Mrs Jones placed her Versace handbag on her desk with a sharp thwack; she was growing impatient with the lack of news over Swallowtail. Her juniors had been working non-stop for days now and each of them seemed to be withering away with every hour spent in front of their computer. Mrs Jones was no exception; her nails were beginning to discolour as the long nights had led her to take up a bad habit. No longer could the act of sucking on a sweet suffice; she often escaped from meetings to have a cigarette in the quiet confines of the car park. The pressure was beginning to break the usually pristine and resilient woman. She had been in this line of work for a long time, she had seen all there was to see, but Mrs Jones was beginning to develop wrinkles around her eyes from frowning and no amount of La Prairie was going to fix them. Blunt was growing impatient. He hounded her day and night for some form of progress, for any sign of what Swallowtail was up to, but…nothing.

As the woman took her car keys from her handbag, she glanced at her filing cabinet beside her desk. The last file she had put away was Hera's. That girl, Mrs Jones frowned with frustration; she would be the end of all of them. Things had become stagnant, putrified, in Alex's Rider's absence, and Hera had taken a massive knock because of it. Mrs Jones never usually felt responsible for anything; she did her job for her country and that was that. But, she mused as she hitched her handbag up to hang on her arm, she could not help but realise that she was responsible for Hera's loss. The girl had killed her father and pushed away the only man she was ever close to. All because of her work with MI6. Mrs Jones had capitalised on that; took a lone warrior and crafted her into something deadly. Her gaze dropped from the filing cabinet as she wondered about Hera; had she ever had a normal life? Did she ever go and see a movie? Of course, Mrs Jones had never wondered such trivial things before but, this late in the game, she could not help but think about it.

She turned to her office door and pushed it open. The lights on this floor glared with full brightness down on the team who were working the graveyard shift. There was no such thing as a 'graveyard shift', in this business, but due to the lack of leads, the team had slowly adopted the phrase; every shift with this department was turning into a graveyard shift.

"Mrs Jones!" The woman looked up suddenly, her eyes trying to hide any trace of tiredness, as a junior approached her.

"Yes, Bennett?" She said, trying her hardest to stifle a yawn.

"There's been no activity in Alex Rider's house for seven hours now." He said in earnest, but his supervisor looked at him blankly. Now they were actually reporting the fact that there was no news?

"What exactly-"

"St Claire and Harris entered the house over seven and a half hours ago," Bennett interrupted, smoothing his hair away from his face in an irritated manner before handing Mrs Jones a sheaf of papers. "In the last seven hours there has been no movement, no sound vibrations, no lights turned on…" The woman glanced down at the papers in front of her: they were graphs showing the sound vibrations throughout the house, the times that lights were switched on and, it did seem odd from 7PM on a Saturday night to 2AM the next morning, that there should be no activity in a house where four people were supposed to be.

"Is it a glitch in the system?" She asked, putting her bag down on a nearby desk and leafing through the reports in front of her.

"That's what we assumed so we brought Smithers up to check his gadgets were doing their job." Bennett moved away and Mrs Jones followed him to the big screen in the middle of the wall on the other side of the room. On the screen was projected images of each room in Alex Rider's house, put there without his consent, each with a graph showing a sound recording. "Throughout the house there are hidden cameras, sound recorders, infrared detectors, thermal radiation-"

"Yes, yes, I know!" Mrs Jones waved away his comments impatiently. "Well, what did Smithers say?" Bennett looked lost for words for a moment.

"He said they'd been hacked." For the briefest of seconds, Mrs Jones stared at her subordinate blankly.

"Hacked?"

"Overridden, forced to put out the same information every thirty seconds, namely- no information." Bennett said wearily, "except for one room." Mrs Jones turned to him sharply.

"Which room."

"The basement." Almost like something from a horror movie, Mrs Jones found she was a little unsteady on her feet upon hearing this.

"Well? What did you find?" She urged him, placing her hands on the desk in front of her to regain her balance.

"We're still trying to regain control of the system, all we know is that there is audio and video information on record for the basement from five hours ago-"

"Well, hurry!" Mrs Jones barked at him, she turned to the room at large in which many of those working had stood up from behind their computers to see what the news was. "I want whatever is in that basement on this screen now-"

"Morning Alpha," the woman's heart skipped a beat, she turned at the sound of Alex's voice, to the screen in the middle of the room. She raised an eyebrow, everyone in the room held their breath as they saw Hera stood in Alex's basement, a gadget in her hands.

"She recorded him speaking." Bennett murmured to himself. "The Alpha system is voice activated-only Rider's voice could power it up." Mrs Jones raised an eyebrow at the screen; what on Earth was the girl up to? Hera was stood in a red dress, cocking her head to one side, her gadget, a crystal hair clip/audio recorder, hung loosely in her hand.

"Hey, Mrs Jones." Hera said smoothly, "I trust you remember my aversion to the game hide & seek?" Hera was referring to the many missions in which she had to hide from assailants trying to kill her. Anyone would expect a little hiding in a game of spies but Hera was much more of a 'let them come. I wanna see if they can land a scratch on me,' type of girl. "But I love playing chase." Mrs Jones put a hand to her mouth as a slow and gentle wave of realisation came over her. She sat down and swallowed hard. "So, MI6…catch me if you can." Hera disappeared from the screen. It went back to the dull, lifeless image of Alex Rider's basement.

"Hera," Mrs Jones breathed, "what have you done?" After a few moments of regaining her composure, Mrs Jones looked around at the group in front of her. All of her team were looking from the screen to her and back again, completely lost for words. "Get Blunt in my office-"

"Yes, ma'am." Bennett spoke quickly and ran from her side, into her office. "As for the rest of you," she turned to the group at large.

"Shall we try to find St Claire?" A girl asked from across the room. She was immediately silenced when her teammates looked at her sternly; no one tells Mrs Jones the plan of action, Mrs Jones tells them.

"No." The woman announced to the room at large. "The more pressing matter is- why does Hera want us to follow?"

There was no need to look very far at all; Hera was sat in a car, her seatbelt securely fastened, checking her lipstick in the rear view mirror. Alex Rider sat in the passenger seat beside her, drifting in and out of consciousness. In the darkness of the evening, hidden away in a small car, the dashboard lit up as Hera's phone rang. She threw her lipstick into the glove compartment and reached over for her phone.

"Everything good to go?" She heard Daniel's voice on the other end.

"Yes," came a male voice.

"Yes," she responded happily.

"Good. I'll see you soon." Hera put down the phone and started the car. With both hands on the wheel she revved the engine a few times. Almost immediately, car headlights blinked on behind her, two motorbike engines could be heard in the distance. She grinned; MI6 were going to have to do better than that.

"There is no time!" Blunt's voice, hoarse and authoritative, came through the phone line loud and clear for Mrs Jones to hear. "She is already on the move, find her!"

"But it could be a trap, a distraction-"

"Unless you have any evidence for those things, I want Hera back at the Royal and General by dawn!" He shouted, causing Mrs Jones to wince.

"Very well," she said grudgingly. As she hit a button on her office phone to end the call, Bennett ran into her office and leant against the doorframe. He was breathing heavy.

"It's no use," he exhaled, clutching his chest, "that car is something else."

With a scream of excitement and wicked smirk, Hera zoomed out of chelsea at an adrenaline-inducing 80 miles per hour. The speed and the agility of the souped up Toyota Supra enabled Hera to drive through the smallest of side streets, down stairs and through uninhabited gardens, as lightly and controlled as if she were going at a normal speed. She could hear the rev of the engines around her, their lights glaring out into the darkness of London, trying to catch sight of her. A slick, black 4x4 followed her like a hunter on its prey; attempting to get as close as possible but not managing to follow her through the tiny alleyways she took. The bikes were harder to lose; they knew every twist and turn she was going to make and followed with ease.

"There was no need to make this so dramatic." A bored voice issued from the car's audio system as Hera went straight from second to fourth gear without blinking.

"Oh, where's your sense of adventure, Jack?" Hera shouted in response, the thrill of chase clear in her voice.

"Back in sixth grade." Hera laughed as the lights of the city rushed past her. "Seriously; a night-time car chase through central London?" Her laughed out loud as she finally hit a road of open space that lead down to the Imperial Wharf. "I thought you were trying to be novel, not full of bad movie cliches." Hera put the pedal to the floor and gritted her teeth as the car accelerated. At this point she was racing ahead of the car and bikes with ease.

"When I get back, you and I can talk hacker-guides-spy-through-city-car-chase cliches all you like-"

"I look forward to it." Came the smart arse response.

"But right now," Hera said through clenched teeth, feeling the velocity making her stomach squirm, "I need to know if everything is ready." She glanced up into the rearview mirror and could she the lights of the following vehicles begin to get closer.

"You have to be at the embankment in 10…9…" As Jack spoke, Hera's eyes widened with surprise.

"That's not enough time!" She protested but Jack was no longer paying attention.

"8…7…6…"

"Damn it!" Hera had to slow down when approaching the end of the stretch of road, the bikes were catching up with her. She was about to hit the redline- the maximum engine speed but that would bring her to a point of no return; she couldn't slow down in time if she went that fast.

"5…4…"

"ARGH!" At a junction Hera slammed hard on the brakes, pulled up the handbrake and used the resulting skid of the wheels to spin the the car around and head in the opposite direction. She grunted with effort and caught a quick glimpse of the shocked faces in the 4x4. The bikers, with their quick reflexes, attempted to stop along side her but the speed they were traveling at caused the drivers to be knocked from their bikes. Hera forced the car into first gear and almost immediately jumped to third, using the slope of the road to gain momentum quickly. The bikes were down but the black panther-like car was still on her tail. She turned a corner and floored the accelerator so she zoomed along the embankment. A quick glance in the rear view mirror- the car tailing her would turn the corner in-

"2…1…Houston we have lift off."

The 4x4 turned the corner and the driver was forced to break hard as a light as powerful as ten football stadium lights, flooded the road beside the river. All sound and vision was interrupted for those in the car as they had put up their hands to shield their eyes from the sudden glare that they were not expecting at this time of the night. As they raised their hands and the driver hit the break, the car skidded and toppled. The unbearable screeching of metal against tarmac sent them into a whirl of painful sound and blinding pain.

Then, as soon as it started, it stopped. The black car gave one final topple until its roof was against the pavement, its inhabitants hanging from their chairs, barely conscious. Silence returned to the sleepy street and after a few moments to recover, the driver managed shimmy out of his seat and through the broken window. He stood, nreathing heavily, clutching at his head as blood oozed from it and looked around. His eyes re-adjusted to the darkness and his head turned this way and that.

But Hera was nowhere to be seen.

Thank you all so much for your lovely reviews. Honestly, they are so encouraging. I feel all warm and fuzzy reading them. You guys! *blush blush blush*