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  “How?”

  “Friday, at noon mess, I’m gonna step into No Man’s Land. Alone. If you’re with me, you step into it, too. Make sure your men stand down. I’ll do the same. And then I’ll tell you how we can pull it off. Maybe pull it off. I’ll tell you face to face, right there.”

  Nyati looked at Cross. “You ain’t short on balls, I’ll give you that.”

  Cross slowly turned around and walked away, not looking back. The three black men were deep in conversation as Cross slipped over the rooftop and lowered himself back into his cell.

  As he pulled the bars back into their original position and coated the broken spots with a black substance that gave off a faint hissing sound, a long, thin shadow shape-shifted on the roof.

  The words “No Man’s Land” vibrated. Then, from inside one of the bars Cross had just sealed:

  “Stay.…”

  Two corners of torn playing cards trembled in the light breeze: the ace of hearts, and the jack of clubs.

  “I THINK you’re crazy,” Tiger told Cross on Wednesday.

  “You saying it won’t work?”

  “I’m saying we don’t know. Nothing like what you’re talking about has ever been tried.”

  “Just because Wanda can’t find it in her computers? I’ve been thinking about everything you told me. Doing time is good for that, thinking about the past. Roman gladiators that don’t know how to farm … Maybe we’re dealing with some kind of … presence. That’s the best way I can put it. All these kills, all over the world, for so many years—it can’t be some mob doing that.”

  “Because?”

  “Because no gang survives that long without takeover attempts. Maybe there’s a palace coup, like there was in Liberia. Maybe it’s a street shooting, like outside Stark’s Steakhouse in New York. Maybe it’s spreading the word that someone’s in custody … and cooperating. A million different ways. And nobody’s ever tried any of them? Ever?

  “And even if any gang could survive for centuries—hell, it would have to be a lot longer than that—what’s in it for them now, all of a sudden?” Cross continued to answer Tiger’s one-word question. “There’s never been a ransom demand, never been a warn-off note; they never try to occupy territory. There’s no money. There’s only this … slaughter they do. And even that, it just doesn’t feel like revenge.”

  “So what does it feel like?”

  Cross held Tiger’s dark-amber eyes, speaking very softly. “It feels like pain. It feels like when someone gets killed—I don’t mean die of old age, or in combat—I mean …”

  His voice stopped. He breathed slowly through his nose, trying to self-center, knowing he wouldn’t get another chance.

  “Okay, this may sound crazy to you, but it’s all I’ve got. I’m not sure, but … maybe when someone gets killed for someone else’s fun, maybe their pain doesn’t die with them.”

  “That’s nice poetry. What are we supposed to do with it?”

  “Look, I don’t think it matters where they come from. All we know is that there’s certain work they do. And whatever that is, it always ends up in enough spine-ripped hanging corpses to make its own forest.”

  “So you couldn’t get close to—?”

  “It’s not something I’d want to get close to. But I know something that might take one of them down, keep him nice and quiet until you can come and get him. And I got the perfect damn place to do it. Right here. Now, all you have to do is listen,” he whispered.

  Tiger remained silent for several minutes. Her only response was “Cross …”

  “Can you get it for me? Yes or no?”

  “Sure. It’s no big deal. We got real small ones now.”

  “I need three of them.”

  “Three?! What could you possibly—?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just remember: three of them, fast as you can, okay?”

  “Okay,” Tiger agreed, her eyes sorrowful.

  “What’re you so sad about?” Cross asked her. “No matter if I’m right or wrong, you’ll be outside the blast zone.”

  “Are all men stupid?” Tiger said. Her face softened for a brief second, then hardened into a warrior’s mask.

  She turned to leave, then felt Cross’s hand on her shoulder.

  “What?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged.

  “Why does Percy think you’re a dyke?”

  “Percy thinks any woman who’s not interested in him is such a rare phenomenon that it can only be explained by her being a lesbian. Truth is, I’m bi. What difference could that make?”

  “Sure, I get that much. But the blond guy, too. And Wanda—”

  “Those two are bloodless robots. But they’re not the same kind of robot. I could stick my boobs in Blondie’s face and he wouldn’t even blush. But if I so much as come near Wanda, she gets feelings she doesn’t want to have.”

  “I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Why you and Tracker can work with people like them. It’s your only way in, isn’t it?”

  “Until now,” Tiger said, and she spun around and walked away, transfixing those watching in the process. Hers was a purposeful move—not a single eye in the room turned toward Cross.

  CROSS SAT next to Banner at the mess table. His mouth barely moved, but his body posture was so intense and urgent that other members moved as far away as possible without leaving their posts.

  Finally, Cross stood up. Slowly and deliberately, he walked into the traditional No Man’s Land of cleared space between whites and blacks. A guard started to step forward but stopped in his tracks as Nyati arose from his crew’s table and moved toward Cross.

  The entire mess hall was silent. Dead silent. The guards froze, knowing that if a full-scale race war jumped off in that enclosed space, they weren’t going to make it out alive.

  When Cross and Nyati were close enough to bump noses, Cross started to speak, his words inaudible to all but the leader of the UBG. When he finished, he stepped back an inch.

  Then he said, still under his breath, “If you buy it, there’s nothing else for me to say. I just told you all I know. For this one, it is us against them. You believe that, then it’s the Death House. Bring whatever you want, bring whoever you want. But it’s only going to be the five of us doing the actual work. That means we all lose some men.”

  “All?”

  “All,” Cross confirmed. “Human body armor isn’t going to keep them off for long. If they get to us before we’re ready, we’re done, too.”

  “Five? You and me, that leaves three short.”

  “Ortega and Banner.”

  “Banner? That Nazi’s already been breathing longer than he should. What do we need with two white men?”

  “Who’s the boss of the Hmongs?”

  “Recognized them right away, huh? They a seriously bad bunch, man. But that crew, it’s also got Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese … probably others I don’t even know about. And, listen now, in here, they forget all that. They play it like an all-for-one mob. They got no choice. But you can see they really don’t like each other any more than they do us.”

  “It’s only the Hmong guy I want.”

  “Why him?”

  “I speak a few words of the language. I can break it down for him.”

  Nyati stared hard at Cross. And took the same in return. “Okay, man. It’s your show. What time?”

  “Midnight.”

  “Done.”

  “For the race!” Cross shouted. But before anyone on either side could react, Nyati echoed, “For the race!”

  Then, to the stunned surprise of all watching, they stood in the middle of No Man’s Land, and clasped hands.

  MIDNIGHT. THE Death House area was clogged with convicts, still divided along racial lines, but not openly antagonistic toward one another. Frightened would be a better description of their mood, fear was the single unifying factor among them.

  Whites, blacks, and
Latinos were all there, even a sprinkling of Asians. Everyone was armed with whatever they were able to procure from the broad spectrum of prison-available weapons.

  Men just before combat act the same way in prison as they do on any battlefield: some smoke, some pace, some pray. Every man was anxious to get it on, and even more anxious for it to be over.

  Cross was standing with Nyati and Ortega, their backs against the gas-chamber wall.

  One of the Asians approached, a short, thin man holding what looked like a strip of razor blades on a string. His face could be that of a man anywhere between thirty-five and seventy-five, but his eyes were not those of a young man. Cross pointed to his right, confirming to Nyati that the Asian’s appearance was not a surprise.

  Banner detached himself from his crew and moved over to where the others were standing.

  “Deal me in,” he said.

  “Just you?” Cross asked.

  “Look around, brother. We’re all here. But it’s got to be me up front. I’m the shot-caller, so this is my place, too. Like you told me, this is for the race. So, whatever goes down, I’m down with it. But I have to go standing up, see?”

  Cross nodded. He turned to Ortega. “Your man knows what to do?”

  “For this, I am my man, hermano. After you first talked with me, I reached out. What you say, it is true. It has always been true. All the way back to the Aztecs. The Mayans and the Incas. So it is just like you and Nyati called it out. For the race!”

  “For the race,” Banner echoed, but very quietly.

  Each man held up a fist, waist-high. And then they slammed them together in an unmistakable gesture of final unity.

  “YOU SURE it’s coming, man?” Nyati asked.

  “Look around you. If it wants to hunt the real life-takers inside these walls, we’re the only game in town.”

  The Hmong nodded, but said nothing. Then he vanished.

  A TINY shadowy blotch materialized within the densely packed men. It thickened and lengthened, gathering mass. Then it began moving like an anaconda through a swamp. Blood spurted wildly as individual men were torn into random pieces. Their body parts flew through the darkness until they hit the nearest wall, where a stack of ripped-out spines began to pile up.

  Some of the men tried to run, others stood their ground, desperately striking blindly at whatever was attacking them.

  This had no effect on the presence, which continued to work its way over to where four men stood against the gas-chamber wall, two on each side of its door.

  The darkness was filled with screams as body parts continued to fly. A red haze formed, so intense it seemed to attack the darkness itself.

  Ortega slipped off to one side of the death chamber; Banner to the other. The Hmong was nowhere to be seen.

  Cross and Nyati remained, now standing alone. At a “Go!” from Cross, they both stepped back through the opened door of the gas chamber, still watching the inexorable progress of … something as it moved through the wall of human flesh.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Nyati muttered under his breath.

  “Son of a bitch!” Cross said. “This is too soon. I was sure they’d—”

  Cross cut himself off. The presence he felt to his right wasn’t the one gutting and discarding individual prisoners; it was the Hmong, joining them.

  The three men backed all the way into the chamber. Cross seated himself in the chair where condemned convicts were once strapped down. He lit a cigarette.

  Nyati took the other chair—dual executions were far from uncommon in Chicago’s past.

  The Hmong crouched in a far corner, covered entirely in a dark mesh blanket.

  A black mist approached the threshold of the death chamber. The men instantly realized the presence had been divided into small pieces by the slashing attacks of the mass of convicts it had oozed its way through. But then they all saw it begin to regroup into a unified mass.

  Slowly, it struggled to form a single entity. The black blob had been deeply wounded—chunks of its border were missing, and gaping holes were visible within its remaining mass. And yet it kept moving forward, as if the human flesh it sought would be the replenishment it needed.

  Just as the misty black mass entered the death chamber, Ortega and Banner slipped behind it and slammed the door closed. They dropped the heavy outside crossbar into place and took off, running.

  They didn’t run far. As soon as they reached the control room, both men randomly flipped a series of heavy switches, releasing cyanide pellets into a shallow pool of acid under the death chairs. A greenish gas immediately began to billow up.

  “Now!” Cross yelled, reaching behind his neck and pulling a flat-faced mask with a dark filter over the front into place. Nyati and the Hmong did the same.

  Cross jumped to his feet, drawing a heavy bear-claw knife from behind his back. Nyati unsheathed a thick length of pipe and waved his wrist; a razor-edged arrow popped free at each end. The Hmong cradled a beautifully crafted blowgun.

  Without warning, Nyati and Cross attacked, slashing at the encroaching blackness … and finally penetrating the shadow-blob, which became more visible every time it took another hit.

  The Hmong was the last to act. Holding the blowgun as a brain surgeon would a tumor-removal scalpel, he emptied his lungs to blast off a single shot.

  The shadow collapsed, breaking into patches of black on the floor of the chamber. But the patches immediately began to pool once again.

  Nyati crawled over to the mass, tentatively extending his hand.

  “It’s still alive. I can feel … something. Like a pulse, maybe. If we’re gonna finish it—”

  Cross pounded his palm hard against the door to the death chamber. Banner and Ortega threw off the crossbar and left it just long enough for the two men inside to dive out before they slammed it back home again. Neither of them realized that the Hmong had been the first to leave, gliding between Cross and Nyati.

  Cross pulled off his mask, opened his mouth wide, reached in, and wrenched the phony molar free. He pressed the top of the tooth, which immediately began to hum.

  “It’s down. In the chamber,” Cross said into the minimike, his voice calm, precise … and urgent.

  THE BLOND man was in the War Room, Wanda at his side. He was half-shouting into a fiber-stalk microphone. “All units. Go! Go! Go!”

  Percy was behind the wheel of the unit’s war wagon, cruising the highway closest to the prison. He picked up the blond man’s message and stomped the gas pedal, hitting the red button on the dash that kicked in the twin turbo-chargers at the same time.

  Tiger and Tracker were already in the shadow cast by the prison wall. They moved in from different directions.

  Tiny black splotches began to reassemble inside the gas chamber. If the poison gas had any effect on this process, it was not apparent.

  Adapting its shape to circumstances, the blackness flattened itself to micro-thinness. Then it slowly began to probe the seals of the death chamber’s door, seeking an opening.

  NYATI, NEAR death, was trying to stand, using a wooden spear as a crutch. Banner stood with him, still slashing with a prison-built sword. But he, too, was fading fast.

  Cross wasn’t doing much better. He opened his eyes just as the chamber door began to crack at one of the top seals, pushed open by something blacker than darkness.

  He had been expecting an Evac Team, but the blackness told him they were going to be too late. He sensed the shadow calling to whatever pieces outside the chamber were still unattached.

  Calling them home.

  Ortega and the Hmong attacked the thickening blackness from either side of the door, but their knife thrusts no longer had any effect.

  Suddenly, the shadow-mass stopped writhing. A tiny blue symbol glowed briefly on Cross’s right cheekbone, just below the eye. As the blue mark crystallized into what would be a permanent scar, Cross plunged into unconsciousness.

  THE ONLINE edition of the Chicago Tribune screamed:

  RA
CE WAR AT FEDERAL PRISON!

  277 CONVICTS KILLED IN PRISON RIOT!

  “WORST IN HISTORY” SAYS BUREAU OF PRISONS

  “Tell me again, goddamn it!” the blond man said, almost incoherent with rage.

  “By the time we got there, they were gone,” Tiger repeated. “Maybe back to wherever they came from. The only trace they left behind was the body count.”

  “I’m done with this,” Percy said. “Taking one alive, yeah, that was a brilliant idea. Look what it cost! And all for nothing.”

  “As long as I’m the head of this outfit, I don’t give a damn what you think,” the blond man responded, back to his bloodless self-control. “Get out of my sight, all of you. I’ve got to work up another capture scenario.”

  Except for Wanda, all the others walked away.

  A soft gray shadow followed them briefly, as though to shield them from harm. After a moment, it started to flow in the other direction, back toward the blond man and Wanda. At above-human detection levels, the “capture scenario” line was repeated. Then …

  “Hit!”

  A glimmering pair of playing cards hovered over the heads of the blond man and Wanda: the ace and jack of clubs.

  When the cards disappeared, the blond man and Wanda were hanging from the ceiling, missing their spines and skulls.

  “THE OPERATION’S been closed down,” Tiger told Cross. They were in the Visiting Room, about a month after the “riot.”

  “Because Blondie and his girlfriend got done?”

  “No. Although I can tell you, even Tracker got a little pale when we found them in the War Room, just … hanging like they were.”

  “The deal’s still in place?”

  “Immunity in front? I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, not now.”

  “What can I get?”

  “You can get out.”

  “I could do that without you. Remember, I’m not convicted of anything, and I’ve got a hunch the feds are going to drop the case.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Stand up.”