Alex wakes with a gasp that nearly tears his lungs apart. Well – not really. But Alex assumes this is what one would feel if they had their lungs torn apart. He feels the crackle of electricity, can hear a faint buzz as it sinks into his skin, and that makes no sense because he wasn't electrocuted. He was stabbed, stabbed in the back in a dark room, a death so stereotypical of a spy that Alex wishes he could laugh. But he's coughing now, too hard to laugh past the burning of his lungs as they take a second and third and fourth-fifth breath.

"Breathe slowly. It's not pleasant hyperventilating to death."

The stranger's friendly advice doesn't help, because now instead of having to worry about waking up alive, he also has to worry about waking up alive in front of someone else.

"Relax," says the voice. Alex tries to put incredulity into his wheezes, and the stranger snorts. At least the effort was noticed.

Then there's a hand on his chest, pressing down and letting up in time with his breaths. A soft voice murmurs in a steady rhythm. It helps, and soon Alex has control of himself. For the first time he looks at the stranger. Black hair cropped short, eyes creased in surveillance, big nose. Strange eyes. A heavy trench coat that can't be hiding anything good. He glances down at something in his hands; Alex's wallet. And hopefully before the man has looked too closely at anything in there besides Alex's license, Alex hastily rasps "Thanks."

The man tosses Alex's wallet back onto his chest and sits back. "The experience is always jarring."

"What do you mean?" Alex props himself up carefully on his elbows, ignoring the residual twinge in his back.

The man smiles, cat-like. "I mean welcome to Immortality, Alex Rider."

Mac can't believe Methos would take a student. "You never done so before!"

Joe concentratedly does not snort. He's read enough Chronicles detailing student-teacher behavior, and Methos has taken plenty of students – he's just not in the habit of telling them. Students like Byron, and Mac. Partly, Joe guesses, to save himself from any ties that would prevent the ass from scrabbling under a rock whenever he scents danger, and partly to protect his students from the possibility that somebody hears the legendary Methos has trained someone, and decides a student is a great way to track a teacher.

Methos, of course, says none of this. Instead, he scoffs. "MacLeod, if I never did anything new I'd be squatting outside a hut sharpening rock spears to catch mammoth. Good heavens, you'd be running around unwashed, in a kilt and eating haggis. We'd both be denouncing light bulbs as devilry, and would have never experienced the joy of changeable thermostats." Methos gave a staged shudder. "Good thing we're adaptable creatures."

Mac refuses to be baited. "Do you even know what you're supposed to teach him?"

"Teaching what?"

Oh, Joe knows that stance. It means any second now Mac will start demanding he take over Alex's training and – that sneaky bugger. Joe makes sure the snort of incredulity sounds like a hacking cough. Luckily, Immortals fighting always makes mortals less interesting that the scenery, because his mask is less than convincing.

"Be serious, Methos!"

Joe loves the paranoid twitch the old fox makes whenever anyone says his name out loud.

"I am perfectly capable of teaching someone how to survive." Oh, Joe might have gauged that one wrong, especially if Methos is making such a transparent allusion to the all-knowing wisdom he claims he hasn't acquired from five thousand years of living. Maybe he really does want the kid. "Besides, Alex isn't your average new guy. He loves to skulk in doorways and eavesdrop on private conversations his teacher is having."

New Immortal Alex Rider (And how Joe will manage to get him recorded in the Watcher database without revealing any of Methos' part in it will be a pain and a half) sheepishly steps out of the back room in a new bloodless outfit Methos had procured from a previously-unknown stash of essentials squirrelled away behind Joe's.

Methos is grinning in something like pride as Alex shuffles in with an embarrassed but non-apologetic shrug. Mac looks a bit flabbergasted (as if an ex-teenage but still-current spy would not lurk) but mostly resigned. Joe sighs and starts polishing the bar. It seems like the paranoid old bastard found a paranoid young whelp. God help them. With the excitement that's bound to come up from this situation, he'd better put aside those plans for a vacation.