Revenge teaser snippet

Okay, so this is jumping the gun a bit and I know I said I'd shut up until Exile was done, but there is a bit of news. Exile is now in my editor's queue, as in, I've finished what I needed to do with it and its gone for its polishing. I've also commissioned the cover for Tube Riders: Revenge, which I'm now working through in second draft.

And as always when I go over a book I've had on the shelf for a while, I come across little sections that I just love, so I thought I'd share one with you today, from fairly early in the book.

I'm not saying who this character is. You can guess, but I'm keeping my lips sealed for now ...

Slight vibrations buzzed in his hands, and he knew that in a lab somewhere they were testing the electrical connections in case he was having second thoughts. They always did this; the government was like a little monkey on his back whispering into his ear, reminding him what it would feel like if he disobeyed.

He didn’t want to pull off his clothes, but he was tired, it was warm, and he never slept well in his boots. He unlaced them and slid them down over his feet, pulling off the black, holey socks to reveal one normal human foot and one plastic molded lump with rounded outcrops for toes. It fused seamlessly with his skin just below the ankle, the synthetic skin that covered the flexible plastic barely discernible from human skin except for its greater elasticity, its hairlessness, and that he felt nothing when he touched it except a tug on the skin of his lower leg.

He hated the foot. He didn’t care about the scars that cross-crossed his body because they scared people away and no woman that he wanted would turn down the money he could offer, but the foot … it was his leash. It reminded him every moment of every day that he was a government dog and even the casual freedom that anarchists and dissenters claimed within the walls of London was not his to share.

He rolled over and pulled a blanket over him, hiding it.

Chris Ward
29th October 2013