Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2)

Child of
Recklessness

By

Matthew
R. Bell

All
rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or
otherwise, without prior permission from the author.

Copyright
© 2014 Matthew R.
Bell

Also by Matthew R. Bell

The Trials of Strength

Fear of
God

Child of
Recklessness

To my biggest supporters: Mum and Dad

The Recap

Greystone was a peaceful, idyllic town in the highlands of
Scotland, a safe, secure place where I used to live. I attended
college, led a normal life with a loving mother and a workaholic
father. In my opinion, it was perfect, a life I was content with, a
life I was positive would continue the way it was.

I was
wrong.

The day it began started like any other. I woke and ate
breakfast and headed for college. I remember feeling anxious that
day, concerned, but like the
normal
guy I was, I ignored it. Then everything went to
hell. I was told my father had had a heart attack, so I rushed home
only to find my mother lying in a pool of blood. After that things
got worse. The people in town changed, not all, but
enough.

At the
time we weren’t sure whether it was the world or just our town, but
it didn’t matter. Several residents of Greystone turned into
mindless killers, animals with no recognition of their loved ones,
of their friends, just an unquenchable thirst for blood and death.
What they had lost however was replaced with increased strength,
speed and other abilities that made them almost
unstoppable.

I was
thrown into this world with my parents’ fates left unanswered and
bundled with a suspicious group of survivors deep under the town in
tunnels that no one knew about. We tried to escape, but the people
behind the change had us trapped. The town itself was perfect,
surrounded by mountains far away from civilisation, coupled with
that was the bombs and snipers that stopped us from leaving, and we
had no other option but to play in the sick game we had been forced
into, even though we didn’t know the rules.

During
that time, I became increasingly close to a number of survivors. We
became a sort of dysfunctional family in a short space of time. We
opened ourselves up, albeit reluctantly, forced to hand over our
trust, our lives, to survive.

It
turned out the group terrorising us used to be a secret science
division of the government, they broke off after their experiments
reached extremes and the results weren’t what were wanted. To top
it off, my father, the man I was worried for was their esteemed
leader, and the tunnels were an old testing ground. The town and
people were just another experiment, another trial to perfect a
drug that would change the world, a drug that altered DNA and gave
the subject increased attributes. The only problem was people are
more resilient than they anticipated, and it came with some
downsides, the subjects gained those incredible abilities, but the
mind rejected the change, leaving their bodies a warzone between
old and new.

Greystone was my father’s last chance, one last experiment
that surprisingly revolved around me. Using the town as a sort of
Petri dish, he created trials for me to struggle through, events
that would enable me to overcome their drug and become the perfect
little soldier he dreamed of. It worked. After a month their plans
had come to fruition and I was changed into something far different
from what I was before. I had that strength and speed and
accelerated healing, increased senses. I also had a new
determination to survive.

In the
end, a few survivors and I fought back, we battled the changed
residents of Greystone and I personally went after my father. He
escaped though, and I found out his group wasn’t the only one
interested in the success of his plans. There were now two parties
involved in this nightmare. The town was destroyed and buried by a
bomb my father detonated, but we escaped with a new
mission.

Stop
this group headed by my Dad, and make sure the events at Greystone
never happened again.

The Infiltration

The moon
was full and it lit up the night in silver. An icy wind blew around
the rooftop I crouched on as I stared down through the huge round
skylight into the room below. It was large, cylindrical like the
window I stared through, but sparse. Its tiled floors and stone
walls set alarm bells off in my mind. It was too empty. A single
computer sat straight below where I stood, at the back of the room,
and across from it was the wide entranceway that led in.

I drew a
deep breath, filtering through my thoughts. The test we were acting
out would hopefully prove Chris’s fears correct or not. It was
simple, wait for Anna to come into the room, and then enter the
room myself, my way a little more destructive, and a lot more
surprising.

Come on.

I
wrapped my arms around myself. Two months had passed since we
escaped Greystone, and the hunt for my father, Richard Bishop, was
dismal. There was also Anna’s brother and perhaps, if Richard had
been telling the truth, my twin sister to find.

The wind
stilled, and my ears honed in on a short, sharp sound. A normal
person wouldn’t have heard it, but I was no longer normal. That
saved my life. I moved, using my unnatural speed to shift out of
the way of a bullet hurtling through the air. I was on my feet and
sprinting when another hit the ground where I had crouched. I raced
across the roof and hid behind the entrance out onto it.

Damn it! Not another one!

I didn’t
dare peek around the corner. I knew I wouldn’t see the sniper
anyway.

‘
Lucas!’ Anna’s voice was muffled by the ground at my feet, but
I heard her.

Shit!

We
didn’t need this. We didn’t need more complications to add to the
mix, but life wasn’t the way it used to be, I wasn’t the way I used
to be. I threw myself out into the line of fire and barrelled at
the skylight. I felt something whiz by my cheek, but it missed, and
just when I started to panic, I jumped at the window and crashed
into the room below.

The Truck

One Month Earlier

I could
hear the two heartbeats along with my own, Anna’s, and the baby’s
in her body. It froze me for a second, as snow cascaded from the
sky, as the televisions in the shop window blared and the truck
jumped the pavement towards us.

With my
speed, I grabbed Anna, and using my right leg, jumped off of Chris,
trying to get us all to safety. We were lucky. I landed on my back
with Anna on top as the truck crashed into the shop window. Glass
exploded around us, on us, and television sets sparked and ripped
apart as the truck obliterated them. The vehicle came to a sudden
stop as it hit something hard, the tail end jumping into the air
and hitting the ground with an audible thud.

People
in our street screamed, others rushed over to see if we were
alright.

‘
Anna?’ I said.

‘
I’m fine,’ she gasped. ‘I’m fine. Where’s Chris?’

I
scanned around us but couldn’t find him. My heart raced and my eyes
widened as they shot back to the truck.

No.

‘
No!’ Anna repeated my thoughts.

Tears
gathered in her eyes and for a second all I could do was blink. No
way after everything we had been through could this be the end of
someone like Chris, Chris the hardened ex-army guy who had been
instrumental in saving our lives.

‘
Son of a bitch!’ a voice screamed.

Chris
rounded the truck and stumbled towards us, a nasty cut on his head.
I sighed with relief, and Anna stood, surprisingly throwing her
arms around him. I had always assumed Chris was in his mid-forties,
his movements fast, flexible and frightening, but we’d learned,
rather reluctantly from him, that he was fifty-four. It showed on
his scarred and line marked face, a face that had weathered more
than any of us. He had brown hair, peppered with grey, and his eyes
were a brown so dark, that it was like looking into
oblivion.

‘
Thank God,’ Anna said.

‘
Takes a lot more than that to kill me, sweetheart,’ Chris
replied, however relief filled his features. ‘Nice thinking.
Thanks.’

He
nodded at me, and I nodded back, but it was hardly necessary.
Saving each other was what we did. I stood up as more people began
to gather and stare at the wreckage. A few were on their mobiles,
no doubt calling for help. I wondered for a second what they
thought had happened; an accident? Some poor driver, who was
probably dead? I knew differently. I had watched the man behind the
wheel deliberately jump the pavement, and intentionally aim for
us.

‘
Chris-’ I started, but he cut me off.

‘
I know,’ he whispered.

I walked
towards the wreckage and my feet crunched the broken glass beneath
them. As I reached the back of the truck, the driver’s side burst
open, and a man fell from his seat. He was covered in blood; his
arm cradled his side as he tried to stand. Eventually, he gave up,
and collapsed with his back against the vehicle. I had to be
quick.

Chris
and Anna followed as I faced the man and crouched. I stared into
his one open eye, the other a shiny red mess.

‘
Who sent you?’ I said.

He
looked at me and laughed with a choked sound that turned into
painful coughs. Once the fit stopped, he glared at me.

‘
Who sent you?’ I spat, my voice rising.

I could
hear sirens in the air, emergency services racing to the scene. We
didn’t have much time.

‘
Lucas, we have to go,’ Chris said and grabbed my shoulder. ‘We
can’t stay here.’

‘
We have to know!’ I said and pulled away.

Our
attacker continued to glare, a smile separating his lips. I brought
my fist against his face, blood burst from his mouth and he spat a
tooth onto the ground. He faced me again, that smug grimace never
leaving his expression.

‘
You’re… you’re wasting your… your time,’ he coughed, his face
grimaced as he tried to draw in air.

Before I
could stop him, he brought a shard of glass up and stabbed himself
in the throat. I gasped along with Anna as blood spurted onto us.
It didn’t take long, the man stared into our faces as his body
shuddered, and his final guttural breath left his lungs. The sirens
in the air were almost deafening, and Chris swore. Bending down he
riffled through the bloody clothes on the man. He came back with a
wallet, a USB drive and a packaged syringe. I stared at the last
item as something niggled at the back of my mind. A sense of déjà
vu, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I stood
as Chris pocketed the wallet and drive. Dropping the syringe, we
made our way out of the massacred shop. When we reached outside we
were greeted with an audience of concerned faces. A few screamed as
we emerged, and as I looked down I saw that all three of us were
covered in the dead man’s blood.

Shit.

‘
Come on, we have to move,’ Chris asserted, leading the way
through an alley off to the side.

‘
What now?’ Anna asked.

I shook
my head. I had no idea what to do. Our plan sounded good spoken out
loud, stopping my father was the most important thing we had to do,
but how?

And now we’re fleeing a crime scene, leaving a dead body in
our wake. Great.

We
jogged further off, the sounds of sirens lessening and the world
returning to some semblance of order. We had to move quickly,
soaked in blood and looking the way we did would make us stand
out.

‘
Let’s just get back to the hotel,’ Chris belatedly answered
Anna. ‘First things first, we get changed and regroup. We need to
move, they’ll be looking for us.’

I
nodded. Now we had the police to worry about too, and with no one
on our side but us, our chances were slimming.