THE BREACH BY M.T. HILL: EXCLUSIVE COVER REVEAL AND EXCERPT

Today we are honoured to bring you the world exclusive first look at the cover for the brand new novel from M.T. Hill.  The Breach will be released in March 2020 by the ever reliable Titan Books.  Pre-orders are already up for the book, and I have a sneaky suspicion that this is going to be a winner, with its potent mix of horror and science fiction.  

And as an added bonus we also have an excerpt from the novel below underneath the rather snazzy cover.  
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M.T. Hill grew up in Tameside, Greater Manchester, and now lives on the edge of the Peak District with his wife and sons. He is the author of Zero Bomb, The Folded Man and 2016 Philip K. Dick Award nominee Graft.

The SteeplejacK

 Shep can pull chins on a doorframe with only his little fingers, so the ten-foot brick wall at the bunker’s site boundary is as easy as it comes. He runs at the slab of it and springs both-handed to its coping stone, hauling himself up in one fluid motion. 

Standing on that skinny border, he already has to manage his breathing. The site beyond the wall is a lightless pool. He pulls on his dust mask and head torch and quickly double-checks the scrambler and helmet are covered by the bushes. He sweeps his torch across the site. Vague outlines emerge: the ruined foundations and strewn masonry of a levelled outbuilding, the crude parallelogram of the bunker’s concrete entrance. His heart is going, and his breath rasps through the mask filter. He shakes out his arms and sweeps the torch vertically. Mechanical parts are scattered between Shep and the bunker door. He turns off the torch to wait and check. The stars glower through the canopy.

This, then, is the edge. Balanced with one arm, rocking over on himself, Shep twists the torch back on and looks for a place to land on the other side. Imagine you’re standing on a ledge of cold, wet slate. His toes pulse with strain as he leans over. At the wall’s base is a concrete border studded with broken glass, rusty nails and metal offcuts. He nods. Faint nausea like an affirmation. In some ways he expected worse than sharps – substandard measures, really – but figures the bunker being hidden counts in his favour. Dogs and glue traps are standard in more built-up areas, and sonic barriers aren’t out of the question. Not that sharps are easy, mind – he’s definitely taken some tetanus shots in his time.

Shep sits on the wall and unties his bootlaces. The torchlight falls into him, jangling between his knees as he swaps the boots for rubber darts, a bit like covered ballet pumps. He stretches out the rubber with his toes, then folds the boots into his Bergen. He turns off his headtorch, transfers his weight over his knees and launches from the wall’s inside.

The breach is on.
 
Shep goes low through the grounds, closing on the sloped concrete lintels of the bunker entrance. A sharp thrill to find its surfaces unspoiled by graffiti. He gathers pieces of machine debris and wraps them with canvas strips, a bin bag for rain cover. He straps this bundle to his rucksack and takes out his ageing camera. Dicey, pausing here, so he reconsiders and continues towards the bunker entrance. Drilled. Trained. Alone by design. There he takes two flashless pictures of the land he crossed, level as he can manage. The first in RAW format to fiddle with later, the second stabilised but over-exposed to get an impression of his surroundings. He reviews them: grainy, yes, but useful. Nothing stands out, even as nothing is familiar. The aerials he saw in the pub toilet have no relationship with the terrain. Then he twists on the torch again. The darkness jumps back thirty yards.

There’s a codebox on the door shell, so he applies a skeleton-string. A mechanism stirs and the door clunks open, soil raining from the frame. The smell of must and metal. Shep takes out a wooden stopper and wedges the door.

The bunker’s entranceway gapes, wet and warm. Oesophageal. Pale stones under a well-worn earthen path, which in the torchlight resemble fossils. Shep’s leading foot brings him out of the wind. He has his hands on the walls, and his skin crawls at the sound of dripping, the wind across the entrance. His tongue thick in his mouth. Now only the habit will keep him down here. Practice and persistence. He can’t see what’s dripping, and that makes it louder. Another set of deep breaths to try and slow things down before he creeps on. One step. Two. As he rounds a corner the wind dies off completely, and the Lake District is gone. He’s crossed a second boundary, and the acoustics change with it. He’s vaguely conscious of his eyes watering.

Shep soon reaches a vaulted antechamber, as dark and indefinite as the site looked from up on the wall. Brown fluid leaks from what might be a run of shower fittings in the roof. The pools beneath crackle and splash. There’s still no graffiti.

When he hears a weak scratching, he stops.

To deal with fear, you have to reimagine the threat. So because Shep can’t shut his eyes, won’t dare, he tries to do just that – remodels the space as the foyer of a hotel, connecting to a corridor that leads off towards its suites. If he holds his head torch at a certain angle, the rough floor passes for carpet. He puts a hand to the slick wall, and smells again the age of the place, the stagnancy. His breath, condensing on the mask, has started running down his chin.
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As Shep goes to wipe his eyes, he stumbles on something soft. He cries out, then gags himself with his sleeve. The scream echoes, travelling deep inside, and his back ripples with cold trepidation. Look, don’t touch.

THE BREACH BY M.T. HILL 

Freya Medlock, a reporter at her local paper, is down on her luck and chasing a break. When she’s assigned to cover the death of a young climber named Stephen, she might just have the story she needs.

Digging into Stephen’s electronic life, Freya uncovers a strange photo Stephen uploaded to an online urban exploration forum not long before he died. It seems to show a nest, but the caption below suggest there is more to it.

Intrigued and on the trail, Freya soon meets Shep: a trainee steeplejack with his own secret life. When Shep's not working up chimneys, he’s also into urban exploration – undertaking dangerous ‘missions’ into abandoned and restricted sites hidden in the wilderness.
As Shep draws Freya deeper into the urbex scene, the circumstances of Stephen’s death become increasingly unsettling – and Freya finds herself risking more and more to get the answers she wants.

The problem is, neither Freya nor Shep realise that some dark corners are better left unlit.

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