Just a couple of things I need to clear up before the start of this next chapter…

The first is that it's a mass conspiracy; 'Saturn' and 'Satan' are now the same thing. Everyone in the world knows that apart from the people who pointed out that I had accidentally written 'Saturn' instead of 'Satan', except, it wasn't actually a mistake of course because they really mean the same thing. You just didn't know that…

(Damn you mild dyslexia!)

The other is, no, I did not use the same spoon to make the cookies for cutting peoples hearts out. In fact, I was lazy and didn't bother making the cookies myself. They where shop bought. I realize now that buying virtual cookies from a virtual shop is lazy, and so everyone who comments nicely on this next chapter can have a home made virtual chocolate brownie (they are really good!).

And what of people who are allergic to that sort of thing?... well…death by brownie is probably less painful then death by spoon…so eat up!

Now I've got that bit sorted out, here is the disclaimer:

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life doesn't give you the Alex Rider books, you write fan-fiction. Sorted :D

The other man seemed to have been aiming for his face. Well, actually, it had been hard to tell. Where ever he had actually been aiming for, he missed as Alex swung round to the right. Using his momentum he punched the dangerously over balanced man in the chest with his left fist, meaning that instead of falling flat on his face from over stretching in his missed attack, the thief collapsed backwards with a yell. As he did so his head came into contact with the sink behind him. There was a sickening crack and his yell cut off abruptly. Alex watched in surprise as the stranger slumped lifelessly to the floor.

Was he dead or just unconscious?

Before Alex could check, he heard laud footsteps thundering along the hallway. Quickly he slipped behind the bathroom door as feet pounded heavily up the stairs. It wasn't something he had thought of, a flare of instinctive fear had simply ordered him to get out of sight. And instincts where often the only thing you could rely on in situations like this.

Out of sight of the second man, Alex swung the arm he had used to punch the first criminal. Despite the adrenalin he could feel the slight discomfort of pain in his fist. Hardly counted as pain though, not after all he had been through. And for some reason that tiny beat of pain in his knuckles made him feel powerful, aggressive, alive.

With just his wits and muscles (and sometimes the odd useful gadget), he could survive what ever was thrown at him. A couple of petty thieves weren't going to change that.

He wanted to smile evilly to himself, wanted to jump out and punch the other man square in the face. Wanted to hurt him. Wanted to make him feel pain for all the times others had hurt Alex.

As the stranger crashed into the room, cursing and yelling at the other man, asking what the hell he was up to, Alex felt a thrill of fear brush its feathery tendrils up his back. Mentally he grabbed hold of them and let fear stab a hole in the odd reckless aggressiveness that had been boiling up inside him.

He needed to calm down, get back into the zone. He couldn't let cockiness and savagery fight for him. That wasn't the way to do it. Wasn't his way. It could only lead to bad things. Like pain and defeat.

Behind the door, despite every muscle in his body screaming for fight or flight, he made himself close his eyes and take several long and calming breaths, being careful to do so quietly. He didn't want the thief to hear him. He wanted to be the first one to make a move.

Snapping his dark brown eyes open, he leant to his right just a fraction. It was enough to show him the back of Daniel Stanley as he leant down to see what the hell his colleague was playing at.

Carefully watching for any signs the man was about to straighten up (meaning that he would be able to see Alex in the mirror), he tried to do a quick summery of his new enemy.

The man was wearing a pair off faded jeans and a dark green t-shirt. Great, because his fashion sense was really going to help Alex defeat him…

What was also obvious though, despite the fact that Alex didn't have a very good view of him, was that he was going to be a much more dangerous opponent then the last man. Where as he had been small and pinched looking, this guy was definitely over 6 foot tall, and probably much more then that. He was large in a hulking, muscular way. Alex had no doubt that he was going to be a lot harder to beat then the last guy. He looked as though a head long collision with a bus wouldn't knock him out, let alone an accidental knock on the head from the rim of a sink.

Another thing Alex soon learnt about him was that he hated the sight of blood. As he roughly shook his partners shoulder, (making the other man groan slightly, proving that Alex had only accidentally knocked him out, not killed him), he slumped forwards, showing that he had cracked his head open on the corner of the basin. The back of his head was bleeding quite badly and at the sight of it, the larger man had jumped back in disgust, letting out a cry of revulsion. As he did so, his elbow came into contact with the door Alex was hiding behind, pushing it backwards sharply. The door smashed into Alex's face, causing him to let out a cry of pain and clutch at his nose, which felt as though it must be broken.

He heard, rather then saw, the door being pulled away from him and a second later, large hands gripped him roughly by the shoulders and dragged him away from the wall.

Opening eyes that where near to watering from pain, he glimpsed a tanned face with grey eyes and sandy coloured hair glaring down at him before he was picked up by the shoulders of hit T-shirt and thrown roughly sideways.

Alex let out a yell as the back of his legs came into contact with the side of the bath, coursing him to fall backwards into it. As he fell his head met one of the taps in a glancing blow that left him temporarily stunned.

As he tried to wake his mind up from the haze of pain his nose and the back of his head were in, more pain was sent jarring up his leg as his enemy stood and then kneeled on him. It didn't break any bones but still hurt like hell.

After a few seconds his world of pain spun sickeningly as he was dragged forward, once again by his T-shirt. The thief couldn't lift the bottom half of his body, owing to the fact he was now kneeling on it, but he could pull him up enough for them to almost be at eye level.

"Who the hell are you?" The man hissed in Alex's face. Some far off corner of his brain said to tell the man that was exactly what his colleague had asked, or else give him the exact same answer he had given the other thief.

But that part of his brain wasn't thinking properly, and neither was the rest of it to tell the truth. He was finding it hard to order his thoughts through the pain.

The man shook him and Alex's eyes refocused on him slightly. "Alex…" He muttered in hardly audible tones.

"What you do'in here, Alice?" The stranger hissed, shaking Alex by his clothes some more. "Its Alex… and I live here." He answered quietly.

"To hell you do Alice, we've been watchin this place for days, we woulda seen you if you lived here!" As he spoke, he abruptly let go of Alex, letting him drop back down to the bottom of the bath, hitting his already sore head on the hard plastic.

As Alex groaned in pain, the thief suddenly came to a conclusion that made sense to him. "You thought yeh could rob this place, didn't you?" A fist hit Alex in the side of the head. Pain and indignation flared up. "I live here, you bastard!" Alex spat back, earning him a whack across his right cheek.

Face stinging, Alex looked around desperately for evidence to back up his claim. There where no photos in the bathroom so he couldn't point himself out in one of those. Finally his eyes fell on an almost full bottle of Lynx shampoo. He tried to lift one hand up to point towards it, for some reason thinking vaguely that it was proof enough to get the criminal to believe him. The other man however, thought that Alex was about to try and punch him.

He grabbed Alex's arm and twisted it back violently, grinning when the boy let out an animal yawl of pain. Being punched hard under the chin quickly got rid of the smile though, changing it into a twisted snarl of rage. "Why you little…" Not only was this kid trying to rob the house they had spent all these days watching, he had also somehow managed to knock his partner, Mike out, and punched him much harder then a boy of his age (what ever it was), should be able to.

Daniel saw red at the attack and clamped his strong arms around the boy's neck. He shook him violently by his throat, making his head crash back onto the plastic bottom of the bath again and again.

As he did so he felt blows strike his side, and then his head as the boy struggled to get free, using his fists to punch, the flat of his hands for madly aimed karate chops and even resorting to scrabbling savagely at his attackers skin with his nails..

Daniel changed his grip slightly, and ignoring the counter attacks as best he could, he started to put pressure on the boy's neck, pressing his thumbs into the boy's soft throat.

Alex was doing everything he could to escape, still not able to accept how badly things had gone. But he was loosing this battle. The pressure on his neck was terrible, no matter how hard he hit the larger man, it seemed to just make him grip tighter, not less. And it wasn't like he could us his legs. He could barely even feel them under the great weight pinning them down.

But Alex didn't give up, he kept struggling even as he felt his attacks get weaker and weaker. He couldn't breath. The world was spinning round him. There was pain everywhere, throbbing white hot through him.

This wasn't the first time he had found himself been strangled to death and he decided in that moment that he really didn't like being throttled. It really wasn't his idea of fun.

He was dying though and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

This one was longer then the last! True, it's only longer by about 50 words, but that's still longer, right? And no one said how much longer they wanted it to be then the last, only that it should be longer.

*Picks up small metal spoon and glares round, waiting for anyone to say by how much they thought the next should be longer then this one*

On a different note, I'm always careful to re-read what ever I write several times, but as some people have already pointed out, that doesn't stop me accidentally leaving in mistakes.

I've changed 'spoon' to 'spun', 'ram' to 'arm' and 'ay' to 'any', but I might have missed some other ones.

If so, I apologies. (Just incase your wondering, I purposefully wrote what Daniel was saying phonetically, rather then the correct spelling)