i dont own any rights to alex rider books or this fanfiction, thyis fanfic is by TheUlmuri
Part I: Exposure
The month following Alex's meeting with Mr. Bray was uneventful. The students of Brookland Comprehensive returned from the spring recess on May first, many of them surprised that Alex was still present for the last stretch of term. The rumors and speculation among the students were still the same as before the meeting, but Alex hadn't expected that to change. The headmaster had been sworn to secrecy after all. The teachers however seemed to regard him with slightly less suspicion and Alex suspected that Mr. Bray had said something to appease them. Even if they didn't know the truth, they knew better than to question further into the matter.
It was on a Monday, two weeks after term had resumed that everything had fallen apart.
Alex had woken up at five o'clock as he usually did, rolled out of bed, and started the shower. Life as a spy had trained him to sleep lightly and wake up early and had conditioned his body to function in top form on very little sleep. He dressed in his usual attire of cargo pants and bulletproof shirt surmounted by his and a black tee shirt. He walked over to his bed and retrieved his gun and knives from the top drawer of the bedside table and slipped them into place and grabbed two spare clips of bullets from the same drawer, dropping them into one of the many pockets of his pants. He then snached his MI6 issue watch and cell phone from the bedside table, sliding the phone into another pocket and securing the watch around his left wrist.
After suiting up for the day, Alex made his way down to the kitchen and ate a bowl of cereal. He rinsed out the bowl and placed it in the sink before walking into the front hall, dawning his windbreaker, grabbing his car keys and leaving the house. He got into his sleek, black 2009 Aston Martin DBS Coup and drove to school.
Alex was hit with a sense of foreboding the moment he stepped out of his car- a relentless feeling lingering in the back of his mind that told him something wasn't quite right. After years of experience, Alex knew better than to ignore his instincts, and he immediately went on guard. To the untrained outside observer, there would be no change, he would still appear calm and relaxed, however anyone with a more practiced eye would be able to see that he was alert and tense, prepared for any kind of attack.
Regardless of his misgivings, Alex knew that there was nothing he could do for the moment. Though the warning of a threat was there, there was nothing to suggest that the danger was immediate and even if thas wasn't the case, Alex knew that he was under the intense scrutiny of his classmates. He snorted quietly at the irony of it; every person in the school besides Tom went out of their way to avoid him, but he was, paradoxically, the constant object of their stares and whispers.
Alex locked his car, stowed the keys and walked swiftly into the building, his senses still on high alert. He met Tom at his locker and the two of them made their way towards their homeroom. The morning passed normally as Alex went from class to class. As usual, he sat quietly in the back and focused diligently on the teacher's lecture. He sat with Tom and, when that wasn't an option, he sat alone. He never knew when he would be sent out again so it was important to him to focus on school while he had the chance, even if it had long since lacked challenge.
Despite the appearance of normalcy, Alex still couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong.
The bell rang after his second class and he made his way to maths. As usual, the people in the hall parted for him to pass through- no one really wanted to get too close to him any more. Alex smiled sardonically to himself. His classmates' behavior amused him. He knew that they were truly afraid of him. There was a time when that knowledge would have bothered him, but the last thing he was ever worried about anymore was acceptance. Alex walked into the maths classroom and nodded a greeting to the teacher, Mr. Donovan and took his seat at the back of the room. As the teacher's lecture started, the warning bells in his head that had been going off all morning intensified. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and scanned the room and the portion of the grounds that he could see outside the window with a slight frown in his face- his only sign of emotion. He still had not seen anything that was markedly out of place and the lack of answers was beginning to worry him. He continued to do routine scans through out the lesson, paying less attention to the lecture than usual.
