was absolutely maddening, the level of ire he was experiencing. It drove him to the brink of insanity and held him over the edge. It drove rationale into a forgotten pit. It bit and clawed and burned at all common sense or thought.

His first and only instinct was to kill. To kill. To kill.

To slaughter.

When his spy told him that Lewis was in the hospital with severe injuries, every thread connecting Mathias to any sense of reality snapped.

He heard garbled, insignificant chatter on the other end of the phone before he snapped the device in his hands, bending it backwards on itself like cardboard, and threw it at the wall for good measure. It splintered and ricocheted across the floor.

He would kill.

He would find out exactly who had caused this crash, orchestrated this crash—knew anything to do with this crash—and oh, would he kill.

And it would be slow. It would be sweet, slow, saccharine torture.

It would do nothing to alleviate this volcanic fury, but it would be oh, so, so wonderfully slow.

First, he would confirm Lewis's safety. Then he would set his plan in motion.

Then. Then.

He would find who had done this to his friend, and he would rend them into nothing more than fragments.

Only then would he kill them.

Only then.

Efrem was halfway to Savernake when he bit the bullet.

He wasn't lying to Matthew—Alex—when he said he had friends. The men and women he served with in his special forces unit would always answer when he called, and he'd always answer when they called.

That didn't mean he particularly enjoyed their company. Especially Aaron.

They hadn't left on the best of terms, but the man had taken care of his son—given him a shot when no one else would—and though technically Efrem owed him, this was big enough that he knew he would need some outside help.

Well. More likely, some inside help.

The phone went to voicemail the first time, so Efrem, in an uncharacteristic display of impatience, rolled his eyes and dialed again.

He picked up on the fourth ring this time. "What?"

"Hello," Efrem said cordially. "Been a long time."

There was a pause. "Oh. Efrem. I didn't know you were calling."

"I thought you did, and that was why you let my first call go to voicemail," Efrem said, and though they weren't on the best of terms, he felt a smile touch his face. Efrem had mellowed out considerably since becoming a single father, but he missed the casual banter with his fellow soldiers.

"Yes, you would, you self-important bastard," Aaron said, but there was no heat to it. "You calling about Henry's unit and their fucking shitshow?"

Efrem blinked. "You know already?"

"Course I know," he scoffed. "I'm the bloody Sergeant, I was the first one they told."

Efrem took a measured breath and was quickly reminded of why he truly disliked Aaron Callaway. "I see. I'm on my way to their hospital now."

"Okay. I have a unit there already. Did Bear call you?"

"No, Ma—Alex did," he responded, sure the Sergeant knew the boy's real name by now. "We'd met, at Christmas. I knew there was something wrong, that he didn't seem old enough, but I had no idea it was this big."

"No, I didn't either, or I never would've let him train here," Aaron admitted. Efrem heard the squeak of a chair as he leaned back.

Efrem was silent for a long minute. He knew Aaron's tone of voice. "This isn't your fault."

"Don't be reassuring, that's fucking wrong," Aaron shrugged his words off. "Save that for your kid."

"Hm," he said, carefully easing his speed up as he crossed into the countryside, away from the traffic of the city. "Catch me up."

"How much do you know?" Aaron didn't mention the breach in protocol.

"Just what Alex said—that someone hurt Daniel and another soldier, because he wouldn't go with them."

"That's the simplified version, sure."

Aaron spent the next twenty minutes catching Efrem up on everything he knew—about how he was Cub first, then an MI6 tool, loaned out to the CIA and other agencies regularly, how he defected briefly to SCORPIA and returned, and how he'd escaped for a meager few months to the SAS before they'd found him again. Efrem questioned, heatedly, where his family was during all this, and that started off another round of indignation.

Efrem Johnson knew anger. He knew anger because he'd seen anger, in his son, in his ex-wife, and in himself. He was furious with her—the woman he'd promised to love and cherish and protect with everything he was for the rest of his life, the woman he'd promised to raise a child with, and she…

Henry didn't know. He'd never told him everything, just that she'd left.

Not that she'd left him for someone else.

Henry didn't need to know that.

Still, he could see the anger in himself every morning when he woke, and it took months of practice to stifle it. He could. He'd always been patient, with others and with himself. He could. It just took practice and care, and there was no room for anger for his ex-wife when his son was self-destructing.

She was no longer a priority—Henry was.

Still. Just because it was hidden didn't mean he couldn't feel it.

He often thought that was why he and Sam got along so well—he was older, more experienced, but he knew they both had quite a bit of anger bottled up inside of him.

He hadn't felt this kind of anger in a long, long time.

"They used him, threw him away, and are using what's left," Efrem summarized, clutching the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip.

"Pretty much. I'm up to my ears in paperwork, but—fuck, Efrem, I don't want to get you this involved. I'm going to lose my job if this goes South, but MI6 staged a car crash to kill my soldiers, and I'll be damned straight to the devil's fucking living room if I don't try to take them down."

Efrem paused. "You want to what?"

"You heard me. I'm going to take down MI6," he said.

Efrem knew Aaron well enough to know he didn't make jokes.

He was dead serious.

"That's…interesting," Efrem said, at a loss.

"Oh, come off it, you can say it's crazy as fuck, you prude," Aaron said, and Efrem could hear the strain in his words, now. "I don't know how it'll go. I don't know if it'll work. At the very least I'm aiming for a complete and utter overhaul of their administration. I will not work with or for people willing to sacrifice my soldiers or bloody children to accomplish their goals, and I sure as hell won't let them stay in power."

Efrem took a breath, watching the countryside flash by as he sped to his son. "How can I help?"

"No, Efrem. I know we're not friends, but I don't want you in this. You could lose your pension, your benefits—I'm going to jail if this doesn't go well. Don't do that to Henry, mate."

"Thought we weren't friends, mate," he responded. "And if what you said is true, Henry is in just as much danger as Lion and the other soldier was. I'm not sitting out."

A pause. "You won't get to take this back."

"I know. You know I don't back out of things."

"I know." Another pause, and a heavy sigh. "Fuck. Well. I guess this is the start of a fucking coup."

Despite the unavoidable fear and the impending dangers, Efrem smiled. "Perhaps the others will want a piece of it."

Aaron snorted, heavy, but humorous. "Let's hope; I don't think we can do this with just the two of us."

"Well, if I know my son at all, he already has a friend on the tech side of it," he said, thinking that is his son knew about anything that was going on, he would've already had Mac on the case. Efrem know one call to them would probably yield more than they already knew. "We'll have eyes inside MI6's system and we can keep up with Alex's condition there."

"Fuck. We're really doing this."

"This was your idea."

"Shut up. I know."

Efrem grasped the steering wheel a little tighter. He was in his late forties and was sure he'd left the action behind decades ago, when Henry was born. God, this was going to be a mess.

Still. Domestic or not, there was a threat to his son, and the people his son loved.

Efrem wasn't going to stop. Aaron wasn't either.

They were just getting started.

END OF SEASON 1

Discord for anyone who still wants it: /Mpf6q6Zt

A/N: It's too long for it to be the end of Book 1, so I was gonna, like…do seasons? Really long-ass seasons.

As of right now, there will be three seasons. I have each one loosely planned.

Thanks so much for all the wonderful reviews!: Wraith and Demjin, Storyspinner16, Cakemania225, MillieM04, Lira, Guest, Asilrettor, agent potter, Captain , fuzzyshungee, ShadyWillow, DudeTrustTheCloak, Guest, Guest, and Eva Haller!

Storyspinner16: HAHAHA I'M SORRY. Don't worry, Fishy gets punched! Hehehe. SNAKE. OH GOD THAT'S EVIL SPINNER I'M GOING TO CRY. Thank you so so much!

Lira: I'm so sorry you're going through all that. I hope this ends peacefully and Putin is removed from power, and that you and Ukraine both get the support you need.

Lira: AW THANK YOU! We'll definitely get to his motivations! Thanks so much, take your time!

Fuzzyshungee: I'M SORRY HERE YOU GO

Guest: AW THANKS! I know I'm so mean to him…THANK YOU

Guest (I can't wait to fund out): Hope this answers some questions!

Guest (You know, I'd like to go back to…): HA yeah that makes sense! Yeah recovery is going to be a long, long process… THANK YOU SO MUCH! I'm so excited to reveal everything!

Lira: ASGYIFUBNOWERUG OMG OMG OMG LIRA I SAW IT IT'S SO GOOD AUGIAEBFYW THANK YOU SO MUCH

This story would be so much less meaningful without all of you being so supportive and wonderful! Thanks for all the reviews, the continued reading, and for just being here to share this journey with me. Love you guys!