Disclaimer: Seriously, what would happen if I said I own all Alex Rider books and copyright? About the same as if I said I own Microsoft, Tesco, and the Taj Mahal. I mean, honestly?

AN: First off, I lied. Took me much longer than a week or two. I have no excuse, not really. Except work and school and life getting in the way. But here it is.

Now, I want to get it across now that Alex has a LOT of scars and seems to be constantly bruised or injured in some way. So if the K-Unit saw him shirtless, or whatever, they aren't ONLY going to notice his bullet wound. Plus, since they know people have held him at gunpoint and want to hurt him (Point Blank ring a bell?) I find the fics where they almost have apoplectic fits at the thought of him being shot… well, a tad extreme. Anyways, just a warning to let you all know that I'm NOT going to spend the whole fic with Alex worrying someone is going to see his bullet wound or having the unit overreact and go super-protective-brothers-for-life on him if/when they do.

Also, for those who are confused: football is soccer. Pretty much everyone BESIDES American's call it football.

That was rather long… but it's been really long since I last updated… So, without further ado and all that- Chapter 5.

Striving to Survive

-Chapter 5-

Sleepless

S – 2 – S – S – 2 – S – S – 2 – S

Alex stared at the ceiling of the cabin, letting the noise of his classmates wash over him.

Three days. They'd already been in this horrible place for three days. Surprisingly, Alex hadn't hated it. The football team had actually done hardly anything with the rest of the SAS camp or too physically demanding, and now he was basically recovered from his illness. Go figure.

After their late-night trip here, the boys had been given a large bunkhouse to stay in and a general schedule to follow. They got up each morning in time for breakfast at the mess hall at 7:30. They would have school reading and homework to do for several hours, sent in from Brookland, and overseen by Coach Wiseman. Their coach made sure to take advantage of the extra time with his team and in the afternoon they spent hours training and scrimmaging. But that was the most physical thing that was required, and Alex found himself benefiting greatly from the schedule, exercise, and bland but highly nourishing food.

After dinner they were free to relax or do as they pleased, all under the watchful eye of their coach, of course. Although the team could get quite loud and rowdy, the more outlandish ideas of the boys never saw it past the door of the bunkhouse; they all knew not to push the large man.

Alex used the extra time in the evenings to catch up on school and sleep, and to write to Jack. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to get the letters to her, and he didn't know what had happened to her, what she'd been told. Was she worried about him? Did she think he had chosen to leave without telling her anything?

He shook his head, trying not to dwell on it. It wouldn't help to obsess about things he couldn't control. And really, as much as he hated the idea of being here, it really hadn't been that bad. He'd arrived tired, sore, and rather sickly. For once the stories of him being ill were easily believed. But now he was basically up to his normal fitness, and yesterday, when he'd gotten up before the rest of the boys to start up his daily run again, he'd found himself able to go nearly as far as usual. He was surprised that something that he was sure MI6 had come up with had actually helped him, though he was still frustrated and not at all over the fact that they had forced him into this when he had his own plans with Jack, without even letting him explain it to her…

Another thing that surprised him was that, not only was the days spent here helpful in his recovery, but he hadn't had any problems with the soldiers or the fact that he'd already spent a full 10 days in the camp. The few men he recognized from before didn't seem to notice him and no one seemed to have been told that one of the "Brookland kids" as they'd been dubbed, was the former "Cub." The football team had very little to do with the rest of the camp; in fact, on the first day they'd sat through an hour long lecture from one of the sergeants that, if they stayed out of the way and did as they were told, just as the soldiers had been instructed, there would be no problems or interactions. For the most part it had been true. A few times they would attend various SAS seminars and lessons on things like first aid, survival, and emergency response. But, for the most part, there were no interactions with the soldiers. Alex was glad. He really didn't want the stress of having to keep his cover with the SAS and his team.

His musings were interrupted as he saw their coach come back through the door, a frown creasing his weathered face. He'd left a while ago with one of the sergeants and was now trying to get the boys' attention. Alex sat up as his teammates slowly quieted down and turned to Wiseman.

"Boys, I've just been talking to Sergeant Mores. It seems that tomorrow we're going to be doing some training with some soldiers. Someone who thinks they know everything has decided that because you boys are 'targets' now, you're going to need some special training." His frowned deepened as he said this and it took a few moments to get the outbursts from the boys quieted down. "Look, I don't have any say in this. If I did, it wouldn't be happening. I think most of you are too young to be learning such things, especially without your parents' permission. But we don't really have a choice here."

"What are going to be learning?" Canter spoke up, leaning casually against a wall. "It can't be so bad, we're not little kids."

"And you're certainly not adults." Wiseman shot back with a steady look. "I'm not sure exactly what they have planned, but I definitely think it's going to be more intense than the first aid lectures we've been to so far."

"Yeah, but that was boring anyhow." Alex glanced over at William Strone as the thin boy spoke up from where he sat, his white shirt standing out sharply on his dark skin. "I already know about all that emergency stuff, my mum being a paramedic and all. I think I'd rather be doing something more interesting."

"You think that if you want. But the Sergeant said that they've brought in an experienced unit to train you. I get the feeling they're trying going to be training you like the newest SAS unit to come in here. And I don't think you're ready for that at all."

"Oh, I bet most of us can handle it." Brawny and cocky Sean Fort smirked as he rolled his eyes at the coach. "I was planning on enlisting when I graduated anyhow, I don't think you need to worry so much coach. They aren't going to push us round."

"Fort, shut up. You don't know anything." Sean lost his smirk as the coach's blue eyes bore into him. "Say or think what you will, but tomorrow this team is going to go out there and be trained with a seasoned SAS unit. And I want all of you to keep in line. I don't like it, but either way, I won't have my team making a fool of themselves. You'll get up, get out there, and do what you're told. Got it?"

There was a mumble of agreement and nods, most of the boys still thinking the man was over-reacting. Alex heard someone behind him mutter that 'the old man is getting dramatic.' But Alex knew better.

A few moments of silence followed before the coach shook his head and sighed.

"Get some sleep boys. You're going to be up early." With a last shake of his head, the weary man turned and left for his small bunkhouse next door.

Immediately the noise went up as all the boys went back to their games and conversations. Most were talking excitedly about the next day and the new lessons. They didn't pay any attention to the one boy who sat, unmoving, staring at the door the coach at left through. They were used to ignoring the strange Rider. Despite the fact that most of them now, from his recent state, believed the reports of chronic illness that plagued the boy, they still didn't much care to associate with him. Canter had been thoughtful before, sitting by him and explaining things. But that was because coach had told him to; it was his duty as team captain.

But now, glancing over at the still figure, he wouldn't think of approaching the younger boy. Rider was too secretive and intense. His eyes would bore into you, with this look that told you he knew everything about you, and most of the rest of the world too. No, Canter, and the rest of the school, wanted nothing to do with Alex Rider and his world.

A world which Alex was currently immersed in and falling deeper.

Of course. He thought as he stared unseeingly forward. He knew things were too good to last. How many times had he thought that in the last few months? It was getting old, had been for a while now. Alex wasn't going to fool himself in thinking that this wasn't because of him. When had something like this happened before, if it ever had? He knew the next day was not going to fun and games. Life was going to get a lot harder, fast. And to think, not only a quarter of an hour earlier he'd been almost grateful to MI6. How many times, for how long, were they going to keep doing this to him?

With a suppressed groan, Alex lay back on his bed and resumed staring at the ceiling.

Only a year ago, Alex had never even thought of joining the army or intelligence. He'd actually always thought he'd like to be a mechanic. Not the best jobs, but it was predictable and he would never have to leave his home or family. He had never been one to really care about money much either.

Only a week ago, Alex was preparing to travel to America with his guardian to get a new start. He'd hardly been able to walk traverse the stairs in their house, and he'd wondered if Jack's family owned a very large estate.

Only an hour ago, Alex had been almost relaxed, his mind more at ease than in quite a while. Months even. He'd almost been enjoying the quarrelling of the boys who were playing a card game. Mark thought John had cheated. He had of course; Alex had seen him doing it.

Now he lay on his bed, tense and frustrated, listening to the other boys holler and talk. He didn't think he'd get much sleep tonight. He'd be too busy worrying over what tomorrow would bring.

S – 2 – S – S – 2 – S – S – 2 – S

"Oof! Ow- Jackal- get off!"

"Come on, Eagle!"

"NO! What's the matter with you? How many times do I have to tell you- I get the lower bunk. Always have, always will. Now leave it alone already. And Stop. Shoving. Me!"

"Ee-eagllle! I hate the top bunk! You know I roll in my sleep- I'm going to fall off every night!"

"Not my problem."

"And the smaller person should be on top- I'm a lot bigger than you!"

"Not my problem- and don't touch me!"

"Why can't you give the new guy a break? I'm not used to sleeping above someone else; I'm not used to it. I probably won't be able to get to sleep. I sleep really lightly; any little thing can keep me up all night!"

"Not my problem."

"You snore! You'll keep me up all night!"

"How many times to have to say it's not my problem?! And I do not snore."

"Yes, you do snore. You so snore. You snore like a revved engine! You're louder than a motorboat and-"

"Jackal! Will you shut up?! You're absolutely insufferable!"

"I'm ins…? Now don't say that. I know I eat my fair share of every meal, and I can't help it that I like my tea time, same as anyone, but you don't need to make a big deal out of it- I don't eat that much. And besides, I don't know what that has to do with you sleeping on the top bunk."

"I… you… what?! Eat your fair share of… Argh! I said that you're insufferable you imbecile, not insatiable!"

"Oh… well, either way. Can I have the lower bunk?"

Wolf groaned from the other side of the room and stood from his bunk, where he'd been sharpening a long knife on a whetstone. Jackal was a good soldier: hardworking, never argued, and one of the bravest Wolf had ever served with. But honestly- the freckled-face, energetic man would drive them all mental before long.

"Eagle, Jackal- you'd both better shut up or I'm going to be testing the sharpness of this on your face!"

Jackal heaved a large, dramatic sigh, but finally stayed quiet. The red-head clomped over to the door and went to mope on the steps of the bunkhouse. He was very obedient, in awe, and, honestly, quite frightened of their unit leader. He'd let the matter go. For now.

Eagle, however, wasn't so easily cowed and scowled over at the dark man.

"Oh, don't you get on me about this, Wolf. I didn't start the argument. And don't pretend you don't know that he's only bothering me about my bunk because he knows you'll never budge off yours."

"Not my problem." Wolf shot back, quoting Eagle from before.

Eagle's gray-green eyes met Wolf's dark ones. A fierce staring contest went on for several moments, until a chuckle came from the top bunk across the room.

"You two bring it on yourselves." Snake, grinning knowingly, glanced down from where he had been trying to read an old astronomy book. "You're both too stubborn and you let him get to you."

"He really is insufferable." Eagle huffed as he looked away. Wolf grunted in agreement. "He acts like he's twelve years old."

"Maybe so. He does seem to have a never-ending supply of energy. And words. Although his vocabulary could use broadening a bit." Snake shook his head as Wolf sat heavily back down on the bunk below him. "But he's new at this, give him a break. Don't argue with everything he says, or even ninety percent of it."

"I've never argued with him." Wolf protested.

"Yeah, but that's because you scare him to death. Ease up mates. Fox is gone and we've got a new unit member that is a lot different than what we're used to. We'll just have to adapt."

"Oh, Mother Mary. Why did your father have to be a psychiatrist?" Eagle groaned burrowing his brown curls into his pillow. "You make it sound like we're all emotionally unstable."

"Someone has to break up the tough exterior of you hard-heads. We need closure to work as a team." Snake grinned as Wolf shoved his mattress to the side from beneath, almost knocking the Scotsman off. "Alright, I'm done. No more group therapy sessions tonight."

"Good, because we need to go over how we're going to handle the new assignment tomorrow." Wolf stated.

Eagle groaned again and peeked his head up from his pillow.

"Why did we have to get stuck with this job anyhow? We were doing great where we were stationed over in Salsburg."

"We finished the job there, Eagle. We weren't needed anymore." Wolf was pleased. They'd gotten that mess straightened up quickly and efficiently. It was exactly the way he did things when he was in charge, and besides that, it looked good on their records.

"And you know we've been due to our turn at training a batch of new recruits." Snake. Ever the logician. "We should've had to do it months ago, we've been lucky."

"Ha. Yeah, lucky." Eagle rolled his eyes. "Now, because of our oh-so-fortunate delay we get to try and teach a load of sniveling schoolchildren to not kill themselves. Much better. I mean, as if we haven't had our share of little schoolboys acting too big for themselves-"

"I think Jackal should be in here for this." Snake cut into Eagle's complaints. "He's part of the unit, remember? He should be involved in the planning."

"Alright Snake." Wolf retorted sharply. "No one was suggesting otherwise. Oi! Jackal- get your worthless hide in here!"

Jackal rushed back in, eyes glancing quickly around the room.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Jackal- calm down." Snake said hurriedly. "We're just going over our plans for tomorrow."

"Oh, right." Jackal blushed a bit, then plopped down at the end of Eagle's bed, landing on the other man's feet, who cried out in protest. "Well, me, I'm excited. I've never trained anyone before, let alone schoolchildren. I have some younger cousins and sometimes I teach them things, but my aunts and uncles don't always like me to. I don't know why, I think I'm pretty good actually. I mean, it wasn't really my fault when little Jerry kicked over that stand, I was only showing him to-"

"Yeah, Jackal, we get it!" Wolf rolled his eyes. "But you're not going to be doing a lot of the training, at least not at first. It'll be a team effort, for the most part. We won't split off for a while, since this is only your second assignment."

"That's alright. I can definitely learn by watching you all. I've heard that's one of the best ways of learning how to do something-"

"I'm sure it'll help." Snake cut in. Eagle was looking about ready to knock the babbling red head off its shoulders.

"We need to decide what we're going to have them do." Wolf got them back on track again. "It can't be the normal scheduled process new recruits go through. They may be a football team, but they won't be able to keep up. And I won't be responsible for what I do if they start crying or who knows what else."

"I don't know. They might be able to handle it. After all Cub did-"

Snake cut off as Wolf shot him a murderous glare.

"That was different." Cub was taboo in their unit. Wolf seemed to have some unspoken vendetta against the kid they had all treated so unsympathetically when he'd trained with them. Snake thought the short man's harsh opinion had changed some after his second run-in with the boy, but apparently not.

"Well, I don't see why we can't do at least part of the exercises." Eagle suggested, breaking the tension as he kicked Jackal over to make more room for his feet. "No point coming up with a brand new schedule when we don't need to. We could just tone it down some, not make them go as long, give them simpler goals- that sort of thing."

"It could work." Snake said thoughtfully. "Obviously some things we'd have to crop… Target shooting and the How to Handle Torture seminar among them. But the endurance runs, self-defense lessons, obstacle course- those sorts of things we could still do. Wouldn't be so hard, yeah? And they could be useful to them, in sports and things."

"Yeah! And they could do the attack situations and response drills! Those would be good. Like the paintball one- I'm sure a lot of those boys have used those before. We could definitely do that. And-"

"Jackal…" Wolf growled warningly, in part because the endless chatter was bothering him, but also because Eagle had sat up with a slight manic look and was eying Wolf's knife from earlier. "Yes, we could probably still do that. I don't see why we shouldn't follow them as closely to the planned schedule as we can. This is supposed to be in place of our training assignment anyhow."

The others nodded and Eagle flopped back onto his pillow.

"Good. Tomorrow, we get them up at 0500 sharp. We'd better get some sleep before that."

He lay back onto his bunk, signaling the others to do the same. Snake flipped the lights before he also lay down, and Eagle rolled over toward the wall with a mumble of "thinks he can give us a bedtime…", but promptly fell asleep.

Jackal stood in the middle of the small bunkhouse for several minutes. No point trying to get a bottom bunk tonight. All of the others were in a bad mood about this new assignment, and he knew he wouldn't get anywhere with his request.

He sighed as he lay on the bunk above Eagle, the shorter man's heavy snores drifting up from below. He'd be hard pressed to get any sleep with that awful racket.

S – 2 – S – S – 2 – S – S – 2 – S

Jack sat in front of the TV, staring, but not watching anything. She couldn't find it in herself to care about the stupid drama between Rachel and Ross. Her life was much more interesting.

Three days. She'd been back here in America for three days. She'd been welcomed and overwhelmed by her family. She'd been with her grandmother for hours, spoken with her late into the night. But now her parents were at work, and her grandmother resting in the hospital, and everyone else had things to do and places to be. And there was no one to distract her from her thoughts.

She hadn't wanted to come. Oh, she wanted to see her family and all, but she didn't want to leave Alex. Not again.

When he hadn't come home from practice on time, she immediately called the school. She almost went crazy when they told her there had been a bit of an emergency, but it had been taken care of and authorities would be in contact with her soon. She'd immediately grabbed her bag and keys and rushed over to the bank. It had to be about Alex. And she wasn't going to sit around at the house and wait for someone to think of her. Not this time.

Alan Blunt had been, relatively surprised, for the stoic man, when she'd marched angrily into his office. No one was quite sure how she'd gotten past security and found his office. But here she was, and she wasn't backing down.

They'd argued for quite a long time, in Alan's opinion. She wouldn't believe him that Rider was being cared for and needed to stay under heavy guard for his own protection. The foolish American woman had insisted that the boy would be safer and happier with her, in America. They'd been planning the trip, and she wasn't going to let MI6 get in her way again.

But it didn't matter. No matter what she said, threatened, even screamed, Blunt wouldn't budge. He wouldn't let this fiery American devil ruin his plans. Eventually he was fed up.

Guards came in and 'escorted' her back home. They'd 'assisted' her in packing up her things. She was 'led' into the airport and onto a plane. Her belongings had been 'secured' and she was 'accompanied' to DC.

Her parents had been 'notified in advance.' When they got to the airport, confused and worried, they'd received a sobbing, irate, redhead daughter on the verge of mauling her 'companions.'

She couldn't go back. She'd tried. Her visa wasn't accepted. She was stuck here with her relatives, feeling like her closest family member had been taken from her.

So now she sat on the couch in her family living room, alone. Some commercial came on for a great new truck, but she didn't see it. A crumpled bag of crisps, 3 empty diet cokes, and a popsicle stick lay about her. She was holding a box of Teddy Grams and Rainbow Chip frosting, dipping the small bears into the frosting. It was her comfort food. As a kid, she always had Teddy grams and frosting when she was especially upset or worried and had gotten frustrated when she found that the English equivalent was nowhere near the same.

She had been up since early this morning. She couldn't sleep. But she couldn't get herself do get up and do anything either. In another hour or two she'd probably feel disgusted with her eating habits and go on a long, exhausting run. She used to do that with Alex, it always helped her unwind.

Oh Alex. She thought, fighting a sob. Where are you? Are you hurt, alone, afraid? Do you know that I didn't mean to leave you- I would never leave you! What have they told you? You know that I'll never give up, I'll never stop fighting for you. I won't let them control you- I'll put a stop to this. Please don't give up on me.

She sat up straighter and closed the lid on the frosting. She was going to fight for Alex. At this time, despite how much she loved her family, Alex was the most important person in her life. She had spent so much time with him, he was like her brother, son, and best friend, all in one. She wasn't going to sit here and forget about him. No matter how long it took, she would find him.

They hadn't won this round yet.

S – 2 – S – S – 2 – S – S – 2 – S

A.N. So not a lot of action, but *shrug* It's what my mind wanted. It was quite a bit longer than most of the other chapters, yeah?

Review please! Sorry, I can't make any promises about an update, but don't give up on me.