Ground Zero (Repairman Jack Series #13) by F. Paul Wilson

From the Publisher

On September 11, 2001, a man drifts in a boat off lower Manhattan as the towers burn. He removes a small box from his pocket and presses a button. As he waits for the south tower to collapse, he thinks: The vast majority will blame the collapse on the crazy Arabs who hijacked the planes and the Islamic extremists who funded them—the obvious choice. A few will notice inconsistencies and point fingers elsewhere, blaming the government or Big Oil or some other powerful but faceless entity. No one—absolutely no one—will guess the truth behind the who and why of this day.

Years later, someone does. Repairman Jack’s childhood friend, Weezy Connell (the genius girl from the Tor Teen novel, Jack: Secret Histories), has started fitting together the pieces of the puzzle and anonymously posting her conclusions on the Web. But she can’t stay anonymous forever. Someone is after her. Jack becomes involved in her troubles and in the paranoid mazes of the 9/11 Truth Movement, where conspiracy theories point in every direction.

They’re all wrong. The truth is stranger, darker, and more evil than anyone can imagine. It involves the cosmic shadow war into which Jack has been drafted. And if the plot behind it--millennia in the planning--succeeds, it will forever change life on this Earth.

Publishers Weekly

Wilson's less than satisfying 13th Repairman Jack novel (after By the Sword) blends 9/11 conspiracy theories with a threat to all life on Earth from otherworldly beings. In the author's alternative history, a shadowy figure floating in a boat in New York harbor causes the collapse of the Twin Towers independently of the suicidal al-Qaeda hijackers by detonating explosives in both buildings. Several years later, Eddie Connell seeks out Repairman Jack, heir to the role of “point man in the war against the Otherness.” Eddie needs Jack's help in finding his forensic scientist sister, Weezy, whom they trace to a New York City hospital ward. Because Weezy had uncovered suspicious stock trading in advance of the World Trade Center attack as well as the editing out of a man from photos of bin Laden and his top deputies, her life is in peril. The apocalyptic plot and frenetic action fail to add up to a chilling read. (Sept.)

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1

Diana stared at herself in the mirror. She did that a lot. Maybe too much. No, definitely too much. But she didn’t have much else to do.

She hated her life. So boring.

Mainly because she was so lonely. Not that she was alone. She shared this big house with three men— grown men, sworn to protect her with their lives— but they weren’t friends. She could talk to them, as in have conversations, but couldn’t really talk to them about things that mattered. She chatted online all the time, but that wasn’t the same as having another flesh-and- blood fourteen- year- old girl in the same room.

But that flesh- and- blood girl wouldn’t stay long once she got a look at Diana’s eyes.

She stared at the reflection of those eyes now. With their black pupils, black irises, and black everything else, they looked like ebony marbles stuck in her sockets. Sometimes she wanted to rip them out. Yeah, she’d be blind, but at least then she could go to school instead of having tutors. And she’d have a true excuse for wearing wraparound sunglasses all the time instead of lying about a rare eye condition.

She guessed it wasn’t a lie. It was rare— only a few Oculi left around the globe— and it was definitely a condition.

So she was an Oculus. Big deal. These black eyes were supposed to allow her to see things regular eyes were blind to, warnings from Outside.

Alarms.

She’d yet to experience one.

Not that she was complaining. She’d seen her father when he’d received Alarms and it didn’t look pleasant. In fact, it looked awful.

Why was she thinking of Alarms to night? Shehadn’t—

Something flashed to her right. She turned to look but it flashed again, still to her right. She realized it wasn’t in the room, but in her eye. A scintillating scotoma. She’d looked it up. The flashing lights always preceded her migraines. This wasn’t the sparkle she usually saw, more like wavy lines, but she knew the sooner she dug out her bottle of Imitrex and took one, the better.

And then the room tilted. For an instant she thought earthquake or tsunami, but then the pain stabbed through her head— much, much worse than a migraine— and the lights flashed brighter and longer and fused to blot out her room as her knees gave way and she dropped to the floor.

As she lay there shaking, shuddering, writhing with the pain that suffused her, a tunnel opened through the light, revealing . . .

. . . a man in a loincloth, standing on an old- fashioned scaffold and carving a huge block of stone more than twice his height into some sort of thick pillar or column . . . his hammer striking the chisel again and again but making no sound . . . all eerily silent . . .

. . . the same man carving strange symbols into the side of the pillar . . .

. . . and others . . .

. . . and carving a cavity, perhaps three feet across and five feet deep, into one end of the pillar . . .

. . . and suddenly she is grabbed from behind and bound hand and foot . . .

. . . forced into the cavity . . .

. . . sealed over with a stone plug, plunging her into darkness . . .

. . . as she struggles for air she feels the pillar tilt as it slides into a deep hole in the earth and is covered over . . .

. . . she thrashes in the small space until her air runs out and darkness claims her . . .

. . . and then . . . a spark in the distance . . . growing . . . swelling . . . to become a glowing egg . . .

. . . the egg fades and darkness regains control until a booming voice splits the silence . . .

IT HAS AWAKENED!

. . . and then the egg reappears and a spot of darkness materializes within it . . . growing . . . growing until . . .

. . . it bursts free . . .

. . . a strange, formless, flickering, alien being . . .

. . . and as it emerges, an odd word forms in her mind . . .

Fhinntmanchca . . . Fhinntmanchca . . . Fhinntmanchca . . .

The vision faded, and with it the pain, replaced by beckoning oblivion. Diana fought the draw of the temporary reprieve it promised and forced her eyes open. She pushed herself off the floor and staggered to her bedroom door. She had to tell them . . . she had to go to New York.

She had to tell the Heir. She had to find Jack. But where was he?

Excerpted from Ground Zero by F. Paul Wilson.
Copyright © 2009 by F. Paul Wilson.
Published in September 2009 by Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.