Wondering: Why were Ascipio and his baddies doing this? Why? Just because he was white? Because he wasn't a bodybuilder? Because he hadn't picked up a whittled broomstick along with the ten other inmates and stepped up to kill Rano the snitch?

Ten feet to the guard station…

A hand grabbed his collar from behind.

"No!" Randy Boggs cried.

And he felt himself start to tumble to the concrete floor under the tackle.

He saw: the characters on the hospital show on TV looking gravely at a body on the operating room.

He saw: the gray concrete rising up to slam him in the head.

He saw: a sparkle of the glass in the hand of a young Latino man. Ascipio whispered, "Do it."

The young man stepped forward with the glass knife.

But then Boggs saw another motion. A shadow coming out of a deeper shadow. A huge shadow.

A hand reached down and gripped the wrist of the man holding the knife.

Snick.

The attacker screamed as his wrist turned sideways in the shadow's huge hand. The glass fell to the concrete floor and broke.

"Bless you," the shadow said in a slow, reverent voice. "You know not what you do." Then the voice snapped, "Now get the fuck outta here. Try this again and you be dead."

Ascipio and the third of the trio helped the wounded attacker to his feet. They hurried down the corridor.

The huge shadow, whose name was Severn Washington, fifteen to twenty-five for a murder committed before he accepted Allah into his heart, helped Boggs to his feet. The thin man closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Then together they silently started back to the library. Boggs, hands shaking desperately, glanced into the guard station, inside of which the guards nodded and smiled as the body on the operating room on the TV screen was miraculously revived and the previews for next week's show came on.