Alex Rider Timeline & Summary

•  Back
• More 

• Alex Rider learns that his uncle and guardian, Ian Rider, has been killed in a car accident.
• Skeptical of the official report, Alex does some investigating that leads him to a shady auto junkyard.
• He finds his uncle's car, which looks riddled with bullets.
• The following day, Alex goes to Royal and General, the bank where Ian worked. Alex tries to sneak into Ian's office through the window, but is caught by the bank manager, Mr. Blunt.
• Mr. Blunt and his sidekick, Mrs. Jones, reveal to Alex that Royal and General is a cover for MI6; they tell Alex that Ian was killed by a famed assassin named Yassen Gregorovich.
• Before his death, Ian was trailing a tech billionaire named Herod Sayle. Herod is readying the release of his Stormbreaker super-computer, which he has pledged to donate to every school in the country.
• MI6's suspicions about Sayle were confirmed after Ian's death, so now they want Alex to go in to find out the truth.
• He has to go through boot camp first, however, where he is tormented by his squad-mate Wolf.
• Alex eventually earns his sergeant's respect after refusing to rat out Wolf for beating him up, and then earns Wolf's respect by pushing him out a plane when he is frozen with vertigo.
• After boot camp, Alex receives a handful of handy gadgets from his MI6 handlers.
• For his mission, Alex will be impersonating Felix Lester, a boy who won a contest for a free tour of Sayle Enterprises.
• Alex meets Herod Sayle and his butler Mr. Grin. He'll be sleeping in Ian's room during his stay.
• When Alex wakes up, he notices a map pinned to the ceiling, so he sends an image of it to MI6 for analysis.
• Alex is led to his session with Stormbreaker by Nadia Vole; he enjoys his time with the computer.
• After his session, Alex creeps into the depths of the facility. Before being caught by Vole, he overhears workers talking about a shipment arriving at 2:00AM.
• Alex follows Mr. Grin and Nadia Vole to the shipment location at 2:00AM, where he sees dozens of soldiers unloading packages from a submarine, led by Yassen Gregorovich.
• Alex has another session with Stormbreaker the next day, and afterward, Nadia Vole suggests that he walk out to Port Tallon.
• He never makes it there, though, and instead he's ambushed by henchmen. He manages to get rid of the bad guys and makes it down to the nearby village.
• Alex remembers Sayle mentioning that Ian spent a lot of time at the local library, so he decides to head there first.
• The librarian tells him that Ian did spend time there researching viruses. He also points out that Ian looked in section CL quite frequently.
• As Alex looks through the books, he realizes that Ian wrote a library reference number on the map, so he finds the corresponding book and realizes that this is a map through the local mine into Sayle's facility.
• He enters the mine, map in hand.
• After a tough walk and swim, Alex makes it into Sayle Enterprises. He realizes that they're loading a deadly virus into each of the computers, which will be released after the release ceremony at the London Science Museum that night.
• Alex goes back to his room to get his gadgets, but Mr. Grin punches him in the face as he leaves; Alex wakes up to Mr. Grin and Herod Sayle taunting him.
• Sayle and Grin leave. Nadia Vole runs in and tricks Alex into falling into a trapdoor.
• He lands in a tank with a killer jellyfish, but Alex uses some highly acidic cream to break the cage, taking out Vole in the process.
• There's only one hour until the ceremony, so Alex catches a ride on a cargo plane flown by Mr. Grin.
• Alex jumps out of the plane as they approach the London Science Museum. Mr. Grin tries to knock him out of the sky, but Alex uses a smoke bomb to send Mr. Grin crashing into land.
• Luckily, Alex makes it in time and stops the ceremony before the virus is released. Sayle manages to escape, however…
• Sayle reemerges the next day, kidnapping Alex and dragging him up to a roof. Before he can kill our hero, however, Sayle is shot dead by Yassen Gregorovich from a helicopter.
• Alex shares a long, tense moment with the man who killed his uncle before the helicopter flies away.