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maccreadysbaby · 9 days ago

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OPERATION: ULTRAVIOLET

alex rider + oc insert

tw: violence :)

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

two in the same day??? Yessir!!!

part two

❝ INFILTRATION ❞

TUESDAY — MAY 3, 2001 — 8:56PM

FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD MALACHI GREY BLACKWELL LIVED A VERY STRANGE, VERY ISOLATED LIFE.

His days started off at precisely seven in the morning, every morning, with a health drink, an hour in the gym, and a hearty breakfast. Then came a phone call with his stepfather, who had the only home's landline ringing at exactly eight-fifteen every single day. Never earlier. Never later.

Afterwards, he would do school, for perhaps five hours. Drowning in foreign language and math textbooks far above his year, he receded to his room until he found his schooling fit for the day. He always had lunch in the midst of his schoolwork — at exactly twelve fifteen.

After, he had one hour of down time, before three hours split equally into self defense training, first aid training, and firearm safety courses that never came with an actual firearm, but plastic ones with orange tips from the store.

After those came dinner at exactly six, four more hours of free time, and then lights out.

Malachi Grey Blackwell lived — and had lived, for all fourteen years he'd been alive — in his stepfather's penthouse apartment at the top of a highly secure Miami skyscraper. He was homeschooled, and he had been since he was old enough to read. His mother and biological father were dead, and his stepfather was hardly home; he had no pets or friends. They did, however, have a butler — an older man called Lionel, who cared for him and the penthouse.

And that was all the human interaction Malachi was allowed.

His school curriculums were sent to the penthouse, textbooks and all, at the beginning of fall and spring terms. His physical training routines were sent to him via email by a trainer he never had the pleasure of meeting. All of his other training and classes — self defense, first aid, etc. — were taught by Lionel himself.

Almost every single day of his fourteen years, he'd spent with the butler, in the penthouse.

Once a week, Saturdays at noon, Lionel carted Malachi through Miami in a Mercedes with extra thick doors, bullet proof glass, and fiercely tinted windows, to an anonymous location that housed a gun range. Malachi was blindfolded on the drive. There, the butler taught the teenager how to use any style of firearm he could get his hands on.

Once a month, every fifteenth, they traveled to Fort Bragg for more exclusive training; The disarming and disposing of bombs. Dealing with poisons and nerve gasses. Breaking out if he ever found himself in a hostage situation -- all taught by Lionel and a Sergeant who had been sworn to secrecy regarding the boy's very existence. Sergeant Wilhelm, Malachi thought he was called.

And all of that, all of the training and precautions, were put in place because Malachi's stepfather was Joe Byrne, the CEO of the CIA, whose title alone was enough to put targets on the heads of anyone who existed around him.

Of course, not being blood related gave them an advantage already — no one would connect surnames, because they weren't the same. But that wasn't enough for Joe Byrne.

Malachi had been carefully concealed from the public eye for his entire life. Everything of his was anonymous -- the schooling institution didn't have as much as the name of the child they were providing the curriculum for, the private trainer didn't have even a hint at who they were really training. He was born via a midwife who kept no paperwork and was long dead. His birth certificate had only been seen by his deceased mother and Joe Byrne. His name was only uttered inside the penthouse he lived in. He'd never been to a doctor's office. He'd never been to school. He'd never even been to a sit-in restaurant.

Only his stepfather and Lionel knew Malachi's name. His features couldn't be tied back as a familial match to anyone, because everyone biologically related to him who'd given him his big brown eyes, almost back hair and tan, Italian complexion, was dead. It was as if... he hardly existed at all.

But, it was safer, he supposed, if he didn't.

And they all took his safety very, very seriously.

Malachi drummed his fingers hard against the textbooks that were sprawled across his mattress, matching the beat to the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. theme song. It was dark outside, and through his bedroom window, which was one-way glass just like the rest of the penthouse's windows, keeping him completely invisible to the outside world, the stars twinkled above Miami like a million tiny fireflies.

Not that Malachi had ever seen a firefly before.

The nineties sitcom was playing on the large plasma television that sat just opposite Malachi's bed. It was perhaps the only thing bringing life to his bedroom -- a fifteen-by-fifteen room, accompanied by an on-suite closet and bathroom, built into the farthest corner of the penthouse with thick walls and a steel door. It was only accessible from the living room bookshelf. In order to open said steel door from the outside, one had to find the hardcover copy of Wielding the Economy as a Sword by David Brayke, amidst the perhaps thousands of more intriguing books, and type a twelve-digit passcode into a fingerprint-sensitive keypad on the inside of the back cover. Only then would the bookshelf split and swing open. There were three panic buttons in the penthouse — one in a kitchen drawer, a second in his father's nightstand, and a third, on the back of Malachi's headboard. Those buttons put his entire room in lockdown, and the shelf wouldn't open without detailed coding and lots of minuscule detail that only Joe Byrne knew how to perform — not even Lionel or Malachi himself would be able to get him out. It also called the police and notified his stepfather no matter where he was.

Of course, Joe Byrne had spared no expense on spoiling his son in return for the immense safety measures and seclusion. In the bedroom alone, he had a Playstation, DVD and VHS tape players, at least three different gameboys, and probably more than one or two dozen board games he could always pester Lionel into playing. And that was among the other, more expensive hobbying supplies he owned, like the sixteen-thousand dollars worth of paint and easels and canvases that stayed under his bed, or the bookshelves lined with thousands upon thousands of titles that, all together, probably costed more than Malachi himself.

(Well. If he'd been worth anything in the first place.)

Despite everything his stepfather had lavished him with, his favorite thing to do in his downtime was watch television. The shows that he could watch on there -- shows like F.R.I.E.N.D.S., like Boy Meets World, like Saved by the Bell -- they were the closest he ever got, and would ever get, to interacting with the world he lived in. Learning about it, about how to navigate social interaction, about how fast and in what ways the world moved while he stayed stationary. He had to discover and live it all vicariously, through fictional characters played by award winning actors on a plasma screen.

Did he wish he could be part of that world? To have friends, and go to coffee shops, and school, and have fun? Yes. A hundred times yes. But would he ever have the chance?

No.

"Kai," Came a smooth voice from beyond his ajar door — a tenor tone that sounded almost melodic, with a faint yankee drawl. "Would you like to play cards?"

Kai pushed himself off of his bed and turned his television off, heading for the large metal door lined with bookshelves on the outside. He pushed it the rest of the way open and stepped through the left side of the bookshelves that flanked the fireplace, into the living room of the penthouse.

It was lavish and modern, decorated with minimalist furniture and very little decor. (His stepfather found trinkets useless.) The entire thing seemed to be an endless color palette of gray and beige, maybe some brown here and there, accented only by the twinkling city lights and nine-at-night stars shining in the windows. It was spotless in the penthouse, per usual, because very little living ever happened inside.

He could see Lionel just through the opening that separated the dining room and kitchen from the living room. Shuffling a deck of cards in his nimble fingers at a large, modern table, Lionel Ferara was a middle aged man, maybe fifty or sixty, with greying hair on his head and a small, wispy moustache on his upper lip. He was wearing a tailcoat, like he always did, even if Kai was the only one who ever really saw him.

Lionel had more or less raised Kai from a baby. He'd always been there — he was the one who was there when he took his first steps, who cared for him when he was sick, who helped him learn to read and write. The penthouse may have belonged to Joe Byrne, but it was more Lionel's, as far as Kai was concerned. Himself, too. That is, if anyone were to actually have legal custody of him. But, since he didn't exist, he guessed no one did.

Kai made his way over and sat in the dining seat across from him. Lionel flipped and spun the cards between his fingers impossibly, even sending them arcing across the air once and landing again in his opposite hand.

Kai smiled at him. He loved when Lionel did card tricks -- it was simple, but it looked out of this world, and there was nothing quite like it that ever happened in the penthouse that wasn’t on television. "What game?"

Lionel shrugged with a playful look on his face, swiping the cards across the table to make a perfect semi circle, then swiping them up again. "Gin rummy?"

"Sure,"

Lionel had only chosen it because Kai was good at gin rummy. Every other card game seemed out to get him, even the children's ones like go fish. He could never seem to get dealt a winning — no, even a decent hand in any other card game. He suspected foul play sometimes; but what good would it do Lionel to cheat against someone who didn't exist? He couldn't even brag to anyone about it!

When Lionel finally stopped performing fancy tricks and dealt the hands, Kai realized he'd gotten a pretty terrible one.

He had a pair: one and one, and the rest were three, four, six, eight, ten, ace, jack, and king. He might've had a chance if Lionel got an equally terrible hand, but he didn't suspect that would be the case.

"What did you do in school today?" Lionel questioned, his bright brown eyes trained solely on his cards. It was almost similar to scenes Kai saw in tv shows, where the parents would ask about their child's day when they got home from school. Only... Kai hadn't left the house, and Lionel had only been one wall away when said school was happening.

"I did lots of French, and Portuguese," Kai shrugged. "And then some Biology."

Lionel looked at him over the fan of cards in his hands, humming. "No math?"

Kai shrugged sheepishly, glancing back at his cards. "I didn't feel like doing it today."

"As long as you do the week's worth by Friday, I don't mind," Lionel said casually. The pair began to draw and discard cards, organizing them in their hands as they went. “When I was in school, I failed math.”

Kai looked up at him, eyes wide, a smile splitting across his face. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. I hated it,” Lionel scoffed. “Once I fell out of my desk and started yelling that the numbers were trying to kill me. I got detention -- teachers can’t take a joke.”

Kai chuckled -- a rare sound in the penthouse. “I can’t imagine you being that dramatic.”

“Oh, I was way worse than that,” Lionel laughed.

A long while of silence passed.

"Do you know when I'm going to see dad again?" Kai asked, swapping a ten of hearts out of his hand for a five.

Lionel's lips stayed in a thin line for a moment, before he licked his lips. "Unfortunately not, son," He said, a solemn edge to his voice. "But, chin up. Your stepfather may be a very busy man, but you know he'll make time to see you soon enough."

Kai nodded, as if that wasn't the answer Lionel gave him every time he asked. "I know..."

For a half an hour, the penthouse was quiet, with only the occasional triumphant exclamation, or quiet chatter, or flapping of cards against the table. They played four games. Kai won three.

Then, at fifteen minutes to ten, the landline rang.

The shrill sound startled Kai so badly he nearly fell out of his seat. He twisted around in his wooden chair to glance at the phone that hung just outside the dining room and kitchen, as if trying to convince himself it really was the source of the screechy noise.

Grocery deliveries, school curriculum mixups, salesmen, handymen, the cable providers — they all called Lionel, on his personal cell phone.

No one ever called the penthouse but his father.

Kai whirled back around, his brown eyes blown wide and catching on Lionel's gray ones immediately. One misstep in the day's schedule and already, he could hear his heart slamming in his chest, his breaths threatening to grow thick.

Kai Blackwell had been groomed into a creature of habit. And a nasty one at that; one that couldn't even handle the sound of the phone ringing at a time it usually didn't. What if someone knew about him? What if a criminal was on the other end of the line? What if his father had died? What if they were going to die?

Lionel put his cards down on the table and held a slightly wrinkled hand toward him. "Easy. Probably just a repairman or the landlord checking the line."

Lionel stood hurriedly, walking around the table and out the opening back into the living area. He stopped out there at the wall-phone and picked it up, making brief eye contact with Kai, who didn't dare take his eyes off of him.

"Hello?"

Kai couldn't hear the voice on the other end. He couldn't hear much at all over the sound of his foot tapping anxiously, of his heart beating three times the normal speed in his ears. He stared hard at Lionel, trying to read his face, but it gave nothing away.

"Sorry, I think you have the wrong number," He said calmly, casually, giving the boy no anxious or unsettled queues. "No, that's okay. Bye-bye."

He hung up the phone with a ding, and for a moment, he stared at the receiver. There was something swirling grimly in the back of his gray eyes that made Kai uneasy, jittery.

"What is it?" The teenager asked quickly. "Who was it?"

Lionel turned toward him with a forced smile. "I... I think it's about your bedtime now. No worries. Hurry along, I'll clean up our game."

Kai didn't budge so quickly. He rose from the table, his sense of alarm tripling as Lionel walked back over to him. "Who was that?"

"Just a wrong number," Lionel replied, grabbing the box their cards had come out of. "Off to bed, now."

Kai moved, slowly, back to the open bookshelf in the living room, keeping his eyes trained on Lionel. He didn't give up his reassuring smile as he began to gather the cards.

Then, came the whirring.

Kai whirled around to face the hallway that doubled as a small entry, just off of the living room — the elevator doors were there that took them straight to the lobby of the building. It was a private elevator. It stopped at no other floors but the penthouse, it didn't even have doors on the other floors. It had a fingerprint sensitive keypad at the bottom and the top so no one unauthorized could even dream of using it... but there it was. Whirring. Humming. Moving.

Was his father home?

The growing sense of dread in Kai's stomach seemed to drown out even the hope of a surprise visit. He turned to look at Lionel, who was staring at the elevator, too. He'd suddenly abandoned the cards and was moving toward Kai, batting a hand in his direction. "Go. Quickly!"

Kai turned on his heel and hurried back into the living room, his heart pounding, shooting through the bookcase door and pulling it behind him until it clicked. The latch on his side would still work to open it right up, like a normal doorknob, but on the other side, the book keypad that only Lionel, Kai, and Joe Byrne could use was activated. If Lionel triggered the panic button in the kitchen, Kai would be stuck.

Kai pressed himself hard against his door, all but flattening his ear against the almost invisible crack in an attempt to hear what was going on. He could've swore he heard the ding of the elevator.

Who was there? And what did they want? Who could get in? It was his father — it had to be his father. It couldn't be anyone else, they couldn't use the elevator. Kai's nerves were threatening to vibrate his very bones apart, his hands already trembling where they were pressed against the door.

Suddenly, Lionel's voice came: "What are you-"

And then, a bone-chilling thud, and a click that made Kai's heart sink all the way down in his toes.

He knew that sound all too well.

That was the sound... of a gun.

His mind seemed to split from his body and float somewhere above him. He couldn't really feel anything as the weight of the sound settled inside of him — he'd heard the racking of a pistol slide many, many times in his life, he'd been a mere arms length away from the loud crack that sent a bullet hurtling down the range and into a target.

But never had it brought the cold, dark, inescapable feeling of death with it.

"Where's the boy?!" Came a new voice — loud and authoritative, deep, and gravely. Angry. "You have thirty seconds to speak before I blow a hole in your head!"

The teenager’s ears seemed to ring. He glanced over at the headboard of his bed, and he could see the small red button shining on the back of it, covered by a plastic cap so it never accidentally got bumped. Did he need to press it? To lock himself in indefinitely until his father got everything under control? To leave Lionel out there with the man who had a gun…?

Something about the simple thought made Kai’s stomach turn.

“There’s no boy here! It’s just me! I’m the housekeeper!” He heard Lionel reply, voice quivering.

“Go find him,” The gruff voice ordered. Malachi heard the repetitive, retreating booms of footsteps heading toward the second floor stairs. Was there more than one armed man in the penthouse?

“Please. I don’t know who you are, but I’m the only one here,” Lionel pleaded. “There is no boy.”

“We know Joe Byrne has a son,” The voice replied harshly, and the sound of safety clicking off made Kai freeze. “You’re going to give him to us, or you’re going to die. Tell me where he is, now!”

Kai turned the door handle and pushed against the living room shelves silently, just enough to see a sliver of the living room. He couldn’t see Lionel and the man with the gun, because the elevator was behind the shelf — and he couldn’t see the other man who’d supposedly walked by. He wanted to look farther, but if he opened the door more, they’d see the out of place shelf next to the fireplace.

What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t let this man shoot Lionel — but he knew for a fact that the housekeeper wasn’t going to give up his location. He would protect Kai with his life, even if that meant it had to end, abruptly, and unexpectedly.

Kai wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

He looked out over the living room. On the other side, next to a bay of windows, was the door to his father’s private office. Kai was allowed inside — but he simply never had a need to enter. Behind the large wooden door he knew were bookshelves, a large mahogany desk, a designer rug, a large single panel window, and a baseball bat hanging on hooks on the wall, on display for the world.

It was old, and metal, with things written on it in marker that were fading. It was Joe Byrne’s little brother’s bat from college that he’d hit four home runs with in more than one game his senior year.

“Please! There’s no one else-“ Lionel’s voice was cut off by the abrupt clack of metal against flesh and bone, and there was a second thud.

“Quiet!” The gruff voice ordered.

Kai’s heart seemed to be trying to rip itself out of his chest. The straight shot through the living room and into his father’s office tunneled and stretched in his vision, from a mere twenty-five foot run, to a mile. He could see the wooden door and it seemed to get farther, farther, farther…

There was a second crack, harder than the first. Kai heard Lionel whimper.

And in an instant, without much thought, he shoved the bookshelf open and darted out of his room toward his fathers office.

His heart slammed in his ears, and his socked feet pounded hard against the hardwood floor, arms pumping fiercely as he made the short run like he were having a foot race with a jet airplane. He heard the noise of shock from the gunman before there was a string of loud bangs, and a hail of bullets passed just over Kai’s head as he crashed into the office.

He had no time to close the door. With his vision darkening, tunneling, he fumbled against the leftmost wall, his grip coming to rest on the bat. He pried it out of the hooks and held it tight in his fingertips, inching himself behind the open door.

He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to get shot, and he was going to die.

Kai’s hands trembling, the man slammed into the room, banging the door back against the wall so the metal knob nailed the teenager directly in the torso. It hurt, but the gunman didn’t seem to notice that the door kicked back too early, so Kai didn’t dare let himself make a sound.

The man had his back to the door. It was the first time Kai actually looked at him — he was tall and burly, wearing solid black with a ski mask so he couldn’t really make out anything about him. He had a semi-automatic pistol clasped tightly in his hands. Kai knew how to use it, how to clean it. Never, ever, had one been shot at him.

Kai had been prepared for this. This was what his father had been training him for his entire life. But now that it was here, he couldn’t seem to remember any of it. He knew that he’d been taught a way to disarm a person with a handgun, but he couldn’t remember and he wasn’t close enough. He knew techniques to knock someone unconscious in one strike, but he couldn’t remember where to hit. Why couldn’t he remember anything?

The man turned around.

Kai‘s reaction was instantaneous. In a fit of adrenaline and panic, he brought the bat up over his head and swung directly down like a lumberjack splitting a length of wood. Hhe was aiming for the man’s head, but the gunman jumped back just in time for him to miss.

Panic surged through him when he realized he had missed. But… it was quickly replaced by shock. He had missed the man’s head, yes, but the bat had slammed into his forearms instead. The man yelled out and jumped back, and the gun clattered to the floor with a loud clack just between their feet.

Kai dropped the bat and dove for it. So did the man, but Kai was much smaller than him and was able to drop to the floor much faster. He grabbed the pistol and, in one swift movement, swung his arm around with every bit of strength inside of him and slammed it into the man’s face with a crack.

The man was crouched from reaching for the gun, so he fell back onto the floor with a thud, blood pouring from his nose. Kai threw the gun far behind the door and picked up the bat again, bringing it down on the man’s head with a ding, one, two, three times until he had stopped moving.

Kai was trembling. He felt like he might vomit. He stood over the man for a solid ten seconds before, with shaky hands, he grabbed the pistol, flicked the safety on, and left the office with both weapons in hand.

“Lionel!” He called. The older man was still crumpled in the entryway hall, and Kai ran for him immediately, hitting the floor and sliding the final five feet on his knees across the hardwood.

Lionel was conscious and sitting up, but his nose was bleeding at an alarming rate. His forehead was split and leaning crimson, and his left eye was bloodshot and already swelling.

Kai dropped both weapons with clatters and grabbed the man by the head, examining the wounds. He felt like he was forgetting something — but there was no time to remember. His adrenaline was making mind fuzzy. He almost felt like crying. “Lionel.”

Lionel grabbed his arms with a forced smile. “I’m okay, son.”

Kai couldn’t breathe, and he was shaking a lot. He inhaled, a sharp, gaspy sound.

Lionel’s brown eyes flicked to something behind him. “Kai!”

Suddenly, someone had him by the neck, and a cloth was forced over his nose and mouth. Panic flooded his veins, and he jolted, bringing his hands up to pry and claw at the arms around him, to no avail. They were too strong.

His limbs started to go numb, and heavy; it was hard to move. His vision was turning black at the edges. Lionel reached out for him, and a boot kicked him roughly in the head.

That was the last thing he saw, before his world went dark.

The thing he’d forgotten… was the other man in the penthouse.

—

tag list! I’m just assuming currently so forgive me if you despise me and don’t want to be on it lol

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy

#alex rider #alex rider fanfic #mb; operation: ultraviolet #oc; kai #oc; kai blackwell #oc; malachi blackwell #oc; lionel #oc; lionel farara #oc; hugh #oc; hugh waters #ov; leon waters #joe byrne #alan blunt #tulip jones #mi6 #cia

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