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Chapter Text

When Fatiha Aicha reached home to find her husband, Oussama, returning at the same time from his mother's, she breathed a sigh of relief. For the third day in a row she had walked the entire way from her work at the harbor offices with the nagging worry she was being followed. Fruitlessly she had walked at an erratic pace, stopping at random intervals to stare into the reflections from storefront windows or look around as if she’d forgotten some intended errand. 

If she believed the evidence of her eyes she was developing a problem in her brain. Paranoia of the sort her cousin Raouf developed after he grew into his height and lost his childish lilt. 

Fatiha did not think she was becoming crazy. She thought someone had learned about her connections abroad.

For the brief moment of her arrival she managed to stow away her fears. Her husband was home, she wasn’t alone, and they were safe. She kicked off her shoes and put her bag inside the closet, noting as she did that Oussama had made a mess of their otherwise neat storage. A shawl and a hat had both been knocked to the floor and left to gather dust. They’d been on hangars when she left.

She corrected the error as her husband came over to her, his own shoes stored away. “How was the visit? And Nour?” she asked, letting him roll his eyes at her mother-in-law’s newest petty complaints about her neighbors, the rising price of the semolina she used for cooking kesra, and the new ailments she thought must be causing her three cats to fight with each other. 

“She’s healthy,” Oussama concluded at the far end of an anecdote, “And she prays for you to be healthy too.”

“And bear her some grandchildren, yes?” Fatiha guessed.

“It’s always so.”

“And you told her it might take more than two years of marriage at my advanced old age, yes?” she pressed.

“Thirty-three is the new twenty-three,” Oussama said. “It’s all on Allah’s time. You know it, I know it.” He took her hand and pressed it close, squeezed it. “One day, even she will know it.”

Leaving Fatiha as the one now rolling her eyes, Oussama went to shower off the day’s travel while Fatiha began to prepare dinner. 

She set out the oil and spices she would use to cook. As she did her mind wandered back to her walk home and the worry she had been followed. She left the kitchen to check she’d locked the door. She had. Minorly reassured, she returned to the pantry and pulled out the flour.

Fatiha had first suspected she was being followed as she left Jum’ah prayers the week before at the great mosque Djamaa el Kebir . The women’s hall had emptied slowly after the sermon. After Fatiha found her shoes she had met Oussama under one of the white arches surrounding the courtyard. It was while they were greeting the other that she noticed the eerie sensation of being watched. She had mentioned it to her husband then as they joined the throngs departing Djamaa el Kebir into the the street beyond; Oussama had glanced around idly, said she must have an admirer or friend in the busy crowd, and carried on about the rumors he’d heard of his sister Samiah’s imminent engagement. 

Oussama had a relaxed outlook on life. It was one reason Fatiha loved him, and another reason she was willing to extend her work into riskier prospects to ensure their families’ interests. They’d had a late start in life, both of them. Him supporting his mom and sister here in Algiers; her working to send money back home to provide for her own family in times of trouble. They were still supporting their family network now. And while Oussama worked a job with regular hours and pay, it was Fatiha who kept them all afloat. It had been Fatiha who had shown the academic prowess and potential to earn a scholarship abroad; Fatiha who had studied in France and England before moving back to Algeria and gaining a government job; Fatiha who heard no end of shame in her village for embracing modernity despite bailing out more aunts and uncles than any of her male cousins. 

Oussama didn’t know about Fatiha’s other work and she didn’t want him to know. He didn’t like to talk of her years abroad; he had only negative feelings towards France. The British were similar enough in his mind to be grouped into the same boat as the French. 

If he knew about her connections abroad, she had no doubt her normally unbothered husband would demand she quit. 

And gone would be the small but regular payments from those outside the region who needed friends–the payments which would one day help them leave their rundown, one bedroom brick apartment in the outskirts of the Casbah, close to the centrale poste, for a luxury haussmannian apartment in the district of Didouche Mourad with room enough for children, and where her sister and niece and nephews could visit from their village and spend time by the sea.

But perhaps it was gone already.

Someone was following her. She had no proof of the crime, but she knew.

Was it someone in the government? They could perhaps be watching for proof of their own–evidence of her treason. Though she had never given away anything which might hurt her own country; it was a line she wouldn’t cross. 

The gangs, then. The people smugglers and weapon traders outfitting the radicals in the south. They were the ones she supplied information on. Her connections abroad had helped her find her job because it dealt with the ports. The gangs were dealing bad business across both continents. Now they’d found her out and wanted her dealt with.

What could she do? Call her connections?

Outside the kitchen she heard Oussama unlock the door to go out.

Was he out of tobacco already?

The sound of water running through the pipes in the ceiling stopped her short.

Oussama was still showering.

With sudden clarity she realized what she’d forgotten before: he’d left before her that morning, too. 

He hadn’t been the one rifling through their closet.

Their apartment door was pushed, quietly, open.

Fatiha, quietly, reached for her chopping knife and the heaviest of her bottles of oil.

Duck, she rehearsed to herself, and throw. 

Afghanistan, Four Months Prior

Alex watched his left foot tap at the carpet he was sitting on in an arrhythmic patter, feeling the anxiety the motion was doing nothing to relax continue to worm its way into his brain.

He’d made a mistake.

It had been a mistake to take anything offered by Yassen. If he’d fully recovered from the drugs forced into him yesterday, he would have approached the interrogation differently. Would have ignored the seemingly endless caffeine waiting by while Yassen waited Alex’s patience out.

His back was pressed against the wall, the window above him and out of sight; regardless, he knew the view; unbroken wall in the foreground, one of many obstacles preventing Alex from fleeing back into the stretch of wilderness where he’d been found, below  a mountain ridge dappled with white caps which stood out against a stretch of cloudless clear skies.

“And then?” Yassen prompted.

Alex clenched his fingers tightly into the pillow he was holding against his propped knees. They both knew what Yassen was waiting for—what Alex was holding back: a continuation of the details of past missions Alex should never have offered up. “There’s no point. You can’t use any of this.”

“Not much of it,” Yassen said. 

It would shock Alex if Yassen could use anything he had shared; there was nothing to be done with miscellania related to weeks-old operations already concluded and put away. Details of the operations had begun to fade from Alex’s memory already. He wasn’t in Algiers anymore. Yassen, as best he knew, might have already been in Afghanistan. They were both here, in a camp neither Alex or K-Unit had expected to find while trekking through the mountainous valley region near the Pakistani border.

“Then why does it matter?” Alex asked.

His foot tapped, ceaselessly, against the floor.

“I’m curious. What are the British doing with their teenage spy? Sending you to reach the people they can’t?”

“That’s the goal.” He wouldn’t have been worth the trouble otherwise. Already Blunt was displeased by the amount Alex had grown since he’d first been drawn into action, barely fourteen and with the fresh face of someone still in early secondary school to match.

“It’s one way to deal with their enemies,” Yassen said.

“You mean, killing them?”

“Are you?”

Squashing the uncomfortable truths that poked in at him around the edges of the accusation, Alex said, “No.” Between them, he wasn’t the murderer in the room.

At least, he didn’t mean to be. 

“You weren’t there to end someone,” Yassen accepted. “Why did they send you into the harbour?”

Alex was silent.

“You don’t want to share?” “This isn’t helping you.” Alex hoped. Increasingly he worried Yassen wouldn’t ask if it meant nothing to him. He’d talked himself into a corner. He had offered to talk with Yassen in the hopes of learning more. Instead, he’d learned the dangers of abusing caffeine as a relief from nerves. “I want to know what’s happening with my unit.”

Yassen considered, waiting him out. Letting Alex’s brain work itself up like it had done all day—it was all a game to Yassen, and one where he held every advantage except for the knowledge Alex and K-Unit carried. “An exchange has two parts.”

Give a little, get a little. Except Alex didn’t trust Yassen not to lean on the scales. “You already said this isn’t helping you anyway.”

“You could tell me instead why your unit came into this country.”

Alex couldn’t.

“If we’re done,” Yassen said. He pressed his palms against the floor, as if he meant to push himself up.

It was a question. Was Alex done? Or did he intend to continue on? 

Did he want to languish, in relative safety, alone with his thoughts while Yassen ignored him or did he want to find out whether the members of K-Unit had each survived their encounter in the wilderness?

“They gave me a pack of cigarettes,” Alex said. “I watched a boat docked in the harbor. I was supposed to light one of the cigarettes if the person they were watching boarded.”

“That required a teenager?”

Alex had wondered the same. “A lot of teenagers worked on the dock. And when I left, I joined a school group taking a flight home.” An English youth tennis team. “I was a close-up visual. Nothing dangerous. No one else was allowed in that section of the harbor. You needed special permission.” He’d been the easiest to send in, Blunt had said.

Alex hadn’t quite believed him.

“How did you get in?” 

“A woman,” Alex said. “She worked with the city; she had permission.”

“Where did you find her?” Yassen asked. “Why did she let you in?”

Talking was a mistake.

Giving up the chance to hear more was a mistake.

The Algiers Harbour was in the past. K-Unit was trapped now. 

Alex’s foot tapped relentlessly. 

What he was sharing was worthless. Yassen was softening his resolve. He didn’t care about any of this; it was an exercise in driving Alex mad until he was ready to share the details of this mission now. Nothing Alex said here mattered–only what he didn’t. A woman with a mole under her brow and a striped headscarf a month back, in a city of millions? It was information which meant nothing to anyone and less to Yassen, a continent away. 

He would take the risk.

Present

It might have surprised those who knew Alan Blunt well, not to mention those who knew him within his capacity as the director of Special Operations, that he had a standing appointment once a year to shop for suits and upkeep his style.

Tulip Jones was aware of today’s appointment in the way she was aware of his schedule in general: distantly, with no details unless a reason to become aware of his whereabouts existed. The sudden appearance of a troubling report on her desk had summoned the need for greater details today. She had asked Blunt’s secretary for the location of his appointment, and, after impressing the urgency of her knowing his location upon the secretary,  was finally given the address.

She could tell at once upon arrival at the business’s entrance that the appointment was no casual drop in. The Mayfair townhouse bore a subtle yet expensive engraved signpost with the name of the store, and a marble plaque underneath detailing in script the expansive history of a family business dating back to the Victorian era.  The man who greeted her when she pressed the ringer had all the courtesy of a butler from the same period and he promptly escorted her through a display room with minimal display and no hint at all of the price range which someone might expect to pay. Tulip was brought to the entrance of a private room, where her escort slipped away before he could intrude on her entrance.

Inside, Blunt was ignoring a tray of tea left out on a low, wide table in favor of examining four ties which had been laid out beside it. A smartly dressed woman half his age hovered nearby, her hands clasped behind her, giving the ties the same study biologists typically reserved for specimens which a recent study had newly discovered.

The four ties laid out on the table varied little in both shade and material. She had worked alongside Alan Blunt for years. Rather privately, she suspected he might have been bullied out of a sense of fashion in his school days. His clothing taste could be described as the bland side of normal on the best of days; color had long ago run away from his wardrobe and the concept of ‘dark’ and ‘light’ followed after, leaving behind a muddle of grey and beige typically reserved for charcoal illustrations of orphans.

“I’ll need the room, Julie,” Blunt said. He examined the ties with disinterest as Julie gave Tulip and Blunt their privacy. 

Blunt picked up one of the ties and turned it in the light. “Is it the militia in Bangui or the problem in the Arctic?” 

“There’s been another attack on an informant.” 

Blunt nodded. “Were they killed?”

“Luckily not. She had the sense something was wrong and managed to fight off the assailant. She suffered injuries but they weren't fatal. ”

Blunt returned the tie to the table, an irate frown taking over his expression. “How many has that been this month?”

“Four,” Tulip said. “Two attacks in Vilnius. The car bomb at our posting in Turkey. Now this one in Algeria.” She wished she’d remembered to bring something to stave off her unconscious drive to grind her teeth. A mint or a pack of gum. “Someone’s sharing details on our network.”

“Casualties so far?”

“Two. Both our informants in Vilnius. The bombing put our agent in critical care, but she’s alive. Algeria wasn’t successful though there’s a strong chance she’ll need a cane past the point of recovery.”

“Better than needing a burial,” Blunt dismissed. “Who’s in charge of our informants in North Africa? There’s no crossover with the other regions?”

“No.” 

Although.

There was one. 

One similarity which bound all four victims to one person active within Special Operations.

Tulip Jones had known betrayal in her life. Loathe as she was to confront the reality whenever betrayal came, she’d grown to accept people for the flawed, weak, selfish individuals they often were. If any other agent had interacted with all four of the victims she would have worked backwards with the inevitable conclusion already formed: their agent had gone crooked.

“There’s one agent of ours they’ve all interacted with,” Tulip admitted. “But I can’t imagine he’d sell any of our people out. Not while realizing what he’d done.”

Blunt connected the thread tying the missions together before she laid the answer out. “Alex Rider.”

“I sent John to his school,” Tulip said. “It’s obvious we need to figure this out before anyone else is hurt. There’s been someone he’s been talking to, surely, who’s taking advantage of his inexperience.”

“Bring Alex in then,” Blunt said. “Have him put in one of the private cells. I expect he’ll remember them from his time with Scorpia.”

“Alan,” Tulip said. She wanted to say more, perhaps with reproach in her voice. 

Circumstances didn’t permit the luxury.

“He’s talked to someone,” Blunt said. He picked up another tie and held it against the fabric of his suit for comparison. “There’s no doubt on that front. We need to figure out who.”

Tulip wished she could disagree. Putting aside the question of carelessness or malice as secondary, their primary focus now was to head off any other information Alex had spilled. “I’ll have John ready an interrogation room.”

“That can wait until morning.” Blunt moved the tie he’d been considering to the side, separating it from the others with the tea tray as a barrier. “On your way out, you can tell Julie I’ve made a selection.”

Tulip took in the fabric and noted it heavily resembled the tie Blunt was currently wearing in both fabric and color. “It’s only lunch now.”

“He’ll be fed, I’m sure.” Blunt reached at last for the pot of tea. “But this is a matter of some importance. I’m sure you’ll agree that when we talk to him tomorrow, it would be best if he’d already worked past any childish theatrics.”

Alex is a child , Tulip considered saying. And perhaps this is an example of why we don’t have any other teenage agents on the docket. 

Except Alan Blunt was right. 

Alex Rider had broken the seal of national secrecy. Lives had been lost, with more quite possibly at stake. This wasn’t a matter for juvenile fits—not even with a child at the heart of the problem.

Chapter Text

Stirling Lines was the newest iteration of the British army garrison in Credenhill, Herefordshire, a few hours' drive from central London. Previously a non-flying school for the Royal Air Force, it had since been given an airfield, converted into the permanent base for several regiments of the SAS, and acquired strategic importance for the Ministry of Defense.

Not everyone within the garrison worked directly for the special forces. A large cadre of labor underpinned the day-to-day goings-on, which any military base would need to ensure smooth operations. Anyone stationed at Stirling Lines could expect to see almost as many food service, logistics, and custodial staff as men and women in uniform.

They did not, however, expect to see a schoolboy.  Alex was still wearing his school shirt and tie from the day before. After a night in the basement of the Royal and General, his jacket had acquired the sort of wrinkles one might expect from a shirt forgotten at the bottom of the laundry hamper for a month. He’d shaken them out as best he could with little success. 

It didn’t matter. Alex knew the curious glances sent his way weren’t due to his wrinkled attire but his age. Mrs. Jones, with her tight bob and neatly cut (though admittedly poorly fit) pantsuit, hadn’t attracted a moment’s notice from any of the troopers they’d passed since arriving at Stirling Lines. Alex, several years younger than the minimum age of enlistment and dressed as if he’d been yanked here straight from secondary school to boot, stood out.

In a way, he had come from school, although less directly than he’d have preferred.

He’d been at Brooklands the day before. The office summons came at the start of lunch hour; John Crawley was waiting for him when he arrived. He’d asked Alex to step outside ‘to have a word’. Before Alex had time to realize the smokers loitering outside the school door had any association with Crawley, he’d been dragged down to the road and into an SUV, handcuffed, and had a hood forced over his head. 

Alex hadn’t fought. What was the point? Crawley had arrived at Brooklands to arrest him–the way they’d briskly bundled him into the back seat of their vehicle, a grunt on either side of him to hold him still, made Crawley’s intention abundantly clear. 

Even when his hood had been removed, revealing the subterranean cells below the Royal & General, Alex had kept himself from lashing out. Blunt didn’t respect anger; Alex’d learnt that lesson several missions ago.

And he had been in shock. How many times had he risked his life for MI6? He was doubled up on afternoon and weekend tutoring to catch up on all the schoolwork he missed. This was how Blunt treated him?

Anger had overridden his shock by dinner, at whatever late hour it must have been–MI6’s hospitality hadn’t included a clock–when they sent a bag of water and a plastic-wrapped sandwich into his cell through a slot. It had been his first chance to eat since breakfast. He could have eaten another three if they’d been offered. Instead, he poured his energy into clamping down on the urge to direct a torrent of recently acquired Portuguese vulgarities towards Blunt. He would have enjoyed MI6 wasting resources translating the rant, even if they didn’t send the transcript to the man himself.

It wasn’t a question of whether Special Operations was listening in. Three cameras pointed toward every corner of the room besides the toilet, and who knew how many cameras Alex couldn’t see?

Considering the power they held over his life, however, he’d managed to refrain from cursing Blunt out. Crawley hadn’t given him a reason for the harsh treatment. Until MI6 explained his abduction, he would try to avoid digging himself deeper into whatever trouble he’d landed in now.

In the morning, Alex became glad he’d held his anger back. His bitterness had quickly faded as Crawley and Mrs. Jones talked.

MI6 could have done without the theatrics. Alex would have told them what they wanted the moment he understood what had occurred, regardless. 

The attacks on MI6’s contacts had, after all, been his fault.

K-Unit had been called in. They’d been on short-term leave until circumstances had forced them back today; the compromised  information merited an immediate response. Still, it would take them time to get out to Stirling Lines. Their summons had gone out around noon. Mrs. Jones was preparing a briefing for seventeen hundred hours.

Alex, in the meantime, had been left waiting by himself.

He’d found a seat in the foyer: a hard bench sat beside three shelves of trade paperbacks, beaten-up VHRs, mass production Bibles, and well-used games the soldiers traded amongst themselves. A framed poster opposite his bench advertised the qualities of SAS soldiers. Advertisements for on-site movie nights and faith groups had been tacked to the wall around it.

He itched to change shirts.

After his morning interview, Crawley had told Alex that someone would drive out to Chelsea to fetch him some clean clothes. Another reminder of  MI6’s regular invasion of his personal space—the government didn’t own copies of any of his friends’ housekeys.

Normally, Jack could have put a bag together for him, but she was, apparently, still out of town. She’d been seeing someone since late summer, and they’d gotten quite serious.

It was almost a relief. Jack had meant to return home from her weekend away Monday, while Alex was in school. Instead, she hadn’t realized Alex had never returned from school because her boyfriend had convinced her to stay another two nights on the coast.

“Don’t come back early, Jack,” Alex had told her earlier over the phone while en route to the garrison. “I won’t be home anyway. Not for another few days.”

Alex had expected his afternoon to go differently. He’d planned to play Mario with Cameron after practice. Jack usually bought takeout from the local Korean BBQ on Tuesdays and Cameron had planned to stay for dinner; Alex had wanted him to meet Jack. Jessica’s party was coming up this weekend as well. Cameron had asked Alex if he wanted to grab dinner before the party, and Alex had hoped they could make solid plans before Saturday arrived. 

Now it seemed likely Alex wouldn’t even make the party.

“Cub?”

Eagle had been the first to arrive. He approached Alex with a frown, taking in the rumpled clothes without comment. “Alright, Cub?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Alex had lied. “You?”

“Fine.” Eagles’ dark hair was longer than Alex had seen it before—longer than regulation. Eagle hadn’t expected to be back at work today. 

He hadn’t expected to find Alex waiting for him either. Eagle’s brows had furrowed when he’d seen him waiting. “Think you’re joining us?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. He didn’t elaborate. Mrs. Jones would explain soon enough.

Snake arrived after Eagle. Unlike Eagle, he didn’t give Alex’s uniform a pass. “Come from school?” he asked, pulling Alex into a brief hug. “I thought you’d have burned your uniform by now. I threw mine on the grill the moment I got out.”

“Yeah, well,” Alex deflected.

Snake let Alex’s non-answer pass without comment. 

They were deep in a game of cards by the time Wolf and Boar arrived, shortly before the briefing was due to start. “You look like trash,” Wolf remarked.

Eagle, diplomatically, rephrased Wolf’s greeting. “It’s not regulation uniform. But who has time for that?”

“Are we rescuing someone else you know?” Boar asked, with a clap on Alex’s back, as Snake dealt a new hand.

“Not this time.”

Boar accepted the response without follow-up, but it was clear from the visual thrice over he was giving Alex that he had been hoping for more. He sized Alex up as if hidden somewhere in Alex’s expression, or on his school uniform, there would be an explanation for why K-Unit had been called back to active duty so abruptly.

Though Boar was the only one to ask outright, Alex could tell the rest had the same question. Despite Alex’s history with K-Unit, he wasn’t one of them. The SAS operated in four-man teams, not five. Even Alex’s codename broke the pattern. So why was he here? 

“Congratulations,” Alex said, noticing the engagement ring on Boar's finger. He hadn’t worn it in Afghanistan.

“Thanks,” Boar said. “Things are going well.” He didn’t elaborate. “Gotten taller, have you?”

Alex shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

He was lying.

Jack thought his most recent growth spurt would be his last. She was probably grateful: With how busy Alex had been, she had been the one to make sure his school clothes always fit. Last week, she’d measured Alex and asked if he realized he’d grown taller than Ian. 

When he hadn’t responded at once, Jack had mussed his hair and promised she wouldn’t need to drag him shopping this time—his clothes should all still fit. The topic of Ian hadn’t come back up.

Alex and K-Unit met Mrs. Jones in a small office. A stern-faced colonel from the SAS sat beside her at the table. He didn't offer his name.

A soldier escorted them in as the hour hand hit five. Mrs. Jones began the briefing exactly on time. 

“Special operations,” she began, “relies on a network of assets. Civilians with links to our government, former soldiers who have settled elsewhere, and connections within other intelligence departments.”

The room’s atmosphere was attentive, almost solemn. Soldiers sat through hundreds of lectures and briefings in their training alone, many of which would wind on far longer than Mrs. Jones’ succinct style of delivery. By the time the typical SAS operative was ready for deployment, they had developed the sort of muscle control which could allow them to ignore a fly crawling across their face during a briefing—better to deal with the tickling sensation of a bug against their skin than breaking form and gathering the attention of their commanding officer.

A few hours before, K-Unit might have scrambled into uniform and made improvised, disorderly plans to get onto the garrison by five, but now they were in a briefing with a high-level commanding officer and the Deputy Head of Special Operations. At this moment, they were stony-faced professionals.

Alex hoped it might be enough to inhibit their wrath once Mrs. Jones revealed what he had done.

“Although we have assets around the world,” she said, “Few know the details of anyone else in our network beyond those designated as their immediate contacts. In many regards, our informants operate as a series of disconnected pins on a map. Or perhaps I could say Special Operations owns a telephone book. Sometimes people pick up their phones and ask for an operator, in order to make reports which might save lives or interrupt conspiracies. More often their intel is written down and filed in large rooms filled with stacks of similar reports, ready to be pulled upon as needed.”

Mrs. Jones continued,  “And sometimes we call our assets. We might ask if they’ve a record of local arrests, or if they could meet one of our agents to pass along a package, or what ships will be in port on the first of the next month and whether those same vessels have come through the region before.”

Alex wondered if any of this was news to K-Unit. He couldn’t imagine so. They were soldiers, not spies, but they worked in special operations all the same. Assets,  local contacts, and moles were par for the course. Mrs. Jones might as well lecture on the importance of using code names in the field.

“Last week, one of our local contacts in Algeria was attacked in her home.” Mrs. Jones sucked in her lip, resulting in a puckered grimace. “In the month before that, one of our safehouses was bombed several countries over. And in the days before the bombing, an assassin killed two friends of our government in Eastern Europe. Any one of these incidents might have been ignored on their own. One attack directly after another begins to form a disturbing picture.”

“Coordinated attacks?” Eagle asked.

The colonel spoke for the first time. “Good question. A very good question. Someone in our network yapped. Someone else listened. Who acted on the information?” He shrugged. “There could be one perpetrator or many. Our country has plenty of enemies. ” 

“One of our people talked?” Wolf asked. “Why?” The question hid an edge Alex had heard only one other time—and not since training. They had been in the Killing House, practicing emergency evacuations under duress. Wolf and Alex would have been the last people out. Instead, Wolf had pushed Alex into a trip wire, ‘killing’ him in the context of the simulation. Tough luck, Double O Nothing. The words had reminded Alex of a childish taunt–Wolf’s tone, in contrast, had shown a level of viciousness which went beyond the playground. It was the same now. Have you found your rat, or should my unit go dig them out? Give us the orders and we’ll make them talk.

“Yes,” Mrs. Jones said. She peered, almost pityingly, at Alex. “It didn’t take us long to find the culprit. We could only link one agent to all three targets.”

It wouldn’t take K-Unit long to figure out why it had been their unit called in, despite their leave—or why Alex had joined them for the briefing. Eagle, almost quizzically, had followed Mrs. Jones’ gaze as she talked. Alex could sense the question forming inside Eagle’s brain.

He might as well rip the band-aid off himself. 

“You mean me,” he said.

She inclined her head.

At first, there was no reaction.

Snake sat motionless enough that Alex wasn’t sure the soldier understood. “What do you mean, Cub?”

Alex folded his arms. He’d been dreading this moment: the inevitable declaration of why he was here. “I was the one who talked.” 

The muscles in Wolf’s face twitched, moved from incomprehension to understanding back to hard edges again. “You talked,” Wolf repeated woodenly.

Snake gave the confession a moment to settle. His tone was neutral when he asked, “Why?”

“‘When’ might be the better question," Mrs. Jones said. “And one I can answer. Earlier this year, Alex went with you to Afghanistan. On your way into the country you ran into Yassen Gregorovich. He convinced Alex to discuss details of where he’d been operating in the prior months.”

Convinced. A more accurate term might be ‘coerced’, without conjuring up a mental image of Alex, coddled and protected from the worst of their captivity, while K-Unit huddled with each other to preserve body heat in a cage outside.

He let the wording pass unchallenged. It was clear already from Wolf’s expression—semantic nuance had little place in this briefing.

“So it’s Gregorovich,” Wolf said. “He used Cub for information, and he’s using what Cub told him to attack MI6’s network.”

“I imagine that’s partially true,” Mrs. Jones said. 

In a blame game, perhaps. Alex was ready to cut to the chase. “The attacks weren’t him. Not directly. He sold the information on.” He’d been told as much earlier.

“We’re operating under some assumptions,” Mrs. Jones acknowledged, “We haven’t been able to locate a common purpose for the attacks beyond disrupting our local intelligence networks. We are certain that in at least one of the attacks, and probably all, Yassen wasn’t directly involved. Travel records indicate he was in Asia when our safehouse was bombed. More precisely, this last attack occurred while he was in the Caucasus, with video evidence confirming the conflict. Based on that pattern alone, we’re inclined to believe the assassinations came directly from another source as well.”

“Yassen is a contract killer,” she continued, “Not a local mafioso. He has coordinated large-scale attacks before—but always for a price. He works for hire. Information about our networks are as valuable as the price tag they can fetch him.”

“Someone’s paying him,” Eagle said.

“We need to know who,” Mrs. Jones confirmed. “As quickly as possible. There have been three attacks already; we plan to head off any more.”

“Your orders are to talk to him,” the colonel cut in. “Which means tracking him down. Alive. Gregorovich is dangerous, but he is not the threat this operation is focused on eliminating.”

Wolf, finally, turned away from Alex. “I’ve spoken with him before. He wasn’t particularly talkative.”

“Convince him.” The colonel considered K-Unit. “My maths aren't the strongest, but I count four men before me. Gregorovich is one. Outman him. Offer him a carrot and show him four barrels pointing his way.”

There’d been no lost love between K-Unit and Yassen when they’d met in Afghanistan. Alex couldn’t imagine a second meeting—one where both parties came armed—ending smoothly. 

“Yes, sir,” Wolf said.

“Alex will help.” 

Alex felt the full weight of the room’s attention return to him with Mrs. Jones’ words. Wolf was barely maintaining his game face; the colonel wasn’t bothering to hide his distaste. The rest of K-Unit still wore the curated indifference professional soldiers brought with them to lectures, briefings, and meetings with their superiors. Alex wondered how long their neutrality would last. Until they left the briefing? Longer?

He had his bets on who would take their frustrations out on him first.

Mrs. Jones had briefed him on the mission on the car ride over. After their briefing ended, they'd be escorted out onto the airfield to board a military jet to Heathrow, where Crawley would meet them with false papers, backstories, and Alex’s backpack. They’d be on their way out of England by daybreak, after a stint overnight in the airport’s lodgings.

Wolf might treat Alex civilly. He wouldn’t be nice.

“Yassen will recognize you,” Mrs. Jones said. “He’s had run-ins with Alex in the past. If you can draw Yassen into a meeting, we believe he can be reasoned with under the right pressure.”

Scorpia could consider pressure to mean a weapon aimed at a knee, or the heart, or a loved one. Yassen had applied a similar definition of the concept when he had K-Unit under his control. 

Alex didn’t want to imagine K-Unit’s definition, or wonder how they’d treat Yassen with the tables turned. The results, no matter Mrs. Jones’ optimism, could only be ugly.

And Alex would be in the middle of it.

“Do we have a location?” 

“Thankfully for the urgency of our objective,” the colonel said, “We received an alert from EU border security in late September. They’d flagged a name on a list of foreign nationals passing through Stockholm Arlanda as one Gregorovich has been known to use. An Azerbaijani passport: he’s believed to have worked with them in the past.”

Mrs. Jones agreed. “Thankfully for the urgency of our objective, we have reliable intelligence confirming he’s in the capital, operating out of the Sabail raion, one of the central hubs.”

MI6 would have sent their Azerbaijani contacts out to narrow down the search, too, while the SAS readied a team. 

How well would they hide their search? Would K-Unit and Alex arrive to find Yassen already tipped off?

Mrs. Jones and the colonel didn’t seem to share Alex’s concern. The colonel, for the first time, bared yellow-stained teeth into a humorless smile. “Anyone here ever been to Baku?”

Alex spent his first afternoon in the Azerbaijani capital navigating the city on his own.

Given the option, he could have thought of better ways he could help the team. Once they’d gotten in that morning, Wolf had broken down their operational needs into a series of tasks. Alex had volunteered for several. It had met his grim sense of expectations when Wolf had been resistant. “Not now, Cub,”  he’d dismissed. “We’ll tell you when you’re needed.”

“Honestly, Cub, it’s probably best if you stay in the flat,” Boar said after Alex volunteered to take on a surveillance role. “If Gregorovich spots you, it will blow our entire approach.”

If any one of K-Unit had asked for his help, Alex would have gone with them. But Eagle, if he had any ideas on how to assign tasks, kept his opinions to himself. 

And Snake had repeated Boar’s sentiment. “It would help to have someone watch over our stuff.”

Alex had dipped out on a walk shortly after Snake’s suggestion, before Wolf could decide his new orders were for Alex to do exactly that. He knew when he wasn’t wanted.

Alex had never visited Baku before, but Ian had gone there for work. He’d called it a banking trip at the time–and he came home with injuries so often Alex hadn’t thought twice of the finger splint Ian had worn on his return. “It’s called the Paris of the Caucasus,” Ian had said. “They had an oil boom in the 1800s where plenty of locals became rich. They hired architects from all over Europe in order to convert an Eastern city into a city resembling the West.” 

Alex could make out areas where Polish architects and principles of art nouveau had affected the architecture–but any observer could tell Baku’s history included a diversity of influences. Each street he passed seemed to bring a different style to life: cosmopolitan apartments, neo-Gothic facades, white stone mosques, and historic palaces. A tourist could spend a week on walking tours alone. For a few hours, Alex tried to pretend he had come to the city for a chance to appreciate the city’s historical heritage and no other reason. It was nice to disappear into the role of an ordinary teenager for once, perhaps one exploring on his own while his family enjoyed a mid-day nap.

Evening found Alex locked in a mental quagmire. He wandered the winding alleys formed by the walls of the old city, tracing a map in his head. K-Unit would be returning to the flat by now, their goals for the day either complete or on pause while they regrouped. Alex was certain he could find his way back from where he was—but he wondered if K-Unit would appreciate him staying out an hour longer. The morning had made their discomfort toward him clear. 

It was as if they had only just re-united after basic. By the time he and K-Unit had reached Faisal, and certainly by the time they had brought him to safety, Alex had thought their time in Afghanistan had shown K-Unit that he was capable of keeping up. They had even treated him like a friend.

If their time in Afghanistan had broken down the walls built up from training, the revelation that Alex had told Yassen details of his past missions had rebuilt the barrier. 

Alex couldn’t blame them. He’d been a fool to trust Yassen. Worse than a fool. He’d let himself be manipulated. People had died for his mistake. How would Alex react if he’d learned the same  about any of them?

He wouldn’t get the chance. No one else on the team would have made his mistake. K-Unit understood the SAS protocol; that soldiers who were captured by the enemy were permitted to share three facts: their name, their rank, their serial number.

K-Unit hadn’t shared their names, ranks, or serial numbers. The men were calling each other by their codenames even in Baku, safeguarding their real names the same way someone might protect an embarrassing secret. Alex had no idea what names any of them went by outside of service. They weren’t cowards; they weren’t sell-outs; they weren’t stupid.

And they thought Alex was all three. 

Alex looked down the hill toward the harbor, where the choppy Caspian seas rocked the boats coming in for the day. The sun was past its zenith, well on its way into a full descent. Soon, the stone walls, minarets, and fortresses of the old city would be bathed in a golden light. Alex was tempted to find a spot to settle in and enjoy the view.

It would certainly be preferable to returning to the flat.

Why should he go back at all? They’d be just as happy if he found his way back to London without them. Staying meant running up against Yassen—who might have used Alex’s naivety for his own gain but had also given Alex the chance to escape with every member of his team.  

K-Unit had signed up for combat. They’d enlisted in the 14-week hell course at Brecon Beacons because they wanted a career in Special Ops; Alex had been shot with a tranquilizer and woken up in Wales. Despite that difference, he’d survived twelve days of SAS training with no help from any of them.

Alex counted the change  in his pocket. A few hundred manat—almost nothing in pound sterling. It wouldn’t go far. It certainly wouldn’t cover a flight.

Sorely, he admitted to himself that he wouldn’t leave even if he could. Alex had dragged Wolf, Eagle, Snake, and Boar into this mess with him; he owed at least an effort to make things right.

Grimly, he headed back.

Every member of K-Unit had returned to their temporary base before Alex returned. He found them gathered around the table, talking together. Eagle had come back from their equipment connect with a small armory: Beretta M9s, 15-round magazines, iron sights, a P-96 with a detachable box magazine, silencers, a smoke grenade, knives, and high-end tactical clothing which Alex supposed they would need to hide under civilian wear. Eagle was inventorying the gear into a notepad;  across from him, Snake and Boar were studying a large diagram.

One by one, they fell silent as they noticed Alex had entered the room.

Wolf broke the silence. “Good news. We know where Gregorovich is staying,” he said by way of a greeting. “His address, his unit number, everything. You ready to hear the plan?”

Eagle placed his pen on the table. He waited for Alex’s response.

Alex nodded. 

Almost casually, Wolf asked, “And you’ll keep the plans to yourself?” 

Alex took a breath. He didn’t expect any of the others to jump to his defense.

He was right.

“Alright,” he said. If Wolf wanted to dig into Alex’s motivations, there was no use putting it off. “Do you want to ask me something?”

“There’s the obvious,” Wolf said. “Why’d you talk?”

He didn’t voice his words as a question. At that moment, they weren’t one. Alex shouldn’t have talked. Full stop. 

Snake took the more practical approach. Alex had talked, obviously. They might as well learn from what had happened. “What did you think he was going to do with what you told him?”

“I didn’t think he was going to do anything with it,” Alex said. “He wanted me to share why we were in Afghanistan. I wouldn’t tell him. Everything else was just stalling.” Alex had thought Yassen had only asked as an opportunity to start Alex talking.

“Why talk at all?” 

“He asked.” Even true, it was a weak excuse. Alex admitted, “I didn’t think there was anything he could use.”

“Then why would he ask?” Eagle’s notepad lay abandoned on the table, forgotten in his irritation. He’d thought Alex smarter than his confession revealed, clearly. 

Alex could feel his ears burning. He’d have liked to think the same. “I don’t know.” Yassen’s people had separated Alex from the rest of K-Unit. Safe from direct threat and fearful for his unit, he’d been kept off-kilter. “I didn’t know why he was interested.”

 “Oh, he was plenty interested,” Wolf said. “Did he offer to take notes, too, while you were letting him know your life story?”

No. If Yassen had started recording the conversation, Alex would have stopped to ask why. Yassen would have tracked the interrogation later. Typed up a transcript from memory once Alex had been sent away. Or he’d had his laptop set to record the surround audio. If he had, he wouldn’t have told Alex.

“Why did you think he was interested?” Snake asked.

Alex couldn’t say. 

Wolf wouldn’t let him hear the end of it if he admitted the truth: that he hadn’t known Yassen cared about the content of the missions. For all he had known, Yassen had been curious–not about the missions, but about him. 

Alex was John Rider’s son. Yassen had been interested enough in the youngest Rider to send him to Scorpia. Why couldn’t Yassen have been simply interested in Alex?

“You can’t talk about your missions like that,” Snake said, slowly. “Ever. Even to people who know you.”

“Especially if the people you know are fucking terrorists,” Wolf said, his temper, judging by the vulgarity, running thin.

“I know,” Alex said. “I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act.”

“You broke the Official Secrets Act,” Boar corrected. “And what—they’re letting you off with a tongue lashing?”

People who had helped Alex had been attacked; people had died. He’d already added the damages to the pile weighing down his conscience.

A guilty conscience wasn’t prison. But Boar would be disappointed if he’d expected Alex to be shipped off to some miserable juvenile hall with poor food and worse insulation. MI6 considered Alex too valuable for proper punishment—in this instance, anyway.

That, or their version of punishment was to make sure every member of K-Unit understood Alex was responsible for the operation. Karmic punishment Alex knew he deserved.

 “I wasn’t let off. I came here to help you.” 

Alex felt he could read Boar’s skepticism in his body language alone. Did they give you a choice?

Alex’s answer hadn’t satisfied any of them.

K-Unit might, just, still have enough goodwill built up to not want Alex shipped off to a cell. But they didn’t want him underfoot, either.

“You know where Yassen’s staying?” Alex asked. 

Wolf gestured at the diagram on the table. It was the floorplan of a building. 

“There was a tenant flat associated with the passport ID we were given,”  Wolf said. “It’s under a different name, but I cross-checked the list of aliases Gregorovich uses, and it’s similar enough. We’re staking it out in the morning. All we need now is visual. Once we have confirmation it’s him, we’ll be ready to launch an approach.”

“Already?” 

“If we get confirmation it’s him? Yes. We’ll break into his place while he’s out and surround him on his way in.”

Boar tapped the blueprint. “We found the floorplan for his building at the library. He’s number 23. It’s on the third floor.” 

“The entrance from the stairwell is here.” Snake pointed to a line on the plan, then traced a path down the page, along the lines for the hall. “There’s six units on each floor. His is the second on the north side, facing the street.”

“You’ll go in with Eagle and Snake once we establish visual,” Wolf reported. “They’ll go in and clear the place of any threats. You’re going to wait outside his door. Imitate a welcome mat. Boar and I will be posted where we can see the ground floor entrance. Once he enters, we’ll give him a beat to start up the stairs before we enter and follow him in. Clear?”

“He’ll see me,” Alex said.

“That’s the point.” Wolf eyed Alex down as if daring him to challenge the orders. “We don’t want chaos. You’re the only one he won’t shoot on sight. He’ll hesitate. We’ll use it to our advantage ”

Yassen had helped Alex escape imprisonment in Afghanistan. He hadn’t shot him on Air Force One. He was probably invested enough in Alex’s general health and safety to hold fire if they ran into each other again.

But did Alex want to bet his life on the fact? Could he confidently claim Yassen wouldn’t shoot him—or if he only drew the line at aiming to kill?

“You’re sure about that?” Alex muttered.

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “Do you want to repeat your question, Cub? You want to ask again if we’d put you in danger?”

Alex hesitated. 

Boar tapped the table impatiently.

No one at the table was harboring any hidden well of sympathy for him, Alex saw. Wolf’s words might remind him of the playground bully the unit commander had been in Wales, but the rest of the group heard their unit commander dressing down a surly teenager. The same teenager who had gotten them all in this mess, Alex amended mentally. The same teenager Yassen had given special treatment. They’d taken his safety for granted—what they saw now was a spoiled kid shirking his responsibility.

“No,” he said. “I’m happy to help.”

Snake kept the conversation moving. “Let him enter before you. Eagle and I will be inside; we don’t want you in our shots. Wolf and Boar are going to close in around him. You’ll come in last. You’re in charge of securing the latch.”

At this point, it was a miracle they trusted him to close the door.

Alex counted the weapons laid out on the other side of the table. They had more than four pistols. Enough to go around. “Which one is mine?”

“None of them,” Wolf said. “We aren’t planning a shoot-out. Your job is to stand there and look friendly. The rest of us can keep Gregorovich in line.”

“You’re a spy, not a soldier. Let us do our jobs,” Snake said. “We’ll watch your back.”

All well and good in theory. 

Alex wished the message sounded more like a promise than a threat.

“I’m not alone,” Alex said.

Credit where it was due. K-Unit had executed their plan exactly as conceived, from the moment Wolf had spotted Yassen leaving the building that morning. Eagle and Snake had made short work of securing the flat—which had turned out to be important, as Yassen was returning barely half an hour later, a bag of laundry detergent in hand. It seemed he had left for a quick jaunt to the store.

Yassen had made eye contact with Alex the moment he left the stairwell. He hadn’t reached for a weapon, reassuringly. Wolf was right: Yassen hadn’t shot him on sight.

Wolf had gotten one detail wrong, however.

Yassen hadn’t paused for even a moment. Shifting the detergent from his right arm to his left, he approached Alex.

Behind him, Boar and Wolf slipped out onto the landing, blocking the exit. They’d successfully surrounded Yassen Gregorovich on his way into his own flat.

Alex’s pupils must have shifted as Wolf and Boar entered the third floor. Yassen glanced over his shoulder, taking his pursuers in without surprise.

“We were in the neighborhood,” Wolf said. “Thought we could catch up.”

The Beretta M9 he held under his coat, poorly concealed from sight, contradicted the message.

Alex tried to play peacemaker. “They just want to talk.”

“I would guess,” Yassen said. “Otherwise, they wouldn't have brought you.” 

Alex stepped back two paces, clearing Yassen's path in.. 

Yassen’s lip twitched, chiding, at the retreat. He didn't bother to reach for his keys. The door, as he must have suspected, was unlocked. “Come in, then,” he said, letting himself in. 

“Our pleasure,” Boar muttered, falling in behind Wolf.

Apprehensively, Alex took a final look around the empty hall. He had no cause to panic. Yassen had been civil; Wolf and Boar were playing nice.

As he entered Unit 23, locking the door behind him, he wondered how long both parties would be willing to keep the act.