Scorpia Rising

warily.
    “Good afternoon. You’re the new boy. Alex Tanner? Isn’t that right?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “My name is Erik Gunter.” Alex recognized the Glasgow accent. “I’m also new here. I just started this month.”
    Gunter was younger than Alex had expected, not quite thirty. It was obvious that he had been in the army. He was incredibly fit, with the sort of overdeveloped muscles that might have been made for tattoos—not that Alex could actually see them beneath the black suit he was wearing. He had dark hair, but he had shaved it close to the skin, leaving only a shadow. He had a high forehead and glinting, sunken eyes. He wasn’t tall—in fact, he and Alex were about the same height—but Alex had no doubt that if it ever came to a fight, Gunter would be faster, stronger, and dirtier than him. He decided at once that it would never happen. If Gunter really was involved in some sort of conspiracy, MI6 could deal with him. This was one man he would leave well alone.
    “Are you a teacher here?” Alex asked. He felt a need to say something.
    “No. I look after security. Do you feel secure, Tanner?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Good. Well, keep out of trouble and you’ll stay that way. I’ll see you around.”
    Gunter made his way down to the main door. Alex saw that he walked with difficulty, that he even had difficulty opening the door. He wasn’t slow, but his whole body was somehow lopsided, as if the different parts weren’t receiving the right signals from his brain. Nothing about him quite worked and Alex remembered that he had been shot several times in Afghanistan. Was he really the enemy? The man was a war hero—and in his own way he had been friendly enough. Alex already felt bad about spying on him.
    As far as Alex was concerned, that should have been the end of this first day at the Cairo International College of Arts and Education. He was looking forward to getting back to the apartment and telling Jack everything that had happened. But there was still one last encounter waiting for him and it was a very strange one.
    He had managed to drift behind the other students and was virtually alone as he walked toward the main gates. The guards were checking everyone’s IDs and the last of the buses was just pulling out. The sun hadn’t started to sink, but there was a pink hue in the sky and a sense of calm in the air. Alex pulled out his card so that it could be scanned. And it was at that moment that he got the impression that he was being watched. Actually, it was stronger than that. He was quite certain of it. It was like an electric shock, a shudder of something running through him as he became aware of somebody’s eyes boring into him.
    Slowly he turned his head and for just a moment he spotted a figure in a downstairs window, looking at him from behind the glass. It was Gunter’s office. Alex was sure of it. But it couldn’t be Gunter, as Alex had just seen him leave. It looked like a boy. Alex was sure he was wearing a school uniform. He glimpsed fair hair. The boy’s face was just a blur. Alex tried to make it out, but almost at once, the boy moved away and instantly disappeared, like a mirage in the desert. Perhaps he had never been there at all.
    But in that brief second, the heat of the afternoon was replaced by a shiver of something that he didn’t quite recognize, as if something unpleasant from the past had chosen to reappear. He stopped and took a deep breath, forcing himself to forget what had just happened. He was allowing things to get on top of him. He had to focus his mind on what lay ahead.
    The window was empty.
    Alex hurried through the main gates. He didn’t look back.

    Jack was waiting for him when he got home. She’d spent the morning at the famous Egyptian Museum, looking at the treasures of the boy king Tutankhamun. In the afternoon she’d gone shopping and she’d even met some of the other parents living at Golden Palm Heights. They’d all been very welcoming. Like their children, they were displaced and needed to make friends.
    Alex quickly told her about his first day at the college. “You know, Jack, I think I’m actually going to quite like it there. Everyone’s really friendly. The school’s okay. And at least it’s not raining.”
    “That’s good, Alex. Maybe this is all going to work out after all.”
    And yet, much later that night, after he’d had dinner, done his first batch of homework, and watched half a bad film on satellite TV, Alex