Disclaimer: I do not own Alex Rider.

I had had dreams of spending the night with Alice Elizabeth Beaumont, but of course the reality didn't go as I had always planned. We were in a cheap motel that we'd paid for with cash. We were in Atlanta, Georgia. We'd gotten cash from a teller machine in Athens. I was almost a hundred per cent certain we were probably safe. When driving into Atlanta, I'd made every precaution that we weren't being followed. The hotel was shady, but I had my sig. The last thing I was worried about was a mugging or senseless gang violence.

I hadn't known exactly what to expect with the mission I was assigned by Agent Quince, how it would end, when it would get dangerous, and such. I knew it would. It was my first long-term investigation. Now everything was going to hell. Alice Elizabeth Beaumont's life was in danger and it was my fault. Well, no, it was Agent Quince's fault and Major Chambers' fault. Ah, the hell with it. It was someone's fault. And I'm seventeen years old, I'm not gonna take the blame for anything.

But of course, the inevitable question came.

"Alright, Graham. Tell me what's going on."

Yeah, Graham. That's me. Charlie Graham. I'm seventeen years old, and I'm a spy.

I sat on the bed next to her. There was only one bed. I offered to share, but she insisted on talking about the men who had kidnapped and tried to kill us. Girls. Nuts, right?

"It started in England," I said, "with a kid named Alex Rider. He was the world's first child spy at fourteen and the UK's greatest secret. Someone leaked the information to other intelligence agencies and the rest of the world began to pick up on how useful it would be to use teenagers as spies. America tried it in 2006, the FBI got a kid to investigate drug-dealers in Florida. The kid was killed right after going in."

Alice looked shocked. But, of course, she had every right to be.

"So the experiment was abandoned by the law-enforcement agencies of the Americas. Until I came along."