Becoming Agent Rider

Back To Normal (Sort Of)

Alex faceplanted into his bed and groaned, ignoring the fiery light of the sunset streaming in through his window. He was completely exhausted. It felt good to be back in his Chelsea house though. A familiar, private space. Something he hadn't had in about two and a half months.

After a day of the Q&A session and having the medical staff fuss over him, his uniform and beret were quickly dropped off, as promised, at the foot of his infirmary bed. He even received a set of his own dog tags. That had been a bit surreal. It made everything finally feel official. There hadn't been much time to marvel at it though. He'd barely stuffed them into his duffel bag before Ben had ushered him into a car, driving them to the Bank as soon as Dr. Flint finally released him from the infirmary. Head's orders, the older spy had said with an apologetic glance. Once there, Ben hurried off to catch up on some way overdue paperwork, leaving him with Mrs. Jones.

It was a bit of a long meeting. Mrs. Jones let him know that the Hunt and Clerkenwell Syndicates had agreed to leave him alone, which was what they had expected but was a relief to hear nonetheless. Then, he was notified about the arrangement of having Jones and Morris give him assignments while Crawley and Smithers took on the role of being his handlers. Since they were on the topic of assignments and logistics, he got her to clarify how his status of being SAS and MI6 would work as well. Apparently, she planned for him to be a full member of both organizations. Operationally, he would be more MI6 than SAS, with the exception of training which was equally under both organizations. Although this meant primarily doing MI6 missions, the SAS would also be able to pull him in for assignments. In the field, his MI6 rank would supercede his SAS one. Legally, the two organizations had simultaneous, equal jurisdiction over him. Interesting development, since this meant that MI6 couldn't just do whatever they wanted with him like before. Something to think more on later. He was sure it was a clue into what Jones expected of him.

Brushing the matter aside for the time being, he was given his new training schedule and they ironed out the details for his schooling. Brooklands had already been notified of his return, but not his newly emancipated status. MI6 would provide him with a "guardian" when necessary to keep up the façade. The school was expecting him for the start of the week, after tomorrow, and had already sent along a pile of homework to catch up on. Alex was puzzled to see Smithers and the Chief Science Officer, a woman named Samantha Redwing, as his tutors on his training schedule to help him with his schoolwork. He was sure that the two of them had much more important things to do than tutor a schoolboy. And even more puzzling was the politics training. Besides the little bit of politics education in Citizenship class, it wasn't one of his courses at Brooklands. However, Mrs. Jones had apparently assigned herself as his tutor for that particular subject. She definitely had more important things to do. The whole setup was unusual. From what Jones had just explained to him, the Intelligence Officer's New Entry Course (IONEC) was the six-month SIS employment training that takes place at Fort Monckton, Portsmouth under the direction of training officers. The fact that his training was going to be overseen by high-ranking officials in London instead was surprising. When pressed, Jones only replied with one word: secrecy. He really needed to figure out what her agenda was. Mrs. Jones wouldn't have arranged all of this if it didn't fit into a bigger picture. The question was where he fit in that picture and how much he was going to hate it. His head hurt just thinking about it.

The rest of his training schedule didn't help his headache. On top of his regular schooling and tutoring sessions, there were martial arts, weapons, and language lessons. That was just the beginning. There were a few other subjects as well, codes and ciphers among them. And therapy sessions with a Dr. Flint, who Jones introduced as the psychiatrist that treated Julius on Gibraltar. This was only the MI6 side of things. The SAS employment training would apparently be done during one of his half term breaks, provided there wasn't a mission that needed his immediate involvement at the time. With such a packed schedule, he wondered when he was supposed to have time to sleep. He might as well be back on Malagosto with night exercises after a full day of training and Yermalov's office hours at four in the morning. That wasn't even including the time spent on homework that the Malagosto instructors had assigned. Better get some sleep now while he could.