by Adam Steel
The rights of Adam Steel and Tina M. White to be identified as the authors of the work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.
Copyright©2013 by Adam Steel and Tina M. White
No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without express written permission of the authors.
Front cover design by Arron McArthur.
We dedicate this book to our long suffering partners, Simon and Abi.
Thank you.
This book is not intended for children.
INDEX
PROLOGUE
The End
BOOK 1
Chapter 1: The Masons
Chapter 2: The Request
Chapter 3: Trouble in Paradise
Chapter 4: Max
Chapter 5: Three Friends
Chapter 6: Restless
Chapter 7: Back in the Red
Chapter 8: Mr Li
Chapter 9: Blue Monday
Chapter 10: Jack
Chapter 11: The Way of Chi
Chapter 12: Warden Mary Clarke
Chapter 13: The Masquerade Ball
Chapter 14: New Orders
BOOK 2
Chapter 15: The Case of Nicholas Oggwell
Chapter 16: Jack in the House
Chapter 17: Irene
Chapter 18: Red-Man
Chapter 19: Daydreaming
Chapter 20: Eden
Chapter 21: All that Glitters is not Gold
Chapter 22: Brotherly Love
Chapter 23: The Devil to Pay
Chapter 24: Wanted
Chapter 25: Clarke sees Red
Chapter 26: The Unicorn Hotel
Chapter 27: Beta Wing
Chapter 28: The Circle of Eight
Chapter 29: City Limits
BOOK 3
Chapter 30: Little Emperor
Chapter 31: Boardroom Politics
Chapter 32: A Proposition
Chapter 33: Taking Chances
Chapter 34: Revelations
Chapter 35: Exile
Chapter 36: Unwelcome Guests
Chapter 37: Union City
Chapter 38: Drago
Chapter 39: Truth is Stranger than Fiction
Chapter 40: Soldier Boy
Chapter 41: Through the Looking Glass
Chapter 42: Love is an Empty Place
Chapter 43: End of the Road
Chapter 44: Genie
Chapter 45: Where Dreams and Nightmares Mingle
Chapter 46: The Beginning
EPILOGUE
Redux
Key Organisations
Fin-Sen, Utopia’s financial and administrative centre. Fin-Sen headquarters is the seat of power for the masons and is based at the centre of Coney City.
CURE, Centre for Utopian Reform and Education. The CURE system acts as law enforcement and the prison system.
TALOS, the elite military force of Utopia.
ISIAH, Integrated Systems for Independent and Advanced Health.
TAU, Technological Advancement for Utopia.
CUB, Centre for Utopian Biotechnology.
Project F2 Genie, A cutting edge power station containing the Genie Reactor.
The Circle of Eight
Mason Albert Coney, (Deceased)
Mason Hester Royale
Mason Bruce Katcher
Mason Marlene Henson
Mason Damon Deckler
Mason Alexis Coney
Mason Jonus Coney
Mason Paul De-Barr
Mason Henri Batide
Citizens of Utopia.
ISIAH Staff
‘Ellie’, Elinor Rushford, Consultant
‘Reenie’, Irene Sharpe, Consultant
Bridget, Psychiatric Nurse
Mr Mackenzie, Coroner
Eric, Glasshouse Keeper
Victor Archer, Professor
CURE Staff
Max Benson, Security Guard
Alvin Betts, Station Commander
Aya Kaleem, Personal Assistant
Arthur Taskin, Prison Governor
Mary Clarke, Prison Warden
Hendrickson, Prison Guard
FIN-SEN Staff
Jon-Li, Financial Executive
Angela Bitton, Senior Systems Administrator
Lance Powers, Financial Executive
Maxwell Blunt, Senior Systems Administrator
TALOS Operatives
Samson ‘Sonofabitch’ Jones, Drill Instructor
Richards, Corporal
Kristoff Ranger, Corporal
Hawkins and Dillinger, Privates
Sector 7 Citizens
‘Red-Man’, Jomo Marseilles, Gang Leader
Marko Marseilles, Gang Leader
Louis, Biochemist
Kojo, Enforcer
Pinks, Street Kid
Jack Greaves, Private Detective
Union City Citizens
Drago, City Leader
Lucian, Citizen
Irish, Demolition Man
Rust and Jeevo, Mechanics
‘Birdman’, Arthur, Trapper
Red, Citizen
‘Skinny Edd’, Edward, Citizen
Sparks, Computer Technician
Keeper, Store Keeper
Mother Esme, Citizen
Others of Note
Aarif Pashazade, Visiting Dignitary
Ajit, Bodyguard
Abigail Winters, Reporter
Nathan Bridges, Tour Guide
Mr Baginski, Porter
Rexton, Chauffeur
Richie Red, Rock Star
Mada, Citizen
Kaleem and Sara, (Deceased)
Sophie and Sandy, (Deceased)
Boris Volkov and Victor, Prison Inmates
“I never think about the future – it comes soon enough.”
Albert Einstein
The End
Brighton Beach
11:58 a.m.
It was a blistering hot August Bank Holiday the day it happened.
The beach was crammed with tourists along the sandy strip that spanned out towards the noisy fairground which was perched on the end of Brighton Pier. Kids screamed and laughed as the rides flipped them around to the thumping music. Dogs yapped as they danced in and out of the waves. Toddlers got their first taste of what it felt like to put tiny toes into the freezing cold water of the English Channel.
It would be the last day for many years that they would get the chance again.
Amongst the crowd that fateful day a young medical student had taken a day off from her second year studies to sunbathe on the beach. Her name was Elinor Rushford, but she preferred the name Ellie. She was propped up on a striped beach towel, reading from a book called: “Augmentation Mammaplasty. Redefining the Patient and Surgeon Experience.”
Ellie imagined herself as a plastic surgeon (famous of course) teaching in an expensive private hospital and earning obscene amounts of money. She would, of course, have a rich and talented husband.
Mr Right.
Like her future career, he had not yet materialised, despite her best efforts to find him. Her room-mate and life-long friend, Irene Sharpe, was lying flat out under the scorching sun next to her.
Irene reached blindly for the radio she had nestled into the sand next to her and turned it up when one of her favourite songs came on. A small c
hild ran across them heading for the sea. He vaulted over the radio spraying a small cloud of sand across the pages of Ellie’s book. Ellie put her book down in annoyance. Between the noise of the radio – and holiday makers – she found it impossible to concentrate.
‘I don’t know why you brought that book anyway,’ Irene chipped in beside her, without opening her eyes. ‘Don’t you ever take a day off?’
Ellie sighed. ‘Guess it runs in the family,’ she said with some resignation.
Ellie’s parents were both working overtime in London. They never seemed to take a day off. It was one of the reasons Ellie had elected not to have children until her career was organised. Her childhood had left her wanting as her parents were always too consumed with work to spend time with her. Irene had filled the gap that they had left. They had been childhood friends before becoming room-mates.
At twenty one years of age Irene was a beauty. She had long red hair that curled over her slender shoulders. Ellie considered that if Irene had not been a medical student she could easily have been a model. Irene seemed to sail through life unaware of her own traits and exhibited the kind of vulnerability about her that made Ellie want to protect her as an older sister would have done.
The sea breeze carried the voices of excited children and barking dogs towards them. Leaning back on her elbows – and looking up at the sky – Ellie watched the wheeling gulls that called above her. She traced the jet-stream of a passenger plane, thousands of miles above and thought to herself. I wish we were on that, going to some deserted beach. Somewhere far away from the crowds and the yapping dogs: a place where the sea’s warm and I could swim without getting hypothermia. Irene wouldn’t get in the sea, she can’t swim. What was it her mother told me? I remember, she said that some idiot pushed her off a paddle boat into a lake when she was six and she nearly drowned. Ever since then she’s been scared to death of water. I can’t imagine how scary that must have been for a six year old. Maybe, when we’ve finished med school, we’ll take a gap year and go travelling.
Earlier they had discussed doing that very same thing on the island of Grenada in the West Indies. It had sounded fantastic – although it was (in Ellie’s opinion) a bit far-fetched. Ellie returned to musing about medical school and how many more years of study and training she would have to do before she was qualified. Study did not come easy to her. She always had to work very hard at it while Irene seemed to sail through her tests and exams without much effort. She would have been jealous of Irene if she had not been so fond of her.
Ellie and Irene were sitting a few hundred yards from the shore where the gentle waves lapped back and forth kicking up a white froth. At the far end of the beach was Brighton Pier with the fairground. The Big Dipper twirled and twisted, carrying its load of children and reluctant parents.
Ellie noticed a man flipping a bright yellow disk in and out of the waves for two tiny dogs to chase. The water had soaked his knee length trousers and they were hanging down revealing the crack of his arse. It was an ugly sight to which he seemed stupidly oblivious. The term ‘knuckle-dragger’ came to Ellie’s mind, and she longed even more to be on the plane that soared high above them.
No one noticed that the gulls had stopped crying. The noise from the beach had drowned out their whining cries. Ellie looked up at the gulls and noticed them behaving oddly; plunging from the sky like a flock of feathered, spent fireworks. A few of the birds landed on the beach nearby and crouched low to the ground, wings touching the sand, heads bowed low, beaks gaping. They seemed stunned. Odd, she thought. A group of kids were poking one of the squatted gulls with a stick. It did not move.
Ellie held her hand above her sunglasses to shield her eyes from the flare of unnaturally bright light that suddenly reflected off the sea. Beneath her body she felt the earth shiver – very slightly – and at that moment the radio emitted an ear-splitting, feed-back noise. She covered her ears with both hands and shut her eyes tightly against the squealing burst of static. The radio went dead. She felt a weird pressure drop in her ears that made all the noise on the beach sound as if it was inside her head and moving down a hollow tube. She did not hear the distant screech of tires and breaking glass far behind her on the road.
12.00 a.m.
‘What the hell was that?’ Irene complained, sitting bolt upright and jiggling one slender finger in her ear. Irene tapped the dials on the radio and cursed.
A few of the holiday makers nearby were also shaking and fiddling with their music players. They looked confused. Others were cursing their portable phones (which had inexplicably shut off) bringing an abrupt halt to their conversations. A baby screamed and the dogs that had been yapping so energetically minutes before were whining and shaking their heads. The music from the fairground rides had also stopped.
‘I don’t know. Did you feel something?’ Ellie said warily.
‘Feel what?’ Irene replied, adjusting the radio and shaking it.
The readout on the front was blank.
Ellie did not respond.
‘What?’ Irene asked again.
Ellie was looking at the sky over the sea, with her mouth agape. A cold breeze passed over them like a wave. It rippled the hairs on the back of Ellie’s neck and sent a shiver through her body.
The man with the yellow disk was standing waist deep in the surf, reaching for one of the tiny dogs that looked like it might drown. The rides on the fairground had ground to a halt and people were stuck in their seats midway. Confused children were leaning over the sides of the rides, some were crying, others were screaming for help. The people who had been standing on the end of the Pier earlier were shouting and running in all directions. Frantic parents were jumping up and down below the stranded rides; desperate to rescue their children from what was coming.
Ellie was frozen to the spot in total disbelief at what she was witnessing. Her eyes saw it, but her mind refused to believe it was real. The huge passenger plane – that seconds earlier had been streaking across the sky with its payload of happy holiday makers – was plummeting towards the sea in their direction. From ten thousand feet it had accelerated to terminal velocity and was dropping so fast that the sound of its failed engines had not caught up with its descent. It was spinning down nose first and out of control at a terrifying speed like a stricken bird. The sound that followed seconds later tore a raw strip out of the sky as the plane smashed into the water just off the shore nearest to the Pier. The noise from the plane continued after it had carved a hole in the sea and disintegrated into a mass of silver shards and flames. Chunks of wreckage were catapulted up into the air.
The whole of Brighton Pier rocked from the impact and the legs of the Pier buckled under the stress. The Big Dipper lunged towards the sea so that part of it hung over the edge; dangling its petrified passengers with it.
The plane exploded into flames when it hit the sea and a shock wave of black water (alight with aviation fuel) sprayed towards the shore at incredible speed. The wave (which Ellie estimated must have been at least one-hundred feet high) was carrying debris and charred bodies from the wreckage when it ploughed first into the Pier and then the beach.
A woman was shouting at the man with the dog from further up the beach. She did not see the exploding wreckage from the plane that was heading in her direction. It landed with a sickening thump on top of her and rolled over into a smoking heap. Parts of her blackened body were welded to the underside of a pair of airplane seats.
Terrified tourists ran in all directions as the black smoking ‘tidal-wave’ of water hurtled rapidly outwards.
