I really don't own Alex although one can dream…

Chapter One

Alex stumbled back into the front hall of his Chelsea home, with some cuts and bruises marring his skin. Alex was just returning from Japan after his 10th mission for MI6. Although a few of the injuries looked bad Alex knew that he had been through worse and they weren't as bad as they looked. Alex now 15 and had been working for them for almost 18 months, ever since Scorpia had assassinated his Uncle Ian. Alex had been living with Ian since he had been one when the plane his parents had been on had been blown up by his godfather Ash under orders from Scorpia.

This was the first time Alex had been home in almost 5 weeks. So he knew that school on Monday would be a complete nightmare. Every time he went away of a mission MI6 used the excuse that he was ill but he returned looking fit, healthy, covered in muscles bruises and cut, alert and very confident and in control of his emotions. This meant that the other students and event the staff to some extent were absolutely fascinated with him and therefore there were the inescapable rumours. Ok so Alex knew that he had faced worse forms of torture than a few snide comments, but he had to at least act more normal and like he was recovering from a very bad virus or whatever when he was at school to minimize the other kid suspicions, and so in some ways this made it worse than what he face undercover on a mission. Because he wasn't allowed to react in the way his whole body was screaming at him to when he was confronted by the school bullies looking to agitate him and cause a fight that he, Alex would be blamed for, and he really couldn't afford the attention that would bring. Alex was also so far behind on schoolwork thanks to MI6's missions that all the teachers would sneer at him and try to catch him out but Alex knew he would remain professional through out giving no one any room to cause major trouble for him. After all Alex had now accepted that spying was in his blood and however much he might try to deny it he had actually began to enjoy the rush of adrenaline that missions and the action brought. So after a month without any contact from MI6 after Snakehead had finished, Alex did something that neither he or Mr Blunt and Mrs Jones had expected him to do (Blunt had expected it to happen but not for at least another year so he was really surprised!).

Alex had phoned the Royal and General Bank and requested a meeting with Mr Blunt and Mrs Jones to take place during Brooklands lunch hour the following day.

FLASHBACK

"Alex what can we do for you today?" Mrs Jones asked unable to completely control the curiosity that was creeping into her voice.

"Well I've been doing a lot of thinking since getting back and I have come to the conclusion that spying is in my blood and however much I try to dine it, I can't just go back to being a normal teenager I've seen and done to much for that to ever happen. So I will work for you with out complaint from now on, on five conditions. One Jack stays with no visa threats ever again, two when I'm away Jack and Tom get protection, three I get back dated pay for all the mission I've already completed, four I get full agent status and everything that goes along with it and finally five I get permission to carry a gun permanently, cus do you really expect me to believe that of all the people I've pissed off none of them will ever find me to retaliate on and try to kill me or attack my school whilst I'm there? 'Cus if that's the case then it really stupid of you to believe that." Alex finished in a very slightly patronizing tone.

There was a brief stunned silence from both Mr Blunt and Mrs Jones.

However Blunt did soon recover enough to look over at Mrs Jones who simply nodded her head.

As Blunt turned back to Alex, bluntly said "okay we agree to your conditions and we will also assign you a tutor to help you to catch up on work for your up coming GCSE examinations. After all now you officially work for us we can't have our top ranking field agent fail his GCSE's can we?" Blunt pulled a form out of his desk and gave it to Alex before continuing "Your contract of employment, read it trough and then sign the bottom, your backdated salary will be in your account by the end of the week after that you will be paid monthly. Oh and we would like it if this summer you did some training just to fill in the blanks and brush up on thing."

Alex nodded and looked down, and read the contract it was fairly simple 'don't tell anyone but if you sign you are now an employee of MI6 and you get the right to medical care, an office and anything else that the Head deems necessary for you to carry out you position effectively.' Alex took the pen off Blunts desk and signed and dated to bottom before handing it back to Blunt. Blunt in turn checked everything was in order and added his signature to the bottom and looked back at Alex.

"Go and see Smithers about your gun and ID, he will be expecting you."

Alex took this as his dismissal and left the room heading for the section of the basement where Smithers lab was situated.

"Alex my boy Mr Blunt told me what you need so you can get back to that school of yours, so let get you your ID first, then we'll sort out that gun for you." With this they headed off to a part of the lab Alex had never entered before, Alex followed Smithers over to a computer where he had his photo taken and uploaded to the computer along with his details and then Smithers hit a few keys and the printer whirled into life and out came Alex's MI6 ID badge which Smithers then slide into an official cover and handed to Alex with out even looking at it, smithers said he wasn't allowed to know what Alex's rank or security clearance were with out Blunts permission and they were both on the badge so he couldn't look at it, Alex also decided not to look and merely put the ID in his pocket. Smithers then began to move to an adjoining room which turned out to contain guns, Smithers walked to the back wall and selected a hand gun which Alex immediately recognised as a Browning Hi-Power, single-action, 9 mm semi-automatic handgun with a 13-round magazine capacity. Smithers handed Alex the gun. Smithers also selected an ankle holster for Alex to keep the gut in and a new box of ammunition just in case a Smithers put it. With the tasks complete Smithers hurried Alex out the lab and told him to go back to school so Alex did just that.

FASHBACK END

Whilst he was remembering that life changing day and the ID he still hadn't looked at but like his gun he carried everywhere he went (except on undercover missions), Alex had staggered gingerly but silently up to his room being very careful not to make any noise as he passed his housekeeper Jack's room so he wouldn't wake her up so she couldn't quiz him on the mission; 'cus he wanted to clean up and try to catch up on some of his missed sleep. There were at least 30 hours of sleep missing this week alone these were mostly from his vivid nightmares from previous missions, but naturally some were from the final show down in which he had stopped a gang from disturbing a new drug that was actually a nerve agent and would have killed millions world wide.

Once Alex was in his room he closed the door behind him and locked it just to be safe (this was something he had picked up from his time at Mologosto, he might not be able to hear someone come into his room but he would be able to hear the door, weather it was someone knocking or trying to break the door down). Slowly Alex made his way across his room shedding his clothes as he went into his on-suite bathroom to let the hot water from the shower work its healing magic on his bruised aching muscles.

As he washed away the dirt and grim left over from his mission along with the 5 wash brown hair dye (he had been forced to use, knowing that it would be out in time for school on Monday) he thought about the few friends he had left at Brooklands hopefully they would stick to the unspoken agreement they had and not ask him any questions about where he had been it had been hard to get to this point but they had when they had realised that Alex had never lied or kept anything from them before so this must be important. They had also decide that Alex might one day tell them what was going on with him 'cus hay had come to realise that none of the rumours had come close to the truth. Alex liked it best this way, them treating him like he was normal after a particularly hard mission was just what he needed to keep him sane. Although Tom, who had know about Alex's double life for about a year, would get an edited account to the mission, it helped to be able to talk to someone outside his world about what happened on missions and surprisingly MI6 had understood this and given Alex permission to talk to Tom about things as long as the main details were edited to a point beyond absolute recognition.

When Alex got out the shower he carefully but methodically dried himself and padded back into his bedroom where he pulled on an old t-shirt and a clean pair of boxers and then completed a security check of his room. Once this was done he settled down on the middle of his room and began to work his way through a series of relaxation exercises that he had been taught by Scorpia and he had found that they kept away the worst of his nightmares and meant that he was actually resting and rejuvenating whilst sleeping. Although he did tend to wake up a bit early so he would meditate to allow his body more time to rest. So on average he slept about 5 hours a night but if he was not on a mission he could push that to about 6 hours. Right now 6 hours sleep seemed like a good thing to Alex and it would mean he would wake up at 8:30am and the meditate until 9:30 which to Alex seemed like a perfectly acceptable time for a teenage boy to get up at on a Sunday. And with these final thoughts Alex drifted off to sleep.

He woke up at about 8:00am sweating and tangled in his sheets, but unusually Alex couldn't remember the nightmare that had brought him out of his deep sleep, at least that was a major improvement. It took Alex well over 5 minuets to extract himself from the knot that was his bedding. Once this was complete though Alex settled down on the floor in the middle of his room a mediation position and just let his mind drift away from his body just like sleeping but he was still aware of everything going on around him.

Will hopefully update in ten days

Reviews are welcome!!!

'tess x