A/N - EDITED: I did a run through before I started writing the sequel to this story and edited sentence structures as well as removed unnecessary words. As this was my first, most successful bit of writing, I didn't change too much, as I wanted to keep it mostly how it was. Thank you to everybody who has reviewed! I'm sorry that I never got around to personally thanking you, but you should know that your feedback was really inspiring to me. Thank you all again!

Word-Count - 4732
Rating - T
Genre - Humor/Action
Warning - Contains an incy wincy bit of swearing.
Disclaimer - All recognizable characters from the Alex Rider series belongs to Anthony Horowitz. I just enjoy rolling them around in the palm of my hand... x)

Cross Country
Part One

"Welcome, welcome," an exuberant voice called over the crackly static of the schools worn megaphone. "To another craptacular -"

"Tom!" Another voice, distinctly female and very, very reproachful, snapped.

"Right, Miss B. Sorry," was the jovial reply, not in the least bit contrite. "I meant spectacular, bit of a slip of the tongue, there. Won't happen again, promise."

"Good."

"Great! Now, where was I? Oh, right. Welcome, my fellow pubescent piles of stunted growth, to Brookland High's annual Cross Country, where the strong prevail, the weak, unfortunately, fail and the rest of us slackers are just here to boost our attendance and watch the race, until, of course, we are put to sleep by the sheer lack of action and intrigue…"

Miss B's defeated sigh was entirely too audible over her own speaker.

Tom was undeterred.

"… The condition's today are perfect for an afternoon siesta. Sunny, with a few undertones of apathy and a hint of repetitiveness that will be sure to have your consciousness thoroughly shutdown by midday…"

Alex listened, half-heartedly, to his best mate's antics as they echoed through the crowd of rowdy teenagers, vaguely wondering who in their right mind had let the boy commentate on the day's event. It wasn't that Tom was bad at it – he could be bloody hilarious when he wanted to be. The problem was, unfortunately, that his comedy had a tendency to irritate certain people. Hotheaded jocks, bullies, the general masses – he didn't discriminate.

Tom's humor was the reason the two of them had such a close friendship. A misinterpreted joke had gotten the under-achiever severely beaten up one afternoon. When Alex, who happened to have a proclaimed Jesus-complex, had come across the shorter boy a little while later, he'd helped the disheveled teen home, and then promptly thrashed his tormentor the next day.

His mouth twitched into a small smile at the memory, which rapidly morphed into a frown as Tom continued his unorthodox annotations with a certain amount of merriment. Alex shot a meaningful glare over towards the podium, where his buddy and a flustered looking Miss B were sitting. It said, with faultless clarity, that, when you get your arse whipped today because of this bullshit I am not going to come and save you.

Tom offered a shit-eating grin in return.

Alex rolled his eyes and turned back to what he was doing. Pulling on his trainers, he scanned the crowd of students around him. Most of them were dressed in the normal school uniform, not intending to participate in the ten kilometer run that the day was all about. The other few who were planning on running in the race wore their sports gear, and were encouraging their friends to bet on them.

That was, essentially, why Alex was there today. It was Tom's fault idea. The shorter boy had bet over fifty pounds on Alex, so that if Alex won (which was bound to happen, what with Alex being accomplished spy for MI6) Tom would have doubled his money and Alex would have received absolutely nothing.

Except, his mate had hurried to tell him as Alex had moved to slam his door upon hearing the proposal, Tom's unconditional love and loyalty.

Which Alex had anyway, but he'd agreed to the 'scam', as Tom had excitedly called it, because he owed his pal that much.

He owed his pal a lot.

"Andrea," Tom shouted through the amplifier, earning several indignant and slightly pained cries in return as the megaphone emitted a discordant, mechanical wail. "Did you clean your pants with Windex? 'Cause I can practically see myself in them!"

There was a smattering of applause, some laughter, and an enraged roar, presumably from Andrea's boyfriend, as Tom threw out on of the worst pick-up lines in the history of mankind.

"Why isn't he getting in trouble for that?" Alex, who'd been pulling his shoelaces taught, paused and glanced up at the speaker. It was Eagle, Alex's unofficial bodyguard for the occasion, and, he looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Why Alex needed a bodyguard for such a mundane event was something he didn't want to delve into. He'd been told, vaguely, that one of his many enemies had caught up with him (a feat that hardly surprised him, it was bound to happen, being a spy, and all) and had arranged to dispose of him during the cross country.

That had been enough for him. He didn't need details. He didn't need to know how they knew he was going to be in the event – although he had a well-founded suspicion that it had something to do with Tom and his whole betting scene.

He stared at the SAS soldier, blankly. Eagle was his codename; he'd learnt that months ago when he was subjected to a highly volatile crash course at a military training camp before being sent off on his first mission. It had been a grueling experience, made worse by the sheer unfriendliness of the unit he'd been dumped on. They'd made his time there utter hell, and the well-muscled guy standing next to him, supposedly watching his back now? He was one of them.

Alex wasn't letting him forget it. Closed off body language, ignoring the man's attempts at small talk and acting unnecessarily hostile when it was compulsory to interact with Eagle – he was sending a very clear message.

'I don't forgive you.'

"Alex," saying his name didn't elicit a response, Eagle had learned almost instantly. But it did direct Alex's attention towards him, or at least he hoped. He really couldn't tell; the kid had a damn good poker face.

Just to make sure the brat was listening; he reached over and tousled the kid's hair, throwing it into complete disarray. Alex tensed immediately at the touch, barely able to restrain himself from lashing out and breaking the man's intrusive arm, or better yet, his neck and putting the bastard out of Alex's misery.

But Alex would do neither of those violent actions. For one, he was in the middle of a pack of extraordinarily judgmental teenagers, and two: It would blow Eagle's cover.

And what was Eagle's cover? Among other things, it saw him acting as Alex's long lost brother of Irish descent.

MI6 could be so painfully useless at times. Even if it was Alex's life hanging in the balance – or not, he'd told them in their last meeting, when Eagle had first been assigned and Alex had actively rejected their decision. For Christ sake, he was a bloody spy. Did they honestly think he couldn't take care of himself? The answer was, of course, no. He couldn't. Because this wasn't an impossible suicide mission that only a fourteen year old had a chance of completing, like the last few tasks he had been blackmailed into. This was different, the heads of MI6 had insisted. Alex had answered, rather bluntly, that they, rather unfortunately, suffered from selective thinking, and if they were going to burden him with SAS, they could do it during the previously mentioned unfeasible jobs, when he actually needed it.

They'd had the gall to tell him to stop being childish, it was unbecoming.

"Well?" Eagle's deep, accented baritone pulled Alex from his inner musing's, and alerted him to the fact that said man's hand was still tangled in his hair. With forced patience, he lightly swatted Eagle's arm away and focused on him, raising an eyebrow in question while subtly shifting out of the older man's reach.

Eagle scowled. He really wasn't fond of repeating himself, and over such a pointless issue too. But he wouldn't back off and let the antisocial brat win. He was going to get a response, whether Alex wanted to give him one or not.

"I asked if he would get in trouble for that." He repeated; managing to sound relatively indifferent, and appear it, too, as he casually inspected his nails.

"No," Alex replied, curtly.

Eagle pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation; it felt slightly disconcerting to be publically shunned by someone half his age. He pointedly stared at Alex's hunched frame for a moment, before letting his eyes shift back to the crowd, analyzing the area and its inhabitants for any sign of threat.

His booted foot swung out and clipped the boy on the calf. "Are you going to behave?"

Alex's poisonous glare melted into a look of incredulity. It was the first time that Eagle had actually sounded dead serious, and, he thought in disgust, completely bloody patronizing. "Excuse me?"

"When the bastard ambushes you out on the trail, are you going to press your panic button and alert me? Or are you going to be a prat, go all gung-ho and get yourself killed?" Eagle asked, blandly, still assessing and re-assessing the vicinity.

"You-" Alex started angrily, irked at the obvious belittlement in the man's words. But he was abruptly cut off.

"Because, frankly," Eagle continued, coolly. "You're attitude is pointing at the latter. And if I can't be certain that you'll play your part, I'm pulling you out."

Alex was on his feet in seconds, about to cuss the soldier to hell and back, when Eagle held up his index finger, effectively cutting Alex off. Again.

"Areyou going to behave?"

Alex twitched, now understanding what the man wanted. He didn't like it one bit.

"Yes." He ground out through clenched teeth, almost choking on the word. It pained him even more to see the triumphant expression that briefly flitted across Eagle's face, before the man's chiseled features smoothed back into blankness.

But the bastard didn't let it drop – payback, maybe, for openly scorning him.

"Yes," a sardonic smile stretched the man's mouth. "What?"

Oh Tom was a dead – subjecting Alex to this torment. Not Eagle, because, in all honesty, said man could probably snap him like a toothpick. No, it was Tom who was going to suffer; the spiky haired boy and his unhealthy lust for cash were indirectly responsible for this ordeal.

"Yes," Alex muttered, defeated for the moment. "I'll behave."

Eagle tore his gaze away to the round-faced boy sitting close by, talking to his wiry friend in hushed tones and throwing shifty glances in Alex's general direction. He turned to the tortured looking Alex and reached out to mockingly pet his cheek.

"Good boy."

Alex squirmed.

Eagle grinned.

"That guy is giving me the creeps."

Hamish Ulverstone peered up from the cracked screen of his game boy and across the clearing at the man his friend, Jackson Riley, was talking about.

He was lean, with compact muscles and a watchful face. Brown hair and light stubble, with piercing blue eyes – he was the kind of man that radiated danger.

And he was staring right at them.

"You think he knows?" Jackson whispered, nervously. His teeth worrying at his bottom lip while he anxiously tugged at the collar of his faded polo-shirt.

Hamish snorted at the insinuation. "How could he possibly know, Jack?"

"Well-"

"Did you tell him?" Hamish interrupted, bluntly. His fingers never faltering as they rapidly attacked the controls on his device. Jackson snarled indignantly beside him.

"Of course not," the other boy hissed, leaning close enough into Hamish's personal space that he could see the fearful sweat practically glistening off Jackson's pallid skin. "I ain't a bloody idiot, Hame."

Even though Hamish would have very much liked to argue that point, he didn't. Instead, he opted to placate his skittish friend. "Then he can't know, Jack. Stop your fretting, and quit looking over at them. It's suspicious."

Jackson immediately averted his gaze, but he did not relax.

"You sure?" he muttered quietly, stretching his paper-thin body out across the picnic blanket they were resting on and trying to appear inconspicuous.

"Positive." Hamish deadpanned.

There was silence, and then;

"Do you think what we did was right?"

Hamish visibly rolled his eyes and mashed his thumb into the button on his console a lot harsher than required. "Jesus, Jack. We only told him where the race was held, and that Alex was in it. We didn't commit a damn crime, or anything."

"But why did he want to know? What if he's going to do something bad?"

"Oh come off it, Jack!" Hamish admonished with a fair amount of amusement, "What do you think he's going to do? Kill him?"

Jackson watched as Hamish chortled, a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.

A feeling he would later come to know as trepidation.

"Could the competitors in the first run please make their way down to the official starting point," Miss B called over her speaker. "The event will be underway shortly, so please make your final preparations now."

Alex shifted lightly from one foot to the other. He held a water bottle loosely in his right hand. It was a small popper top, and, when he popped the top, it sent out a distress signal – to Eagle. It was a gadget, of course, made by Mr. Smither's at MI6. But, unlike most of the devices made by the short, pudgy man, Alex was far from impressed with this one.

"How," Alex had asked with prominent irritation. "Am I supposed to drink out of this thing?"

"You can't." Smither's had replied, sheepishly, and rather apologetically. "Bit of an oversight, my boy, sorry."

"It's a ten kilometer run!" He'd huffed. "I'll die of dehydration!"

"Nonsense, Alex." Mr. Blunt, otherwise known as the heartless head of MI6, had smoothly entered the conversation at that point. "Stop the dramatics and act your age."

Alex had complied, and forced himself not to impishly inform Mr. Blunt that he was, as a matter of fact, acting his age.

"… Immediately if you run into trouble, you hear me?"

Alex blinked, confused. "Sure?"

Eagle adjusted his earpiece and reached under his leather jacket to confirm that his concealed weapon was still there. Alex chose that moment to point out, again, that having his own comm would have been a lot more convenient.

"We've been over this, Alex," Eagle responded, neutrally, as Alex's complaint had lacked sarcastic bite for the first time since they'd met earlier in the morning. "If he see's you with a headset, he'll know you're onto him. Plus, you're friend's will get curious, and you don't want that, do you?"

"Well you're wearing one, and you're supposed to be my brother."

"I don't see where you're going with this."

"And I don't see your logic."

Eagle shrugged, before activating his comm and speaking quietly into it. There was a brief moment of nothing, and then a disembodied voice echoed through.

It sounded faintly Scottish.

"Why couldn't Snake be my backup?" Alex demanded, immediately identifying the voice as that of one of the other men from his temporary unit. "At least he has blonde hair. It would have been easier to pass him off as a relative."

A single sentence filled with warmth could have an amazing effect on a teenager in way over his head. Snake had been the only soldier to openly show Alex kindness at the hellish military camp, and he would have preferred the slightly more amiable Scotsman over Eagle.

"Because," to his credit, the soldier didn't sound particularly miffed. "I'm your backup, you ungrateful brat."

In fact, although he wouldn't admit it aloud, Alex would have taken Wolf, the unit's cruel, overgrown bully of a leader instead. At least knew where he stood with the short-tempered man.

Eagle was unchartered territory.

"You should get down to the starting point, kid. It's about to begin."

Eagle inspected his watch, twisting it around on his wrist as he waited for the boy to move. "I'll be right behind you," he added, reassuringly. Alex nodded. That was the plan. Eagle would follow Alex into the forest, out of sight and a little way behind, until Alex pushed the panic button. Eagle would then place a call back to the cavalry (several SAS agents stationed in a van in the nearby parking lot) while he moved to backup Alex.

It was an extremely convoluted plan. Alex had asked why the other SAS soldiers couldn't just tail him, to reduce the level of difficulty.

"One person is less likely to be noticed." Eagle had explained. "We don't want to spook this guy, Alex. We want to catch him, so he won't come after you in the future, and hurt you, alright?"

Eagle clapped him on the shoulder, an over enthusiastic testament of brotherly love that left his arm aching a little painfully, before giving him a firm shove.

"Get a move on, brat. We haven't got all bloody day."

Alex went.

Alex settled into a steady lope once he'd put the energetic swarm of shouting peers a few hundred meters behind him. There were three others trotting alongside and nearby, pacing themselves like the track veterans they were. The rest of the competitive group had broken into, and continued, a rash sprint as soon as the starting horn had blared. Alex smiled grimly – they wouldn't get far.

There are tree's were everywhere. Solid, tall and wide – so wide that they almost touched each other and so tall that their shadows turned the trail the boy's were jogging down dark. The impenetrable barrier of plantation was almost stifling. It soaked up the soft thudding of Alex's footsteps as he moved.

Even the ragged breathing of his classmates was hard to hear over the oppressive silence.

Nobody would hear if someone screamed, Alex thought morbidly as he pushed himself a little faster. This was the perfect place to bump a person off.

It wasn't a comforting notion.

It had been five minutes; the amount of time he'd told Alex he'd wait before following the kid in. But, just as he'd been about to slip into the foliage, relatively unnoticed, he heard something that had him frozen, literally, in his tracks.

His eyes narrowed.

"Yeah," the slightly overweight teenager that had caught his attention earlier muttered into his phone as he meandered about the edge of the sandstone toilet block, absently picking at the wall. "Alex went in a couple of minutes ago."

His skinny friend wasn't anywhere in sight, and, unluckily for the kid, nobody else was, either.

Eagle waited, patiently, for the call to end.

Then he struck.

There was a reason the SAS were considered Britain's elite soldiers.

One moment, the boy was standing near the entrance of the men's restroom, pouting slightly at the shiny black mobile in his hand. Then, he vanished.

Inside the lavatory, Hamish Ulverstone fought weakly against Eagle's strong hold as the man trapped him inside the cubicle furthest from the door. A calloused hand clamped across his mouth to staunch the terrified screams.

The other hand lazily cuffed the adolescent over the head to quell his struggles.

"Marshmallow," Eagle spoke in a rough tone that promised copious amounts of pain. "If you don't tell me everything you know about the guy you were talking to just now, you and this toilet are going to get intimately acquainted, understood?"

There was a canal. It was empty, of course. But Alex still got a sense of foreboding when he saw it over the horizon. At the end of the dirt path he'd been following, there was a red arrow that pointed directly into the dry waterway. He scanned the top of the duct and saw it.

A ladder – there was one on the other side as well.

They had to climb in and then out. Brilliant.

Behind him, Alex could make out the sounds of his peers leaving the woods. There was some excited chatter about being clear of the 'spooky forest', a fair bit of heavy panting and a breathless greeting aimed his way as the boy's drew level. Alex absentmindedly returned it.

"What've you stopped here for?" Jackson (Alex was sure his name was) questioned as he doubled over and tried to catch his breath.

Alex shrugged. "No reason."

"Just looking, eh?" Another boy asked between short sips from his bottle.

Jackson straightened up and none-to-gently elbowed the boy who was drinking in the stomach. "Don't go and give yourself cramps, James."

James snorted. "I look like an idiot to you?"

"From here? Yeah, you do."

Alex rolled his eyes at the banter and watched, amused, as Jackson started forward, dodging James' fist as it flung out to slug him. He wandered over to the ladder, eyeing it for a moment before maneuvering himself down it. There was excessive rattling, a curse and then Jackson's wholehearted shout of, "Git!" floated up out of the channel.

"Hey!" James cried out, offended. "I should be the one saying that!"

"Slow as always, huh James?" Jackson sniped from somewhere below them. Alex shook his head and swept towards the ladder.

It was when his foot touched the last rung that all hell just seemed to break loose.

James was shouting heatedly down at Jackson while the latter smirked. Alex was beginning to feel the dull throb of an oncoming headache when an ominous creak resounded throughout the narrow passageway.

Everyone fell quiet.

Alex's feet tapped onto solid ground.

Then, the floodgates opened.

Someone screamed.

A surging mass of water exploded through the entrance, tearing down the passageway at a dangerous speed. Alex's world trembled, the shockwave hitting him before the whitewater could. The roar of the rapids howled in his ears; a raw sound that chilled him to the bone, froze him to the spot.

By the time his brain began to whir again, it was already too late.

Eagle tore through the undergrowth, shouting into his earpiece and out into the stillness of the timberland at the same time, desperately calling for Alex.

He was about half-way to Alex's location when he heard the ill-omened sound of gushing water. If anything, he pushed himself faster, harder, further. He leapt agilely over a fallen log covered in a light green moss. Weaved through the all too solid trees. Slid much too quickly down a steep hill.

A shriek, loud, fearful, and undoubtedly human echoed through the forest.

Eagle swore.

It felt like he'd been hit by a truck.

But this truck was cold, and everywhere. Alex battled against it, his limbs erupting in a flurry of uncoordinated movements as he tried to reach the surface and ease the steadily building burn in his lungs. The water pulled at him, twisting and turning him, rolling him about effortlessly in its relentless grip.

Then, he rammed into something. It bent a little as he made contact and he vainly reached through the murky haze of water to grab it.

His hand closed around a pole.

The ladder!

His other arm snaked out to wrap around it, too. He was in the process of navigating his legs sluggishly towards the steps when something seized them.

The resulting shock almost knocked Alex off his escape route. He panicked, briefly, before common sense kicked in, and he remembered that he hadn't been alone.

Jackson.

Not wanting to dislodge the other boy, Alex stopped moving his lower half and began to bodily heave himself, and Jackson, up and out. His muscles seared as he dragged the combined weight upwards, constantly battling with the water as he went. In what Alex considered to be too long of a time, he reached the pure bliss of air… and the menacing barrel of a gun.

Damn. And Jackson was still underwater, fruitlessly tugging on Alex's pants.

'Get me out of here,'

He was going to drown, Alex thought with a pang of regret. And Alex was about to be shot in the head.

Could he ever catch a break?

"Little bloody wonder boy aren't you?" The silhouette on the other end of the weapon cooed softly, mockingly, triumphantly. "But you can't dodge death at point blank range, I'm afraid, no matter how talented you are."

He cocked the gun, "Say goodbye," he chuckled. "You menace."

A solitary gunshot rang out.

"Goodbye." A voice drawled. There was a soft splashas a body hit the water.

"Took you long enough," Alex rasped as he dragged himself onto sweet, solid ground. Coughing and hacking all the way. He wriggled a bit further, scraping his stomach across the rough floor until he heard Jackson's feeble moan.

Then he collapsed, sucking in long, deep breaths.

Eagle didn't respond. Instead, he swooped down on the waterlogged teens and checked them over, poking and prodding and questioning none-too-gently.

"You're alright?" He asked calmly, once he'd given both boy's a thorough once over.

It was Jackson who answered, hoarsely. "Yeah, thanks to Alex, and his deceptive upper body strength."

There was a brief pause,

"I do Cardio." Alex said, flatly.

The teenager and the soldier stared blankly at the spy.