Free Age of Power 1: Legacy by Jon Davis Page A

to white fire. A bright star flared, casting
sharp shadows black as ink. Then the light faded until we could see two arcs of
fading blue-white light with that bright shining star between them. Then it
faded, leaving the blue of the sky.
    And my world fell to black.

CHAPTER FOUR

 
 
 
    When I opened my eyes, my mind was a whirlwind full of images. I
found that I had to keep blinking against the feeling of grit. I wanted to rub
them clear, but I found it almost impossible to move. Finally, I did manage to
get my right arm to move, but it was only after a few tries. That act alone
took everything I had. I felt wasted. I was wasted. In fact, I felt like a
giant asteroid had hit me. My internal voice groaned with the bad joke. But I
was alive, that was the important thing.
    I took in my surroundings as I let memories try to sort
themselves into something I could understand.  Alex
glowing and flying…the sky lighting up…Mom and Dad calling out to me…Brand in
an ambulance next to me.  Some of it made sense, but it was a
jumble, and I barely remembered bits and pieces of it. But I did remember what
Alex had done, the impossible thing that Alex had done.  That  I
would remember for the rest of my life.
    That I was here, in a hospital room, told me that he’d
succeeded. Looking down I saw that golden cotton blankets covered my body. I
had a blue hospital gown on. Looking at the bed directly across from me, I saw
Brand. He had on the same type of gown with an IV tube going into one arm. The
bed tilted up enough that I could see his closed eyes. Looking to my left, I
saw a partly open door, which, from the visible edge of a sink I guessed to be
the bathroom. Past that in the middle of the room was a large door through
which I guessed was the way out. To Brand’s right there was another open door.
Moving my head, I saw clothes hanging there.
    It was dark out. But aside from that, I wasn’t sure what time it
was. It was snowing heavily too. I could see it hitting the windows in waves,
and I could hear the wind whistling past the window. Great, we were in a
blizzard. The nice weather had ended. A slight tug on my left arm got my
attention. I had an IV attached to my arm. The fingertips of my left hand also
had sensors attached to them. I glanced up and saw the monitor units, telling
me that my body was living at least.
    “Hey,” Brand said, and I looked back to him and saw that he was
watching me with exhausted-looking eyes. He said, “Finally woke up huh? I’ve
been up for a bit myself, but don’t try moving or you’ll burn out.”
    “Riverlite Hospital?”  I
asked, but stopped talking. The dryness of my throat made it too hard. I hoped
someone would come with water. Then I thought about that point. How many people
were in the place? It couldn’t be all that many, not with the town deserted as
much as it had been. Looking at the IV bag, I hoped that whoever had attached
it to me was someone who knew what they were doing,  medical-wise .
Given that we were here though—well, that brought up even more questions.
    For that, I wanted to ask Brand to fill in the blanks. It took
me a bit to make the attempt. “How long, and what the hell hit us?”
    And that was it. My throat was too dry. With a grimace, I
stopped talking. Worse was, now that I was more awake, I could feel the other
aches. Dry throat, dull pain where the needle was in my arm, and, frankly, I
felt as if I’d gone days without a shower.
    Brand said, “We were both out for about two weeks.”
    I kept looking at him, trying to process everything I
remembered. Nope, nothing was making sense yet. I said, “No really, how long
were we out?”
    Brand snorted and said, “Serious as Yama, man. Shaw zapped us!
The doctor said it was radiation poisoning.”
    “Brand, don’t…” I started to say and stopped myself, damn
throat.
    Ignoring my look of worry, Brand slowly got out of bed. He
managed to get to his feet, but had to lean on the bed. I could