1.02 pm, Monday, 8th August

Montpellier, France

Alex lay on a beach in the south of France next to a beautiful girl who thought he was funny and cute and wished, not for the first time, that any of it was actually true.

He should have been happy - one week into a holiday that, on the surface, had been perfect from the moment the plane had touched down in Montpellier and he had stepped out into the brilliance of his first Mediterranean day. He loved the South of France – the intense colours, the smells, the pace of life that hung onto every minute and refused to let go. He and Ian had lived in Bordeaux back when he was six and although he didn't have many memories from that time, there was still something comforting in being surrounded by things his subconscious recognised as safe.

Even if, right now, he was anything but.

A girl with a radio blaring pop music had walked past and, startled by the sound, Alex had turned to look at her. And that was when the sun went in, the sea froze, and the whole world seemed to catch its breath.

He wasn't looking at the girl with the radio. He was looking past her, down to the sea wall that divided the beach from the jetty, where a yacht was just pulling in. A man stood at the very front, staring straight ahead, his face blank. It was a face that Alex recognized instantly.

Yassen Gregorovich.

If he had any sense, he would call it in. Blunt had told him to simply say the man's name out loud as soon as he saw him and they would use the tracker in his wrist to pinpoint his location and arrest the assassin on sight. He had another week left on his "holiday" and Jones had promised him that, no matter what happened, he'd get these two weeks off so it wasn't as if he was going to lose anything by informing MI6 that one of Interpol's Most Wanted had just stepped off the yacht and onto the peer.

And yet… Alex hesitated.

He wasn't a fool - he knew that Gregorovich had murdered dozens if not hundreds of people and that some of his victims had very likely been innocent civilians. The man wasn't innocent himself by any means… but he had spared him, on that rooftop in London. He had killed Herod Sayle to prevent him from killing Alex and no matter what the assassin said about his orders, Alex knew that "I have no instructions concerning you" had been absolute bullshit. He'd embarrassed Sayle by foiling his plans, and had embarrassed whoever the hell both Sayle and Yassen worked for, so the only logical outcome of that was for the contract killer to shoot them both.

But he hadn't.

Instead, Gregorovich had been the first, last, and only person in their world to ask him what he was doing with MI6, and based on Blunt's reaction afterwards, Alex had no doubt that the assassin would have helped him in some capacity too, if only he'd been given enough time to ask. And now, he found himself reluctant to betray that brief moment of kindness by telling MI6 where he was.

"Alex? What are you looking at?"

Sabina. He had to force himself to turn around, to turn away from the assassin, to remember that she was there.

"I'm…"

The words wouldn't come. He didn't know what to say. In another life, they could have been great friends, but here, now, with a relationship built on lies, he knew that that could never happen.

"Alex?" she asked again.

He looked back at the yacht. Even at this distance, he could see that Yassen was very much in charge as he shook hands with a bald man, a deckhand standing nearby, waiting for orders. He was probably here to kill someone.

Alex wondered if he could ask him for help now.

He turned back to Sabina.

"Sorry; what did you say?"

"Do you think you could rub a little more suncream into my back? I'm overheating".

He forced a smile and took the bottle from her hands. "Sure, Sabina. No problem".

If Gregorovich was as smart as he thought he was, then he'd get the hell out of the Camargue as soon as possible and, if asked, Alex would keep a blank expression, stare Blunt dead in the eye, and say "No sir. I didn't see him at all".

3.21 pm, Monday, 8th August

Montpellier, France

Sometimes horror announces itself in the smallest of ways.

On this day it was a single police car, racing along the wide, empty road that twisted down to Saint-Pierre. Alex and Sabina were sitting in the back of a truck, hitchhiking back to the house they were staying in. They were looking at a herd of cows grazing in one of the fields when the police car - blue and white with a light flashing on the roof - overtook them and tore off into the distance.

Alex still had Yassen on his mind and the sight of it tightened the knot in the pit of his stomach. But it was only a police car. It didn't have to mean anything.

But then there was a helicopter, taking off from somewhere not so far away and arcing into the brilliant sky. Sabina saw it and pointed at it.

"Something's happened" she said, "That's just come from the town".

Had the helicopter come from the town? Alex wasn't so sure. He watched it sweep over them and disappear, and all the time his breaths were getting shorter and he felt the heavy weight of some nameless dread. And then they turned a corner and Alex knew that his worst fears had come true - but in a way that he could never have foreseen.

Rubble, jagged brickwork, and twisted steel. Thick black smoke curled into the sky. Their house had been blown apart.

Just one wall remained intact, giving the cruel illusion that not too much damage had been done. But the rest of it was gone. Alex saw a brass bed hanging at a crazy angle, somehow suspended in mid-air. A pair of blue shutters lay in the grass about fifty metres away. The water in the swimming pool was brown and scummy. The blast must have been immense.

A fleet of cars and vans was parked around the building. They belonged to the police, the hospital, the fire department and the anti-terrorist squad. To Alex they didn't look real: more like brightly coloured toys. In a foreign country, nothing looks more foreign than its emergency services.

"Mum! Dad!"

He heard Sabina shout the words and saw her leap out of the truck before they had stopped moving. Then she was running across the gravel drive, forcing her way between the officials in their different uniforms. The truck stopped and Alex climbed down, unsure whether his feet would come into contact with the ground or if he would simply go on, right through it. His head was spinning; he thought he was going to faint.

Nobody spoke to him as he continued forward. It was as if he wasn't there at all. Ahead of him, he saw Sabina's mother appear from nowhere, her face streaked with ashes and tears, and he thought to himself that if she was alright, if she had been out of the house when the explosion happened, then maybe Edward Pleasure had escaped too.

But then he saw Sabina begin to shake and fall into her mother's arms, and he knew the worst.

He drew nearer, in time to hear Liz's words as she clutched hold of her daughter.

"We still don't know what happened. Dad's been taken by helicopter to Montpellier. He's alive, Sabina, but he's badly injured. We're going to him now. You know your dad's a fighter. But the doctors aren't sure if he's going to make it or not. We just don't know..."

The smell of burning reached out to Alex and engulfed him. The smoke had blotted out the sun. His eyes began to water and he fought for breath. He didn't know why it had happened but he was utterly certain of who was responsible.

Yassen Gregorovich.

You are going to spend two weeks on holiday with her and her parents, Blunt had told him, As luck would have it, it provides us with the perfect cover.

There was no luck involved in this. This wasn't random or circumstance or a coincidence. The only reason Gregorovich had shown up in Montpellier was because he knew Edward Pleasure was going to be in Montpellier. Alex wondered, briefly, if Blunt had known who Yassen's target was. It didn't seem likely, and yet it was exactly the sort of thing he'd do, sending Alex in blind like this, putting innocent lives at risk like this.

Either way, he knew exactly what he had to do next.

5.09 pm, Monday, 8th August

Montpellier, France

"Do you mind if I go for a walk?" Alex asked, an indeterminable amount of time later.

The policeman in front of him frowned. "A walk?"

Sabina and her mother had left for the hospital ages ago, leaving him at the police station until someone from the English consulate could be called. It would be up to them to send him home, underaged as he was, but Alex knew that Blunt would no doubt be pulling strings in the background to send him elsewhere instead.

He didn't have much time.

"Just five minutes" he replied, doing his best to look scared and upset, "I want to be on my own".

"Of course. Don't go too far. Would you like someone to accompany you?"

"No. I'll be alright".

Alex turned and quickly walked away. With every step he took, images stamped themselves on his mind. Sabina's eyes widening as she took in the wreck of the house. Edward Pleasure being flown to some city hospital. Yassen Gregorovich on the deck of his yacht, gliding off into the sunset, another job done.

Was this Alex's fault?

If he had said the man's name, had told MI6 that he'd seen him in the first place, then maybe he would have been arrested before the bomb had been placed. Or maybe the bomb had already been in place before the family had even arrived in France, and Gregorovich had simply arrived to ensure that it detonated on time. Would he even still be there, when Alex checked?

When he reached the main road, he glanced back. The policeman had forgotten about him. He took one last look at the burnt-out shell that had been his holiday home, turned away, and began to run.

6.36 pm, Monday, 8th August

Saint-Pierre, France

Saint-Pierre was just under a mile away. It was early evening by the time he arrived there and the streets were packed with people in a festive mood. In fact, the town seemed busier than ever. Then Alex remembered - there was a bullfight tonight and people had driven in from all around to watch it.

He hadn't expected to see the yacht. At the back of his mind, he had thought that Yassen would have left long ago but there it still was, moored where he had seen it earlier that day - a lifetime ago.

At the docks, there was nobody in sight; it seemed that the whole town had gone to the bullfight. Then a figure stepped out of the darkness and Alex saw the bald man once more. He was smoking a cigar, the smouldering tip casting a red glow across his face. There were other lights glinting behind the portholes of the boat. Would he find Yassen behind one of them? Alex had no real idea what he was doing. All he knew was that he had to get onto the yacht and that nothing was going to stop him.

Alex wondered how close he could get to the man before his suspicions were aroused. If it had been an adult approaching the boat, it would have been a different matter; the fact that he was only fourteen was the main reason he had been so useful to MI6. People didn't notice him until it was too late. He drew level with the man, and then lashed out.

The man dropped the cigar as Alex's heel struck him hard in the stomach, but he recovered quickly, his hand already scrabbling in his jacket pocket. It came out holding something. There was a soft click and seven inches of glinting silver leapt out of nowhere. He had a flick knife.

Moving much faster than Alex would have thought possible, he launched himself across the jetty. His hand swung in an arc. Alex heard the blade slicing the air. He swung again, and the knife ashed past his face, missing him by a centimetre. Alex was unarmed. The bald man had obviously used the knife many times before, and if he hadn't been weakened by the first kick, this fight would already have been over.

The man swung his arm through the air, this time carrying the knife in an upward arc that would have cut Alex's throat if he hadn't thrown himself backwards. He lost his footing, falling heavily onto his back, one arm outstretched. The man grinned, showing two gold teeth, and stepped towards him, anxious to finish this off.

Too late he saw that he had been tricked.

Alex's hand had caught hold of an old fishing net. As the bald man loomed over him, he sprang up, swinging his arm forward with all his strength. The net spread out, falling over his head, shoulder and knife-hand. He swore and twisted round, trying to free himself, but the movement only entangled him all the more. Alex took aim and kicked a second time, his foot driving into the man's stomach.

He lost his balance and fell. With his hands trapped, he couldn't protect himself. His head hit the concrete with a loud crack and he lay still.

Alex stood, breathing heavily. In the distance, he heard a trumpet blare and there was a scattered round of applause. The bullfight was due to begin in ten minutes. He looked at the unconscious man, knowing he had had a close escape. Even worse, MI6 had undoubtedly heard everything and although no words had been exchanged, the sound of fists hitting flesh was unmistakable.

He was running out of time.

Alex climbed the gangplank onto the deck of the yacht and headed for the cabin. Inside was a low table with a crumpled magazine, a bottle of beer, and a gun. The man must have been sitting there before he went out for a smoke. Walking over, Alex slowly picked up the weapon.

Each time he had been forced into working for MI6 he had asked them to give him a gun, and each time they had refused. He felt the power of the weapon he was holding. He weighed it in his hand. The gun was a Grach MP-433, black, with a short muzzle. It was Russian, of course.

Alex allowed his finger to curl around the trigger and smiled grimly. He didn't think he'd need to use it, and he certainly hoped that he never would, but it was better to be safe than sorry. As his uncle had often told him - only the paranoid survive.

Alex silently crept forward into a corridor with thick carpet and multiple closed doors. They were all dark… except for one. Gritting his teeth, he reached for the handle of the only door that had a yellow strip of light seeping out beneath it. The handle turned and the door opened. He stepped in.

6.51 pm, Monday, 8th August

Fer de Lance yacht, Saint-Pierre

Yassen Gregorovich made no movement as Alex approached, the gun held out in front of him just in case. He reached the side of the bed. This was the closest he had ever been to the Russian. He could see every detail of his face: the chiselled lips, the almost feminine eyelashes, the handsome smooth face with pale skin-

"Good evening, Alex".

It wasn't that Yassen had woken up. His eyes had been closed and now they weren't. It was as simple as that. His face hadn't changed. He knew who Alex was immediately, at the same time taking in the gun that was pointing at him. Taking it in and accepting it.

Alex said nothing. There was a slight tremble in the hand holding the gun and he brought his other hand up to steady it. He didn't think that the man would kill him, not after what he'd said on that rooftop in London, but at the same time, he wasn't taking any chances.

"You have my gun" Yassen said calmly, "Do you intend to use it?"

"... Not unless I have to" he admitted.

The man regarded him silently for a moment.

"Your uncle is looking for you".

Fuck.

Alex abruptly lowered the gun and frantically shook his head.

Yassen frowned briefly because surely the boy couldn't deny that his uncle loved him enough to try and find him, but there was also a slightly scared edge to Alex's expression, so…

He looked him up and down, taking in the tense shoulders and trembling hands and-

Oh.

'Listening device?' he mouthed, and the wave of relief that came over the boy's face was palpable as he quickly nodded.

The assassin slowly, silently, stood up from the bed.

"Or so I've heard" he continued evenly, "Not that it concerns me, of course, but in our line of work it's always useful to pay attention to the grapevine… If you're planning to shoot me, I think you should consider it very carefully. Killing a man is not like you see on the television".

Reaching him, Yassen gestured at his body and silently asked 'where?'

The boy swallowed thickly before turning over his left arm and holding it out. For a moment, Yassen was confused, but then, once he took a step forward, he could see the faint red glow of a tracking device just beneath the surface of his wrist.

He clenched his jaw and barely refrained from snarling.

MI6 had microchipped him like a dog.

"... If you pull that trigger, you will fire a real bullet into real flesh and blood" he forced himself to continue, "I will feel nothing; I will be dead instantly. But you will live with what you have done for the rest of your life. You will never forget it".

As he spoke, he gently pried the weapon from the boy's hands and double-checked that everything was in order before sliding it into his waistband.

"Do you really have it in you, Alex? Can you make your finger obey you? Can you kill me?" he asked, striding over the desk and picking up a pen and a piece of paper.

"Maybe you have forgotten what I once told you. This isn't your life. This has nothing to do with you" Yassen said, before handing the supplies to the boy with a silent 'for Ian'.

Across from him, the door opened but he quickly held up his hand to stop a very furious Raoul, the deckhand, in his tracks. Alex was barely listening, instead frantically writing down everything that he could on the notepad. Raoul was looking between them, confused, but he was at least smart enough to not voice his confusion out loud.

Alex finished writing, folded the note in two, and then held it out to Yassen with nothing but gratitude and relief and even tears in his eyes. The assassin took it, slipped it into his pocket, and then mouthed 'make it look real'.

The boy frowned, briefly, before suddenly realising, glancing over his shoulder just as Raoul stepped forward and grabbed him. He struggled, briefly, more for the listening device's benefit than his own, before going limp.

Raoul, now beyond confused, turned to Yassen for an answer.

"Monsieur?"

"Tie him up" he replied in flawless French, "We'll deal with him later".

What a very interesting holiday this was turning out to be…

9.01 pm, Monday, 8th August

Saint-Pierre, France

To say that Alex was pissed off would be putting it mildly.

It had only taken him a moment to realise what the assassin had meant when he'd told him to 'make it look real'. MI6 could only listen in, after all - they couldn't see what they had actually been doing on that yacht and so, as far as they were concerned, Alex had tried to shoot Yassen Gregorovich and had been knocked out for his troubles... or so they thought.

He had kept himself obediently quiet as the deckhand and Yassen had decided his fate, going back and forth in perfect French while the bald man sat across from him, glaring in his direction fiercely, a large dark bruise on his forehead where he had hit the ground.

The man had wanted to kill him, then and there, and he would've done, too, if it hadn't been for Yassen. There had been something… curious about the way he'd looked at him. His clear blue eyes gave nothing away and yet Alex had felt like he was being appraised. It was as if Yassen had known him a long time ago and had expected to meet him again.

And what he'd implied about Ian made him wonder if perhaps the assassin knew his uncle too.

"I do not kill children" Gregorovich had told the bald man, but Alex knew he was telling only half the truth.

The bomb in the Pleasures' holiday house could have killed anyone who happened to be there, and he knew that Yassen wouldn't have cared. No, what he had really meant was "I do not kill Alex Rider" - and Alex wanted nothing more than to find out why.

Of course now, two hours later, he was starting to rethink that evaluation.

Alex stood on sandy ground in the shadows of a concrete archway, unable to take in what was happening to him. He had been forced, at gunpoint, to change his holiday clothes for a uniform so bizarre that, but for his knowledge of the danger he was about to face, he would have felt simply ridiculous. The uniform was a traje de luces - the suit of lights worn by matadors in the bullring. Yassen wasn't going to kill him himself, of course not; instead, he was going to make him fight a bull.

Alex knew, logically, that it would be far too suspicious for the man to simply let him go - Gregorovich had to make it look real just as much as he had in case Alan bloody Blunt was listening in - but for fucks sake, a bull?! Seriously?! An actual bullfight?! Him?! A matador?! Was he fucking serious right now?!

The bull thundered into the arena like a bullet fired from a gun. The creature was huge - a mass of black, shimmering muscle. It must have weighed seven or eight hundred kilograms. If it ran into him, it would be like being run over by a bus - except that he would be impaled first on the horns that corkscrewed out of its head, tapering to two lethal points.

At least Yassen'd told him that the bald man; Franco, and the deckhand; Raoul, were lying in wait outside the ring, so if Alex tried to escape, they would shoot him. The assassin had phrased it in such a way, of course, that would make MI6 think he was taking great enjoyment from leading the boy to his death, but Alex had recognised the warning for what it was.

He wouldn't be able to simply walk out of the arena - he'd have to earn his freedom.

The bull noticed him.

Alex knew with a sick certainty that it was about to charge.

Silence.

The heat of an oncoming storm pressed down on him and nothing moved.

The bull charged.

Alex was shocked by the sudden transformation. The bull had been static and distant. Now it was bearing down on him as if a switch had been thrown, its massive shoulders heaving, its every muscle concentrated on the target that stood waiting, unarmed, alone.

Everything happened very quickly. The bull was almost on top of him. The vicious horns were plunging towards his stomach. The stench of the animal smothered him. He actually felt the watching crowd catch its breath. Alex leapt aside.

The bull had been expecting it.

Although it was advancing too fast to change direction, it flicked its head and Alex felt a searing pain along the side of his stomach. He was thrown off his feet, cartwheeling backwards and crashing down onto the sand. A roar exploded from the crowd. Alex waited for the bull to turn round and lay into him - but he had been lucky. The animal hadn't seen him go down. It had continued its run to the other side of the arena, leaving him alone.

Alex got to his feet and pressed a hand against his stomach. The jacket had been ripped open and when he took his hand away there was bright red blood on his palm. He was winded and shaken, and the side of his body felt as if it were on fire. But the cut wasn't too deep. In a way, Alex was disappointed - if he had been more badly hurt, they would have had to stop the fight.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement. Yassen, well-hidden in the stands, had stood up and was walking out. To the right of the arena, Raoul was leaving too. Evidently, the proof of his bloodshed had been punishment enough for them; he'd earned his freedom. Turning again, he expected to see Franco stand up from his front-row seat and walk out as well - except he didn't. The man was only ten metres away. Sitting down. And smiling.

Even if Alex did manage to escape the bull, Franco would take out his gun and kill him himself.

He briefly considered letting the bull conveniently gouge his left wrist on his next approach, but there was no guarantee that it would destroy the tracker and he'd likely die in the process. That was also the reason why he hadn't cut it out himself. Alex had thought about it. A lot. But he had veins and arteries and no idea how to avoid them all. He didn't even know how deep the tracker was, after all, and he sure as hell didn't want to cut straight through his arm. His current situation was deplorable but it was still a notch above death in his books.

And then… then he got an idea.

Ignoring the pain in his side, he started to run. The audience muttered and then roared in disbelief. It was the bull's job to attack the matador, but suddenly, in front of them, it seemed to be happening the other way around. Even the bull was taken unawares, regarding Alex as if he had forgotten the rules of the game or decided to cheat - but Alex wasn't running for the bull; he was running for the banderilla.

It was an ugly thing similar to a spear, about a metre long with a short barbed hook at one end. Matadors used it to kill the bulls they fought, but the previous matador had obviously been bested by his rival and had left the blood-stained weapon on the sand when he'd been hauled out of the arena.

Now, Alex snatched up the banderilla and, in one single movement, he swung it round and threw it.

He hit his target dead on.

Franco had started to rise out of his seat as soon as he'd realized what Alex was about to do; his hand was already scrabbling for his gun. But he was too late. The banderilla turned once in the air, then buried itself in Franco's shoulder. He screamed. The whole arena was in an uproar. The crowd had never seen anything like this. Alex continued running.

He saw the bull spin around, already searching for him, determined to finish him off. He had reached the gate and leapt up, grabbed the top and pulled himself over. Franco was too shocked and in too much pain to react; anyway, he had been surrounded by onlookers trying to help. He would never have been able to produce his gun and take aim.

Everybody seemed to be on the edge of panic. A man in jeans and a black shirt sprinted towards Alex, shouting something in French. Alex ignored him. He hit the ground and ran. At the very moment that he shot out into the night, the storm broke.

The rain fell like an ocean thrown from the sky. It crashed into the town, splattered off the pavements and formed instant rivers that raced along the gutters and overwhelmed the drains. There was no thunder. Just this avalanche of water that threatened to drown the world.

Alex didn't stop. In seconds his hair was soaked. Water ran in rivulets down his face and he could barely see. As he ran he tore off the outer parts of the matador's costume, first the hat, then the jacket and the tie, throwing each item away, leaving their memory behind.

The sea was on his left, the water black and boiling as it was hit by the rain. Alex twisted off the road and felt sand beneath his feet. He was on the beach - the same beach where he had been lying with Sabina when all this began. The sea wall and the jetty were beyond it. He leapt onto the sea wall and climbed the heavy boulders and-

Yassen's boat had left.

Alex couldn't be sure, but he thought he could see a vague shape disappearing into the darkness and the rain and he knew that he must have missed it by seconds. He stopped, panting. What had he been thinking of anyway? If the yacht had still been there, would he really have climbed aboard a second time? He'd given Yassen a note to pass onto Ian - an idea that seemed almost ludicrous now that he thought about it. What would the assassin gain by helping him?

But what had he already gained by keeping him alive?

He already dreaded the oncoming conversation with Alan bloody Blunt.

Alex stood there for a few more moments with the rain streaming down his face, then turned and limped back into the town.