Well, it wouldn't be the first time.

The difference, though, is that this time, Tintin has no idea why he is waking up from presumably drug-induced slumber bound and gagged and handcuffed to a pole in the dark. Haven't bought any suspicious merchandise, haven't looked into any leads for a while now, haven't seen or done anything unusual, really …

'Well, well, well, look who's awake.'

How cliché.

'Are you going to say anything?'

Apparently not.

'What a pity. Looks like I'll have to lead the conversation, and that's always such a chore. Nevertheless. Why are do you think you are here?'

You tell me.

The woman – the voice is undoubtedly female, though rather low-pitched – sighs quietly. "Stubborn, are we? Well, it'll make torturing you all the more entertaining."

What the hell? "Look, there's obviously been some sort of misunderstanding–"

'I'm sure there has been.' The sarcastic, snappish interruption exposes his captor's emotional investment for a moment before she composes herself and addresses him again.

'Think, Mr. Tintin. You get caught up in all sorts of dangerous messes, and generally all the wrong people come calling. You don't know me, not personally, but I seem to have something of a ... grudge against you. Use that famous mind of yours, boy.'

He hadn't found anything provocative in the past five months at least; it had been rather frustrating, actually. The most recent story he had exposed had already come back to bite him in the jugular, and had been dealt with accordingly. Same with the one before. Which leaves …

'I'd have expected Scorpia to take a little less than two years to get back to me.'

'Yes, well, we've had other priorities, thanks in part to you.' The woman had started off sounding pleased that he had deduced the identity of her 'organization', but ends on a bitter note.

'Glad to be of service.'

'Oh, I'm sure that will change rather soon. But let's change the subject. Have you met your partner-in-crime? Did you know that you had a partner-in-crime?'

'No on both accounts. And you use that term ironically, I hope.'

'Hm,' the woman pauses. 'Alex? Care to join our little chat?'

'I was wondering when you'd invite me,' is the scathing reply that originates from somewhere in front of Tintin. Something shifts, and metal clangs. Another prisoner? Interesting ...

His voice sounded premature, in a strange, intangible way, as though he had known too much too soon. Alex ... did Tintin know an Alex?

'Don't we have a pair of firecrackers? I should expect nothing less. Now, I understand that you know each other indirectly, whether you realise it or not. You've both guessed your connection to me, so let's see how you do with each other. In fact, allow me to add some incentive. Whoever accurately deduces the other's story more might find himself receiving some ... benefits in the coming days.'

'I'm not going to play your sick game,' Tintin spits, just as Alex drawls, 'I never took you for that particular brand of insanity, Belinda.'

'Say what you will, an advantage is an advantage. And you have yet to see who your friends and foes might really be." She stands up, and he hears a door open and close, though no light was permitted into the room. Tintin memorizes the approximate location of that door.

Silence.

'I know I've got one "foe" pinned down for certain,' he mutters. Just then, two stark white lights flash into life, one directly above him and one in front of him, which, when he turns his head, Tintin sees illuminates the back of a blonde boy in his teens. His hair has reddish streaks in it. A child? How did someone so young get on the bad side of something as monstrous as Scorpia?

'I suppose I owe you a name, Mr. Tintin, since I've just overheard yours.' The boy speaks almost lazily, barely glancing Tintin's way. The reporter is not fooled, however, into thinking that he is not being scrutinized.

'A name would be nice. A way out would be better.'

'Yes, well, now that the kind and gentle Belinda Four has left us alone, we may as well talk. Besides, I've tried to escape. Twice. The floor around you is electrified.'

Tintin winces, thinking about how the boy had obtained that information. 'Belinda Four?'

'Daughter of the infamous Dr. Three. Belinda Four is one of her alibis. She wanted to inherit her father's legacy without being identified as merely his offspring. Reputation is everything – but I don't need to tell you that. You have quite the history yourself, as I, and the rest of Europe, know.'

Being famous can be such a pain sometimes.

'I actually have some hunches about why you might be here, actually, but they're only preliminary and I don't feel like sharing. Not, of course, that I'm not simply dying to have dearest Belinda back again.'

'I still don't have your name.'

'Mm. I guess it couldn't hurt. Actually, it could hurt a lot. But nonetheless – Alex Rider.'

It is announced so suddenly that Tintin takes a moment to ascertain that, in the context of their dialogue, the boy had indeed just given his name. But it rings no bells in the reporter's mind. 'Why are you here? What did you do to Scorpia?'

'What didn't I do, you mean. Well, I've never funded them. There's that."

That is information, Tintin supposed, though the rich-benefactor-who-tried-to-back-out story is so far down on Tintin's list that he finds the revelation hardly significant. But it is more about what the boy was not saying, isn't it?

'So you've fought them? Killed an executive, perhaps? Joined them, even?' Tintin is getting some 'hunches' of his own. But it seems far too implausible; he is so young...

'Catching on, I see. I think I've talked quite enough.' The boy moves himself with his feet (his hands are bound and cuffed around a pole, like Tintin's) and turns himself 180 degrees to face the reporter. Tintin's eyes widen. Besides the fresh burn marks presumably resulting from the electric floor, the boy had been beaten all over. His arms hang limp, and Tintin can see that one is probably broken. Blood streaks his hair and face, and patches of it cake his arms and legs. Pools of the red liquid are still oozing out of knife wounds on his legs and bare feet. His drawl isn't natural, Tintin realises in horror, or an attempt to sound at ease. He probably can't speak cleanly from the pain and blood loss and whatever else might've been done to his mouth and throat.

It is terrible. But it has to be true.

'You're the Agent,' Tintin whispers hoarsely.

Alex Rider nods grimly. 'You're the confidante. A certain angry and sympathetic co-worker of mine wanted the story out. MI6 was going to let Scorpia's downfall be known without mentioning specifics, but this agent disagreed.'

'It was two years ago,' Tintin leans his head back on the cold, smooth pole, partly from exhaustion, and partly to escape the bloody sight before him. 'Possibly one of the largest stories of my career, and I had to do so little, really. Well, I had to do very little physically. Spent hours and hours wading through the paperwork, though. Probably came close to being arrested and imprisoned for life, if not given the death penalty somewhere out of the public eye.'

'MI6 didn't do anything outside of the legal red tape?' Rider sounds surprised.

'Just one drive-by shooting. But then I made it very clear that there were many different copies of my work in the hands of many different people, each of whom knew who to blame if anything unusual happened.'

Alex Rider falls silent, and Tintin feels a pang of pity. His informant had explained some of the boy's background, but even that informant had said that she or he did not know the full story. From what the reporter could piece together, the boy had been used as an agent for several years now, since he was fifteen, or even fourteen. He was an orphan, like Tintin.

'Who were you living with?'

'A friend in the States.'

'No, before. When you were involved with Scorpia.'

'Well, Scorpia, for a while. But mostly I lived with our housekeeper.'

'Our?'

'My uncle Ian, before he got killed. Actually, it was his death that pulled me into this whole thing. It just seemed ... off, somehow - '

'-and you couldn't help but investigate,' Tintin finishes. He can understand that. In fact, he had experienced it many times before.

So at least the boy had someone at home. Except ...

'Did she move with you to the States?'

Rider laughs, a short, caustic bark of a sound that held absolutely no humour. 'No. She's dead.' Then, almost as an afterthought, 'Everyone close to me gets murdered at some point. You'd best keep your distance.'

Tintin stops talking. Not because he is trying to 'keep his distance' – he never quit at any sign of danger, which probably explains his current situation – but because he needs time to process what he had just been told.

'So how are you planning on surviving? Are you planning on surviving?' Almost casually, the boy interrupts his thoughts.

'Someone will be looking for me. I just have to stay alive until they find us, or get to a phone.'

'Sounds nice. Aren't you lucky." The boy pauses, contemplative. 'I was thinking something more along the lines of – well, never mind. We're not really in the same situation, you know. Maybe it'd be better to split up. I can deal with them. You get out.'

Tintin stares. 'I'm not going to leave you!'

Rider sighs. 'I can take care of myself. And, besides, you can always come back with reinforcements.' But Tintin can see the resignation in his eyes, as though he expects to die and is prepared for it. Too young.

'Stop thinking like that.'

'Like what?'

'Like you have to sacrifice yourself. You don't.'

There is another silence, and when Rider speaks again, his voice is more muted, but rawer somehow. 'Everyone else has been sacrificed, and I'm always the common denominator. It's been enough. It's my turn.' Then, 'You have something to go back to, so go back to it. Don't worry about me. It never ends well when someone worries about me.'

Alex lifts his eyes (since when had his gaze dropped? He hadn't noticed it) and is met with steely resolve. 'I don't care if you think you should die. I don't agree. We're living through this together.'

'If we're lucky, maybe.'

'I have a funny sort of luck. It drags me to the pit of death and drops me in before plucking me back out again at the last possible second.'

The edge of Alex's lip quirks up. 'Mine too, Mr. Tintin, mine too. Perhaps our guardian angels will cancel each other out.'

'Or maybe we'll have twice the luck.'

'We'll need it. Glad to have met you, Mr. Tintin.'

'Oh, but the meeting's just starting, Alex Rider. You should come visit Marlinspike Hall sometime, after this fiasco is over.'

'You're an optimist.'

'I'm a realist.'

'We must live in separate realities, then. If there's good in this world, then I certainly haven't experienced much of it.' The other man sighed, and Alex mentally winced as he realized how self-pitying his last sentence had been.

He seems like Ben Daniels sometimes. Something about the eyes. Oh, Ben. Yet another corpse in the 'Alex Rider associates' list. Alex's unbroken lower arm moves to make a fist, but his injuries prevent him from doing so. Killed by his own organization, no less.

'I've felt that way before. But there is good out there. Like the agent that told me about you.'

If only you knew. 'MI6 wanted an expendable for a badly informed, highly dangerous mission with negligible available backup. In other words, a death trap. It was only too convenient...' Alex releases a breath he didn't know he had been holding with a sharp hiss.

'I see.'

A stillness washes over the room, as though the two men are simply at a quiet cafe, each immersed his own thoughts.

'Tintin!'

'Captain!'

Alex's gaze shoots up to where he knows the door is, and is rewarded by being blinded with an electric torch. The bright beam moves away as someone mutters apologetically, and Alex watches as a bearded man moves into the circle of light around Mr. Tintin, untying him and unlocking his cuffs. 'Billions of blue blistering barnacles, Tintin, don't you ever disappear like that again!' Alex stills his emotional reaction to the fatherly tone with practiced stoniness, though the after-effects of the psychological torture that Neo-Scorpia had recently put him through makes it a little harder.

Tintin laughs. 'I try not to get kidnapped by international terrorist organizations, Captain, but they never really stop to ask my opinion on it. Well, not sincerely, anyway.' He cranes his neck to look around. 'Are the Thompsons here?'

'Yes. I mean, I thought they ...' just then, Alex hears a pair of bodies tumbling into the room, torches swinging wildly.

'Those brutes!'

'Savages! Putting those pebbles right in our way!'

'Nasty booby-traps!' The remarkably similar-sounding people seem to have straightened themselves out, if their lights were anything to go by.

'Thomson! There's another one!'

'I see it, not to worr – aaah!'

This time he stumbles right into the 'Captain', and Alex catches a glimpse of bowler hat before he feels the ring of lock picks that the 'Captain' had previously been holding slide past his fingertips.

Tintin watches in weary amusement as Captain Haddock picks himself up, grumbling and swearing. 'Good to see you too, Thomson and Thompson.'

'Ah, Tintin, we're mightily glad to see you healthy and alive!'

'To be precise – we're greatly relieved to find you living and in good health!'

'What happened to Belinda Four? And Scorpia?' Tintin stands and stretches, walking out of the circle of light. It makes him uncomfortable to be put on display when he can't see anyone else.

'Not to worry, Tintin, not to worry. They're being arrested as we speak, I presume.'

'It's easy as talking, to be precise. No need to fret.'

'And we're taking you to the hospital for a check-up – don't argue!' the Captain adds.

'Fine, if we must.' Tintin smiles. His eyes flicker over the two poles where the prisoners had been attached. 'Oh, and there's someone –' he narrows his eyes. 'He was right there, I swear.'

'The boy?' the Captain shines his light around. 'Yes, I think I saw him. I was too busy being happy to see you, of course, but he was very plainly there."

Tintin walks into the cone of illumination and sifts through the loosened ropes and unlocked handcuffs, finding the lock picks. 'Did any of you close the door?' he inquires musingly. But he already knows the answer.

For a moment he stares into the darkness, unmoving, running through their conversation. He had met someone of a kindred spirit, if he wanted to be trite about it, but someone leading a terribly dissimilar life. I could have been him, had circumstances been different. Then he stands, turning to his friends with new appreciation. 'Let's go.'

'Shouldn't we look for him?' the Captain proposes uncertainly.

Tintin smiles, a fond, heavy rising of the cheeks. 'I don't think it would be any use. He's far away by now, I imagine.'

It was a sealed underground chamber, yes, but there has to be an air supply somewhere. Ah! There! He had found it in less than a minute, luckily enough.

He peers down through a vent in the ceiling (how predictable).

For a moment Alex Rider looks at the four heads under one of the lamps, three of them there because they don't want the boy to feel self-conscious in the light, and a blade of envy that has been buried for years stabs its way to the surface. Then Alex closes his eyes, and when Rider opens them, the people are gone and so, he would like to believe, is his flash of weakness. It's normal to desire things, he can hear his short-lived therapist saying. He has seen too much, and he knows it in theory, but for a long time now he has seen no other, and he cannot afford to act normally.

He is not 'far away' now, but he will be very soon, Alex Rider promises himself.