Chapter Text
Night time in the desert. Finally a relief from the oppressive sun. Unfortunately, it also meant he wasn’t able to crawl too fast because the darkness was almost as oppressive as the light. He could barely make out two feet in front of him and with all the nocturnal creatures in the desert he didn’t fancy moving too quickly. He’d been stung by enough scorpions, thanks.
This wasn’t where he thought he’d end up.
He wasn’t sure where, exactly he thought he would be. Just… not in a desert. It brought back too many memories of Cairo and Razim and… he shook his head, sending sand skittering around him.
He jutted out another arm to pull himself forward but the sound must have called some attention. He heard what sounded like movement - cloth rasping against itself and fluttering stiffly in the merciful ocean breeze.
“Boss, you’re going to want to look at this.” A voice cut through the quiet, still night. And then flood lights snapped on, making the world go bright. Alex instinctively buried his head in the still-warm sand.
“What is it?” The hair on the back of his very sunburned scalp was wrenched upward to face into the light and then blocked by shadow.
Alex squinted an eye open but couldn’t make out most of his features, his accent also escaped Alex. A long day in the sun and the still fuzzy feeling that something wasn’t right didn’t help. Dehydration, he diagnosed. “Some kid.”
“Shoot him.” The boss sounded, of all things, bored. As if someone crawling through the desert was a normal occurrence for them.
“Doesn’t look like he’s from around here.” The first man considered, turning Alex’s sunburnt chin with meaty unmerciful hands.
That got another frustrated growl from the boss, this time closer. “None of us are. Now if you’re not going to do your job, let him go so I can.”
Alex dropped from the rough hands and into the desert sand, then heard what he now knew as the unmistakable click of a gun safety. He threw his hands up, scrambling up to his knees. A bit stupid given sudden movement tended to make trigger fingers jump but laying helplessly on the ground was going to get him killed anyways.
He squinted into the bright light, wishing he had any last words to say. Alex waited for the bullet but instead was rewarded by the gun being lowered. “Oh shit.” There was a painful period of silence until Alex, finally acclimating to the light, was able to get a better bearing.
“What?” The other man said before Alex could get enough saliva together to even speak.
“Kind of looks like… hey kid do you know Alex Rider?”
And he really had not expected to hear his name after hours of crawling around in the middle of nowhere. The odds of this being a mirage or hallucination had just greatly increased. Maybe he had died? Who knew but what he did know was he might actually die if he said yes. “Uh…no?”
“Alright then." The gun leveled back at him and Alex opened his mouth to protest only to once again be relieved of that duty by the first man.
“Wait, wait- wait, what if it’s one of those situations .” The situation was stressed enough that he could only assume the worst. “T&I may want to ask a few questions.” T&I was another set of words Alex never wanted to hear said around him. The last place he had heard that had been Malagosto and before that Brecon Beacons. He wasn’t cut out for it. No matter how many psychopaths had tried in their own unique ways.
“Fine. I’ll call Crux. Hopefully she’s still awake. If not, I’m taking it out of your pay.” Presumably he didn’t mean Alex.
“Come on, kid, we got someone special for you to meet.” Alex stumbled to his feet and they almost immediately collapsed underneath him. The adrenaline high of almost being shot wearing off the last of his energy as Alex passed out.
He woke up some time later, stripped to his boxers.
Standard cell. No windows, concrete walls that hurt his knuckles when he knocked against them, hoping for a hollow weak point. Alex didn’t find anything, and that was… worrying. It was more than a little depressing that at this point in his life, he had a ranked list of places he’d been captive in.
This one was hovering around the middle. No immediate threats, but no explanation and no hope of escape. He hadn’t been able to see anything aside from sterile white walls when he peered through the food slot.
Alex spent his time assessing himself. He was hungry and already peeling from the sunburn that had crawled over his neck and shoulders from his time in the desert sun. Sand had abraded his legs until the skin there was raw and sensitive, covered with tiny cuts where he’d fallen again and again onto tiny rocks.
And that didn’t even take hunger or dehydration into the mix.
Put succinctly: Alex felt like shit.
He huddled in the far corner of the cell, hoping that the few seconds of separation between himself and the door would at least give him some warning on what would happen next.
It was just around the time that Alex settled in for a long and sleepless night when the door opened and a slight woman stepped through, a guard following her in.
For a moment, they studied each other.
She looked too casual for the austere surroundings, was Alex’s first impression.
A t-shirt and joggers tucked into laced-up black boots. It was something Jack might have worn, and the thought of her sent a familiar lance of pain through him. It hadn’t ever stopped aching, but sometimes Alex thought he’d gotten used to it.
Alone and held captive, Jack’s memory was closer than usual.
Alex stayed in place. Whoever this was, she couldn’t be trusted. Not if she was with the people who had so casually discussed shooting a child in the head.
The new woman had a clipboard and a pen that she clicked open as soon as the door closed behind her and the guard.
“Hello, Alex,” she said gently, coming over to kneel near to him. Still out of range for him to lunge at her, he noted distantly. He didn’t have any idea how she knew his name and he didn’t have any gadgets that might even the score slightly. It was a lonely, familiar feeling.
Alex nodded in response, trying to seem pathetic and like he wasn’t a threat. It didn’t take much acting, but all it earned him was a note scribbled on the clipboard before she resumed speaking.
“How did you come to find us, Alex?”
Alex considered his response. It wasn’t something he really wanted to talk about. Not with her. It was far more likely to get him locked up than it was to get him out of here. “Can I have some water?” He rasped.
“Maybe later.” Her eyes trailed over to a tub planted on the side of the room. Waterboarding. He gave an involuntary shiver. Granted, right now he felt like he could drink it all happily down - poured over a cloth or not.
“I’ll ask again, Alexander. How did you find us?”
“Dunno. I thought the place was desert-ed.” The woman did not move or even blink at the pun. But the henchmen Alex ran into rarely did.
“I believe it would be beneficial for you to answer my questions. Currently, we are considering you to be a clone. Should you have information to the contrary, it would prevent you from meeting the same fate as the last clone that we encountered of Mr. Rider.”
“Julius?” The name came out almost unwillingly and tasted bitter on his tongue. He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but there was only one clone he could think of. Maybe in this world…
“Why, yes, Julius.” The woman tapped her pen thoughtfully, “How odd that you should know his name. Perhaps Dr. Grief was more thorough than we originally thought.” Alex couldn’t help the way his face scrunched uncomfortably at the name.
“Perhaps not then,” she remarked, consideringly. “Maybe you would like to enlighten me as to how you found yourself here.” It was the same question as earlier but he didn’t have an answer, he needed to stall.
“Where exactly is here?” he pressed.
She came back with that same deceivingly placid tone: “Where do you think you are, Alex?”
“I don’t know? Razim’s base?” The walls were similar, as was the sterile smell. Maybe this was yet another bid for revenge? Dragged from San Francisco to an assignment and now to here.
“Abdul Aziz Al-Rhaim?” she asked, and Alex nodded.
He was pretty sure that was his name but it had been hard to keep up with amidst the grim events that had taken place in the Saharan stronghold.
“Interesting,” she finished and seemed to jot a few notes.
“Who are you with?” In his experience they rarely sent the important people to question him despite the rather large berth everyone seemed to give this woman even in the tiny enclosed space they found themselves in.
“SCORPIA, of course.” Alex winced at the name. It was always SCORPIA. The woman seemed to take interest in his reaction. “You’re familiar then. Good, that will remove the need for any tedious explanations of just how much danger you could potentially be in.”
“Could be in?”
“Could.” The woman nodded with a smile that didn’t ever seem to reach her eyes. “Should you prove yourself cooperative then I do not foresee it becoming an issue.”
She gestured to the guard and he left the room, coming back with a television on wheels. The screen prickled with electric static.
“I will leave you with this for your consideration while we run a few tests.”
The TV in front of him flickered to life. So reminiscent of Razim’s however, instead of Jack’s Jeep it was an almost identical version of himself strapped to a table.
“-so we can only conclude that it’s a clone, sir,” Crux said. The small speakers made her voice tinny, but the heavy emphasis on the final words came through loud and clear.
“A clone?” Alex repeated, incredulously. He had thought that he was done with clones after Julius but the world seemed to have other ideas.
“Yes, but different than the Grief iteration,” Crux reported, her screen bifurcated with an image of a live feed in a cell. Someone with shaggy blonde hair was settled miserably in the corner, head hunched over, knees pulled up. Alex couldn’t confirm the resemblance, but knew there were hours of footage of himself in a similar state. “Its DNA is an exact match but there are some… defects that make me skeptical as to the purpose of it being here.”
“Oh?” That was certainly interesting, the purpose had seemed obvious enough to him - trick, intimidate, gather intel. The solution was equally obvious, but if Crux had misgivings then perhaps there was more to consider.
“He’s young. Around the same age when you graduated based on your medical history and growth patterns at the time. Some of its scarring is even consistent with your first physical but then there are other glaring differences - a partially healed bullet wound over the heart, webbed scars on an arm, a scar across the side of his neck. But none of the damage is cosmetic, as far as we can tell, it was actually injured.”
“And that doesn't match up with someone using it to get intel or any form of reward,” Alex finished, settling back in his leather chair, and idly spinning a pen in one hand.
Crux nodded. “And the different scarring leads me to believe that it’s not a statement either. There have been some scientific advancements that have been whispered about. I’d like some time to confirm my theory about it before it is destroyed.”
He’d rather it be gone quickly but if it meant neutralizing the next, more convincing clone then he couldn’t very well argue with that. “If you’re asking for permission, you have it.” It was meant to end the conversation, but then another thought occurred, “Is anyone else aware of it?”
“No, sir. Not outside of the staff who need to be kept apprised.” That could mean anyone, but he trusted Crux to keep it to a necessary minimum.
“Let’s keep it that way. I don’t think Commander Marcus’ heart could handle the idea of another me running around. Let alone a teenage version.” He couldn’t resist the conspiratory look up at where his Commander was standing at attention by his desk looking faintly ill.
“Of course, Mr. Rider.” All business, except the small smile twitching up the corner of a lip. “I will update you once I have some more information.” The screen went blank, and Alex returned his attention to his Commander.
“I was going to say the news in Sarajevo was the worst of the day but…” His eyes trailed to the computer.
Alex closed the lid of the laptop and shoved it away in favor of the papers Marcus was holding. “Let’s hear it, I need a distraction. Sounds like this will be a good one.”
To his credit, Marcus didn’t blink before launching into a dissertation about interrupted arms smuggling lines and double agents that was certain to tie Alex’s head in enough knots to keep any thoughts of a clone firmly at bay.