I don't own anything. Scorpia and Scorpia Rising are elements of the Alex Rider book series.
"What happened before" is not very important, but it won't hurt you reading it.
You should, however, take a look at the description of the main characters.
What happened before:
Scorpia Rising I: An old enemy of Tony hires the criminal organization Scorpia to kill him. They send the hit man Caroline after him but the NCIS team can uncover the identity of the organization's members and only Caroline, her younger sister Katarina and their boss Dr. Medici could flee.
Scorpia Rising II: On 09/11/12 the National Museum at Washington DC is attacked by a plane and Tony gets wounded and hospitalized. Only moments before the hospital blows up by a bomb attack, he gets rescued by Caroline and Katarina and he learns that they are working for a new organization, also called Scorpia Rising, who is responsible for those attacks. The NCIS team finds out again the plans of Scorpia and the sisters help them with killing its leaders. Tony is freed but the sisters managed to disappear once more.
Scorpia Rising III: In the morning of their wedding, Ziva gets abducted from her father to Israel and Tony decides to ask the sisters for help. Together they enter Israel and with the help of a terroristic group, they are able to free Ziva and Tony has to shoot Eli David to escape. Four months later, Ziva is pregnant and Tony gets arrested by FBI for the murder of Eli David. Fornell wants to bring him to a safe house because the murder of the Mossad director by an NCIS agent off-duty is the reason for growing tensions between Israel and the USA. When Mossad agents try to kill them, Tony can fleet with the help of Katarina.
Scorpia Rising IV: Tony and Katarina are on the run in Malibu, Sacramento and San Francisco. She gets arrested on Hawaii and Caroline helps Tony to make an agreement with the Hawaii special unit 5-0. Officer Danny Williams accompanies Tony to the CIA headquarters on the East Coast so that he can help clarifying the circumstances under which he has killed Director David. The plane gets kidnapped but Caroline manages an emergency landing. Ziva who hides in a Safe house of FBI is attacked by Mossad agents but Caroline rescues her. About six months later, Caroline is in Mexico and a friend asks her to help him torture a Mossad spy inside NCIS who he has kidnapped from Washington DC. He hopes that he can blackmail the governments with the information he gets.
Scorpia Rising V: Katarina flees from prison and she hides with her sister in Mexico City where she tortures an NCIS cop from Washington who actually works for Mossad. Ziva in the meanwhile has given birth to her and Tony's daughter and goes into maternity leavewhich is other expression for voluntary suspension for the previous events. Both the NCIS team and some Mossad agents leave to Mexico City to retrieve the dead agent/spy. One of the Mossad agents however recognizes Tony as the guy who killed director David and decides to kidnap him to Israel. Ziva is brought into witness protection and McGee decides to take action and ask the sisters for help. Caroline meets with McGee but sees a déjà-vu in the rescue situation of Tony with the one of Ziva. McGee travels to Italy to meet the siblings with the help of Cui Dai Ling who dies at the airport. McGee eventually finds Katarina and with Ling's help they're able to find Tony who is then rescued by McGee and Caroline. At the safe house, the CIA agent Rose dies and a person in a biker suit kills Ziva.
Scorpia Rising VI: Lee Danes, someone Tony had brought into prison, is set free and orders several killings of his enemies. He also ordered the killing of Ziva because she was Tony's wife. When he set Tony's house on fire, he and Caroline barely escape. Caroline is then brough to the NCIS HQ and admits that Katarina and her had been working for Danes, but didn't know about his relation with Tony. Due to certain circumstances, Fornell suspects Caroline's new girlfriend Janet to be working for Danes.
Janet finds out where Tony's is hiding and and goes to kill him, leaving Caroline tied up in a hotel room. Fornell and Gibbs find Caroline in time, and they all drive to the safehouse where Caroline kills two men saving Gibbs' and Fornell's life but gets stabbed by Janet who is then shot by McGee.
Characters:
Caroline is 29/30 years old and has studied computer science in Great Britain. She became known to the team as a member of the Italian organization Scorpia and after the second known destruction she continues working as contract killer. She has two daughters, four year old Scarlet and four month old Carey.
Katarina is 26/27 years old and Caroline's younger but more aggressive sister. She has studied Physics at Cambridge. She becomes a member of Scorpia in Scorpia Rising II but then works together with her sister as assassin. She had wanted to marry her fiancée Edoardo about one year before Scorpia Rising III but he got shot during their wedding ceremony.
Edoardo was Katarina's deceased fiancée. His brothers took revenge for his death and Katarina starts a relation with Federico in Scorpia Rising III. He and his younger brother Alessio died in Scorpia Rising IV.
Yassen was Caroline's boyfriend and father of Scarlet. He died in front of them both due to a car bomb. His younger brother works as high member of the Sanchez cartel in South Mexico and he asks Caroline to torture a spy for him.
Cui Dai Lingwas the ex-girlfriend of Katarina. Ling died while helping McGee to rescue Tony. She died in Scorpia Rising V.
SCORPIA: (according to wikipedia)
SCORPIA (acronym for Sabotage, Corruption Intelligence and Assassination) is a criminal organisation, and the series' (Alex Rider book series by Anthony Horowitz) main antagonist. Despite not appearing until the fifth novel Scorpia, their influence was felt in the very first novel, as it was revealed when they appeared in Snakehead that they were responsible for supplying the virus Sayle uses. Scorpia has had a great deal of influence on the Alex Rider series, and are mentioned at least three times. They were formed in Paris in the early 1980s by spies and assassins from several governments who, fearing they would lose their jobs when the Cold War ended, decided to go into business for themselves. They split profits equally and are assigned tasks alphabetically. After many years of work, they are now responsible for a tenth of the world's terrorism.
Chapter 0
She gasped for breath. She suffocated, she felt the air going thinner but she did not faint again. Everything was black around her. She panicked. She breathed heavily, six, seven, eight times and then she lay calmly back into bed again. Slowly, she tried to open her eyes. The colours were dancing around her and it took a while until she managed to see clearer. She spotted an uncomfortable armchair, an old TV hanging from the ceiling and a half-opened door. A hospital, she knew immediately.
She sighed and tried to get enough air again. She sat up and wanted to rub her itching legs but her right hand was handcuffed to the bed. "Fuck," she cursed in a low voice. She lay back again, she couldn't get enough air. Don't panic, she told herself. Everything is going to be alright. Her chest lifted and lowered very quickly and closed her eyes again. She tried to calm down and took her time. Then she tried again to sit up.
With her left hand she gently pushed away the blanket. She wore hospital clothes, white with light green dots. Tasteless. Then she noticed a dark brown dot. She pulled up her dress and saw the thick and wide bandage, stretching across her belly and around her waist. It had soaked and now the blood was leaking through. She felt a warm drop of the dark red liquid flowing down her dark skinned belly and reaching her piercing. Mother of God, she thought and leaned back against the bed.
While trying to retrieve the memory of how she got here – leading to no conclusion – she already looked for a way of how to escape. If she was cuffed to the bed, there was most definitely a police officer guarding her room from outside. Or they would constantly watch the footage of the CCTV in the upper right corner of the small room. Either way, she had to try to escape.
She had enough contacts to disappear and to hide, but no enough to escape a charge once she was accused and brought to jail. And with the recent events, they definitely were able to incriminate her successfully. With time, she could make these accusations disappear into the depth of politics and chain of evidence. But right now, she had to get out of here.
She touched her hair with her left hand. No hairpins. They must have removed them before the operation. Her piercing was still there. Probably not enough metal, it was a composite anyway. She regarded it for a while. It wasn't as long as a hairpin, but if she got it open, removed the shimmering fake stone and get the small plastic rod, she could try to fumble the handcuff open with it. However, it was worth a try and she made a mental note to get a new piercing stone.
It took her longer than usual but after a time that felt like two hours she heard a click inside the handcuffs. With a few more tricks she was free. If they really watched her via camera, she needed to be quick. She jumped out of the bed – perhaps a bit too fast. She grabbed hold on it and touched her front head. It hurt like hell but she had no choice. She stumbled forwards, looking around but finding no clothes. She had been right. There was a police officer standing outside the door.
He spotted her the moment she saw him but before he could protest her flat hand hit his trachea and he panted for air. She pulled his leg forwards using her left foot and he went down to the floor. He wanted to get up but she grabbed his head with her right hand and smashed it against the wall, leaving the officer unconscious. Without hesitation she looked around and when she noticed that no one was there, she dragged the officer back into the room, but not far enough to appear on the camera. She was right between the angles of the room's CCTV and the one of the hallway.
She quickly undressed the officer and changed into his clothes, not forgetting his gun and badge. The uniform was two sizes to big and a man's one but she didn't care. With toil she now spotted the nearly naked man's name, Officer Max Jackson. Well, could be Maxime, she thought and went back into the empty hallway. Gaining more self-confidence in her walk, she explored her surroundings. She left the hallway and entered a more populated part of the hospitals. Nurses were rushing by and doctors were having too less time for their patients. She had a look on the operation plans and noticed that two days had passed since her last memory – since her girlfriend had betrayed her.
She walked down the staircase and picked the mobile phone from an elderly man's pocket. It was a very old model and perhaps even a prepaid one. She went out a side exit and thought about what number to dial first. She decided for her sister. She typed in the code for Italy and tried the mobile phone. It rang nine times but no one answered it. She sighed and dialled her second phone's number. Nothing happened either. Second last chance, before I have to take the emergency call number. It rang four times now and finally, Katarina answered. "Pronta?" she asked in Italian.
"Sono io," Caroline said sighing.
"Caroline?" Now it seemed that Katarina was awake. Deducing from the position of the sun, Caroline guessed it must be late evening in Italy. "What the hell happened? I only heard you'd be stabbed and nothing more ever since."
"Calm down," the older sister said and started walking away from the hospital. "They probably had problems contacting you."
"I disappeared a little more since Tony had been brought to the safe house. Where are you? Are you alright?"
"Just woke up with a severe looking stab wound through my belly. I assume that bitch Janet missed the vital organs. I don't feel well but I need to hide. I knocked out a cop and wear his uniform, so not very unobtrusive."
"Get out of the bloody states, Caroline. Get into a hiding and call me when you're under the radar, okay? Just avoid whoever wants to kills you."
"Oh, what a great advise. Where are you? The Bertani cartel had been taken down, we lost a few friends there, you know that."
"Things have changed. I'll explain when we're on a secure line. Now, get out of trouble and we can talk again." With that, she was gone. Caroline rolled her eyes and threw the mobile phone into a trash bin. Although they would already know that she used it, she had wiped away her fingerprints as much as possible. It was damn hard to find a usable fingerprint with enough minutiae anyway. And since she took out and broke both simcard and the accumulator, no one could trace her calls. She hurried along the busy main road, attracting attention and respect in the uniform of an officer of law and started her search for a new mobile to use.
Meanwhile in Italy Katarina turned around in her bed and looked at the man she had been sleeping with. He was silently snoring next to her. What a waste, she thought. He was quite an admirable assassin, but unfortunately working for the wrong cartel. And even with the right money they couldn't be sure if he was truly loyal. She grabbed the knife under her pillow and with the other hand she touched his cheek. She bent forwards and tenderly kissed his lips.
"What's up?" he moaned, just being torn out of a horny dream. "What have I been missing?"
"Your death," she answered calmly and pushed the knife into his belly. The flesh eased off and contracted, the bed clothes soaking with blood. She pulled out the knife and cleaned it. With all the time in the world, she stood up and got dressed. She didn't need to care for forensics, this town's cops belonged to the Bertani cartel anyway. She left the house without wasting a second glimpse at the dying hatchet man.
Having arrived at her little flat, she cleaned the knife first with hot water, then with highly molar hydrochloric acid. "That should do," she said to herself and stored the knife in the toilet box. Texting a message to Sergio that her mission was accomplished, she got rid of her clothes and started the washing machine. She waited while checking her latest emails and then hang up the clothes to dry. It was already dawning when she doze off in her own night clothes in her own bed.
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