Scorpia Rising

7 ANGLE OF ATTACK “ALEX! YOU’VE OVERSLEPT AGAIN. Get yourself out of bed!”

Jack Starbright was standing in the doorway of Alex’s bedroom on the first floor of the house they shared near the King’s Road in Chelsea. It was seven forty-five in the morning and he should have been up and getting dressed, but all she could see was the back of his head with a clump of messy light brown hair poking out from underneath the duvet and the curve of his body beneath.

“Alex . . .,” she said again.

A hand appeared, clutched hold of the pillow, and dragged it down. “What day is it, Jack?” The voice came from nowhere, muffled beneath the bedclothes.

“It’s Friday. It’s a school day.”

“I don’t want to go to school.”

“Yes, you do.”

“What’s for breakfast?”

“You’ll find out when you’ve had your shower.”

Jack closed the bedroom door and a few seconds later Alex emerged from bed, wrinkling his eyes against the morning light. He threw back the covers and rolled into a sitting position, looking around the wreck that was his room. There were crumpled clothes on the floor, school-books and folders everywhere, DVDs and games stacked up beside his computer, posters peeling off the walls. He and Jack had actually had one of their very rare arguments a few weeks before. It wasn’t that she wanted him to tidy the room. That wasn’t the problem. In fact, it was the other way around. He had insisted that she stop tidying it for him—as she had done every day for the last eight years. In the end she had understood. This was his space. And this was the way he wanted it.

He stripped off his pajamas and stumbled into the shower. The blast of hot water woke him up instantly and he stood there, letting it pound onto his shoulders and back. This was his favorite part of the morning, five minutes when he didn’t belong to anyone—not to Jack and not to Brookland School—when he could collect his thoughts and prepare himself for whatever the day might throw his way.

He wasn’t a spy anymore. That was the important thing. That was what he had to remind himself. Four months had passed without so much as a whisper from MI6. He had made it through the second half of the spring term and the first five weeks of the summer without being recruited, kidnapped, or forced into some hare-brained mission on the other side of the world. He was getting used to the fact that it was never going to happen again. He was tall now, five foot ten. His shoulders had broadened and he had virtually lost the little-boy looks that had been so useful to Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones. His hair was longer. He was fifteen years old. There had been times when he had thought it was a birthday he would never see.

And what had happened in those four months? School, of course. Alex had even begun to think about college . . . It would be only three years away. He already knew that science and math were his strong suits. His physics teacher, Mrs. Morant, insisted that he had a natural talent. “I can see you at Oxford or Cambridge, Alex. If you just apply yourself and try to turn up for school a little more often.” Then there were sports. Alex had been chosen as the captain of the first team at soccer. And drama—he was playing Teen Angel in the summer production of Grease, although he still wasn’t convinced he could actually sing.

He seemed to be at home less and less, hanging out on the King’s Road with Tom Harris and James Hale, who were still his two best friends. He played soccer on weekends and had joined a rowing club near Hammer-smith. He was in the fifteen-to-twenty-one group, and he loved the rhythm of it, slicing through the water on a Saturday afternoon, down through Putney and Richmond and on to Hampton Court, even if his muscles ached for the rest of the weekend. The cox, barking out instructions with an old-fashioned bullhorn, was a girl of his own age, Rowan Gently, and she was obviously interested in him. He had joked that her name sounded like their progress up the Thames.

But he was still seeing Sabina—even if most of their contact was made through Facebook. It wasn’t easy being thousands of miles apart with an eight-hour time difference so that while Alex was getting up and frantically grabbing his clothes, she was still sound asleep. It was almost as if they were on different planets, and part of him knew that if she didn’t return to England soon, it would be almost impossible to maintain their friendship.

He had seen her quite recently. Her parents had invited him out for ten days during the Easter holidays, and Jack had stumped up the cost of the transatlantic flight. It had given her a chance to have a break too.

It had been a fantastic vacation . . . something the two of them had promised themselves after their near-death encounter with Desmond McCain in Scotland at the start of the year. They had explored San Francisco—the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz prison—and driven down the winding coastal road to Big Sur, where they had spent the weekend hiking and camping in some of the most stunning countryside in California.

As he pulled on his trousers and set about trying to find two matching socks, Alex remembered the last night he had spent with Sabina. The two of them had sat together on the porch of the white-painted wooden house that Edward Pleasure had rented in Pacific Heights, a quiet, leafy part of the city. It was a brilliant night, the sky deep black and scattered with stars.

“I wish you didn’t have to go back.”

“Me too,” Alex said.

“It’s crazy. You’re my closest friend and you’re thousands of miles away.”

“When do you think you’ll come back to England?”

Sabina sighed. “I’m not sure we ever will. Dad’s doing really well out here and he’s got his green card now, which means he can live here permanently. And Mum likes it.” She put her arm around his neck. “Do you think we’ll stay together, Alex?”

“I don’t know.” There didn’t seem any point in lying. “You’ll probably meet some American football player and I’ll never hear from you again.”

“You know that’s not true.” Sabina paused. “Maybe you can come back in the summer. You know you’re always welcome. We could go to Yellowstone. Or maybe to LA . . .”

“I’d like that.”

Alex remembered how Sabina had looked at him then. But it was the way she had kissed him good-bye that he remembered most.

Alex grabbed a shirt, but before he put it on, he turned around and examined his shoulders in the mirror. It was something he did automatically,