The World Walker Series Box Set

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  “What are you? What are we going to do?” she said. “Where are we going to go?”

  “I’m a World Walker,” said Seb. He held up his hands as she started to speak. “I don’t know much more than you. As for the other questions, I really don’t know. There’s so much to tell you, Mee. But first, we need to get away. Far away.” He smiled at her gently and put his hand on her face. “This might feel a little strange. Hold still.”

  Meera felt her skin tighten, then slacken strangely, the roots of her hair tingling. She looked in the rear-view mirror and gasped. Then she looked back at Seb and gasped again. Then she giggled until she thought she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Mason had people stationed at every exit of the parking lot within a minute of the station wagon pulling in. Barrington was on the fourth floor, his cold, blank stare scanning everyone coming through the doors. After twenty minutes, a team swept the entire parking garage, reporting back that no station wagon had been found. Barrington’s report insisted the priest and Patel must have got past one of the less vigilant members of Mason’s team. No one could answer Mason’s question as to how that was possible. The search continued for a week but no trace was found. Mason kept a low-key worldwide search active permanently. He hated loose ends.

  Barrington, meanwhile, never once gave another thought to the octogenarian couple who had shuffled past him on their way into the mall. The old boy, with a Florida tan and bony wrists, had stopped and spoken to him.

  “No school today, sonny?” he had said, and ruffled Barrington’s hair. If he hadn’t been so intent on finding the priest and the girl, Barrington might have considered stopping the old bastard’s pacemaker, but he didn’t have the time. He just briefly glared at the frail, watery-eyed nightmare in the blue shirt, with his elasticated tan pants pulled up to his ribs. He never saw the old guy turn around and look at him after he’d taken a few steps. He never saw him smile. And he never saw him kiss the old woman with him like a teenager and, his hand tightly holding hers, both of them smiling broadly, stroll out of sight.

  THE END

  Book Two, The Unmaking Engine, was published 30th September 2016:

  USA: http://amzn.to/2cBByB8

  UK: http://amzn.to/2cNpHPa

  Read Chapter One now…(it follows the Author’s Note)

  Author’s Note

  Get The World Walker Prologue FREE!

  If you’re reading this, the likelihood is you just finished The World Walker. My first novel. So, before I go any further, let me thank you. Thank you. I would love to be able to write more books, and you are instrumental in making that a possibility. Don’t let the responsibility weigh too heavily on you. If you really enjoyed it, I’d love you to leave a review on Amazon. And maybe click http://eepurl.com/bQ_zJ9 to sign up for news on more books and occasional blogs (not many, I’m lazy and I’m going to be spending my free time writing the next World Walker book. Yes, there will be another one.) I’m even on FaceBook and twitter, apparently. I’ll send the prologue to everyone who signs up above, or emails me at ianwsainsbury@gmail.com. It tells the story of Simeon, the founder of the Order. In the end, it didn’t get included because I wanted to get straight into the action. But if you enjoyed the book, I think you’ll like it.

  I used to enjoy Stephen King’s author’s notes as much as his books. More, sometimes. I liked the sincerity, the directness. As readers, we were reminded that the rich work of fiction in which we had just lost ourselves was not the work of some kind of super being, just a regular human being. Well, perhaps not completely regular, in Mr. King’s case. Every time I read one of those notes, I felt that itch. The itch I hadn’t yet scratched, making itself known again. But I never did anything about it. Mostly because, as Ray Bradbury put it, “writers write”. Every interview with a writer suggested they wrote because they had no choice. If they couldn’t get in front of their computers, typewriters or yellow legal pads with that brand of pencil every day, their lives would fall apart, their marriages would break up and they would end up living in a cardboard box, drinking lighter fluid and shouting at pigeons. Hand on heart, I couldn’t make the same claim. I wrote, sure, but I always enjoyed the sensation of having written far more than actually writing.

  It took me an age to realize many writers feel the same way. I don’t know why this information took so long to sink in. After all, one of my favorite writers, one of the few I had read in my teens, twenties, thirties and forties is Douglas Adams, and he seemed to hate the act of writing. When he wrote the radio series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, he was famously locked into a hotel room by the producer until he finished it. But, somehow, he managed to author some of the funniest, most thought-provoking books of all time. He also once said, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

  Don’t get me wrong. I have written before. Scripts, sketches, lots and lots of songs. The occasional short story. I had small successes along the way, but nothing to get excited about. I had notebooks full of ideas for novels. But the longest thing I’d ever written was around 10,000 words long. I had no idea how writers sustained an idea for so long. And who’d want to spend all that time trying when the vast majority of first novels never get published? I didn’t have that much confidence, but I admired those who did, the talented few who made it.

  Then ebooks came along, a novelty at first. When Amazon launched the Kindle, it obviously wasn’t going to be a novelty for long. And so a new era began. Writers were publishing their own books. When that first Kindle came along, I was an early adopter. My job at that time involved an awful lot of flying, as I was playing piano and singing in Scandinavian bars most weekends. I used to buy dog-eared paperbacks from thrift stores, read four or five every weekend and leave them in airports, bars and restaurants for the next reader to discover. The Kindle did wonders for my back as I could now lift my carry-on baggage unaided. After re-reading every Sherlock Holmes story, some Dickens and every cheap classic I could find, I started filling it with thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, magic, religion, philosophy. When I hunted the Kindle store for new books, I sometimes came across writers I’d never heard of before. Their books cost me less than a good cup of coffee. I bought some. I’ll be honest, many of them weren’t so hot. I got a bit more discerning, read reviews, tried a sample. And I found some great stuff out there. Wool, by Hugh Howey, was one I remember. And The Martian by Andy Weir. Now both of them have big publishing deals and The Martian is a movie starring Matt Damon. Self-published books! Everything has changed.

  The final convincer (although it took me another four years to start writing, but, hey, I’m a slow learner) was meeting someone who wrote ebooks. Ebooks that sold enough to make him a living. Pot boiler political thrillers, high-octane, violent. Eminently readable, and tens of thousands of readers had discovered this and were buying his books. Murray McDonald. He’s even written a sci-fi novel - The God Complex. You’ll find him on Amazon. Just having a friend who described himself as “a writer” without blushing was a new experience. Finally, I had first-hand, undeniable, evidence-based findings: it’s possible to write books and make a living at it. For real.

  I started writing. I still had those old notebooks, but I’d been inspired by an interview with science writer and presenter James Burke, during which he was encouraged to make predictions about the next forty years of technological progress. He foresaw the rise of nanotechnology leading to a society of abundance, without poverty or hunger. I wondered if our age-old hierarchies of the haves and the have-nots would be permitted to be up-ended quite that easily. Then I speculated what the world would look like if the technology already existed, but, for some reason, was only available to a few. Next, for some reason, Roswell, New Mexico, 1947 popped into my head. And, suddenly, it was hard to write my notes fast enough to keep up with the alternative world that was springing into being.

  Seb and Mee aren’t done yet. Mason haunts the World Walker without us ever finding out much about him, b
ut I know more than I’m letting on. He’ll be back. As will Walt, who fascinates me. I know I’m doing that author thing now, talking about the characters as if they were real. They are real! Sonia Svetlana turned up halfway through the first draft without ever featuring in my notes. She was such a powerful character, I wrote her into the story much more fully. Scared the crap out of me, I don’t mind admitting. And the Order has always been more than the sum of its parts. It’s not going anywhere.

  I’m writing this note in a cafe. I’ve overdone the caffeine today, so it’s afternoon tea for me. How civilized. I finished the novel four days ago and sent it to a few friends and family members to check for errors and let me know if it made sense. One of them—Neal—read the whole thing in two days flat and loved it. Really loved it. His enthusiasm gave me a glimpse into the way authors feel when their work makes a real, tangible connection with someone else. What a rush! So if this book ends up sinking into obscurity, Neal was wrong. But if enough readers feel the way Neal does, I might end up being able to say, “I’m a writer” without caveats or embarrassment. So, one more time, before I start work on the next book, thank you, whoever you are, for reading this one.

  Ian W. Sainsbury

  Norwich

  February 9, 2016

  Also by Ian W. Sainsbury

  The Unmaking Engine (The World Walker Series 2)

  The Seventeenth Year (The World Walker Series 3)

  The Unnamed Way (The World Walker Series 4)

  Children Of The Deterrent (Halfhero Series 1)

  The Unmaking Engine

  Copyright © 2016 by Ian W. Sainsbury

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Visit the author at

  https://ianwsainsbury.com/

  Cover design by Hristo Kovatliev

  For Anya

  Previously in The World Walker…

  IMPORTANT NOTE: The Unmaking Engine is book two of a series. The following contains spoilers relating to the first book in the series. If you haven’t read The World Walker and would prefer to read the books in order, please go read it first.

  If you don’t care about the order or you’ve just dying to get reading, skip the following.

  However, if you would like a quick reminder of what happened in The World Walker before you read The Unmaking Engine, this section is for you. You could always re-read The World Walker before starting The Unmaking Engine, of course. I did ;)

  If not, here’s the quick version of what happened…

  Terminally ill musician Seb Varden decides to end his life rather than let his brain tumor do the job for him. An alien that’s been waiting since the Roswell incident of 1947 has other ideas and gives him his life back, along with a body full of advanced alien technology he has no idea how to use.

  Seb finds he has superhuman powers, seemingly can’t die, and situations involving extreme stress trigger an automatic vanishing act, taking him miles away from where he started.

  Different factions are interested in Seb’s progress. There’s Westlake, who appears to be a government secret service agent with no qualms about taking any measures necessary to capture Seb. There’s the Order, a quasi-religious organization which thinks Seb may be the messiah. And then there’s Walt Ford, somewhat of a mentor for Seb, who takes him to Las Vegas and shows him a very good time indeed. He also teaches him about Manna - a source of power buried at many locations around the world and wielded by various individuals and groups. Manna may seem like magic, at first, but in reality is nanotechnology. Manna users have to ‘refill’ their Manna reserves regularly, but Walt is amazed to find Seb doesn’t need to do this.

  Mason is the villain of the piece. No one - even those highest in his organization - knows his identity. As the strongest Manna user in America, he rules by fear and controls a network that, in effect, holds more power than any other group in the country. He sees Seb as a threat that must be controlled or removed.

  Meera Patel, a singer in Seb’s old band and his ex-girlfriend, teams up with Bob Geller, Seb’s friend, to find the missing musician. They are helped by members of the Order who bring them to the outskirts of Las Vegas to hide them from Westlake while they continue their search.

  As the story progresses, we learn that Westlake is Mason’s man, and Mason can see that his best bet of getting to Seb is by kidnapping Meera. Westlake does so, killing the members of the Order protecting her, and murdering Seb’s friend, Bob Geller. Walt Ford helps in this operation. He is also in Mason’s organization, although he hates what he has become.

  Meanwhile, Seb has come to distrust Walt and has left Las Vegas. He is gradually learning some control over the nanotechnology in his body. This has been helped by his personality splitting into three parts. Seb2 is learning how to communicate with and control the nanotech - or Manna - and Seb3 is a silent partner in constant agony: a constant reminder that Seb was not ready to absorb the alien technology and is still struggling to do so.

  While Meera is being kidnapped, Seb has gone to Roswell, absorbing the Manna there. No other Manna user has ever been able to do this. His power and control increases massively as a result. On his return, now able to consciously use his instant-traveling power, he ‘Walks’ to Vegas to meet Meera. She’s gone. Walt reveals his treachery and tells Seb Mason has taken Meera.

  Seb meets Mason’s representatives, who show him a live feed of Meera having her pinkie cut off by Westlake. Mason intends keeping Meera prisoner for the rest of her life to control Seb. He tests Seb by sending him to battle his closest rival - Sonia Svetlana and her followers. Seb’s victory impresses Mason still further, but Seb refuses to be controlled. He says he will give his own life instead - on the condition that Meera is released. Mason agrees and the arrangements are made.

  Seb meets Westlake and Walt at a New York building site, where Seb is beheaded and his body reduced to bones and ashes by a flamethrower. His remains are thrown into the foundations of the parking lot before being covered with concrete.

  Mason has underestimated Seb. The body his henchmen killed was, in fact, a homunculus - an artificial creature made by Manna users. Seb’s homunculus was more sophisticated than Mason or anyone else thought possible. The real Seb changes his - and Meera’s - appearance. They escape.

  His enemies think he’s dead. He got the girl. He is just beginning to explore the incredible power he has been given. What could possibly go wrong?

  1

  Dover, Delaware

  There were five of them and only one of him, which was the first problem. One of them—the biggest, ugliest one—had just unloaded both barrels of a shotgun into his chest from a distance of five feet. That was the second problem. The third, most serious problem was the presence of nineteen witnesses. This was causing Seb Varden a real headache.

  He was in a bank in Dover. He was there because he knew the police weren’t going to show, the armed gang had already carried out similar robberies in the last six months, and the death toll attributed to them had hit double figures. The ugly guy was trying to kill him because Seb had asked whether his mother had had sex with a genetically-modified pig to produce him. Or if he’d got his good looks by running into a wall. Twice.

  The alarm in the bank wasn’t ringing because the gang was backed by a sophisticated syndicate which had disabled all security systems, including cameras. This was one of the two ways the syndicate earned its fifty percent of the haul. The other was its handling of the Dover police department which, even Seb had to admit, was inspired. Right now, the city’s finest were racing to a bank twelve miles west of the one currently being robbed, due to seven 911 calls apparently made from that location. Some remotely triggered explosions and a lockdown of the premises in question meant police resources were looking in the entirely wrong di
rection when the actual robbery took place. When the security system had gone down at the exact moment the cops were hauling ass in the opposite direction, Seb2 had nudged Seb into action. The gang thought they had everyone in the building covered until Seb walked out of an office near the main door.

  Seb knew Ugly was going to shoot him 0.37 seconds before he pulled the trigger. The man’s eyes had dropped from Seb’s face to his chest at the same time as he’d raised the weapon and held his breath.

  “Here we go,” said Seb2. Seb was used to his consciousness being split into three parts—although Seb3 was pretty much a silent partner. It was one of the consequences of having a body full of advanced alien nanotechnology, eighty-seven percent of which, according to Seb2, he still had little idea how to use. He twisted to his left just before the flash of light at the end of the barrels let him know two cartridges of lead shot were heading his way.

  A shotgun cartridge is designed to spread its payload of hundreds of lead pellets as it travels toward a target some distance away. Close up, as long as you’re facing the right direction, you can’t miss. No one gets up and walks away from a close-up encounter with a shotgun. Which was unfortunate for the two members of the gang directly behind Seb.

  As he twisted, 57 of the 410 tiny lead balls tore across Seb’s ribs and stomach, ripping widening channels through his flesh. By the time the shot had passed through him, his body was unmarked again, blood vessels, muscles and skin knitting together so fast as to be virtually instantaneous. Since sound travels at a significantly slower speed than light, he only heard the near-deafening blast of the shotgun just after the two men behind him were blown off their feet.