Stormbreaker recap

Fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is told that his uncle and guardian, Ian Rider, has died in a car crash, and discovers instead that the wrecked car is full of bullet holes and that his uncle was a career MI6 officer. The department blackmails Alex into finishing the assignment his uncle died on: infiltrating the Cornish plant of Herod Sayle, a computer magnate about to donate a Stormbreaker machine to every school in Britain. Posing as a competition winner, Alex uncovers a shipment of sealed vials, breaks into the mine beneath the plant, and finds that the computers are being loaded with a modified smallpox virus. Sayle intends to kill the nation's schoolchildren in revenge for being humiliated as a boy by the classmate who is now Prime Minister. Alex escapes, reaches London, and drops through the roof of the Science Museum in time to stop the launch. Sayle is shot dead by the Russian assassin Yassen Gregorovich, who spares Alex and reveals that he was also the man who killed Ian Rider.

Fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is woken before dawn with the news that his uncle and guardian, Ian Rider, has been killed in a car accident. Ian, a banker who travelled constantly, has raised Alex since his parents died when he was a baby, with the household kept by Jack Starbright, a young American who came to London to study and stayed on. The account of the crash does not convince Alex: he is told his uncle was not wearing a seat belt, which was not like him at all. Tracking the wrecked car down to a scrapyard, Alex sees that the bodywork is punched through with bullet holes, and he is nearly killed in the car crusher when the yard's owner finds him. Following the trail to the Royal & General Bank, where Ian supposedly worked, he finds an office that is nothing like a bank and staff who are nothing like bankers.

At the Royal & General, Alex is taken in hand by Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones, who run the Special Operations division of MI6. They tell him that Ian Rider was an intelligence officer, killed while investigating Herod Sayle, a computer magnate who is about to donate one of his new Stormbreaker machines to every school in Britain. They also tell him that his uncle spent Alex's whole childhood quietly preparing him for the same work: the languages, the climbing and diving trips, the martial arts. The department wants a boy inside the Cornish plant, since a teenager can go where an agent cannot, and it makes clear that a refusal would have consequences for Jack's right to remain in the country. Alex is sent to a Special Air Service selection camp in the Brecon Beacons, where he is attached to a four-man unit whose leader, Wolf, resents him. He survives the fortnight, and the department's gadget-maker, Smithers, equips him with weapons built into ordinary teenage possessions.

Alex arrives at Sayle Enterprises in Cornwall under the name Felix Lester, supposedly the schoolboy who won a competition to test the Stormbreaker before its launch. He meets Herod Sayle, who keeps a Portuguese man-of-war in a tank in his office and tells the story of his rise from poverty in Beirut; Sayle's mute, disfigured butler, Mr Grin, a former circus knife-thrower; and Nadia Vole, the assistant who controls where Alex is allowed to go. The tour of the plant is smooth and tells him nothing. Left to himself, Alex explores the estate and the nearby town of Port Tallon, and an attempt is made on his life while he is out alone, confirming that somebody there knows exactly who he is. Every part of the site connected with the computers themselves is sealed off, and the whole operation is running to a deadline that ends with the Prime Minister switching on the network in London.

At night Alex watches a helicopter land on the estate and unload a consignment brought by a young Russian who is treated with more deference than Sayle's own staff: Yassen Gregorovich, a professional killer working for whoever is behind Sayle. Alex breaks into the disused mine workings that run beneath the plant and finds a sterile production line where the Stormbreakers are being finished. Each machine is being fitted with a sealed reservoir of liquid taken from vials delivered by the Russian, and the operation is guarded far beyond anything a computer factory would need. Alex realises that the gift to Britain's schools is the delivery system for something else, and that his uncle died a few days after reaching the same conclusion.

Alex is caught in the mine and dropped into Sayle's jellyfish tank to die; he cuts his way out through the glass and survives. Sayle, now certain of who he is, explains everything with the pleasure of a man who has waited decades to be understood. The vials hold a modified smallpox virus, and every Stormbreaker in every school will release it at the moment the Prime Minister activates the network. His motive is not money but revenge: sent to an English boarding school as a boy, he was tormented there by the classmate who grew up to become Prime Minister, and he intends to kill the country's children in front of him. Alex escapes the estate with the plant's security behind him and no way to warn anyone in time, because MI6's own people are waiting for a signal that will never come. The launch is hours away.

Alex gets aboard an aircraft bound for London and drops from it into the Science Museum, crashing through the glass roof onto the display below and stopping the Prime Minister with seconds to spare. The network is never switched on and the virus is never released. Sayle runs, is cornered on a rooftop, and turns his gun on Alex; he is shot dead first by Yassen Gregorovich, firing from a helicopter to keep his employers' involvement quiet. Yassen spares Alex, tells him to go home, and promises they will meet again. Afterwards Alex learns that Yassen was the man who killed Ian Rider, and that the people who supplied the virus have not been touched at all. MI6 send him back to Brookland with their thanks and no undertaking to leave him alone, having established that a fourteen-year-old makes an extremely effective agent.

Alex reaches London aboard an aircraft and drops through the glass roof of the Science Museum, landing on the Stormbreaker display seconds before the Prime Minister can press the button that would have activated every machine in the country and released the virus into Britain's schools. The launch is stopped and the plot exposed. Sayle escapes in the confusion and is cornered on a rooftop, where he draws a gun on Alex; before he can fire he is shot dead by Yassen Gregorovich from a helicopter, silencing him on his employers' behalf. Yassen leaves Alex alive, tells him to go home, and says they will meet again. Alex learns that it was Yassen who killed Ian Rider, and that the men who supplied Sayle with the virus were never Sayle's own. MI6 thank him, return him to school, and make no promise to leave him alone; Blunt and Mrs Jones have seen how useful a fourteen-year-old agent can be. Alex goes back to Brookland with a dead uncle, a debt he cannot collect, and the knowledge that the department now regards him as an asset rather than a schoolboy.