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Thlipsis	By : AislingSiobhan Category: A through F > Alex Rider Series Views: 3072 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Alex, or any of the affiliated characters, events, etc. I make no money from this so please dont sue. And credit to where credit is due: Mr A Horz!

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
This was written as part of the Spyfest 2010, and I’m very pleased that I decided to take part!
Epic thank you to Annephoenix and PalletofPaintedSkies for being amazing betas!
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Thlipsis
Summary: [YG/AR] Kidnapped by Yassen and raised by Scorpia, Alex Rider is the world’s youngest assassin. When a mission takes an unexpected turn, MI6 sends Ian Rider to bring him home. Alex would rather die than work for the people who he thinks killed his father, but the choice is about to be taken out of Alex’s hands. It’s kill or be killed, and the time to choose has run out. AU.
Warnings: Slash. Underage. Dub-Con. Torture. Angst. Character Death. YG/AR. AU. Language. Incest. Attempted Non-Con (not Y/A).
Rating: NC-17.
Word Count: 21,368
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Words: 4,981
Chapter 1/4

March 1988.
Yassen watched them.
With his car half-hidden in a shadowed alleyway and confident that they could not see him, he watched the three men through tinted windows. Two of them worked for MI6: the Special Intelligence Service. They might be a problem. The other one was a young woman and she was the one carrying the young child. The child of course would be no trouble, and Yassen hadn’t even included him in the count.
Alex Rider was just over a year old. He had been a month old when his father, John, was murdered, and it had taken Yassen an entire year since then to find the boy. After John’s death, Yassen had presumed the man’s wife would take care of Alex. He had never personally met Helen, but John spoke well of her and had loved her fiercely. However, it wasn’t Helen holding Alex. John had shown Yassen his wedding photos once, a few months before his death, and Yassen would have recognized the wife of John Rider anywhere. Yassen doubted she would be the type of person to abandon her son. Perhaps she was also dead?
The blond man gave a soft chuckle. He wouldn’t put it past those agents outside to kill an innocent woman to achieve what they wanted. They had murdered John in cold blood, hadn’t they? Why should his wife have been spared? And now the child would be dragged into their mess. But Yassen wouldn’t let that happen. When Julia Rothman had finally confided in him about Alex’s whereabouts, Yassen had initially only wanted to check on the boy. Alex was apparently living with his uncle Ian. One would assume that a blood relative would take good care of his brother’s son. Ignoring the difficult relationship that had existed between John and his brother, MI6 must have felt Ian was the best choice as Alex’s guardian.
Now, Yassen knew better.
Anyone would have been a better choice than Ian Rider.
The nanny and the two MI6 operatives had been knocking on Ian Rider’s front door for the past hour, shivering in the wind that was blowing in over the river. It was still Spring, and the mornings were chilly with the barest threat of frost in the air. Alex had been crying from the cold for the past ten minutes, and yet neither of the agents had thought to send the nanny and Alex to wait in their car.
Yassen was exceptionally good at lip-reading. His blue eyes narrowed as he caught what one of the men had said. “Agent Rider must not be back from Hong Kong yet. Where shall we leave the child?”
“Mr. Blunt said the spare key was under the flower pot. You’ll stay with him, won’t you?” The other man asked the dark-haired nanny, reaching down to lift the potted plant. He pulled out the key, but Yassen didn’t wait for him to insert it into the lock. Instead, he raised his gun, lowered the tinted window just enough for the nozzle to poke through, and fired. Were these men actually planning to leave the child without even waiting for Ian Rider? Were they really that disrespectful?
Yassen gritted his teeth. One of his first memories of childhood was of his father explaining the importance of respect to him. Respect for others and for himself; he had lost much of his self-respect as an adolescent trying to survive in a grown-up’s world. But he would always respect John Rider and what the man had meant to him. If MI6 couldn’t respect the son of his hero then they didn’t deserve to know the child.
Alex was coming home with him.
He shot again, and the second man fell. The woman was screaming, one arm tight around Alex’s wiggling body and the other hand scrabbling to fit the key into the lock. She shoved open the door, but before she could run inside, Yassen was right behind her, moving with the grace and agility of a dancer.
“Do not turn around, or I will kill you. Give me the child,” he whispered into the woman’s ear. There wasn’t even a trace of an accent in his voice, no subtle clue to hint where he came from, no way of identifying him by sound.
The woman was sobbing, one hand pressed against the doorframe and the other holding Alex like he was her lifeline. “Please?” she breathed, not sure exactly what she was begging for.
“Give me Alex. I won’t hurt him. I promise,” the assassin said softly. The hand holding the gun was steady, and he pressed it firmly to the base of her spine. “I will shoot you, and take Alex from you before you even have time to drop him, I promise. Give me the child and there will be no need for me to kill you.”
She was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, arms and legs trembling. Keeping her eyes squeezed shut, she turned her face slightly towards him. As she leant down to place the toddler on the ground, Yassen noted the tears that wetted her cheeks. Alex sat on his bum, staring up at Yassen with trusting brown eyes and a soft smile, as he raised his hands and said: “Up!”
“Go into the house,” Yassen told her, prodding her again with the gun. “Close the door behind you, and wait for Ian Rider to come home.” He smirked to himself. “If the police do not turn up first.”
“W-What should I s-say?” she stuttered, and she bit her bottom lip, waiting for Yassen to answer her.
Yassen thought about John’s death. About how disgusted he had been with himself for allowing John to be captured in the first place; how his own mistake and actions were what had ultimately led to him watching as John was shot in the back. Yassen had felt physically sick, watching John gasping as he toppled forwards, blood blossoming across his chest like a rose. Bile had risen in Yassen’s throat; the taste of it in his mouth had been revolting.
Later, he had seen Tulip Jones on camera, speaking into a microphone, ordering John’s death. And Ian Rider, his own brother, had been the one to pull the trigger!
The knowledge had given birth in Yassen to a hatred so strong that even after a year his heart still pounded furiously at the thought of those two people. Yassen had followed his orders; he had carried out his revenge on Mrs. Jones, had targeted her husband and children and had killed them, but he had never been allowed to take revenge on Ian. Every mission that Scorpia believed Rider to be involved with had been denied to Yassen. They had expressly forbidden him from having any contact with Ian. The year before, Scorpia had ordered him not to kill Ian Rider, and those orders still stood. Yassen couldn’t wait around for Ian, but he wasn’t going to leave Alex to be raised by the people who had gunned his father down in cold blood either.
Alex would know about his father. Yassen would teach him, and Alex would know about those who had betrayed them, who had destroyed what had been precious to Yassen. One day Alex would be the one to have his revenge.
But until then—
“Tell them, Scorpia never forgets.”
He shoved the woman forward, closing the door behind her. He was certain she hadn’t seen his face, completely certain, or else he would not have let her live regardless of whether he wanted the message delivered or not.
His own safety was paramount. A message could be delivered in any number of ways, but his identity was important to him. Yassen prided himself on being unassuming. He was handsome, but he didn’t deliberately draw attention to himself. His face was smooth and pleasing, with chiselled lips and with slightly feminine eyelashes. He kept his hair closely cropped at his natural shade of blond. He didn’t wear make up or gel, and while he wore expensive clothes, he preferred them to be in neutral or dark shades. There was always something suspicious about men who wore Hawaiian print shirts at a British airport, after all.
No one would look at Yassen twice and think, assassin. He looked like every other ordinary businessman to stroll through Stanstead, Treviso Airport, or JFK. He spoke with no accent, unless he was very angry in which case a trace of his Russian origins seeped through. Yassen rather enjoyed being unmemorable. It helped him survive.
MI6 would inevitably know it was him who had taken Alex. Cameras would capture his face as he carried Alex through the airport and boarded the first available flight to Venice but there would be no human around to recognize him and call for help. It would not be hard to steal Alex away from his home.
Yassen reached down and gently gathered Alex into his arms. “Come, child,” he whispered, one hand running over Alex’s soft, fair hair. “It is time to take you home.”
There was no child seat in Yassen’s car, but there wasn’t one in the agents’ car either. The nanny must have carried him on her lap, Yassen mused, as he buckled himself into the driver’s seat. Yassen frowned over at Alex, watching the child lying flat on the passenger seat. There was no time to waste and Yassen drove to the nearest train station with Alex belted on to his own lap. From there, he held Alex against his chest as the train took them away from Victoria Station. One Yassen was far enough away, he changed lines. He needed to get to the furthest airport away from Chelsea. If Ian Rider came home soon, or if MI6 had been watching, they would undoubtedly search for Yassen at the nearest airport. Going further away from Chelsea before booking a flight would give him a little more extra time.
Once they boarded the plane, and the airhostess had offered him one of those tiny yellow seatbelts for babies, he belted Alex to his own lap again. Then the Russian allowed himself to relax. They were leaving Britain. In two hour’s time they would arrive in Venice, and from there it would only be a short boat ride until they were home.
It had not been long since Yassen was last at Malagosto, but he had already started to miss it. Just as he himself did, Yassen knew Alex would love it there.
XXX
February 19th 2001.
Sayle Enterprises was an interesting enough place, Alex supposed, if one were into technology and computers. The buildings were tall and impressive, and the floors shiny and always clean. The people hurried about in white lab coats and biohazard suits with lowered, submissive gazes, and the curious looks they shot at him made Alex grin and bare his teeth. Alex Rider wasn’t too interested in what Sayle Enterprises looked like. Or of what its staff thought of him.
Alex had a job to do. If he did his job well, he would be paid well, and that was all that mattered to him.
Not to mention that the sooner the job was complete, the sooner he could go back to Malagosto and see Yassen again.
“Ah, Mr. Rider,” Herod Sayle drawled, linking his fingers together beneath his chin. “What a coincidence.”
Alex waited for him to speak again, but his employer remained silent. Sayle was dark-skinned and beady-eyed. Originally from Beirut, and adopted by American tourists after he had saved them from being crushed to death, Sayle had somehow ended up in a British school with the current Prime Minister of Great Britain. Apparently, Sayle could hold a grudge with the best of them. His plan was clever, in its own way, and undoubtedly cruel, and Julia Rothman loved it.
Alex wasn’t so sure.
Yassen hadn’t been concerned by the thought of working for a man who wanted to kill all of the children in Britain with one push of a button. But when he had been informed that Alex would be going to Cornwall, the Russian had suddenly begun to feel uneasy.
“What is a coincidence?” Alex forced himself to ask, knowing he would not be able to leave this ‘meeting’ until Sayle had finished making himself feel important. Alex kept his voice cold and his face expressionless, showing neither pleasure nor disgust.
He did not like Sayle. Sayle did not like Alex either. Unfortunately, Yassen’s injury was taking longer to heal than had been expected and Scorpia had been left with no choice but to send Yassen’s partner as his replacement.
Herod did not like schoolchildren, especially schoolboys, which was a pity because Alex was only fourteen. Not to mention that some geek kid would be arriving in just over a month because he had won a magazine competition, so Herod would be stuck with two teenage boys, and miles to go before he could cripple the country.
Alex felt a smile tugging at the edges of his lips, but he fought it back. Now was not the time to give in to his baser emotions. Now was the time to work, and sometimes ‘work’ meant sucking up to your employer. Though in this instance ‘work’ was less sucking up, and more trying not to outright laugh at him.
Alex was tempted to repeat his question, but he didn’t. He knew Herod was waiting for Alex to enquire, to show curiosity and interest and something else which Sayle probably thought of as infantile. So Alex waited too. He was being paid to be there, Sayle was not, and as such Alex had all the time in the world. Or more accurately, he had all the time Herod Sayle could afford.
“There is a new security guard starting work this week. His surname is also Rider.” Herod said, a sugary smile on his lips. His eyebrows were narrowed together as he waited for Alex to startle in recognition or surprise. But Alex remained blank-faced, expressionless and unconcerned. Herod spoke again, his voice low and husky, as if Alex’s lack of facial expressions were arousing. “Ian Rider,” he continued.
Alex reacted then. A grin broke out across Sayle’s face, but he said nothing as Alex’s eyes widened and then narrowed just as suddenly. The teenager took a small step back, fighting with himself to keep his feet from running out of the room to track Ian Rider down and hurt him.
“Yes,” Alex whispered once he was back under control. “Quite the coincidence.”
He considered telling Yassen, but Yassen would only tell Scorpia, who would then pull him from the mission. That would make his assignment a failure, and so far Alex had a straight record of success after success after success. He would not let Ian destroy this for him, like he had destroyed his family! Alex would keep the information to himself, wait and watch and stay wary until he knew what Rider was doing there and how much the man knew.
MI6 didn’t know about him, Alex was sure of that. Scorpia had been very careful to mask the identity of the world’s youngest teenage assassin. If Ian got even an inkling, the vaguest notion that Alex and Cub (Cossack’s partner) were one and the same, then, orders or no orders, he would have to die. Alex would deal with Julia Rothman, and Yassen, and his punishment afterwards. His security was more important than the ‘no kill’ order about Ian Rider, after all. The number one rule Yassen had taught him, having learnt from his experiences with John in Malta, was don’t get caught!
Without waiting to be excused, Alex turned sharply on his heels and walked from the room. His footsteps were silent. He passed through the hallways as barely more than a shadow, and those who did notice him gave no indication of such, deterred by the scowl that marred the child’s normally handsome features.
Alex had a lot to think about. He entered his room, closing and locking the door, before lying back on his bed and shutting his eyes. But he did not sleep. Yassen had always said the night was too valuable to be wasted in sleep, and so Alex had trained and tried and succeeded in needing only four hours of sleep a night.
Instead, Alex thought.
XXX
March 12th 2001.
There was something strange going on at Sayle Enterprises. Besides the obvious, that was. Ian may have been pretending to be a security guard, but he wasn’t going to pretend to be stupid as well. Normal computer game developers, software developers and technologists didn’t have radiation protocols or suspicious convoys of trucks filled with armed men patrolling the Cornwall coast every night.
Ian knew what all of that was about now. It had taken the best part of three weeks, but he had done his job well. He was ready to return to Liverpool Street and accept his pat on the back from Mr. Blunt.
Except…
Except that there was something else that was strange about Sayle Enterprises, and Ian wasn’t talking about Herod’s dress sense. Ian had watched, hidden uncomfortably in the air conditioning vents that ran the length of the biochemical lab’s ceiling, and he had seen the scientists and the hired mercenaries doing their jobs. The scientists had been injecting the genetically modified smallpox virus into little test tubes, while the guards waved their guns threateningly at them. And then it had happened. One of the scientists had dropped a test tube. The other scientists had screamed. The guards panicked, stumbling backwards until they were pressed against the walls. But the vial had only bounced once and rolled. There was no crack in the tube. No more screaming.
There was just silence, and there he'd been.
A teenager, fair-haired and nicely built, had entered the lab through the secret door that Ian had spent hours and hours trying to open from the outside. He'd stood silently, his arms held behind his back and there was a soft, soft smile on his pleasant face.
“What did you do?” he had asked in a calm voice, his hands slowly moving until they hung limply by his sides.
The scientist had trembled. He'd bent slowly to collect the undamaged test tube and placed it gently back in its designated holder. “It won’t happen again, Mr. R-”. He'd stopped speaking suddenly, his mouth widening into an ‘O’ of surprise just as the crack of gunfire echoed through the underground room.
No one had dared make a sound as the perpetrator had fallen to his knees, and then his side, and lay still. Ian had watched as the child’s brown eyes, calculated and cold, traced over every shadow inside the room, searching for something. But he had obviously not found it, because the boy had then sighed deeply, and said, “No. It won’t.”
Just as silently as he had entered the room, he'd left it. And Ian had watched him go, knowing he couldn’t leave Port Tallon until he knew for sure that the boy was not who he thought he was.
The day after, Ian had packed his bag and secured all of the information he had gathered on behalf of MI6. It had been relatively easy to steal a set of keys for one of the quad bikes that the guards used to patrol the grounds.
He had talked himself into leaving during the night since he had glimpsed the fair-haired child. It was the right thing to do. Ian needed to return home, check on his house and his housekeeper, hand over his information and be debriefed. And then he would lock himself away in his office and pore over family albums: filled with photographs of him and John, John and Helen, and Alex, they were an endless source of self-loathing for him. There were two special photos framed on his desk. They were the reminders of why he did his job as readily as he did and why he fought so hard to destroy anything that Scorpia hadn’t already ruined with their poisonous touch.
One was of an airplane after it had been blown up. Ian had cut it out of the paper, with the headline ‘Disgraced Soldier dies in explosion’ underneath it. The other was a smaller picture. It was one Ian had taken himself as a reminder of why he hated Scorpia as much as he did. It was Alex’s body after MI6 had finally retrieved it. Or what was left of it.
The memory of those pictures, of his own personal photo-ritual, was all that kept him from hunting down the teenager and demanding to know who he was. Alex Rider was dead. He had to be...
Ian wasn’t about to put himself through any unnecessary torture when he knew he would only be disappointed in the end. Alex was gone.
Yassen Gregorovich had made sure of that.
Ian fished the quad bike keys out of his pocket, palming them between his hands as he made his way out into the open ground between the buildings. He froze suddenly, holding his breath as two people walked by. The child followed them. With his hands in his trouser pockets and headphones over his ears, he acted just like every other teenager, but Ian had seen first-hand that the child wasn’t normal.
“Mr. Rider?” Nadia Vole said. Alex didn’t hear her; her voice was drowned out by his music.
“Hmm!” Mr. Grin grunted, waving his hands in Nadia’s direction.
She sighed and stopped walking. Alex stopped too, but did not remove his earphones. “Mr. Rider, really, can you please try to be more professional?”
Ian couldn’t think straight. Blood pounded through his ears, painfully loud. Rider was a common enough surname. In fact, he and John had gone to school with two others, a boy and a girl, who all shared the same last name. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. “Alex!” The blond haired woman hissed.
“It’s less a matter of professionalism and more a general dislike of your voice,” Alex informed her snidely. “I heard Herod as well as you did. There is no need for you to repeat his orders. Everything will be fine,” he said, before he turned and walked away. Shocked and mortified, it took Nadia a moment to realize that Mr. Grin was still following Alex and that she had been left on her own. She ran to catch up with them. Once they were out of sight, Ian stepped out of his shadowed hiding place.
Alex Rider. The boy’s name was Alex Rider.
It was too much of a coincidence. Having the same surname was one thing, but sharing the same Christian name as well was too much. Ian felt like laughing, he felt like falling to his knees and praying, and he felt like screaming. Alan Blunt had told him Alex was dead. Mrs. Jones had helped to bury his nephew’s body a month after they had buried his brother’s. When Alex had turned to insult Nadia Vole, it had been John Rider standing before him. Younger, and with Helen’s cheekbones, but Ian had been looking at his brother.
His nephew had been right there, close enough to touch. The urge to take him home and keep him protected was so strong it almost felt
like his heart was tied to a string that was held within Alex’s hand. As Alex walked away from him, he felt he was being pulled to follow.
But no… he had to go. He had to go now. Sayle was onto him, and if Ian didn’t leave now, there was a strong possibility that he wouldn’t be leaving alive.
He knew where Alex was, and more importantly, he knew Alex was alive. Ian would come back for him.
He smirked to himself as he mounted the nearest quad bike and turned it on.
He’d come back, all right, with back up. Scorpia would be so sorry that they fucked with his family.
XXX
March 29th 2001.
1
Alan Blunt rested his head on his palm. His elbow ached from digging into his desk, but he didn’t shift positions. Instead he pushed the pain from his thoughts and focused on the young boy in front of him.
“Mr. Lester, hello,” he greeted as warmly as was possible for someone like him.
He may have considered himself one of the good guys, but he was far from the hugs-and-puppies type. He was cold and unfeeling at times, but most importantly he did what was necessary. When Alex Rider had been kidnapped, every one had assumed the worst. Mr. Blunt and Mrs. Jones however knew there were fates worse than death, and if Alex had really been dead it might have been a blessing for the child. They had watched the surveillance footage of Yassen carrying Alex through Gatwick Airport together.
2
Simultaneously, they had turned to one another and whispered, “John.”
Yassen Gregorovich would no more hurt Alex than Ian would have; they both knew that. But when Ian refused to take assignment after assignment, choosing instead to waste his time hunting for a child who would most likely never be found, Alan had been forced to take necessary actions to ensure that Ian Rider could move on from his nephew’s death.
Agent Rider was refusing to speak to them at the current time, but Mr. Blunt had other things to focus his attention on anyway. Beside him, Mrs. Jones popped a mint into her mouth and smiled widely at the teenager seated across from them.
“Hello Felix,” she said, reaching out to shake his offered hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Congratulations on winning the competition. You must be so excited.”
“I’m looking forward to playing with the Stormbreaker, yes,” he told them. He looked a little bit like Alex, except his hair was a shade of mousy brown, and he kept pushing old-fashioned glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger.
“I know that this is supposed to be an exciting adventure for you; a holiday, if you will,” Mrs. Jones said, deciding that the boy would be most likely to listen to her. “But could you do us a small favour?” She didn’t wait for Felix to reply. She pushed a photograph of Yassen across the table separating them and pointed at the Russian’s face. “If you see this man, will you call us immediately?”
“Here is a phone. Hold down the number one and it will dial this office immediately. It will be impossible to connect with any other number from this device.” Alan slid the phone across the table. Mr. Blunt frowned at the teenager, wondering what the situation would have been like had Alex been sitting in that chair instead, Ian hovering over his shoulder like a proud parent. Alan brought himself back into the conversation. “My nephew is there on work experience for a security company. You’ll probably meet him; he might even be the one to show you around. His name is Alex, by the way. Jolly good chap, clever, friendly, and good at snooker. I dare say you’ll like him. That fellow, however,” Alan said, trailing off with a very real frown.
“His name is Yassen Gregorovich.” Mrs. Jones was also frowning.
“What’s so important about him?” Felix Lester asked, a curious half-smile on his lips. “He looks harmless enough.” Brown eyes darted between the faces of two adults in the room. They both scowled at him.
“Yassen Gregorovich may look to be in his mid to late 20s, but he is in actual fact 35 years old. My nephew,” Alan had no problem lying about his relationship with Alex, but every time he used the word ‘nephew’ he considered whether he should have let Ian deal with this, as the man had wanted to. “Alex is only fourteen. We have reason to believe that Gregorovich has instigated a relationship of a sexual nature with Alex. Alex’s other uncle and myself have tried to warn the man off, but he refuses to listen. Alex doesn’t really want the police involved, as he insists he ‘loves’ the man. It would be best not to mention anything like this around my nephew.”
Tulip Jones gave a soft smile. “We’re just trying to do what is best for the boy. His father was a great friend of mine, before his death. None of us wants to see Alex hurt by a relationship of this kind.”
“Ok,” Felix agreed, clearly feeling the need to protect someone his age, even if he had never met him, from falling victim to a sexual predator. “I’ll keep an eye on him. If I see this guy around,” he pointed at the photo again, “I’ll give you a call.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lester. Have a good time.” Alan waved his hand at the door, and Mrs. Jones stood from her chair.
“I’ll show you out,” she said, and took hold of his arm.
Alan watched them go. He knew there was a good chance that the boy would get hurt or even die, but he was just one child. Compared to the hundreds of thousands that would die if the Stormbreakers were released into the public, Felix Lester’s life wasn’t all that important. Sacrifices had to be made. Every agent knew that. It was one of those necessary evils in life, and Mr. Blunt was very, very good at doing what was necessary! It was a pity the Prime Minister wouldn’t let them move on Sayle Enterprises without a sample of the virus, and it was a shame that Ian had not managed to procure one. But if Lester died, Alan Blunt would get what he wanted anyway: the end of Herod Sayle.
XXX
1 – In the book, Ian Rider was there for 3 weeks before his death on March 12th 2001. February 19th 2001 is exactly 3 weeks later.
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