Chappie One

AN: As you read, you may notice quite a few references to pop culture, or anything, really. This is deliberate, and I hereby disclaim that I own nothing that I reference. Also, I am announcing a competition: The person before February 13, 2016 to review with the highest number of references that I have made (e.g. Staying Alive by The Bee Gees, prologue, "You can tell by the way I use my walk") will win a one-shot from me, of their choice. The prize is limited to fandoms I know (if I can't write it, I'll ask you to choose something else) and the rules of FFNET (nothing explicit, please) :) I reserve the right to ask you to choose a different story.

Alex woke to a steady beeping. Disoriented at first, he was shocked to find himself clothed in a dress, which was open at the back. Even more horrifying were the wires plugged into him and the stark whiteness of the room in which he was confined. It reminded him eerily of the Matrix, except that the Matrix didn't force its male prisoners to wear dresses. Unless the prisoners wanted to. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Anyway…

Mind still sluggish, he looked at the tubes poking out of his skin. He had to remove them, quickly. Who knew what poisonous substances were being pumped into his bloodstream? In one movement, the tubes were torn out. He started at the long, angry beep now resonating from a machine near the bed he sat upon. To stop the obnoxious noise, he pushed the machine away, where it stopped, sulkily, next to the door.

The noise was probably an alarm, and his captors were probably returning right now to sedate him again. He had to get out.

Stepping off his bed, the carpeted floor was rough and hard on his bare feet compared to the soft sheets of before. He shuffled slowly over to the window, still weak from the drugs his captors had given him. With a bit of effort, he opened it. Stupid of whoever had kidnapped him to leave him a way to escape.

Ignoring the winds buffeting at him from outside, he started to climb down, using a rainwater-pipe to steady himself.

Hopefully, the match hadn't started yet – he could still make it before the coach got too pissed off at him...

xxx

Nurse Wainscott was not having a good day. She'd woken at one o'clock in the morning to an alarm blaring at her, and upon going to its corresponding room, had found that her patient had escaped, after tearing off his heart-rate monitor.

What kind of a patient tears off their heart-rate monitor? Was he trying to make her life more difficult? Patients these days, honestly. They needed so much patience.

Knowing that she had no other option, Wainscott had gone to the supervisor and informed the woman of the Escape. The woman had been very understanding, having had disoriented spies in her care before, but Nurse Wainscott worried that this understanding might not be present when she was faced with the agent's bosses.

After the explanation, she was ordered back up to the room, and to take a partner with her. Perhaps she was merely tired and had only imagined seeing an empty bed where there shouldn't be.

Unfortunately, this was not the case.

With her partner close behind, she rushed back down to the supervisor and informed her that, no, she wasn't hallucinating. Of course, the supervisor had to be completely sure – could she check again? After a few more months of this, Nurse Wainscott reckoned she would become quite fit.

When she came back, her supervisor was less understanding, as expected. With a quick order to someone else to call the Firm, the hospital was soon sent into a flurry of searching orderlies, nurses and interns, all watched over by the hawk-eyes of their supervisor.

They performed an initial search; then, failing to find him, began to comb the entire building in earnest. After multiple scourings, it soon became obvious that the boy wouldn't be found so easily. Damn these spies and their infernal escaping abilities.

However, he was to be commended for his talents...

Nurse Wainscott felt sorry for the poor interns who had never experienced anything like this. Then again, they weren't the ones who were going to be in trouble. She snarled at a particularly awkward looking one, who looked very small and very frightened standing in a corner. He cringed in response, looking even more like a deer in headlights. Why couldn't he stop cowering and actually help?

On the other hand, maybe it was good that he wasn't helping. Ugh, she was so confused. It was all the spy's fault. Though he had been drugged up...

She irritably brushed off another annoying intern who hovered around her like a mosquito, buzzing included. Well, it sounded like buzzing; she wasn't really listening.

As she swept by, she sent a glance towards the receptionist. The poor lady was very meekly informing the Head of MI6 about the problem. Then again...

xxx

Alex was ecstatic. After climbing for so long, it was wonderful to see the ground in reach. It wasn't very nice to wake in an unknown place, and he was still very annoyed about the dress he'd been dressed in. He was going to 'borrow' some much less revealing clothes when he got done down, law be damned! He was the law! Or at least, he worked for the law. Same thing, right?

However, as he was reaching down to move a step closer to freedom, trousers (although the two were rather contradictory) and the football match he'd been working towards all year, he felt a twinge of pain. It started at his abdomen and quickly spread to his leg. Knives were cutting into his internal muscles and he shut his eyes as if to block it out.

It didn't work. The pain grew. He hoped it wouldn't become too unbearable; he was still a fair way above the ground, and it would hurt a lot if he fell.

Frowning, he rubbed his strangely-sore stomach, eyebrows drawing even closer together when he saw his hand come away with a red liquid. Why –? Was he leaking? Was he melting? What was happening to him?

He started to panic. What if he didn't make it down? What if his captors had poisoned him and this was the effect? He cursed the cruel people who had done this to him.

Then, like a pin dropping, he realised that couldn't be right because the wires he'd been so scared of before had been attached to a heart-rate monitor. Did that sign really say 'St Dominic's Hospital'? And… were those bandages around his waist?

His mouth fell open as he remembered. The sniper! Of course! It was so obvious now, and he cursed the morphine for slowing down his ... mental fastness stuff. He'd been shot and blacked out. This was obviously a hospital he'd been put in!

"Gah!"

With a frustrated sigh, Alex reached up with his arm and began the long climb back up.

xxx

By now, the hospital had slipped into the high panic mode that humans switch to when they realise they're about to crash and burn. It is in this state that some of the most inspired inventions have been created. Not today, however.

To Nurse Wainscott's slight amusement, coloured with commiseration, she observed yet another intern – who'd arrived only a week before – sobbing to the side. She understood how he felt, even if she would be happier if he cleaned himself up and actually did something useful. Poor duck.

She continued walking the path to her doom.

Arriving at the front desk, she was pointed to a man who seemed to almost fade when you tried to look at him. So this was what the head of MI6 looked like. When she concentrated on his face, she noted his lips, a strange pinky-purple drooping over a crooked jaw-line, his detached grey eyes, and his wrinkles, which completed his blank-faced old-man look.

Wiping the pity off her face, she strode briskly to him.

"Nurse Wainscott?" he droned. Of course he would know her name.

"Yes. I'm to show you the room where Agent Rider was last seen." At least her voice was steady.

"Very good."

She wondered how he could look so calm in front of the person he surely blamed for the disappearance of his agent. She shuddered to wonder what he would look like while signing the form sacking her from her job.

After some thought, she came to a conclusion: probably the same.

"Follow me, please."

xxx

Nurse Wainscott came to the door of the empty room and stepped aside to let the head of MI6 speak to the guard outside. She felt a slight feeling of vindication when she realised that the soldier would probably receive as much, if not more, blame than she would.

The poor man moved away to let the MI6 head enter through the white, somehow very irritating door.

It opened slowly, with the same sense of foreboding that precedes a death in a horror movie. The only thing missing was the high-pitched shriek of a violin.

The head of MI6 crossed the threshold slowly. Everything seemed to be in place. The bed was where it was meant to be. The TV was untouched, the bedside table undisturbed. The only thing out of place was the heart rate monitor, which stood off-kilter next to the door.

The man's awful wrinkled body in its depressingly bland suit stepped over to the window.

As he peered over the ledge, Wainscott's panicked thoughts ran wild.

Oh no, now he's looking out the window. Hah, the wind's a pretty good spy, exposing your comb over like that. I wonder what would happen if I walked over there and push—Oh, he's turned around. Hi, Sir, I'd like to show some initiative and leave right now, if you don't mind.

Just as she was about to follow through on that last thought, the MI6 head froze.

He stared.

What is he staring at? What's so interesting about the bed? Is there a strange stain? Oh, no, it's only the body. THE BODY? That wasn't there before. Now he's looking at me! What have I done?

Slowly, with an air of disbelief, he looked up at the group, back down to the body, and back up to the group. He repeated this motion a few times.

He looks like one of those nodding dogs that are on the dashboards of cars.

On the bed before them, one blond teenager slept peacefully with a smirk on his damned face. Out of the corner of his almost-closed eyes, a very tired and sheepish Alex saw Mr Blunt twitch.

xxx

When Alex awoke the next morning, Blunt was still beside his bed and wearing the same annoyed expression he'd carried the day before. Alex felt equally annoyed. The coach had specifically said upon Alex's promotion that Alex had better not disappoint him and get sick or anything. The man was going to kill him once he found out that Alex was in hospital.

Like a person next to a landmine, Alex sat up carefully. He didn't want any sudden movements forcing his boss' emotions over the edge and causing an explosion. But to his relief, Blunt simply looked at him.

"We need to talk," he said, "about this attack." He had obviously decided to ignore Alex's mysterious disappearance and miraculous return.

Still not completely sure of his safety, Alex tried not to snigger at the poor choice of words. "Respectfully, sir, what is there to say? I was shot, and now I'm here. When I'm allowed to, I'll leave and go home. You know, I missed the first match of the season."

Blunt sighed, seeming oddly emotional. Alex decided it was simply an affectation, meant to make him feel at ease. (He didn't.) "I'm afraid there is more to it than that. You see, Alex, what happened to you was no accident. We do not yet know who hired the sniper, but it is probable that they will try again. They are not like SCORPIA. We cannot negotiate with them. You cannot return just yet."

Alex would have said some very nasty words, if Blunt weren't there. It had taken a while, but he'd almost readjusted back into normality, and to have it snatched away so abruptly was, well, cruel. Not to mention blunt. In the privacy of his mind, Alex burst into delighted cackles at his genius.

"What am I supposed to do, then?" he asked. "I want these people to stop. And I'm not going to join MI6, either, so you can forget about making a deal like that."

The man opposite him remained seemingly unfazed. "Mrs Jones predicted you might feel this way. MI6 would be grateful should you choose to rejoin us. A compromise could be made, regarding working conditions and such."

Alex shook his head decisively. "I'm still a child, and I have stuff to do. Like finishing the football season. A bucket list, and all that. Maybe when I'm older, but not now."

Blunt sighed again. "In that case, we have decided that you may investigate these people on your own, as we do not have the necessary clout or resources to investigate a group apparently targeting just one person, and not one of our employees. However, considering all you have achieved in our employ so far, we are prepared to assist you. Indirectly."

Alex's eyes widened. That was generous of them, or were they bribing him into working for them later? He shrugged. Either way, better not to look the gift-horse in the mouth.

Blunt continued, oblivious. "Obviously, you will require time; we have provided the locations of our various safe houses for your use, as long as you need them. You are free to do as you will, as long as it is within the boundaries set by the law.

"I assume you would like to investigate your attackers away from Britain, because, no doubt, they will attack your school if you remain in it. Mr Smithers has asked me to inform you that he recommends Brazil. Apparently, the weather there is exquisite. Speaking of which, Mr Smithers is waiting outside. If you have no further questions, I will leave you to him."

Alex nodded his agreement, though it was clearly unnecessary as his ex-boss rose from his position and left the room without a word.

Before the door had time to shut properly, Smithers forced his large body and a black briefcase through the doorway.

"Alex, my boy! Sorry to hear about your accident."

The boy in question's mouth stretched into a genuine smile. "Only you would call a failed assassination attempt an 'accident'." Shaking his head, he greeted Smithers with a firm handshake.

When he had seated himself to his satisfaction, Smithers' expression grew serious. "Unfortunately, Alex, the fact that it wasn't an accident is why I'm here. You see, my boy, I have a feeling that whatever you do, you won't ever be completely safe."

From the black leather briefcase he'd been carrying, the large man conjured an armful of seemingly-harmless bits and bobs. Alex knew better, though; each and every one had hidden features that he could use on his quest.

Curious, he examined them from where he sat. A few caught his attention as Smithers explained their properties – sunglasses that were mirrored on the inside so that one wearing them would be able to see behind him; a knife concealed within a scientific calculator; the yo-yo from his first mission…

While Alex thanked Smithers profusely, the gadget-master gave the boy one last thing: a nondescript manila folder containing papers for a new identity, so that his assailants would be less able to track him. His job done, the man stood up and, wishing Alex good luck, left him alone once more.

AN: So what do you think? I've sort-of worked out a plot, but I'd like your input. Where do you think the story is going? Can you think of any changes you'd like made?

P.S. Remember the competition I announced at the beginning of this chapter!