Sins of the Father Read Online Free PDF Page A

time, was separate and outside it.
    It was the source of every psychic's powers. Its subtle energies allowed telekinetics to move objects with their minds; it allowed precogs to see the future; it let pyrokines start fires through no other cause than the force of their wills. Anderson was a telepath, her powers trained and honed by her years as a Psi-Judge. Her connection to the psi-flux allowed her to read minds, send and receive thoughts, sense psychic vibrations, and utilise other powers besides. Now, she reached out to it, seeking the imprint of Lucas Verne among the shifts and modulations of the currents around her. She gave herself up to the psi-flux. It was like drifting in a dark and ever-changing sea. She reached out. Feeling the elusive traces of Lucas Verne, she tried to home in on them. She let the psi-flux's currents pull her closer. Following the tide, she let it lead her to her destination. The psi-flux moved, and she went with it.
    Ready or not, Lucas: here I come.
    She let it lead her, slowly, effortlessly, inexorably, into the mind of a madman.
     
    She was in his head, as he worried and fretted at the world outside. She was in his head as he paced his apartment, stalking its bounds like some caged and raging beast. She was in his head as he watched the Tri-D news stations each night, the sound turned down low as images of chaos and disorder played out in the air before him. Sometimes, the news was so bad he sat crying in his chair for hours, his tears staining the pages of the Bible open in his lap.
    She was Lucas Verne. She was inside his head.
    It had started when he lost his job. In the wake of unemployment he had begun to spend most of his time in his apartment, watching the news on the Tri-D. There were a dozen twenty-four-hour news stations in Mega-City One. He had watched them all, obsessively flicking the channel from one crisis to the next whenever they cut to commercials.
    The state of the world had troubled him. It did not take a genius to see that things were steadily getting worse. The Great Atom War had transformed ninety per cent of the Earth into a radioactive wasteland. The seas had been poisoned. The cities were overcrowded. Crime was on the increase. Mutation had become commonplace. Every day on the Tri-D there were reports of fresh horrors: wars and riots, plagues and famines, ecological catastrophes and strange new monsters. Alone in his apartment, Lucas Verne had experienced a growing feeling of foreboding. The world seemed terrifying. Nothing made sense anymore. It was like everything was going to hell and nobody cared. He had begun to fear the future. It was as though the entire world was in a downward spiral, caught helpless in the grip of a frightening and unstoppable process of decline.
    Slowly, understanding had dawned on him. He had resisted it at first, but eventually he had come to the realisation there was a reason why things were so awful. There was a reason why he had lost his job. A reason why the world had started to go wrong. A reason why everything in his life had turned to shit.
    It was all in the Bible, in the pages of the Book of Revelations. For years Lucas had turned to the Good Book for comfort. He had leafed through its wisdoms, following the example set by generations of his forefathers before him. When times were hard, he had turned to the word of the Lord Grud for answers. Now, by virtue of his belief in Grud, he saw past the outward symptoms of the world's ills to the darker cause hidden beneath them. Finally, the truth was revealed.
    The world was coming to an end.
    It was all in his Bible. He saw that the Great Atom War and the Apocalypse War had only been the beginning. The True Apocalypse was at hand. He lived in an age of signs and wonders. The Four Horseman of War, Pestilence, Famine and Death were at work in the world. The Mark of the Beast was the sign of mutation. The Whore of Babylon was the sexual promiscuity he saw in his neighbours and in the