Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense Fynn Perry (if you liked this book TXT) 📖

in an area dominated by ten slow-moving conveyor belts, some at floor level, some at waist level, all moving in the same direction. Around these belts there must have been around a hundred people working, heads down, not talking to each other, and bizarrely, dressed only in underwear and sandals. Sweat glistened on the sea of old and young bodies that ranged from scrawny to flabby, their faded and worn undergarments only adding to their indignity. When occasionally one of them looked his host’s way, John could see the fear and resignation in their faces. He figured that the dress policy was in place not only to demean and break these poor people but to prevent them from stealing the bags of pills they were handling.

At one end of what looked like a set of production lines, boxes slid from the arriving robot platforms onto the conveyor belts. As the goods progressed, packaging was removed to reveal various electrical appliances like microwaves, washing machines, dishwashers, Hi-Fi units, and computer servers. Farther along the belts, another group of workers, all Hispanic, pulled the appliances onto side benches where they partly disassembled them to enable the insertion of bags of pills into voids within the casings. Re-assembled and restored in their original packaging, the white goods, now significantly more valuable, made their way back onto waiting robot transport units, which whisked them away, back up to the warehouse.

Stepping out of the cage-like elevator enclosure, John’s host walked toward an armed guard in black combat gear guarding the entrance to a free-standing steel staircase. The guard immediately moved aside, allowing the host to climb the stairs leading to the walkway on the mezzanine level John had seen earlier. As the host walked along the front of the glass-walled units, John could now see, up close, the quality of the pill production setup. His host stopped by the section containing the brewing vats that John had seen earlier. He watched a thin man in a lab coat carrying a clipboard and taking notes. Dark skin, glossy black hair, and a thick beard gave him a Middle Eastern appearance. His manner was fussy, like that of a scientist under pressure, and the others in the room regarded him with reverence. John’s host knocked on the glass wall and signaled to him that they should meet on the walkway. The scientist was clearly startled, if not frightened, at the sight of John’s host. He immediately stopped jotting notes on his clipboard and nervously nodded obediently before making his way to the exit.

The guard kept watching him as he walked in parallel with the man to the nearest door. John could sense a feeling of hate toward the scientist emerging from within the guard. These were exactly the type of feelings that possessing spirits could amplify and manipulate if they wanted to, John realized.

“My wife and children? Are they safe?” The man pleaded as soon as he stepped through a door and onto the walkway. He had a strong Middle Eastern accent but flawless elocution.

John could feel the resentment building inside the guard. “They will be fine,” he sneered. “As long as you keep doing what we tell you. Give me the numbers for this week,” the guard commanded.

The scientist handed him a sheet of paper from his clipboard. It had all sorts of graphs and a table showing pill production for every day of the week.

“Don’t you have any sick relatives with serious, life-threatening diseases?” the scientist blurted. “My discovery could help produce new medicine that will do a lot of good and help cure the incurable.”

John searched for even the slightest hint of empathy in his host, but failed. Instead, the guy clearly had an overwhelming feeling of contempt for the scientist which John couldn’t even attempt to soften. This man’s soul was stone cold.

The host placed his finger to his lips. The scientist shut up immediately.

Taking out his mobile phone, the guard looked up his favorites in his contacts and selected an entry. He pressed on the name ‘The Accountant.’ The device rang and the gruff voice answered, “Speak.”

The guard repeated to The Accountant the information he had just read from the scientist’s report. There was a pause before The Accountant answered, “We need to increase production by twenty percent. We have new orders from the boss.”

“How do we do that?”

“Either he makes it faster, or cuts it with something cheap when he bakes the pills. I don’t care how—just do it!” The Accountant said and hung up abruptly.

The guard repeated what The Accountant had told him and watched the scientist shaking his head before complaining jerkily, “I’m…I’m doing all I can! The…the modifications required to the genomes in the yeast strains to optimize the microbes’ metabolic reactions to yield more product takes time. It takes careful consideration and testing to optimize––”

“Testing?” The guard interrupted with a laugh. “What do you think this is? The FDA? You get your test results from the junkies. Remember what they thought of the first batch of heroin your little Frankenstein yeast pumped out? Weak as shit, they called it. I’m surprised the boss didn’t kill you and your family there and then. But he gave you another chance. And while you worked on improving the formula…”

“Modification to the genomes,” the scientist said and immediately clearly regretted the interruption.

“We,” the host continued with a heightened annoyance John could feel, “had to do something with that first batch so we mixed it with some other shit we couldn’t move, dangerous shit and, unfortunately, a lot of people reacted badly to it. As you can imagine, death is bad for business. But the boss hates waste, so now and again, we press some of the crap stuff into pills and mix them with your latest stuff to slowly get rid of it.” The host paused and John could feel a surge of evil pleasure as the man spoke his next words. “Think of each death as a reminder of what