Alex awoke to the soft hum of the vacuum, "Jack's at it again," he thought. Jack had been on a cleaning rampage lately, ever since he had been scooped out of the ocean and dumped back in London. That had been one long plane ride; he had wanted nothing more then to be safely home. When he got home, though, he had wished immediately that he was back floating in the deep blue sea. Jack had made a huge fuss, ranting on and on about how he should never have gotten mixed up with MI6 and all of that. It bugged the hell out of him, especially because if it wasn't for him she would be back in America.

With a groan he rolled out of bed. He didn't bother looking in the mirror before heading downstairs, but he imagined he looked a sight after sleeping for twelve hours straight.

As he clambered down the steps he saw that Jack had ceased vacuuming and now was vigorously scrubbing a large pile of dirty dishes. Without throwing so much as a short glance at him he asked, "What do you want for lunch; you've managed to sleep through breakfast?"

"I'm not that hungry," he muttered groggily.

"Oh, and Tom called, he said something about the cinema later."

"I'll call him back after I take a shower," he had already started moving back toward the stairs.

Jack went back to her scrubbing with an audible sigh. Alex had come back with a whole new batch of scrapes, cuts, and bruises. If someone didn't kill Alex, the stress would. No fourteen year old boy should ever have to be put through what Alex had been put through, it just wasn't right.

Alex allowed the hot, steaming water to run over him. It was such a trivial thing, but it felt good to be home and able to take a shower in his own bathroom. Stepping out, he wrapped a towel around his waist and went back into his room just in time to hear the doorbell ring downstairs. He grabbed a plain blue t-shirt and a pair of black shorts from the wardrobe and headed downstairs.

He could hear Jack talking, "I haven't seen you in a while, Tom"

"Yeah," tom sounded the same as ever.

"Why don't you come in, I think Alex is upstairs taking a shower. He got up a tad late this morning."

Alex jumped down the last few stairs, "I'm here," he turned toward Tom, "Hey Tom."

"Alex, you look…" he broke off.

Even though Tom didn't finish his sentence Alex knew that the other boy was commenting on his new batch of injuries.

"Yeah, so, Jack said you called and said something about the cinema?"

"Oh, yeah. A bunch of us from school were thinking of going to see the new Bond film."

Alex was torn between his desire to go with everyone to be a normal teenager for at least a few hours, and the huge pile of homework waiting for him upstairs.

He finally smiled, "Sure, when is it?"
"Right now mate, come on, we're going to be late as it is."

"Oh," Alex grabbed his wallet, slipped it into his pocket, and headed out the front door after Tom, who had literally ran out the door.

They walked down the street in relative silence, one of them occasionally commenting on the beautiful weather, or the amount of homework they had been assigned. They both seemed to avoid discussing the reason Alex had been "sick" again.

"Look, mate, I'm supposed to tell everyone that I had a bad case of the flu with severe complications, and I ended up having my tonsils out, so if you could go along with it, it would be really great!" Alex said this very suddenly and Tom looked taken aback.

"Sure, but what really happened?" Tom had an eager look on his face, almost like a child waiting to be told an exciting bedtime story.

"I got shot, nothing more," Alex had no desire to explain to Tom the fiasco with Ark Angel.

"Oh, where?"

"Chest," Alex forced out through clenched teeth.

"Ouch!"

"Yeah…" he trailed off.

Just then they rounded the street corner and the cinema came into view. A group of rowdy teens were standing in front; Alex recognized only one of them.

The five waved to the pair, beckoning them over. Tom introduced Alex to the five strangers.

"This is Jena," he pointed to a short slightly overweight girl with curly red hair and freckles wearing jeans and a t-shirt. She gave Alex a cheery smile and a wave at this introduction. "This is Brett," pointing to a surly looking boy with dyed black hair in all black with chains all over his pants, which were falling halfway down his butt- Alex had to suppress the urge to laugh at the boy's pink boxers that clashed magnificently with his gothic clothing.

"Anthony," Tom made a brief gesture to a brunette boy in a Chelsea jersey and jeans. Anthony gave Alex a brief nod and a slight smile.

A girl with long black hair steeped forward with a brilliant white smile, "I'm Alicia by the way, Tom seems to have forgotten me," Alex couldn't help but notice that she was very pretty. Her log curly black hair was half pinned back and her dark eyes sparkled in the light.

"Hey, Alex," Anthony called, "Why haven't you been at school lately?"

"I had a nasty bout of flu and ended up having my tonsils removed," Alex muttered nonchalantly.

Anthony shook his head, "Yeah and my grandmother's the queen."

"Leave him alone," Alex was shocked to hear Alicia, "Why would he lie, I doubt he wanted to miss school, after all, he had to make up all of the work he missed."

Alicia stood in front of a large spotlight, and her trim figure stood out, Alex just noticed how her red tank clung to her perfectly. He had to shake his head to clear the image of her in that little white jean skirt and gold flip flops.

Alicia fell back to talk to him, "If you need any help on the work, I'd be happy to help," Alex couldn't help but smile, she was really pretty, and really nice, what more could he want?

"Thanks, really, I might take you up on that. Do you think you could come over and help tomorrow? I'm never going to be able to catch up otherwise."

"I'd love to!" she really did sound happy, Alex noted. As she ran to catch up with Jena Alex took notice of a bizarre scar on her shoulder. Clearing this from his mind he ran to catch up with Tom.

I've decided to write smaller chapters more frequently, it's easier for me, although "frequently" will not be that frequent, not with the amount of work I've had at my new school. If anyone has any guesses as to what will happen and who the two people in the previous chapter are, feel free to PM or email me!

-Marissa

You might also want to check out my other two stories!