“He’s certainly a clever man. By telling his young, new, female psychiatrist that he had been sexually abused in prison, he hoped to hit a soft spot, and boy did he ever. Wake up, Dominique. Can’t you see what’s happening? You’re reaching out emotionally to your patient, based on your own childhood trauma. But Mr.Gabriel wasn’t sodomized by his cousin for three years, was he? He wasn’t beaten to within an inch of his life—”

Shut up, just shut the fuck up—

“Many women who’ve gone through similar experiences like yours often deal with post-traumatic symptoms by joining women’s movements, or taking up self-defense, just as you have. Pursuing clinical psychiatry as your chosen profession was a mistake if you’re planning on using it as an alternative means of therapy. How can you possibly hope to help your patients if you allow yourself to become emotionally involved?”

“I know what you’re saying, but—”

“—but nothing.” Owen shakes her head. “In my opinion, you’ve already lost your objectivity. For God’s sake, Dominique, this lunatic actually has you convinced that everyone in the world is going to die in ten weeks.”

Dominique wipes tears from her eyes and chokes back a laugh. It was true. Mick had her so emotionally wound up that she was no longer just humoring him as part of his therapy, she was allowing herself to be coerced by his doomsday delusions. “I feel embarrassed.”

“And so you should. By feeling sorry for Mr.Gabriel, you’ve ruined the dynamics of the doctor-patient relationship. This forces me to contact Dr. Foletta and intervene on behalf of Mr.Gabriel.”

Oh, shit. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to request that Foletta place you with another resident. Immediately.”

Miami, Florida

Mick Gabriel has been walking the yard for six hours.

Pacing on automatic pilot, he maneuvers around the mentally inept and criminally insane as his mind focuses on reshaping the pieces of the doomsday puzzle floating in his brain.

The radio signal and the descent of the plumed serpent. The dark rift and Xibalba. Don’t make the mistake of lumping everything together. Separate cause from action, death from salvation, evil from good. There are two factions at work here, two separate entities involved in the Mayan prophecy. Good and evil, evil and good. What’s good? Warnings are good. The Mayan calendar is a warning, as are the Nazca drawings and the serpent’s equinoctial shadow on the Kukulcan pyramid. Each warning, left to us by a bearded, Caucasian wise man, all portending the arrival of evil. But the evil is already here, it’s been here. I’ve felt it before, but never like this. Could that deep-space transmission have triggered it? Somehow strengthened it? If so, where is it?

He pauses, allowing the late-afternoon sun to warm his face.