Accelerated Dragons: A Brefniverse Action Thriller (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798248067084)

When a homeless former chess champion is recruited to tutor a wealthy businessman, he gets a new lease on life, but after assassins target his new employer, he becomes embroiled in an overseas espionage mission.

"Mickey" is a troubled homeless chess player who spends his days hustling speed matches in the park. Fifteen years ago, Russian mobsters, led by Ivankov, kidnapped his children and killed his uncle. Mickey got away, and he's been trying to escape his turbulent past ever since.

Enter Dawson, a young executive assistant, who, on his lunch breaks, has been watching Mickey do his thing. He hires Mickey to tutor his boss, software magnate Christof LeBarron. A trip to Europe awaits, and LeBarron wants to sharpen his game against the competitive Russians he does business with. Soon Mickey is off on a private plane, with new duds, some money in his pocket, and a new lease on life as he shows LeBarron the intricacies of "The Accelerated Dragon", a chess opening he specializes in.

But when Mickey arrives at the mansion of cruel dictator Ivan Volstad for a high-profile chess exhibition, he sees faces from his past, including ex-wife, Daniela. Suddenly a team of Special Forces Troopers storm the house, take him hostage, and proceed to brutally execute the top 25 players in the game for good measure.

In the aftermath of this international incident, Mickey is whisked away to a cargo ship where the leader of his captors is revealed to be none other than Dawson. The scheming nephew of Mickey's old nemesis, Anton Luzhin, Dawson blames Mickey for his uncle's death and obviously still bears a grudge. That's because he knows who Mickey really is... Mikhail Gradenko, a former undercover Russian Intelligence agent and one time chess champion.

Mickey is forced to help Dawson and his cohort, Ivankov, steal the "Stanislaw Singularity", the most advanced Artificial Intelligence prototype ever developed, albeit one friendly to humans. The AI Box is secured in a laboratory vault and guarded by a chess playing supercomputer that Mickey must defeat. It appears Mickey has been uniquely selected due to his exceptional "chess-pionage" skills.

After a tense high speed match, in which his strategic skill helps disarm the booby-trapped computer lab, Micky makes a daring escape, but loses the AI-Box to Ivankov. Targeted for assassination, Mickey goes on the run, dodging attacks from Russian secret agents and police on board a runaway train.

Narrowly escaping, and teaming up with a dedicated Europol agent, he discovers that a hostile AI, "The Luzhin Singularity", has already been unleashed and has been manipulating events from the start.

With the AI-box absorbed into the Luzhin Singularity via a group of notorious hackers and the free world facing Digital Armageddon, Mickey must go back to his homeland to face off against "The Luzhin Avatar", a ghoulish cyber-menace infused with his late nemesis' vindictive personality. In a macabre human chess match to the death, the stakes are raised like never before.

Mickey learns that his long-lost son and daughter are among the "pieces" rigged with a nerve toxin, to be triggered upon their "capture" during the game.

Mikhail "Mickey" Gradenko may be the only hope for a rapidly changing world that once left him for dead.

A C C E L E R A T E D D R A G O N S

Don't hate the players... hate the game.

Author: Brefni O'Rourke
ISBN-13: 9798248067084
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 02/12/2026
Pages: 212
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.64lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.48d