HE slowly ran his flattened palm across the concrete. It was pitch black in his windowless Supermax cell, so he had to feel his way along the wall. Holding a sharpened plastic knife in his right hand, he smiled as his recognised the outline of a recent carving beneath his fingers: a star chart, Galileo’s. He was close. He brushed past the Italian script and found a smooth section of wall, untouched – a blank canvas.

He withdrew his hand and placed it on his naked body, every inch of which was covered in script and symbols. His skin was a patchwork of professional and home-job tattoos, and he had also cut, burned and branded himself to create a terrible topography all over his body, encompassing biblical passages inked in perfect twelve-point lettering and even a scale keloid replica of Mount Hira. He had used every inch of skin.

Exhaling, he closed his eyes and pushed his palm down his torso.

He began the ritual.

Nothing.

He kept going. Minutes passed.

Still nothing.

He persisted.

It would come.

Just as he was beginning to doubt, there it was.

The revelation.

He pressed the sharpened knife into the wall and scraped, scratched and dug. His guttural cry pierced the silence and he entered an almost trance-like state as the visions came – as if he were merely acting as a scribe for some higher power. Sometimes he was lucid enough to recognise whether he was producing charts, words or maps and sense the language: mostly English, often Latin, but sometimes an unknown tongue that was yet to exist in the realm of men. Today the script was cursive: flowing lines and linked loops, topped with dots and dashes. Arabic.

The Serpent dragged filthy fingers across the carving when he was finished.

‘And he shall rise,’ he said.

CHAPTER 4

Long Bay Correctional Complex, Sydney, NSW, Australia

FOUR steps from wall to wall, back and forth he went. Over and over and over again. Mind racing and adrenaline pumping, Jax spent the first couple of hours pacing around his cell, processing the events of the day.

He thought back to the bus and his encounter with Marsh.

Bashed, fucked or murdered. Maybe all three. The lawyer’s voice haunted him, the seven words bouncing about his brain. He wished he could wipe the conversation from his mind, but he couldn’t. Jax did not forget things. He remembered them. Everything. Except for the murder.

He thought back to the holding cell. To the drug addict. Then to Marsh. What he’d said. I’ll make all the arrangements.

His original plan had been to remain unseen – to go under the radar. Too late. He shuddered when he realised Marsh might not even be the worst. Some might be meaner, tougher, bigger.