Sir Damian Cray

"Please don't irritate me."

- Sir Damian Cray

Sir Damian Cray (real name: Harold Eric Lunt) is the main antagonist of the Alex Rider novel Eagle Strike.

Origins
Sir Damian Cray was born in London on fifth October 1950 to a businessman named Sir Arthur Lunt. Sir Arthur had been knighted like his future son and he was making millions from four-storey carparks. One day, Harold, the young Sir Damian, professed a wish to become a jazz or pop musician in a rock band.

His parents were disgusted and horrified, because Sir Arthur had a wish for his son to become enrolled at the Royal Albert Hall signing oprah. Sir Damian didn't want to be a professional, he wanted to be rebellious, modern and eccentric.

Sir Arthur was going to bully Harold Eric Lunt into being a preppy singer, so Harold decided he would have to kill them. He made out as if it was an accident, but it is strongly implied he killed his own parents. Everybody said the car rolled off the top storey and hit them, but Harold may have pushed it off, aiming the car at his mother and father.

Harold had to pretend to be upset, of course, to inherit their wealth and appear decent, but in reality he was a demonic schoolboy, welcoming his own parent's death.

In the 1980s he changed his name to Damian Cray, and formed a band named Slam and bought an apartment in London. The rest of his life went from fame to fame - he ended up playing at Princess Diana's birthday, in Buckingham Palace, and then he was back to the Palace several days later, to be knighted.

Sir Damian Cray raised many millions of pounds for charities, and he was seen as a living saint. Then, Sir Damian went to Africa, and he decided to make the people richer. He had a pretty insane plan, though: He had realized all the problems in the world were caused by drugs. So, he decided to pinpoint all the drugs refineries, and blow them all up.

Biography
To do this, Sir Damian needed government-style technology, so he made an announcement he would become a videogame developer. He made several famous games in his lifetime. The latest game, Feathered Serpent was being released in London's Hyde Park.

Unfortunately, Sir Damian had found out that a journalist, Edward Pleasure, was making some inquiries into his "real" agenda. Edward had found out Sir Damian had met with a traitor to the NSA and he wondered why Sir Damian was being bribed with thousands of pounds.

Edward began to suspect illegal and criminal affairs, but before he could pursue Sir Damian further, Sir Damian got Yassen Gregorovich to put a bomb in Edward's holiday house in France. The house blew up, but the bomb was badly placed and only burned Edward Pleasure rather than kill him.

Most unfortunately, Alex Rider was a friend of Sabina, Edward's teenage daughter, and was staying with the family in France but had gone to the beach with Sabina. So, only Edward was in the house and only he was hurt when the bomb hit. But Edward was taken to hospital, and Alex knew Yassen had blown up the house because he had seen Yassen on the beach. Alex found Yassen's phone, and memorized a number, the last number he had phoned. Alex went to a phone, rang the number, and to his amazement, Sir Damian Cray answered, and said it was Sir Damian.

Alex met Sabina at Liverpool Street and told her the truth that Sir Damian Cray was a monster and wanted her father dead. But even though Alex told her he was with MI6 and showed her their headquarters, they had turned against him, pretending to be a bank, and threw Alex out. Sabina cut off her friendship with Alex, calling him a worthless loser and dumping him on the street. Then, Mrs. Jones came out, having heard everything that was said, and took Alex to her office.

She told him about Sir Damian, about him being a saint, but Alex said he knew Sir Damian was mad and he would prove it! Only Jack Starbright, Alex's female guardian, believed him about Sir Damian. Alex went to the videogame launch, and actually met Sir Damian Cray, being invited to play the game with him. A couple of eager journalists asked about the games, and one, an irritating woman, asked about why it was violent if Sir Damian was a pacifist. Sir Damian pretended he didn't mind the questions, answering her honestly, that games stopped children from being violent, but the woman just wouldn't shut up, so he said "I think I've answered your point, so maybe you should stop questioning my answer!"

Sir Damian walked Alex through the game, but got annoyed when Alex beat it easily. Sir Damian knocked Alex on the last level and killed his character. Because Sir Damian had used an avatar of Alex as the character, Alex felt like he had really died, because of the sick pain synthesis Sir Damian had used on the game.

Alex and Jack then went to Amsterdam, but not before Alex saw the rude female journalist had been run over, seemingly deliberate, as she left the presentation.

In Amsterdam, Alex found Cray Software Technology, an organization he had suspected since Edward was attacked by the Carmageus Sans Touristes, a French terrorist organization. Alex went into the place, breaking in with MI6 gadgets, and then he was captured by Sir Damian, whom he had just seen murder Charlie Roper, NSA agent, whom Edward had met in Paris. Then Sir Damian mockingly said "Let's get a drink - and let me tell you how you're going to die." Sir Damian confessed that he had always wanted Alex dead even when they played the game.

Sir Damian revealed how he had made the game - it wasn't technical at all, it was in fact a theme park, where human hostages had been made to do the levels for real, filmed, their emotions processed to the discs and processed. It was evil beyond imagining. But Alex got through the theme park but barely made it. He found a flash drive which Sir Damian had killed Charlie over, and stole it.

To get the flash drive back, Sir Damian had found out about Sabina and kidnapped her from the hospital where her father was. Sir Damian used Sabina to summon Alex to him for the final showdown. Sir Damian explained how many people - hundreds - he had killed over the years and how he was pure evil. Sir Damian said about his parents' death "I thought God was on my side. He wanted me to be a success and so He had decided to help me!"

Sir Damian explained his idea to blow up twenty-four refineries of drugs in South America, North America, Africa, China... "almost every continent will feel the pain."

Then Sir Damian took Alex and Sabina to a cell, threw them in, then came for them with biochemical suits which he used to invade Air Force One, the presidential plane, hence the operationa's name: Eagle Strike. Sir Damian killed all the guards on the plane, then piloted it out of Heathrow.

But Alex insulted him, so Sir Damian ordered Yassen to kill Alex and Sabina, but Yassen had respect for Alex because of how John Rider had saved his life, and Yassen refused.

Sir Damian shot Yassen dead, and then pounced on Alex, shooting him - but Alex wore a bullet proof vest. Alex fought Sir Damian, battling him in the cabin, and Sabina flung a trolley under Sir Damian, tearing him out of the door into the jet airplane engine, which turned him into gas in seconds.