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"Earth to Alex?"
Fourteen-year-old Alex Rider jerked his attention away from the teenagers who had just walked into the cafe and back to his best friend and his girlfriend. "Sorry," he said, "force of habit." Being unwillingly recruited by MI6 had forced lots of habits on him, and being very aware of new people was far from the worst of them. Still, there was something in the way the older teens were looking around that made him nervous.
"So will Jack go for it?" Tom asked before Alex could go back to his covert surveillance.
It took Alex a moment to remember what they had been talking about; normal teenage stuff like bands, concerts and talking his guardian round. His life was officially weird when he had to remind himself what normal was. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure she will," he said. "They're her favourite band at the moment."
"But will she agree to be a responsible adult for us?" Sabina asked. "I mean, if she wants to listen to them..."
"I'm sure I can talk her into it," Alex told her. He took Sabina's hand and smiled encouragingly. "She knows I can take care of myself."
"Great!" Tom said. "I'll let my brother know he can get the tickets."
"Hang on, I haven't asked her yet," Alex objected.
"How is your brother getting cheap tickets anyway?" Sabina asked. "He doesn't even like them."
"He went to school with the drummer," Tom said smugly. "That's why he's in London at all, to catch up with his mates."
Sabina's eyes went wide. "Can he get us backstage?"
Alex leant back and smiled as Sabina and Tom started haggling about exactly who was going to get to meet the boyband Sabina idolised, or more exactly what it was going to cost her. He was just glad that she wanted to see him at all in the few days she was in the country. They hadn't exactly parted under the best of circumstances.
The bell at the cafe door tinkled again, but Alex resolutely ignored it. He had let his paranoia get the better of him once already this afternoon and he wasn't going to do it again. He owed it to his friends to have a normal day.
That resolution lasted about five seconds, the length of time it took him to notice that the teenagers at the next table had gone still. They were very wary, he saw when he looked surreptitiously in their direction, and they were ever-so-slowly reaching for their pockets. They didn't look like a gang — much too well-dressed, Alex thought — but they looked exactly like practised agents Alex had seen casually reaching for their weapons.
When the newcomers wandered past on their way up to the counter, Alex understood why the other teens were so nervous. The new people looked like thugs, pure and simple. They were big and bulky, looking down their noses at everything and everyone, and they carried themselves like they were expecting violence, and maybe even looking forward to it.
Alex leaned closer to his friends. "When I say 'duck', get under the table as fast as you can," he said in a low voice.
Sabina glanced briefly at the newcomers. "Do you think they're after you?" she asked, sounding determinedly calm. Tom gave him a wide-eyed look and mouthed 'Scorpio?'
"I don't know," Alex said. "They don't look like — Duck!"
The men had turned, reaching into their jackets. For weapons, Alex presumed. He didn't hang about to check, just shoved Tom and Sabina down and slid under the cover of the table himself. He expected to hear gunfire erupt, but instead there was shouting and zapping noises like some kind of video game. Had he just gone all paranoid over a game of Laser Tag, Alex wondered?
Then a bright red beam shot past the end of the table leaving a scorch mark on the floor. This was no game, not if their lasers were strong enough to do that. Not that Alex had heard of real lasers that were that powerful, but given the amazing gadgets Smithers produced he wouldn't be surprised to find that MI6 had some.
There was a scream that cut off ominously, and Alex risked a peek over the table. He saw the waitress collapsing to the floor, and one of the thugs turning away from her with a cruel smirk on his face. One of the other thugs was down on the floor, unconscious but still breathing as far as Alex could tell, while the other was firing what looked like a wooden stick at the other teenagers. One of them was now tied up with rope, Alex couldn't imagine how, while the other two were desperately waving their own sticks around. Alex watched the man's laser splash off something invisible just in front of the dark-haired boy, and decided that figuring out what was happening was going to take too long. At least that smirk had told him who the bad guys were.
In one smooth motion, Alex stood up, grabbed the plate his pie and chips had come on and threw it like a discus at the nearest thug. The man must have noticed because he turned slightly and shouted something, and the plate smashed like it had hit a brick wall about a foot from his face. Alex didn't wait to see if anyone would take advantage of the distraction. He dived over the partition into the next booth, mindful that he needed to keep these people from shooting at his friends.
Peering low round the foot of the table, Alex saw that the fight was continuing much as before. The teenagers were maybe not quite as much on the defensive, but it didn't look like Alex's contribution had done much. The thug he had tried to brain looked his way, and Alex pulled his head back quickly. Just as well; the floor beside him didn't so much scorch as explode this time, showering Alex with bits of concrete and cheap floor tile. That gave him an idea though. Just before he had ducked out of sight, Alex had noticed fresh white grit on the thug's jacket. It hadn't been there before, so it must have come from the plate when it shattered. Small or slow-moving things apparently got past that barrier, whatever it was.
Stealthily, Alex reached up onto the table top and pulled down the cruet set. He removed the lid of the pepper pot and, risking one more quick glance at the thugs, lobbed the pot gently at them.
"Oh, brilliant!" he heard the teenage girl say, then Alex felt a sudden inexplicable breeze move around the cafe and sneezing and choking noises started coming from where the thugs were. He rose, ready to throw the salt cellar as another distraction if need be, to see a cloud of pepper slowly whirling around the hapless pair.
"Stupefy! Stupefy!" Beams of light leapt from the boy's stick and struck the two men, who instantly collapsed to the floor. The boy ignored them, rushing past to check the waitress. Alex approached more cautiously and checked them over. He really didn't want either of them getting back up and catching them by surprise. It also gave him a chance to pick up the stick one of the men had been using and hide it under his jumper. Smithers was definitely going to want to have a look at it.
"They're all out cold," he announced when he had finished checking all three men over. "How is she?"
The black-haired boy shook his head and looked down. She was dead then; Alex could see the guilt in the boy's eyes, just like he felt every time he failed to save someone. He felt a surge of anger that other young people were being dragged into situations like this. "Who?" he demanded. "Who are they and what were they doing coming after you?"
"It doesn't matter," the boy said. "Hermione, they can't know we were here. Can you...?" The girl, who was evidently Hermione, was helping the ginger-haired boy up now that she had cut the ropes off him. She nodded, then her eyes flickered to Alex and she looked back at the dark-haired boy questioningly. Alex tensed.
"You might as well tell him," Sabina said. She and Tom had come out from under their table. Alex rather wished they hadn't; if this turned into another fight, they were only going to get hurt. "Otherwise you'll just find a new boy starting at your school, asking all sorts of questions about you."
The red-head snorted. "That would be a really bad idea. Our school isn't safe any more."
"Wow! Alex, look." Tom had his mobile phone out, pointed at the ropes. Alex rubbed his eyes and looked more closely. Yes, they really did seem to be turning into smoke and disappearing. Alex had seen tricks like that done with acid, but this looked different. Sounded and smelled different as well, come to that.
"No!" the dark-haired boy said, and suddenly Tom's phone leapt out of Tom's hand into his. He started tapping at it rapidly, presumably deleting the pictures. Tom looked at Alex in amazement. Alex shrugged; he had no idea how this was happening,
"Would it help if I said I'd already emailed the video of the fight to my brother?" Tom asked.
The dark-haired boy stopped, his shoulders slumping. The red-head just looked puzzled. "What's he mean, 'emailed'?" he asked.
"He means that he took pictures of us and sent copies to his brother. Probably before we even stopped fighting. We can't just obliviate them, we'd have to find his brother too, and if he's put the pictures up on Facebook or something... We are in so much trouble, Ron."
"You-Know-Who is trying to kill you, Harry, and you're worried about the Statute of Secrecy?"
Alex frowned. He had been trying to make sense of what he'd seen and heard. He had heard of a lot of weird things working for MI6, but nothing that involved the lasers, stun-rays, telekinesis and all the other strange things he had seen in the last few minutes. For a fantastic moment he wondered if they were aliens to have such inexplicable technology. The sticks they used to control things seemed so out of place, though; Alex would have expected them to use something that blended in more, not what looked more like... oh...
"You're wizards?" he blurted out.
Harry grimaced, which was all the answer Alex needed. All Sabina needed too, apparently, since she turned on Alex. "Did you know about this?" she demanded.
"No, honestly," Alex protested. "I never even heard of anything like this before. I wasn't planning anything more than an afternoon out with you, I swear."
Harry handed Tom's phone back. "Please tell your brother to keep those pictures to himself," he asked, almost nicely.
"Why should I?" Tom asked. "You started threatening to obliterate us—"
"Obliviate," Ron corrected. "Make you forget about us, that's all."
"There's more of them," Alex said, working it out as he spoke. "A lot more. You need a whole society before you get laws and statutes."
"Thousands," Harry admitted. "Maybe millions, I never asked. All still worried about being discovered after the witch trials and the Spanish Inquisition."
"But that was centuries ago," Sabina said.
"Wizards live a long time," Harry said. "They would feel threatened if they became public knowledge, and right now we're in the middle of a war. Anything might happen, but it probably wouldn't be good."
Alex thought about it for a moment. "Shouldn't there be people who are supposed to look out for incidents like this?"
"Yeah," said Ron, "but they're all over the place right now. The Minister of Magic has just died."
"Murdered," Harry clarified, "maybe quarter of an hour ago."
"You-Know-Who is taking over the Ministry," Ron continued, "and no-one knows what to do. Harry, we need to move. I don't know how the Death Eaters found us here, but we have to get somewhere safe."
"I know. Hermione, could they still have the Trace on me?"
Hermione looked up from where she was making a white mist drift up from the head of one of the thugs. "That would be illegal," she said frowning.
"Dark Lord," Harry reminded her. "I don't think he cares about legality."
"But the spell stops automatically on your eighteenth birthday anyway," Hermione replied. "I checked, and it was broken. They can't put it back without having you there for the ritual."
"The Trace?" Alex asked.
"The Ministry keeps track of underage wizards and witches," Hermione said, standing up. "They don't trust us to be sensible. Though to be fair, I can think of a few people who wouldn't use magic sensibly if they were allowed to."
Ron snorted. "I don't think turning eighteen is suddenly going to make Seamus sensible."
"We have to go," Harry repeated.
"Wait," Alex said. "What's your phone number?" He whipped out his own phone, ready to start typing.
"I don't have one," Harry said shortly. "Magic doesn't mix well with technology. You really need to go now before anyone else turns up."
"But—" Alex protested in vain. The older teens just looked at each other, sort of turned on the spot and disappeared into thin air.
"That was awesome," Tom said.
"That was terrifying," Sabina corrected.
"Same difference."
"They're right, we need to move," Alex told his friends. He didn't really want to have to explain a dead body to the police, never mind the unconscious wizards and all the damage. He needed to get to MI6 and tell them what had happened. While he wouldn't be hugely surprised if Alan Blunt already knew all about wizards and magic, Harry's news about ministers being murdered was too important for him to ignore. Besides, Alex dearly wanted to know what other idiot thought putting a bunch of teenagers in a life-and-death situation was a good idea; he couldn't do anything about his own life, but maybe he could get the others out of the line of fire. He had their names now, and he would track them down somehow, no matter how much they tried to keep him out.
First things first, he thought as he hustled his friends out of the cafe and down Tottenham Court Road. He had to make sure Tom and Sabina were safe before he did anything else.
Then the fun would start.