The Power Broker by Nick Svolos

Author:Nick Svolos [Svolos, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-18T04:00:00+00:00

XII

Insanity is scary. Terrifying. Our interactions with other people rely heavily on the other party acting in a sane, rational manner. When we run into madness, most of us are ill-equipped to deal with it. It's only natural. Yet, at some point in our lives, we all have to deal with it. You might adjust your path to avoid the wild-eyed guy on the corner ranting about the Bilderbergs. If you’re less fortunate, you might have to deal with mental illness in a friend or family member. If you’re really unfortunate, you might find yourself in physical danger at the hands of a particularly deranged individual. Some of us don’t survive it.

I have dealt with madness before. I interviewed Crimson King, a man who could produce knives from his own flesh and psychically hurl them with deadly force. He suffered from a dissociative identity disorder so severe that his own normal personality was all but extinguished, completely suppressed by a murderous psychopath. The only sign that the man he once had been was still in there was the look of desperation that periodically flashed across his features. He didn’t harm me, but he racked up quite a body count before Golden Crusader killed him.

I thought that was as bad as it could get. I was wrong.

I sat in a comfortable chair, the sweet taste of aged Cognac numbing my tongue, with a man who fervently believed it was perfectly reasonable to unleash a nanovirus upon the world’s population because he thought our gene pool had been polluted by fallen angels with a taste for human women. He was willing to exterminate a city of almost four million people to see if it worked.

I looked into his eyes and saw only unhinged certainty there. He was deranged, but he was committed. He had everything he needed to implement his scheme. Looking into those eyes, I knew there was no way I could ever talk him out of it.

I looked away and took another sip of the brandy to take stock of my situation. He had to be stopped. I had no idea how that might be accomplished. My dad once told me that a good card player sometimes just has to assume that the cards he needs to win are out there and play accordingly. It seemed like good advice. I had to operate under the assumption that a means to thwart this scheme would present itself if I could stay alive long enough to find it. Then it would just be a matter of execution. Hopefully I could get a message out to somebody qualified to get the job done. If not, I’d have to find a way to do it myself.

“So, what do you say, Mr. Conway,” the madman asked. “Will you join us? Will you be the herald of the dawn of a new age of man?”

Thanks, Dad. You were right. The cards I need are out there, and here’s the first one. I smiled and forced myself to say the words.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.