2.41 pm, Wednesday, 27th April

Chelsea, London

As usual, Ian found himself aimlessly wandering Chelsea as he thought. More often than not, his feet led him past all of Alex's usual haunts - Chelsea Common which was full to the brim on this sunny afternoon, Westfield Park which had a bunch of boys he half-recognized from school events playing football, even Brompton Cemetery was busier than normal. The good weather brought people out by the dozens, and given that it was the last few days of the Easter holidays, kids everywhere were trying to soak up the last of their freedom before school started up again next Monday.

Alex would have been doing the same, had he been here.

He wondered if Blunt ever let him out of whatever locked cage he was being kept in, or if the only time his nephew saw the sun was when he was being put in danger.

Ian sighed heavily and shook his head.

It was easy to slip into despair these days - too easy. He knew that it was pointless, stupid, risky even. It made him less sharp, less aware, and right now, he couldn't afford to not be at the top of his game; for Alex's sake if not his own.

So.

What did he know?

He knew that MI6 had kidnapped his nephew - or, more accurately, Alan fucking Blunt had kidnapped his nephew given that it was incredibly illegal, not to mind immoral, to force a teenager to do Britain's dirty work. He highly doubted that anyone outside of a very select few personnel that Blunt hand-picked himself knew of Alex's existence, let alone the Prime Minister.

That brought him back to going public with the little knowledge he had. He didn't even have to release it to the press, just a higher-up government official. He had enough contacts from the so-called good ole' days to make it happen, so now the question was - should he?

If he did, somehow, tell the PM that the Head of MI6 was using and abusing his kid, would the man even believe him? It sounded incredibly far-fetched, after all; a fourteen-year-old? Working for MI6? Defending England?! Ian wouldn't have believed it himself if it hadn't been Alex who was doing it.

Perhaps you shouldn't have trained him so well if you didn't want someone to take advantage.

He angrily shook his head and turned right onto King's Road.

No.

He hadn't trained Alex for this; he hadn't trained him to become a spy! He'd trained him to- to protect himself! To defend himself, not England! Ian had already sacrificed so much for his country; he never planned on Alex having to do the same.

Except… hadn't he? Hadn't he trained him for this? Prepared him for this sort of lifestyle? Even if that hadn't been his intention, Blunt was right - Alex wasn't a normal fourteen-year-old, and the very skills that Ian had taught him to protect him from MI6, made him a perfectly ideal agent for MI6. Had he unwittingly condemned his nephew, his kid, for a life of peril? The thought stung like an open wound. He had just wanted to teach Alex how to defend himself, not to become a pawn in a game of international espionage.

A surge of frustration coursed through him, mingled with guilt and anger. Ian knew he couldn't stand idly by while Alex's life hung in the balance, but if he didn't act carefully, then the boy's life would be forfeit anyway - and unfortunately, that meant ruling out going public with the information.

Best case scenario, if the Prime Minister did believe him… then what? It wasn't as if Blunt couldn't just hide Alex somewhere far away until the fuss died down. It wasn't even as if Ian could provide physical evidence that Blunt was the person who had Alex anyway. Sure, the SAS would back him up - but what did they know, really?

There was a teenager; young, blond, quiet. He had completed a few weeks of training with them on MI6's orders and then he had left. Wolf had seen him parachute the glass roof of the Science Museum and then again in the French Alps.

But there was nothing definite, nothing concrete, that proved that the teenager was Alex.

Blunt could easily dismiss it as Ian having gone mad after tragically losing the only family he had left; a man whose mind had turned against him in his grief. No paperwork had Alex's name on it; not even the Sergeant had that much. So Blunt would smile and nod and give the PM a pitying look as he explained how their perfectly legal of-age agent was on the shorter side and looked quite young, which was what made him so effective, but that everything was above board and he had no idea that Ian was even back in England after having spent over ten years away, and isn't it sad that such an intelligent man had now been reduced to this?

Ian snorted and shook his head, more bitter than amused.

The simple fact was, he had no proof. Sure, he had eyewitnesses and mission files and a purchasing order for boys' clothes to be sent to Brecon Beacons in Wales - but none of it, absolutely none of it, confirmed that Alex was the boy in question.

So no; he couldn't tell the Prime Minister, couldn't go public with the very little information he had, because if all of that was the best-case scenario, then the worst case… was Alex's death.

Turning off the King's Road, he found himself walking down a deserted side street which, in a few days time, would be packed with teenagers once more. In front of him, Brookland Comprehensive loomed over the open gates and-

Ian stopped.

The open gates?

But every child in the country was on Easter break right now, and from what he could see, the car park was deserted which meant that none of the teachers had come in to get extra work done or collect forgotten papers either.

So just why on earth were the school gates open?

Slowly starting forward, he wondered if it had been the elderly caretaker, Bernie, who had unlocked them. Maybe there was something inside the building that had to be fixed or he was doing some sort of landscaping project or-

But no.

The car park was empty, after all, and Bernie always parked his beat-up white Ford Fiesta in the same place every day - just inside the gates to the left, right underneath the large sycamore tree. Today, that spot was as empty as the rest.

It was probably nothing.

It was probably just a mistake or a prank or something completely harmless and futile and not worth his consideration.

But still… Ian hesitated.

This was Alex's school, after all, and although he knew that the chances of the boy being inside were perhaps even less than zero, it was still… odd, and lately, where weird events went, so did Alex.

Pausing at the entrance, as if stepping over that invisible line into the car park itself was a boundary he could never uncross, Ian took a deep breath and scolded himself for being so bloody paranoid.

But it was like he always said - only the paranoid survive.

He stepped into the schoolyard.

It felt strange, walking across the tarmac on his own. The school seemed bigger with nobody there, the yard stretching out too far between the red brick buildings with the sun beating down, reflecting off the windows. Ian had never seen the place so empty and so quiet. The grass on the playing fields looked almost too green. Any school without schoolchildren has its own peculiar atmosphere, and Brookland was no exception.

He found himself drifting towards D block where the Headmaster, Mr Bray, had an office. If there was someone here, someone who hadn't driven or even cycled, someone who wasn't the caretaker but still had a key, then chances were, it'd be Mr Bray.

Ian reached the swinging doors and, after another brief moment of hesitation, reached out and touched them.

They swung open freely.

Inside, the off-white walls were covered in posters and science diagrams. There was another door open to one side. A quick glance inside revealed it to be the main laboratory, but it was as empty as the rest of the building. He climbed up the stairs, his heels rapping against the stone surface. He reached a corridor - left for biology, right for physics - and continued straight ahead. A second corridor, with full-length windows on both sides, led into D block. Bray's study was directly ahead of him. He stopped at the door and, feeling only slightly ridiculous, knocked.

"Come in!"

Huh.

So it had been Mr Bray who'd opened the gates after all.

Well then. Ian couldn't exactly leave now - and besides, he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just a… concerned parent who had been in the area and was worried that a robbery was taking place. It was as good an excuse as any.

He opened the door and walked into the principal's study. It looked the same as it had the last time he'd been there; a cluttered room with a view of the schoolyard, a desk piled high with papers, and a black leather chair with its back currently facing him.

It was only then that it struck Ian just how odd it had been that the man had greeted him like that - like he'd been expecting him. And, now that he did think about it, it hadn't really sounded like Mr Bray's voice, either. But even if it had been Mr Bray, then where was he now?

The chair turned slowly around.

Ian froze.

It wasn't Henry Bray sitting behind the desk.

It was Alex.

3.07 pm, Wednesday, 27th April

Brookland Comprehensive School, London

He was looking at a fourteen-year-old boy with fair hair cut very short, brown eyes, and a slim, pale face. The boy was even dressed identically to what he'd find in Alex's wardrobe at home, should he open it. For one brief, split second, Ian felt so full of emotions that he could burst - joy, relief, concern, happiness, relief, worry, delight, relief - but then-

Then he saw the gun.

It was Alex, but it was also… not. The way the boy was sitting was wrong - not slouchy enough and far too arrogant. His eyes were bright, not with joy or relief like himself, but with something Ian could only describe as sadistic glee. And that smirk… that wasn't Alex's smirk. This one was dark, cruel, and far too inhuman to belong to his kid.

"Come in" Not-Alex said again, but Ian didn't move.

What was it that Wolf had said? He'd been sent to a school for fourteen-year-old boys in the Alps, a school where the Headmaster had been making clones. He'd assumed the clones had been of the man himself, but that didn't make any sense - what would he gain by doing that? Making clones of the students, however… The students who had all been from wealthy, powerful families, like the person that Alex had been pretending to be.

It took Ian what felt like an eternity to accept what he was seeing.

This really wasn't Alex, wasn't his kid, this was- this was his clone.

"I've been looking forward to this. I knew you'd show up eventually" the boy said, and despite the hatred in his voice, Ian couldn't help marvelling. The voice wasn't the same as Alex's. The boy hadn't had enough time to get it right. But otherwise, they could have been identical twins.

"I thought MI6 would have rounded you and your… brothers up by now" he said, as evenly as he could.

"Oh, they have… Fifteen of them, at least" Not-Alex replied, "But they forgot all about me".

"Lucky them".

"Shut up!" Suddenly, the boy was furious. "Shut up! You're exactly like him! The same- same stupid sense of humour, the same pitiful quips! Just- Just shut up!"

Apparently, during their brief time together, Alex had hit a nerve. Ian couldn't help but smile, but that only seemed to enrage the blond further, and the barrel of the gun was raised to point directly at his heart.

"He killed my father, you know. Your precious nephew. He murdered him!" he snarled, "But since MI6 have him so securely stored away, I'll just have to get my revenge on the next best person… It's rather fitting, don't you think? He killed my father, so now I get to kill his".

Ian still hadn't closed the door. He mentally judged the distance, waited for that glimmer of hesitation in the boy's eyes - because he still was just a boy, after all, test tube baby or not - and then threw himself backwards out into the corridor.

At the same time, the gun went off, the bullet exploding inches above his head and crashing into the far wall. He hit the ground on his back and rolled out of the doorway as a second bullet slammed into the floor. And then he was running, putting as much space between himself and his nephew's double as he could.

There was a third shot as he sprinted down the corridor, and the window next to him shattered, glass showering down. Ian reached the stairs and took them three at a time, afraid that he would trip and break an ankle. But then he was at the bottom, heading for the main door, swerving only when he realised that he would make too easy a target as he crossed the schoolyard - so instead he dived into the laboratory.

The main lab was long and rectangular, divided into workstations with Bunsen burners, flasks, and dozens of bottles of chemicals spread out on shelves that stretched the full length of the room. There was another door at the far end. Ian dived behind the farthest desk. Would Not-Alex have seen him come in? Might he be looking for him, even now, out in the yard?

Then he mentally cursed himself. He was a full-grown ass man hiding from a bloody fourteen-year-old for god's sake!

Cautiously, Ian poked his head over the surface, then ducked down as four bullets ricocheted around him, splintering the wood and smashing one of the gas pipes.

Well. It was a fourteen-year-old with a gun, at least.

There was another gunshot and an explosion that hurled him backwards, sprawling onto the floor. The last bullet had ignited the gas. Flames leapt up, licking at the ceiling. At the same time, the sprinkler system went off, spraying the entire room.

Ian tracked back on his hands and feet, searching for shelter behind fire and water, hoping that Not-Alex would be blinded. His shoulders hit the far door. He scrambled to his feet. There was another shot. But then he was through - with another corridor and a second flight of stairs straight ahead.

He wished desperately that he'd paid even just a bit more attention to the layout of the building during parent-teacher nights.

The stairs led nowhere. There was only a single classroom at the top of them that had a spiral staircase which brought him out onto the roof - and the roof had no way down.

He was standing on a wide, flat area with a fence running all the way around. There were half a dozen terra-cotta pots filled with earth. A few plants sprouted out, looking more dead than alive. Ian sniffed the air. Smoke was curling up from the windows two floors below, and he realised that the sprinkler system had been unable to put out the fire. He thought of the gas, pouring into the room, and the chemicals stacked up on the shelves. He could be standing on a time bomb.

Then he heard the sound of feet on metal and realised that Not-Alex had reached the top of the spiral staircase. Ian ducked behind one of the greenhouses. The door crashed open. Smoke followed the boy out onto the roof. He took a step forward - now Ian was behind him.

"Where are you?!" Not-Alex shouted.

His hair was soaked and his face contorted with anger. Ian knew his moment had come. He would never have a better chance. He ran forward.

Not-Alex twisted around and fired. The bullet creased his shoulder, a molten sword drawn across his flesh. But a second later he had reached him, grabbing him around the neck with one hand and seizing hold of his wrist with the other, forcing the gun away. There was a huge explosion in the laboratory below and the entire building shook. Ian pulled with all his strength, trying to bring the gun down. Not-Alex clawed at him, swearing - not in English but in Afrikaans.

The end came very suddenly.

The gun twisted and fell to the ground.

Not-Alex lashed out, and Ian, despite knowing that it wasn't Alex, that it wasn't his own flesh and blood, his own kid that he was attacking, still couldn't bring himself to fight back.

He fell, hitting the hot roof hard, just as the boy dived for the gun.

There was another explosion, and a sheet of chemical flame leapt up. A crater had suddenly appeared in the roof, swallowing up the gun. Not-Alex saw it too late and fell through. With a yell, he disappeared into the smoke and fire.

Ian stumbled to his feet, walked over to the hole, and looked down.

Not-Alex lay on his back, two floors below. He wasn't moving. The flames were closing in.

He had to fight back the wave of nausea that threatened to overcome him at the sight.

This wasn't Alex. He wasn't Alex. It wasn't Alex it wasn't Alex it wasn't Alex-

In the distance, he heard sirens.

Forcefully blocking out any and all mental images of a blond fourteen-year-old child lying at the bottom of an inferno, Ian limped back to the spiral staircase and began to make his way down.

10.24 am, Thursday, 28th April

Chelsea, London

"Ian! You will never guess what happened!"

The man smiled and then grimaced as the antiseptic stung the bullet wound on his upper arm fiercely. The adrenaline from yesterday had only fueled him long enough to make his escape, and once he'd returned home, he'd had just enough time to haphazardly bandage the graze before face-planting his bed.

He'd only woken up half an hour ago, the shock and fear and pain and terror and emotional rollercoaster having effectively knocked him out for fifteen hours straight. Now, however, perched on the edge of his bathtub with an open first aid kit in front of him and his phone cradled between his good shoulder and his ear, he was seriously regretting not treating the wound properly that day before.

"What happened?"

Carefully pulling away the cotton swab, he examined the injury. It wasn't deep, thankfully, but would still be a bitch of a thing to heal.

"Someone burned down the Science Block at Brookland!" Tom exploded, his voice far too loud at the other end of the phone, causing Ian to grimace yet again, albeit for a different reason.

"Oh yeah? And why's that good?"

"'Cause it means I get another week's holidays, duh! Mum got the text this morning. They can't let us return to a half-falling-down building, after all, and apparently, all of those chemicals in the labs have made the air poisonous or toxic or something - which is absolutely great, because I had a chemistry exam on Monday that I was not prepared for".

"Lucky you" Ian agreed, tearing open a packet of sterile dressing, "Do they know what caused it?"

"I dunno. They didn't say so in the text, anyway… Why?"

He clenched his jaw and bit back a vicious curse as he wrapped the bandages around his arm and pulled them tight.

"Why what?"

"Why're you asking?"

"Why did you call me?" he countered, tearing off a strip of medical tape with his teeth.

"You can't just answer a question with a question, Ian".

"Can't I?"

Tom huffed a brief laugh, but even with a row of houses between them, Ian could picture his nervous expression.

"... This had something to do with Alex, didn't it?"

"What makes you say that?"

"It's his school. Our school. And- I mean, yeah, okay, accidents can happen and all but… I don't know. It's just- I mean, it's just that it's Easter break, so- so the building should have been empty but it wasn't, obviously, or this wouldn't have happened, so…"

He trailed off, but Ian understood the point he was making; it was the same reasoning that had led to him entering the school after he'd seen the open gate to begin with. Where Alex was concerned, where MI6 was concerned, coincidences like that just didn't happen.

He taped the end of the bandages in place and turned all of his attention back to his phone.

"Yeah" he said, simply, "It had something to do with Alex".

"How do you know? Did you find him?! Where is he? Is he alright?! Did you-"

"Tom".

The boy fell silent.

Ian sighed.

"I can't… I can't tell you everything, kid; you know that. Both because some of these things are state secrets that even I shouldn't know about, but also because you're fourteen years old and there are some things that no fourteen-year-old should ever have to know".

"But Alex does".

"... Yeah. Alex does". He leaned back against the bathroom tiles behind him, briefly flinching at their coldness. "Remember what I told you? That day at the park? How- How none of this was a coincidence and that it very likely had something to do with… with my previous employers?"

He heard the boy's breath hitch as realisation sank in.

"You mean Alex is mixed up with all of that? With M- I mean, with your previous employers? He's… working for them now too?"

"Not willingly, I assure you. They're… They're not very nice people, Tom".

"I'll say! So, what, they're just- they're just forcing him into- to working for them? They can't do that!"

Oh, if only the world really was so black and white...

"Actually, they can" he corrected, almost gently, "It's illegal of course, not to mind a whole bunch of other things, but… well, it's not as if I can prove it to anyone that matters… to anyone that could do something about it".

"So that's it? You're giving up?! Just like that?!"

"Of course not! I'm not giving up on anything or anyone, Tom, I promise you. This just means that… that I'll have to go about doing things differently. Getting him back isn't so straightforward, just because I know where he is now. Things like this take… time".

"... So it was Alex who burned down Brookland?"

Ian winced.

"Uh, no, actually, that was… that was me".

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line.

"... That was what?"

"Me" he said, somewhat awkwardly, "I, uh… I kind of burned down your school".

"You burned down Brookland?"

"Yeah".

"For real?"

"For real for real".

"... Wicked!"

He couldn't help but smile, but then that brief moment of amusement quickly turned into a pang of regret because-

Well.

Alex would likely never feel such childish joy again, now would he?

"I'm guessing you had a reason for doing it?" Tom asked, "I mean- I can't really picture you burning down buildings just for the hell of it".

"How else do you think I spend my weekends?"

"Ian".

"Alright, alright" he placated, "It's… complicated".

"Understatement of the century" the boy muttered, and he grimaced in agreement. "Yeah. Look, long story short, it had something to do with Alex and with the people that he's… currently with. I don't know if he knows what happened, but… well, either way, it doesn't really matter much. As far as I know, he's still as… safe as he can be, given the horrible, horrible circumstances".

"... Are they really forcing him to do this?"

Ian immediately baulked, anger and indignation and pure and utter fury rising up in him at the mere suggestion that Alex, Alex, was willingly-

"Not that I think he's there by himself!" Tom quickly added, "Or that- that he decided to do whatever it is that he's doing on his own! I just meant that… they're… them. They're the government, the- the good guys, you know? Would they… Would they really do this? To Alex? To a teenager?!"

"Evidently, yes".

"But they're the good guys!" he burst out, "They're- They're not meant to- to- Okay, fuck, look, I get that- that this probably sounds stupid and- and childish or whatever but- but they're supposed to be the good guys and- and if they're not then that means that they're the bad guys and if there are then that means there are no good guys left and- and that means that… that there are only bad guys".

Ian's heart ached in sympathy for the boy. That was a life lesson that he'd been unlucky enough to learn too - but at least he'd been in his twenties when he'd realised, and he'd had the opportunity, the option, of saying no. He chose this life despite realising just how vicious and gritty and horrifying it could be, but Alex never had that choice, and Tom didn't deserve to see the dark parts of the world either, even if it was only just a glimpse.

"... I hate to sound like a cliché, kid, but life isn't fair" he eventually replied, "And for people in my world, in- in Alex's world… Well, things are never as they seem, and they're often a hell of a lot worse. But I'll get him out of it, I promise. I've got a few soldiers on my side and together we're doing our best to make a plan to get Alex out for good. It'll just… It'll just take some time".

He ran a hand over his face and then caught sight of his reflection in the bathroom mirror. There was exhaustion and weariness etched into his features. It was as if he'd aged a decade in the past month alone.

"Does Alex have any time left?"

Tom's voice was level, even, and Ian hated it.

"... I hope so" he said, quietly, "For both our sakes".