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“Alex,”
The voice was distant and Alex was only vaguely aware of it. If it had been anything other than his own name, he doubted it would have registered at all.
“Alex.”
Alex pulled his gaze from the bare brick of the sports hall wall. He looked up at the person to whom the voice belonged. It was Mrs Brady, her arms laden with papers. Alex regained his awareness, and a deep sense of dread settled in his stomach.
He was in a GCSE English exam. Or at least, he had been. Since his last mission, since Mrs Jones had left MI6 and told him he wouldn’t be used anymore, his brain seemed to be struggling to process things. He’d been zoning out in lessons, getting into trouble for not paying attention.
Alex looked down at the small square desk where he was sat. There was a paper in front of him, only half answered. Two questions had been filled out, but the rest was alarmingly empty. Alex glanced at the clock. The last time he’d checked it, he’s had forty minutes left. But now the time was up, and he was expected to hand in his completed paper.
He looked between the paper and Mrs Brady, who was waiting expectantly for Alex to pass it to her. Alex’s eyes moved over the question he had failed to answer, the question that had so clearly made him falter.
‘Write about a time when you were afraid. Consider emotion, senses, figurative language and voice.’
Ah. Alex remembers now. He remembers just how quickly his brain had provided him with examples of things to write about. He remembers how overwhelmed he suddenly felt, in the middle of a sports hall full of people, all frantically scribbling away around him. His mind flashed with images of various missions he’d been on over the past two years, and it had become too much. Alex hadn’t zoned out consciously, it had just happened. It was some kind of coping mechanism – his brain just switched off when it was overloaded.
A little disoriented, Alex closed the booklet and reluctantly handed it over to Mrs Brady.
Tom caught up with him as he was heading out of the school. Technically he still had a maths study session that afternoon, but he wasn’t in the right mindset anymore. He just wanted to leave.
“Alright mate?” Tom bounded up to Alex had pulled his headphones off of his head. These days, music was one of the only ways Alex could quiet the thoughts in his head.
“Yeah, alright?”
“Yeah, yeah…” Tom said, falling into step beside Alex. Alex paused his music so that it wasn’t blaring out of the headphones now around his neck. “How’d you find it?”
“Started off well… I think,” said Alex. Hopefully his first couple of questions would be good enough to carry him through to a pass.
“Same, honestly,” reassured Tom. He’d always been good at reading Alex, and dealing with him when he wasn’t quite there. He hadn’t, for example, even mentioned the fact that Alex was heading away from school rather than towards the maths block. He was probably looking for an excuse not to go himself, anyway. “It’s the creative stuff that always gets me,” he said. “Like, I can’t just… write a story on demand, you know? That kind of thing takes time.”
“Yeah,” Alex agreed.
“Anyway, only two more exams left now.”
Alex nodded as they crossed the road towards Alex’s house. Neither of them commented on the fact that Tom lived on a different road, but was walking with Alex as casually as if he lived in the same house.
“Want to work on maths for tomorrow or just chill?” Tom asked as Alex unlocked the door and dumped his bag on the floor in the kitchen. Tom did the same, and helped himself to a glass of water.
In that moment, Alex felt an immense gratitude to Tom. He’d said barely anything since the exam, and Tom had recognised that something was going on with him, but respected Alex’s lack of want to talk about it. Tom knew everything that Alex had been through. He knew what he continued to go through in his own mind. He, Tom and Jack were close like that. Alex was grateful for the company; he needed the distraction when he got like this. He knew that Tom wasn’t expecting much from him. He was just there for the company that Alex needed.
“Maths,” Alex said, hating the words from his mouth as they came out. An organised study session in school surrounded by other students sounded like hell, but a casual revision session just him and Tom was fine. Better.
Tom groaned. “I can’t wait to never look at another quadratic equation again after tomorrow.”
Jack came home a few hours later. She looked momentarily surprised to see them at the kitchen table, completely surrounded by a mess of practice papers and workings out.
“Hey guys,” she said, setting her work bag down on the counter. “I thought you were going to that-,” Tom cut her off with a subtle shake of his head and a glance at Alex, who was just finishing off an equation. Once he was done, he looked up at Jack.
“Hey.”
Jack smiled at him, reading Alex just as well as Tom had. “English?” When Alex took a moment too long to figure out how to answer, Jack just shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. It was just one exam.”
Tom left a little while after to get home for dinner. His parents had insisted on being home early during the exam season. It was just one more reason why Tom couldn’t wait for the summer. Alex gathered up his notes, hoping that he’d crammed as much as his brain could retain. He felt okay about maths, but that meant nothing if his mind betrayed him the way it had today.
Jack started cooking, and Alex lingered to keep her company. Only once they were sat down and eating did Jack try to speak to him.
“You want to talk about it?”
Alex twirled some spaghetti around his fork, but didn’t lift it to his mouth. His appetite was off again. That was happening more frequently recently. He just… didn’t get hungry. Either that, or he’d eat and just throw it up again after. His stomach wasn’t settled. It meant he didn’t tend to eat much when his brain got like this. He’d pretty well stopped eating at school, not wanting to risk the nausea.
“Let me rephrase that,” said Jack. “Tell me what’s going on in there.” She jabbed a finger into the side of Alex head. Alex, who hadn’t been expecting the contact, jumped back, causing Jack to look at him, alarmed. “What was that?”
“Nothing. You just made me jump, that’s all. No big deal.”
“Alex.”
Alex put his fork down, spaghetti only half eaten, and looked at her.
“I zoned out again today. In the exam.”
“Oh, Alex.” Jack looked at him sympathetically. It probably wasn’t anything she hadn’t guessed already, but it meant more to hear it directly from him.
“There was this question. We were supposed to write about a time we’d been afraid. And there was just… too much,” he said, frowning. “I got overwhelmed and I completely spaced. For like forty minutes, I don’t remember anything. I was just… not there.”
Jack sighed. “Where were you?” She was aware of his nightmares, of the flashbacks he got sometimes, how he often got lost in a memory. This was different, though. It wasn’t new, but neither of them was that familiar with it.
Alex shook his head. “Nowhere. One moment I was reading the question, getting overwhelmed, and then I… I blinked… and the exam was over.”
Jack silently put her hand on the table between them, palm up. After how Alex had reacted to her last unprompted touch, she was now giving him the control. Alex took it, and Jack squeezed.
“Alex, I think you should talk to someone about this.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“A professional.”
Alex withdrew his hand, suddenly uncomfortable. Talking to Jack was fine. She basically raised him. Talking to someone else, though. To have some stranger know his business? That wasn’t something that appealed to Alex. The thought of it made nausea rise. Alex could barely look at the plate of discarded food in front of him.
“We’ll find someone with clearance. You’ll be able to talk about all your missions.”
Alex started to shake his head. “No. No, I can’t do it. I can’t talk about that stuff.”
“You had a major dissociative episode today. Without help, it’s only going to get worse.”
That comment was one thing too much for Alex. He knew he had issues, but he didn’t have a name for any of them, and he didn’t want one. Using words like dissociative meant that Jack had been researching.
Alex got up from the table and went quickly upstairs, not sparing so much as a glance at Jack. He headed straight for the bathroom, only just making it to the toilet before throwing up the meagre dinner he’d just eaten.
After brushing his teeth, he headed for his room and collapsed onto the bed. He looked around the room. This place used to be his safe place – somewhere removed from MI6, somewhere with no reminders of his double life. Today, it wasn’t doing its job. There was a framed photo of him and Ian in the Italian Alps, and Alex’s eyes moved past their smiling faces and fixated on the mountains. Point Blanc. He went to the desk and shoved the frame face down. Then he ripped down the solar system poster from the wall. Ark Angel. He picked up an anatomy textbook from the top of his dresser and stuffed it into one of the drawers. Yu’s organ harvesting facility. He was heading back for his bed when he walked past a mirror. He paused in front of it, then seized it and propped it against the wall, facing the wrong way. Julius Grief.
He grabbed his headphones and turned the volume loud in an attempt to drown out the thoughts in his head. He clamped his eyes shut in frustration, and begun the long and arduous process of reaching the next morning.
The maths exam goes fine. No zone outs, no flashbacks, no unwanted memories. The questions didn’t feel too difficult, either, which was a bonus. Alex liked maths. He liked how logical it was. You don’t have to think creatively about maths; there’s one answer. It’s objective. He liked that. There’s no room for the brain to wander.
Alex’s last exam was later that afternoon – biology. His class was meeting to cram before going in. He made his way to the biology room and slumped down beside Sabina. She’d come back to the UK from San Francisco a few months before and Alex was enjoying having her back in his life. Tom was sat at the back with another one of his friends, but when he locked eyes with Alex, he flashed a thumbs up, thumbs down in silent question. Alex gave him a quick thumbs up. He was okay.
“Hey Alex,” said Sabina. “How are you?”
“Good, yeah.” Alex took out his notes, busying his hands. He was okay. Really. He just didn’t want Sabina to push. It was at that moment that Alex’s stomach decided to betray him, rumbling loud enough for anyone within a couple of metres of him to hear. He’d eaten a protein bar on the way to school for breakfast, but that was it. The lunch break had just ended, which was probably what prompted the look that Sabina gave him.
“You didn’t eat any lunch?” she asked. Alex shook his head.
“Left in a rush this morning. No time to pack anything.”
“There is such a thing as a cafeteria you know?”
“No money.”
Sabina tutted, and reached into her bag. She put an apple on top of the notes he was looking at.
“Do you want to fail this exam? Eat.”
It wasn’t a request. Alex picked up the apple and obediently ate it, not without a little apprehension. His body was just so unpredictable when it came to food. Luckily, it settled his stomach.
They worked in relative silence until it was time to go in for the exam, and as they were heading into the sports hall, Sabina gave his arm a supportive squeeze. He hoped he hid the way his whole body tensed up at the unexpected touch, but he wasn’t that confident.
The next two hours passed with minimal problems. Alex couldn’t ignore the way his mind drifted towards Yu’s facility or weaponised smallpox or genetic cloning, but luckily he managed to keep his mind with him in the exam room. It wasn’t his best, but it would do.
Everyone left the sports hall cheering and slapping each other on the back, their exams finally over. Sabina and Tom appeared either side of Alex, grins on their faces.
“We’re finally free!” Tom exclaimed. “No more revision, no more exams, no more school!” He paused, turning his attention to Alex and Sabina. “Well, for me anyway. You nerds will be back in September for A-Levels, of course.”
Tom was going to a sports college instead of sixth form, but both Alex and Sabina had elected to do A-Levels. Alex hadn’t really known what else to do. For the last two years, he’d thought he wouldn’t get a choice, that MI6 would have him the moment he turned sixteen and that would be it. He hadn’t let himself think about a career path that wasn’t MI6. In the end, Alex had just chosen the three subjects he though he’d be able to keep doing for two more years. He’d settled on sports science, maths and French. He was already fluent, so he might as well make use of that to get a good grade.
Alex’s phone buzzed, and he opened it to a text from Jack.
Congratulations!!! I’m home early, invite Tom and Sab.
Alex typed out a quick thanks, and showed his friends the message. They were happy to take Jack up on the offer, and went with Alex towards his house.
Jack, it turned out, had been preparing for their return. She had tied balloons up around the kitchen and living room, and there was a vast array of junk food and drinks.
“I’m so proud of you all!” Jack said, giving each of them a tight squeeze, lingering on Alex the longest. She ruffled his hair and then pushed them further into the house.
“Jack, this is amazing,” said Tom, tucking into a bowl of crisps.
“Yeah,” agreed Sabina. “You really didn’t have to do this.”
“I know,” Jack said. “I wanted to. It’s not every day you finish your GCSEs.”
“Thanks, Jack.” Alex said, shrugging off his backpack and leaning against the counter. The sight of so much food made him feel a little nauseous, but it was ignorable for now. He was with his friends, and he was going to have a good time. He was.
The party went on for a long time. Alex ate bits and pieces to avoid any suspicion, but was careful not to overdo it. He didn’t want to shock his stomach. Jack, Tom and Sabina were currently debating whether bourbons or custard creams were better, and Alex was watching from a distance. He’d been involved with conversation over the course of the evening, and he could feel himself getting more tired. Tiredness was bad for Alex; it made him feel less in control of everything. Unfortunately after so many bad nights, Alex had been living in a pretty much constant state of fatigue.
Watching his friends, Alex started to feel himself drift. It wasn’t even triggered by anything, he just grew less… attached to his body.
“Alex?”
It was Jack’s voice. She was tentative, cautious. Using her voice as a kind of tether, Alex slowly came back to himself. He blinked a couple of times, as though that would ease the sense of distance, the sense that time had passed without him realising it.
“Mate, are you good?” Tom asked. He put his hand on Alex shoulder, probably meaning it to be reassuring. However, in Alex’s far away state, it felt like a threat. Alex instinctively twisted so that he was facing Tom, and used the opposite arm to grab Tom’s wrist. He yanked it away and twisted behind Tom’s back. Then, he shoved Tom against the wall, one hand pressing against the twisted wrist and holding him against the wall. With his free arm, Alex used his forearm to push the back of Tom’s neck against the wall too, keeping him very firmly in place. Tom yelped in pain and struggled against Alex’s grip, but Alex wasn’t together enough to process what it was he was doing.
“Alex!” Jack yelled. She moved to pull him off, but after seeing how he’d reacted to Tom’s touch, wasn’t sure how to proceed. “Alex, let go of him!” She stood right next to him, but not touching him, and made sure her face was in Alex’s line of sight.
Sabina was right behind her. “Alex, it’s just Tom. It’s okay.”
They kept saying his name, and Alex let their voices filter through the fuzziness. Suddenly, he realised what he was doing and released Tom immediately. He stumbled away from his friends as Tom steadied himself with the help of Sabina and Jack. He was rubbing his wrist and stretching out his neck.
Alex watched the scene with horror. He looked down at his hands, which were shaking with adrenaline and the force with which he’d attacked Tom. He looked at their terrified faces, and realised uncomfortably that they weren’t the faces of people scared of him – as they should be; Alex had just attacked Tom – but the faces of people scared for him.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said unsteadily. “I don’t… I… I’m sorry.”
Alex turned around and ran upstairs.
“Alex, wait!” Jack’s voice called after him, but he had already reached his room. He shut the door behind him and slid down onto the floor. He pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his face into them. He pressed his shaking hands into the back of his skull and desperately tried to steady his breathing.
Alex didn’t understand. What had happened? One moment, he was fine, watching his friends having fun, and the next his hands were on Tom, hurting Tom.
He didn’t know how much time had passed by the time he heard a knock at his door. Alex had moved onto his bed, and was leaning against the headboard with his headphones on.
Jack gently opened the door and slid into the room. She silently moved towards the bed and sat down, making sure to leave enough space between them.
“Tom and Sab have gone home.”
Alex took off his headphones.
“I should text them.”
“They can wait.” Jack said. “They know you’ll speak to them when you’re ready.”
Alex stretched out his legs, letting himself relax a little. He wasn’t sure he could face them right now. There was silence between them for a while. Jack was waiting for Alex to say something.
“I zoned out again.” He admitted. Jack nodded. “I didn’t mean to hurt Tom. I didn’t do it on purpose, it was just… I don’t know… instinctual?”
“He knows that,” Jack reassured him. “He knows you’d never hurt him on purpose. In fact, he asked me to apologise to you on his behalf.” Alex frowned. Apologise to him? “For touching you,” Jack clarified.
Alex hesitated. Then, decided to just say it. “I’ve been having some issues. With touch.” Jack looked at him with understanding. He really couldn’t have asked for a better guardian. “I think it’s a… trigger.”
“That’s understandable. You’ve been through significant trauma in relation to touch.”
“That wasn’t what caused me to space, though. I don’t know what that was. I don’t know what’s happening to me, Jack.”
Jack shuffled closer, and hovered a hand over Alex leg, giving him a questioning expression. Alex nodded his permission and Jack rested her hand on him. It felt fine, reassuring, even. It made Alex think that the problem was more unexpected touch than just touch in general. That was a positive.
“We’ll figure this out. Together, okay?”
Alex nodded. Together. He took a breath.
“I haven’t been eating right. Can’t keep anything down.”
Jack nodded knowingly. Her eyes landed briefly on the ripped poster on the floor, on the face down picture frame and the turned over mirror.
“Everything reminds me of them. The missions.”
“The mirror?”
“I have a psychopath’s face.” He admitted, thinking of Julius. Jack was quick to shake her head.
“A psychopath had your face. Not the other way round.”
“I shot him in the head,” Alex recalled. “It was like shooting myself.”
Jack shuffled closer still, and after another silent request for permission, placed a hand on his cheek, gently wiping the tears which had become to fall.
“Julius wasn’t you. And you did what you had to do.”
Alex leaned into Jack’s shoulder, letting the sobs come thick and fast. She held him silently as he wept. Only after Alex had calmed a little did he speak again.
“I’ll talk to someone,” he said. Jack took his head in his hands and looked at him.
“Only if you’re sure.”
Alex nodded. “I can’t risk hurting you. I don’t think I could ever forgive myself.”
He pulled away, the thought of it stirring something up in his stomach. Then, he wiped his eyes with the heels of his palms.
“I’m proud of you, Alex,” said Jack. “You are strong. You are the strongest person I know. And doing this means that you are not letting MI6 win. This isn’t you being weak, this is you finally taking back control, okay? This is you being strong.”
Jack and Alex looked at each other, their expressions saying more that words ever could. Sitting there with Jack, with her words lingering in his mind, he felt like maybe this was a turning point. Maybe he could come back from this. Maybe there was a future waiting for him after all.