Scorpia Rising

and began to address the crowd in Arabic. The secretary of state was about to walk on. Her speech was about to begin. He turned up the volume but kept it low.
    “Julius should have left by now,” Gunter said. “You have very little time left, Alex. In a way, I feel sorry for you. But if there’s a moral in all this, it’s that kids shouldn’t get mixed up in adult affairs. You should have known that. Now it’s too late.”
    “I want something,” Alex said. His voice was neutral.
    “Oh yes?” Gunter was surprised that Alex had asked for anything at all.
    “I want a cigarette.”
    “A cigarette?”
    “Yes.”
    “When did you start smoking?”
    “A year ago.”
    Gunter shook his head. “It’s a bad habit. You’re too young to smoke.”
    “It’s not going to kill me now. What difference does it make?”
    “You have a point.” Gunter shrugged. “But I’m afraid I don’t smoke. I don’t have any cigarettes.”
    “There’s a pack over there.” Alex nodded at the work surface near the door, just behind Gunter. Sure enough, there was a pack of Black Devils—the cigarettes smoked by Razim—lying on the surface.
    Gunter glanced over his shoulder. The cigarette pack was within easy reach. “I hope you’re not trying to trick me,” he said. “You think you can distract my attention? Let me assure you that I could shoot you dead before you even realized I’d picked up the gun.”
    “I don’t care what you do to me,” Alex said. “I just want a cigarette.”
    “All right. If you want the truth, Alex, I think you’re a little pathetic. But if that really is your last wish . . .”
    Without taking his eyes off Alex, Gunter reached back for the cigarette pack, opened it, and slid his hand inside to take out a cigarette.
    And screamed.
    In half a second, all his poise and self-control had gone. The gun was forgotten. Even Alex didn’t matter anymore. All he was aware of was the pain blasting its way through the palm of his hand and up his arm—all the way to his shoulder. The pain was crippling. It was tearing at his heart.
    And from out of the cigarette pack crawled a mature, angry, fat-tailed scorpion. The sting of such a creature is not always lethal, but this one had been a prisoner inside the cigarette pack for almost twelve hours, and in that time it had been filling its glandular sacs with poison, waiting for the moment when it could attack. As soon as Gunter had opened the pack, it had struck, its barb—or hypodermic aculeus —injecting a dose of fast-acting neurotoxins into the palm of his hand. At the same instant, Alex had come back to life, springing out of the chair and snatching up the gun in one movement. He didn’t have time to load it. Instead, he swung it with all his strength into Gunter’s face. He heard the man’s nose break. With blood spouting, still clutching his injured hand, Gunter fell back, lost his balance, and fell. His head hit the edge of the countertop with a sickening thud. His neck snapped forward. He lay still.
    Alex stood where he was, breathing heavily.
    He had noticed the nest of scorpions outside his cell the day he had arrived at Siwa Oasis. With no gadgets and no weapons, he had begun to formulate a plan long before Jack Starbright had tried to escape. He had stolen the cigarette pack at breakfast. He had concealed it in his cell. And he had been awake all night—the longest night of his life—hoping that a scorpion would reappear. The adult had climbed in through the windows a few hours after sunrise. Alex had managed to trap it in the cigarette pack and had been keeping it in his pocket ever since.
    He had slipped the cigarette pack into position as he entered the OBU, pretending to stumble. It had been there ever since.
    Alex’s face had barely changed. His eyes were still far away. But now there was a pinprick of something there, deep inside them. Had Gunter been conscious or even alive, he might have described it as a spark of fury. Alex examined the gun. It was quite heavy in his hand, but he could see that it would be fairly simple to use, with an external hammer, no safety catch, and a detachable box magazine in the handle holding eight bullets. It was fully loaded. Alex slipped it into the waistband of his trousers. He was going to need it.
    There was a round of applause and Alex glanced at the screens. The American secretary of state was walking onto the stage. The audience had risen to its feet. Alex took one last look at Gunter.