The Will Slater Series Books 1-3 Read online

  The Will Slater Series

  Books 1-3

  Matt Rogers

  Copyright © 2018 by Matt Rogers

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Onur Aksoy.

  www.onegraphica.com

  Contents

  Reader’s Group

  Books by Matt Rogers

  Wolf

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part II

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Lion

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Bear

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Bonus: The Hidden

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Announcement

  Books by Matt Rogers

  Reader’s Group

  About the Author

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  Meet Jason King — another member of Black Force, the shadowy organisation that Slater dedicated his career to.

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  Books by Matt Rogers

  THE JASON KING SERIES

  Isolated (Book 1)

  Imprisoned (Book 2)

  Reloaded (Book 3)

  Betrayed (Book 4)

  Corrupted (Book 5)

  Hunted (Book 6)

  THE JASON KING FILES

  Cartel (Book 1)

  Warrior (Book 2)

  Savages (Book 3)

  THE WILL SLATER SERIES

  Wolf (Book 1)

  Lion (Book 2)

  Bear (Book 3)

  BLACK FORCE SHORTS

  The Victor (Book 1)

  The Chimera (Book 2)

  The Tribe (Book 3)

  The Hidden (Book 4)

  The Coast (Book 5)

  The Storm (Book 6)

  The Wicked (Book 7)

  The King (Book 8)

  The Joker (Book 9)

  Wolf

  Book 1

  “I, William J. Clinton, Presid
ent of the United States of America, find that the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and of the means of delivering such weapons, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

  Executive Order 12938

  Part I

  1

  The lab reeked of disinfectant, an artificial stench that permeated throughout the steel room — a half-hearted attempt to overpower the smell of the dead.

  The three occupants couldn’t smell a thing. They wore protective rubber hazmat suits, covered head to toe in vapour-tight material to prevent a single viral particle from making contact with their skin. A hushed silence had fallen over the lab as they observed the grisly results of their experiment, the only noise coming from the distinct rasping of their self-contained breathing apparatus.

  The scene in front of them was ordinarily reserved for bad science fiction movies.

  Years ago, the trio would have turned away in disgust at the body on the steel gurney in the centre of the room. They would have lost the contents of their stomachs, unable to help themselves as natural instincts took over.

  Now, they stood silent, watching and analysing in clinical fashion.

  The world was a harsh, unforgiving place.

  They had come to learn that.

  ‘Take samples,’ the man in the middle said in his native tongue.

  His voice came out wrong, muffled by the face mask hanging over his features. It filtered out through the sides of his mouthpiece — the device that separated him from a fate worse than death itself.

  The men on either side stepped forward, approaching the corpse without hesitation. They knew the consequences of displeasing their boss. The rivers of blood dripping out of the body’s every orifice did little to deter them.

  They worked methodically, collecting DNA samples and slotting them into pre-arranged storage containers. The leader hung back, letting his underlings carry out the dirty work. He had no qualms about doing everything himself, but over the years he’d made a pointed attempt to delegate tasks more often.

  Trying to handle it all on his own had almost cost him his life six years ago.

  In this world, there was no margin for error.

  Once the necessary samples had been collected from the grotesque, misshapen corpse on the table, the trio set about running them through a complicated web of machinery and lab equipment that had set their financier back well over a million USD.

  The price would be worth it, though.

  It took just over an hour to confirm their rudimentary theory. Weeks of further testing and analysing and tweaking would be required, but for now they had the answer they’d been looking for.

  The pair of underlings turned to the leader.

  ‘You were right,’ one of them said.

  ‘It’s different to the original strain?’ the leader said.

  The other man nodded. ‘Ever so slightly. We don’t know what that means yet, but it could very well align with what you thought.’

  The leader turned to look at the horrifying sight of the body they had extracted the samples from. He couldn’t imagine the extent of the suffering the man had gone through before he finally succumbed to the virus. They had patiently observed every second of the three weeks it had taken the guy to finally reach breaking point and fade away into oblivion.

  It had tested all their resolves, but the leader had made it explicitly clear that if any of them had second thoughts about their involvement in the experiment, they would be silenced and thrown in a ditch for the wolves to pick at.

  Freeze-frames of horrific memories had etched into the leader’s brain, and he couldn’t see them ever going away. He remembered locking eyes with the test subject as the man spasmed in his death throes, bleeding out of his eyes and nostrils and mouth all at once.

  He remembered a hell of a lot more, but he tried not to dwell on it.

  Not yet.

  The operation was still live.

  Emotion had to be forced to the side.

  ‘It can’t be anything else,’ he said. ‘An incubator can turn any lab-forged virus into something more powerful. You know that.’

  ‘We’re not certain yet. We need to run further testing.’

  ‘Do it. But I’ll make the call. I’ll tell them we have a weaponised variant.’

  ‘What does this mean?’ one of the men said. ‘Is our work done?’

  ‘Almost. Everything’s going according to plan.’

  The leader stepped out of the workstation, slipping silently through an adjoining door with a digital keypad built into the wall alongside it. He closed and locked the door behind him, just to be safe, and pressed on into a small office. The space was indistinguishable from a retail store’s backroom. The operation’s budget had been reserved exclusively for the testing facilities — anything else was spartan in comparison.

  The leader sat down on a rickety wooden chair, peeled his face mask off, and reached for the landline phone on the desk. He punched in a long string of digits and waited for the call to be received.

  ‘Yes?’ a low voice said after a single second of ringing.

  ‘It’s done.’

  ‘You have the variant?’

  ‘We believe so. Further testing is required.’

  ‘Run the tests. There’s no rush. Make sure it’s airtight.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me what you need it for.’

  ‘And I never will. You’ll see it in the news, though. Get back to work.’

  The call disconnected abruptly, without a word of farewell.

  The man stared at the phone in his hand for a significant length of time, twirling the device in his fingers, deep in thought. He glanced sideways at the tiered trays of empty round steel containers resting in orderly rows against the far wall of the office.

  Bomblets, ready to be filled with enough weaponised bacteria to cause unimaginable devastation.

  Especially given the nature of the virus they had bioengineered.

  The memories of the man who had succumbed to the infection came rolling back into the forefront of his mind. The skin turning a dark shade of horrifying blue. The uncontrollable bleeding, which had subsequently turned him entirely crimson by the end of the descent into madness. The loss of control of his bowels. The distinct screeches of agony as his organs failed and melted away inside of him.

  The leader pictured a populated city square inhaling the contents of the bomblets, trekking back to their apartment complexes to spread the virus to their loved ones and anyone who so much as stepped foot in the same room as them.

  He found himself disgusted by what he had become.

  But he wasn’t being paid to sit around and ponder the morality of his choices. He had made them, and now he was stuck fulfilling the wishes of a man who wanted nothing more than to see raw suffering on a global scale.

  He didn’t know the reasons for his financier’s deep-seated hatred.