Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's not a sound that wakes him - more like a feeling. An instinct drilled into him by years of SAS training: you sleep lightly, and you wake when someone is in your home who shouldn't be there.

Wolf is alert in seconds, out of bed and on his feet, blinking in the darkness. He forces himself to move slowly, stepping as quietly as he can as he makes his way to the door, his toes bare against the scratchy carpet. Squeaky floorboard, he reminds himself, and carefully shimmies around it. Wolf is the sort of person who sleeps with his bedroom door double-bolted, and all the hinges in his house well-oiled.

The intruder is in the living room.

Now, Wolf can hear them. They're quiet, but they're not silent. There is a shuffle of footsteps, and a breath that seems to shake a little on the way out, which gives Wolf a moment's pause. He wonders what, exactly, this person is doing in his flat. A run-of-the-mill burglary? No. Out of the question. Wolf has enough security alarms to wake half of London. No, this must be something to do with Wolf's job.

Well, he thinks, flexing his knuckles and preparing for a fight, whoever you are, you picked the wrong house tonight.

He catches sight of the guy at the doorway: a shadowy figure beside the window, shoulders hunched. Wolf spends a second sizing the guy up (average height; not massively built), and then another few planning attack angles (sweep the legs out – punch to the kidneys – get the motherfucker in a headlock) before he's launching forwards to take the bastard down.

To Wolf's surprise, the guy actually gives him a little fight. Considering Wolf's advantages (knowing the terrain, being prepared, plus being two hundred pounds of solid military-grade muscle), the intruder really makes him work for it. The guy moves like a cat, like a shadow, not like a soldier. He slips out of Wolf's grasp; he dodges a few blows. But he's not as quick as he could be. It's almost like something is slowing him down. Eventually, Wolf gets the guy on the ground – and when he slams the guy's shoulders against his equally-scratchy living room carpet, a pained noise breaks from him.

Wolf pulls out the zip-ties he grabbed before leaving his room (this whole incident is totally going to win his long-running argument with Snake that it's not weird to keep emergency zip-ties in your bedside table) and prepares to tie the intruder up, knock him out and call Command.

But when the guy opens his mouth, everything changes.

"Wolf, stop! Wolf – it's me!"

Wolf freezes.

Wait a second. He knows that voice. And that voice using his codename—

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me..."

Wolf doesn't let the guy (the kid?) go, but he eases up a little, sitting back on his ankles. He squints against the dim light, and the intruder's features rearrange themselves into a familiar face. One that Wolf hasn't seen in two, maybe three years, since the Swiss Alps, and didn't expect to ever see again, in all honesty.

"Cub, what the fuck are you doing in my flat?"

A huff escapes Cub's lungs as Wolf releases him properly.

"Good to... see you... too."

Wolf shakes his head as he gets to his feet. Fucking fantastic, he thinks. This is exactly what he wants to deal with at arse-o-clock in the morning. The kid from Brecon Beacons – the annoying little enigma who was tacked onto their team – has materialised in his home, and now Wolf has to deal with his shit. In his momentary irritation, it doesn't occur to Wolf that it might be strange that Cub hasn't gotten up yet, or that there was definitely a strain in his voice that was more than just exertion, or that there is a faint metallic tinge on the air that can only be one thing.

And then Wolf hits the lights, and he freezes for the second time that night.

"Shit, Cub. Shit - what the fuck happened?!"

Cub is wincing as he makes an attempt at sitting up. There's a bead of blood on his lip from where Wolf just hit him. But Wolf is more concerned with the fact that Cub's whole body is clenched like a fist around the dark red patch that's spreading across the side of his hoodie.

"I... there was..."

Before Cub can give him an adequate explanation, however, his eyes have rolled back into his head and he's gone.

Wolf tears open the packet of medical thread with his teeth.

"Stay still," he says. His tone is sharp because he needs the kid to follow his orders right now, but he is gentle when he pushes Cub back against the bathroom tiles.

"Just get it done, will you?" the kid groans.

Wolf begins wiping down the needle with antiseptic. "This isn't a movie, Cub. I'm not sewing you up just to give you an infection."

"What," says Cub, his lips quirking, "you mean you're not just going to pour brandy all over me and go to town?"

Very funny, kid, Wolf thinks. But when Cub's eyes have settled on the floor tiles, Wolf steals a proper look at the kid, and worry still gnaws in his stomach. The kid might be joking around, but he's scarily pale, washed out underneath the yellowy bathroom lights. Wolf's gonna need a hell of a lot of stain-remover to get all of that blood out of his carpets - or maybe he should just get rid of it altogether. His sister has been trying to persuade him to let her redecorate this place for ages; maybe it's finally time to take her up on that offer. Although he doesn't know how he'd explain all those particular marks without giving her the impression that he's a serial killer.

When he managed to bring Cub back around, he didn't suggest a hospital. If Cub wanted one of those, he could have walked into any A&E in London. Instead, he chose to scale three stories and break into Wolf's flat, and there must be a reason for that.

"How did you even get in here, anyway?"

Cub raises his eyebrows. "Are you really setting me up for the classic 'in-tru-da window' joke? C'mon, Wolf."

Wolf shakes his head. He should know better than to think he can get a straight answer out of the kid. He was the same in France: all snark, no give.

He tosses a few bloody tissues into the bin and reaches for a clean one. As he examines the wound in Cub's side, Wolf finds himself frowning.

"You sure this was just a knife?"

"Yeah. When you get stabbed, you usually know - ah - about it."

Wolf shoots him a glare. He isn't a medic, but he has enough training to be able to deal with this kind of emergency; he knows what to look out for. Miraculously, despite the amount of blood, the wound doesn't seem to have punctured any of Cub's major organs, which makes him weirdly lucky for someone who was unlucky enough to get stabbed in the first place. It seems to be shallow at the edges but strangely deep at the centre of the cut. It's hard to picture how that could have happened...

Wolf shakes his head. Cub is still losing blood; Wolf needs to get on with it.

Cub tenses up at the first few stitches (Wolf curses that he doesn't have any local anesthetic on hand; he's only been able to give the kid painkillers), but after a while, he goes quiet. At one point Wolf glances up, worried that he's lost consciousness again, but the kid meets his gaze coolly. His skin is clammy and his head is resting against the bathroom tiles, but he's very much awake.

"Not gonna pass out," he mumbles. "Don' worry."

Shit, Wolf thinks. Because that's not exactly normal, is it? This whole situation, this is seriously fucked up. The kid shouldn't have that shrug in his shoulders, that "I'm-used-to-this-get-it-over-with" attitude. He's a teenager, for Christ's sake.

Wolf has a thousand questions. Why is the kid here? Who fucking stabbed him? How did he get Wolf's address? And, maybe more importantly, why did he choose Wolf to come to, of all people?

"Cub..." he starts, after he's finished and he's washing the red off his hands, but the kid reads his mind.

"Can I - can I just pass out for a few hours first, please? 'll explain ev'rything in the morning. Promise."

Well, Wolf can't exactly say not to that, can he?

"Sure," he says. "But I charge board."

The kid groans. "London rates?"

"Abso-fucking-lutely. No freeloaders in this house."

Wolf helps Cub back to the living room, and no sooner has he lowered the kid down onto the more comfortable of his two sofas, Cub is out like a light. His head nods into his chest and doesn't come back up again. Wolf sighs, then heads to the kitchen to make himself a mug of coffee. There's no way he'll be sleeping again tonight, not even with his usual two knives under his pillow. Apparently, without signing up for it, he's found himself on protection duty.

Chapter Text

Wolf knows that he should report this. He should tell Command as soon as the kid passes out on his sofa...

But he doesn't. He holds off. He decides, casting an eye over Cub's sleeping form, that he'll at least give the kid a chance to explain himself first.

(Maybe some part of Wolf's gut already knows that this is more complicated that it looks.)

He tries not to think about what might have happened to Cub if he'd broken into an empty flat last night. He’s lucky that Wolf was here, and not on a mission or at Brecon. Wolf isn't really supposed to be on leave at the moment, but every SAS member in the London area has been put on yellow alert. Apparently, Five or Six think something is going to happen. Not that Wolf has been told anything. Typical. Bastards.

He also tries not to stare at the kid too much while he's sleeping, because it makes him feel like a class-A creep. But he can't help but cast a few curious glances when Cub mumbles things that sound like "help" and "stop" and "not doing it", his face screwed up against the pillow that Wolf slid underneath his head.

Cub sleeps until noon. Wolf isn't actually in the room when Cub wakes - which he just knew would happen. He's spent most of the morning loitering around the kitchen and living room, waiting for the kid to come around. But, predictably, it happens when Wolf ducks into his bedroom for no more than two minutes, only to return to see Cub off the sofa and half way to the kitchen counter. He catches Wolf's eye, and there's a guilty look plastered on his face that makes him look far too young. Hand-in-the-cookie-jar young.

"Nope," says Wolf, folding his arms. "No way. Get your arse back on that sofa or I'll put another knife in you."

Cub's eyes almost roll out of his head. "Nice to know some things never change, Wolf."

"My house my rules, Cub."

Hmm. The codenames. Wolf wonders if he should tell the kid his real name. But surely he must know it already, since he knows Wolf's address? Maybe the kid decided that it would feel strange to call him James. Maybe it would. Whatever. They'll stay as Wolf and Cub for now.

He fetches Cub one of his own t shirts, since his is still covered in blood and crumpled up on Wolf's bathroom tiles. It's too big for him, but Cub doesn't complain, shrugging it over his shoulders and letting it fall to cover the wound and the bandages.

Wolf makes Cub a coffee on request, makes an obligatory comment about pretentious teenagers who think they need to drink coffee, and then sits down on the other sofa.

"So," says Wolf. "Are you gonna tell me what's going on? Or do I have to beat it out of you?"

Cub leans back and takes a sip from his mug. He must be feeling like absolute shit, but he looks perfectly at ease. Now that the bandages are hidden from view, it's all too easy to forget that he's injured. If it weren't for the slight tension in his brow (and Wolf only knows that because, unfortunately, he's seen quite a few people with injuries), Wolf might think he was sitting in some artsy indie cafe in Soho.

"The thing is," he says, "Yeah. I'll tell you. But there's not really not that much to tell."

Wolf sighs. He tries not to get frustrated. Deep breaths, his sister or Snake would say, but those never really worked with him. "Okay, kid. I know you're an agent. But it's my doorstep you turned up on." Or my window you broke into more accurately, but Wolf isn't in the mood for splitting hairs. "I think I deserve some kind of explanation, don't you?"

"No, no - you do. I know you do. It's just..." Cub shrugs with one shoulder. "It's pretty run-of-the-mill. I was in a bad situation, and it ended with me being stabbed. I managed to get out of there and needed place to lay low, and - well, I remembered that you live around here."

Wolf is pretty sure his eyebrows reach his hairline.

"Oh yeah - I hacked into your files a while ago. Sorry."

He doesn't sound sorry at all. "Fucking spies," Wolf mutters, but he can't begrudge the kid too much. He shouldn't really have expected anything else, from an agent. "But why didn't you - I dunno - go to a safehouse, or something? I thought Six had them all over London."

"Nearest one was further away than here. And, uh, my arteries don't exactly come with free unlimited refills, you know? Didn't have much time to think. Had to make a quick decision."

Wolf studies him for a minute. Cub doesn't look fazed. He takes another sip of his drink and meets Wolf's gaze evenly. If he's lying, he's very good at it. But then, he would be, wouldn't he?

"Okay," Wolf nods, eventually. "You feeling up to eating anything? I could make some… breakfast, or whatever. If you people eat stuff like that."

"Wow. Breakfast. Quite the fifties housewife, aren't you?"

"Every time you insult me, I double your board."

Cub grins. Then he moves a little, and Wolf sees him stifle a wince. "I... don't think I can eat just yet. But thanks."

"Okay," says Wolf, eyeing the place where, underneath Cub's hoodie, the wound must be. "Who stabbed you?"

He's hoping to catch Cub off-beat. But Cub, of course, rolls with it.

"Just some people I fucked over."

"An assignment?"

"Kind of. You could say they were, uh, keeping track of me. For a while. But I decided to cut ties for good, and they really weren't very happy about that."

That seems like a reasonable enough story. Although, frustratingly, it doesn't actually tell him anything. Whoever taught Cub to do that - talk without actually saying anything of substance - did it very well.

"Any chance they'll track you here?"

Does Wolf imagine that small curl of Cub's lip – like he's said something funny? "No. I left them a... a little present, you could say, on the other side of the city. That should keep them occupied for a while. You don't need to worry. Nobody's going to come calling."

Nobody except the one who already has, Wolf thinks. His eyes fall on the blood patch on the carpet beneath the window. In the morning light, he realises that there's no way he's going to be able to pass that off as a red wine stain. (Not that he drinks red wine. Nasty stuff.)

"I would apologise for bleeding on your carpet," says Cub, following his gaze, "but I think I did you a favour, to be honest. If you don't mind me saying, Wolf, that's the nastiest carpet I've ever had the misfortune of passing out on."

"Your board just doubled again. Also, if you're gonna keep wanting coffee, you better pay me back for the milk."

Cub sleeps again in the afternoon, and he persuades Wolf to get a few hours of rest himself. Wolf has to admit that he feels better for it. He's been trained to last much longer without sleep, of course, but that doesn't mean he actually wants to do it, or functions better for it. After he wakes, he starts making dinner, and frowns down at his phone. It's not connecting to the internet, and the call signal looks shit as well, which is weird.

"Are you getting any signal?" he calls to Cub.

"It would be kind of hard for me to get any signal when I don't have a phone."

"What - a teenager who doesn't have a phone?"

"Lost it when I was being chased."

Then Wolf realises something. He assumed the kid was going to make his own arrangements RE: getting out of here. But since he doesn't have any means of communication… what's his plan, exactly?

Wolf finishes making the pasta and passes Cub a plate. He doesn't have a dining table, because this is London and his flat isn't quite the size of a peanut can but isn't far off, and he doesn't want to waste space with something like that when he doesn't have people over all that often. He fishes out a spare dining tray that his sister bought him years ago (he thinks it was decorated by his nephew, because it has "Uncle Jams" painted on it in glittery letters) and hands it to Cub, whose lips twitch a little but say nothing.

"So Cub," he says, after a while. "I don't mean to be rude exactly, but—"

"When am I going to fuck off and leave you alone?"

Wolf tries not to wince. In his defence, he might have phrased it a little more tactfully.

Cub pushes around the pasta on his plate.

"I should probably call Jones. She'll send someone for me. It's just…"

And then Cub bites down on his lip. He almost looks nervous.

"Just what?"

Cub sighs. He puts his tray down on the arm of the sofa and draws his legs underneath him. Alarm bells are going off in Wolf's head. Cub has been nothing but cool and stoic since he woke up - hell, he was cracking jokes when he was bleeding out - but the prospect of talking to MI6 turns him into this?

"Cub," says Wolf, putting a little more authority in his voice. "What's going on?"

Cub's eyes snap up to meet his. "Jones... Jones has put me with this foster family, right? And they... okay. But they don't get it. You know? They're MI6, but they're desk workers. If they knew I'd been hurt, they'd send me to hospital and then I'd have guards on the door and… I don't want that. I don't need that. I'm not a little kid, I've been in the game for years now. I've dealt with worse than this."

Wolf is once again struck with the realisation that this isn't normal, none of this is, hearing a teenager (eighteen-year-old? Nineteen-year-old?) talk this way.

"Also..."

Wolf can see that Cub is going to say something else, but he stops himself. His teeth catch on his lower lip.

"Also what?"

"The foster family. I'm not sure if I can trust them."

Well, shit. Wolf understands that. Of course he understands.

"Look," he says, leaning forward, "I know this line of work is dangerous. It's easy to see enemies everywhere. Really fuckin' easy, sometimes. But you have to trust somebody, or you end up alone. And that's the most vulnerable position you can be in, remember?"

Cub looks up sharply. There's a glint in his eye, and Wolf suddenly has a feeling that he's going to regret those words.

"My dad was a spy too. A really good spy. He only trusted two people, and one of then sold him out to Scorpia. They got both of my parents murdered."

Wolf can't hold his gaze. "Jesus, kid."

"Yeah." Then, Cub pushes a hand through his hair. "Fuck. Sorry. I shouldn't have... look, if you just let me borrow your phone, I'll call Jones and ask her to-"

"No," Wolf cuts him off. "No. You don't need to call her."

Cub looks confused.

"You can stay here as long as you need," says Wolf. He shouldn't be saying it, but fuck it, fuck it all, he is. "If you think there's something off about this foster family, you shouldn't go back to them yet. Not yet. Not until you've got your strength back again."

Cub lets out a breath. "Are you serious? Are you sure?"

"'Course I'm sure. Didn't stitch you up just to send you back into the firing line, did I?"

A smile breaks across Cub's face. A real one. "Thanks, Wolf. Seriously - thanks."

Wolf doesn't leave his flat that day. He needs groceries – they actually are running low on milk – but he'll do that tomorrow. Cub showers in the evening, and Wolf redresses his wound (it doesn't look much healed but it's early days), and Cub then falls asleep again pretty quickly after that. Wolf is actually surprised that the kid is awake and talking at this point. Most people would have crumpled into shock like wet cardboard by now. Cub must have been telling the truth when he said he's been in the game for a while.

But...

Wolf still can't shake the feeling that something isn't adding up. The kid's story checks out, sure. It all makes sense. But Wolf still feels that there is something more going on here.

He tries to shake it off. Another few days, he thinks, and then Cub will be recovered enough to leave, and he'll go back to MI6, and they probably won't see each other again for another decade or whatever. Another few days, and then it will be like none of this ever happened.

What harm can it do?

Chapter Text

Over the new few days, Cub slips easily into the cracks in Wolf's life. He forgets the kid is there a few times (thank God Wolf isn't one of those people who sleep naked; his mother always told him it was dirty), but after a couple of awkward moments, he quickly adjusts to Cub's presence in the flat.

In all fairness, it doesn't really take much adjusting. Cub isn't the picture of a messy teenager. If anything, the kid is a little too clean – Wolf can never tell when he's been in a room, not even when he's used the shower, which veers a little into the unnerving, because it's definitely a spy habit. Cover the tracks; get rid of the evidence. Wolf wonders if the kid knows he's even doing it or not.

What's more, Cub deflects questions with the ease of an experienced agent. He parries "How old are you anyway?" with "Too old to call social services but too young to flirt with, I'm afraid" and a wink. "Do they even pay you?" is met with "Oh, yeah, they pay me so much - I'm so expensive, Wolf, you have no idea…" until Wolf actually begs him to shut up.

Wolf still hasn't been called in by HQ, despite the yellow alert, so he spends his days trying to make himself busy. He runs errands, keeps up with his workouts, and goes on a few runs. But he mostly tries to stay around the flat. Not that he's getting attached to the kid, or anything. No, he's just looking out for himself, more than anything. If someone showed up at his place… well, it would be hard to explain, wouldn't it? Why exactly do you have an injured agent sleeping on your sofa, Corporal? The last thing Wolf wants is to get in trouble with Intelligence.

On the third night, when him and Cub finally get sick of watching re-runs of awful American soaps, Wolf fishes out a pack of cards from the back of the sofa and lays them out on the coffee table. He thinks it's a good idea (brain stimulation and all that, right?), until he loses the first two rounds of poker.

"You're cheating," he accuses, when Cub looks set to win his third. Wolf can't tell how he's doing it, but he knows that Cub has to be. Eagle used to cheat atrociously back in training. Fox too, only he was more subtle about it (probably why Six snapped him up and left the rest of them).

Cub plasters a Who, me? look on his face, but sure enough, when Wolf throws down his cards, the kid has pulled a full house out of nowhere. He scoops up their playing chips (a handful of old bottle tops that Wolf has been meaning to toss in the recycling) to add to his growing hoard.

"Who taught you to do that?" Wolf asks, glancing down at his phone. Not that it's any use: the internet is still playing up, which is irritating, but he can't complain about it because he knows that Cub would take the piss. The big bad SAS soldier can't handle a little shitty WiFi? Besides, Wolf has his pager; if K Unit is called in for an assignment, he'll know about it.

Cub's hands move deftly as he shuffles, weaving the cards in and out, in and out. "My uncle taught me a little. And I picked up some tricks along the way."

Wolf snorts. "Very Casino Royale of you."

Cub pulls a face. "That movie is so overrated. The way he gets back up and carries on playing after he's poisoned? Unrealistic. I was poisoned once and I was out of it for weeks."

Cub is so casual about these things, but the words hit Wolf like a slap. "Who the fuck poisoned you?"

Cub freezes for a moment, and Wolf thinks it's the first time he's actually caught the kid off guard. But then he shrugs it off, making a vague gesture like it hardly matters. "Just someone I pissed off."

"You say that a lot." Wolf picks up a fresh card - a jack. "Was it the same people you pissed off enough to put a knife in you?"

"Nah. Different crew."

"Sounds like you're making a lot of enemies."

And a habit of leaving loose ends, Wolf thinks. That isn't the way Wolf was taught to go about assignments. In his book, when you leave a mission, you make sure every bad guy is accounted for, or it isn't over yet. Cub's way of doing things sounds a lot messier.

Wolf thinks of the nightmares he keeps overhearing. The way Cub tenses in his sleep.

"Are you telling me how to do my job?" asks Cub, glancing up with an unreadable look.

"I just don't want you to get yourself killed, kid."

"Well, you don't need to worry. I can take care of myself."

Shut up, James, whispers a voice in his ear, Let it go. But he's never been good at that – at backing down from an argument once it's been kindled. "Really? Because you didn't see yourself the other night, Cub. You looked half-dead already."

Cub puts his cards down. "I didn't come here for a lecture. You're not - you're not my guardian, or my fucking keeper, or whatever. So mind your own business, won't you?"

But who is his guardian? Some "foster family" who he hasn't mentioned once, except to inform Wolf that they existed?

"You broke into my-"

"Yeah, yeah, your house. So you keep saying. Next time, I'll just bleed out on the pavement, shall I?"

"From the sound of it, there might not be a next time if you carry on like you are!"

Wolf knows he should shut up, because what does he know about it, but he can't help it. Poisoned, stabbed… what the hell is Cub getting himself into?

Cub's laugh is cold and cynical; for a moment; he sounds nothing like the teenager that he's supposed to be. "I wouldn't worry too much, Wolf. If I were going to die young, it would already have happened. Enough people have tried, believe me."

"It almost sounds like you're trying to get yourself killed."

Cub jerks like Wolf has hit him. And - okay, yeah, that was a low blow. Wolf half expects the kid to tell him to go fuck himself, half expects some cold remark that's sharp enough to slice him in two. But he gets neither. Bereft of the opportunity to make a typical teenage exit - with no bedroom to storm into - Cub throws down his cards and stalks off into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

"Game over, I guess," Wolf mutters.

He's pissed off, torn between wanting to kick himself and wanting to kick some sense into the kid. It's not like he said anything that isn't true… even if, admittedly, he wasn't very tactful about it.

As Wolf puts the cards away, he is surprised to see that Cub's hand wasn't actually that good. If they had kept playing, Wolf would have won.

Cub is sulky with him for the next day and a half. It's impressive, how he manages to avoid Wolf in a flat that only has three rooms. When Wolf comes back from the gym the following evening, there's no immediate sign of Cub, and for a second, he thinks the kid has left. Slipped away into the darkness.

But then he sees a light on in the bathroom, and breathes.

Cub hasn't closed the door properly. When Wolf approaches, he catches a glimpse of the kid as he twists in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to re-tie his own bandages. He must feel Wolf approach because his eyes snap up, meet Wolf's gaze in the mirror, and he scowls.

Ugh. Wolf hates having to be the bigger person, but enough is enough.

"Give me that," he mutters, pushing into the bathroom and plucking the roll of bandages from Cub's hand.

Cub glowers for a second, but he lets Wolf take charge, as Wolf knew he would. Over the last few days, Wolf has learnt enough about the kid to gather that he's a stubborn son of a bitch (unfortunately, they share that trait), but he's also figured out that Cub is ruthlessly practical (they all are, spies) and he'll know that Wolf can do a better job of this than him.

Cub slides up onto the counter, giving him access to the wound. As Wolf presses antiseptic into the gash, his brow draws into a frown. The knife wound looks much the same as it did four days ago. The edges of the wound are still red and raw, nastily tender… Not signs of a full-blown infection. But Wolf assumed it would look a bit better by now. Cub hasn't complained about it hurting - but this is the kid who climbed two stories while bleeding out rather than knock on the door. Wolf is starting to suspect that Cub would sooner perform open heart surgery on himself than ask for help.

Don't overthink it, he tells himself. He's not the team medic, after all; he only has standard first aid training. What does he know about stab wounds?

And then something else catches his attention, anyway.

When Cub first broke into his apartment, and Wolf was patching him up, he was too focused on keeping the kid from bleeding out or passing out to notice much else. But as Wolf is wrapping the wound this time (traditional bandages; he doesn't want to put anything sticky near that just yet), there isn't an immediate danger this time, and Wolf's attention is not so hyper-focused on the knife wound. This time, he notices things.

Wolf has his fair share of scars. Run-of-the-mill ones, in this line of work; cuts and stitches that have faded to dim white lines, old brushstrokes. And Cub has those kind of scars, too, which gives Wolf a little shake at first (he's a teenager), but shouldn't be surprising, all things considered. Workplace hazards and all that.

No - it's the other kind of scar that Wolf can't unsee, and he can't resist saying something, either.

"That looks pretty nasty." He nods at the pale bundle of scar tissue that looks awfully close to Cub's heart. He doesn't even know what to think about the ones on the kid's shoulders – blotchy discolouration; skin that has burst through skin.

Cub follows his gaze. "Yeah. That one stung a little." Then Cub shifts slightly. "Just so we're clear, I don't have a death wish. Okay?"

Wolf pauses. "Good. Because I don't need that on my conscience, alright? Even if you are an annoying little shit."

Cub raises his eyebrows. "Careful there, Wolf. Almost sounds like you actually care or something."

"Well, funerals depress me." He ties the first bandage in a neat, tight knot. "And I don't know how they'd fit your big head into a regular-sized coffin."

Cub smirks.

Wolf rubs his eyes with the crook of his elbow. His muscles are still aching from the gym; he might have gone a bit too hard on the weights. "Look, if I ask you some questions, will you answer honestly? It's just that - since you're staying here, there are things that it would be easier for me to know straight up, so you don't just spring them on me out of nowhere. And I've signed the Official Secrets Act and everything; I'm not going to sell you out to the tabloids."

Cub's head cocks. He looks at Wolf for a long second.

"Alright. But within reason, okay? And only – only – if you do the same."

Wolf grunts. He supposes that's fair.

"So where did you grow up?"

"Same as you."

Wolf frowns for a second, before realising the kid probably means London. His accent is a bit more polished than Wolf's, but they're both Londoners; anyone could tell.

"Can't ever answer a question straight, can you?"

"Nope."

"Okay. How old were you when you came to Brecon?"

"Fourteen. How old were you when I was there?"

"Twenty-two," Wolf answers, a beat too late, because fourteen? Shit.

"Young for an SAS recruit," the kid comments, like he isn't practically fresh out of the womb. "I thought they only recruited after three years of service?"

"I dropped out of college to join up. And you've got no right to talk. What, are Six picking them out of the fuckin' nursery now? Jesus Christ."

The kid looks amused.

"What?" Wolf says defensively.

"You're funny when you get angry, is all." Cub shakes his head. "I can't believe I ever thought you were intimidating."

Wolf's hands stop in surprise. His sister said almost exactly the same thing, once. You look like steam is gonna come out of your ears, James, she had cackled. Wolf tries to ignore the odd feeling in his chest. Cub isn't his little brother, he reminds himself. He hardly knows the kid - and he's a spy, besides. But the feeling does not go away.

"You didn't answer my question. How did you end up with Six so young?"

Cub shrugs, like it's an unimportant detail. "I was a special case. All my family were spies."

"Were?"

Wolf knows he said his parents were dead, but surely he must have somebody, right?

"Yeah. Were."

Ouch, Wolf thinks. That answers his next question: Why haven't your family objected to what you're doing with MI6? Clearly, they're not in a position to be making objections.

"So this foster family—"

"Have absolutely no relation to me. They're a couple - desk workers at Liverpool Street. You know about Liverpool Street? Yeah. One of them used to be Jones' PA a few years ago. They're a convenient choice, to be honest. Both of them work for Jones, so there's no need to be all secretive about who my real guardian is or where I go when I'm not at their place."

There is no animosity in his tone. But no affection, either. He said "their place" and not "home".

Wolf is no bleeding heart, but - well, his heart may be bleeding a little for the kid. Just a little.

"My turn. So, do you have any family, or are you a poor little orphan Annie like me?"

Wolf's mouth twists. He doesn't like talking about his family - not with people in his line of work. Stories like what happened to Jones' family… they're rare, but they tend to stick with you. He can't exactly refuse to tell Cub, though. They made a deal.

"I have a sister. And a nephew."

"No parents?"

"We moved to London when I was eight. The rest of my family stayed in Argentina, and my mum died of cancer when I was sixteen."

Instantly, Cub sobers. "I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago." Wolf pauses. An idea occurs to him. If you tell him some really personal shit, maybe he'll do the same? It's a bit of an underhand move, but Wolf swiftly decides that it's worth it. Cub is a spy; his kind deal almost exclusively in low blows. "It got me into some trouble, though. My mum dying. I, uh, I didn't really know how to deal with it. The grief. For a while, it mostly got turned into anger. I think if I hadn't joined up… well, I don't know what I might have ended up doing, or where it would have led me."

Cub is looking at him very closely. Wolf wonders if it's worked. Is Cub going to open up in return? Tell him what happened to his family – or how he ended up working for the British Intelligence before his voice dropped? Is this our emotional bonding scene?

"Sorry I had a go at you," is what Cub says, eventually, when Wolf has finished with his bandages and he's pulling his t-shirt back on. "It was shitty of me. Especially when you're letting me stay here, and - and looking out for me, and everything."

Not exactly what Wolf was hoping for, but... there's something there. Is Wolf reading this right? Is Cub avoiding his eye because he's embarrassed? Embarrassed to admit that he needs someone to look out for him - even when it's just someone to bandage his literal knife wound and let him crash on their sofa (aka: the bare bloody minimum)?

"Don't be stupid," says Wolf brusquely. "Like you said, you were bleeding out. You'll just have to-"

"Pay you back for the milk?"

"Pay me back for the milk."

Cub grins. Maybe Wolf should leave it there - end on a good note, rather than stick his neck out and risk starting another fight. But there's one more thing that he needs to know about.

"Cub… I know you said that the people who you, uh, pissed off, wouldn't be able to track you here. But I have to know. Do you have a plan for dealing with them in the long term?"

The grin fades. "What, worried I'm gonna get stabbed again and ruin more of your carpet?" Cub looks down, and Wolf notices his fingers curling against the granite of the bathroom counter. "Yeah. I have a plan."

"Are they… big? Powerful?"

A ghost of amusement passes over Cub's face, nothing like his smile from before. "You could say that. Yes, they have pretty terrifying amount of influence. I actually don't think their core ideals are all bad… but the way they operate is wrong. They've gone unchecked for a long time, and I-" He stops abruptly, his mouth closing, as if realising he's said something that he shouldn't have. "Anyway. Yeah. They're powerful. But there are bigger fish in the ocean, you know? And now that I'm out of there, they're not getting me again."

"How can you be sure of that?"

"Because I'm gonna make friends with the bigger fish."

Wolf remembers how Cub said, yesterday, that it was his uncle who taught him poker. Was it this same "uncle" (who must be dead now, Wolf realises) that taught him this kind of strategy? How closely did he distinguish between the game and reality? And how old was Cub when those lessons started?

"I could have sworn we were talking about spying a minute ago, not fish."

"Not my fault you don't know how a metaphor works."

Wolf glares, but there's no real heat behind it, just like there's never any bite in Cub's insults. "Listen, kid. I know you don't need anyone to tell you how to do your job - but you don't always have to do it on your own. You know that, right? If there's anything me, or, or K Unit can do to help-"

"I appreciate that," Cub cuts him off. "But I don't need anyone's help. I work best alone."

Really? Wolf thinks of the wonky bandages, tied in front of the mirror. He thinks of Cub, pale and unresponsive, in those awful few minutes the other night when Wolf thought he wasn't going to wake up. He thinks of Cub when he talked about his foster family. A convenient choice. I don't trust them.

"There's a reason they train us in units, kid," he says softly. "Sometimes you can't do a job on your own, and you shouldn't try, even if that's how you'd prefer to do it."

But Cub is shaking his head. "I don't need anyone else," he repeats, not looking Wolf in the eye but down at his hands. "And I've got the luck of the devil. Didn't you know?"

Wolf thinks it's supposed to be sarcastic, but to his ears, it just sounds sad.

And later that night, something finally happens.

Wolf always keeps his SAS pager in his pocket. He has it linked to his phone alarm as well for when he's sleeping, but the shrill ringing would probably be enough to wake him anyway. It certainly catches his attention now, as evening is sliding into night, making him wince until he manages to hit the accept button.

Wolf glances down at the screen, and sees a string of words. Orders.

Go immediately to 89 Sagittarius Lane, Surrey. Position outside target location. Wait for the rest of your unit there.

"Oh, here we bloody go," Wolf mutters. That address is almost thirty miles away, and apparently he's expected to make his own way there. Fantastic. He gets to his feet and grabs the holdall from his wardrobe, where it has been ready and waiting for days.

Cub barely glances up when he hears Wolf's been called in for an assignment. "Don't get yourself killed," he calls as Wolf is on his way out, and the last Wolf sees of the kid, he is sprawled out on the good sofa, feet on the coffee table. I'll give him hell for that when I get back, Wolf thinks, and swings the door shut behind him.

Wolf drives a fraction over the limit, but not enough to get himself in trouble. It has rained, and the streets are shimmering with it, a second city reflected upside-down in the puddles. Wolf is gliding down a thankfully-minimally-congested road when his phone buzzes on his dashboard. A call. Wolf glances at it, and accepts.

"You alright, Eagle?" He assumes that Snake and Eagle will be making their way to the same location, from where they've been stationed on yellow.

A moment of crackling silence, then, "… Wolf?"

His teammate sounds surprised to hear him, like he didn't just ring his number.

"Yeah." Wolf tilts the steering wheel as the road meanders left. "What's up?"

"Didn't expect to hear from you, mate. Have they cleared you for duty, then?"

Wolf frowns. "What d'you mean? I was never taken off duty."

Suddenly, there is a bad feeling stirring in his gut. Eagle's next words don't make it any better.

"Uhh, yeah? You were? One of the higher-ups suspended you from field missions a few days ago. We got a phone call from HQ saying you'd be sitting this one out. We - me and Snake - we thought it must be pretty serious, since you weren't even picking up the phone..."

Wolf swerves the car to the side of the road. A bit dramatic, maybe, but alarms are going off in his head. "Eagle, when exactly did you get that call?"

"I dunno – a few days ago? Shouldn't you know that yourself?"

"Just fucking tell me, will you!"

"Okay, okay, sheesh." A pause. "I'm pretty sure it was Saturday. Some time in the evening? Yeah, 'cause I was round at Snake's, and we were gonna try that new pub next to the one that closed down…"

Wolf stops listening. He counts back the days. Cub turned up on Friday night – or the early hours of Saturday morning, to be exact. Wolf stayed up the rest of the night after he showed up, but in the afternoon… Cub persuaded him to get some sleep. And when he woke up, the phone lines were shot and the internet was disconnected.

"Shit," Wolf breathes.

His brain is firing off possibilities now, and boy, are there a lot of them. Cub has had access to Wolf's whole flat - including his computer - for four days. Could he have gotten into the SAS database? Yes. Almost definitely… in fact, he already admitted to doing it once before. I hacked into your files a while ago. Sorry. Taking Wolf off duty would mean that he wasn't getting any alerts. And it would be even easier for Cub to cut him off from the rest of the world. He's Six – he could definitely get his hands on a signal blocker, or something similar, to take out the internet and the cell signal.

And now, being paged today, to this mystery location…

It's lured Wolf out of the flat. Almost lured him all the way out of London.

"Fuck!"

Wolf slams his palm into the steering wheel. The kid has played him like a fiddle.

"Uhhhh, you okay there, James? You sound a little—"

Wolf ends the call. All he can think of is turning the car around and going straight back to his flat. But he's not driven more than half a mile when Eagle's name flashes up on his screen again. Wolf tries to ignore it, tries to focus on the grey asphalt, on going as fast as he possibly can without killing anything, but eventually, on maybe the fourth call, the buzzing becomes so annoying that he picks up.

"Really not in the fucking mood right now, Eagle."

He cuts off a seven-seater to a chorus of angry shouts. Wolf doesn't care; doesn't give a single shit. His mind is full of scenes from the last few days… Cub, bleeding out on the living room floor. Sleeping on Wolf's good sofa with his hair askew. Sitting on the bathroom counter, skin sliced open, grinning. He trusted the kid. He liked the kid. Was it all just a ploy?

Or is Wolf wrong about this? Could it be a mistake? Wolf hesitates, even now. Maybe he shouldn't jump to that conclusion. Maybe it's nothing to do with Cub at all…

"Neither am I, you prick," Eagle snaps. "James, what the hell is going on? And don't hang up. I'm your bloody teammate, so whatever's happening, you need to tell me about it, because it affects me too."

Wolf is going to hang up again – but something in Eagle's words catches at him. Wasn't he saying the same thing to Cub, just a few hours ago? There's a reason they train us in units, kid. Sure, in the time since then, Cub has (might have? Already had?) turned on him, but it's still true. Eagle's his teammate. Wolf resists the urge to shut him down again, albeit with a scowl.

"I'm just dealing with something right now. I don't need any of you to get involved."

"… Okay. Alright. Sure. I don't understand how you're not able to come on the assignment with the rest of us but you're able to get mixed up in your own shit… but alright, James. Whatever."

Wolf is ready and raring to snipe back, but—

"What do you mean, the assignment? I thought we were on yellow alert."

"Yeah, we were. Then yellow turned into red."

Wolf tries to swallow the lump in his throat. "What happened?"

"Mate, have you not read the news at any point this week? Most of the units have already been called in. We're just waiting for our turn."

Wolf's stomach is doing Olympic-level acrobatics.

"Some Six agent has gone rogue. The whole bloody country is looking for him."

James San Luca, you truly are the dumbest bastard alive.

Chapter Text

Wolf gets angry sometimes. That much is true. But even in his blackest of moods, there's this annoying little voice in his head that's always trying to talk him down. Maybe it's his conscience, or an angel on his shoulder, or, as his sister once put it, "just your own fucking brain, shithead" – whatever it is, it's pleading for Cub right now like a defence attorney in a murder trial.

What if it's not him? the voice suggests as Wolf speed-tickets his way back to the flat. But of course it's him. Who else could it be? Another agent. No. There are too many coincidences. Cub has to be involved somehow. Okay, so what if he's doing this under some kind of coercion? Six is messy. You don't know what he's gotten himself mixed up in. Hear his side of the story first.

But even if only half of it is true, then Cub has still lied. He's lied and lied and lied.

How would Wolf believe anything the kid said?

As he runs his third red light, Wolf tries to force this little debate club exercise out of his mind. He needs to keep his head clear. Best case scenario, Cub is still in the flat, and he has no idea that Wolf knows what he knows. That way, Wolf can take him by surprise when he gets there and hopefully (hopefully) subdue him somehow before anyone else has to get involved. Worst case scenario… Well, there could be a lot of worst case scenarios. Probably best not to think about those right now.

Wolf's had a lot of strategy training, but one memory that comes back to him is when he watched The Lord of the Rings with his sister, back when they were teenagers. His sister had not been impressed with the last movie to say the least, and she'd thrown popcorn at the screen when the eagles showed up. Why don't you like them? Wolf had asked her, and Elena had pulled a face. They just show up in random places, she'd said. You don't know when they're gonna turn up and save the day, because you never know what they want. It's annoying.

So, he thinks now, what does Cub want? What's the motive here? It could just be for money. Selling MI6's secrets. This is the twenty-first century, with a thousand sources of misinformation - truths are worth more than they've ever been, to the right buyer, and Lord knows Cub must know some classified things. Is it as simple as that - or is there something else going on here? And where does Wolf fit into this picture? Why did Cub come to him, and not anybody else?

There's something missing from the picture. Well, there are a lot of things missing, to be honest, but there's something in particular. A major puzzle piece. Wolf has felt its absence since Cub first arrived. He racks his brains, trying to figure it out what it is as memories flicker before his eyes.

Playing cards weaving in and out of each other...

A humorless smile...

Blood in the carpet...

Stitches in an oddly-shaped wound...

Wolf parks the car on a side street and makes his way to the building on foot. He takes the stairs, treading lightly, and when he slips his key into the front door, he squeezes the other keys on the fob so they don't jangle. This is just a mission, he tries to tell himself, and he imagines how the Sergeant might brief him. Extract the dangerous agent. Be aware of his abilities. Don't let him get away.

When Wolf steps through the front door, the flat is still and dark and utterly silent.

The only warning he gets is a rush of air from the side, before he's ducking a punch that would have knocked him out cold.

Wolf recovers quickly because there's no other option. Instinct tells him where the kid is. He kicks out and his foot connects with a shin, making his attacker dance back, far enough for Wolf to wheel himself upright, fists clenched at the ready.

Cub is a ghost in the gloom. The sight of him almost makes Wolf shudder. This is not the grinning teenager who was kicking back on his sofa just a few hours ago. No - right now, Wolf's can only think that Cub looks like a spy. A thing made of shadow, only half-there.

"Cub," Wolf tries to keep his voice level, "Just tell me what's going on, yeah? Just tell me why everyone's looking for you, and we can figure something out. We don't have to fight about this."

But Cub shakes his head. The element of surprise has certainly gone out of the window.

"You can't do anything about it," says Cub, his voice oddly flat, "And I'm not going to let you get in my way."

He lashes out so quickly that he's hardly more than a blur, and then Wolf has no more opportunity to try and reason with the kid. It takes all his energy to defend himself against Cub's attacks. He throws a punch to the ribs; Wolf blocks. Cub seizes the momentum, trying to use Wolf's own movement against him and flip him over, but Wolf sees it coming and steels himself against the move. Then he takes advantage of the proximity, kicking out to sweep Cub's feet out from under him-

If the kid hadn't sprung back in the nick of time, slipping out of his grasp.

It's Cub's eyes, more than anything, that are close to throwing Wolf off. As they circle each other, the kid's gaze is unnervingly empty. His face is pure calculation, a blank screen, and if Cub is a machine then he's a deadly one.

But as the fight continues (minutes, it must only last minutes, although it feels like anything between a second and a year) a pattern emerges, and despite Cub's almost unnatural level of skill, it's not in his favour. Before long, Wolf realises that he's backing the kid into a corner. Cub is losing ground. He's good, impossibly good for his age, but just like before, there's something holding him back, and this time Wolf knows it must be the injury. It's dulling his edge, injecting a stiffness in some of Cub's movements that's giving Wolf an advantage.

When he next throws a punch, Wolf sees it coming. He sees the slight grimace in Cub's lips, obviously steeling himself against the pain of fighting with a fresh injury. Wolf acts quickly, grabbing the kid on his unguarded side and twisting him into a choke-hold. As Cub thrashes out against him, Wolf can feel him struggling for breath. A heel driven into Wolf's foot gets him free, but Wolf can see the slightly wild look in his eyes as he jerks away, and Wolf knows that he's realised the same thing.

Wolf is better prepared for this fight.

Wolf is going to win.

He's already thinking about how he will end this. At some point, the balance has flipped, and although Cub initiated this, it's Wolf who is on the offensive now. He just needs to subdue the kid somehow - not do him any serious damage, but make sure he's not a threat anymore, and then Wolf can figure out what he's going to do about this, who he's going to call...

Wolf aims a punch at Cub's kidneys. But instead of blocking the move, as he has been doing so far, Cub twists mid-air. In the briefest of seconds, Wolf doesn't have time to think. Suddenly, he sees his fist heading towards a different spot - towards the exact spot of the knife wound - a blow will surely tear the injury back open, and have Cub bleeding out on the floor all over again-

Instinct, not logic, pulls the punch.

And in his split-second hesitation, Cub's knee comes up, sinking into his gut. All the breath vacates Wolf's lungs. His vision is a patchwork of stars. He opens his mouth (Cub will listen; Cub has to listen) but before he can get a word out, there's a sharp pinch in his arm.

Wolf is flooded with the strange sensation that the room is rising around him, and then he's out.

When he manages to get his eyes open again, Wolf recognises his own bedroom wallpaper.

"Oh, you're kidding me."

So, he's trussed up with his own zip-ties, tied to his own desk chair, in his own flat. Great. Fantastic. When the SAS finds out about this, they won't even have to fire him; he'll resign out of embarrassment.

Cub, sitting cross-legged on the bed, glances up. Wolf's laptop is open in front of him, and as his eyes adjust, Wolf's realises that the kid is wearing his favourite hoodie. Which doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but it just feels like salt in the wound right now, to be honest.

"Hey, Wolf."

Wolf suppresses a grimace. Yep, turns out that going one-on-one with an agent is a bloody terrible idea. He can feel bruises coming up on his arms, and his ribs have definitely felt better, although thankfully nothing feels broken. He knows what that feels like. When he stretches his neck, pain needles through his temple.

"Did you use a fucking horse tranquiliser on me?"

Cub has the audacity to roll his eyes. "Bit dramatic, aren't you? It was just anaesthetic. You'll be fine."

Anaesthetic. So Cub planned this, all along – or accounted for the possibility, at least. He must have brought it with him when he broke away from Six, hidden it in the flat somewhere over the past days, because Wolf sure as fuck doesn't have that in his supplies.

It leaves a bitter taste in Wolf's mouth.

"Mmm. You know, I'd feel a lot better if you let me out of these fucking ties."

"Ah, sorry. No can do. If it helps, this is nothing personal."

Nothing person— "You broke into my fucking house. You convinced me you were - you were a scared kid. Vulnerable. Then you stayed under my roof for days while all the time you were— you were—"

What is Cub doing exactly? Wolf's eyes fall to the laptop, and a thrill of fear runs through him.

"Cub, I swear to God, if you're hacking into SAS files-"

"Jesus Christ, can you relax for a second? I'm not interested in your little SAS Christmas party videos."

"Then what are you even doing here? What are you doing on my fucking laptop, Cub?"

Cub doesn't reply. Wolf curses a bit more, out of sheer anger more than anything. The worst part is that he has no-one to be angry at but himself. He knew the kid was an agent, a skilled liar, and that Wolf had no reason to believe what he was saying was the truth. Wolf knew that. Yet he still fell for it. He fell for it right until the end, where Cub pulled the dirtiest trick in the book: betting on the fact that Wolf would pull the punch rather than seriously hurt him.

"I should have turned you in the second you showed up here."

Cub's fingers stop typing for a second. "Yeah," he says after a beat, his voice neutral. "Probably."

"Are you even gonna tell me what you're doing?"

"Hmm..." Cub drums his fingers on the keyboard. "Nah. I've been on the end of a few villain monologues, Wolf. They're tedious, and repetitive, and if you don't mind, I have things I actually need to be doing. How about you just let me get on with it, and it'll be painless as possible for both of us?"

Wolf really shouldn't reply "How about you go fuck yourself?" but he's pissed off, so he does, and Cub turns back to the screen, face impassive. And then there's nothing for Wolf to do but stew in his own anger, until eventually it simmers down enough that he's able to think properly.

Alright, is his first thought. I'm definitely going to be out of these ties in the next five minutes. Cub's might be good at his job, but so is Wolf, and at the moment, Cub's too absorbed in whatever he's doing on his laptop to notice Wolf carefully edging the penknife down from his sleeve. Luckily, "Never tie their hands behind their back" was one of the lessons they learned at Brecon after Cub left.

His next thought is that Eagle definitely picked up on the fact that something was wrong during their phone-call, and he'll probably have told Snake. Wolf wonders what they'll do about it. Call HQ, or come over here themselves? Either way, Wolf doubts it'll just be him and Cub here for long. When the cavalry show up, it'll all be over for the kid then.

And then, as Wolf slips the tie off his right hand, a pinprick pain throbs in his right arm, which gives him pause. He thinks of Cub rolling his eyes. It was just anaesthetic. You'll be fine. It occurs to Wolf, for the first time, that Cub could have knocked him out properly, action-movie-style, bashed him over the head and given him a serious head injury. Shit, Cub could have even killed him.

But he didn't.

Ugh. Wolf finds himself wishing that this whole thing were more clear-cut - that Cub was either completely innocent or a complete villain, and he didn't have to feel so damn bad about the fact that this is definitely going to end with the kid disappearing into some bottomless MI6 dungeon.

When he's cut through the first tie, he glances up at Cub, knowing he should keep talking so he doesn't get suspicious about the silence. Cub, however, doesn't seemed to be overly concerned with his hostage. He's staring at the laptop screen so intensely that Wolf can hear his mother saying That'll give you square eyes if you look at it for too long. As Wolf looks the kid over, his head tilts. Maybe it's the shitty lighting, but Cub looks... kind of rough. He's pretty sure even white kids aren't supposed to be that pale. Or have that drawn-out, I-could-use-three-weeks-of-sleep look. Wolf looks the kid up and down, and notices that he's leaning a little - just a little - on his left side, and using his left hand on the laptop mouse, even though Wolf is pretty sure he's right-handed.

"Not having any luck?" Wolf ventures.

Cub doesn't reply, but his lips twist. Irritation, Wolf thinks.

"You know, Cub, you've definitely looked better."

"Oh, thanks. You're no oil painting yourself."

"It's the knife wound, isn't it? It's still giving you hell."

"Oh, for fuck's… yes, okay?" Cub pinches the bridge of his nose. "Is that what you want to hear, Florence fucking Nightingale? Yes, it's still giving me hell, 'cause that thing was bloody awful to get out, and-"

Abruptly, he stops. But he's already said enough.

"What?" Wolf frowns. "What was hard to get out? The knife?"

He sees Cub take a deep breath, and turn firmly back to the laptop screen. "Shut the fuck up, would you, Wolf?"

But Wolf can feel the pieces sliding together in his mind. Bloody awful to get out. He's not talking about the knife. It doesn't sound right. Wolf thinks of the odd shape of the wound, curiously wedged between organs - almost like it was never intended to do real damage, despite the blood loss. He thinks of the things Cub has said, over the past few days, about the group who attacked him. The way they operate is wrong. They've gone unchecked for a long time. And now, now that Wolf knows that it was Six that Cub was running from all along...

You could say they were, uh, keeping track of me.

"Holy shit," Wolf breathes, his eyes widening as it all falls into place. "Cub - your injury. Was it… did Six…"

Cub's eyes snap up. His face drains of what little colour it had.

And then his eyes close, and Wolf can see the moment that he gives in.

"Well done, Sherlock Wolf. You've cracked it. Yeah - they put a tracker in me."

"Fucking hell. Fucking hell."

Wolf's head spins as he tries to take the information in. If Cub had straight up told him, Wolf might not have believed him. But he saw it for himself. That wasn't a combat wound, it was a surgical one: extracting something that had already been implanted, and doing a pretty brutal job of it.

"Wait… Cub, did you do that to yourself?"

"Well, what was I going to do, walk into A and E and ask them to perform surgery on me? Not that you care, Wolf, but I never wanted anything to do with MIfucking6. God, I was fourteen! My entire family was dead! By the time I was old enough to make a choice, it was pretty bloody clear I wasn't allowed to leave." Cub's head falls to his hands. He really does look like shit. "I got injured on a mission, about a year ago. I woke up after surgery and they'd put a tracker in me. D'you understand now, Wolf? Sorry that I lied to you, sorry that I knocked you out - but I had to get away from them. I couldn't stand it any fucking longer."

And finally, Wolf does understand. He can see it playing out, in his head: Cub planning it out, cutting out the device, running to Wolf's doorstep for protection. He understands, and it makes his stomach turn over. It throws everything that he knows about Cub - everything about his relationship with Six - into a different light.

"And before you ask," says Cub, his voice weary now. "I needed your laptop because I need evidence. Anything I can find that incriminates Blunt and Jones. At the moment, it's just my word against theirs, and they have some pretty convincing psychiatrists on hand to testify that I'm a compulsive liar and I'm too traumatised by my uncle's death to know what I'm saying.

"I need solid proof of what they did. I figure the SAS might have something in their digital archives about me training with them. You don't have access to those, but I can work with your clearance level and hack the rest of the way in. And then... I figured MI5 are too close to Blunt to act, right? The CIA are in their pocket too, and well as ASIS… I think the only option is taking it to international level."

Wolf's brow creases. "What?"

"Well, they broke international law with me, didn't they? Even Six are supposed to be accountable to the UN. If I can get proof of what they did, the plan was to take it to the embassy in the city centre. Ask for protection. I thought about trying to send a message, or make a call, but Blunt would trace and intercept it. This was the only way to do it."

This is, quite literally, the last thing Wolf expected to hear. But when he thinks about it, it makes perfect sense. This isn't a betrayal... it's a getaway. An old-fashioned cut-and-run.

"I thought…"

"That I was going darkside?" Cub raises an eyebrow. "Selling national secrets? Yeah, I'm sure that's how they're making it look. They control the media, you know?"

"But why not just go underground?" Surely that would be the easier option than this?

"And spend my whole life on the run? No. They'd find me before the year was out. They're too powerful. I've got to-"

"Make friends with the bigger fish," Wolf finishes, remembering what Cub said earlier that day.

So this is what Cub meant by that. His options were to hide, knowing Six would find him, or make a big, dramatic break for it and take on the whole Secret Service with no allies, no evidence, and nothing to his name. Wolf almost thinks it's the most insane plan he's ever heard, but then he remembers the snowboard in France, and realises that this is probably the usual level of madness in Cub's plans.

And regardless of how insane it is, Wolf also knows that he has to be a part of it.

"Okay," he says, nodding slowly. "Okay. So how are we going to do this?"

Cub stares. "I'm starting to think you don't really understand what the word 'hostage' means."

Wolf snorts. "Give over, kid. We both know I could have gotten out of these ties by now, if I wanted to." In reality, he has already gotten out of them, but he needs Cub to trust him, and if he reveals that now it'll send the kid straight onto the defensive. Wolf doesn't want this to turn into another fight. "You say you're doing this because you've been treated like shit. Alright. I believe you. And I don't particularly want to see Six lock you up and throw away the key, so-"

"No," Cub cuts him off. "Stop it. Stop - whatever this is. I'm not fooling for it."

Wolf blinks. "I'm trying to help you, kid."

But Cub is shaking his head. "Do you really think I'm that stupid?"

Frustration builds in Wolf. "So you're gonna let your trust issues get you killed?"

"I don't need your help. I've managed on my own fine this far, thanks."

"Really? Then how are you gonna get all the way across London when the whole SAS is looking for you? I know their tactics. I can help you avoid getting caught. I meant what I said earlier, you know. About K Unit being like a family."

"You spent a week making my life hell in Brecon, and then - what? Three hours with me on the Point Blanc mission? Because your higher-ups told you to be there. I don't have an actual family to compare notes because they're all six feet under, but if that's your definition of family, Wolf, it's a bit fucking sad."

Wolf's mouth twists. Cub is lashing out because he's scared, he reminds himself, and tries not to let it get to him.

"You need my help. I can get you what you want. You want evidence that Six used you as an agent? You won't find that stuff in the archives, kid. They'll have covered their tracks too well. But I can give it to you, if you work with me."

Cub doesn't look away from the screen, but Wolf can tell that he has the kid's attention.

"I told you before," he continues. "I have a sister. When we were training at Brecon, I wrote to her. Old fashioned letters, you know? She likes that kind of thing. And I mentioned you. I mentioned there was this teenager that had been put into our unit. Mostly bitching about you, to be honest. But it's evidence, isn't it?"

"Where are these letters now?"

"At her house, probably. I know she'll have kept them. Is that enough for you?"

"That…" Cub leans back, pushes a hand through his hair. "That could actually work."

"Yeah, it could. But you know what, Cub? I can get you something even better." Cub says nothing, and Wolf takes a steadying breath. "First-hand testimony. I'll come with you and I'll tell them everything I know. About you training with us. About the mission in France - what almost happened to you there. How about that?"

Cub does not exactly respond with the enthusiasm that Wolf hoped for. He says nothing, and then turns back to the screen.

Fuck, Wolf thinks. "Come on, kid. You're not going to get a better opportunity than-"

"I said no, okay? I'm doing this on my own."

Wolf wants to scream in frustration. He wants to force Cub to see the reality of: if he tries to fly solo on this one, with the literal army he is up against, he's going to get himself killed. Wolf's hands itch to make a move, to take control of the situation. He could take the kid by surprise, and he'd win the fight this time. It's what instinct it telling him to do. His body is so lined with tension that it's taking more effort not to act…

But he can't. Because that's what Six have done: take decisions away from Cub, strip him of his agency. If Wolf does that, he'll lose Cub's trust, permanently.

Think, James, he wills himself. Use that thing between your ears.

He wets his lips before speaking again. "I'm sorry for how I acted at Brecon. I was a complete dickhead."

Cub pauses. "Yeah. Yeah, you were."

"I know it's not an excuse, but if it makes any difference, it's 'cause I was bloody terrified. I thought-"

"I would get the unit failed. Get you kicked out. I know."

Wolf nods. It's not surprise that Cub worked it out. "And I was jealous as well, to be honest," he adds. "You were… well, you were better than you had any right to be. Made me feel like I wasn't good enough to be there, if a kid was able to do so well."

That puts a gleam of surprise in Cub's eyes.

"The point is, Cub, I'm sorry that I was such a piece of shit. But - Jesus, kid, I never wanted anything bad to happen to you. When we found you in France, I thought you were dead. Did you know that? You were all crumpled at the bottom of that railway track, and there were these spikes everywhere, and blood in the snow. And all I could think was, fuck, this is all my fault. My fault for not getting to you sooner. And… when you showed up here, last week… I thought you were dead again and… shit. I just really don't want you to get yourself killed. I'm sorry if I say it in the wrong words. And I'm sorry if I ever treated you like you were a child. I know you're probably smarter than everyone in a mile's radius. That's how I know that you're smart enough to know the odds, here."

Wolf takes a deep breath. Cub hasn't moved an inch.

"I wasn't kidding when I said that every SAS unit is looking for you. They're all getting ready to take you in. We've been on standby for days already. They know you're in London, and they're probably narrowing down your location right now. I really, really don't want to see this end the way it's gonna end, if you try to do this by yourself, Cub."

Wolf realises that he's pleading with the kid. He also realises that he doesn't care, right now, how undignified it might make him look. He doesn't care a single bit.

"I pulled the punch, didn't I?" says Wolf. "You pulled that trick because you knew that I would."

Cub is still as painted scenery. He stares at Wolf for a long, long time, until they're past uncomfortable and into unnerving. Then, finally, he pulls his hands back from the laptop, clasping them together in his lap.

"It's Alex," he says very quietly.

"Huh?"

"My name is Alex. Not Cub."

Holy shit. "Right. Right. Okay. I'm - er - James."

"Yeah, I know."

"Oh, right. Hacked file, and all that."

"Yeah." Wolf thinks he sees Cub's lip twitch a little, before his expression sobers. "And you're right. I know the odds. It's just…"

He stops, and for a moment, the mask slips. The mask which makes him seem like an infallible spy, capable to the point of being untouchable, which Wolf didn't even realise he'd been wearing until suddenly it is gone. Wolf sees real fear in Cub's eyes for the first time, and his chest aches with sympathy. Jesus - the kid is terrified. How long has it been since he last trusted someone?

"I get it," says Wolf. "You know, after my mum died, I didn't know how to do shit. I was sixteen, and I didn't know how to cook or clean or any of that - and my sister was working, she was too busy to take care of those things. But I didn't know, so I just didn't do any of it-" Wolf is rambling, and he never meant to say any of this to Cub, but it feels like he's saying the right thing so he just keeps going- "-and it got to the point, right, where I hadn't had a lightbulb in my room for three weeks 'cause I didn't want to ask my sister to change it. Even though I knew I'd have to do it sooner or later. I was a fuckin' mess. Shit, Cub - I mean, Alex. D'you get the point I'm trying to make?"

Cub's lip quirks. "How many SAS soldiers does it take to change a lightbulb?"

"Ah, Fox said that one too."

"But I do get your point. Yeah." Cub chews on his lip. "Screw it. Okay, then. If you want to come with me - give testimony - I'm not going to stop you."

Wolf lets out the heaviest breath of his life. Thank Christ.

"Alright." He flexes his arms and tosses away the now-defunct zipties. "So, what do we do first?"

And then, as if in reply, the window shatters.

Chapter Text

Wolf’s leg bounces up and down on the floor.

It wasn’t meant to go like this, he thinks, every time his heel hits the carpet. It wasn’t meant to go like this...

“How long until you’re done?” he asks.

“Just a second,” Scarab, the medic from R Unit, replies. Then, finally, he reaches over and peels the blood pressure sleeve from Wolf’s arm. “Okay. All done. Well, there’s nothing wrong with you that I can see. Still, I expect they’ll want to run more tests back at HQ.” He shakes his head, expression twisting into one of disgust and disbelief. “God, I can’t believe the bastard drugged you. Can never see what’s coming with these spy types, can you?”

“Never,” Wolf agrees miserably.

“Sick son of a bitch.” Scarab a contemptuous look into the adjacent room, where the other SAS soldiers have Cub under arrest.

No, it was absolutely not meant to go like this.

Scarab the medic wasn’t the one who had broken through Wolf’s bedroom window. He was, however, the one who had kicked down the door, and his unit leader Lion was the one who had tackled Alex. Logically, Wolf had known that someone would be coming. He had known that Eagle would tell Command he was acting suspiciously, and that Command were likely to take action, and the end result might look something like this. But in the moment, he’d been so preoccupied with winning the kid’s trust that he wasn’t listening out for it. He hadn’t heard R Unit and J Unit creeping into his apartment block, positioning themselves on the windows and doors, covering all exits.

Not until it was too late.

The SAS soldiers, of course, had taken one look at the scene (Wolf tied up; Cub looking like a delinquent teenager from a hacker movie; the blood and the bruises and the needle on the floor) and deduced the obvious.

Now, Wolf glances across at the kid, and the guilt is like a finger in a bruise. They’ve sat him down on the chair where he less-than-successfully tied up Wolf, with enough weapons trained on him to thoroughly discourage an escape attempt. And since they detained him, the kid’s guard has slammed back down like an iron shutter. Lips sealed, eyes on the floor, pointedly exercising his right to remain silent.

Both of the unit leaders are hovering nearby, speaking into their radios, undoubtedly making arrangements to hand Alex over to his employers – after which, it will all be over. The kid will disappear into some Six dungeon and all of this will have been for nothing...

As Scarab is packing up his med kit, Wolf catches his arm.

“Mate, who’s calling the shots on this one? I mean, who’s the highest up?”

Scarab frowns. “General Williams, I think, but—”

“I need a line to him. Fast as you can.”

Scarab is looking at him like he’s wondering if he should have checked for head injuries, too.

“Wolf...”

“Look,” Wolf says, and he fights the urge to keep his voice as low as possible, forcing himself to adopt a veneer of confidence. He needs to stop Cub being whisked away by MI6, and he figures that his only hope is to appeal to the SAS side of things for support. “I don’t know how much I can tell you. But there’s more going on here than meets the eye. It’s not as clear-cut as Six have been telling us all.”

“Go on," says Scarab.

“There’s things the kid told me – things I need to get to someone at the top – before we hand him over to the spies.”

“What kind of things?”

“Things about the spies.”

Scarab’s expression darkens, and Wolf knows that he’s hit the right pressure point. Very few people in these circles enjoy working with Six, and the number of people who trust them is even smaller. Appealing to this flavour of institutional xenophobia might be a bit of an underhand move (a Cub move) but if that’s what it takes, Wolf finds that he really doesn’t care, as long as it get him results. All he knows is that if they take Alex into that huge, freaky building on Liverpool Street, Wolf is probably never seeing him again.

“Okay. I’ll try to get you a line.”

The relief is like morphine to Wolf’s system.

Unfortunately, he is only allowed to enjoy it for a matter of minutes.

While Scarab is working his way up the ranks on his radio (“Yes, I mean the General – Yes, I know he’s a very busy man – No, I don’t want to speak to his secretary instead—”), the door to Wolf’s flat opens again.

“Evening, gentleman,” says the man in the doorway, flashing an ID and an empty smile.

Wolf glances into the adjacent room just in time to see Alex’s stoic mask shatter. His face crumples like he’s been hit.

Even if they hadn’t been dressed in tailored black suits, it would be obvious who – or rather, what – their visitors are. There are two of them, and they don’t look anything alike; the man is tall and very broad-shouldered, the woman slight and round-faced. But there’s a quality they share in the eyes that would mark them out from a mile away, to anyone who knows what to look for. Wolf, having spent the past week living with Alex, is all too accustomed to the trained blankness; the way their eyes scan the room with near-robotic precision, while giving nothing of themselves away.

And then there’s the effect they have on the room. The men fall silent when they register the agents’ presence. By the time they’ve crossed Wolf’s flat, stepping easily into the court of soldiers, Wolf is filled with the sense that a power struggle has been fought, lost and mourned, all in the space of a few seconds.

“On behalf of Mr Blunt,” says the man. “I’d like to thank you all for your handling of the situation tonight. We’re here to oversee the next step of the process. I’m sure it won’t take too long, now that you have Rider secured. And I’m sure that you’ll all be grateful to get back to your homes and your—”

“Sorry,” says Wolf. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

The spy turns to him with a cool expression. “Ahh. San Luca.” He pauses briefly. But if he expected Wolf to be intimidated that he knows his name, Wolf makes sure that he's disappointed. “You’re right. We haven’t crossed paths until now. I’m Agent Walker, this is Agent Kopp. We’re here to take Alex to a safe location.”

“Where’s that, then? And who told you to take him there?”

The spies exchange glances.

Before either of them can reply, however, someone else speaks up.

“Wolf.”

Wolf looks around so fast he probably risks a neck injury. He’s not the only one: it’s the first thing Alex has said since they arrested him, and it draws every eye in the room. Alex, though, looks straight at Wolf. He presses his lips together—

And shakes his head.

The signal couldn’t be clearer.

Stay out of it.

Unfortunately for Alex, Wolf is not in the mood to humour his martyr tendencies.

“No,” says Wolf. “Sorry kid, but if you wanted someone who would throw you under the bus at the first time of trouble, you should have bloody well gone to someone else. Scarab, you still able to get me what I asked for?”

The medic only hesitates for only a second before nodding, picking up his radio, and retreating into the corner of the room.

“Corporal,” the female agent, Kopp, begins in a cautious tone, “I’m not sure what Alex has told you, but there are things going on here that you’re probably not aware of. Certain things Alex has been diagnosed with—”

“Oh, you can save that bullshit for someone else. The kid’s told me everything.”

“Then he’s told you lies, San Luca,” says the male agent, Walker, with a pitying look. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Alex is a pathological liar with clinical paranoia and severe attachment issues. This is what he does. He latches onto a person for attention, then he fills their head with stories where he’s always the victim.”

“And it’s not his fault,” Kopp adds quickly. “It’s terrible that Alex has had such a bad start in life. It’s tragic that he’s experienced so much grief, in such a short period of time, that his mind creates these delusions as a way to cope. But at some point, we have to put aside fault, and blame, and accept the facts of the situation. The facts being that Alex needs to be returned to state custody, for his own welfare as much as everyone else’s. He needs medical treatment. He needs to go home, San Luca. This isn’t where he belongs. I think you know that, deep down.”

Wolf waits for a moment to be sure that she’s done. “You know, that was pretty convincing. You practice in front of the mirror before you leave the house?”

But he can’t deny that anxiety is rising within him. He’s very much aware of the alarmed looks that other SAS soldiers are exchanging; the way they’re shifting on their feet. Shit. The spies are good.

The agents are aware of it too, because Walker shoots Wolf a sympathetic look before leaning in and stage-whispering, “I know you’re trying to do the right thing, San Luca. And sticking to your morals like this is admirable, it really is. But trust me: this isn’t the hill you want to die on.”

The thinly-veiled threat is not lost on Wolf.

Kopp coughs into her sleeve. “This is such a delicate situation... I think perhaps some privacy might help...?”

That’s actually the last thing Wolf wants (he wants the soldiers as witnesses, he wants to get them on his side, damn it) but the MI6 magic is strong stuff. A glance from the spies has the leaders of the two units nodding in agreement and ushering the rest the living room, leaving only a pair on the other side of the door for security.

When the bedroom door shuts, the change in the room is palpable. Immediately, something falls away from both of the spies. Walker rolls his neck, letting out a sigh. Wolf didn’t realise the female agent was holding herself in a certain way until suddenly she isn’t anymore; if not quite sweetness, there was a kind of earnestness in her expression that vanishes like a cheap illusion.

“Alex,” says Walker. “Well. Regardless of what else has happened, it’s good to see you in one piece.”

When the kid glances up at him, the shadows under his eyes seem particularly pronounced. “You know, I really wish I could say the same. But, uhh, if we’re being honest with each other? I was kind of hoping to never see either of you again. Sorry! Nothing personal.”

“None taken. Although I was talking more in the context of the scene you left at the house. I know you don’t like us very much, Alex, but coming home to something like that, all that blood—”

“Hang on,” Wolf interrupts, “Are you the foster family?”

He assumed they’d been a fictional concoction. The agents, too, look a little surprised.

“Why do you all look like that?” Alex demands. “You know I’m capable of telling the truth sometimes, right?”

“I suppose we were a foster family, in a way. Alex has lived in adjacent accommodation to us for around a year and a half. Our employer hoped it might provide a sense of... stability, for him. But it didn’t turned out how they hoped.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Wolf tries to imagine living with these guys as stand-in parents, and sympathises with Alex’s decision to stick a knife into himself instead. Jailers, is the word that comes to mind. Informants.

“I assume you’ve been seen by a medic, Alex?”

Wolf doesn’t miss the way that Alex’s shoulders tense as Walker takes a step towards him, just a hair too far into his personal space. He could choose to sit down on the end of the bed, to lower himself to the kid’s level, but he doesn’t. Small choices like this, Wolf is beginning to realise, mean a lot, in the world that Alex comes from.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

Wolf gnaws on his lip. He’s not surprised the agent asked. Alex is looking more haggard than he has since he first arrived at Wolf’s flat. A permanent crease has settled in his forehead, a pain tell that he must be too tired to hold in, which is worrying, because Wolf knows just how much the kid is capable of internalising.

“So if I go out there and ask for a medical report, I’ll receive one?”

“I said I’m fine," Alex snaps. "Jesus, has Blunt really gotten so neurotic about his property being damaged? He never cared about me being injured when he was sending me into warzones.”

“Being wounded on a mission and performing amateur surgery on yourself are two quite different things.”

“Yeah, the difference is that one of those things, I actually chose. And if you get any closer, you’ll be the next thing I perform amateur surgery on, I swear to god.”

Wolf is, for once, grateful for the close quarters of bedroom. It allows him to put himself between Alex and Walker with little effort.

“You heard the kid. Give him some space.”

“And you! I told you to stay out of it! For god’s sake, Wolf, why couldn’t you just—”

“Because I promised I would help you! Because helping you and letting them take you aren’t compatible ideas, Cub!”

Wolf is fully prepared for a fight, but the anger seems to drain out of Alex. His shoulders drop, and the look of utter exhaustion that settles into his face ages him by years.

“It’s not a case of ‘letting them’ do anything. Wolf, everyone in this room outranks you. They can have you removed whenever they like. They’re only going through the motions with this—” he makes a gesture that is pretty limited by the fact that his hands are tied behind his back, but that Wolf gets the gist of, “—because they’re trying to figure out how much you really know, and whether you’re a threat to the clean-up operation. Which is why you should have just shut up and left it alone, so at least one of us could have gotten out of this in one piece.”

“Oh, that’s not the only reason.” Kopp speaks for the first time since the door closed. There’s nothing objectively creepy about her, but her soft voice still sends a shiver up Wolf’s spine. “We also needed to figure out how emotionally attached he is to you. And the answer would appear to be: very.” She shoots Alex an approving look. “You always make friends quickly, Alex. It’s one of your best traits.”

“I don’t need lessons in friendship from you, thanks.” The corner of Alex’s mouth twists. “Did you even think about letting me run? You could have just… no. It was always just a job to you, wasn’t it?”

Neither of them speak up to correct him.

Wolf’s mind conjures a variety of words for these people, none of which his mother would like to hear him saying, although he knows that she would agree with the sentiment.

“I think this has gone on long enough,” says Kopp. “Time to go, Alex. Tell me, which one of those nice soldiers do I have to ask to get a key to those handcuffs?”

"That's your problem," says Wolf. "You're acting like you have the keys here. But you don't."

Kopp gives him an unimpressed look. "Be careful, Corporal. You're very close to actually annoying me."

Wolf, however, holds her gaze steadily. "You're not taking Cub anywhere. Yeah, you might outrank me, or whatever, but you're all forgetting that you're not my superior." He straightens his back, making every inch of his height work to his advantage. "I don’t answer to you people. Nor do any of the men outside that door. Cub’s in SAS hands, not yours. I guess we’ll see what they want to do once Command hears Cub’s side of the story.”

There is a long moment of silence. Then the agents exchange a look, and Walker lets out another deep sigh.

“Fine,” he says. “But just so you know, we really didn’t want it to come to this. You brought this on yourself, San Luca.”

And then Kopp reaches into her pocket.

The feeling that seizes Wolf, when he sees the photograph, is more physical than emotional. Firstly, he freezes. All of his muscles seize up in unison, as if making himself completely still will transform the shapes and lines of the image into something else. Then the implications begin trickle in, and Wolf feels as if the room itself is twisting, warping. His head is full of static; there is bile in his throat.

No, he thinks. No no no no no—

“This was taken less than an hour ago. We have people in place.” Kopp’s voice is extraordinarily gentle, but Wolf flinches hard. “Go into the other room now, Corporal. Sit down and don’t interfere again.”

“You can’t just—” But Wolf stops himself. Because even if they can’t – even if they’re bluffing – it’s not a risk that he’s willing to take. It’s something he will gamble on. And that’s exactly why they chose it. “You sick pieces of shit.”

“The other room, Corporal.”

Wolf looks despairingly at Alex. “I’m sorry, Cub.”

“It’s not your fault.” The anger is back in Alex’s eyes again, although this time, it’s not directed at Wolf. Alex doesn’t ask what was on the photograph. He’s probably guessed. Smart kid, yeah, of course he has. Alex knows what Six are capable of - and this is probably exactly what he was trying to prevent. “Do what you have to do. I’ll be fine.”

No. You won’t. But Wolf is in checkmate. There’s nothing more he can do for Cub.

So that’s the end of it, Wolf thinks, and oh, he hates it so much. What quiet, terrible little ending. A cheap bit of blackmail - was that really all it took?

“James,” Alex calls, just as Wolf is turning to leave. The kid chews his lip for a moment, looking like he's thinking hard, before finally settling on, “... Thanks. For this past week. You... you weren’t so bad. As far as flatmates go.”

A lump catches in Wolf’s throat. “Yeah,” he manages to say, after a second or two. “You neither.” Keep it together, San Luca. This is far worse for him than it is for you. “Although you still haven’t paid me back for that milk.”

“Ahh.” Alex’s lips twist into the ghost of a smile. “I guess you’ll have to put my rent up again.”

“Guess I will.”

“Hey,” says Scarab, when Wolf returns to the living room. “Think I’m almost through to the big guy.”

Hating himself, Wolf takes the radio and hangs up.

Wolf loses track of time, a little, after he crashes onto the sofa. Listen, he’s had a stressful night. A stressful week. He can feel the worried looks of some of the men – muttering about him, as sits with his head in his hands – but can’t bring himself to move, or care. It feels like he’s failed in the worst way possible: failed to protect the people he cares about. If there’s ever a time that Wolf deserves to mope, it’s now.

His mind can’t stop running through awful scenarios of where Alex might end up. Will they lock him up to bury the secrets? Or will they send him straight back out there, onto his next mission, back into the firing line? Wolf thinks about the scars he glimpsed when he re-bandaged Alex’s wound. He thinks about the white rope of scar tissue, so close to the kid’s heart. He thinks about the detached look in Alex's eyes as Wolf sewed him up with no anaesthetic. That’s what four years of this life has done to him – what will he look like after eight? Ten? And if he manages to survive that far, how many parts of Cub are going to have to die to get there?

When the front door opens again, he almost doesn’t notice. But the Welsh accent carries across the room so strongly that it compels him to look up.

“Car’s ready,” announces the soldier. This one didn’t take off the bottom half of his night-gear mask; the black cloth is pulled up almost to his eyes. “If you lot are done with the chatter, we can get this show on the road. I have to let you know, though, the general’s ordered a four-seven before we clear out.”

Although no-one audibly groans, it's a close-run thing.

“Forgive me," says Walker, "It's been a while since my Brecon days...?"

“A full-detail bomb sweep,” provides Lion, R Unit’s leader, sounding tired and unhappy. Wolf doesn’t blame him; it’s already late, and it will take at least another couple of hours to fulfil that request.

Alex is similarly enthused. “Oh, so painting me crazy and a traitor wasn't enough for Blunt? He had to add terrorist to the list, too? Jesus, he's really filling out my CV."

“Got something to hide, kid?” asks the Welsh agent, rounding on him.

“Just not a huge fan of wasting government time and resources, you know. This isn’t what I want my taxes to be going towards.”

“Yeah, you look like you’ve clocked in so many years of tax-paying. And now that you’ve protested so much, we’re definitely doing that sweep, so well done. Get him to the car, would you?” he says to the soldier at his side, who is also still wearing his mask. “Lion, can you run through the four-seven procedures with the sp— with these lovely agents, while we secure the vehicle?”

“Us?” says Kopp. “What do you need from us?”

“Mostly just a signature on the paperwork, don’t worry. None of us have the authority. It’ll only take a few minutes. Oh, and, er – Wolf?”

Wolf’s head snaps up. He meets the masked soldier’s eyes, and – and—

“You’re coming to HQ too. They want to talk to you.”

“Wolf doesn’t know anything, you’re wasting your—”

“Not your decision, Cu-  Rider. Or mine, for that matter. Boss’s orders.”

Wolf stands up, keeping his own lips pressed tightly together. He lets the other masked soldier steer him out of the flat without protest. He makes a concerted effort to walk at a very normal place, to hold himself in a very normal way.

In the hallway, he casts a questioningly glance at one of the masked soldiers, but he shakes his head.

“Not yet. We need to get out of the building.”

Wolf hears a sharp inhale from Alex behind him. Yes, the Scottish accent is far more authentic than the Welsh one.

“Wolf – the nearest fire escape?”

Wolf doesn’t let himself hope. Not as they make their way down the outdoor metal staircase, rattling atrociously with every step. Not when they head for the nearest alleyway, setting a quick pace. Blood pounds in his ears as he waits for the shout or the bullet that will end it. Maybe the shock of the window breaking virtually against his cheek has affected him more than he thought, because when they reach the end of alleyway, and break into a full-out run, he finds himself cringing away from every doorway, expecting them to be flung open, expecting hands to grab them from the dark.

But then they’re four, five, six streets away, and it hasn’t come.

At one point, Cub stumbles, and steadies himself with a hand on the wall beside him. He’s breathing harder than the rest of them, and his knuckles are bone white against the bricks.

“I’m sorry, kid,” says Snake, gentle but firm, “But we need to keep moving. We left a breadcrumb trail in another direction, but I want at least a couple of miles between us and them before we even think about stopping.”

Cub's eyes are squeezed tightly shut. But after a moment, he nods, and they continue. Alleyways melt into side-streets and back into alleyways. They stay away from main roads, so meticulously so that Wolf realises they must actually be going somewhere, not just going.

“Please tell me you have some kind of getaway car?” he asks, with some difficulty. His sore ribs are not enjoying this much at all.

“Should have,” says Eagle. “If my bastard of a brother drops it off where I told him to.”

“You asked your—”

“Yes, Wolf, because this was very last minute and I didn’t exactly have a lot of options.” Eagle comes to a stop, and pulls a face of intense discomfort. “Fuck me, I’ve got a stitch. That's embarrassing. I didn't know you could get a stitch past the age of sixteen.” His voice is his own again, now, with its mild Yorkshire lilt.

“That’s probably far enough to buy us some time,” Snake allows, also looking relieved to no longer be running. They've come to a stop in a dark enclave, barely big enough for the four of them, a slip of a space nestled between two slabs of apartment block.

Wolf smears a hand across his face. His fingers, he realises, are trembling. “Christ,” he breathes. “Fuck me. Left it pretty bloody late, didn’t you?”

“A little gratitude wouldn’t hurt."

“It was the earliest we could intervene."

“Sorry to interrupt,” says Alex. “But would someone mind explaining to me what the hell is going on?”

“Oh, right.” Finally, Eagle pulled the mask down. “Long time no see, eh, Cub?”

“Yeah, I know who you are. I got that bit. I’m just stuck on why you’ve brought me to—”

He gestures, perhaps unsure about whether the space could earn the title of "alley". It does vaguely remind Wolf of those late-night documentaries about people who die while deep-sea caving because they try to squeeze through a razor-thin tunnel and get stuck halfway through.

“To this fine establishment,” says Eagle. “Well, Wolf seemed awfully keen on not handing you over to the spies, back there. And despite Wolf’s many flaws—”

“Hey—”

“We do trust his judgement on things like this. So...” He shrugs, as if the rest is self-evident.

Alex, however, stares as if Eagle has grown a third head.

“Cub,” says Snake. “I know it must all have happened pretty quickly for you. But something felt off about this mission from the start, on our end. We were put on alert with all the other units, but Six refused to give us much information to work with. Honestly, they didn’t give us anything, just separated us from the other units and told us to wait for our orders."

"Basically put us on lockdown," says Eagle. "No contact with the outside world. Yeah, it was loads of fun."

"But then Wolf called, and it was obvious something else was going on with him. So Eagle snuck out of the barracks, got hold of an internet signal, and we realised they were keeping us in the dark because it was you. There would be a conflict of interest, because we trained with you. And then...” Suddenly, Snake hesitates. Is that a hint of guilt, in his eyes? “I won’t lie to you, Cub. If we hadn’t gone to Command tonight, if we hadn’t told them Wolf was acting weird, and it might have something to do with you... they probably wouldn’t have found you.”

Alex, however, just shrugs. “It’s fine. I know what they’re saying about me. If I was in your spot, and I thought my friend might be in danger, I would probably have done the same."

“You’re definitely the first person I’ve met who’s been accused of three kinds of treason.” Snake’s lip quirks. “But then we got to the flat, of course, and we realised Wolf was on your side. And Eagle’s right: both of us trust Wolf more than anyone else in that room. So if he’s with you, then we’re with you.”

“Plus, you’re our teammate too,” Eagle adds. “Even if it’s been a long fuckin’ time since we last saw you. God, how many years has it been? Look at you, you can probably grow a beard now and everything.”

“Growing a better beard than yours isn’t that much of an accomplishment, Eagle,” says Wolf. “Listen, Cub, I know you’re still working on the whole... accepting other people’s help... thing. But you've got to know there’s not a chance in hell we would have gotten out of there, if it weren’t for them. You get that, right?”

Alex's mouth twists. “I know. I would still be with my loving foster family.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Shit. Thank you, I guess. This is weird. I don’t know what to say.”

"Cub," says Snake, "Did MI6..." Abruptly, he trails off. Nobody, however, steps up to fill the tense silence that the half-finished question creates, and after a moment Snake swears under his breath and asks, "Did they hurt you? Is that why this is all happening? You don't have to give us specifics, but..."

"Yeah," says Alex. "They did."

Eagle glances away, all mirth gone from him. Snake simply nods, but Wolf has spent enough time around him to notice the muscle that twitches in his forehead; the tell of his anger.

Yet something about Alex's admission seems oddly false, to Wolf. Maybe it's because hurt is such a small word, a childish word, a word for when someone kicks your shin on the playground and you run crying to a teacher. It doesn't even scratch the surface of what MI6 have done to Alex. The depth of it; the layers of manipulation and dehumanisation that Wolf feels like he barely understands himself.

But at the same time, there's something that rings true in the simplicity of it. Six hurt one of theirs, so K Unit will protect him. With their lives, if necessary. That's how it works, for them.

"So what's the plan?" asks Wolf.

The atmosphere in the not-quite-an-alleyway sharpens; everyone stands a little straighter, as if simultaneously remembering that they're all still very much running for their lives.

“Our plan was to get you out of there, and let you resume whatever plan you two had, before the place got swarmed."

“Our plan was international soil,” says Alex. “The UN headquarters in Westminster.”

“That makes sense," says Snake, approval in his voice. "You think they’ll shelter you from Six?”

“I hope so. Because if they don’t, then I don’t have anywhere else left to try.”

Eagle clears his throat. "Well, in that case. Time for a good old group roadtrip, don't you think?"

The drop-off location turns out to be not too far from where they stopped. Another half-mile and they come to a stop, in a slightly less claustrophobic alleyway entrance, lurking just beyond the chatter and amber lights of a local pub.

“James,” Alex says quietly, while Snake and Eagle venture out to find the brother, “Your sister...”

Wolf’s throat tightens. He takes a deep breath. Since they left the building, he has been categorically Not Thinking about the photograph that Agent Kopp pulled out of her pocket. That, too, had been the exterior of a building, much like the one they are standing beside. The windows warmly-lit, the shadows inside oblivious to their watchers. Although it had been taken in darkness, Wolf would recognise the stucco front of that two-bedroom terraced house anywhere.

“For what it’s worth," says Alex, "I don’t think Blunt will touch her. Or your nephew. He’s an evil piece of shit, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not sadistic. Every terrible thing he does is done with purpose. Without you here to blackmail, there would be no point in hurting them. And I know he’s gotten away with a lot of bullshit, but hurting them – especially your nephew – is something he might actually face consequences for. If it got out somehow.”

Wolf had figured as much, when he did the split-second mental calculation on whether to risk it, as they were leaving the building. He’s met Blunt all of two times, and both times he struck Wolf as the kind of ruthless bastard who would wring blood from a stone if necessary, but wouldn’t take a drop more than he needed.

But still, he asks, “Is that what you really think? Or are you just saying it to make me feel better?”

“It’s my professional opinion, I swear. As a good-for-nothing spy. And as someone who’s been hurt and blackmailed by Blunt, in the past.”

Wolf exhales. “Thanks. God. No offence, Cub, but I really hate your boss.”

“Me too. It’s a horribly toxic work environment. I’ve been trying to put in my two weeks’ notice for years, believe me.”

Wolf almost smiles. Then he remembers. “Cub... I’m s—”

“If you say you’re sorry that you chose your literal sister and three-year-old nephew over me, I’ll break both of your legs.”

Wolf shuts his mouth accordingly.

He gazes out at the street. It feels like a long time ago, weeks rather than days, that Alex crash-landed on his doorstep. Since then, Wolf knows that his priorities have shifted. It occurs to him that if this is successful, there isn’t going to be any going back to "normal". He’s tangled up in Alex’s life now, whatever that means. If they succeed, if they actually get Alex to somewhere safe, what will happen? He brings down MI6? He sues the British government? What will Wolf’s role in this look like?

He should probably be more panicked about it, but unusually, for Wolf, he finds it difficult to call up the anxiety that should be there. All he can feel is certainty that he made the right decision. And Wolf is almost, almost allowing himself to feel hope.

“So what d’you think of the getaway car?”

For a second, Wolf can’t find Eagle’s voice. The only car parked nearby is a black cab that's just drawn up, light switched off to indicate the cabbie already has a passenger, so go somewhere else, thankyouverymuch.

Then it hits him.

“Eagle, you fucking genius.”

Wolf honestly couldn’t think of a more inconspicuous way of getting around the city. The taxi is clearly not a fake, with slightly battered paintwork and greying dice swinging over the dashboard. Six will be watching cars, of course, but with the windows already blacked out? For completely non-suspicious reasons? It might actually work.

Eagle grins out of the rolled-down window. “Joe promised me he’d lend me this once, and only once, for an emergency. So this better go well, or I’m uninvited from Christmas dinner.”

Before Wolf can reply, however, Snake’s voice cuts across them, sharp with alarm.

“Cub? You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” comes a mumble. “Just a minute...”

Ice floods through Wolf.

Although he was holding a conversation with the kid only a few minutes ago, Cub is leaning against the alley wall again, and not lightly. He looks like he’s resting half his body weight against the bricks. His chin has dropped low, casting his face into shadow.

Snake moves before Wolf does, carefully hooking an arm around Cub’s shoulder.

“’M fine,” the kid protests, but Wolf sees him blinking, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I thought you spies were supposed to be good liars,” says Snake. “Wolf, take the rest of his weight. Help me get him in the car.”

When Wolf mirrors Snake’s supporting position on Alex’s other side, however, the kid can’t quite hide the way he winces. Wolf’s eyes fall – and another wave of fear washes through him. Where Wolf’s combats have come into contact with Cub’s side, the khaki material shows what the black hoodie was able to hide.

Blood.

And not a small amount of it.

“Sorry,” says Alex, his voice very small, “I think I tore those nice stitches you gave me.”

And his eyes slip shut again.

Snake swears all the way to the car. They manoeuvre him awkwardly into the backseat, Wolf feeling strangely detached from his hands, and from the weight in them. The kid is light, which Wolf expected, but he didn't expect the shocking coldness of his skin. When Wolf steps back, he can’t help wanting to kick himself for not doing anything sooner. The pallidness of Cub's skin is something awful. He hasn't quite lost consciousness, but he seems dazed, confused, and it makes him seem very young, without his wicked tongue and immaculate composure covering those lingering traces of childhood. Of vulnerability.

“Eagle, start the car,” Snake instructs, then goes into full medic mode. He narrates his actions, telling Cub that he’s going to lift the hoodie to check the injury. Wolf lingers, giving them room. When Snake is done, he ducks out of the car with a murderous expression.

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me he was injured?” he snaps, then shakes his head, and cups his forehead with his palm. “Sorry. It’s not your fault. You didn’t even know we were planning to help...”

“Is it really that bad?” Wolf asks, dread truly sinking its claws into him. They can’t lose Cub, not after everything they’ve done to get him this far. There’s no way the universe could be that cruel.

"I’m guessing he was running on adrenaline this whole time. Now it’s finally worn off, and it’s all hit him at once. Plus, he's lost a lot of blood... come on, get in the car. We can’t lose any more time.”

Wolf would describe Eagle’s relationship with the speed limit as fast and loose at the best of times, which these are not. The city becomes a blur around them. The sat nav announces upcoming turns with a chirpy voice that makes Wolf feel slightly hysterical.

"Forget the UN," says Snake. "We need to get him to the nearest hospi-"

"No."

Although Alex only looks half conscious, his eyes in the rearview mirror glint with determination.

"We're sticking with the plan," he says through gritted teeth. "Or I'll jump out of the car, I swear to god, James. If you... if you take me to a... they'll find me. I'm not going back to them."

"You're not," Wolf agrees. Snake presses his lips together tightly, and looks thoroughly unhappy, but doesn't object. He has come to the same conclusion that Wolf has: they don't get to make that choice for Alex, in the end. There will be medical personnel at the UN. Or there won't be. Either way, it'll be their final destination. "Don't worry, Cub. We'll get you there."

"We sure as fuck will," seconds Eagle. He puts his foot down, and the car speeds into the night.

Chapter Text

There’s not exactly a lot of chit-chat for the next part of the journey.

In the back of the taxi, Snake had gone into Medic Mode, asking Alex questions in a calm, measured voice while he does what he can for the injury. He’s stemmed the bleeding and conjured some fresh bandages seemingly out of thin air, and Alex hasn’t fainted again… but he hasn’t exactly sprang up and started doing cartwheels either. So Wolf doesn't relax just yet.

Wolf has learned his lesson about just how well the kid can mask pain.

In the front, Eagle drives, and Wolf – well, Wolf mostly tries not to feel too useless. He does have a job. He’s keeping an eye out for trouble.

But what does “trouble” look like, when you’re running from just about everyone?

Wolf gazes out of the rain-battered windows, eyes sliding over each pedestrian. Gaggles of clubbers clutching bottles. People filtering out of tube stations, headphones on, heads down. Girls who surely must be freezing, wearing only that in late October.

His gaze shifts to the rearview mirror, and he gets a glimpse of Alex. The kid is tucked into the backseat, his hood pulled up, head resting against the window. He’s looking out of the window, too, an unreadable expression on his face.

“We should turn on the radio,” says Eagle, after a while. “Might hear something useful.”

“Yeah,” Wolf agrees, and moves to flick the dial.

And sure enough—

“In the last hour, MI6 has confirmed that dangerous agent they’ve been searching for since last Friday is still at large. Residents of Greater London are reminded to exercise caution when leaving their homes, and report any suspicious behaviour immediately to the police.”

The newsreader has a crisp RP accent. In the corner of his eye, Wolf sees the way it snags Alex’s attention, drawing his focus back into the car.

“Additionally, in the last hour, MI6 has released another statement with new information about the case. MI6 have now stated that the rogue agent is not working alone, as he was previously assumed to be…” Wolf’s stomach does an uncomfortable turn, “… and images have been released of three men who are believed to be helping the agent.

“Civilians are urged to report any sightings to the police. A spokesperson for Scotland Yard has stressed that none of the men should be approached, as all four are thought to be armed and extremely dangerous…”

“Well, there goes the element of surprise,” Snake mutters.

“Fucking hell," says Eagle. His fingers have begun to drum nervously on the steering wheel. "Images, they said. Photos of us. If my parents see…”

“It doesn’t change anything,” says Snake, his voice firm. “After we get Cub to safety, everyone will know the truth anyway. And shush – we might be missing something important.”

The newsreader continues, “We can also report that, in the past hour, we’ve been getting an unprecedented number of calls from passengers at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, claiming that their flights have suddenly been cancelled. Whether this is related to the ongoing national emergency is yet to be confirmed...”

“They think he’s leaving the country,” says Eagle. “Fancy it, Cub? Holiday abroad? Somewhere nice and sunny, maybe. South of France? Italy?”

“Sounds lovely,” says Alex. “As long as it’s not Venice.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you another time…”

They listen for a little longer, waiting for any more news, but the newsreader seems to have finished with Alex. He moves on to discussing a celebrity’s pregnancy, and, feeling as if this information won’t be very helpful to their cause, Wolf turns the radio down.

He feels a twinge of disappointment. They haven’t learned much. Not really. What he really wanted to hear about – and what they failed to mention, of course – was roadblocks. Because if the police or MI6 or whothefuckever are stopping and searching cars, then they’re done for. Even if there were a way to hide Alex, they’re all too recognisable now.

But that’s exactly what they’re not going to announce, is it? Not when Six knows that they could be listening.

Wolf’s teeth worry at his lower lip. Maybe… maybe the whole airport thing is actually a distraction. Maybe Six are counting on the fact that K Unit will be listening out for news, and they’re trying to lure them into a false sense of security. Maybe Six know exactly where K Unit is really heading, and they’re preparing a trap...

Perhaps the others are having similar thoughts, because the longer they drive, the more tense atmosphere in the car seems to become. They’re covering ground, yes, but slowly. When they hit their third red light in five minutes, Eagle lets out a frustrated breath.

“Coincidence?” Wolf says half-heartedly.

“In my experience, there’s no such thing,” says Alex, and then, as if to prove his point, blue lights begin to flash in the car’s side mirrors.

Eagle swears.

Wolf twists around in his seat to get a better look. “It’s an ambulance. Three … no, four cars behind us. Doesn’t have its siren on.”

Snake is frowning. “If it’s an ambulance…”

Wolf wonders if he’s reluctant to suspect a fellow medic. “Do no harm”, and all that.

“What,” says Alex, “You think we can pose as a taxi but the MI6 can’t pose as an ambulance?”

Eagle swears again.

“If they find us—” Alex begins, but Wolf cuts him off.

“Shut up, Cub.”

"You have to say that I threatened you. Say I had people watching your families—”

“Wolf’s right,” says Snake. “Shut up, Cub. It’s not going to come to that.”

But even so, Wolf begins running through the mental checklist. Gun? Check. Phone? Check, although it’s been useless for the past few days. Cover? He glances out of all the window again. They’re in the middle of three lanes, and surrounded on either side by cars. Civilian cars, full of bystanders. If there’s a shootout, he’ll have to try and grab Alex and pull him behind one of them until he can find an exit route…

It almost takes him by surprise when the light turns green and the ambulance sails straight past them.

Just an ambulance, after all.

“Jesus Christ,” says Eagle, blowing out a long, anxious breath. “You really do this all the time, Cub? All these bloody mind games?”

“Well, I’m currently seeking a career change…”

But they don’t get to enjoy their newfound luck for long. No sooner has Eagle turned the next corner, he has to slam on the brakes. The traffic is backed up almost to the end of the street – blocked by the line of police cards that have cordoned off the other end of the road.

“Reverse,” says Cub, springing into action. “Reverse right now, Eagle!”

Eagle obeys.

“Do you think they saw us?” Snake asks, as Eagle manoeuvres the taxi back onto the road they came from and aims for the next exit.

“I don’t know,” says Eagle.

“Look,” says Wolf, “We’re not far now. We only need to get to the next junction, then it’s just a few more miles. There’s another turn-off here. We can just…”

His voice dies in his throat.

The next road is blocked by another line of flashing blue lights. And on this street, high-vis jackets are bobbing in the darkness, making their way from car to car.

Shit.

Cub doesn’t give an order this time. He doesn’t need to. Eagle reverses out again, and, instead of heading for the next turn-off, he pulls over to the side of the road. When he kills the engine, the silence that descends on the car is a heavy one.

“James,” says Eagle. “What do we do?”

Wolf swallows. He can feel the pressure of Snake and Eagle’s eyes on him – and even more keenly, he can feel the pressure of their expectations. Glancing in the rearview mirror again, and sees Cub scrubbing his face with his hands, looking pale and pained.

“Cub, this was your plan…”

“I know,” says Alex. “Just… just give me a second to think.”

Wolf obliges. But the “second” becomes a minute, becomes more, and Wolf is extremely aware that they’re on the clock here. The cops could expand their search at any minute…

He’s on the verge of speaking up again when Alex finally says, with a tone of deep resignation, “It’s possible that they know where we’re heading.”

“Did you leave a trail?” Snake asks sharply.

“No! I mean, I really tried not to. I spent the better part of a year planning this. But Blunt and Jones…” He sighs, a far heavier sigh than any teenager should have. “The problem is, they know me. They trained me. And they trained all the other people who trained me. I told you that my whole family were spies. So they know how I think, how I plan my missions. And they’ve had a few days to put their heads together and try to figure it out…”

Wolf sees the effect that his admission has on Snake and Eagle. Snake glances away to hide his expression, but Wolf sees the way his lips have pressed together tightly. Eagle’s foot is bouncing up and down, a familiar nervous tic.

K Unit is stuck. They’ve covered a lot of ground, sure; there are less than five miles to go now. But it might as well be five hundred, if every route there is blocked…

Think, Wolf urges himself. There has to be a way around it. Think…

Wolf runs over the events of the past few days in his head. Alex arriving at his flat. Alex almost bleeding to death. Their conversations. Alex tricking him; Alex lying to him…

For some reason, the memory that rises to the surface of Wolf’s mind is that of the two MI6 agents, standing in his bedroom, talking to Cub as he was tied to the chair.

And then, he thinks of what Alex said just now. They know how I think, how I plan my missions…

Suddenly, Wolf knows what to do.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Right. Cub, do you think you could walk for – say – a few miles?”

Wolf twists around in his seat to face him, and sees Alex blinking at the abrupt change in conversation.

“I – what?”

“I said, do you think you can walk?” Wolf asks again. “C’mon, kid, we don’t have a lot of time. If you think you’re going to faint again—”

“No,” says Alex. “I think I could walk that distance. If I went slowly. But what—”

“Good,” Wolf interrupts. “Then get ready. Here’s what we’re going to do.” He takes a deep breath, then launches into it. “Eagle, you’re going to drive the taxi to the end of the road, then pull over again. Cub, you and me are going to get out. I’m going to pretend to pay Eagle at the window. Make it look real. Then Cub, you and me are gonna walk the rest of the way. We can avoid main roads that way. Take backstreets and maybe go across a few gardens if we need to. If you’re sure you can do that?”

“Yeah.” Alex is nodding. “That makes sense. Two of us will attract less attention on foot than four.”

“Exactly,” says Wolf. But that was the easy bit; the part he knew Cub would agree to. The next part, however… “Snake, you’re going to stay in the car. Eagle, after you’ve let us out, I want you to turn around and put at least six or seven miles between us and you. Go back across the river if you can. Then… I want you to let yourself be seen.”

Alex reacts exactly as Wolf expected him to.

“Absolutely the fuck—"

“It wasn’t asking your permission, Cub. I was giving Eagle orders. I’m team leader and this is an emergency. Authority defaults to me.”

K Unit has a much more informal structure than most units; Wolf rarely pulls rank like this – so rarely that Snake and Eagle know to follow his orders, when he does. He sees them exchanging looks, both of them wearing grim expressions, but neither of them protest like Cub. Snake and Eagle will go along with his plan, he knows, because they trust his judgement. Because put their faith in his leadership on other missions, and he hasn’t let them down.

Alex, however, is not going down so easily.

“You don’t get it,” Alex practically snarls. “God, you’re so naïve. None of you have any idea what they’re like. What Blunt is like. As soon as he gets his hands on you, it’ll start. Do you think they’re above blackmail? Torture? You’d be better off telling Eagle to drive the car off a—”

“And what happens if they get their hands on you?” Wolf rounds on him. “What happens to us if Six recaptures you before we can prove that you’re innocent? You heard the news. We’re traitors now. Best case scenario, I reckon, we all lose our careers. We get court-martialled. We spend the next decade or two in prison. Worst case scenario… what you just said. We get blackmailed, tortured, maybe killed. All because we helped you, Cub.”

Hurt and betrayal flashes across the kid’s eyes, but Wolf doesn’t let himself feel bad about it. Later, he'll deal with that later. Right now, his priority is keeping everyone alive.

Still, he tries to soften his voice a little as he says, “Listen, kid. Right now, there are too many eyes out there. We need to siphon off some of the cops or we’re never going to be able to slip past them. You just said that MI6 knows you too well. And back at the flat, that woman agent said that you ‘make friends easily’. They know you’re loyal to people, Cub. They’ll be expecting us to all stick together. They know you’re not gonna want to… to…”

“Use my teammates as bait.”

Wolf holds back his wince. “Yeah. And you know I don’t want to do it, either. But we have to distract them somehow or we’re all going to be fucked. Now, are you gonna do what has to be done? Or are you going to keep wasting time and make sure we all get caught?”

Cub holds his gaze for a long, long moment.

Then he looks away with a jerky motion. Wolf exhales, knowing it’s as close to an acceptance as he’s going to get.

“Okay,” he says. “Eagle, get us moving.”

True to his word, Alex can walk.

He seems, however, to have lost the ability to speak. He only nods when Snake instructs him how to move – go slowly; go carefully; avoid any bending motions that will aggravate the wound any further.

Alex slams the taxi door with far more force than necessary. Wolf bites back a comment about moody teenagers. He knows he’s putting Cub through his own personal hell right now.

And the kid can hate him. That’s fine.

As long as he stays alive to do so.

It takes a little time before they start to notice the effects of their plan. They find a way to cross the police line that involves ducking through an alleyway, but the next roadblock proves more of a challenge. There are cops checking every civilian who passes on the pavement, even ones who are obviously the wrong age or gender. Wolf chews his lip as they watch from a distance…

… until one of the cops who gets a call. The conversation is short, and when she puts the phone down, she motions to the others on the street. Wolf hears snatches of the conversation through the still-drizzling rain.

“…Tower Bridge… think it’s him… reinforcements…”

Then, sure enough, more than half of the cops peel away, driving off in the direction that Wolf instructed Eagle to head in. The handful that remain on the street are too few in number to check every passerby; Wolf and Alex manage to slip past them.

Still, even as they’re covering ground again, their pace is almost torturously slow. Wolf stays half a step behind Alex, as Snake advised, watching the kid’s step in case he gets light-headed again. On his best day, Wolf can run a six-minute mile, but now he’s starting to think that they’ll be lucky if they reach the embassy before the sun comes up.

Nerves tingle beneath Wolf’s skin at the thought of still being out here at dawn. He knows that this whole thing will become way more difficult when they lose the cover of darkness – when commuters and dog-walkers and early morning runners start to trickle out of their houses. People who will just have seen their faces on the morning news…

Wolf almost walks into Cub when he stops, outright, in the middle of the street.

“Listen,” says Wolf, trying to stay patient, “I know you’re pissed at me, but we need to keep—”

“I know,” Alex interrupts. “I just got distracted…” Wolf follows his gaze, and realises the kid is looking over at a park on the other side of the street. “I used to play football over there. Feels weird seeing it again.”

Wolf feels his eyebrows going up. He suspected Alex came from money, but even so, they’re in central London. This is the kind of area where you need several trust funds and then some to afford a place to live.

“This was your local?” he asks, falling into step beside Alex as they carry on walking.

“Nah. Our team – my school team – our practice ground was in Chelsea. But me and my best friend used to come here on the weekend when no-one had booked the pitch. It was less busy than everywhere else.” His lips curve into something that’s almost a smile. “The gardener ran us off a few times. Said we ruined the grass.”

“You really like football, eh?”

“Yeah. You?”

“I’m Argentinian.”

At that, Alex does smile. “I… I actually wanted to be a footballer. Before MI6.”

Wolf tries to hold back his surprise. It’s just… so idealistic. So at odds with the Cub he’s come to know – the cold, hard realism, often crossing the line into flat-out cynicism, he’s come to expect from the kid.

“I know, I know,” says Alex. “In my defence, I was fourteen. Every other boy in my class also wanted to be a footballer.”

“Were you any good?”

Alex frowns slightly, like he hadn’t considered that. “I wasn’t bad, I suppose? Not exactly Premier League material, though. And I’m too old to try out now, anyway.”

“Oh yeah, you’re practically decrepit.”

“I am, actually. In athlete terms. If you’re not enrolled in a sports academy by the time you’re sixteen, you might as well forget about it. And I’m out of practice. I haven’t so much as kicked a ball around in years. And besides, they’d never take anyone with…”

“Anyone with what?”

Alex sighs again. “Anyone with my kind of injuries.”

Oh. “The bullet wound.”

“And the rest.”

They walk for another street or two in silence. Then, Wolf asks, “What about your friend? The one who you used to come here with?”

“Tom?” Wolf sees Alex rubbing at the back of his neck. “Honestly, I haven’t seen him in years. I kind of… let the friendship slip away. Stopped replying to his texts. It was less dangerous for him, that way.”

Wolf nods. It makes sense. It makes sense, with Alex’s job. Emotional distancing. Pushing everyone away to protect them. Making them less likely to be hurt – and making yourself less likely to hurt over them, if something does happen.

It makes sense, but it’s still awfully lonely. Especially for a kid.

“If this works,” says Wolf, “If you manage to clear your name… will you try and reconnect with people you knew before?”

Alex doesn’t reply straight away.

“I don’t know,” he says eventually. “I was thinking about that in the car. I want it to work, obviously. But if it does… up until now, I’ve put all my energy into planning how to get away from Six, you know? I didn’t really let myself think about what comes next.”

Wolf nods understandingly. “Listen, once you’re out, once it’s over… you can do anything you—”

“Oh, are you gonna give me the speech about how I can do anything in the world if I put my mind to it? That I can become an astronaut? Or a deep-sea diver?” A smirk plays on Alex’s lips; the little shit. “Or maybe a pop-star… I could release the best album the world’s ever—”

“Fuck off. I know you can’t sing.”

“What if I told you that MI6 trained me to go undercover in a French opera house last year?”

Wolf stares at him for a few seconds.

Alex bursts into laughter. “Oh my God, you’re so easy to rile up…”

It’s a credit to the fact that Cub is seriously injured that Wolf doesn’t slap him upside the head.

“Seriously, though,” says Wolf, after Alex’s laughter has faded to just a lingering grin. “I’m sure a bunch of other people will tell you this, when this whole thing is over. But you can do whatever the hell you want with the rest of your life, kid. Start over, if you can’t go back… and you’re bound to be annoyingly good at whatever you try, anyway.”

“And you’re bound to be insanely jealous of my skills,” Alex shoots back. But then he gives Wolf a look that – if Wolf isn’t mistaken – contains a hint of gratitude. “Thanks, though. I, uhh. Appreciate the vote of confidence.”

They lapse into another silence, although it’s a lot less tense than before, and Wolf is grateful for that. As K Unit’s leader, he always feels best when he has all of his teammates a) in his line of sight, b) on good terms with him. At least he has the latter, since the former isn’t possible.

There’s a tight knot of anxiety in his stomach that he knows won’t go away until this is over, and he’s personally seen that Snake and Eagle are fine. Wolf has been steadily avoiding thinking about them. Where they are. What might be happening to them… with some luck, just being glimpsed will be enough, and they’ll manage to evade actual capture…

The next time Alex stops walking, Wolf doesn’t stop.

“Okay, unless you’re gonna pass out again, we need to keep it—”

A hand grabs Wolf’s arm and pulls him to a halt.

“Wolf. That’s it.”

Wolf looks around. He’s been relying on Alex – who seems to have a near-photographic memory – for navigation. They’re about to turn into a street that looks mostly residential, if extremely upper-class. He follows Alex’s gaze… to a large, redbrick building halfway down the street. Now that Wolf is looking properly, he notices a few things that distinguish it from the neighbouring houses.

For one, there’s a golden plaque on one of the columns leading up to it. They’re much too far away to read it – but not too far away to see the line of flagpoles that are mounted above the doorway. In the centre is a Union Jack, swaying gentle in the night breeze.

Wolf blinks.

It’s the embassy.

They’re here. They made it.

On instinct, Wolf moves to approach, but Alex’s grip on his arm tightens. Then he’s pulling Wolf back, into the shadow of a nearby tree. Wolf doesn’t question it, just scans the street, eyes narrowing, searching for what Alex has seen that clearly he’s missed.

Sure enough, there are two cars are parked directly opposite the embassy. Two cars with blacked-out windows. A guy leans against one, scrolling on his phone, looking a little too casual. The jacket he’s wearing could look so bulky because he’s just a big guy… or it could be because he’s wearing a bulletproof vest underneath.

“Agents?” says Wolf.

“Or plainclothes cops,” says Alex. He runs a hand through his hair. “God. It’s right there…”

“We’ll find a way in,” says Wolf.

He understands the kid’s frustration. The end is literally in sight. All they need to do is get Alex over the threshold, and then he’ll be on neutral territory, and at long last, he’ll be out of danger. They’re at the very last hurdle.

“We need a distraction,” Wolf muses.

“You sent our distraction to the other side of London.”

“And we wouldn’t have gotten here if I hadn’t done that.”

Wolf stares at the street in front of them, stares until his eyes start watering from the glare of the streetlights. There has to be a way to get in without being seen; there has to be…

He glances over at Alex, and sees a calculating look on the kid’s face.

“You got an idea?”

“Yes. But you’re not going to like it.”

Wolf pinches the bridge of his nose. “If you’re about to suggest handing yourself over again–”

“No,” says Alex. “It’s not that. It’s… it’s something that will only work if you really trust me.”

Wolf stares at him. “Listen, I know you’re used to working alone, but I thought that after the hundred conversations about trust that we’ve had tonight—”

“We had a lot of conversations about me trusting you,” says Alex, his voice tight. “Not about the other way around.”

Wolf stops short.

… shit. Despite everything, despite all the work they’ve done breaking down Alex’s walls, it’s true, isn’t it? So far, all of their trust stuff has mostly been a one-way street.

Wolf swallows. Alex is a spy. He spent days manipulating Wolf. Less than twelve hours ago, he knocked Wolf out and tied him up in his own apartment.

But… but Wolf knows the reasons that Alex did all of that, now. And the more he thinks about it, the more clear it becomes in his mind. Hasn’t he seen Alex’s true colours, over and over again, by now? Sure, Alex has a chequered past. And Wolf isn’t stupid; there’s probably a lot of unpleasant stuff that he doesn’t know about, with him having worked for Six for almost half a decade.

But Wolf also knows that it was never his choice to be part of it. And sure, Alex can be a little scary – a frightening combination of extremely reckless and crazily smart – but his heart is in the right place. He doesn’t like people being hurt. He’s a good kid.

“Cub,” says Wolf, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I trust you. What’s the plan?”

And he feels some tension drain out of Cub, beneath his touch.

“First of all,” says Alex. “You need to give me the gun.”

Wolf doesn’t like the plan.

Wolf really does not like the plan.

It’s only gonna be for a few minutes, he tells himself as he wrings his hands and tries to prepare. Only gonna be for a few minutes…

Alex is preparing too: he’s unloaded and is now reloading the gun, turning it over in his hands, examining it.

“Meet your standards?” asks Wolf. He’s trying not to watch, but his eyes keep being drawn back to the weapon with a warped sort of fascination. Like the impulse to watch the needle when having blood drawn.

“It’ll do.”

“You never came to the shooting range with us at Brecon.”

“No. I wasn’t allowed to.”

Wolf decides not to ask the obvious question: Then who did teach you to handle a gun like that? He suspects he might not like the answer.

“Just let me do the talking,” Alex says, after they’ve been over the plan twice. “If they ask you any questions, I’ll try to answer for you. But if you do have to talk…”

“Stick to the story. I’m not an idiot, Cub.”

Alex hesitates. “Wolf, are you sure—”

“Just get over here,” Wolf says, more harshly than he intended. Before I lose my nerve.

It takes a moment to figure out a position that looks realistic. Eventually, they settle for Alex holding Wolf’s wrists with one hand together behind his back, and holding the gun in the other.

Then Wolf has to close his eyes as Alex places the gun against the side of Wolf’s head.

When he feels the cold sting of metal, every instinct in Wolf’s body screams at him – get away get away get away. Instantly, his mind provides him with a dozen ways to disarm Alex. He needs to get out of this situation, even if he has to punch Alex, kick him, hurt him…

“You okay?” Alex asks.

“Yeah,” Wolf manages to say around the lump in his throat. “Let’s – let’s get on with it.”

Wolf didn’t think he could feel any more vulnerable than he does already, completely stripped of control with a weapon being held again his head. But he learns that yes, there’s a new level of powerlessness he still can reach, when Alex drags him out into the middle of the empty street.

“I’ve got a hostage!” Alex shouts. “Try anything and I’ll shoot!”

The reaction is instantaneous.

It’s almost comical, how many people come pouring out of the woodwork. Four agents – Wolf thinks they’re agents – emerge from the cars. Another two come from out of a side-street, and one seems to materialise out of literally nowhere. In the blink of an eye, it’s gone from being a quiet night on a residential street to an active shootout.

Most of them have guns – and those that do are training them directly on Wolf and Alex.

“I’ve got a hostage,” Alex yells again, making Wolf wince because it’s right in his ear. Then Alex drops his voice and murmurs in Wolf's ear, “Let’s go. Like we planned.”

They move in slow, excruciating steps, with Alex leading, like the world’s most awkward, heart-attack-inducing dance. Alex keeps them on the pavement, with the line of houses at their backs, which will hopefully preventing anyone from getting a vantage point from behind.

All of the muscles in Wolf’s body feel pulled tight. He has to make himself breathe manually, in and out, in and out, or he thinks he might forget to do it. With every step, he’s aware of the press of the gun at his temple. There's a loud voice in Wolf's head telling him that this is, hands down, the stupidest thing he's ever done. He trusts Alex, yes, he's come to that conclusion - but does he really trust anyone enough for this? Wolf is a soldier; he knows not to fuck with guns in this way. A single slip of Alex's finger, a moment's lapse in concentration, and Wolf will be dead before he hits the ground.

Don't think about it, he tells himself firmly. Don't fucking think about it.

Instead, Wolf turns his eyes to the agents. They've clustered in front of the cars. One is speaking very quickly into an earpiece. Others have their heads together in conversation, though their eyes are pinned on Alex and Wolf. Wolf tries not to meet any of their gazes. If he does, he’s sure that they’ll see right through him - they'll look into him with that patented MI6 death stare and realise it's fake.

They make it about halfway down the street before the agents – as Alex predicted they would – try to engage.

“It’s over now, Alex,” calls the man who was the lookout. He seems to be the one in charge, judging by their body language. His voice has a kind of deliberate ease, and his hand is half-outstretched, in a gesture that makes Wolf think of a zookeeper trying to wrangle a volatile lion. “There’s nowhere left to run. If you come quietly, I can guarantee that you won’t be hurt.”

“You seem to be missing the fact that I have a hostage,” Alex replies.

The man’s eyes flicker briefly to Wolf before returning to Alex.

“You can drop the ruse. We know San Luca’s working with you. We know you won’t really—”

In a fluid motion, Alex points the gun away and fires. The sound is earth-shatteringly loud. Wolf can’t hold back a flinch, especially when the gun is immediately returned to the side of his head.

“Anyway,” says Alex lightly. “Now that we’ve established that this thing is loaded, and I’m willing to use it, I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen, and you’re going to do exactly what I want you to do, or I will fuck San Luca up.”

Something seems to ripple through the agents. Wolf sees them exchanging glances; dark looks. He suspects he wasn’t the only one who flinched at the gunshot. When he looks over at where Alex shot, he sees a neat, round hole in the windscreen of the nearest car - exactly where the driver would sit.

“Okay, Rider," says the agent in charge. "Give us your terms.”

“I’m going into the embassy," says Alex. "None of you are going to move from where you’re currently standing. If you try anything, I’ll shoot Wolf.”

“You must know that if you kill him—”

“Then there’ll no longer be anything stopping you from shooting me. Yeah, I know how a hostage situation works, thanks. But I don’t need to kill him to do serious damage.” Wolf feels the gun press in a little further. “Do you think the SAS will still want him back if I put a bullet in each of his hands? I know they pay tens of thousands to train each of these guys. At what point do you think he becomes too damaged to be worth the cost?”

Wolf's throat feels tight. He doesn't mean it, he tells himself, as he stares resolutely at the cobbled stone of the street. He doesn't mean it. It's just an act. He's just saying what he needs to sell it...

But still, his heart is hammering against his ribcage, and he honestly doesn't know much more of this he can take.

There's a look of open contempt on the agent's face. “You know, we were told that San Luca was working with you. That he considers you a friend.”

“Wolf got me where I needed to be,” says Alex. “He helped me out. That’s what friendship’s all about, right?”

“So you were just using K Unit, this whole time? That’s what you’re saying?”

“Well, I learned from the best about using people. Give Blunt my love, won’t you?”

The man looks at Alex for another long second, before turning away and beginning to exchange words with the other agents again.

Alex tugs on Wolf’s hands, a clear motion to keep moving. They take another step. Two. Three.

“You’re a really good actor,” Wolf mutters, trying not to move his lips.

“Sorry,” Alex whispers. “Have to make it look real.”

Unfortunately, approaching the building means that they also have to approach the agents. Wolf can see them better up close. At least three of them are talking into radios or earpieces or phones now. He doesn’t doubt that MI6 knows where they are. How long will it take for reinforcements to arrive? And how will they try to bring Alex in, when they do?

“Rider!” the agent in command calls, as they’re almost at the white marble steps that lead up to the embassy’s front door. “I have a message for you from Mr Blunt.”

“Tell him my birthday was in April,” says Alex. “He missed it.”

“He’s willing to negotiate if you stand down now.”

Alex lets out a laugh. “Blunt isn’t in a position to negotiate with me. He doesn’t have anything to negotiate with. The only thing I want from Six is freedom, and they’ve made it very clear that they’re not going to let me—”

“What about Jack Starbright?”

Alex goes utterly still.

Wolf sees something flash across the agent’s eyes. Foreboding creeps up Wolf’s spine. Who the hell is Jack Starbright? Alex has mentioned an uncle, over these last few days, but Wolf could have sworn Alex called him by another name, not “Jack”. And just now, he mentioned a “Tom”…

But no Jack. And definitely no Jack important enough to justify the reaction he can half-hear, half-feel – Alex’s breathing becoming fast and shallow; his grip on Wolf’s wrists slackening.

“Jack’s dead,” says Alex. The two syllables are laden with pain.

“Mr Blunt says she wanted out. After Egypt. The car bombing was faked, but it made her realise that you were too dangerous to be associated with. They arranged for her to return to the States.”

Wolf hears Alex’s breath catch.

“You’re – you’re lying.”

But there’s uncertainty in Alex’s voice. And the gun is wavering, now, at Wolf’s temple.

“It’s not too late to fix things, Alex. You’re still a valuable asset. All of this can be reversed. Your mistakes are fixable… and you can see Miss Starbright again. She’s agreed to a meeting, if it means bringing you in safely.”

Wolf’s stomach sinks.

What will happen to him, if Alex says yes? To Snake and Eagle? No, there’s no point questioning it. Wolf knows what will happen. It will be over. They’ll be done.

But how can Alex not say yes?

Wolf doesn’t know the ugly details, but he thinks he can figure out the main parts of it. This Jack, whoever she was, was someone that Alex was awfully close to. And she died because of it. Or, Alex thought she died. And it affected him so badly that he hasn’t mentioned it – hasn’t breathed a word about it – even as him and Wolf have been becoming closer, over this past week. Becoming something like friends.

But it sounds like this Jack was family. And Wolf knows how little Alex has of that.

Fuck. Wolf braces himself for the worst.

And then a voice whispers in his ear, “C’mon, James. I thought you knew we had to keep moving?”

Wolf feels his mouth fall open in shock.

Alex… Alex isn’t taking the bait.

Alex is choosing K Unit.

Wolf never thought he’d feel glad to feel a gun pressing more firmly against his head, but tonight has been full of surprises. Alex steers them on, another step, another…

“Rider!” the agent is calling, “Rider, you’re making a mistake!”

But Alex doesn’t seem to be listening anymore.

There are exactly seven steps leading from the street to the building’s entrance. Every one of them is a trial. Wolf has to feel his way up them backwards, blind, fearing that he will lose his footing at any moment. In his mind’s eye, he tries to picture what Alex is doing, though his actual eyes are on the group of agents as their composure visibly disintegrates. Voices are becoming frantic. In the distance, Wolf hears sounds of cars approaching. Distant tires…

Actually getting inside the building is kind of a blur. Wolf feels a sharp tug backwards. Then a sudden blast of heat – warm, indoor air—

And then he’s being slammed onto a hard floor. The breath is knocked out of him. Pain screams through in his ribs.

“Don’t hurt him!” he hears Alex’s voice from somewhere above. “You can have the gun! We haven’t got any other weapons, you can check…”

Alex’s fake grip on his wrists has been replaced by a very real one; a strong set of hands is holding him tightly as someone pats him down. When they apparently decide that he’s weapon-free, he feels the pressure release, and someone pulls him up into a kneeling position. Wolf blinks, trying to make his eyes adjust. It’s shockingly bright in here, compared to outside. Everything seems to be made of white tiles.

“Oh my God,” says a woman’s voice. “It’s him. It’s the guy from the news.”

And then comes Cub’s voice, loud and clear.

“My name’s Alex. I’m eighteen. Until last week, I worked for MI6, but my employment was entirely against my will. I’m here to seek legal immunity and to report a very long list of crimes committed against me by the British government. And this is Corporal James San Luca of the SAS. He’s here to give evidence.”

Wolf glances across. Alex is in much the same position as him, kneeling on the floor with his hands held up in the universal sign for surrender. His voice is steady – but Wolf can see the way his hands are shaking.

And yeah, Wolf is beginning to feel the adrenaline hangover hit him, too. It hardly feels real to finally be here, to look up and see the faces that are staring down at them.

They haven’t exactly got a grand reception, at this hour of the morning. There are two women wearing suits, hovering near a desk. A couple of security guards, one of them holding the gun, the other looking slightly horrified to see blood on his own hands (probably Alex’s). And Wolf thinks he hears the sound of doors opening – more people filtering into the lobby, drawn by the commotion?

All of the staff are looking as if this is miles above their pay grade.

“Look,” says Alex, sounding as tired as Wolf feels, “If you can just get me a lawyer, I promise I have a really, really good case for them.”