The sun rose on Mrs Jones in her office on the sixteenth floor of the Royal and General Bank building on Liverpool Street. They had been searching the city ever since Orion had first been taken but, so far, they had found no trace of him. The van must have stopped briefly to move him to a different vehicle when it went down one of the few streets where there were no CCTV cameras. And following all of the vehicles that came out of those streets at similar times to the van was a logistical nightmare. Some of them split off into underground residential car parks, others onto motorways and others still headed out of London onto country lanes or down streets with no CCTV. If it hadn't been rush hour when he was taken, they might have had more success but as it had been, she didn't have much hope. He had been missing for over twelve hours and, realistically, Mrs Jones knew he could now be almost anywhere. Tracing the van back on its journey before it reached Alex and Daniels on Arlington Way hadn't yielded any results either. Whoever had taken him had known what they were doing.
Mrs Jones would never tell her boss, but she secretly hoped that it was Scorpia who had taken him from the street. If it was Scorpia, then they would, at least, take care of him. If it was one of his enemies, they would, almost certainly, torture him for information, believing him to be Orion the Scorpia operative. He would die, as Elliot, scared, alone and in pain, and that was the last thing she wanted. If it had been her decision, Alex Rider would have been incarcerated and interrogated (and perhaps, eventually, rehabilitated and been allowed back into the world), but he wouldn't have had his mind messed with in such an intrusive way. But it hadn't been her decision; she had been given her orders and had followed them to the letter, pushing aside any personal doubts and misgivings. She would not be the reason that this mission failed.
They hadn't learnt anything from 'Elliot' and Mrs Jones knew that Alan Blunt was disappointed with the result of his experiment. He had hoped that 'Elliot' would reveal things that bled through from Alex's subconscious but whoever had modified his mind had clearly done their job too well. Either that or the technique simply didn't work. 'Elliot' had known nothing other than the life that he had been given. They had failed. And now there was the possibility that he was being tortured for information that he didn't have. Pushing those thoughts out of her head - shutting off her emotions as she had been trained to - Mrs Jones focused back on her task. She had to find Alex Rider.