Russian Roulette (novel)

Shortly after the Science Museum scene in Stormbreaker, Yassen Gregorovich receives an order to kill Alex Rider. The connection the two of them share prompts Yassen to recall his past.

In the past, Yassen is a young boy in a small Russian village named Estrov. His parents work at a nearby fertilizer factory that secretly develops chemical weapons for the Russian government. He is forced to flee his home after an accident at the factory contaminates the whole village with a deadly strain of anthrax, which had been genetically modified to spread much faster than it would in normal conditions. Yassen's parents escape from the factory and give him the only sample of antidote before they advise him to flee to Moscow and seek Misha Dementyev, a friend of Yassen's father. Yassen escapes into the forest with his best friend Leo Tretyakov as attack gunships sent by the Russian authorities destroy the village, to contain the outbreak and cover up the development of the chemical weaponry. They narrowly avoid a band of soldiers ordered to hunt down all the survivors of the Estrov disaster, by escaping through a narrow sewage pipe, and later find shelter in an old construction hut. Leo dies of the disease that night and Yassen continues on alone, narrowly avoiding getting caught by the police and escaping onto a train for Moscow.

Yassen finds Dementyev in Moscow University, but far from helping him, Dementyev calls the police. He is aware that Yassen is a loose end regarding the chemical weapons development. Yassen evades arrest and joins a gang of petty thieves who had pickpocketed him earlier and later persuades them to rob a flat owned by Vladimir Sharkovsky, a wealthy businessman whom Yassen overheard Dementyev talking to on the phone. As the smallest of the gang, Yassen is chosen to crawl through a fortochka and let the other members into the house, but Sharkovsky unexpectedly returns to the flat and captures Yassen. Sharkovsky decides to let Yassen live and work as a food taster due to the recent death of the previous one, and forces him to play a game of Russian Roulette with a single bullet, of which Yassen is extremely reluctant but he survives. After making two unsuccessful attempts to escape, Yassen spends the next three years at Sharkovsky's estate, serving as his food taster as well as a general laborer. One night, he learns that Sharkovsky had been responsible for the deaths of his parents and subsequent destruction of his village, having cut corners regarding safety at the factory to increase profit, and vows to kill him.

One day, a Scorpia assassin, Grant, infiltrates the compound and shoots Sharkovsky, supposedly killing him. Yassen talks Grant into letting him escape with him, and the two meet up with Julia Rothman, one of the commanders of Scorpia. It is revealed that Sharkovsky in fact survived the attempt on his life, and Grant is subsequently killed by Rothman for his failure. Rothman offers to let Yassen join Scorpia: her rationale is that his past has been erased by the Soviet authorities, and thus no records of him exist anywhere else in the world, making it extremely difficult, if not totally impossible, for authorities to track him down. Yassen agrees, his only other option being to return to Russia, where Sharkovsky's people will no doubt be looking for him. Yassen spends the next four months at Scorpia's training facility on the island of Malagosto before being given his first contract, which he is unable to carry out. Scorpia then decides to pair him up with John Rider, Alex Rider's father and an MI6 double agent within Scorpia.

The pair work two contracts together. During the first contract, John saves Yassen's life, expresses doubt that Yassen has it in him to be a killer, and suggests that he give up if he does not want to be one. The second contract takes place in Paris, where Yassen again hesitates to kill the target, and admits to John that he does not want to be an assassin. As John and Yassen wait in an airport – Yassen planning to take a plane to Berlin and vaporize – Yassen discovers a gadget from MI6 in John's luggage, and subsequently discovers his true allegiance. Feeling betrayed from this revelation, guessing that John has warned Scorpia about his defection in an attempt to weaken them further, Yassen abandons his original plans and returns to Sharkovsky's estate, using the skills he learned from Scorpia to infiltrate the place and confront Sharkovsky. He reveals his true identity, as well as Sharkovsky's role in influencing his life, before playing Russian Roulette, this time with five bullets in the revolver, seeing it as his last chance to leave the path of a killer. Yassen once again survives, and kills Sharkovsky. He resolves to become a professional killer to prove John's beliefs about him wrong.

The final chapter takes place during the last chapter of Stormbreaker. Yassen kills Herod Sayle, not because of orders from Scorpia as he had claimed to Alex (though he believes they would eventually have wanted him killed), but so that he could talk with John Rider's son. Yassen chooses to disregard Scorpia's order to kill Alex to repay John for saving his life, and tells Alex not to become a spy, since he still feels that he has a chance at a normal life.

The book was released on 12 September 2012 (UK) and 9 December 2013 (US).[2]