Alex Rider: Deception

Sarah- Chapter 9

"That was way too close." Sarah muttered when Alex left.

"So tell me again, he found you how?" Jack asked disbelievingly. She sighed, "He said he recognized me and followed me all the way to the alley."

"Sketchy, and he beat you in the ensuing fight?"

Sarah scowled, "He did not beat me, he got lucky and hit my foot to Kingdom Come." Jack smirked, "I'd expect better from someone so experienced as yourself."

"He got lucky! And I'll have you know I did eventually win. You should've seen the look on his face when I got out of his death grip."

"Whatever you say, I'm going to start dinner."

Sarah wrapped her foot and sat down at the converted dining table to check the world news.

Her foot would heal quickly enough, although right now it was still burning painfully. It was weird to rediscover all these "talents" or "gifts" or whatever you wanted to call it, and healing quickly was one of them. They were extremely useful too, especially to tease Jack.

Ever since the CIA had found her, she and Jack had been misleading them, but she had to keep checking for anyone else that might be interested in her Portal. The CIA had taken care of Dr. Weinberg and his henchman as promised, but they had been unable to find out if anyone else knew about it. It was not easy fooling the CIA and sending them on wild goose chases, and between that and Protecting, Sarah felt like she could never relax. Jack's computer was had special programming allowing him to view the names of all government files, but opening and reading them was another challenge. They only opened the ones absolutely necessary, lest they tip off the government that someone was invading.

Sarah was scouring government reports and news reports from all over the world, when on impulse, she decided to search Alex Rider. "Uh, Jack..."

"Mmm?"

"You need to see this, like, now." Jack rinsed his hands and walked around the breakfast bar, coming to a stop behind Sarah. "What's u- oh."

"There's a huge file on Alex Rider from MI6!"

"Yeah, I can see that, let me in." Sarah scooted out of the way and Jack's fingers began clicking away on the keyboard. His expression went from concentrated, to surprised, to downright alarmed. "What? Let me see!" Sarah elbowed Jack out of her way and skimmed the file.

It was massive, and the summary said Alex had worked for one government or another for almost two years, in which time he completed seven missions. He had single handedly saved the world no less than five times, and saved thousands, if not millions, of lives. The file was relatively void of emotion, and Sarah wondered if something had been left out, files were often bias one way or another. His parents had been killed in a plane crash when he was less than a year old, and he had been raised by his uncle. Both his father and uncle had been MI6 agents. His uncle was KIA when Alex was fourteen, and it appeared that just after his uncle's death Alec began his missions. When his uncle died his housekeeper Jaclyn Starbright became his legal guardian. On his last mission, the guardian had been killed and Alex was sent to live with Edward Pleasure and his wife and daughter. Alex had exposed and inadvertently killed the man who plotted against Edward's life after an attack was made on his life in the south of France. He had been shot in the chest an severely wounded just after his fourth mission, but had managed to pull through and regain his health. The last bit of the file mentioned that Alex had been deemed emotionally unstable and could not be commissioned for future missions until further notice.

Sarah sat back in her chair and let out a long breath. This was not good. Not good at all. She looked despairingly at Jack. "What are we going to do?" she whispered. Jack was thinking hard, "Well, he might not have seen or heard anything."