All Men Are Gods (Book 0.5)

By Shelley Young

A black-ops operative goes inside an insane asylum to commit murder. But the asylum is hiding secrets, along with a young patient that very well may not be human.

Moments after stepping foot through Delta Hospital’s doors, trained assassin, Michael Manus, quickly become suspicious.

Has he been set up?

Was it intended for him to leave the asylum alive?

Or is Michael simply becoming paranoid?

One thing is certain. In the end, more than his life will be at stake.

An explosive short story thriller that can leave you on the edge of your seat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shelley Young
• Release date: May 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370959754

Shelley Young

Shelley Young is the owner of Shelley Fiction Inc., and the author of The Blood Feud, The Blood Tie, Plain Dealing and several other titles. An Amazon International Bestseller, fans has dubbed her books as next to be made into Hollywood movies. A masterful suspense-builder, her work has been described as slow burning fireworks that quickly turn into atomic bombs. When she's not writing, she's a speaker, as well as coaches aspiring authors one-on-one. She resides in Southern California with her family.

Book preview

All Men Are Gods

SHELLEY YOUNG

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are solely fictitious and written from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or events is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Maduranga of mnsartstudionew

Edited by SF Publishing

www.shelleyfiction.com

Copyright © 2018 by Shelley Young

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY SHELLEY YOUNG

CHAPTER 1

Major Michael Manus didn’t realize how many places someone could hide inside the psychiatric hospital. Asylums were what they were called in the past, supposed places of protection and shelter for the mentally ill, but were mostly remembered as houses of bedlam and horror. Local newspapers depicted Delta Hospital as such a place after one of its patients escaped, somehow getting beyond all of the hospital’s high-tech security. He didn’t get far. Just to the house next door where he killed an entire family by tying them to their beds and slitting their throats.

Manus thought bedlam described Delta well. From the moment he stepped through its doors to attend the 4th Annual Psychiatry Conference hosted by the hospital’s owner, the renowned Dr. Ezra Janiak, he sensed horror and not once had he felt protected, although armed guards patrolled the large crowds, and hardly a time passed without a guard being in sight.

Delta with all of its walls painted the color of corn and halls that curved, stopping anyone from seeing who else shared the hall with them, and its many locked doors that sat either too closely together or too far apart, and its flat camera lenses that poked out of ceilings and warned at all times he was being watched; Manus constantly sensed something more happening inside Delta other than standard patient treatment. And not just bedlam and horror, but crime, like what the staff did in secret to patients that didn’t have a clear mind to fight back. He knew a lot about crime. For eight years he worked secretly for the Pentagon, as an operative for black ops missions out of the Defense Sciences Office. The hospital had come under DSO’s radar as the physical address of America’s number one threat to national security.

Select doctors attending the conference were given accommodations, in rooms adjacent to the staff that lived on grounds. To his surprise, one of these rooms had been given to him within minutes of his arrival. But no matter where he stood, regardless if it was alone in his room or when he became a part of the crowds, the atmosphere hung thick with depression, darkness and secrets. Like ghosts all three had taken form and had the ability of movement. So present were all three entities that for every attendee, Manus felt certain these ghosts stood with them, moved with them and spoke with them. He could feel all three entities’ cold touches, their icy fingers that gave him shivers, and their wintry breath that stayed suspended in the air, but each time he looked out amongst the attendees like he did now, it became obvious that he alone sensed anything. Psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts smiled with exuberant faces, all of them too rational to conclude that Delta had been purposely built as a complex maze of fourteen floors to hide illegal or macabre activity.

If that wasn’t strange enough, DSO had shocked him the most. The target he’d been sent to kill wasn’t a man or woman, but a nine year old female child and a patient inside the asylum. He had even shocked himself by accepting the assignment and coming. Kill a kid? Not him. Never him. DSO knew this and still they smuggled him in under the guise of a psychiatrist. Yet, the atmosphere and his heightened sense of alarm didn’t frighten him more than feeling like he belonged inside the building at this hour and on this day.

Use this and live another day.

That’s what the note said. A nurse handed it to him only seconds ago. After forcing it in his hand, she’d run off and disappeared before he could read the note and look up again.

Use this and live another day had been written on the fold of a Kleenex in a child’s handwriting. The note hadn’t been signed, but he knew it came from the child he’d been sent to kill.

Pushing his way through a cluster of doctors, nurses and students, he wanted to find the nurse and ask a few questions. The more he pushed the more faces he saw and arms and shoulders that needed to be pushed aside. Finally stopping, he realized there were too many places inside a psychiatric hospital for someone to hide.

That’s when he smelled it, the cloying sweetness of a woman’s perfume. His nose followed the scent, his eyes espying a tall blonde with spiked hair, wearing a gray suit with a mini skirt. One look at her and he sneezed, hard, and instinctively brought the Kleenex to his nose.

The sneeze blared like a broken horn. Smiling faces stopped talking and turned in his direction. These small actions, he would realize later, had saved his life. The blonde reached inside her purse to fish out a cocktail napkin she’d been saving to use for a similar occasion. As she handed it to him, her eyes froze over Manus’s shoulder.

The look on her face told Manus someone behind him was doing something out of the ordinary for it to have gotten the blonde’s attention like it did. He took the napkin and slid behind her, then