Scorpia Rising

shoot you down before you can even rise out of your chair.”
    Jack’s hand had indeed closed around one of the knives. She was hardly breathing and her eyes were pin-pricks of fury. Alex reached out and touched her arm. She put the knife down.
    “Thank you. Now, where was I? Yes. It’s a bit like entering a swimming pool. The child who imagines the cold water, who enters it one inch at a time, has a much worse experience than the child who simply runs off the diving board and jumps in. The dread that one feels before visiting the dentist is often as unpleasant as the visit itself. That is why I’m telling you this now, Alex. I want you to start thinking about what lies in store for you tonight. You see that building over there?” He pointed to what looked like a chapel on the far side of the compound. “That is where you will be taken. That is where, for you, hell is waiting.”
    “You can’t do this,” Jack said. “You’re a monster! Alex is a fifteen-year-old boy!”
    “It is because he is fifteen that he is so useful to me. And please don’t bore me with this stupid name-calling. I have already made it quite clear to you that Alex Rider is nothing to me. I am not like Julius, for example, who hates him very much indeed, who is indeed consumed by hatred. I have no such emotions. For me, hate is as much a waste of time as love. Alex has been a useful device in a plan that I have created for Scorpia. Tonight, he will be useful to me. That is all. I simply want the two of you to prepare.”
    Razim pulled the cigarette pack toward him and opened it. There was one cigarette left. He took it out and lit it. “You have the rest of the day to yourselves,” he said. “You are free to walk in the desert . . . The salt lakes have a certain beauty, and you may like to swim. I can lend you both bathing suits. Do not take this as a sign of weakness on my part. You have no drinking water and it would be quite impossible for you to walk the ten miles to the village of Siwa in the full heat of the day. And anyway, you will be watched at all times. As you may have appreciated when you were brought here, Alex, I have reasons for not wanting to damage you. But if you stray too far from the fort, if you attempt to do anything that gives me reason to believe that you are trying to escape, I will not hesitate to put a bullet into your friend. Do you understand me?”
    “I understand you completely,” Alex said. There was contempt in his voice.
    “Good.” He stood up. “I have a few last-minute preparations to take care of, but please feel free to have as much breakfast as you want. Lunch will be served here as well. The guards will take you back to your cells at four o’clock—you’ll need to get as much rest as you can before your experience tonight. I hope you both enjoy what time is left to you.”
    Razim got up and left. Jack waited until he had gone into the house.
    “Oh, Alex . . .,” she began. The words came out almost as a sob.
    “Let’s not talk here,” Alex said. “We might be overheard.” He looked briefly at the archway and the open door that led out of the compound. It was still hard to believe that Razim was just letting them walk out. But then again, they were in the middle of the Sahara—a perfect prison even if it didn’t have any walls. “He said we could go for a swim, so let’s do that. No one will be able to hear us in the middle of a lake.”
    In the end, they didn’t swim. Two of the guards had followed them and stood watching, twenty paces away. Instead, they walked along the shoreline of one of the extraordinary lakes that had somehow sprung up in the middle of the desert, with so much salt in the water that strange crystal formations were spreading out across the sand. The fort was about a quarter of a mile away and reminded Alex of something he might have built when he was six or seven years old.
    They had both heard what Razim had said. Neither of them knew quite what to say. Alex knew that Razim had done this on purpose. He might pretend to be a scientist. He might claim to have no feelings. But deep down, he was getting some foul pleasure from their pain.
    It was Jack who broke the silence. “What a bastard! What a little jerk! I won’t let him hurt you, Alex. I swear to God . . .” Suddenly there were tears in her eyes and this time she didn’t try to wipe them away. “I never had any idea,” she went on. “When you went away on all those adventures, I knew it