Scorpia Rising

one, the boys had been given painful—and permanent—plastic surgery, making them identical to their targets. None of them had complained. This was the purpose of their entire life. This was what they had been created for. They had never had proper identities of their own. Even their names had been chosen deliberately. Each one of them had been named after a great world leader. Julius’s name had come from Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor. And there had been other boys named Napoleon, Ghengis, Mao Tse, and even (the sixteenth) Adolf.
    As things had turned out, Julius had been the last of the boys to be given a new identity. He was going to be Alex Friend, the son of Sir David Friend, a man who had made a fortune from supermarkets and art galleries. He was going to live in a huge house in Yorkshire, in the north of England. He would go riding and shooting with aristocratic friends. It was going to be amazing. And one day, after he had murdered Sir David and his family, it would all belong to him.
    And so he had undergone the surgery. He had begun to learn his new role—how to talk like Alex Friend, how to walk like him, how to be him. And then, at the last minute, he had discovered the terrible truth. The boy he was watching day and night, the one he was modeling himself on, was not Alex Friend at all. His real name was Alex Rider and he was, incredibly, a spy working for British intelligence! Julius Grief had been given the wrong face! The face of Alex Rider!
    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