This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. Any trademarks mentioned herein are not authorized by the trademark owners and do not in any way mean the work is sponsored by or associated with the trademark owners. Any trademarks used are specifically in a descriptive capacity.

Published by:

Rutherford Literary Group

1205 S. Air Depot, PMB #135

Midwest City, Oklahoma 73110-4807

Cover art by Sharon Legg,

Sharon Legg Digital Art

Edited by Lea Ellen Borg,

Night Owl Editing Services

eBook ISBN 9780982861387

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

DEDICATION

Of the various adversities and obstacles you may face in your life, sometimes your biggest challenges are the ones found deep within you…

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My love and thanks to my wife, Lori, for all of her continued love and support. Her thoughtful encouragement is truly inspiring. And thanks to Selina for interjecting her own special, and often amusing, insights regarding my countless hours of typing.

Once again, my heartfelt thanks to my creative and gifted cover artist, Sharon Legg, for the vivid, striking, and powerful cover art on this novel. As always, thank you to my talented and wonderful editor, Lea Ellen Borg, for her spot-on editing skills and keen eye for detail. As I continue to hone my writing craft and skills, Lea Ellen remains ever diligent in mentoring me.

Thank you to all of my friends and fans who continue to be wonderfully supportive of my literary endeavors. Though I’ve said this before, it bears repeating that although writing is a highly personal endeavor, it is equally rewarding to share my novels with those who experience enjoyment reading them.

Chapter 1

Brain cancer has always been an ugly disease. It’s sinister. It’s evil. At the age of twenty-eight, the diagnosis had shocked and horrified me into a near-fugue state. Then despair. By age twenty-nine, the cancer had nearly decimated me and the doctors soundly declared that I was terminal.

That’s a hell of a thing to hear from someone.

But a last-minute opportunity to receive an experimental treatment brought a sliver of hope, and early test results were encouraging.

What followed was six long, torturous months of treatment, enduring bouts of nausea, vomiting, exhaustion, and the most debilitating sense of personal fragility of my illness thus far. If not for the strength, encouragement, and support of my friends and family, particularly my mother and sister, I doubt that I would have endured it all.

However, by the end of those challenging six months, my tumor had not only shrunk, it had practically disappeared.

During the next two months, my body slowly reconstituted itself, and I embraced cautious optimism that I might not only survive, but also hope to once again thrive. To have walked through shadows of despair and come out the other side both sane and relatively intact was one of those life-changing experiences.

To say that I was ecstatic was an understatement.

However, four days ago, my euphoria gradually changed to something altogether different. Some startling and mysterious side effects had begun to promulgate.

My curiosity gave way to concern…and then to alarm.

That’s when events took a decidedly dramatic turn for the worse.

Add to that, I hated that the phone always rang at precisely the wrong time.

The shrill tone of the ringer, a sound that I kept vowing to change but never seemed to get around to, pierced through the silence of my house. The problem was I was too busy throwing up my breakfast to care.

I had been fighting a stomach virus for nearly two days.

Five minutes later as I was swishing Listerine around in my mouth, the damned phone rang again. I quickly rinsed my mouth and darted into the living room, battling a renewed queasiness in my gut.

“Hello?” I demanded.

“Logan? Are you okay?” came the anxious-sounding voice.

My sister, Lexi, mothered me even more than Mom did.

“I’m fine, Lexi. Just donating breakfast to my porcelain throne. Honestly, you’d think I was a Roman as often as I’ve been purging---”

“Thank God,” she groaned.

“Lexi? What’s wrong?”

“You’re kidding. Logan, just turn on the TV,” she urged. “Honestly, you’re like the world’s worst hermit.”

I hastily searched beneath magazines, couch pillows, and a comforter for the TV remote.

“What channel?”

“Any channel!”

What had gotten into her? Had World War III started without me?

I finally found the remote underneath a rumpled pair of sweatpants. As I reached down to snatch it, the remote almost seemed to impact my palm before I actually touched it. I flinched with surprise and nearly dropped it.

“What the…”

That’s precisely what had happened three days ago, except it had been a spoon that I’d reached for at breakfast.

Had I only imagined it?

“Can you see it yet?” Lexi demanded.

I hurriedly pressed the power button.

What I saw shocked me well beyond the scope of my former distractions.

“…have no idea how many people might be left inside the Wallace Building. Ambulances are streaming in as quickly as possible while fire engines rush to the scene. As you can see from the overhead vantage of Sky-6, police are rushing into the building alongside firemen to help remove victims and survivors. So far, only three people have been pulled from the blazing center alive.”

The high-definition camera view from the news helicopter laid bare the full desperation of the situation. A four-story professional office complex was mostly engulfed in flames. Virtually the entire large glass facade had been blown outward, and the roof was partially collapsed at one end of the building.

“Damn,” was all that I managed to say.

“Isn’t that---?” Lexi asked.

Holy crap. The Wallace Building housed the Nuclegene Cancer Treatment Center.

“Yeah, that’s where I’ve been going for my cancer treatments.”

I was supposed to have been there that very day, at this very moment, in fact. But I’d contracted a stomach virus, so I had called in at the last minute to cancel.

“Oh, Logan, it’s so horrible. I was afraid that you were there. I prayed so hard that you hadn’t gone today, and I could barely dial the phone to call you,” she managed to say through tears and sniffling.

What the hell had happened? How did an office building just blow up like that?

The images from the circling copter were surreal. I had just been there a week ago for a cancer treatment. My mind rushed with visions of the nurses and fellow patients who I had seen and talked to then.

“I was supposed to be there today.”

Suddenly, my head throbbed and my throat felt so dry that it was raw.

“I-I have to go, Sis.”

I heard my sister blow her nose. “Do you want me to come over there?”

I felt numb.

“No. Just call Mom and Dad for me, will you?”

“Sure. Sure, I will,” she said. “Logan, I’m just so glad that you weren’t there today. After everything, I don’t think I could’ve handled that.”

I wondered who else could have made it out alive from that kind of disaster. The building was completely ablaze and smoldering debris was cast all around the area. It appeared from the various camera images that the only people being recovered were being laid underneath sheets alongside waiting ambulances.

I could’ve been lying beneath one of those sheets.

“Logan?”

“Yeah, I know.”

I plopped down onto the couch and stared at the images before me.

“I’ll call Mom and Dad and then call you back in a little while, okay? Logan?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks, Sis,” I said, staring at the televised images before me.

I put the phone down and started surfing the news channels, but the same nightmare played out before me. I couldn’t move or talk, and I could barely even breathe.

Then, after a time, I managed to rise from the couch, though only to rush to the bathroom to throw up again.

* * *

Later that day, my sister brought 7Up, homemade chicken noodle soup, and saltine crackers over to me. Thankfully, Mom and Dad were still on their cruise to the Bahamas, or I’d have Mom hovering over me, as well.

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