The Source

Kyntak, 2008

Clomp, clomp, clomp.

Alex Rider held his breath as the Chinese soldier walked past above him. Alex was clinging to the underside of a steel walkway, 5 kilometres above the bottom of a mineshaft. His fingers were dug into small holes in the metal, and his sneakers were braced against a narrow support bar.

Clomp, clomp. The soldier's boots clanked slowly across the walkway above his head. A droplet of sweat dribbled down Alex's brow, stretched out under his ear, and plunged into the blackness below.

His magnetic belt buckle was connected to the walkway, lifting his torso – but Smithers had told him it could only lift 25 kilograms. If he lost his grip, he would probably fall to his death.

Clomp. The soldier had stopped. Alex kept absolutely still. Had the soldier heard him, sensed him somehow? He was still holding his breath ­– his chest was starting to ache. His heart was thundering in his ears. His arms and legs quivered with the strain of holding himself up.

The mineshaft yawned beneath him. His hands were getting slippery. But letting go with either one in order to wipe it was not an option.

Clomp, clomp, clomp. The soldier moved away. Alex heard him open the door to the tower at the end of the walkway, go through, and shut it behind him.

Alex expelled the stale air from his lungs and sucked in a fresh gasp. He coughed as the bauxite dust tickled his lungs. He spat down into the shaft. Then he let go with one hand, slapped the release button on his belt buckle, and swung back up on to the walkway.

He scanned the area. Doors to the towers at both ends of the walkway. Night sky above. Cold, dark void below. All deserted. Nothing but stillness and silence.

Alan Blunt's voice echoed through his mind. 'Don't be late,' he'd told Alex. 'If you're not at the rendezvous point at 0200 hours, your contact won't think twice. He'll just leave – he can't risk getting caught. And who knows when we'll get another chance?'

'I'll be there,' Alex had said.

He hit a button on his watch. The light seemed pathetic in the gloom of the cavern. It was 1:58 AM. Less than two minutes to make it to the observation deck in the East tower.

He could waste no more time. He sprinted toward the door the guard had disappeared through. The handle wouldn't turn – it had locked itself automatically. Alex had no pass for the scanner. He held his phone up in front of the lock and touched a button.

There was a whirring sound as the molecules inside the lock demagnetised and spiralled away from one another, shredding the metal on a microscopic level. Alex pocketed the phone and tried the handle again. It turned with a sound like a chocolate wrapper twisting in a cinema, and the door creaked open. Too easy.

'Thank you, Smithers,' Alex muttered. He ran inside the tower.

He was supposed to meet the MI6 contact on the observation deck, three floors above here. He headed for the fire stairs. Thankfully, the door had no alarm and was unlocked. The stairs clanged under his feet – he'd like to be quieter, but he only had sixty seconds left to get to the observation deck.

He reached a door on the third floor, shoved it open, and –

'Quiet!' a voice hissed from the darkness. 'Do you want to get us killed?'

Alex instantly froze. All he could hear was the thudding of his heart in his ears.

The halogen lamp outside the window splashed the room with shadows. Every object was a silhouette; the vending machine, the emergency fire hose wheel, the assortment of high school cafeteria-style tables and benches, and the woman standing in the corner.

'Were you followed?' the woman hissed.

Alex shook his head.

The woman stared suspiciously at the door for maybe twenty seconds. Alex tried to make out her face, but got only vague impressions.

She nodded, apparently satisfied. 'Okay,' she said. 'Do you have it?'

Alex frowned. She was supposed to be giving him the disk, not the other way around. 'Have what?' he asked.

'Don't play games with me, child,' the woman said. 'Do you have it?'

'You mean the disk?' Alex tried to recall the briefing at MI6. There had been no mention of anything he was supposed to give the contact. He was here to collect the Blu-ray disk of files that the source had hacked from the Guojia Anquan Bu database.

The Guojia Anquan Bu, also called the Ministry of State Security, was the People's Republic of China's foremost intelligence agency. Its server farm held every one of the Chinese government's state secrets. If the source didn't have the disk, then who did?

'You were supposed to give it to me,' Alex said.

A smile spread across the woman's lips. Alex could see the whiteness in the dark – a Cheshire cat's grin. 'You don't have it?' she said.

Alex felt dread creep into his guts. Something wasn't right. 'I'm out of here,' he said, turning to the door.

The woman shouted something in Chinese, and the door burst open. The sudden blast of air swept Alex's hair off his forehead as he staggered back. A soldier marched in, grasping a QBZ-95 assault rifle. Another was right behind him.

And another.

And another.

Alex scrambled backwards until he was against the wall. Five guns were pointed at him, including a semi-automatic handgun that the woman had pulled from a holster under her jacket. In seconds, a 5.8mm slug could be embedded in his heart.

Alex had been shot before. He didn't like it.

He didn't plan on letting it happen again.

The woman was arguing with one of the soldiers in rapid Chinese. Alex heard her say 'MI6' a number of times, and 'Blu-ray' once. The rest was incomprehensible.

Alex hadn't been issued with a gun – and even if he had, he doubted he could take down all five before one of them opened fire on him. He said, 'Do they know you've double-crossed them?'

The woman looked back at him. 'MI6? No. And with you gone, they never will.'

'Not MI6,' Alex said. He tilted his head towards the soldiers. 'Them.'

The woman frowned, puzzled. She would have no idea what he was talking about. But Alex was betting that at least one of the four soldiers would understand English.

Bingo. One of the soldiers was turning his rifle towards the woman. 'Double-cross?' he quoted clumsily, eyes narrowing.

Alex grabbed the nozzle of the fire hose behind him, whipped it up to face the soldiers, and with his other hand, twisted the valve as far as it would go.

He was slammed back against the wall by the force as the water blasted out of the hose with hundreds of kilograms of pressure. The soldiers and the woman got it worse. They were blown off their feet like puppets in a storm-water drain. Bullets riddled the ceiling as they fired reflexively.

Alex wasted no time. He turned the hose on the window. Glass exploded out into the void, and he dropped the hose and he ran and he jumped, tumbling out into the light from the halogen lamp, and falling . . .

WHAM! He landed on the steel walkway, and sprinted into the darkness. Shouts echoed behind him, but he was gone before the echoes died.

Alan Blunt had some explaining to do.