Perception: The Senseless Series, #4

By W.J. May

Everyone needs to be a hero at one point in their life.

Eight months ago, six friends took shelter from a storm in a uranium mine, and walked out with super senses. Now, one of them is dead. The other is working off a prison sentence as a CI. With the woman who killed Rylee safely locked away and graduation rapidly approaching, Zoe dares to hope that she might have a chance at a normal life.

Then Kieran shows up in her living room, wounded after a fight with an unknown assailant. With him comes the military, a team of top-secret scientists studying the secrets of the Radium Halos, and the shattering revelation that Zoe's dad has been lying to her. Worse still, Rylee's killer, in a display of terrifying new powers, has escaped the secure psychiatric facility that held her.

Reeling and lost, Zoe tries to find solace in her steady, predictable relationship with Brent, but it's Kieran who draws her. Kieran who's the first to hear when Zoe's abilities start changing in strange and frightening ways.

With her world falling apart around her, Zoe has to make a choice: hope her father finds a cure for the abilities that have ruined her life, or stand up and take on the mantle of hero once and for all. If, that is, she can survive long enough to make the decision.

An incredulous group of heroes. A traitor in the midst. Some dreams are written in blood.

This is the final book of the Senseless Series. Join Zoe, Brent, Kieran on an epic adventure of supernatural, love, loss and thrilling mystery.

The Senseless Series

Radium Halos – Part 1

Radium Halos – Part 2

Nonsense – Book 3

Perception – Book 4

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Shadow Publishing
• Release date: May 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393125167

W.J. May

About W.J. May Welcome to USA TODAY BESTSELLING author W.J. May's Page! SIGN UP for W.J. May's Newsletter to find out about new releases, updates, cover reveals and even freebies! http://eepurl.com/97aYf   Website: http://www.wjmaybooks.com Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-WJ-May-FAN-PAGE/141170442608149?ref=hl *Please feel free to connect with me and share your comments. I love connecting with my readers.* W.J. May grew up in the fruit belt of Ontario. Crazy-happy childhood, she always has had a vivid imagination and loads of energy. After her father passed away in 2008, from a six-year battle with cancer (which she still believes he won the fight against), she began to write again. A passion she'd loved for years, but realized life was too short to keep putting it off. She is a writer of Young Adult, Fantasy Fiction and where ever else her little muses take her.

Book preview

The Senseless Series:

Radium Halos - part 1

Radium Halos - part 2

Nonsense - Book 3

Perception – Book 4

Find W.J. May

Website:

https://www.wjmaybooks.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-WJ-May-FAN-PAGE/141170442608149

Newsletter:

SIGN UP FOR W.J. May's Newsletter to find out about new releases, updates, cover reveals and even freebies!

http://eepurl.com/97aYf

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Perception Blurb:

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EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE a hero at one point in their life.

Eight months ago, six friends took shelter from a storm in a uranium mine, and walked out with super senses. Now, one of them is dead. The other is working off a prison sentence as a CI. With the woman who killed Rylee safely locked away and graduation rapidly approaching, Zoe dares to hope that she might have a chance at a normal life.

Then Kieran shows up in her living room, wounded after a fight with an unknown assailant. With him comes the military, a team of top-secret scientists studying the secrets of the Radium Halos, and the shattering revelation that Zoe’s dad has been lying to her. Worse still, Rylee’s killer, in a display of terrifying new powers, has escaped the secure psychiatric facility that held her.

Reeling and lost, Zoe tries to find solace in her steady, predictable relationship with Brent, but it’s Kieran who draws her. Kieran who’s the first to hear when Zoe’s abilities start changing in strange and frightening ways.

With her world falling apart around her, Zoe has to make a choice: hope her father finds a cure for the abilities that have ruined her life, or stand up and take on the mantle of hero once and for all. If, that is, she can survive long enough to make the decision.

AN INCREDULOUS GROUP of heroes. A traitor in the midst. Some dreams are written in blood.

This is the final book of the Senseless Series. Join Zoe, Brent, Kieran on an epic adventure of supernatural, love, loss and thrilling mystery.

Contents

The Senseless Series:

Find W.J. May

Perception Blurb:

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

The Senseless Series

Find W.J. May

More books by W.J. May

PROLOGUE

Kieran

All right, Scotland Yard, Officer Davis said. You’ve had your goodbyes and you’ve closed the case. Time to go back to your cell.

My jaw tightened. I didn’t need the officers who called themselves my handlers to like me, but was a little bloody respect too much to ask?

I’d appreciate it if you called me Kieran, Officer. I smiled a little too sweetly at him. It’s a small enough request, me being a valuable asset and all.

Valuable asset. Davis scoffed. You’re a jumped up killer with delusions.

I guess you’ll not be too worried if I tell you that I’ve just foreseen your death, then.

He shoved me roughly in the direction of the cells. I’d watch your mouth if I were you, Hunt. Threatening an officer isn’t going to make you any friends.

Neither is being a royal arse. I wisely decided not to voice the words. Davis had been on a power trip since I was assigned to him, and he wasn’t likely to appreciate me taking the piss. Even the more reasonable officers I’d run into seemed pretty keen on keeping me in my place, but at least they mostly just avoided anything that could be interpreted as friendly. Davis had been less than happy being saddled with what he called ‘bloody babysitting duty,’ and was determined to make me as miserable as he was.

I didn’t have far to go anyway. Not after saying goodbye to Zoe, probably forever. Three years was more or less an eternity from where I was standing, and she had no reason to wait for me. By the time I was a free man again, she’d be halfway to a university degree and happily planning kids’ names with Brent. I shuddered.

Davis led me down a hallway to an old storage room they’d remodeled—if you could call it that—into my new home. Elliot Lake didn’t have the space to house long-term prisoners in regular cells, especially not the sort best kept out of the way, like me. The Radium Halos floating in my blood made me more valuable on the black market than an original DaVinci. That required more protection than most of the prisoners had, and my extra-sensory abilities required more supervision. All of which meant, like it or not, I got special treatment.

Davis unlocked the several locks on my cell door before opening it to reveal a small cot and thin blanket with a portable toilet chair right next to it. Aside from a small stack of books on the bed, it was depressingly empty. I wished more than ever that the story I’d told Zoe about being allowed to go wherever I wanted within a mile of the station was true. Davis took off my tracking anklet and shoved me into the room before slamming the door.

I sat down on my cot and looked at the books. While most convicts went to an actual prison and got regular access to a library, among other amenities, I was allowed to check out three books per week from the public library to fill my hours of free time. I had chosen two of the thickest novels I could find and a book on meditation and yoga. Whether it would be helpful or not was still in question, but I had to learn how to control my powers somehow. And I had no intention of leaving the process up to the experts I’d been told were coming to study me. I needed to be valuable fast. Random spurts of vision weren’t going to help me keep the deal that had saved me from life in a prison cell.

I sighed and stretched before stripping off my t-shirt and tossing it on the bed. Then I got down on the floor to do sit-ups. Working out might have been a poor means of keeping my sanity, but it was one of the only methods I had.

But as soon as my back touched the cement floor, I froze. I was in a hospital room, but I knew immediately it wasn’t my own eyes I was seeing through. I was handcuffed to the bed by one wrist. I reached up and grabbed a bobby pin from my hair and inserted it into the lock of the handcuffs. It only took me a second to be free. I got up as quietly as I could so I wouldn’t tip off the police officer waiting right outside my room. It was on the first floor. However the window, when I went to look out it, was locked. I glanced back at the police officer, getting a glimpse of him through the narrow glass pane in the door. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and I knew he was asleep.

A quick look around the room told me my options were limited. I grabbed the heart-rate monitor, picking it up carefully, and then slammed it through the window. Glass shattered everywhere. The officer jerked awake, but he was too late. I was out the window and running before he ever made it out of his chair.

I opened my eyes to my own small cell, breathing hard. Realization came quickly. I knew whose eyes I must have seen through. I jumped to my feet, pounding as hard as I could on the locked door that separated me from the rest of the station.

Help! I shouted. HELP!

Chapter 1

Dr. Landers

I hate this.

I shook my head slightly to get my mind out of the dark cloud I felt like I was constantly drowning in. My breathing grew shallow, and my vision went in and out of focus as I made my way to my car. My feet felt like lead, and I unconsciously tugged at my tie to loosen it. It felt like a noose around my neck.

It had been a handful of months since our return from Mexico and everything that happened after, and things seemed to have finally calmed down for Zoe and the rest of the kids. For me, it had been utter chaos. My mind kept spinning over the strange occurrences that had piled up in the aftermath of the mine. Being a doctor under normal circumstances—even in a town as small as Elliot Lake—was hectic enough, but being a doctor discovering that your daughter and her friends had somehow developed superpowers made everything that had come before it seem like a cakewalk.

I placed my briefcase, stethoscope, and scrubs in the trunk of the car, then sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine. For a moment I just sat, gripping the steering wheel until the bones in my hands creaked. My knuckles went white with tension. I consciously loosened my fingers, drumming them on the soft leather of the grip.

I had to make sure my head was clear and focused. It was easier said than done. The intensity of what I was about to do washed over me like a cold wave, threatening to crush me. Taking another deep breath, I let the air out of my lungs in one long sigh and shifted gears. I drove out of the parking lot, slowly at first, then picking up speed as I started to pull myself together.

There’s no escaping this.

I fought back the anxiety that came with knowing I was on my way to the asylum for the criminally insane.

Where I was scheduled to meet Eleanor.

It was a long drive, and it should have been peaceful. A blanket of snow softened the edges of the trees crowded close to the street’s margins, and the sun hung bright and serene in a pale blue sky. The houses were laid out in neat little rows, smoke drifting here and there from chimneys. Elliot Lake was a perfect, picturesque little town. No one would ever think there was something strange going on, just beneath the quiet surface.

But Eleanor knew.

I was still beating myself up about the fact that she had been the one hunting the kids down to take their powers. How could I have been so stupid? How had I not realized? She was the only one who could’ve known about my research on the Radium Halos, the only one who had any access to the details about the kids. It was my fault Rylee was dead. My fault Heidi and Brent had been taken hostage. My fault Brent had nearly died for Eleanor’s plans to profit on his blood. And it was my fault Eleanor had abilities that threatened not just Elliot Lake, but everyone.

Luckily, that threat had been more or less contained.

Here we are, I thought as I pulled into the asylum’s parking lot thirty minutes later. The doctor in me was excited about what I might discover, especially given that Eleanor had more than one super sense. But with that excitement came worry. Try as I might, my body felt more primed for flight than fight. The more I thought about the woman I was about to check on, the more I felt as though something terrible loomed just ahead. I gave up on my already loosened tie, stripping it off altogether and tossing it into the passenger seat in a crumpled heap.

Eleanor was far from stable. None of us knew what she was capable of. She had tried to kill my daughter, for Pete’s sake. I checked my appearance in the rearview, making sure I didn’t look as haggard as I felt, and got out of the car.

There was something unsettling about walking down the corridors of an asylum for the criminally insane. Elliot Lake shouldn’t have needed such a place. But it did.

The guard escorting me was kind enough to keep his hand firmly placed on top of his baton and his other hand on his walkie-talkie—to call for help in case someone jumped and attacked. Highly unlikely with all the doors locked, but for some odd reason the possibility still crossed my mind. Eleanor’s room was at the far end of the wing, isolated, where she couldn’t wreak havoc.

As though thinking of her had summoned her attention, a loud but low-pitched sound came from the room just ahead. Eleanor.

She spoke slowly, every single word emphasized, as if each held a kind of power. Well, well, well. What do we have here? Dr. Landers in the flesh? Come to visit little ol’ Eleanor?

I stopped.

Eleanor, tone it down, the guard said nonchalantly, as if the psychotic voice calling out to us was an everyday norm for him. It sent shivers down my spine, but I was determined to get the samples needed.

The guard stopped at Eleanor’s door. It looked heavy, with thick bars where a small window should have been. He unhooked a collection of keys that hung off the side of his belt, slowly flipped through them, and let out a satisfied grunt when he found the right one.

Here we go! he exclaimed as he unlocked the door, pushing it open and stepping aside to let me through. You have a guest today, Eleanor. Something that doesn’t happen all that often, huh? Be nice, and the good doctor might visit you again.

I had been to the asylum before, but not in her room—only in the infirmary where she’d been sedated. I stepped forward into the room.

The first thing that hit me was the smell of Eleanor’s perfume—she had always worn the same one when she worked for me, filling the whole room with its pungent lime and lavender undertones. It had always grated on