Chapter 4 Rosary School

Alex and Lacey were released from the HQ at twelve o'clock. Faith had asked them to return in a few hours, and receive their school trunks and other personal belongings. Lacey disappeared as soon as they were out the door, and Alex went back to his hotel. He was worried. He still hadn't figured out what those anonymous red squares were. He wasn't accustomed to his CD player's key. Of course, they could be perfectly harmless. Perhaps they were simply part of the wallpaper. But why were they so carefully set out, in such meticulously straight lines?

He toyed with the idea of telephoning MI6 and asking to speak with Smithers. But MI6 was untouchable; aloof. He had several phone numbers, all of which would direct him to Personnel at the fake Royal & General, and it would probably take several voice scans to get him through.

He might as well, though. There was nothing else for him to do.

He lifted the phone from his bedside table and dialled the number.

It was only then he realized that there was no dialling tone.

Alex Rider swore, loudly. Lacey Jayne Anders, behind him, tutted primly and smirked at him as he swung around, cursing.

'Why the hell doesn't this phone work? And what the hell are you doing here?'

'Why d'you think? D'you really think HQ want you phoning out all the time? And didn't you know that the hotel staff monitor the phones anyway? We don't really like the whole world to know what goes on in KSR.'

Alex slumped, deflated, and removed the CD player from view behind his back. Lacey was back to scowling now, and she sat down on the chair opposite him, glowering fitfully at him.

'For God's sake,' Alex found himself saying, 'you'd be quite pretty if you didn't look so angry all the time. Can't you cheer up?'

Lacey's face stiffened, and she moved very close to him, and said in a low, tight voice that made his blood freeze, 'I have just lost my sister. I doubt even you, the unfeeling English schoolboy that you are, would be very cheerful if you'd just lost your sister.'

'I'm sorry,' Alex said, and then he noticed that Lacey's face was barely inches from his. He could see the grey-green circles around her blue eyes, and the thick, dark eyelashes that reached each corner of her eyes. He could see the dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose, and the small crack on her top lip that was just healing over. And then he lost himself, and he kissed her.

For a second, it almost felt as though she was kissing him back, but then she pushed him sharply from her and cracked him hard, across the cheekbone. He was taken utterly by surprise, and loosened his grip on the edge of the bed. He slid down, scraping his backbone on the wooden bedstead, and as he gathered himself and began to test each limb carefully for damage, he heard Lacey run from the room.

Neither of them spoke on their way to the Rosary School. It was raining outside, and great sheets of drops slid across the window-screen. Alex concentrated on working his new clothes out of their stiffness. He was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, and a pale shirt with a tie. He was also wearing black-rimmed, square-lensed glasses, and his hair was spiked and slathered in gel. He was Joshua Rider, the medical genius. Even Lacey had had to smirk when she saw him. He looked, and felt, a complete idiot.

Lacey, on the other hand, was dressed in a loose, knee-length brown skirt and a patterned, fitted shirt. She seemed quite comfortable, and her scowl had relaxed a little. She was gazing out of the window of the minibus, and every time Alex glanced at her, she looked stonily back, and he felt heat creeping up his face.

He was still trying to regain his professional attitude when the bus stopped, and the driver threw them their bags. As far as the driver was concerned, they were Joshua Rider and Leonora Andrews, two new students for the mysterious Rosary Selective School, which was renowned for taking in the cream of the country as children were concerned, and then swallowing them for ever. No famous medical genius had ever come out of the Rosary School. A lot went in, but none came out. It was almost as though in the school, budding doctors and scientists lost interest completely and left quietly as small-time corner shop managers and milkmen.

Alex dragged his two cases down the steps of the bus and thankfully slipped his CD player into the front pouch of one of them. He had been carrying it attached to the belt of his trousers, beneath his shirt, for several hours, and it had left a huge hole in his stomach, not to mention it had looked as though he was sporting the stump of an extraneous leg.

'Well, are you coming then?' Lacey snapped behind him.

'Of course,' he said, with careless ease, and picked up his cases.

Lacey watched him walk in front of her, the shirt and jeans clinging to his well-formed, muscular body. She watched the sun glinting off his greased back hair. He wasn't convincing as a nerd. He was far too tanned and well-built.

Alex stopped in the yard of the school, and took a good look around. The building was tall and old, with a dark roof and unlighted windows. There was a great deal of ivy growing over the walls. As he looked around, he saw that the school spanned a huge, sprawling complex of newer-looking buildings, most made of red brick, but one a huge, white concrete construction with a small door in the side and windows fixed very high up.

'I wonder what that is,' Alex said, as a way of making conversation.

Lacey gave him a sardonic look. 'Don't you read? It was all over the papers. It's a new games hall and it cost a bomb.'

'I read English papers,' Alex said, stiffening at the word 'bomb'. He felt a shiver run down his spine. Lacey caught his look and said slowly, as though she was forcing herself to share this information with him,

'It doesn't feel right, does it?'

'No,' Alex said reluctantly. He looked at Lacey. 'Lacey – Leonora – do you know anything else about this computer business? It's too vague for words. There must be something else involved.'

'You're interested in Science, aren't you, Joshua?' Lacey said smoothly, looking over his left shoulder.

Alex tightened his jaw, and turned around slowly. Behind him was a tall, skinny woman with tight red curls, and a thin mouth. She raised one delicately arched eyebrow and looked at him coldly.

Alex stuck out a hand. 'Joshua Rider, ma'am.'

Her face relaxed, and he noticed the dark powder that encrusted her face, and the thin mouth outlined with greasy red lipstick.

'I'm Elle Vaughan,' the greasy red mouth said. She gripped his hand and he felt dry skin and hard nail polish beneath his fingers.

Alex tore his eyes away and put a hand on Lacey's shoulder, meaning to introduce her in a gentlemanly fashion, but she moved away and almost seemed to revert to her normal, brooding self for a moment. Then she giggled brightly and plucked at her shirt.

'You get yours from the Lodestone?'

'Sure did,' the woman said, and they compared shirts with the ease of two fashion addicts.

'Great shop,' Lacey said. 'They have a sale on next month, and I'm going to buy some of their sandals.'

Alex watched the two of them in cold silence. They moved off, chatting brightly, and he followed, lugging his cases and thinking deeply. He couldn't help his gaze from wandering over to that building. It was so simply constructed and yet seemed to powerful and terrible. He almost felt a sick sensation of dread in his stomach when he looked at it.

Lacey, in front, was feeling the same. She could barely keep the anxiety out of her voice. The place was dead and cold; Elle Vaughan was too carelessly childish and her laugh sent shivers up Lacey's spine.

The two of them were glad when they reached the door of the building and were out of sight of the sports hall.

Elle motioned for them to stop. She handed Lacey's case to her and said, 'OK, sweetheart – and you, Joshua. There aren't many students staying here at the moment. This is the boarding area. There is a leisure complex situated on this floor, with ping-pong tables, and full-colour plasma screens and so forth. There is also a library and a swimming pool. The concrete building you saw as you came in is the sports hall. It's out of bounds at the moment since the metalwork in the roof can conduct electrical rays from a great distance and therefore is extremely dangerous. It's being worked on at the moment.

'Over to the left are the Science block –' (here Alex attempted to look interested) '– and the other classrooms. I'm afraid the Rosary School doesn't take much interest in Music, Art or Drama, so we don't have many facilities for those subjects, but we have a large Psychology, Sociology and Defence department. This is the school you come to so you can learn about life.'

Lacey twitched involuntarily beside Alex.

'Your rooms are situated high up in this building. Near the roof. I must ask you both not to leave your rooms during the night. It's a school rule and I expect neither of you to break it. Please take the lift to your rooms now. There will be a bell in about an hour's time signalling dinner. Then progress to the dining hall which is on this floor. The lifts are programmed to take you straight to your rooms – simply key in the numbers and you'll arrive on the right floor. Mr Rider – you are in Room 006. Miss Andrews – Room 009.'

Elle did not wait for them to speak, but hustled to two of them impatiently into the lift. Alex caught a whiff of her cloying perfume as she shut the door, and felt ill.

In the lift, he tried to behave normally. He felt as if he were being watched, the whole time. Lacey stepped on his foot and hissed in his ear,

'There's a camera in the corner. Don't look at it. But I don't think there's any other bugs.'

Alex was surprised that she could be so suspicious. He spoke in a low voice in her ear.

'Why are we only in number 6 and number 9? Don't you think there should be more students here? It's a very famous school.'

'That games hall,' Lacey said broodingly. 'It's too big. It's way too big for a games hall.'

'I think there's more to this computer theft than meets the eye.'

'I've thought that for a long time. She didn't even mention the IT department, and you'd think that'd be on her mind since the theft.'

The lift stopped with a grating beep. The doors slid open smoothly and Lacey stepped out, dragging her cases behind. Alex followed.

The room in front was number 004. He walked down the corridor. All the doors were the same. Plain, polished wood, with a small, oblong slit of silver metal where the handle would usually be. Two of the doors stood open – Lacey's room and his.

The small slit of metal was to insert a card. Alex felt this a little too paranoid for a boarding-school. Who was going to steal anything within a school of precocious geniuses? Only another precocious genius, and precocious geniuses don't usually waste time stealing from other precocious geniuses. Usually, they are too busy trying to hack into the President's email account.

Alex entered his room slowly. It was light and airy. The floor space was wide and there were no carpets on the polished wood tiling, only a few plain rugs made of black rubber. They lent an odd, cheap look to an otherwise expensive-looking room. The wardrobe, chest of drawers and desk were all dark wood, but the bed was small and narrow. There was a large ensuite bathroom and a bookshelf, devoid of books. There was also a laptop on the desk, and a sound system.

Alex gazed in amazement around the room. It seemed as if it were taken from two completely different rooms. Part of the room was comfortably furnished, and the other part, like the rugs and the bed, looked as if they had come from the army training camp Alex had been to at the very beginning of his career with Special Operations.

This made him think for a second, and he began, methodically, to search the room. First he scanned for bugs. There was one, situated high in the left-hand corner. This, on its own, was fishy. The place was a boarding-school, or supposedly. Why on earth were they bugging their pupils?

He looked through the drawers and through the desk and wardrobe unsuccessfully. While he worked, he played one of his CDs (a genuine one) on the sound system, hoping this would cover up any noise of what he was up to.

Then he turned over one of the rugs.

The bottom of the rug was dusty, as though it hadn't been moved while the rest of the room was cleared. As Alex looked along the floor of the room, he was certain he could see marks – small circles where something heavy had cut into the wooden flooring. There was a continuous line of them disappearing under the wardrobe, set evenly apart, marking about the same width and length as the posts of his bed. Had there been other beds in here before?

He looked back at the rug, and stopped short. He almost stopped breathing for a moment.

On the bottom of the rug, near the corner, was a small marker. Part of it had been torn hastily off, but there was enough there for Alex to recognise the three red letters:

'KSR.'