SIGNALZ
An Adversary Cycle Novel
(Prelude to Nightworld)
By F. Paul Wilson
A Crossroad Press Production
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Copyright © 2020 F. Paul Wilson
ISBN: ePub Digital Edition - 978-1-951510-44-2
ISBN: Trade Hardcover - 978-1-951510-43-5
ISBN: Trade Paperback - 978-1-951510-42-8
Cover images courtesy of IsaOpp and Budgme via Unsplash
LICENSE NOTES
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Meet the Author
F. PAUL WILSON is an award-winning, bestselling author of sixty books and nearly one hundred short stories spanning science fiction, horror, adventure, medical thrillers, and virtually everything between.
His novels The Keep, The Tomb, Harbingers, By the Sword, The Dark at the End, and Nightworld were New York Times Bestsellers. The Tomb received the 1984 Porgie Award from The West Coast Review of Books. Wheels Within Wheels won the first Prometheus Award, and Sims another; Healer and An Enemy of the State were elected to the Prometheus Hall of Fame. Dydeetown World was on the young adult recommended reading lists of the American Library Association and the New York Public Library, among others. His novella Aftershock won the Stoker Award. He was voted Grand Master by the World Horror Convention; he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers of America, and the Thriller Lifetime Achievement Award from the editors of Romantic Times. He also received the prestigious San Diego Comic-Con Inkpot Award and is listed in the 50th anniversary edition of Who's Who in America.
His short fiction has been collected in Soft & Others, The Barrens & Others, and Aftershock & Others. He has edited two anthologies: Freak Show and Diagnosis: Terminal plus (with Pierce Watters) the only complete collection of Henry Kuttner’s Hogben stories, The Hogben Chronicles.
In 1983 Paramount rendered his novel The Keep into a visually striking but otherwise incomprehensible movie with screenplay and direction by Michael Mann.
The Tomb has spent twenty-five years in development hell at Beacon Films.
Dario Argento adapted his story “Pelts” for Masters of Horror.
Over nine million copies of his books are in print in the US and his work has been translated into twenty-four languages. He also has written for the stage, screen, comics, and interactive media. Paul resides at the Jersey Shore and can be found on the Web at www.repairmanjack.com.
Repairman Jack*
The Tomb
Legacies
Conspiracies
All the Rage
Hosts
The Haunted Air
Gateways
Crisscross
Infernal
Harbingers
Bloodline
By the Sword
Ground Zero
The Last Christmas
Fatal Error
The Dark at the End
Nightworld
Quick Fixes—Tales of Repairman Jack
The Teen Trilogy*
Jack: Secret Histories
Jack: Secret Circles
Jack: Secret Vengeance
The Early Years Trilogy*
Cold City
Dark City
Fear City
The Adversary Cycle*
The Keep
The Tomb
The Touch
Reborn
Reprisal
Nightworld
Omnibus Editions
The Complete LaNague
Calling Dr. Death (3 medical thrillers)
Ephemerata
Novellas
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium*
“Wardenclyffe”*
“Signalz”*
The LaNague Federation
Healer
Wheels Within Wheels
An Enemy of the State
Dydeetown World
The Tery
Other Novels
Black Wind*
Sibs*
The Select
Virgin
Implant
Deep as the Marrow
Sims
The Fifth Harmonic*
Midnight Mass
Collaborations
Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)
Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)
Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)
Draculas (with Crouch, Killborn, Strand)
The Proteus Cure (with Tracy L. Carbone)
A Necessary End (with Sarah Pinborough)
“Fix”* (with J. Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson)
The ICE Trilogy*
Panacea
The God Gene
The Void Protocol
The Nocturnia Chronicles
(with Thomas F. Monteleone)
Definitely Not Kansas
Family Secrets
The Silent Ones
Short Fiction
Soft & Others
The Barrens and Others
Aftershock and Others
The Christmas Thingy
Quick Fixes—Tales of Repairman Jack*
Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong
Secret Stories
Editor
Freak Show
Diagnosis: Terminal
The Hogben Chronicles (with Pierce Watters)
* see “The Secret History of the World”
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Table of Contents
SUNDAY—MAY 14
BARBARA
HARI
ERNST
HARI
MONDAY—MAY 15
ERNST
BARBARA
FRANKIE
HARI
BARBARA
ERNST
FRANKIE
BARBARA
HARI
TUESDAY—MAY 16
HARI
BARBARA
HARI
ERNST
HARI
FRANKIE
ERNST
HARI
WEDNESDAY—MAY 17
BARBARA
HARI
ERNST
FRANKIE
ERNST
BARBARA
ERNST
BARBARA
HARI
BARBARA
HARI
BARBARA
HARI
BARBARA
The Secret History of the World
SUNDAY—MAY 14
BARBARA
1
Ellie was changed when she came out of the coma.
Not that I expected the exact same flaky, sixteen-year-old we’d all known and loved, not after she’d been dead to the world between Christmas and May Day, all the while constantly shuttled in and out of a hyperbaric chamber to help heal her burns. The doctors warned me that some cognitive changes were inevitable.
But this was something else. This was someone else.
She awoke looking just like her sixteen-year-old self—the same straight black hair, the same round face and pale skin. But she wasn’t really Ellie. Not anymore.
Someone else looked out through her owlish blue eyes.
Perhaps I should have suspected things weren’t quite right when her burns started to heal, but I was too happy to imagine any sort of downside. I mean, third-degree burns aren’t supposed to heal. They run the full thickness of the skin and beyond, down to the fatty layer and sometimes through that and into the underlying muscle. They require tissue grafts to fill in and skin grafts to close.
But Ellie’s burns started filling in by themselves as fresh new skin—skin, not scar tissue—slowly irised in from the periphery. It bothered the doctors because they couldn’t explain it, but I was ecstatic. My Ellie wouldn’t be horribly scarred for life.
I’d been with her every day. I’d even brought Blanky—yes, that’s what she still
