Work Text:
120847ZFEB21
“Sir,” Miles started. “I’ve been meaning to ask you this for a while now.”
“Sure. Go ahead.” Alex said. He was in a happy mood, buzzing with light contentment, more than happy just to stare out of the tinted window in the front seat, watching London come alive in the crisp morning air, cloudless for once but still bitterly cold. The meeting this morning with Mr Crawley had gone well then. Now Miles had been tasked with driving Alex to Brooklands Comprehensive in time for the young agent’s school day.
“Why is it that you always insist on sitting in the front seat when I drive you anywhere?” he asked.
Alex smiled lightly, saying almost teasingly, “And if I said that I just like sitting up front?”
“I would say that there’s another reason.”
“Miles.” Alex laughed breathily. He was in a really good mood. “I may be the senior in terms of rank but you don’t work for me . You answer to Crawley as his assistant; we work together.”
Oh. It’s a sign of respect, Miles thought, warming inside with respect of his own for the teen. It was thoughtful of Alex, to be kind in his own small way, rather than let their cold world of intelligence worm its way into freezing his heart. Unlike some (most) others.
“Second to last corner, sir. Are you excited?” he said instead.
“Well, not really. It’s only just school. Almost half-term though.” Alex returned to looking out of the window, fiddling with a badge on the lapel on his school blazer. He must have seen some other students he recognised as the secondary school was clearly visible from the street they smoothly turned into. On the pavements, small groups of friends stood gossipping and some other students walked alone, wrapping their coats tighter around themselves to keep out the February chill. A few were eating various bright sweets or had energy drinks, probably from a corner shop nearby.
The Jaguar XJ Sentinel slowed, waiting at a traffic light as it turned amber. Alex sighed.
“Sir?”
“You really have to stop calling me that. It’s nothing. Don't worry about it.”
The light turned green after a few more seconds, Miles carefully pulling the car to the middle of the small junction, watching for the right moment to make the turn to the right. The streets were busy, like any other school morning, with traffic as parents scrambled to drop off their kids and get to work themselves. The pavements themselves were pretty crowded too.
Maybe that’s why the both of them both missed noticing the van than was speeding recklessly around another corner towards them at a speed much more than legal on the motorway, let alone in a school area.
Until it crashed into them.
Everything suddenly went almost weightless and it was like the two of them would be torn violently out of their seats if it wasn’t for the belts cutting into their skin. It was sickening, feeling like they were spinning away from the ground with no control. Cars aren’t made for flying. Everything around them seemed to slow, drawing out their air time, as if the universe itself was laughing derangedly at what was to come.
The impact was expected, inevitable. It didn’t make it any less jarring.
They hit the ground upside down.
It was expected to all stop quickly. It didn’t.
Metal scraping horribly against tarmac. The car was still moving, dragged along the ground with banshee-like screeching. Glass smashing. They came to a slow halt. Screaming. Click-click. A voice calling someone to call 999. Click-click . The indicator going off, like mechanical mocking, not showing any signs of stopping in pity. Click-click. Smoke gathering. Click-click. Petrol dripping.
Miles coughed weakly, faintly heard ringing getting louder in his ears, rather than fading, like a grenade had gone off, as he hung limply and he tried to get up, get both of them out of the car. He could feel hot blood running down his side and from his nose. Then a pained groan next to him let him know that Alex was still alive too.
He couldn’t move any further. Even to get out.
Everything went black.
In the distance somewhere, a siren started wailing again.
120932ZFEB21
“Explain what we know so far.”
On the twelfth floor of the Royal & General Bank, otherwise known to a select few as the headquarters for MISO, an emergency meeting had been called. The email had been short and urgent, straight to the point. All the department heads were present, with several high-ranking team leaders and agents, and Mrs Jones. Mary Makepeace had already blended somewhere into the background like she always did, constantly documenting all the going-ons.
It could have been a normal day. Even a normal meeting with anyone else’s eyes. Apart from the fact that Crawley uncharacteristically hadn’t spoken a word or voiced his opinion at any wrong statement, choosing instead to steadily click a metal pen at steady intervals. No one had called him out for it either.
6.4 seconds , Redwing noted absent-mindedly, stirring a sugar into the steaming cup of coffee in front of her. Always 6.4 seconds. He’s angry, not that anyone can blame him. She tuned back into the conversation.
“...a possible assassination attempt, though on whom is still being decided.”
“How so?” Mrs Jones prompted.
“There were two people in that car. Alex Rider, a high-profile target on his own. Plenty of people have reason to try to kill him. Miles Crawley, an accomplished agent and someone with personal connections to Mr Crawley as well. This could be related to a case that they have worked on or it could be a personal statement.” The agent speaking seemed to have finished. Redwing moved in with a theory of her own.
“Mrs Jones, may I remind you that the car is registered to the Royal & General under Crawley’s name. The person who caused the car to overturn may have assumed that he was in the vehicle at the time and Rider was caught in the crossfire instead.”
Their Chief Executive simply nodded, considering this. “Was anybody else injured?”
“Fortunately, no. This was, however, a statement in some ways. An attempt on two of our owns’ lives, in broad daylight, in front of dozens of school children, at London morning rush hour. It’s a miracle that no one else got hurt!” somebody else across the table answered. Public Relations, probably used to media control over incidents.
“And the van driver?”
“Scotland Yard are searching for him. We have CCTV scanning the city with facial recognition as well. He ran away during the chaos after the crash.” One of the techies, working as part of Redwing’s team spoke up. She took the moment to glance back at Crawley, who was still staring blankly at the table like it contained all the answers to the universe. Unlikely but if it made him feel any better, who was to argue?
121056ZFEB21
Alex awoke to numbness. He couldn’t feel anything. That would probably fade in due course, leaving him in more pain instead.
He was in hospital - something he could easily infer without evening opening his eyes. The steady beeping of a heart rate monitor, the IV he could feel in his wrist, the smell of ‘clean’ if there was ever a smell for it and the sheets he was lying on. St Dominics, then.
The car crashed, right? He cast his mind back. Everything had gone weightless for a few long seconds before impact. An accident like a car crash was a plausible explanation for the reason why he was in hospital.
Trying to sit up worked surprisingly well. From there, Alex scanned himself for what had been actually injured. A cast on his left leg, some stiffness in his neck and a large bandaged cut across part of his arm seemed to be the major ones. There were probably a lot more bruises elsewhere, he noted, with the late realisation that his school uniform was gone, replaced with a sky blue gown in place of it.
School, Alex’s eyes widened as he realised. And Miles. Is he okay?
Being the teenager he was, he immediately reached to see if he could find his phone. Someone had considerately left his backpack on the table next to him, with the smartphone inside. After a few moments of fumbling with the various zips and trying not to fall off the bed in the process, Alex managed to reach into the hidden inside pocket for the device.
5 missed calls. 15 messages. 1 unread email.
The email seemed to be a good place to start. From the Royal & General. All senior agents, officers and analysts who could attend an emergency meeting at 9:30 in one of the conference rooms on the twelfth floor were required to be present. Strange. A last minute meeting with no clearly labelled subject was never good.
The missed calls were next on his list. One from an unknown private number. Four of them were from Tom. So were the texts, most with shortened abbreviations that hurt his head to infer correctly. Ranging from shocked ‘omg were you srsly in the car’ and ‘are you still alive’ all the way to acceptant ‘well u have a valid excuse to skip school now’.
The door swung open abruptly, making Alex’s heart rate monitor spike for a second, before revealing a familiar white coat that relaxed him again. Dr Hayward.
“Good morning to you, Alex. How do you feel?” he asked, checking things off a clipboard and getting straight to business as Alex blushed, but thankfully not even mentioning the phone.
“Numb.” Alex snarked back, not being able to resist himself. “Really numb.”
“That’s a given. We had to do so, since you were unconscious and we didn’t know how much pain you were actually in. I’ll lower the dosage for you, then. Do you remember exactly what happened?”
“I think so. We were going to turn right so Miles pulled into the middle of the junction to wait. We were hit by something fast. Everything went sideways and the car rolled over upside down. Is Miles okay?” he asked as Dr Hayward started his customary checks. “He’s the man who was in the car with me.”
“I know who he is. Room 14. He’s not in much better condition than you, just without the broken leg and with lighter painkillers. You were the one hit first but the car actually absorbed a lot more of the damage than a normal vehicle of the same model would. You can thank your employers for that. It’s the only reason both of you are still alive and with so little damage, considering that you were hit by a heavy van travelling at near 70.”
Dr Hayward seemed to pause to let that set in before checking the IV bag without saying another word.
Being almost killed again wasn’t something he did for fun, that was all Alex knew.
Now all he had to do was wait for someone he knew or someone from the Bank to turn up with some answers.
Proper answers, before he decided to look into it himself.
Well, there went his half-term plans.