The God Complex: A Thriller Read online

  The God Complex

  by

  Murray McDonald

  The God Complex

  Murray McDonald

  Published by Murray McDonald

  Copyright 2014 Murray McDonald

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The right of Murray McDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  MISSION LOG – EXTRACT 1-1

  Deep Space Mission – New Hope

  Log entry 1

  Mission Commander

  It is with great sadness that I look back on the fading speck in the distance that we have called home since birth. We have said goodbye to parents and loved ones that many, or all of us, will never see again. Our only hope of seeing them again would be the failure of our mission, a failure that would condemn our population to a certain death. Our planet is dying, and with it, our future.

  Our mission, steeped in secrecy, is known to but the very few, and our future as a race depends on our mission. A weight that bears heavy on us all as we speed towards a solution that we believe lies out there, amongst the vastness of space. A solution that our descendants will deliver for the future, we are destined never to return, but our mission will live on in our children and their children’s children, until the time comes when our work will save our people.

  The end may not come during our lifetime but in the near future, our work will be our only hope. When the time comes and the end seems nigh, we will have prepared for that day and the end will be but a new beginning.

  Chapter 1

  Lick Observatory

  Mount Hamilton, San Jose, CA

  2:27 a.m.

  His heart nearly stopped beating as the image came into view. It couldn’t be, he argued with his own eyes. The more he looked, the more he realized it was real.

  He grabbed his phone and hit the professor’s number on the third attempt. His fingers shook so wildly that he had had to abort two calls to ‘Paul’, whoever that was, in his contacts list. As the line rang, he pleaded, Don’t go to message, not today, not now.

  “Good God, James! It’s half two in the morning,” came a groggy voice.

  “Professor… you… were… right!” said James excitedly, barely able to get his words out.

  Professor Charles Harris sat up, suddenly wide awake. His deputy was not a man prone to excitement. In fact, in the ten years he had known him, he had barely smiled, let alone shown any emotion.

  “James, take a deep breath and tell me what you’re talking about,” suggested the professor calmly.

  “I’m calibrating the equipment for tomorrow’s inauguration by the President,” began James, trying desperately to calm himself down and make sense of what he was seeing. “I wanted to make sure that when you demonstrated its power, you’d make an impression.”

  The professor nodded on the other end of the phone. He certainly wanted to make an impression. Twenty years and $15 billion dollars of funding later, Hubble 2 was about to go live. Significantly more powerful than its dated predecessor, Hubble 2 could look farther into space and farther than had ever even imagined. However, its capabilities were not limited to space. A large portion of the funding was secured on its ability to look back towards earth, in as great a detail as it could look into space. Hubble 2 was not only the greatest telescope ever built, it was also destined to become the greatest spy satellite ever built - a situation the professor was less comfortable with, but after the inauguration, that would no longer be his problem. The spy functionality would be officially handed over to the National Reconnaissance Office, the US Intelligence agency responsible for spy satellites.

  “Its power is amazing, the details of the images are exquisi—”

  “You said I was right?” interrupted the professor, frustrated with the padding James was adding to his outburst.

  “Yes I did,” James replied excitedly. “And you are!”

  “I am what?” asked the professor.

  “You are right!”

  “About what?”

  “Everything…” replied James, uttering his last ever words. The bullet passed through his left temple, removing his right temple and destroying his handset, instantly killing the call and the caller.

  “James? James?! Are you there?!” shouted the professor into the dead phone line.

  The professor dialed James’ number but it went straight to voicemail. He tried the observatory’s landline number.. No answer. He dialed James’ cell again. Voicemail.

  “Dad?” a knock on his bedroom door preceded its opening.

  “You okay?” asked the professor’s son, Copernicus Armstrong Sagan Harris, more commonly known as Cash. In fact, very few knew that ‘Cash’ was not his given name - a deliberate ploy by a very young Copernicus.

  The professor was halfway into his trousers when his son entered the room. “I’m fine, son, but something’s going on at the observatory.”

  “Dad, it’s 2:30 a.m., I’m sure it can wait.”

  “James was very excited and James doesn’t do excited. He told me I was right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “Everything, apparently, and then the line went dead.”

  “Okay, but I’ll come with you, it’s an hour’s drive,” said Cash. “Just let me throw some clothes on.”

  Cash, turning to leave, allowed the professor for the first time to see the battle wounds his son had suffered. A large scar surrounded by burn tissue covered the left side of his back. A tear welled in the professor’s eye. His actions had driven Cash to enlist and, as a result, suffer numerous injuries during his tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. It had been almost fifteen years since they had seen each other. Cash’s return for the inauguration had been a wonderful surprise. Cash wasn’t going to miss one of the professor’s proudest moments.

  Cash walked back to his childhood room.

  “Okay?” asked Rigs, appearing behind Cash.

  “Jesus!” said Cash, jumping and pushing his friend out of the room. “Don’t do that!”

  “What?” asked Rigs.

  “Sneak up on me like that!”

  “I followed you,” protested Rigs. Cash patted his friend on the back as an apology. Rigs couldn’t help himself, he was quiet in every sense of the word.

  “Copern…?” called out Cash’s father as he made his way along the corridor.

  “Dad, Jesus, how many times, it’s ‘Cash’, call me ‘Cash’, okay?!”

  “Good morning, Rigs,” said the professor, noticing Cash’s friend hovering quietly in the corridor. The professor had only met Rigs that day and was still trying to work him out.

  “Good morning,” replied Rigs quietly, lowering his head as he spoke. He didn’t like to make eye contact at the best of times. Rigs was, as Cash described him, complex. Others found him intimidating or odd. Few had ever heard him speak more than a few words at once. Cash was the only person he could talk to and if possible, he relayed conversations through him. ‘Dysfunctional’, ‘loner’, ‘troubled’ were only a few of the words that had followed
Rigs through his life.

  “You ready?”

  The professor nodded.

  “Where are you going?” asked Rigs quietly, looking at Cash.

  “We need to go to the observatory. Dad’s deputy called and Dad can’t call him back.”

  Rigs headed into his room to get ready.

  “No, it’s fine,” smiled Cash. “You grab some sleep, I’ll go with my dad!”

  “Sure?” asked Rigs.

  Cash nodded. “Yeah, nothing to worry about,” he said, closing Rigs’ door.

  “Don’t ask,” said Cash to the inquisitive look from his father before pulling his sweater over his head and leading the way down the stairs.

  “Is he alright?” asked the professor.

  “He’s not comfortable around strangers but once he gets to know you, he’s much better.”

  “Better, but not fine, not normal?”

  “Better,” emphasized Cash. “Rigs is…” Cash struggled to find the word. “Special?”

  “And you work with him?”

  “Wouldn’t work with anyone else,” said Cash proudly.

  “And for the last fifteen years—”

  “Let’s not go there, Dad. I’m here and I really want us to move on,” said Cash.

  The professor held up his hands in surrender. “It’s all I’ve dreamt of for the last fifteen years,” he said, his voice breaking. “It was such a stupid—”

  “Dad,” warned Cash.

  The professor raised his hands again and nodded in acknowledgment. “So what exactly did your deputy say that’s got you up at this hour?” asked Cash, keen to change the subject and not open a wound that after fifteen years was still very painful.

  “Just that I was right about everything, supposedly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It could mean many things.”

  “But he was really excited?”

  The professor placed one hand on the door handle and paused. He placed his other hand under his shirt and withdrew a chain that hung around his neck with a small flash drive attached to it. “It couldn’t be,” he mused while turning the door handle.

  “Couldn’t be what?” asked Cash, increasingly frustrated.

  “No, it couldn’t be that,” the professor said confidently, stepping out onto the front porch.

  By the time Cash registered the noise, it was already too late. The sound of wet flesh being slapped reverberated in his ears. He tried desperately to pull his father back from the danger, snatching him back into the hallway out of the line of fire, but it was already too late. His father’s chest was soaked in blood; the bullet that had hit his heart failed to stop it pumping.

  A barrage of spits from the silenced rifle followed, tearing at the door and floor while Cash pulled his father deeper into the house.

  His father’s eyes pleaded with him to stop. Cash stopped moving and tried desperately to stem the blood but knew it was useless. He knew all too well how utterly useless his actions were. His father reached for his hands to stop him, taking his right hand and placing it over the flash drive on the chain.

  The professor mumbled something that Cash couldn’t make out. He leaned in closer to his father.

  “Sophie…” said the professor with his last breath, pushing the flash drive into Cash’s hand, the last action of a dying man.

  Cash stumbled back. His father could not have uttered a more devastating blow to his son. It was the one name he never wanted to hear again and certainly not from his father. The fact that he’d said it on his dying breath made it all the more distressing.

  Cash was frozen by his father’s dying word. He held the flash drive in his hand, not sure what to do. Another barrage of bullets tore into the door. Cash needed to move, he needed to take action, fight back, do something. He needed to avenge his father’s murder.

  The bullets stopped hitting the door, another change of magazine or an assault on the house. They must realize the house was weaponless.

  “Rigs!” Cash whispered urgently.

  “Yes!” came the reply from behind the front door.

  Cash stood and opened the door to a naked and bloodied Rigs.

  “What the…?”

  “One sniper, at the end of the drive,” said Rigs, looking despondently at the lifeless Professor Harris.

  “Can he talk?” asked Cash.

  Rigs shook his head and raised a dripping wet pen. “Sorry, I pushed this up under his skull. He’s dead.”

  Cash patted his best friend on the back, it said ‘thank-you’ in a way that words simply couldn’t.

  “Do you know why?” asked Rigs.

  Cash shook his head and held up the flash drive. “He pushed this into my hand and said…” Cash swallowed hard, his voice breaking, “Sophie.”

  Rigs had met Cash at basic training fifteen years earlier, and the two had been inseparable ever since. Cash had taken the quiet loner under his wing, while Rigs had accepted a friendship for the first time in his life. There was nothing they didn’t tell each other.

  “Sophie?” he shrugged.

  “My ex fiancée.”

  “Your what?”

  Chapter 2

  Santa Cruz, CA

  The sound of police sirens killed any explanation.

  “Clothes might be a good idea,” suggested Cash when the blue strobe lights cut through the darkness.

  Rigs, covered in blood and naked as the day he was born, made no attempt to move. He wasn’t leaving Cash alone until he knew the danger had passed.

  “Police!” came a shout from the front door.

  “My father, Professor Harris, has been shot, we’re unarmed!” shouted Cash clearly, as he stood next to the body, his hands aloft.

  “Copernicus, is that you?” came a reply from the policeman, raising a questioning look from Rigs.

  “Cop what?” asked Rigs, it was the second time he’d heard that name being said to Cash.

  Cash pointed to his dead father, instantly silencing Rigs, there was a time and a place.

  “Yes, it is, Chief,” replied Cash clearly.

  “I’m coming in, okay?”

  The door opened to reveal a far older version of Harry Kramer, the police chief Cash had once known. He was accompanied by three officers who rushed into the entrance, secured Cash, and ordered Rigs to lie down in the hallway with his arms and legs spread.

  The Chief knelt down by the professor’s body and the side of an old and dear friend. “Copernic—”

  “It’s Cash, it’s been Cash since I was eight,” said Cash.

  “What happened?”

  “He got a call from the observatory and said he needed to go there immediately. We were heading out and a silenced bullet caught him in the chest.”

  “Someone shot him with a silenced weapon?” he asked, incredulous.

  Cash nodded, suddenly realizing the anomaly. “Wait, if it was silenced, how did you know? We’re a mile from the nearest house,” asked Cash, confused at who had raised the alarm.

  “We didn’t come about the shooting, it’s only when we got here that we saw the bullet holes. It’s the observatory, it’s been destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?”

  “Up until a minute ago, I’d have said it was a gas explosion, an accident but…”

  The president, thought Cash, thinking ahead to the ceremony due to take place later that evening. He was searching for reasons but the president’s trip was shrouded in secrecy. Nobody but those deeply involved in the project, itself top secret, were aware of his planned visit.

  A handcuffed, bloody, and naked Rigs was lifted from the floor, interrupting the conversation.

  “Chief, this is a friend of mine, Captain Jake Miller, US Marines,” said Cash, turning to look at Rigs.

  The Chief looked at Cash with some discomfort. “Whose blood?” he asked, trying to ignore the nakedness.

  “The shooter’s,” said Rigs nonchalantly, indicating with his head to the pen on the floor, soaked in blood and co
vered in brain matter. All of Rigs’ awkwardness had gone. It was almost as though he had forgotten how awkward he was, how uncomfortable he felt around strangers. “In the bushes, end of the drive,” he added.

  Rigs was in the zone, one of two zones that Cash knew overrode Rigs’ awkwardness. One he knew all too well - killing. When it came to killing, Rigs had little or no conscience. An emotional void, Rigs could kill without the slightest hint of remorse and that had made him one of the US Forces’ most accomplished operatives. The other, Cash had to take the word of the many women who, after spending a night with Rigs, were desperate to spend another with him. Fucking and killing were Rigs’ two areas of brilliance.

  “Check it out,” said the Chief to the officer closest to the door. “And somebody get something to cover this guy up!” Rigs was comfortably standing at ease, his hands cuffed behind his back letting the air flow easily over his muscular frame. Cash shook his head in despair. His friend had no body confidence issues, strange for a guy who couldn’t look you in the eye or talk to you, but if he hadn’t been a soldier, he’d have made a great porn star.

  “Chief, I’ve got the weapon but no sign of a shooter,” reported the officer.

  “He’s at the end of the drive by the rose bush,” insisted Rigs.

  “Nothing there, Chief,” said the officer.

  Rigs walked towards the door but was held back by another officer. “I killed him, that guy was going nowhere!”

  “You can’t have, he’s not there,” argued the officer. “Perhaps you only wounded him?”

  “With a pen through his brain? And a double tap with his own rifle for good measure?” asked Rigs, looking at Cash and not the officer. “Trust me, he couldn’t have been any deader!”

  “So you fired the rifle?” asked the chief, trying unsuccessfully to catch Rigs’ eye.

  “Yes.”

  “The rifle that killed the professor?”