The Soul Consortium Read Online Free PDF

direction and entered his ear.
    His eyes flickered open, the pupils dilated with panic and bewilderment. Obviously he had no idea who I was, and my bald head and heavy build silhouetted against a bright sun were enough to startle him back deeper into his torn seat. “Who? … Oh, God! Is anyone … ? Am I—?”
    “You’re fine; you’re fine,” I reassured him with a smile and a large hand on his shoulder. “No serious injury as far as I can tell.”
    “What about the other car, the other driver? How is he?”
    “Let’s leave him to the police and paramedics, shall we? Here, let me help you out.” I reached through the wreckage, grabbed him under the armpits, and hauled him onto the grass verge next to the impossibly twisted monster that used to be his car.
    He threw up when he saw it, or perhaps it was the old woman’s hand poking out from under the roof like a broken claw. His car had rolled down the bank at least four times as it crushed bollards and roadside debris in its wake.
    Kriefan Mack had done nothing wrong. But being good or right or true does nothing for you in this world. His nemesis, the seventeen-year-young speedster, lay on the other side of the road. And on the crumpled bonnet of his Subaru. And all over his dead girlfriend’s body. There was very little for the emergency services to scoop up and scrape out. He’d performed his final act trying to overtake a gritting lorry on a blind bend and met the unsuspecting Kriefan Mack head-on.
    I saw the collision in all its gory glory whilst waiting to turn out of the junction on my way to the office. Although it is fair to say that one could not have expected there to have been any survivors when two cars kiss bumpers at a combined speed of 150 mph, my experience tells me that the perpetrator often escapes his idiocy with little more than a scratch to his forehead. Not so this time. The speeding youth’s life had been smeared from existence along with his partner and an unfortunate dog-walking pedestrian, but Mr. Mack left the carnage suffering only from mild shock, a small cut by his ear, and the doom of impending insurance claim forms. He should not have survived that accident. Fate had been cheated.
    And that’s where I came in. She would not be cheated so easily, and my presence at the scene was obviously no accident. I tried to move quickly, looking for an opportunity to reach the overturned car unseen by the public. But police cars and ambulances screeched into view within minutes, announcing their arrival with the lurid splash of red and blue and the wail of sirens—a parody of the slaughter.
    I laughed as I walked through it, seeing the metaphor so much like human nature. People pretend to care. They throw themselves into moments of ugliness like this in a theatrical display of valiant altruism, but people like me see through every reluctant glance and declaration of horror into their thirsty hearts. They’re looking for the next thrill, the next juicy story to tell their friends, the next chance to demonstrate their heroism as they run into the fire to help. I have a different agenda. And so does Fate.

FIVE
     
    I entered Kriefan Mack’s home two days later at ten minutes to midnight with everything planned to perfection. It’s a nice four-bedroom detached house with a postcard-perfect garden, pastel walls, and immaculate modern furniture, minding its own quiet business at the end of a tidy cul-de-sac.
    The lights had been out twenty minutes, time enough for Kriefan, his wife, and two children to drift into sleep. Smiling at the neighborhood-watch stickers on the windows, I slid Mr. Mack’s stolen door key into the lock. He’d probably assumed his keys had been lost in the accident, and with so much happening since then he hadn’t had the opportunity to get the locks changed.
    I moved quickly. Wasting time with precaution is worthless when one enters an occupied house so easily. Experience has taught me that it’s better to strike