Yassen waited until he heard Alex turn on the shower before bringing out the files he had confiscated from the target. He fried garlic and chopped bread while he flipped through the papers for any useful information.

When Alex came back down the stairs, hair damp from the shower, the Sopa de Ajo was done and the files safely destroyed.

Yassen placed two steaming bowls and a basket of bread on the table and filled their glasses with water. Reading Alex's intention on his face before he opened his mouth, Yassen said, "We'll talk after dinner."

Alex looked reluctant, but hunger and a warm shower must have sapped his energy enough for him to comply without more than a half-hearted grumble.

Yassen made sure Alex had eaten most of his portion of soup, before breaking the silence.

"Why did MI6 send you to assassinate Juan Martín?"

Alex froze with the spoon halfway to his mouth. Yassen calmly took a bite of bread, though he kept his eyes on the child.

It took Alex a moment to pull himself together enough to glare and answer, "They didn't."

"Oh?" The child wasn't lying. That didn't mean Yassen was wrong. "And why did they send you then?"

Alex took another spoonful of food. Good. Yassen suspected the child hadn't eaten a proper meal all day.

"Where did you get the gun?" Yassen said, genuinely curious. The Glock 19 was a standard issue for several countries, including England, but MI6 had never provided their child soldier with one before.

Alex pointed at his bowl with his spoon. "This is good." Yassen waited patiently for Alex to loudly slurp the spoonful before he continued. "Even if putting eggs in soup is strange."

"Alex."

"What?" Alex flicked his spoon so drops of soup went flying. Yassen found a handkerchief and wiped the table down.

"If you want answers," Yassen said, "you need to help me first."

"So you know what things not to tell me?" Alex asked. "No thanks."

Yassen took another bite. "I have time. You do not." He gave Alex a pointed look. "I thought you might prefer a light conversation over dinner."

"Right." Alex looked sullen. "Fine, but I want answers as well. You promised."

Yassen hadn't. He nodded in agreement anyway. It was the quickest solution, and the alternatives were… less pleasant.

"How did you end up in the hotel room?" Yassen folded his hands on the table. "The full story please, or I cannot help you."

Alex sighed and abandoned his spoon on his plate.

"I wasn't supposed to be there. MI6 just needed a convenient last-minute cover."

The black government car waited at the curb opposite Brookland Comprehensive. Alex wanted to turn around as soon as he spotted it.

Instead, he made Tom promise to tell Jack what had happened. Tom glanced worriedly between Alex and the car and asked him to be careful, before biking off.

Alex wished he could follow.

He left his bike in the rack and strolled over to the car.

"You couldn't have called?" he asked as soon as the driver had rolled down the window.

"We have limited time," Crawley said. "Get in."

Alex looked around. A few other students were milling around, though no one he knew.

"Don't make a scene," Crawley warned.

"What?" Alex asked, "You're not even trying to pretend to give me a choice?"

Crawley demonstratively opened the door to the passenger seat. Alex threw his school bag unto the back seat and got in, slamming the door for effect. Crawley wanted him to play the spoiled teenager? Alex could do that.

Crawley twitched his brow, but sadly kept his calm and didn't comment.

"Are we going to the bank?" Alex asked once they were on the road.

"Airport."

Alex blinked in surprise. Usually, he had a briefing with Blunt before a mission, where they would both pretend Alex had had a choice when he inevitably agreed to go.

"We're not seeing Smithers?" Alex was fine with avoiding Blunt, but he would have liked a bulletproof shirt or a similar useful gadget. And he liked Smithers.

"No time. Our flight leaves in an hour."

Apparently, shady government people did not have to arrive two hours before take-off.

"I don't get to pack?" Alex looked back at his school bag. Hopefully, someone would deliver it back to Jack. He felt a pang in his chest; He would have liked to say goodbye. At least Tom would tell her what had happened, even if she would still worry. Alex snapped his head around. "Wait our flight?"

"There's a bag of clothes and a passport in the back. We'll be father and son for the trip."

Alex let his head fall back.

"Wonderful. Another family vacation. Those always turn out so well." He made sure to lay on the sarcasm extra thickly. "Can you at least tell me where we're going?"

"Spain."

Three hours later, they landed at El Prat Airport, Barcelona.

Yassen stayed quiet for a moment after Alex stopped talking. It was… worrying to have his suspicions confirmed about Alex's willingness in MI6's plots. Although, it at least showed the child possessed a fraction of common sense.

"You did not answer why you were at the hotel," he noted.

Alex crossed his arms. "You promised me answers."

"When you had answered my question."

Alex shook his head. "I'm not telling the whole story before I get something in return." He frowned. "Why are you asking anyway? You know why I was there."

"Is that your question?"

"No." Alex sent him an annoyed look. The child needed to learn how to hide his thoughts better.

Yassen raised a brow and waited.

"Why did you bring me here?" Alex asked. That was not the question Yassen had expected, although a reasonable one.

"Would you have preferred the police picking you up?"

Alex rolled his eyes. "Just tell me."

"I needed to question you about MI6's interest in Juan Martín," Yassen said drily.

"Now who's not giving a full answer?"

Yassen shrugged. "If you want to ask another question, you need to continue your tale."

Alex scowled. "Fine."

Alex arrived at the hotel in a light blue dress shirt, jeans, and a new pair of white trainers – courtesy of MI6. Crawley had changed his cheap off-the-rack charcoal suit with a slightly more expensive charcoal suit; less government paper-pusher and more semi-successful businessman.

Alex slouched in place while Crawley checked in. He didn't have to try all that hard to act like the disgruntled teenager getting dragged on his father's business trip for some pretend bonding time.

Blessedly, MI6 had splurged enough to give them a room each, and Alex managed to get a whole hour for himself which he spent unpacking and texting Jack and Tom before Crawley knocked at his door and insisted on going for dinner at the hotel restaurant.

Ordering and getting their drinks while pretending to be father and son was about as awkward as you would expect. Alex ordered a large sirop de grenadine that he made sure to slurp as soundly as possible. Crawley's mask of fatherly stoicism was impressive, but Alex expertly wore him down with random chatter filled with as many bad puns as he could squeeze in.

When dinner arrived, Crawley was not so subtly scowling and barely managed to politely thank the server, cheeks tinted red from anger.

"Please act a little more professional," Crawley said once the server had left.

Alex shrugged. "Just living up to my role."

Crawley didn't look impressed. Alex began picking at his steak. It tasted delicious, and after only having what the flight had claimed to be a ham and cheese sandwich since lunch, it went down smoothly.

"Why are we here anyway?" Alex asked when it became clear the agent wasn't going to keep the conversation flowing on his own.

Crawley gave him a deadpan look. "Having a nice family dinner."

"Oh, come on. No one will hear us here." Alex leaned forward and pointed his steak knife at the agent, who Alex was happy to notice shifted subtly out of range."Don't pretend you didn't plan on telling me here. We could have just ordered room service."

"This helps keep the cover."

"A workaholic father more focused on the stock market than his son?" Alex asked. "What a novelty We would have been fine with room service."

Crawley took a long sip of his wine before saying, "Very well."

It was Alex's time to raise a brow. That had been way too easy.

"As you guessed," Crawley continued. "I already planned to tell you, and I don't have the patience for more games today."

The agent took a bite of his steak and chewed thoroughly, probably leaving Alex hanging just for the sake of it.

"We're here because the man currently residing in room 541 has come into possession of some rather dangerous information. He plans to sell it to the highest bidder in two days."

"What kind of information?"

"That I'm not sanctioned to tell you. However, it would be very bad if it were to fall into the wrong hands."

Alex snorted. How very informative.

"And we're going to steal it," Alex concluded. Unless MI6 actually paid for something for once. Now that would be a twist.

Crawley nodded.

"How?"

"The man has a table reserved at a restaurant tomorrow at nine and will be gone for the evening. I'll break into his room then."

Crawley took another sip of his glass for show; The amount of wine hadn't changed since the server poured it.

"And he'll just conveniently leave the incriminating information behind?" Alex asked.

Crawley gave him a grim smile. "Juan Martín is a man who saw an opportunity, not a spy. I doubt, he'll dare take the information with him in fear it will be stolen."

"And if he does?"

"We have contingencies."

He should have pressed Crawley for more information. However, at the time he still had the small hope things would go right for once, and for once Crawley would be the one in danger.

Alex should have known better.

"MI6 didn't tell you what the flash drive contained?" Yassen asked.

Alex shook his head and leaned forwards. "What does it contain?"

Yassen raised a brow, and Alex shrugged. "What? I answered your question."

Yassen let him hang for a moment, though he had already decided to give up this piece of information. Well, some of it – he had a professional image to uphold.

"Blue prints for a missile."

"What type?"

"A new kind. Very valuable."

"And very destructive," Alex concluded.

Yassen shrugged. Destructive enough to potentially change the power balance in the Middle East, if his employer had anything to say about it.

"How did you end up being the one to break in?"

Alex frowned. "Bad luck."

Early the next morning, Alex was woken by loud voices outside his hotel room. Weary of trouble, he grabbed a metal shoehorn – conveniently within reach of the door – and peaked out.

Two tall, dark-haired men stood outside the door to Crawley's room and were arguing with the agent. The men both wore the official black uniform with yellow shoulder patches of the Guàrdia Urbana – the municipal police force. Though, something about their stance made Alex suspect they might have been something more.

The officers were firing off angry questions in Spanish at Crawley, who was answering them haltingly in the same language with a thick accent Alex was sure was forced.

The agent looked the appropriate mixture of confused and irritated for someone woken up early on their first day of vacation.

It took Alex's sleepy brain a moment to mentally switch to Spanish so he could understand what exactly they were saying.

"Please," Crawley said and held up his hands in defeat. "I'll go with you. Just let me talk with my son first."

Only then did the officers seem to notice Alex looking at them. Alex kept his hand holding the shoehorn hidden behind the door frame.

The expression of the closest officers softened. He looked younger than his partner, maybe in his early to mid-twenties, his face still had a bit of childhood roundness and his hair was a little too messy to be called stylishly tussled. Maybe Alex hadn't been the only one who had been woken up much too early.

"Your son will be alright?" the officer asked, switching to a much better English than Crowley's attempted Spanish – probably to include Alex in the conversation. "He has someone to stay with?"

"My friend was supposed to meet us here later," Crowley assured him, also switching to English. "He'll be fine alone until then, won't you?" He directed the last part towards Alex.

"Sure," Alex agreed.

The officers continued to look a little sceptical, but they allowed Crowley to awkwardly give Alex a tight hug before leading the agent away.

Alex watched them leave, then went down to the lobby for a large breakfast.

In his pocket laid the cloned keycard for room 541 that Crowley had slipped in during the hug.

"Your friend is not very good at his job, getting taken in by local authorities in less than a day," Yassen said.

Alex grimaced but didn't disagree.

"You said MI6 didn't send you to kill the man. The gun was Martín's then?"

Alex gave a nearly imperceptible nod and looked away, eyes filled with guilt.

Yassen could guess what had happened. MI6's intelligence had been faulty; Martín had arrived back early and surprised Alex. The man had drawn a gun, they had fought for it, and in the struggle, the man had been shot.

Alex's eyes sharpened. "That was two questions. My turn."

Yassen tilted his head in agreement.

"Who did you give the flash drive to?"

Yassen smiled. "A local contact." At Alex's expression, he added, "No names."

Alex didn't look pleased but seemed to accept that Yassen wouldn't yield on this. Yassen didn't doubt the child planned to find the information another way.

"Who's your employer?" Alex asked instead.

"That is not– " Yassen paused when his phone rang.

There was only one person who had the number for that phone, and a glance confirmed it: Carlos.

Yassen glanced at the wall clock – but no, he hadn't lost track of time. It had been less than two hours since he delivered the flash drive, phone and computer to the man – much too early for the news to be any good.

"We'll talk more later," he said and walked out of the room to take the call.