The four-inch glass wasn’t there to keep him out, but to keep them in. Them. The monsters. He wanted to turn around, his brain urging him to take flight. But he fought off the instinct to run and held the key up against the entry pad.

Now there was just one barrier between him and the beasts. Between him and the Serpent.

‘Fuck it,’ he said.

Jax was a monster too.

Bring it on.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as soon as he stepped into Supermax. The overhead fluorescents that had lit the corridors when he had delivered the meals were off. A series of red lights lining the corridor provided the only illumination, little more than a bloody glow that did nothing more than colour the darkness red.

Jax looked into the first cell as he silently moved past it, but he couldn’t see past the glass. He prayed that the paranoid inmate was fast asleep, that he wouldn’t suddenly start screaming about brain-lasers or whatever his conspiracy du jour was.

No amount of noise would disturb the guard – he’d be knocked out for a few more hours based on the dose Turner had given him – but any outburst would likely wake the rest of the wing up. Including the Serpent.

Jax relaxed a little after he got past the first cell without incident. He relaxed even more when he got past the second, third and fourth cells, all of them dark and silent. But the tension returned as he approached Cell No. 5. He relaxed again when looked into the glass and saw only his red-washed reflection, not a man masturbating.

Supermax was asleep. Thank God.

With every step bringing him closer to the Serpent, Jax mentally ran through what was ahead. As always, he had a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C . . . hell, he even a Plan Z. The plan he liked best was the one where he didn’t even have to use his final key, the one marked ‘SC’ for Serpent Cell. He was hoping to be able to point his flashlight straight through the glass and find his final number: preferably in big neon lights.

But he didn’t like his chances. The numbers – the eight, the five, the one and whatever followed – which Jax believed were the key to the location of the final attack, could be scratched into the wall in tiny script, or concealed in God knew what kind of bodily fluid.

He was almost resigned to having to enter the cell, so his next best scenario had the Serpent asleep, and staying asleep: he’d go in, find the numbers fast, and get out, the Serpent none the wiser.