Scorpia Rising

wondered. He had taken the smaller of the two bedrooms and was sitting at a desk with views over the back of the complex. There were no curtains and the night was very black, dotted with stars. The air-conditioning was on full and he could feel it blasting over his shoulders. He’d opened his laptop and logged into Facebook. The photograph on his profile page had been taken on a mountaineering vacation with his uncle, Ian Rider. The two of them were sitting next to each other on a ridge, both of them with ropes coiled over their shoulders. He wondered why he had chosen it.
    He had eighteen messages, nearly all of them from his friends at Brookland. The first one was from Tom Harris:
    Hey, Alex. Where are you, man? I’m out of hodpital and now I know whatit feels like to be shot. Hurt like hell. ThANKs for dragging me down as I’d have just stod there and let that nutter hit me a secod time. I guess he ws aiming at you. Yes? Hope this doesn’t mean you’re in troubble again. Let me know, if you can. EVEryone talking about it. Brookland on News at 10, Daily Mail, Sun ETC. Now we’re not allowed to talk to anyone. Typimg this with one hand. Two weeks off school plus counseling. Ha ha ha. TOM
    He quickly looked through the rest but didn’t reply. How could he explain what had happened in the last few days? Finally, he opened a message from Sabina:
    Alex . . . we saw Brookland on the TV and heard what happened. I can’t believe someone tried to shoot you. Where are you now? Mum and Dad really worried about you and guess this has got something to do with you-know-what. You said you weren’t getting into all that again. Really worried about you. James told me you’ve disappeared so hope you’re somewhere safe. Let me know!!! Sab xxx.
    Sitting on his own, framed against the darkness, Alex suddenly felt isolated, as if he were trapped in some sort of cyberspace, between two worlds. Here, in Egypt, he was Alex Tanner, in a new school, making new friends. But none of it was true and as soon as the job was done, MI6 would pull him out and he would disappear so totally and so immediately that it would be as if someone had just pressed the delete key. And yet, what of his old friends, his real life in London? After what had happened, would he ever be able to return to it? Or had the sniper snatched it away for good?
    He was about to turn the computer off and go to bed when he noticed he’d been sent a new e-mail. He reached out for the mouse and double-clicked.
    Hi Alex,
    Julius G wants to be friends with you on Facebook. Respond now:

    For a long minute he gazed at the screen, at the brief message and the green panel: CONFIRM FRIEND. He didn’t know anyone named Julius, but that wasn’t so unusual. He’d connected with lots of people he’d never met. So why did the name make him feel so uneasy? He thought again of the boy he had glimpsed in the window at Cairo College. It had been a boy, he was sure of it.
    Right now, Alex felt he needed all the friends he could get. But not this one. He didn’t know why, but some instinct told him to stay away.
    Alex pressed the button: IGNORE.
    He turned off the computer and went to bed.

    Over the next two weeks, Alex fell into the natural rhythm of Cairo College. Monday was the quietest day of the week. Wednesdays were the worst, with the biggest pile of homework. School food was okay so long as you avoided the pasta. He worked out which teachers he liked best and which ones he preferred to avoid, and he made plenty of new friends. He was still the new boy, but in an international school like this, with people coming and going all the time, people were more quickly accepted. At the end of the first two weeks he was called back into Monty Jordan’s office and given his first report.
    “You’re doing very well, Alex,” the principal told him. “Your teachers all say you’re making good progress, although Miss Watson thinks you could focus a little more in French. How are you finding it?”
    “I’m okay, thank you, sir.”
    “Good. I’m glad to hear it. By the way, I see you’ve applied to join my politics set.” This was one of the Extra Curriculum Activities. Alex knew that the Scottish boy, Andrew, and Craig were both in the group, which met once a week to discuss stories that had appeared in the newspapers. They also took part in a miniature version of the United Nations, with everyone pretending to be a different country. According to Craig, the last session