Wired

By Jessi Hammond

Ashlyn Gates is a young psychologist thrust into an unbelievable situation.

Connor Moore is a ten-year-old subjected to an insane experiment which is slowly killing him.

Can Ashlyn keep Connor's mind intact as the scientists fight to save what's left of his body – or has Connor found his own solution?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kincaid Publishing
• Release date: Jun 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386560715

Book preview

About this book

Ashlyn Gates is a young psychologist thrust into an unbelievable situation.

Connor Moore is a ten-year-old subjected to an insane experiment which is slowly killing him.

Can Ashlyn keep Connor’s mind intact as the scientists fight to save what’s left of his body – or has Connor found his own solution?

Wired

One

Ashlyn Gates’s first reaction when she saw what was left of Connor Moore was shock, anger, and a deep, stomach-clenching pity.

She’d been briefed about him after the Australian Federal Police had turned up at her house at one in the morning and taken her away. Well, ‘briefed’ wasn’t exactly the right word. For two days she’d been kept in some bland, anonymous holding pen while they proved that they knew everything about her, from her parents’ deaths when she was eleven to the name of her first cat when she was five. They then handed her over to a Dr Grant Cavanagh, who asked her to sign so many damn confidentiality agreements that Ashlyn felt she’d never be able to talk about anything to anyone ever again. She thought he was being paranoid. After all, he knew she was a psychologist, he knew her entire job depended on confidentiality. And even though she’d only been in practice for several months, she would never jeopardise that job for anything.

She understood his caution after he told her about Connor.

Not that she knew exactly who Dr Cavanagh or his group of specialist techs were. She guessed they were government – the confidentiality agreements seemed to indicate they were – but he refused to confirm or deny anything. Instead he showed her the footage of how the AFP had stormed the bunker and found Connor.

Ashlyn’s heart had gone out to Connor, completely and unprofessionally, and she knew why Dr Cavanagh was so passionate about recruiting her – and so secretive about the whole project.

She guessed he had known what her reaction would be, had sought her out because Connor’s story was so close to her own. Connor had told his rescuers that three men had come to his house and dragged him from his bed, killing his parents when they tried to protect him. But while Ashlyn had been left crying beside her fatally-wounded parents, these men had taken Connor and ripped his life apart.

Dr Cavanagh insisted she take a day to become familiar with his team’s progress so far, both with the computers and with Connor. Then she’d been cleared to enter the bunker and the room where Connor had been found – and where he still was.

The bunker was beneath a warehouse in an industrial park on the outskirts of Sydney. The