Once upon a time there was an author and a story. The author mysteriously disappeared and the story stalled. Since the author had a terrible track record with keeping up with her stories no one went looking for her. Since no one went looking for her I blame YOU all for the lack of updates and not myself. No lack of responsibility on my end, no siree, its all you peoples faults -.-

But still, sorry for no updates! Here's the end of the story! It may not clear up everything, it may not be what you wanted, it may not be great, but its an ending :/

Enjoy! - Ara

"Don't you dare." Alex felt his heart stop, his chest throbbed in response. His breath shortened.

"Choose." Stecha pointed the gun at Wolf. "Your 'friend's' life or the truth, Alex?" He didn't smile, but he looked deeply interested, excited even. "At least I'm giving you a choice."

"Fucking kill me first." Alex growled, advancing a step to draw the attention of Stecha's weapon. He wasn't about to make a decision, and the rage was suddenly back full force. He was sure they could see it on his face. It would be like choosing between his own life and Wolf's and he knew which he would rather gamble with.

"Okay." Stecha shrugged and shot him.

He recoiled in surprise, stumbled, and dropped to one knee. The pain didn't hit him immediately, it took a moment for him to realize that he had actually been wounded so there was no shout of pain or surprise, just the growing realization of what had happened. He'd been shot in the shoulder. He hadn't thought Stecha would actually shoot him. Alex groaned and bit his lip to keep from either shouting or saying something stupid. I'm an idiot, I'm supposed to be protecting these people not getting myself killed.

In his moment of distraction Stecha stepped closer and pistol whipped him across the face. Alex recoiled but quickly faced Stecha again, ready for the next attack and Stecha rested the cold metal of the gun against his forehead. "You told me to kill you, Alex, but that's not in the plan. Maybe later." He said clearly, lifting the remote, but Alex didn't hear him. All Alex saw was a mistake.

Stecha had stepped in range and into Alex's direct line of influence, not to the side of him, not behind him, but in front of him. Alex had consciously forgotten that he was supposed to stall Stecha, having gotten caught up in the drama and the showmanship, but despite that Stecha had still been lulled into a false sense of security and finally made a mistake that Alex could take advantage of.

In the moment that Stecha's eyes flickered to the remote to find the button he intended to press Alex lifted his good arm straight up, striking the gun with his palm and knocking it upwards. The weapon went off but Alex had no time to worry about someone being injured behind him. He grabbed the gun, lifted his body towards it and into his center of gravity as Stecha struggled with him, and then fell upon it and attempted to twist away from the man. The gun came loose of Stecha's hand with a pop as the man's index finger snapped under the boy's weight and Alex oriented himself quickly, knowing he didn't have much time.

He fired the weapon three times, shooting three of the guards holding back the crowd of soldiers while leaving himself unprotected.

Alex felt Stecha's hands wrap around his ears from behind even as he fired, forcefully lifting his head upwards to the angle that would be needed to snap his neck. In that split moment Alex saw Wolf gain control of his own guard's weapon and turn to finish the other guards that Alex had targeted. He didn't turn to save Alex, and for that Alex was grateful.

There was gunfire.

And a distant pop.

Something small punched through the metal siding in front of Alex, just under a small vent near the ceiling on the wall. The blur of images as his head turned and the pressure that Alex had expected never came. There was a moment as the hands fell away, then Stecha toppled, his arm catching Alex across his wounded shoulder and dragging him to the ground with him. There was a mist of blood that settled around them and after a moment only the echoes of gunfire rang in his ears.

"Cub!" Someone shouted.

Stecha's body was lifted away and Alex stared in confusion at Snake.

"Help me drag him away from this blood, we don't know what kind of infections that fucker could have." Snake barked at Wolf, giving the body an angry kick. "Be careful of his wound and I'll keep his head steady, we don't know how much pressure he put on Cub's neck."

They grabbed their small, confused teammate and pulled him out of the puddle of blood that had collected under Alex and Stecha, both bleeding profusely. Alex let out a gasp of pain as the weight of his body pulled on his shoulder wound.

"Cub, you idiot." Wolf growled down at him. "Shut up." As Alex gasped in pain again when Wolf put pressure on his bullet wound. "Don't you pull martyr shit like that ever again!" He shouted in the boy's ear.

"Can you feel and move your toes?" Snake asked, holding his head. Alex tried to nod but Snake's hands held his head. "Don't move your head. Can you feel and move your fingers?" Alex tried to nod again, his throat too thick with fear, pain, and confusion to try to speak. "Don't move your head! Tell me when it hurts."

"It all hurts." Alex retorted ruefully, his voice coming out crackly and tense. He didn't want to get yelled at again. Snake scoffed and seemed to relax a fraction now that his teammate was up to cracking jokes, but he was still rigid with stress. He began to very slowly rotate Alex's head to the side, not far but it was far enough for Alex to get a glimpse of the television.

Stecha must have pressed the button on the remote before Alex had attacked him because it was playing. There were pictures of Jack scrolling across it, her playing football, her at a party, her with an ex-boyfriend, her being herself. Alex watched them for a moment, letting them wash over him. They were the simplest thing in the room to understand at the moment. Snake asked him something but Alex ignored him.

Snake saw Alex's attention shift. The boy wasn't responding very well and that had Snake worried. He didn't think it was a spinal cord injury, if the assassin had managed to turn Alex's neck he would be dead already, but the man could still have done muscular or tendon damage that could be immediately dangerous. No, Cub was probably going into emotional shock. It had been a rough day for everyone, much less for Cub. Snake followed the boy's gaze to find what had finally brought him back to reality.

It was the television. He missed what Alex had been watching, only getting a flash of a picture of a flame-haired woman, before the image changed to a car high-tailing it out of some sort of desert compound. He felt Cub stiffen.

Without thinking Alex raised the weapon he still had in a dead-lock in his uninjured hand and emptied the clip of the gun into the television. The entire room of men instantly turned to the direction of the gunshots, prepared to defend themselves once more, but found a smoking television.

"For fuck's sake, Cub!" Eagle cried into the silence, who had been making his way over to his team. Wolf grabbed the gun from Cub's outstretched hand after it ran out of ammo.

Pain bloomed in Alex's chest beneath his old bullet wound at the mere thought of Jack's death. Guess the doctor was right about the anxiety disorder, he thought, but Alex wasn't prepared to deal with it yet. The physical pain was better than the emotional pain for now.

"Stecha attacked the people in the med station." Alex tiredly told Snake. "They injured Dr. Epps and the staff."

"Eagle! Send a group of men to check out the med station, they hit there first!" Snake shouted at his teammate.

"We have wounded people on their way there now." Eagle shouted back.

"Have someone check it for traps first!" Wolf barked, and Eagle stopped short and then rushed off.

"So what was that, Cub?" Snake asked, eyeing his now responsive patient. Cub just looked up at him, he didn't know what to say.

"Got tired of that channel." He grimaced.

Mrs. Jones stood by the projector screen, too inwardly upset to sit. Sitting felt vulnerable right now, and she couldn't let her guard down with these people.

"How do you propose to fix it?" One woman asked coldly.

"We can't." Mrs. Jones said clearly and intentionally.

Fifteen angry faces glared at her response. They had seen the composite documentary of the video captured from Brecon Beacons and the images used in that same takeover. They were the only ones who had. It would have been too easy for MI6 to shut down a widespread broadcast, or so MI6 had said, and so SCORPIA had circulated only 15 copies by hard-lining the documentary straight to their televisions separately. MI6 couldn't have possibly intercepted them.

Each person around the conference table was powerful in their own right. Many of them were human rights activists, or policy makers and politicians. They were respected, intelligent, and dangerous, and they were out for blood.

The silence stretched uncomfortably until one woman, a matronly, older lady, broke it gently. "We are here today to decide how we should react to this, not to prosecute the perpetrators. There is more to this story than just a victim and a criminal and boundaries must be respected." She said softly. The others listened.

"I propose that we do not make this situation public knowledge."

There were shouts of disagreement and outrage from the table. "Do you realize what they have done?!" "A boy, he's just a boy!" "The public deserves to know!" And many other cries that melded into one another.

The woman stood and leaned forward on the table. "And what about all that he has before him?!" The room quieted. "We have ruined his past," she hissed, "I will not ruin his future as well with some public spectacle! He has saved all our lives, if the video and MI6 are to be believed, multiple times. We owe him a future at least."

The silence stretched again and was not interrupted for a long time.

Alex took the elevator up to MI6's headquarters. A guard attempted to relieve him of his handgun (he carried it religiously now) as he exited onto the correct floor but the Director's secretary forestalled him and led the young man down the hall, weapon and all. There was more whispering than usual in the offices as they pushed through the busy maze of desks, an area that Alex had never seen before. He followed the well-dressed secretary to a large conference room at the center of the building. She punched in a code, ushered him inside, and then hurried away as though she knew she didn't want to know what the meeting was about.

"What's with the…" He started, but then he turned from watching the secretary scurry away and saw the long table full of people. He paused in surprise. He had never been debriefed en mass before. It had always been an emotional (at least for him) and private affair, and he didn't feel like he wanted to start changing that now. "… crowd?" He finished lamely.

"Alex." Mrs. Jones greeted neutrally. "These are the recipients of SCORPIA's threat to distribute your… story." She almost looked apologetic.

Alex's heart sank. "Well, I see I can never really win." He muttered. His grimace made the tired lines and the faint bruising on his face stand out, adding drama to his appearance along with the sling that supported his arm.

"If you would come with me, Alex, while they deliberate amongst themselves." Mrs. Jones said sternly, motioning him back out of the office. Alex felt as though she was using him as a reason to escape from the judging and upset gazes of the group of people around the table, but he would rather leave than stay so he followed.

They travelled back through the cubicles where strangers nodded in acknowledgment at him.

"There's not much to say at this point, Alex." Mrs. Jones said as they finally entered the refuge of her office.

"You could start by clarifying things a bit." Alex said, settling stiffly into a chair. "It was SCORPIA that stole my files." He stated.

"Yes. It appears that while SCORPIA is for all intents and purposes out of business they wanted to exact one last revenge of their own. I can only assume they wished to expose you and cause civil unrest by making you public." Mrs. Jones unwrapped a peppermint, but as she lifted it to her mouth she seemed to think again and tossed it in the trash.

"Alex… Stecha mentioned Yassen to you, that he is alive."

"Yes, he did." Alex's eyes narrowed.

"I wanted to show you something." She said, whisking a folder out from behind her desk and opening it to show him a shell casing. "Stecha died by a bullet wound to the brain, but the shot was not fired from inside the building. We found a small puncture in the steel siding that matched the trajectory for the bullet that killed Stecha and from that we pinpointed the position of the sniper that saved you. He left a casing with a message for you." She said evenly.

Alex looked closer. There was a Y etched on the side. His eyebrows rose.

"Why would you show me this?" He asked, a lopsided grin forming on his face.

Mrs. Jones took a deep breath, it almost seemed shaky to Alex but her outer demeanor was still stony and confident. "When Alan Blunt ran this department he did many things that I didn't approve of. Despite my objections he ran MI6 the way he thought was best, now I must do the same." She propped herself against her tall desk, sitting on the mahogany surface.

"I owe you an apology and a debt, Alex Rider." She said slowly. Her eyes drilled into his, trying, in her way, to communicate her sincerity and depth of emotion without letting down her walls. That was one thing she couldn't allow for anyone. "You deserve to know everything and you always have.

"From the moment I met you I knew exactly what Alan had planned. I never stopped it and I should have. I should have helped you and I am so very sorry that I did not. If there is any way that I can help you, Alex, please let me know because we could never repay you for what we have taken from you."

"Don't go after Yassen." Alex said softly.

Mrs. Jones' shoulders stiffened. "I'm not sure that is something I have to give. He is wanted by dozens of countries, they would notice if we gave him shelter and be held accountable."

"Just give him a head start. Let him slip through your fingers again." Alex said. He wouldn't plead but his voice had an edge of quiet desperation.

Mrs. Jones looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. "Just this once." Then her eyes narrowed. "Why are you letting him go? You were so tempted to kill him yourself once, what changed?"

"I dunno." Alex shrugged, looking worried and a bit younger. "Look, he's saved my life twice now and I'm a little tired of answering those kinds of questions..."

Mrs. Jones sighed. "Well, you've never been able to leave dangerous mysteries alone." She said ruefully.

"Speaking of dangerous" Alex said sheepishly with a grimace. "I want to return to the SAS…"

"What?" Mrs. Jones frowned and her brow raised.

Alex pursed his lips. "I realized something through this whole mess. I haven't really got anything left except what you gave me, sick as that is.

"If it weren't for you and Blunt, I'd be dead. A couple of those crazy revenge plots could easily have killed me along with everyone else, and now that I've seen that and know what really happens out there I can't just stand by and watch it happen. I've made it this far, I'm not going to die now by doing nothing." Alex continued, "Maybe you've learned your lesson, maybe you haven't, but I can't sleep any longer knowing that there are worse things out there to come that I can't stop. I have to have a hand in this or I'll go crazy."

"Alex…"

"This is all I have left, the fact that I can help and protect others. I failed with those CIA agents, I failed so many people, I failed Jack," he paused for a moment before saying her name but then hurried on. "But if I can train harder, learn more, have back-up, maybe I could continue making a difference.

"I can't go back to being normal, you and I both know that. I've changed, I'm different, I don't fit in, and people notice that. I can convince them for a while, but not forever. The only people that could ever understand are people who have seen the same things I have."

"You want to stay with K-Unit?" She asked, her brow still knitted in concern and confusion.

"Maybe… I haven't talked to them since it happened, but maybe. I don't know yet." He sighed. "I haven't really thought this completely through." He chuckled, feeling surreal. He hadn't come into this office today to request it, but he'd been thinking about it for the last few days. It was the only step forward that he could really live with.

Mrs. Jones gave him a long look and popped a peppermint into her mouth. Alex knew from that that she wasn't comfortable with the idea and he knew why. What would she tell to those angry bureaucrats in the other room? They would think she was taking after Blunt, forcing him to do more of what he hated, enslaving him. But Alex also saw the steel in Jones' bones, the deep set self-accountability that Blunt had lacked.

She would do this for him if only because she had forced him into this position herself.

"Alright." She said, giving a sharp nod. "I'll take care of the harpies in the other room for you, Agent Rider." She managed a grim smile, using his title as some sort of respect now that she knew that he didn't want to leave the life. Now that she knew he didn't despise it. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No, I shouldn't think so." Alex smiled, he had to appreciate how hard Jones was trying.

"I'll call a car to take you to a safe house until we can verify that SCORPIA is no longer an immediate threat, then you may contact K-Unit if you wish or make alternate plans. Keep in touch, Alex, my offer of help still stands." She nodded and motioned to the door.

Alex was more than happy to leave. The whole conversation had been awkward and unsettling, although he felt better now that it had been had. Everything was out in the air, and maybe he could work with Jones like he had never been able to do with Blunt. Maybe he could manage this, now that he wasn't completely alone.

There were more awkward nods as he moved towards the elevator. When he finally escaped the floor and as the big metal box moved downwards he took a deep breath and heaved a sigh. That had been relatively painless, almost satisfying to be honest. He had a modicum of control over his own life, and that was more than he had had for a long time. There was more to come, but as long as things looked up from here he could handle it. He'd been in worse situations before.

REVIEW just this last time? :3