Chapter 7

Alex had no idea how long he'd been asleep. He woke up in a panic, pain thudding through his shoulder. Snake was shaking him.

"Wake up, Cub."

Alex blinked and saw that the door to their cell had just been opened again. He was instantly alert and sat up straight. "What's going on?"

A masked guard stepped into view. It was the leader of the team from the helicopter.

"What the fuck do you want?" Alex growled, clenching his fists and swinging his feet off the bunk. He was unable to stop the surprised cry of pain that escaped him when his right leg took his weight. He felt pathetic.

"Cub," Snake warned in a soft voice.

But Snake needn't have worried. The guard did not rise to Alex's threatening tone. Instead, he stepped back and silently observed as his colleagues manhandled two struggling figures into the cell.

It was Wolf and Spider. They both looked furious, but unharmed.

"Snake!" Wolf exclaimed, immediately rushing to greet his colleague. "What the hell is going on here?"

He ignored Alex completely.

" They killed Eagle.," Snake blurted out, glancing towards the red stain in the middle of the cell. Then he shook himself and rushed to grip his colleague's shoulder. "Man, it's good to see you. We feared the worst."

Wolf took the news silently at first, but then his eyes narrowed and he nodded towards the guards. "What do these guys want? After they pulled you into their helicopter, they came back and ended up picking us up only ten miles from command base. Who are they?"

"It's Scorpia. They …" Snake glanced at Alex, as though considering how much to tell Wolf. He ended up saying nothing more as Wolf interrupted: "Scorpia, as in terrorists and militia for hire Scorpia?"

"There is only one Scorpia," the familiar voice of the Australian came from the open doorway. "What a touching reunion, though I note there doesn't seem to be much love lost for you," he addressed Alex directly.

"Yeah well, not everyone loves me like you do," Alex quipped, wishing he hadn't when the Australian's gaze hardened.

"We're back to the cute stuff are we, Rider? Does that mean you're scared?"

The Australian advanced on Alex, while armed guards raised their rifles and covered the room. Alex took an involuntary step back, keeping his eyes on his enemy. He winced as his injured leg almost gave way underneath him.

"Leave the boy alone," Snake demanded, but the Australian didn't seem to hear him. He had eyes only for Alex.

"Surely Alex Rider, son of the great John Rider, isn't actually afraid?"

Alex felt the cold metal bunk behind the back of his legs. He reacted on instinct, unable to bear the thought of being trapped against the bunk with this dangerous man closing in on him. Ignoring the sharp pain in his right leg, Alex leapt onto the Australian. He grabbed one of the man's ears and twisted hard.

The Australian's blue eyes widened in surprise, and for a moment he seemed too shocked to even fight back. Alex felt skin tearing as the ear started to come away in his hand, but then a fist caught the side of his head and he fell back, biting his lip and tasting blood. A hand twisted his hair and he was dragged to his knees. He screamed as his injured knee was forced to bend on the metal surface and fought wildly against the searing grip in his hair.

"You little bastard," the Australian swore even as blood streamed down the side of his head. It was the first time he didn't look in control. His face was a picture of fury.

Still gripping Alex by the hair, the Australian strode to the doorway, forcing Alex to crawl with him. The pain in his knee was almost unbearable, and Alex wailed out loud with every agonising movement.

He was thrown down in front of polished black boots. A rifle pointed down at him, aiming straight at his head.

"Shoot the little bitch," the Australian ordered.

His voice sounded calm again, but Alex recognised his tone as cold fury rather than control. The man was serious.

Snake roared with rage somewhere in the cell, and Alex heard Wolf's voice shouting something or other about letting him go. But their protests were futile. The guard's eyes sparkled eagerly behind the mask, and Alex watched his gloved hand tighten around the trigger.

He was going to die. He knew it, and a part of him even welcomed it. But then his instincts kicked in and he rolled away, moaning at the pain that seemed to consume him. He grabbed the barrel of the rifle and somehow twisted it out of the guard's grip. His knee hurt so much he couldn't get up, but that didn't matter. From the floor, he aimed the rifle at the Australian, and without even thinking about it, Alex pulled the trigger.

A resounding crack echoed through the cell, and then all was silent.

The Australian did not go down. He did not even move.

Red paint decorated the front of his black jacket, and he smiled like a cat that had licked cream.

"You pleased with yourself?" the Australian asked quietly. "Because I am. I am very pleased, Rider. I'd been led to believe you had some issues when it came to shooting at living targets, but now I understand that it's just a question of motivation."

The Australian's smile turned cold. "Now restrain him, or I really will have him shot," he snapped, "like this."

Before Alex could make a move, one of the other guards lifted his rifle and a single shot echoed through the cell. Alex screamed as Spider went down. He would have attacked the Australian again to finish the job on his ear had Snake not stepped forward to pull him to his feet and hold him back.

"I don't know anything!" Alex screamed until his voice was raw. "I don't! I don't!"

His vision had gone blurry and his ears were buzzing again. Wolf's voice was shouting again, but the words made no sense to him. Someone was gripping his arms and prying him out of Snake's grip. He struggled, but his shoulder flared with agony and he cried out loudly in both pain and frustration. He was rewarded with a backhanded smack across the face by one of the guards.

"I know you don't know anything, you stupid boy," the Australian hissed, touching a hand to his half-detached ear. "Time to go."

Despite K Unit's best attempts to stop the guards from taking Alex, he was manhandled through the door and through a series of whitewashed corridors, all lit by the same pale halogen strips.

Alex had no idea where they were taking him, just that this was not good. Suddenly he was shoved into a much brighter room. He tried to twist to look around, but was held back by cruel hands. He was pushed against a wall and his head was slammed back over and over until he stopped moving, dizzy and nauseous. Even then, Alex still glared at his captors as vehemently as he could manage.

"Finished your little tantrum?" the Australian growled, not even pretending to be calm any more.

Alex glowered. This was it. He was sure of it. They were going to kill him. Slowly, painfully …

"Good," the Australian continued. "Then we can get to business at last. Look at me, Alex Rider."

Reluctantly, Alex raised his eyes to meet the cold gaze of the Australian. The blood on the man's face was already drying. It didn't look as though the ear was as damaged as Alex had hoped. It was still mostly attached, anyway.

"Listen carefully. I am going to implant this little device inside your abdomen." The Australian nodded toward one of the guards who held up what looked like a small barrel with a huge needle on the end. "It will enable Scorpia to track your location any time and any where in the world. Attempting to remove it will cause a toxin to be released into your body and you will die very quickly. You might want to let your precious MI6 know about that."

Alex was confused. "Why don't you just kill me now?"

The Australian laughed coldly. "Because you have a lot of work to do. By all means, take some time off if you need a holiday, but after that you will solve this puzzle for us. Seeing as you're such a good little patriot, you will find out exactly what Ian Rider did for MI6 after your father died. And if Yassen Gregorovich is alive, as I believe him to be, then you will find him for us. You will find out why Ian Rider died and then you will bring Gregorovich back to us."

"Surely you should know why Ian died? Sayle had him executed for snooping around!"

A strange expression crossed the Australian's face. "That's the thing. Neither Sayle nor Scorpia ordered that execution …"

Alex heart gave a strange jolt at the thought of it. What the fuck was going on? A part of him yearned to know … But then he looked the Australian straight in the eye. "I won't do it. I will never work for you, no matter what you threaten me with."

The Australian observed him carefully. "I don't need to threaten you at all. I know you too well, Rider. You're too much like your father and once he was given a mystery, nothing could stop him from solving it. A great man, indeed. The niggling doubts about Ian's involvement with Gregorovich, as well as the confusion surrounding his death – these things will eat away at you from the inside. Don't pretend you haven't already been thinking about it. You will go looking for Ian's past and for Gregorovich – maybe if we are lucky, Gregorovich will even come looking for you – and as soon as you are near him," the Australian smiled toward the implant, "we will know."

"What do you mean?"

The Australian smiled coldly. "Gregorovich has a matching device. All of our agents have one, even your father in his day … and Ian. Unfortunately the technology of Gregorovich's time did not permit any type of tracking. We cannot locate him … but when the two devices are close to each other, yours will emit a very special signal."

The Australian had lifted Alex's black shirt as he spoke, but Alex hardly noticed it. Ian? His uncle? Scorpia?. Suddenly Alex flinched as a cold finger ran over the exposed skin of his belly. He let out a shaky breath and forced himself not to give the Australian the pleasure of a reaction.

"Clever, don't you think?" the Australian murmured appreciatively.

And with those words, he nodded at the men holding Alex and their grip tightened excruciatingly. Alex screamed as the thick needle approached. He bucked against his captors and writhed with all his might, but he knew it was a futile resistance. Sure enough, Alex felt the needle pierce deep through the muscles of his abdomen. Then he heard a resounding click and the needle was withdrawn again.

"You bastard," Alex snarled.

The pain in his stomach was nothing compared to the gut-wrenching understanding that Scorpia had tagged him like a dog and that he would never be able to hide from them again. And if the toxic ability of the implant was true, and Alex had no reason to believe that it wasn't, then Alex's life was as good as forfeited anyway.

The Australian seemed to be reading his mind. "If you don't try to remove it, it won't poison you. Scorpia has no interest in your death …"

… for now.

Alex could tell those words were on the tip of his enemy's tongue. But they remained unspoken.

"What if you're lying about Yassen Gregorovich?" And about Ian. Please be lying about Ian …

"I'm not."

Alex growled. Somehow, he already knew it was the truth. All of it.

"What about the others? My unit?" he wanted to know, thinking of Wolf and Snake stuck in the metal cell with the body of their murdered colleague.

"As a gesture of goodwill, I will drop off the survivors by parachute. They will live. You understand that I do not have to let them go at all. But since we are going to be working together …" he trailed off with a cold smile.

"I fucking hate you," Alex hissed.

But at that moment, Alex hated himself more than anything else in the world. For he knew that the Australian was right. However much he wanted to lie to himself and swear not to give in to Scorpia, he already couldn't stand the thought of not seeing Yassen again and never finding out the truth behind the relationship between Yassen and his father. He wanted to know what the hell was going on with his uncle … how Ian had really died, and why. In a way, the Australian had simply triggered questions that Alex had been asking himself for the last ten months. He had been lied to by too many people, and he wanted – needed – to hear Yassen's version of events.

Yes, the Australian was right. Alex Rider had a lot of work to do …

FINIS

== I know you probably all hate me right now, but this wraps up the story as I first visualised it. Thanks for your incredible support during the 10 days of posting, I really appreciate it and I hope you enjoyed the ride! The good news is that Alex and the surviving members of K Unit, as well as several other well known characters, will return in part two of this adventure: You can run but you can't hide! I need a writing break for a few weeks, but as soon as part 2 is ready, it will be posted in a similar rapid fire fashion over 7 – 10 days ==

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