First Kill

A/N: Super long A/N coming up…none of it's really a necessary read, except for the paragraph in all bold. But you can skip that to, just refer back to it if my English seems a little off later in the chapter.

I just recently learned something while looking up Alex Rider on Wikipedia: Alex's birthday, while the year is still unknown, was on January 13th, while Ark Angel, the time-frame post-Scorpia, was in early October. I'm really sorry, as I normally try my best to be absolutely accurate.

Oh, and… (blushes) There's been a little confusion with the story summary, so let me explain. This story was going to be a lot longer, but I decided to break it up into two parts at the last minute, but I forgot to change the story summary to reflect that. Here's the real summary for this story:

"Part I of the Night Cast Series. Alex really tried to save Jack's life…but she still ended up dead. And he doesn't take it very well. In fact, he killed someone over it. And now, everything is changing because of it. Can he handle it? Post-Scorpia."

Oh, and: it might later seem, with the run-on and/or clipped sentences, that I look like I have zero knowledge of the English language. However, it's because this particular part of the series is written in stream-of-consciousness style, which means I'm really writing it like it happens inside his head, and people rarely thing in neat, grammatically correct sentences.

Wow…I have got to learn how to write concise. These A/N's are scaring me.

Previously:

"Jack…please…no…." Alex said, his chest aching horribly in a way that had nothing to do with the bullet lodged in there just two weeks prior.

But that mental image, he knew, would be seared into his memory forever. Jack, the cheerful, loving, red-headed American, lying on the ground, covered in blood from her gaping bullet wound, her face frozen in shock, skin pale and cold…

And most of all, her horrifying stare right into Alex's dark brown eyes. Those baby-blues were what he would remember most of this for the rest of his life – lifeless eyes.

For a few moments, he stared in horror at his loving guardian, the woman who'd basically taken care of him for the last seven years, and one of his best friends in his whole damn life…he watched her cold eyes stare right into his eyes, unable to see…

A shadow fell across them, and Alex more felt than heard the metallic click as the gun was pressed to the back of his head.

"Sorry, kid," was all that was said.

And that so-called apology was all it took for all the rage in Alex to go from frozen in shock to searing pain in his whole body, agony and misery all boiling his blood at once, just waiting to explode-

"You killed her," he rasped. And that was it.

Alex ducked to the side with his arm sweeping up as the trigger was pulled. He didn't really feel the burning on his cheek from where the bullet grazed him. All he felt was his arm catching the man's wrist as he tried to disable him of a gun.

But the man was Scorpia-trained, and wasn't put off that easily.

He bent his whole arm and freed himself, but not before Alex had reeled and lashed out with his foot, almost blindly, at the man who killed Jack.

Punch, kick, kill, hurt, maim, punch, kick, kill, hurt, maim, that was all Alex could think in his rage as he went after that horrible, evil man, the one that could possibly do this…

"YOU KILLED JACK!" Alex practically screamed at him.

The man was striking back, and probably landed many a blow on Alex, himself. He wasn't sure, he couldn't feel, he wasn't there, he was just in his head, a corner of him screaming inside while he lashed out and attacked outside, just attacked, all that rage flying out in his hands and feet. He didn't see the foodstand man staring in horror or hear the sirens blaring and he no longer could smell or taste the blood in the air.

Alex didn't know when he'd felt the cold metal of the gun in his hand.

He didn't remember trying to wrestle the gun away from the man.

He didn't know or remember how it'd gotten into his hand, sandwiched between the two bodies, his finger on the trigger.

All he remembered was looking into the man's hardened eyes, momentarily terrified in realization as he stared into the raw rage in Alex's eyes.

"Goodbye, murderer," Alex was sure he said, softly.

Then all he remembered was pulling the trigger, feeling the immense power travel up his arms and through his pained shoulders as the deadly little sliver of metal flew out the other end towards the man before him.

All he watched that man fall as a red, gaping hole appeared in his stomach, gushing blood all over Alex's hand and front, Alex feeling the fading heart beat and the spine shattering, through the gun, before the man fell onto the grass.

He'd was vaguely that he was turning his head to see out of the corner of his eyes as the food-stand man fainted, and the policemen got out of their cars to stare at him in shock, themselves, with a few glances of additional horror.

Alex slowly looked up from there towards Jack's dead body, on the grass behind the bushes but in front of him, staring up into the heavens…her new home.

He knew his whole body was shaking, but he couldn't find it in himself to truly care.

The young man turned his head slowly towards the other direction, the policemen stared, before one slowly started walking in his direction.

"Kid," he said slowly approaching. "Give me the gun…he can't hurt you know…you'll be all right…"

No, no, never, he'll never be all right. Jack was dead, and he just bloody killed someone, how could things be all right, ever all right, ever again? It just wasn't possible, this man was lying-

No, he wasn't lying, he just didn't know the whole story, everything behind this entire moment, all the true horrors besides a teenager having just killed someone, but that this teenager was no ordinary teenager, and this dead man had been no ordinary man…

Alex slowly nodded, a haze settling in his mind, turning the gun around quite expertly, handing it to the bobby professionally, obviously surprising him, probably wondering what a teenager was doing having such knowledge of guns, but he didn't say or ask anything, just taking it carefully.

As soon as that happened, as soon as Alex let go of the gun, he let go of his anchor to the moment, to reality, and simply muttered, "Thanks…but you were too late…"

And then his vision faded as he fell back and his blackened mind fell into blissful darkness, away from the horrifying reality that was his life, and all he could see in his mind's eye were the dead man's lifeless eyes.

A/N: I don't know what I'm thinking in updating this fast, but I'm doing it. (Further proof I've gone off the deep end).

Sorry for the grammatical errors or anything like that. It's 1:32 in the morning and I've been getting about 5 hours of sleep a night since Saturday, so sue me (actually, please don't, because I only have about three dollars left to my name and I really need new ear phones).

Sorry for all inaccuracies, though. I appreciate honesty (I'm the only person in the universe who looks forwards to flames, alongside the other types of reviews), and thus if you see ANY mistake at all, please feel free to point it out to me.