Drawing Dead (45 page)

“Just don't
think
anymore, brother,” Cross said. “No more logic. For this to work, you have to
be
him.”

“IS HE
sleeping?” Tiger whispered to Cross.

“The way a computer sleeps, yeah. Goes inert, takes some kind of action to wake it up. Rhino already said a signal would start beeping and flashing. Until then, we have to be quiet.”

“Isn't your smoking…?”

“No. Some part of him knows I'm here. He's like me—I don't understand some of the things I know, I just know them.”

“And trust them.”

“Yes.”

“So you've tested them and—?”

“It's not like that. I'm no scientist. More like they test
me,
if that makes any sense.”

“It…Oh! That's it. That has to be it.”

“Tiger…”

“Those other computers, not that grand piano Rhino uses, the other ones over there, are we using them for anything?”

“No. They're just for—”

“Mural Girl,” Tiger interrupted, keeping her voice below a whisper. “We can't talk to her any more than we already did. But the camera-feed, it's loaded on one of those computers?”

“Far as I know, on all of them.”

The warrior-woman pointed at her eyes with both index fingers, then moved one of those fingers so it was pointed at Cross, raising her eyebrows in a question.

MURAL GIRL
was working with a series of black pens, creating an architectural image that was three-dimensional to the eye.

“What's that?”

“She's almost done,” Cross said. “Just putting the finishing touches on the cash-out room.”

“A casino? But the other things look like…little houses, schools, the Projects, a library with only a few books, a…I don't know what that is,” she said, pointing at what Cross instantly recognized as a generic “training school” for juvenile delinquents.

Before he could explain, Tiger scratched one of her talons across the back of his right hand, as if drawing a “No” diagonal symbol across the bull's-eye tattoo. “ ‘Cash-out room,' that's an execution chamber, right? That gurney…it almost looks like a Christian cross, only laid down flat.”

Cross didn't say anything.

They watched in silence, Tiger's hand slipping into Cross's.

“It's the path,” the gang leader finally said. “Look over to the far right. That's a graveyard. You get it now?”

“No.”

“Any gang boy would. ‘The jailhouse or the graveyard.' They grow up to that soundtrack. None of them expect to see twenty-one without going one place or the other. Some of the OGs, they outlive the deal by doing time. They live longer because they're in prison. Shot-callers. They can reach out to the street anytime. But there's one thing they can't do. They can't walk away. That's what that lethal-injection chamber means.”

Tiger leaned slightly forward, turned her head. “It's flashing. Can you feel it?”

“Yeah. But it's not…burning. More like when an infection starts throbbing. Like it has its own pulse.”

“Then…Oh, look!”

Cross shifted position so he could see the complex architectural renderings hold their starkly black-and-white position as they became the background for two playing cards: king and queen of spades. Within seconds, two more cards popped up on either side, each one the ace of hearts.

Bracketed by…what, love?
ran through his thoughts, just as a final card fluttered slowly down, spinning so that it was impossible to make out the face side of its checkerboard-patterned back.

When it finally came to rest, Cross and Tiger saw a card lying across the others. A translucent pale blue, with a large, hollow “3” in its center.

What the…?
joined their thoughts as the see-through blue background turned darker and darker and…

“It's the same!” Tiger whispered urgently.

“What's the same?”

“That blue color. It's the exact same color as the…brand they left on your face.”

“Are we supposed to know what it—?”

Whatever Cross had been about to say stuck in his throat as they watched the hollow “3” fill with colors, flickering from one to another so quickly that it was impossible to register any single one.

Finally, the “3” became the same color as the background, a solid rectangle in that same blue that had branded Cross just below his right eye ever since that…whatever it was had butchered its way through the prison's abandoned basement.

It held that position, as if to be sure even the slowest pupil in the classroom had time to memorize it.

Then everything disappeared. The wall had returned to pristine white. And Mural Girl was gone.

CROSS HELD
his finger over Tiger's lips.

At any other time, she might have playfully nipped it, but she took it for the signal it was and let Cross move her head so she was facing Rhino's big-screen computer monitor.

It was silently flashing an image of a knotted rope.

A beep sounded.

Rhino's eyes opened.

His cigar-sized fingers hovered over the keyboard.

“It's him,” the once-chained man said. “
I'm
him. She's there now, too. Wait…”

>say name

>clever. never died. where, then?

>how long?

>how shelter/food/clothing?

>how survive shot?

>police?

>but *they* know?

>never truth to me.

>mind/body =
[

>trapped, both us.

>2?

>No. us, together, decided long ago. me running. alive, always B *un*wanted.

>C?

>No. but we can be together.

>I know. but I come, B w U until…

>no place for me except 1. with U. *we* decide when 2 go. and we go TOGETHER.

>Wanda

…

>yes. 4ever.

<*together* forever.

>we will not die apart?

>foundation has surface cracks. most weather, but one I made. SW corner, you will see two <<2>> cracks intersect. insert 4-foot fiber-optic probe. flash 3x, then stand back. my robot will pull cracks apart, hydraulic power still working. U come in until past hips, then hands above head & drop. robot can close crack behind you.

>I have waited all my life. just be careful.

“That's all,” Rhino said, laboriously squeezing out each word. “They won't make contact again until…”

“We'll be there, brother.”

“You know…she's right, Cross. What they did to him,
that
wasn't right.”

“It wasn't. I know….I think I know….”

“They must have done something like that to her.”