About Broken Angel:
In 2029, Gabriel Martiniere testified against the Martiniere Group's forced imposition of mind control programming on unwilling indentured workers.
For his pains, he was forced into exile for over thirty years. Forced to divorce the love of his life.
But he's still coming. Still bent on vengeance against the man who forced him into exile, Philip Martiniere.
Gabe will win...or die trying.
Excerpt:
His tie felt tight enough to choke him, even though he’d been careful to give himself plenty of breathing and swallowing space when he’d tied it that morning with trembling hands. Gabriel Martiniere ran a finger underneath his collar to check. Lots of room, enough to accommodate the bulletproof vest underneath, which should be the case with his bespoke suits and shirts.
Nothing more than nerves, then. For good reason. Gabe glanced around the small room that felt claustrophobic in spite of the pale gray walls, light pine furniture, and diffused natural light. It was too damn bright. Sterile. Like he’d died and was going into the light.
“You doing all right?” asked Anne Wright, the assistant US attorney babysitting Gabe, along with a full complement of US marshals.
“Nerves.” Gabe was unable to say more than that through the tension in his throat.
“You’ll be all right,” Anne said, patting his hand. “We’ll keep you safe.”
Gabe didn’t respond. He wasn’t as concerned about physical attack as he was about the preprogrammed Martiniere mind control responses to verbal cues that could cause him harm. Neither Anne nor any of the other Feds seemed to fully understand the implications of the Martiniere programming. They kept brushing off that level of mind control as science fictional.
The Martiniere program wasn’t fictional, as Gabe knew too damn well. Just two words, and he’d be paralyzed long enough for something bad to happen. Even with a bulletproof vest and Plexiglas shielding around the witness stand.
Broken Angel. His uncle Philip had delighted in using psychotropic meds to program those control words into Gabe at the age of twelve, after the deaths of his parents and sister in a suspicious plane crash. Broken Angel. Those words locked Gabe down so that he couldn’t retaliate during Philip’s beatings after he’d taken custody of Gabe. Broken Angel had paralyzed Gabe so that Philip could tie him down before flogging him, and Gabe couldn’t fight back.
His cousin Serg Vygotsky had tried to help Gabe develop resistance to Philip’s programming over the past year, once they had committed to Gabe going public about the Martiniere Group’s illegal abuses of indentured workers. Counterprogramming that Serg had access to through his family’s security organization, Vygotsky Security. And while the counterprogramming reduced his susceptibility to those words, Gabe still reacted. It delayed the lockdown but didn’t eliminate it.
But neither Serg nor Gabe’s other cousin and ally, Justine, Philip’s daughter, were here. And once he was done with this testimony, the marshals would whisk Gabe off into a witness protection program.
However, Philip would be in the courtroom, sitting at the defense table. All it would take for Philip to stop Gabe’s testimony were those two words.
Broken Angel.
His uncle had authorized illegal mind control and manipulation of Martiniere Group indentured workers. Until Gabe had assembled the evidence and turned it over to the Feds, no one could prove what had been only rumor. He had been assigned to implant that mind control programming into indentured Martiniere workers, without their consent. It had taken two years to get the records Gabe needed to document Philip’s authorization of the indentured mind control programs, with Serg and Justine’s help. A little longer to create a worm that trashed the mind control programs, set to activate when Gabe left the labs.
His cousins had been willing to stand with Gabe—but they had too much to lose by testifying.
Gabe didn’t have anything or anyone to lose, unlike his cousins.Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Apple | Scribd | Thalia | BOL | Angus & Robertson
About Joyce Reynolds-Ward:
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