Age of Power 1: Legacy (44 page)

As the last bits and pieces of floating ash cooled and died, I
whooped with joy at what I’d done. Then someone next to me said, “Wow, dude. I
didn’t know you had that in you.”

“Yeah, no more blowing out candles on the birthday cakes, huh?”
I said without thinking.

My eyes went wide when I realized who had spoken. I turned to
see Brand standing there, looking at me with a slight smile. But there was only
rage and hate in his eyes.

He said, “You’re turning out to be pretty dangerous. Die time
now!”

Before I could react, Brand blurred and backed away, then
blurred again, running at me. One punch later and I was flying—that was it.
Sailing up into the air in a long arc, the world spun around me. Then it ended
as I slammed down onto hard asphalt nearly three blocks west. I had ended up on
the other side of the bridge. I don’t think I had time to draw a breath.

It felt like the impact had compressed every bone in my body.
That I was still alive and conscious was shocking all by
itself
.
But moving…well, my body told me not to. In fact, everything screamed at me not
to make any stupid attempts to move, or breathe, or blink, or…

No, I had to get up. I didn’t know how I had survived that big
of a hit, but I did. It had left its mark, though. I was bleeding from small
cuts and scraped skin all over my body. My shoulder injury was now throbbing
with sharp agony to every beat of my heart. Lying on the cold road in a
heap—that was a good thing, right? Let someone else…damn it…no one
else.

I opened my eyes. I was on my back in the middle of Main Street,
and I could see the other side of the bridge. Right in front of me, slushy snow
was scattered across the road, deposited by passing cars and my own crash
landing. Pushing myself up to my knees, I ignored the spasms threatening to
send me back down to the road. I had to. If I failed, the whole town was going
to burn. Brand made that clear.

Images of buildings on fire with people burning as if they were
candles lashed through my mind’s eye. And it was exactly what I needed to push
myself to my feet.
Or rather, to get to my hands and knees.
With everything hurting, I didn’t care if I stood up or not. Frankly, I didn’t
really care if I fell over unconscious.

And I might have done precisely that, if not for the screams. I
looked up and saw him still near where the gas station had been. But for a
moment, I couldn’t tell what he was doing. It hit me when one of the homes
across from the station exploded. I could hear him yelling and laughing about
it. The asshole was showing off!

People were running away, and Brand let them. But he fired off
heat bursts in their direction, laughing and screaming for them to run faster.
Wonderful, he’d become our very own homegrown terrorist! It worked to get my
adrenaline going, though. I still couldn’t move very well, but, just the same,
I got to my feet. Opening my mouth, I took in a breath to scream. It was a fair
distance, but his back was to me, and if I focused enough, I knew I could take
him down while he was distracted.

“Brand!”
 I yelled.

Brand simply looked in my direction. And I was in trouble. So
much for hitting him with a sonic attack, something was wrong. Then I
realized that I wasn’t feeling the usual buzz in my nerves and brain. Instead,
there was only a vacuum-like feeling, a nothingness where the buzz had been all
these weeks.

Whining, I said, “Nothing? I got 
nothing?
Come on! This is a craptastic time to run out of gas!”

Brand cocked his head, and then shaking it, he yelled back,
“Seriously? I send you flying, and you still think you can take me
out? 
Damn, man!
 I think I’ll just kill you
now and be done with it!”

He started running. But he didn’t blur. If he had, I would’ve
been dead a second ago. No, he was playing with me. Brand was building up speed
slowly, letting me know that I was about to be killed.

Well, good.
He was acting like a child showing off. Brand had always been hotheaded, but he
usually only went after someone without wasting time on melodrama.
Unless…maybe he was wearing out as much as I was? Oh, that would
be nice. Then he could beat me to death in slow motion.
Yay.

I had to lead him away from the people around us, though. I
moved toward the side of the road—well, I started to. Brand yelled at me. “Stay
there, Vaughn! Or run! It doesn’t matter. Either way, I’ll burn you down!”

He was moving faster. Brand hit the other side of the bridge
moving as fast as a car would. I put up my fists. My only chance was to dodge
to the side and hit him with a glancing blow as he passed me. But I knew I
would have to time it perfectly, and I really didn’t have the chance to think
of much else. But as he got faster, I saw something around him, like a shift in
the light. He glowed for only a split-second, and then he sped up. The air
around him wavered as Brand began to blur. I could see steam or…vapor
around him, flying off when he increased speed. 
Cold
air…or the moisture losing heat?

Friction—that had to be the answer. Just as the energy in my
nerves manipulated sonic vibrations into kinetic force, Brand’s energy took
heat from the air hitting his body and converted it into speed or heat blasts.
The faster he moved the more power he gained. Suddenly what he had done so far
made sense. Short of his body’s physical limits, there was no end with how fast
he could go.

And, that was a total waste of comprehension. It was coming down
to one thing. He was coming to kill me with a very fast punch. I’d probably go
flying again, and this time, I’d be dead. Oh, how I wish this
was
a movie. That way I’d at least come down on a big air
bag. Oh no, all I had here was half melted…snow.

Snow.
 I glanced
down at the slushy, dirty stuff in the middle of the road. Time was up. Brand
was nearly across the bridge. I’d backed up towards the intersection behind me,
but he was going far faster than I could manage. I had to act now!

One…he blurred, I dived down and rolled.

Two…he was out of sight. I had to guess where he would be.

Three…I grabbed a handful of snow and threw it.

Brand screamed in pain and shock, slush exploding across his chest.
He lost his footing and skidded down the road.

Good guess. I win the prize! I get to live for a few more
moments! 
Yay!
Ow…

I lay there for a moment, watching him. He twitched and moaned.
That was fun. But I’d only hit Brand with snow. And he was already starting to
move. He was groggy, but he would shake it off before too long.

I got back to my feet and stumbled toward him. I hoped he’d be
down long enough for me to hit him hard. I wanted him knocked out.
No such luck.
Before I got more than a couple steps, his
eyes flew open as he gasped. Brand growled wordlessly and got back to his feet.

He glared at me as he said, “That fucking hurt, you son of a
bitch!”

“Aww, I feel for you, asshole. Really…” I muttered. I still
couldn’t feel the buzz. I couldn’t wait for it to come back. I had to stop him.

I said, “Brand, Yasmine is dead! She can’t hurt you anymore! You
can get past this! Please, just stop! Whatever she made you into, you can
fight it!”

He shook his head, laughing softly. Something in his voice made
me hesitate. He yelled. “You dumbass, what makes you think I want to stop? This
is the ultimate high! Let me show you!”

He and the world blurred as something hit me. Once again, I flew
through the air with the greatest of unease. Brand let me go, and I skidded
right into the side of a hill. I grayed out for a moment, then slowly came back
to see that I was near the river at the bottom of a hill.

Brand called out from somewhere above me, “Come on up, buddy!
Let’s hang out, shoot the breeze! Hey, yeah, let’s go back to being good old
bros, like we used to be!”

I looked and saw him waving at me from the railroad trestle we
used to climb all over. I started up the steep hill. Tracking through the slush
and mud was incredibly hard to climb. By the time I reached the top, I was
muddy, and very wet. I’d slipped a couple times to Brand’s laughter. The
bastard was trying to humiliate me. But I got up to the top and climbed over a
low-lying wooden fence to walk out onto the train tracks.

He was still waiting in the middle of the trestle. I was muddy,
bloody, and generally in need of a shower. He could have run away and back
again at least ten times in the moments it took me to get up there. He wanted
this to end. I did, too. Taking a breath, I went out onto the trestle.

Taking him in, I saw that he didn’t look much better off than I
was. The fighting had scored and ripped his suit in various places. He didn’t
look all too healthy, either. He was sallow, his face was tight and his
cheekbones stuck out. Brand was burning himself up with all this. Psi-energy
enhancement or not, he actually had to run to use his power.

But he was still going, and he was still full of that rage.
Worse, his face had this sneer on it that was so unlike his usual cynical smile
that seeing it disturbed me deeply. I’d known Brand my whole life, and this was
the first time I’d seen such disdain on his face.

He said, “Dumbass. I bet you’re still thinking you can convince
me to give it up, right? Or are you going to try that bullshit with
the snowball again? Don’t bother. So come on, dude! Let’s have one last good
old trip down memory lane! And then I’m going to melt the eyes in your head and
let you 
live long
 enough to hear me kill
your faggot bud bit by bit! Then I’ll take his sister as my whore!”

“Damn man, Yasmine seriously pissed in your cereal this morning,
didn’t
she
?” I yelled.

Brand barked out a laugh. Shaking his head in wonderment, he
said, “Oh, man, you are an idiot! That stupid mind-witch didn’t make me do
anything I didn’t want to do. She freed me, Vaughn!”

He raised his hands, turning them over slowly. Waves of heat
built up around them as he slowly closed his hands into fists. He looked at
them with an expression of what was almost sexual ecstasy on his face. His
voice had a dream-like quality to it. “I love this. The power inside me wants
to get out, needs to get out, it’s like the rush of cocaine, man. But it comes
without any of the nasty side effects!”

He glared at me.
“But Yasmine.
She kept
trying to dominate me.
Dumbass bitch.
She had no clue
what I could do. All she worried about was those damn Noumenonii. They stood in
her way. The very thought that someone else was out there, able to stop her,
sent her into full-on panic!”

I snapped at him. “She was right to worry. Think about it,
Brand. We’re paranormally gifted humans, with powers like Alex. He had to have
come from somewhere. He did come from somewhere.”

“Yeah, I already figured that out a long time back—didn’t you?
Wow, I thought you were the smart one. Well, you ain’t!” he said with a sneer.

“That’s ‘aren’t,’ not ‘ain’t,’ you idiot.” I said out of reflex.

Brand looked startled for a second, then his eyes narrowed and
he said, “Screw you. And screw Yasmine! She kept worrying about those damn
Noumenonii of hers! When they arrested you, it freaked her out because they
suddenly had a live subject to use! God, I told her to forget it! Told her we’d
deal with them later. Get an army together, as she originally planned. Then they
arrested you and all that
was tossed
out. Hell, you’re
the one who’s stupid, man, getting caught like that!”

 “So how’s this going to end? Do you think we’re going to
make up now? You heard me before; there isn’t any way back,” Brand
said. “
You hearin’
me, man?”

I nodded, and then said, “Yeah, yeah, I heard you. So what’s
this—one last blast from the past, when we used to climb underneath and hang
from I-beams?”

Brand snorted. His hair blew in the breeze and, for a moment, he
looked like my old friend. That ended when sneered at me. Then he said, “Sure,
let’s go with that, man. You’re dead. You know that,
right?
Once I kill you, it breaks the last ties I have to this stupid-ass town.
Yasmine was right! We’re the new gods! We have power unlike anything ever seen
before! You think those leftover humans will ever be able to take us down when
we come together?”

I sighed, “Yasmine’s dead. Her nightmare is dead with her. Her
friends are dead, or so out of it that the military will just grab them. You’re
all alone, Brand.”

Brand laughed and said, “Wow! You have no idea, do you? Do you
really think she got to only the people that you just fought? The bitch
went all over the world to every Empowered she knew! What do you think she did
to them? Since the attack at the hospital, she had Alan jumping everywhere! Do
you seriously think this is over because she’s dead? 
No
way!”

Oh no, it wasn’t possible. I shook my head in disbelief. I said,
“No, she didn’t have that long. She took out Paradoxis, yeah, but to manipulate
that many people—no, no way, man.”