Hook
Alex finally quits. Defeat is a bitter taste in the back of is mouth.
Alex Rider has saved the world. Alex Rider has killed men in cold-blood and in self-defense. Alex Rider is sixteen years old. Alex Rider is too old to be doing this anymore.
He tells this to his superiors, and maybe its the look in his eyes when he says it that makes them let him go.
I'll kill you if you keep me, they say.
I'll die if you keep me, they say.
I'm just so tired, they say.
He walks out of headquarters, and he doesn't look back. He doesn't get shot, he isn't called back right away because some megalomaniac is trying to end the world again. He returns to normalcy, just like that. But not really. He's still on someone's hit list, he's got to keep watching his back. He'll never be normal, but he can try. Alex can pretend. He can fake it. He can't leave without even trying.
It takes him a few months to realize he has no friends, he hasn't spoken to anyone on a personal level in weeks, and he doesn't know a single name at the school they set him up at. He's been treating this like an undercover mission, going through the motions of a teenage boy without ever being one. And he also realizes that he is being crushed under the pressure of waiting.
Alex has been biding his time without even knowing it, been keeping one ear and eye out at all times for signs they're calling him back, and maybe he's even been hoping for it. The stress of it starts to get to him, appearing in black circles under his eyes and in his faltering grades. Until finally, it is only his pride that keeps Alex here, demanding that going back is giving up, saying you were right and take me back, please. He lives from one day to the next, never relaxing, never letting his guard down. Paranoia makes him skip school, makes him watch that kid who sits in the back of the classroom, makes him glare at the girls who stare at him, and reason argues they just think you're cute and caution argues but they could be the next person you have to kill.
Until it is all too much, and he feels so empty and hollow and purposeless that he has to do something or he will take his own life.
He stands in front of them and they say
We knew you'd come back.
Defeat is a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. It is the remnants of his pride, washed away by life.
You didn't give me choice. He wants to scream at them. They've hooked him on this drug, and they're not going to let him go.
A little something that came to me. Probably OOC, but I haven't read the series in a while.