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Chapter Text

It all began with Brookland school’s headmasters Grand Educational Excursion. Which sounded impressive until you realised it was just a poorly disguised excuse for twenty bored Year 10s to be dragged into the Lake District to “build character.”

Alex Rider had fought trained assassins in Venice, infiltrated nuclear facilities, and leapt out of a helicopter with only a half-functioning parachute and a grudge.
But this? This was worse.

"This trip is going to be sick, bruv!" shouted Jamie Weston for the fifth time in as many minutes. “Proper Bear Grylls vibe. I’m gonna drink stream water and everything.”

“Do us a favour and drown in it,” muttered Alex, too quietly for anyone to hear. He sat wedged between the condensation slick window of the minibus and a tower of shared rucksacks, one headphone in, not playing music but pretending to. His waterproof jacket was zipped to his chin, and he wore the resigned expression of someone who had accepted their own impending emotional doom. Tom was lightly snoring in the seat across the aisle next to him, having been kept awake by the ruckus of parental disputes all night.

Brooklands Secondary’s Year 10 Lake District Adventure™ had been billed as a transformative character-building experience. In Alex’s experience, "character-building" generally meant someone would get hypothermia and the teachers would pretend it was a learning opportunity.

Mr Harrow, the geography teacher with a comb-over and a voice like a broken smoke alarm, sat up front beside the driver. Occasionally he banged his clipboard on his knee and shouted things like, “Remember your buddy system!” and “No wandering off!”

Not that anyone was listening.

Jamie was too busy trying to impress Katie Fenton with a loud and inaccurate explanation of how to wrestle a bear. Liam “Beans” Murphy, so named after a tragic incident involving school lunch chilli and a fire drill, was recording the journey on a GoPro his uncle gave him for Christmas.

Alex pressed his forehead against the glass, watching the rainy northern countryside slide by in shades of grey. They'd be arriving at the activity centre soon. Then three days of group bonding, campfire songs, unqualified map reading, and kids who thought you could boil pasta in a kettle.

He tried not to think about it. Or about the fact that someone had called him “heroin chic” in the lunch queue last week. That someone had been Jamie, who was now three seats away attempting to ignite a portable gas stove with a lighter.

He should have said no to the trip. Mrs Jones had even offered him a forged letter about a “family bereavement” if he’d wanted out. But no. He had insisted. He’d been insistent that he could be normal.

He was fifteen now. Just a kid again. Just Alex.

No more spy games. No more near-death experiences. No more extracting uranium rods from underground bunkers with chewing gum and a shoelace. Just… PE class. Homework. Group projects with people who thought Uzbekistan was a made-up country.

Normal.

He wanted normal.

Then Jamie, blessed with the lungs of a foghorn and the subtlety of a sledgehammer, turned around in his seat and shouted, “Oi, Rider. You alright, mate? You look like you’ve just escaped from rehab. You gonna make it through the trip, or should we get you an emotional support llama?”

Laughter erupted around the minibus.

Alex didn’t react. He didn’t even blink.

Instead, he slowly pulled out his other headphone, looked Jamie in the eye, and said with absolute, weary sincerity, “I hope you get eaten by a fox.”

The bus erupted again, but now it was harder to tell if they were laughing at Jamie or at Alex’s deadpan delivery. Jamie, ever the alpha, recovered with a theatrical gasp and a, “See, Katie? He’s feral!”

“Right,” Mr Harrow bellowed from the front. “That’s quite enough banter. Ten minutes to the centre. Prepare yourselves for nature.”

Beans raised his GoPro. “Day one, gang,” he said solemnly. “If I die out there… tell my mum I never passed my maths mock.”

Alex leaned back against the cold window, letting his eyes close briefly.

Ten minutes to the centre.

Three days of pretending.

What could possibly go wrong?

-
The activity centre was a converted youth hostel with a leaky roof and suspicious stains on the floorboards. It sat hunkered in the shadow of a slate-grey hillside like it was trying to apologise for existing. Outside, the rain had turned to a lazy drizzle that smelt like sheep and damp trainers.

"Welcome to Gorsefield Lodge!" Mr Harrow announced as they tumbled off the minibus like miserable dominoes. "Our home for the next three days. Phones off, minds open, teamwork essential."

No one clapped.

Beans sneezed. Loudly.

Inside the lodge, the air was thick with the scent of mildew, floor polish, and a group of teenagers realising they were about to experience suffering. The entrance hall contained laminated posters titled things like LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINTS, TAKE ONLY MEMORIES! and ARE YOU A TEAM PLAYER? There was also a stuffed badger in a glass box by the stairs, which seemed to be judging them.

“Right!” chirped Miss Dalton, the younger of the two teachers and unfortunately the more enthusiastic. “Room lists are up. Bags in the drying room first. Remember, no changing your allocations!”

A groan rippled through the group.

Alex moved wordlessly toward the noticeboard, already resigned to fate.

Sure enough, there it was:

Room 5
• Jamie Weston
• Liam “Beans” Murphy
• Alex Rider

He briefly considered faking a broken leg.

“Oi oi!” Jamie bellowed. “Dream team!”

Alex gave him a tight-lipped smile that could have curdled milk.

Room 5 was on the first floor: two bunk beds, a single window overlooking a rain-slicked field, and an overpowering smell of old socks and damp wood. Someone had scrawled POO into the condensation on the glass. Probably Jamie, who immediately threw his bag on the top bunk and started unzipping it like he was setting up camp in a warzone.

Beans wandered in behind them, wheezing slightly under the weight of his gear. “D’you think we’ll get haunted here?” he asked, dropping his backpack with a thud.

“We can hope,” Alex muttered.

He picked the lower bunk furthest from Jamie, sat down, and began unpacking with the efficiency of someone who once had to assemble a sniper rifle in under two minutes.

“Mate,” Jamie said, flopping backwards onto his bed. “You’re so neat. What, were you in the Scouts or something?”

Alex didn’t reply. He was counting socks and weapons. (Technically, the Swiss Army knife was for opening tins. Technically.) God he missed smithers’ gadgets.

Mr Harrow’s whistle blew downstairs.

“Common room in five!” he called. “Briefing, then dinner!”

Jamie was already halfway out the door. “Bet it’s spaghetti hoops,” he said. “I’m gonna inhale like four portions. Come on, Rider, you need bulking up. You look like an extra in Trainspotting.”

Alex stood. Breathed in. Let it go. He reminded himself, again, that he was not on a mission. No one was trying to kill him (yet). And MI6 had explicitly requested he not harm any of his classmates.

Even if they were idiots.

-
The common room was a garish, echoey space filled with fraying beanbags, mismatched chairs, and an electric heater that made a worrying buzzing noise when switched on. The ceiling had once been white. Now it looked like the underbelly of a diseased frog.

The students slouched into place in a loose semi-circle around Miss Dalton, who stood at the front beside a flipchart labelled ACTIVITY GOALS. She had a clipboard, a whiteboard marker, and a wildly naïve enthusiasm of someone who genuinely believed this trip might change lives.

“We’re going to focus on four themes,” she said brightly. “Communication. Resilience. Navigation. And mutual respect.”

Jamie elbowed Alex. “Resilience,” he snorted. “That’s what I’ve got after six hours on Fortnite.”
Alex stared ahead.

Miss Dalton beamed. “Tomorrow, we’ll be heading out for our orienteering challenge. That means maps, compasses, checkpoints, and eventually-” she paused for drama, “-a full overnight wild camp in the hills.”

A collective groan.

Someone whispered, “I’m calling Childline.”

“There’ll be no mobile signal,” Mr Harrow added grimly. “You’ll be relying on one another. As nature intended. Well that and a GPS and a map.”

Jamie raised his hand. “What if someone dies?”

Miss Dalton laughed. “Don’t be silly.”

“No, but like-hypothetically-what if someone goes missing? Or eats something poisonous? Like a mushroom. Or, like… Alex?”

The group chuckled. Alex blinked slowly. “I’ll be sure to point you toward the toxic ones.”

Miss Dalton cleared her throat. “Anyway! Dinner’s at six, lights out by ten, breakfast early. Remember, you’re here to push your boundaries. Let nature surprise you.”

Alex leaned back in the chair and muttered under his breath, “Nature can try.”

-
Dinner was served in what the lodge optimistically called the Dining Hall. In reality, it was a long, echoey and very multi-purpose room that smelt like gravy granules and wet wool, with folding tables arranged in long rows and stackable plastic chairs designed by someone who hated the concept of spinal comfort.

The food was a choice between beige and slightly wetter beige: pasta shells in an unconvincing tomato sauce, or something labelled vegetable surprise that looked like a tragic soup accident.

Alex had taken his tray with a nod of thanks, because years of espionage hadn't erased his manners.

He was scanning the room for a seat when he heard a voice that made his shoulders unclench slightly. “Alex! Over here.”

Tom Harris.

Alex’s best friend, and quite possibly the only person in the building who didn’t think he was a haunted Victorian orphan or a drug addict. Tom was halfway through buttering a bread roll and looked genuinely relieved to see him.

Alex made a beeline for the seat opposite. The table was surprisingly peaceful, mostly girls from the drama club and a quiet lad called Sanjay who was surgically attached to a Rubik’s cube. Bliss.

“Cheers,” Alex muttered as he sat. “If I had to sit within five feet of Jamie again, I was going to test how aerodynamic a bread roll is.”

Tom snorted. “How’s Room 5 treating you?”

“About as well as Room 101 would.”

Tom winced. “Beans still talking about ghosts?”

“He asked me if I thought badgers can smell fear.”

Tom grinned. “I mean… can they?”

Alex gave him a look.

Tom offered him half the roll. “You alright though? You’ve been a bit… I dunno. Clockwork. Not that I expected you to start singing campfire songs, but…”

Alex shrugged and began mechanically chewing through the pasta. It tasted like regret and powdered cheese.

“I’m fine. Just tired.”

Tom didn’t push. That was the thing about Tom, he never tried to fix Alex. Never asked too many questions. He knew about MI6. Not all the details, no one but Alan Blunt and possibly God knew all the details, but enough. Enough to know that Alex sometimes came back from half-term break with a cracked rib and a haunted expression.

Tom knew and still saved him a seat.

“Did I miss much on the bus?” Tom asked, steering the conversation gently away. “I meant to catch up, but I was knackered mate.”

“Mr Harrow nearly reversed the minibus into a ditch, and Katie Fenton fell asleep with her mouth open and drooled on her neck pillow. Oh, and Jamie’s doing that thing where he tries to flirt by being aggressively annoying. You’d think he’d be better at it by now.”

“With you?” Tom asked, wide eyed.

“God, no, he’s not flirting with me,” Alex said, alarmed. “I don’t think..”

“I mean…” Tom waggled his eyebrows.

Alex rolled his eyes. “I’ll add it to my list of concerns, right after whether or not I’m sharing a sleeping bag with a boy who thinks beans are a food group. No, it was mostly Katie once she woke up.”

Tom laughed. “Still glad you came?”

“No,” Alex said, but there was a faint smile now tugging at the corner of his mouth. “But this helps.”

A silence settled between them, comfortable and warm. The rain tapped gently against the window. Somewhere across the hall, someone let out a shriek as their chair collapsed mid-chew.

“I’m telling you,” Tom said casually, “first group hike, someone’s going to get us spectacularly lost.”

Alex stabbed a mushroom with his fork. “Yeah. Probably.”

Chapter Text

Night crept over the hills like fog on a battlefield-quiet, cold, and uninvited.

Room 5 was dark save for the orange glow of a battery-powered camping lantern propped on Jamie’s bunk. It cast monstrous shadows across the ceiling. Beans had fallen asleep in his hoodie with the hood up like a makeshift cocoon, snoring gently and muttering what sounded suspiciously like “snack tax.” Jamie, on the top bunk. And Alex.

Alex lay awake, eyes open in the darkness, listening.

He’d tried to switch off. Really, he had. But his mind didn’t know how to sleep in a strange room. His ears registered every creak of the pipes, every change in the wind outside the window. Once, just before midnight, he thought he heard a crunch outside-just one. A boot on gravel.

He sat up, heartbeat already lifting.

Waited.

Nothing.

Then a fox’s bark rang out from the treeline.

He sighed. Just a fox. Not an assassin. Probably.

“Mate,” came Jamie’s voice, barely a whisper. “Are you awake?”

Alex considered pretending to be asleep. Then again, Jamie didn’t strike him as someone who took hints.

“…Yeah.”

Jamie leaned over the edge of the top bunk and peered down, his face upside down and faintly eerie in the lantern light.

“You’ve done wild camping before, right?”

Alex blinked. “A bit.”

That was one way to describe a week in the Bolivian jungle being hunted by a hit squad.

Jamie nodded solemnly. “Cool. Just… don’t let me die tomorrow, yeah? I’m rubbish with directions. I can barely get to Greggs without Google Maps.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you leading the navigation group?”

“Yeah. But Katie thinks I’ve got leadership potential.”

“Have you ever used a compass?”

Jamie grinned. “I know it points north.”

Alex sighed. “That’s only half the battle.”

“What’s the other half?”

“Knowing where you are.”

Jamie looked thoughtful. Then his face disappeared back over the edge of the bunk. “Night, bruv.”

Alex lay back again and stared at the ceiling.

This was fine.

This was going to be fine.

-
Alex woke with a start.

Not to an alarm. Not to shouting. But to the unmistakable sound of -wait, was that a gas canister exploding?

He sat bolt upright. In one motion, he rolled out of bed and landed in a crouch, instincts taking over before his brain was even fully awake.

Then he heard:

“IT’S NOT ON FIRE! IT’S JUST STEAM!”

And-

“BEANS, PUT IT DOWN!”

And-

“WHO TOOK MY LEFT BOOT?!”

The room was chaos.

Beans had clearly tried to use the portable camp stove indoors. A plume of pressurised steam was now venting into the room, creating a sauna-like haze. Jamie was hopping on one foot, wrapped in a sleeping bag like a cursed totem, holding a spoon like a weapon.

Alex closed his eyes. Took a breath.

Not life or death.

Not a mission.

Just Year 10s being morons before breakfast.

Still, it was alarmingly convincing.

A pounding on the door. “You’ve got ten minutes to be downstairs in gear!” Mr Harrow’s voice called. “We leave at 7 sharp!”

“Sharp?” muttered Jamie, still hopping. “Mate, I can’t even find my pants.”

Alex pulled on his boots and hoodie, already dressed with military precision. He strapped on his rucksack and tightened the buckles with practiced efficiency.

He glanced once more out the misted-up window.

Clouds were rolling in thick and low across the hills.

Somewhere out there, the wilderness waited. And something-Alex didn’t know what yet-was off.

He could feel it. He could always feel it.

-
The hike began in hopeful drizzle.

By hopeful, one might imagine a light mist clinging poetically to the trees. In reality, it was the kind of damp that clung to your eyebrows and dripped down the back of your neck in steady, miserable intervals. Spirits were already waning before they’d crossed the first field.

“We’re going to die out here,” muttered Katie Fenton, pulling her poncho tighter around her head like a grief veil. “They’ll find my bones next spring.”

“You could’ve stayed behind,” said Sanjay, still solving his Rubik’s cube beneath a rain cover like it was a matter of national security. “You faked tonsillitis during swimming week. You’re the only girl since Jess bailed. They’d have let you.”

Jamie, undeterred, stood at the front of the group, compass held aloft like a mystical artefact. “Alright, team,” he said, clearly relishing the word team, “we’re heading north-east, across this ridge, up through those woods, and into the valley.”

Alex opened his mouth.

Then closed it again.

He’d decided somewhat foolishly, to give the group a chance to work it out. Let them lead, he’d told himself. Stay under the radar. Blend in. It’s just orienteering. What’s the worst that could happen?

Apparently, he was about to find out.

They’d walked for exactly twenty-seven minutes when Alex realised Jamie was holding the map upside down.

“Quick question,” Alex said dryly. “Where are we now?”

Jamie beamed. “On this path.”

“That’s a river.”

Jamie frowned. Turned the map. “Well, it looks like a path.”

“It’s blue.”

“Colour coding, mate. For… elevation.”

Alex blinked. “No. That’s… that’s not how maps work.”

But by then, Jamie had already declared they were on trail marker four and led the group confidently toward what he called a shortcut. It was, in fact, a drainage ditch.

Katie slipped within five minutes.

Beans fell in.

Tom helped her up, looking damp and betrayed by nature itself. “Jamie,” he called, “maybe we should double-check-”

“I got this,” Jamie snapped, puffing up like a goose. “I’ve watched four seasons of Alone. We just need to follow the tree line.”

Alex was starting to develop a migraine.

Not from the map.

From the optimism.

-
An hour in, they were already in a bog. It was raining horizontally. Spirits were low. Morale was dead. Beans was crying because he’d dropped his snacks. Alex had mentally marked their coordinates and plotted the best exit route, but hadn’t said anything yet.

Another hour later, the rain turned to drizzle. Still the kind that seeped through your sleeves. Into your socks, into your very soul.

“Anyone seen a checkpoint?” Sanjay asked. “We were meant to pass one twenty minutes ago.”

Katie sniffled. “My ankle hurts.”

“I think my compass is broken,” said Jamie, spinning in place.

Alex, soaked to the bone, finally broke.

“Right,” he said, stepping forward. “Give me the map.”

Jamie hesitated. “I’m leading.”

“You’re wandering. That’s not the same thing.”

“I didn’t see you offering to help.”

“Fairly sure he did actually, mate.” Tom supplied.

Alex looked up, the rain dripping from his fringe, and said in a tone that could freeze boiling soup, “I was trying to let you lead. But you’ve taken us inland when we were meant to skirt the southern ridge. We’ve passed the same crumbling dry-stone wall twice, and unless you’re aiming to summit the wrong peak, we’re half a mile off-course and heading deeper into the part marked restricted area.”

The group stared at him.

“How do you know that?” Katie asked.

Alex bit back the truth. “I can read a map.”

“…Like, really well,” Beans whispered.

Jamie flushed red. “You think you’re so clever-”

“I think,” Alex interrupted, “we’re in trouble.”

He pointed. “Those clouds aren’t just rain. That’s a front coming in fast. Visibility will drop. If we don’t reroute now, we’ll lose the light and any chance of getting back to the track before dusk.”

Mr Harrow and Miss Dalton were at least an hour behind, following another group. There was no phone signal. The GPS was so old it had given up 20 minutes ago.

-
It started with the crunch of boots-heavy, fast, and wrong.

Alex was the first to freeze. Mid-step, ankle-deep in mud, posture tightening like a tripwire had just snapped.

The others kept trudging forward until Alex threw out an arm across Tom’s chest. “Stop.”

Tom blinked. “What is it?”

But before Alex could answer, a bark of command shattered the drizzle.

“DOWN! HANDS ON HEADS!”

The forest erupted.

Men in full camo emerged from the trees with tactical gear, rifles raised but not aimed-yet. Black gloves. Helmets. Radio units chirping at their waists.

Katie screamed. Beans flung himself behind a tree. Jamie, remarkably, tried to square up before Tom grabbed the back of his jacket and yanked him down.

Alex didn’t move. Not yet. Not until he saw the patch on the shoulder. His shoulders relaxed by half a degree.

One of the soldiers stepped forward, visor lifted. He looked over the group with an expression that screamed exercise fatigue and zero patience.

He scanned the teenagers with the blank wariness of someone trying to decide whether he was hallucinating.

“Which one of you is in charge?” he asked, curt but not unkind.

There was a beat of silence.

Then, predictably, everyone looked at Jamie.

Jamie stepped forward and gave a salute so sloppy it could’ve been mistaken for swatting a fly. “That’d be me, sir. Team leader. Spiritually, logistically… emotionally.”

The corporal raised an eyebrow. Behind him, one of the other soldiers snorted.

A taller man stepped up beside him — dark hair, unshaven jaw, and the lean build of someone who hadn’t sat still in a month. His fatigues were better kept than the others, though the name tape read SANDERS. A stripe marked him as a sergeant.

“Evac scenario?” Sanders asked, addressing the corporal.

“Must be,” the younger man muttered. “Teens. Underprepared. Lost in the outer quadrant. Has to be part of the sim.”

Jamie blinked. “Sim?”

“Yeah,” Sanders said, like it was obvious. “Civilian extraction drill. We’ve been running it across the southern boundary. You lot are the wildcard, yeah?”

It was Alex’s turn to blink then inhale quietly through his nose.

That’s what they thought this was.

A simulation.

He could work with that.

“Uh,” Jamie said slowly, “yes?”

“No.” Alex said flatly, stepping forward. “We’re from Brooklands Secondary. School trip. Orienteering. We got lost because…” he shot Jamie a look, “someone couldn’t read the map.” He gave the soldier the kind of blank expression he knew they expected from a fifteen-year-old under pressure.

Jamie grinned like a guilty golden retriever. “It was upside down!”

Alex ignored him. “We didn’t mean to wander into anyone’s training zone. But if you’re offering an extraction, we’re happy to accept.”

Sanders studied him for a moment, eyes narrowing slightly. There was something too calm about the boy. Too steady. But they were cold, and none of the kids looked like they’d eaten anything warm in the last twelve hours.

“Even if it’s not part of the op,” Sanders said to the corporal, “extraction protocol still fits. Better to get them out of the zone before command starts yelling.”

“Agreed,” the corporal said, before turning to the group. “Alright, gather your kit. We’re setting up temporary shelter about half a click north. You’ll be safe there overnight with a group of our men. We’ll figure things out in the morning.”

The soldiers fanned out, scanning the perimeter like it was second nature.

Jamie leaned in toward Alex. “What just happened?”

“We got lucky,” Alex murmured. “Or unlucky. Depends how this plays out.”

“Wait-what?”

But Alex was already moving, backpack in place, falling in line like he belonged there.

He didn’t notice Sanders watching him just a moment longer than necessary. Frowning, not in suspicion, but in curiosity as he allocated a team to follow the teenagers.

-
A crunch of boots on gravel preceded the four chosen soldiers, rifles slung and visors lifted. Their gear was streaked with mud, and they moved with the quiet exhaustion of men halfway through a long day. The one in front looked barely old enough to rent a car, let alone carry a weapon. The patch on his sleeve marked him as a corporal.

Katie raised her hand, still crouching. “Can someone explain what’s happening?”

“We’re here to secure and escort your team to the temporary base camp for overnight shelter,” said the soldier. “Debrief and extraction tomorrow.”

Jamie looked smug. “See? I knew this was all part of the programme.”

Alex sighed through his nose. “Of course you did.”

One by one, the students were pulled gently into line, checked for injuries and given water bottles, energy bars, and tactical blankets.

No one seemed suspicious. Yet.

“Where’s your teacher?” the squad leader asked.

“Behind us,” Alex replied smoothly. “With the slower group. We split earlier.”

“Of course you did,” the man muttered. “Classic scenario scripting.”

Another soldier passed a thermal scope over their group and gave a thumbs up. “No visible injury. One ankle sprain, two borderline hypothermic, but all manageable.”

Katie looked affronted. “I’m not hypothermic, I’m just cold and traumatised.”

“We’re going to set camp just past the ridge,” the leader continued. “You’ll bunk with us tonight. Stay close. Don’t wander. If you hear gunfire, it’s probably not for you.”

“…Probably?” Beans squeaked.

The soldier turned. “Welcome to a live exercise.”

-
Tents. Camouflage. Fires burning under lean-tos. Soldiers with rifles that gleamed beneath the fading light. Radios murmuring in clipped code. It looked like a scene from a war film—and for most of the group, it felt like one too.

“So, do we get names or what? I’m James, by the way.”

The boy’s confidence levels were something that needed to be studied, Alex thought to himself. Maybe preserved in a lab. Jamie was standing like he was at a barbecue and not in the middle of a live military training zone wearing a damp hoodie and half a cereal bar in his pocket.

The sergeant gave a brief sigh through his nose. One of those small, invisible communications passed between him and the corporal, the kind you only develop when you've been on too many patrols with the same people. Then, finally, the man offered a brisk nod.

“Sergeant Mason Sanders,” he said, voice clipped but not unfriendly. “This is Corporal Finn Dawes. And Privates Eli Brennan and Nate Salim.”

Each gave a short nod or small wave as their names were said. Dawes looked tired. Brennan looked like he was trying very hard not to look panicked. Salim just gave Jamie a flat look that might have been hello or might have been do not talk to me again.

“Cool,” Jamie said, undeterred. “Is this your real job? Like, do you do this full time? Or is it, like, army work experience?”

“Jamie,” Katie murmured, shooting him a look of warning.

“We’re attached to the 42nd Joint Response Unit,” Sanders said. “Active duty and training rotation. You’re currently in the middle of a live exercise zone, so until we get orders to extract you, you stay with us. No wandering. No splitting off. You follow instructions.”

“Does that include toilet breaks?” Beans piped up. “Asking for a friend.”

Dawes muttered something under his breath in response.

They moved toward the fire pit as Sanders directed the privates to fetch spare blankets and ration packs. The heat was immediate, sharp and welcome after the slow chill of evening crept in. Salim silently handed out canteens. Brennan passed around vacuum-sealed meal packs, each labelled with grim-sounding things like “poultry and rice variant C” and “meat-flavoured nutritional substrate.”

“Where’s the vegetarian one?” Katie asked, politely.

Salim blinked once. Then held up a salt packet. “This?”

Katie stared. “That’s… generous.”

Alex accepted his ration pack without comment and sat slightly off to the side, eyes scanning the treeline. It was second nature. One part of him catalogued shadows and exit points. The other just watched his classmates try to figure out how to open army-issue packaging without a PhD in physics.

Tom sat down next to him. “You good?”

“Define good.”

“Not visibly traumatised?” Tom hadn't really thought the followup to that question through.

“Then yes. I’m great.”

Tom didn’t press. He just shared his water and poked the fire with a long stick like it might give him answers.

Jamie had pulled Dawes into some rambling conversation about the fitness requirements for SAS selection (“Can you actually punch a man to death?”), while Beans quietly narrated his own attempts to toast a sealed protein bar like it was a marshmallow.

It was almost peaceful.

Almost.

“You alright?” Alex returned the question.

Tom sat. “Not the worst day I’ve had, weirdly.”

Alex smiled faintly. “Give it time.”

From across the firepit, Jamie was still trying to impress a corporal with stories of his “wild instincts” and “leadership capacity.” Beans was roasting a stick, poorly. Katie had fallen asleep with her blanket wrapped around her like a cocoon. Sanjay was visibly uncomfortable with the entire situation.

No one noticed how Alex kept glancing toward the northern tree line.

-
The morning began the way all miserable mountain mornings do-damp, grey, and far too early.

“Up. Gear on. Eat something if you want to stay vertical,” barked one the corporal as he stalked past the sleeping line of teenagers. “Ten minutes to move-out.”

Alex was already dressed.

He had been awake since before dawn, listening. Not just to the soldiers exchanging clipped updates on patrol rotations and checkpoint markers-but to the forest itself. The birdsong was off. Sparse. Distant. The air felt still in a way it shouldn’t. Like the wind had stopped watching.

Around him, his classmates stirred in various states of damp misery.

Katie emerged from her tent cocoon like an angry burrito. “My socks are wet.”

“Your soul is wet,” muttered Beans from inside his sleeping bag.

“Breakfast?” Jamie asked hopefully, stumbling toward the supply crates.

“Ration packs or nothing,” called the corporal. “Pick a colour. They all taste the same.”

Jamie pulled a face as he squinted into a green foil pouch. “Is this… mashed lasagne?”

Sanjay was muttering calculations into his hands while trying to reassemble his water filter straw. “If we’re walking three hours downhill at a fifteen-degree incline and the soldiers stop every twenty minutes for recon, we’ll-”

“No one cares, Sanjay,” Jamie snapped.

Alex didn’t speak. He just stood, slinging his rucksack over his shoulder and adjusting the straps with efficient precision. His eyes were already scanning the ridge.

One of the soldiers caught his expression.

Alex offered him a blank smile.

The man nodded slowly, giving him a second look before moving on.

Too close, Alex thought. Or just paranoia.

Tom appeared beside him, bleary-eyed and shivering, tucking the last of a sad cereal bar into his pocket. “What’s today’s plan? More not-dying, I assume?”

Alex gave a half-shrug. “North trail, then downhill. Supposedly.”

Tom looked up at the thick sky. “Bit ominous for a school trip.”

“That’s one word for it.”

-
They walked in tight formation, the students in the middle, flanked by soldiers on either side. The forest had thickened-taller trees, darker canopies. The occasional squawk of a bird echoed above them.

“Anyone else feel like we’re being watched?” Katie muttered.

“That’s just my trauma,” Beans whispered back. “It’s very expressive.”

Jamie, to his credit, was taking the hike somewhat seriously now. His bravado had shrunk overnight into a quieter kind of puffed-up sulking. He still kept checking his compass like it owed him money.
“Pretty sure we were meant to reach the turnoff by now,” he said. “Map said 2miles, that's like forty-five minutes, right?”

“Or maybe,” Alex said mildly, “the professionals know how to read a map.”

Jamie turned to glare at him. “Why are you always so smug?”

“I’m not smug. I’m just right.”

The path narrowed as they moved into a deeper stretch of undergrowth. The trees here were twisted differently-too angular, too quiet. The air thickened with the scent of earth and lichen and something faintly metallic.

Alex felt it then. In his stomach. That tightening. The one that always came before things went wrong. Not loud. Not painful. Just a pressure. Like being watched from beneath.

He scanned the terrain. Slopes curved up either side like wings folding in. The trail was pinched between two steep ridgelines, funneling them forward into a basin of stone and shadow.

“I don’t like this,” he muttered.

Tom glanced at him. “What?”

From ahead, one of the soldiers called out, “Hold position!”

They stopped.

A moment passed.

Then-“We've got a ground anomaly. Metallic echo. Looks shallow. Grid reference matches nothing on our map.”

Another voice: “Could be an old surveyor’s shelter. Civilian, maybe.”

Alex was already pushing past the others, eyes narrowed. “Let me see it.”

“Stay back, kid,” the soldier warned. “We’re handling it.”

But it was too late.

Alex had seen it.

Half-covered by moss, sunken slightly into the slope of the hill, was a metal panel. No insignia. No rust. New.

Too new.

And in the centre, half-obscured by leaf litter-

A handle.

His stomach turned. “Don’t touch that-”

But Jamie-trying to recover some sense of authority, puffed up and oblivious-stepped forward.

“Bet it’s some secret army thing,” he said cheerfully, gripping the handle. “I’ll get us extra points.”

“Jamie, no, no-don’t touch that-”

But the boy yanked.

There was a hiss.

A whirr.

And the ground opened.

The hatch groaned open with the sound of long unmoved metal. Slow and too smooth. A wave of cold air rolled up from the opening, strange in the summer damp. It smelt faintly of stone, dust, and something sterile beneath it all.

A hush fell over the group.

“Whoa,” said Beans, stepping closer, peering into the shadowed opening. “That’s not a shed.”

Katie made a soft, frightened sound. “Is that a bunker? Why is there a bunker?”

“I told you!” Jamie crowed, still holding the handle like a trophy. “I told you it’d be some secret government thing. Classic Special Ops hideout.”

“Classic?” Sanjay said dryly. “On what planet is that classic?”

One of the soldiers stepped forward at last, raising a fist to signal silence. “Back up. All of you. No one touches it again.”

Jamie raised both hands innocently, grinning. “Relax, mate. I just opened it.”

The soldier gave him a look. “You don’t open unknown military infrastructure. You report it.”

Alex, arms crossed and jaw tight, said nothing. Not yet.

Another soldier crouched beside the hatch, flashlight in hand. He swept the beam inside. “Corridor. Smooth walls. Electrical cabling along the floor. Looks powered. No markings. This isn’t ours.”

The squad leader frowned. “It’s not listed. It’s not one of ours, and it's not on the joint survey charts.”

Katie hugged herself. “Why would there be a secret base in a national park?”

Jamie snorted. “Have you seen Netflix lately? Half the country’s hollow.”

“That’s enough,” barked the sergeant. “Nobody moves. We’re waiting for Command.”

Alex’s voice cut through. Quiet. Sharp.

“You should seal it.”

Everyone turned to him.

Sanders raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

Alex stepped forward. His face was unreadable now-cold, closed. “I’ve seen this before. A hidden hatch, no tags, no corrosion, no paperwork. This isn’t your facility. And if it’s not yours, then you’re not
the highest authority on-site anymore.”

The soldier’s mouth twitched. “And who exactly do you think is the authority here?”

Alex stared at him for a long moment. “Someone who’ll be very annoyed you didn’t call it in before opening it.”

Jamie laughed. “Mate, you're acting like this is Area 51. It's probably just a boring Cold War fallout shelter. Dead rats and tinned peas.”

“Shut up, Jamie,” Tom snapped suddenly. “He’s serious.”

“I-what?” Jamie flailed. “You’re listening to him now?”

Before anyone could answer, Beans leaned in too far. His foot caught on a root.

There was a yelp.

A flail.

And then-a thud.

It echoed like a punch.

Everyone froze.

“Beans?” Tom shouted, peering over the hatch. “Beans, are you-”

“I’M OKAY!” came the muffled, panicked voice from below. “Sort of! I think! It’s really dark and there’s… there’s a corridor and something’s humming and oh god I think I saw a security camera-”

Sergeant Sanders turned, barking orders now. “Rope. Light. We need someone down there now.”

Alex stepped forward instantly. “I’ll go.”

“No, you won’t,” the corporal snapped, defending Sanders. “You’re a student.”

Alex turned his head slowly. “And you’re untrained for this.”

That earned a ripple of protest.

The sergeant bristled. “You think we don’t know how to manage an extraction?”

“I think,” Alex said coolly, “that if what’s down there isn’t abandoned, your presence will escalate it faster than you can radio for support. You opened something you weren’t meant to. And now one of us is inside.”

Katie was crying again, soft and frantic. Jamie looked like he might throw up.

The soldier still hadn’t moved.

Alex’s voice dropped.

“You don’t have time for pride. You have minutes. Maybe.”

The sergeant turned to one of his men. “Get that rope. Now.”

Tom touched Alex’s arm. “Do you think it’s really that bad?”

Alex didn’t look at him.

“Yes,” he said. “And it’s going to get worse.”

-
The rope dropped into the hatch with a flurry of clipped commands and torchlight glare.

Alex was already on the edge, hand on the rope, waiting.

The squad leader didn’t like it but he didn’t stop him.

“Three minutes,” he snapped. “That’s all you get.”

Alex didn’t answer. He was already dropping down.

The air inside the bunker shaft was colder than it had any right to be. Not just chilly, refrigerated. It clung to the back of his throat like chemical fog. His boots hit metal with a hollow thud.

Below, crouched awkwardly in a pool of pale light, was Beans.

“I fell on my hip,” Beans whimpered. “And then on my knee. And also my dignity.”

Alex crouched, scanning the corridor. Smooth steel walls. Ventilation duct. LED runners pulsing faintly along the skirting.

Still powered.

Still active.

“Up. Now.” Alex’s voice left no room for argument.

Beans scrambled, awkward and wide-eyed. “There’s a door down there. With a panel. And a-”

“I know. Don’t touch it.”

Alex looped the rope under Beans’ arms and gave two sharp tugs.

“Ready?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

The soldiers began pulling him up.

Alex didn’t take his eyes off the far end of the corridor-not even when Beans’ feet disappeared above. Not even when he heard the faintest click-like pressure shifting inside the wall.

There were eyes on him.

Not human ones.

Sensors. Surveillance. Maybe worse.

This place was awake.

“Rider!” the squad leader barked from above. “Let’s go!”

Alex took one last glance down the corridor.

Then he climbed.

-
Above ground, everything moved too quickly.

The second Alex emerged, the soldiers started moving-repacking gear, stringing tape across the clearing, marking the hatch as hazardous. Beans was sitting on a tarp, hyperventilating softly, cradling a thermal blanket like it could absorb trauma.

“We’re sealing it,” the squad leader said. “Command’s on their way.”

Alex opened his mouth to protest-

And then he heard it.

Snap.

A branch.

Close.

Too close.

He turned, instinct taking over.

“Contact,” he said sharply.

Too late.

The forest exploded.

Figures burst from the tree line. Black-clad, masked, fast. No shouts. No demands. No warning. Just weapons raised, silent and surgical.

One of the soldiers went down without a sound - tranq dart in the neck.

Another fired, but his rifle jammed. “We’re under-!” Gunfire.

Not military issue. Suppressed. Precise.

Screams broke out as students dove to the ground. Katie shrieked. Jamie tried to run and was immediately tackled. Beans disappeared under a pile of camo blankets.

The soldiers were the first to fall. The corporal went down mid-transmission, his mouth still forming the words “Repeat-contact-unknown hostiles-” as a tranq needle caught him in the neck.

Alex pulled Tom down and rolled behind a particularly large tree.

The hatch yawned behind them, still open.

Still pulsing with cold.

A figure emerged from it. Slowly. Calmly. Not rushed like the others.

Tall. Lightly armoured if you knew what you were looking at. Masked, but not hiding. Deliberate.

Commanding.

Alex’s heart sank. Because the stylised scorpion the figure had embroidered into their clothes could only mean one thing, Scorpia.

-
It was over in minutes.

When the smoke cleared, there were no gunshots. Only darts, stun charges, and fists. Silence wasn’t just preferred by Scorpia. It was weaponised.

Within four minutes, Brooklands Secondary’s orienteering team had gone from soggy and lost to prisoners of a group they couldn’t even name.

The students were pushed mostly, back toward the hatch. Some kicked. Some cried. Jamie tried lying that his uncle was in the police. One of the masked agents punched him in the ribs so hard he
looked like he might throw up.

Alex didn’t speak. He just kept walking, scanning everything. Movements. Formation. Weapon make. Discipline. Focus Alex.

This isn’t just 1 operative, he thought grimly. This is a full Scorpia-trained team.

One of the soldiers beside him-hands zip-tied, blood on his cheek-caught his eye.

“We’re dead, aren’t we?” the man muttered.

Alex didn’t answer.

-
The bunker smelled different now.

More bodies. More heat. A low buzz of electricity that hadn’t been there earlier.

They were forced down a flight of cold metal stairs, pushed hard into a long corridor with reinforced doors on one side and grated storage alcoves on the other.

No holding cells.

No beds.

Something they may have been a weapons locker. Two of them had been cleared out-stripped bare of their crates and racks, the walls left with just bolted hooks and stripped cabling.

The bars remained.

Alex was shoved in first.

He hit the back wall and staggered to keep his feet, but didn’t resist.

Tom was thrown in after him. Then Katie. Then Jamie, groaning and pale. Beans followed, wide-eyed and still hiccupping with panic.

The soldiers had been disarmed, their armour removed, stripped of radios, vests, and belts-were shoved into the opposite cage.

One tried to fight. He was tased until he twitched on the floor like dropped wire.

The Scorpia agents said nothing.

They didn’t have to.

The doors slammed shut with a clang of iron and finality.

Alex looked around their cell. The bars were steel-not welded, but reinforced. The lock was mechanical. Old. Not unbreakable, but stubborn. The light above them buzzed faintly, flickering every ten seconds.

Katie sank to the floor and put her head in her hands. “What the hell is this place?”

Tom leaned against the bars, staring across at the soldiers, full of misplaced rage. “You lot don’t have a plan?”

Sergeant Sanders still cuffed, jaw set, just looked away.

Jamie sat in the corner, shivering.

“They didn’t even ask who we were,” he whispered.

“They didn’t need to,” Alex muttered.

Beans looked up. “Why not? Shouldn’t they, like… interrogate us? Work out who’s who?”

“They’re not interested in us,” Alex replied, too calm.

Then paused.

Because that wasn’t entirely true. Alex didn’t know why they’d kept them all alive. Maybe Scorpia had grown a conscience when it came to kids.

“Alex?” Tom whispered. “What do we do?”

Alex turned, slowly. He didn’t answer right away.

Instead, he walked to the bars, gripped them lightly, and looked out towards the corridor.

His voice, when it came, was quiet. Controlled.

“We wait.”

Chapter Text

The lighting was oppressive, the atmosphere thick with the cold buzz of recycled air and half-cooled electronics. Someone had kicked over a chair hours ago and no one had picked it up.

Two Scorpia operatives, black jackets off and vests still on, stood over a folding table stacked with files and an ageing field monitor. The screen glitched every few seconds, flickering between security feeds. One showed the prisoners: teenagers sobbing in one corner of the cage, soldiers in the other. Some crying. No resistance. Not yet.

Agent Lye crossed her arms and exhaled through her nose. “This is a bloody mess.”

“Language,” said the man next to her. Call-sign: Mace. Accent clipped. Facial scar recent.

“Oh, please,” Lye snapped. “We just took out an entire evac unit and shoved a dozen teenagers in an armoury cage. I think the moment for professionalism has passed.”

Mace said nothing. He tapped a gloved finger against the security feed, brow furrowed.

“They weren’t supposed to be here,” Lye muttered again. “What kind of moron schedules a school group into an active military training sector?”

“British military morons,” Mace said. “It happens.”

“Well, now we’ve got three problems: civvies, uniforms, and a government that’s going to notice the loss of both.”

Lye scowled. “We can’t extract. We’re under the radar and off the map.”

“Not our call. Should have just killed them.”

“Because bodies wouldn’t have raised more questions?” Lye asked dryly.

A pause.

Then Mace leaned in slightly toward the monitor, eyes narrowing.

“That one,” he said. “The kid on the left. You think he looks alright?.”

Lye looked. “What, the one staring at the vent?”

Mace nodded. “He hasn’t blinked since the door shut.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“I’m being careful.”

She clicked her tongue, but didn’t argue.

“Fine,” Lye said. “We’re not equipped for interrogation anyway. We weren’t even supposed to be manning this site.”

Mace was already pulling a secure comms line from the wall panel, plugging in the headset with fast, familiar movements. “I’ll make the call.”

Lye arched a brow. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

He hesitated for a moment, just long enough to suggest he didn’t want to make it. Then hit the transmitter.

A soft, repeating tone filled the silence.

Then-click.

A voice answered. Male. Smooth. Older.

“...Go ahead.”

“Sector Nine has been compromised,” Mace said. “Civilians. Military. We’ve secured the site, but we’ve got more bodies than expected. We need instructions.”

A pause.

Then: “Bodies?”

“Alive. For now.”

“Local command?”

“Non-existent.”

More silence.

Then the voice said, “Contain and confirm identities. Someone will be on site by morning.”

Mace glanced at Lye.

She was already pulling out a clipboard. “Guess we start with names and lies.”

The line clicked off.

-
The command room echoed as Lye dropped a fresh set of restraint bands onto the metal table with a cold clatter.

“They sent us to catalogue old files,” she muttered, “not detain hostiles. We don’t even have a proper chair for this.”

“We’re not interrogating,” Mace replied, sliding a small black case across the surface. “We’re identifying. Holding until backup arrives.”

“Right,” she snorted. “And if one of them’s lying?”

Mace didn’t answer.

Instead, he unlatched the case. Inside-four vials, pre-filled syringes with colour-coded tips.

Lye raised an eyebrow. “You brought truth serum?”

He glanced at her. “Field-grade suggestion inhibitor. Low dose. Makes people compliant. Disorientated. Not technically serum.”

“Oh, well that’s alright then,” she muttered, grabbing a data tablet and flicking through the newly typed prisoner list.

“We start with the soldiers,” Mace said, clicking a syringe into a compact injector device. “They’re trained, but they’ll crack first. We’ve got enough serum just for them.”

“Assuming they’re not already radio-tagged,” Lye muttered. “I hate this. No, do the kids. We only need names. Gives us more time with the pro's."

He nodded once, grim.

Then, a softer voice cut through the comms behind them.

A junior agent, barely twenty-five, still sweating from patrol duty.

“Sir. Ma’am. We’ve got a problem.”

Mace turned. “What sort of problem?”

The agent fidgeted. “One of the kids. He asked to use the toilet. Was polite about it. I’m not really sure what to do.. they’re kids?”

Then Mace said, very quietly, “Show me which one.”

They all turned toward the security monitor.

The students were still in the cage. Still sitting. Still tired and quiet.

Except him.

Seated near the bars.

Watching.

Thinking.

-
The footsteps came before the orders.

Heavy. Two sets. Steel-capped boots against the metal walkway outside the cages. Measured. Not rushed.

Alex was sitting with his back against the bars, legs drawn up, head resting loosely on his arms. From the outside, he looked tired. Maybe scared.

He wasn’t.

He was counting.

Two guards. One armed with a baton. One carrying a data slate and a scanner unit-outdated, military surplus. Not standard Scorpia issue. Probably acquired second-hand.

They’re not senior operatives, Alex thought. They’re logistics. Obedient. Not informed.

The door unlatched with a groan.

The baton-wielder stepped inside. “Students. On your feet.”

No one moved.

Jamie groaned from the corner. “What now?”

“You’ll be processed for identification. Individually. Quietly. If you behave, you go back to the cage. If you don’t, you don’t come back at all.”

The threat was delivered like a weather report-flat, impersonal, routine.

Katie whimpered. “Processed how?”

The second operative, older, face drawn and grey, tapped the scanner. “Name. Birthdate. Basic scan. We’re checking for tags.”

Tom whispered to Alex, “Tags?”

“Implants. Trackers. Subdermal chips,” Alex murmured, still not moving.

Tom made a sound between a cough and a choke. “Why would anyone have that?”

Alex didn’t answer.

The soldiers in the opposite cage watched too. Still silent. Still restrained. The Sergeant hadn’t spoken since they were thrown in. Not even a 'hey are you guys ok?' But he was watching Alex now. Eyes
sharp.

The guard stepped closer. “Get up.”

No one did.

Then unexpectedly, Beans stood. “I’ll go.”

“Beans-” Katie grabbed his wrist.

He offered her a shaking smile. “Better me than someone who’ll panic.”

Alex stood, finally.

The guard raised an eyebrow. “You volunteering too?”

“I’m making sure he comes back.”

The man looked at him for a long moment. “You’re not in charge.”

“No,” Alex agreed. “But you think it’s fair to let kids go on their own?”

They let both boys out.

Tom half-rose from his seat. “Al-”

Alex glanced back just once. “It’s fine.”

But his eyes said something else.

Be ready for anything.

-
The room was small, harshly lit, stifling.

A desk. A scanner. Two empty folding chairs.

No restraints.

Beans was placed in one of the chairs. Alex stood.

The technician, a woman with streaks of grey in her hair and a lab coat that didn’t belong here, held out a stylus.

“Name?” she asked Beans.

“Liam Murphy,” he said immediately.

“Date of birth?”

“Twenty-seventh of March. I think. Oh god, wait, or is it the twenty-sixth? No. No, I’m sure it’s the twenty-seventh. Mum always gets it wrong too, so-”

The woman waved a hand. “Good enough.”

She scanned his hand. Nothing. Checked behind his ears. Eyes. All clear.

“Next,” she said, gesturing to Alex.

He moved slowly. Sat in the chair.

The stylus hovered.

“Name?”

Alex looked at her.

He let just the right amount of hesitation show.

“…Alex Rider.”

The stylus stopped.

Her head tilted.

“Spell that?”

He did. Calm. Even tone. Like it meant nothing.

She tapped the scanner. Ran it over his wrist. Jawline. Back of his neck.

The machine beeped.

Then beeped again.

Faint.

Delayed.

But definite.

The woman frowned.

Muttered something to herself and ran it again.

This time-nothing.

False read?

Or glitch?

Alex kept his breathing slow.

Beans glanced between them, eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”

“Probably nothing,” she muttered, but her hand hovered over her comm device.

Alex met her gaze.

Cool. Calm.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

She hit the comm.

“We might need verification. Sending profile now.”

Alex didn’t blink.

So this is how it begins.

-

The woman tapped the command twice, frowning at the flickering results.

Name: Alexander John Rider
Status: UNKNOWN
Source Verification: RESTRICTED ACCESS – LEVEL 7
Database Response: QUERY LOGGED
Trace Echo: GHOST SIGNAL RETURNED

She stared at the screen.

That wasn’t a yes.

It wasn’t a no.

It was… noise.

Static wrapped in clearance codes she couldn’t parse. The sort of answer you got when you tried to access files far, far above your pay grade.

She clicked the terminal again. No photo. No cross-reference. No ID number.

Just that single-line response:

QUERY LOGGED. RESPONSE PENDING.

She leaned back slightly. “That’s odd.”

One of the guards glanced over. “What?”

“This Rider kid. System’s playing up.”

“Maybe it’s a duplicate. Foreign national?”

She shrugged. “Could be. Or just bad data entry.”

And that was that.

She closed the file.

Saved the scan logs to local only.

Didn’t send anything further.

And no one in the room noticed that somewhere, half a continent away, an alert had begun to blink.

-
London – MI6 Internal Intelligence Hub, Classified Archive Storage Node 3

The room was cold. Low-lit. Quiet but never quite silent-the hum of servers and the occasional clicking of rotating backups broke the stillness.

A single line of red text appeared on a secure terminal.

SEARCH FLAG – PROTECTED NAME REQUESTED: RIDER, ALEXANDER JOHN
REQUEST ORIGIN: UNAUTHORISED NODE – NON-GOVERNMENT NETWORK
PRIORITY OVERRIDE CODE: BLACK WIDOW-16

The system waited three seconds.

Just long enough.

Then the alert propagated.

Not to the night duty team.

Not to the surface-level analysts.

But directly encrypted and encrypted again to Mrs Jones’ secure line.

She opened it within seven minutes.

Her face, usually composed and vaguely tired, paled slightly as she read.

She stood immediately, coat already in hand, and called for transport.

There were protocols. And then there were Rider Protocols.

She would check it first, it could be anything, an innocent search. But then she’d have to wake Alan Blunt.

-
Alex was returned to the cage without fanfare. His eyes met Tom’s, just briefly. Tom looked at him like he was seeing something he didn’t quite recognise.

Beans was shaking.

Jamie had stopped talking.

And somewhere above, a storm was gathering.

-
It was late morning by the time the new Scorpia operative arrived. Though arrived was perhaps the wrong word. She descended like a storm cloud in designer boots. Flanked by two of Scorpia’s internal security detail and a hard-case tablet tucked under one arm.

The low-level operatives straightened as she entered the corridor. One of them, Kane, Alex had heard him called, tried to make a joke about paperwork.

She didn’t smile.

Didn’t even slow her stride.

Instead, she paused just outside the weapons cages that had been hastily repurposed to hold the prisoners. Her eyes scanned the group of sodden teenagers, pale soldiers, and one boy sitting a little too still.

For a moment, she said nothing.

Then: “Which one entered the hatch?”

“That one,” Kane said, pointing to Liam “Beans” Murphy, who was currently attempting to look both invisible and deeply apologetic.

The woman didn’t even glance at him. Her gaze had settled-locked-on the boy in the back. The one sitting on the bench with a carefully blank face, his wrists resting loosely on his knees.

Blonde hair.

Grey eyes.

That impossible stillness.

“Oh,” she said, almost softly. “Well. That is interesting.”

Kane blinked. “You know him?”

She smiled now. Not kindly. Not really.

“I trained with him,” she said. “Back when he still wore boots two sizes too big and looked like a kicked puppy.”

Alex didn’t move. But his knuckles tightened slightly.

Tom, beside him, turned. “Wait, what’s she-?”

“Rider,” the woman said, voice smooth as oil. “Didn’t expect to see you again. Thought MI6 had stuffed you in a cupboard somewhere. Or were you retired? Killed? Honestly, it’s so hard to keep track with child operatives.”

The air in the cage changed. Heavy. Crushed.

Jamie stared. “What did she just say?”

Alex finally spoke.

“Hello, Rosa.”

Her name landed like a dropped coin in a cathedral.

Rosa Malvani.

Malagosto graduate. Specialist in psychological profiling and field manipulation. Former asset handler, promoted quickly within Scorpia’s inner circle for her ruthlessness and precision.

And the only person in the room who truly, immediately understood what was about to happen.

Rosa turned to the lower-level agents.

“You. Out. All of you.”

“But-”

“Now.”

She waited until they were gone.

Then stepped closer to the bars.

“You’re not even in the system anymore, are you?” she murmured. “Clever. Reeks of Alan Blunt and his technical crew.”

Alex said nothing.

She tilted her head. “They thought they could erase you. Make you vanish. But here you are. At the bottom of a Cumbrian bunker with a school group. Did you think they’d protect you forever?”
From behind her, the metal door clicked shut.

Alex stood slowly, his expression carved from stone. “What do you want, Rosa?”

She shrugged. “The team here simply scooped up some trespassers but now you’ve shown your face, we’ll have to see. I suppose it depends how cooperative you decide to be.”
She took a step closer. “I also want to see what happens when your little school friends realise the kid they’ve been bunking with is a weapon in human form.”

Tom, pale and silent, looked between them.

Jamie’s mouth was open.

Beans whispered, “Is he… is he a sleeper agent?”

Alex rolled his eyes.

Rosa smiled wider. “Let’s talk again soon, Rider.”

And just like that the world tilted. Not with a bang. But with a quiet truth.

She knew who he was. And soon, Scorpia wouldn’t be the only ones.

-
The makeshift holding cell stank of damp metal and tension. One of the overhead lights flickered intermittently, casting long, shifting shadows across the weapons cage where the teenagers and soldiers sat, backs pressed to cold walls, their breath clouding in the stale air.

Rosa Malvani stood just outside the bars. No clipboard. No restraints. No theatrics. Just her voice, smooth and deliberate, curling through the silence like smoke.

“Let’s make one thing very clear,” she said, pacing the length of the cage with slow, measured steps. “We didn’t know what we had, at first. Just a bunch of soggy schoolkids and a few play-pretend army types blundering into our airspace.”

She paused.

“But then I saw him.”

Her eyes cut to Alex.

Alex, who hadn’t moved.

Alex, who looked more like a statue than a boy.

“You see,” she continued, turning toward the group at large, “I trained with him. Years ago. Different continent. Different rules. He was… promising. Efficient. Lethal, even then.”

Someone made a noise, barely more than a breath. Jamie, probably. Tom was still frozen, mouth a hard line.

Katie whispered, “What is she talking about?”

But Rosa didn’t answer them. She was still watching Alex.

“What I want to know,” she said, “is whether this was an accident... or a mission.”

She crouched slightly, bringing herself level with Alex’s eyeline. “Did you really just stumble into my bunker, Rider? Playing schoolboy with your little mates? Or were you sent here? Are they watching now? Do they know we’re here?”

Alex gave her a look that could have cut steel.

“I was on a school trip,” he said, flat and low. “Because I’m fifteen. And I’m retired.”

“Retired,” Rosa echoed, like it was a funny word. “That’s rich. Does the British government do gold watches for teenage assassins?”

Jamie made a sound like he’d swallowed a stone.

Tom, finally speaking asked, “Alex… is she serious?” A quiet worried question, that Alex wished Tom hadn’t asked. He didn’t want to give her an ounce of information, or satisfaction.

Alex didn’t answer.

Not to Tom.

But Rosa did.

“Oh, he’s very real,” she said, standing again. “MI6’s little shadow. The boy they burned and buried.”

“You’re insane,” Jamie blurted.

Rosa chuckled, soft and cold. “He’s the reason you’re not already dead. That’s the part no one tells you.”

She turned back to Alex.

“So what happens now?” she asked, voice lilting. “Do they come for you? Or have they written you off again, ‘acceptable loss’ and all that?”

Alex didn’t move.

She stepped closer, enough for him to see the pin on her lapel, a thin silver line in the shape of a serpent.

“We’re calling in backup,” she said, conversationally. “Someone will want to know you’re here. Someone very high up. And in the meantime, well…” She gestured at the cages. “You’ve made quite the impression.”

She gave a sharp whistle, and two guards entered.

“Move him,” she said. “Front cage. On display.”

The soldiers protested. Tom stood up. Jamie, to everyone’s surprise, did too.

“Hey, he’s just a kid-!”

“Sit,” snapped Rosa. “Unless you’d like to see just how much he isn’t.”

They hauled Alex up.

He didn’t fight.

Didn’t blink.

Just walked, calm as the sea before a storm, into the smaller cage opposite the others. Metal bars. A floodlight overhead.

Rosa turned back to the group.

“Watch him,” she said, smiling now. “You’re going to want to remember this moment.”

She moved like a woman who owned the corridor, spine straight, hands gloved, every inch of her designed for command.

Two more operatives followed behind her-silent, masked, and armed.

“Bring him forward,” she ordered, nodding toward the smaller cage where Alex sat cross-legged in the corner, as calm as a monk in a bomb shelter.

The guards opened the cell.

Alex didn’t resist. He stood, silent, jaw tight, and walked without being pulled. His boots echoed against the metal grating of the corridor.

Rosa stood waiting beside a rusted interrogation chair welded to the floor. It looked like it hadn’t been used in years, and even then only for things no one wrote down.

“Sit.”

Alex did.

“Restrain him,” she said curtly. “Ankles, wrists, chest. Full binds. No slack. Get rid of this shoes, belt.”

The guards hesitated.

“We already searched him,” one said, clearly uncomfortable. “He’s just a kid.”

“He is not,” Rosa snapped, voice like a whipcrack. “He is a Class-A intelligence asset with confirmed history in covert operations, explosives, surveillance, and infiltration. He has killed before. He’s been trained to kill again. If you think he can’t take three of you down with a shoelace and a bad attitude, you’re more foolish than I thought.”

The room held its breath.

In the larger cage, Jamie muttered, “What the hell-”

Tom pressed his knuckles to his mouth.

Alex gave Rosa a blank look. “You always did enjoy monologuing.”

She smiled. “And you always did enjoy escaping.” Her eyes flicked to the guards. “Do it. No eye contact. No loose edges. If he so much as twitches, you shoot him.”

“You can’t be serious,” the sergeant finally snapped. “He’s fifteen. He’s a child. You can’t treat a child like this!”

“He stopped being a child the first time your government put a gun in his hand,” she shot back. “Now step aside before you find out how disposable you really are.”

The silence that followed was bitter and sharp.

The guards obeyed.

They buckled the steel cuffs into place, ankles first, then wrists, then a reinforced band across his chest that pinned him to the chair. His neck flexed slightly as they tightened it. He made no sound.
The students watched in horrified awe. It looked like something from a film, some dystopian military fantasy. But it wasn’t.

This was real.

And the boy they thought they knew, weird Alex Rider, sat like a prisoner of war.

He didn’t struggle.

He didn’t speak.

But his eyes were cold steel.

Rosa stepped forward, folding her arms as she stared at him. The look she gave him was not cruel. Not mocking. It was worse.

It was curious.

“So,” she said softly. “Let’s start with the truth. Were you sent? Are they watching? Did they finally send you back?”

Alex tilted his head. “You’re paranoid.”

“You’re here.”

“It was an accident.”

She chuckled, low. “There’s no such thing. Not with you. I want every detail, Rider. From the moment you left your school to the moment you fell into my hands. I want names. Routes. Who else knows. And most of all-”
She leaned in.
“-what they’re willing to trade to get you back.”

A long pause.

Then, very quietly, Alex said, “You’re not going to like the answer.”

Rosa straightened.

“Oh,” she said. “We’ll see.”

-
The second alert came as she was still investigating the first.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t flash red or blare sirens. It was subtler than that-an automated flag buried in the cybersecurity net, pinging in one corner of a secure internal monitoring dashboard.

And someone, somewhere in the world, was about to be very sorry.

Search Attempt Detected
Query: Rider, Alexander J.
Result: No record located. Query origin: external. Traceable ID: Scorpia-15 [Level 2 operative].
Action: Escalate to Priority 1. Notify Head of Section.

Within ninety seconds, it had reached the desk of Mrs Jones.

She paused mid-sip of her coffee and stared at the screen. One flag was concerning, twice- a disaster. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, then moved quickly, typing in override codes. No one-not even the Cabinet Office-was meant to be able to find Alex Rider anymore. His file had been buried so deep it didn’t even technically exist.

So why was a known Scorpia cell pinging it?

And why now?

She opened a secure channel.

“Blunt. It’s Jones. We have a problem.”

Thirty minutes later, the conference room on Sublevel 3A had six people in it. All of them tense.

“We don’t know it’s him,” said a man from G-Branch. “They could’ve been trying to confirm a rumour. It might not be linked to the training zone at all.”

Mrs Jones tapped her tablet. “Except a Scorpia search was initiated from inside Cumbria, twice. And we do have a school trip reported missing in that exact region, after coming into contact with SAS units on joint exercise patrol. No phone signal, no check-in. And one of the listed students is Alexander Rider.”

“You let him go on a school trip?” someone muttered.

“He insisted,” Jones said flatly. “And Blunt signed off. We’d already scrubbed his records. He was meant to be untouchable. Untraceable.”

“Well he’s not anymore,” the G-Branch officer snapped.

“Which is why we need boots on the ground. Controlled, covert, and fast.”

She turned to the man seated across the table, arms folded, face unreadable under close-cropped grey hair.

“We need K-Unit.”

The man-Colonel Jameson, head of the SAS Joint Operations Task Force-grunted. “Wolf’s still in active rotation. He’s running a readiness cycle. You want him pulled for this?”

“Yes,” Jones said.

Jameson nodded once. “I’ll contact Brecon.”

-
The call came through during morning drills. Rain hammered down in sheets. Mud clung to every inch of clothing. And the sound of yelling was near-constant.

Wolf didn’t flinch when the junior officer handed him the sat phone. He wiped the rain from his brow, tucked the rifle under one arm, and answered.

“Wolf.”

“Priority op,” said the voice on the line. “Northern sector. Possible HVI in Scorpia hands. Youth profile. Your expertise is required.”

Wolf frowned. “kids?”

“..It’s Cub.”

There was a pause.

Wolf’s grip on the phone tightened. “He’s supposed to be retired.”

“He was on a school trip.”

A longer pause.

Then. “Of course he was.”

The line crackled.

“Bring the team. We’ll debrief on route.”

Wolf hung up and turned to the three soldiers standing nearby, mud-slicked and windblown.

“Pack for field,” he said. “We’re going north.”

Snake blinked. “What’s the op?”

Wolf slung the rifle back over his shoulder. “Babysitting.”

Eagle groaned. “Again?”

“Not just any kid,” Wolf said grimly. “Cub.”

Ben Daniels-Fox-swore softly. “Bloody hell.”

Snake gave a dry smile. “So.. A rescue op then?”

“No,” said Wolf. “A containment one. If Scorpia’s got him, they’ll want to use him. Which means we’ve got hours, not days.”

Eagle buckled his vest. “Did you at least pack the tranquilisers?”

Wolf smiled. And it wasn’t a nice smile.

Chapter Text

They’d bound him like he was a bomb waiting to go off.

Steel cuffs around his wrists. A loop of wire between his boots, tethered to the leg of the chair. Two guards stationed inside the door, both armed. A third stood just outside, watching through the grated glass window. The room reeked faintly of mould and fear and sweat. Somewhere in the shadows, water dripped at irregular intervals, the sound echoing like a ticking clock.

Alex sat still.

Head bowed. Shoulders loose. The very picture of a terrified teenager.

Rosa wasn’t buying it.

She moved slowly around the room like a shark circling a buoy. Her boots clicked against the concrete floor. Sharp little echoes. She’d changed out of the generic Scorpia black and now wore a sleek grey coat, unbuttoned, with leather gloves she didn’t need but wore anyway, more for intimidation than insulation.

She stopped in front of him. Bent slightly.

“You’re not on any list anymore,” she said softly. “That’s unusual.”

Alex said nothing.

“Your name. Your photo. Your prints. We ran every database, and do you know what came up?”

Silence.

“Nothing.” She straightened. “That’s expensive, you know. Getting scrubbed like that. Even off our systems. It means someone very, very powerful wants you forgotten.”

Alex blinked. Slowly. “Guess I’m just unpopular.”

“You trained at Malagosto. You disarmed a live combat simulation in thirty-two seconds. You once broke someone’s thumb during a sparring exercise and apologised afterwards. Very British of you.”

Alex finally looked up. Just a flick of his eyes.

Recognition passed between them like a fuse catching flame.

“And you’re Rosa,” he said. “You failed your graduation the first time. Overconfidence in a field op. Left your partner behind.”

Her mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile.

“You remember.”

“Good memory. It’s inconvenient sometimes.”

Another pause.

She crouched slightly, eye level now. “You’re in enemy hands, Alex. No comms. No tech. No cavalry. Not this time. So tell me, were you here on purpose, or just very, very unlucky?”

He tilted his head. “Does it matter?”

“Oh, it matters. If this was accidental, you’re a pawn we can use. If this was intentional… well.” She stood again. “Then you’re something far more valuable.”

She turned toward the door, then paused. “Double restraints at all times. No food unsupervised. And if he so much as looks like he’s counting anything, sedate him.”

That last command was met with a sharp objection from the soldiers, still locked in the adjacent cell.

She turned to them, “You should be more worried about what he’s worth to your government. Or what they’re willing to trade to get him back.”

She shut the door behind her with a slow click.

Inside, Alex exhaled through his nose. And smiled.

-

The door shut with a mechanical finality, the echo of the bolt scraping home ringing in everyone’s ears. For a long while, no one moved.

Alex was still where they’d left him. Still restrained, seated, a faint sheen of sweat along his hairline. The room was low-lit, buzzing with the fluorescent hum of the overhead tube, casting long shadows across the walls.

No guards. Not for now.

Just the dim, collective realisation that something monumental had just shifted.

Jamie was the first to speak. Not loudly. Just a whisper, sharp-edged and hollow.

“Was that real?”

Sanjay, still sitting cross-legged with his back against the bars, rubbed his arms and stared at the floor. “That woman knew him. Like… knew knew him.”

“She said ‘Malagosto’,” Katie added softly, drawing her knees up beneath her chin. “Is that… a place?”

“A training academy,” Corporal Dawes said, his voice flat. “For people like them.”

He didn’t look at Alex as he said it. Didn’t need to. The rest of the soldiers shifted uncomfortably.

Sergeant Sanders, the senior among them, spoke at last. “He’s still a minor,” he said quietly. “They’ve left him in restraints. No food. No medical check. That’s not standard, not even for enemy combatants.”

“He’s not an enemy,” Tom snapped before he could think better of it.

Dawes glanced over. “You seem sure.”

Tom opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at Alex. “Because I know him.”

Alex hadn’t moved. But his eyes flicked up then, just briefly, meeting Tom’s.

A silent warning.
Not here.
Not now.

He knew they’d still be watching and listening. Last thing he needed was Tom giving them anything.

Tom understood and so he gave them nothing. Not a twitch. Not a nod. Just calm, blank-eyed silence.

Beans finally broke the hush. “Mate… what are you?” he asked, almost reverently, as though Alex might confess to being a vampire or demigod.

Alex didn’t answer.

Jamie scoffed, but it lacked venom. “Are you, like, MI5 or something? You’ve got all this James Bond energy but, like, angry.”

Still nothing.

The silence stretched. Heavy. Loaded.

Katie leaned toward the bars and asked, almost gently, “Are we in danger because of you?”

That made Alex blink. Not in fear. Not even guilt.

But in something like weariness.

And then he spoke, voice low and deliberate.

“Right now,” he said, “they think you're just unlucky hikers. Civilians who got caught in the wrong place. As long as it stays that way, you’ll be fine.”

Sanjay frowned. “Aren’t we though? And what if it doesn’t?”

Alex hesitated.

Then, evenly, “Then you’ll wish you were only in danger.”

Sanders cleared his throat. “We need to get those restraints off. This isn’t interrogation. It’s intimidation. He’s not even armed-”

“He doesn’t need to be,” muttered one of the younger privates. “Did you see how she looked at him?”

Alex shifted just slightly in the chair, drawing their eyes back to him.

“Don’t,” he said, quiet but firm. “They’re baiting a reaction. One of you makes a move to help and they’ll classify you as compromised. That’s how they operate.”

The tension spiked like a static charge. Then dulled again, settling into a suffocating hush.

Tom pressed his forehead to the bars, whispering, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Alex’s voice was too quiet for the guards beyond to hear.

“Because knowing gets people killed.”

He turned his head just slightly, a flick of movement in the stale half-light.

And for the first time since they’d been captured, his face cracked. Just a little.

He looked young.

Tired.

Alone.

But only for a moment.

Then the mask slid back into place. Blank. Controlled. Ready.

He didn’t sleep much that night.

Neither did anyone else.

-

The lights snapped on with clinical violence. Alex presumed that meant it was morning, but he couldn’t be certain.

It wasn’t sunlight. There was no sunlight here. Just the hum and flicker of ceiling fluorescents that bled colour from skin and hope from bone. The concrete walls, already cold, now seemed to sweat with it.

Someone hissed as they stirred. Katie shielded her eyes. Jamie groaned. Sanjay curled deeper into his hoodie.

Only Alex was already awake.

Still bound. Still upright in the interrogation chair like a marionette left out of reach. His neck ached, spine bent at an angle that was never meant to last the night. His wrists were raw where the restraints had cut into them, and his left leg was starting to go numb.

The Scorpia operatives came in five minutes later.

They were wordless and efficient. One tossed a crate of sealed protein pouches across the floor into the cage where the students huddled. Another passed two to the adjacent pen, where the soldiers were already standing, silent and watchful.

Then, deliberately, they approached Alex.

A plastic cup.

Half full.

Lukewarm water, tinged slightly yellow from the pipes.

One of the guards held it just out of reach.

“You drink, you talk,” he said.

Alex stared up at him. Didn’t speak.

The guard crouched slightly, a cruel smirk forming. “Thirsty, ghost-boy?”

Another silence.

Then Alex lifted his chin. Not much, just a fraction. But it was enough to shift the balance.

“Put it down,” he said calmly.

“What?”

“If I wanted your help, I’d ask for it.”

The smirk faltered.

The water was placed on the floor. Not close. Not enough.

Alex said nothing more.

The guards left.

-

“He hasn’t eaten in over thirty-six hours,” Tom hissed, gripping the bars with white-knuckled fury. “They didn’t even give him a proper drink!”

“They’re softening him up,” the sergeant said darkly. “Starve the body, weaken the will. Classic tactics.”

“But he’s just a kid,” Katie whispered, eyes wide with disbelief. 

Sanjay didn’t speak, just stared at the water cup on the floor. Still half-full. Untouched.

When they came for him, Alex didn’t resist.

They unstrapped his arms, but resecured his hands behind his back instantly. Metal cuffs this time, tight enough to bite. Two guards lifted him by the shoulders, another trailing with a taser still unholstered.

He didn’t stumble. But his movements were slower now, edged with stiffness.

“Let’s not waste time today,” said one of the masked handlers. “Our guest of honour has kept us waiting long enough.”

Alex didn’t flinch. But his jaw set tight.

As they passed the cages, he caught a flash of Beans' frightened eyes.

Tom whispered his name.

Alex didn’t look at him.

Couldn’t.

The door closed again. Bolted shut. The camera light blinked red.

Rosa was already waiting. Immaculate. Merciless. Her voice was low and pleasant, almost kind. “Good morning, Alex. Sleep well?”

He didn’t answer.

She circled him slowly, heels clicking on the cracked floor tiles.

“I trust the hospitality has been… adequate?”

She paused, then snapped her fingers.

A chair was dragged across the floor and placed directly opposite.

She sat. Crossed her legs. Folded her hands. Her smile was wolfish now.

“I’m done being subtle. You’re going to tell me why you’re really here. Who knows. And what they’re willing to trade to get you back.”

Alex raised his eyes. And finally spoke. “Warm water?” he said flatly. “Bold move. Psychological warfare at its finest.”

Rosa tilted her head, amused. “Oh, you’ll get more than water today.”

She gestured.

The guards moved.

A fresh set of restraints were brought forward.

“This time,” she said, “we don’t give you an inch.” She knew if anything might break Alex Rider is was giving him no way to escape.

-

The room had no windows. The light was too bright. The air too still.

Alex had been restrained again, this time in a chair that wasn’t just bolted to the floor, but welded. His ankles were bound to the legs, wrists secured behind the backrest. The metal cuffs bit deeper now. His shoulders ached. His spine felt like it had been pulled too tight, like a bowstring ready to snap.

Rosa sat opposite, notebook balanced on one knee.

She hadn’t spoken for seven minutes.

Not a word.

Just the sound of her pen tapping against the paper.

It was the silence that made it cruel.

Alex had lost track of how long he’d been in the chair. It could’ve been half an hour. It could’ve been two. There were no clocks. Time wasn’t real here. Only the cold and the tension.

Eventually, she sighed like a disappointed mother, not a terrorist commander. Then stood.

She placed the notebook on the desk. Then slowly, deliberately, she walked behind him.

"Let’s try something simple," she said. Her voice had lost its playfulness. "Name."

He didn’t answer. She knew his name.

Tap. Tap. Her fingernails on the back of the chair.

"Are you here by design, Alex Rider?"

Silence.

She moved forward, hands resting lightly on his shoulders. “Or are you just unlucky?”

His head stayed still, eyes focused on the peeling paint ahead of him.

Then a flash of pain.

She’d grabbed the side of his jaw-forcing his head up, fingers digging under the hinge of bone and tendon.

"Look at me."

He did.

And in that moment, she saw it again, that maddening flicker of calm. That detached, calculated stillness behind storm-grey eyes. Not bravado. Not teenage rebellion.

Training.

“You were always your fathers protégé, the Rider family legacy.” she muttered. “They said you had potential. But even I didn’t realise how much.”

Still no reply.

She gave a sharp nod.

The guards stepped forward.

-

They didn’t beat him.

Not properly.

Scorpia weren’t fools, bruises were hard to explain if a trade was needed. But there were other ways to inflict pain.

They used sound - jagged bursts of white noise piped directly into the room.

They used pressure - forcing his body forward, folding his torso until it strained at the cuffs, forcing his breath to stutter.

They made him kneel at one point - still bound, still silent - until Rosa had circled him enough times to make a point that even Alex wasn’t sure of anymore.

But he never begged.

Never answered.

Never cracked.

When they asked again-name, origin, handler, purpose, he blinked slowly, mouth bloodied, and said, “In answer to your question. You’ve got terrible hospitality. Is this your way of asking me to leave?”

Rosa stared at him for a long time.

Then she laughed. Once. Quietly.

“Enough,” she said finally. “He’s no use like this. Not yet.”

-

They dragged him back to the cells just before evening.

He couldn’t walk by then. One foot refused to hold weight, and his shoulders had locked into a dull, static ache. They didn’t bother hiding the limp, or the dried blood at the corner of his mouth.

The doors creaked open and two guards hauled him inside, dumping him like a bag of wet cement in the far corner of the soldiers' cage. There was no dignity to it.

The others stood at once.

“Jesus Christ,” Sergeant Sanders swore under his breath, reaching forward. The guards were already gone, door slammed shut.

Jamie looked like he might throw up. Katie was crying and didn’t even seem to know it. Tom just stood still, hands curled into helpless fists.

Alex lay motionless on the floor, breathing through his nose. Every rib twinged with it.

“Rider,” the sergeant said cautiously. “Can you hear me?”

A pause.

Then Alex opened one eye.

"Still alive,” he croaked. “Ten out of ten for effort. Zero for originality.”

Someone let out a shaky, disbelieving laugh. Maybe Beans.

Tom knelt beside him. “You idiot,” he whispered, holding back a sob. “You stubborn, brilliant, bloody idiot.”

Alex didn’t answer. He just let his head fall sideways and stared at the scuffed concrete.

He hadn’t given them anything. Not yet. Not that there was anything to give this time. 

But he knew this wasn’t over.

And neither did Rosa.

-

The tactical chopper roared to life, slicing through the morning mist.

K Unit boarded in full gear-quiet, efficient, unsmiling.

Inside, Wolf reviewed the satellite overlays. The last ping from the Scorpia cell had originated less than a klick from the eastern hiking route. An exfiltration corridor, cleverly buried under environmental easement records and false forestry development plans.

“Do they know it’s him?” Eagle asked, over the headset.

“Unclear,” Wolf said. “They know his name, that’s how the ping got picked up. Jones said he has a history with Scorpia.”

Snake exhaled slowly. “God. If they do anything to him..”

“They won’t,” Wolf said. “We’ll be there before they do.”

Fox looked at him. “And if they already have?”

He looked out the window. The hills stretched out below them-green, grey, and treacherously familiar.

“Then we don’t ask for permission,” he said. “We get him out.”

-

The tactical chopper bucked slightly as it sliced through the rising wind above the moors. Inside, the interior was dim, the hum of rotors blending with the occasional clatter of gear. No one spoke for several minutes. They were reviewing the intel again, not because it had changed, but because it hadn’t.

Too many unknowns.

Wolf stared at the scrambled coordinates on his tablet screen. “Still no signal burst from inside?”

Snake shook his head. “Whatever this base is, it’s dark. No Wi-Fi, no cell signal, no power spikes. It’s either running on isolated infrastructure or using shielded hardware.”

Fox leaned in. “So we don’t know who’s down there. How many. Or why they grabbed the group.”

Eagle frowned, tapping the screen. “Or even if they know who they’ve got. I know you said they pinged his name, but this intel says they did that for all of them.”

Wolf’s jaw clenched.

They didn’t have time for maybes.

Colonel Briggs’s voice still echoed in his ears-tight, professional, but rattled. “This wasn't part of the scheduled live engagement exercise in that quadrant. We’ve lost contact with Bravo Unit and a student group. I don’t know who authorised this, but we sure as hell didn’t.”

“Rider wasn’t on any active roster,” Snake muttered, flipping through the highly redacted digital personnel files on his portable console. “Still scrubbed. Nothing on MI’s shared channels. Not even redacted stubs.”

“So either Scorpia doesn’t know it’s him,” Fox said, “or they’ve figured it out and locked everything down before we could notice.”

Eagle looked up. “If it’s the second one, why haven’t they moved him?”

“Because they’re waiting to find out what he’s worth,” Wolf said, finally. “They won’t kill him until they know who’ll pay for him or come for him.”

Snake’s fingers stilled. “Us.”

The helicopter dipped slightly. Fox swore under her breath. “We don’t even know the layout of the facility. No schematics, no tunnel maps, no exfil routes. If this is a legacy base, it won’t be listed on anything newer than 2001.”

“Satellite scan’s patchy,” Eagle added. “Trees are denser than they should be for natural growth. Could be deliberate planting to mask entrances. Only one visible structure: camouflaged ventilation housing and two concrete panels sunk into the ridge line.”

“Possible roof access from that small air inflow area,” Snake muttered. “But if it’s rigged internally, we’re not sneaking in without alerting the entire nest.”

Wolf’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. “So we get boots on the ground. Recon first. No breach until we know what’s inside.”

He looked up. His voice was quiet. Final.

“He’s survived worse. We wait for the right gap, or we don’t go in at all.”

Fox gave a sharp nod, eyes scanning the terrain below. “If they touch him-”

“They won’t,” Wolf said.

But he didn’t sound convinced.

Chapter Text

The morning silence had teeth.

It wasn’t just the exhaustion, or the stale, recycled air in the bunker, or the aching bruises stitched across Alex’s body like signatures of defiance. It was the tension that gripped the room like a wire pulled tight, as though the concrete itself was holding its breath.

He sat cross-legged on the cold floor of the cage, wrists still bound loosely in front of him. His arms ached from yesterday’s restraints, and his head throbbed from the interrogation. The other prisoners were quiet. The students were pale and shaken. They watched him with wary glances, whispering nothing, just absorbing.

Alex didn’t speak.

Didn’t need to.

Because footsteps were coming.

Even before the heavy bunker doors opened, everyone could feel it, like the air had changed pressure. A new force had entered the equation. A ripple in the calm.

Rosa strode in first, brisk and sharp. But she paused at the door. Stepped aside.

And that’s when he appeared.

Yassen Gregorovich.

He moved like smoke in a bottle, contained but impossible to hold. Blonde hair today, slicked back, clothes immaculately clean despite the mud outside, and eyes the colour of cold steel. He didn’t need weapons. He was one.

The Scorpia agents in the room straightened subconsciously, like prey scenting a predator. Even Rosa, who had been ruling this dungeon with impunity, adjusted her stance slightly.

And Alex… froze.

He didn’t stand, didn’t flinch-but his spine stiffened, and his eyes flicked up. That was all.

“Alex.” A single word was all it took to pull out the deep conditioning Scorpia had trained into him.

“Sir,” he said, low and automatic. It came out before he could stop it.

Yassen studied him. Not cruelly. Not kindly. Just measured, watching the way the boy had grown into something dangerous and weary and too quiet for his age.

Then he turned to Rosa, to the others, to the students still caged beside the soldiers and smiled faintly. “Clear the room,” he said, his accented voice like silk pulled over a blade. “But leave the doors open.”

No one questioned it. Within moments, only Yassen remained in the room with the prisoners. He walked slowly to the bars, observing. The students shrank back, some hiding behind one another. The soldiers didn’t move, but their eyes followed every step.

Yassen stopped in front of Alex’s cage. Not Rosa’s chair. Not the shadowed corner with its interrogation set-up.

Just the bars.

“Alex.” He said again.

“Sir.”

His voice wasn’t steady. Not quite. It wasn’t fear in the childish sense, it was older, deeper. 

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Yassen said, voice low. “And certainly not like this.”

“I didn’t expect to be here,” Alex answered. He wasn’t shackled as tightly now, not properly, but his wrists might as well have been in iron. “I was on a school trip.”

Yassen’s mouth twitched. Not a smile, exactly. Not humour. Something sadder.

“You’ve always had unfortunate timing.”

A pause.

Then Yassen tilted his head, the words sliding out like a test: “I’ve been asked to advise on how to handle this situation. Your situation.”

Alex tensed. He knew what that meant.

Yassen continued. “You’re an unregistered asset. No official trail. No diplomatic weight. But I know who you are. And they know what you can do.”

He glanced at the others, then back at Alex.

“So here’s what I propose.”

The air dropped a degree.

“You come back. With me. You work for us again.”

“No,” Alex said, instantly. Flat.

But Yassen hadn’t finished.

“If you agree to return to Scorpia of your own will, I will let the students go. All of them. No harm. No pursuit. They forget this happened, and you come home. And this time, we see to your training, properly.”

Alex felt the floor tilt. Not physically. But something inside him shifted.

The students stared at him. Silent. Still. The soldiers didn’t speak either, watching, calculating.

Yassen’s voice softened. “You know what we can offer you, Alex. You trained beside some of the best. You have more instinct than most men twice your age. No more lies. No more pretending you’re normal.”

Alex’s throat was dry. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Not yet.

“You don’t have to keep pretending to be the boy,” Yassen said, almost gently now. “Because we both know you aren’t.”

A pause.

“I trained you. I protected you, once.”

Alex looked up, eyes fierce now behind the fear.

“And you killed the only person who ever loved me.”

Yassen didn’t flinch. “I did what I was told. What I had to. Just like you’ve done.”

That struck somewhere deep. Unforgiving.

Yassen stepped back a pace.

“You’ll make your decision quickly. But understand this.. if you say no, I walk out of this room, and those students will not be the next people I speak to. And you might go back to being MI6’s pawn, if your devils luck gets you out of this. But I wouldn't count on it.”

He turned away. As he reached the door, he looked back over his shoulder.

“It’s not about betrayal, Alex. It’s about belonging. And whether you’ll ever find it anywhere else.”

Then he left.

And Alex was left in a cage.

With eight pairs of eyes staring at him like he was someone else entirely.

-

The silence after Yassen left was oppressive.

Not heavy with sound, but with meaning. With questions no one dared voice. Alex didn’t speak. He hadn’t moved since the proposal-arms loose, back against the wall, gaze fixed on the dusty ceiling like it might offer an answer. No one in the cage dared ask what he was going to do.

But they all knew.

They knew.

They saw it in the set of his jaw. In the way he looked at them. Like assets he was mentally sorting into columns of who could be saved, and how much it would cost him.

It didn’t take long.

When the Scorpia agents returned, Alex stood.

He didn’t wait to be asked. Didn’t flinch when they re-bound his wrists tighter. Didn’t speak until Rosa appeared again, flanked by guards, her expression wary but intrigued.

“I’ll go,” Alex said.

His voice didn’t waver. But it was quiet. And laced with something ancient and cold.

“You’ll let the students go.”

Rosa arched a brow. “You’re in no position to bargain.”

“That was the deal from Yassen. You need me alive. They’re leverage. If you don’t release them, I’ll make myself useless.”

A calculated pause.

“You know I can.”

Behind Rosa, a low whistle escaped from one of the guards. She silenced him with a glance.

Then she nodded.

“As Mr Gregorovich agreed, then. They go. You don’t.”

Alex turned to the cage one last time. The students were already on their feet, half-panicked, half in awe, all of them looking at him like they didn’t understand what they were seeing.

He didn’t look at Tom.

Couldn’t.

“They’ll be released at the bunker entrance,” Rosa said. “Your soldiers stay.”

“No.”

The guards stiffened.

“They stay. They weren’t part of your deal.”

Alex met her eyes. “They stay alive. They get food. You’ll need them later. If I do what you want, you’ll need someone to keep your house in order.”

A beat.

Another nod.

“Fine. But you’re done making demands.”

I was done the minute I stepped through that hatch, Alex thought.

They pulled him from the cage. Not gently. There were no theatrics just the crackle of tension and the click of locks.

He passed the others without a word. Without a glance.

And only when they took him out the far door did Tom whisper, quiet and broken, “Alex…”

But it was already too late.

-

The students were blindfolded. Not gagged. Not bound. Just stumbling, tearful, confused. They were led up the winding corridors, past doors that stank of metal and damp concrete, out into the icy morning air that tasted like freedom.

The Scorpia agents didn’t speak.

Didn’t explain.

They simply walked them to the treeline, to the edge of the bunker’s disguised entrance, and shoved them out into the mist.

Tom pulled his blindfold off first.

They were alone. No guards. No warnings. Just standing on loose gravel and pine needles, somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

“…We’re not dead,” Katie breathed, as though only just realising it.

“No,” Tom said. “We’re not.”

He turned, scanning the treeline as if Alex might emerge too. As if this were still a joke, still salvageable.

But the forest gave no answers.

Jamie swore quietly, once.

“Why would he…?”

Tom didn’t respond.

He just stared back at the sealed door in the earth. The one that had swallowed their friend.

“Because he knew they wouldn’t let us all walk.”

-

Alex’s new room was smaller.

Cleaner, though. No bars. Just four concrete walls and a heavy door with a single observation window. They hadn’t unshackled him. They hadn’t spoken.

Someone had tossed a thin blanket and a metal chair into the corner.

He stood.

Waited.

Eventually, Rosa came to the glass. She didn’t enter. She didn’t need to.

She looked at him like a cat studying a caged bird.

“You made a wise choice,” she said. “Mr Gregorovich believes you can be reasoned with. I’m not convinced.”

Alex said nothing.

She leaned closer. “We’ll see how long your loyalty lasts when your country forgets you ever existed.”

Then she left and the lock turned.

Alex slumped into the chair, every bone aching. He closed his eyes. Breathed.

They thought he’d surrendered.

They didn’t understand.

He wasn’t giving in.

He was buying time.

Chapter Text

The fog was thinning by the time K Unit dropped in.

Their boots landed softly on the mossy forest floor, rifles slung low, eyes scanning every branch. The bunker entrance, still disguised by undergrowth and loose stone, gaped faintly in the earth like a forgotten wound.

Snake was the first to spot movement. A flicker of colour in the mist. Then another.

“Contact,” he murmured.

Weapons lifted, but paused.

The shapes weren’t enemy silhouettes. They were slumped. Shivering. One was wearing a school-issued waterproof with a broken zip.

Children.

K Unit lowered their weapons in perfect synchronicity.

“Bloody hell,” muttered Wolf.

Four teenagers, damp and hollow-eyed, were huddled under the skeletal arms of a pine tree. One of them stood up, barely. His ankle was heavily bandaged with a ripped school jumper.

“…Are you the extraction team?” Sanjay asked, with the tentative disbelief of someone who might be hallucinating.

Eagle blinked. “...What?”

“Because we’ve been out here forever, we tried to walk back where we came from, but that was two hours ago, and Katie has trench foot, and Beans might be concussed-”

“I’m fine!” Beans said brightly, from where he was staring at a pinecone.

Sanjay ignored him. “And Jamie hasn’t cracked a joke since yesterday and we’ve run out of Skittles, and Alex is gone.”

That last bit landed like a stone dropped in a still pond.

Fox moved forward, eyes scanning each of them. “Alex?”

Tom spoke up then, even though he was filthy and tired and bruised in more places than he could count from sleeping on the hard floor, his voice was steady. “Alex Rider. He’s still in there.”

Wolf’s expression didn’t change but his body stilled. “…Say that again.”

“Alex Rider,” Katie repeated, too exhausted to care how absurd it sounded. “Blond hair. Looks like he hasn’t slept since 2002. Apparently can read a topographic map upside down and take down three soldiers with a camping spork.”

Sanjay nodded. “We’re pretty sure he headbutted someone unconscious.”

“He told me to play along when they tied us up,” Beans added proudly. “Like some kind of secret code. I mean, I didn’t understand the code. But he said it really confidently.”

Fox crouched beside them. “Where is he now?”

No one answered.

Then quietly, achingly, Tom said, “He traded himself. For us.”

Silence.

The trees didn’t even creak.

Wolf’s jaw flexed once. Then he turned. “Fox. Eagle. Secure perimeter. Snake, check them for injuries.”

“Where are you going?” Tom asked, even though he already knew.

Wolf adjusted his rifle. His voice was iron.

“To get him back.”

-

Fifteen minutes later, the teenagers were sitting in a tight semi-circle under foil blankets, drinking cocoa from military-issue flasks that tasted faintly of sadness and rationed sugar.

“...He’s not actually a student, is he?” Katie asked, dazed.

Fox gave her a tight smile. “He’s… complicated.”

“Is he a spy?”

Beans perked up. “Is he our spy?”

Sanjay snorted. “He’s not your anything, Beans.”

“I just think it’s cool,” Beans mumbled.

Tom stared into his cocoa. “He didn’t even think about it,” he murmured. “He just… stood up and made the deal. Like he knew it was coming.”

Fox crouched beside him. “He’s done it before.”

Tom looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

Wolf returned then, expression carved from stone. “We need to move. You’ll be airlifted out in ten.”

“Wait,” Katie said. “What about Alex?”

Wolf didn’t stop walking.

“Trust me,” he said over his shoulder. “He’s not staying.”

-

The new room was cleaner. Not comfortable, Scorpia didn’t do comfort, but at least the walls didn’t sweat moisture, and the chair Alex sat in wasn’t bolted to the floor. That felt significant.

He wasn’t restrained anymore, either. Not by metal.

But that didn’t mean he was free.

Alex sat with his back straight, hands loose in his lap, staring at the wall like it might blink first.

The door hissed open.

He didn’t look up. He didn’t need to.

The air shifted. Just slightly. The temperature dropped, not in degrees, but in instinct. That ancient voice in his bones, the one MI6 had beaten into silence, had started whispering the second the man entered the base.

Boots, measured. Breath, shallow. A man so silent he could pass through shadow and still leave it undisturbed.

“Sir,” Alex said quietly.

Yassen Gregorovich shut the door behind him. He didn’t speak for a moment.

He simply watched.

Alex finally turned his head. Slowly.

Yassen was older but the blue of his eyes still cut through you like a sniper’s bullet. His mouth was set deeper in something unreadable.

Regret?

No. That would be too human.

“You should not be here,” Yassen said, at last.

Alex gave a faint, humourless smile. “Believe me, it wasn’t in the itinerary. Orienteering, wild camping.. being handed over to a low-level death cult was a bit of a detour.”

“You made a deal,” Yassen said flatly.

“I did.”

“For the students.”

“Yes.”

Yassen moved closer, but not enough to feel like a threat. Not that he needed proximity. With Yassen, danger wasn’t in the distance. It was in the silence.

“They are gone,” Yassen said. “I allowed that. Because you asked.”

Alex nodded once. “Thank you.”

A pause.

Then: “But you’re still here.”

That hung between them, brittle and heavy. Alex stared at the floor for a second too long before answering.

“I knew you’d come.”

Yassen’s eyebrows lifted faintly. “And if I hadn’t?”

“Then Rosa would have broken me. Eventually.”

A long silence. Then, to Alex’s astonishment, Yassen chuckled. It was a dry, mirthless thing, like rust shedding from an old blade. “I trained you better than that.”

“You trained me,” Alex said, carefully, “to think for myself.”

Yassen gave a small nod of acknowledgement. “And yet here you are. In chains of your own forging.”

“I made a choice.”

“Did you?” Yassen’s voice hardened. “You are not one of them, Alex. You never were. You are not one of us either. But you persist in believing you can exist between the cracks. That no side will claim you. That is… delusion.”

Alex stood up. Slowly. He didn’t move closer, but he met Yassen’s eyes with the stubborn steadiness that had once driven Blunt to fury and Fox to tears.

“I’m tired,” he said. “Of being a pawn. MI6. Scorpia. Even school. Everyone thinks I belong to them.”

“And do you?”

“No,” Alex said, voice flat. “But I’ll play the part. Because it keeps people alive. Keeps me alive.”

Something flickered in Yassen’s expression, something too brief to name.

“You are still a child,” Yassen said.

“I’ve never been one,” Alex said. “Not really.”

Another pause.

Yassen walked to the corner, where a steel case lay unopened. He tapped the top of it thoughtfully. “Rosa believes she’s won. That you’re a prize.”

“I’m not.”

“No. You’re bait.”

Alex tensed. “For who?”

“For who they think will come,” Yassen said. “To see how valuable you are to them.”

“MI6.”

Yassen nodded. “They won’t leave you. But this bunker is a trap. Not a prison. And you are not the only one in it.”

Alex exhaled slowly. “So what now?”

Yassen looked at him with something like sorrow and said, “Now, we play our parts.”

“And after?”

Yassen’s gaze lingered for a long moment. “After,” he said quietly, “you survive. Whatever it takes.”

-

Night clung to the hills like a threat.

Rain had turned the soil slick and treacherous, and swallowed sound and boots and good intentions. Somewhere beneath the mossy hillside, a forgotten Cold War bunker pulsed faintly with life. K Unit stood a hundred metres out, lying prone in a shallow, wind-scoured dip behind a crumbling stone wall.

They didn’t speak.

They listened.

Fox was calm, meticulous, he lowered his infrared scope and passed the signal to Snake. The medic gave a quiet double-click of his comms, confirming four rotating patrols at surface level. One vent shaft. Two locked access doors. All rigged with Scorpia-grade bolt-on reinforcements. Improvised. Temporary.

That was a good sign.

Improvisation meant chaos. And chaos could be broken. K Unit were surprisingly good at Chaos. 

Wolf knelt at the centre of the group, eyes flicking across the hand-sketched topography like a warhound scenting something just out of reach. He didn’t trust this. Not just because the mission briefing had been so thin. Not because the intel from MI6 was two steps behind and one wrong word from being useless. But because this was personal.

They were here for Alex Rider and he didn’t know how to handle that. Cub had been an anomaly; one he hadn’t taken the time to understand properly during his SAS training. Alex Rider, the MI6 agent was a wild card, his missions were always of the mildly crazy kind. Alex Rider the Scorpia asset was an unknown.

“Talk to me,” Wolf muttered.

Eagle, hunched beside the comms gear, grimaced. “We’ve got interference. Comms blackout across most of the ridge. Signal jammers, low range but nasty. I’ve got partial bursts from a low-frequency sweep. Counting at least ten.”

“Civilians?” Fox asked.

“Possibly. Pattern suggests a few groups. Some are stationary, some possible guard rotations. ”

“Probably prisoners.” Snake’s voice was flat. 

No one argued.

Wolf turned his face away for a moment, rain streaking down his hood, jaw tight. “No floor plan. No confirmation of what’s inside. But we’ve got potentially wounded soldiers, a Scorpia presence.”

“And Rider,” Eagle finished.

Wolf didn’t react. But his eyes burned like match tips.

“Then we go in blind,” he said. “Fast. Quiet. No mistakes.”

Fox tilted his head. “Extraction or retrieval?”

“Both,” Wolf said grimly. “We find Rider, confirm he’s breathing, and pull everyone out. If we can’t do that cleanly-”

“We burn the bunker,” Eagle finished.

Snake didn’t flinch. “How are we entering?”

Fox gestured with his knife tip to the secondary access, half-covered by turf and stones, likely used for ventilation or supply drop-ins. “I’m guessing they didn’t expect anyone to know about this hatch. It's old and the bug sweeper suggests not surveillance in the area. But it’s real.”

Wolf nodded once. “Then that’s where we go.”

No glory. No heroics.

Just four ghosts, slipping into the dark.

Chapter Text

They entered through the hatch like smoke.

Fox was first. Slim, precise, a whisper of breath and movement, MI6 trained. Then Eagle, close behind, checking angles with his rifle steady. Snake brought up the rear, eyes sharp for anything that bled or broke. And Wolf, last, watching everything.

The old maintenance shaft had collapsed in one place, forcing them to belly-crawl through mud and rusted struts. The walls oozed condensation and the scent of time. But past the choke point, the air shifted. Colder. Filtered.

They were inside.

The corridor was concrete. Low ceiling. Harsh corners. One flickering lightbulb buzzed above a rust-stained hatch.

Snake pressed his hand to the wall and muttered, “Power’s running on a loop. They’re draining energy somewhere.”

“Keep moving,” Wolf said.

They did.

Footsteps like breath, shadows like memory.

Two turns down and one level below, Eagle caught the sound first: murmuring voices, the creak of metal, the scuff of a boot. He signed twice-occupants, ahead.

Fox edged forward, peering through a vent slot.

His eyes narrowed. Then he looked back and signed: Soldiers. Alive. Locked in.

Wolf didn’t hesitate. He moved like a storm with a leash.

They swept the corridor, cleared it fast and clean. Eagle overrode the keypad with a bypass spike, and the door groaned open.

The soldiers inside scrambled to their feet, wide-eyed.

Two of them looked like they'd been through a war-mud-streaked faces, bruises, wrists chafed from zip ties. All of them, hunger and stress hollowing out their expressions. The other two looked more wary, the command of the group Wolf presumed.

“Who are you?!”

“We’re British Army,” Fox snapped. “SAS, Joint operations. K Unit. We’re getting you out.”

“Where’s Rider?” Eagle demanded.

Wolf stiffened in anticipation of the response.

Corporal Dawes stepped forward, jaw clenched, face pale. “He’s not with us. They moved him last night. After… after Yassen came.”

Eagle froze. “Yassen Gregorovich?”

The corporal nodded.

The room chilled by degrees.

Wolf exchanged a sharp look with Snake. “Where is he?”

“They moved him,” Brennan muttered. “After they let the students go. Said he volunteered to stay. Didn’t resist. Just… went.”

And like lightning in dry air, the tension cracked.

“You’re saying he stayed?” Fox hissed.

“Not stayed,” the corporal growled. “Chose. Told them to let the others go. They respected him. They treated him like… like one of theirs.”

“They said he was Malagosto trained,’” the other soldier, Salim, added bleakly. “And he didn’t deny it.”

Eagle took a step back. “Bloody hell…”

Snake’s voice was low. Measured. “So half of you think he turned.”

“Wouldn’t you?” the corporal bit out. “He gave them something. Bought the students’ release. Now he’s in there eating with them, talking to Yassen like they’re on bloody first-name terms-”

Wolf held up a hand, silencing the room. His voice, when it came, was quiet. But it cut like wire. “You think Rider turned?”

The soldiers shifted uneasily.

“I think,” Salim said bitterly, “he didn’t look like a prisoner.”

Wolf stared at them for a long moment. Their Sergeant yet to speak.

Then he turned and muttered to his team. “Snake. Patch them up. Fox. Keep them here, secure. Eagle, with me.”

He was already walking.

Down the corridor, deeper into the dark.

Toward the boy they’d once trained with.

The boy who might now be something else.

The deeper they went, the stranger it became.

No standard layout. The corridors twisted like veins, pulsing with old power and new security. There were cameras, but none moved. Broken? Deliberate? Wolf didn’t like either possibility.

“Eagle,” he murmured. “Thermals?”

“Dead spots everywhere. This place is built like a bunker, but rigged like a trap. If he’s alive, he’s not moving.”

Wolf nodded once. He kept walking.

They passed a locked server room. Dark but humming.

Then a sealed infirmary. Too clean, too quiet.

Then-

“Hold.”

Eagle stilled. He gestured to the left: a short corridor with one reinforced door and a keypad beside it, old and cracked.

A scuffed clipboard hung nearby, almost carelessly. No names. No times. Just:
R9 – DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT CLEARANCE.
A smudge of dried blood ran across the corner.

“Alex?” Eagle asked.

Wolf didn’t answer. He was already moving.

He bypassed the pad. Old tech, brute force. He ripped the casing off, twisted two wires, and forced the emergency bypass sequence.

A click.

A low hiss.

The door unsealed with a shuddering exhale, like the room was holding its breath.

Inside-

A single overhead light.
A plain chair.
A cot pushed into the corner.
No obvious cameras. No food tray. No comfort.

And on the cot, sitting cross-legged with his back to the door, was Alex Rider.

He didn’t turn.

Didn’t even flinch.

“’Bout time,” he said. His voice was hoarse, dry as sandpaper.

Wolf took one step forward. “Cub.”

Slowly, Alex looked over his shoulder.

His face was thinner. Jaw bruised. One eye slightly swollen. But his eyes-

His eyes were the same.

Sharp.

Defiant.

Tired.

“Wolf,” he said, with that brittle edge of sarcasm he always fell back on when he was afraid. “You’re late.”

Wolf took another step. Stopped.

Eagle hovered at the doorway, gun still up, just in case.

Alex raised both hands, palms open. “No tricks. No weapons. They left me with a toothbrush and a threat.”

“Why are you in here?” Wolf asked, low and steady.

Alex exhaled. “I cut a deal. Students go free. Soldiers live. I stay.”

“Why would they take that deal?”

“Because Yassen offered it.”

That changed the air in the room.

Wolf tensed. “Gregorovich made the offer?”

Alex nodded, eyes flicking to the far corner of the room, where the wall met the ceiling. Subtle. Too subtle for a civilian.

Eagle followed the glance. Saw nothing.

Wolf understood.

Still being watched.

“You’re not compromised?” Wolf asked aloud, but his expression softened. One brow barely lifted.

Alex met it, gaze cool. “Depends how you define it. I gave them nothing. Not about MI6. Not about you. Not about the kids.”

“Then why the hospitality?”

“I’m bait,” Alex replied simply. “I think Rosa was going to try and sell me. Or convert me. She brought Yassen in to help. He said I should come back to Scorpia.”

“And you said?”

Alex stood slowly. “I said yes.”

Wolf’s face didn’t change.

But Eagle flinched.

Alex spread his hands wider. “I said yes. And then I waited. Because I knew someone would come looking. Took you long enough.”

Wolf exhaled through his nose. “And you’re not actually going back?”

“No.”

“But they believe you?”

“They did. Until you opened that door.”

He stepped forward now, out from the cot’s shadow. His voice dropped to a whisper.

“There’s a backup team arriving tomorrow. A real Scorpia cell, not the amateurs who caught us. And when they get here, they’re going to move me. Or kill me. Or eventually both I assume.”

Wolf nodded slowly.

Then, quiet and calm: “We’re pulling you out.”

Alex shook his head once. “Not yet.”

“What?”

“You get me out now, they go to ground. If I stay thirty more minutes, I can copy the server in the south wing. Might as well figure out what they’ve got down here, make this whole shitshow worth something.”

Wolf stared at him. Not speaking. Not moving.

Eagle muttered, “You’re not serious-”

Alex looked up. Just for a moment, he looked fifteen again. Tired. Bone-deep tired.

But he said, “If I leave now, all of this was for nothing. I’m not walking out just to protect me.”

And there it was.

Wolf lowered his rifle.

“Fine,” he said. “Thirty minutes.”

Alex nodded.

And then, quietly, respectfully: “Thank you.”

Wolf moved to the doorway. “Eagle. Set the extraction timers. This ends in forty-five minutes, whether we’re in or out.”

He turned back to Alex. “You’ve got one shot.”

Alex smiled grimly. “Always do.”

-

The air in the bunker had changed.

The Scorpia guards were gone from the immediate corridors. No more booted patrols or barking orders. Just the heavy press of anticipation and the faint, maddening buzz of flickering overhead lights. K Unit moved like a shadow through it, escorting the rescued soldiers down a long, curved hallway toward the south sector.

Alex walked at the front.

Still barefoot. Still half in the dirty clothes they’d caught him in. A dark stain on the left sleeve marked the torn stitches in his arm, but he hadn’t complained. His movements were purposeful, methodical, and entirely unlike the teenager most of the soldiers had last seen being tied to a chair.

Sergeant Sanders was having a hard time with that.

“This is absurd,” he hissed, glancing between Wolf and Alex. “We’re storming an enemy facility led by a teenager who looks like he just crawled out of GCSE biology. I don’t care how dangerous they claimed he is. He’s a starved child.”

Wolf didn’t blink. “He’s got clearance.”

“He’s got bare feet, Sergeant.”

Alex stopped walking.

Turned.

His voice was soft. “I’ve memorised the patrol patterns for three wings of this facility. I know the server room access route, the camera blind spots, and the last rotation times. If you’d prefer to take point, be my guest. Though I suggest you keep your voice down before you walk into the east hall. They’ll hear you coming.”

Sanders looked at him, startled. “How do you-?”

“I listened. While you were all held captive, I listened.”

There was no ego in Alex’s tone. Just fact. Cold, clinical, efficient.

Eagle gave a low whistle. “He’s in that mode again. You’re about to get a front row seat to something spectacular boys.”

Snake muttered, “Don’t slow him down.”

Wolf said nothing.

They reached a junction. Alex gestured right.

“We take the storage tunnel behind the armoury. There’ll be two guards outside the server door. One’s lazy. The other twitches when he hears running water. Don’t ask.”

“Do we have a weapon?” Sanders asked tightly.

Alex reached into his sleeve. Produced a thin, curved scalpel-clearly nicked from the medical wing. “You’ll slow me down if I wait for an ambush.”

“Rider-”

But Alex was already moving.

He slipped through the shadows, vanishing into the tunnel ahead.

Lake turned to Wolf, flabbergasted. “He’s bleeding, barefoot, unarmed-”

“No,” said Wolf. “He’s Alex Rider.”

Seconds passed. Then a crack of bone against metal. A scuffle. A muffled yelp.

By the time they caught up, Alex was standing over one of the guards, unconscious. The other slumped in a heap at the foot of the door, nose broken and twitching.

Alex wiped the blade clean on the guard’s sleeve. “Try the keycard now,” he said, already pocketing a recovered gun and pressing his palm against the biometric reader. “Before they notice the cameras went dark.”

Sanders hesitated. “You just-he didn’t even make a sound-”

“You’ll get used to it,” muttered Eagle, stepping around him.

Snake gave Alex a long look. “How long do we have?”

“Fifteen minutes if we’re lucky. Seven if they’re watching the third quadrant feeds.”

Wolf nodded. “Let’s move.”

Inside the server room, blinking lights cast a faint blue glow across metal racks and humming machines. Alex went straight to the far console. The terminal required a retina scan.

“I can bypass it,” he said. “Give me thirty seconds.”

The sergeant opened his mouth to argue.

Then closed it.

He’d seen enough.

And apparently so had the rest of his men who followed, now silently observing.

-

The server room hummed like a sleeping animal-heavy with heat and too many secrets.

Alex knelt beside the terminal, his fingers quick over the command keys. The system language was one he recognised-modified Scorpia backend, a derivative of the old Malagosto protocols. His eyes flicked across the screen, absorbing it faster than most adults could have read the file names.

K-Unit kept watch behind him. Snake had his sidearm raised. Eagle hovered by the exit. Wolf stood beside Alex, silent, waiting.

The other soldiers kept their distance.

“Got anything useful?” Wolf muttered.

Alex didn’t respond. Not yet.

The console blinked red-Access Denied.

He reached up, pressed two fingers against the side panel, popped it open, and tore out a low-level cooling cable. The system chirped. Screen flashed. He fed in a string of coded inputs so fast his fingers blurred.

ACCESS GRANTED.

“Honestly,” Alex muttered, “they never fixed the backdoor from Cairo. Sloppy.”

File trees cascaded across the screen.

“Facility layout. Personnel rotations. Off-book payment trails. Supply manifests. Names.” His voice lowered. “Some of these are MI6 moles.”

Wolf stiffened but handed him a pen drive from his pocket.

“I’m copying everything,” Alex added. “It’s encrypted but I'll burn it once we’re safe.”

A progress bar appeared.

TRANSFER: 11%…

Behind him, Snake hissed through his teeth. “Come on, come on…”

27%… 43%…

Alex’s hand hovered over the cancel key, just in case. One foot rested lightly against a screw bolt under the panel-ready to pull the system down if he had to.

78%… 94%…

Then a beep.

Transfer complete.

He pulled the drive, tucked it into his pocket. “Done.”

Wolf reached down and hauled him to his feet. “Good work.”

Alex didn’t flinch from the praise but he didn’t respond to it either. He was already turning toward the exit.

They didn’t run, but they moved fast. Through the corridors, tight as a unit, boots quiet over concrete.

They hit the emergency exit just as the first alarm sounded.

BWAH-BAWH-BWAH.

A klaxon.

Red lights snapped on across the hall. Somewhere far off, voices rose. A command was shouted. Too late.

K-Unit and the soldiers poured out into the grey dawn. The forest sucked them into shadow like they’d never been there at all.

Wolf clapped Alex once on the shoulder as they reached the tree line. “Still got it.”

Alex’s mouth quirked. “Didn’t say I ever lost it.”

He didn’t say anything else.

His arm was bleeding again. His eyes were sharp. The drive was still warm.

Behind them, the Scorpia bunker began to burn.

Chapter Text

They’d made it a mile from the scorched bunker before Wolf gave the all-clear to slow. The forest swallowed their footsteps, branches slapping wetly against combat fatigues and battered boots. The soldiers moved in tight formation, whisper-quiet, eyes flicking through the grey light for any signs of pursuit.

Alex didn’t speak.

Not at first.

His shoulder throbbed like someone had wedged a hot knife under the blade. His ribs ached to hell from that final scuffle in the corridor. His head buzzed from adrenaline and the raw sting of too many unspoken things. And his feet hurt.

But his mind was clear. Focused. Trained to task.

And then, just as they crested a rise and the extraction beacon came into faint view, a blue light blinking through the mist like a distant star, he stopped walking.

“Wolf.”

His voice was quiet, but it carried.

The unit turned. Wolf raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

Alex didn’t look at him. He was scanning the horizon, as if afraid that saying it aloud might make the answer worse.

“The students,” he said. “The Brooklands lot. Are they safe?”

A pause like he wasn't about to go with them.

Behind Wolf, Eagle muttered something like “bloody hell,” under his breath. Snake gave a low sigh.

Wolf hesitated. It was barely half a second. But Alex caught it.

“Found ‘em before we went in. Took a while to calm them down, a lotta nerves, a lotta gaps in the story. They’re safe. They were evacuated before we breached the bunker. Choppered out with one of the forward med teams. They’ve likely been taken to the closest secure base for debrief and treatment.”

Alex stared at him.

“But?”

Wolf exhaled. “But K Unit’s orders were you. Nothing else. No updates beyond that. I don’t know more.”

Alex looked away, jaw tight.

Of course.

Of course they hadn’t followed up on the kids.

Alex exhaled, slow and hard. His shoulders sagged, not from injury, but release.

“And Tom?” he asked, more quietly. “Did he seem..?” Alex didn’t know how to finish that question.

Wolf’s gaze softened slightly. “The Harris kid? He’s fine. Shook up. But he asked about you.”

Of course he did.

Alex didn’t say anything. He didn’t trust his voice. Instead, he nodded once, sharp and small, and turned back toward the signal beacon. 

Wolf caught up beside him. “You did good, Cub.”

Alex gave the faintest of smiles.

“Tell that to my shoulder.”

Wolf grunted. “We’ll get you stitched up. Then you can tell Blunt exactly where to shove this whole mess.”

Alex didn’t reply.

He was already planning how to do exactly that.

Then just, “I’d kill for a pair of shoes.”

Eagle clapped him on the shoulder, “that can be arranged.”

-

The base was a slab of concrete in a valley, flanked by forest and fencing and far too many locked doors.

The students had arrived an hour earlier.

They’d been met by medics, real ones this time. Not Scorpia masks or clean-pressed actors. Actual human beings with warm hands and steady voices who checked pulses, offered blankets, and didn’t demand names like weapons.

Still, the mood was brittle.

Katie hadn’t spoken since the chopper.

Beans had cried quietly when they removed his GoPro.

Jamie had thrown up in a bin and then insisted it was “just adrenaline.”

Tom sat on the edge of a cot in the base infirmary, his eyes on the reinforced glass door like a hawk waiting for a sign. Or a shadow. 

No one had told them anything useful. Only that they were being held temporarily, pending review. The words “safety protocol” had been repeated so many times it had started to lose meaning.

Katie had muttered, at some point, “This feels like a holding cell with biscuits.”

She wasn’t wrong.

They were now being marched down a grey corridor flanked by men in uniform. Not threatening, just unreadable. Like walking through a hallway of mannequins with guns. They’d be rescued, but they weren’t free.

Tom walked near the back, eyes flicking constantly to the sealed doors they passed, restless, wary. Looking for Alex, even now.

They were ushered into a plain briefing room with cheap carpet, sealed windows, and a pitcher of tepid water on the table like some sort of peace offering. A woman in a pressed navy suit entered after them. A clipboard, no name badge but still very government looking.

“Thank you all for cooperating,” she said, tone clipped. “You’re safe now. That’s the priority.”

“Where’s Alex?” Tom blurted, before he could stop himself.

The woman blinked, then offered a professional smile that could’ve been cut from ice.

“We’ll come to that.”

Katie narrowed her eyes. “You’re not going to tell us anything real, are you?”

There was a pause. Then- “What you experienced was an unfortunate accident. A case of mistaken location during a live military training simulation. Your orienteering group happened to cross into a classified perimeter. The facility you entered was under review for decommissioning and... certain protocols were triggered.”

Jamie made a faint choking noise. “Mistaken location? They shot at us!”

“We’re filing incident reports,” she said smoothly. “And your headteacher has been notified. You’ll all be returned to school with the appropriate cover story.”

“Cover story?” Sanjay echoed.

Beans raised a hand. “Can I still do my geography coursework on this? Like... ‘Rural Defence Infrastructure and the Psychological Impact of Being Held Hostage’?”

“No,” she said crisply. “This is not going on your UCAS form. Or your socials. Or your diaries. You are not to discuss it. At home, online, or in school.”

Tom leaned forward. “What. About. Alex?”

The woman’s smile didn’t budge. “At the moment, your classmate is being transferred for... further health evaluation. For now, the story is he’s recovering at home from injuries sustained during the incident.”

“That’s a lie,” Katie snapped.

“Yes,” the woman said. “But it’s the one that keeps you all alive and uninvolved.”

The room fell into silence.

Beans leaned toward Tom and whispered, “I knew he wasn’t just weird.”

-

Before they were released back to their room, each student was given a form to sign.

Official Secrets Act. Minimal version. Just enough to scare them.

Jamie’s hands shook as he signed his name. Sanjay asked for a pen that didn’t feel like it had been used by twelve others. Beans tried to doodle his initials until the woman snapped at him to focus.

Tom held the pen for a long time.

“Is he coming back?”

The woman paused. “He’s... where he needs to be.”

Which wasn’t a no.

It wasn’t a yes either.

Tom signed.

They were ushered back to a spartan room, full of emotion and smelling of antiseptic, but otherwise fine.

Fine.

Only Tom knew that wasn’t true.

-

By the time Alex arrived, flanked by two grim-faced officers and K Unit at his back, there were orders waiting. Medical treatment for the wounded. Evidence to be secured. Personnel to be accounted for. But him?

Him, they didn’t know what to do with.

He didn’t resist. He barely spoke. Just handed over the drive to the first MI6 agent who would take it, and allowed himself to be processed like any other loose end.

“You’re being detained pending verification,” said the base commander. Not unkindly. “Your cooperation is noted, but after the Scorpia proposal…”

He trailed off.

Alex said nothing.

Wolf stood nearby, face like granite. “It was tactical,” he said. “He agreed to their terms to save the civilians. He never actually defected.”

“We’ll see,” the commander replied. “When everyone’s stories line up, we’ll revisit his status.”

Alex didn’t argue. He just let them take his weapons, his jacket, his recently acquired boots.

He let them lock the door.

-

Sergeant Mason Sanders sat stiffly across from the MI6 interviewer, his bruised cheek blooming purple across the left side of his jaw.

The woman questioning him was precise. Neatly dressed. Cold eyes.

“So,” she said. “Tell me about the moment you first suspected the boy might be more than a civilian.”

Sanders blew out a breath. “I didn’t suspect. I knew. Not at first, but after we were taken. The way he spoke. The way he moved. Like someone used to combat. Not some school kid playing scout leader.”

“You’re referring to the bunker?”

“They were scared of him. And he was restrained and tortured and still prioritised extracting information before extracting himself. I’ve been in the Forces eighteen years and I’ve never seen a man or kid like that.”

“Did you believe he’d turned?”

A pause.

“No. But some of the others did. He was cold. Focused. Strategic. Scorpia seemed to want him. It… rattled people.”

“But not you?”

Sanders hesitated. Then: “He asked them to keep us alive. That’s not something a defector does.”

-

Tom Harris looked exhausted.

Dark circles. Red-rimmed eyes. Clinging to his hoodie like armour.

“He’s my best mate,” he said quietly. “Has been since Year Seven.”

“Do you know what he really is?”

“No. Not really. But I’ve guessed… things. For years. He comes back from holidays with scars. He knows weird facts. He once made an acid-neutraliser out of toothpaste and salt and wouldn’t tell me why he’d needed it.”

The interviewer didn’t blink.

“Did you know he was a government operative?”

“No. But it doesn’t surprise me.” It wasn’t a full lie.

“Did he ever mention the name Scorpia?”

“No.”

“Do you think he’s a threat?”

Tom bristled. “No. I think he’s been in situations no kid should be in, and he still tries to protect everyone around him. Even people like Jamie.” Tom’s voice cracked. “He sacrificed himself for us, he’s always sacrificing himself.”

-

Mr Harrow looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.

“I don’t know anything. I mean it. He’s a good student. Quiet. Always on time -when he’s not off sick. Bit odd, but not in a dangerous way. Very sad business with his uncle, so I’m not surprised.”

The agent made a note. “Did Alex ever strike you as violent?”

“No. But… capable, I suppose. He doesn’t rise to bait. Ever. Not when Jamie’s shouting.”

“Would you say he endangered the group?”

Mr Harrow swallowed.

“I can’t know that, I wasn’t with them. But it wouldn’t be very in keeping of his character.”

-

Beans fiddled with a juice carton the entire time.

“I mean, I thought he was a bit weird, yeah? Always knew stuff. Like, knew what brand of boots the army wears. Knew how to bandage Katie’s leg. Knew how to break a zip-tie using his knees.”

He looked up, eyes wide.

“But when that scary lady with the Russian accent came in and said his name like that… I thought-wait. That’s not just Alex.”

“Do you trust him?”

Beans nodded. “Yeah. But I don’t think he’s gonna come back to school after this, is he?”

-

Jamie Weston sat like a kid trying to look innocent after setting a shed on fire.

“I knew something was off with him. He never laughed. He never joined in. Always watching.”

The agent raised an eyebrow. “Are you frightened of him?”

Jamie hesitated.

“…No. I don’t think I am. He doesn’t scare me. But I think he’s dangerous. Like..he’s a grenade with the pin half-out. And we’ve all just been sitting next to it for years.”

“But did he protect you?”

“…Yeah. Yeah, he did.”

-

The MI6 handler made his observations cleanly. “He’s not on any database. We scrubbed everything two years ago, when the agreement was made. That alert came from Scorpia poking a little too hard into our gaps. We’ve since traced four IPs back to Southern Europe. Possibly ex-Malagosto.”

“Do you believe Alex Rider is compromised?”

“I believe Alex Rider is a fifteen-year-old who’s been used like a pawn since he was twelve. If he was compromised, we’d all be dead by now.”

“Can we trust him?”

A pause.

“We never could. That’s what made him useful.”

-

Private Eli Brennan sat forward, elbows on the table, bandage showing under his sleeve. His hands never stopped fidgeting.

“I didn’t trust him at first. I mean, the lad’s fifteen. Sounds like he should be in year ten maths, not cracking open locked doors and coordinating defence strategies. But the moment the extraction team broke in and he went feral-I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That he wasn’t one of us. But he wasn’t one of them either. He was... something else.”

“What convinced you?”

“He covered me. Then just told me to ‘keep moving’ like he was the one in charge. Like he’d been doing this his whole bloody life.”

Private Salim, one of the younger recruits, seemed uneasy.

“He spoke fluent Russian,” she said. “To one of the Scorpia guards. Calmly. Like he was ordering a coffee. And the guard looked scared. Scared of him.”

“And you believe he was loyal?”

“I think he played a very long, very dangerous game. And we’re only just catching up.”

Corporal Finn Dawes had more of a chip on his shoulder.

“I don’t like that we followed a kid into enemy territory,” he said flatly. “I don’t care if he did have intel or saved our lives. It’s a failure of protocol. Of chain of command.”

“Are you saying he’s a threat?”

“I’m saying no teenager should be that good at killing.”

“But is he a traitor?”

Dawes’ expression darkened.

“… I don’t know. But I think, we don’t know half of what he’s done. And we should.”

-

Author: Sergeant Scott “Wolf” Delaney
Classified Internal Memorandum
Eyes Only – Tier 3 Clearance and Above

Subject: Operative Alex Rider
Re: Scorpia Facility Breach and Asset Retrieval – Operation Thornshade

Summary:

Subject was located at the Scorpia-held facility known as Site Theta. He had been captured, interrogated, and propositioned to defect. Based on corroborated eyewitness accounts, Subject agreed to Scorpia’s terms in order to secure the release of civilian students and reduce immediate risk to military personnel. Subject remained under surveillance in the facility and did not disclose actionable intel to the enemy.

Upon extraction, Subject procured a drive containing high-level operational files from Site Theta, accessed using methods not all consistent with MI6 tactical and electronic training. Subject also engaged in direct neutralisation of enemy personnel during exfiltration, while managing a reopened arm wound and a concussion sustained in prior conflict.

Behavioural Observations:

Subject displayed high situational awareness, psychological resilience, and unwavering mission focus throughout the operation. Subject took personal risks to prioritise the safety of others-including civilians and military staff-despite prolonged captivity and limited resources.

Subject’s combat response was instinctive and lethal. Use of force was measured, strategic, and in defence of the extraction team.

Subject also showed signs of emotional compartmentalisation, delayed physical self-care, and extreme restraint under duress. Recommend psychological evaluation once secure clearance is re-established.

Conclusion:

Subject did not defect.

Subject maintained operational cover, protected civilian lives, and executed independent intel retrieval under active enemy pressure.

Subject remains an asset of considerable strategic value.

Recommend full debrief in person. Immediate clearance for temporary containment lifted once corroborations complete.

Signed,
Wolf.

-

The room was beige.

Not cream. Not white. Beige. A colour that had been chosen, very deliberately, to offer no comfort whatsoever. The kind of shade that said we don’t want you to feel at home here.

Alex sat with his back straight, hands in his lap, left wrist still raw from the restraints. His hoodie had dried into creases. The scab above his eye had cracked twice already from subtle facial movement, and the muscle in his jaw twitched every few minutes.

Across from him sat three people: one Ministry observer who hadn't said a word, one MI6 risk assessor with kind eyes and a clipboard, and Jones.

Mrs Jones. Still in her charcoal-grey suit. Still with the cigarette case she never opened.

"Alex," she said, and it was almost gentle.

He didn’t reply.

The risk assessor, a young man named Fraser who probably got excited about graphs, cleared his throat. "We’d like to run through the timeline of events."

"Which version?"

Fraser blinked. "Sorry?"

Alex finally looked up. “You want the MI6-friendly version, the version you’ll put in front of the Prime Minister, or the truth?”

A beat.

Jones folded her hands. “Start with the truth.”

So he did.

He told them about the hike. About the soldiers. About Beans falling through the hatch and how the Scorpia guards had descended like a swarm, guns raised before anyone knew what was happening.

He told them about the cage. The questioning. Rosa. The way she hadn’t blinked when she gave the order to restrain him like a live grenade.

He didn't mention the fear, but it lived in the white between his words.

When he got to Yassen, his voice cracked. Just a little.

“I don’t know why he still .. I hate that I still.. ” He couldn’t explain how he still feared and respected the man.

Mrs Jones didn’t interrupt.

“He gave me a choice. Go with them. Let the kids go.”

Fraser wrote that down with an expensive pen.

“I agreed. I bought time.”

“Did you mean it?” the Ministry man asked at last, his voice as dry as the room.

Alex’s jaw twitched. “I meant to keep them alive.”

"And what about now?"

Now.

Now the adrenaline was gone. Now the ache in his ribs had returned. Now his own government had him locked in a facility two hundred miles from home while his classmates were being monitored for signs of 'contamination'-as if trauma were a virus.

“I never turned,” he said flatly. “You know that.”

“Some of the soldiers-”

“I never turned.”

He said it like it tasted of iron. Like it was the only truth left in the world.

Mrs Jones nodded once.

“What would you have done,” she asked, “if Yassen hadn’t offered you that deal?”

Alex exhaled, long and low.

“I’d have found another way. I always do.”

Fraser looked up from his notes. “Are you ready for the next question set? It's a little more... personal.”

Alex stood.

Fraser flinched.

“I’m going to the bathroom first,” Alex said, not asking.

Mrs Jones rose too. “Two minutes.”

“I’m not going to vanish,” he muttered, brushing past her.

“No,” she said quietly. “But the question is, where else would you go?”

Alex paused in the doorway, back still to the room.

“I don’t know,” he said.

And for the first time since he stepped into the bunker, he sounded fifteen.

-

The room didn’t change while he was gone. Still beige. Still watching him.

Fraser offered him a protein bar as he sat back down. Alex ignored it.

Jones didn’t smile. “Let’s talk about Yassen.”

Alex’s eyes flicked up, sharp and warning. “We already did.”

“We need more.”

“You want me to guess at what he’s planning?”

“I want to know if you believe him.”

Alex stared at a faint scuff mark on the floor. “He’s not a liar. Not in the way you think.”

“Meaning?”

“Yassen’s a weapon. He doesn’t bluff. He threatens when he’s already made the calculation.” He hesitated. “He’s not impulsive. If he said he’d let the students go, he meant it. If he said he’d kill them, he would’ve done that too.”

Fraser scribbled something. “But you didn’t think he would.”

“I think.. I didn’t give him a reason to.”

“Did you think he’d kill you?”

“…Yes.”

Silence again.

“You respected him,” Fraser said softly.

Alex didn’t rise to it. “I knew him,” he said. “That’s not the same thing.”

Jones adjusted a single sheet on her clipboard. “He let you live. He let the others go. And he didn’t try to extract you when K Unit arrived. That tells me something.”

Alex’s voice was hoarse. “It tells you nothing. You can't even try and being to understand the mind of Yassen Gregorovitch.”

She raised an eyebrow. “No. But you can.”

There was silence - not a refusal, not quite. But something sharp and unreadable flickered behind Alex’s eyes.

He looked away, jaw clenched. “Yassen doesn’t do favours. Not without reason. If he left me, it’s because he wanted someone else to find me first.”

A pause.

“Which should scare you more than it does.”

Jones didn’t flinch. “Do you believe that?”

He didn’t answer. Not directly. Instead, he asked, “Are you going to let me see them?”

“See who?”

“The students.”

“Why?”

“I want to know they’re alright.”

Jones tilted her head, not unkindly. “You don’t want to know what they think of you?”

Alex looked down at his raw wrist. “No.”

That hung heavy.

Fraser leaned forward. “Do you think you’re still fit for field service?”

Alex finally met his eyes. “Did I complete the mission?”

“Yes-”

“Did I protect the civilians?”

“Yes, but-”

“Then you tell me, Fraser.”

He said the man’s name like a challenge. Like a dare.

Fraser swallowed. “You… seem under extreme psychological strain.”

“Good. I’d be more worried if I wasn’t.”

Mrs Jones spoke, quiet but unflinching. “And if you’re redeployed?”

“I thought I was retired.”

“We’ll have to.. revaluate.”

“Then, I’ll go where I’m told.”

“To kill?”

“If necessary.”

“For Queen and country?”

Alex didn’t blink. “No. For the kids you lot let rot in that cage.”

That stopped everything.

Even Fraser’s pen.

Jones looked at him differently, then. Not like a boy. Not even like an asset.

Like a legacy.

“We’ll reconvene tomorrow,” she said.

Alex stood, already bracing to be escorted out.

“Where are you taking me this time?” he muttered.

But Jones didn’t answer straight away. Instead, she said something quiet. Something almost human.

“You did well, Alex.”

He didn’t look at her. Didn’t say thank you.

Just walked out the door, leaving beige walls and silence behind him.

Chapter Text

The room was antiseptic in design. One of those military side offices repurposed for quiet interviews, with linoleum floors, plastic chairs, and a rectangular table that had seen better decades. The mirror across the wall reflected back five figures, and the presence of the armed guard in the corner reminded everyone that this was not a reunion. It was surveillance, dressed as civility.

Alex sat calmly. No cuffs. No visible restraints. But his posture was still locked down, shoulders square and hands folded on the table. Every inch of him screamed tension. At his side, a suited MI6 handler named Grant. A man with the warmth of a closed filing cabinet, sat with a clipboard and a sealed tablet.

The door opened.

Tom came in first, eyes flicking over Alex instantly. Relief washing across his features even as his steps slowed. Behind him followed Katie, guarded as ever, then Beans, who looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be excited or terrified. Jamie strolled in next, all swagger and bad timing, while Sanjay hovered quietly at the back, expression unreadable.

“Alex!” Tom breathed, the name caught somewhere between accusation and worry. “Bloody hell, they have you locked up.”

“I’m not locked up,” Alex said with a faint smile. “It’s more of a… secure location.”

Katie folded her arms, unimpressed. “That’s what people say when they are locked up.”

The handler cleared his throat before anyone could answer. “Mr Rider has been approved for a limited meeting with your group. Any attempts to discuss classified material will end this conversation immediately. Mr Rider is to stick to the pre-approved debriefing statement.”

Jamie dropped into the chair directly across from Alex and grinned. “So, what’s the official story, mate? That you tripped over a branch and landed in a Bond film?”

Alex glanced at the mirror. “I got separated during the hike,” he began, in that too even voice that immediately set everyone on edge. “I entered a restricted zone without knowing it. I found shelter, but was picked up by local forces who mistook me for someone else. The soldiers arrived shortly after, and we were all extracted.”

“Wow,” Jamie drawled, kicking one foot up onto the chair leg. “Ten out of ten for delivery. Very BBC voice. Very ‘we regret to inform you.’”

Katie’s brow furrowed. “That’s not what happened.”

Alex’s eyes flicked to hers. “That’s what I’m authorised to tell you.”

“But we were there,” Beans said earnestly, wide-eyed. “We saw what happened. Those people knew your name. You knew them. You were, like, commanding people.”

“I’m not who they thought I was,” Alex said, the line brittle on his tongue.

“You told them to take you instead of us,” Sanjay said calmly. “That doesn’t sound like mistaken identity to me.”

“I wanted to protect you,” Alex replied, and for a brief moment, his voice slipped. Just a breath too honest, a hair too personal.

The MI6 handler immediately cut in. “Mr Rider. Stick to the statement.”

Alex drew in a sharp breath, bit back what he was going to say, and nodded once.

The silence stretched.

Tom leaned forward, voice low. “We know. Okay? You don’t have to say it. But we know. And we’re not angry. Not anymore.”

Alex looked at him for a long moment. The weight of unspoken things sat like iron between them.

“You’re safe,” he said quietly. “That’s what matters.”

Jamie scratched his cheek. “You’re not going to, like, disappear again after this, right? Or get dropped out of a helicopter into a volcano or whatever it is you do on weekends?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said, and for once it sounded honest. Tired. “That part’s not up to me.”

“You’re still a bit of a legend though,” Jamie added, smirking. “Even if your CV turns out to be ‘secret government ninja.’”

Beans nodded. “Yeah. That was cool. You were terrifying, but, like… cool terrifying.”

Katie gave Alex a measured look. “Just don’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

Alex hesitated.

Then he said, carefully, “Even if I did, people wouldn’t believe me.”

“No,” Katie agreed. “They wouldn’t.”

Tom pushed his chair back. “Alright. Let’s go before they decide we’ve been ‘contaminated’ or something.”

Sanjay stood too. “Take care of yourself.”

Jamie gave a two-fingered salute. “Next time we do orienteering, maybe don’t find an enemy base, yeah?”

“I’ll try,” Alex said, almost smiling. "Maybe don't open it next time." 

Jamie's cheeks flushed.

As they filtered out, Tom lingered in the doorway. His voice was quiet.

“If you ever want to tell us the truth - I’ll be here.”

Alex just nodded.

When the door closed, the handler flipped his tablet screen around to make a note.

“Next time,” he said without looking up, “stick to the script.”

Alex didn’t respond.

He just reached across the table and poured himself a glass of water with a hand that wouldn’t quite stop shaking and sat still in the silence that followed.

Grant flipped a page on his clipboard without looking at him. “That could’ve gone worse.” He offered as reassurance.

Alex stared down at the table, where the imprint of his folded hands still lingered in the faint dust.

“They deserve better,” he murmured.

Grant didn’t reply.

The fluorescent light hummed above them like a wasp trapped in a jar.

-

The door clicked shut behind Mrs Jones.

Alex stood alone in the briefing room, a stillness settling around him like fog. The last hour had been a formality - her voice crisp, clipped, rehearsed - a walkthrough of the final report. MI6 had finished their internal assessment. His mission integrity had been signed off. Yassen’s offer had been noted. His actions deemed acceptable. Even commendable.

He was no longer under observation.

Technically.

But when he stepped out into the hallway, two soldiers flanked either side of the door. Neither moved. Neither spoke.

The freedom was only on paper.

-

They called it the lounge, but that was being generous. It was a holding space with mismatched chairs, a coffee machine that produced watery sludge, and a vending machine full of suspiciously identical cereal bars. A battered TV played a muted news feed in the corner. The students were still there.

Tom was sprawled on the floor, back against the wall, flipping through a dog-eared copy of Top Gear Magazine. Katie sat cross-legged beside him, arms folded, chewing a pen lid. Beans had passed out with his hoodie over his face. Jamie was balancing a plastic water bottle on his forehead and somehow making it look like a competitive sport. Sanjay was silently playing solitaire on one of the base-issued tablets.

When Alex walked in, the mood shifted like someone had opened a window.

Tom looked up first. “They let you out?”

“For now,” Alex said.

“Good,” Katie muttered. “Maybe now someone’ll tell us what’s going on.”

“Still stuck here?” Alex asked.

“Apparently the military doesn’t like it when school kids get taken hostage in secret bunkers,” Jamie said, bottle still teetering. “Something about bad PR.”

Sanjay didn’t look up. “They’ve cleared us medically. But they’re still sorting through the reports. Yours included.”

Beans stirred under his hoodie. “Can’t we just say we tripped into a Bond movie and leave it at that?”

Alex dropped into an empty chair with a quiet exhale. “They’ll keep you here a bit longer. Standard containment protocol. Psychological evaluation. Threat assessment.”

“Charming,” Katie said. “Like we’re walking viruses.”

“You’re witnesses,” Alex said. “That makes you liabilities. Or assets. Depending on which briefing room you’re standing in.”

“That supposed to comfort us?” Jamie asked, still grinning, but more tired now.

“No,” Alex replied. “It’s supposed to explain why the doors are still locked.”

The silence settled again.

Beans yawned. “So… what now?”

Alex hesitated. His voice was soft when he spoke.

“Now we wait.”

-

They weren’t even pretending anymore.

The envelope had arrived in the late afternoon, hand delivered by a tight lipped officer who muttered something about a final roundtable before release. Inside: a single, neatly folded document marked CONFIDENTIAL in red.

Katie had read the heading three times before whispering, “This isn’t a school letter.”

Jamie whistled low and long, eyes skimming the text. “Jesus.”

Katie stared at the sheet in her hands like it might vanish if she blinked. “We’re being… summoned?”

“Debriefed,” Tom corrected, though his voice held a nervous edge. “By the army. Properly, this time. Everyone involved. Us, the soldiers, the-what’s it say-‘tactical response unit’?”

Beans squinted over her shoulder. “They mean the rescue lads with the scary eyebrows, yeah?”

Sanjay frowned. “Read the bottom line.”

Jamie let out a low whistle. “Oh. Oh, damn.”

Alex didn’t need to look. He already knew what it said. He’d seen the list an hour ago, handed to him without ceremony by the same sergeant who still refused to make direct eye contact.

There it was, in bold, regulation-black print:

🇬🇧 UNITED KINGDOM MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
JOINT OPERATIONS COMMAND – INTERNAL BRIEFING FILE
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: LEVEL 5 – EYES ONLY
DOCUMENT TYPE: POST-OP DEBRIEF SUMMARY
REFERENCE CODE: JOC/BUNKER-EV-771-ALEX/MI6

SUBJECT:

Joint Military and Intelligence Response — Scorpia Bunker Incident
Location: Virebeck Training Region – Unauthorised Subterranean Complex
Date of Incident: [REDACTED]
Date of Debrief: [REDACTED]
Compiled By: Major Linda Harper, Military Police / Oversight Division

ATTENDING PERSONNEL

Senior Military Officials – Ministry of Defence Oversight

• Major General Arthur Stratton, Director of Strategic Operations (MOD)
• Colonel Elise Grant, Royal Army Intelligence Corps
• Commander Alec Woodson, Joint Tactical Command, SAS Liaison Officer
• Lieutenant John Reynolds, SAS (Field Commander – Joint Training Exercise)
• Major Linda Harper, Military Police (Lead Investigator)
• Captain Farrah Kwan, PsyOps Division (Debrief Oversight)

Rescued Armed Forces Personnel – 42nd Joint Response Unit

• Sergeant Mason Sanders
• Corporal Finn Dawes
• Private Eli Brennan
• Private Nate Salim

K UNIT – Special Air Service Tactical Response Unit

• “Wolf” – Unit Commander
• “Snake” – Tactical Comms Specialist
• “Eagle” – Reconnaissance
• “Fox” – Embedded MI6 Intelligence Asset
• “Cub” – Senior Intelligence Operative MI6 Directive – Class S

Note: Operative “Cub” is subject to Section 12.3 of the Covert Operatives Act. Identity protected. Refer clearance requests to MI6-OPS-CY.

MI6 Personnel (Observer Status)

• Agent Marla Chen, Covert Operations Division
• Handler “J”, Youth Operative Oversight
• Dr. Ian Redford, Psychological Profiling, MI6 Black Section
• Agent Ben Daniels, cross-listed under K Unit
• Senior Agent Alexander Rider, cross-listed under K Unit

Civilian Group

• Four (4) Civilian Students, Brooklands Secondary. Identified and flagged under Youth Welfare Protocols (MOD/MI6)

Names redacted under safeguarding guidelines.

Status: Debriefed, non-operational civilians. Cleared for release pending psychological review.

Document ends.
[Secure Seal — MOD Clearance Code 7-139/ALPHA-OPS]

Tom looked up from the paper, brows raised so high they practically disappeared into his hairline. “You’re listed on this. Twice.”

Alex didn’t respond.

Sanjay read aloud, deliberately. “'Cub – Senior Intelligence Operative MI6 Directive – Class S.' And then again. 'Senior Agent Alexander Rider.'”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Then Beans let out a quiet “...well that explains so much.”

Alex sighed. He was sitting stiffly in the corner of the room in a folding chair that somehow made him look even more like a soldier than the ones who wore the uniform. His posture hadn’t softened since he rejoined them. He looked, Tom thought, like he was bracing for impact.

Katie shook her head, the paper still in hand. “So all this time. You weren’t... just unlucky.”

Alex gave a tight shrug. “No.”

Jamie frowned. “Wait - so like... you're MI6? Proper James Bond? You’ve got a number and everything?”

Alex glanced up at him with a smirk. “Not quite. But yes. I work with them. I thought you’d figured that out already. I can't believe they actually put that on paper..”

“Since when?” Katie asked, her voice quieter now. Less accusation. More awe.

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen.” Sanjay said flatly. “You were still figuring out algebra.”

“I was figuring out how to dismantle a stolen Russian arms shipment in France,” Alex replied, deadpan. “Same thing, really.”

Jamie gave a low whistle. “Mate. You’ve got range.”

Tom’s voice was soft. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Alex finally looked at him, really looked, and his face shifted slightly. Something vulnerable flickered at the edge.

“Because it’s not something I can talk about. And it’s not something you should have ever been dragged into.” He paused. “I’m sorry you were.”

Katie folded the summons neatly, her fingers trembling just a little. “Is this the real reason no one ever picks you up from school?”

Alex gave her a half-smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah. Jack... my guardian... she’s rarely in the country anymore. It’s easier if I just blend in.”

Jamie tilted his head. “You do realise you’re rubbish at blending in, right?”

“That’s the idea,” Alex said simply. “So rubbish, it becomes believable.”

The group sat in silence a beat longer. Outside, an officer’s voice barked a drill instruction, sharp and distant.

Beans cleared his throat. “So when this meeting thing happens... what do we do?”

Alex stood, smoothing his shirt like it was armour. “You do what you’ve been doing. You answer questions honestly. You tell them what you saw.”

“And you?” Tom asked.

“I stick to protocol.”

“You’re going back, aren’t you?” Katie asked. “After all this.”

Alex didn’t answer right away.

Then, quietly: “It’s not about going back. It’s about never having properly left.”

Tom rubbed a hand over his mouth. “They’re not even pretending you're one of us anymore.”

Jamie, still holding the paper, looked at Alex for a long moment. Not suspicious. Not hostile. Just… curious.

“So,” he said slowly, “do we salute you now or just offer our lunch money?”

Alex’s face didn’t twitch, but Tom saw the faintest shift of tension in his shoulders. Jamie tried again, more serious this time. “You’re going in as one of them?”

“They’re trying to make the timeline make sense,” Alex replied evenly. “It’s… a box they can put me in to make themselves feel better.”

Sanjay, blunt as ever, said, “We’re not going to be able to lie about you when they ask, are we?”

“No,” Alex said. “But you won’t be able to tell the truth either.”

He looked up at them, and for the first time, they didn’t see the quiet, awkward boy from school.

They saw the agent.

-

The room was rectangular, featureless, and lined with chairs chosen for function, not comfort. No table. No barriers. Just two curved rows of seats facing each other beneath the sharp eyes of overhead strip lighting. One arc was filled with students, still in soft hospital-issued layers, bruises visible beneath sleeves, expressions caught somewhere between confusion and exhaustion. The other was military: the rescued soldiers in fresh fatigues, the lean silhouettes of K Unit in their dark grey gear, and a few shadowy MI6 figures in civilian suits that managed to look more dangerous than the uniforms.

The air was thick with unspoken things.

At the centre of the room, standing at a small podium that might once have seen a press briefing, was Major General Arthur Stratton. Ribbons neat. Cap under his arm. The kind of man who’d never had to raise his voice to silence a room.

Flanking him, seated with the calculated spread of authority, were Colonel Elise Grant of Army Intelligence, Commander Alec Woodson from Joint Tactical, Major Linda Harper of the Military Police, and Captain Farrah Kwan from PsyOps. Their pens were poised. Their screens lit. No one here was just observing.

Stratton surveyed the room like it was a live operation.

“Thank you for your attendance,” he said. “This is a formal multi-agency debrief conducted under Level 5 classification. All testimony will be recorded and transcribed for intelligence consolidation and procedural review. Cross-talk is discouraged. Questions will be directed by presiding officers. You are not here to speculate. You are here to report.”

His gaze swept across the students. Katie straightening; Tom swallowing hard; Sanjay giving the tiniest nod.

Then across the soldiers. Sanders and Dawes, ramrod straight; Salim looking wary; Brennan alert and quiet.

Then, finally, K Unit.

Still. Sharp. Lethal.

“Before we proceed,” Stratton said, voice crisp as frost, “Mr Rider, please take your assigned seat.”

There was no hesitation.

Alex stood from the far wall, where he’d been posted between two MI6 observers, and walked across the open floor. His school hoodie was gone. He wore the same black tactical trousers and regulation boots as K Unit. His steps were even. His eyes forward.

He sat down between Wolf and Snake, spine straight, hands loose but still.

A ripple passed through the students. Tom’s mouth opened, then shut. Jamie let out a sharp breath. Katie looked like someone had just dropped her into a war film. Beans, remarkably, said nothing at all.

They’d had warning of course, but seeing Alex as a solider was something else entirely.

Alex didn’t look back.

Didn’t dare.

Across the room, one of the soldiers Salim, young and still bruised, blinked at him like trying to match two conflicting images in his head.

Colonel Grant made a mark on her tablet.

Stratton nodded once. “Proceed with testimonies. Civilian group first.”

And just like that, the review began.

No preamble. No mercy. No room left for pretending.

Alex Rider was no longer the quiet boy from school. And none of them could unsee it now.

-

“Mr Harris,” Harper said. “Please begin.”

Tom stood slowly. His jumper was slightly too big, sleeves hanging over the edges of his hands. He pushed his hair back once, then again, then folded his arms tightly across his chest.

“There were five of us in the orienteering group — me, Alex, Jamie, Katie, and Beans. There were supposed to be 6 of us but Jess stayed behind. We were meant to do a circuit and meet the rest of the class at base camp that evening. But... Jamie took charge and, well... he got us lost.”

There was a pointed cough from Jamie’s seat. Tom didn’t look.

“We ended up further into the training area than we should’ve. That’s when the soldiers found us. A group of them. Real ones. They thought we were part of their evac exercise — like a civilian sim. I think they were supposed to extract a group of fake hostages or something. Anyway... we didn’t argue.”

“Four of them stayed to help us, figured either way they’d be staying with us. Sim or lost kids. They let us stay the night with them,” he continued, quieter now. “They fed us, gave us extra gear. Next morning, we kept moving together.”

“And the hatch?” Harper asked.

Tom hesitated. “We found it late morning. Looked like an old storm drain cover, but heavier. Jamie opened it. Said it’d look great on the GoPro. Beans leaned over to film it and... slipped.”

Tom’s hands curled into fists. “Alex jumped in after him. No hesitation from him. The er Sergeant wasn’t happy with letting him go down though.”

“Thank you,” Harper said. “Miss Fenton?”

Katie stood. She was paler than usual, but her voice didn’t shake.

“Tom’s right. Jamie got us lost,” she said, levelly. “We weren’t that far off course, but far enough. The soldiers. Um Sergeant Sanders and his team, were decent. They treated us like part of the sim and kept things light. We trusted them.”

She exhaled. “Then we found the hatch. Alex... he didn’t like it. I remember how tense he went. Told the soldiers to seal it. Said it didn’t feel right.” She looked across at him. “He was right.”

Grant raised an eyebrow. “And you believe Mr Rider had prior knowledge of it's existence?”

“I think,” Katie said carefully, “he understood the danger before the rest of us did. And he started protecting us from the second it went wrong.”

A long pause.

Then, “Mr Sanjay Gupta?”

Sanjay stood with military formality, awkward, but deliberate.

“I confirm most of what’s already been said,” he began. “Timeline checks out. I also want to add that when the gunfire started, Alex didn’t flinch. He moved. Covered us. Shielded Jamie. Gave orders. Proper ones. Some of it should be on the GoPro if MI6 hasn’t erased it.”

“Did you follow them?” asked Colonel Grant.

“Yes,” Sanjay said simply. “And we’re alive because of that.”

A nod.

“Mr Murphy.” Beans had to be nudged.

He half-stood, one arm in a sling, hoodie creased and muddy. “I dunno how helpful I’ll be, really. It was all a bit, you know, mad. I thought it was just, like, an advanced army thing at first? Some training? Then Alex told us to shut up and get down and we did.”

He scratched at the back of his neck. “Didn’t make sense. One minute he’s quiet and moody and a bit weird about maths homework. Next minute, he’s doing roll calls and using words like perimeter and fallback position.”

Even Colonel Stratton gave a brief flicker of amusement at that.

Jamie stood last, shoving his hands in his pockets like it was just another school detention.

“Right. So. I’m the idiot who opened the hatch.”

“Duly noted,” muttered Harper.

“I figured it was just some boring water works thing. But it turns out it was a hostile paramilitary compound. That’s my bad.”

His expression sobered slightly.

“But when it all kicked off? Alex got us into cover, got us quiet, got us out. When those blokes in black started yelling, he understood them. When they separated us, Alex stalled, negotiated, actually offered himself to go with them instead.”

“Mr Weston,” said Harper, expression unreadable. “You appear to be taking this lightly.”

“Believe me,” Jamie said, suddenly serious, “I’m not. It’s just easier to joke than think too hard about how we nearly died.”

Silence followed. Then Stratton nodded, once.

“Your cooperation is noted and appreciated.”

The students sat back down, fidgeting, whispering, folding and unfolding sleeves. Most of them couldn’t stop glancing toward Alex, who sat motionless, gaze fixed on a point in the air directly ahead of him, as if none of this concerned him at all.

But it did.

And they knew it now.

Harper gave a single nod. “Testimonies received. Thank you all.”

“Sergeant Sanders,” said Major Harper, pen poised.

The broad shouldered man stood, brushing down his sleeves before clasping his hands behind his back. His bruises were healing, but the cut over his right brow still stood out like punctuation.

“Ma’am,” he said, voice even.

“You were the ranking officer among the captured personnel?”

“Yes, ma’am. Myself, Corporal Dawes, Privates Brennan and Salim. We were mid-exercise, Phase Four recon, when we encountered the civilian group.”

“Explain your decision to remain with them.”

Sanders nodded once. “We were under the impression the students were part of the scenario. Simulation briefing listed a possible ‘civilian evac’ objective, with minimal detail. Five youths appearing unexpectedly fit that profile. They were under-equipped, exposed, but calm. We followed protocol, extracted them from the path of live exercises, and camped down overnight.”

“Did you question their presence?”

“We did. Got vague answers. One of the civilian lads, Jamie, seemed to think he was leading the hike. Honestly, ma’am, we still thought it was part of the op. Until the next morning.”

“And what changed?”

Sanders glanced at Alex briefly before returning to Harper. “The hatch. It wasn’t on our maps. Wasn’t listed. Jamie opened it. One of the other civilians, known as Beans, fell. Rider retrieved him. Fast. Calm. Efficient.”

He hesitated.

“That’s when I noticed the shift.”

“Clarify.”

“Rider. His demeanour changed. Body language, voice. He told us to seal the hatch. Said the placement was wrong. Used words most teenagers wouldn't throw around.”

Sanders paused again.

“Something in my gut told me this wasn’t a sim anymore.”

He stepped back into place as Harper nodded. “Corporal Dawes?”

Finn Dawes stood next. Lean, wiry, with a tight jaw and the guarded eyes of someone still replaying events in his mind.

“I backed the sergeant’s decision to stay with the students,” he said. “Made sense at the time. Looking back... I see it clearer. Rider wasn’t reacting. He was assessing. Watching tree lines, tracking sounds. Even during dinner he barely spoke, but his eyes never stopped moving.”

Harper tilted her head. “And the moment of contact?”

Dawes exhaled. “Chaos. We were escorting the group back toward command. By then we’d raised the possibility they weren’t sim assets. Rider was trailing behind with one of ours. When the hostiles hit, he was the first one who moved.”

“Explain.”

“Dropped flat. Pulled one of the students down. Then signalled us. Didn’t flinch under gunpoint. I’ve seen lads twice his age lose it in less.”

Harper gave him a long look. “What did you think he was?”

“Not one of them,” Dawes said flatly, gesturing to the students. “Not really.”

“Thank you, Corporal.”

Next was Private Eli Brennan, the quietest of the four.

He rose slowly, eyes flicking briefly toward Alex.

“I didn’t speak much, ma’am,” he said, voice calm. “Watched. Listened.”

“And what did you see?”

“Control,” Brennan said. “He didn’t command us. But when he gave suggestions, we listened. No hesitation.”

He clenched one fist. “In the bunker, they separated us. But even then... he held himself differently. When the interrogations started, he didn’t scream. Didn’t beg. He avoided answering questions. Tactical ones. About structure. Chains of command. His position.”

Harper frowned slightly. “You believe he remained operational while restrained?”

“I think,” Brennan said slowly, “he never stopped being operational. Ma’am.”

He sat. Silence followed.

Then the last voice.

Private Nate Salim stood, younger than the others, and clearly uneasy with the room’s weight.

“I was the last to realise,” he admitted. “I thought he was just scared. But when they pulled him for questioning... the way the enemy treated him. They didn’t think he was a kid.”

Harper nodded. “Anything else, Private?”

Salim swallowed. “Yeah. When they took him... he looked back. At us. Not his mates. Us. Like he was... apologising. Or warning us.”

He sank back down, and no one spoke for a long breath. Then, they were asked to continue their reports filling in the gaps.

Sergeant Mason Sanders stood again, this time slower. His eyes were shadowed, like he'd been up most of the night reliving it.

“The capture was fast,” he said. “Tactically sound. We didn’t see them coming. Black gear, no insignia, zero chatter. I remember trying to shout to the kids, to tell them to run, but we were surrounded too quick. I barely got a hit in.”

He paused, jaw flexing.

“They stripped us. Radios, weapons, trackers. Just clothes left. Dragged us into what looked like an old armoury cage, a weapons vault converted into a cell. The kids were herded into the next one. They kept the kids together until the Scorpia agent, Rosa, appeared. She knew Alex... that’s when they took him separately.”

Major Harper asked quietly, “Did you witness the interrogations?”

“Some of them. They kept him restrained, never given an inch. Starved. They took him from where they were keeping us too. But the cells weren’t soundproof. We heard some of it. The beatings. The questions. They didn’t treat him like a hostage. More like a traitor.”

He hesitated.

“The woman. Rosa. Sharp. Professional. She started asking real questions. About his objectives. His allegiances. Tried to pick apart his cover. She obviously knew Alex and what he was capable of but she didn’t know why he was there.”

“And how did Rider respond?”

Sanders glanced at Alex.

“He stayed calm. Gave nothing. Didn’t even flinch when she brought up the others. Just asked what she wanted. I’ve seen grown men fold under less.”

A longer pause.

“And then the other one arrived.”

Harper blinked. “Yassen?”

Sanders nodded. “Didn’t need to say his name. Everyone in that place, even the guards, changed when he walked in. Like the air changed. We watched it happen through the bars. Rosa stood down. The guards backed off. And Rider…”

His voice faltered.

“He sat up straighter. Not scared. Not exactly. But… deferential. He called him ‘sir.’”

There was silence in the room.

“He offered Rider a deal. Join Scorpia, walk back into the fold, and he’d let the kids go and us, the soldiers, live. Alex took it.”

Sanders raised a hand preemptively. “Don’t mistake me. It wasn’t surrender. It was negotiation. Tactical sacrifice. He went with them to protect the rest of us.”

“Do you believe he intended to rejoin them?”

“No,” Sanders said simply. “I think he wanted time. And intel.”

Harper nodded. “Thank you.”

Corporal Finn Dawes stood again and rolled his shoulders like the memory still clung to his uniform.

“I didn’t trust him at first,” Dawes admitted, nodding toward Alex. “Didn’t like how quiet he was. Too still, like a predator. But when we were in that cage? I changed my mind.”

He looked grim.

“They beat the crap out of him, but it wasn’t about pain. It was performance. Rosa wanted to know if he was bait. Or if we were. When that didn’t work, she turned it psychological. Said MI6 left him. Said no one was coming.”

“She wasn’t wrong,” Dawes added, bitterly. “No signals. No extractions. Until K Unit showed up.”

He almost smiled.

“That was something. Smoke grenades, flashbangs, full breach and Rider was bleeding and still coordinating us. Told us what corridor to use. Which side to duck. Took out two guards while limping.”

“And K Unit?”

He gave a slow nod. “They didn’t treat him like a kid. Didn’t even question him. Just fell into line like they’d trained together.”

Harper looked to Private Eli Brennan, who stood with a tight grip on the chair in front of him.

“I didn’t know who Yassen was,” Brennan said. “But I know killers. I’ve seen what they look like. He was polite. Still. Didn’t blink.”

His eyes flicked to Alex.

“They were similar. Like opposite sides of the same coin. The way they looked at each other like brothers, or old enemies. I don’t know. But the moment he offered that deal, we all knew it wasn’t a bluff.”

“And Rider accepted it.”

Brennan nodded once. “Yeah. But he didn’t cave. He calculated.”

He shifted.

“When K Unit came, we were pinned. Rider went through them. Didn’t wait. Just carved a path to the server room, got the data, got us out.”

He shook his head.

“I’ve trained for seven years. That kid moved like he’d been born with a kill order.”

Then came Private Nate Salim. He stood nervously but spoke clearly. “I didn’t understand what was happening until it was over,” he admitted. “But I remember Rider never panicked. Not once.”

He glanced at the students, then to the K Unit operatives.

“He’s not normal,” Salim said. “But he’s one of us.”

Colonel Stratton didn’t rise. He didn’t need to. A tilt of his head was enough to shift the weight of the entire room toward the far right, where K Unit sat like statues. Four seasoned SAS operators and a teenage boy who mirrored their posture with uncanny precision.

“Let the record note,” he said, voice slow, “that these next testimonies come from Unit Designate: K. Direct-action, classified tier. Names withheld under Section 12.4 of the Covert Operatives Act.”

He looked at the first of them. A man who might’ve been mistaken for a bouncer if you didn’t know his kill count.

“‘Wolf.’ Begin.”

The man gave a single nod. “Yes, sir.”

He stood, shoulders broad and boots planted like he was back in theatre. “We received partial intel about unauthorised movement in a black zone. Limited access. No blueprints. No ground clearance. We were inserted forty-eight hours post-alert.”

“Did you know who triggered the alert?”

Wolf hesitated — just long enough to make the entire room hold its breath.

“No,” he said. “Not officially.”

“And unofficially?”

He met Stratton’s eyes with something that might’ve been defiance. “We had suspicions.”

“About Cub?”

“Yes, sir.”

The term landed heavy in the room.

“Would you classify him as an embedded asset?”

Wolf tilted his head slightly. “I’d classify him as operational. Always have.”

There was a rustle of paper behind one of the MOD aides.

Colonel Grant asked, “You refer to Rider by his codename. Does that reflect current unit dynamics?”

Wolf didn’t blink. “It reflects reality.”

“And what, exactly, is that reality?”

“He’s a member of K Unit.”

Soft gasps rippled through the student arc. Jamie gave a silent “what the hell” face to Tom. Beans just looked quietly terrified.

“And how did Cub end up a member of your team, Wolf?”

“He’s been with us since SAS selection.” The finality of his tone was understood. Wolf would not be elaborating further.

Stratton turned his attention to the man beside Wolf, Snake, long-limbed and hollow-eyed.

“Comms?”

Snake nodded once. “All internal transmissions were blacked out. Grid was jammed with directional pulses. Only one signal spiked before the jam, a failed upload from a body cam. That’s what flagged the AI crawler. The asset in question was identified as civilian, but behaviour patterns matched known embedded profiles.”

“And your opinion of Cub’s role in the op?”

Snake’s voice was eerily calm. “He kept us from walking into a trap. Twice. Knew the infrastructure better than our tech by the time we reached him. Had already mapped fallback routes. Had two alternate evac plans. And he was injured.”

Silence again.

Colonel Avery looked like he’d swallowed battery acid.

“And the enemy leadership?” he asked. “Rosa? Yassen Gregorovich?”

“Rosa underestimated him,” Snake said. “She wanted control. She got resistance. But Yassen?” His eyes darkened. “He knew what we were dealing with. Knew Cub wouldn’t bend.”

“Did you observe their interactions?”

Eagle, seated beside Snake, spoke for the first time. His voice was low, graveled. “No. Yassen Gregorovitch was not in the bunker when we arrived.”

“Was there any indication that Rider might’ve defected?”

Wolf bristled.

“No, sir. Not for a second.”

Stratton leaned forward. “You didn’t question his choice? Even temporarily joining them for our safety?”

Fox, the only one in a civilian suit, technically MI6, answered before anyone else.

“He played the board,” he said. “Sacrificed a piece to protect the civilians. He never changed sides. He changed position.”

A long, cool silence.

“Would you trust him again in the field?” Grant asked flatly.

K Unit responded as one.

“Yes.”

No hesitation. Not from a single one of them.

Stratton cleared his throat. “Then let the record show: K Unit maintains full operational trust in Asset Cub. Field rank: retained. Clearance: under review. Status: active asset pending.”

He didn’t bother to hide his distaste.

“And to be clear,” he added, “this remains highly irregular. A civilian student, embedded in a joint-force operation-”

Wolf cut across, calm but loud enough to stop the sentence in its tracks.

“He’s not a student.”

Stratton blinked at the minor insubordination. 

Wolf folded his arms. “Not really. Not anymore.”

The room quieted the moment his name was called.

Colonel Avery’s voice was crisp. “Rider. Step forward.”

Alex stood slowly.

He didn’t look at the students.

Didn’t glance at the soldiers.

Just crossed the floor with the flat, even steps of someone who’d done this before. A dozen times. Maybe more. He stopped in the centre of the open space and clasped his hands behind his back, feet at parade rest.

Major Harper raised her tablet. “Please state your designation for the record.”

“Rider, Alex. Asset Codename: Cub. Clearance Level S, MI6 Special Operations Section, embedded with specialist SAS strike force and retrieval team. designation K Unit on provisional assignment.”

Someone in the civilian section failed to hide a sharp inhale of breath. Tom, probably.

Harper blinked once. “Proceed with your statement.”

“At 0700 hours, the civilian school group began a scheduled orienteering exercise. A navigational error resulted in a deviation from the planned route. At 1038 hours, contact was made with four military personnel in a temporary field camp. Identification was withheld but the context of the joint training exercise accounted for this. We remained overnight.”

He didn’t glance at anyone as he continued.

“At 0943 hours the next morning, on the walk back to what was supposed to be safety, a hatch was discovered. I instructed immediate reseal but was overruled. One civilian fell through. I descended, retrieved them. Shortly after, hostile engagement occurred.”

Harper tilted her head. “Hostiles?”

“Unmarked operatives. Well-armed. Coordinated. Tranquillisers used. At least two soldiers subdued in the opening seconds. The insignia, partially obscured, matched historic Scorpia markers.”

“You recognised it?”

“Yes, ma’am. Immediately.”

A short silence.

Harper’s voice lowered. “And then you allowed yourself to be taken?”

“Yes. The situation had escalated beyond the soldiers’ control. The civilians were at risk.”

The room fell quiet again, the implication humming beneath the surface like electricity.

“Who conducted your interrogation?” she asked.

“Initially, mid-tier operatives. On day 1 it was simple identification checks. On day two, Rosa Malvani. She recognised me. After, Yassen Gregorovich was called.”

That name cut across the room like a knife.

Even the senior military officers exchanged looks.

Colonel Stratton cleared his throat. “You have a… documented history with both Malvani and Gregorovich, Rider. Would you care to elaborate?”

Alex’s reply was quiet. Perfectly calm. “No, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

He turned slightly. Still perfectly composed.

“With respect, sir, my prior operations involving Scorpia fall well above the clearance level of everyone in this room.” His gaze didn’t flinch. “Including yours.”

The pause that followed was absolute.

Even Wolf gave a small grunt that might’ve been a stifled laugh.

Stratton's jaw twitched, but he said nothing.

Harper, to her credit, simply nodded and moved on. “Continue.”

Alex resumed without missing a beat. “I accepted a conditional deal. I agreed to remain detained in exchange for the release of the civilians and surviving soldiers. It was the only viable option available at the time. I did not pass intelligence, answer questions, or make any formal commitment. It was a stalling tactic.”

“And the extraction?”

“K Unit entered at 0340 hours on day five. I had memorised the approximate layout of the base. I led them to the data terminal. Hostile forces were neutralised. I sustained injuries, a dislocated shoulder, fractured rib, minor hearing damage.”

Colonel Avery leaned in slightly. “And when instructed to evacuate-?”

“I declined to leave until the civilians’ status was confirmed. My responsibility didn’t end when I was freed.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t sign up for any of this. They needed to go home.”

That flicker of humanity. It was there. Just beneath the surface. Another long beat passed.

Then Harper clicked her pen, softly. “Agent. Your testimony is consistent with field reports, and your conduct has been cleared by both MI6 and MOD review boards. You are formally released from operational hold, pending further assignment review.”

Alex gave a simple nod.

“Do you have anything else to add?” she asked.

He looked past the panel. Past K Unit. Past the quiet, wounded students on the opposite side of the room.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Except that I’d do it again.”

Then he turned, walked back to his seat, and left a silence behind him that no one filled and not one person; not one soldier, spy, or student, saw him as just a schoolboy anymore.

Chapter Text

It was after the briefing, long after, when most of the base had dimmed to its evening hush. Overhead fluorescents humming in tired rhythm and the smell of overcooked pasta wafting faintly down the halls. Wolf cornered the students in the corridor.

“Come with me.”

No explanation. No questions invited.

They looked at each other warily, like he might be leading them to another debrief, or worse - another sealed room with a ticking clock and a form marked FOR YOUR EYES ONLY.

But they followed.

Alex was already with him. Head down, silent, walking like the floor didn’t quite trust him.

They stopped outside a battered metal door with a chipped label that read:

Sgt Recreation - Authorised Personnel Only

Wolf pushed it open.

Inside, it smelled faintly of old socks and lemon cleaning spray. There was a battered pool table with a rip in the felt. A darts board. An ancient TV with an equally ancient games console parked below it. Two sofas - sagging. One lopsided table tennis setup held together with duct tape and the grim will of generations of exhausted grunts.

And half a pack of biscuits on a shelf marked DO NOT TOUCH - LANCE CORPORAL JENKINS.

Jamie took one look and let out a whistle. “Mate, this is… beautiful.”

“Bit of a dump,” Beans added, eyes wide with glee.

“Exactly,” Wolf said, dropping his bulk onto the nearest sofa with a grunt. “No ranks in here. No statements. No forms. No chain of command.”

Katie arched a brow. “So why bring us?”

Wolf looked at her. Then at Alex.

“Because that briefing didn’t solve the real problem.”

“And what’s that?” Sanjay asked.

“You’re scared of him,” Wolf said plainly. “And he’s terrified of you figuring that out.”

Alex stiffened, but Wolf didn’t soften.

“He’s not dangerous to you. He’s dangerous for you. He knows it. You know it. So now we sit, we eat whatever’s left of Jenkins’ biscuits, and we try to pretend we’re all just people for one night.”

Jamie gave a lopsided grin. “I vote we start with table tennis.”

“Agreed,” Tom said, already moving.

Katie crossed her arms. “And what if we’re not ready to pretend?”

“Then don’t,” Wolf said. “But at least let him try.”

That settled it.

“You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here, Wolf.” Alex grumbled quietly.

-

An hour later, the room was loud.

Beans and Jamie were locked in a chaotic ping pong match, using wooden spoons after snapping both paddles within five minutes. Katie was reluctantly taking score - or claiming to, while mostly mocking their technique. Sanjay had discovered the games console still worked and was quietly dominating a very pixelated football game against Snake.

Tom sat beside Alex on the sofa, both of them nursing lukewarm mugs of whatever passed for tea from the vending machine.

“You okay?” Tom asked, voice low.

Alex nodded. “Better.”

“First time I’ve seen you relax since this started.”

Alex shrugged. “It doesn’t last.”

“Still,” Tom said, nudging him gently. “Nice while it does.”

Alex glanced across the room; to Jamie, shouting at the ping pong ball like it owed him money; to Katie, whose smile had reappeared, if only briefly; to Wolf, who had wordlessly put the biscuits in the middle of the table and said nothing when half were immediately stolen.

And something in him eased.

Just a little.

“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

-

It was well past lights out when the room began to dim. Not literally, the strip lights still hummed, and the vending machine still blinked like a tired heartbeat. But the energy had settled, dropped into something warmer. Softer.

The ping pong ball had vanished somewhere behind the radiator. Jamie claimed victory on the grounds of “definitive chaos.”

Sanjay had curled into a beanbag with the games console’s controller in his lap, eyes half-closed, screen forgotten.

Beans lay upside down on the sofa, legs hooked over the back, arms dangling towards the floor like a ghost with zero ambition.

Katie sat cross-legged near the biscuits, scribbling silently in a notebook she picked up from the side table, her pencil tapping a thoughtful rhythm against the page.

Alex was on the floor, his back to the side of the sofa, knees drawn up loosely, a now-empty mug keeping his hands occupied.

Tom sat beside him, fiddling with the string on his hoodie, eyes flicking between his best friend and the others as if trying to connect dots he couldn’t see.

Jamie broke the silence first.

“So,” he said, voice unusually level, “we didn't get to finish that conversation early - how long have you been doing this spy stuff, then?”

Alex didn’t look up. “Too long.”

There wasn’t a joke in it.

Just truth.

“That’s not really an answer,” Katie murmured.

Alex glanced sideways, a tiny shrug. “I started when I was fourteen.”

Jamie gave a low whistle. “Right. So while the rest of us were panicking over GCSE coursework, you were what, getting shot at?”

Alex didn’t smile. “Sometimes.”

“Bloody hell.”

They sat with that for a while.

"How did you even get started?" Sanjay asked.

"It's.. complicated. My Uncle died and the rest was a combination of luck and timing. Or bad luck I suppose."

Beans turned his head toward the ceiling. “Did you ever think about quitting?”

“All the time,” Alex said. “But every time I tried, someone else got hurt. Or someone told me I was the only one who could do it.”

“That’s not fair,” Tom said, sharp. “That’s not okay.”

“I know.”

Katie looked up. “Do you even know who you are outside of all this?”

Alex opened his mouth. Then stopped.

“I used to,” he said eventually. “Now I just know what I’m not allowed to be.”

Sanjay, still curled in his beanbag, said quietly, “That’s not living.”

“No,” Alex agreed. “It’s not.”

For a long moment, none of them spoke.

The clock ticked. Someone’s boot squeaked faintly against the floor.

Jamie blew out a breath. “This whole thing’s messed up, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Katie.

“Yeah,” said Tom.

“Absolutely,” said Beans.

And Alex, with a voice that didn’t quite shake anymore, said, “It really is.”

Jamie picked up a cushion and tossed it gently at Alex’s head. “Right, then. Guess you’re stuck with us till the end of the trip. Spy or no spy.”

Alex caught the cushion.

And held it like it mattered.

It was Wolf who called it.

“Alright,” he said, rising with a stretch that made his spine crack audibly. “Enough trauma bonding for one night. Beds. Now.”

Groans answered him from every direction.

Jamie flopped off the sofa. “You’re cruel, mate. I was just getting comfy.”

“Not your mate,” Wolf muttered, but without bite.

Katie tucked the notebook away. Sanjay unplugged the console. Beans wandered toward the door in the dazed shuffle of someone who had forgotten they were still wearing shoes.

Alex didn’t move straight away.

Tom hesitated beside him. “You coming?”

Alex offered a tired half-smile. “In a bit.”

Tom gave a small nod and didn’t press.

Soon it was just Wolf and Alex left in the room, both lingering in the scattered warmth of spent laughter.

Wolf crossed to the biscuit shelf, plucked out the last broken Bourbon, and held it up like a peace offering. “Jenkins’ll have my guts for this.”

Alex managed a faint snort. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Wolf studied him, then tossed the biscuit into his own mouth with a shrug. “You did alright, tonight.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” Wolf said simply.

Alex’s eyes dropped. “It won’t last. They’ll remember what I am.”

“They’ll remember who you are,” Wolf corrected. “And if they forget, remind them.”

Alex looked at him then, properly. For once he saw no orders behind the eyes. Just understanding. Shared silence. Mutual weariness.

“Thanks,” he said, voice barely there.

Wolf just jerked his chin toward the hallway. “Go. Before I make you do push-ups for sentiment.”

Alex smirked, nodded once, and slipped out into the corridor. He returned to the spartan barracks assigned to visiting K Unit personnel. One bed. One lamp. One footlocker. No one waiting.

He didn’t sleep much.

-

The meeting was held in the command conference suite. The kind with walls thick enough to keep secrets in..and out. A long table. Water jugs. Security latches. Every chair filled.

Mrs Jones sat in her usual crisp black, an unreadable expression drawn tight over sharp cheekbones. Colonel Avery presided at the far end with his aides flanking him like pillars. Major Wallace of army intelligence sat to one side, eyes narrowed. The commanding officer from the school group, pale and subdued, barely spoke.

“Let’s get to it,” Avery said. “Status of the Rider asset.”

Mrs Jones gave a single nod. “Cleared. No deviation from assigned mission parameters. Cooperated fully. His handling of the Scorpia exposure was within acceptable collateral margins.”

“Casualties?”

“None. Psychological impact is being monitored.”

“Student witnesses?”

“They have partial knowledge,” she admitted. “Not enough to connect Alex to past operations. Their silence is being maintained through plausibly deniable debriefs, NDA coverage under guardian authority, and educational safeguarding protocols. The army debrief let out more than we’d have liked, but nothing too damaging.”

Avery leaned back. “And your recommendation?”

Mrs Jones didn’t hesitate. “Return him to civilian school. Reintegration with the class. Public optics demand it. Any sign that this child is something other will raise attention. Scorpia knows now. The general public does not.”

“Will he comply?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

Then Wallace spoke. “Isn’t that a risk? Sending him back out like a pressure valve about to blow?”

Mrs Jones looked straight at him. “Alex Rider has operated under far greater pressure. He will manage. What he won’t manage is isolation. The students are a tether. Familiarity. Structure. For all our sakes, we need him grounded.”

Avery nodded once.

“Very well. Return him with the class.”

He closed the file with finality.

“Let’s hope to god we don’t regret it.”

-

They didn’t call it discharge.
They called it reintegration.

Alex sat stiffly in the briefing alcove outside the officers’ wing, watching the sunrise stain the world gold through slatted blinds. The base had already begun to stir: boots against concrete, orders barked in the near distance, helicopters groaning into the sky. No one noticed the teenager sitting still in borrowed fatigues, hands loose in his lap, pulse steady through force of habit.

Mrs Jones sat opposite, her tablet closed, her voice low and final.

“You’re being sent back,” she said. “With the others. You’ll travel under your school identity, escorted by vetted personnel. The reports have been finalised and locked down. Your presence in the training zone is classified. Any footage captured has been confiscated or, where necessary, corrupted beyond retrieval.”

Alex nodded once.

She tilted her head. “You understand what’s expected of you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And what’s that?”

He met her eyes with an expression like calm steel. “Act normal.”

Her mouth twitched. It was the closest she came to approval.

“Good. Keep them close, Alex. Don’t give them a reason to question.”

He stood. “Was that all?”

“For now.”

There was something in her tone - a softness that wasn’t kindness, exactly, but maybe something like pity.

“You did well,” she said quietly. “No one else would’ve come back from that the same way.”

“I didn’t,” he replied. “Come back the same.”

And with that, he walked out.

-

The minibus waited just outside the east gate. A grey, government-issue people carrier with tinted windows and no logos. It looked utterly forgettable.

Exactly the point.

The students were already loading bags under the half-watchful eye of a man with a clipboard and a regrettable moustache. Katie was arguing about legroom. Jamie was pretending he hadn’t stolen someone’s hoodie. Sanjay sat on the steps staring at the clouds like they might start offering answers. Beans had fallen asleep upright against a bollard.

Tom was standing slightly apart, scanning the base until his eyes landed on Alex.

He gave a small wave.

Alex took a breath.

And then, just like that, the transformation was complete.

His posture softened. His shoulders dropped. A half-smile pulled at his lips. He shoved his hands in his pockets and ambled over like the only danger he’d ever faced was a biology quiz and mild sunburn.

He was schoolboy Alex again.

Just a little paler.

Just a little quieter.

“Someone save me a window seat?” he said, voice light.

“Absolutely not,” Katie deadpanned.

“Beans is snoring already,” Jamie grinned. “Welcome back.”

Alex climbed in without a word.

They didn’t hug. They didn’t cheer. They just shuffled over, made room, and handed him a cereal bar with silent consensus.

Back to normal.

Whatever that meant.

Chapter Text

The minibus pulled up outside Brooklands Secondary just after 3p.m., brakes hissing, paintwork still streaked with Lake District mud, and the engine sounding like it was also in need of a debrief.

Outside the gates, parents were already waiting. Clustered in small groups with coffee cups and concerned eyes. A few waved as the bus turned in. Some were crying. One had a handmade sign that read WELCOME BACK KATIE! complete with glitter glue.

As soon as the doors opened, the noise returned.

“Mum!”
“Beans, what did you do to your shoes?”
“Oh thank God, you’re safe-never again, do you hear me? Never again!”

Katie was swept into a hug that seemed to last forever.

Sanjay's older brother ruffled his hair with a quiet “You good, genius?” and then took his rucksack.

Tom’s mum gave him a bottle of Lucozade and a frown that promised questions later.

And Jamie Weston, miracle of miracles, launched himself at a woman in gym leggings who promptly gave him a clip round the ear before hugging him so hard his sunglasses nearly snapped.

Alex stepped down onto the pavement with his backpack slung over one shoulder, watching the scene unfold like someone just outside the frame of a photograph.

No one was waiting for him. Not that he’d expected anyone to. Jack had probably been in another time zone when MI6’s fake itinerary email was sent. If it was sent. Or maybe the office had decided it was best he arrived back like all the other kids, just… quieter.

Tom noticed first.

“Hey,” he said, frowning gently as the crowd thinned. “Where’s Jack?”

Alex shrugged. “Probably didn’t get the memo.”

“Want us to wait with you?”

He smiled then, that soft half-smile he reserved for when he appreciated something too much to say it aloud. “Nah. Go on. You’ve got the whole overprotective-parent experience to enjoy.”

Jamie, coming back from his dramatic reunion, tossed a lopsided grin Alex’s way. “You sure you’re not just some posh orphan, mate?”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure.”

“Right,” Jamie said, nodding sagely. “Just checking. You’re weird, but you’re alright.”

Then, as if embarrassed by his own sentimentality, he added, “Bet your survival badge is made of actual iron, though.”

“Titanium,” Alex deadpanned.

Jamie gave a snort-laugh, nudged him with his shoulder, and wandered off with his mum, still recounting the time he “fought a fox.”

The others left gradually-waving, glancing back, uncertain whether they were allowed to say goodbye properly. Only Tom lingered the longest, hovering by the gate until Alex gave him a firm nod.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Alex said.

“Yeah,” Tom replied. “Normal day. Double maths.”

“Can’t wait.”

And then he was alone.

Alex stood quietly by the school gate, the late-afternoon sun turning the pavement gold, his shadow long behind him. His backpack felt heavier now. So did the silence.

After a few minutes, a sleek black car pulled up by the curb. Tinted windows. Government plates.

Alex didn’t hesitate.

He opened the door, threw his bag in, and climbed into the passenger seat without a word.

The driver didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.

Alex looked once over his shoulder-at the school, the emptying street, the echo of something almost like belonging-and then looked away.

Back to normal.

Whatever that meant.

-

The corridor smelled like every other British school. Disinfectant, cheap deodorant and poster paint. Someone’s trainers squeaked wetly across the floor as a Year 7 sprinted past with toast still clenched between their teeth. The first bell rang tinny and relentless, the kind of sound designed to crush all dreams of freedom before 9 a.m.

Brooklands was unchanged.

And that, in itself, was jarring.

Tom adjusted the strap of his bag as he stepped inside, spotting Katie by the lockers. She was already halfway through her timetable, colour-coded and aggressively highlighted.

“I can’t believe they gave us homework,” she muttered. “We were abducted.”

“Yeah, but we weren’t technically on the register as missing,” Tom replied. “Not even counted as a full safeguarding incident.”

“That’s grim.”

Sanjay and Beans appeared next, the latter loudly proclaiming that no one appreciated how traumatising it had been to be woken up by a military helicopter when he’d “barely recovered from mountain air.”

Katie rolled her eyes. “You snored so loud the soldiers said they’d rather go back to being prisoners.”

“I bonded with them,” Beans insisted. “One of them gave me a Kit-Kat.”

“Out of pity.”

“Out of respect.”

The light-hearted bickering carried them through to form time until the door opened, and silence rolled in behind it like a weather front.

Alex Rider stepped into the classroom.

He wore the same uniform as always. Blazer a little rumpled, tie knotted too loose, bag slung carelessly off one shoulder. Nothing about him screamed spy. Nothing about him screamed survivor.

But it was like watching someone walk into their own body again, one deliberate motion at a time.

He nodded once at the group.

Then sat at his usual desk, took out his pen, and started copying the date off the board.

As if he’d never been gone.

As if the world hadn’t nearly tipped sideways just days earlier.

Jamie leaned over to Beans. “Still think he’s posh?”

“Have you seen his handwriting?”

“…Fair.”

Mr Whittaker, their tutor, bustled in five minutes late with a stack of forms and a story about train delays that none of them really listened to. He paused only briefly when his eyes landed on Alex, then carried on like nothing was amiss.

Because that was the rule, wasn’t it? Pretend nothing happened.

Katie’s eyes flicked to Alex. He didn’t look up.

Sanjay, beside her, murmured, “Do you think he ever sleeps?”

“Probably with one eye open.”

Tom caught Alex’s gaze for half a second. Just long enough to see the flicker of tension under the surface. But then Alex blinked. Smiled. Tilted his head.

Normal.

He was pretending. And now they all had to pretend too.

-

By fourth period, Brooklands had settled back into its usual rhythm: fire alarms that didn’t work, supply teachers who didn’t care, and the smell of burnt jacket potatoes wafting out of the canteen like a desperate cry for help.

The students of Form 10K were dragging their feet toward the changing rooms, the words “double PE” hanging over them like a threat.

Katie eyed the timetable. “Please let it be indoor cricket.”

Jamie groaned. “If they make us do the bleep test, I’m faking a collapsed lung.”

Beans pulled at his laces. “I’m just gonna throw up pre-emptively and save us all the suspense.”

Alex trailed behind them all, quiet and unreadable. He wasn’t making eye contact. But he was watching everything. Always.

They reached the gym just as a new voice echoed out across the hall:

“Alright, Form 10K! Let’s line up, nice and sharp!”

The man who strode out from the equipment cupboard was too tall, too clean-cut, and far too alert for anyone who actually taught at Brooklands. His tracksuit was uncreased, his trainers pristine, and he had the kind of posture that screamed military rather than municipal funding.

He smiled. It didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I’m Mr Norris. Your regular teacher’s off sick for the foreseeable, so I’ll be filling in.”

Jamie leaned toward Katie. “He’s either ex-military or he works undercover at GCHQ.”

Katie didn’t blink. “Both I bet.”

Mr Norris clapped his hands once. “We’ll be starting with a bit of light circuit training. Strength, stamina, agility. All the good stuff!”

Beans looked physically ill.

Tom glanced sidelong at Alex, whose face had taken on that politely blank expression used exclusively by people who were internally screaming.

Mr Norris continued, breezy as anything. “I’ve already got your names and files, just need to match faces. Weston, James?”

“Here, sir.”

“Good. Namrata?”

“Present.”

“Nina Kershaw?”

“Off sick.”

“Alex Rider?”

Mr Norris looked up. Just briefly. Just enough.

Their eyes met.

Alex felt it, the barest flicker of recognition. It was there and gone in a blink, buried under perfect, PE-teacher smile.

Tom leaned close. “New teacher gives me the creeps.”

Alex gave a one-shoulder shrug. “He’s not a teacher.”

“Wait-really?”

“Yep.”

“…What is he?”

Alex didn’t answer.

But when Mr Norris blew the whistle and called them into teams, Alex was already moving.

And if, over the next hour, the man tracked Alex’s form with clinical interest through every sprint and jump and landing, well - no one said MI6 had subtlety nailed down.

-

It was the end of the school day. The sky had gone a flat, washed-out grey that matched the mood of the corridors. The students of Brooklands shuffled out in varying states of exhaustion, arms full of textbooks and snack wrappers, debating whether to brave the bus stop or guilt-trip a parent into collecting them.

Alex took his time packing up. He always did now.

He waited until the classroom was mostly empty, until even Jamie had stopped pretending to need help with a homework sheet he hadn’t read, and only then did he move. Slow, steady, every motion rehearsed.

His locker was still stiff on the hinge. He nudged it open, grabbed his bag, and-

Paused.

There was a folded note tucked into the side.
Unmarked. No name. No seal. Just a plain piece of white paper with the softest indent of letters beneath the crease.

He glanced once down the hall. No one watching.

He unfolded it.

"Stay on Script."

That was all.

No signature. No need.

The note vanished into his sleeve in a motion so smooth it might as well have been second nature.

Alex closed his locker and left the building without a word.

-

By the time three weeks had passed, Brooklands Secondary had done what schools do best: it had moved on.

There were newer things to whisper about now; stolen exam papers, the Year 10 disco rumoured to be chaperoned by an actual bouncer, and someone’s leaked Snapchat story that might’ve been filmed inside a Nando’s mop cupboard.

The drama of “that weird Lake District trip” had faded into something half-remembered and heavily embellished. Most of the school hadn’t really noticed that half the year group came back quieter. Or that the PE department now had a suspiciously punctual new member of staff who wore military-grade trainers and had memorised everyone’s surnames by the end of his first hour.

Alex fell back into routine.

He showed up. He took notes. He drifted in and out of lunch queues and group projects with the same polite smile he’d always worn. He laughed at Jamie’s jokes, lost to Katie in chemistry practical’s, and even let Beans copy his history homework when the teacher wasn’t looking.

To the untrained eye, he looked the same.

Only his friends, the ones who’d been there, knew where the seams were. The places where normality was stitched together a little too tightly.

Sometimes, mid-lesson, they’d catch him zoning out. Eyes fixed just over the window ledge like he was tracking something they couldn’t see. Sometimes he moved too fast, snatching a falling beaker before it hit the floor, or reacting to a fire alarm like a gun had gone off.

But then he’d shrug it off.
Make a joke.
Walk on.

He was always walking on.

-

It was a Friday afternoon, mild and damp - that distinct British flavour of almost-rain that turned every pavement into a wet trampoline. The sky hung low and grey. The air smelled faintly of chips. He wasn’t a student, not really. Not anymore. But the schoolboy protocol fit like it always had - neat, quiet, and just convincing enough to keep the world from asking questions.

Alex walked home alone.

Jack had texted earlier to say she’d be out late with a gallery thing, and he’d waved it off with a thumbs-up emoji and a quiet relief. Sometimes, it was easier like this, to just walk. No questions. No small talk. Just his footsteps and the worn-out rhythm of school bag straps slapping lightly against his back.

He passed the usual landmarks: the corner shop with the cracked lottery sign; the underpass full of graffiti that tried too hard to be philosophical; the dog in the window of Number 43 that barked at everything except him.

It was all so familiar.

And maybe that’s why he noticed the car before it even pulled up.

It didn’t screech. It didn’t flash. It didn’t stand out in any way.

It just rolled to a gentle halt beside the kerb a few feet ahead of him - a nondescript black vehicle with tinted windows and an engine so quiet it might have been holding its breath. Unmistakably MI6.

Alex didn’t pause.

He just walked up, opened the rear door, and climbed in without a word.

The door closed behind him.

The car pulled away.

And the street was empty again.