Scorpia Rising

wait.
    “As you can see, there are all sorts of ways that I could cause you pain, Alex,” Razim murmured. “My young friend Julius has ideas of his own. Left to himself, he would, I am sure, do unspeakable things to you, starting perhaps with your toes and working up. He would have enjoyed that very much. Unfortunately, I cannot allow him to go ahead. We are both somewhat limited, for reasons that I won’t go into at the moment. You cannot be marked in any way. No cuts or bruises! No bits missing! And so, with regret, we must say farewell to the knives and the syringes. There will be no bloodshed tonight.”
    He covered the trolley and pushed it away.
    “However, do not believe for a minute that this offers you some sort of easy way out. I have made it my life’s work to study pain in all its different forms, and the pain that I intend to inflict on you will be perhaps even worse. There are two instruments that I am going to use. Earlier today, I promised you hell. And now, my dear child, it is here.”
    He reached down and took hold of two plastic boxes. Alex recognized one immediately. It was a remote control, presumably for the television screen in front of him. The other was similar, about the size of a mobile phone, with a single red button mounted in the center. Razim handed this to Julius, who took it gratefully, licking his lips and rolling it in his palm.
    Razim tapped his earpiece as if awaiting instructions. “Are you ready, Alex?” he asked. “There’s something I want you to see.”
    He turned on the TV.

    Jack had begun working on the bar the moment she had heard Alex being taken from his cell. As the footsteps faded into the distance, she felt a black steel mesh of shock and disbelief slamming down in her mind. Jack had always thought the best of people. She had refused to believe that anyone could be completely heartless and evil. Her breakfast with Razim had proved her wrong.
    She had seen the guard sitting outside in the corridor and had no idea if he was still there. She hoped that Razim wouldn’t have considered her important enough to watch over while he dealt with Alex. Even so, she would have to work quietly. And quickly. What were they going to do to him? How soon would they start? Jack felt the tears rising and angrily wiped them away. Crying wasn’t going to help Alex. She had to get out of here.
    The window looked out onto a strip of sand and rubble with another building, possibly a storehouse, directly opposite. There were just two vertical bars, solid steel, set side by side, as if in a cartoon. She had to remove only one of them and she would have enough space to squeeze out. And one of them, as she had discovered, was loose.
    The fruit knife that she had stolen from the breakfast table was small, with a blunt edge. Even if she had been able to use it to attack Razim, it was unlikely that she would have been able to do him much harm. But it was surprisingly effective against the crumbling brickwork that surrounded the bar. She was using it like a chisel, chipping away, making sure that the rubble fell into the cell where nobody could see it. The cement was very soft, almost like putty. And maybe it had rained—did it ever rain in the desert?—because it was damp to the touch. The bar was already wobbling. Soon she would be able to pull it free.
    But how soon? Alex had been gone for about ten minutes and she dreaded to think what they might be doing to him. It was worse than that. She had to use all her mental strength not to think about Alex, to put him out of her mind. Otherwise, she would be too sick to continue. She was his only hope. She was going to break out and bring help. She had come all the way to Egypt to look after him and she wasn’t going to let him down.
    She had scooped out a lot of the cement, forming a cavity around the bar. She pulled and it came free. It happened so suddenly that she actually dropped it, trying to grab it with fumbling fingers and only half catching it as, with a dull clang, it hit the floor. She froze, terrified that the sound of metal hitting concrete would alert the guard if he was still sitting outside. She waited a minute, her heart pounding. Nobody came. The door didn’t open.
    She pulled herself up and stuck her head out of the gap she had made.
    The cell block was in one corner of the fort—on the side opposite of Razim’s house. Leaning out, Jack could just glimpse the main courtyard with the salt pile that the guards had