Excerpt: The Soul of the Matter, Chapter 5

Editor's note: We have been delighted to offer three excerpts from Bruce Buff's new novel, The Soul of the Matter, with the permission of Simon & Schuster/Howard Books. See David Klinghoffer's review here. Find Chapter 3 here and Chapter 4 here.

A series of sharp tones jolted Stephen. The processing of the first set of information was complete. A more detailed image of a human body was displayed on the monitor.

Collecting himself, Stephen sat back down, entered a series of commands, and kick...