Quinn - The Assassin: Zero, #1.1

By Clifford Barker

Quinn, a lost and forgotten little boy who never asked to be born. Deaf, mute and damaged, every day is a battle to survive ... In the orphanage, then the asylum. There seems to be no end to his suffering. Then one fateful day a giant load of trouble arrives not to save him, but to salvage him. Khaalida will repurpose the broken child, into a tool to do her bidding and accomplish something great ... To kill the mysterious Cabal's agent Zero and put an end to their endless meddling in her attempts to drive mankind forward towards a technological future. 

Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clifford Barker
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393196518

Clifford Barker

An artist from a young age, Clifford Barker followed his father into engineering. After relocating from his home town of Sheffield, England, he now enjoys life with his family in South Wales. Now 47, Clifford is continuing to write the Zero- Earth series of sci-fi action adventure novels. When not writing, he is usually working, drawing, watching anime, riding his motorcycle, or playing with his two dogs. Clifford illustrates his own covers. The Zero series is now three books strong. Zero - Earth Fire was released in March 2020 and Zero - Earth Fall was released in December 2020. Book 4, Zero - Into Ashes is well underway and will be released in 2021. Clifford then plans to expand the back ground of the series with a series of supporting short stories. Quinn the Assassin, centred around the assassin from Zero - Earth will be the first..  

Book preview

Quinn:

The Assassin

A Zero - Earth Short Story

Author:- Clifford Barker

Zero - Earth Fire Copyright © 2021 by Clifford Barker.

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or

mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems,

without permission in writing from the author.

The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. 

Cover designed by Clifford Barker 

This book is a work of historic fiction.

Though some of the players and events were real,

the characters and events have been changed by

the story woven around them as products

of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Chapter 1 - Doctor Death

Chapter 2 - Inmate 191

Chapter 3 - 191’s Padded Hell

Chapter 4 - Mother

Chapter 5 - Dragged into the light.

Chapter 6 - The purple painted fingernail

Chapter 7 - Training begins

Chapter 8 - Rock, Paper ... Scissors ... Rock.

Chapter 9 - A monk's mistake, repaid in triplicate.

Chapter 10 - The present ... Straightening out the future.

Chapter 11 - Eat, sleep, train ... Repeat

Chapter 12 - Bear vs Eagle. The stage is set.

Chapter 13 - Missiles on the doorstep.

Chapter 14 - Quinn bears his fangs

Chapter 15 - Zero’s jacket of death.

Chapter 1 - Doctor Death

D octor Somnus! I’m telling you to cease any further work. This project ... The way you’re treating the inmates; at the very least it’s unethical. I fear people will consider you a monster. I will not cover for you anymore. What you’re doing cannot be considered a treatment. You aren’t helping them in any way.

Doctor Morren Somnus had worked at the facility for years, in all that time he had never been far from controversy. Had it not been for the director of the sanitarium, Somnus would have been stripped of his license to practice years ago. Psychiatric institutions had existed in some form for centuries, but only in the last hundred years had a new form of medical discipline begun to form. Most psychiatric doctors were sworn to help the people in their care, no matter how hard some patients would buck against their methods of treatment. The symptoms some patients exhibited could lead to some of the mildest treatments appearing both brutal and cruel, not so Dr. Somnus’s patients. They were in exactly as much pain as they appeared to be ... If not more.

Of course, some psychiatrists were better than others, they were genuinely trying to gain a deeper insight into affairs within the maladapted mind. Somnus was different, had it not been for his license to practice, the doctor would’ve most likely been an inmate. Since the doctor’s arrival in 1924, some twenty years earlier; his experiments had moved well past the fringes of what was acceptable. No longer did Somnus seek to cure the patients in his care. Without any boundaries he sought to find the limits of the human psyche. What exactly did it take to break the human soul?

In some cases people were brought to the sanitarium because they had snapped or become unable to cope in their daily lives. Others had been born different. In comparison to social norms, these people were damaged. Some of the inmates had been rendered this way by accident or disease after living normal lives. The most difficult inmates had been affected in such a way as to become criminals of the worst and most vile kind. These were the ones Dr. Somnus like to pay special attention to. These inmates were rarely still, physically or mentally; even in the calm of their cells.

Conducting his studies without remorse or empathy, Somnus found it inconceivable that he could make their already chaotic, meaningless existences any worse than they already were. The Director though had been pushed over the threshold of his blindness just over a month ago. Somnus had been continuing a series of electroshock therapy treatments upon one difficult patient. After the doctor had followed the guidelines for amperage and duration to the letter, this patient had lashed out with particular violence at Somnus. During this episode, an ageing leather strap fastened around the subject's wrist had broken. The director could not ascertain whether the injury to Somnus had been accidental or intentional. Patient 56 was a criminal too violent for the U.S. prison system to hold. Either way the fracture to Somnus’ cheek bone and right lower orbit could not be missed ... Or covered up.

I have one question for you Morren ... What were you doing stood within his reach? The controller for the stimulator is at the other side of the room. Even IF 56 strained enough to break the strap, you shouldn’t have been standing over him like that. What were you doing?

Somnus remained silent. He couldn’t admit to standing over inmate 56, staring into his eyes as they were held wide open by the pain running through his brain. The director was correct, it would take two to three seconds to walk from the controller to the bedside. Procedure dictated that he remain by the controller to switch the current off after the given duration ... Somnus had not done this. Finally with his back arching clear of the bed for almost thirty seconds, inmate 56 had broken the strap securing his left wrist. Already pre-loaded, 56’s body had then swung around his right arm to launch the perfect punch against his tormentor. With Somnus sprawled out on the floor of the treatment room, 56 had attempted to make good his escape. Unbuckling his right arm, he hadn’t gotten further than the door when a large orderly immediately scooped him up. Seeing the doctor unconscious on the floor, the orderly raised the alarm and had then singlehandedly wrestled inmate 56 back to his cell.

You were goading him?

Oh director ... I was doing nothing of the sort. Part way through the shock I noticed the strap under duress and attempted to add my weight to his body to hold him down.

Really? Was the machine still activated?

No ... I had already shut the machine down. 56 continued to strain ... As you know I was knocked unconscious so I don’t remember anything after that. Maybe after 56 got himself free his first instinct was to try and shock me back ... For revenge.

So why didn’t he?

He’s a big man ... I was out cold. He’s killed before right? Always with his bare hands. Maybe he thought I was dead already and just decided to run. You know how simple he is. I’ve told you countless times the treatments aren’t helping.

It all sounds a little convenient to me Somnus. Just make sure everything is in your report. The board will string me up by the balls if they get wind of this ... Damn it Somnus ... You’re a bona fide nightmare.

The director let the issue go, though he also hinted that he knew Somnus was lying. This time the doctor’s abuse had at least been returned with some sizeable interest.

I’m worried about you Somnus, you’re my most senior doctor. You know every patient in this place intimately. It would be bad for the patients if I had to wait for another doctor to get up to speed, but you’re backing me into a corner with a gun against my head.

Somnus looked ambivalent. He knew now that the director might be watching him more closely. A setback for sure, but for the most part things would carry on as normal. There were over two hundred people in the facility but he had only ever experimented with a handful of them. 56 was one of the worst cases. He’d been transferred from jail after he began killing his fellow inmates. He was a big, dangerous man who no longer had any appreciation of how to restrain his temper or apply his force. With the mind of a petulant, angry child; 56 took what he wanted, whenever he wanted. No one could stand in his way.

At first glance 56 was a typical case; a serial rapist who had quickly graduated to murder. Efforts to dig deeper revealed his case to be more complex than that, this was why Somnus was drawn to him. Apparently 56 had been a family man with a lovely young wife and baby son.

This had all changed after an accident at the steel plant where he worked. His external injuries had mostly healed but some facial disfigurement had resulted. The worst damage had occurred deep inside 56’s mind. Reason, empathy and love had all been erased from the young father’s mind, only to be replaced by anger and violence. After her husband had returned from the hospital, things had seemed normal enough. Over the course of one month it became clear to her that although the lights were still on, her husband was no longer there. The final straw came when her husband threw his untouched evening meal, at her head. Though the food hit her, thankfully the plate had missed. What followed was ten minutes of terror as she fought with all her might to escape the house; shielding her son. Essentially unharmed, the woman returned to her parents house. The embarrassment of her failed marriage weighed heavily on her, worst of all she had no idea what she’d done to anger her husband so. In their six year marriage and courtship before that, he had never displayed even a hint of anger towards her.

By the time the police arrived the next morning, the house was already unoccupied. The few times she’d seen her husband after this he’d been