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metrgabalbilicious-xd · 23 days

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Second Chances

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Alex stirred in his sleep as someone stroked his hair and softly called his name. Even in his half-asleep-half-awake state, he was confused - Jack hadn’t woken him up like this for years. Usually she just called up the stairs or, if he was being particularly slow to get out of bed, came in and pulled the covers off to make him get up. And now that he thought about it, it was a man’s voice saying his name, not Jack’s. Suddenly wide awake, he opened his eyes and looked into the last face that he expected to see.

“What the fu-”

“-Alexander Johnathan Rider, do not finish that word,” the man warned. The shock of hearing that voice again left Alex floundering for words, his mouth gaping silently as he struggled to comprehend what was happening. He couldn’t be here! It was impossible. He died a year and a half ago! And then Alex looked over his uncle's shoulder and saw that his room was not his room. Well, it was, but it was his room from when he was about seven years old. It wasn’t his - fifteen year old Alex’s - room!

“Alex? What’s wrong?” Ian asked, the stern look that had been on his face a moment ago replaced by concern at the panic and confusion in Alex’s eyes.

Instead of answering, Alex jumped up and ran to the bathroom to examine himself in the mirror. It was as he feared. He hadn’t just somehow woken up in his seven year old bedroom. He was back to being a seven year old himself! What should he do? Should he tell Ian everything? Or should he pretend to be a seven year old again? But what did seven year olds do? How did they act? And talk? And think?

“Alex?” Ian asked, knocking softly on the bathroom door. “Are you okay?”

“Umm I’m not sure,” he began, noticing for the first time how high pitched his voice was now. “I had a bad dream,” he said after a moment, deciding that that would be the easiest explanation for now. He didn’t want to try and explain what was going on before he had thought through the different possible scenarios and Ian’s reaction.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Alex opened the bathroom door and almost instinctively threw himself at Ian, his arms wrapping around his waist. Ian felt safe, and Alex felt his uncle's strong arms pick him up and carry him back into his bedroom. The realisation that he was able to spend more time with Ian, however long or short that might end up being, hit him like a truck and he had to stop himself from crying. Then he decided that a seven year old after a nightmare would be very entitled to cry, so he let the tears fall down onto his uncle’s shoulder unchecked.

“Alright then little man,” Ian said as he sat down on Alex’s bed. “Tell me all about this dream.”

“I… I was fourteen,” he began through his sobs. “And you were a spy, but you got killed. And then I was made to be a spy by the people that you worked for. And they kept making me spy on people and it was really scary. People shot guns at me and there were explosions and I nearly died loads of times. And then Mr Blunt” -Alex felt Ian shift almost imperceptibly as he said the name. If he had been a normal seven year old, he wouldn’t have noticed the subtle movement, but fifteen year old Alex could tell that Ian was now paying much closer attention to what he was saying- “sent me to Egypt to investigate something but everything went wrong and Jack was killed!” Alex had said all of this still buried in Ian’s shoulder, taking shuddering breaths as the tears rolled down his cheeks and his body wracked with sobs. Only now that he had finished recounting his dream did he allow himself to slowly begin to relax into his uncle’s comforting embrace. He had been quite vague, deliberately avoiding mentioning MI6 and Mrs Jones and all of the gadgets from Smithers as well as names like Scorpia that Ian would recognise, but he wanted to throw Blunt into the mix to see how he would react.

“It’s alright, Alex,” his uncle whispered soothingly. “It was just a dream.”

“But it was scary!” Alex protested, his voice shaking and tears rolling down his face still. “You were gone and Jack was gone and I was all alone!”

“I know, I know,” Ian said softly. “But I’m here now and you’re not alone.”

The two of them stayed like that for quite a while with Alex sitting on Ian’s lap, crying into his shoulder, while Ian rubbed gentle circles on his back. Alex allowed himself to look like he was calming down and slowly the tears stopped falling and his breathing evened out, but he didn’t relinquish his hold on Ian.

“Let’s get you ready for school, shall we bud?” Ian asked quietly after a little longer.

“No!” Alex protested vehemently, holding onto Ian tighter than he had been before.

“It was just a dream, Alex.”

“No!” Alex was being deliberately clingy. He didn’t know how long he would have with his uncle, but he was determined to spend every moment that he could with him. And if he could drop some subtle hints that may end up saving his life when Herod Sayle and the Stormbreaker computers came around or find a way to tell his uncle everything, that would be all for the better. Alex couldn’t remember Ian pandering to him growing up, but he hoped that he would make an exception today. Maybe saying Blunt’s name would pique his curiosity enough to keep Alex home from school today, even if it was just to pick his brains about the ‘dream’ a little more. He felt Ian touch a hand to his forehead.

“Hmm you are a little hot,” he said. “Maybe you are coming down with something.” It was a feeble excuse, but seven year old Alex would have believed him, so Alex just snuggled back into him.

“Let’s get you tucked back into bed. I’ll phone the school and let them know that you’re sick and then I’ll be right back, okay bud.”

Alex didn’t say anything, but allowed Ian to put him back into bed and tuck him in. He pouted a little when Ian stood up but didn’t want to push his luck and annoy Ian into changing his mind and sending him to school. And when Ian handed him Toothy - his stuffed shark toy that they got at the aquarium when he was younger - Alex snatched it gratefully and hugged it tightly to his chest.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

Alex sniffled but nodded. As soon as Ian closed the door behind him and he heard his uncle's soft footsteps retreating down the hall, Alex sat up and thought. He had to tread carefully - he didn’t want to reveal that he had somehow ended back in the past, at least not yet, anyway. But he also couldn’t act too oddly, or Ian would get suspicious. He might already be, but Alex hoped that he would chalk any odd behaviour to the ‘dream’ that he had supposedly had. Alex supposed that Jack must be in class, or Ian would have sent her up whilst he made his phone call to the school.

________________

Ian closed Alex’s bedroom door and began walking downstairs, deep in thought. Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence that Alex had dreamt that he had hired someone called Jack who seemed to act as a nanny or housekeeper. It had to be because how could Alex have known that he was thinking of hiring someone to keep the house and look after him when Ian was away, and that the first response from the advert he had placed was from a student named Jack Starbright? He hadn’t even broached the subject with him about having someone staying in the house! And how did he know Blunt's name? Ian had never mentioned it in the house but his role in Alex’s dream was far too similar for his actual position within MI6 to be a coincidence.

As he picked up the phone and called the school, Ian pondered the situation. He needed to find out more about the dream from Alex to see whether there were any more uncomfortable coincidences or whether it was just that. After he had informed the school that Alex was ill and wouldn’t be coming to school that day, he rang the office to say that he wouldn’t be in as he needed to take care of Alex. His nephew didn’t have a temperature and certainly wasn’t ill, but the dream he had had had certainly spooked him; he didn’t usually cry and he wasn’t normally as clingy as he had been that morning. There were no important meetings or cases that he was working on at the moment, so Alan Blunt would just have to manage without him for the day.

He made both of them a hot chocolate - made with milk and melted chocolate, of course - and headed back upstairs to see if he could get anything more out of Alex that he could investigate. He opened the door and saw that Alex was laying on his side, his eyes wide open with a haunted look to them. Keeping him home from school had definitely been a wise decision. Alex didn’t even acknowledge that he had come back into the room so Ian gently set the two mugs down on the bedside table and climbed onto the bed, trying not to jostle him too much. When Alex still made no move, Ian began gently stroking his hair, hoping that it would begin to ground him and pull him back into the present. Thankfully, it worked and after a couple of minutes, Alex seemed to wake up. He scrambled back into Ian’s lap, and he just sat there, sinking into him, breathing shakily.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ian asked after a couple of minutes, but Alex just shook his head violently. “How about we drink our hot chocolate and then you tell me a little bit more of your dream?” He looked a little uncertain, but eventually decided that the reward of hot chocolate was worth talking about the dream, as Ian had known he would. So the two of them sat quietly for a while, the only sound in the room being the slurping as they drank.

“Okay, bud,” Ian said once they had both finished their drinks. “What else can you tell me about this dream?” Alex looked scared again, so he added “If you tell me, it won’t seem so scary. When you keep things to yourself, they can seem much more scary because it’s more like a secret. But telling me and talking about it makes it not a secret anymore. I’m not saying it will stop being completely scary, but it won’t be quite as bad.” Alex nodded, and seemed to steel himself to think about the dream again.

It took Alex a long time to recount the different things from the dream, and Ian understood why it had scared him so much. In his dream, Alex had been sent on at least ten different missions and in all of them, he had saved entire countries, if not the world. If he had been anyone else, Ian would have probably put it down to the overactive imagination of a seven year old who had perhaps watched something on the tv that had sent their creative mind into overdrive, but some of the stories that he had told rang a little too close to real events that he and other agents had stopped in the past to be comfortable. On the other hand, how could Alex know about them? Ian was extremely careful to not talk about his work around his nephew, and any files that he brought home were always kept in a locked filing cabinet in his office which he also kept locked. There was no way that Alex would have been able to find anything out about Ian’s job, but he knew things that he shouldn’t. Ian was sure that he had never told him that his office was on Liverpool Street. He had never mentioned Alan Blunt by name. Alex didn’t know that he had a godfather who lived in Australia, but there had been one in his dream. And in the dream, Ian and everyone he worked with was a spy. Oddly though, there was one thing that was bothering him more than all of that; Alex had referred to Jack as ‘she’. There were too many coincidences and Ian didn’t like it.

He had been soothing Alex the whole time he had been thinking and saw that his nephew had dropped back off to sleep, clearly exhausted by the retelling of his bad dream. Ian tucked him back under the covers and went downstairs to make another phone call, taking their empty mugs with him.

“Smithers?” he asked when the phone was answered.

“Hello Ian, old chap. How’s young Alex doing? Mrs Jones told me that he’s feeling under the weather.”

“That’s actually why I’m calling. Alex had a bad dream last night, which involved me being killed in action and him being recruited by Blunt. There are too many coincidences for my liking and I hoped you might be able to help me run some tests.”

“What sort of tests, my boy? I’m certainly no doctor.”

“I know, but you know that truth serum that you’ve been working on?”

“You want to drug your nephew with truth serum because he had a nightmare?”

“Look, I know it sounds ridiculous, but something is definitely wrong and I need to find out what.”

“Ian,” Smithers began. “You’re one of the best agents we have. You have excellent instincts, I’m not denying that, but please just think through what you’re asking me.”

“I have thought about it, Smithers. But Alex knew far too many things. He knew Alan Blunt’s name and in his dream, he was the man who sent Alex on all of his missions. In the dream, I had hired a nanny or housekeeper called Jack. Alex doesn’t know that I have put an advert in the paper and received a response from a student called Jack.”

“That's not an uncommon name, Ian.”

“I know, but the Jack who has applied for a job is female, and Alex referred to Jack as a woman in his dream.”

There was a pregnant silence at the other end of the phone.

“And that’s not counting all of the other details from real life that match his dream that he shouldn’t know about. Something has happened, and I need to find out what it is. If Alex has been compromised by someone trying to use him to get to me, I need to know.”

“Alright. Are you coming in?”

Ian thought for a moment. If he took Alex to the MI6 offices and he had been compromised, then he might inadvertently give secrets to one of their enemies.

“I think it would be best if you come here. There would be too many opportunities for information to get into the wrong hands if I brought Alex to the office.”

“Very wise. I’ll pop over after work. I would come now, but I don’t think Mr Blunt would take that too well.”

“Neither do I. Thank you, Smithers. I’ll see you this evening. Are you coming for dinner?”

“That would be lovely, old chap. Let me know if there’s anything I can do in the meantime.”

“Thank you. I will,” Ian said earnestly before ending the call.

He went back upstairs to check on Alex. He was still fast asleep in bed, looking much calmer than he had all morning. So Ian headed up to his office to do some work whilst Alex slept. He wasn’t very productive, with his mind occupied with what might be wrong with Alex, but it was better than doing nothing.

Lunchtime rolled around without so much as a peep from Alex’s room, so Ian checked on him before heading down to make lunch. He was still fast asleep, cocooned in his bedding, and Ian let him sleep. He would wake him up when lunch was ready but didn’t want to disturb him just yet. It had been an extremely eventful and stressful morning for him and he needed sleep to restore some of his energy.

Ian cooked lunch for the two of them and was about to call up the stairs when Alex appeared in the kitchen, still cocooned in his duvet with Toothy the shark tucked under one arm.

“How are you feeling, bud? Did you sleep better?” Ian asked as he carried their lunch over to the table.

Alex didn’t say anything, but nodded slightly before tucking into his pasta.

“Can I have some juice please,” Alex asked after a couple of minutes.

“Sure bud,” Ian said as he got up from the table, grabbing a cup of water for himself and an orange juice for Alex.

“Thank you,” Alex said, taking the cup in both hands and taking a long gulp of juice before starting on his pasta again. He was much quieter than normal, Ian mused. Usually, Alex was the chattier of the two of them, telling Ian about his day or asking questions in the inquisitive way that seven year olds do, but today they just sat quietly as they ate.

“Where’s Jack?” Alex asked after he had finished his lunch.

“Who’s Jack, Al?”

“The lady who looks after me when you’re away for work?” Alex looked confused. “Is she at her big school for class?”

Ian took a moment trying to work out how to respond. How on earth could Alex know that Jack was a student?

“Come here,” he said, pushing his chair away from the table, inviting Alex to sit in his lap. “Sometimes, we have dreams and they feel a lot like real life, don’t they. Well you told me about a lady called Jack in your dream, but in real life, it’s just the two of us. There isn’t anyone called Jack and I don’t go away on business trips.”

Alex looked even more confused. As though he knew that Ian wasn’t telling him the whole truth, but Ian certainly wasn’t about to say that Alex had somehow known with complete accuracy an event and person from his future. Alex didn’t know that Ian was going to be sent away on ‘business trips’ in the near future, necessitating his hiring someone to take care of Alex and the house. He didn’t know that Ian had already begun background checks on Jack before inviting her to the house to meet in person. Alex couldn’t know those things, but he did. He had always been a perceptive boy, but this was off the scale.

“But…”

“I know it’s hard to take in, Alex. Sometimes our dreams can seem so real that it’s hard to know if it was a dream or not when we wake up. But I promise that right now it’s just you and me.”

“But if it’s so hard to tell, how do we ever know what’s real and not real?”

“It gets easier when you’re older,” Ian admitted. “But I promise I’ll always tell you if something isn’t real, how about that? If you’re unsure, you can ask me and I’ll tell you if it’s real or if it was a dream.”

“Okay,” Alex agreed in a quiet voice.

Very unusually, Ian allowed Alex to spend the afternoon watching movies (although he double checked each one to make sure that there was nothing violent and potentially triggering for his nephew). Now that he was awake, Alex refused to let Ian out of his sight, so he brought his laptop downstairs and worked on the sofa. After a while, Alex sidled into Ian’s lap and he decided to give up working for the day; with Alex snuggling into him, it was impossible to keep his laptop screen out of Alex’s sight and although he wasn’t working on anything classified, he didn’t want Alex to see anything to do with his work, whether he had been compromised or not. Just after five, Ian managed to persuade Alex to let him leave the confines of the sofa so that he could cook dinner. The curry that he had made was simmering on the hob when the doorbell rang.

“Hi, Smithers. Come in,” he said as he opened the door.

“Thanks, old bean,” Smithers greeted in a booming voice. “How’s young Alex?” he asked in a hushed whisper. Ian didn’t think he had ever heard Smithers speak so quietly.

“He’s okay,” Ian replied, also in a whisper, as he opened the door to allow Smithers into the house. “He definitely knows things that he shouldn’t though.”

“Well I’ve brought everything that we’ll need, so hopefully we’ll get some answers tonight.”

Ian nodded. He really hoped that he was just being overly suspicious and cautious, but also needed to know if something was going on.

“Is it better if he has it on an empty stomach or not?”

“It’ll work either way. But an empty stomach will get a quicker response.”

“Empty it is then.”

“It’s colourless and virtually tasteless, so you should be able to slip it into a drink unnoticed.”

Ian just nodded again. Leading the way into the kitchen, he made Alex a cup of squash, poured the vial of truth serum into it and then led Smithers into the living room.

“Here’s some squash, Alex,” he said at a normal volume. “You need to keep your fluids up. And this is Derek, one of my colleagues from work.”

“Hello Sm-Derek,” Alex said dubiously as he took the squash.

“Hello, young man. I hear you’ve been feeling a bit under the weather today. Are you feeling better this evening?”

“A little,” Alex replied, and Ian could almost see the cogs turning in his mind, but he had no idea why Alex would be suspicious of Smithers arriving at the house, seeing as the two of them had never met.

“We’ve got a little bit of work to discuss, so we’ll talk while I finish cooking dinner, alright.”

“Okay,” Alex said, seeming to accept Ian’s story and turning back to the television as they walked out, closing the door behind them. Once they were back in the kitchen, with the curry simmering away on the hob stopping their whispered conversation from carrying into the lounge, Ian turned to Smithers.

“He definitely started to call you Smithers, but I don’t talk about anyone at work, definitely not by name, and I introduced you as Derek.”

“It’s certainly unusual,” Smithers agreed. “We’ll just have to wait for the serum to come into effect to find out the truth.”

A couple of minutes later, the kitchen door opened and Alex appeared with his empty cup.

“Could I have some more squash please?”

“You can have some water,” Ian said, taking his cup and filling it from the tap. He usually encouraged Alex to be independent and get his own drinks, however he was happy to make an exception today. Alex pouted slightly, but accepted the water with a word of thanks before disappearing back into the lounge.

“He’s very much like John, isn’t he?”

“Sometimes too much,” Ian agreed. “How long does the serum take to work?”

Smithers looked at his watch. “Well, given that he drank the entire amount in less than five minutes, it should begin to take effect in the next ten minutes or so.”

“And how long does it last for?”

“About half an hour.”

“Okay.”

“Breathe Ian. One way or another, you’ll find out soon enough.”

Ian nodded and steeled himself for what was likely to be an uncomfortable conversation over dinner as he stirred the curry and prepared the vegetables, doing anything to keep himself busy.

***

“He didn’t drink the truth serum,” Smithers said quietly from the front step as he was leaving.

“What?”

“His eyes didn’t glaze over. He got everything else right, but that’s the one thing that is hard to replicate if you’re faking.”

Ian swore. “So he didn’t drink the serum, but he faked it, so he knows that we tried to drug him?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Ian swore again. “What do we do now? We know that there is definitely something going on, but he’s not going to take anything that I hand him now… I really don’t want to take him to Liverpool Street if I can avoid it.”

“I understand that. I wonder if you can book him in for an MRI?”

“What good would that do?”

“Well, if he’s had a blow to the head and has a form of concussion, then that would show on the scan. It would explain why he’s acting so oddly. I don’t know, maybe he saw a bit of a tv show where they used a truth serum and a head injury has made him think that it’s his reality. Maybe he’s just concussed and confused, or maybe it’s something else entirely, but a brain scan would rule out some possibilities.”

“I’ll think about it, thanks Smithers. Do you happen to have a spare vial of the serum on you? Just in case?”

“I’m afraid not, old bean. I can drop one off for you tomorrow though. I take it you won’t be coming in?”

“That would be brilliant, thanks. I doubt it if Alex is still behaving oddly. I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone about this.”

“Of course, my boy. My lips are sealed.”

“Thanks Smithers. Have a good evening.”

“You too, Ian. And try not to worry too much.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I know, but try,” he said before making his way back down the garden path. Ian closed and locked the door behind him before quietly climbing the stairs to check on Alex, who was fast asleep in bed. Sighing quietly to himself as he contemplated the potential worst case scenarios and his options, he went back downstairs to tidy up the kitchen.

________________

The next morning, Alex woke quite naturally just after half past six. Ian had put him to bed before 8, which was a sensible bedtime for a 7 year old but was extremely early for a 15 year old. Despite that, and the fact that he had napped for most of that morning, Alex soon dropped off to sleep and woke up feeling more refreshed than he had done in a very long time. Even with everything that was happening, he had slept remarkably well. Although now he was awake, he remembered what had happened the night before.

Ian had invited Smithers over for dinner which had never happened when Alex was growing up. The first time they had actually met was when he had given Alex his first set of gadgets before he set off to Cornwall to investigate Herod Sayle. So the very fact that Smithers was in the house did not bode well. That immediately made him distrustful and suspicious, despite there not being any obvious reason to be. Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones had cultivated the spy in him too well to ignore his suspicions, so he had not drunk the squash that Ian had given him. The intent way that both adults had looked at his empty cup when he entered the kitchen a few minutes later confirmed his suspicions.

When Ian and Smithers had been saying their goodbyes, Alex had listened to their conversation through the minuscule gap in his open window and heard from their lips that he had been right. Worse still, they knew that he knew. That would make for an awkward breakfast conversation! A rather uncomfortable thought struck Alex as he lay awake in bed trying to weigh up his limited options on what to do; if Ian heeded Smithers’ advice and arranged for Alex to have an MRI scan (he had no doubt that he would be able to arrange it if he decided to), what would it show? Would his brain look like a 7 year olds or a 15 year olds? Would it be like a combination of the two? And another thing - Alex had sustained a considerable amount of head trauma throughout his time working for MI6. Would that show up on a scan too? If it did, how on earth would he begin to explain that in a way that would be believable? Especially given that he barely understood what was happening himself! And despite all of his own experience, Alex had no idea how Ian would react, nor what he would do… and that wasn’t a comforting thought.

Deciding that he would just have to adapt to however Ian was acting, Alex threw back the covers and went downstairs to have breakfast. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see Ian already sitting at the table with a mug of coffee and reading the newspaper, but for some reason he hadn’t expected it.

“Morning,” he said, stifling a pretend yawn.

“Morning Alex,” Ian replied. Was it his imagination or was Ian more detached and analytical already? “You’re up early.”

“What time is it?” he asked. Could 7 year olds read analogue clocks, he wondered.

“Quarter to seven,” Ian replied, folding his newspaper and finishing his coffee. “Now then, young man,” he said, turning his chair around and holding his arms out, inviting Alex into a hug. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said a little sheepishly as he climbed into Ian’s lap. He still wasn’t quite used to the sensation of being hugged by his uncle again, but he certainly wasn’t going to pass up any opportunities to do so. He didn’t know how long he would be trapped in his 7 year old body or when he would be brought back to the present, where he would never be able to hug Ian again.

“Hmm, you still feel hot, bud. Let’s get you some Calpol and see how you feel after breakfast.”

Alex knew that he didn’t have a temperature and he doubted that Ian would actually give him medicine if he weren’t sick, which could only mean one thing. He must be trying to get him to take the truth serum again. Ian would be watching him like a hawk too; there would be no way of avoiding taking it like he had done last night. Equally, the amount of truth serum that he would be able to dose Alex with would be a lot less if it was given to him as part of fake medicine. From memory, a dose of Calpol was only 5ml and Ian would have to disguise it to look like Calpol, so he wouldn’t ingest very much… but Ian would have had to have calculated that it would be enough to work… which was an issue. He hadn’t planned to tell his uncle the truth so soon and even with the truth serum, would he believe him? Or would he just believe that he had been compromised somehow?

He needed more time! So he did the one thing that would buy him some more while he thought what to do next. Taking Ian by surprise, he jumped off of his lap, ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs. He ran into the bathroom and just managed to slide the bolt across before Ian reached the door. He collapsed panting against the door, sliding down it into a ball on the floor.

“Alex?” Ian asked patiently. “What’s going on, bud?”

Alex didn’t answer for a minute as he tried to work out a plan from here. Ian might not be able to dose him with truth serum while he was stuck in here but equally Alex couldn’t do anything himself. He steeled himself, deciding that the only thing he could do now was tell him the truth.

“Alex,” Ian called again. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“Okay, but I don’t think you’re going to believe me.” His voice was small.

“Can you open the door?”

Should he let Ian in? He took a deep breath and slid the bolt again, unlocking the door. Ian must have heard the bolt because he slowly opened the door, gently pushing Alex into the middle of the bathroom. He felt Ian settle on the floor next to him and pull him into his lap.

“Now then, what’s wrong?” Ian asked in a soft whisper, his chin brushing against Alex’s cheek.

“You’re not going to believe me, but I’ll tell you.”

“Why won’t I believe you? If you’re telling me the truth, we’ll be able to sort out whatever it is that’s bothering you.”

“We won’t, but thanks.” Alex took another deep breath and began. “It wasn’t a dream. When I went to bed the night before last, I was fifteen years old. When I woke up yesterday morning, I was a seven year old again and you were still alive. Everything that I said happened to me in the dream actually happened to me in real life. You died when I was fourteen. I was told it was a car crash, but I soon found out the truth. You’re a spy and you died when you were on a mission and then Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones sent me to finish it in your place. To everyone’s surprise, I lived and was successful in my mission… and over the next year and a half, I completed another fourteen missions. I was seconded to the CIA and ASIS in Australia. I came up against Scorpia multiple times and survived an assassination attempt by them. I learnt the truth about my dad, despite Julia Rothman’s best efforts. I’ve been to space and I’ve survived against impossible odds. You hire Jack Starbright, although apparently not yet, and when you die she becomes my guardian, and Blunt uses her to blackmail me into doing that first mission...” He had steadfastly refused to look at Ian’s face as he told his story, instead staring at one of the buttons on his shirt, but how he looked up into Ian’s eyes to see how he was taking it. There was a mixture of astonishment, disbelief and sadness in his eyes and Alex didn’t know if that meant that he had accepted his story or not.

“That’s why I didn’t take the truth serum last night,” he continued. “I didn’t really want to tell you everything like this. And Smithers was there and I didn’t want him to find out at the same time as you…” he trailed off, waiting for Ian to say something. He didn’t say anything for quite a while, but he pulled Alex into a much stronger hug.

“Ian?” he asked after a few minutes, but he didn’t get a response other than a kiss on the head. Alex just waited, taking comfort from the fact that Ian seemed to believe him.

“I’m sorry,” Ian said eventually, his voice breaking.

“What for?”

“Everything. I really am sorry, Alex,” and before Alex could say anything else, he felt a needle jab into his arm.

“What… no… please-” he started to say, his speech slurring and mind unfocused.

“I’m so sorry.” Ian’s voice echoed through his head, as he fell into blackness.

Alex woke up with a pounding headache and a profound sense of panic. He was in a dark room and he couldn’t make out anything. And he was chained to the bed.

“Ian?” he called softly. There was no reply. “Ian!” He screamed this time, his voice echoing in the darkness, but nobody came. One good thing about having the body of a seven year old was that all of his restraints had been designed for adults. It didn’t take him long to wriggle his wrists free from the handcuffs and jump out of bed. The room was still in darkness, so he had to feel his way around the wall until he found a door. He pulled the handle and was pleasantly surprised to find that it opened onto a well-lit corridor. One of the downsides to being trapped in his seven year old body was that he was so small. He had to stand on tiptoe and even then he could only just about peer in through the window in each of the doors. None of them contained anything very interesting and they gave no clues as to where he was. He didn’t recognise it as Liverpool Street but there were probably plenty of places in the building that he had never been before.

He had just finished peering through the last door of the corridor when he heard talking from the other side of the wall and he realised that it was a key-card operated sliding door rather than a traditional swing door like the others along the corridor. Quickly, he opened the door to the storeroom that he had just checked and managed to close it just as two people walked through the other door. They didn’t see him and, although he only got a quick glance as they passed the thin window of the door, Alex didn’t recognise them. He knew that he would only have a very narrow margin in which to escape this corridor without being seen before the two guards saw that he was missing and raised the alarm. He opened the door again and slipped through the door just before it slid shut behind him.

Alex found himself in another corridor but before he had a chance to do anything, the alarm began to blare. He ran. There was a set of stairs to his right and he ran up them, not knowing where it would take him, but hoping it would take him to relative safety, away from the guards. Only now, as he was running down yet another corridor, did it occur to him that trying to escape might not have been the best course of action this time. He wasn’t being held captive by a madman who wanted to destroy the world with himself being the only person standing in their way. But it was too late to think about that now. His priority now was avoiding the guards, finding Ian and hopefully convincing him that he was telling the truth.

He found another set of stairs and climbed them too. They spiralled up more than one flight and Alex emerged from the sub-levels to what must be the ground floor. There was a window which gave him a view of the outside, unless it was one of Smithers’ gadgets like in the safe house he and Jack had been to. This floor was further away from the alarms and the next floor up opened onto what looked like a floor of offices. This looked more like the Liverpool Street offices that he remembered. What floor was he on? The first door number he could see was 101. The first office on the first floor? Smithers’ office was on the eleventh floor. If he could climb that far without being caught, he might be able to persuade Smithers that he was telling the truth. Alex ran back to the stairs and began to climb.

He made it without being seen, at least in person, although he had no doubt that there would be cameras all over the building. When he reached the eleventh floor, Alex cautiously poked his head out to see if there was anyone waiting for him. There wasn’t. He ran silently down the corridor until he reached Smithers’ office. He threw open the door and ran inside, closing the door behind him quickly and leaning up against it. Smithers was sitting behind his desk and Alex saw too late that he was not alone. Ian was sitting on the sofa and they had clearly been in the middle of an intense discussion, but they were both now staring at him with wide eyes.

“You could have just said that you didn’t believe me,” he said bitterly to Ian. “You didn’t have to carry on a charade and then knock me out. And frankly, MI6 really needs to improve their security.”

“How..?” Ian began. “How did you escape?”

“I already told you that I’ve been working as a spy for more than a year and a half. It really wasn’t very difficult, especially since the cuffs you used were designed for adults, not seven year olds. What can I say to convince you that I am who I say I am? How about the fact that you’re wearing a disguise, Mr Smithers? Or that I have a godfather who everyone calls Ash who moved to Australia not long after the plane carrying my parents exploded. He set off the bomb, by the way. Or how about the fact that Mrs Jones’s husband was a Russian spy who was finding out MI6 secrets and that he stole her two children - William and Sofia - when he made his escape from the country. How about the fact that according to the newspapers, my dad got a dishonourable discharge from the army for killing a taxi driver who was saying stuff about soldiers who fought in the Falklands war, but it was just a big cover story so that he could be recruited by Scorpia to infiltrate their ranks. I can tell you that Scorpia have their training facility on Malagosto, an island just off the coast of Venice. What do you want to know?!” The two adults just sat staring at him. “Look, I don’t know why this has happened. I don’t know how I ended up back here but if I can do something... like save your life,”- he glanced at Ian as he said this, -“then perhaps it will all be okay in the end.”

“Alex.” It was Ian’s voice, but Alex was sure that his mouth didn’t move. “Alex.” This time Alex was certain. It was Ian’s voice but he wasn’t speaking. “Alex.” He blinked and when he opened his eyes again, he found himself back in his bedroom, looking up into Ian’s concerned face. He sat bolt upright and held his head in his hands, breathing heavily. It had all been a dream! Relief flooded through Alex as he realised that the events of ‘that morning’ hadn’t actually happened. Ian was definitely suspicious and he had tried to get the truth out of Alex with some form of truth serum, but at least he hadn’t knocked him out and locked him up in the basement of the MI6 offices!

“Were you having a bad dream, Al?” Ian asked, putting an arm around Alex’s shoulder. Alex just nodded, unsure what to say. His heart was hammering in his chest and he was breathless, as though he had been running. The adrenaline in his system was making him shake violently too.

“Come here,” Ian said, inviting Alex to crawl into his lap. “Do you want to talk about it?” Ian asked when Alex was safely ensconced in his arms, but he didn’t say anything. “Was it the same dream as before?” Ian prompted. Alex shook his head.

“It carried on from it,” he explained hesitantly. “I told you the truth and you didn’t take it very well. You gave me an injection that knocked me out and then I woke up chained up in a room. And then I escaped and alarms went off and I got up to Smithers’ office and you were both there and I was trying to explain and get you to understand that I was telling the truth but I don’t think you believed me and then you woke me up,” he finished with a sob, and burrowed further into Ian’s soft pyjamas, while Ian stroked his hair.

“And what was the truth, Al?”

“That it wasn’t a dream. That I actually am fifteen and somehow trapped in my seven year old body and everything that I said before was real and actually happened,” he said truthfully.

“I see,” Ian said softly. “But it was just a dream, bud. You’re safe now.”

They stayed sitting like that for a while, before Ian tried to get Alex to go back to sleep.

“Stay?” Alex pleaded.

“Your bed isn’t big enough for us both, Al.”

“Please?” he asked, allowing an edge of panic to creep into his voice.

“Alright, you can sleep in my bed tonight. How about that?”

Alex nodded into Ian’s chest and felt himself rise into the air as Ian stood up. He bent down again and Alex felt Toothy brush against his arm and clutched him to his chest. Fifteen year old Alex hadn’t slept with a cuddly toy for years but it had been oddly comforting to sleep with Toothy again. Ian carried him into his bedroom and they settled down together on the bed. Alex fell asleep almost instantly.

When he woke up, he was alone in the bed although he could hear Ian showering in his en-suite. Alex sat up and tried to work out what to do. He knew that he had to tell Ian the truth but the question was ‘how’? The shower stopped. He was running out of time! Ian appeared a couple of minutes later, his hair still damp but he was dressed. Alex knew what he had to do.

“Morning, bud,” he greeted, coming over to ruffle his hair. Alex promptly (and deliberately) burst into tears. “Hey, hey,” Ian said soothingly as he pulled Alex onto his lap again. Alex had lost count of the number of times they had sat like that over the past couple of days. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what’s real and what’s not real,” Alex said through his sobs. Ian shushed him gently, rubbing circles on his back. “It was so scary!”

“What was scary, bud?”

“You… you didn’t believe me. And then you locked me up and there were guards with guns but you weren’t there. You locked me up and left me…”

“Alex, look at me,” he said, lifting Alex's chin so that they were looking into each other’s eyes. “I promise I will never, ever lock you up and leave you there.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” he said, pulling Alex into a tighter hug.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course you can.”

“And you promise that you’ll listen and that you’ll at least try to believe me?”

“I promise.”

“Okay. So you know when you woke me up yesterday, I said I’d had a bad dream?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that wasn’t a dream.”

“What?”

“That wasn’t a dream.” Alex took a deep breath. “When I went to bed two days ago, I was fifteen and then when I woke up yesterday, I was back to being a seven year old, but with all of my memories. And frankly, I’m terrified telling you this because last night I had a nightmare where I told you and you knocked me out and chained me up in the basement of MI6. I know it sounds crazy, but I know a lot of information that seven year old me wouldn’t know and-”

“-It's alright, Alex,” Ian interrupted his rambling. “Why don’t you tell me everything, and then we’ll work out what to do from there?”

What? Ian wasn’t being instantly dismissive of what Alex had to say! Even though it sounded crazy! Alex supposed that was a positive, even if Ian was just humouring him by letting him talk before… well that didn’t bear thinking about. He had to focus on the positives.

“Okay.” Alex took a deep breath and began to tell Ian a brief overview of his story, although this time he framed it as it had actually been, rather than as though it had been a dream. He also made sure to say all of the significant names and places. He explained how Ian had died and how he found out the truth about both his life and his death, about how he had been blackmailed by Alan Blunt to go on his first mission. He told him about Hugo Grief and Point Blanc Academy, about being sent to Afghanistan and then Skeleton Key with Sarov and the CIA, about Scorpia and what he learned about his father. He told Ian about Drevin and the space station and about Ash and the Snakehead. He spoke about Razim and what he did to Jack and how he had found her again after travelling halfway around the world. And finally about Nightshade. How he had found Mrs Jones’ children and brought Sofia safely home although William was still missing. It took a long time to go through everything, and Ian didn’t interrupt but just let Alex speak and explain everything as briefly as he could.

“And I don’t know how I ended back here or if I’m supposed to do anything or if I can do anything…” he concluded.

For his part, Ian just looked stunned. Alex wriggled his way out of Ian’s lap, just in case he needed to make a run for it, but when he looked into Ian’s face, he saw defeat more than anything else in his uncle's eyes.

“I really thought I was doing the right thing,” he said eventually.

“What do you mean?”

“All those holidays. The climbing and skiing and kayaking and diving. They were ways for us to bond and I thought that if you decided to follow a similar career path to me that they’d be good as a starting point and if you decided to do something else entirely, then you’d just have a variety of different adventurous hobbies. When I took you to your karate lessons, it was supposed to be for self-defence, so that if you ever got caught up in my world by someone who wanted to use you as blackmail against me, then you’d have some way to defend yourself. I never expected Alan Blunt to look at you and see you as my replacement, especially at fourteen. I’m sorry, Alex.”

“It’s not your fault. You did your best, and I loved those holidays! Blame Blunt, that’s what I do,” he said with a small, sad laugh.

“Oh Alex,” Ian sighed sadly. “Come here,” he said, holding out his arms. Alex looked warily at him, remembering that the last time they had had this conversation, it had ended with Ian knocking him out, even if it had only been in a dream. “Oh, right. The dream,” Ian said as he realised why Alex didn’t trust him. “You can search me for a syringe if you like?” Ian stood up as he spoke, holding his arms out so that Alex could search him. When he found that Ian was clean, Alex wrapped his arms around his waist, and then felt Ian lifting him up so that they could both hug each other.

“So what do we do now?” Alex asked.

“I don’t know,” Ian replied. “So you don’t remember anything special about the day you went to bed before you woke up here?”

“No. I didn’t even speak to anyone at MI6 that day. It was just a normal school day.”

“Okay. Let’s have some breakfast, and then we’ll start with your first mission. Maybe you’re here to stop me from being killed?”

“Okay,” Alex said, and a weight that he hadn’t realised had been pinning him down suddenly lifted. He had told Ian the truth and his uncle had taken it in his stride. Alex knew from his own experience that being able to accept the outlandish was important when you worked in intelligence and he was glad to see that his uncle understood that too.

After breakfast, they settled into Ian’s office and Alex recounted everything that he could remember about Ian’s final mission. Ian took notes on everything, occasionally asking questions, but mostly just letting Alex talk. He had debriefed on missions enough times to be able to recall the relevant facts first time through. Once they had gone through the specifics of Stormbreaker, their conversation continued, moving on to Hugo Grief and Point Blanc, Darcus Drake in Afghanistan, Sarov and Skeleton Key and beyond. It took them a long time to cover everything that Alex had been through in the last 20 months in enough detail for it to be useful.

“So what happens next?” Alex asked when they had finished.

“I don’t know,” Ian said ruefully. “Let’s go and have some lunch and decide from there.”

Alex nodded and followed his uncle down the stairs into the kitchen, secretly wondering what would happen if he couldn’t get back to his time. Would he have to relive the past eight years again? He hoped not but without any idea how he travelled back in time in the first place, he had no way of knowing how to make the return journey.

***

Alex Rider jerked awake and saw the ceiling of his bedroom through sleep blurred eyes. Suddenly, he was wide awake as he remembered what had happened over the past couple of days. Sitting bolt upright and looking around, he realised that he was back! He was back in his fifteen year old room. Hastily jumping out of bed, Alex knew instantly that he was back in his fifteen year old body too, but examining himself in the mirror, he saw a distinct lack of scars. Did that mean? Surely it had to! It had to mean that Ian was still alive! He ran silently downstairs, hoping against hope that he was right. Peering cautiously around the door to the kitchen, he saw a man drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.

“Good morning, Alex,” Ian said from behind his newspaper, sensing his nephew's presence without him making a sound.

Alex didn’t say anything in reply. He was in too much shock at the realisation that it had worked. Ian was still alive. He pinched himself to see whether he was still dreaming, but the sharp pinch seemed to confirm that he was very much awake. He could remember both lives; one where Ian died and he became a spy and a second where he was just a normal teenager, going to school and studying for his GCSEs. He had no idea how it had happened or why it had happened, but the very fact that Ian was sitting before him proved that it had. Somehow, he had travelled back in time and prevented Ian’s death.

“Morning,” he eventually replied, a little gingerly, and Ian instantly folded his paper down and examined him.

“It just happened for you, didn’t it?”

It took Alex a second to realise what Ian was on about. Then it hit him. Of course Ian would know! Alex had explained everything to him, over eight years ago for him, even if it had only been the day before for Alex. A flood of emotions overwhelmed him and he found that he couldn’t say anything so, instead of talking, he just nodded. Alex’s world seemed to have slowed and he watched as Ian stood in slow motion and, in just a few strides, stood before him and pulled him into a warm embrace. It gave Alex an odd feeling; it was both familiar and new.

“You… you’re still alive…” he managed to gasp out as he hugged his uncle back tightly.

“Yes, Alex. I’m still alive. You saved me, and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”

They stayed like that for a long while, Alex still hardly able to believe that he wasn’t dreaming.

“Do you want some breakfast?” Ian asked eventually.

“Yeah,” Alex said as they broke apart, albeit still a little numbly. “Breakfast sounds great.”

Ian led Alex to the dining table before heading into the kitchen, but Alex barely heard the slight clattering and clinking that his uncle was making as he made breakfast. Ian was alive! When Ian set down a plate with a couple of boiled eggs and marmite soldiers a few minutes later, a sudden realisation hit Alex.

“Jack went back to America, didn’t she?” he asked, knowing even as he did so that it was true. He remembered saying goodbye and watching her go through the departure lounge of Heathrow.

“Yes, she did,” Ian confirmed, a little sadly. “Once you’ve finished breakfast, I’ll fill you in with everything from my perspective from the last couple of years and then you can tell me what you remember.”

“Okay,” Alex agreed.

“I’m just going to phone the school and tell them that you won’t be in.”

“Okay,” Alex didn’t seem to be able to say anything else at the moment. Once Ian had gone, he picked up one of his soldiers and dunked it into the egg. Watching the runny yolk spill out of the egg and down the egg cup to the plate, Alex tried to make sense of the two versions of the past two years of his life in his head. He was definitely going to have to write it all down later to make sense of it.

Ian came back a couple of minutes later and finished his coffee whilst Alex finished his breakfast. They sat in silence, which Alex was glad about. Despite having the memories of a life lived with Ian, the more prominent ones in his mind were from the life where Ian died, so it was extremely odd to see him now sitting at the table and very much alive. Once Alex was finished, they quietly headed up to the top floor of the house, to Ian’s office.

“You haven’t redecorated, then?” Alex said with a smile as he looked around the room.

“No. It serves its purpose.” Ian gestured for them both to sit on the comfortable sofas. Alex took the same seat that he had taken before and Ian did likewise, sitting opposite him.

“The first thing I did after you left was look into Kavos Bay,” Ian began.

“Nightshade,” Alex muttered sourly. It was rather ironic that his own last mission was the thing that Ian had tackled first.

“Exactly. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do anything about most of your missions until closer to the time, but I could begin to investigate Nightshade. I used satellites and a couple of ingenious remote control fish bugs that Smithers designed for me and pulled a case together for more resources to be spent to look into the operation that was being run there. Nightshade used the disguise of a children’s charity to help them to avoid suspicion but, once I had made my initial report, we scrutinized their activities and gathered all of the intelligence that we needed to make a move. The ‘teachers’ were all arrested and the kidnapped children returned to their homes, after intense therapy to break the brainwashing that they had been under and help them to remember their lives from before.”

“And they’re all okay?” Alex asked.

“They are now,” Ian said with a slight smile. “The next mission of yours that I began to look into was Hugo Grief at Point Blanc. I knew that his clones would be about eight by the time that I began my investigation, which would give me a few years before they began to put Project Gemini into action. I also put a watch on Nikolei Drevin, as it’s much easier to gather information as it happens rather than looking retrospectively. At this point, the CIA weren’t looking into him and MI6 weren’t looking officially so, although he was careful, I managed to get a lot more than I suspect the CIA had when they sent you to Flamingo Bay. They received an anonymous package with all of my findings, and arrested him after they had begun their own investigation but before the first part of Ark Angel was launched into space. I also sent an anonymous tip to ASIS, and Ash was arrested about a year later.” Ian continued, explaining how he had used the information that Alex had given him to circumvent each of his missions before the need arose to send an agent to investigate. Then Alex began to tell his side of the story.

“I remember both versions. I remember the version where you died and I was sent on all of those crazy missions. I remember nearly dying countless times, being shot at and kidnapped and tortured. But I also remember life with you. I remember going kayaking in New Zealand and completing the Kokoda Trail and snowboarding and skiing in Canada. I remember saying goodbye to Jack as she left for America and just going to school and playing football and starting rowing and going on the school trip to Venice and just having a good time rather than being sucked into Scorpia. I don’t know how or why I remember both versions, but I do,” he concluded with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Well, I’m glad that you remember both, because I have a surprise for you,” Ian said, standing up. “Obviously, I would prefer it if you didn’t remember all of those awful things, but I had a feeling that you might, so I built you something,” he said as he led the way into the storage half of the attic. “Place your hand here,” he said, indicating a perfectly normal looking spot on the wall, but Alex was sure that it concealed something, although he hadn’t a clue what it might be. Obediently placing his hand on the wall, and being reminded of the fingerprint recognition scanner that Winston Yu had built into Royal Blue, Alex watched in amazement as a section of the wall slid out of the way to reveal an office space. It was smaller than Ian’s with just a desk with a computer on it, a swivel chair, a filing cabinet and a bookshelf, but there was still plenty of space.

“You don’t have to but I thought you might like somewhere to come when I’m away on missions to see what’s going on. The computer is encrypted so we can send each other secure messages. Nobody at MI6, other than Smithers, knows that I’ve had this equipment installed, but you will be able to access the servers and view anything that I have clearance to see. If you want to, we can work on missions together, but you will be able to do it without being sent into danger yourself. You clearly have an impressive head for intelligence work anyway and I would have thought that knowing that I am working on missions and being unable to do anything about it yourself would just be frustrating. But, it is completely your choice, Alex. If you want to do a little or a lot, provided that it doesn’t interfere with your studies,” he added with a stern look, “or absolutely nothing at all, I will understand, but I want you to have the choice, as you haven’t had that for the past couple of years.”

“Thank you,” Alex gasped. It was a lot to take in, but Ian had thought everything through so carefully. If Alex wanted to be involved, all of the equipment was already set up, but if he wanted nothing to do with MI6 again, he didn’t have to.

“So how much does Smithers know?” Alex asked as they walked back down the stairs for lunch. They had spent the entire morning in Ian’s office, talking about the past two years and both of them were ravenously hungry.

“He knows most of it. I had to go to him for various off-the-book gadgets and frankly it was easier to explain the truth than to come up with different lies. And since he already knew that something had happened with you after that night that he came over, he believed it a lot quicker than I thought he would. Although, I suppose it probably helped that I told him after having taken his truth serum.”

“You took truth serum to convince Smithers that I had come back in time to warn you about your death?” Alex asked incredulously.

“Well of course it sounds ridiculous when you put it like that!”

“Does he know what happened in the timeline where…”

“Where I died and you were blackmailed into going on multiple missions by Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones? Yes he does. And he’s been working on something specifically for you for if you came back being able to remember everything...” Ian said cryptically. “But before you ask, he has refused to tell me what it is, so I can’t actually tell you anything more than that! Let’s eat lunch and then we can sort out meeting up with Smithers. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see you!”

“Sounds good! So what’s for lunch?” Alex asked with a grin as they descended the multiple flights of stairs to the ground floor. He could still hardly believe that he had done it. Ian was alive!

#alex rider

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