Survival
Chris Wright
Copyright © Omni UK Publishing 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Survival (The Survival Series, #1)
Chapter 1 – The Vanishing
Chapter 2 – Forest of Splinters
Chapter 3 – Shadows Arise
Chapter 4 – The Reality Changers
Chapter 5 – Reality Bites
Chapter 6 – The Elite
Chapter 7 – Extraction
Chapter 8 - Nano-Nano
Chapter 9 – Zombied
Chapter 10 – Dear Nephew
Chapter 11 - Rendezvous
Chapter 12 – Feeding on Memories
Chapter 13 – Rogue Elements
Chapter 14 - Floating
Chapter 15 – Spored Out
Epilogue
Dedicated to my beautiful wife Alison, for her support and encouragement through thick and thin.
Chapter 1 – The Vanishing
WEDNESDAY
It was a usual Wednesday morning. Danny sat at the table sipping his coffee as he waited for Olivia to arrive. The hustle and bustle of the coffee shop patrons were always a nice gentle way to break in the day, waiting as the caffeine slowly dripped into his blood and cleared his foggy morning mind. She was a little later than normal, unusual but not alarming. They always met for a quick pre-work coffee just to see how each other had been, it was a little routine that kept an order they both liked in their day. They had been friends for a long time and their relationship was as close as a platonic friendship could be. They did have the added complication that they had once spent a drunken night together in college, just the one, but they had moved past that a long time ago.
He glanced out the window, looking to see if she was striding up the street but couldn't see any sign of her, so took another sip from his cup. He looked around at the décor, the modern chic blend of colours that seemed to be the coffee shop template throughout the country. Something seemed slightly different though, he could have sworn that the walls used to be a different colour, but he guessed he hadn't paid enough attention to them before. As his eyes moved back towards his own table, he caught eyes with a smiling blonde-haired woman, whose eyes were fixed in his direction. He didn't know this woman, but felt an urge to smile back, not just from politeness, but because he sensed she had been smiling at him for other reasons.
His attention was quickly taken away from the attractive woman across the room as the front door clattered open and he looked over to see Olivia running through it in a rush. She waved at Danny and mouthed the word 'sorry' and ran to the counter to grab her morning fix. Danny took the opportunity to glance towards the smiling lady again and they caught eyes once more before she looked across to Olivia and then down at her own coffee. Olivia jumped into her seat looking flustered.
“Sorry I'm late” she said.
“No worries, is everything okay? It's unusual for you to be late” he asked concerned.
“Yeah I'm fine, it was weird” she said glancing away from Danny's gaze briefly before looking back to him, “It's hard to explain, but don't worry about it, it's probably nothing”.
“Okay, all set for your big meeting?”
“As ready as I was yesterday” she laughed nervously.
She was going for a promotion, not the first time she had tried it and the scars from her previous rejections were still fresh in her mind, but she was going to do her utmost to ignore any doubts and sell herself to her manager. They continued their morning pick me up as Danny gave his best motivational speaking he could, every now and then glancing behind Olivia towards the woman behind, who still caught eye contact with him every so often. There was something intriguing about her that he couldn't quite put his finger on. They gulped down the last of the coffee as they realised what the time was and stood to leave the shop. As they neared the door, Olivia turned to Danny.
“You should go and speak to her”
“Who?” Danny replied coyly.
“You know who, the woman you couldn't keep your eyes off that was sat behind me” Olivia said with a wink, “promise me you'll speak to her next time, you know you need to start dating again”.
Danny looked round at the woman, who was trying to not look in his direction, but clearly failing.
“Maybe I will” he said as he gave the woman a smile before they closed the door.
They continued on to their offices. They both worked in adjacent buildings, which is why it was so convenient to have a morning catch up there each day. They went their separate ways. Danny's day was as exhausting and simple as they normally were. He was a statistician and spent his days pouring through and analysing data for a Tech Development company, one reason his morning caffeine dose was so important. There was nothing eventful to speak of, a short lunch with his colleagues, another afternoon of analysis. Then it was a short commute home to grab his dinner and relax in front of the TV before sleeping it off overnight, to reboot the next morning and start again. He had a restful nights’ sleep, the only time he stirred was when a dog a few streets away decided it was the barking hour. Despite this small interruption he awoke feeling refreshed.
Thursday
Danny noticed that he seemed to be taking longer to get going this morning, which he found unusual. He had done the same routine and wasn't aware that he had been slower showering or grabbing his toast, but the clocks can't lie, so he had to quicken his pace. He noticed an envelope that had been pushed through his door and picked it up. It was an invitation to a small
