But there is still pain, and fear, and suffering. I guess at least now we have a chance to fight back. Against evil. Against evolution.”—Matthew Icarus, unpublished commencement speechto MIT, class of 1990Lester Bradford rarely felt nervous, but he did at this moment, walking down the endless corridors of Blackbird Prison. There were the usual sounds—shouts, screams, crying. The smell of sweat and urine and stale air.A cell door clanged, and Lester flinched. He didn’t like prisons. The long hallways and the flickering light tubes and the close, hopeless quiet reminded him too much of the tower block in East London where he’d grown up. Sleeping in the stairwells when his dad had too much to drink. Watching the world go by through stained, impenetrable glass.“Thank you for coming,” said the warden. Post, his name was. He was bald and a head shorter than Lester, built like a bulldog and the personality of a rabid ferret.“Think nothing of it, mate,” Lester murmured.“He’s been asking—well, screaming—for you for the last six hours,”
