Soul Purpose (The Conduit Sequence) by Nick Marsh

Author:Nick Marsh [Marsh, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2013-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

I

George’s torch beam danced along the stacks. Alan stepped forward but George put his hand on his chest.

‘Stop,’ he said, looking dramatically into the darkness. ‘I’ll go first.’ He grinned. ‘Always wanted to say that.’

Alan waited. George frowned at him. ‘I’m not actually going first, you know.’ Alan sighed, taking the torch from George’s hand, and stepped into the stacks.

‘What was it again?’ he called back to the terminal.

‘Che 45:17,’ Kate called back. ‘Under 10th June 1921.’

Why did library references always sound like passages from the Bible? Alan shone the thin beam of light along the row of stacks, back and forth, until the light fell on a yellow label with ‘Che’ written in sharp black letters. He headed towards it. George followed him. Alan briefly thought that he should send George back to stay with Kate, but a selfish part of him didn’t want to do that. Why should George get to spend any more time with her? Anyway, Alan was the ‘chosen one’ or whatever. He should be the one with protection, shouldn’t he? Plus, he was half-scared to death, though he didn’t know why. The more scared he got, the more nervous he became, which in turn made him even more scared.

George was nervous too. He was trying to brazen it out, Alan could see, but he jumped like a man wired to the mains when his arm brushed one of the rows of books.

They turned the corner of the ‘Che’ stack, and headed down it, each checking the rows of large plastic-bound papers on either side. About halfway down George called to Alan, who hurried over and knelt down next to him. George was pulling out one of the bound rows of papers.

‘In here, somewhere,’ he said.

He flicked through the pages of the paper until he reached the 10th of June.

‘Here we are,’ he said. Alan glanced down at the paper. The story had made the front page.

‘SEVENTEEN DIE IN SUICIDE PACT’ the headline read.

‘This looks promising,’ George said. He leaned over at the shelf again, and retrieved a small leather-bound book. ‘Here’s the journal too, by the looks of it.’

‘Hadn’t we better head back to the table?’ Alan asked anxiously.

‘Let’s just have a quick shufti,’ George said. ‘Think this is it? What does Yoda reckon?’

Alan froze. The voice! It hadn’t said a word to him since they had been in the library! That was what was niggling at him. He rewound his thoughts to the last time he remembered the voice saying anything to him. It had been when it was whinging to him about wasting his time with Kate, right before… right before they had met Trevor!

‘Shit!’ he said, jumping up and running back to the reception, leaving George crouching in darkness in his wake.

II

Trevor paced nervously backwards and forwards, up and down the length of the reception desk. For a moment, he stopped, and looked at Kate sitting in front of the library terminal. Then he started pacing again.

This was crazy! He

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