How It All Goes Down
"So What Do You Say?"
- Alex wakes up in a "large, comfortable room" (4.2). He looks at his watch and realizes that he's been out for almost a full day—he must've been hit with some sort of drugged dart.
- A nurse enters the room after Alex comes to. She leads him into a room where Mr. Blunt and the funny-looking woman are sitting at a dinner table.
- Blunt introduces the woman as Mrs. Jones and orders food. Then he finally reveals the truth—that they (along with Ian Rider) work for MI6.
- Ian was a "highly trained field agent" (4.20) who traveled all over the world on missions. He was always going on mysterious business trips, so this isn't too far-fetched for Alex to believe.
- Blunt reveals that Ian was killed while on assignment in Cornwall—although he refuses to tell Alex who actually killed him—and then he says something even more surprising: He needs Alex's help.
- Ian was monitoring Herod Sayle, a mega-successful businessman who grew up an orphan on the streets of Cairo, but was adopted by a British couple after he saved their lives.
- Sayle went from begging for scraps to attending a fancy prep school with the current Prime Minister of England, going on to make a fortune as a tech entrepreneur.
- Recently, he's been working on something big—a "revolutionary computer that he calls the Stormbreaker" (4.45). You know—the same phrase Alex found in his uncle's filing cabinet.
- Sayle has also offered to supply every school in England with their own Stormbreaker. He even roped the Prime Minister in, setting up a big ceremony at the London Science Museum in which the Prime Minister will press a button to bring the network online. Wait, so what's the problem?
- It turns out the Sayle has ties to a lot of Britain's enemies, which certainly raises a few questions; plus, MI6 believes that he was involved in Ian's death.
- Ian Rider discovered something while posing as a security guard at Sayle's facility, but he never got to reveal it to MI6. And with the release of the Stormbreaker only three weeks away, they're going to have to figure out the truth fast.
- So where does Alex fit in? Well, a fourteen-year-old boy named Felix Lester just won a contest for a free tour of the factory (who does Sayle think he is, Willy Wonka?) and an opportunity to be the first child to use a Stormbreaker. They want Alex to pose as Felix to find out more.
- Blunt calls Alex "extraordinarily brave and resourceful" (4.73), and asks him if he would be interested in working with them. Alex, understandably, is resistant to leave his simple life.
- But Blunt has leverage: He implies that he will give Alex his uncle's wealth—enough to keep Jack on as his caretaker—and his mansion if he agrees to help them. So Alex does just that.