Kristen and Shen had landed in the Chad N'Djamena airport—right in the capital of the country. As opposed to being scared like hell, or even nervous, they were both relatively calm—sort of like calm before the storm—showing only slight irritation at the heat when they were chauffeured to a nearby hotel.
Ten minutes later, after changing into black slacks and polos, they were picked up by the area's MI6 leader, and brought to their headquarters in another fake bank. This one was all steel and bullet proof glass, with sleek black furniture and stainless steel appliances.
A man dressed in a black suit, grey-green sunglasses and a blank expression was seated behind a black desk, waiting for them.
"You already know you are to bodyguard Chad's president," the man informed them as they were showed into the room and sat down.
"But you don't know the main insurgent leaders, except for Scorpia. Levi Kroll heads this operation, flanked with Dominique Trenton and Angel Muyers. Trenton is a highly dangerous individual—proficient in modern warfare, and a prized strategist. He was born in Romania, and is now around 31 years old. Muyers on the other hand, is a sort of body guard. Very thickset, not all that intelligent, but loyal and strong. He's of Mexican descent, and is 26 years old—involved in some of their drug cartels as well; good connections."
"Is the reason you are giving us this information so that we can shoot them?" Kristen asked her voice as soft and calm as ever.
"We would prefer that it not come to that," the man answered from behind his sunglasses. "Interrogation is a high priority. But if worst comes to worst, something more…covert would be preferable."
"An execution style death then," Kristen bantered.
"If you must," he nodded stiffly.
She smiled thinly, having won the tangle. It gave her small comfort though.
"As I was saying," the man continued. "You will first do surveillance duty for about three days, get a feel for the environment. You will be staying at a nearby hotel—close to the capital building. You must get Chad's president out of the coup's way as quickly and effectively as possibly, without letting Scorpia know that you're here. If you would continue down the elevator and turn on your left, gadgets are going to be supplied to you. Good luck."
Sensing the clear dismissal, Kristen headed out the glass and steel doors, followed by Shen, to where they were directed.
A woman wearing khaki shorts and a white polo, as well as flip flops met their eyes through the doors. She was busy tampering with one of those hand held plastic fans that you had to wave to cool yourself, muttering. She finally snapped a piece of plastic in place and squeezed the sides—out shot something that blew up a potted plant she had aimed at and she laughed delightedly.
Kristen shot a look at Shen as she pulled open the doors and stepped coolly inside.
The woman looked up, and rose to greet them.
"Nice to meet you, hello! And you must be Ms. Chang and Mr…?"
"Zhang," Shen muttered, unfazed by the question and the woman's cheery demeanor.
"And you are?" Kristen asked.
"Yolanda," the newly introduced woman answered. "Yolanda Pierce. And I understand that you're operating on a tight schedule, so let's move! Firstly, you'll notice that it's hot out here. Therefore, you, Ms. Chang, get to have on hand this delightful folding fan. It looks tacky, for American tourists in China, but watch. Once you open it and clasp the ends together, out comes razor sharp metal that should cut through anyone and anything. I can tell you we didn't have a nice clean time testing this."
Yolanda handed the cheap piece of black plastic to Kristen, and then pulled out a fancy, heavy silver fountain pen.
"This is for you, Mr. Zhang. You'll need a pen to look half-way business like, and this is it. Be careful with the type of ink you write with! If you twist the cap left, it'll be regular ink. But if you twist it right—out comes acid. It's poisonous too, if you really have to get rid of someone."
Then, she proffered what looked like a jewelry case to Kristen, who opened it. "Earring bombs?" she asked, having used something similar before.
"But of course. Don't worry, they weren't that expensive. Reattach the earring to the backings within a ten second frame, or they'll blow up. They aren't that powerful, but they will cause a nice little distraction all the same."
Lastly, she turned back to Shen. "Here's an iPod. It's only the third of its kind, so we'd like if you could report back on it afterwards. It's for eavesdropping—turn on a Beatles' song and you'll be able to hear everything within a 30 foot radius. Turn on any other music—well, it'll just play as normal. Now off you go!"
Bemusedly, the two agents were ushered out of the room and taken back to their hotel, where they were to lay low for a few hours before staking out the capital building.
"Nice place, this is," Shen commented without any real interest as he watched TV. Kristen had been walking around the huge suite, in the white and grey marble and stainless steel applianced kitchen and bath, the two big beds and decent sized closet.
"Yes, it's very nice," she muttered. "Did you notice that the only clothes MI6 sent us were black and white?"
Shen glanced at her, amused. "It doesn't really matter does it, seeing as you only wear black anyways?"
Kristen rolled her eyes and ignored that. "What are we doing later anyways?"
"I've got to put up those tiny cameras in the entrance lobby. No big deal, of course no one will spot me climbing up the walls like friggen Spiderman to install the stupid things," he answered, dripping sarcasm.
Kristen ignored that. "Blueprints?"
"Here,'' Shen tossed her a satchel.
She unzipped it to find the blueprints, and blinked at the huge roll of blue paper inside.
"Never mind then."
Glancing over, Shen took the roll and started studying them.
Bored, she flopped down next to Shen, and subsequently fell asleep.
--
"Dude, wake up," the voice snuck into her sleep and someone was shaking her hard. Oh, but just one more minute…
Sighing, Shen resorted to his last hope…tickling. "Nmmm!" she grabbed her pillow and whacked Shen with it. "I'm awake dammit!" Kristen rubbed her eyes and ran a hand through her hair.
"About time woman," he muttered, chucking the pillow back at her. "You have five minutes to get your ass ready for infiltration."
Grumbling, she threw the gadgets into her pockets, straightened her clothes and checked herself out in the mirror.
Decent, for waking up two minutes ago.
Kristen finger combed her hair again, and turned to Shen, who was already decked out in sunglasses and the rest of their black wardrobe.
He looked her over.
"You need a haircut," he muttered, tossing her a pair of obviously expensive sunglasses and ushering her out the room.
"Not on your life," she threw back, remembering the last time she'd gotten a haircut. Oh sweet baby Jesus, she was not doing that again.
Walking through the hotel's doors, Chad welcomed them with a blast of hot, humid air and she winced. Hot and dry she could handle, but hot and humid absolutely killed her.
"Come on, let's get to the building before I stab myself."
Having reached said building, they keyed a side door that presumably only maintenance men used, and snuck inside to the janitor's office. There, they donned the spare uniforms—that were hugely baggy on them—and brought a ladder out into the lobby with a feather duster. Kristen silently thanked god Shen had been looking over the blueprints as she slept.
Cool air conditioning greeted them, as well as marble flooring, pillars, whatever. It looked like a huge block of grayish white ice cream.
"Cameras?" Kristen asked as they rolled the huge ladder towards the very front doors. Behind Shen, she could see the receptionists getting a bit antsy.
"Hurry up," she hissed, as he began climbing the ladder with the duster in hand. Kristen wondered if janitors even did that sort of thing as she pretended to steady the ladder.
Shen was taking the stickers off the back of the self adhesive tiny cameras, sticking them to the window, the ledge, anything that would give them a 360 view of the main hall.
But soon they would have to creep through the halls.
Grinning, Shen stepped off the ladder. Kristen wheeled it back into the office, and the receptionists warily let them by, into the heart of the building. They kept their heads down, janitor caps pulled low and hurried through.
"Right, you take that way, I take this way," he muttered. "Circle back here once you're done."
"What if we're caught?"
"Get the hell out any way you can."
"Alright," they set off.
Kristen worked fast, peeling off the stickers off the backs of those cameras which were barely half the size of her pinky nail, and sticking them either really high or low—where no one would notice—evenly spaced about 4 or 5 feet apart.
She was almost done with the vast amount of corridors when she froze, hearing footsteps and muffled voices coming towards her. Oh damn!
Quickly, she tried a few doors. They were locked. But finally, she found one that wasn't—it was a small kitchen, intended for creating snacks for diplomatic meetings.
Right after walking in, she promptly smacked into a refrigerator placed at a very odd angle and swore.
The voices hushed—the footsteps came faster and directly at her this time.
Just in time, she opened a cabinet and squeezed in, careful not to clang any of the metal pots and pans together and held her breath.
After what seemed like an eternity, the person left. Kristen got out, and went back to the entrance hall to meet back up with Shen and leave.
--- A few days later
This was it. Their surveillance and intelligence was telling Shen and Kristen that the coup was today. They had hours to get Chad's President out of harm's way and get rid of the men attempting the coup.
They had no idea that their backup, a certain Alex Rider, had been delayed in setting off for them. So delayed, that he might only reach N'Djamena after all the events occurred. And that would make him too late.
They were inside the Capital building now, where the President was due to arrive any second. It was this building that was to be bombed, this building where the ambitious leaders of the coup hoped to finally see all their plans come together.
Somehow, the two of them needed to get a note to everyone in the building to evacuate. Especially the President though.
Turning her head, Kristen spotted a few of the President's inferiors running around.
"If we can get the message to them, maybe they'll tell the President," she told Shen.
He agreed that it was worth a shot, and when one of them went running to get coffee—"Mocha, not decaf, MOCHA!"—they dragged him into a closet.
"Alright, listen up," Kristen calmly pointed a revolver at him, and his face instantly paled, "Don't worry, I won't shoot you. I need you to get everyone to evacuate the building."
There was only a look of confusion on the man's face.
Shen lifted his eyes to the heavens. "Oh damn. I bet he speaks French."
Kristen gave it a try with her first level French. "Parlez-vous français?"
He nodded his head vigorously.
"Damn," Kristen muttered. "I can't say 'evacuate the building, s'il vous plait,' in French. At least, not without a good explanation."
Shen had his laptop out. "Alright, Google, prove your translator works." He punched in a few phrases, and showed it to the man.
"I bet you it won't even be proper French."
"He'll get the jist of it."
The screen read, Évacuer le bâtiment, ou tout le monde, il sera en mourir.
"I'm pretty sure that's not right," Kristen muttered.
The man widened his eyes again, and sputtered, "Non, c'est impossible! Non—no—"
"OK, then how the hell do we get everyone out?" Shen muttered. "This dipshit is saying that it's impossible."
"An alarm," Kristen suggested calmly. "Use those hacker skills and set off a fire alarm or something."
"How much time do we have?"
"Three hours and counting…down."
"Fine."
Kristen let the poor man go after telling him to get the President as far away from the building as possible, and he scurried away. Soon though, Shen's terrible time at MI6's training paid off. A loud, obnoxious alarm began blaring and people began screaming and running as the water sprinklers turned on.
"That works," she muttered.
"Kroll and his cronies are definetly here, so let's get going," Shen was checking out all the cameras. "While we can get them. Oh—they're at the top floor. Alright, let's go."
They exited the closet silently, soaked within seconds, and took the stairs up to what looked to be a definite face off.
At the airport, Alex waited for a cab to take him to the Capital building. When MI6 had approached him, he'd been ready to reject—until he heard whom it concerned. Kristen. And Shen.
MI6 wanted him to make sure they succeeded. While he had no doubt that they would, he was going to be there.
Finally, a taxi pulled up. It brought him to a massive building with equally massive chaos outside, what with people running around, with—water stains on them?— and an alarm blaring outside. Alex paid the driver, and, slipping out of the car, slipped into the building.
If Shen was still watching the cameras he had planted, he would have seen Alex Rider coming. But he wasn't—he and Kristen were after Trenton and Muyers. Kristen ducked a bullet that Muyers had fired, and leaped onto his back, and with a quick jerk of her hand and powerful cut towards his pressure points, Muyers was knocked out. Leaving Shen to deal with them, Kristen headed the opposite direction to get Kroll.
Shen fired a single shot to the back of Trenton's calf and he went down, screaming with the pain and rolling in the pools of water.
Showing no emotion, Shen stripped the two criminals of their clothes down to their boxers and, handcuffing them together, locked them into the same closet he and Kristen had been in.
Then he went looking for Kristen.
Alex ran into Levi Kroll, who cursed and ducked back the other way. But then there was Kristen, who had a gun in her hand, finger on the trigger and steadily advancing.
"You wouldn't shoot," Kroll tried to bluff it out. "You're a kid. You and Rider. Neither one of you could shoot me."
Kristen smiled that type of smile that made the Artic seem like the Sahara. The water was still pouring, effectively plastering her hair and clothes to her body, giving her a dangerous look. "Try me. I'll call your bluff and we'll see whose laughing then."
Alex could barely contain his relief, but it disappeared when Kroll knocked through a glass conference room, roaring like a bull elephant that had lost a contest of masculinity.
Kristen sprang into action, dropping the gun so she could use both hands, kneeing Kroll in the balls and punching him in the face. As soon as that happened, she stripped off his fancy suit, just in case there was anything he could use to get him away from her. And finally, she handcuffed him to the chair, blindfolding him using a piece of Alex's shirt
Kristen breathed in hard when she realized that now would be the time to kill him, to exact her revenge, for both herself and her family. Alex saw it in her eyes.
"Kristen," he grabbed her arm, "Don't. He's not worth getting a murder sentence for."
Her dark eyes, now even darker, rose up to his, and he could see down into her soul, her own personal abode. It frightened him, to see her so raw, and uncomposed.
She took a step closer to him. "I have to Alex," she murmured, her voice soft, on the verge of breaking. "I need to. All of them—all of Scorpia."
"No, you don't, you can just—"
Kristen had had a feeling that he would say something like that. Taking another step forward, now so close she could feel his breath, and dragging one of her own through her lungs, her lips crashed onto his, and god, he tasted good. Warm, and strong…
His arm cocked around her body, and her right hand felt for the gun in his back pocket, ignoring the blasts of water that pumped from above.
He stiffened, catlike reflexes kicking in and reaching for the gun, but she pressed herself even more forcefully against him, left arm pinning both of his to his body, eyes shutting halfway as she aimed behind his back and pulled the trigger.
They broke apart soon after the gunshot sounded, lips each bruised, swollen, pulsing.
"You only kissed me to get the gun," he accused her, with almost hurt pushing through his eyes.
"No. I've wanted to do that for a long while now," she answered quietly. "The gun was just a bonus."
He didn't answer that before she walked over to the man tied to the chair. The perfect shot had smashed through his heart, instantly leaving him dead. Alex had already known she was a crack shot.
"You got your revenge."
She didn't answer as MI6 agents swarmed in.
--
They were being questioned in different rooms, back in London. Alex could see her—perfectly relaxed—through the glass wall. He thought back to when they were in that room in Chile:
Her eyes were dark, darker than he'd ever seen them.
"You only kissed me to get the gun," he accused her.
"No, I've wanted to do that for a long while now."
What did that mean? But what about Sabina? What about the fact that they were practically working for MI6, were only 14, were living in so much damned danger? "Alright that's all Alex, thank you," Blunt said. "You can go home now. We'll send Shen and Kristen along when they're done."
He opened the door and left, stealing another glance at the back of Kristen's head as he went.
When he got home, Sabina was there, looking amazing in a dark red sweater and tight blue jeans. She mobbed him, pulling him into a tight embrace.
"How're you here?" he asked, stunned. Coincidence much?
"Oh, school let us off early for Thanksgiving break. Dad wanted to come back here to interview some people who're building the Olympics stuff."
"Cool," he murmured, gently disentangling him. She pulled him back in for another hug though, as Shen and Kristen walked in, and then pressed her lips to his.
What's with all these girls and kissing me?
Kristen smirked, Shen wolf-whistled.
"You busy Alex? Cause I'm hungry," Kristen yawned.
--
Later—
She was by herself, dwelling on the moment she walked into Alex's house, seeing him entwined around his friend Sabina. The image was burned into her eyes.
Well of course he wouldn't like her, Kristen; they were only working together because of crime. That was all good, but then she had been stupid and let herself actually like him.
And seeing him kiss Sabina, so soon after she herself had kissed him, hurt like hell.
She'd pasted on a fake smirk, but she was getting out of this. She didn't trust MI6—there was nothing stopping them from sending her on a suicide mission, nothing to prevent them from using her, hurting her, making her work with him. It would be better if she didn't like him—dammit, they were spies, they were 14; they were in a world that they shouldn't be in. It was too dangerous, with such high stakes and these big time players. The CIA would be better; protect her at least, from Scorpia. She would be without a weakness.
She was going home.
--
"D'you know why you'll always be better at this sort of thing than I will ever be?" Kristen asked softly. They were standing on his porch, inches away from each other and letting the soft blackness cover them like a blanket.
"Why?" he asked. Alex had an odd sensation that the way she said it—what she was talking about—was very final.
"Because," she answered. "You don't feel the guilt that I do. Every life taken, you consider it done, and move on; every thing you've done, you move on. I don't. I remember. You let go. You can survive without the guilt, but I can't. I have nightmares, sometimes, about the people—what I've done…You, though, you can ride it out, and you can survive. That's why…" she let the sentence trail.
Alex couldn't say anything. His throat was closing up, he couldn't speak, couldn't stop what was coming…
"I need to save myself from this…from you," she whispered, cutting off any thing he might've said, and pressed her lips to his in a last, forceful goodbye.
Breaking apart from the dizzying force that she was, he called, "Krist—"
She had vaulted over the railing and loped over to a car waiting for her. Shen was already inside. The black door opened, Kristen got in and it drove off, leaving him behind in the dust.
--
Let me know what you think about this super long chapter! I fused the original chapter with another scene that I'd been writing for awhile. Like the change of events, where the plot's going? I have to say that the story is wrapping up. I think…hmm maybe like 4 chapters MAXIMUM it's going to be over. I'm not delving into book 8, 9, 10—this is just until Alex / Kristen are happy. PLEASE review and let me know what you think!
Review Reply:
SheWeapon1: Hehe...I hope you really liked this chapter, it totally changes the focus of the story in my opinion!!