See No More: Gemination, #2

By Melsa M. Manton

What do you do when you come face to face with your own psyche, and it's not one you recognize?

The Sedition is crumbling and the Faction is growing stronger, but there's a chance that Stone can stop it and restore equilibrium and order. Good, old-fashioned demolition-as-distraction becomes the strategy in hopes of goading the Faction into making a mistake, into revealing their éminence grise.

As defectives from both sides join Stone and nanotechnology renders privacy obsolete, the uncertain future sparks the volatile component of her psyche and threatens what remains of her sanity. And the Faction is hunting her for more than just retaliation—they want her mind.

EVOLVED PUBLISHING PRESENTS the second installment in the "Gemination" series of sci-fi/espionage/psychological thrillers, combining the amnesiac espionage of "The Bourne Identity" with the psychological unraveling of "The Three Faces of Eve", set on the genetically manipulated stage of "Brave New World". Frontier nanotech and a hint of the supernatural interlace for some truly twisted tradecraft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evolved Publishing LLC
• Release date: Sep 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781622535521

Melsa M. Manton

Melsa M. Manton grew up roaming the mountains of Western North Carolina. An early education of Aliens, Predator, Terminator, and Stephen King led to a love of science fiction and she began writing as soon as her fine motor skills allowed. She studied International Affairs in Washington D.C. with the intention of diving into the political realm, but ended up diving into the ocean instead. An avid scuba diver, she spent seven summers sailing and teaching diving worldwide. For the next ten years, the wanderlust took her all over the world, from Russia to Tasmania, with many places in between, and eventually set her on a path of holistic medicine. She runs Blue Desert Hale, a wellness center in the mountains of New Mexico. Her life path has morphed considerably over the years, but there is one thing she has done consistently through it all. To write is to live. Melsa’s personal motto: DREAM BIG OR DIE.

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SEE NO MORE

Gemination – Book 2

Copyright © 2023 Melsa M. Manton

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ISBN (EPUB Version): 1622535529

ISBN-13 (EPUB Version): 978-1-62253-552-1

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Editor: Lane Diamond

Cover Artist: Richard Tram

Interior Designer: Lane Diamond

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

At the end of this novel of approximately 71,354 words, you will find two Special Sneak Previews: 1) SPEAK NO MORE, Melsa M. Manton’s third novel in this Gemination series, and; 2) CASS AND WAT by Cagey Magee, the award-winning first book in the NorthWatch series of futuristic young adult mystery thrillers. We think you’ll enjoy these books, too, and provide these previews as a FREE extra service, which you should in no way consider a part of the price you paid for this book. We hope you will both appreciate and enjoy the opportunity. Thank you.

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Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.

GEMINATION

Book 1: Hear No More

Book 2: See No More

Book 3: Speak No More

Book 4: Veil No More

Book 5: Sleep No More

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www.MelsaManton.com

We’re pleased to offer you not one, but two Special Sneak Previews at the end of this book.

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In the first preview, you’ll enjoy the prologue and first three chapters of Melsa M. Manton’s SPEAK NO MORE, the next installment (Book 3) in the Gemination series of futuristic sci-fi thrillers.

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OR GRAB THE FULL EBOOK TODAY!

FIND LINKS TO YOUR FAVORITE RETAILER HERE:

GEMINATION Series at Evolved Publishing

In the second preview, you’ll enjoy the first two chapters of Cagey Magee’s CASS AND WAT, the multiple award-winning first book in the exciting NorthWatch series of futuristic young adult mystery thrillers.

~~~

~~~

OR GRAB THE FULL EBOOK TODAY!

FIND LINKS TO YOUR FAVORITE RETAILER HERE:

NORTHWATCH Series at Evolved Publishing

Table of Contents

Copyright

Books by Melsa M. Manton

BONUS CONTENT

Table of Contents

Dedication

SEE NO MORE

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

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Special Sneak Preview: SPEAK NO MORE by Melsa M. Manton

Acknowledgements

About the Author

What’s Next?

More from Evolved Publishing

Special Sneak Preview: CASS AND WAT by Cagey Magee

For Jesse, the man who let me burn.

It’s boring on this side, I’ll tell you that. It’s like watching the Southern Ocean for growlers—that’s all you can do: watch. But damn, when she ended up at my front door... now that was cause for celebration.

Leyla followed the clues brilliantly, even with the interruption of that massive fight in the library.

Un-fucking-believable.

I shouldn’t have been surprised; I did design it for her, after all, and I knew her pretty well, maybe better than she knew herself.

I don’t mean to sound cocky, but she’s got a lot more on her plate than I do. I’m relatively simple, and she’s... well, she’s complicated.

Finally, we would get to talk. Well, she would get to listen, actually, for I was about to shake her world so violently, she’d be bereft of speech. I’d been waiting for this encounter patiently, biding my time, waiting for the opportune moment. So, I pressed my hand into the biometrics scanner and let her in.

She was shocked to say the least, and now, it would finally get interesting.

About damn time.

The door slid soundlessly open, revealing a concrete room with a bank of monitors that filled the wall in front of me, a security system of the highest caliber. A split second later, the monitor dead center flipped on.

I nearly shot the screen but managed to pull my trigger finger back just in time. Eva Fox waited on the other side for me, after all. I stared wide-eyed at the girl on the screen, who bore a harrowing resemblance to myself.

That’s because she is me, I told my brain.

She stared back for a few moments, blinked, and then began to talk.

"Hello, Leyla, my name is Eva. If you’re watching this and you don’t remember making it, it means that things have not gone as planned and we don’t have much time. So please, sit down and pay attention, I have a lot to tell you. Shut the door first, behind you, pad to the left." She stopped here, giving me time to comply.

I somewhat numbly turned to see a black, rectangular, hand-sized pad mounted on the wall to the left of the door I’d just come through. I figured I’d rather have an actual wall between me and the Sedition, just in case they were able to follow me this far, and take my chances with whatever dwelled on this side. I placed my hand on the pad, and the door once again slid soundlessly shut.

A chair sat directly in front of the monitor, and by the looks of her positioning on camera, it was the same chair and the same place she’d sat in to make her recording. I sat down, creeped out.

She began to make what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette. "I’m afraid I won’t be able to take questions at the end, so listen carefully." She paused for a few eerie moments while she finished rolling the cigarette, and then tucked it behind her left ear.

My left ear. I reached up and felt behind it, insanely expecting to find a spliff there and immensely relieved when I came away with nothing.

Indeed, she continued, "you and I were never meant to meet, but here we are. Today is October 13. It’s 3:30 in the morning, and I’ve just returned from what was supposed to be a meeting with the 19.

"By now, you may know a few things. You may know about this new brand of psychological warfare, which has created me, and you may know a little about Gemination, probably because they’ve been after you. I hope that Vail is alive and has found you. You can trust him, Stone, but I’ll be honest: he’s the only one I can speak for. So, trust him, just make sure it’s him. The world is one big deception from here on out, and the skill of discernment has never been so important."

Make sure it’s him? Christ, that’s something I never thought of but should have. Since Vail has a double, how do I know for sure who is who?

Eva Fox went on. When I awoke last night, after you went to bed, I received an urgent message from Thomas Colton, the one you know as John Ember. He instructed me to show him the location of the 19 and then to come directly back here. Whatever’s happened, it’s not good. They may all be dead, or as good as. All I know for sure is that Colton wanted me as far away from it as possible. This interesting turn of events has prompted me to make this recording. I hope I’m wrong and laugh at myself the next time I walk through that door. She gestured behind her at the door, now also at my back. But if I’m right, I’ll never really know.

She knew she wasn’t coming back. She had her own plan.

Everyone had their own plan, it seemed—everyone but me.

She paused here to light her cigarette. So, that’s why I’m smoking. Yes, you don’t smoke, but I do. Don’t worry, it’s not tobacco, but somewhere in here—

She tapped the side of her head—my head.

—we’ve taken a liking to various extracurricular activities we’ve been exposed to during our time at the Sedition. It’s a fairly rare occurrence, though more common recently, but unlikely to happen again. She took a drag, held it in, and then blew it out. Good job on the treasure hunt. It was the only thing I could think of ridiculous enough to make most people ignore it.

She spread her arms wide and flicked ash onto the floor. "Welcome to the Underground, aptly named after the Sedition Underground, the true Sedition Underground. So, this is what we’re going to do. She leaned her elbows forward on her knees and somehow managed to stare right into my eyes. I’m about to throw a lot of information at you. However, our brain is only going to be able to take in so much at once. We’ll break periodically, and you can wander around and explore, pondering what I’ve just told you. It’s just us down here, so, pick a door, any door—your prints will work for any of them. First break... go." She stopped here and continued smoking.

Clearly having been dismissed, I rose to have a look around as she, as I, suggested. I stood in the middle of the room at a crossroads. Behind me lay the tunnel back to the Congressman’s mansion. I stared at the ominous black pads sitting beside the three doors on the other three walls. No way in hell was I going back to the mansion.

I took a deep breath and picked door number three, to the right, which led into a den full of fairly drab couches and coffee tables, though a fairly elaborate projection system sat in a corner. The lights behind me in the Mud Room, as I now called the room Eva Fox spoke from, turned off automatically, and the lights in the den clicked on. This registered surprise for only a moment. The Underground surely wasn’t what it seemed. If it weren’t for the technology, it would have seemed outdated, even ancient, a forgotten relic built by a paranoid religious fanatic who was sure the rapture was nigh and he would stay behind on Earth as it turned into hell.

Or a paranoid congressman who was sure his exposed unethical stature would condemn him to the depths below his house, my mind suggested. Perhaps, Eva Fox has the Senator’s skeleton stashed away in a closet.

Two hallways branched off from the den. One led into a dining room with a long communal table and a kitchen stocked with supplies that would feed an army for nearly two years. The other led into the living quarters with several sets of bunk beds, a large communal bathroom with nearly as many stalls as there were beds, and two small private bedrooms, each with attached en-suite bathroom. One of the private bedrooms obviously belonged to Eva Fox, the only room that looked semi-lived in—the new, comfy mattress gave it away. I guessed she had only updated what was necessary. One small painting hung on the wall above the bedside table. Painted on a block of wood, a sheep sat in an upside-down umbrella afloat in the ocean. I pulled it off the wall and turned it over.

Scrawled on the back, an inscription read, I know where I’m going now.

Very weird. A desk with a chair sat on the wall opposite the bed, its surface covered with papers, the drawers full of books and journals, most of them blank. I sorted through the mess for a moment until she called me back on an invisible intercom.

Though I could tell by her eyes that she had been very much relaxed by whatever she had smoked, she sat bolt upright in the chair. I sat down in the same chair and prepared myself mentally.

Game time.

As I said, Eva resumed, "I was unable to have my usual meeting with Colton and the 19 last night. Therefore, I was unable to give the full detail on where I was, what I was doing, and what I found out last night. That is the night of October 11th, early morning of October 12th.

"Let me tell you about what we now know, what I now know. I witnessed a meeting between Gemination and the Sedition. Not unusual or unexpected, exactly—we knew it would only be a matter of time—but what is unusual is that this was not the second meeting, or the third meeting, or the fourth, or fifth for that matter. This goes back much further than we thought. The Sedition has fought the Faction since its inception, and seems to have had minor victories, though I now question the true nature of those victories.

The Faction, however, has never retaliated, at least not in the way you think. Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer. The Faction has been very cunning, patiently trying various angles to gain access to the Sedition all these years. There is no record of multiple meetings with the Faction because each meeting had an extremely well-executed façade. The Sedition never knew who they were meeting with, the parent company of the parent company of the parent company.

Apparently, she had been privy to Spade’s rants as well.

For the Sedition’s part, the alliance was always declined, but with each refusal, the Faction came a little closer to breaching the walls. The meetings gave the Faction up-close and personal access to the emissaries. They were looking for the weak one, the one that would let them in.

I thought back to the hospital, how I had selected the guard, the weak link in the hospital’s security.

She cleared her throat and continued. "This backfired on them when Ember showed up as the emissary, and so the fight, the real fight, has begun. In the meeting I witnessed, or rather overhead, five people attended: three Sedition, two males, one female, all Heads, one of the males ex-Sedition, retired; and two Gemination, both male, high-ranking. I don’t have names or faces, only voices, but the message was clear enough. Gemination is finished making attempts to gain Sedition support. They’ve chosen a more direct route: infiltration. The current male and female Sedition Heads are the infiltrators, something I’m sure ol’ Jackander thinks is impossible."

I hadn’t the slightest idea who ‘ol’ Jackander’ was.

Jackander doesn’t know what’s coming. John Ember and Oliver Skelton have bounties on both their heads, and I fear this information may be too late to save them.

I remembered Spade mentioning Oliver Skelton, Ember’s fellow Head and one true ally. He’d been the one to assign Spade’s tail.

She continued. With Ember and Skelton out of the game and replaced by members of Gemination, the new Sedition plants will take majority vote, by four to three. Those in the minority will either be turned or replaced. As the identity of the Sedition Heads is kept secret to the rest of the Sedition employees, most won’t even notice. This is an extremely subtle takeover and very well executed.

She sighed. That was the information I should have given Colton last night, but he was in a race against time. I managed to tell him he was in danger, but you know Ember. She paused for a moment, as though considering if she should tell me what came next. "He did something very unusual. He kissed me and said, ‘Tell me something I don’t know. Now go home and keep her safe.’ As in, keep you safe. You are more important to him than you know."

I rolled my eyes. Yeah, important for what I have, not who I am.

So, here I am, missing all the action. You wouldn’t be sitting here, I know. You’d be in the thick of it. You don’t follow orders too well, and I don’t blame you, but understand that I have been created to do just that: follow orders. Break. She abruptly rose and walked out of the frame.

As the bank of monitors took up most of the wall, the door that led ahead veered off slightly to the right. The passage brought me first to a typical interrogation room with a table and two chairs, and then to a thorough medical lab that unnervingly reminded me of the infirmary at the Sedition. Med bots sat in watery pouches, and the room contained enough drugs to sedate a small country. I opened the cabinets and checked the expiration dates on the bottles: all current.

Beyond the med lab, the passage dead-ended into a couple of holding cells, identical to the dark tank I had imagined Eva Fox throwing me into after she’d knocked me out. For a moment, it amazed me that what my mind had conjured up was real, but then I realized it was not a coincidence at all, but subconscious. This place was stored in my subconscious memory banks, and there would only be more to come. The thought gave me chills, and I hurried back to med lab.

Another door connected back to the living quarters, and yet another gave way into a long room with an impressive arsenal. A lot was lost on me, as hand-to-hand combat and sniping had been the focus at the Sedition, but Fox was ready for Armageddon—any kind of Armageddon. A cabinet in the back of the arsenal was chock full of medieval weaponry: maces, crossbows, battle-axes, and many other forms of torture devices, in the event the cavalry burst through the front gates, I guessed. Or perhaps there was a time machine down here somewhere—wouldn’t have surprised me—Leyla & Eva’s Excellent Adventure, which felt way more bogus than excellent.

She started singing in the background, something about the moon.

What a strange lady. I thought I was weird, but I don’t compare to my subconscious.

The door at the far end of the arsenal led back to the Mud Room, making a loop out of this half of the subversive fortress. As I stepped through an archway in the middle of the arsenal, the ceiling opened up and in front of me laid a massive garage with the largest private collection of vehicular transport I’d ever seen, half of them motorcycles. She had damn good taste: BMW, Ducati, Moto Guzzi, even classic Indians and Triumphs.

As I stood gawking at the motorcycles, she called me back to the monitor.

I rushed back, took the shortcut through the arsenal, and sat back down in the same seat she now lounged in.

A small, blue notebook dangled loosely from her fingertips, and she gestured theatrically around her. Do you like what I’ve built down here? All of this is for your use. I know you don’t ride much anymore, but I do, and let me tell you, it is just as thrilling as ever. I couldn’t resist the classics—sentimental value, I guess. All vehicles are cloaked, meaning nothing and no one can find or track you unless you want them to. In addition, the inside of the Underground is a bot-free zone, other than the med bots in the infirmary, and the security bots in the tunnels, of course. Upstairs, it’s a different story, as you will see when I’m finished.

She pointed ahead and to either side of the monitor. "And, I’m proud to say, we finally managed to create an extremely intelligent EMP, a blip, which can distinguish bot frequencies."

I wondered who she meant by we. A blip was one of three ways of disabling bots: pills the infected person swallowed, bombs for small areas such as cars, but a blip took out an entire building. Each delivered an electromagnetic pulse that neutralized bots. The EMP didn’t destroy them, but scrambled communication until reprogrammed, and up until now, they were indiscriminate killers. It really sucked when you had to use a blip around someone that was bleeding out and needed a med bot to stay alive. This was revolutionary. Nanotech evolved faster than lightning.

Her tone changed and she straightened up in her chair, putting the blue notebook in her lap. If I am right in my suspicions that Gemination found out where the 19 was holing up, and they were attacked tonight, it can only mean one thing: there is a traitor in our midst. Whoever it is, they’re waiting for me, which means they’re waiting for you too. Tread carefully, and be very careful who you take into your confidence.

A lot of people seemed to be telling me this.

She then read my mind, which probably wasn’t hard for her to do. There will be many along this road that will not be what they seem. Even those who may be who they say, may not be what they seem, and when dealing with the Faction, remember this: the weaker you seem to them, the closer the odds get to being in your favor. They will think you’re weaker now without John Ember, due to your history, but you and I know differently. Make their assumption work to your advantage.

Good assumption. I certainly felt weaker without Ember. Why did she think differently?

She flipped the notebook open and glanced at one of the pages. There’s one last thing, and this is very important. I suspect the original 19 were not the first experimental group for Gemination. There was one before them—whether one person or a group, I don’t know.

She paused, closed the notebook, and set it on the control panel in front of her. "If Ember is dead, our hope lies in keeping Oliver Skelton alive and getting evidence to the remaining true Sedition Heads. They may currently be more interested in themselves, but if they see that the Faction is behind Gemination, they will hold true to the Sedition. Find someone that can get to them, not just physically, but mentally." She tapped the side of her head and then glanced above the camera.

I did so myself and found myself staring at a clock. At nearly seven in the evening, it would be completely dark at ground level. No doubt everyone—ex-Sedition, current Sedition, and certainly Gemination—wondered where I’d disappeared to.

She caught my attention with a sigh. Time for me to go. Once I leave this place and go back to sleep, I may not be coming back for some time. For you see, if John Ember is dead, I can’t come back. He is the catalyst.

‘He is the catalyst.’ Did she just tell me that without John Ember, there’s no Eva Fox?

Although I am dormant, I’m still here, in the background. If you listen carefully, you might be able to hear me. The subconscious has the power to subtly influence things. I still see and hear what you do. I just can’t act on it directly, so try to listen. I’m fighting for you. Gemination must be destroyed, no matter the cost of life, even ours.

So that was the reason for the weird feelings inside my head, the way I knew things without knowing how. I realized then that Eva Fox had sent me