Work Text:
It started, as most catastrophes do, with a joke.
Alex had meant it ironically. That was important. He knew it was ironic. Tom knew it was ironic. The cat at Number 43 probably knew it was ironic. The only people who apparently didn’t were the very agency he’d been metaphorically (and literally) carrying for the last two years.
So when Alex walked out of the MI6 office for what he assumed would be a dramatic, short-lived defection, just to see if anyone noticed, he expected at least a raised eyebrow. A security alert. Perhaps even a mildly frantic phone call.
He got nothing.
Not that morning. Not that week.
He’d even left a note. Typed, printed, signed. Left neatly between Jones’ overpriced oat milk flat white and her weekly report on foreign chemical stockpiles. It read:
To Whom It May Mildly Concern,
I quit.
Yours in betrayal,
A. Rider
He considered that sufficiently theatrical.
The Scorpia building didn’t lurk. It announced itself bluntly, unapologetically. Because the very well-funded evil had opted into a business park lease. And no-one had the gall to stop them.
It was somehow both menacing and aggressively corporate.
Glass panels. Automatic doors. Air conditioning that worked.
The reception had a minimalist orchid and a biometric scanner.
The lighting was perfect. The silence was suspicious.
Alex stood outside for a moment, backpack slung over one shoulder, weighing his choices. But he was here, on the polished doorstep of international villainy, staring at tinted glass and a sliding door that whispered welcome in a distinctly ominous way.
He stepped inside.
The carpet was very plush.
The receptionist, a woman with half her head shaved and a clipboard labelled “Tuesday Executions”, looked him up and down.
“Name?”
“Alex Rider,” he said.
Pause. Blink. Slow exhale.
“And what are you here for?” she asked, in the same tone one might use when asking if a chicken was here for a haircut or the oven.
“I’m defecting,” Alex said cheerfully. “Ironically.”
She didn’t even flinch.
“Alright. New recruit forms are down the hall, there’s an induction today. Vlad will do your ID badge.”
Vlad was six foot five, wore a cardigan with skull buttons, and introduced himself as a “reformed assassin turned compliance officer.”
Alex liked him immediately.
“Tell me, Alex,” Vlad said, as the badge printer whirred, “are you more of a stapler or a guillotine man?”
“I… what?”
“For your welcome kit,” Vlad explained, entirely serious. “You get your choice of stationery. We take office supplies very seriously here.”
Alex blinked. “Am I in the wrong place, or do you actually do evil here?”
“Oh yes,” said Vlad, smiling. “But we’re unionised now.”
Orientation took an hour.
He watched a video called "Scorpia: Vision. Values. Venom." narrated by a disturbingly chipper woman in a lab coat who talked about “strategic homicide” the way most people talked about quarterly goals.
There was a quiz at the end. Alex answered all the questions sarcastically and passed with a perfect score.
It ended with a tour.
“Each floor specialises in a different department,” said the cheerful tour guide. An ex-marine named Sandra who now ran Internal Espionage Audits and a weekly crochet group. “We’ve got Research, Assassination, Disinformation, Bioweapons, Legal-”
“You have a legal department?”
“Of course,” she said brightly. “We’re evil, not uncivilised.”
Back at his desk, Alex found a welcome pack waiting for him.
Inside:
- One branded mug ("World’s Okayest Villain")
- A Scorpia hoodie (strangely soft)
- An annotated building map with “Avoid Floor 7” underlined three times
- A scented candle called Blood Orange Betrayal
- And a note: Looking forward to working with you. Try not to get dismembered before payday - Vlad.
It would have been funny, if it weren’t so well organised.
By Friday, he had a desk plant.
No one from MI6 had called. Not Jones. Not Blunt. Not the tech guy who once burst into flames trying to install WhatsApp on a secure phone.
He was beginning to think they hadn’t noticed. Or worse-they had, and didn’t care.
And somehow, that was what stung most.
“Have they still not called?” Tom asked over video chat, chewing a noodle in the loudest way possible.
“No,” Alex said, from the suspiciously ergonomic chair in his suspiciously well-lit office. “Not even a passive aggressive email.”
“You literally defected. To Scorpia. Like, capital S, murder-on-speed-dial, criminal syndicate Scorpia.”
“I thought it would be funny,” Alex muttered. “They used to care when I skipped school. Now I vanish into an international crime cartel and it’s radio silence.”
Tom slurped thoughtfully. “Maybe they think you’re on a mission.”
“I left a note, Tom.”
“You once left a note saying you’d gone to the corner shop and turned up in Belize. Nobody trusts your notes.”
Alex leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
“Am I the baddie now?”
There was a pause.
“You’re wearing a name badge that says Associate Traitor, Logistics Division. What do you think?”
By the end of the second week, Alex had submitted a supply audit just to pass the time.
By the end of the third, his suggestions were implemented.
By the fourth, he’d been added to a task force.
Still no word from MI6.
He tried hacking their comms.
Nothing.
Not even a “Happy Birthday” message.
(It wasn’t his birthday, but that wasn’t the point.)
It wasn’t until the end of week five, while correcting the master schedule for Project Meltface, that the horrible thought struck him...
What if… what if he wasn’t joking anymore?
What if this was just… his job now?
He stared down at the spreadsheet.
Then at Geoff the desk plant.
Then back at the spreadsheet.
“God help me,” Alex whispered. “I think I’m good at this.”
Alex arrived at the seminar five minutes late and already regretting everything.
He’d been promised biscuits.
What he hadn’t been told was that “biscuits” meant a disturbingly efficient catering table with fresh pastries, herbal teas, and tiny placards that read things like 'May contain almonds. And ambition.'
He made a mental note to never eat anything here without checking for toxins.
“Welcome, Traitors!” announced a voice at the front.
The speaker was a woman in a blazer sharp enough to classify as a weapon and heels that probably were. She had a name badge that read Vesper – Executive Director of Ruthless Efficiency. Her eyes scanned the room like a biometric lock. Not hostile, just perpetually calculating.
Alex didn’t know if that was her real name or just the vibe.
“Today we’ll be covering the Five Core Pillars of Scorpia,” she said, gesturing to the screen behind her. The slide deck flickered to life in a sleek, minimal black and white palette. Very Apple-meets-Armageddon.
THE FIVE PILLARS OF SCORPIA
- Synergy
- Secrecy
- Sabotage
- Structure
- Survival
“These are the foundations of everything we do here,” Vesper continued crisply. “Note that none of them involve unnecessary bloodshed. That falls under Strategy.”
Someone behind Alex laughed. It sounded more like a throat clear, but with intent.
The next session was Workplace Expectations and You: Navigating Efficiency in a High-Pressure Environment.
Vlad, who had apparently become Alex’s unofficial chaperone, handed out booklets. Black cardstock. Silver-embossed cover. The kind of thing you’d expect to be about offshore tax fraud, not employee wellness.
Alex’s copy had a smiley face sticker on the inside front cover and a handwritten note:
“Let me know if you need help logging into the internal portal – V.”
He hadn't asked for help. That was the most worrying part.
They broke for coffee.
“Remind me again how I got here?” Alex asked, leaning on the catering table. “I thought this was a joke.”
“It still can be,” Vlad said, stirring sugar into something green. “But jokes tend to last shorter than six weeks. You’ve outlived irony.”
“I defected ironically.”
“Of course,” Vlad said warmly. “We all do, at first.”
The afternoon was reserved for Team Integration Exercises.
Alex’s group included:
- A woman named Cass, whose CV (attached to the welcome pack) included six languages and the phrase “moderate experience in food-grade toxins.”
- A quiet man with a mechanical thumb and a background in logistics.
- And another trainee who claimed to be in “Corporate Acquisitions”, which Alex was fairly certain was code for kidnapping.
Their task: simulate a supply chain breach and recover a stolen delivery of experimental tech without setting off any of the virtual countermeasures.
It was, essentially, a very violent escape room with better graphics.
Cass nudged Alex at the start. “Try not to trigger the failsafe. They reset the entire scenario and make you write the post-mortem.”
“Even if no one died?”
“Especially then.”
The simulation ran for forty-seven minutes. Alex ended up in charge of the comms relay and redirected a decoy convoy using an improvised workaround involving two cables, a broken access panel, and a forgotten shortcut in the mission brief.
They succeeded. Barely.
Back in the debrief, Vesper appeared again.
“Well handled,” she said, eyes flicking over the data. “Rider - clear thinking under pressure. That’s a promotable trait.”
Alex blinked. “Promotable?”
“You’re already assigned to Logistics, aren’t you?”
“Sort of? I think it was a joke assignment.”
“It isn’t anymore.”
That night, Alex sat in his apartment (clean, modern, impersonal) and stared at his inbox.
Two new emails.
The first was titled:
Subject: Well Done on Your First Scenario!
Attachment: PDF Feedback Report + High-Performer Badge (Digital Only)
The second was an internal HR memo.
Subject: Suggested Track Placement – Level 3 Logistics & Oversight
Body: Initial performance promising. Recommend temporary assignment to supply flow analysis with escalation review at end of month.
Comment: Candidate shows initiative. May stabilise with structure.
It wasn’t threatening. It wasn’t even manipulative. It was frighteningly professional.
And Alex, exhausted from pretending this wasn’t happening, leaned back in his chair and sighed.
He glanced at the Scorpia hoodie folded over the back of his seat. Black, thick cotton, subtle logo on the sleeve.
World’s Okayest Villain, the mug read beside it.
Six weeks in, and MI6 still hadn’t called.
Alex opened a fresh note on his laptop. Titled it:
How to Tell If You’ve Accidentally Started a Career:
- You have a desk.
- You have a hoodie.
- People send you feedback reports.
- You use the phrase “escalation review” unironically.
- You’re not sure if you want to leave anymore.
He shut the lid quietly.
“Maybe just one more week.”
By that Friday, Alex had stopped checking his phone for missed calls.
It wasn’t conscious. It just… happened. Like muscle memory fading. Like a cut healing without ceremony.
He used to glance at the screen every half hour, expecting some kind of alert-emergency summons, encrypted message, a passive-aggressive text from Jones asking where he'd left the mission brief. Nothing had come. Not in days. Not in weeks.
He wasn’t even sure they’d noticed he was gone.
The temporary logistics placement wasn’t temporary.
Vlad introduced him to a woman named Miri, the acting department head, who handed him three folders and a brief nod.
“We’re shorthanded. Everyone’s shorthanded. Do what you can with these,” she said, already turning away. “No classified access yet. Just numbers. Timetables. Asset routing. You’ve got clearance for Level 2 but if you see anything Level 4 or above, don’t open it. You’ll regret it.”
“…Will I be punished?”
“No,” she said. “You’ll just regret it.”
Alex opened the first folder.
It was a transport schedule. Equipment. Gear. Discreet labels. Half of it was deliberately vague, but the patterns jumped out at him like code-routed too tightly, duplicated resources, inefficient dead space between cycles. Someone had loaded two agents and a portable EMP generator onto the same jet, flying them ten hours to pick up gear they could’ve sourced from another site.
The whole thing was absurd.
He sharpened a pencil. Started correcting.
By the end of the day, Miri leaned over his desk with a raised brow.
“Where’d you get these figures?”
“From your schedule,” Alex said. “Page twelve. The Syria drop’s off by three hours. The Bahrain lab hasn’t filed for weeks. And if you’re staging from Estonia, the cross-supply at Lisbon makes no logistical sense.”
She stared at him.
“Was this your job before?”
“I was in secondary school,” Alex said flatly. “This is just basic planning.”
Miri blinked. “You’re promoted.”
“I don’t-wait, what?”
“Welcome to Ops Oversight. You’ve just saved us four million and two agents’ sanity.”
That evening, Alex walked home past the glowing glass wall of Scorpia HQ, still wearing his access badge. The sun was setting in sharp lines against the building’s steel outline, casting shadows across the pavement like long fingers.
He passed a small outdoor courtyard on the side of the building. Someone was lighting candles for an agent memorial. No names. Just initials and dates.
It was quiet. Not somber, not theatrical. Just… part of the job.
It didn’t unsettle him.
That was the unsettling part.
He arrived back at the apartment just before nine. Took off the badge. Set his phone down face-first. Heated something from the freezer, only to realise it was a branded Scorpia ready meal labelled EAT. STRIKE. SLEEP. with worrying enthusiasm.
He sat on the sofa and stared at nothing.
When the message pinged, he didn’t jump.
From: Vlad [Internal]
Subject: Good job today
You’re adapting faster than anyone expected.
Just be careful not to burn out.
People notice when you’re competent.
And they notice even more when you’re too competent.
Alex read the message twice. Then once more.
Then he opened his laptop and added to his list.
How to Tell If You’ve Accidentally Started a Career (cont.)
- Your department head knows your name.
- People send you warning emails that sound suspiciously like compliments.
- You keep telling yourself this is still a joke, and nobody laughs.
- You’re not even sure you’d leave if they did call.
Alex had always been good at systems.
He didn’t love them. He didn’t dream in colour-coded workflows. But systems were predictable. Tidy. The opposite of missions, and kidnappings, and the kind of trauma that left blood under your fingernails and the smell of gunpowder in your hair for days.
So when he sat down one morning to find yet another delivery manifest mismatched by four hours and twelve crates, he did what any reasonable teenager would do. He built a spreadsheet.
It was supposed to be simple. Just an overview.
Blue for weapons. Red for medical. Grey for the unlabelled stuff, which he was 90% sure was biochemical and 10% sure was lunch for the Madrid cell.
Then he added a second sheet. Cross-referencing route efficiency and driver fatigue.
Then a third. Tracking storage capacity, resource allocation, and unauthorised requisitions-which, incidentally, were rampant. The Johannesburg base had ordered seventeen crates of classified tech and marked it as “office supplies”.
Alex left a polite comment in the cell:
'Consider revising item descriptions. Also: do you really need five plasma detonators for stationery?'
Miri had stopped shadowing him and started treating him like a department she vaguely remembered authorising.
“Where’s the Paris drone manifest?”
“Outdated. I moved the hub to Lyon-flight times are better and the locals are less nosy.”
“…We had a Lyon hub?”
“You do now.”
She blinked. “Okay.”
He didn’t mean to climb the ladder. That was never the plan.
But one afternoon, while eating suspiciously good soup in the canteen, someone tapped his shoulder.
A man in his mid-forties. Suit. Tie. Unplaceable accent. Unreadable expression.
“You’re the one who fixed the Helsinki funnel?” he asked.
Alex blinked. “Sorry-who are you?”
The man gave a small, thin smile.
“Executive Logistics Oversight.”
There was a pause.
“That’s not a real title,” Alex said.
“It is now,” the man replied, handing over a card. No name. Just a symbol-Scorpia’s logo, stamped into matte black. “Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s noticed.”
Then he walked away.
The soup had gone cold. Alex barely noticed.
By the time week nine rolled around, the spreadsheet was a system.
He’d coded macros. Created dashboards. Built a flagging function for any routes with more than 6% inefficiency.
He was no longer reviewing manifests. He was approving them.
Twice, someone asked him for clarification on field asset deployment ratios.
Once, someone called him “sir.”
He made a rule then, nobody under thirty was allowed to call him that.
It didn't stick.
Vlad dropped by late Friday afternoon, balancing two cups of coffee and an expression of wary amusement.
“So,” he said, placing one cup on Alex’s desk, “how’s our boy genius of bloodless efficiency?”
“I’m not doing anything illegal,” Alex muttered, cross-referencing drone surveillance shifts with customs data. “Technically.”
“Technically,” Vlad agreed. “But you are facilitating it.”
Alex paused. Looked up.
“…Does that bother you?”
Vlad shrugged. “Not really. Most people here make messes. You just make the trains run on time.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s rare,” Vlad said, sipping his coffee. “Which, here, is much the same.”
Later that night, Alex stayed behind to finish rebalancing the Alpine resource pool.
He didn’t have to. No one asked. But the numbers weren’t quite sitting right, and the Montenegro base kept requesting aerial extraction as if they had their own budget.
He adjusted the columns. Cross-checked fuel use. Set a gentle red alert on one cell that was 3.2% off-target.
The satisfaction was quiet. Subtle. A low hum of something that almost-almost-felt like pride.
He shut the laptop at midnight. The office was silent, except for the faint hiss of air conditioning.
His reflection in the window looked older than he remembered.
Not tired.
Not angry.
Just… settled.
He walked home through the business district, still in his Scorpia fleece and carrying the secure tablet in one hand.
His phone buzzed. For the first time in days.
One message.
From Tom.
Hey. Did you see the news? MI6's internal audit leaked. Apparently they lost track of six field assets. One of them was “Alex R.” Lollll
Alex stopped walking.
Just stood there, under a flickering streetlamp, in the dead silence of 2AM.
He read the message again.
Then he typed:
Six months. And they only just noticed.
Tom replied instantly.
You okay?
Alex didn’t answer. He stared at the screen for a long moment.
Then, slowly, he opened his secure work portal, found the routing list for the Berlin drop, and corrected a decimal point that had been annoying him for three days.
He didn’t go home that night.
Mrs Jones didn’t panic.
She reorganised her desk, alphabetised her hard copy files, and typed a strongly-worded internal memo flagged 'high importance.'
But she did not panic.
She was not allowed to panic.
Panicking, at her level, was something that happened behind closed doors and three layers of plausible deniability.
Still, the facts were hard to ignore.
- Alex Rider had not been officially seen in six months.
- His most recent listed operation was marked 'Concluded. Debrief pending.'
- The note he'd left-“I quit. Yours in betrayal, A. Rider”-had been assumed to be a joke.
- It was not a joke.
She had it in a folder now. Paper copy. The ink slightly smudged by what may or may not have been coffee. She’d stared at it for eleven full minutes that morning.
“Did anyone follow up when he left?” she asked, voice steady.
They were in the sub-basement conference room. The one with the flickering light and the smell of damp carpet and betrayal.
The room of last resorts.
Drayton from Personnel cleared his throat. “We, ah… we assumed he was still embedded. Or on sabbatical. The last tracking ping was two months ago, but we had a security lockdown that week and thought it was a glitch.”
“A glitch?”
“Yes.”
“A glitch,” she repeated, slowly, like she was trying the word on for size and finding it offensively small.
Drayton wilted.
Blunt was sitting at the head of the table, looking-as ever-like a statue with the vague suggestion of having once been human.
He hadn’t spoken since the meeting began.
Now, he set down his cup of tea and said, flatly, “What are you telling me?”
Jones did not flinch.
“I’m telling you we’ve lost a sixteen year old asset who once infiltrated a nuclear compound using a school trip as cover. And who, according to leaked audit notes, has not filed a location, a mission log, or a single expenses form since February.”
There was a pause.
“…He hasn’t even filed expenses?”
“No.”
“…My god,” Blunt murmured. “He really is gone.”
“Any idea where he is now?” Blunt asked.
Drayton shuffled some papers. “Er. There was a report from the Danish Intelligence Service about a logistics consultant with high-level clearance moving through non-aligned arms territories.”
Jones narrowed her eyes. “Name?”
“None listed. But they described him as ‘young, British, eerily calm, attracted to chaos.’”
Jones inhaled slowly.
Then exhaled.
Then stood.
“I want eyes on every Scorpia related satellite feed we’ve got. I want a full digital sweep of active European logistics networks. If it moves on a train, plane, or smuggler’s yacht, I want to know who signed the delivery form.”
“And if it was him?” Blunt asked.
Jones hesitated.
Then, quietly: “Then we’ve got a problem.”
In the silence that followed, Blunt leaned back.
“Well,” he said, folding his hands. “At least he’s using his skills.”
“You’re not concerned?” Jones asked.
“I’m deeply concerned. But I’m also realistic.” He paused. “We trained him to survive. He’s surviving. That’s more than can be said for half our agents.”
Jones frowned.
“That’s not good enough.”
Blunt sipped his tea. “We’ll get him back.”
That afternoon, she sat in her office, hands still. Phone silent.
There was no emergency alert. No ransom video. No villainous monologue echoing down a signal feed.
Just silence.
Alex Rider had disappeared without trace. And the worst part wasn’t that he was gone. It was that he might have left willingly.
It started, like all the worst things in Alex’s life, with a compliment.
“You’re good with difficult people,” Miri had said, without looking up from her tablet. “You keep things calm. Contained. They like you.”
Alex, halfway through flagging a shipment of illegal nerve agents disguised as “Specialty Garden Fertiliser”, blinked.
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Middle management,” she said absently. “And the Barcelona cell. Also Vlad.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly,” she said, tapping her stylus. “That’s what makes it impressive.”
The message came the next morning.
Subject: Team Harmony and Performance Oversight – Temporary Assignment
From: Internal HR Systems
Hello, Alex.
We’ve noted your aptitude for quiet leadership and interpersonal navigation. As such, you’ve been flagged for a rotation within our Internal Resolution Track.
Your first assignment is listed below.
Conflict Type: Resource Hoarding & Unauthorised Interrogation Techniques
Team: Eastern Europe Operations – Prague Cell
Resolution Deadline: 48 hours
Please pack light.
– HR
Prague was cold, bleak, and deeply passive-aggressive.
The cell was housed in an old embassy building with bulletproof glass, a koi pond, and what appeared to be a gym exclusively for knife-throwing.
Alex was met at the gates by a man in a turtleneck and steel-toe boots.
“You’re the mediator?” he said, tone flat.
“Temporarily,” Alex said. “I’m not HR.”
“You’re on a file called ‘Active HR Solutions’.”
“I’m not career HR.”
The man narrowed his eyes. “That’s what they all say at first.”
The actual conflict was worse than expected.
The Prague cell had:
- Redirected over £700,000 of tactical funds to build a sauna “for mental clarity.”
- Stolen resources from a parallel Berlin operation mid-mission.
- Begun a very public feud with a rival cell in Bucharest by sending them a single, taunting ham.
Alex read the reports. Then reread them.
Then he gathered the entire team in a bare concrete room and said, calmly, “If you don’t stop acting like disgruntled toddlers with knives, I will reassign all of you to Vlad’s budget team, where the only violence allowed is Excel-based.”
There was a long silence.
“…He means it,” someone muttered.
He did.
Back at headquarters, his inbox had changed tone.
Fewer logistics briefs. More internal assessments. Performance flags. Personality conflicts. An anonymous form titled “How Do You Feel About Your Team Today?” that someone had responded to with simply “hungry.”
He wasn’t sure if it was literal.
He flagged it just in case.
“Why me?” Alex asked Vlad over lunch one afternoon, stabbing at his rice with more energy than required.
“You don’t escalate,” Vlad said. “You don’t posture. You just… deal with it.”
“That’s not a skill,” Alex muttered.
“No,” Vlad said. “It’s a survival instinct. Most of our field agents can’t manage a disagreement without a body count. You, on the other hand, made two rival cells sign a resource-sharing agreement and shake hands.”
“They spat on the contract.”
“That’s basically diplomacy, here.”
They gave him a code.
Nothing dramatic. Not even official. Just an internal tag: "R-04 (Neutral Asset)"
It wasn’t ominous. But it wasn’t comforting either. He was now the person you sent when things got messy.
Not to fight. Not to kill.
Just… to sort it out.
A consultant for chaos.
And the worst part? He was good at it.
That evening, he sat in his flat and watched the rain slide down the window.
On the kitchen counter:
- One confidential file from the South American division.
- One bottle of wine from the Paris office with a note: “Thanks for stopping the bloodbath. Please enjoy this instead.”
- A single white envelope with the MI6 seal, slid under his door by someone who hadn’t knocked.
He picked it up.
Turned it over.
Inside, a card. One line.
We’d like to talk.
-J.
No signature. No contact number. Just the card. Just the seal.
He stared at it. Then, very slowly, he tore it in half.
MI6 continued to reach out with the delicacy of a man trying to reassemble a smashed vase with marmalade and blind optimism.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Coffee? :)
Alex,
Hope you’re well. We’d love to catch up-casual, nothing formal.
No pressure.
Best,
J.
The smiley face was doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Alex stared at it for three full minutes, then calmly forwarded the message to Vlad with the subject line:
“Do I get hazard pay for this?”
Vlad replied:
“Only if you meet them in person. And wear the hoodie.”
They arranged a neutral venue.
Alex chose it. Of course he did.
A sterile corporate café on the 19th floor of a commercial towerblock with no clear line of fire and coffee so overpriced it might as well have been a bribe.
Jones arrived precisely on time, dressed in what Alex suspected was her “concerned maternal figure in the field” coat.
He was already seated. He didn’t stand.
“Hello, Alex,” she said, carefully.
“Mrs Jones,” he replied, stirring his espresso. “No need to lean in. I know this place is bugged. I did it.”
There was a pause.
“…You bugged your own meeting?”
“I didn’t want Scorpia to beat me to it.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Right,” she said, and sat. She took out a file. Slim. Tidy. Slightly trembling.
“We’re worried about you,” she said, sliding it across the table.
Alex didn’t touch it.
“I defected six months ago,” he said, sipping his coffee. “Ironically.”
“We weren’t sure at first. You… left a note.”
“I also left a tracking signature, three fake safe house locations, and a decoy mission report titled Operation: Burn the Bridge, Keep the Shoes.”
“Yes, well,” Jones said tightly. “Internal comms have been under strain.”
“You mean you forgot about me.”
“We misfiled your case.”
The barista in the background called out “Flat white for Kevin!” with far too much optimism.
“We’d like to bring you home,” Jones said, eventually.
“I have a flat. A team. Four different task forces currently reporting to me on rotation.”
“But you belong with us.”
Alex tilted his head. “I used to. And then I started doing performance reviews for chemical weapons teams and realised they communicated better than MI6. One of them made me banana bread.”
Jones blinked.
“Banana… bread.”
“It had a note. ‘Thanks for the feedback on the poison lab. You’re right, Barry is a little loud.’”
“I see.”
“Do you? Because Barry has now been relocated to missile logistics. Everyone is happier.”
She looked tired. Underneath the restraint and layers of protocol, she looked… worried.
Not about the state secrets. Not about the press. About him.
Alex folded his arms. “I’m not angry,” he said. “I just stopped expecting anything.”
Jones nodded slowly. Then, more softly: “You were never supposed to be permanent.”
Alex’s smile was small and sharp. “Neither was my trauma.”
They parted without shaking hands.
Jones left a second envelope.
He didn’t open that one either.
Instead, he returned to Scorpia HQ, briefed two departments, finalised the Q3 transport review, and approved an internal transfer request for a handler who wanted to specialise in explosives but had “people skills.”
It was only later, in the quiet of his apartment, that he allowed himself a single moment of doubt.
He opened his laptop.
Opened a new spreadsheet.
And titled it:
REINTEGRATION PROS & CONS – NOT SERIOUS UNLESS I AM
Under “Pros”, he wrote:
- Familiar faces
- Still technically British
- Pension?
Under “Cons”, he wrote:
- Trust issues
- No banana bread
- Might actually miss Vlad
He closed the file.
Didn’t save it.
MI6’s retrieval team arrived at 05:42.
They were quiet, professional, and-critically-two months too late.
By then, Alex had already changed the passwords to the internal resource database, reorganised the personnel hierarchy under Logistics-East, and colour-coded three regional dead drop maps “for clarity and morale.”
They were expecting resistance. What they got was a polite assistant at the front desk who offered them espresso and said,
“Oh. You must be here for the presentation.”
The room was windowless. Air-conditioned. Lit like a war crimes tribunal.
Blunt sat at the end of the long table, hands folded. Jones beside him, face unreadable.
Alex entered alone. No cuffs. No handlers.
Just a remote clicker and a calm, neutral smile.
He set down a folder. Plugged in a drive.
The screen behind him flickered to life.
“Synergy, Subterfuge, and Strategic Homicide: Six Months in Scorpia Ops – A Personal Journey” By Alex Rider
Blunt exhaled. Loudly.
Jones didn’t blink.
“Slide one,” Alex said, clicking forward. “Mismanagement in Youth Asset Deployment: A Case Study.”
The next slide was titled “How To Accidentally Radicalise a Teenager With a Printer Budget”.
The presentation lasted seventeen minutes.
There were bullet points. There were graphs colour-coded and sourced from anonymous feedback forms. At one point, Alex included a bar chart comparing “Number of Death Threats Received” while working for each employer.
MI6’s bar towered over Scorpia’s. “That one surprised me too,” Alex said. “But in fairness, most of the Scorpia ones come with fruit baskets.”
“Now,” Alex said, clicking to the final slide, “let’s talk about what I’ve learned.”
Blunt cleared his throat. “Is this really necessary?”
“You dragged me out of bed at dawn,” Alex said. “You’re lucky there’s not a live musical number.”
He closed the presentation. Sat.
Silence.
Then Jones, slowly, “are you happy?”
Alex tilted his head. “That’s not usually part of the debrief.”
“It is today.”
He considered. “I’m not unhappy.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” Alex said. “But it’s close enough.”
They slid the offer across the table.
Official reintegration. Pardon for unauthorised defection. Assignment flexibility. A dedicated handler. A psychologist, for god’s sake.
“And what do you want in return?” Alex asked.
“Come home,” Jones said. “Let us fix this.”
He looked down at the folder.
It was well-assembled. Bulletproof legal work. Time limits. Clauses. Promises.
But he’d seen folders like it before. He’d been the promise that came with one.
When he stood, he didn’t take the offer.
Instead, he handed them his own folder.
A slim, plain thing. Black, no seal. Just one title: “Exit Strategy: Not Applicable”
“What is this?” Blunt asked.
Alex smiled faintly. “My terms.”
“You’re negotiating with us?”
“No,” he said. “I’m offering advice. Something you forgot how to take.”
He turned to Jones. “You trained me to infiltrate. Survive. Adapt. You made me good at the job.”
He held her gaze. “But Scorpia made me good at life.”
The door shut behind him like punctuation.
Jones didn’t speak.
Blunt just muttered, “I preferred it when he didn’t do PowerPoint.”
Back at Scorpia HQ, Vlad was waiting in the lobby with two coffees and a raised eyebrow.
“How did it go?”
“I think I broke Blunt.”
“Did you use the chart with the banana bread ratings?”
“I led with it.”
Vlad handed him a coffee. “Monster.”
“Efficient monster,” Alex corrected.
They walked in silence through the polished corridor.
Alex had no badge now. No codename. No official role. Just an office. And a desk. And a title that hadn’t been officially declared, but which everyone quietly acknowledged.
He was the one who knew how things worked.
And why they didn’t.
The party started at 18:00 sharp.
Because of course it did. This was Scorpia-even chaos came with a calendar invite.
Subject line:
"Farewell(?) to Alex – HQ Cafeteria – Cake Provided"
Sub-note: Dress code: semi-professional. No cloaks.
“I’m not leaving,” Alex said, for the third time, as Vlad adjusted a black-and-silver banner that read GOOD LUCK (OR ELSE).
“You submitted a formal debrief report,” Vlad replied. “That’s halfway to a resignation in this place.”
“I wrote that report to stop the Internal Comms team from staging an intervention.”
“You included a section titled ‘If I Leave, Please Feed My Succulent’.”
“Because someone keeps forgetting to water Geoff.”
Vlad ignored him, tapping a balloon into place.
It was shaped like a grenade. Tasteful, matte finish.
They held the event in the HQ cafeteria.
Someone had dimmed the lights for ambience. Someone else had labelled the dips ‘mild’, ‘medium’, and ‘lethal’.
There were speeches - Miri from Logistics made one. “Alex joined us as a logistical anomaly,” she said, raising her glass. “And somehow became our solution to other anomalies. He has streamlined operations, de-escalated three intercell conflicts, and-against all odds-got our Prague team to submit receipts.”
Scattered applause. Someone whistled.
Cass shouted, “He also colour-coded the field trauma kit roster!”
Miri nodded. “A true villain.”
The HR team insisted on an official exit interview.
Alex agreed, just to see what it looked like.
He was led to a clean grey room with a soft chair, two glasses of water, and a laminated values poster that said “Integrity. Loyalty. Avoiding Unnecessary Incineration.”
Across from him sat a man with rimless glasses and a folder labelled ‘A.R. – Pending Departure?’
“Let’s begin,” the man said gently. “What would you say was your greatest achievement here?”
“I taught the Bucharest cell how to use Google Sheets.”
“Impressive. And your greatest regret?”
Alex paused.
Then: “Being surprised that you cared.”
The questions continued.
How did you find the workplace culture?
(Efficient. Slightly stabby.)
Would you recommend Scorpia to others?
(Not to friends. Maybe to a cousin you’re not fond of.)
Do you feel you’ve grown as a person?
(Define ‘person’.)
Finally, the man closed the folder and said, “We hope you’ll consider staying. Off the record.”
“I’m not resigning,” Alex said again, this time quieter.
Back in the cafeteria, someone had started karaoke.
Cass was doing a dramatic rendition of "Toxic".
Vlad handed him a cupcake. It had the Scorpia logo in edible glitter.
“Weird night,” Alex said, taking a bite.
“You’ve had weirder.”
“That’s the problem,” he said, mouth full. “This doesn’t feel weird anymore.”
Just before midnight, he stood outside HQ. Alone. The air was cold, sharp. Smelled like ozone and too many internal monologues.
His phone buzzed.
A message.
Not from MI6.
From Tom.
How was the party?
Tell me someone made a speech. Did you cry. Did Vlad cry.
Alex smiled.
Vlad used black balloons. Miri called me a villain. I’m still employed.
There was glitter.
Tom replied:
So… not your standard exit interview, then.
Alex didn’t reply. He looked up at the sky-quiet, starless, and full of nothing.
There was no exit.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Just the next task.
The next file.
The next day.
The last offer came by courier.
Hand-delivered. No stamps. No seals. Just a plain folder in a plain envelope, carried by a very polite man with no name and far too clean shoes.
He didn’t say much.
Just handed Alex the envelope and said, “You don’t have to read it. But they’d like you to.”
Then he disappeared.
Alex didn’t open it immediately.
He set it on his desk. Worked around it. Built a travel schedule. Rebalanced a medical loadout for an operation in Tunisia. Sent three polite warnings to the Milan office about overdue reports and one impolite one to Berlin about stealing backup tech without signing it out.
Then, at 23:17, with a mug of tea and nothing but ambient piano music playing from someone else’s office down the corridor, he opened the file.
The offer was full clearance. Clean slate. Field work optional. Training role available. A permanent flat in London. Choice of assignments. Access to counsellors. No questions asked.
It was generous.
Too generous.
At the bottom, one sentence stood alone:
You don’t have to come home. But we’ll always leave the light on.
Alex stared at it for a long time.
Then picked up his pen.
And wrote, in neat, final strokes:
Turn it off.
He sent the file back unsigned.
He suspected they’d understand.
The next morning, Miri handed him a new project brief.
“Congratulations,” she said dryly. “You’re officially heading up internal integration for the Pan-European network.”
Alex blinked. “You’re promoting me?”
“Technically, we’re acknowledging that you’ve already been doing the job.”
“Do I get a new title?”
“You’re now listed as Strategic Liaison Director.”
A beat.
“And, unofficially, Disaster Wrangler.”
He raised a brow.
Miri shrugged. “Someone’s got to handle the Germans.”
Later that day, Vlad cornered him in the lift.
“You’re staying, then?”
Alex gave a long, noncommittal hum.
“You had a chance to go back,” Vlad added. “That folder smelled of British guilt and hastily rewritten contracts.”
“I know.”
“And?”
“I like it here,” Alex said simply. “I like knowing when things are coming. I like fixing things before they break. I like… being useful.”
He looked up.
“I like being trusted.”
Vlad smiled. “Dangerous thing, that.”
That evening, Alex walked the corridors of Scorpia HQ like he always did-routine check, quiet steps, nods exchanged in passing.
In the logistics wing, someone had stuck a sticky note on his office door.
It read: “Please stop being right. You’re making the rest of us look bad. - Cass”
He left it there.
He turned off the lights.
He went home.
In the morning, he wore the hoodie.
The black one. Soft cotton. Barely branded.
The one that fit.
THE END.
Epilogue
Tom got the news on a Tuesday.
Technically, it wasn’t news-no headlines, no press releases, no dramatic explosions on the evening bulletin. Just a text. One line.
Finalised contract. Office got upgraded. Still not evil. Still thriving.
It was the kind of message that sounded boring unless you were Tom Harris. In which case, it was roughly the equivalent of:
Alex has just been unofficially promoted to mid-tier supervillain operations manager and is weirdly fine with it.
He stared at the screen for a moment, then messaged back:
Did you at least get a badge this time?
No badge. New stapler. It’s weighted.
He put the phone down.
Stared at the ceiling of his flat.
Then laughed. Softly. Not like a joke. Like a memory.
He remembered:
- Alex at fourteen, sneaking out of school wearing two watches and a face full of bruises.
- Alex at fifteen, pretending everything was fine when nothing was.
- Alex at sixteen, vanishing for weeks and coming back quieter. Sharper. Unreachable in a way Tom could never quite name.
And then he remembered Alex six months ago.
The irony in his voice when he said, “Bet I could defect and no one would even notice.”
Tom had laughed at the time. Because that was the joke, wasn’t it?
But no one had noticed. Not until he was already gone.
He’d kept quiet when MI6 came sniffing.
Told them he hadn’t heard from Alex in weeks.
(Technically true. Alex had been emailing under a burner account called [email protected]. Tom had responded with GIFs.)
He didn’t always understand the job.
Didn’t want to.
But he understood Alex.
He understood that Alex had spent too long being used and too little time being seen.
And now-somehow, incomprehensibly-he was.
By murderers. By ex-assassins. By the kind of people who used “hostile takeover” both metaphorically and literally.
And they had made space for him.
They’d given him a desk. A title. A hoodie.
They’d given him peace.
Tom picked up his phone.
Typed, slowly:
You’re a bit of a legend, you know. Even Jones looked shaken when she asked if I’d heard from you. I told her you were alive, competent, and probably managing a small empire of criminal middle managers.
A few minutes later, Alex replied.
That’s not true. They’re not middle managers. They’re deeply unstable freelance professionals with grenades.
So... yes.
Tom smiled.
He didn’t need more than that.
Alex was fine.
Not normal. Not safe.
But fine.
And for the first time in years, that felt like enough.
END. FOR REAL.