The unmarked Tupolev Tu-194 landed in Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, the flight from Moscow had a full flight crew, two medical personnel and two passengers. Alex had slept under heavy sedatives after initially agreeing with the proposal for the freedom of a life long Russian Agent.

Alex groaned as he emerged from the fog of drug induced sleep. God, he was on the f-ing plane. No chance of making a run for it. He was jaded enough not believe the reassurances that he would be safe. He felt the crippling ache of failure due to his survival. Roman had been blunt that the Americans thought he had been imprisoned for over a year in a Gulag. His accident now painted the perfect picture that their misinformation was correct. The only comfort was that both Grief clones were dead. He had read their autopsy reports, gruesome reading considering both had been beaten to death.

Tim Gillings was sat opposite his fellow passenger and noted the kid, who looked like he had gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson, was awake. "Morning, kid. We've landed. Not long now until you're home with your family."

"I have no family." Alex answered bluntly. All he knew were abusers. He now even thought of Jack as spineless, not standing up to either Ian nor Blunt as they had used, blackmailed and abused him. Every move and every holiday used as training or cover for missions. She must have suspected something before Blunt sank his claws into his teen operative.

"Must have missed home comforts though?" The former prisoner had been treated with grudging respect by the security service and had been protected in semi isolation. Even so it had been eighteen months of bad rations and poor conditions. What had happened to this teenager?

Alex shrugged. He knew he had burned his bridges and there would be no possibility of going home to Chelsea. The Royal and General had wiped his existence from all official records. Ian's estate had been liquidated and dispersed to distant cousins. He had nothing. His only friend now a merciless assassin, who had only recused him as repayment to a debt to his dead trainer, Hunter. He felt hot and sticky, his arm itched under the cast and his arm, head and chest ached. He needed medicating back to numbness, but said nothing to the two nurses were busy chatting with the stewards. Pale, pain pinched and terribly thin; Alex coughed and a thick gob of sputum hit the plane carpet. "Sorry, that was gross."

Tim leaned over bent down and wiped up the mess with a paper napkin left from his drink. Two cold vodkas to celebrate his ignominious return home. His two Russian contacts arrested with him would both likely die in jail. If the kid felt like he did, guilt, regrets and failure, there was no real comfort returning knowing your team was either captured or dead, while you got off relatively scot free. "Yeah, not going back Stateside under the best of circumstances. I expected to be so forgotten. Special Operations means you fuck up, you get betrayed and caught, you are on your own. I wonder who we were traded for?"

"Professor Daniel Konstantin of Georgetown. He ran the recruitment operation for over 30 years. The old man gets to retire to a nice dacha rather than die in federal prison." Alex had been told exactly who he was freeing, not that he expected anything more than house arrest if he was lucky in the States. He prayed it wasn't military school, not again.

The CIA agent was surprised, all he had been told was that he was going home. "Oh, they told you."

Alex nodded. "I have always been honest with them. Did what I was told. They got what they wanted from me. Quid Quo Pro."

"So, why do look like you've been beaten into submission?"

"Oh I was, don't worry. This," Alex gestured with his right hand, "was as result of going over the wire. My luck pretty much ran out last year and accidents happen."

They pair sat in silence as the door opened and they were beckoned to descend the stairs. Alex stood and the tall American offered to help. So it was the pitiful display of a battered sixteen year old being supported by his fellow detainee descending onto the tarmac, where two wheel chairs awaited, as the airbase personnel had been forewarned about the need for medical assidstance. The FSB agent, they were being traded for looked ashen his counterparts. There was a child involved. What had the CIA done and how had the youth been injured?

Alex looked at the man who was trading one imprisonment for another, "Good Luck, Professor." Alex said with a weak smile.

The old man looked closely at the boy. "You too."

…..

In the base hospital, both agents were stripped and assessed. Alex was finally left to his own thoughts after x-rays were taken of his injuries. He tried not to worry that the doctor had listened at length to Alex's chest, he had only coughed up more repellent lumps of mucus twice.

The teenager had expected a debrief first, but being prodded and pocked was almost as bad. Then again his interrogation after Murmansk had been a mixture of doctors and FSB agents. He shuddered thinking about his first stay in the clinic and the mix of concern and badgering over details. Its not like he knew anything about Blunt, Byrne, MI6 or the CIA.

God he had hated Ivan and his over friendly attempts to empathise with him after getting kicked out of Suvorov, while grassing each and every admission and foible to Valentin. It had been claustrophobic over last winter, as the depressed teenager had been watched constantly. Alex smiled thinking about his first escape in April, during the first day above freezing. He had gone hunting by himself as he had been sick of bad army rations.

Now he was thousands of miles from there and he could never apologise properly to Dimitry, never mend their broken friendship. It had all been a controlled illusion anyway as Dima had been the only 'suitable' companion vetted by his bastard father. God, he hated Sarov and he could not escape him as even here they called him by that name; not that he wanted to be called Rider either. Ian had tainted his childhood with his grand plan and now Alex had nothing to look back on without thinking about games within games.

He lay and stared at the ceiling, taking controlled breaths. Getting his mask back in place. Alex was alone and that was fine.

…

"Surgery on Mr. Sarov's arm is scheduled for this evening. At the moment he is on broad spectrum antibiotics for his numerous leech bites and we suspect pneumonia, but that may be masking something else and samples of sputum are being analysed."

"Analysed for what?" Asked General Charles Canterbury.

"Shadows on his lungs and his general poor condition suggest he has tuberculosis. We can confirm Alex has intestinal parasites and is receiving treatment for that."

"Does Mr. Gillings have the same conditions?"

"No. Just run down from poor nutrition and lack of exercise. He has no overall or underlying health concerns." The doctor then brought up his main concern "You do know Alex has numerous scars on his back from being whipped, he also has scars on both wrists from a suicide attempt. He refused to elucidate any details to either when asked. Just that shit happens. God I love teenagers!"

"So we have a suicidal teenager who has been tortured in the past."

"Yes." the doctor confirmed.

"And the cause of his present injuries?"

"Alex stated he slipped and fell into a ditch after going 'over the wire' for a swim in a nearby lake."

"Right, that's a pile of bullshit if ever I heard it. So, he;s on suicide watch?"

"Yes, he refused to talk to the shrink. Said he'd had enough of mind games and clinics."

"Oh shit. we all know how bad that could be."

…

Alex woke from surgery to find himself in isolation. The nurses and doctors all in full gowns and masks and the news he had tuberculosis. "Am I dying?"

"No, its just a long slow road to get well with lots of tablets to begin with for two weeks, then a course of tablets for six months. Do you know where you contracted it?"

"A couple of guards were diagnosed with TB in November, but I barely knew the guys. Only… I played backgammon with Kolya. He got sent home because of TB last month. We all had a medical, but I got cleared as OK."

Alex lay down and now got the reason he'd been queazy and tired. He'd thought he'd been going mad. "Six months in isolation?"

"No, you are infectious for two weeks, so stuck here until you are well enough to travel."

The patent thought sourly 'Great, stuck in isolation on an army base in Turkey, it was no different than his last prison in the forest 700 kilometres north of Yelizovo.'

…..

The debriefing had been intense and Tim was glad it was over as he smoked outside in the midday heat. Only then he thought about his travelling companion and decided to pay a visit to the kid in isolation. Ever the spy, he walked with stealth and stopped to listen in to the nurses as they gossiped. "Poor kid, no family, no visitors and he just lies there never asking for nothing. Never complains, nothing. That bitch Laura forgot about him on the night shift and he wet the freaking bed, because he'd been told no to leave the room. That darling boy was lying in his own filth for hours. He has a rash all the way up his back and the Major went postal when he found out. That and the fact Alex is not eating."

Tim Gillings went back to get several confections from the vending machines because the food was not what he wanted to eat and he wasn't sixteen.

Dressed in scrubs, it took a moment for Alex to recognise the other spy. It looked like Tim had not slept since they landed. "Hi, you look awful. I guess the debrief included full sleep deprivation. No truth serums I hope. That stuff makes me as sick as a dog. RTI never covered that!"

"Usual for a debrief, I think its best to get it over with. You had other things to worry about considering your ribs, arm and infections." Tim then placed a can of coke, jolly ranchers, gum and m&ms on the bedside table. "A few non regulation treats. I haven't been out and about but I can try and rustle up a burger for you."

Alex smiled "Well, a whopper is definitely work giving you a blow job. I have nothing else to trade. Hell, I left my stash of contraband in my room for Valentin to find. You know the usual porn, food, pot and smokes."

The Agent looked at this kid shrewdly, prison was run on trade. "No smoking here. Best use the time here to quit. I will be when I get home."

"Its just nothing much else to do, back there. I'll miss Kolya. We… hung out…. experimented. Almost boyfriends, but you can never be open about anything like that. I never told any of the shrinks nor Alexei or Valentin that I was sexually attracted to the same sex. Big no no. Come to think of it I never told Ian, Jack or Tom in London. Told Dima and he called me a pervert."

There was the crux of the matter, here was a kid exploring his boundaries about puberty in the worst situation possible, while controlled by MI6, the CIA and then the FSB. "Talk to the guys here. Its OK to shock the bastards that they fucked you up, when they fucked up by using you. Dig the knife in and be brutal. I… I was off limits in Camp 352. No contact with the general population. I got packages from home as well. You were on your own weren't you."

"Yeah I was."