When he next glanced at his watch, Caleb was pleasantly surprised. One hour to go. Then he looked down at the floor, at the seven scattered pages and the elaborate illustrations his subconscious had been drawing for the past sixty minutes.
Free-drawing, his mother called it. Kind of like the free-writing other psychics did while in a trance. With Caleb and others like him, especially those in the Morpheus Initiative, free-drawing was the key-the key to the past, the key to the present, the key to anything you set your mind to, giving it free rein like a dog off its leash in a great open park. Sometimes it returned empty-handed, other times it came back with something you really wanted, something valuable.
He stared at the drawings. Each one held a recognizable scene, something familiar. In some cases, he had drawn these very images before, years ago as a frightened kid hauled along with his baby sister on exotic romps around the world with his mom and a bunch of weirdoes claiming to see things.
Sheet one: a dizzying spire, so high it scraped the clouds, with a burning flame at its peak and a beam striking out below, seeking out the next target among the fleet of Roman galleys braving the greedy reefs. Two ships were ablaze, sinking as men leapt into the sea.
Sheet two: a smaller, much more modern lighthouse erected atop a hill beyond an apple orchard while below, a rusty iron ship with a lantern on its mast approached from the horizon.
Sheet three: a rugged mountain range and a series of caves, one with bars and withered arms reaching out from the darkness. In the sky hung a five-pointed star behind a crudely drawn fence. The entire picture was dark, drawn in deep lines and angry shading, as if he had wanted to be finished with it as soon as possible.
Sheet four: a girl in a wheelchair at work in a lab, peering into a microscope. Caleb frowned. What was that about? He had definitely drawn Phoebe, but as far as he knew she had never had an interest in biology or chemistry. What could it signify? He shook his head and considered the next one.
Sheet five: another ship, a naval clipper with striped sails-red and white, Caleb saw with sudden clarity-braving a dangerous sea while fleeing a small armada hot on its trail.
Sheet six: a finely detailed caduceus, a thick staff entwined with knotted snakes facing each other with huge glowing eyes.
And finally: a turbaned man standing atop a windswept dune, gazing at the ruins of a once-great tower, and a small flame burning at its peak while the stars blazed in the night sky. Caleb stared at this one, then back over the other six for a long time.
The minutes passed, his vision blurred, and it seemed another trance beckoned, just within a breath, a finger’s reach, a blink. He caught the whiff of jasmine, the thick pungent aroma of hashish, and the musty signs of old, wind-eroded stones.
Then the door whirred, the speaker crackled, and everything in his mind dissolved into a pale sheen of white as Waxman, lowering his head, stepped inside the chamber.
“Time served, young man. Ready for parole?”
Caleb blinked. “No, but how about dinner?”