The Modified (The Biotics Trilogy, #1)
Read The Modified (The Biotics Trilogy, #1) Online
Authors: C.A. Kunz
What would
you
sacrifice?
THE MODIFIED
C.A. KUNZ
Cover design and logo illustration by
Nathan Szerdy
For all of our wonderful supporters. We love each and every one of you, and appreciate everything you do for us. We’re extremely lucky to have you all in our lives.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
© Copyright 2012 by Carol Kunz and Adam Kunz (C.A. Kunz). All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Published 2012. Manufactured in the United States.
C.A. Kunz, LLC
Contents
Chapter Two - The Shrouded Facility
Chapter Three - The Escadrille
Chapter Five - Becoming Acclimated
Chapter Seven - Defensive Measures
Chapter Eight - Strategic Maneuvers
Chapter Nine - Division Assignment
Chapter Ten - Final Assessment
Chapter Eleven - The Magnus Ball
Chapter Twelve - The Fortification Division
Chapter Thirteen - The Takeover
Chapter One from Here by Ella James
-- Acknowledgements --
First we’d like to thank Robert Kunz, Tim Coleman, Charlie Steffy, Matt Boggs, Andrew Nocar, and Stephen R. Burkett for being our A-list supporters, dedicated readers, much-needed critics, and beta readers. We’re truly grateful for all of your assistance throughout this whole process.
A huge thank you should go to Lee Wilson who has been hard at work on a truly awesome companion soundtrack for The Modified. He’s an incredibly talented musician and engineer, and we’re very lucky to have your help and support on this project.
Tremendous thanks should also go to Nathan Szerdy for designing an absolutely amazing cover for us. You’ve seriously given us something very eye catching and stupendous. We can’t thank you enough for sharing your talent with us and our book!
Very special thanks to our wonderful editor Hollie Westring. We absolutely love you and all you do to help clean up our writing! You have yet again made one of our books much more polished and refined.
An extremely special shout out goes to all our Paranormal Plumes Society sisters! We can’t thank you all enough for your love and support. You are hands down the best group of women we have the privilege of calling friends.
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Thanks to
you
, our readers, for reading our books. By performing this simple act you are helping us make a lifelong dream come true and you have no idea how much you mean to us.
Finally, we cannot forget to thank all of our wonderful family and friends. Your love and support keep us always moving forward, and for this we are eternally grateful.
“Don’t worry, Little Bit. I’ll be back before you know it.” Those were the last words my brother said to me before he went off to war. I never heard his voice again. Though it’s been almost two years since Dylan’s passing, the pain I still feel makes it seem like it only happened yesterday.
As I sit here looking around the large stadium full of seventeen-year-olds, who like me are waiting to become soldiers, I witness a mix of emotions. Some are scared, some nervous, some even seem a little eager. I’m the latter. The war we’re all being forced into is the one that took my older brother from me, and now I’m being put into the same position he was in when he turned seventeen.
Who knew our first encounter with a life form outside Earth would cause an intergalactic war to break out? We definitely weren’t prepared for it, that’s for sure. It has the entire world scrambling to find anyone to fight for our unified cause. No one knows exactly why the war even started in the first place, but once it did, we lost a lot of soldiers. So Earth’s government, the Allied Federation, decided it’d be a good idea to implement a worldwide military draft for any able seventeen-year-old.
Those damn Bringers have a lot to answer for, and I plan to take the fight directly to them. Of course I’m scared out of my mind, but I have to do this for my family. For our survival. For my little brother, so he doesn’t have to make the same sacrifice in three years.
“Are you okay, Kenley?” I hear Joey ask as he places his hand on my knee.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just got this weird headache all of a sudden,” I reply, looking into his beautiful hazel eyes that have a hint of worry in them. The rubber band holding my long blonde hair up in a ponytail seems to be the cause of my strain, so I take it out, and let my hair fall down around my shoulders. “That feels much better.”