J P Kelly Collection Volume 1

By J P Kelly

A collection of 4 stories from J P Kelly and Scruffy Publishing.

Apocalypse Dublin

"The first thing Finn Murphy registered wasn't the headache, though Christ Almighty, it was a cathedral-sized throb behind his eyes, echoing the frantic pulse in his throat. It wasn't the taste - like licking a battery wrapped in stale Guinness dregs and regret. No. It was the smell. Not the usual Dublin cocktail of damp wool, diesel fumes, and fried breakfasts clinging stubbornly to ancient brick. This was... wrong. Coppery, thick, cloying. Like a butcher's slab left out in the August sun, overlaid with a chemical tang that stung his sinuses - ozone and something vaguely... alien."

The Hollow Crown

THE WORLD IS OPPRESSED BY ITS OWN SAVIORS.

The year is 2047. Climate collapse, economic ruin, and war have left humanity desperate for salvation. They found it in The First 6-the world's original superhumans, who promised order but delivered tyranny. With abilities beyond mortal comprehension, they rule with absolute power, crushing dissent beneath their heels.

But evolution isn't done yet.

WE

Silas Thorne lived in the quietest place on Earth. Not geographically, perhaps, but sensorily. His apartment was a symphony of nullity: temperature eternally balanced at 21.5 Celsius, humidity precisely 45%, air scrubbed until it tasted of nothing at all. The walls were panels of seamless, sound-absorbent nano-foam, swallowing any echo of existence. The light was soft, diffuse, and unchanging - a perpetual, sterile twilight.

He sat in the embrace of the Veil Rig. It wasn't a chair; it was an exoskeleton of intent. Polished carbon-fiber limbs cradled his limbs, sensors like cold, metallic leeches adhered to his temples, his spine, the pulse points of his wrists. Before his eyes, suspended in the darkness of the visor, hung the invitation: Doll Interface: ONLINE. AWAITING CONNECTION. It glowed a soft, seductive cyan.

iPearl

IN THE RAIN-SOAKED GUTTER OF MANC-Z, SHE WAS REBUILT. NOW, SHE'S THE STORM.

Pearl died in the toxic embrace of the Irwell River-ambushed, mutilated, and discarded by Silas Rook's organ-harvesting Vipers. But death was a luxury Manchester couldn't afford her. Resurrected by a black-market cyber-surgeon with stolen tech and grim pragmatism, Pearl is reborn: a fusion of scarred flesh, durasteel, and a volatile cyber-eye pulsing with captured starlight. Her mission is simple-blood for blood, eye for eye.

Yet the augments that saved her life come with ghosts. The experimental arm? Spliced from Syndicate tech. The eye? A prison for something older and far more dangerous than she knows. As Pearl hunts Rook through Manc-Z's decaying towers and drowned docks, she draws the attention of Chimera-a shadowy corporation hell-bent on reclaiming their lost property. Because Pearl isn't just carrying vengeance in her bones. She's carrying the Pale Saint: a cosmic entity of unfathomable power, and the key to Chimera's darkest ambitions.

Trapped between vicious gangs, cold-blooded tech hunters, and the god screaming behind her eyes, Pearl must become more than a weapon. She must become the crucible where humanity and cosmic fury collide. Or burn out in the rain like everything else in this rotting city.

A GRITTY CYBERPUNK SAGA FUSED WITH MANCHESTER'S ICONIC SOUNDTRACK
Blending the visceral brutality of Altered Carbon with the rain-lashed soul of Blade Runner and the anarchic spirit of the Madchester scene, iPearl is a relentless odyssey of vengeance, transformation, and the ghosts we forge in metal and light.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GQL88P69
• ISBN13: 9798250063258
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"