2 THE FRESHMAN

F IVE THOUSAND MILES AWAY, in San Francisco, Alex Rider woke up and took in his new surroundings.

He had been living here for a month now, but still it seemed new to him—a bright, colorful house at the top of Lyon Street, in the area known as Presidio Heights. He had his own room on the fourth floor, tucked into the rafters. It was reached by a single narrow staircase that went nowhere else. Every morning, the sunlight streamed in through a window that slanted over his bed, and as he got dressed, he had a view all the way down to the ocean, with Alcatraz—the famous prison—and Angel Island in the distance. The house was old, built in the Victorian style, with extra rooms bolted on almost haphazardly. Inside, it was a jumble of corridors, archways, and stripped wooden stairs. There was a garden at the back—a “backyard,” he had to call it—and it was a lovely place to sit in the evenings, overgrown with ivy trailing everywhere, orange and lemon trees, and wildflowers tumbling out of terra-cotta pots.

Sometimes he would remember how far he was from home. Then he would correct himself. That wasn’t true anymore. This was his home.

It was the house that Edward Pleasure had bought when he had moved to America to continue his career as a writer and journalist. In a strange way, Alex had helped to pay for it. Edward Pleasure was the author of The Devil You Know, the true story of international pop singer, antidrug campaigner, and multibillionaire businessman Damian Cray. The book had become a huge bestseller, turning its author into a celebrity. But it was Alex who had unmasked Damian Cray, almost getting himself killed in the process. The book was full of information that only he could have supplied.

Edward Pleasure had more or less adopted Alex after his last mission in Egypt had gone terribly wrong. To the journalist, it seemed that Alex had been completely broken by what had happened. He had barely spoken as the two of them passed through Heathrow Airport and had simply stared out of the window as they sat together on the plane. Alex, I want you to think of yourself as one of our family. Edward had spoken the words as the plane dipped down over the American coast. It’s going to be a new beginning for you, and we’re going to do everything we can to make it work.

And maybe it had worked. After four weeks in California, Alex seemed a little more like his old self. He’d managed to put on some weight, even if he was still a little short and lean for a boy who had recently turned fifteen. But he went to the gym and seemed to enjoy hiking or hanging out at the beach on weekends. He had cut his fair hair short, and occasionally Edward noticed a haunted quality in his eyes. It was also true that he hadn’t yet made many friends. But it was early days. Of course it would take him time to settle in. All in all, though, Edward was optimistic. He knew what Alex had been through but believed that, slowly, he was putting it behind him.

Alex went into the bathroom, showered, and brushed his teeth. Then he got dressed. He had started school at the beginning of the fall semester—the autumn term, he would have called it back in London. There was no uniform at the Elmer E. Robinson High School. Today, Alex threw on sweats, a T-shirt, and a hoodie—all of them bought from the same branch of Hollister on Market Street. Glancing at himself in the full-length mirror next to the bed, he decided that he looked American and anonymous. It was only when he spoke that he stood out. Of course, everyone said how much they loved his British accent.

There was a homework assignment on his desk: “Do Animals Have a Conscious Life?” It was an essay he’d been given for Human Geography class, but Alex wasn’t even sure that he understood the question. He’d managed to scrawl out the five hundred words demanded, but he was fairly sure that he’d get a bad grade . . . a C or even a fail. When Alex was at Brookland—the school he’d gone to in South London—he’d always done well, even when he was missing classes, dragged out of school by MI6. But there was a part of him now that just didn’t care. He picked up the pages and stuffed them into his backpack. Then he went downstairs.

Sabina was already in the kitchen with her mother, sitting down to breakfast. Liz Pleasure had set out pancakes and fresh fruit, cereal, and coffee. Alex remembered the first time he had met the family—when they had invited him on a surfing trip in Cornwall. He had thought then how close they were and had secretly envied them. His own parents had died soon after he was born, and he had never had a proper family of his own. He’d been raised by his uncle until he too had died, leaving Alex in the care of his nanny, Jack Starbright. It pained him to think of her. She’d done nothing but her best for Alex. And he’d gotten her killed.

Well, now he was one of the Pleasures. He had become a son to Edward and Liz, a younger brother to Sabina (she was three months older than he was). So why didn’t he feel that he belonged? Why did he still walk into the room like an invited guest?

“Good morning, Alex!” Liz beamed at him and poured him a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. She was a large, round-faced woman who was always cheerful. If she worried about Alex, she was careful never to show it. “Did you get your homework done?”

“Yes. I finished it last night.” Alex sat down next to Sabina. In the corner, Rocky, the family Labrador, thumped his tail lazily against the floor as if he was glad to see Alex too.

“I had two pages of math,” Sabina complained. “It took me ages!”

“Well, you should have started it when you got in,” her mother scolded her. “Instead of watching all that TV.”

Math, not maths . Alex noticed what Sabina had said. She had been in America for less than a year, but it seemed that she had quickly folded herself into her new life.

Edward Pleasure was away. He was working on a news story in Los Angeles and wouldn’t be back for a couple of weeks. Liz was also a writer, finishing a book about fashion. She had a study at the back of the house overlooking the garden and worked from there. “Did you sleep okay?” she asked.

Alex looked up. He hesitated for just a moment, then answered automatically. “Yes. I slept fine.”

He hadn’t. The nightmare had woken him again. He was back in the chapel at the eighteenth-century fort in the desert outside Cairo. Razim was there—the madman and agent of Scorpia who hoped to make a name for himself by finding an exact measurement for pain. And Julius Grief was standing in front of him, bobbing up and down in excitement. The boy was also mad in his own way. He had been surgically altered to turn him into an exact replica of Alex, and it was as if Alex were looking into a fairground mirror, seeing a distorted version of himself.

Alex was tied to a chair, unable to take his eyes off the television screen in front of him. Wires had been attached to different parts of his body: his neck, his fingers, his forehead, his naked chest. He could feel the chill of the air-conditioning against his skin. But there was something even colder in the room. It was his own terror. Razim and Julius Grief were about to murder the person he most loved, and they were forcing him to watch.

Once again he saw Jack Starbright on the screen. She had managed to escape from her cell by prying out one of the bars in the window. She had found a car parked in the courtyard outside. The keys had been left in the ignition. She climbed in, unaware that this was what they wanted her to do, that her every move was being monitored. In his dream, Alex was twisting in the chair, straining against the ropes that held him. Julius Grief was laughing. Alex screamed at her to stop.

The car drove out of the fort and into the desert. And then, as it had done the night before and every night after Alex had finally managed to fall asleep, it blew up. There had been a bomb concealed inside. Razim had stage-managed the entire escape simply to torture him. Alex saw the flames as he had seen them fifty times before and woke up in his room on the fourth floor, his pillow damp with sweat and tears.

Sabina’s mother had served him a pancake, but he pushed the plate away, unable to eat. She noticed this and eyed him warily. “Aren’t you hungry, Alex?”

“No, thanks.” Alex tried to smile. “I’m fine with orange juice.”

“Well, make sure you eat at midday. Sabina—keep an eye on him!”

“Yes, Mum,” Sabina said. She couldn’t keep the worry out of her voice. She knew there was something wrong.

A few minutes later, Alex and Sabina left. They were both at the same high school, just a few blocks north, close to the huge park—the Presidio—that gave the area its name. To Alex, the Elmer E. Robinson High School looked more like a university, with half a dozen low-rise buildings spread across beautifully kept lawns and an oversize Stars and Stripes fluttering at the entrance. There was a theater, a brand-new library, a thousand-seat auditorium, tennis courts, basketball courts, and, of course, an American football field. It was home to over two thousand students and made Brookland seem small and old-fashioned.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sabina asked as they approached the fountain that stood outside the main entrance. “I know how hard this must be for you.”

“I’m fine, Sab. Really.”

“Maybe you should change your mind about Los Angeles. We can have lots of fun down there, and Dad really wants to see you.”

Normally, Edward Pleasure came home on weekends, but he had a Saturday meeting and the family had decided to take advantage of the warm weather and spend some time together on the coast at Santa Monica.

“No. I’ll be fine, and it’s good that the three of you have a bit of time on your own.” They’d reached the steps leading up to the front doors. “I’ll see you later. Have a good day.”

“You too.”

The two of them went their separate ways. Sabina had deliberately remained close to Alex in his first week as he tried to settle in, but they’d agreed that it would probably be easier for both of them if they stayed apart, allowing Alex to make his own friends. Anyway, Alex had noticed that Sabina had met someone else. Blake was seventeen, broad-shouldered, blond-haired with an easy smile. He was the senior basketball captain and one of the most popular boys in the school. Alex had taken an immediate dislike to him and then felt annoyed with himself for doing so. What was wrong with him? He’d never been like this when he was in the UK.

It wasn’t working out. He had to admit it. Most of the students at EERHS has been welcoming, but somehow he was still on his own . . . and he understood why. You can’t make friends unless you’re completely honest, and there was simply too much mystery about Alex, too much that he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t tell anyone why he had no parents, why he was living with Sabina and her family, what he had been doing for the past year, why he had come to the United States, or even how he had managed to get a visa. He just hoped things would get better in time. After a year, or maybe two . . . people would begin to accept him.

The bell was about to ring for the first class of the day. Alex strolled over to his locker to take out some books, but as he opened the metal door, a hand came out of nowhere and slammed it shut again. Alex felt a tightness in his stomach as he turned around. Yes. It was just as he had thought. Clayton Miller and Colin Maguire. CM and CM. The two of them had decided to give him another dose of their daily medicine.

Alex knew that there were boys like them in every school in the world, and no matter how hard teachers tried or how many parents complained, nothing would make them go away. They were bullies. Nobody knew quite why they did what they did. Perhaps they were victims themselves, damaged in some way by their own families. Perhaps they were unwell. But they were always together. They were always picking on someone. EERHS had a student code of conduct that that forbade any sort of abuse . . . physical, mental, cyber. Unfortunately, it seemed the CMs hadn’t read it.

Colin was the younger of the two, sixteen, with curly black hair, bad skin, and freckles. He wasn’t exactly fat, but he had the sort of flabbiness that comes with a bad diet and no exercise. Clayton was a year older, with blond hair slicked back and a lazy eye. He worked out obsessively—in his bedroom and at the gym where his brother worked—and it showed. If Colin was the brains, Clayton was the muscle. Colin made the decisions. Clayton made sure they were carried out.

“How are you doing, England?” Colin asked. That was what he had called Alex ever since he had learned he was from the UK.

“I’m okay,” Alex said quietly.

“I got a question for you,” Colin continued, and Clayton grinned, waiting for what was to come. “How come you got no mommy? What happened to your mommy, England? I heard she dropped you because she didn’t like you. Is that true?”

“My mother’s dead,” Alex said.

“Oooh! I’m so sorry!” Colin was jeering at him, screwing up his face in mock sympathy. “But now you got Sabina to look after you. Is she your mommy now?”

Alex felt a wave of cold fury shudder through him. It would be so easy to take out these two creeps. He was a first-degree dan, a black belt in karate. He imagined an elbow strike to the side of Colin’s head, followed by a jab punch using the index and middle fingers straight into Clayton’s throat. In less than three seconds, they would be writhing on the floor. He could actually feel the muscles in his arms tensing up as they prepared for action, and he had to force himself to remain calm. Hitting back wasn’t the answer. If he did that, he would be as bad as them. And anyway, he was the stranger here, the freshman. It would only cause him trouble if he attacked these two kids.

Fortunately the bell rang. Clayton flicked a hand against the side of Alex’s face, and Colin sniggered. The two of them lumbered away. Alex took his things out of the locker and headed off for his first class.

The rest of the school day was much like any other. In the morning, there were three classes of ninety minutes each, then lunch, then two more classes. In the afternoon, he had a session with his counselor, a pleasant African American woman named Mrs. Masterson, who had been assigned to him the day he had arrived. This was their third meeting, and Alex had quickly learned how to lie to her, how to make her believe that everything was going well. It was only when the final bell rang and he drifted back out that he realized that he had barely spoken to anyone his own age. Once again, he was annoyed with himself. He had to make more of an effort. Surely he could do better than this?

He had brought his laptop with him, and sitting in the sun, waiting for Sabina, he opened it and connected it to the school’s high-speed wireless network. It was something he’d been doing more and more recently. He liked to see how Chelsea FC was doing, picking up the scores of games he hadn’t actually seen. He glanced at a few news stories—what was on TV, stuff on social media—and even checked out the weather in London. He knew it was stupid, but it somehow made him feel less far away. He still got texts from Tom Harris, his best friend at Brookland. Jane Bedfordshire, the school secretary at Brookland, had contacted him too by e-mail. He knew they were both worried about him, and he always tried to answer as cheerfully as he could. There had never been anything from Smithers, from Mrs. Jones, or from anyone else at MI6—but nor did he expect it. They had probably forgotten about him, and if they did want to reach him, they wouldn’t send anything as insecure as an e-mail.

It was four o’clock in San Francisco, which meant it was midnight in London. However, there was one message in Alex’s in-box. It was from a company called HERMOSA. Alex had never heard of it. The message had no subject. It was probably spam, and he was about to delete it when, at the last moment, something guided his hand and he double-clicked and opened it instead.

Three words appeared on the screen.

ALEXX

I’M AL

That was it. No sign-off. No image. No link. No explanation. But Alex stared at the screen as if he had been electrocuted. He sat there, utterly unaware of the other students walking past, climbing into the yellow buses that would take them home. He didn’t see or hear anything. He didn’t feel the sunshine on his neck and arms. At that moment, Alex forgot even that he was in America. Everything that had happened in the past month was wiped away.

He slammed the computer shut and went to find Sabina.