Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance Read Online Free

written. All the connections pointed to one name:
    WE NEED TO FIND MR. HOBBES
    But Will had no idea where to start! Hobbes had always found him. They knew Hobbes had been at the Center—on Ronnie Murso’s video, six months before he’d found Will. And for all they knew, Hobbes could be connected to the mysterious research program called the Paladin Prophecy, but his real role remained a stubborn mystery.
    They had one other lead to go on. Will’s friend Nando Gutierrez—the taxi driver he’d met in Ojai—had tailed Hobbes and his Black Caps to the Los Angeles Federal Building, tracking them to the office of a seemingly benign academic testing organization called the National Scholastic Evaluation Agency, or NSEA.
    The NSEA turned out to be the supervising agency that had flagged Will’s over-the-moon test scores and brought them to the attention of the Center (Ajay’s and Elise’s as well).
    Not only that, but Will had also subsequently discovered that the Center owned the NSEA, through an organization called the Greenwood Foundation.
    Will boiled the mystery down to the biggest unanswered questions: WHAT IS THE PALADIN PROPHECY? ARE THE KNIGHTS AND BLACK CAPS BEHIND IT? AND DOES IT INVOLVE THE CENTER ?
    Will hadn’t proved his theory that the strange powers they’d started to manifest during the last year resulted from genetic manipulation performed during in vitro fertilization. But three of his roommates—Ajay, Nick, and Elise— had been able to confirm with their parents that, like Will, they’d been conceived and born in the same year as a result of in vitro procedures performed at privately owned fertility clinics in four distant cities.
    What odds would Vegas give you on that being a coincidence? What about after you add in that the Center owns the NSEA and all of us end up here fifteen years later, in the same year each of us starts to manifest these strange powers?
    But had all that been done as part of a plot called the Paladin Prophecy? That was THE QUESTION. Which forced Will to finally look at the area that might provide the answer:
    He’d spent his whole life believing that he was Will Melendez West, the only son of Jordan West, a low-profile scientific researcher, and Belinda Melendez West, a part-time paralegal. The Wests appeared to be perfectly ordinary, aside from the fact that they’d moved around so restlessly, every fifteen months on average. A puzzling pattern that now appeared to have complicated reasons.
    Will had since learned that his father was in fact Dr. Hugh Greenwood, the grandson of Thomas Greenwood, the visionary educator who had founded the Center nearly a century ago. Hugh’s father was Franklin Greenwood, only son of Thomas, who had succeeded his father as the school’s second headmaster.
    Will had cautiously poked around for information about Hugh and learned that he had taught at the Center and that he and his wife had left the school—without explanation—sixteen years ago. Hugh had also graduated from the Center, but all other details of his parents’ presence here had been erased, until he’d found a photograph in a seventeen-year-old yearbook. He took out the copy he’d made of it from his desk and looked at it for the thousandth time.
    A casual moment of “Hugh and Carol” watching an outdoor student concert, with the following caption: POPULAR SCIENCE TEACHER HUGH GREENWOOD AND WIFE CAROL ENJOY THE ANTICS AT THE ANNUAL HARVEST FESTIVAL.
    It was “Jordan” and “Belinda” all right. Many years younger, of course, and their hair looked completely different—Hugh had a crew cut, while Carol wore a long blond ponytail. Hugh was clean-shaven, whereas “Jordan” had always worn a beard, and Will had only known “Belinda” as a brunette. Neither wore glasses or a hat in the photo, something they’d done frequently during Will’s childhood, perhaps, he realized now, as part of a disguise.
    Why did they go on the run when they did? What made them leave