Érica suddenly felt very helpless and very angry. She had been betrayed by those she had trusted with her life. She saw no way out. There was no escape. She knew that only her body would die, but for her soul to be locked inside that capsule forever – that was unimaginable.
The laboratory staff unceremoniously stripped her naked, adding insult to injury. Marcus took a good look at her.
“Sorry about that, my dear, but clothing upsets the calibration of the apparatus. I’m sure you understand. ”
Two assistants manhandled her roughly into the donor chamber. Before the transparent lid was closed, Marcus bent over her.
“I would have liked to have cut your throat myself, but that would have meant releasing your soul to the four winds, and I can’t allow that. So you’ll just have to suffer the delights of finding yourself in a vacuum. I know I’ll enjoy watching.”
A lab technician turned on the machine.
Érica looked down at her skin as best she could, given that she was still physically restrained. It began to swell and turn blue as the air was sucked out of her body. She fought for her breath and started to feel very hot as her blood temperature began to increase. Marcus was feeling very pleased with himself.
“I’m impressed Érica. You’re still awake. Nobody normally lasts this long. Oh, did I speak too soon? I think your lungs are about to give up on you… come on…come on…and…there we go! No more lungs!”
The monitoring technician called out.
“Sir, the soul is leaving the donor body.”
Érica’s soul left her corpse and set off in search of a new host. But this time there was no recipient body to receive it.
“Sir, it’s in the airlock.”
The airlock door was quickly closed, and air was pumped into the small tube that linked the two incubators in order to seduce the soul towards where a recipient body would normally be waiting
Inside the apparatus, Érica’s soul was darting to and fro in an effort to find a body. An airlock opened and the soul sensed that there was another possible escape route. It hurled itself through an opening that it thought would give it freedom, but instead found itself inside a lead-lined cylinder.
Another button was pushed and within milliseconds a lid clamped shut on the container. Marcus walked over to the equipment and removed the container, itself the size of a small thermos flask, from its cradle.
“Excellent job gentlemen. And, of course, ladies.”
He made his way along the network of corridors, casually tossing the container from hand to hand, until he arrived at a large red door. He wasn’t worried about dropping it; there was no way that the container would break, releasing its prisoner. He passed his hand over an optical reader and the door opened. Inside was a heavy steel door with a forty-eight number combination lock. He had deliberately used the same locking technology to that which had been employed to secure the safe at Maidenhead Thicket in 1990. It was a good memory and he saw it as a bit of an homage to the beginning of his journey towards possessing the power that he now held.
Marcus deftly entered the correct combination sequence and the door swung open. Inside was another smaller safe, more technologically up to date. Marcus placed his palm onto the identification plate. There was a click, and the door opened.
Marcus took one final look at the vessel imprisoning Érica’s soul.
“Goodbye Érica or should I say, Nathan. This will be your home for the next - well, forever actually. May we never meet again.”
He placed the cylinder inside the safe and closed the door. Then he turned around and left the vault, pushing the door shut with his foot, and scrambled the combination. Finally, just before leaving by the red door, he armed the intruder detect and destroy system. He stepped through the red door and watched as it automatically closed behind him.
Chapter 34
2:45 p.m. Saturday, 15th June, 2069
Caitlin settled herself on her chair at the rather cheesily named Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe in Covent Garden. The coffee it sold wasn’t any different to Starbucks or Costa, in fact it was probably sourced from the same suppliers, but the décor and the frontage of the place was like something out of Dickens’s London. The staff were dressed in Victorian dresses and everything about it did its best to whisk its customers away into a world that had existed two hundred years earlier. It was escapist coffee.
Caitlin liked to imagine what it would have been like living in those days, conveniently forgetting the squalor and poverty that many of London’s Victorian citizens had to suffer. The sanitized version of the age that this coffee shop represented was so successful that often there were long queues for tables and for this reason most customers accompanied their coffee with a pastry or a cake, making the wait outside more worthwhile.
That day was no different; the coffee shop was packed with customers, the only spare seat available being at Caitlin’s table. A balding stockbroker had vacated it thirty seconds earlier but Caitlin knew that the chair wouldn’t be available for long. A rather good-looking young man with golden hair approached her table and rested his hands upon the chair back.
“Excuse me, miss. May I sit at your table?”
Caitlin looked up to see the man smiling effortlessly at her.
“Be my guest.”
The man fixed his piercing blue eyes on her and held out his hand in a gesture of friendship. Caitlin returned the gesture, shaking his hand gently.
“Hi. I’m Caitlin Boone.”
The man smiled again.
“Well, Caitlin Boone. I’m very pleased to meet you. My name is Marcus. Marcus Gallagher.”
# THE END #
Thank you for reading Revelation, the first novel in the Recarn Chronicles series. Reviews are gold-dust to writers, so if you enjoyed the novel it would be great if you could write a brief review at your preferred bookstore or at Goodreads.
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Other Titles by Gregory N. Taylor
REVOLUTION
Science Fiction
The second book in the series THE RECARN CHRONICLES
Caitlin Boone has always been a headstrong young woman but she is finally falling in love. Her new boyfriend seems perfect, a succesful player in the city, but appearances can be deceptive. Unbeknownst to her, he is not who - or even what - she thinks he is.
Such a liaison can only bring trouble and the Boone family’s world falls apart when Caitlin disappears. Her resistance fighter sister, Michelle, is forced to decide between jeopardising a mission and finding her sister.
One Life cannot hope to defeat the Illumination on its own and is forced to enter an uneasy alliance with a group of rebel Recarns who want to return the original leader of the Illuminati to power.
Sometimes it’s necessary to choose between two evils.
VIRTUAL MESSIAH
Contemporary Thriller
When a post goes viral on a social network it's usually a good thing; thousands, perhaps millions, have enjoyed or been positively affected by what was posted.
Perhaps Carl should be pleased. He has a philosophy of life that has been posted on Facebook and Twitter and thousands upon thousands of people have shared his thoughts. But Carl is a very private person and he didn't make the post.
Now he has to deal with the fall out as the world's media seeks to identify the philosophy's source, a search spearheaded b
y the sassy and sexy journalist Natalie. Worse than this, he has awakened the psychopathic tendencies of John Henry Foster, who is also looking for him, but with murder in mind. And Carl is oblivious to either's existence.
Who will find him first? And more importantly, what will happen when one of his pursuers does find him?
REVELATION: Book One of THE RECARN CHRONICLES Page 20