by Matt Rogers
Corrupted
A Jason King Thriller
Matt Rogers
Contents
Reader’s Group
Books by Matt Rogers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Announcement
Afterword
Reader’s Group
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 by Matt Rogers
All rights reserved.
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Books by Matt Rogers
THE JASON KING SERIES
Isolated (Book 1)
Imprisoned (Book 2)
Reloaded (Book 3)
Betrayed (Book 4)
Corrupted (Book 5)
“Do not be dismayed to learn there is a bit of the devil in you. There is a bit of the devil in us all.”
Arthur Byron Cover
1
The Kamchatka Peninsula
Russian Far-East
Sarah Grasso could hardly feel her face.
The rural village at the edge of the Kamchatka Peninsula — her temporary home for the past five days — seemed like it belonged on another planet. Before touching down on Russian soil, her superiors had warned her of the extreme climate.
Nothing could have prepared her for it.
She crouched against one wall of an izba, a traditional Russian dwelling made of logs and complete with a thatched roof. The small building shielded her from the biting wind howling across the plains. With each breath forming a cloud in front of her, she tucked the cold-weather mask up over the lower half of her face, then shoved her gloved hands under her armpits and rode out the shivers.
It was mid-winter in the Russian Far East.
On the horizon, a storm brewed.
She had been holed up in the izba for the last two hours, helping an elderly woman through a particularly nasty case of tuberculosis. The old girl’s symptoms had been severe; fatigue, coughing blood, sweating, chest pain. The outbreak had spread like a medieval plague through this village, no thanks to its primitive technology and outdated medical supplies.
That was the reason she had been tasked to visit this desolate corner of the globe.
She clenched her teeth and made for the gravel track in front of the izba. An unassuming grey four-wheel-drive thrummed idly by the side of the road, headlights cutting through the swirling darkness. She rounded the vehicle and threw open the passenger door, ducking into the seat as soon as there was enough space. The heat of the cabin struck her. She slammed the door closed and turned to the driver — a European man in his late twenties.
‘She’ll live,’ she muttered, removing the cold-weather mask. Her breath fogged the windshield almost immediately. ‘But this isn’t good.’
The man sported a resigned expression. ‘I know.’
‘We’re fighting a losing battle.’
‘The weather isn’t helping us.’
‘Neither is the location,’ Sarah said, gesturing out the windshield. ‘The disease is endemic out here. I didn’t believe WHO when they told us how isolated the region was.’
The man shrugged. ‘At least we were put in the same detail.’
She smiled. ‘I’m glad, Léo. Someone’s here to keep me composed.’
They leant over the centre console and pressed their lips together. Sarah closed her eyes in an attempt to wash out the stress and the unease and the exhaustion churning through her system. She felt his warmth and tried her best to tune out everything else.
Léo was the only person keeping her from going insane.
The Kamchatka Peninsula had single-handedly pushed her to breaking point. She knew she was a naturally introverted person, and — despite her occupation — she had managed to keep control of the nausea that often came with being thrust into inhospitable regions to combat disease and poverty.
This, however, was a little too overwhelming.
Nevertheless, she didn’t take her job lightly. The demonic winds and mind-numbing cold didn’t matter. The residents of this village needed her help, and she would do everything in her power to ensure they came out of their battle with tuberculosis unscathed.
The newfound romance with Léo had instilled a sense of calm within her. They had never met before being assigned to the same detail and sent to Russia. There were eight others back at the makeshift HQ that had been assembled in the rundown town hall. Their ten-person detail had formed a bond over the last few days that could only rise out of the situation they had been tasked to deal with.
Her and Léo, especially.
Léo shifted gears and the four-wheel-drive rolled off the mark. The chains laced around its tyres bit into the icy road and they set off back to the town hall. It was approaching ten in the evening. Sarah was utterly exhausted.
‘How’s the morale?’ she asked.
Léo raised a palm and tilted it back and forth. ‘So-so. I don’t think many of us were expecting these kind of conditions.’
Sarah stared out the grimy passenger-side window, peering into the darkness. The winds tearing across the road rattled the thin pane in its sill, bombarding their vehicle as it trawled along the empty gravel track. Frail trees with twisted branches dotted the sides of the road at random. Beyond that, visibility ceased abruptly, cut off by the night.
Out here, street lights were a foreign concept.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Léo bite his lip in what appeared to be frustration. He blinked hard and flashed a glance out his own window. She could tell he was on edge.
‘You okay?’
He blinked again. ‘Just a bit nervous.’
‘Why?’
Silence.
‘Léo…’
‘This place is getting the best of me,’ he said, motioning out the windshield. ‘It’s probably nothing. We’re all just exaggerating.’
‘What is it?’
He shrugged. ‘We haven’t heard from Marcus yet. He was suppos
ed to check in an hour ago. It doesn’t take much for us to get worried — sitting around in that building.’
‘Where’d he go?’
‘Outskirts of the village. Delivering Isoniazid to the families out that way — apparently that area took the brunt of the symptoms. Nothing notable. He’s probably just caught up with administering the supply.’
‘Probably,’ Sarah said, refusing to outwardly display her concern. ‘You’re right. This place is causing too much stress. I’m sure he’s fine.’
But inwardly, her stomach constricted and a chill ran down her spine.
They continued to the end of the road and turned onto an even narrower track that sliced between a cluster of izbas. Ahead lay the town hall, a decrepit wooden building that had seemingly gone unused for decades before they had been allowed to take up temporary residence within its walls. Missing tiles and rotting portions of the exterior enabled the wind to seep into the building, creating an almost constant wailing that unnerved even the most resilient members of their party.
Sarah couldn’t wait to experience the comfort of her own bed back in Michigan.
Dusting snow off her boots into the footwell, she heard Léo let out a grunt of concern. She raised her head and peered out into the night.
Instantly, she realised something was awry.
She noticed the bulk of the strange vehicle an instant before its enormous headlights flickered off. It was some kind of all-terrain truck — so large that for a second she mistook it for a tank. It was parked facing the hall, four gigantic tyres resting in the rudimentary parking lot out front. The headlights — two powerful white beams that obliterated the darkness around the hall — vanished, switched off by the driver.
The surroundings returned to night.
‘What the hell is that?’ Léo whispered, his voice barely audible.
Sarah said nothing.
She had no answers.
He touched his foot to the brake out of instinct, and their four-wheel-drive slowed. He approached the town hall cautiously, engine idling as it coasted closer to the lot.
The massive vehicle looming out front remained stationary.
‘What do we do?’ Sarah said, her voice cracking.
‘Nothing,’ Léo said. ‘It’s probably Russian military. We have all the documentation we need. We’re supposed to be here. We’ve done nothing wrong.’
She let his words hang in the air, aware that he was speaking more to reassure himself than anything else.
As they left the gravel track and crawled into the lot, the gargantuan truck began to move.
Already jumpy from the tense situation, Léo panicked and stamped on the brakes. They jolted to a halt. Sarah felt the leather of her seatbelt bite into her shoulder. She let out a deep breath and waited for what would come next.
Headlights still shut off, the vehicle rolled gently past them. Sarah stared with wide eyes as its massive wheels — almost as large as their own car — rumbled in the opposite direction.
It turned onto the same gravel track they had come from.
A moment later, it disappeared from sight.
Silence descended over the lot. Their own headlights were significantly less powerful. The twin beams washed over the front of the town hall, casting vast shadows across their surroundings.
It did nothing to help the ominous feeling in the pit of Sarah’s stomach.
It was then that she began to notice the problems with the view ahead. Before, the vehicle’s presence had consumed her attention entirely. Now she saw the entrance doors to the hall hanging wide open, exposing the interior to the elements.
Carmen wouldn’t dare leave the doors open, she thought.
A few seconds later, something wafted out of the entranceway and spun away into the night, separating as the wind carried it out of the hall.
Sarah gulped back apprehension as their headlights illuminated a cluster of documents, fanned out by the wind, disappearing into the darkness…
Something was seriously wrong.
She flashed a glance at Léo, and noticed his face had paled. The usual colour in his cheeks from the Hungarian sun had all but disappeared, replaced by a white sheet of fear. A drop of sweat ran from the corner of his forehead down the side of his face.
‘Léo…’ she said.
He turned to her. ‘Let’s find the others.’
They parked diagonally across the lot and stepped out into the night. Léo left the engine running and the headlights on, aiming them towards the hall.
Then, Sarah realised there were no lights on inside the building…
It was late. Marcus should have been the only one still out on assignment. The other seven WHO workers were supposed to be in the hall, preparing for a quick night’s sleep before an early start the following morning.
The building seemed deserted.
Léo led the way, one hand cradling a bulky LED torch that he had fished out of the rear footwell. As they moved away from their four-wheel-drive, he flicked the torch onto full capacity, activating 240 lumens of artificial light. A white LED beam cut through the open entrance, revealing the hallway within.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary so far — except the darkness.
She followed him inside, cutting off the wind lashing her clothing. This hallway led into the vast main hall that took up the majority of space within the building. Five days ago, they had established their base of operations in the middle of the hall, unloading their medical supplies and communication equipment across a sea of trestle tables they’d found in a back room.
As she and Léo stepped into the open space, she couldn’t suppress a gasp of shock.
She barely recognised their workstation anymore.
Léo cast his torch beam over the destroyed surroundings. Sarah hurried past him to get a better look at the carnage. All the tables had been overturned violently, and all breakable equipment had been smashed. In the corner, a cluster of plastic chairs rested in pieces against one of the walls.
There had been serious commotion here…
More importantly, there was no sign of any of their co-workers.
Carmen. Jessica. Marcus. Ethan. Aaron. Diego. Seth. Eli.
All gone.
The beam floated over to the pile of broken chairs — likely used by the crew as rudimentary weapons to defend themselves from…
…from what? Sarah thought.
She spotted a dark brown patch smeared into the floor beyond one of the tables. As the torchlight hit it, she noticed the distinct flash of crimson.
Dried blood.
With a pang of terror arcing through her chest, Sarah spun on her heel. She hadn’t heard a word from Léo this entire time. She needed to voice the emotions tumbling through her head…
‘Léo,’ she said in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘Where are—’
Then she saw it.
Standing behind Léo.
A bulky figure, hunched over, illuminated ever so slightly by the faint light spilling off the edges of the torch beam. With limited visibility, she couldn’t quite make out the features. She thought it was a man — his face covered by some kind of gas mask…
Then the figure lurched forwards and wrapped an arm around Léo’s exposed neck.
She watched Léo’s eyes boggle as he was wrenched backwards by the motion. He lost his footing and let go of the torch. It clattered to the ground loud enough to echo off the surrounding walls…
…and the beam flickered out.
Her heart racing so fast she thought she might pass out, Sarah screamed as her vision went black. The darkness washed over her. She heard Léo struggling against the attacker’s grip.
A powerful hand seized the back of her jacket.
Charged with indescribable terror, she felt her limbs take on a life of their own. The fight-or-flight mechanism kicked in and she tore away from the grip, racing across the room in the direction of the entrance hallway.
She couldn’t see anything.
; She couldn’t hear anything above the noise of her heart pounding in her ears.
Thump.
She ran directly into something.
Someone…
The impact took her off her feet. She sprawled to the cold wooden floor, scrambling for purchase. Two strong hands clamped down on her shoulders and pressed her to the ground. She screamed again and thrashed wildly, bucking and jerking as fear tore through her veins.
It was no use.
This time, her attackers were prepared.
A thick cloth slammed against her mouth and was held there, cutting off her outcry. Panicking, blind to what was unfolding, she sucked in a deep breath of air.
She noticed the chemicals far too late.
It tasted like a mixture of red wine and rot, both fruity and sterile like an artificially-flavoured hospital disinfectant. The acrid flavour stung her throat as it flooded her airways.
The terror gave way to drowsiness and Sarah Grasso slipped into a different kind of darkness.
2
Stockholm
Sweden
It had been three weeks since Jason King’s services were last employed by Black Force, and the injuries sustained over the course of a gruelling one-man war in Egypt had only just begun to fade into relative obscurity.
He let his breathing settle as he jogged back into the confines of the Mariatorget. He had spent the last week growing accustomed to the pleasant city square in Södermalm, one of the more desirable boroughs in Stockholm. It was calm, residential, tranquil — the polar opposite of what he was used to.
No automatic weapons.
No bloodthirsty extremists.
No fighting and killing.
Just peace.
He took caution not to grow used to the serenity. He knew it would only be a matter of time before he was sent back into hell.
He had come to learn that Södermalm was largely populated by locals, distinctly separate from the busier tourist districts in Stockholm. He had only been in Sweden for seven days, but it felt like it had been an eternity.
Day-to-day civilian life moved slow.