Kaylin looked at Quinn. “That’s why you came isn’t it? That’s why you’re here? To go back into the past, before the invasion occurred.”
Quinn nodded.
“Let us come with you,” Kaylin continued. “Let us help.”
“Frankly, I don’t think you’ve got a choice anymore,” Quinn replied.
Howls echoed from somewhere overhead and seemingly all around. Quinn flinched. She realized they didn’t have much time. Her eyes found Cody. “What do we do?”
Without responding, Cody moved forward and Quinn saw something flicker in his eyes. A light that, for a moment, did not seem entirely human. Cody breezed past her and his footfalls caused something to jut up at the end of the promenade, a raised dais that resembled a sacrificial altar. Atop the dais was a featureless silver tablet.
Cody pressed his hand to the tablet and everyone started talking all at once behind Quinn, whispering, murmuring, wondering what he was doing. The tablet hummed to life and Cody began tapping and accessing windows and that’s when Quinn saw them out of the corners of her eyes.
Green orbs began appearing in the air like holograms.
The orbs commenced circling the room and the air filled with the perfume of what smelled like freshly-cut flowers.
Cody’s hands were a blur, he was engaging the tablet so rapidly.
Lights were flashing, the orbs blinking and now—
WHUNK!
The entire room trembled and a low rumble began to build.
The walls fell away to reveal one continuous wall of transparent alien alloy that afforded a dazzling view of outer space—
WHUNK! WHUNK!
The ground shook and Quinn looked down to see the pieces of machinery self-animate, seemingly coming alive and locking together.
And now she could see it from her vantage point. The pieces had snapped together to form the shape of the Syndicate symbol, the snake devouring its own tail.
The machinery began pumping and electricity filled the room, causing the hairs on the back of Quinn’s head to stand at attention.
“CODY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”
Cody turned and there was an expression of absolute wonder on his face.
“We are the machine!” he shouted deliriously. “Can’t you see?! We are the machine!”
The machine under the promenade fully engaged, interlocking mechanisms slamming together like pistons as the air became super-charged, a vibration slicing through it like some galactic tuning fork that had just been plucked.
Through the faraway wall Quinn could see that the time ship was picking up speed. The vessel’s engines were on overdrive, the entire ship flashing through an incredibly beautiful nebula.
What appeared to be lightning flashed overhead and Quinn suddenly was able to see through her hand, which appeared to be dematerializing. She wiggled her fingers in front of her face and they appeared to be made of space dust. Hayden shambled up next to her. His face appeared distorted, as if he was merely a hologram beamed back from some point in the future.
“This isn’t the end, Gunny,” she whispered. “It’s only the beginning.”
Time and sound slowed and the ground vanished under Quinn’s feet.
The frame of the time ship disintegrated like a dandelion head blown by the wind. She rode a burst of pure energy down into deep space, rollercoastering into the blackness. Somehow she’d regained her helmet, which was now fully intact and on her head, her body still protected by the Syndicate armor. Her stomach lurched as she headed straight down, skysurfing past at an incredible rate in a manner not unlike a skier sluicing down over the edge of a cliff.
Quinn’s mouth pulled back in a silent shriek and tears stabbed at her eyes as the murkiness whipped past. She was assaulted by black stars, blue vortexes, all the secrets of the universe seeming to reveal themselves at once. She bombed down into the nothingness, her field of vision compressing into a tiny, obsidian bead, and then there was a wave of angelic light and a final image appeared, Samantha, rising up, beckoning her, as beautiful as a daydream. Quinn reached for Samantha and the light wrapped around her, suffusing everything with warmth. And then the light vanished and she was falling again.
Straight down.
Plunging into the darkest space she’d ever seen before.
A hole in the universe.
Quinn continued to fall for what seemed like an eternity and then she came to a rest in the outer darkness. Her breath fogged the interior of her helmet. Even in the armor she could feel the bitter cold. She was lying in a never-ending sweep of ice and snow. She elbowed herself up and looked into the sky and what she saw next caused her jaw to unhinge.
In the heavens was a faint sliver of light surrounded by a profound, starless patch of blackness and then something … some things began falling to the ground. What looked like panes of glass were raining down all around her, shattering, smashing as she covered her head, and waited, then looked back up. The sky … was literally falling. Innately, she knew she was back on Earth, but she had no idea whether she’d gone forward or back in time. Regardless, something was very fucking wrong. She collapsed into the snow and screamed, but there was nobody around to hear her. Then she turned over on her side, lying in the blackness, feeling a strange warmth come over her. She realized she was likely suffering from hypothermia, but the sensation, the gentle heat was intoxicating.
Her head rested against a pillow of ice and snow and her eyes slowly began to close as she remembered something. Words. A poem somebody had once read to her. Something about the woods and the snow being lovely, dark, and deep, and miles to go before one sleeps. She’d kept her promises, hadn’t she? She’d done what she’d said she’d do. She’d kept her promises and now she’d earned her sleep. She smiled and closed her eyes and the darkness swallowed her whole.
The End
AUTHOR NOTES
George S. Mahaffey Jr.
I’m taking a few liberties with the quote, but Aldous Huxley once said the person who goes through the door in the wall is never quite the same as the one who comes back out. That’s precisely what our characters are about to experience at the end of Book 4, which was a true labor of love as I worked to overcome a nasty bout of strep throat and a very sick three year old! Eventually, everyone healed and I was able to get a first draft finished that begins to tie up some of the loose ends. It’s clear by the end of Book 4 that everything that happened before, has led up to this moment. Quinn and the others have fought the aliens and struggled to put the pieces together as to why they continue to experience a sensation like déjà vu on steroids, the feeling that they’ve run the same gauntlet over and over again. But now they’ve obtained the coordinates for the Syndicate’s time ship and are hell-bent on using it to go back in time and possibly thwart the alien invasion before it ever happened. Quinn in particular has a strong motivation to right the wrongs of the past in light of Samantha’s disappearance after the attack on the floating alien bases. The question is, what will happen if they’re able to slip back in time? Where will they go? What will they experience? And how will that help them to defeat the Syndicate? All of these questions will be answered throughout Book 5 which explores the adventures of Quinn and the other characters during their individual loops back in time. Everything will be tied together at the end the series, but we thought it would be really cool to see exactly what our characters experience in Book 5 by bringing aboard some other fantastic authors and their unique perspective on the world we’ve developed. We’re all really excited to see how the different visions come together at the end of Book 5 and then tie everything together in Book 6 which happens six years after the events in Book 4. We’re busy hammering away at Books 5 and 6 and really think you’re going to be amazed at some of the final reveals in Book 6. Stay tuned!
Kyle Noe
Time travel is a tricky beast to wrangle, especially in a fiction story. We did a great deal of research and consulted a friend who works in the space exploration field, thus al
lowing us to test our vision and theories against the knowledge of others until we found what worked best for our story. One thing we were able to incorporate was that different forms of time travel are not only possible within a single story, but likely. For example, we now know that the temporal totems were echoes from someone in the future sending back messages to change the past by bouncing a loud enough noise off the edge of the Universe. And the motivations of the future senders of those messages will be revealed quite soon! Second, to move a spaceship back or forward in time, we essentially needed a means to move something through space by defeating gravity and not lose the characters’ memories of what had happened to them, or they would keep repeating the same mistakes. The most plausible way to pull that off is to accelerate particles at faster than the speed of light, similar to how the Large Hadron Collider works. Thus, was born the temporal ship. Instead of a fifty mile wide space science station, however, we built a temporal ship that could create a similar effect in the openness of space and then have the ship travel through the portal as a protective vessel for its passengers. Lastly, we’re about to introduce a third form of time travel in book five that is going to add a twist to what we think we know.
Thank you for joining us on this exciting journey, and I hope you’re having as much fun experiencing the story as we are!
Would love to hear more of your thoughts. I’m at http://twitter.com/bookrumors
Justin Sloan
What can I say about this journey? It’s been a fun one! Podium is making the first three books into Audiobooks (maybe the rest? Let’s hope!), and we have this exciting BOOK 5 ANTHOLOGY coming your way. Basically, the way its going to work is it is book 5, in that you’ve seen the group move into the time ship here, so book 5 goes into their time travel experience. George, Kyle, and I will each have short story following a character, and we have some other authors following the story of other characters you’ve seen here.
And did we tell you what happens next? Well, there will of course be a book 6, but then there will also be spinoffs about these characters.
So yeah, I’m very excited about that, and we got a great author to do the foreword—but you’ll have to wait to learn about that and who these spinoff authors are.
Anticipation!
So yes, stay tuned and we’ll keep bringing you the books. Please consider leaving a review. Let us know what you think, and join our Facebook group. Thanks!
https://www.facebook.com/SyndicateWarsBooks/?ref=bookmarks
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GEORGE MAHAFFEY
George S. Mahaffey Jr. is a practicing lawyer, author, and screenwriter. As an author he’s written AMITYVILLE: ORIGINS, AMITYVILLE: REVENANTS, RAZORBACKS I, RAZORBACKS II, RAZORBACKS III, THE PACT, FAMILIARS (Book 1), THE DEVIL’S ARK, and VERTICAL CITY: A ZOMBIE THRILLER (Parts 1 through 4). In addition, his script HEATSEEKERS was bought by Paramount with Michael Bay producing and Timur Bekmambetov directing. He’s also sold or written scripts for Arnold Kopelson, Blumhouse, Benderspink, Thousand Words, directors Louis Leterrier and Paul McGuigan, has co-created a TV show for Sony and Barry Josephson, and is the creator of IN THE DUST, a kick-ass action-horror graphic novel in the vein of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT to be published by Top Cow with art by Christian Duce.
JUSTIN SLOAN
Justin Sloan is the bestselling author of the epic fantasy series FALLS OF REDEMPTION, the urban fantasy werewolf series CURSED NIGHT, the tough-guy urban fantasy series MODERN NECROMANCY, and coauthor of the vampire post-apocalyptic series RECLAIMING HONOR (A Kurtherian Gambit series) with Michael Anderle.
He also writes video games such as Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, and has sold/optioned several screenplays/teleplays. Because of his five years in the U.S. Marines, you just might find some of his Devil Dog attitude coming to play in his novels. Justin's books are available in audio and print editions, and he has sold Turkish and French rights to several of his series.
KYLE NOE
Kyle spent five years at the FBI working in counterintelligence, espionage, arms trafficking, CyberWarfare, CT, human trafficking, a stint building the Director's Briefing, a stint working with the National Security Council on an international case, a stint on Presidential Transition Briefs. Five years in Marine Intelligence, specifically Light Armored Recon Intel. Mostly building profiles, targeting portfolios on individuals, and targeting portfolios on groups and specific military units and off-the-radar non-gov militarized teams owned by corporations or governments. And left the intel world behind to pursue his passion for storytelling and has since co-created a TV show for Sony Studios and Barry Josephson.
Copyright © 2017 by George S. Mahaffey Jr, Kyle Knoe, and Justin Sloan
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.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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
Author Notes
About the Author
Copyright
Syndicate Wars: False Dawn (Seppukarian Book 4) Page 19