Someone reviewed saying "There's got to be more behind [the robber's plans]" Of course there is!
Hopefully this chapter explains it.
Well, more than explains it... executes it, in fact.
Chapter 19.
-8-
Resigned – he hated that word – he waited. After a few hours thinking back and worrying about James, but knowing that he was safe somewhere, his eyes drooped, and he slept.
-8-
Several hours later, Alex found himself in the same position as he'd slept in – the chain on his wrist didn't allow him to move much, and what movement he had managed to achieve in his sleep had caused him nothing but pain and discomfort. He could feel his skin chapping, and it wouldn't be long before it started to bleed.
He was awoken by the door above him clicking open, and light poured onto him once again.
Shielding his eyes against the glare of light, he kept his watch on the figure that stepped down each stair. As his captor reached the bottom, he strode towards Alex and again shoved the torch into his face. It stopped Alex from seeing anything of the man's face or other features, unfortunately, and he knew it was done on purpose. Should Alex manage to escape, there would be nothing much that he could tell the police – if, as his captors thought he would, he went to them.
"You know, kid, it is strange that no one's raised the alarm about you," his captor said. Alex deemed him to be called 'Captor' from now on. "Not one news article or policeman looking for you."
"What can I say? No one loves me." Alex smirked, trying to make it sound like he was trying to be funny. In actuality, he was wondering whether or not anyone would raise the alarm. Obviously, MI6 and the SAS were looking for him, but they would do it on the sly and keep it quiet. He suspected that James and his father might keep an ear to the ground for news of him... but was anyone else? Tom, his school teachers, Sabina?
"It does not matter to me. Just makes my job easier, no?"
Captor released some information about what would happen to Alex next, there. He wouldn't be killed, yet; they planned on using Alex for something.
"And what job would that be?"
"Now, kid," his jailer said. It seemed that that was all Alex would be known as, 'kid'. "I cannot tell you that. But you will see in time," he laughed, a tad bit manically. "Or rather, you won't see."
Before Alex knew what happened, Captor dropped his torch, and before Alex's eyes could adjust, there was a pain in his neck. A needle jab, Alex recognised.
He started to struggle, and put his plan into action.
Lifting his hands to his hair, he searched for his plain hair clip. No longer than four centimetres, and a dull yellow colour, it was hard to spot in his hair unless someone was actively searching for it. After Jack's death, Alex had gone home and packed a quick bag of items he thought he'd need.
Planning ahead, he thought about what would happen if MI6 found him – no doubt they'd bind his hands together, and he hoped that they would do it with handcuffs. Going into Jack's room, he searched through her many hair products until he'd found some hair clips. Being a red head, she'd often picked out yellow ones from the stores to try to blend them in with her hair when she put it up.
It was perfect for Alex.
Yanking it out from his hair – not to mention pulling a few strands out in doing so – he quickly put it into his mouth before leaning down to slot it into the keyhole.
He could feel the effects of whatever drug was in his system taking effect already, although it was acting slower than other's he'd been drugged with before. Then, he'd been knocked out almost instantly.
Captor stood back, confident in knowing his prisoner wouldn't escape.
Alex thought differently. Twisting the hair clip this way and that, and applying even more pressure, he quickly managed to release the clasp of the handcuffs.
When Alex was eight, Jack gave him his first magic kit. By the time he was eight and three months old, he'd mastered most of the tricks in the book that had accompanied the set. By the time he'd turned turned eight and ten months, he'd become hooked on anything to do with Harry Houdini, the most famous escape artist that ever lived.
He'd tried to escape himself, once, from some pink and fluffy handcuffs he'd found in Jack's room during one of his monthly snoops. Unfortunately, he hadn't quite learnt how to escape, and he'd never found the key that would unlock the cuffs. So it was with some embarrassment that Uncle Ian had to come to his rescue after he'd whined "Uncle IIIIannn!" from the next room, with a trembling lip. "I'm stuck!" during one of the rare times he was home. Jack was out, having fun with some friends.
His uncle had saved him, with a smile on his face and amusement shining in his eyes.
He never saw the handcuffs again, and for a week Jack wouldn't look him in the eyes. When he turned twelve, and finally understood what the meaning of those pink, fluffy handcuffs were for, he never snooped in her room again.
But if there was one thing Alex got out of it all, was his uncle teaching him the 'tricks of the trade,' as he'd put. At the time, Alex assumed this to mean the magical trade, not the spying trade.
As a treat for mastering the skill of escaping, Alex was taken to see Steve "Mr. Escape" Baker (as it was labelled on the ticket) for Christmas.
He'd never forgotten any of it, and it was this skill that enabled him to escape out of the cuffs.
Sluggishly, he rubbed his wrists where the metal shackles had scratched at his skin, before standing up and rushing, albeit slowly, to his captor. The jailer was much quicker than Alex in his sorry state, though, and easily stepped to the side. Before Alex could turn, he grabbed the boy with one arm under his armpits and across his chest, and the other around his neck.
"Now, kid. No point in struggling. Nothing you can do about it. You'll just hurt yourself," Captor said in stunted sentences. Alex's muscles were slowly starting to relax, and he could feel his eyelids drooping with sudden tiredness. "There's some, ah, soupe for you by the stairs for when you wake up. Night night, kid."
And with that, Alex's eyes closed for what seemed to him to be the fiftieth time in just a few short hours.
-8-
Time passed, and Alex slept. He woke by himself, nothing disturbing him. The drug in his system must have worn off, he realised. He had a headache, his throat was sore, but most of all, he was free.
Well, free from the shackles, at any rate. And to Alex, that was something.
Remembering that Captor had mentioned something about soup being close to the stairs, he crawled slowly to his left in a search for it. Unluckily for him, it was in a bowl, and as he put his hand down from moving forward, it splattered straight into it.
He rubbed his hand on the floor, before feeling around the bowl to get a good grip on it. It was surprisingly hard without any light to bring the bowl to his mouth, and twice he banged it against his chin before he finally managed to take a sip of the food.
It tasted weird, and not just because it was cold; this was no Heinz minestrone soup, but still, it was like nothing he'd ever had before.
Deciding that the phrase 'beggars can't be choosers' applied in this situation, he choked down the rest of it.
He wished he hadn't.
Crawling back to his original place near the shackles, he leant back against the wall, patting his stomach. For a few minutes, he almost felt sleepy – naturally sleepy, not a drugged sleep.
But then his lips started to numb, then his tongue, and then his gums. He panicked, which didn't help things at all. His heart rate spiked uncontrollably, and he could actually feel it.
When nothing more happened, and he started to calm a little, he realised that it wasn't panic that had induced butterflies in his stomach, but rather whatever the soup had contained. Within moments of the realisation, he started to vomit, over and over and over. When there was nothing else left for him throw up, he rested his head on the floor, uncaring that he was lying so close to his sick.
He was so dizzy. Things were swirling around in his mind, and when he mustered up enough strength to move away from his vomit, he found that he couldn't; there was no strength in his muscles at all. In fact, he didn't have a care in the world.
And it was with that thought, that he once again drifted off.
What he never heard during his vomiting was the door opening, and many sets of footsteps coming down the stairs before stopping near-by.
And after he'd fallen into unconsciousness, the owners of the footsteps finally stepped close to the boy.
One, and older man with a white beard and a receding hair line stepped forward and rolled Alex onto his back. Placing his bag on the floor, he quickly used a suction device to clear the boys airways from any puke, before grabbing a spot light and tubing from his bag. Motioning to Captor, he directed the man to holding Alex's jaw bones apart so he could work.
"Just make sure his mouth doesn't close," he said in French, their native language. "And for Christ's sake, don't block my light or knock me or we'll need a need child, understand?"
Captor didn't reply, but glared at the Doctor to get on with it.
Placing the spot light just below Alex's nostrils, he looked straight into the caverns before sliding the tubing inside. Watching carefully, he changed pressure from sliding to moving downwards and forwards. Happy that he'd managed to get the tubing far enough into his nostrils so it would poke down his throat, he looked inside the boy's mouth instead.
Now came the tricky bit – for him.
He didn't have much time left – soon the child's diaphragm would give up on him, and his lungs would not receive the oxygen it needed.
"I think you might have given the boy too much puffer poisoning, Gorgo," the Doctor said as he slid the tubing down the boys throat. This method of automatic respiratory allowed the machine the tubes were connected to to breathe for Alex, bringing oxygen to his lungs and bloodstream, and removing deadly toxins like carbon dioxide. Later, he'd apply another IV into the vein close to his wrist to give the boy the nutrients he'd need. But for now, breathing was what Alex needed to do.
"James put less in than the last boy got. This kid seems strong. He's sure he'll pull through," Captor stated.
They didn't speak further.
Finally, the doctor seemed satisfied with the placing of the tubing, and after he'd pressed around the boys midriff to follow the piping, declared, "nasal cannulae. Always the way to go." He smiled, pleased.
"Just make sure that he survives, Doc," Captor said, before marching up the stairs and leaving.
For now, Alex was safe. But if he didn't survive the next twenty-four hours, James wouldn't be pleased, and Captor would need to go and find another Chair for the job.
-8-
So, it's shorter than the last chapter, and I also tried to add in a bit of humour to it to contrast with the mood in the previous chapter.
Whether it worked or not, I guess we'll see.
Any ideas on what's going to be happening next? I've got it planned out, but I'm keen to here what you think'll happen :)
So review, people!