Dr Edward Kitchener was a brilliant researcher into quantum cosmology... but he's found dead, lungs spread on either side of his open chest.

His employers, Event Horizon, now want to know what happened - and fast.

Many were anxious to stop Kitchener's work, and could have paid an assassin's fee. And only a mercenary could've breached Launde Abbey's premier-grade security system. Yet why would a professional waste time ritually slaughtering the target?

Greg Mandel, psi-boosted ex-private eye, is enticed out of retirement to track the killer. He launches himself on a convoluted trail which will mean confronting the past. But - according to Kitchener's theories - this past might never have happened.