Prologue for End of the Road. This is the new series I've been procrastinating on getting up. It is going to be nothing like my Safehouse arc, for now at least, with the exception that I'm leaving my OC in K-Unit (Falcon) and everyone who played a role in my previous arc will be keeping similar personalities to what they had in my original arc. I know that's lazy, but I can't picture them any other way. You do not have to have read my Safehouse arc previous to this.

End of the Road begins about two years after the end of the series, with the exception that the epilogue never happened.

The assassin stepped off the Eurostar train, officially entering England. He was dressed in plain clothes and a dark hoodie with a bored expression. None of the policemen idly scanning the crowd even took a second glance at him, and his fellow travelers acted much the same, neither noticing nor particularly caring.

Stepping out into bustling London, he pulled the hood down to better see the street signs. Recalling the directions his teacher had given him, he hailed a cab. It was three minutes before one finally pulled up. When the driver asked him where he wanted to go, he passed him a slip of paper with the address. His hands were covered with thin gloves. The cab driver immediately assumed it was to protect against the week of bitter cold weather that London was currently under, but the assassin had donned them specifically so his fingerprints wouldn't be carelessly left on anything he touched.

While the cab was moving, he unzipped the grey and dark blue backpack that had been his only luggage for the trip over. He drew out a jacket similar to the one he was wearing, though subtly different, and slipped into that one, stuffing the other back inside his bag.

In reality, they were essentially the same jacket. It was just that the one he was currently garbed in had some extra features added to it that he couldn't wear while getting through security. His bag had been manufactured to disguise the gun hidden in a case looking just like a science fiction novel. Two other books in the same genre were included to make it a more genuine cover. Not only that, but it had hidden the secondary jacket from view. Inside the jacket's pockets were a plain switchblade, a rather nasty looking kukri* that secreted the venom of the deadly inland taipan**, and a remodeled Swiss army knife. Of course, on the outside it was just a plain piece of defensive clothing, lined with a nearly invisible layer of Kevlar that included his hood and was completely fire-retardant. A slick material that camouflaged with the jacket enveloped the outside to absorb metal detecting signals, keeping guns, knives and other equipment from being immediately detected. SCORPIA wouldn't just shoo their agents out the door with merely the minimal protection.

He smoothed out his hair, adding dark brown streaks into it as he did, and switched out the pants for higher quality jeans. Overall he still looked like your basic teenager, but now he gave off the appearance and arrogance of one with a rich father.

The cab driver never took a second glance at him, but if he had, it would have been a completely different person than the one who had stepped into his taxi seven minutes earlier.

With his head cocked to the side and jacket rippling in the ever-present wind, the teenager could have owned the whole place. Which was just the effect he was trying to create. At the entrance of a towering hotel, he arrogantly thrust over his ID to the sentry—because he was more of a guard than a clerk or attendant—who waved him in after keying the entry code for the day into a well-concealed panel by the door frame. This was not just a hotel, after all, but a fortress for visiting guests who had either the money or contacts to get a room.

On the inside, the hotel could have been made purely out of the finest glass and diamonds. The only traces of metal were beautifully wound through the one-way glass in the elevators and hanging hallways, which were safely secured by the strongest metals despite appearances. The very floor was wrought from a bulletproof glass, as well as the walls. Even the front desk where the alert clerk sat seemed to be carved straight from the purest crystal.

Inwardly smirking at how easily this was going, he set his mind towards the next obstacle. The cameras would be tracing his movements, expecting him to head towards the third floor room that the kid who'd originally owned this card had been paying for. His target was on the second floor. It was possible, but not certain, that getting off on a different floor would trigger a silent security alarm. He didn't have another plan, placing all his hopes on his uncanny luck and hope that the guards would overlook him as another harmless teenager.

He swiped his card in the slot beside the elevator. With a gentle swish of air, the doors opened instantly and let him step into the empty cabin. As soon as the elevator doors were tightly secured, he jabbed his thumb over the tiny retinal scanner. Until it got a reading, the cabin would not move in the shaft. As it buzzed impatiently, he pulled out the switchblade and flicked the blade out with a quick motion in his wrist. Making sure to leave no telltale scratches along the sides of the panel, he delicately pried open a small metal tile above the scanner. Just as he'd expected, the mechanics were placed in identical places as those on other elevators SCORPIA had gotten for him to practice on. Instead of disengaging the two wires that controlled the cabin and reconnecting them by hand, putting him at a high risk of self-electrocution, he used the switchblade to tap one of the small mechanisms down a notch. The suppressor would have automatically dropped him on the third floor, as his card had informed it in the moment it was scanned. His small change in the mechanism would place him on the second. When it returned to the first floor, it would erase the glitch he had put into it and no one would be the wiser.

Re-securing the tile, he put a special contact lens in his right eye before releasing his hold on the scanner. The plain-looking lens was built with nano-processors that could virtually imitate a three-dimensional model on a two-dimensional surface, a.k.a. his retina. It worked on all existing scanners to date. Without the annoying burst of light that some retinal scanners emitted, the device identified his eye as that of the card's holder and proceeded to what it believed was the correct floor.

The minute he stepped off the lift, he began watching for the cameras that would mark his progress through the glass corridor. At high noon, it was only to be expected that most of the hotel's occupants were out enjoying the day or attending to their work, so he didn't worry about running into anyone else on his way to the target's room. The cleaning service wouldn't be passing this way again until he left his room, which he knew through SCORPIA's contacts that that wouldn't occur until well after supper. The target had just traveled a long distance and was not yet recovered from his jet lag.

Outside the target's door, he pulled out the Swiss army knife. The original model wouldn't have been nearly as helpful as the one a fellow assassin had remade for him. The girl was an absolute genius with her tools, and she had insisted that this was nothing special. He thought quite differently as he extracted the set of lock picking rods from the vast assortment of useful metal pieces. This little bundle of tools was absolutely ingenious and among his favorite gadgets.

While the lock was technically supposed to only be serviceable through its owner's card, and the master key of course, it had become recently evident that there needed to be a second way through the door should an issue arise with the lock***. Using the flat bit of one rod, he twiddled with the small crevice beneath the bit where you slide your card until the crevice became a much more evident crack, at which point he bluntly forced it sideways to fully open. Once inside the secondary key hole, he used the twin set of typical lock-picking rods, albeit smaller versions for the considerably smaller hole. Five seconds of irksomely difficult tweaks and adjustments later, he heard the door's various locks release. Réussite.

Knowing that if the target was awake he would undoubtedly have heard the door noisily disengage the locks, he fumbled with the hollow book to remove his Beretta 92G-SD. While not as safe as some other Beretta models during reloading, it was quicker to fire when one needed to act on their reflexes without taking the time to line up a shot. Not only that, but if the trigger pin broke, it could be fitted in backwards and safely work as its own backup and it had an open slide design, allowing for emergency tactical reloading. The gun was simple and almost impossible to jam. Perfect for law enforcement and assassins.

He took a steadying breath before kicking the door open and aiming his gun at the first things within sight inside the room. After all his careful planning for potential unexpected tribulations, he was thoroughly gratified to find the target sound asleep, undisturbed by either the door unlocking or being kicked in. Dropping his bag by the door, which he quietly closed after entering, Alex pulled out the kukri by its long inwardly bent blade and set out to create a message worthy of SCORPIA.

A/N: Sorry for making Alex so evil, but I really wondered how things would go if things went south for MI6's teenage spy. This is a prologue, just so you know, and that's the reason for it being so short. I would have had this up sooner, but I ate the wrong chocolate bar and, voilà, emergency room for Tsuki. Due to that, I missed half my final exams and had to cram all five into one day. Somehow, I managed to pull awesome scores on all five. In celebration, you get not one, but two chapters today! Can I get a "hell yeah!" for summer vacation?

Once again, this is in no way related to my previous arc. People may act the same but, excluding the events in the real series, there are no ties to my previous arc whatsoever.

*You have to search for images, but this is the bitch of all knives. More machete than knife, really. Totally serious. I'm still on my Dresden Files rampage, wonderful books they are, and Thomas was just wielding one like it was the newest fashion. Don't I wish. It was the first thing that came to mind, so…yeah.

**The inland taipan, thankfully only found in Australia, is said to have the most lethal venom.

***I honestly don't know if this is true, but it sounded realistic enough to utilize. I'm a computer hacker, people, not a master cat burglar. But then, I would say that if I was one, wouldn't I? *evil laughter*