Shining Knight

by Official_Disney_Princess

Summary:

MI6 said it would be “a simple rescue.” Alex knew that was code for “horrifically dangerous with a 40% chance of betrayal.”

When a foreign princess is taken hostage by a general leading a civil war, Alex is sent undercover among a militia of child soldiers — again. Between poison, politics, and a girl who can’t quite remember English idioms, Alex discovers there’s more than one way to play knight in shining armour.

Notes:

Hey folks! This is my attempt at writing an Alex fic that is (hopefully) canon-adjacent! Really excited - let me know what you think!
Edit: I should mention that I have invented a country called 'Calandria' for this story; in-universe, it's a very small country close to the scandinavian area of Europe. I thought I'd say because there was a bit of confusion in the comments, and while everyone's managed to understand, I thought I'd better clear it up. Thanks for your patience, folks; sorry for the confusion!

Chapter 1: Two Million

In twenty minutes, the girl would be gone and Major Olsen would be two million American dollars richer. 

He was trying his hardest to focus on the latter part of the plan, rather than the former.

The man with the cold blue eyes had shown him a picture of the girl he wanted brought to him, and of course Olsen had recognised her. Withdrawn from public life or not, the Calandrian native recognised the king’s brat when he saw her.

She has not lived in Calandria since she was six years old, Olsen had been informed as he was given the mission. King Leopold has moved his daughters all over Europe to evade us, to Geneva, to Paris, to Rome. But he grows lazy. Her highness currently resides in an English boarding school, and the Secret Service grows weary of guarding the little hvalp. We must strike as the time is right.

And this was why he was stuck, being driven in an armoured truck through the misted moors of the English countryside, trying not to look too hard at the squirming captive in the seat next to him.

The girl was dressed in the checked skirt and too-large blazer of a thousand schoolgirls around the world, long blonde hair held back from her face with an alice band. Her wrists and ankles were held together by soft corded ropes; her face was covered by a blindfold and a strip of tape pressed over her lips.

This had two benefits. One, the girl would never see her kidnappers’ faces; if things went south, Olsen and his men had deniability. And two, they could all pretend that it wasn’t a little girl they had taken.

The major could hear his two subordinates muttering to each other now, in the front seats.

“This is not right,” Hagen was insisting in a low voice, speaking in accented French in an attempt not to let the superior officer hear. “I am all for removing Leopold - the king is a swine. But she is a spedbarn, a child. How will I look my own daughter in the eyes after this?”

“You will have the money,” Pedersen snapped back, hands tight on the steering wheel. “Pay for new memories if you must, but shut your mouth. I have enough issues with this mission without you reminding me of what we are doing.”

This was dangerous talking. Olsen unbuckled his seat belt and walked towards the two grunt workers.

“You can tell your daughter, Hagen,” the major hissed in his ear, causing both men to jump, “that she will live no longer in poverty if this goes well. Remember, whatever happens to the girl is no concern of ours. We are not the ones who will do anything to her; that is all the general.”

But his words rang hollow to everyone in the truck, including that of the teenage girl who lay shivering in the back, trying not to cry.

The truck turned yet another corner and rumbled finally to its destination: a secluded field, occupied by around ten soldiers dressed in the same uniform as the truck drivers: dark blue with a blood-red reptile - a dragon - silhouette embossed on the right arm. But there was one who stood apart from the rest, even if he were dressed identically.

Olsen felt bile rise in his throat, but tried to disguise it by busying himself with issuing orders. “You two - grab her and follow me. Be quick.”

The major took careful steps across the damp grass towards the man with the cold eyes, Hagen and Pedersen following behind. They half-guided, half-dragged the still-blindfolded girl between them as she stumbled uncertainly in the right direction.

The other men in the clearing stepped aside one by one until the only person still in Olsen’s way was the man with the cold eyes. The reason why they were all here tonight.

The major, a man who on any other day could have struck fear into a man’s heart by merely looking at him, cleared his throat awkwardly before addressing the man before him in a voice he was fighting hard to keep under control. 

Olsen had hoped Vogel would send an aide. It was easier to demand things from an aide.

“Good evening, General.”

“Major.” General Alfred Vogel regarded his subordinate with eyes that were so dark brown they were almost black. He did not bother to shake hands; only gesturing impatiently for the girl to be brought towards him. Pedersen did so hurriedly.

Vogel knelt on one knee, putting him at eye level with the girl in front of him. The gentleness with which he removed her blindfold could almost have been mistaken for tenderness, in any other situation.

Vogel looked into the bright blue eyes of the princess he had been hunting for so long. The final bargaining chip that would finally, after all this time, give him the leverage he needed. The general smiled pleasantly. “Good evening, Princess Beatrice. A pleasure to meet you, after all this time.”

There could be no doubt that Beatrice knew who she was looking at - every part of her body language screamed fear, desperation, an animalistic need to get out.

Vogel rose, straightening his gloves, and barked orders towards his men in a language Major Olsen did not understand. The men started moving, packing up equipment and moving a newly-struggling Beatrice towards the cars.

Olsen was growing anxious. “Pardon me, General, but… the money?”

Vogel turned back towards the three truck drivers, apparently remembering they were there. “Ah yes. The two million. Unfortunately, gentlemen, I am a little short on cash as of late. I trust you will accept your fee in gold, instead? After all,” the general let out a laugh. It was not a pleasant sound. “I can hardly be expected to write you a cheque.”

Olsen tried to hide his scowl. Vogel knew as well as he did that gold would not be ideal; the whole point of bank notes was their unassuming appearance. But this whole exchange was making him uneasy, and Hagen and Pedersen were practically quaking in their boots behind him.

“Yes. Gold will be satisfactory.”

Vogel gave a little smirk, and spoke into a radio clipped at his chest.
“Gentlemen, please pay the major and his subordinates their fee.”

That was the last thing Olsen, Hagen and Pedersen heard before they were shot with a hail of gold-plated bullets that, if anyone had cared to count, added up to exactly two million dollars. Vogel did so enjoy symmetry. 

Vogel turned sharply and walked to his car with the posture only a military man can possess. The bodies of the three kidnappers would be collected and the bullets extracted. After all, two million was still two million.

Vogel opened the door of the nicest car in the clearing and sat down, buckling himself in. As the car started to move away, he spared a glance at his captive, seated across from him. Beatrice’s flimsy rope restraints had been replaced with chains too heavy for her to lift, her gag reinforced with several more layers. The horror in her eyes told him she’d seen exactly what had happened to her kidnappers. How she realised the depth of the trouble she was in.

Vogel spared her a warm smile.

“Oh, the fun we are going to have together, princess.”

Chapter 2: Particular Silences

Summary:

Alex goes on a school trip. Things go as well as can be expected.

Notes:

Hi guys! Back with a new chapter and this time *drumroll* we're seeing Alex!
One quick thing I should mention: for anyone who read the first chapter when I initially put it out, you may have noticed Vogel's emblem was said to be a cobra? I've changed it to a dragon now (for reasons that will make sense eventually, I promise). Not a big change, but as a couple of lovely people had commented on it, I thought I'd better mention it here.
Hope you all enjoy!

Over the course of his short but action-filled life, Alex Rider had begun to consider himself a master of different types of silence. One of his least favourite was the kind of silence that came over doctors when they were examining him.

This strange hush would fall over the room the second he had to take his shirt off, revealing the countless bruises, scrapes, scars and particularly the bullet wound resting close to his heart. 

Then would come the looks. The “How are you still standing?” kind. The “What the hell has happened to this boy” kind.

The worst ones were when they turned their eyes semi-accusingly to Jack - she’d always be there, a muscle in her jaw twitching with barely repressed anger. 

It wasn’t as though they could ask any questions even if their suspicions were right - Alex had once snuck a peak at his file and seen the acronym MISO written there. Military Intelligence: Special Operations. It basically meant they weren’t allowed to ask him anything about his injuries much beyond ‘where does it hurt’?

 

Alex hadn’t liked doctors before his first mission, and liked them even less now. But the cherry on the cake of unwanted doctor visits surely had to be this.

A vaccination. For a school trip he hadn’t even wanted to go on. 

Brookland was taking some of its ‘less noticed’ pupils (which meant a roomful of prats with the collective humour of a ten year old) on a civics trip to listen to a talk on how politics worked in small countries. In said country’s own embassy, no less.

Alex had ended up being invited because of his poor attendance. 

He’d planned to skip out on it… until he’d heard his name called on the register for the trip a week in advance.

Um, Miss, he’d interrupted the school secretary, raising his hand. I don’t think I’m meant to be going on that trip?

Helen Bedfordshire had looked down at her list to check, before smiling at him. Oh you are Alex. Yes, it seems Jack has signed you up for it. What fun we’ll have! It’s bound to be interesting.

Which was why Alex was now on the bus with his chin in his hands, trying to dodge things being thrown at his head. At least he was sitting at the back.

“Why did we have to have a needle poked inside us to go on this dozy trip, anyway?”

Alex looked to his left, where Tom Harris was slowly munching his way through his lunchbox too early, as usual. Later he’d eat half of Alex’s food when lunchtime actually did roll around.

“They said these people giving the talk are very… disease-conscious, or something. Had to be vaccinated against some rare virus you only get in their country.”

Once the doctor had finished being silently horrified at the mess of scars that was Alex’s torso, she’d injected him with the vaccine, telling him about the components that made it up. You only find this disease in this country, apparently, she’d murmured as the needle pierced his skin. Good thing too, because the main part of the cure is a flower you only find there. A rare breed of orchid, apparently.

Tom licked biscuit crumbs off his fingers. “Oh brilliant. If we don’t die of boredom or hunger, we’ll turn into a pair of mutants. I’ll get the extra head; the world needs more of this face.You can have the laser hands.”

Alex laughed. Tom would never fail to cheer him up. He was on the trip for his low grades in… most subjects. At least now there’d be somebody he could talk with who wasn’t a complete arsehole.

A small, hard object suddenly pinged off the side of his head. Alex, soldiers’ reflexes half-expecting to be forced into action again, jerked around quickly to see-

- a sharpener. 

“Oy, watch out for the invalid! Anything else hits him and he’ll take a month off school again!”

Alex scowled up the aisle. The accumulation of at least ten missions’ worth of absences, explained away to the school that he apparently had the immune system of a victorian chimneysweep had given the resident geniuses a fresh hobby: testing out a new range of insults on him. Annoying, but manageable so far.

“I’d move seats if I were you, Harris,” one boy, who had his hair swept over one eye in a way that, he assured himself, the ladies found irresistible, drawled. “You’ll end up dying of an incurable disease like - what was it last time? The flu?”

Laughs all around. The teachers, sitting at the front of the bus, of course heard nothing.

Tom offered the boy a cheery grin. “Yeah, well. If I came down with the same flu Alex gets, mate, I reckon you’d be a lot more polite to us.”

Before anyone else could say anything, the bus drew up to its next stop and Mr Bray, the teacher who had arranged the trip, clapped his hands. “Right, ladies and gentlemen! Off the bus, carefully. That means you, Mr Jackson.”

 

Alex grabbed his bag, rolling his eyes at Tom. “Be careful with that. You’ll tempt fate. I’ll probably end up with another bout of the flu if we’re not careful by the end of the day.”

Tom scoffed, waving a hand at him. “Nah. Not even you can get into trouble on a political trip.”

“And if I can?”

“Then I’ll buy you a bag of crisps. Happy?”

Alex huffed a laugh. He was trying not to remember the events of the trip to Greenfields research centre a few months ago.

But this would be different.

Surely. 

///

“...so you see children, that is why farming is the backbone of the Calandrian economy, as without it we would lose over 75% of our income from trade overseas. Furthermore, potatoes feed 80% of Calandrian citizens…”

That was all Alex could hear among the sound of half muffled snores, phones clicking, and whispers of Harry’s got a crush on Bella, but she likes Theo. Tom was drooling on his shoulder and at least five other people were nodding off all around them.

The old man with the droopy moustache at the front had apparently no inclination that his speech of crops was, if not the most dull thing they’d heard about today, then definitely in the top three.

There had been a speech on finance, a lecture on food (Tom had woken up a bit for that one, and promptly gone right back to sleep when the man had announced how chocolate was hard to come by in Calandria), and now the talk on agriculture. There was more than one mumble about how they didn’t want to hear about potatoes in some micro-country nobody had ever heard of.

Alex didn’t mind so much. He could use a boring day.

And yet, it still wasn’t.

The first thing he’d noticed as they walked inside the lecture hall was the number of security there was around. That in itself was understandable - they were visiting an embassy after all, it was sure to be security-conscious - but not in the way most were.

Alex had visited a British Embassy in Italy once while on holiday once with Ian Rider, his late uncle. They hadn’t been there long, and as there hadn’t been any issues with their passports or anything the visit had seemed rather pointless (although looking back now, Alex felt sure it had something to do with his uncle’s… employers). But he had always remembered the visit, and one thing he was sure of was that there was a lot more security in this embassy.

It might simply have been a case of different countries operating differently, but it didn’t seem that way to Alex.The tension in the way many of the guards held themselves, the watchfulness in their eyes, the posture that spoke of years spent being ready to spring into action at a moments’ notice.

These weren’t your common-or-garden ‘passport control’ officials. These were highly-trained bodyguards.

The real question was, of course: which body were they guarding?

“I will now pass on to the Special Cultural Envoy to the Calandrian Embassy, Ms Langeford.”

There was an awkward silence as Droopy Moustache paused for a moment - was he expecting applause? - then moved away to reveal the new speaker.

Everyone in the hall noticed immediately that she was different.

For a start, she was the first female speaker they’d had today. She was also a good thirty years younger than everyone else who had spoken.

Ms Langeford was quite a pale woman in her early twenties, with very white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She was dressed smartly in a pencil skirt and blazer, wearing a simple row of pearls around her neck. 

Alex knew at once.

That’s her. She’s the reason why there’s so many guards here.

There was something regal, important, about this woman.

She took her place behind the podium and connected the board to her computer. A slideshow flashed up on the board behind her.

It read:

 

CALANDRIAN PARLIMENT

or

HOW A COUNTRY WORKS (A CRASH COURSE)

by

CHARLOTTE LANGEFORD

 

“Good morning. As Mr Altruist has said, my name is Charlotte Langeford. I have been given fifteen minutes to educate you all on the structure of my government in a way that interests you.”

A beat.

“Should I succeed, I am owed a biscuit. I enjoy the bourbons here.”

She spoke English with the air of someone who had learned it for formal occasions - each word was pronounced exactly, with faint traces of an accent lying underneath. But there was something humorous about the way she’d said this that got a slight, surprised laugh out of Alex, and a few other people. 

“Calandria is small,” Charlotte continued, putting a map of the country up on the slideshow. “Too small, according to most. Globes tend to ignore us entirely. This is personally insulting.”

More laughter. People were looking up from their phones. Even Tom had woken up and was looking towards the stage with some interest.

Charlotte smiled softly. “As I’m sure every one of you were told as children, good things come in small packages. When I say ‘small country’, many immediately go to ‘unimportant country’. This is never true. A nation’s worth comes from the size of its history, people, hopes. Even if most people would be unable to point to my country correctly on a map, I know the meaning it has.”

Another beat. This one met with silence. Everyone was listening now. Alex doubted many students really took it to heart, but there was something about a woman pouring out her soul for the love of her country that made them stop and listen.

“Our parliament works very similar to the British one, but with a few key changes. We elect a new Premier, or Prime Minister, every four years. This role involves-”

Charlotte suddenly paused, a strange look on her face, head turned slightly to the side as if she were listening to something.

“She’s got an earpiece on,” muttered Tom.

Alex looked again - his friend was right. The ambassador was equipped with a small, discreet telephone attached to the side of her head - and, going by her expression, whatever the person on the other end was saying, it was bad.

“I… have to go.”

Confusion was emanating from the crowd now. Mr Bray half-stood, tone indignant.

“But we-”

“Please excuse my bluntness,” Charlotte broke in. Her face was back on now, the friendly one she’d had since she’d first arrived - but now, there was a forced quality to it. “What I meant to say is… it is time for the interval!”

At this, an attendant with a far-too-wide smile and a remarkably clean uniform wheeled in a trolley piled with cakes and tea. Simultaneous eye-widening from all the members of Brookland in the room.

“Please help yourselves to snacks during a brief intermission. I will return… shortly. In the meantime, please enjoy!”

As most people swarmed towards the trolley, Alex hung back with Tom to watch Charlotte leave. The second attention had moved away from her, the smile had dropped, replaced by a tense look of worry. She slipped out of a side door, accompanied by a few of the burly security guards. 

Odd.

And, because Alex was a magnet for odd… he knew he had to go and check it out.

“Tom?”

His friend was on his feet in seconds. “Alex, don’t. Not again. I can’t afford a bag of crisps right now.”

“I’m not gonna do anything risky!” Alex swore, raising his hands. “I just… need the bathroom.”

“The bathroom.” Tom raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Yeah. And I need you to distract Mr Bray while I go.”

Tom stared at Alex for a minute. He finally hung his head, turning in the direction of their teacher. “Sir! Can I ask you something?”

Alex huffed a sigh, guilt worming its way into his brain - but it was too late to worry about that now. With Mr Bray distracted (Tom was pretending to be enthusiastic about foreign potatoes), he slipped out of the door and into the corridor they’d come in by.

///

He almost spoiled everything by crashing into the attendant who’d brought the tea trolley in, who happened to be leaving at the same time.

“Sorry.” Alex stepped back.

He was met with a scowl. “Dumme liten gutt,” the man hissed, before stomping off down a corridor in the opposite direction.

The attendant moved away quickly, but Alex had still been able to spot something interesting: his pressed embassy uniform sleeve had ridden up slightly when Alex had crashed into him. Underneath, he was wearing a second set of clothing, a dark-blue uniform, with a crest of a deep red dragon inside a circle printed on the sleeve.

It wasn’t an insignia Alex had ever seen before. Hmm.

He was half-inclined to follow the man, when-

“Takk, men neim, gentlemen. I must take this call on my own.”

“We do have our order, Ms Langeford-”

“And I release you from them. Go, enjoy your lunch hour. I will not be long. The call is imprtant. I must see to it alone.”

Alex quickly ducked into an alcove as some of the security guards - English ones these were, not dressed in the deep red uniforms that Alex guessed must be Calandrian-issue - came marching up the corridor.

“Shouldn’t we stay with her anyway?” asked one, glancing behind him uncertainly. Definitely British.

His companion raised and lowered a shoulder carelessly.”Eh, what the hell. We get paid the same either way. Exactly how much danger has she been in since she’s been here? Nothing’s gonna happen if we leave her for a half-hour.”

Alex peeked out from his hiding space. The guards had walked far enough down the corridor that he couldn’t hear them anymore. And thus, they couldn’t hear him.

There was a faint voice coming from behind a door a little down the hallway, too high to be a mans’. Alex snuck closer, pressing his ear to the keyhole. Not really spy-like, but it would have to do for now.

“I do not understand. Beatrice was supposed to be in safe hands at that school. Every precaution was taken, just as with myself. And you mean to tell me, Mr Blunt, that my sister has been taken?”

Alex froze. Blunt? 

It might just be a coincidence, but if Blunt had been mentioned, Alex knew coincidence couldn’t exist. The head of MI6 was involved in something suspicious again, and if the past was anything to go by… Alex would be involved himself soon.

Well, at least he had an excuse to snoop now.

Judging by the volume, it seemed Charlotte was in quite a large, echoey room. He doubted the door was locked, if she had just gone in there. Provided she was preoccupied with her conversation , she hopefully wouldn’t notice him slipping in.

Alex silently turned the knob and slipped inside.

 

The room was indeed big, with a high ceiling and an indoor balcony running around it. Charlotte was on the far side, far enough away to not see Alex come in, next to the stairs that lead up to the balcony. She was still occupied with her phone, voice beginning to rise with stress, slipping in and out of a language Alex didn't know.

There was a stack of crates, filled with what appeared to be paper, nearby. Perfect height for a teen eavesdropper to hide behind.

“You claim that the school was infiltrated by Vogel’s men? And you had ingen anelse? Blod og aske.” Charlotte took a deep, shuddering breath. It was the kind of sigh someone took when they’d been living in fear for too long… and the monster had finally caught up with them. 

“Charlotte, kom op zeg.

“Has my father been informed?” she had switched back to a colder, more businesslike tone. “Ja. Please inform him that I will meet him as soon as he lands. We will discuss… something.”

A click. Alex peeked out slightly from behind the crate, and saw the Calandrian emissary collapsed on her knees, head in her hands.

“Beatrice ... vær forsiktig, lillesøster.”

 

Alex wasn’t really sure what his next move should be now. If he went up to talk to Charlotte (a stupid idea), she’d most likely scream and he’d be arrested. If he stayed behind the boxes, he might be there for who knows how long, and eventually someone would notice he’d disappeared from the school party, and he’d get in trouble. Plus, if he waited for Charlotte to leave, she’d probably see him when she came to the door, scream, and he’d be arrested.

Then he saw the gun and the decision was made for him.

///

What neither Alex nor Charlotte had noticed was that there was another door into the room: the balcony running around the walls had a door up there, with a staircase leading up to it. The door wasn’t particularly meant to be a secret, but wasn’t really known to many people who visited the embassy unless they were looking for it. 

Which the man with the hidden uniform, emblazoned with a red dragon sigil, clearly had been.

 

It seemed to Alex that things happened in slow motion:

The attendant from the lecture room - now in a different uniform, with the secret sigil on full display - appeared on the balcony.

He reached into his pocket.

A gun.

A click as the safety came off.

Charlotte’s head turned at the sound.

And then Alex twisted his legs around to kick the box in front of him with all his strength, causing the bullet to smash it to pieces and saving Charlotte.

To Alex’s surprise, the woman didn’t waste time screaming. She simply curled up in a ball on the floor, minimising the assassin’s target best she could.Alex leapt out and grabbed her, pulling her behind the remaining crates.

“Stay there,” he hissed, peering towards the balcony. The would-be assassin seemed to be in momentary shock, but that wouldn’t last long. 

Charlotte was staring at him. “You were in the lecture hall,” she began, flabbergasted. You are en gutt, a boy. How…?” She had no time to finish her question as another crate was demolished. 

Alex pushed her behind a pillar, following soon after. “You know who that is?” he asked, as more shots rang out. Slow. That was good. He didn’t have that many bullets, then.

“Not specifically, though I know who he is working for.”

Alex nodded to himself. A hit then. This guy wouldn’t stop until the job was done, or he couldn’t continue. But how to stop him?

And then it came to him.

 Fumbling in his pocket for his phone, he opened the camera app.

Not long ago, Derek Smithers, the head of tech and gadgets at MI6, had upgraded Alex’s phone ‘in case you’re ever in a spot of bother, old chap.’ This included an X-ray app, a programme that could send videos straight to MI6 headquarters, and, most importantly, boosting the flash on his phone enough that it would near-blind anyone he snapped a photo of.

“Shield your eyes.”

Alex waited until there was a gap in the gunshots. He sprang out, raising the phone towards the balcony and throwing an arm over his own eyes in one move.

“Say cheese!”

CLICK.

The flash was bright even to Alex’s covered eyes. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to the surprised assassin.

Smithers had told him to wait five seconds before uncovering his eyes, which seemed long after the wildness of the past few minutes. When it was eventually safe to see again, Alex snuck a careful peek.

It seemed the light had been so much that the man on the balcony had actually fallen down from it. He was now lying on his back, unconscious, leg twisted at a funny angle. Alex grimaced. Even if this man had tried to kill someone, Alex felt bad about hurting people.

Bang.

“What the HELL?!”

Alex spun around to be met with the sight of the two guards he had seen earlier coming in through the door, weapons drawn. Charlotte had pulled herself up from behind the crates and was coming slowly towards him. All three had the same expression on their faces.

 

Over the course of his short but action-filled life, Alex Rider had begun to consider himself a master of different types of silence. One of his least favourite was the kind of silence that came over doctors when they were examining him.

But the worst type, the type that took the top spot out of all his particular silences, was this kind. The one that filled a room after he had done something crazy, something he shouldn’t rightly have been able to do at his age.

And when he was faced with that kind of silence, there was only one thing left to do. 

Alex offered them all a sweet smile.

“I’m afraid you won’t be getting that bourbon any time soon, Ms Langeford.”

Notes:

And there we are! 🎺🎺🎺
What did everyone think? I'm not quite sure how good some of the slower parts are in this chapter, but I'm reasonably pleased with the ending. Alex is a joy to write, I love him and I can't wait to inconvenience him, hehe 😈
There's also been the introduction of a pretty important character, and a bit of foreshadowing for later! I wonder if anyone will pick up on it...
The language Charlotte speaks in is a mixture of Norweigan and Dutch. I don't speak either of these languages myself; I was relying on google translate for most of it. If someone who speaks either of these languages notices a mistake, please except my apologies in advance! It wasn't intentional.
Thank you SO MUCH to all of you lovely people who wrote me such thoughtful comments on Chapter 1! I've never had a first chapter of a fic be recieved so well before, and I hadn't even included Alex yet? You lovely people, you.
If you enjoyed, please consider leaving me a kudos and/or a small comment down below telling me what you think! It would be greatly appreciated. 😊
Next chapter, we'll have Alex called into MI6, and you can all understand how he's going to fit into this mess!
Bye for now! 💖