Kill Me/Kiss Me- An Alex Rider Fanfic

Paradise

Alex's throat was aching with thirst. It was the first thing he felt; that dry, itchy, agonising hurt for a sip of water, is what pulled him back into consciousness. His eyes flickered open but they seemed not to be working very well; they refused to stay open for long or even focus on anything in the dimly lit room. He closed his eyes and in a desperate attempt to figure out where he was, he flung his arms out to either side of him but all he felt was, unsurprisingly, the soft bedsheets that swaddled him. His head was foggy and begging him to go back to sleep but he knew he couldn't; he had to focus, he had to get out. Alex's fingers brushed against the linen curiously as he opened his eyes again to stare at the ceiling. Slowly, a chandelier came into focus and he recognised the feel of the bedsheets as that kind of cotton Jack Starbright used to love; cold, hard and scratchy but oddly comfortable. They were the kind of sheets you would find in an expensive hotel. Even the chandelier, which was fully in focus now and no longer swimming about his vision, was a modern mesh of twisted metal, the kind you would find somewhere expensive.

"Ugh," Alex grunted with the effort it was taking to get feeling back into his body. His limbs felt heavy and unresponsive to his brain telling them to move. Alex stopped for a minute in a bid to get his head straight; thoughts were tumbling around him in his disoriented state. The last thing he remembered was Hera at dinner, in a red dress. That was it, he cursed himself, just the vision of her, that's all he had been paying attention to. Someone had been next to him, his mind travelled back to those memories at dinner...Sabina! She had been holding onto his arm and looked at him with unfocussed eyes. She had been drugged. He had been drugged! Suddenly the heavenly vision of Hera turned dark, her hair fell in front of her face and her porcelain face cracked as though to form a malevolent smirk...Hera had drugged him and brought him here.

The cold realisation of the situation seeped into Alex's bones and seemed to wake him up. His eyes snapped open; that grotesque, overly-decadent chandelier that reminded him of barbed wire, came into focus and he sat up to look around him. The blinds were drawn and the room was bathed in a dim, dull light that emitted from all around him; the chandelier, bedside lamps, small lights lining the wardrobe in front of him. Everything was in creamy, rich tones of brown, mauve and ivory. Everything was luxurious; from the cotton bedsheets to the impressive, ornately carved desk in the room. It looked like an antique, Alex observed as he squinted at it. Looking to his left, Alex jumped out of bed and struggled to find his feet for a moment as he was unbalanced from the drugs still going through his system, before he ran up to a coffee table in the room, on which was placed a water bottle. He unscrewed the lid and drank eagerly until he had guzzled down every last drop. Breathing heavy, Alex turned back to face the room.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror; he was still in his clothes he wore at dinner. His hardened blue eyes looked back at him and a sudden strange and familiar feeling came to him; that same feeling he would get on a new mission. This was exactly that: escape from being held prisoner. A mission. He hated it, it almost made him sick to realise he had missed this feeling. The same feeling of stepping out into the unknown in search of something precious. He looked away from his reflection and instead checked his belongings, as he had been trained to do. Looking down he saw his shoes, socks and watch had been removed and, searching the room, they were nowhere to be found. In the wardrobe, he found trainers, dark trousers and a black t-shirt, with the label 'for dinner' placed neatly on the folded clothes. He washed his face and changed quickly, almost eager to see who it was Hera had brought him to.

Upon leaving his room as quietly as possible, Alex almost gasped at the mere size of the building he was in. Like the Tardis, his room gave no indication that it would open up into a mansion but it did. Dark wood made up staircases, four staircases to be exact, which connected the corners of this first level to a massive open hallway below. Three crystal chandeliers, the size of which Alex had never seen, hung at differing heights int he middle of the hall. Soft, nude-coloured carpet lined the wooden floors and ran along the staircases in a way that reminded Alex of a labyrinth The scent of oak and flowers was drifting in on a breeze although, as Alex peered around, he could see the floor-to-ceiling windows were unopened and the impenetrable darkness outside told him it was very late in the evening.