#herod sayle

[imnotadogiswear]

Here are some meme ideas I have for my Villains React concept

[winter2468]

Alex Rider was fun when the books came out, but as an adult I can recognise that the plot of the first book is literally "Man was subjected to years of racial abuse by the privileged upper class and decided to kill thousands of children as revenge" which has. problems.

[spiritandthephantoms]

Part 10 of amazing fanfic quotes

 "...Mate, this is a pet shop. What do you want me to do? Feed a hamster steroids?"

[arshipweek]

AR Ship Week - The Four Yassen Gregorovichs

This is the third weekly post in the lead up to Alex Rider Ship Week.  Only 2 weeks to go!

This week we’ve got a fantastic guest submission by AFewBulbsShortofaTanningBed, all about the different characterisations of Yassen Gregorovich.

The Four Yassen Gregorovichs by AFewBulbsShortofaTanningBed

presented roughly in the order in which they came to be

Yassen Gregorovich is one of the most important and iconic characters of the Alex Rider series, one half of the fandom’s most popular ship, Yalex, and the catalyst to many of the series’ most important events - Ian’s death and Alex’s introduction to the spy world, as well as Alex’s being sent to Scorpia and learning of his father’s history with them. He is also, indirectly, a cause of the events of Snakehead - Alex decides to work with ASIS and Ash in part because he wants to know more about Yassen.

Thus far, there have been four official interpretations of Yassen: the original books (of which he appears in three: Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, and Russian Roulette, a Yassen-focused prequel); the 2006 movie, where he is played by a scenery-chewing Damian Lewis; the ongoing tv series, where he is played by a menacing and mysterious Thomas Levin; and the graphic novel adaptations of the books (of which there have been six thus far.) The following is an overview of each Yassen and how each is written in fic/shippiness. Spoilers ahead!

BOOK YASSEN

illustration by inkyquail

Appearance: close-cropped blond/light hair, blue eyes (which as a child look “permanently surprised”), “almost feminine” eyelashes, chiseled lips and a smooth face (what do these mean? Who knows!), appears “in his late twenties”, the body of a dancer” (there are further mentions of a “sleek dancer’s body”), said to be small for his age and shorter than John as an adult.

Scar: long and straight “as if it had been drawn with a ruler” on his neck, acquired on a mission with John Rider as depicted at the beginning of Eagle Strike; easily hidden by collar if plot demands it.

Accent: none, or a faint Russian accent, depending on the book.

First meeting with Alex: on the rooftop of Sayle Enterprises, right after killing Herod Sayle.

There were two small explosive cracks.

Alex looked down, expecting to see blood. There was nothing. He couldn’t feel anything. Then Sayle staggered and fell onto his back. There were two gaping holes in his chest.

The helicopter landed in the center of the cross. The pilot got out.

Still holding the gun that had killed Herod Sayle, he walked over and examined the body, prodding it with his shoe. Satisfied, he nodded to himself, tucking the gun away. He had switched off the engine of the helicopter and behind him the blades slowed down and stopped. Alex stepped forward. The man seemed to notice him for the first time.

“You’re Yassen Gregorovich,” Alex said.

The Russian nodded. It was impossible to tell what was going on in his head. His clear blue eyes gave nothing away.

“Why did you kill him?” Alex asked.

“Those were my instructions.” There was no trace of an accent in his voice. He spoke softly, reasonably. “He had become and embarrassment. It was better this way.”

“Not better for him.”

Yassen shrugged.

“What about me?” Alex asked.

The Russian ran his eyes over Alex, as if weighing him up. “I have no instructions concerning you,” he said.

“You’re not going to shoot me too?”


“Do I have any need to?”

There was a pause. The two of them gazed at each other over the corpse of Herod Sayle.

“You killed Ian Rider,” Alex said. “He was my uncle.”

Yassen shrugged. “I kill a lot of people.”

“One day I’ll kill you.”

“A lot of people have tried.” Yassen smiled. “Believe me,” he said, “it would be better if we didn’t meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you’re still a child.”

He turned his back on Alex and climbed into the cabin. The blades started up, and a few seconds later, the helicopter rose back into the air. For a moment it hovered at the side of the building. Behind the glass, Yasen raised his hand. A gesture of friendship? A salute? Alex raised his hand. The helicopter spun away.

Alex stood where he was, watching it, until it had disappeared into the dying light.

Other key moments: The Fer-de-lance, Alex’s failed assassination attempt, and subsequent bull-fighting incident (illustrated here by the excellent inkyquail)

There was a slight tremble in the hand holding the gun and he brought his other hand up to steady it.

“You have my gun,” Yassen said.

Alex took a breath.

“Do you intend to use it?”

Nothing.

Yassen continued calmly. “I think you should consider very carefully. Killing a man is not like you see on the television. If you pull that trigger, you will fire a real bullet into real flesh and blood. I will feel nothing; I will be dead instantly. But you will live with what you have done for the rest of your life. You will never forget it.” He paused, letting his words hang in the air. “Do you really have it in you, Alex? Can you make your finger obey you? Can you kill me?” Alex was rigid, a statue… “Maybe you have forgotten what I once told you. This isn’t your life. This has nothing to do with you.” Yassen was totally relaxed. There was no emotion in his voice. He seemed to know Alex better than Alex knew himself. Alex tried to look away, to avoid the calm blue eyes that were watching him with something like pity.

Air Force One and the “I love you” speech

“He saved my life. In a way, I loved him. I love you too, Alex. You are so very much like him. I’m glad you’re here with me now… If you don’t believe me, go to Venice. Find Scorpia. And you will find your destiny…”

Russian Roulette - the eponymous book as a whole, particularly his relationship with John (which has given rise to numerous John/Yassen fics)

Backstory: Given to us in Russian Roulette and Snakehead. Yassen grew up as Yasha Gregorovich, a young Russian boy living in a tiny village called Estrov, hundreds of miles south of Moscow. Unbeknownst to him, his parents and many of the villagers work at a factory manufacturing weaponized anthrax, and an accident at the factory leads to the destruction of Estrov and the deaths of everybody there besides Yassen. (It’s very heartbreaking.)

The whump doesn’t stop there for Yassen; he is betrayed by his parents’ friend, lives on the street for a while, and is eventually captured by Vladimir Sharkovsky, a cruel man who forces Yassen to play a game of Russian roulette for his life, and who Yassen eventually learns was responsible for the destruction of Estrov. There isn’t anything Yassen can do about it, though; he is forced work as a slave for Sharkovsky, as both household laborer and food taster who is frequently tormented by Sharkovsky and his son, Ivan. Several years later, a Scorpia assassin is contracted to kill Sharkovsky, and Yassen escapes with him, thereafter brought to Malagosto and trained as an assassin.

Though he excels in many aspects of training, he struggles with taking a life; due to his potential, he is given a second chance, this time under the tutelage of John Rider, an experienced assassin. John isn’t entirely trustworthy, but treats Yassen with more kindness than he has received in years, and saves his life during one of their missions (the scar incident.) He doesn’t think that Yassen is cut out to be an assassin, emphasizing the harshness and loneliness of the life while pointing out that he has lots of potential and can work elsewhere, have a gentler life. Yassen is on the cusp of leaving Scorpia and the world of espionage and murder behind when he learns that John works for MI6; betrayed and devastated, he plays one final game of Russian roulette (with five bullets and one empty chamber) to determine the course of the rest of his life - he doesn’t want to be a killer, but John’s betrayal has convinced him that there is no world in which he lives and can be anything else. Yassen lives, murders Sharkovsky and his son Ivan, and returns to Scorpia, vowing to become the best assassin he can and loyal to nobody but himself to spite John.

Some time after his return, Yassen and John are in Mdina where John is to be extracted by MI6, in what is staged as a capture. However, the mission goes wrong, and Yassen kills many members of the extraction team and stabs John’s best friend, Ash, in the stomach, leaving him with lifelong pain and disability and contributing to his resentment of John and his decision to agree to Scorpia’s offer to work for them and have the Rider family killed with a bomb in their plane.

Important relationships:

Alex Rider (a parallel and foil, he’s responsible for killing Ian Rider, the closest thing Alex had to a parent and his last remaining family member, and for indirectly throwing him into the world of espionage, and later on sending him to Scorpia. Though usually ruthless and unemotional, he becomes emotionally compromised when Alex comes into play.)

John Rider (mentor, saved his life, gave him the training that allowed him to survive. His lessons affected Yassen’s approach to being an assassin - someone with no attachments, no loyalty, no sentimentality. Though he is revealed to be working for MI6, Yassen still feels gratitude and loyalty towards him for the training he gave him and the time he saved his life, and still loves him over a decade after his death. This in turn leads him to spare Alex multiple times despite orders and opportunities to kill him, and to save his life with Sayle.)

Vladimir Sharkovsky (responsible for the destruction of Estrov and deaths everybody Yassen knew and loved and then personally tormented him for years, his treatment of Yassen is often interpreted as haunting him long after he escapes - often in subtle ways)

Fics: Being the original version and the one that has introduced most fans to the fandom, this is the Yassen who is written about most and who has the longest history of fics about him. You can find book!Yassen in some of the earliest fics of the fandom (though this author does not know how to use ff.net or livejournal and at this point doesn’t believe she will ever learn), and he continues to be popular in fics, in whole or in part, today. The way Yassen is written has evolved significantly, influenced by both the release of the movie (which likely led to a number of fics that favored a more sinister Yassen), and Russian Roulette (which gave us his sympathetic and whumpy backstory and likely led to increased interest in Yassen - replacing K Unit as Alex’s most popular adult companion(s).) More than any other adaptation of Yassen, the books portray Yassen and Alex as parallels and foils, emphasized by their similar appearances and histories, as well as matching scars - both have been shot in the chest and along the side of the neck.

BoldAsBrass - Christmas in Chelsea, New Rules, Exit strategy BurntWhisper - Overture in G Minor Suzie_Shooter - Lights Out series Ireliss - alone together fredbassett - Coins in the Fountain (Yassen Gregorovich/Monica Peretti, inspired by the short story The White Carnation)

MOVIE YASSEN

Appearance: Damian Lewis, red hair and all, taller than Alex (Rider and Pettyfer)

Scar: none???

Accent: heavy, Russian

First meeting with Alex: all the nonsense with the vials in the lab

Other key moments: Campy highlights include the assassination at the beginning

and of course, the rooftop scene

Important relationships

Alex (confrontation over vials, saves his life, tells Alex to forget him and shrugs knowingly when Alex says he won’t, possibly arranged for fog machines and violin music for reasons unknown)

???

No relationship with Ian that we know of, aside from killing him in the most iconic way possible

Backstory: who knows!

Fics: The second interpretation of Yassen and the first one we see onscreen, this Yassen has sadly fallen out of fic-writing favor in recent years. As compared with present-day book!Yassen, movie!Yassen is often written as more suave, confident, and sexually forward. He is also very, very Extra. Though fics tend to tone down his more dramatic tendencies, he remains the campiest of the Yassens. I hope for a resurgence in popularity someday.

RimauSuaLay - No Enemies yaseanne - A brief and tentative excursion abrandnewboom - keep you like an oath

TV YASSEN

Appearance: Thomas Levin - brunet, dark eyes, stockier build and perpetual five-o-clock shadow, long and dramatic black coat, shorter than Alex (heh)

Scar: prominent and on the side of his face, somewhat spider-webby, impossible to miss

Accent: nonspecific, non-native accent; American accent skills shown off at one point

First meeting with Alex: the “Alex Friend” scene (can be found here in a gifset by emziess)

Other key moments

Killing Ian Rider

The rooftop at the end of season 1 where he shoots Julius Grief (here)

The time he nearly shot Alex but then didn’t, concealing Alex’s identity, protecting him on Air Force one, telling him about his father (spectacular moments show in this gifset and this one)

Important relationships:

Alex (similar to the above descriptions, he’s saved his life numerous times and has shown a soft spot for him - hopefully to be explored further)

Ian (unlike the books, the encounter between Ian and Yassen at the beginning of season 1 seems to suggest that Yassen has some sort of personal history with Ian, beyond being his murderer. What that history is, we do not know!)

John Rider (not explored yet, but Yassen says that they worked together. Something that will likely be explored in season 3.)

Backstory: in general, a mystery. We get suggestions that he has a history with Ian, a history with John, and that he was thought to be dead for years. These will hopefully be explored further in season 3!

Fics: The biggest changes (aside from physical appearance and tv-specific events) that I have noticed between how tv Yassen is written in fic as compared to book Yassen is the use of the nickname “Yas” and an increased emphasis on his relationship with Ian - and concomitant increase in Ian/Yassen (aka Yian) fics. (As we saw in the post for week 1 of ship week, it is the most popular ship over the past year behind Yalex!) Numerous fics also incorporate elements of both tv and book Yassen, for instance, including both elements of book!Yassen’s backstory from RR and tv!Yassen’s possible history with Ian and encounters with Alex, or blending their appearances (i.e. a Yassen with blond hair, a facial scar, and a black coat.) He is less of a super-assassin than in the books or tv series, with abilities that seem more grounded in reality and closer to those of a normal hitman, and is less prone to dramatics.

fredbassett - I Spy series (starring Yassen/Ian!) Nanimok: i do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief; Spies and Recreation; The Alec Walker series; Just Say I do (featuring a combo of book and tv show, which seems not uncommon) kelkblr - The French Connection

GRAPHIC NOVEL YASSEN

Appearance: at a glance, I thought that his appearance was meant to be similar to Damian Lewis, but with darker red hair (closer to an auburn.) Upon closer inspection, his face is in fact quite different, as is his build. He has blue eyes and pale skin, but doesn’t look particularly feminine, and his eyelashes are not particularly notable. Taller than Alex.

Scar: Only when the artist remembers it’s supposed to be there. Usually no.

Accent: ???

First meeting with Alex: a blend of book and movie (the adaptation of Stormbreaker incorporates elements of both), on rooftop after killing Sayle

Other key moments: Pulls the same dangling-from-a-helicopter nonsense as movie version

and refusing to kill Alex followed by the “I love you” moment from Eagle Strike

Important relationships:

Alex (like the books and movie)

John (similar to the books thus far, though Russian Roulette has not yet been released)

Fics: none :(

Graphic novel Yassen has the distinction of being the most forgotten Yassen, and thus, he has no fics attributed to him, shippy or otherwise. I’m not entirely sure why this is, though I have some theories. It could be in part due to limited availability of the graphic novels, limited publicity, and slow release; that they do not add much of anything that has not already been portrayed in the books or movie, so there is no new material to grab fannish attention; and that they do not provide a visual of a book-accurate Yassen but instead create yet another version that is, unfortunately, not as pretty as the Yassen of the books and thus is not nearly as alluring. Perhaps this ship week, graphic novel Yassen will finally get recognized!

[zevfern]

Alex Rider season 1 review! Spoilers below:

What a ride, pun intended. It's not perfect, and it's far from accurate, but it's still pretty fun and entertaining.

First off, let's get the complaining out of the way:

Quite a bit of the casting isn't accurate to the books. Blunt doesn't look like Jeremy Clarkson, Mrs. Jones and Eva Stellenbosch are much too pretty, Dr. Greif was cast to look more like Herod Sayle (especially odd since he's supposed to be from Apartheid period South Africa) and Yassen Gregorovitch looks like Noel Gallagher if he had been a successful boxer and not a rockstar.

No SAS training for Alex like in Stormbreaker means that Wolf isn't much more than just an interrogator who shows up later to shoot people. Really disappointed, as Alex gaining Wolf's respect and Wolf reappearing in Point Blanc are highlights of both books and could have been included in the series (maybe budget constraints prevented this?)

WHERE ARE THE GADGETS? All they give Alex is the Walkman MP3 player and it doesn't even work for sending out the distress signal like it does in the book. No exploding earring or CD player buzzsaw :(

The secondary storylines with Tom and MI-6 investigating Scorpio are somewhat hamfisted, and if not for the final episode would not have a good payoff.

Alright, now for the good stuff, and there's a lot:

Alex and Tom's friendship is great, and Tom finding out about Alex's spy recruitment and visiting him at the Friend mansion is great! It helps to humanize Alex, who at times came off as a mix between James Bond and (name redacted) in the books, and Tom gets to be a supporting hero in the story, as he is crucial in the final fight between Alex and Alex's clone since he manages to tell them apart.

Point Blanc (as in the school) is exactly like I imagined when I first read the book, hats off to the producers and scenery department. The uniforms and such are also really cool, and helped with some subtle storytelling (the Kyra clone reveal!)

Speaking of Kyra, despite being an original character who's not in the book I still liked her. She somewhat supplants James Spritz as Alex's main friend in Point Blanc (he's still there, he's just focused on less), and I did like that the writers restrained themselves from using her as a love interest for Alex. I wonder whether she'll show back up later or not.

Yassen, despite not looking all that tough or imposing, still managed to keep the intense intimidating aura he has in the books. Will be looking forwards to seeing him again next season.

As mentioned earlier, if not for the Tom/MI-6 side storylines the final confrontation between Alex and his clone would be much as it was in the book, a swerve that came out of nowhere but was still very exiting. Giving it real stakes for Alex really improved it! A shame the clone got killed, but maybe that's a good thing since Scorpia Rising won't get adapted (as it was the original ending for the book series before Horowitz decided to write more for some reason and the writing suffers for it)

Overall, I'm still really happy I finally watched this, the show runners did a great job with their adaptation. I'm pretty sure the next season will do something similar to season one where elements of another book bleed into the one actually being adapted, but this is still much better than butcherings like the Stormbeaker movie.

[barrenceallence]

literally the last thing i could have ever wanted was tragic backstory for DAMIAN CRAY.

Okay started Alex rider season 2 and instantly crying form first episode alone. What did I ever do to deserve Otto farrant as Alex rider

[mugenloopdalove]

in response to ur "characters you could selfship with" post. im reading the first alex rider novel rn and ... herod sayle is kinda you. hes a weird shady tech company guy who hunts animals and keeps jellyfish and also his butler used to do knife swallowing until that guy fucked up so i guess. knife swallower to butler to a weird tech guy pipeline? also sayle got bullied by the fucking prime minister and decided that was his villain arc. very silly guy i love him u might too

Omg I love that sm... Real

[sassmasteralexrider]

- Stormbreaker (2006)

[imnotadogiswear]

I’ve only read up to Ark Angel at this point but here are some more ideas for a villains react to the books fic:

Begins with Russian Roulette so everyone knows what Yassen’s deal is

Smithers becomes a prime target for revenge/kidnapping

Cray begrudgingly respecting Alex for dropping Skoda on a police conference

Sharkovsky twists how he treated Yassen: “He ate fine food every day!”

Everyone compares their henchmen

Grief being his charming racist self

Rothman gets called out for her creepy behavior (like seriously, she called a 14-year-old her “boy toy”)

Sarov still caring about Alex

Yassen is mocked for his attachment to the Riders

Every character tears into each other’s mistakes

In the end they’re all transported to before the series began. What changes do they make?

Feel free to add on ideas!

[azurenightowl]

When Alex looks back, analyses his memories of the rooftop with Sayle, on the Helipad, he can’t help but notice that Yassen Gregorovich’s hair is the same shade of pale, blond-gold as his. It probably shouldn’t stick in his mind as long as it does.

[literatureandbeyond]

Who Killed Ian Rider?

Okay so despite both the movie and the TV show having Yassen shoot Ian in the head on screen, in the books that never happens. Ian and Yassen are never in a scene together at all if I’m remembering the books correctly.

As well as this, when Alex finds Ian’s car it has a load of bullet holes in it and I think we can all agree that a machine gun is not Yassen’s style in any interpretation of him whether that be the book, movie, TV show or even fanfiction.

But also at the rooftop scene at the end of Stormbreaker Yassen never confirms it. Sure he didn’t deny it but it’s not like Alex would have believed him if he said he didn’t. Yassen was an assassin and literally had just killed a man.

And then to make Yassen killing Ian even more unbelievable, Yassen was on a submarine on his way to Cornwall from Asia at the time. He wasn’t even in the country. Sure he was a good assassin but I’m pretty sure he couldn’t teleport no matter how much training and experience he had.

So who killed Ian Rider then?

Alan Blunt.

(I am going to slightly defend Ian at this point, I’m sorry)

So Alan Blunt only recruits Alex after Ian’s death. Well Ian was the only person who ever would have been able to do anything to stop Blunt from using Alex as a spy and with him dead Alex had no one able to protect him from MI6, therefore, we have the book series.

So Ian was the only thing stopping Blunt from getting to Alex who, in Blunt’s eyes, would be a perfect spy. Blunt would easily have the connections needed to get an agent killed. All he had to do was tipoff Herod Sayle to Ian’s true identity and that’s Ian dead.

By telling Alex that Yassen killed his uncle, Blunt made sure that Alex would never listen to anything the assassin said, presuming Blunt knew Yassen was who John had trained when undercover and was being cautious - SCORPIA could have used that to get Alex to join them, I mean it worked in Eagle Strike.

All of this together meant that by Alan Blunt getting Ian killed would mean he would have complete control over Alex and no-one would be able to stop him from sending Alex on more and more dangerous missions - he had the power to blackmail or get rid of anyone who tried to stop him.

Either that or I read way to much into things and Anthony Horowitz just can’t do timelines (but we kind of knew that already).

[an-amalgamation-of-things]

A Day to Remember (Twice!)

Read on AO3

Read on FFN

It was an unusually sunny day for the beginning of March. Ian almost found himself relaxing as he drove through the English countryside towards London and home, despite the fact that he still had to write his report before his mission was complete. He might not have discovered the exact virus that Herod Sayle intended to unleash with his Stormbreaker computers, but that didn't matter now. Ian had found the computer code and added a kill switch; when the system was activated to release the virus, it would shut down, locking the virus safely away until the computers were recalled and it could be disposed of by MI6. He'd also been able to add his laptop as a remote source writer. Even if his code was discovered and removed, he'd be able to add it back in. And, provided the traffic when he arrived in London was no worse than usual, he would be home in time to have dinner with Alex and Jack and still write his report before the end of the day.

As he pulled onto the drive and grabbed his bags out of the boot, Ian took a deep breath and smiled. The clean air of Cornwall, with the ever present smell of sea salt in the air, had been nice, but the smell of the pine tree hedge, which really needed a trim before the birds started their breeding season (he didn't remember it being so overgrown when he'd left for Sayle Enterprises), intermingled with the cherry blossom and the flowers that were just beginning to bloom was home. And, like the icing on a cake, he was home in time for dinner, just as he had hoped he would be. Often, he got home so late at night that he ended up skulking into the house silently so that he didn't disturb Alex and Jack as they slept. He might even suggest they got a takeaway for dinner if Jack hadn't started cooking yet. He unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway and saw Jack just leaving the kitchen, holding two steaming mugs in her hands.

"Hi Jack," he greeted jovially.

Smash! The two mugs dropped to the floor, spilling tea everywhere. Jack's jaw almost seemed to join them, her mouth open wide, as though she were in shock. All of the colour drained from her face in the time it took Ian to blink just once.

"Everything alright?" Ian asked, dropping his bags in the doorway and rushing forwards to help her, pieces of the ceramic crushing beneath his boots. "You look like you've seen a ghost!"

Jack just stared at him, eyes wide and barely breathing.

"Jack?" Alex called from upstairs. "You good?"

She didn't reply but continued to stare at him in what, if Ian didn't know better, he would have called disbelief. Her strange reaction to his arrival stopped him from calling back up to Alex to say that he'd sort it. He couldn't understand it - he often showed up unannounced after going on a mission, so why was she so surprised to see him?

"Jack, what's wrong?" he asked at the same time as Alex called again. This time, Ian heard his nephew walking down the hallway from his bedroom to the stairs. Well, he could help get Jack to a chair and then they could work out what was wrong.

Alex came bounding down the stairs but came to an abrupt halt when he skidded around the corner and saw them.

"What..?" he breathed. Like Jack, Alex seemed shocked to see him.

"Alex?" Ian asked, looking back at his nephew and suddenly unsure what he had walked into. Alex, almost unconsciously it seemed, had prepared himself for a karate strike. His knees were slightly bent, lowering his centre of gravity, his arms were raised and tensed and there was a dangerous look in his eyes. And now that Ian looked at him properly, he saw that something was seriously wrong. He had been so concerned about Jack and whether she was going to faint on him that he hadn't looked at his nephew properly when he first came down the stairs, but now he did. This was not the same boy that he had left three weeks ago. Somehow, he was older. Significantly older. And his eyes… they were so much darker than Ian had ever seen them.

"Alex?" he said again, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Before Ian knew what was happening, Alex sprang into action. He crossed the space between them incredibly quickly, jumping over the shards of broken mugs like they weren't there, and striking out with his arms and legs in such a flurry that it was all Ian could do to back away towards the lounge and block the attack.

"Get out of here, Jack!" Alex called behind him, not losing his focus on Ian or letting up with his kicks and punches.

"Alex? What-" but before he could ask what was going on Alex let out a yell of rage.

"-Who are you working for?"

"What?" Ian was beyond confused at this point. All he could try to do was calm Alex down and then work out what was going on. He was still blocking and dodging all of Alex's attacks, but his nephew was a strong and experienced fighter. And somehow, he seemed much stronger than he had been when they had sparred almost a month ago, almost like he had done much more intensive fight training… and had used it… outside of training fights. He wasn't allowing any opportunities for Ian to strike back (not that he particularly wanted to) and was moving with such speed and ferocity that it took Ian by surprise. It felt like he was fighting an enemy on a mission who would very happily kill him if he got the chance, rather than Alex.

"Why him? Of all people, why him?" Tears were streaming down Alex's face but it did not stop his attack from being effective. He was focused and disciplined and didn't even seem to have noticed the tears.

"Alex? What are you talking about?"

They were completely in the lounge now and Ian had to avoid coffee tables, sofas and chairs along with Alex's attack. Suddenly, he was on his back. One of Alex's strikes had knocked him down and before he could make a move to get out of the way and back to his feet, Alex had pinned him down.

"Did you really think this would work? That you could disguise yourself as him and sneak into the house unnoticed?"

What the hell was Alex talking about?

"If you wanted that to work, you're two years too late," Alex snarled. He might have the upper hand right now but Ian was stronger and more experienced than him. He made his move and now he was the one pinning Alex to the floor.

"What do you mean, Alex?" he asked gently. "What do you mean two years too late?"

"Ian died two years ago," he spat out but Ian could hear the defeat and sadness in his voice too. "If you wanted to pretend to be Ian, you should have done it years ago."

Ian froze. Why did Alex think he was dead? And that he'd died two years ago! Alex took advantage of his lapse in concentration and Ian suddenly found himself on his back again.

"Who sent you?" Alex growled.

"Nobody sent me," Ian said truthfully, his mind racing at a hundred miles an hour trying to make sense of what Alex was saying and work out what to do.

"I will not ask again. If you tell me the truth, I might consider letting you just go to jail rather than some MI6 black site where the sun doesn't shine."

No. Alex had just said MI6. Why would they be coming? Alex didn't know anything about his work, he couldn't, but he had definitely just said MI6.

"How can I prove to you that I am Ian?"

"You can't."

"There must be something."

"There is nothing you can say because I know that Ian is dead. He died two years ago. And, anyway, I didn't know enough about him for you to be able to say anything that only I would know."

That broke Ian's heart but he had been an agent for long enough to be able to suppress his own feelings. He took advantage of Alex's distraction and flipped him on his back again.

"Maybe you can't think of anything right now, but I will prove to you that I am who I say I am."

Before either of them could do or say anything more, Ian was grabbed from behind and pulled off of Alex. He'd been so focused on his nephew that he hadn't heard them coming up behind him. His hands were jerked behind his back and he felt the cool metal of handcuffs closing around his wrists. Whoever they were, they had arrived at the house almost impossibly quickly.

"Is Jack okay?" Alex asked, picking himself up off of the floor and dusting himself off.

"She's fine. Fox is with her. How are you? Who's this?" The man was clearly a soldier. The SAS liked to use animal code names. How had Alex called soldiers, possible SAS soldiers at that, to the house, so quickly? There had been no introductions but Alex clearly knew and trusted them… more than he currently trusted Ian… what the hell was going on?

"That's good, thanks Wolf. Yeah I'm okay. I don't know who he is but-" Alex lent forward and whispered into the man's ear. Ian couldn't hear what he said to the man but he could guess, based on the sudden hardness and change in his expression and the glare that he cast in his direction.

"We will find out who you are and who sent you," the soldier said coldly. "But you definitely chose the wrong disguise and you will pay for that."

Ian said nothing. He was used to threats and knew that it would be no good to try and persuade them that he really was who he said he was, not at the moment, anyway. The truth would out, in the end. The main question he had was why they thought he was dead in the first place.

"Alex-"

"-Nope. You're done," the man called 'Wolf' said, interrupting him and signalling to the two soldiers who were holding his arms and stopping him from moving.

That was the only warning he got before he was swung around and marched through the house. It was not worth the fight to break free right now. He was forced out of the house and down the drive towards a car waiting on the road. Jack was nowhere to be seen.

"He's even got the same car that Ian had." Alex must have followed them to the door and seen his car on the driveway.

"It's the same car, Alex!" he protested, earning him a hard shove in the back, but Ian dug his heels in and managed to turn himself around to face his nephew.

"The last time I saw the real version of that car, Ian's car, I nearly died in it," Alex replied quietly but there was an edge to his voice that Ian had never heard before. "It was littered with bullet holes and Ian's blood was all over the driver's seat, and it was crushed in a car compactor while I was still inside it. I only just got out."

Ian was too stunned by Alex's shocking revelation to say or do anything as he was dragged down the drive, shoved into the car and driven away. He had so many questions! How could Alex be 'remembering' all of that? His death, when he was here and very much alive! His bullet ridden and blood stained car, when the car was on the drive! And why had Alex said that two years had passed? He'd only left for Sayle Enterprises three weeks ago! There was no way that any of that had happened but… something had happened and Ian was determined to find out what it was.

Alex watched as Snake and Eagle shoved the fake Ian into the car and drove away before he retreated back into the house. Jack was in the dining room and he folded himself into her arms. The man could have chosen any day to walk into his house looking like Ian. Any other day and Alex might have coped just a little bit better. But today? Today was the second anniversary of Ian's death, so naturally Alex had been thinking about his uncle more than usual. And then to go downstairs and literally see him standing there! For a second, he had thought he was hallucinating or seeing Ian's ghost before reason had kicked in.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I will be. Are you?"

"A little shaken but I'm fine. It really was just like he was walking through the door."

"I'm just glad he's gone now."

"They're taking him to Liverpool Street to question him," Ben cut in. Alex had noticed him standing in the room, but Ben was much more like a friend to both him and Jack and neither of them minded him being there.

"Thanks Ben."

Alex stepped back into the hall and, for the first time, surveyed the mess that had been left behind. He had been lucky to avoid all of the broken pieces of ceramic when he'd attacked the man; he'd barely noticed the smashed mugs when he'd first come down the stairs. All he had seen was Jack, deathly white and leaning against the wall looking like she was about to faint, and Ian. The fake Ian had been so close to her that he could have done anything, and all Alex had been able to think about was getting him away from her. It was only now that he saw that his favourite mug had been smashed; it was one that Ian had bought for him when they had gone to Disneyland when he was eight. It always reminded him of a time when life was simpler. When he had Ian and Jack and knew nothing about MI6. And aside from that, it was just a nice mug. He always felt incredibly British when he thought about the fact that he had a preference on mugs based on how they felt in his hands and how much tea they could hold. Like so many things from before Ian's death, the mug was gone but, Alex couldn't afford to dwell on that right now.

"How did you guys get here so quickly?" he asked, looking away from the carnage in the hallway and turning back to face Ben.

Alex had finally been given an emergency beacon that wasn't just for a mission. Mrs Jones had decided that he had perhaps made too many enemies and they might try and retaliate. So when Alex had come to his senses and realised that it was a real person standing in his hallway, not a hallucination or a ghost, he'd promptly pressed his transmitter three times to signal a home invasion before he attacked.

"We were on our way to a briefing," Ben explained. "We were only about five minutes away from you when you activated your beacon and, as we were by far the closest support to you, Mrs Jones rerouted us."

"I'm glad it was you guys," Alex admitted. He needed the familiar and friendly faces today.

"He even had a key!" Jack breathed.

"What?"

"He let himself in with a key."

Alex glanced at the door and sure enough, a set of keys was hanging from the lock. He walked forwards, his legs moving of their own accord.

"How the hell did he get these?" he wondered aloud as he examined the key ring.

"What do you mean, Alex?" Ben asked gently.

"This is the exact same key ring that Ian had." And even as he said it, he knew that it was true. There was one thing that made Alex sure. One year, Jack had taken him to the Lego store for his birthday; when they were at the tills, Alex had seen a suit-wearing Lego figurine key ring and he'd bought it for Ian. The thing that made Alex sure that this was the exact same figure that he'd given his uncle was the face. Ian had had it on his keys for a long time and the face on the little figurine had worn away. And Alex, in the ever present optimism of childhood, had decided that he'd draw a replacement on. Looking at it now, he shuddered. The face that his younger self had drawn was horrific but it was definitely the same face that he was looking at now. He took the key out of the lock and held the keys in his hand for a moment before making a decision. He stepped out of the house and unlocked the car on the driveway.

"Alex? What are you doing?"

"I just need to make sure."

"Make sure of what?"

"Well," he said, pausing and turning to face Jack and Ben as he tried to compose his thoughts to be able to explain. "Ian was driving when he was killed and he had to have had his keys with him. So whoever this man is, he can't have taken the keys from the car or by breaking into MI6 and stealing them because then he'd have known that Ian was dead and used a different disguise. And nobody would have been able to replicate that awful face I drew, so they have to be the same keys! They have to be Ian's! So why did this man choose Ian as his disguise if he knew that he's dead? It doesn't make sense."

He turned and began walking towards the car again, his body growing heavier with every step. He didn't particularly want to get into the car again - the last time he had, he'd nearly been crushed - but he had to know. He had to know how this man had Ian's keys and an exact replica of his car but didn't know that Ian was dead… or why he decided to use Ian's face despite the fact.

"Alex!" Ben called, running down the drive towards him. "I know you want answers but it would be better to wait. We don't know if the car is a trap."

"What, like I open the door and it explodes in a ball of flames?" Alex's mouth went dry at the thought. He'd been tricked into thinking that it'd happened to Jack once; he didn't really want to find out what it actually felt like.

"It's a possibility."

Alex almost wanted to groan in frustration but he knew that Ben was right. It wasn't worth the risk.

"I'll check the car over and then, once I'm happy it's safe, you can have a look, alright?"

"Thanks Ben."

"Come on. I'll make us all a drink, and then I'll get to work and you can make a plan."

"Yeah, okay," Alex agreed with a sigh.

When they reached the door, a holdall and jacket that had been dumped on the floor caught his eye.

"Did he bring these in?" he asked, looking up at Jack. She nodded.

Alex quickly closed the front door behind them, grabbed the bag and coat and carried them into the living room. If he couldn't examine the car, he was definitely going to have a look at these.

He emptied the contents onto the floor and began to pore over them. There was nothing in the holdall that stood out to him. It was just black t-shirts, black trousers, underwear and toiletries. Alex tried not to notice that the toiletry bag was identical to the one Ian had had… nor the fact that the man and his clothes smelt exactly the same as he remembered Ian smelling (that had been almost more of a punch to the gut than seeing someone walking around with Ian's face), but everything he discovered lingered in his mind, floating around like irritating flies that buzzed around and refused to leave him alone. Like he was collecting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but didn't have enough to put the outline together, let alone complete the whole image! There was a laptop too but, seeing as he would be unable to log in to it, Alex didn't waste any time examining it. He moved on to the jacket and in the inside pocket, he found a wallet. His fingers trembled slightly as he opened it.

Inside were the usual credit cards, loyalty cards, some loose change and a receipt from a petrol station just outside of Port Tallon. Alex checked the date and took a shaky breath. It was dated two years ago. It was from the day before Ian was killed! He put it to one side to examine properly later and a photograph in the wallet caught his eye. It was of him and Ian from their first skiing holiday. He thumbed it out of its slot and turned it over. On the back, written in Ian's handwriting, was the date of their holiday and a sentence that made him catch his breath. A's first solo run! Alex was sure that this was Ian's handwriting; either this was an excellent forgery or this picture really had once been Ian's and he'd been proud enough of Alex that he'd commemorated the occasion and kept it with him as a reminder.

He'd never considered his uncle to be a sentimental man. Hell for the last two years all he'd been told was that Ian had only been training him to take his place as an agent! But if this genuinely had been Ian's, then there was some level of care and attachment there. And suddenly, Alex remembered the photograph that had been on Ian's desk in his office in Liverpool Street when he broke in, back when he'd still believed that Ian was a banker. Perhaps Ian had cared for him, even if he had been training him. Both photos were reminders of skills that he'd been taught, after all. Alex was about to put the photo and wallet down when he noticed another photograph that had been hidden behind the first. It was of a man and a woman holding a baby and beaming from ear to ear. These were his parents; the baby had to be him. He gently prized this one out of the little pocket too and just stared, enraptured, for a moment. He'd never seen a photo with the three of them in it before! He could feel the indent of writing on the back of this photo too, but he stared at the photo for a little while longer before turning it over.

The note on the back of this one was in different handwriting. One that he'd never seen before but still felt like he recognised. With all our love, always x. Alex almost wanted to cry. His parents must have had this photo taken just before their move to France. And they had given Ian a photo with all of their love. If the plan had worked, they would probably never have seen each other again…

"Alex?" The call pulled him out of his train of thought.

He looked up, tears welling in his eyes, and saw Ben standing in the doorway.

"I've checked the car. It's clean."

"Thanks. Can you take me to Liverpool Street? After?"

"Well," Ben began uncertainly.

"I want to talk to Blunt or Jones. To start with, anyway."

"If you're sure."

"I am. Thanks Ben." Alex put both the photographs back into the wallet and pocketed it before picking up the car keys again.

A flood of memories hit him as he opened the car door. The crash of the claw and motion as it picked the car up and dumped into the crusher. The smell of oil and diesel as the car broke apart. The smash of the glass and the feeling as it fell down onto him and into his hair. His heart racing as he clambered desperately through the car to the rear window... Alex shuddered and took a few seconds before he forced himself to push those memories aside for now. He needed to be analytical, to examine every inch of the car and not let his emotions cloud his judgement.

He was looking around the backseats when he found it. So far, all he'd found were the usual things you'd expect to find in a car; the map as backup in case the Sat Nav failed, a first aid kit, sunglasses, de-icer, a half empty bottle of water. But in the back, tucked down the side of the rear passenger side seat, where he had always sat when he was too little to join Ian in the front or when he, Ian and Jack had all been going somewhere together, was a small plastic object. It had fallen into the gap where the plug came out of the upholstery and must have been forgotten about, until now. He pulled it out and examined it. It was his old Tamagotchi. He'd completely forgotten that he'd owned one until he looked at it, but now he remembered being so upset when he'd realised that he'd lost it. He could only have been about eight at the time and he and Jack had searched the house for hours with no success. But now he looked at it, at the scratched and half peeled stickers where he'd tried to remove them, and knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was his.

Everything that he was finding was throwing up so many more questions and providing absolutely no answers. He would just have to find them for himself. He walked back to the door where Ben and Jack were waiting.

"Okay, I'm ready," he said to Ben before turning to Jack.

"I'll be waiting in the car," Ben said, and Alex knew that he was purposefully giving them some time alone.

"Are you sure about this, Alex?" she asked.

"Yes. I need answers, Jack. I need to know how he managed to get so many of Ian's things. I need to know how I saw Ian's car get crushed two years ago, yet it's here without a scratch."

"Are you sure that's his car? It could just be the same model and they switched out the licence plates?"

"No, it's definitely his. I found this in the gap between two of the back seats," he said, holding up the Tamagotchi.

"Wait, is that?"

"Yes. It's my old Tamagotchi. It's got the same peeling stickers and everything." He let out a sigh. "I don't know, Jack, but this, the keys, photos that definitely came from his wallet... I just don't understand how so many details can be correct but also not making sense, and I need to find out."

"I know," she said, pulling him into a hug. "I can come with you, if you want?"

"No, thanks, Jack. I'll be okay. I don't even know if anyone will see me but I've got to try. Are you going to be okay?"

"Don't worry about me," she said with a quick smile. "You go do what you need to do. Are you sure you don't want me to come?"

"It's not that I don't want you there, Jack, but I want to keep you as far away from them as possible. I don't want them to do anything to you, too!"

Alex and Ben drove to Liverpool Street in silence. Alex could tell that the older agent was worried about him but couldn't think of anything to say to ease his nerves, so he said nothing. Alex was glad of that. So many thoughts were swirling around in his head that it was as much as he could do to try and process them himself, let alone hold a conversation. The whole situation was too hard to explain until he knew more, anyway. They pulled into the underground carpark and Ben led him over to one of the lifts.

"Are you sure about this, Alex?" Ben asked.

"Yes."

"Alright," he replied with a resigned air and swiped his card to call the lift.

Ben led him along the corridor and into Mrs Jones's office, not that Alex needed his help. He would have been able to find his way to the office blindfolded.

"Good evening, Alex," she greeted from her seat behind the desk.

"I need to see the file you have on my mother," Alex said without greeting or preamble.

"I'm sorry?"

"Before my mum and dad married, Blunt had her investigated. There is a file with everything in it and I need to see it."

"Alex, what is this about?"

"I just need to see it."

"Why?"

"Mrs Jones," he said as politely as he could but his patience was wearing incredibly thin. "I have done so much for you and I haven't had so much as a penny in thanks. You have blackmailed me, manipulated me, and straight up forced me to go on suicide mission after suicide mission. I think that should give me some authority to see the file you have on my own mother, but, if it isn't, I think the fact that I have just been attacked by a man who looks identical to my dead uncle might be. Not just that, he's instant that he is my dead uncle and absolutely nothing about the entire situation makes sense. I'm getting answers and this is where I am starting."

"Very well, I'll see what I can do."

Alex nodded and sat himself down in one of the plush grey chairs that sat against one of the walls. Sitting in the chair in front of the desk would give her power and Alex absolutely refused to do that.

"It might take some time, Alex. Perhaps-"

"-I'll wait," he growled. He was not going to allow her to fob him off and send him away.

"If you insist," she said nonchalantly and began typing away at her keyboard.

Ben sat down on the seat next to him and they waited in silence while Mrs Jones worked. For all the attention she paid them, they might as well not have been there. About half an hour later, there was a knock at the door.

"I've got the file you requested, Mrs Jones."

"Thank you, William." Mrs Jones took the file from her assistant and placed it on her desk. Clearly, if Alex wanted to look at it, he would have to join her.

Alex threw himself into one of the chairs in front of her and pulled the file towards him but Mrs Jones put a hand on it, stopping him before he could open it.

"What are you looking for, Alex?"

"Who says I'm looking for anything?"

"Clearly you've known that this file existed for a while - I won't ask how you knew when today is the first I've heard of it - but you need something today."

"Or, perhaps, seeing my dead uncle walking around, even if it was just a disguise, has reminded me that I know practically nothing about my parents. Maybe I decided that enough is enough and I want to know more about my mother because aside from the fact that she was a nurse I know practically nothing. Maybe I just want to know where I came from."

"Alex. I am breaking the rules by letting you see this file. Tell me the truth."

"Is it so hard to accept that I just want to know more about my mum? I know that you won't give me Ian's file, or my dad's, and even if you did, it would probably all be redacted. This just has who my mum was. What she did. Who her friends were. I just want to know more about her."

"Very well," Mrs Jones conceded, taking her hand away and letting Alex open the file.

Thankful that he'd managed to avoid telling her the real reason, Alex gazed down at the first sheet of paper. It just had basic background information; her height, weight, eye and hair colours. It also had her birthday, home address and where she worked. He'd known that she was a nurse. He hadn't known that she had worked at St Dominic's, the very same hospital where he'd been treated several times in the past. Had any of the doctors or nurses who'd treated him worked with her? Would any of them be able to tell him about her? Alex made a mental note to look into it at some point in the future and carried on reading. There was more on that first introductory page than Alex had ever known about her, and he was only just beginning to scratch the surface.

He slowly made his way through the file, keeping an eye out for anything handwritten, but learning so much about who his mum was and what she did. Finally, as he neared the end of the file, Alex found a copy of a letter that she'd written to his dad. There was so much love crammed into that small page that Alex's heart almost felt like it was going to burst. And the handwriting matched the inscription on the back of the picture. Alex wasn't an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it was good enough to reassure him that the photo in 'Ian's' wallet had indeed been given to the real Ian by his parents a long time ago.

But what did that mean? If the wallet, or at least the photos, had been Ian's, how had the man gotten hold of them? It was the same question with the keys and the Tamagotchi. If someone had gone to this trouble to set up a disguise, why hadn't they realised that Ian was dead? Or, if they had, why had they decided to continue with it, knowing that he would be discovered almost immediately?

Alex's thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door and someone coming in.

"Mrs Jones, I've got an update on the… oh hello, Alex old chap, I didn't see you there." Smithers had become unusually uneasy upon seeing Alex sitting in the room.

"Hello Smithers."

Mrs Jones and Smithers exchanged tense glances, and Alex knew that what Smithers had come to say was about the man who'd broken into Alex's home.

"Could you wait outside for a moment please, Alex?" Mrs Jones asked.

"No."

"Alex-"

"-No, Mrs Jones. This man broke into my home. I deserve to know what you've found out about him."

"Oh, very well," she replied exasperatedly. "Please go on, Smithers."

The gadget master cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I, um, I ran some tests…"

"And..?"

"I think it would be easier to show you."

"Very well." Mrs Jones stood up to follow Smithers and Alex stood up too. So did Ben.

"Alex, old chap-"

"-Forget it, Mr Smithers. I'm coming."

The tension as the four of them walked silently to Smithers' office was palpable.

"He isn't wearing a facial disguise and I can't see any signs of plastic surgery. He does just look and sound like Ian. And he's done his research - he knows who I am and where he is. So I took the liberty of doing a DNA test to see if our mystery man is recorded anywhere on our system, and that's where things get interesting. There was a match." Smithers had looked increasingly uncomfortable as he'd been talking. "This is the DNA of the man you apprehended, Alex," Smithers said, tapping away at his keyboard and bringing up the DNA string.

"Okay," Mrs Jones said. Clearly, like Alex, she was unable to see the relevance.

"And this-" Smithers said, again tapping at his keyboard "-is the record for the DNA match on our system." He paused for a moment. "The DNA match is for Ian Rider."

There was silence for a few moments as everyone tried to take in what Smithers had just told them before Alex broke it.

"How can that be Ian? You told me he died two years ago!"

"I don't know," Smithers began but Mrs Jones interrupted.

"Ian was killed, Alex. I hate to say it but I saw his body. We did all of the necessary tests at the time. We did DNA analysis and matched fingerprints and did retinal scans. The man who died on his way back from Cornwall was Ian Rider. We knew that before we sent the police to tell you."

"Well clearly you got it wrong! Either you're wrong now or you were wrong then! Because they can't both be Ian!"

"There's something else," Smithers said. "Obviously, we questioned the man downstairs… he's insistent that he has just come from Cornwall… from Sayle Enterprises… but he is also acting as though it is two years ago. Either he's a very, very good liar or he is telling the truth and has no knowledge of the past two years."

"How is that possible?"

"I don't know, Mrs Jones. That's the thing. I just don't know."

"What happens now?" Ben asked.

"We need to find out the truth."

"And how exactly are you going to do that?" Alex exclaimed. "You've done all of the tests! What else can you do?"

"I don't know just yet, Alex, but we will find out."

"No. You know what? That's not good enough. You have ruined my life since before I was born. I am not going to stand around and watch you mess it up again. Let me talk to him."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Alex."

Alex laughed humourlessly. "To be honest, Mrs Jones, right now I don't care what you think. Let me question him."

Alex was surprised both by his own assertiveness and by the fact that Mrs Jones conceded without more of a fight, but he was glad of that. He hadn't wanted to use all of his remaining energy arguing with Mrs Jones. Although, now that he was walking along the corridor to the interrogation room where 'Ian' was being held, with her, Ben and Smithers, his stomach began to churn. He was about to come face to face with the man who was using Ian's face as a disguise and he didn't like the thought of it one bit.

"We'll be watching next door," Ben said softly. "And if you want to leave, you can. Just get up and walk out, okay?"

Alex took a deep breath and nodded before he opened the door and walked into the interrogation room. He sat down stiffly and examined the man who sat, cuffed to the table, before him.

"Alex?" he said softly.

"Who are you?" Alex asked coldly.

"I'm Ian. I'm your uncle."

"My uncle was killed two years ago. Who are you?"

"Alex," the man said, manoeuvring his hands in the cuffs to try and hold Alex's and trying to look him in the eye. But Alex pulled his hands away, clasping them in his lap and staring at them to avoid the man's gaze. He could barely deal with being in the same room and speaking to someone who looked like Ian, let alone whatever the man was trying to achieve by physically reaching out. He supposed the answer was probably emotional manipulation if the man was a fake. And if it was Ian then it could either be that, given that his uncle had been training him for intelligence work all of his life, or, perhaps, a more genuine attempt at a connection if he had ever cared for him at all. Either way, Alex was not going to deal with it. Not right now. The man cleared his throat and pulled his hands back, seeing his reaction to the movement. Alex glanced up and saw the pain in his eyes before the man began to speak again. "I don't know what's happened. I don't know how it has happened, but I promise you that I am Ian."

"What did Jack get me for my ninth birthday?"

"What?"

"You want to prove to me that you're Ian? Well then, I'm going to ask you some questions. What did Jack get me for my ninth birthday? You should know the answer to that. Ian was actually there for that one."

"What happened to you?"

"Just answer the question or I will leave and I won't come back."

"She got you a DVD," 'Ian' said after a moment's thought. "Spy Kids - it has just come out and you loved it. The three of us watched it on the sofa after your party."

"What did Ian always say to me when we started something like climbing a mountain or when he helped me with difficult homework?"

"The first part's the worst part," 'Ian' said with a sigh.

Well the man was two for two on some of the more private questions that Alex had been able to think of. Questions that he didn't think anyone would have been able to discover the answers to before impersonating him.

"Where's the spare key kept?"

"Behind a fake brick in the front wall of the house."

"Ian left a map of the mine tunnels in his room in the Sayle Enterprises compound. Where?"

"How do you know that?" the man whispered, his eyes widening with shock.

"Answer the question."

"How can you possibly know the answer to that question?" 'Ian' breathed, his eyes filling with tears. "What the hell did you do?" he shouted at the blacked out window where Alex knew that Mrs Jones, Smithers and Ben were watching.

"Just answer the question. Where did Ian hide the map?"

'Ian' took a deep breath before he looked Alex straight in the eye and answered. "I tucked it in the canopy at the top of the bed. Alex? How do you know that? What did they make you do?"

"Exactly what you trained me for. You must be thrilled," Alex said coldly, standing up and walking to the door. He had his answer - this man was Ian. He could be the only person who knew where that small, seemingly insignificant piece of paper had been hidden.

"What do you mean?" Ian shouted, losing control of himself for the first time that day. "Alex! What do you mean? What did they do? Alex!"

But Alex had reached the door and closed it behind him, cutting off Ian's shouts. He took a few deep breaths before he opened the adjoining door to join the others.

"Are you okay Alex?" Ben asked. Mrs Jones and Smithers were still watching Ian through the glass. He was the only one looking at him.

He shook his head slightly in response. "I will be," were the words he said out loud, though.

Alex looked through the glass. It was a jarring sight. His uncle had always been calm and collected. Alex couldn't recall him ever losing control like he was now. But the thing was, Ian wasn't thrashing about, the metal of his cuffs cutting into his wrists and causing blood to drip down his arms and onto the table. He was sat completely still, staring at the glass with a look that Alex had never seen in his eyes before. It chilled Alex to his core and he was just grateful knowing that it wasn't being directed at him. He was certainly glad that he wasn't in Mrs Jones' shoes.

"Did he get the answers right?" Mrs Jones asked, looking at Alex now.

"Yes. Every single one of them."

"Shall I take you home, Alex?" Ben asked softly. "Let them ask him more questions and investigate a bit more?"

"No. I want to stay."

"Alex, I don't think-"

"-I don't think you get a say, Mrs Jones. I'm staying."

She examined him for a few moments. She must have decided to let him stay without putting up a fight because she nodded and left the observation room, entering the interrogation room a few seconds later

"Mrs Jones," Ian said coldly. "I wondered when you were going to grace me with your presence."

"Ian."

"Where's Blunt?"

"He'll see you later."

"Ah. I'm not a priority then, I see."

"Ian. We need to know what happened."

"Well, as I've already explained numerous times today, I drove home from Sayle Enterprises and went home. Except apparently two years have passed since then for everyone else, and you all think that I died. And, if I'm understanding correctly, you decided that the appropriate response to my 'death' was to use Alex? To send him in my place instead of one of the hundreds of trained, adult agents that you could have used? Did you really think that I would have left that compound if the virus was still a threat? Obviously I couldn't tell you exactly what I'd done over an unsecured line but in what world would I have left if there was still a threat?"

Alex took a deep breath. This was Ian and if he was telling the truth (and why would he be lying right now?) then the Stormbreakers had not been a threat when MI6 had sent him to the compound. They had used him and he'd nearly died and it would all have been for nothing if he had!

"I need to ask you some questions."

Ian threw his hands in the air as far as the cuffs would allow and huffed in exasperation.

"I can't tell you anything more, Mrs Jones."

"You see, Ian," Mrs Jones said, leaning back slightly in her chair and crossing her right leg over her left; to look at her, she could have been having a coffee with him in a café, not interrogating him. "We saw your dead body two years ago. You were driving home from Cornwall, that part's true, but you were ambushed by Yassen Gregorovich with a machine gun and he gunned you down. I saw your body, littered with bullet holes, and you were dead. So the question is, how can you be here now?"

Ian's eyes darkened and narrowed slightly as she said Yassen Gregorovich's name. Something she had said did not sit well with him but Alex had no idea what it was. Was it to do with Yassen killing him or something else?

"Did Alex see?"

"Did Alex see what, Ian?"

"Did he see the body?"

"No." Alex saw Ian slowly let out a breath in relief. "Very few people did," Mrs Jones continued. "But we did enough tests to establish that it was Ian's body. So, how can you be here?"

"I don't know Mrs Jones. I only know what I've told you and what you've just told me. Now I have a question for you." He didn't wait for her permission before he asked. "What the hell have you done to Alex? You sent him to Cornwall but it wasn't just that, was it? How many times have you used him? And what did he mean 'what I trained him for'?"

"That's four questions."

"Well then, four answers."

"You aren't exactly in a position to negotiate Ian, are you?"

"Who said I'm negotiating? But if you're not going to tell me, let's see if what I've guessed is an accurate summation of the truth, shall we?"

Mrs Jones gestured as if to say 'go ahead' so Ian continued.

"When I 'died', you decided that using Alex was a good idea. You sent him to Cornwall, straight into Herod Sayle's hands. But, looking at him, I'd say it didn't end there? Am I right? I'd guess that you've been using him for the last two years. How many missions have you sent him on?" Ian swore and ran a hand through his hair as best he could with the cuffs. "He's fourteen years old! Did you ever stop to think about the damage you were causing?! And why the hell does he think that I was training him?"

Ian paused for a few moments, waiting to see if Mrs Jones would respond, before he spoke again. "Do you have nothing to say?"

"He has saved so many lives-"

Ian scoffed. "-Is that how you can sleep at night?" he asked incredulously. "You justify it with the lives that he saved? Well, I guess that and by saying that you were only following Blunt's orders? Right?"

"Ian-"

"-No. I'm done. You're going to uncuff me and I'm taking Alex home. Do you understand?"

"I don't have the authority to release you, Ian. We still need to find out what happened before we can let you go." She stood up and walked over to the door.

"This is ridiculous. Let me go." Ian's voice was low and serious.

"I'm sorry, Ian."

Mrs Jones walked back into the observation room where Alex and Ben had been watching.

"Alex, you should go home. Daniels can take you. No one else is going to talk to him tonight."

"I want to stay."

"Go home, Alex. I'll send a car to pick you up in the morning and you can stay all day. But there is nothing else to do today. Go home and get some rest."

Reluctantly, Alex allowed Ben to lead him out of the room and down the corridor to the lift. Only once they were in the car and on the road to Chelsea did Alex let out a deep breath that he hadn't really realised that he'd been holding.

"Are you okay, Alex?"

"No." He could be truthful with Ben, he knew that. "I just don't understand, Ben. Ian was killed two years ago so how can he be here now? And if he was telling the truth… that the Stormbreakers weren't going to be a threat after he left the compound, then everything they made me do…"

"I don't know, Alex," Ben said gently, pausing while he focused on the road for a moment. "I don't know if we'll ever know. But if he's here, regardless of how or why, isn't that a good thing?"

"To be honest, I don't know, Ben. He was training me my whole life to become a spy, just like him… I don't even know if he liked me, let alone loved me."

"Look, Alex, obviously I never met him before but, from the brief glimpse I saw just now, I didn't get the impression that he was training you. It didn't look like he was just saying it for effect or to get you to believe him. It looked to me like he was telling the truth and was horrified when he realised what Blunt and Jones have made you do. All I'm saying is, let him talk to you before you make your mind up, okay? No matter what you've been told by Mr Blunt or Mrs Jones or anyone else, he is the only person who actually knows what his intentions were. Try and sleep on it and I'll pick you up in the morning, alright?"

"Yeah, okay," Alex agreed with a weary sigh and leaning his head against the window, gazing sightlessly out at the London streets. In fact he hardly noticed when Ben pulled up outside his home.

"I'll come in with you."

"Thanks."

Jack had seen them pull up and was running to greet them before Alex was even out of the car.

"Oh Alex!" she whispered, pulling him into a warm hug. At least he knew that Jack loved him.

"Let's get inside," Ben suggested, guiding the two of them towards the front door.

Walking into the house, there were no traces of the broken mugs and spilled tea, his fight with Ian earlier, nor of his frantic search through Ian's holdall.

"I'm sorry for just leaving you to deal with all the mess earlier, Jack."

"You don't have to apologise for that. Not to me," she said, pulling him into another hug. "You went where you had to go."

"So who was that man?" she asked a few minutes later when they were all sitting in the lounge with a cup of tea. Ben had ordered them a takeaway. Despite how late it was, they all felt like they needed one.

"It was Ian," Alex said simply. "I don't know how or why but it's definitely him."

"But he..?"

"For us he died two years ago. For him, he left Sayle Enterprises earlier today and those two years never happened. It makes absolutely no sense but he was telling the truth, I'm sure of it."

"Wow! I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. So what happens next?"

"He's being kept at Liverpool Street tonight," Ben told her. "He'll be questioned again tomorrow, I presume by Blunt this time and possibly others. Ultimately, I guess it'll be up to Blunt what happens after that."

"I'm going back tomorrow, Jack." Alex felt like he should give her some warning.

"Well then, I'm coming too."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. If you're going, I'm going."

Alex did not sleep well that night. Nightmares of Sayle Enterprises and the maze of mine shafts and swimming through the submerged tunnel flooded his brain. Each time, he was caught or got lost or ran out of air part way. Each time, Alex woke up breathless and in a cold blooded sweat.

When the first light of morning finally broke, he went downstairs for breakfast, out of habit not because he actually felt like eating anything. One look at Jack and he guessed that she hadn't slept much better than he had.

"Are you sure you want to go, Alex?" she asked as they both pushed their breakfast around on their plates. She'd made them both scrambled eggs on toast but neither of them had much of an appetite. The prospect of going back to Liverpool Street would have been enough on its own to stop him eating but the thought of seeing Ian again made it ten times worse.

"No. But I'm going. I'm sure that he really is Ian but I don't know if anyone else is. And I don't understand how he can be here. I think that's bugging me more than anything. I mean, life wasn't exactly great with him gone and MI6 using me as and when they liked but… oh, I don't know, 'simple' isn't the right word..."

"I don't know what the word is either, but I know what you're saying," Jack said, pulling him into yet another hug.

"Are you sure you want to come?"

"I could very happily spend the rest of my life with neither of us going back into that building. But I'm not going to let you go through this alone, Alex. No matter what they might try and do to me."

"Thanks, Jack," Alex breathed.

Sitting in the back of Ben's car on the drive back to Liverpool Street, Alex began to question his wisdom in coming back today. His palms were clammy, his heart was pounding and at times it felt like he couldn't breathe. At the same time, he knew that he wouldn't have been able to just sit at home, waiting for news.

"Good morning, Alex," Blunt greeted as they stepped out of the lift and into the corridor where Ian was being held. He had been waiting for them and the thought almost made Alex shiver. "And Miss Starbright…" Alex could tell that he was not impressed that she was here.

"She's staying," Alex told him.

"Very well," he conceded and Alex did not like how quickly he had accepted it.

"We'd like you to ask him some more questions."

"Why?"

"Just ask him some more things that only your uncle would know."

"I got my answer in four questions yesterday."

"He doesn't know that, though," Blunt countered inscrutably.

Alex paused, feeling like he was walking into a trap. "Fine, I'll go and ask him some more questions," he agreed after a moment.

"We'd like you to wear an earpiece too. We have some questions that we'd like to ask him."

Alex was surprised at this. Why was Blunt sending him in with his questions instead of going himself or sending Mrs Jones or Crawley?

"Why me?" he asked suspiciously. "What exactly are you trying to do? Find out if he is who he says is, or hope that he makes one mistake so that you can use it as your excuse to lock him up for the rest of his life?"

Blunt did not reply and Alex knew that he was not being given a choice. After a couple of moments of silence, Blunt turned and walked away down the corridor towards the room where they were holding Ian. With a glance to check that Jack and Ben were still behind him, Alex followed. The soft sound of their footsteps along the corridor was more comforting than he cared to admit, even to himself. There was an agent on guard outside the door now; he waited until Blunt, Ben and Jack had gone into the observation room before he opened it to let Alex in.

Ian was still cuffed to the table, sitting exactly as he had been the evening before. To look at him, you wouldn't know that he'd spent the night here. Alex wasn't even sure if he'd have slept, but Ian looked exactly the same as when Alex had first seen him yesterday afternoon.

"Morning," he greeted stiffly, sitting down in the chair opposite his uncle.

"Is it?" Ian replied.

"Have you eaten?"

Ian laughed. "No."

Alex turned to face the glass. "Seriously?" he asked. "When you kept me here, I was given a proper spread! And arguably, I'd done something worse than disappearing for two years."

"We'll organise some food to be sent in," Mrs Jones said through his earpiece.

When he turned back to face Ian, there was something calculating in his uncle's eyes.

"Alex? What did you do?"

"We aren't here to talk about me."

"You might not be, but apparently I've missed two whole years of your life and I'd like to know what I've missed," he whispered.

"No. You really don't," Alex replied softly. He cleared his throat and refused to look Ian in the eyes. "Describe the room you stayed in at Sayle Enterprises. Where was it in the compound? Furniture? Pictures on the walls?"

Ian gave a resigned sigh before he began to answer.

"It was in Sayles' house. Quite a large room - the 'blue room' they called it - at the end of the upstairs corridor. The furniture was old mahogany; a four poster bed with a canopy draped over it, a desk with a chair, and a wardrobe. There was a Picasso on the wall next to the door to the bathroom. I put a bug on the back of the canvas so that I could check whether anyone had been in the room while I was out. The window looked out onto the fountain."

Well those details were all correct. Alex was surprised to learn that it had been his uncle who placed the bug rather than Sayle, but didn't comment on it.

"Tell me about the mine. What you found there."

Ian told him. He described the graffitied entrance, the tunnel collapse, and which tunnels he'd had to use to go around it. He spoke of the submerged tunnel and how he'd used SCUBA equipment and fixed a guideline from one end to the other. How the other side of the submerged tunnel allowed him to access the hidden construction line of Sayle Enterprises.

"Do you think you'd have been able to swim the tunnel without SCUBA gear?" This was more for his own curiosity than proving to them that this was Ian.

He paused and thought for a moment. "Probably. It was quite a distance but, with the guidewire, I think so."

"What did you have sent to the box at the post office?" Alex didn't actually know the answer to this but it didn't matter. Either MI6 sent him the information, or they'd be able to find out what was sent if they deemed it important enough.

"It was just some books. I worked out that Sayle was planning to use the Stormbreakers to release a virus and I was trying to work out what it might be."

"Did you find out?"

"No," Ian admitted. "There weren't any samples in the compound while I was there. But I do know that it would have wiped out most of the population… which is why I neutralised the threat before I left," he added, glaring at the window and slamming a hand onto the table, making Alex jump.

"They left it until the last minute to bring the virus in. Yassen Gregorovich brought it a couple of days before the launch."

Ian swore softly under his breath. "Did you meet him?"

"I've already told you. I'm not the one answering questions."

"Alex, please," Ian whispered.

"Stop!" he said in a tone of voice that he hoped sounded serious. "I'm not talking about it, so you can stop asking."

There was a knock on the door and a man walked in with a tray of food. He put it on the table and left again without saying a word. Alex examined the breakfast that had been brought for Ian. There were a couple of individually wrapped pastries, a cereal bar and a glass bottle of orange juice. Ian glanced at the tray too, but made no move to pick anything up.

"To be honest, I'm not feeling very trusting of them right now," he said in a low growl, staring at the blacked out window again. "And even if I was, I'm not hungry." He turned back to face Alex. "I feel sick thinking about what's happened to you."

"If you want me to stay, stop. You don't have to eat but stop trying to get me to tell you what happened." Alex took a couple of deep breaths before he continued. "Who do you play Mario Kart as?"

The sudden change of pace took Ian by surprise, but only for a second.

"Yoshi. On the Mach Bike."

"And who am I?"

"Luigi. In the Nostalgia 1 Kart."

"And Jack?"

"When she plays, she's Daisy if we're using your account and she's unlocked. Otherwise she's Princess Peach. But she doesn't like playing with both of us at the same time."

"Why?"

"Because we're too competitive," Ian said with a reminiscent laugh.

"Ask him what office number was his." This time it was Blunt's voice that came through his earpiece.

Alex asked the question.

"1504."

"And what is outside your office window?"

"There's the flagpole between mine and Crawley's office? Is that what you mean?"

"It is."

This went on for quite a while, his own questions being interspersed with ones that Blunt or Mrs Jones or someone else fed him through his earpiece. Some of them Alex also knew the answer to and others he had no idea what they were talking about, but he tried to keep his face blank either way.

"Okay. That's it for now, Alex," Mrs Jones said through the earpiece. "Take a break for lunch."

Alex was glad for a break. He was exhausted.

"We're stopping for lunch," he said as he stood up.

"Just tell me one thing before you go."

Alex paused, waiting for Ian to ask his question.

"Obviously you're wearing an earpiece today, or you've been prepped with questions. Were you wearing one yesterday? Or given questions to ask me then, too?"

"Why does it matter?"

"It matters because if you were then they might not have involved you in any missions since… well since I 'died'. For you anyway. If you were wearing an earpiece, then you could have been fed questions about Sayles compound that another agent found out the answers to." He ran his hands through his hair awkwardly again. "It matters because it's the difference between you being used as an agent, and you just living your life while adults who have signed up for this and are trained are sent on missions."

Alex turned away and walked out of the door without giving his uncle an answer. He couldn't bear to tell him the truth but he didn't want to lie either. Silence was easier.

Jack and Ben were waiting for him outside the door.

"Can we get McDonalds?" Alex asked.

"Absolutely."

The three of them made their way down to Ben's car in the carpark without really saying anything.

"How are you holding up?" Ben asked when they were on their way.

"Honestly? I'm exhausted."

"It's tough. But you're doing really well."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

"It feels like all I'm doing is being Blunt's puppet. Like he's waiting for Ian to make a mistake that he can use to label him as an imposter, so that he doesn't have to deal with him coming back."

"You're sure it's him then?"

"Yeah. I mean, he got every single question that I asked him right. I don't know about the ones Blunt and Jones came up with, but he knew all of the answers to my questions. And I've just got a feeling. There's too much detail for it all to be a set up. If they'd gone that deep, they would have known that Ian was dead and they'd have used someone else as their disguise."

"I trust you, Alex. If you believe it's him, then I guess it's him."

"For what it's worth, I think it's him too," Jack agreed, just as they pulled into the Drive Thru.

Ben and Jack both said their orders. Then it was Alex's turn.

"Could I get two medium Chicken Legend meals please? One with barbecue sauce and the other with spicy mayo?"

Jack gave him a slightly odd look when he ordered the two meals but he just shrugged. A glance at Ben told him that the agent knew why he'd ordered for two. Alex understood why Ian didn't want to eat any of the food that MI6 were giving him - he doubted that he would have eaten any food that they provided if he were in his uncle's position - but he also realised that his uncle hadn't eaten since yesterday, probably at lunchtime. Maybe he would eat food that Alex brought him, maybe he wouldn't, but Alex felt like he had to try. He was still extremely conflicted about how he felt about Ian and what he thought Ian might think of him, but he couldn't just let the man starve.

"Are they both with fries?" came the slightly crackly voice through the speaker system.

"Yes please."

"And what drinks would you like with those?"

"A Coke and a lemonade please."

"Lovely. Can I get anything else for you today?"

"No, that's everything thanks," Ben confirmed after a quick glance to him and Jack.

"Wonderful. If you'd like to pull up to the next window ready to pay. Have a good day!"

"Thank you. And you."

When they arrived back at Liverpool Street, Ben suggested eating in his office so that they could have some privacy.

"That'd be great, thanks, Ben."

"Sounds good. I'm just going to take this to Ian first," Alex added, proffering the McDonalds bag. He saw the sudden realisation in Jack's eyes as she understood why he had ordered two meals. The three of them took the lift down to the holding cells and walked the now familiar route to Ian's cell.

"Open the door," Alex said to the agent on guard outside Ian's room.

"I've got orders. No one is allowed in."

"Let. Me. In."

"I'd do what he says if I were you," Ben suggested from behind him. His voice wasn't quite at 'threatening' level yet but the agent on duty shifted uncomfortably, looking from Ben to Alex and back again several times before he finally opened the door.

"I thought you were having lunch?" Ian asked with a raised eyebrow when he saw Alex walk in.

"Well I brought some for you," Alex said, putting the McDonald's bag on the table.

"Spicy Mayo Chicken Legend with fries and a lemonade?" Ian asked hopefully.

For the first time, Alex smiled briefly as he nodded and put the meal on the table. They had never had McDonalds that often when he was growing up. It had been a very occasional treat but Ian had always ordered the same meal. The same meal that Alex had just brought him.

"I should go," he said, nodding to the door.

"Thanks Alex," Ian said, returning Alex's smile with one of his own.

Alex, Jack and Ben ate their lunch quietly in Ben's office. Alex was glad of that; he'd done enough talking this morning. And listening for that matter. He'd finished eating and was sipping his drink when there was a knock on the door. It opened before any of them answered and Mrs Jones walked in.

"Can I have a word with you, Alex?"

"If you must," Alex replied warily.

"In my office," she said, extending a hand to the open doorway.

"Really?"

"Yes, now, please, Alex."

"Fine. Fine, I'm coming," he said begrudgingly as he stood up.

"Just Alex," Mrs Jones said, and Alex saw that Jack had stood up too. He nodded at her to say 'I'll be okay' and she reluctantly sat back down.

Mrs Jones said nothing as she led the way back to the lift and up to her office. It was only once they were inside with the door closed that she spoke.

"What do you think of him?"

"What do you think?" Alex countered.

Mrs Jones sighed, clearly deciding whether or not she should say.

"He certainly has Ian's memories."

"He answered all of your questions correctly, then?"

"Yes. He did. And yours?"

"Yes. If you believe he's telling the truth, why haven't you released him?"

"Because the difficulty is that it can't possibly be him. You know as well as I do that he was killed two years ago."

"Do I? Because I was originally told that he died in a car crash. Then, only once I started to unravel the truth, did you tell me that he was a spy. First you all work for a bank. Then it's MI6. I have been told lie after lie after lie, so why do you think that I could ever trust anything you tell me?"

"Alex. You know very well that we couldn't tell you the truth to start with. Everyone is told that the Royal and General is a bank. All of our employees' friends and families think they work for a bank."

"And that's understandable, Mrs Jones, but you can't exactly stand there and say that I know Ian died when I never saw him! All I got was a policeman telling me he died in a car crash, a glimpse of a car that looked like his that was covered in bullet holes, and then you telling me that he was shot on his way home from a mission in Cornwall! What kind of proof is that?! And before you ask, no I don't want to see the file. I don't want to see the 'proof' that you have." Alex paused for a moment, bracing himself for what he was about to say. "You've been wrong before. You thought Damian Cray was good, remember. I'm just saying, whatever is actually going on, there might be more to the truth you think you know than you realise." He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. He'd never spoken to Mrs Jones like this before. Sure, he'd argued and protested, but even when Scorpia had sent him to kill her, he hadn't challenged her like this.

"We can't let him go until we understand," Mrs Jones said, ignoring the jibe about Damian Cray, although Alex was sure that she tensed slightly.

"And if you never understand? If you never get your answers? You'll just keep him locked up forever?"

"There is the possibility that it is an extremely well curated plan to get close to you, or to our intel, or both."

"Ah yes, that miniscule possibility that somehow there's an identical copy of Ian who's magically the correct age, has all of his memories and wants to infiltrate MI6," Alex said, injecting as much sarcasm as he could into his words. "And this copy somehow has Ian's exact keys and wallet and car."

"What exactly do you mean by that, Alex?"

He told her. He told her about the key ring with the Lego figure whose face he'd drawn back on. About the wallet with the receipt and the photo's inside and about the Tamagotchi that he'd found buried in the back seat of the car.

"Now I don't know about you, Mrs Jones, but I don't see how they would have gotten those specific details right, do you?"

"So you believe that man is Ian?"

"It doesn't matter what I think, though, does it? It never has and it never will."

"That's not true, Alex."

"Really?" Alex laughed incredulously. "In all of the time that you've known me and used me? You dare to stand there and say that you thought anything that I had to say or think mattered!"

"Of course it mattered!" she protested.

Alex scoffed. "No! For once, Mrs Jones, just for once, you are going to listen to what I have to say! You have made the last two years of my life hell. You can talk all you like about the good that I've done and the people that I've saved, but my life has been hell. It wasn't enough that you took my parents from me when I was a baby. It wasn't enough that you took Ian. No. Then you took the rest of my childhood. You made me face horrors that would give adults nightmares and then, when you were done with me, when I'd done whatever it was that you wanted, you just chucked me away until the next time you wanted to use me."

His eyes were burning as tears rolled down his cheeks but he didn't care. But even in his anger, his voice was steady.

"You have lied and manipulated and tortured me. And do you want to know the worst thing? You've turned me into someone who almost needs it. You've turned real life boring. But a boring life is better than being dead. You have taken absolutely everything from me. I lost Jack because of you. And when I told you that she was alive, you dismissed me. You told me to go back to America and to move on with my life. As if I'd ever be able to move on if there was the possibility that she was still alive. And now there's this man in the basement who says he's Ian. He has answered every single question that you have thrown at him, and you're still willing to stand there and dismiss the probability that it is him just because. Once again, you are prepared to ruin my life. You are willing to take my uncle away from me for a second time and you don't even care. Tell me something, Mrs Jones. When you got Sofia back, did you hold her at arm's length because she'd been with Nightshade for years?"

Alex didn't pause to allow her to answer. He had started on this tirade and he was too much in the flow to stop now.

"You knew for a fact that she was dangerous but you didn't lock her up and keep your distance."

"Alex," Mrs Jones said softly, speaking for the first time in minutes.

"No. I'm done, Mrs Jones. I'm walking out of here and I'm taking Ian with me. I don't care about your rules and procedures. You've never cared about repeatedly breaking the law, so why should I give a damn about your rules?"

Alex hadn't known what he was going to demand until it came out. And then once he had said it, he couldn't unsay it. So he guessed that Ian was coming home. Precisely how that was going to work, he didn't know. He still didn't really know how he felt about Ian. They would all have to get used to living with each other again; Alex and Jack to having Ian in the house and Ian to them having moved on and endured the two years from hell without him. But they had been a family once and they would make it work again, somehow… hopefully.

He stormed out of Mrs Jones' office and almost bumped into Jack and Ben who were standing in the corridor outside.

"Alex?" Jack asked cautiously. Alex wondered how much of his conversation with Mrs Jones they had heard.

"We're taking Ian and we're going home. Ben," he asked, looking at the agent, "please can you drive us?"

"Of course."

Alex marched down the corridor, Jack and Ben following closely behind. They said nothing when they were in the lift going down or when they were walking along the corridor towards Ian's cell.

"Open the door," Alex ordered for the second time that day.

"I'm afraid-"

"-Just open it." Apparently the look on Alex's face was enough to coerce the guard into moving and the door swung open.

Alan Blunt was sitting in the chair opposite Ian. Now Alex understood why the agent on door duty had been so reluctant to let him in. The empty McDonalds wrappers lay on the table and he presumed that meant that Ian had eaten.

"Alex, Daniels, Miss Starbright," Blunt said impassively, but Alex knew that he was taken aback by their sudden appearance. Maybe he'd ordered Mrs Jones to keep them occupied while he questioned Ian. "You shouldn't be here."

"No. You're quite right. I should never have been here. I shouldn't even know this place exists. But since I do, I'm taking a stand. I'm doing something that I should have done right at the beginning, but I don't think I can be blamed for any of that, do you? You should have done better. You should never have looked at a fourteen year old and decided that you were going to force them into a nightmare, no matter how useful you thought that they might be. I've already told Mrs Jones, but I may as well tell you too. I'm done. I'm leaving and Ian is leaving with me."

"Alex, I really can't allow-"

"-Can't allow what, Mr Blunt? It seems to me that there is nothing you can't allow. Blackmail, manipulation, breaking the law, using me. If you know what's good for you, you will uncuff Ian now. You will not prevent us from leaving. You will not follow us. You will not contact us."

"Is that a threat?"

"Yes. Yes it is, Mr Blunt. Because after two years, I have finally snapped. I am not prepared to allow you to ruin my life for a single second longer. It is my life and I am taking it back. Uncuff him. Now."

The next few seconds passed in an agony of silence as Blunt stared at him impassively. Alex could never tell what the man was thinking and right now was no different. But he did not back down. He had made his demands and he was determined that Blunt was going to concede for once. After what felt like an eternity, Blunt glanced at the agent who had been standing guard and nodded his head slightly. The agent rushed forwards and uncuffed Ian's hands. He pulled his hands towards him and stood up, his chair scraping on the concrete. None of them said anything as they left the building.

The car ride home was quiet too. Alex was still running on nervous energy from standing up to Blunt and Jones, and was concentrating on not physically bouncing and giving away how he was actually feeling. Thankfully, Ben and Ian were in the front and Jack was with him in the back. She probably knew what he was feeling, but Alex knew that she wouldn't make him talk about it. She'd wait until he was ready, and she'd listen when he was but she wouldn't press him to say anything before he wanted to.

"Alex?" Ian said once the three of them were inside the house.

"I'm going for a run. I need to clear my head," he replied dismissively. He couldn't face talking to Ian right now. He had to calm down before he even thought of having a proper conversation with the uncle who might or might not have been training him. The uncle who had possibly never loved him and who had mysteriously reappeared after two years of 'being dead'. Alex ran upstairs to change before Ian could say anything.

"Just give him some time," Jack said gently, leading him into the living room.

"What the hell happened, Jack?" Ian asked as he sank into one of the sofas. He'd hoped that Alex getting him released meant something, but now he wasn't sure.

"What did you think would happen when you left him in their custody?" she snapped furiously, stunning him into silence. "I was so angry with you for so long, Ian. You lied to Alex every single day of his life. You trained him. You took him on all of those adventure holidays." She scoffed. "I thought it was a way to make up to him all of the time that you were away. But it never was, was it? His whole life, you were making sure that one day he would be able to follow in your footsteps. His fathers. Ash's." She looked up at him and Ian saw the anger in her eyes, but he was so speechless that he couldn't even begin to try and question what she meant or explain. "He needed you and you weren't there. It was your job to protect him and you didn't. Everything that has happened in these past two years is on you, just as much as it is on Mr Blunt and Mrs Jones and the rest of them."

"Why did you say that I left him in their custody?" he asked quietly.

"Because you did. 'The Royal and General' are his legal guardians. They control the house, the money that you left. The only reason that he went on that first mission is because they told him that the house would be sold, I'd be deported and he'd be put into care if he refused."

"What the hell?" Ian breathed. "I promise you Jack, that's not what-" he struggled to find the right words. "I named you as his guardian. Whether it was to be temporary while you both worked things out or permanent was up to you…" he trailed off. "And I wasn't training him. Not in that sense anyway." Ian paused and took a deep breath. The realisation of everything he had learnt over the last twenty four hours was catching up with him… how badly he'd failed Alex… It took a few seconds before he'd composed himself enough to continue. "I knew that my past might have caught up with me and that Alex could have ended up in the middle. I wanted him to have enough skills that he would be okay if anything happened."

"It's not me you should be defending yourself to," she said coldly.

"He can barely bring himself to look at me, let alone talk to me… although," he said with a sigh, "I now see a lot clearer why."

"Ian," Jack said, her voice a lot softer than it had been for the last few minutes. "These past two years have been awful but it's got to be up to him to listen to what you've got to say. And he has to decide when he's ready to tell you the details of how it's been for him. And, to be honest, I don't know how long that will be. This is going to be hard for all of us. For Alex, you died two years ago and in that moment, his whole life changed. You went from being his uncle who worked in international banking, to a spy who had been training him his whole life to become a spy too. He's never said as much to me, but I know that he has spent the last two years wondering whether you ever loved him, or whether he was just an assignment to you. And since then… well I don't know exactly how much you know other than that Mr Blunt and Mrs Jones have forced him to work for them. He might be a teenager but mentally, he's been through so much that… well, he's had to leave his childhood behind in order to survive."

Ian swore under his breath. In the day he'd spent in MI6's custody, he'd gathered that it had been bad for Alex but evidently he'd only scratched the surface on how bad it really was.

"Look, Ian, if I'm confused by all of this, by you showing up again, if I'm so unbelievably angry by everything that's happened, I can't even imagine how Alex is feeling. He needs time. If you try and get him to talk before he's ready, he'll close up and he might never talk to you."

"So why did he get me out, even after all of the lies that he's been told about me? Surely that has to be a good thing?"

"As I understand it, Mr Blunt and Mrs Jones were willing to keep you locked up until they could be 100% certain that you're Ian, and they understood how you can have died two years ago and be here now. I think Alex just snapped. He knows it's you, even if he doesn't understand how, and he wasn't going to let them take you away again. But that doesn't mean that he's ready to accept that you're back in his life. I doubt he knows how to process it - I certainly don't - so, although he couldn't leave you locked up, I don't know if he knows how to live with you around either. And he doesn't know that it was all lies. For him, you were training him. You did give Mr Blunt complete control over his life." She sighed sadly. "I'm sorry, Ian. I really am. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're alive and here and can tell the truth all but, it's going to take a long time to get used to. It's going to take time to accept the truth, and it's not going to erase the nightmare that we've been living for the past two years."

"It's hard for me too. I mean, yesterday I was driving home from Cornwall, but I arrive home and everyone thinks I'm dead, and somehow we're two years in the future and I've found out that the worst thing imaginable has happened. I can't wrap my head around it either." He sighed and shook his head. "I'm just so angry that I wasn't here. That I couldn't stop them. And it's tearing me up that I don't know what Alex has been through."

"Just give him time, Ian. He might end up telling you more than he's ever told me because you'll be able to understand. He tells me bits and pieces, but I know he only tells me the minimum that he can. I clean up the mess as best I can, but there's so much that I can't fix."

"Thank you, Jack. For looking after him." He stood up. "I'm going to go shower and try and wrap my head around it too."

Ian headed upstairs and into his bedroom. It was strange. He'd last been in there less than a month ago but the room felt different. It felt like it had been empty for two years and he supposed that, technically, it had. It was strange to think about the fact that the world had moved on for two years, while for him, no time had passed at all. The question was, what was he going to do about Alex? Well, for starters, he had to set the record straight; he had never been training Alex to follow in his footsteps. To look after himself in case his or John's past ever came knocking? Absolutely! Had all those holidays been a way for Ian to share at least a little bit of his life with him? Yes. But training Alex to become an agent? Well, it had never been his plan and, anyway, that should always have been Alex's decision.

As he stood in the shower, the hot water splashing against his body and washing away some of the grime from the last day, Ian felt the rage that had been bubbling at the surface ever since he had suspected that MI6 had used Alex rising up until it exploded out of him. When he became aware of himself again, Ian was standing, his hands balled into fists and resting against the tiles, tears still rolling down his cheeks. He stayed there, letting the steam envelop him and feeling the water burning his skin, until he felt like he had some semblance of control again.

After a few more minutes, Ian turned the shower off, although he made no move to get out. Instead, he slowly slid down the tiled wall until he was sitting on the floor. All he could think about was how badly he had failed John and Helen. He had promised to look after their son and he had failed. He had failed Alex. He hadn't been there for him. Hadn't protected him. His imagination was going wild thinking about all of the possible ways that Alex had been used. Just how bad had things been?

He heard the front door close and Alex running up the stairs. He heard the creak of the bathroom door closing and the shower turning on. Well, that gave him the strength to dry his eyes, get off of the floor of the shower in his en-suite and get dressed. The sooner he could make sure that Alex knew the truth about all of the lies that he had been told, the better. It wouldn't do anything to change whatever Alex had been through in the last couple of years but surely it would help him to know that he was loved. That it wasn't what he had been trained for.

Ian quickly dried himself and found a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in a drawer. He was surprised, but grateful, to find that most if not all of his possessions were exactly how he had left them. Then he went in search of a strong coffee. Walking around the house was strange; everything was almost exactly the same but with slight differences. His bottle of red wine no longer sat on the counter. The brand of instant coffee had changed. The crisps in the cupboard were different. There was a new kettle. They were tiny details but each one was like a stab to the gut. A reminder of the life lived without him. He searched in the fridge for some coffee grounds to make a cafetière, but didn't find any. He supposed that made sense. He had been the one to drink it - Jack had always been happy with instant and Alex hadn't drunk coffee when he'd left. Ian wondered whether he did now. Taking his steaming mug into the living room, he collapsed into a sofa, feeling like a stranger in his own home.

He'd just finished his coffee and put the mug down on the table when Alex appeared in the doorway.

"Alex," he said, jumping on the opportunity to talk to him. "I know you aren't ready to talk to me yet. That's okay. I'll be ready whenever you are, but there is just one thing that I need you to know and it can't wait."

Alex nodded and sat down on the sofa instead of walking out of the room like it looked like he had been going to.

"What you said yesterday… that I'd been training you… I need you to know that that is not true. Okay, yes, I wanted to make sure that you could handle yourself in case someone decided to go after you to get to me. But I was never training you for the purpose of becoming an agent. It is very important to me that you know that. Okay?"

"Okay."

"I love you so much, Alex, and I'm so proud of you. You know that, right?"

Alex blinked rapidly and his eyes began to fill with tears, as much as he tried to fight it. He cleared his throat and coughed a couple of times before looking Ian in the eyes. Ian's heart broke before Alex said anything; a reaction like that could only mean one thing. Jack had been right.

"Um, actually, over the past couple of years, I had begun to wonder…" Alex smiled and laughed briefly, trying to make light of what he had just said, but Ian couldn't stand it. What the hell had Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones said to him in the last two years to make him doubt? He was going to make them pay for what they had done. There was no doubt in his mind about that.

"Oh, Alex..." All Ian wanted to do was to give Alex a hug but he didn't know how receptive he would be and he didn't want to push him further away than he was already.

"What can I do?" he asked instead.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"No. Nothing. Nothing you do or say is going to change what happened, so can you please just drop it?"

"Alex. Nothing is getting to me more than the fact that I can do nothing to change what has happened to you. If I could change it I would, but I can't. But that doesn't mean that things can't be different now."

"Don't you get it? Even if they never use me again, it's not going to change the past two years! The Alex you left when you went to Cornwall is dead. Has been for two years. Even if things change now, I am never going to be that person again. I never could be."

"I know that things aren't going to be the same. I know that there is no way that they possibly could be. But that doesn't mean that we can't begin to move on from here. Whenever you're ready, I'll be here."

"I'm going out."

"I could come? If you want?"

"No. I'd rather be on my own." Alex left and Ian heard the slam of the front door closing before he could say anything.

Days passed and Alex didn't seem any more willing to open up than he had been when Ian first showed up. He was out of the house 'running' for hours at a time and when he was in the house, Ian felt like he was walking on eggshells. He didn't blame Alex - whatever MI6 had made him do in these last two years had clearly been devastating - but he wished that Alex would talk to him.

"Hey, Alex?" he asked, knocking on his bedroom door.

"Hmm?"

He went in and handed over the steaming mug of tea that he'd made. "I was thinking of booking a holiday. To get away. Have a break."

"Oh yeah."

"Yeah. Is there anywhere you'd like to go? Skiing or diving or hiking or something?"

Alex looked at him with an intensity that he hadn't seen since he confronted Blunt in that cell. "None of those. Not yet."

"Okay. So 'or something' then?"

"Look, Ian. I know you're trying. I'm trying too and I want to talk but I also don't and, anyway, I don't know how…"

"Well, why don't you start by picking a holiday that you want to do?"

"There isn't anything left that we used to do that they haven't ruined for me. Skiing, kayaking, diving, surfing. They've ruined it all."

Ian didn't say anything but joined his nephew sitting on the bed, hoping that this would be the beginning of Alex opening up to him.

"Did they give you backup?" Alex asked after a few minutes of quiet.

"What do you mean?"

"Did they give you backup when you called for it?"

"If I called… yes they would."

"Must be nice."

Ian kept his rage in check. It would be no good for Alex if he allowed his anger to get the better of him, especially now that he was beginning to open up a little.

"How many times did they use you, Alex?" he asked gently.

Alex paused for a moment, his body tense. "Does it matter?" He sighed and thought for a moment. Ian could see his fingers twitching as he mentally worked out the number. "They've used me like ten times, the CIA twice and ASIS once. I went off on my own-" Alex paused and thought "-umm four times. Oh and I was kidnapped three times, outside of missions they sent me on. Well two of them were kind of related but after the mission I'd been sent on had finished so… and one was completely unrelated to anything I'd done… other than the fact that I'd 'worked' for MI6."

Ian swore internally. If he'd done the maths right, Alex had been used thirteen times in two years! The CIA and ASIS hadn't only known about it and not done anything to try and stop it, but they had used him too! And that wasn't including the times Alex had gone off on his own or been kidnapped.

"How about Iceland? For our holiday? To see the northern lights?" Alex said suddenly after a few more minutes of quiet.

Ian smiled. "Sounds good to me."

There was still a long way to go to rebuild their relationship, but they had started. That was the main thing for Ian. He would deal with MI6, with Blunt and Jones and everyone else who had been complicit in their using Alex, and he would make them pay. But, for now, Alex was his number one priority.

MI6 had already lost him his brother and sister-in-law. He would not let them take away their son too.

The doorbell rang. Ian jumped up to answer it and it was only as he was opening the door that he wondered whether it was the best idea. The number of people who knew that he was still alive was minimal, after all. Standing on the step was Tom Harris.

"Huh. You really are back, then," the boy said after examining him for a moment before stepping into the house and walking past him towards the stairs.

As Ian closed the door again, he was glad to find that some things hadn't changed in the two years that he had missed.

[irelise]

Yassen Gregorovich - Books vs TV

With the excellent new Alex Rider tv show out, I thought I would make a comparison post for one of my old favs, Yassen Gregorovich, who has a somewhat different feel in the books as compared to the show! This post will largely cover the first book Stormbreaker and should theoretically contain no spoilers for the potential future arcs of the show, since the events of Stormbreaker are presumably non-canon now. (Spoilers abound for the episodes of the show already out, though!)

If there’s any interest, I’ll put up a second post covering Eagle Strike and some parts of Russian Roulette that delves deeper into Yassen and his complicated relationship with Alex. Just let me know!

Much like the show, Yassen was the one who killed Ian Rider. Unlike the show, however, he’s known to be active on the field and the first time we “encounter” him is prior to Alex’s first mission, where Mrs Jones gives Alex a warning:

She took out a black-and-white photograph and laid it on the table. It showed a man in a white T shirt and jeans. He was in his late twenties with light, close cropped hair, a smooth face, the body of a dancer. The photograph was slightly blurred. It had been taken from a distance, possibly with a hidden camera. “I want you to look at this,” she said.

"I’m looking."

“His name is Yassen Gregorovich. He was born in Russia, but he now works for many countries. Iraq has employed him. Also Serbia, Libya, and China.”

“What does he do?” Alex asked.

"He’s a contract killer, Alex. We believe it was he who killed Ian Rider.”

There was a long pause. Alex had almost managed to persuade himself that this whole business was just some sort of crazy adventure…a game. But looking at the cold face with its blank, hooded eyes, he felt something stirring inside him and knew it was fear. He remembered his uncle’s car, shattered by bullets. A man like this, a contract killer, would do the same to him. He wouldn’t even blink.

[…]

“Why are you telling me this now?” Alex asked. His mouth had gone dry.

"Because if you see him, if Yassen is anywhere near Sayle Enterprises, I want you to contact us at once."

“And then?"

“We’ll pull you out. It doesn’t matter how old you are, Alex. If Yassen finds out you’re working for us, he’ll kill you too.”

I always thought this was a pretty good introductory scene -- Yassen has a very deadly reputation in the books, which is established at once then hammered in over and over again. Other traits which come up again and again include his coldness and his dancer’s body which is totally something I’m into, gotta love those “elegant and deadly assassin” tropes

(also, yes, Yassen is blond in the books and definitely not a brunet or even a redhead as in the movie. he also doesn’t have a distinctive facial scar!)

Yassen doesn’t actually have many scenes in Stormbreaker, although the shadow of his presence looms pretty darkly over the narrative. Alex only runs into him twice on the mission: once from a distance -- A lean, fair-haired figure dressed in black detached himself from the assembly line and walked languidly toward a door that slid open to receive him -- and the other encounter also occurs from a distance, when Alex is spying on a mysterious delivery at the docks in the dead of the night...

And then the tower opened and a man climbed out, stretching himself in the cold morning air. Even without the half-moon, Alex would have recognized the sleek dancer’s body and the close cropped-hair of the man whose photograph he had seen only a few days before. It was Yassen Gregorovich. Alex stared at him with growing fear. This was the contract killer Mrs. Jones had told him about. The man who had murdered Ian Rider. He was dressed in grey overalls and sneakers. He was smiling. He was the last person Alex wanted to meet.

[…]

Meanwhile, the guards from Sayle Enterprises had formed a line stretching back almost to the point where the vehicles were parked. Yassen gave an order and, as Alex watched from behind the rocks, a metallic silver box with a vacuum seal appeared, held by unseen hands at the top of the submarine’s tower. Yassen himself passed it down to the first of the guards, who then passed it back up the line. About forty more boxes followed, one after another. It took almost an hour to unload the submarine. The men handled the boxes carefully. They obviously didn’t want to break whatever was inside.

By the end of the hour they were almost finished. The boxes were being repacked now into the back of the truck that Alex had vacated. And that was when it happened. One of the men, standing on the jetty, dropped one of the boxes. He managed to catch it again at the last minute, but even so it banged down heavily on the stone surface. Everyone stopped. Instantly. It was as if a switch had been thrown and Alex could almost feel the raw fear in the air.

Yassen was the first to recover. He darted forward along the jetty, moving like a cat, his feet making no sound. He reached the box and ran his hands over it, checking the seal, then nodded slowly. The metal wasn’t even dented.

With everyone so still Alex heard the exchange that followed.

“I’m sorry,” the guard said. “I won’t do that again.”

“No. You won’t,” Yassen agreed, and shot him.

Largely a reaffirmation of what we saw from the photograph scene, this time in person: Yassen is generally quiet, understated and deceptively relaxed -- up until the point he murders somebody without blinking. I think the show does a good job capturing that aspect of Yassen, with scenes like Ian’s death and Dr. Greif in the car coming to mind in particular. Gotta love that pairing of Yassen’s generally calm demeanour with the bursts of restrained yet lethal violence!

Some other minor but interesting character notes: despite being one of the most highly-paid and successful assassins in the world, Yassen is perfectly comfortable doing grunt work (passing boxes, dressing in shitty grey overalls). Similarly, despite being (presumably) more comfortable working alone, he’s also at ease with giving orders and coordinating large groups of people.

Now, moving onto the last time Yassen shows up in Stormbreaker. This is right at the end of the book after Alex successfully foils the plot of the big bad (Herod Sayle), only to get kidnapped by him while his guard is down. Sayle takes them to a rooftop where a helicopter is coming to whisk Sayle away, but first he wants to have some revenge...

"That’s my ticket out of here!” Sayle continued. “They’ll never find me! And one day I’ll be back. Next time, nothing will go wrong. And you won’t be here to stop me. This is the end for you! This is where you die!”

There was nothing Alex could do. Sayle raised the gun and took aim, his eyes wide, the pupils blacker than they had ever been, mere pinpricks in the bulging white.

There were two small explosive cracks.

Alex looked down, expecting to see blood. There was nothing. He couldn’t feel anything. Then Sayle staggered and fell onto his back. There were two gaping holes in his chest.

The helicopter landed in the center of the cross. The pilot got out.

Still holding the gun that had killed Herod Sayle, he walked over and examined the body, prodding it with his shoe. Satisfied, he nodded to himself, tucking the gun away. He had switched off the engine of the helicopter and behind him the blades slowed down and stopped. Alex stepped forward. The man seemed to notice him for the first time.

"You’re Yassen Gregorovich,” Alex said.

The Russian nodded. It was impossible to tell what was going on in his head. His clear blue eyes gave nothing away.

"Why did you kill him?” Alex asked.

“Those were my instructions.” There was no trace of an accent in his voice. He spoke softly, reasonably. “He had become an embarrassment. It was better this way."

"Not better for him.”

Yassen shrugged.

“What about me?” Alex asked.

The Russian ran his eyes over Alex, as if weighing him up. “I have no instructions concerning you,” he said.

"You’re not going to shoot me too?”

"Do I have any need to?”

There was a pause. The two of them gazed at each other over the corpse of Herod Sayle.

“You killed Ian Rider,” Alex said. “He was my uncle.”

Yassen shrugged. “I kill a lot of people"

“One day I’ll kill you.”

“A lot of people have tried.” Yassen smiled. “Believe me,” he said, “it would be better if we didn’t meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you’re still a child.”

He turned his back on Alex and climbed into the cabin. The blades started up, and a few seconds later, the helicopter rose back into the air. For a moment it hovered at the side of the building. Behind the glass, Yassen raised his hand. A gesture of friendship? A salute?

Alex raised his hand. The helicopter spun away.

Alex stood where he was, watching it, until it had disappeared in the dying light.

HOO BOY where to start! This is a longer scene compared to the rest but I love it so much, it’s probably the best part of Stormbreaker for me and obviously it’s fairly different from the show. I adore the last scene of the show since the tension was delightful, but this hit in a different way. Alex! And Yassen! Actually talking!!! It’s a sparse scene (like most of AH’s writing), but very atmospheric and loaded with meaning all the same.

Let’s start with the obvious stuff first - book!Yassen is fair-haired and blue-eyed (or grey, depending), and has a very measured way of speaking without any accent at all. He very much falls into the archetype of “inscrutable Russian assassin with a mysterious connection to the protagonist” and it’s delightful.

I do like the fact we only really see Yassen in person for two scenes in the entire book, and both times he kills someone ruthlessly and efficiently. (...yes, he did kill Sayle while piloting a helicopter) His reputation is well-deserved and I think the show does an excellent job with that too; every time we see Yassen on screen there’s a feeling that shit is about to go down and somebody is about to die.

The show also does a pretty good job hinting at the connection between Yassen and Alex (ughh Yassen’s expression when he sees Alex for the first time kills me every time). In Stormbreaker, Yassen does (initially) seem colder towards Alex, emotionless, just a man on a job. But even then, we get little hints of warmth shining through such as the way he smiles when Alex promises to kill him, and of course the salute! It’s pretty clear that Yassen has some measure of fondness for Alex, because no way an assassin would normally just let somebody go after they promised to kill him, even if that person is only a teenage boy (especially considering that teenage boy is driven by a desire to take revenge on his uncle’s killer). I also think it’s interesting that Alex reciprocates his salute. He’s clearly aware (even if only subconsciously) of the connection between the two of them.

Though I think what hits the hardest for me is the fact Yassen is the one to tell Alex that he belongs in school, that he’s a child and he shouldn’t be part of this world. Alex in the books is much, much lonelier compared to the show. There was no Jack or Tom there for him, since Jack was kept completely out of the loop and Tom doesn’t even exist in the book. Wolf and the K-Unit largely either ignored or bullied Alex. As for Blunt and Jones, Alex just saved thousands of kids in England yet the only thing MI6 tells him afterwards is that his actions can never be revealed to the public, his youth will make him useful for future missions, and then the only thing they give him is a doctor’s note(!!!) to explain his absence from school.

If that sounds all sorts of terrible and unfair, Alex agrees:

In the end the big difference between him and James Bond wasn’t a question of age. It was a question of loyalty. In the old days spies had done what they’d done because they loved their country, because they believed in what they were doing. But he’d never been given a choice.

Nowadays, spies weren’t employed. They were used.

And of all the people to point out how fucked up the whole situation is and how Alex needs to get out...it’s Yassen, the contract killer, his uncle’s murderer. And Yassen says it straight to Alex’s face instead of just making token protests about how wrong it is to send a teenage boy into danger and then doing it anyway. I think the moment had a fairly big impact on Alex, and I was sad it wasn’t included in the show, but ah well. Another time, maybe?

BONUS

OK i know this was meant to be a book vs tv show thing BUT I WOULD BE REMISS IN MY DUTIES NOT TO LINK TO THE LAST SCENE AS DEPICTED IN THE OLD MOVIE

‘2 minutes of questionable everything’ from the video description about sums it up. the violins. the closeness. the long lingering looks. “i’ll never forget you.”

Anyway, hope this was interesting and at least a bit informative! Do let me know there’s any interest in a part 2 of this post covering Eagle Strike and maybe a bit of Russian Roulette!

[movedyoakkemae]

alex's second "therapy" session. / do not reblog.

Dr. Feng: Alex, the last time we spoke, you told me how your uncle, Ian Rider, prepared you to be a spy. How were you actually recruited into MI6?

Alex: I don't want to tell you.

Dr. Feng: Why not?

Alex: It's classified.

Dr. Feng: You remember, then.

Alex: Yes.

Dr. Feng: It's important to go over these details. I need to know that your memory is functioning properly... that there hasn't been any damage as a result of the injury to your head. And as I've explained to you, I work for MI6 too. Have you forgotten that?

Alex: Why are you keeping me here? I want to leave.

Dr. Feng: Then the sooner we get through this, the sooner we can make that happen.

A long pause. Subject trying to remain silent.

Alex: All right. I was recruited after Ian died. At first, they told me he had been killed in a car accident. It seems to me that MI6 tells quite a lot of lies about car accidents.

Dr. Feng: You think I'm lying to you?

Alex: I didn't say that.

Dr. Feng: Go on.

Alex: I tried to find out how Ian had been killed and that led me to MI6. I nearly got myself killed... twice. The first time, I hid in a car crusher and they started it up. And then I climbed out a window to get into Ian's office.

Dr. Feng: And what did you find?

Alex: Nothing. The whole thing was a waste of time. It was a test. Alan Blunt had already decided he wanted to use me.

Dr. Feng: Who is Alan Blunt?

Alex: He's the chief executive of MI6 Special Operations. If you work for MI6, how come you don't know that?

Dr. Feng: I do know that, Alex. I'm just testing your memory.

Alex: Alan Blunt needed someone to investigate a company called Sayle Enterprises, which had a manufacturing plant down in Cornwall. That was where they were making a brand-new computer -- the Stormbreaker -- and the owner, Herod Sayle, had offered to give one, free, to every school in the UK. Blunt knew there was something dodgy about him and he asked me to check him out. I went into the plant under a false name. There was a boy who had won some competition to visit the factory and I took his place.

Dr. Feng: What happened to Herold Sayle?

Alex: Somebody shot him. It wasn't me. I never wanted to kill anyone. And when I was sent on my missions, I was never given any weapons, nothing that could seriously hurt someone. Mr. Blunt never let me have a gun and I was glad about that. I'm fourteen. It's bad enough that I have to lie to all my friends about what I do. I didn't want to be a spy and I still don't. If they asked me to kill people, I'd refuse. I'm not sure I'd be able to live with myself if I did that.

To be honest with you, if I had a choice, I'd walk away. A lot of the kids at my school would think it's cool to be a spy and to have adventures and miss class and all the rest of it. But I was never given any choice. So far, I've been lucky, but one day I'm not going to be able to walk away. I'm going to end up in a real hospital... or dead.

And what's really sick is that if I get killed, Blunt won't even care. He'll be annoyed. It'll be inconvenient. But in a way, he and Mrs. Jones are as bad as the rest of them. They're using me the same way they'd use a gun or a hand grenade or whatever. I'm just a weapon. A secret weapon. And when the day comes that they can't use my anymore, they'll simply find someone else. They'll forget about me.

Dr. Feng: I'm sure that's not true, Alex.

Alex: I'm tired, I don't want to talk anymore. I want to go back to my room.

[corolune]

Breathing Underwater Chapter Three: Lightning

AO3 / Tumblr Alex had always known he wasn’t like other children. They didn't hear the song of the ocean in their ears, or feel the thrumming rhythm of the waves in their hearts like he did. Then he finds a silvery coat made of seal fur, glistening and calling him to slip it on — and everything he thought he knew about himself washes away like foam on the sea. Alex Rider is a selkie, and this is the story of how a seal becomes a spy. Prologue 〰 Chapter 1: Zephyr 〰 Chapter 2: Nimbus 〰 Chapter 3: Lightning

light·ning — ➀ the flashing of light produced by a discharge of atmospheric electricity; ➁ a sudden stroke of fortune

Only weeks after his fourteenth birthday, Alex woke to a dark sky pierced by a red and blue glow. Everything was still and silent, in that part of the night when everything was asleep. As he blinked his eyes open, he peeked through the soft curtains near his bed, and saw that the flashing lights came from a police car sat in their driveway. As he heard the doorbell ring downstairs, he could feel a sense of unease, the same way he felt when clouds started gathering and he was stuck outside. A sure sign of a storm to come.

Now fully awake, he could hear the soft sound of Jack’s slippers padding down the stairs to the door. Letting the curtain fall back over the window panes, his eyes fell on his fur coat, still on his desk chair from where he’d left it to dry after school. He wasn’t sure what was going on yet, but he didn’t want to leave it lying there if anyone happened to come inside. Shoving aside his sweatshirts and trousers, he pushed it into a hanger in the very back of his closet and slid the door shut.

He heard Jack open the front door with a rattle of the chain, and tiptoed down the stairs to peek into the foyer.

There was a policeman at the door, and Jack’s quiet words floated down the corridor.

“A car accident? But Ian was always so careful…”

Sitting down heavily on the bottom step, the words washed over him, and he felt the first thunders of the storm to come. Just like his parents, his uncle had died in an accident while traveling. Distantly, he found himself wondering if that was what would happen to him, too, dying on his way to somewhere else, a victim of someone else’s carelessness.

As sunlight bled into the sky, he couldn’t help but wonder what exactly happened to his uncle. Where had Ian been going so late at night? And how would he, the same man that drove like an eighty year old, forget to put on his seatbelt? The more he thought about it, the more he found things that didn’t add up.

Tom and Jack put it down to shock, but he knew there was something wrong. And like always, he was too curious to let it go.

A few days later, seated in a drab, grey office opposite an equally grey Alan Blunt, Alex was regretting that he’d indulged his curiosity.

“There’s something we’d like you to do for us,” Blunt said.

“My uncle died because of you. What makes you think I’m going to help you?” Alex crossed his arms and glared at him and Mrs. Jones.

Ever since he had woken to that bleak policeman’s doorbell, he had been adrift in the choppy waves of a stormy sea. At first, it had seemed like the storm would soon be over, but now he saw it was only the beginning of many, like the rains of the monsoons.

“You’ve already proven yourself to be quick, resourceful, and most importantly, curious.”

Curiosity killed the cat, Alex thought to himself as they went on to explain about some billionaire called Herod Sayle, and his plan to give away thousands of Stormbreaker computers.

“All you’d need to do is look around and report back to us,” Mrs. Jones said.

“I’m not doing it.”

All of a sudden, Blunt shifted, and when he spoke next, there was none of the forced friendliness from before. For the first time since Alex had walked into the office, he saw the cunning shark that lay beneath the man’s skin.

“Your uncle left the Royal and General Bank in charge of your care. Certainly, Ms. Starbright is no longer needed, especially with her expired visa. I’m sure Mrs. Jones could find a suitable institution that would handle your living and schooling.”

“Are you blackmailing me?” Alex scoffed in disbelief, yet somehow he’d known this was coming. The storm in his life had finally broken, and now he had these people on one hand, ready to pull him out from drowning in the icy waves. If he didn’t do as they said they would push him back into the water.

Mrs. Jones spoke around yet another peppermint. “Alex, if you only helped us with this, we’d be able to let you stay in your home with your housekeeper. Otherwise, there’s just nothing we can do.”

“You haven’t really left me a choice,” muttered Alex, with a resigned sigh. “It’s just to look around, you said?”

〰〰

He’d done much more than just looking around. When Alex crept back into the room he’d been given at the sprawling Sayle mansion, he snatched up the gadgets Smithers had given him. After some thought, he pulled his sealskin out of the bag and slipped it on, too. If things went badly, he didn’t want to leave it behind, and surely it was safer on him. After his night time adventure in the submerged tunnel, he was coming to realize it could be useful in more ways than he had initially thought. He shuddered, thinking of how the cold and dark water would have been much more comfortable and easier to navigate with his warm seal fur and sharper eyes.

Pulling the silver fur closer to himself, he quietly opened the door, only to come face to face with Mr. Grin — and then, with a sudden jerk backwards, his eyes slid shut and he saw only blackness.

When he woke, he was cuffed tightly to a hard metal chair that rested against the vast, glass wall of the aquarium. Left alone in the room, after Sayle and his assistant had left, he had the distinct feeling of being just as trapped as the restless jellyfish that was held captive in the deep tank behind him. The glow of coloured lamps cast the undulating form of the sea creature in flickering shadows onto the tile in front of him.

As he wrestled with the metal cuffs, he heard the click-clack, click-clack of heeled shoes. With a feeling of dread, he looked up to see Sayle’s other assistant, Nadia Vole.

Moments later, that dread turned into panic, as he was thrown into the winding passage and splashed into the cold tank, only metres away from the Portugeuse Man of War.

The salt water burned at his scraped and bruised wrists. The jellyfish drifted languidly while Alex spluttered and slapped at the water, keeping his head afloat in the small pocket of air.

“I hope you can hear me, Alex,” he heard from a speaker somewhere above him. Through the thick glass, he could see Vole’s cruel smile. “I am sure you will have seen by now that there is no way out of the tank.”

As he looked around, he saw there was indeed no path for escape — the metal structure holding everything together was screwed tightly, and the glass seemed too thick to shatter with his weight. All the while, he kept an eye on the dark, mauve tendrils ever reaching through the drifting current. When he turned his attention back towards Vole, she was still droning on. “Soon, you will get tired, Alex. You will drown. Or perhaps it will be fast and you will drift into the embrace of our friend. You see him...no? It is not an embrace to be desired. It will kill you.”

Kicking in the water to keep afloat, he remembered Sayle’s words describing the stinging cells dotted along the long mass of tentacles. In the neon coloured lights, the circular nodes glowed ominously.

An unforgettable death, Sayle had said.

There was an echoing beat, like a drum, and he realized it was his own heart hammering away in his chest. Flowing water rolled towards him as the current changed, drawing the creature closer, and with a quick push against the wall, he managed to evade it. The glass stretched behind him, some twenty or thirty feet of it, but the man-of-war itself was close to ten feet long.

Its tentacles had danced through the current, just inches away from his arms. He broke through the water, spluttering in his shock. As he gasped for breath, trying to keep still, something clattered against the artificial rocks that were set into the massive aquarium. Through the rippling water, he could see something shiny and metallic winking back at him in the flickering lights.

Vole’s blurry figure seemed to be laughing at him from beyond the thick glass. Suddenly the water shifted, a strong current making small waves and bringing the jellyfish back towards him. More water splashed into his face, and he felt himself being dragged with the flow, his fur coat heavy on his back. With a sharp breath, he ducked underwater, swimming towards the metal object.

Distantly, Alex heard the song of the ocean thrum through his blood. As the water closed over his hair, the hood of his sealskin floated over his head, and he felt himself fall to the rhythm that was pulsing in his heart.

There, he saw what had fallen out of his pockets — Smithers’ zit cream — and breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow, the pressure of the water had lessened, and his lungs had stopped fighting for air. When he reached for the tube, he realized why — instead of rounded fingers, he saw five stout claws, attached to a furry, grey flipper.

Alarmed, he looked through the rippled glass at the bottom of the tank and met Vole’s shocked, round eyes. Breathing out slowly, he shook his head — Vole knowing his secret would only be an issue if he found a way out of the aquarium, and it was easier to focus on the problem at hand. A quick look up, and he could see the tentacled creature still drifted near the top of the water. Hopefully the current would keep it there, long enough for him to spread the cream onto the metal frame keeping the glass in place.

He snatched up the tube from where it lay amongst the rough hewn rocks, and scrabbled at the cap, struggling to get a strong grip on it with his claws. A few failed attempts, and he resorted to holding it in his flippers, and twisting it open with his teeth.

The white cream burst out, and he smeared it onto the metal that was closest to him. He followed the seams, squeezing the tube firmly and rubbing the paste into the joints with his claws. Dodging the enormous jellyfish, he swam quickly to the other side, his back flippers beating the water powerfully, and spreading the cream onto the other side of the frame.

Now, he would only have to wait, and hope that Smithers’ cream would work just as well underwater as it had in his office. He floated into the far bottom of the tank, away from the tangled tentacles and the front wall that would soon shatter.

〰〰

A lean, fair haired man stood silently in front of a helicopter. Though he was irritated at Sayle’s habit of delaying, he looked just as bored and indifferent as the rest of Sayle’s staff. The breeze rustled the leafy trees nearby as the helicopter’s engine rumbled in wait. An inconvenient, and supposedly urgent, phone call had had Sayle scurrying off of the aircraft, and he could see the short man waving his left arm wildly. A thin, shrill sound screeched out of the phone, and he recognized it as Vole’s voice.

Yassen Gregorovich was starting to regret taking this job, and he found himself wondering how many more madmen he would have to look after before his employers realized he was better suited elsewhere.

Sayle was still on the phone as he hurried off the helipad. Sighing, Yassen climbed into the aircraft and switched the engine off, watching the older man’s silhouette disappear into the hedges. It looked like they wouldn’t be departing anytime soon. He might as well stretch his legs.

As he passed through the open archway of the house, he heard an enormous, deafening crash from Sayle’s office. Was this what had caused Sayle to hurry back inside? What was that man up to now?

In a few quick strides, he had a sinking feeling he knew what had happened.

A steadily growing stream of water puddled on the persian rug in front of the office door. It seemed that Sayle’s grotesque jellyfish had finally met its match.

He opened the door slowly, letting the water flow out to equalize the pressure before stepping inside to a scene of complete wreckage, like a seaside town after a storm.

Water gushed through shattered windows, escaping the house. Lavish furniture floated by in broken pieces, and ornate frames with priceless, soaked artwork hung crookedly on the walls. Everything was covered in a fine sheen of liquid, and droplets trickled down from where the spray had hit the ceiling. He spotted the Vole woman prone on the floor, the man of war clinging to her head like a monstrous wig, and couldn’t suppress a grimace.

He delicately picked his way through the debris, careful to keep away from the venomous tentacles, which floated lifelessly in the shallow water that still flooded the room. The front wall of the aquarium was in pieces, as if something had blasted its way through.

A shape in the corner of his eye moved, and he whipped around to face it.

Something dark and furry disappeared under a floating bronze sculpture. Grateful for his combat boots, Yassen made his way towards the corner. He hadn’t been in Sayle’s office in some time, and wouldn’t be surprised if the man had added a new creature to his collection. Kicking aside a toppled candelabra, he sloshed around the heavy wooden desk only to come to an abrupt stop.

He blinked. There, hiding under the remains of Herod Sayle’s desk, was a large, fat, grey seal. As he stared at it, the seal spread its mouth into a smile. Impossibly, the creature lifted its paw as if to wave hello, before shuffling forward with a small splash.

Yassen watched it come towards him with apprehension. Perhaps it wasn’t a fully grown seal, but the thing would easily weigh over a couple hundred pounds, enough to cause serious harm. Clearly, enough to break the supposedly high-strength glass that now covered the floor in broken shards. Had Sayle decided to house a seal in the same tank as the jellyfish? The man was truly an idiot.

The man of war was highly venomous and any animal in close contact with it would succumb to a painful death. Almost every rich person Yassen had had the misfortune of coming across in his life had the most peculiar tastes, and more often than not, their whims bordered on idiotic cruelty.

Round eyes stared up into his, and he found himself feeling a bit sorry for the animal. It was lost, stuck in an unfamiliar world, but it was a strong and brave creature. Instead of succumbing to its fate, the seal had somehow managed to smash its way out of the tank, and now, instead of cowering in fear, it bravely looked up at him, asking for help.

Somewhere deep down, the seal reminded Yassen of himself, but he brushed that thought away before it had a chance to fully form. He bent down, stretching his hand towards the furry animal, and was pleasantly surprised when it bumped its head against his skin. Its fur was soft and warm.

As he looked closer, he saw a shard of glass had pierced into its flank, a bright red line of blood marking it out from the rest of the silvery fur. Now he understood what the clever creature had been asking of him.

“Are you hurt, little one?” He murmured softly, looking into the seal’s eyes as he slowly moved closer. For a fleeting moment, he thought he recognized something familiar — something he couldn’t quite place — in those dark eyes.

The seal huffed quietly, a low grunting sound, in answer to his voice. Compared to Mr. Grin and Vole, he supposed anyone would seem friendly to the poor sea creature.

The glass wasn’t embedded too deeply, and would be easy enough to pull out. Glancing around the room, he saw the sheer curtains that lined the heavy brocade drapes — they were still relatively dry. Tearing them from the windows, he ripped off a wide ribbon of the white cloth, and snatched up a heavy throw from the remains of an armchair.

With a few careful folds of the knitted blanket, his fingers were protected from the sharp edges of the large shard. With his other, free hand, he gently stroked the seal’s side, carefully assessing the best angle to extract the fragment. A quick, sharp tug, and the glass was free — but drops of blood fell into the water at his ankles, blooming like ink.

The seal was breathing quicker now, and as Yassen reached over to grab the strip of linen curtain, he saw the seal watching the blood trickling out of the wound. Swiftly, he folded the cloth around the cut, pressing hard until the blood flow slowed.

That was when he realized that binding the bandage would be a problem. He could wrap it around the top of the seal but he wasn’t about to endanger himself by trying to roll the animal.

Well. He’d done his best, and that would have to be enough. He supposed he could call someone who actually knew what they were doing. Who did one ask for, to help a randomly appearing seal, anyway? This job was ticking a lot of firsts on his list.

Seals, it turned out, were much more intelligent than he had originally thought. The furry animal pressed its flipper against the cloth covering the wound, and rolled in the shallow water, before attempting to tie the bandage itself.

The seal slapped its flippers against the water, and let out a loud, indignant bark. Yassen was shocked to see it grab the ends of the cloth in its claws and wave it at him, and couldn’t hold back a startled laugh. Shaking his head, he bent down again and tied the bandage securely.

For such a clever and brave creature, he would have to find someone to take it to safety, away from Herod Sayle, even if he wasn’t exactly being paid for it. But first, he had a deadline to keep, and a billionaire to prod back onto schedule.

Later, a bewildered animal worker would arrive at the scene after receiving an anonymous tip, but by then the seal would be long gone, as if it had never been there.

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