Chapter 11

When Alex got up, the door had been closed and locked. The room had some dirty lights and no windows. From his view, there was no way to escape. Alex closely surveyed his cell and realized that he was not alone. There was someone lying in a heap in one of the far corners of the room. Alex approached the figure cautiously. He held his breath as he reached for the person's wrist, and released his breath when he felt a pulse. Alex reached forward and brushed the person's hair out of the way and gasped when he realized that the person was Jamie. She looked like she had been in some sort of accident with all of the bruises and cuts there were. Alex picked up her left wrist, which was missing its brace and was lying at an awkward angle, and Jamie groaned. Alex found the splint in the other corner and began to try and put it back on gently.

Jamie slowly swam up through the depths of unconsciousness. She was about to open her eyes when she realized that someone was touching her. It took amazing self control for her to keep her body relaxed and loose until she could figure out what the person was doing. Then the person bent her wrist and the pain shot up her arm.

"Ow!" Jamie jerked her arm away as the other person jumped away. She cradled her wrist to her chest and blinked hard to stop from crying.

"I… I'm sorry. I was trying to put your brace back on." Jamie could barely believe who was in the room with her, but she looked up to see Alex crouching just in front of her. She had meant for him to get away. "Are you alright?" he asked.

Jamie smiled wryly. "Yeah, I'm doing just great."

Alex cringed, "okay, sorry, stupid question." Jamie shook her head and managed to slip her brace on without causing too much more pain. Alex watched her carefully. He wasn't quite sure what to do.

"I thought you went to MI6," Jamie said finally. "I thought you got away."

"I did." Jamie stared at him. "But then MI6 wanted me to come back so that I could find you and the terrorist cell. They were having a hard time decoding the flash drive you gave me and thought this would be faster." Jamie sighed. This was not working out at all like she had hoped. "They sent me to make sure that you stay safe."

Jamie snorted. "You're supposed to keep me safe? You don't know these people at all!"

"I've held my own in plenty of situations," Alex said defensively.

Jamie just shook her head. "We are so screwed." Jamie started wiping at some of her bruises. Her lip was split and her nose was bleeding, but that wasn't too bad. Her worst injury was her wrist.

"Any more knives you could use to get us out of here?" Alex asked.

"They wouldn't let me get away with that trick twice," Jamie laughed. "I was thoroughly searched before they threw me in here."

"What do they want with you?" Alex asked.

"This is supposed to be the first really big operation that I am involved in," replied Jamie. She would not look at Alex. "I'm in charge of setting up the computer programs that will carry out Dylan's big attack on London."

"So you are in on this entire operation?"

"Not by choice." Now she looked Alex straight in the eye. "If I had my way, I would have stopped being part of this whole group years ago when I finally realized what they were doing. It just so happens that when you are related to the people who lead a group like this, they don't want to let you go, especially not alive."

"So this is your only way out? To get MI6 to stop this operation and get you a free pass out?" Alex asked. Jamie nodded. They sat quietly for a little while. Jamie was stretching out and making sure that her muscles would work when they were needed. Soon footsteps could be heard approaching their cell. A key turned in the lock and then the doorway was filled with a group of five men led by the man Alex had seen in the computer room earlier.

"Honestly, Ali, how many men do you need to escort two teenagers?" Jamie asked in a light voice.

"If you were normal teenagers, I would get you myself, however, this is a rare occasion and we wanted to take extra precautions. Dylan does not like mistakes and neither do I," Ali replied as the other men came into the room and took hold of Jamie and Alex's arms. "Time for you to do your job, Jamie." Ali turned and left the room followed by the guards with Alex and Jamie.

They were led down the hall to the computer room Alex had been in earlier. All of the computer stations had people working, but as they came in the man at the main computer in the center of the room got up and walked towards them.

"What is all of this, Ali?" the man asked. "Don't you think she has learned her lesson?" Ali shrugged his shoulders and signaled for the guards to let go of Jamie. "Come on Jamie, the computer is ready for you."

"No, dad, I won't do it." Alex looked from Jamie to the man she had just called "dad". So this was the person MI6 had been asked to find because he had been "kidnapped". There was not a huge family resemblance. Alex was surprised to see how much calmer Jamie was around her dad than around Dylan.

"Jamie, this is your chance to prove you deserve more advanced work. You know how to do this, you won't mess up," her dad used a calm reasoning tone. Jamie realized that he thought she was afraid of messing up the operation, not that she really just didn't want to be a part of the terrorist cell.

"No. You don't understand. I do not want to be a part of any terrorist group. I want out," Jamie enunciated every word so that there would be no confusion on what she had just said. Her dad looked shocked.

"Now I thought we had fixed this attitude problem earlier," Dylan entered through the other side of the room. He had changed out of his workout clothes and into jeans and a button down shirt. "You used to be such a good kid, always doing as you were told. Is this a show for your new friend? We could get rid of him if that would clear this matter up." Dylan picked up a gun from one of the tables and aimed it at Alex. Jamie caught Alex's eye. He could see that she was fighting an internal battle over whether or not she should just keep standing up against Dylan or give in to protect the innocent person Dylan was threatening.

Jamie looked coldly at Dylan. "Fine." Her dad put his hand on her shoulder and steered her toward the computer. Dylan approached Alex with the gun.

"So here stands the famous Alex Rider. I should really thank you because by killing you I will earn a great deal of respect among the terrorist community. Maybe I'll get contracts from some of Scorpia's dissatisfied customers." Alex managed to swing out and kick Dylan, but he was rewarded with a punch to the face that would have sent him flying except the guards still had a tight hold on him. "Hm, I see why Jamie took a shine to you. You've got the same type of temper that she does." He turned to Jamie, "You done yet?"

"It's taking a little longer because you broke my wrist," Jamie yelled back with tightly controlled anger. Dylan looked like he was going to make a retort, but then his phone beeped. He took it from its holder on his belt and answered in Arabic. Alex noticed Jamie trying to listen in while still looking like she was working. Dylan finally yelled instructions into the phone and hung up. Then he approached Alex and punched him.

"You brought company with you?" Dylan yelled. Alex shook his head to clear his vision and noticed that Jamie had stopped working on the computer and was turned to face them. "There's a whole army of the SAS around this building right now!" The sounds of bullets could be heard from outside the room. Alex saw Jamie's eyes widen. Her father left her side and went to calm Dylan down. As he left her side, Jamie went back to furiously typing at the computer, obviously her wrist didn't hurt as much as she claimed.

"Dylan, maybe it wasn't them. Maybe the SAS tracked you from the meeting with Aisha," he put a reassuring hand on Dylan's arm. "Now is not the time for rash actions my friend. We have planned for these sorts of situations, now we must use those preparations." Dylan stayed still for a moment and then nodded in concession.

"Take Aisha and her force and try to take out as many as possible on your way out," Dylan said, regaining his calm, in charge attitude. "I'll take Jamie and the Rider boy once the computer information is complete." Alex watched Jamie's dad's reaction and was somewhat surprised by the satisfied nod. Alex had thought that this man would stop Dylan from doing anything more to his daughter, but Alex had guessed wrong. Dylan came over and grabbed Alex by the arm and dragged him over to where Jamie sat at the computer. He had pulled out a gun.

"Almost done?" he asked gruffly.

"Just one more minute…" Jamie trailed off as she quickly scanned the code she had typed in. She was about to add the finishing touches when the door to the room was blown off of its hinges. SAS men swarmed in through the hole where the door had been and Alex breathed a small sigh of relief. Now he and Jamie weren't completely on their own. Dylan whipped toward the SAS man with his gun pointing in Jamie and Alex's direction. Then he yelled something in Arabic at the soldiers. Jamie had turned to face the men when they had stormed in, but Alex saw that her fingers were still on her keyboard. They were slowly inching toward the enter button. Jamie looked in his direction and Alex caught her eye with his questioning glance. He had thought that she didn't want to be part of what her family had planned, but maybe he had been wrong all along.

Jamie tried to communicate that she wasn't going to cause harm. She just needed to finish entering the code that would stop Dylan's project from being complete, but the SAS wouldn't be happy if she started messing with the computer in front of them when they didn't know her and she didn't want Dylan to shot Alex and her when he realized she had sabotaged his project. She froze as the SAS men spoke. She realized then that Dylan had used a different dialect of Arabic, one that was not well known, but her family used it a lot. One of the soldiers was trying a more common form of Arabic, but she knew Dylan would continue to play dumb.

"Sir, put down your weapon. This is not a fight you should try." One soldier said it in English while the other tried it in Arabic. Dylan just shook the gun and started babbling in his other dialect of Arabic again, but he was making the soldiers nervous. "Sir, please stop or we will use force!" one of the soldiers tried again, but Dylan didn't care. Jamie finally had enough of Dylan's craziness.

"He speaks English. He's ignoring you," she called to the soldiers and Dylan turned and hit her across the face with the gun. Jamie flew out of the chair and onto the floor and Alex backed away from Dylan and the gun. One of the soldiers fired and Dylan turned to return the fire. As he did, Jamie reached up from where she was on the floor and hit the finally key in her sequence. The computers digested the new information and almost instantly the screens went fuzzy and then to black. Dylan turned to catch this latest problem and turned on her, but Jamie had ducked out of his line of eyesight and with the soldiers firing and some of Dylan's people returning fire, he just had to get out of the room. Jamie hid under the desk, behind the wiring while Dylan casted about for what he should do next. She was just praying that he wouldn't find her and that if he did; she hoped that the SAS would shot her first. She did not want to know what the price would be for deceiving him. When Dylan headed out of the room in a sprint, Jamie came out from her hiding spot and was about to follow him, when Alex caught her arm and spun her into a doorway, out of the range of fire.

"What did you do?" Alex asked, his voice desperate. He was hoping he had not just been led into a trap.

"I crashed the computer. The program that he wanted is dead, it won't work on these computers anymore. I stopped his first plan. Can you let go of me now? You're hurting me." Jamie wriggled her arm and Alex let go. She met his eyes as she rubbed where he had grabbed her. "You have quite a grip, did you know that?"

Alex shook his head and then snapped up to look at her again. "Wait, you said you stopped his first plan… what is his second plan?"

"I don't know," Jamie shrugged her shoulders in frustration. "I was going to follow him and find out what his backup plan was, but you stopped me."

"Do you have any idea where he may have put the backup?" Alex asked. He was sorry he had stopped her from pursuing Dylan, but it was also a very dangerous task.

"I think I do, but it'll be easier if I just go by myself," Jamie said as she checked whether the coast was clear.

"And why do you think that?" asked Alex as he started to follow her down the hall. He had not been expecting her to stop and turn on him so quickly so they were almost nose to nose when she turned. There was anger in her eyes.

"Because most people here do not entirely realize that I am a traitor to all that they have worked for and thus I will be able to get around more quickly and easily. Second, I speak their language, so I will be able to know what is going on and I can't be hindered by someone who doesn't know what is going on!" Jamie was scared and angry and just wanted to get back at Dylan for all that he had ever done to her and yet she did not want Alex to get hurt by following her into some unknown.

"Good reasons, but you still need someone to watch your back, and that is my job," Alex said resolutely. "That was the task MI6 assigned me and I plan to see it through." Jamie could have smacked him.

"I don't need your help or MI6. I can take care of this on my own!" Jamie started to run down the hallway and Alex followed quickly behind. He wouldn't be given the slip. He was doing this to help her. He didn't want to find her among the casualties at the end of the day; by Dylan's hand or the SAS.