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The tree was finally standing. It turned out that Alex had massively underestimated how difficult the task would be – the bloody thing weighed a ton and a half – but he’d finally managed to wrestle it into the stand. Jack was scheduled to come back from America the next day and he wanted everything perfect for her return. Or at least as perfect as the Rider house was ever capable of getting.
Christmas was Jack’s favorite holiday, so that meant decorating the house in preparation for her return. Ian hadn’t been the biggest fan though, finding the commercial decorations that Jack loved kitsch and gaudy. As a compromise, Jack had always taken Alex shopping for real fir and pine branches and holly berries to make garlands from. They’d also always bought a fresh tree, decorating with hand-made popcorn chains and tiny candles for lights. In retrospect, most of the decorations were actually hideously dangerous for a child. But it had always been their tradition.
This year, Jack’s cousin had been getting married in the middle of December, and she’d wanted to spend some more time with her family, catching up with everyone she hadn’t seen in years. She was scheduled to return in the evening on Christmas Eve – when the flights weren’t so god-awful expensive – which meant that she wouldn’t have time to decorate anything the way that she liked. Which meant it was up to Alex to save Christmas. And he’d been doing a good job of it too – the tree was up, there was a wreath on the front door and the branches were laid out on the dining room table for garlands – until he got the text.
Somehow, even before he picked up the phone, he knew something was wrong. It wasn’t that texts at 12am were unheard of – Tom could never wait if he found a meme he wanted to share with Alex – but somehow, in that moment it felt wrong. There was no reason for his heart to be beating so quickly, but he immediately set down the string of lights he’d been sorting and picked up his phone.
I know where you were on October 20th, little Alex . The first message reads.
I know what you did.
And I think it’s only fair that we get better acquainted. You took someone from me. Someone I’ll never get back again. So I took the liberty of evening the scores a bit.
If you want to see your friend alive again, come to the old knife factory near your home in Chelsea at 4am.
It would be such a shame if anything permanent were to happen to him.
The final message was a picture of Tom. His hands were taped together with several layers of packaging tape bruises climbing up his forearms where whoever had taken him had grabbed too tight. He glared at the camera, an ugly bruise blossoming on his cheek. Whatever had happened, he certainly had not gone down without a fight. But more importantly, he was still alive and had all of his body parts.
Alex glared at his phone. He’d been in Kosovo in October. MI6 had wanted some intel on a crooked school administrator suspected to have ties to a drug smuggling ring in the United Kingdom. Things had gone sideways, as they always seemed to do when MI6 came calling. There had been an explosion in the chemistry lab. Alex had made it out. The men trying to kill him had not.
Except they clearly must have if they were back now angling for revenge. And they had Tom.
No one should have known about Tom. He was supposed to be safe. MI6 always promised that their covers were secure. They had always promised that if Alex just did this one more mission, he would keep Britain safe, would keep his friends and family safe. And if he didn’t, well MI6 couldn’t guarantee the same thing. The implicit agreement had been that MI6 would keep them safe. Alex isn’t sure why he had ever believed them. Clearly, they had not put any more effort into keeping up their end of the bargain than they had about any other aspects of Alex’s safety. And now someone had figured out who Alex was. Someone had kidnapped Tom.
That was unacceptable. Tom wasn’t part of this world. Tom was just a schoolboy and he had never done anything to anyone. If they had wanted Alex, they should have taken him. They shouldn’t have made the mistake of going after someone he cared about. If they wanted personal, they were soon going to find out to be careful what they wished for. As of this moment, it was very personal. Not the least of which because while MI6 might be willing to go to extreme lengths to make sure their involvement with Alex stayed their own dirty little secret, they were unlikely to waste resources extracting one teenage boy when they could arrange a tidy gas explosion at the old factory.
Alex knew he should feel scared – and he was, worried that whoever had texted him from Tom’s phone would get bored of waiting before the agreed upon meeting time. But mostly he was angry. He was angry that someone figured out where he lived, who he was, who his friends were. But mostly he was angry that MI6 had let this happen. That they were always relying on him to clean up their own bloody messes. And he was angry that this had to happen tonight when there were still ten different garlands he needed to make and Tom’s Christmas was going to be spent with black and blue bruising over his whole body. And that the kidnappers had only left him four hours to come up with a plan.
But Alex was creative. Four hours would be enough, as long as he could keep the anger in his stomach from turning to fear. As long as he could concentrate on a plan and not the worry about what might be happening to Tom. And if Tom would recover, if he’d ever be able to look at Alex the same way again, knowing this was all because of Alex.
***
By 3am, Alex was in the building. It probably wasn’t much of a surprise to turn up early, but he’d take any advantage he could get.
The old knife factory had been cleared out years before Alex had even been born and now the only remnants left behind were the steel tracks for the factory carts, some old wall-cranes rusted enough not to be worth the cost of moving them, and the large brick tower in the center. In warmer months, it was a popular hangout for teenagers looking to feel a thrill without really doing anything dangerous. Right now though, the danger was rather more real than imagined. Alex just planned to be more on the giving side than the taking one.
For the evening, he’d brought along a roll of duct tape, a set of lockpicks, and some of the surplus equipment from his missions which Smithers had never bothered asking him to return: A two part chewing gum that could cause a minor explosion when mixed together. A knock-out gas enclosed in what looked like plain marbles. And a modded taser which could knock someone unconscious. It wasn’t much, but he’d been in worse situations with less. And with some luck, this would turn out to be an amateur operation and he’d be in and out without ever needing any of them.
And at first, it did see that his luck was holding; whoever had kidnapped Tom hadn’t had time to install anything like new locks or windows. Alex had no problem climbing through long-empty window frames or slipping through half-open, rusted doors. Even the debris on the ground was more or less easily avoidable without needing an extra light. It was only as he neared the heart of the factory that he started to hear other people in the building.
They were quiet. He had to give them that much. But they weren’t silent, and they weren’t as quiet as Alex, who grew up playing ghosts in the graveyard and survival with Ian Rider. The closer he got, the more their footsteps seemed to echo. Two guards walking an offset pattern in the corridor around the corner from the large room Alex had entered. If he could tell correctly, they crossed paths roughly in the middle. It would be nearly impossible to sneak up on them and if they were here keeping watch, there was almost certainly someone else farther in. Which meant Alex needed some way to distract them without being suspicious enough that they would call for backup.
Thinking quickly, Alex reached into his pocket to pull out the chewing gum. It was only able to create a small blast, but the building was old. If he placed it correctly, a small charge would be enough to help entropy along and knock down one of the rusted out supports. That was a risk of choosing such a run down base of operation, things fell apart. And with a little luck, they’d mistake the sound of the explosion for part of the crash.
The chewing gum tasted like Earl Grey. Somehow, Alex wasn’t surprised that Smithers had taken the time to flavor it. You were not supposed to chew for more than ten seconds (just enough that the gum would be malleable), but he’d still gone to the trouble of making it interesting.
Alex’s target was easy to locate, situated under a hole in the roof, thick rust was already eating out large chunks of the I-beam. In the moonlight, he could also see where Ivy had started to work its roots into the exposed metal. It was within the range he could accurately throw the mixed gum and looked like it had been contemplating giving up the ghost already for the last ten years.
The gum landed with a silent plop on a particularly rusty section in the middle of the beam. Alex waited, breaths long, slow and silent while the two halves of the polymer started to react. 5…4…3…2…1…boom!
It was louder than he’d hoped. And when he opened his eyes again, the beam was still standing frustratingly intact. Or at least not noticeably less intact. But he hardly had time to contemplate that as the two guards from the hallway rushed into the room. Which… he could actually work with. In their haste to find the source of the noise, they had run straight past Alex, and were both standing in front of the support post, trying to determine what had happened. Which meant neither of them were prepared when Alex took Smithers’ modified taser out and shot them both from behind, one after the other.
They fell, jaws locking before they could begin to scream. Alex retracted both of the electrodes, storing the taser back in his pocket before pulling out the duct tape and binding their hands together. Once he was satisfied they wouldn’t be getting out, he pushed their bodies closer to the support beam, taping them in place, before placing a final piece of tape over their mouths. He wasn’t actually sure how long the taser would leave them immobile and it was better to be safe than sorry.
Brushing the dirt off of his clothes, Alex stood back up and walked cautiously back to the corner. The corridor was silent, apparently the guards hadn’t bothered to call someone over before they left to investigate. It meant he was probably not dealing with professionals. That sort of mistake could get you killed. It would have gotten these two thugs killed if Alex had had a gun instead of a taser.
Moving on to the closed door at the end of the hallway, Alex waited a moment, straining his ears to hear anything from the other side. After several breaths of silence, he carefully turned the handle and slowly began creeping the door open. It was old and rusty, and despite his efforts made a high-pitched squeaking noise as he entered. But the room was empty, save for a lone figure sitting in the middle of the room. He was facing away from Alex, but even in the darkness of the room it was unmistakably Tom.
Alex crept closer, hand on the taser in his pocket. The room was silent, but he could hardly make out Tom in the dark, let alone anyone who might be hiding deeper in the shadows.
Alex had just managed to cut Tom’s hands free when he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking.
“Very well done, Mr. Rider. Truly you do live up to your reputation. But I’m afraid that’s as far as you’re going this morning,” a voice called from behind him.
A moment later, the voice was accompanied by a bright light. After so long in the dark, the light from the torch burned Alex’s eyes and completely blinded him to anything about the speaker. But it did allow him to get a better look at Tom. The other boy had a new bruise blossoming on his jaw and duct tape wrapping over his mouth and back around his head acting like a makeshift gag. He glared in the direction of their captor and Alex was sure would have given the man the two finger salute if his hands had been free. Which meant whatever happened, Tom was still doing all right.
“Who are you?” Alex asked, hoping to at least buy some more time to try to free Tom.
“You don’t know?” the man returns, sneer evident in his voice. “It’s funny. I know it was only business, but somehow I thought you would at least remember it. Or is it that you’ve killed so many fathers it no longer registers?”
“I think you might have gotten the wrong person here. I don’t kill anyone. If you didn’t notice, you’re currently the only one here with a gun.” While he spoke, he slowly pressed the pen knife into Tom’s hand along with one of the marbles. Tom was smart, and Alex was counting on him at least figuring out that it wasn’t a normal marble. “It seems to me that if you’re so concerned with killers, you wouldn’t be pointing guns at children,” Alex continued, slowly standing and moving away from Tom.
As he had hoped, the light followed him, which meant if Tom were quick, he’d be able to free himself while their captor’s attention was trained on Alex.
“Oh, I think we both know that whatever you are, you’re hardly a child anymore. More like a dog, I think. They chain you up and send you out to do whatever dirty work they don’t feel like doing, don’t they, your MI6? And in the end, you get a nice little pat on the head and-”
“Hey, ugly!” Tom yelled, apparently having successfully freed himself, “leave Alex alone!”
Alex didn’t even have time to cringe before he registered Tom moving to throw the marble, grabbed his hand and violently tugged him. In that same moment, their captor noticed the same thing, turning the light back on Tom and pulling the trigger of his gun. The marble flew wide of their captor, shattering on the ground and releasing the gas inside. At the same time, Tom let out a scream from where the bullet had grazed his arm. Refusing to think how close that same bullet had come to hitting Tom’s heart, Alex began running, desperately pulling Tom along behind him to get out the door before they breathed in too much of the gas.
A second shot rang out behind them as they reached the old rusted exit, but the other man had been much closer to the marble and his aim was already suffering. By the time they made it through and closed the door, Alex was confident the other man was already unconscious.
“So…” Tom said, once the gas had cleared and Alex had taped up their would-be kidnapper. “Is that what things are normally like for you? I always thought that being a spy was a lot more cool gadgets and less duct tape in your mouth.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, failing to sound lighthearted, “the cool gadgets are only there to distract from the other parts.”
“But it was pretty sick when I threw that poison gas marble, though, huh?”
“It was ridiculously dangerous, you idiot. If I had been any slower pulling you over you’d be dead. Were you trying to give me a heart attack?”
Tom began laughing hysterically, the adrenaline starting to work its way out of his system, “You should hear yourself! You sound just like Ian. I guess being a spy turns you old and boring. And hypocritical, you definitely would have done the same thing if our roles were reversed.”
Alex sighed because he can’t really argue that one.
“Let’s get you home,” he said, choosing the higher road and not getting sucked into that argument. “I need to call MI6 so they can clean up their mess, and we need to get you patched up. You can come to my place and I’ll fix up your arm and get you some ice while we finish the Christmas decorations and wait for Jack.”
“You just want someone to help you finish making all of those garlands. You know there are easier ways to ask for help man than sending someone to kidnap me so you can come rescue me and put me in your debt.”
“ Put you in my debt ? You wish, you already owe me so much for all the homework I’ve helped you on. Please.”
But Alex smiled too. Obviously Tom wasn’t as okay after this as he was pretending, but he was still Tom. And they were going to be okay.