BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS
Page 94
Kerrin and Dana looked at each other in confusion.
"What are you suggesting, Mr President?"
"I am asking you to join us. To become part of the Chymera Corporation! The Orlando Treatment is not a dream…It works! …Join us! Take part in the next round of clinical trials, with myself and other leaders from the Chymera Corporation, and become part of the new elite…Our doctors have already looked at Dana's medical files and have assured me that the therapeutic cloning techniques that have been pioneered in the Orlando Treatment using stem cell technology, will be able to successfully re-grow the areas that were damaged in Dana's spine. If she takes part in the trials I can promise you that within months, maybe weeks, Dana will walk again…And I think that you have already witnessed for yourself that one of the major benefits of the treatment is the ability to stop and partially reverse the ageing process…We can take ten or twenty years off your biological age! We can make you both twenty-eight again, and hopefully we can help you to maintain that age for the rest of your life…"
"…Just think! You can both be young again…you can travel the world, laugh and run together, swim in the ocean, climb mountains…whatever it is that you always wanted to do together…it's yours for the taking!"
"And in return, what do we give you?" Kerrin asked, holding Dana's hand tightly.
"Nothing…you just promise that you will never betray the brotherhood of which you become a part…It works two ways…We keep you alive, healthy and fit, to make sure that you are able to make the phone calls to your boss and whoever else has the documents…and in return, you make sure that the documents are never released to the world."
Kerrin stood up, and walked away from his chair towards the window of the Oval Office. He looked out over the grounds of the White House, not seeing how green the grass was or the beautiful deep blue of the sky above. His mind was awash with emotion.
He felt dizzy, and faint, and his heart was racing.
They had lived through hell this past month. People they knew had been murdered. Friends, relatives and acquaintances. They had all gone. And the suffering of the bereaved relatives would still go on for year after year, for longer than Kerrin would dare to guess. Death is always harder on those left behind.
He turned to look at Dana, and for the first time in years he saw how old she had become, how the years had begun to add lines to her face and how the skin had slowly begun to lose its elasticity and luster. He looked at her wheelchair, and for a fleeting second he could feel the jarring impact of two cars colliding on a remote country road, and the sight of Dana's bloodied and torn body in the wreckage of the accident so many years before.
And then he could see two people running along a beach, splashing through the waves, before they both plunged headlong into the surf and swam out to sea, swimming hard and fast, …together.
"So Kerrin," the President asked the Washington reporter. "What will it be? Will you join us …or destroy us?"
Kerrin glanced across at Buz who had been silent throughout, but who now watched Kerrin expectantly, his attention not leaving him for a second.
Kerrin walked up to Dana, and looked down into her eyes. She reached up her hand towards him and he took it in hers. Tears were streaming down her face, and it was only then that he realized that he too was crying.
Kerrin looked back at the President, and began to form the answer with his lips. He knew that there may be times in the years to come that he would hate himself for the answer he was about to give.
Yet really, in spite of it all, there was only one answer he could give…
It was one word.
Chapter 45
Epilogue
January
Chapters Bookshop
Washington D.C.
The young couple walked into the bookshop, as they so often did these days. They split up at the door, and each went their own way. He to the thrillers and crime sections, and she to cooking, travel or world geography.
They liked to travel a lot, and she wanted to get the latest edition of the Lonely Planet Guide to Southern Africa.
The young man, probably somewhere in his middle-to-late twenties, passed by a display of the latest hardbacks in the centre of the shop, and stopped in his tracks.
The podium was covered by six different piles of books, each belonging to a different up-and-coming author. Above each pile there was an upright plastic card with the writer's name on it and a picture of the author smiling proudly at his achievement.
The young man picked up one of the books and flicked it open to the inside cover to read the summary of the plot. His hands were shaking.
Normally he would never buy a hardback, preferring to wait until it came out in the cheaper paperback form, but without hesitation the young man walked across to the cashier and handed the young assistant the book and his credit card.
"Good choice," she replied. " ‘The Untamed Gene’ has become one of the fastest selling books this month…if only the author were still alive, he'd be a very happy and wealthy man by now."
The young man took the book and his receipt and hurried over to find his wife in the travel section. A mixture of emotions swept through him as he searched for her amongst the rows of bookshelves. Excitement and fear mixing together to produce a curious blend of emotions.
According to the synopsis on the back cover, the book was a fictional thriller based on the real work and actual discoveries of the author, the now world-famous scientist called Mike Gilbert.
Published after the author was mysteriously killed, according to the author's surviving fiancée, the thriller was an exposé of the secret work conducted at the genetics company the author used to work at, … before he died in such strange circumstances…
Book in hand, the young man found his wife who was lost in adventures in foreign lands in a corner at the back of the book store. She looked up and smiled.
"Anything interesting?"
"Yeah, look at this…"
She took the book from his outstretched hands, and read the cover. Her eyes lit up as she read the summary on the inside cover.
"But…?"
"That's not the worst of it…look at the first chapter!"
She turned quickly to the first page of the book, read the first line, and then laughed.
"I'm sorry, darling…he's stolen your thunder!"
"Talk about coincidence! The bastard stole my line!" he said, looking over his wife's shoulder.
As far as first lines for a new novel go, it was a cracker. Two words. Simple, but effective:
"…So what?…"
THE END
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April 21st 2013
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Crown of Thorns
:
The Race to Clone Jesus Christ
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IAN C.P. IRVINE
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Published by Ian C. P. Irvine
.
Copyright 2001 IAN.C.P.IRVINE
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright observed above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the copyright owner.
.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own
copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
.
.
.
..
To my Wife
. .
.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Book Two
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
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Book Three
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Review The Crown of Thorns
Questions for your Book Club to discuss
Prologue
The Oval Office
The White House
United States of America
4th November 2018 A.D.
1.
The President of the United States of America switched the cup of coffee into his right hand before picking up the ringing phone. President Jamieson was tired. The coffee was barely keeping him awake, but he couldn’t sleep until he had heard from Tim Curts. He had to know whether or not the operation had succeeded.
“Mr President?” the voice echoed down the scrambled satellite connection from somewhere in Oxford, England.
“Tim! How did it go?” the President asked, nervously.
“Like a dream. We've got it. We’ll be back in Delaware tomorrow night, and within a few hours we’ll start the second phase of the operation. It’s looking good.”
“Excellent, Tim. Will anyone know it’s gone?” the President asked, wondering how soon the French would miss their most important religious relic.
“They’ll never know. We swapped it for an identical copy.” Tim chuckled.
“I can’t wait to see it. Tim, I’ve just decided, I’m flying down tomorrow to meet you. I want to see this baby for myself…” the President paused “You know, if this project works, we're never going to lose a war again. For Christ’s sake Tim, and I mean that literally, if you’re right about this, we’re going to rule the bloody Universe, let alone the world…”
Tim hesitated for a second. He recognised the tone in the Presidents voice. And he didn’t like it.
“It’ll be good to see you again, Mr President. I’ll brief you on the other details then.”
“Look forward to it Tim.”
The President relaxed back into the big mahogany chair behind his desk of office. He switched the cup back to his other hand, and took a sip of the coffee.
“Rule the Universe? Yes!” he thought to himself. “With God on our side, nothing will be impossible!”
Part One
. .
Chapter One
Carlisle, England
August 2012AD
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It was a hell of a place to die. After fifty years of life, Paul Dyke had hoped that he would have ended up somewhere better than this.
Their small flat was filthy. The wallpaper was beginning to come off the walls, and the rooms smelt of damp.
Not that Paul could smell anything anymore. The fever was burning out of control, and for the past two days he had been slipping in and out of delirium, shivering violently and sweating continuously, his body fluids drenching the bedding on which he lay.
The man on the television had described the symptoms well, and Paul had got them all. It wouldn’t be long now.
.
Outside, the sun was setting and the street lights had just come on. The sound of thunder rolled across the distant hills, and a flash of lightning lit the room. The humidity in the air was oppressive and even though the fan hanging from the ceiling was spinning as fast as it could, it did nothing to lessen the heat.
Jason, Paul’s sixteen year old son, came back into the bedroom carrying a fresh bucket of ice and their last dry towel. He knelt down beside his father and tried to mop some more of the sweat from his glistening, emaciated body.
His father turned his head towards him, his eyes trying to focus on Jason’s face. His lips began to move, and Jason knelt closer so that he could hear his words. When he tried to speak, he coughed and spluttered, and blood oozed out of the corners of his mouth.
As Jason reached out to wipe away the blood, he felt his father's hand grab his wrist.
“Jason…I’m sorry…”
He whispered the words quietly, but Jason understood.
The grip on his wrist relaxed, the hand falling lifelessly onto the wet towel covering the bed. A long, slow sigh came from his father’s chest, and a trace of froth gathered round the edges of his lips.
Jason’s father was dead.
.
As Jason knelt beside his father’s body, tears rolled down his face and blurred his vision. He listened in disbelief as the man on the television excitedly announced the discovery of the long awaited vaccine for the 'SARs 2' virus. At the end of the bulletin the man mentioned that the death toll in the UK had now reached one million.
Surely they meant ‘one million and one.’
Chapter Two
Somewhere in the Egyptian desert,
Six years later,
May 2018AD
.
As the plane rose into the sky, Jason waved out of the small cockpit window at Dr Simons, his new girlfriend Lydia, and all the others gathered at the end of the runway. Quickly falling away far below him, the group which had assembled to bid him bon voyage soon turned into little black specks, and were swallowed up by the vast plain of the Egyptian desert.
Jason settled back into the seat, his eyes staring blankly at the waves of undulating sand dunes beginning to roll beneath them across the desert floor. The pulsating drone of the twin propeller engines washed over him hypnotically, and he fought with the urge to sleep. There was so much to think about. So much to remember.
He had spent the past six months digging up and living in the past. It had been an incredible time. A time full of new friendships, adventure and romance, but as soon as he stepped off the plane in Cairo he would be thrust back into the land of the living, and of science and the fut
ure.
He cast his mind back to the lab at Oxford, and to the discoveries and developments that would make cloning of the Pharaoh possible.
The progress that Professor Wainright’s team had made in the past few years was nothing short of remarkable. Thankfully, the cloning process that had been developed at Professor Wainright’s privately funded Institute for Genetic Evolution for the Greater Good of Mankind was still a well kept secret, and no one outside of the core I.G.E.G.G.M. team knew of its existence.
Rightly so. It was considered too dangerous to make public that Wainright’s team had discovered a way of recovering and regenerating prime DNA samples from damaged genetic material previously considered unfit for use in the cloning process. The implications were incredible.
Until now, it had been believed that DNA had an inbuilt sell-by date, which prevented mankind from tinkering with the seeds of its past. But in some revolutionary, painstaking research, Wainright had found the key that unlocked the blueprint within the DNA itself, allowing them to take DNA samples which were centuries, even thousands of years old, repair them, reproduce them, and then introduce them to a donor egg to create an embryo which could be cultivated and grown to maturity.
Using this process Wainright’s team would revolutionise the field of genetics.
It had already worked in the laboratory, and they had secretly succeeded in creating clones from genetic material extracted from three consecutive generations of humans, stretching back from 1900 to 1800 AD.
The three cloned embryos were now beautiful bouncing babies, all thriving and doing well, having been adopted by infertile loving couples.
Pushing back the boundaries of science even further, Wainright argued that there was no reason why genetic material couldn’t be extracted and cloned from anyone, regardless of when they had died, so long as the required genetic material had not been contaminated by certain chemicals which rendered the whole process impossible. However, the process was still in its infancy, and although the first three babies born to couples within the programme were doing well, there was admittedly still a thousand things that could go wrong.