Read Online Scorpia Rising by Anthony Horowitz - Free Book Online Page B

rules, but he was playing his own game. One day, she hoped, he might accept a Jaffa Cake. Then, at last, she would know that the healing process had begun.
    “So how has your week been?”
    “I’ve had a very good week, thank you.”
    “Are you reading anything from the prison library?”
    “I’ve just started War Horse. ”
    “That’s excellent, Julius. You should try to read as much as you can.” She smiled. “What’s it about?”
    “It’s about some stupid horses that get killed in the war.”
    “Aren’t you enjoying it?”
    “No. Not much.”
    Dr. Flint sighed. The boy was lying. She knew every book that he had borrowed and every book that he had read. He was the only teenager in the prison and there weren’t a great many things he could do with his time. He devoured books. But when he was with her, he pretended otherwise.
    “Have you thought more about what we spoke about last time?” she asked.
    “We discussed a lot of things, Dr. Flint.”
    “We were talking about anger management.”
    “I’m not angry.”
    “I think you are.”
    Julius didn’t answer, but he could feel something burning white-hot inside him. It wasn’t anger. How could this stupid woman describe it like that? It was like molten lava flowing through his intestines. It was like acid. He looked down deliberately, knowing that he would be unable to keep the emotion out of his eyes. Dr. Flint would see it and she would write it down in that notebook of hers. She wrote everything down as if she could even begin to understand him. It was lucky that she couldn’t see into his imagination. Julius dreamed of killing Alex Rider. Slowly. Painfully. He should have done it on the school roof a year ago. He had come so close.
    And he might yet get another chance. For a brief second, Julius thought about the note he had found the night before. It had been waiting for him, hidden in his room . . . incredibly, impossibly. He had read it so many times that he knew every word by heart—but he quickly forced it out of his mind. The woman was still examining him. He didn’t dare give anything away.
    “I thought we might try some word association today,” Dr. Flint said.
    “Whatever you say, Dr. Flint.” It was her favorite game. She said one word. He had to say another, instantly, without any thought. It was supposed to demonstrate what was going on in his mind.
    “Right.” She looked around her. “I’m going to start with something very ordinary. You know what to do.”
    There was a pause. Then she began.
    “Dog.”
    “Bone.”
    “Kitchen.”
    “Knife.”
    “Handle.”
    “Blade.”
    “Grass.”
    “Dead body.”
    Dr. Flint stopped. “I don’t understand the association,” she said. “When you said ‘blade,’ I said ‘grass’ because I was thinking of a blade of grass.”
    “And when you said ‘grass,’ I thought of burying someone underneath it.”
    “Who do you want to bury, Julius?”
    Julius didn’t answer. They both knew whom he had in mind.
    “Let’s try again,” Dr. Flint said. For the first time in her career, she was beginning to wonder if there was any point in this. She had been working with this child for months and she had made no progress at all. She touched her lip. “Mouth.”
    “Throat.”
    “Drink.”
    “Poison.”
    “Bottle.”
    “Message.”
    “Letter.”
    “Bed.”
    She stopped a second time. “That was a little better,” she said. “You were thinking of a message in a bottle, I suppose. But why did you say ‘bed’?”
    Julius was cursing himself. He couldn’t get the message out of his head. He had found it under his pillow when he went to bed. Someone must have placed it there during the day. And now he had almost let it slip out of his mouth, throwing out words without thinking.
    “Actually, I’ve got a slight headache. Do you mind if we don’t play this anymore?” he asked.
    “Of course, Julius. Do you want to have a rest?”
    “No, Dr. Flint.” Only a few minutes of