Extract from Declan's Lost Race

An unidentified man has been found dead on the Costa del Sol. What the forensic examination reveals is difficult to reconcile with the body lying before the investigators.

The body in Spain had no name. He was dressed in jeans and a denim jacket, but no wallet, identity documents or passport remained. His fingerprints produced no database match; enquiries based on his dental chart produced no candidate; no identifying implant or medical device was present; and the initial missing-person searches had yielded nothing.

Pathology placed him somewhere in his mid-fifties. A single small-calibre bullet had entered below the left shoulder blade, crossed the heart and remained in the body. Acid had been applied to his face after death, damaging the external features beyond useful visual identification. The inner mouth, however, had remained sufficiently intact for sampling.

An internal pocket of the denim jacket contained about seven hundred pounds in sterling and a folded slip of paper bearing a few handwritten English lines:

Your eyes collapse the infinite into a whisper. Your skin dances on repelling fields. Touch is merely the echo of space.

The money and the English writing did not establish nationality, but together they made a British connection sufficiently credible for both genetic profiles to be sent to the British authorities for comparison. Two distinct profiles — apparently belonging to close relatives — had therefore been recovered where every outward fact insisted there was only one man.

Extract from Declan’s Lost Race © 2026 Bob Mazzei. All rights reserved.