Jax suspected his mind had given the Serpent yellow eyes, a forked tongue and now fangs to make him more monstrous than human. Jax himself was now a monster. He did not deny it. Maybe he was just like the Serpent: once a genius, now a killer. He shivered as he drew the comparison. And that shiver told him was not like the Serpent. Not yet.

Beep. Beep.

An electronic acknowledgement.

Then snap, the lock closing.

Fuck.

Jax tensed and waited. The blow would come soon. At any moment. Springing from the dark, the Serpent would strike.

Jax wanted to flick the torch on and wave it about. To yell, ‘Here I am . . . Let’s go!’ But he wouldn’t stand a chance. Not injured. His only play was to cower in the dark and pray the Serpent was asleep – or, even better, not here. Oh, he would feel stupid if he survived, only to find out the Serpent was back in Long Bay. But stupid was better than dead.

The blow did not come. He waited some more. Still standing. He listened hard. He might get in a lucky blow if he struck first. He would be forced to try if he heard a sound that suggested the Serpent was here and anything other than asleep. Yet he heard nothing but his own heart, which was beating too hard, too fast. He breathed deeply but quietly, slowing his heart and quietening his mind. Then he moved and . . . stepped on something slippery. Maybe shit. Maybe piss. Maybe blood. Maybe all three.

Maybe something worse.

He resisted the urge to find out, pointing the torch towards the wall instead of the floor as he switched it back on.

Jax decided to start in the far corner and work his way back to the middle. Eyes just inches from the wall, he went from top to bottom, reading every word and studying every symbol. It was mostly madness, but there was also genius. Carved, painted and written over the top of a noughts and crosses series that must have featured all of his thirty-three personalities was the solution to P versus NP, one of mathematics’ greatest unsolved problems. Incredible. The Serpent, or somebody inside him, had also answered the previously unsolved Hodge Conjecture.

But Jax hadn’t found his solution. The bomb-stomping, life-saving, war-averting number he needed. He slowly worked his way back to the middle. To the number he already knew, with the addition of a colon between the 3 and 2.

93:241

Up close, Jax saw that the blood had not merely been smeared into the grooves, but layered on. There were multiple coats, now dried and flaking