Prologue

Part 2

The Englishman was thrown into his bare cell. His forehead hit the edge of his cot, opening a small gash in his skin. But the pain was nothing compared to the throbbing that was his back. He felt like his backside was on fire.

The Englishman slowly crawled onto his cot. He lay on his stomach, sore and bruised. The man took stock of his injuries. A black eye. A split lip. A broken rib.

That was just the beginning. Even though they had given him a reprieve his wrist still ached when they had broken it and it had healed wrong. But that was no problem, they had broken it again. He felt and looked like a giant bruise. Scars littered his body.

Now his back.

The Englishman had to get out of there.

It's not like he hadn't tried to escape before. He had tried. Many times. But his luck had run out since he had been captured. The Englishman had paid dearly for his efforts. But he just couldn't stand being locked up!

He was going insane. No doubt about it. He could practically feel his sanity slipping away. He still muttered randomly to himself. "Es muy peligroso… Don't touch! Pumpkins, and spices, and candies, oh my! …. Bonjour!"

The Englishman sobbed: half a good-bye to his sanity and half because he couldn't control anything anymore. He would have pissed himself if anything was in his bladder. He muttered on Russian. Then he laughed.

It was a cruel, cold laugh. It was the laugh of a madman. But it was too late to fix it. The Englishman was crazy.

Colors whirled across his vision. Laughs bubbled out of nowhere. His back burned. He was spinning… spinning. The colors whirled faster. The laughs reverberated painfully in his head. Everything was going black, hazy, demented…

No!

Images from his life flashed through his head. The colors danced. Laughing grew. Spinning faster. It was getting hard to breathe. Gibberish raged from his mouth. He couldn't feel his extremities.

Losing himself…. Losing… Losing…

No! The Englishman could not let himself lose it! An image floated by and he grabbed onto it. It was an image of a boy, roughly fourteen or fifteen with blond hair and clear brown eyes.

Alex Rider.

There was a reason to keep his sanity. He clung to it like a man out to sea in a storm. He could not die here. He could not go mad! He could not fail. He needed to get out of here, if only for Alex.

It was the sanest thought he had had all day.

The Englishman knew he had to escape tonight. His captors thought he was mad, and they would probably kill him soon. He knew he was of no use to them.

He allowed himself a small, grim smile of satisfaction. Almost eight months he had suffered and almost eight months had passed without him divulging a single detail. His company hadn't come to get him, and he had stopped waiting for them. But at that moment he swore he would remind them he was alive. He would remind them there were consequences of ignoring a man like him.

Voices outside his door jerked The Englishman out of his reverie. He stiffened, but fell limp, pretending to sleep.

"Hey, Johnny."

Johnny was his guard. The Englishman knew that.

"Hey, Malik."

They talked for a while.

"How your idiot?" Malik asked.

Johnny laughed. "Mad. Purely insane. He fell asleep a while ago though."

Malik laughed. His voice was deep, but The Englishman knew the sound of a person's voice was deceiving. He prepared to tune the conversation out. He needed to plan. He already knew most of the building's layout. He knew a weakness in the outer defenses. Now he needed to order what he was going to do in his head.

But something in the conversation stopped him short.

"Those SAS punks. Where are they?" Johnny asked.

"Those turds? They tried to invade the Research Department the other day, looking for that new bomb we got."

"I know that."

"Well One-eye's gonna act like he doesn't know what they were doing here. He's gonna ask them real nicely."

They both laughed.

Those sick…

The Englishman shook his head. He was getting out of there. Soon he would never see Malik, Johnny, One-eye, or any of those sick men again.

Thirty minutes later, a guttural scream came from a cell down the hall. The Englishman would get those SAS men out too.

A man known only as Wolf paced in front of his cell door. His unit mate, Eagle, lay in the corner bleeding and writhing in pain. Wolf felt the rage welling up inside him. Snake, another man from the unit, assessed Eagle's wounds.

Wolf punched the wall in anger as Eagle passed out in the pain. Another unit mate, a new one, watched Wolf calmly. His code name was Coyote.

"Don't hurt yourself Wolf." That was all he said.

Wolf sneered at him. He was too angry to do anything else. He was getting out of here.

Late at night, when Eagle had finally woken up, and was grinning even though he was sweating and shaking with the pain, something happened. There was a struggle outside their door. Wolf bolted up, jumping in front of Eagle. He adopted a defensive stance, ready to protect his mate against whatever may come through that door.

There was a key scratching in the lock and the door flew open. What Wolf saw took him totally by surprise. There was a man, clearly beaten up. His brown hair was messy and his gray eyes were wide. His bloody shirt hung off his thin frame in strips. Bruises littered his body. He was holding his arm close to his body.

It was clearly broken.

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then the man smiled. He had a tooth cracked. "'Ello, boys. Do you want to get out of here or not?"

Wolf narrowed his eyes. Who was this man? "Who are you?"

The man paused. "English government… You can call me The Englishman."

Eagle groaned. "Hello. Dying man here. I would love to get out of here, thank you very much."

Wolf wouldn't have agreed but he couldn't stand seeing Eagle in so much pain. He picked up his unit mate and grudgingly followed the… The Englishman.

They were outside. The Englishman was breathing hard, his side paining him. The others were hardly out of breath. Snake saw the man wincing and made a mental note to ask him about it later. But then they were up and running. The guards were looking elsewhere, the lights passing to the side of them, not touching them. They were unseen. They were desperate. They wanted to get the hell out of dodge.

There. A break in the fence. It was almost too perfect. Wolf crushed the excitement rising in his heart. Emotions could get him killed at this stage. Wolf placed Eagle on his feet and he hobbled out, needing to be caught by The Englishman on the other side. They both stumbled.

The Englishman smiled, helped Snake steady his burden, and then faced Wolf.

"There you go, mate." The Englishman was giddy. It was the first time he had been free.

Trees and darkness encroached on all sides. It was cold, but it was fresh. But The Englishman was shaking. He had exerted his tired body too much. Darkness encroached around his vision.

Then it all went black.

Wolf watched The Englishman try to steady himself. But it was of no use. He fell to the ground, face first. Wolf groaned.

Another man to carry.

But he wouldn't complain. He owed this man his life.

Sorry if the end is choppy. And sorry if I didn't edit this well. I'm tired. I need to stop sleeping more. But here's the chapter I promised you so please, please, please review so I can get some sleep!