Scorpia Rising Read online

  Worse was to follow. Alex had escaped from Point Blanc, only to return at the head of an armed force. The school had been destroyed. Dr. Grief had been killed. Julius had managed to escape and had tracked Alex down to his school in Chelsea, but somehow, even though he’d had surprise on his side and a loaded gun in his hand, Rider had managed to get the better of him. Julius remembered the fight on the roof of the chemistry block. The fire. Plunging down into the inferno. He could still feel the burns that started at his neck and crisscrossed his body all the way to his thighs. He’d spent two months in the hospital and the pain would be with him for the rest of his life. He was reminded of it every time he caught sight of his reflection.

  He still had Alex’s face.

  It drove him mad. When he brushed his teeth in the morning, there it would be, in the mirror, smiling back at him. If he passed a window at night, the ghost of his enemy would glide by beside him. After a heavy rainfall, Alex Rider would look up at him from the puddles. There were times when he wanted to tear his face off with his own nails . . . In his early days at the prison he had tried to do exactly that, leaving deep scratches down his forehead and cheeks. That was when they had decided he needed psychiatric help. He was on his way to his next appointment now.

  Julius Grief reached out and rang the bell at the side of the warden’s front door. He was expected, of course, but it was against regulations to go in without ringing. The bell sounded both inside the building and in the control room at the front gate. A TV camera had already picked him out and one of the guards was checking that he was meant to be there. Yes. An eleven o’clock appointment. He was exactly on time.

  The front door opened and a short gray-haired woman looked out. As always, she was wearing dark colors with a white shirt buttoned up to her neck and very little jewelry. She could have been the headmistress of a primary school, perhaps in some remote English village. She was in her mid-forties with a pinched face and a slightly turned-up nose. Her name was Rosemary Flint and she was a child psychiatrist. She had been meeting Julius twice a week for the past six months, talking to him in the living room of the warden’s house rather than in the library or in his cell because she hoped the homey atmosphere might help.

  “Good morning, Julius,” she said. She had one of those annoying voices that were always sweet and reasonable. Somehow you knew that she would never lose her temper.

  “Good morning, Dr. Flint,” Julius replied.

  “How are you today?”

  “I’m very well, thank you.”

  “Come in.”

  They had spoken almost exactly the same words fifty times and Dr. Flint noted that not once had the boy’s expression ever changed. He was coldly polite. His eyes were empty. She had never told Julius this, but part of her job was to decide if there was any chance that he could one day be released and returned to society. After all, it wasn’t entirely his fault that he was what he was. That was how he had been made. Someone in British intelligence hoped that he could be turned around and that one day he might lead a normal life. But as far as Dr. Flint was concerned, that day was still a very long way off.

  She led him into the living room and gestured toward a large, comfortable sofa covered with a fabric showing a pattern of flowers. There was no need for the gesture. Julius sat in the same place every time. The warden’s wife liked flowers. The room had flowery wallpaper too, and there was a vase of roses, cut from the garden, on a low, dark wood table. The curtains were thick and kept out much of the sunlight even when they were open. An antique mirror had once hung on one of the walls, but Julius had smashed it in the middle of his third session. The warden hadn’t been pleased, but Dr. Flint had insisted that there be no punishment. In her view, the boy wasn’t responsible for his actions. She thought of him, at least in part, as a victim. A painting—a view of Cadiz—now hung in the mirror’s place.

  “Would you like some orange juice, Julius?” Dr. Flint asked.

  “No, thank you,” Julius said. He never drank or ate anything during these sessions. Dr. Flint had tried cookies, chocolates, Coke, and cream cakes—all without success. She knew exactly what was going on in his mind. To have taken anything would have been to give her power over him. She might set the rules, but he was playing his own game. One day, she hoped, he might accept a Jaffa Cake. Then, at last, she would know that the healing process had begun.

  “So how has your week been?”

  “I’ve had a very good week, thank you.”

  “Are you reading anything from the prison library?”

  “I’ve just started War Horse.”

  “That’s excellent, Julius. You should try to read as much as you can.” She smiled. “What’s it about?”

  “It’s about some stupid horses that get killed in the war.”

  “Aren’t you enjoying it?”

  “No. Not much.”

  Dr. Flint sighed. The boy was lying. She knew every book that he had borrowed and every book that he had read. He was the only teenager in the prison and there weren’t a great many things he could do with his time. He devoured books. But when he was with her, he pretended otherwise.

  “Have you thought more about what we spoke about last time?” she asked.

  “We discussed a lot of things, Dr. Flint.”

  “We were talking about anger management.”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “I think you are.”

  Julius didn’t answer, but he could feel something burning white-hot inside him. It wasn’t anger. How could this stupid woman describe it like that? It was like molten lava flowing through his intestines. It was like acid. He looked down deliberately, knowing that he would be unable to keep the emotion out of his eyes. Dr. Flint would see it and she would write it down in that notebook of hers. She wrote everything down as if she could even begin to understand him. It was lucky that she couldn’t see into his imagination. Julius dreamed of killing Alex Rider. Slowly. Painfully. He should have done it on the school roof a year ago. He had come so close.

  And he might yet get another chance. For a brief second, Julius thought about the note he had found the night before. It had been waiting for him, hidden in his room . . . incredibly, impossibly. He had read it so many times that he knew every word by heart—but he quickly forced it out of his mind. The woman was still examining him. He didn’t dare give anything away.

  “I thought we might try some word association today,” Dr. Flint said.

  “Whatever you say, Dr. Flint.” It was her favorite game. She said one word. He had to say another, instantly, without any thought. It was supposed to demonstrate what was going on in his mind.

  “Right.” She looked around her. “I’m going to start with something very ordinary. You know what to do.”

  There was a pause. Then she began.

  “Dog.”

  “Bone.”

  “Kitchen.”

  “Knife.”

  “Handle.”

  “Blade.”

  “Grass.”

  “Dead body.”

  Dr. Flint stopped. “I don’t understand the association,” she said. “When you said ‘blade,’ I said ‘grass’ because I was thinking of a blade of grass.”

  “And when you said ‘grass,’ I thought of burying someone underneath it.”

  “Who do you want to bury, Julius?”

  Julius didn’t answer. They both knew whom he had in mind.

  “Let’s try again,” Dr. Flint said. For the first time in her career, she was beginning to wonder if there was any point in this. She had been working with this child for months and she had made no progress at all. She touched her lip. “Mouth.”

  “Throat.”

  “Drink.”

  “Poison.”

  “Bottle.”

  “Message.”

  “Letter.”

  “Bed.”

  She stopped a second time. “That was a little better,” she said. “You were thinking of a message in a bottle, I suppose. B
ut why did you say ‘bed’?”

  Julius was cursing himself. He couldn’t get the message out of his head. He had found it under his pillow when he went to bed. Someone must have placed it there during the day. And now he had almost let it slip out of his mouth, throwing out words without thinking.

  “Actually, I’ve got a slight headache. Do you mind if we don’t play this anymore?” he asked.

  “Of course, Julius. Do you want to have a rest?”

  “No, Dr. Flint.” Only a few minutes of the session had passed. They still had a whole hour together. Julius wondered if he would be able to get through it without screaming at her or even trying to break her neck. He had thrown himself at her once, early on in his therapy, and after he’d been dragged off, they’d put him in the punishment block for a week. That couldn’t happen now. The message. The secret friends. They wouldn’t keep him waiting long. He just had to hold everything together until the right time.

  “All right. Why don’t we draw some pictures together? I’d like you to draw some imaginary place, and then you can take me through it and tell me what you can see.”

  Julius had an imaginary place. It was a forest with Alex Rider hanging from every tree. A whole world of Alex Riders, each one of them suffering in a different way.

  “Can I draw an amusement park?” he asked.

  “Of course, Julius.”

  Even as he picked up the child’s crayon that had been supplied for him, he thought about the moment he had lifted the pillow and seen the single folded sheet of paper beneath. He had known at once that it was something special. Nobody ever came into his room when he wasn’t there. The other prisoners weren’t allowed. The guards and the cleaners made a point of asking his permission.

  He had unfolded it and read:WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS. WE ARE PREPARING TO HELP YOU ESCAPE FROM THIS PLACE. GO TO THE LIBRARY TOMORROW AT TWELVE O’CLOCK AND YOU WILL FIND FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

  The words had been neatly typed. Instead of a signature there was a little emblem printed in silver at the bottom of the page.

  A scorpion.

  Julius had read the note a dozen times, then crumpled it into a ball and swallowed it with a cup of water he had drawn from the tap. After that he had gone to bed—but he hadn’t slept.

  WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS.

  Who? He had no friends. Could it be some of his brothers? Julius had never found out what had happened to them after the Point Blanc Academy had been shut down but had assumed that they were, like him, prisoners. Perhaps he had been contacted by people who had known his father. They might be from the old South Africa . . .

  TOMORROW AT TWELVE O’CLOCK . . .

  Tomorrow was now today. It was already ten past eleven. Just fifty minutes to go. Julius Grief forced the image of Alex Rider (with a kitchen knife in his chest, his bones exposed, lying in the grass, under the grass) out of his mind and began to draw a merry-go-round. Dr. Flint watched him and of course she didn’t know. Nobody knew.

  This was the day he was going to escape.

  5

  OVER THE EDGE

  THE LIBRARY WAS THE MOST modern building in the prison, and although it was unusually small and compact, it could have been lifted out of almost any provincial town in England. It was low-rise with red bricks and sliding glass doors and contained about three hundred books—half in English, half in Spanish—for the guards and their families used it too. There was a desk where books had to be signed in and out, a newspaper and magazine section (although all the publications were carefully censored), then the books themselves, divided into the usual classifications. The crime and horror sections were the most popular with the prisoners. New books appeared occasionally, mainly sent in by charities. When Julius Grief had arrived, the warden had personally set up a children’s section, purchasing the first books—a complete collection of Roald Dahl—with his own money.

  Julius Grief walked over as soon as his session with Dr. Flint was over, crossing the open space where some of the other prisoners were enjoying the sun, sitting on rickety chairs between the trees. The two terrorists were playing Scrabble. As Julius walked past, one of them noticed him and nodded vaguely in his direction. He had just made the word JIHAD with the J on a triple letter, scoring thirty-three points. The assassin was nearby, reading a celebrity magazine, circling some of the heads with a black felt-tip pen. The other prisoners didn’t really like having a teenager among them. It offended their sense of dignity.

  Julius had to force himself not to hurry. He knew that his every movement was being watched and that any strange behavior, any indication that he was planning something would be reported immediately. He actually hesitated before he went into the library, as if he wasn’t sure whether he needed a book or not. Then he made up his mind and passed through the glass doors.

  “Buenos días, Julius.” The librarian was a Spaniard who also worked in the prison accounts office. His name was Carlos and he was plump and good-natured, dressed in the same uniform as the guards, an olive green shirt and dark trousers. “You are coming to the talk tonight?”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Julius said.

  There were occasional talks in the library, given by the prisoners or by the guards. Two weeks ago, one of the secret agents had given an hour’s lecture on the Cold War. Tonight, the chef was demonstrating his mother’s recipe for paella.

  “What brings you here today?” Carlos asked.

  “I’ve come to borrow a book.”

  Carlos glanced at his computer screen. “But you already have three books in your cell.”

  “I know. But I’ve finished two of them. And I’m not enjoying the third . . .”

  Julius walked toward the bookshelves, feeling the librarian’s eyes boring into his back. What exactly was he looking for? The note had told him to come here . . . he would find further instructions. But apart from Carlos, there was no one else in the building. Would there be a second letter hidden somewhere here—and if so, how was he meant to find it? He decided to head for the children’s section. After all, that was where “they” would have expected him to go.

  He stopped in front of the shelves. The Dahl collection stretched from one side to the other. Julius had never read any of it, although he had once come upon one of the terrorists with The Fantastic Mr. Fox. As far as he could see, nothing had changed since his last visit. He could even make out the gaps where he had pulled out his own choice of books.

  And then he saw it. One new book, lying flat on its side. A fat, dusty-looking hardback called Wildlife in Gibraltar: Volume 2—Birds and Insects. It shouldn’t have been here. It should have been on the other side of the room, in Natural History. But that wasn’t what had caught his eye. It was the cover. There was a picture of an insect that seemed to be gazing at him with its tiny eyes. It couldn’t just be a coincidence.

  It was a scorpion—the same creature that had appeared on his note.

  He glanced around. Carlos was sitting, tapping at his keyboard. The librarian seemed to have forgotten him. But there were still cameras mounted in all four corners of the room. They would be watching him from the control room beside the gate. Julius put on a performance for their benefit. He took out one book, then another—as if considering which one to read—then finally lifted the wildlife volume and carried it over to a table.

  He had chosen the position carefully. The table was right next to a shelf, which screened it from the cameras. Carlos could still see him. But he was fairly certain that the book was out of sight. Very carefully, he opened it. And gasped. How could this have happened? Nobody knew about the prison. Nobody could possibly infiltrate it. And yet there it was in front of him. The pages of the book had been cut out to provide a hiding place for a gun, a Mauser C96 automatic pistol with the barrel shortened to allow it to fit. Julius ran a finger over the cold metal. He had been taught to shoot when he was six years old and had killed for the first time when he was nine. But it had been a long time since he had held a gun in his own hands, and he
had thought he would never have one again. For just one moment he felt an urge to pick it up, to turn around and shoot Carlos in the head. But that was crazy. He had to be careful, do this one step at a time.

  There was a second note folded into the book. It was much longer and more detailed than the message he had received the night before. Julius read it very carefully. Whoever was helping him, these were serious people. He knew he couldn’t make a mistake. Finally, when he was ready, he closed the book and got up. It was half past twelve, exactly the right time. He knew what he had to do.

  The subject has made no progress at all since his arrival in Gibraltar. It is clear that Julius Grief has a pathological hatred for Alex Rider that is deep-rooted and permanent. And yet, at the same time, surgery has made him identical to the object of his hate. It must surely follow that subconsciously, some of that hatred must be directed against himself. In my view, there is a very real danger that this psychological turmoil could drive Grief over the edge and that he could plunge into depression, suicide, or total nervous breakdown. Indeed, it is surprising that it hasn’t happened yet.

  Dr. Flint looked at what she had just written and felt a deep sense of gloom. She had been working with damaged children for her entire professional life, but she had never met anyone like Julius Grief. On the one hand, she wanted to feel sorry for him. He wasn’t responsible for what he had become. He had been manipulated from the moment he was born—in fact, even his birth had been manipulated. He was a freak, created for one purpose only: to help his father take over the world. She had read the file on Hugo Grief and it had made her shudder. All sixteen boys had been drip-fed a diet of hatred and insanity, and all of them (apart from two who had died) had ended up in institutions like this, locked up for the rest of their lives. It wasn’t their fault.