Safehouse is going to be a two-part series with a possible 'sequel' that I'm starting on. Within the next week, all three parts to it should be up. Please R&R! ~ SamayouTamashi

Swearing colorfully in at least seven different languages, Alex could hear the thugs reloading from somewhere behind him. He sped up the pace, clutching his shoulder tightly though he knew the Kevlar should be tight enough to staunch a lot of the bleeding. As he glanced back to see how far behind the shooters were, a lucky shot grazed his cheek. 'Nothing deep,' he mentally noted while recoiling away from the open street. 'Won't even scar if I'm lucky.'

Over all, he hadn't had the best of luck today. Before he had realized the danger, their sniper had nailed him in the shoulder. The bastard was a great shot, sending Alex crisscrossing the city to lose him and the rest of his team.

Sharply turning the corner he leapt up, ignoring the burning throb in his shoulder, to catch the thin ledge of a low balcony above him. Pulling himself over the metal guard rail and into his new vantage point, he pulled his Sig from the holster around his waist. Only recently, MI6 had allowed him to carry guns but only if they were unregistered and in no way connected him to them. Not bothering to aim, he shot the five men who had come in the alley only a moment behind him. He didn't bother to look either. All five shots had gone right between the eyes with the exception of the one who had been turned in an awkward direction. The bullet had gone through his heart.

A shuffle of feet was his only warning before a sharp jab to the side of one knee knocked him to the ground and the Sig tumbled from his hand. The gun clicked as the cold metal was pressed firmly to the side of his head. "And here I thought we were having fun," Alex said.

"None of your silly remarks can help you now," replied a man with an unbelievably thick Russian accent. "Goodbye, Rider."

"Rider was my father," he snorted under his breath as the razorblade previously imbedded by Smithers in the false base of his sneaker was suddenly fully sheathed in the Russian sniper's neck. "Call me Alex."

Standing up, but putting most of his weight on his uninjured leg, he retrieved his gun and limped from the dark alley to look at the street sign a block down the road. "Crawford, building 46, flat 93." Like a mantra, he repeated it over and over.

Ben had given him the address when he'd heard of the mission for a secondary safe house in case the first was exposed; he swore up and down that it was safer than anywhere else in the world. Knowing that Alex would be shipped off to Russia on a highly dangerous mission, he had told him that someone he personally knew would be there at all times awaiting his return.

Alex winced as he slipped in a puddle from the recent drizzle. The mission had gone badly from the very start. Their supposed leak in the mafia had betrayed him to his real bosses and since then, the spy had been doing his work from the street. Three weeks ago, he had carried out his purpose for being there: the assassination of their SCORPIA liaison. MI6, despite his call for assistance, had been unable to send back-up to retrieve him so far east.

So over these past three weeks, he'd made his back to England.

Even with the bullet embedded in his shoulder, he hesitated before entering the building. Two more were likely still after him, and those were only the ones he'd seen. Alex didn't want to leak Ben's location, but he didn't have a choice. The bullet wound could be problematic if left untreated for too long and he was tired from weeks of running with little to no sleep. Slowly, his resolve was breaking down.

With another look around, he took the narrow stairway up to the third floor and apartment 93. Cautiously, he limped to the doorway and firmly knocked three times. The Sig was gripped tightly in his hand as he clenched and relaxed his grip, always keeping his finger on the trigger. The door still hadn't opened and he knocked again before he heard someone stumble to open the door, muttering "I'm coming, I'm coming."

When the door was pulled open, he had the gun to the man's temple. "I need identification," Alex demanded, still worried that there was another leak or that he'd been beaten to the safe house. The guy was silent, likely from shock by the look on his face. "What the-"

"Identification, please," he stressed.

From behind the man at the door, another more familiar voice sleepily asked, "Alex? S'that you?"

He cautiously lowered the Sig and blinked. "Be-Fox?" he corrected, mentally thwacking himself.

"Yeah, come on in. Wolf, let him past." Alex blinked again as he realized that he hadn't recognized the SAS man. Wolf, just as dazed, stepped warily aside to let him in, realizing that he also felt a sense of recognition for the teenager.

Fox was stretching his weary limbs and shaking the sleep from his eyes. "Sorry about that, but we'd all gone to sleep. Long day." Yawning again, he looked more closely at the dirty and blood-splattered teenager just inside the entrance, who was examining the safe house. "How come every time I see you, you look like hell?"

"Uh, classified?"

"Hey, that's unfair. I'm MI6 too, remember? Now get comfortable. We'll be stationed here until Blunt gets whatever shit you've gotten into sorted out. Until then, just don't-uh—get any of that blood on the carpet. And don't mind Wolf here," he chuckled at the still-shocked SAS operative. "He's not a morning person before his first cup of coffee."

Poor Wolf was still trying to process what had just happened. "Cub?" he blurted out. "You're the 'high priority' MI6 agent?"

"Can we discuss this later?" he asked, thinking about re-holstering his gun, but deciding against it.

"Bandages!" Fox said. "There are some in the bathroom cabinet. You look like you could use some, but then you always do." Alex rolled his eyes. "Wolf, where's Snake? He might be needed."

"Probably still sleeping. Guess I should go wake him." As Wolf trudged over to the adjoining room, he muttered, "Three in the morning. It's three in the bloody morning."

The MI6 agent went to fetch the first-aid kit tucked in the bathroom and Alex put a hand up to his cheek remembering the long scratch, courtesy of the Russian sniper, as it came back sticky with his blood. The rush of adrenaline was starting to fade, leaving his fingers trembling and an acute sense that the room was spinning around him.

Fox returned with a white plastic box in hand, the familiar red cross emblazoned across both sides. "You don't look so good," he noted. "Sit down and I can patch you up."

"It's fine. I'll get blood all over the cushions, and that never comes out of fabric," he waved his fellow MI6 agent off.

"It's just a scratch, Ale-Cub." Fox was also mentally repeatedly whacking himself upside the head for slipping up and forgetting the codename again. "And this apartment has been through worse than a couple stains."

Alex stared down at the front of his jacket. The only trace of the bullet's path was a hole no bigger than his thumbnail. None of the blood had been able to seep through his Kevlar. "Yeah, about that. Those Russians I was looking into? Well, they had a sniper."

"It's the mafia," Fox stressed. "Of course they have a sni-" He cut himself off as he noticed the small hole that had drawn Alex's notice previously. "Chikusho*, Snake get in here now!" Alex felt himself falling as his knee gave out. Fox grabbed him before he could hit the floor and pulled him over the couch. He peeled back the wet and dirty running jacket that the boy had been wearing for the last week as gently as he could, but there was still a small hiss of pain as it pulled the wound.

Snake raced into the room, now fully awake, with Wolf not far behind him and Eagle stumbling sleepily behind them both. "What is it?" the medic of the group demanded.

"I'm going to need help," he told Snake, "and scissors."

"Can't ge' it off wit scissors," Alex slurred through the haze of pain. "Shir' made of Kevlar."

Abandoning the scissors he had grabbed, Snake took one look at the hole in his shirt and declared, "This is gonna hurt." Before Alex had time to realize what he'd said, his shirt had been yanked smoothly off and he let out a short yelp, his vision going white. In moments, Snake had pushed a handful of gauze into the bullet wound to keep the bleeding under control. "Wolf, the tranq," he commanded calmly, not even looking up. The needle was pressed into his hand and he swiftly ejected the tranquilizer into the boy's neck, rendering him unconscious almost instantly.

His attention moved quickly to the swollen hole in his patient's chest. Despite the heavy bleeding and the grime covering his skin from weeks on the street, there were no immediate signs of infection. Using the thin scissors he had previously abandoned and a spoon, he deftly extracted the bullet without causing further injury. With the bullet out, he could see the inside of the wound. No major arteries or veins had been nicked, and it had failed to do more than barely graze the bone.

Snake let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding when he realized that while the wound looked messy, there would be no further complications.

Fox and Eagle had settled into chairs beside the couch, fidgeting as the medic stitched the hole carefully shut, but Wolf continued to pace. All of them were angered that someone so young, someone they knew and had trained with, had been shot. Neither Wolf nor Snake had missed the scar marring the spot barely above his heart, nor had they missed the implications of it.

"Fox," Wolf boomed, and the slight MI6 operative jumped. "Yeah?"

"You've got some explaining to do. How'd MI6 get a teenage operative? Is this why Cub trained with us?"

Fox's eye twitched. "Do I really need to tell you that it's classified?" But he simultaneously sighed in defeat. "Personally, I'd like to know that too, but he won't tell me and my clearance isn't half of what it has to be to read his file. I've only been on a handful of missions with him, the first being while I was down in Australia, and every time we meet, I only get more questions."

"How'd he wind up on the other side of the world?"

"No clue. Truthfully, I saw him in Bangkok first and then he was with ASIS, not MI6, for that one. Though," he looked thoughtful, "there had been a rumor around base that he had fallen in from space."

Wolf was downright frustrated with the lack of information. "So Point Blanc wasn't his last operation."

"Wasn't his first either," Eagle piped up. Everyone in the room, including Snake, turned to him in disbelief. Unperturbed by the shift in attention, he continued, "Remember when they outsourced me to M-Unit for that incident with the Prime Minister?"

"Yeah," Wolf commented. "You wouldn't shut up about having more fun with them in that one week than in a year with us."

"It's true, but anyway that shooter we had to cover up, the one that burst through the ceiling, looked exactly like Cub did when he left Brecon Beacons and he had MI6 clearance higher than I've ever heard of someone having. No other teenagers I know of even work for MI6 anyway."

An awkward silence filled the room before Wolf snapped at no one in particular, "What do those bastards at MI6 think they're playing at? He can't be eighteen!"

"Fifteen," Fox whispered. "He told me when he turned fifteen two months ago."

The soldier stormed into the adjoining room where they'd set up their sleeping quarters to let off steam and Eagle bounced after him saying, "I'll make sure he doesn't kill anyone or break anything."

Snake solemnly turned his attention fully back to Cub as he knotted off the triple layer of stitches and layered thick bandages across and around his shoulder to keep the stitches from getting pulled.

"When should the tranquilizer wear off?" Fox asked quietly.

The medic stood up and popped his back, his work completed. "Not long. It was meant to be strong, not lasting." He paused before asking Fox to get the IV from where it had been stored under the sink. "I'm going to set up a morphine drip just in case. If I knew his blood type, I'd get him a transfusion just in case, but it's too dangerous to take a wild guess." No sooner had he asked that Fox was gone and back. The IV was fed into the crook of his left elbow, the right still tightly clasping the gun he refused to drop even while unconscious. The spy also found some an extra pillow and blankets from a closet in the bathroom to keep Alex comfortable.

Less than an hour later, the teenage spy was stirring. Before he was even fully conscious, he had already begun assessing his surroundings, determining all possible entrances and exits, potential weapons, and noted both Snake and Fox as allies. Recovering from the haze of the tranq, he sat up slowly, noting the painkillers that made him feel both numb and light running in his system. "How bad?"

"If these were different circumstances," Snake spoke up, "we'd have you in the nearest hospital. You could use a transfusion and liquids, and that morphine won't last more than a day, plus or minus a couple hours. Fox, however, insisted that you wouldn't be here unless it was bad and thought a hospital would be too dangerous."

"Thanks, both of you. Fox is right about this. There was an unfortunate incident while I was in Russia, and since then these damned assassins won't get off my back. Most of them have been put permanently out of play," Snake flinched at how easily he was able to say this, "but at least a half dozen of them are just too determined to get easily shaken off. One of them in particular has likely been broadcasting my position to the rest since I left Moscow. He's going to catch up with me at some point, and probably soon."

"You need back-up," Fox paraphrased.

Alex deliberated before speaking, "No. I need sleep. Between these two," he nodded to the Sig Sauer still in his hand and the distinct outline of the Colt Magnum** strapped to his ankle, "I have plenty of ammo. Karov's men have been practically on top of me since his assassination and I can't remember when I slept last. Just give me some time to rest, and I'll be back out in the field tomorrow." The spy yawned deeply.

"Not if I have anything to do with this," Snake spoke up angrily. "That shoulder is going to keep you in bed for at least two weeks."

"Heh," he snorted. "That's what the doctors try to tell me every time. I doubt it's going to work this time either, Snake." He rubbed at his shoulder, though, as if he agreed with the medic. "By tomorrow, I'll need a new safe house whether I want to move or not. Until then," Alex fell back against the pillow and closed his eyes, "tell me if anything happens."

In moments he was sleeping again, the Colt loosely in his hand and facing the doorway. Eagle appeared in the doorway, the sounds of Wolf's swearing having calmed to angry muttering. "Is he always this difficult?" he asked Fox.

A disbelieving look appeared on his face. "Cub's actually being reasonable today. Most days, he's a trillion times worse!"

The two SAS men sighed.

"But if what he says is true, then we should all be on our toes," Wolf growled from where he now stood behind Eagle. "We need to get ready for company, boys."

A/N: This is my first story, so even if you think it sucked...REVIEW!

*Chikusho is Japanese for damn it, or a rough translation. Not my first language, so sorry bout that.

** Yes, I know that the Colt is sort of an old model, but the Sig and Colt are personally my favorite firearms and they have a helluva kick to them.