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Miles Etherton - Author of The Codex file
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Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Miles Etherton
ISBN-10: 146995303X
Type: Fiction
Pages: 262
Copyright: February 4, 2012
ISBN-13: 146995303X
Price: $3.31 (eBook)
The Codex file is a dark technology-based conspiracy thriller about the future of the internet and its potential for misuse.
Forget everything you think you know about the internet. If you think nefarious web sites peddling a cocktail of online scams, illegal pornography, racial hatred and vicious computer viruses was all you had to worry about - think again. The government has banned access to the internet and the world wide web, dubbing it an illegal, unregulated zone. Sounds good news doesn't it, until you know that its replacement controls every aspect of your life, from digital content, provision of your gas, water and electricity, and all your money. And with everything and everybody connected, we're all now potential targets if we oppose it.
Do you still feel safe?
Empowered?
Connected?
Welcome to the future of the internet. Welcome to the Codex file.
Michael Robertson’s family has been murdered to protect the covert government project linked to establishing a new internet. Piecing together what happened leads him to four computer hackers, vehemently opposed to the new network, who provide the only means to hunt down the killers. But uncovering the truth leads to industrial espionage and a plot that leads right to the heart of government as he seeks the truth behind the Codex file.
Excerpt
Excerpt from Chapter 1
Sliding the key into the lock, the front door opened up into the dark hallway. Glancing at his watch, lit-up by the full moon, the time was a little after eleven. Normally Colette would still have been awake at this time, probably working on her laptop, but instead, all the downstairs lights were off. The only illumination came from the upstairs landing.
Flicking the hall light on Michael’s gaze dropped to the assortment of letters strewn across the carpet, just beyond the doormat. Colette prided herself on her tidiness, and the letters and bills that needed to be responded to were always stacked neatly on the side of the hall table, not lying in a mess on the floor. Maybe Harry, their cat, had taken a walk across the narrow table, he thought, closing the door gently behind him.
For a brief second he thought about calling out to Colette, but rejected the idea in case she’d gone to bed. Despite the recriminations at breakfast, he hoped she was still awake and they could enjoy some of the remaining evening together with a pleasant glass of wine.
Placing his keys on the hall table, Michael headed in the direction of the kitchen to retrieve two wine glasses. Before he reached there, he stopped, his gaze honing in one of Colette's slippers, discarded on the bottom step of the staircase. Several steps further up, one of her gold encrusted earrings, a present from their last wedding anniversary, lay unattended.
A quizzical look crossed Michael’s face as a slight frown formed before he turned and slowly began to climb the stairs. Even when she was ill, Colette wouldn’t just dump things on the stairs, especially not her favourite jewellery.
With the roses in one hand and the bottle of wine in the other, Michael gently walked up the stairs, careful to avoid the creaky step at the top.
The upstairs of the house was just as quiet as downstairs. Eerily quiet. There was no sound of life from the bedroom. No quiet mumblings from the television. Not even the quiet whistling of the wind coming in through the bathroom window which was always open, even in winter. And no sign of their cat Harry keeping guard at the top of the stairs which was his nightly ritual.
Reaching the landing one more thing wasn’t as it should have been. Their bedroom door was closed. They never closed it, just in case Clare ever needed something in the night.
Without further thought, Michael turned the door handle to his bedroom. The room, like the rest of the upstairs of their house, was in darkness. But there was something else he wasn't prepared for. The smell. A metallic chemical cocktail hung in the air, invading his senses as he grappled to decipher what it might be.
His heart began to pound and he could feel himself starting to perspire. Something was wrong, and as he reached for the light switch his sense of dread was rising by the second.
He felt the air being sucked from his lungs as artificial light bathed their bedroom. For a few long moments he stood, staring, unable to move, a sea of blood filling his vision as he looked at what had once been their bed.
Even as he stared at the sight before him, his confused thoughts couldn’t process what he was seeing. The duvet was on the floor at the foot of the bed. The sheets were stained crimson, barely a spot of white remaining. Colette was bound to the bed, her wrists fastened to the bedstead, her ankles taped together.
Michael could feel numbness and nausea creeping through him simultaneously as he took in every detail of the horror before him. Bloodied duct tape was pulled over Colette’s mouth, and what looked like a piece of rubber tubing was hanging limply from her swollen lips. On the floor next to the bed was a discarded white plastic canister. The words ‘White Spirit’ just visible from where the container lay on its side.
Beginning to shake, the acidic taste of bile burnt the back of his throat as his gaze dropped to Colette’s exposed chest, her shirt torn open and crumpled beneath her. Savage markings and lacerations had been cut into her pale flesh, the blood now dried into a gruesome message that made no sense.
‘Fuck the net’.
And on the wall above the bed, more blood, smeared in large letters, spelling out another message.
‘Reclaim the world’.
Unable to hold back the nausea any longer Michael vomited onto the floor in front of him before beginning to hyperventilate.
“That can’t be Colette,” his mind was pleading.
But he knew it was as his eyes traced the lines of blood running from the wounds in her chest, matting portions of her long brown hair together where it had got in the way of the blood flow.
And as unconsciousness crept up on him, and he slumped heavily to the floor, one more terrible thought filled his head.
Where was his daughter?
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