Alex Rider's elbows on the bar were numb. He couldn't feel his mouth in his face. The one side of his jaw felt bruised and mottled. Respectfully, he held his injured arm aloft, hand drooped like the broken neck on a hunted goose. His arm was bandaged and sewn snug like a teddy bear but its throbbing felt nothing like that of pain. From the awkward crook of his neck, he saw that the ice in his drink was melted. A good sign, he had been slowing down a bit since all the time before the ice had clattered itself noisily on the sides of his glass like how his teeth banged around against his swollen cheek.

"Hey," he said, flopping his arm and broken neck hand, "hey, bartender. What's the name of this place?"

The bartender had been ignoring him for most the while. Tending to other patrons that each adopted that religious bowed pose. Each staring into their cup or bottle like Alex had been except their hands were fine if not nicotine stained. The bartender threw a look at him, and said, "Say what?"

"I said what name? No, I...What's the name of this place?"

The bartender glanced skywards, a sharp contrast to his sad faced clients. He looked up for god's strength while the others looked down. "You don't know?"

"No well, I was a bit busy, I mean this place is something dumb right, something-."

"This bar has the spectacular name of Hinkins."

Alex scowled at the slowly melting ice. "I meant the town, what town."

"Don't ask," the bartender said, "you won't know it."

"Well that's a bit of the bloody point."

He had gotten a bit tired, but he felt that he was tired all the time now, but it was a different sort of ache that didn't dissolve itself when amphetamines did. Sometimes he wondered if it would make a difference if he lodged up wads of cotton and smashed them in his ears, wadding it up and poking deep until they popped his ear drums. His teammates now liked to chatter at him, ignoring the way his cheeks still were round and his skin pimples on occasion; they liked to pretend his face was a comfort to them like their families were when they woke up screaming after bombing a place of worship in Iraq.

Alex listened to them chatter, laughing at their cues as they rambling on about a new girlfriend or what new car they wanted to buy after MI6 fueled their paycheck. They were all so much older than him with scars and military tours and Alex was still just a boy in their eyes and Alex didn't bother to correct them. MI6 sent the one man, a codename that kept changing so Alex didn't bother trying to remember it, all the information for their targets. They had that fake illusion, the one engraved with glory and making-a-difference and Alex wouldn't bother to break their fake beliefs if it would break their aim and perspective.

They ran through rather spectacularly, shooting innocent civilians while Alex planned the escape route and eventually searched a hospital for their target. A terrorist wanted by nine different countries, but one man or a million men wanting him dead wouldn't have made a difference. Alex didn't find him in the first known location, or the second, or between the scared children smelling of sweet urine that meant diabetes, or the unconscious woman covered in chemical burns.

"He's not here," so Alex left and met with the greenhorn team and didn't flinch or join the screaming as MI6 dropped bombs instead.

"What the fuck!" the team leader shouted, the one that thought two tours in Afghanistan and medals meant something to MI6, "what thefuck!"

Alex didn't bother explaining because if the greenhorns didn't make it then they'd be shot and he'd be paired with someone new. They took turns sobbing in horror, retching over what glory really meant. Broken legs and toxic burns and no more sleeping but always feeling so tired.

He'd made a dangerous cynical camaraderie over somewhere in Italy. Their special little jet detouring for more fuel and time. Every so often Alex would see his teammates twitch, the one with a pregnant wife he gushed about hadn't talked since they boarded. Alex could have parroted him, for how loud he chattered on and on. The other, the one who wanted a truck, had punched the walls a few times.

"Why aren't you messed up, Rider?" The team leader demanded. His face contorted in a snarl, like he wished he could scream.

Alex shrugged wordlessly. His captain grabbed his collar, hauling lanky bones up to attention. "I said why aren't you messed up, Rider!"

"Because," Alex said listlessly, "it's a mission."

"It's a fucked up mission! That's what that shit show was!"

Alex said, "no, it really wasn't."

It was all right to be who he was, but others would probably think it was terrible. A couple of times in the past he'd reached this...absolute zero of the truth, and without fear or bitterness in his heart he realized now that somewhere inside it where was a move he could make. A shift across a chessboard, an effort that could change his life, to make himself another person, but Alex could never figure out what it was.

Sometimes he felt that bit of life, that hungry spark that chewed him up and spat him out and he masochistically leapt back in. The heat of fire dancing on his fingertips. Alex hadn't been a smoker, but he carried a thick metal plated lighter in his pocket. Stolen of a corpse of someone he didn't remember, faces blacked out and body tightening and already stinking of feces, but Alex took his cheap metal plated lighter and pretended it meant something.

He struck the stirrup and for a moment there was nothing before him but the flame. When it wavered and danced it left his fingers tingling- oh what a wonderful feeling. He'd gone looking everywhere for it.

"Maybe I should be locked up, you know?" said Alex.

Tom looked at him, grown up and older, with a patch of stubble he missed while shaving and the clean smell of cologne he wore to try and impress his girlfriend. Alex didn't want to tell him that he thought she didn't love him, that she only told him that because they were both so insecure and small and sometimes being important to someone made you forget your own insignificance.

"Why? Did you break any laws?"

"I always break laws, I'm supposed to. It's my job or something I think, maybe I should go and rob a jewelry store and see how long I'm on parole for."

Tom scowled at him. He didn't think it was very funny.

"What else kind of locked up is there?" Tom said, "you going to head overseas again? I watch that show on the telly, Carra does too, that'Locked up Abroad' stuff is bloody bad, mate."

'Carra' Alex remembered that was Tom's girlfriend's name. He didn't think she was important enough to remember.

"Nah, not me."

"Good! Poor blokes, hear all about reporters getting snatched. Don't go making enemies overseas Alex. Alex? You hear me?"

He wondered what Tom would think knowing he had blown up a hospital, that he'd sent the signal after seeing the orphans and dodging the open reaching claws of a garish newborn with anencephaly.

"I hear you," Alex said, stretching out lethargically on Tom's small couch. It was lumpy on the corner, he should fix that, but he'd find out soon when the girlfriend fought and he was forced to sleep on it alone.

"So uh, when you graduating again?"

Tom looked at him, face shifting into neutral. He was easy to read and prod into functionality, like driving a manual stick. Tom's voice had gotten deeper, a low hoarse growl to it from shouting on his sports team. Tom's nose was crooked like a bad tape job on a broom, but his smile was bright and he had all his teeth but a minor concussion left him slow at maths.

"In three months mate," Tom said, "you said you were coming."

Alex hummed a flat noise and wondered if Tom would have broken up with the girlfriend by then or if Alex would have to pretend to remember her name and face.

"What about you?" Tom asked. "Anything new? See anything fun? How was America?"

"I saw someone jump in front of a cop car," he said unsure, "the car missed, but it lit up right after to get the jumper."

Tom looked at him. "That's not fun, mate that's sick."

"Well, I didn't hit him, and the cop didn't hit him, and there wasn't another police brutality riot so I thought it was fun to see?"

Tom didn't look happy. "That's sick mate, that's sick. That poor bastard, wonder what happened to him."

"Maybe he got locked up," Alex said.

Alex left the bar swaggering, grabbing the doorframe to keep his legs steady. His bad arm, with its lame broken goose-neck hand flopped erratically as he hauled himself to the curb.

"Whoa there," someone said, not nearly as drunk but not sober enough to steady him, "you need me to grab a cab?"

Alex staggered against the telephone pole, reclining against it. "Wh't time?"

The streets were empty here, in this forgotten town in some forgotten backwater American region. A state with a name that sounded like vowels slurring together. The type with biker gangs with leather jackets, that whistled at his baby face but choked in anger when he whistled back. They sometimes swung first, but most times Alex kicked their knees out.

"Three in the morn." the tipsy stranger said, "arn' you young?"

Alex shrugged, burped something rotten and sour then laughed because he could. His stitches stung a bit but it was a hazy grumbling burning. Towards the end his hands shook too much to hold a shot glass, it spilled half on split skin and half across his teeth.

There was a night bus, driving from stop to stop along this empty corn fed city. It picked up passengers each as weary as him, most trembling from their own sort of poison. Almost all of them were black, Alex laughed because through the thoughts of assassinations and poisons and slitting children's throats, he forgot that racism was still a thing.

"You can't keep riding, honey." The bus driver said, looking a bit miffed but not concerned enough to do anything. She seemed sweet, another black woman a tad overweight with a face like a caring mother but no more strength to care. "You have to get off eventually."

Alex grinned at her and said, "Wh'n you 'ff work?"

Sometimes the medical unit of MI6 had disgusting people. Limited by mind or body or the sadness that weighed more than flesh could handle. Some of the staff there weren't certified. They were volunteers, those who felt too guilty over missions and instead dedicated themselves to making other monsters feel better.

Alex never liked it. The stench of floor cleaner and air freshener and how some lucky bastards got out with amputated legs and only their own self pity to pin them down in bed.

Smither's came once or twice, pretending that what they had still existed and wasn't tainted anymore by corpses and his face on bounty markets. Smithers tried to find the bright side; Alex still had all his fingers and toes and limbs and most of his teeth. Alex had an urge to spit in Smithers face.

"Why don't you work here?" Staff suggested, handling him like he was broken. Maybe he was, but helping others and passing medication felt more disgusting to him then throwing grenades. A false layer, a mask of domesticity and compassion that Alex had ripped out of him by bullets.

"Why don't you leave me alone?" Alex said.

"Working will make you feel better, it'll give you a sense of purpose. It's annoying to be held down, so maybe helping others will-."

"People seem to believe I should work here, and you all seem to believe that I'd be happy about it because all of you shits," Alex said, "seem to think that work is a happy thing."

They looked struck by his outburst, staring at him wordlessly like he was something of an outlier. Alex waved at them, and wondered if they had once been on his team as well.

He knocked into a motorcycle. One of the behemoth chrome ones that Americans seemed to worship. It teetered and clattered, already mucked from Alex's fingerprints.

He laughed, because in the shithole world there was one asshole who left his bright pretty motorcycle out in a legal parking spot. Alex felt like kicking it, maybe the effort would burn the liquor from his pores.

"Hey! Hey!"

"Hey y'rself!" Alex shouted back, faltering through octaves and volumes as vertigo twisted his vision and balance.

The screaming voice revealed himself as a balding man with a small belly tearing down the fire escape. A portly man, not towering or muscular but he carried his weight through his shoulders and looked large enough to right side the motorcycle with little effort.

"You did this! You little bastard, if you scuffed my baby you-."

"Y'r baby?" Alex laughed, "baby bec's your face l'ks like somethin' I draw w'th my lef' hand."

Alex waved his hand, broken goose neck and all and laughed the taste of whisky.

He felt the punch and let his leg kick out. He was drunk and the world was spinning but punching flesh and breaking bones was something Alex knew sober or sleeping and maybe more broken teeth would make alcohol slosh down faster.

"You fucker!" the man roared, bashing in Alex's face with pork meat fingers, "you fucker!"

He was sleeping in a jeep in the backseat with his head against the window. It was hot outside so the air conditioner was spewing halfhearted lukewarm air and rattled like a garburator. Alex didn't wear his combat helmet, instead he wrapped his fingers tight around the straps and tried to doze to the unimportant argument of his new commander.

They were in Turkey, somewhere Alex didn't care with a mission of some sort that his team thought was important but Alex knew didn't mean anything. Another death tally or an imposing presence, and one of his teammates would end up screaming or shot or maybe dead if they were lucky enough.

"Don't worry kid," the other backseat support said bravely, "it'll be easy as tea or uh, whatever you British kids like."

"You'll probably die first," Alex said with his eyes closed. "Don't wear your seatbelt like that, when the mines go off it'll trap you and you'll die here."

The mines did go off, Alex wriggled himself out of his broken window, chucking his combat helmet to the side because it was already hot as hell. The radiator was hissing and leaking, neon yellow frothing fluid that parted the oil and gasoline spill like Moses. The car exploded, and Alex took a longer walk about the crater of his jeep red sea.

"What a bastard!" Alex shouted, laughing and swaying slightly on his bar. He was a few drinks in and his face stung a bit raw but the alcohol burned down his throat and hurt worse than his torn up skin.

The occupants of the bar in Turkey were a sort that Alex knew and noticed. The men that stayed out late and early and walked with a hunched lumber that whispered sleeping in alleys or on couches from unhappy wives dealing with drunkards. Alex wouldn't remember one in the sunlight, or outside the haze in the bar where loneliness and long fled hope saturated the broken stools and bar tops like stain.

"A bastard," Alex said, giggling and pointing at the door.

The new arrival looked a bit perplexed, but no one else had heard Alex's drunken declarations or none cared for one voice when men tried to drown out all they heard.

"I know that face," Alex continued rotating on his stool, swiveling around although the stool was not meant for such. It screamed out a grating cry of metal on metal but Alex ignored it and sloshed out more whiskey from his miniature glass.

Nile, dressed in what seemed to be standard Turkish clothing walked quickly and silently through the sooty hookah stinking bar. He slid onto the available seat next to Alex, avoiding the wet puddles or a half melted chip of ice traveling to an unknown destination.

"What are you doing here?" Nile asked instead, casually waving some salute to the bartender who had grown indifferent to Alex's babbling tongue. "I thought you had teams now."

"Oh," Alex said, setting the small glass down very carefully, "smashed up, thanks for that."

Nile frowned, said nothing until a beer had been slid to him. It was warm and he didn't drink it. "Your team got smashed up?"

"Amateurs." Alex snorted, "one got deca-capi- decapitated. Bloody mess, y'know how long i'takes to get here? From walking?"

Nile stared at Alex, finally noticing what looked like road rash and steadily weeping lesions along his exposed left hand. "You looked banged up yourself."

"Nah," Alex said, downing what alcohol remained of his before he pulled Nile's beer and pulled that down too. He set it down, chest heaving and forehead sweating from the Turkish heat. His clothes looked dirty and damn, smelling like sweat and the sweet dark stink of hookah and toxins melting from his pores. "Not banged up- you wanna?"

Nile only needed a fraction of a moment to comprehend Alex Rider. He frowned, the boy couldn't be that old, younger than Nile was even when he first started out on solo missions.

"No," Nile said.

"Fuck you too."

"Not that." Nile said, waving down the bartender who slid him another bar, uncaring for the small grubby fingers that snatched Nile's beer on the way down, confiscating it for his parched throat. "You're drunk."

"Dn't talk abou' morals."

"How long have you been here?"

"Seven hours," the bartender provided helpfully, likely thinking that Nile would take Alex with him and finally steal away the annoying loud mouth drunk.

"Jesus, Rider." Nile said, running one hand along his face. "So, you showed up, your team instantly died, you didn't, you hauled ass all the way here, didn't contact support but went to a bar, and decided to get shitfaced."

"Yep," Alex said.

"Did you think at all about what you were going to do after?"

"Pick som'ne up." Alex squinted down at the table top in thought. He used one thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of where some of the older more exhausted burnouts were sharing drugs or unconscious or dead. "M'be fuck."

Nile stared at him. "You were planning on getting laid. Can you even speak the lang-."

"Nah," Alex Rider said, burping something disgusting and rancid. He fell from his stool, liquid and boneless and somehow managing to flop like a cat over Nile's thigh and side. On instinct, Nile wrapped and secured his unwanted cargo, finding the sweaty agent flush to his hidden body armor.

Nile heard the bartender mutter a prayer of thanks, and found himself obligated to drag the boy back to where he had been setting up base for a while now.

It wasn't that far away, the bar tended to frequent the more darker side of Turkey so it was an easy area to exchange information for the stability of SCORPIA's operations. Finding Alex Rider was unexpected, but Nile had been watching the boy's steady decline into something more disturbing than even Yassen's self expression.

"Ooo," Alex crooned, grubby fingers and bleeding scabs popping on Nile's shirt. He ignored the several dubious looks from night dwellers, the lecherous sounds that even Alex returned drunkenly.

Alex was unconscious and gasping wetly for air by the time they got to Nile's temporary housing. Wetly puking all liquid and sweating just as much. He was a flushed disgusting wreck, blood splattering his face from an angle that suggested it was the day old wreck of his former teammates.

Alex slurred something half drunk and half unconscious that Nile couldn't process, even with all his code breaking training. Alex hiccuped and burped and puked himself sorry.

At some point, Nile awoke and forced his elbow sideways into a trachea and sour breath. He heard the gurgle and the wet pressure in the two minutes he steadily restrained his foe- the long two minutes before his eyes adjusted pigment and let him see Alex Rider's adrenaline high and blown pupils and broken tooth smile under his arm.

"Do it," Alex gurgled under Nile's arm, the little weasel having wriggled himself between the covers to Nile's side, " do it."

"What the fuck, Rider." Nile hissed, instantly releasing the younger and staring as the boy pouted.

Nile endorsed the idea of not doing anything at all. He felt that Rider expected something of him, and by choosing ignorance he both salvaged whatever trauma and danger Rider clearly wanted done.

Alex slumped back into his pillows, slippery and hot with the Turkish heat and the blankets. " Ugh, either fuck me or fuck me up."

"You want me to beat your scrawny ass?"

Alex mumbled something into his pillow but stilled and choked out snores instead.

"You going to be fine out there, Rider?" Nile asked him on the drop point, leaving him alone in the Turkish lines where MI6 supposedly had sent their agents to rendezvous.

Rider rolled his eyes, throwing a middle finger salute with a black scabbed cheek and a black bruised throat.

"Sure," Rider rasped, his voice harsher than a meat grinder, "ask that to my bullet holes, tell them I'm fucking fine."

He knew the cycle, wash rinse repeat. People like him, they lived and survived on the gentle scheduling that, over time, drifted thread by thread, until they lived a mangled existence of patchwork things and patchwork places that would always, eventually, fall apart.

"Why, Alex?" Jones asked him, that low sad tone to her voice. The audacity, that he had disappointed her.

"Why what?" He rasped, because why not?

"Agent Rider, your mission report said that you abandoned your teammates after an incident, and then decided to hold up in a bar."

Alex grinned, teeth bright and eyes dark. "Oh, that."

" Why would you…"

"What? Why would I do that? How could I do it? How could a person gothat low? And, I understand your question, Mrs. Jones, to which I politely reply are you fucking kidding? That's goddamn nothing-."

"Rider. Control yourself."

"That's nothing," Alex grumbled furiously, "I've been so much lower, and I goddamn expect to be lower-."

"Stop." Jones snapped, voice cold and sharp and there it was, that fancy tone that tore back all that fake parental care. "Stop. Explain yourself. Now."

"I'm a complete and utter mess," Alex said, "and the rest of you lot go on trying to fool each other over it-."

"Agent Rider, you have passed all required physicals and checks. You are completely medically cleared and that is not a viable excuse for your actions."

Alex said, "and yet somehow you always find excuses for ridiculous actions instead."

Jones' face sharpened quickly. "That is above your clearance."

"Of course it is." Alex said. The woman had hurt him before, and perhaps maybe once he may have thought of her fondly, may have thought of her as a project in sympathy, a potential out if he bared his heart just right. Those times had been forgotten just as the names of corpses were forgotten, or the face of the man whose lighter he stole was forgotten, or Tom's girlfriend who he couldn't picture or the date of his graduation he was sure he had already missed. The woman, this woman, hurt him. Mrs. Jones looked so polite and pretty and perfect, and just as the rest of the world was cheap and cold and made of plastic, she had been a mannequin all the way through as well.