Age of Power 1: Legacy Read Online Free

My arms and hands ached, and
a glance down at my coat made me wince. There were small tears across the front
and arms of the jacket. I shrugged it off. “I slipped. Maybe I should get
home.”
    Alex
looked at me with those dark eyes of his. In the daylight, his deep brown eyes
seemed to have an endless depth to them. Right now, the darkness made them
frightening to look at, almost as if I looked into a void. That was Alex Shaw
for you. He was always scary looking. He constantly wore black and kept his
dark hair shaved down to the scalp. With his black goatee and dark eyes, he put
off a sinister cast to people dealing with him. He liked it that way. I know he
did, because he once told me so. He said it kept people from bothering him
while he read comics, and studied science. And he studied all types of science.
    If
he were a sociopath, that knowledge, mixed with the look, would have had him
starring in the FBI’s top ten most wanted list. He and I mainly read and talked
about comics. And reading comics was fun yeah. But then, he would go into
such  high level  talk of science that I’d be
lost. I never got frustrated about it. That was just his way. He’d sit there,
reading comics and then he’d begin talking about the real physics behind what
he was reading. Because I barely had a clue about science, I would just smile
and nod. But, it was because of his love of knowledge—including astronomy—that
I had felt guilty and lied about what I had been doing.
    I
had started to tell him what I was doing with Brand tonight, but then I
realized it might hurt his feelings. I know he would love stargazing on the
church roof, but it’s something Brand and I did. I considered it a good way to
separate the two of them in my life. After all, Brand wasn’t the type to hang
around and talk comics or science. But talking with Alex wasn’t enough to get
me to stop worrying about Mom. Certainly, she had to know that I was gone by
now.
    As
though he was reading my mind, Alex said, “Go see if your Mom is okay. She
probably is worried about you. Though, uh…here, take this.”
    He
reached in his coat, pulled out a pack of gum, and handed me a piece. He said,
“I don’t think she needs to smell the beer, do you?”
    My
jaw dropped.  Busted.  Fortunately, Alex
always kept some gum on him for the times after he smoked a cigar. That
was good, since I smoked cigars too. Occasionally, I’d grab one of his smokes
from a box he kept in his bedroom. As I said, he was smart, scary smart, and he
noticed things.
    I
took the offered gum and thanked him. With a nod, he started going back towards
the street. I watched him walk into the darkness for a moment longer before
turning toward home. Mom would be worrying about me by this point. The thought
of her puzzled expression when she saw I wasn’t in bed made me chuckle for a
moment. I stopped myself. I was punch-drunk from everything that had happened.
I really needed sleep. But I had to get past Mom first. Taking a deep breath,
throwing the gum in my mouth, I went in to face the music.

 

 
    CHAPTER TWO

 
 
 
    If there was ever a chance for people to
say, ‘I told you so,’ this was it. Across the world, people crowed about how
close to the truth the prophecy came to be. For a short while, they enjoyed
their moment in the sun. But it was for a moment only. The asteroid   didn’t   crash to the planet’s surface.
    Once the point was made , people politely told doomsayers to relax and be
glad they were only partly right. Tweeters and bloggers were not so polite. As
usual, that began the newest war on the Internet. By the next day, however, the
rest of the public managed to agree that the world wasn’t going to end.
    Karla was
ecstatic about it. Her view was that the ‘Lord saved them from the Apocalypse’
at the last moment of course, for dramatic purposes—Brand’s words, not mine. He
told me about her religious view of it all through texts. Unfortunately,
texting was