The Dark Atlanta Series, Intelligenz

By Lloyd Blake

Atlanta, Georgia. Something disturbing is happening at one of America's most successful tech companies. A girl is found dead in her home shower cubicle. A home linked to the Intelligenz corporation network of technologically advanced gated communities. This suspicious death, in a world where everything is scrutinised by the media, sets off unprecedented interest.
A young rookie journalist, Clara Flockhart, is assigned by her chief editor, Eric Nash, to investigate the strange happenings at the Intelligenz compound. An assignment that will plunge her into the unknown and lead her straight to the man whose company is being rocked by events outside of his control, Brandon Bloomfield.
At the same time, a young college dropout, Karl Jones, has his own suspicions about the recent death and the gated community that has overtaken his neighbourhood. Suspicions that will see him undertake his own exploration of the Intelligenz compound, he calls the fortress.
As the body count climbs and the nanotechnology, Intelligenz has secretly guarded, comes under scrutiny, the mysterious riddle as to what is actually happening deepens.
Is there a saboteur lurking within the corridors of the fastest growing company in America's corporate history? Or does the darkness come from an unlikely source.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lloyd Blake
• Release date: Feb 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370540952

Lloyd Blake

Born in London England, from a young age Lloyd Blake enjoyed reading comics and writing short stories. Lloyd Blake first began writing for ezines - writing music reviews on up and coming artist releases and articles on music artists. Lloyd graduated from London Metropolitan University in 2006 and during a break from studying decided to forfill a life long ambition of writing a novel. The novel had to be a story with a gripping and intriuging storyline with conflict and the uncertainty that conflict brings at the heart of the story. With an interest in world issues and science fiction, the fight for naturah was born. Lloyd also harnessed much of the stories themes from global isssues affecting the lives of many. The end result is an exciting debut full of intrigue.

Book preview

Foreword

I really enjoyed writing INTELLIGENZ. The entire experience was a learning curve. I learned so much about nanotechnology, neurology and researched elements of psychology, which was really interesting. I was really gripped by all of these subjects. Creating the concept, building the characters and the world around the characters was also enjoyable.

Getting into the heads of my characters and understanding their motivations was another element that kept me going until the very end. It was nice writing for characters with extremely different personalities and it pushed me in more ways than one.

I wanted the story to occur over a few days and roll along at a pace and I think I achieved this through the action and swift occurrence of events.

I wrote this book with science fiction elements but wanted it to appeal to all readers. So, I hope many different types of reader can get something out of it.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed writing it and just maybe I think there is another story to come, with two of the leading characters. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, enjoy the novel.

Intelligenz

The human brain is the most powerful organ known to man. Its full capabilities unrealized. An enigma we have yet to completely understand.

Prologue

Bethany Laggard’s naked body resembled a collapsed manikin - legs contorted, left arm shielding her bosom, right arm slouched over her head, hand braced against misty hard plastic. She lay crammed at the bottom of a four by four foot, thick Perspex cube. Barely holding onto life, her quivering body rattled against the transparent cube. Five chaotic watery finger marks broke through steamed Perspex, running down from the top of the misty box, stopping at her fingertips.

Sodden brown hair clung to her face, trapping her features. Her once beautiful cream skin now resembled the colour of smoked bacon.

The pain Bethany felt was beyond excruciating. She felt all hot inside as if she was about to internally combust. Through folds of hair, she glimpsed her blistered water saturated hand propped against the cube. Gasping in horror, she let out a weak cry. She wanted her life to end and for it to end now. Shocked to the core, her nervous system had gone into overdrive. She could not control the shaking of her body; every movement heightened the pain.

She was trapped. She had fought like a crazed dog to get out of the floor to ceiling shower cubicle that kept her prisoner for the past hour. Had banged on the thick Perspex until her knuckles were red raw, and had screamed orders at the shower’s voice recognition software, configured throughout her home, to no avail. All this, while being bombarded with powerful jets of mist, before today, usually caressed her aching joints at a pleasurable forty-five degrees centigrade, now shooting up to an unbearable one-hundred-and-eighty degrees centigrade.

The shower cubicle had delivered a blistering onslaught of heat, crippling her to the point she no longer had full use of her legs or arms. Lying there, she felt like a caged animal at the mercy of an unscrupulous circus owner. Bewildered, she glared at the safety valve that did not budge, no matter how hard she had tried to pull on it. Right now, she had lost control over something she always felt she had ultimate control over. The place of relaxation, where she felt most safe, had turned into a death trap.

The blasts of blistering steam had ceased. For how long; she knew not. I must have blacked out from the pain. All she could hope was that they would not return. As the concentrated steam slowly cooled, she sensed now was the time to hasten an escape. She mustered on all the strength she never thought existed, wrenching her hand away from the slippery shower cubicle, slowly lifting her left arm away from her body, all the while shaking uncontrollably. Forcing both hands into the bottom of the shower, she gingerly lifted her head up, sliding her back against the slippery cocoon, cautiously untangling her mangled legs.

Now panting, she reached up to a silver hand rail; gripping with both hands. Staggering to her feet, she pulled hard on the rail. The pain afflicting her body was immense, but she had to block it out. Her head was spinning and everything was now a blur. A surge of adrenalin forced her heart to hammer hard against her chest, sending the signal that she was not about to die but was still alive. Drawing in a huge breath, she screamed the words she had said countless times. Open the shower cubicle door!

Her cry of desperation was not answered. Distraught, Bethany Laggard began to weep. Gasping in horror, she glanced to her left as the digitised temperature gage, fused into the Perspex, sprang to life. Climbing slowly at first, the green digits began to speed up, hitting eighty degrees, and then pressing on. Her heart raced and a shiver of fear ran down her spine as the numbers continued to climb. Suddenly, a burst of hot vapour surged out of one of the mini shower heads dotted around the cubicle, startling Bethany. Another hotter blast seared her calves, forcing her to jump forward. The next, even hotter, catching the side of her face, sending her spinning on her heels.

Buckling under her knees, Bethany fell to the hot, wet tiled base, shaking with fear. A scorching watery explosion tore into her flesh, forcing Bethany to scream out in agony. Reeling from the pain, it suddenly hit her that making it out of the shower cubicle alive, in her state, was unattainable. Bethany gasped for air. She could not feel the throbbing of her heart. Utterly exhausted, she felt herself slipping into unconsciousness. Another relentless blast of steam ripped into her body, and then another - each blast like a knife through flesh.

One last blood-curdling scream echoed around the bathroom… then there was silence.

The shower cubicle swallowed Bethany Laggard’s entire body in white steam, as incessant hot watery blasts raged on…

Chapter 1

Intelligenz Headquarters, Lenox square

Atlanta, Georgia

Brandon Bloomfield stood behind a blue pleated curtain that rose spectacularly into the rafters. Wearing an exquisitely fitted dark blue Armani suit with pale grey shirt and trim black tie, he anxiously held both hands together behind his back. Tapping his left foot against the floor and twiddling his fingers in preparation for his big announcement, he listened to a pre-recording of his speech that beamed into his right ear from a DVRT or digital voice recital transmitter.

The buoyant sounding voice blaring into his ear was not his own. However, the words he had spoken to the device, bleary eyed, stumbling over his words at midnight some days before, now rang with an expressive clarity, providing him the injection of self-assurance he now craved. He inwardly smiled, knowing, along with his team of expert technologists, he’d helped create the product that now fed him with reassurance. Majoring as a design engineer had gotten him to this very spot. Sometimes, he didn’t know how he did it.

A make-up girl suddenly broke his fixed gaze as she padded a sponge against his forehead. We can’t have you sweating on launch, Mister Bloomfield. She smiled. We don’t want to give the press any negative headlines for tomorrow’s newscasts.

Brandon gave her a wry smile as he straightened his cufflinks and swept his hands down the side of his jacket. The girl scurried off the stage and as Brandon followed her body form, his eyes caught the countdown clock falling from ten. This is it. Let’s go. Ruffling his hand through his hair, he cleared his throat.

At these launches, the entrance was always the part he hated most, but he had to keep on telling himself he’d done this numerous times - there was nothing to fear. A dramatic symphony of recorded drums, violins and trumpets, filled the air and the curtain began to rise up from his gleaming black Luis Vuitton shoes. As the curtain sailed over his head, Brandon strode - shoulders back head high - confidently onto stage. A rapturous applause filled the auditorium. He felt his heart skip a beat and then a warm relaxing sensation flow through his body as he glanced at the hundreds of expectant people seated within the auditorium. Turning to his left, Brandon eyed four people he knew well, seated on stools, some ten feet from him. Jenny Alvaro, one of three founders of the company and his public relations consultant, beamed from ear to ear. She looked like a proud mom at a sports day watching from the side lines.

Above their heads, the identifiable triangular emerald green logo, with the simple but effective black letter ‘I’ embedded at its centre, filled a huge screen. The company’s slogan, ‘INSIGHT, INNOVATION, INTELLIGENZ,’ dazzled boldly in green below the icon. Brandon inwardly purred with satisfaction as his eyes fell away from the company logo he helped create, and the slogan that identified his brand as the leader in home construction and advanced home appliance nanotechnology.

He now trained his gaze on the waiting audience as the applause dwindled to silence. The home, it’s where we feel most safe. He paused as his voice bounced off the walls in the arena. It’s where we feel most free. It’s a place where we can leave the outside world and all of its troubles behind. Where we can be ourselves. Where we can forget about the hard day at work. Forget about the long school day, and forget about the cold weather, or at times the sapping sun. Taking three steps closer to the audience, he raised both hands in the air. Your home is your castle, and Intelligenz homes provide the answers to all these worries. Brandon relaxed the stretched muscles in his jaw line. Intelligenz has revolutionised the way in which we use technology inside our homes, so much so, that our home owners sometimes forget there is a world beyond their iron gates. A world that at times can be harsh. A world of the have and the have not’s. Where the poorer of our society seek to join this exclusive club, and the ones who can’t, seek to destroy it. It hadn’t escaped Brandon Bloomfield that his homes were primarily targeted at the middle classes. That’s just where the money to feed his empire had come from, and he wasn’t about to cut the umbilical cord anytime soon. Home protection and Intelligenz home appliances are symbiotic - they wouldn’t exist without the other.

Brandon slowly placed both palms together and then suddenly thrust a pointed finger into the audience. Eyeing the front row, he quickly paced up and down the stage. Has anyone left their wonderful home wondering what’s going on back there? Whether the expensive 18 carat gold, diamond encrusted necklace you forgot to put away is still where you left it? Whether the $40,000 SUV is still in the driveway ready to take you across town? Or, whether an intruder has made their way onto your private property without permission with the sole intention of breaking into your home and stealing the things you hold most dear? As Brandon’s words flew off his tongue at speed, he noticed some in the crowd slowly nodding. He had them where he wanted them - the concern in their eyes told him as much.

Brandon forced a smile. Well, fear not. He noticed a woman’s eyes flare and her shoulders slump with relief. Brandon felt an injection of adrenalin course up from the pit of his stomach. It was always those brief glimpses of emotion about one of his products from a potential consumer that told him it would be a roaring money spinner.

Brandon raised a hand toward the huge screen overhead. I give you the IRSU-3.

Everyone’s eyes in the auditorium fell on the screen. A confused rumbling murmur rippled around the hall as brows ruffled and eyes squinted toward the screen. Brandon had anticipated this would be their reaction. They were staring at a live image of the tops of their heads from a huge height - a bird’s eye view.

Brandon chuckled with excitement. Now everybody, look up.

Hundreds of heads shifted skyward, eyes wide and mouth agape.

Brandon shot a hand toward the lofty concaved ceiling. The new and improved INTELLIGENZ ROVING SECURITY UNIT-3!

The crowd gasped as a sleek chromed object, half the size of a Ducati motorbike, hovered overhead. At the oval shaped head of the IRSU-3, around twenty inches in diameter, a blue light flashed above large black insect-like eyes. The machine jetted closer to the crowd below and then swung round on its axis, so that its entire body could be seen. As the machine sailed silently toward the stage, its silver smooth outer design glimmered under the lights. Although all machine, the IRSU-3 resembled a wingless insect and moved as if it had a beating heart. Its back end was shaped like a perfectly constructed kidney. There was a sinister quality about its design that would put the frighteners into any unwanted intruder. The IRSU-3 came to a stop several feet above Brandon Bloomfield’s head.

Brandon smiled as he soaked up the design of the machine he had engineered. Taking inspiration from an organ of the body, and the humble bumble bee for his design, was one of those moments of ingenuity that had cemented Intelligenz status as number one in the home appliances market for over five years, and a trailblazer in the creation of nanorobotics that brought his products to life.

This beautifully designed machine is an upgrade to the IRSU-2. Brandon craned his head, eyeing the machine. As you can see the design is much improved - a sleeker more aerodynamic body for faster speeds in flight. Don’t you think it looks sexy?

The crowd laughed.

Brandon had learned using informal language at these launches always got the crowd interested. He strode toward the technologists on the other side of the stage and stopped next to John Swift, his new chief technologist, a balding man sporting a white lab coat. And the best bit of all - I call it the golden nugget. Brandon eyed John, who looked oddly cool in a pair of black stylish shades. Brandon placed a hand on John’s shoulder. You may be wondering why the live image on screen is of you guys in the auditorium. And most importantly, you may be wondering why John here is wearing these - if I may say so - wickedly stylish shades.

Some in the audience chuckled.

Well, John is actually viewing the exact picture you see on that screen - May I. Brandon removed the dark shades from John’s face. These are what we call real time surveillance shades. Brandon placed the shades around his face, and turned his back on his captivated audience. Analysing the looks of bewitchment, he brushed a finger over the top left rim, zooming in on a young woman’s face sitting in the back row. Hey. Brandon waved a hand above his head as some in the crowd chuckled quietly. May I congratulate you on your gleaming whites, and scarlet red lipstick looks great on you. Looking pleasantly startled, the woman suddenly realised she was on the big screen, placing a hand coyly over her lips.

Brandon removed the shades and faced the crowd. You see, these shades can be taken anywhere. Across town, from state to state - even overseas. If an intruder comes onto your property with the intention of breaking into your home, you’ll know about it before they’ve even put a crow bar against the front door. Brandon raised a hand toward the hovering IRSU-3. Oh - and they’ll have this thing to deal with. Equipped with image recognition software, the IRSU-3 even learns the movements of those it is assigned to protect, distinguishing its master from that of an intruder. It also includes a new feature called dangerous object technology - the IRSU-3 can identify a gun, or knife using infrared technology. It can also determine erratic behaviour associated with an intruder. Brandon now eyed the audience with a stern expression. Should it come to the point where the IRSU-3 has to use force to apprehend an intruder, the IRSU-3 is equipped with a laser deterrent.

The crowd gasped as a front portion of the IRSU-3 slid back and a silver shaft shot forward.

Salivating at this feature, Brandon swallowed hard. It had been difficult work lobbying government to get this feature added to the machine as different states had varying takes on the governments trespass laws. A country-wide law had now been passed that allowed advanced machines the ability to apprehend an intruder using force if required.

Initially, it had been difficult convincing politicians the molecular nanotechnology on the Intelligenz network running the IRSU-3 was safe, and that the thousands of minute nanorobots could communicate and make clear cut decisions without malfunctioning. However, after rigorous testing and the odd sweetener, politicians passed the law. It’s amazing what a person will do to get a hand on one of our products, Brandon thought.

Brandon flexed both hands downward in a calming motion. Don’t worry, this one isn’t armed. The crowed collectively sighed in relief.

Bringing the presentation to a close, Brandon rubbed both hands together. He couldn’t stop smiling. Once again, he felt he had done a great job introducing another Intelligenz product to the world. An unbeatable product with home protection at its heart. Brandon glanced around the audience. Now, any questions?

A woman, two rows back, shot a hand in the air. Wearing a black raincoat, which clung to her ample shape, she looked unimpressed by the preceding presentation. Brandon had an inkling she was about to punch holes in his new product. Yes.

Brandon Bloomfield. Meghan Jones. IBN. Her tone was sharp.

Recognising she was a journalist, Brandon forced a half smile. She seemed oddly preoccupied with a translucent hologram beaming out from an instant information device attached to her wrist. He disliked journalists who wasted his precious time.

A troubled look crossed the woman’s face as her eyes pulled away from the device. In the last half hour it has come to our attention that a twenty-four-year-old woman, known as Bethany Laggard, has been found dead in one of your homes within your flagship compound at Bellshire heights. Glaring at the transparent white article, her eyes flittered over it. Deciphering the breaking news, her plump face rose up from the multifaceted device. She was found in her shower cubicle. She gazed questioningly at Brandon. Do you have any more information on this?

A collective shocked babble swept around the auditorium.

Brandon’s shoulders slumped and he felt his heart skip a beat. Shocked to the core he could not speak.

Chapter 2

Heart racing, Brandon gave the journalist a suspicious look. Over the years, he had become untrusting of journalists - one minute they were championing his company’s innovations the next they were tearing down his achievements, finding fault with the simplest glitch. Brandon shook his head. No. He paused. No I don’t - are you sure?

Yes. The journalist nodded slowly and then glanced at her information device. Her body was found this morning, by a friend I think.

Brandon drew in a deep breath and then glanced at Quentin Davoz, his press officer who was sitting in the front row. Shaking his head in disbelief, Quentin rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his chin and then quickly broke eye contact, glancing down. In that moment Brandon sensed Quentin knew more about this incident then he was letting on.

Another Journalist raised a hand and Brandon nodded in his direction.

Jeff Thomas. GNN. This is the second such incident of someone being found dead in one of your homes in as many weeks. Sir, what is going on?

Brandon swallowed hard. The hall now seemed twice the size. All eyes were now focused on him and he felt totally alone. Trying to block out the questioning looks, he glanced at Quentin. Raising a hand toward his neck, Quentin performed a cutting motion.

Brandon returned his gaze on the Journalist. I can’t comment on this until all the facts have been looked at. This launch is now over - I can’t comment any further. We don’t even know how this woman died. As you must appreciate, I have to talk to the appropriate people before I can make any further statement.

With that, Brandon hurried off stage.

***

Yo. Blaze. Have you seen this shit? Mad crazy.

Karl Jones turned in Guppy’s direction, eyeing the trail of smoke that surged from his mouth, obscuring the television set he now pointed at. What’s up?

Guppy’s eyes were wide. Something’s gone down at the fortress.

Karl Jones quickly raised his head from his slouched position up off the sofa. His head began to spin, and in that moment he realised the intoxicating fumes lingering in the air and the spliff he held between his fingers were to blame. Taking one last draw on the handmade cigarette, he placed it on the side of the coffee table, knowing it would burn itself out. His attention had been perked as soon as he heard Guppy mention the word ‘fortress.’ That was the name he and his friends had given to the Intelligenz, Bellshire heights gated community that seemed to blight his community. The fortress had sprung up at the centre of his neighbourhood like an unwanted patch of stinging nettles - at first deceptively beguiling, now an annoying irritants.

Bellshire heights had flattered to deceive. Sold to the community as a new development that would invigorate the job starved community of Kingsway town, Atlanta, Georgia, with employment, economic stability, and population diversity. Karl Jones had laughed when he saw the poster promoting Bellshire heights two years ago, and had read those two words: population diversity. He never really understood what it meant, but he guessed it meant bringing rich folk into his neighbourhood, and mostly white rich folk at that.

Karl Jones had grown up in Kingsway town from birth, and in the nineteen years he had known it, the majority of the town’s population was inhabited by blacks, and within the last fifteen years, Hispanics had moved into the area. Hispanics had found it hard to settle into the area at first, Karl remembered.

As a five-year-old, Karl would listen to his teenage cousins and their friends highly charged discussions on the Hispanic invasion, and their elaborate plans of ambushing Hispanic school kids, for their valuables, on their way to and from school. Over the years, this animosity soon dispersed, Karl knowing they had been accepted into the community when he caught his cousin Jessica, smooching with a Latino boy one moonlit night on his grandmother’s porch.

Bellshire heights, however, with its iron gated perimeter and huge sprawling mansions, had failed to give his community the reinvigoration it needed. Sure, the fortress had physically reinvented a part of Kingsway with impressive technologically advanced buildings, but in Karl’s eyes, only for the few. The few that could afford to live a life of complete luxury. Those with high flying jobs and not a care of where the next meal was coming from. Those few who failed to acknowledge him. Those few who had bulldozed their way onto his patch and had failed to learn his way of doing things or change their behaviour to suit him.

Now, eyeing the thin circular television screen, Karl Jones focused on the reporter - umbrella in hand - standing outside the rain soaked imposing gates of the Intelligenz, Bellshire heights compound.

Speaking loudly over the persistent raindrops, the reporter, face serious, nodded. Bill, at this moment in time we have no idea of how Bethany Laggard died. All we know, at present, is that she was found inside her shower cubicle by her boyfriend. He is said to be hysterical by the condition in which he discovered her body.

So can we assume she died of natural causes? the newsreader asked.

At this point, nothing has been confirmed from the coroner’s office and we will have to wait for a post mortem. It seems…

Karl shook his head, eyeing Guppy. Damn. Isn’t that the second person to die in that place this month?

Guppy pulled hard on his spliff, releasing a lazy plume of smoke from his lips. Sure is.

Karl sighed with anger. How many people’s lives is that dump going to destroy?

Guppy’s hazy eyes now looked clueless. I don’t know Blaze, I don’t know.

Since the grand opening of Bellshire heights two years ago, from Karl’s knowledge, the Intelligenz compound had taken many casualties. If it wasn’t Big Sam’s liquor store having to close down because it sat on land bought by the Intelligenz Corporation, it was his friends being locked up for challenging the might of Bellshire heights, and Intelligenz itself.

To Karl and his friends, Bellshire heights was like an enormous gleaming twenty-four carat gold diamond encrusted ring sitting in the middle of his community. A ring that wouldn’t stop blinging. A ring that said, look at me, look at how expensive I am. It wasn’t the fact it did this that drew Karl’s attention to it. It was the fact that Bellshire heights separated itself from his community. Bellshire heights, with all its technological brilliance, said it was better than him - he was nobody.

Karl and his friends had made it their intention to challenge this ‘up your own ass ego,’ and they would do it by breaking into homes within the fortress.

Scaling those shiny iron gates and outwitting the fortresses security, was a monumental challenge that gave Karl and his friends an immediate adrenalin rush and put a little money in their pockets. Karl and his friends weren’t stupid, if the compound was not going to directly improve their lives, then they would make it their priority to siphon money from the compound. Bets were waged on whether Karl and his crew could infiltrate the compound and steal valuables. And it was at high school where most of the deals were done.

Karl remembered one such deal in the school canteen vividly. All of his close friends, including Guppy, and a group of kids from different classes were huddled around a lunch table.

A girl named Josie took a huge slurp from her can of cola, slamming the can onto the table. So you’re telling me you think four of you can sneak into the compound and then somehow break into four homes and get the good stuff?

Karl, eyeing his close co-conspirators, slowly nodded. We’ve all done it before.

Jacob, a close friend of Karl’s, leaned forward. And we’ve always brought back the good stuff.

Hold up! Shifty, a skinny kid with glasses and a square high top, shook his head. Not all at once you ain’t.

True. Karl and his friends had never synchronised a strike on the compound. However, with each successful assault, the stakes had to be raised. Karl smiled broadly, head down, whispering now. That’s why the bets have to be higher. You bet $10 each, once we’ve sold the goods you get $20 on top of your $10 – that’s $30 back in total. And if we don’t, you get your money back. It‘s a win, win. Karl knew, he could get hundreds of dollars for the stolen goods on the black market.

Everyone around him slowly nodded.

That daring deal was one of Karl’s crews riskiest, but it paid off. That could not be said for the one that followed.

Now staring at the television set in his bedroom, his awkward fascination with Bellshire heights had just been reawakened.

Chapter 3

Enraged, Brandon kicked the sliding doors to the Intelligenz boardroom before they could open automatically. The doors swiftly parted and Brandon strode into the spacious room. Sat around a grand glass table were members of the board, technologists, his public relations consultant Jenny Alvaro and press officer Quentin Davoz. Brandon had called a hastily arranged emergency meeting.

Pulling his chair forcefully away from the table and slumping down on it, Brandon slammed a fist against the glass in frustration. Quentin, I can’t believe you allowed me to go out there, knowing what had happened to that girl! Brandon glared angrily at the young press officer. What the hell were you thinking?

Quentin’s Adam’s apple rose and fell as slight signs of perspiration appeared beneath his blonde trendy gelled back hairstyle. Brandon, you had a huge launch ahead of you - I assumed it needed your full focus.

Brandon felt his entire body grow hot. He pulled hard on his neck tie, loosening it in a bid to cool himself. He suddenly wondered whether he had put too much faith in his relatively inexperienced press officer. So, the death of a young girl in one of our homes didn’t need my full focus - is that what you’re saying?

I only found out about this incident two minutes before you were due on stage. I figured it was best to go ahead with the launch, considering how much time, effort and money had gone into it.

Brandon stopped short of retaliating on hearing that crucial word, ‘money.’ He had always drummed it into his workforce and close members of his team, that in business, money should not be wasted and at every opportunity utilised effectively to push the business forward. He wasn’t about to go back on that tenet inside the boardroom. So, what more do we know about the situation the girl was found in.

Quentin’s young eyes looked heavy and his nostrils quivered. It seems she was scalded to death. I sent one of our cameras down to take pictures before the body was taken away. Quentin removed a silver pen-like object from his shirt pocket, pressing down on it. I must warn you these pictures are graphic.

The transparent table under Brandon’s fingertips suddenly morphed into an image of a bathroom. At the centre of the picture, a woman - skin red raw with peeling white flesh - lay lifeless at the bottom of a shower cubicle. A smashed shower cubicle door wide open, a naked smouldering torso half out of the cubicle.

Brandon felt his stomach wrench as another graphic scene emerged. My gosh. How could this have happened? He turned to John who sat on the opposite side of the table.

John looked stunned. "After her body was removed, I sent a team of experts on site to take samples of the nanorobots within