Age of Power 1: Legacy (14 page)

I gave him an amused look and said, “Yes, Mommy, I did. Look,
I’ll be all right. It’s just been a tense day.”

Murmurs of agreement passed around the room. The crowd relaxed
and went back to talking with each other. I was relieved to find that I
couldn’t hear anything more than indistinct talking. Dana said, “Are you
sure you’re all right? You turned as white as a sheet for a moment. Do you need
something to drink?”

I smiled and said, “I should be okay. Thanks, Dana.”

She gave me a smile and once more offered a bottle of water. At
my nod, she walked back to the table for the water, leaving me with Brand.
Still looking worried he leaned forward and whispered, “Are you really okay, or
are you trying to play macho?”

I just shook my head as I noticed my parents talking in
whispers. I heard some of what they said, and I spoke up. “Getting food does
sound like a good idea. Maybe I can grab a pizza on the way home,” I said
without thinking about it.

My mom blinked and looked at me in surprise. “You heard us? From
over there?”

I blinked. I 
had
 heard them. And I’d heard my
dad trying to calm her down. The sharp hearing was back. Something 
was
 going
on. But I didn’t have a clue what it was. But to deal with it, I needed to get
away and think about what happened. And I needed to do it before I started
hearing about someone wanting an aspirin in Kentucky.

So I said, “I did hear you, but I’m gonna just head home, if
that’s okay.”

Brand said, “Okay, how about I go with him? It ain’t that I’m
worried about you, but I feel like grabbing something to eat, too.”

My dad laughed. “Yeah—chips are great for snacking, but not for
real meals. If you want to join us, I’ll cook a couple steaks just for you
two.”

James and Karla Houseman came up as my dad made the suggestion.
Brand looked at them to see if it was all right.

Jim said, “That’s fine. But I want you home after supper. I’d
actually like to have you around instead of in the hospital for weeks
at a time.”

Brand sighed dramatically. “Oh, damn. Vacation from the parents
is over.”

“Smart ass!”
Karla said with a laugh.

We laughed at that and went to grab our coats. While we put them
on at the lockers, Brand said, “Dude that was just some stunt to get away from
here, right?”

I stared at him. I said, “What? No! 
Seriously—no!
 I
don’t know what happened!”

I told him about the voices and overhearing the conversations.
Brand looked worried as I spoke of what I’d heard his friends saying. He said,
“I heard them, but I just ignored it. I figured their bull just ended there, so
I didn’t need to deal with it, but if you heard that, wow.”

“Tell me about it,” I said with a trace of fear. I took a breath
and then grabbed my parents’ coats after I put mine on. Brand got his parents’
coats and we headed back to the cafeteria.

“You gonna tell them? I mean, why cover it up?” Brand asked. I
looked at him, and, after a moment, I shook my head.

I said, “I don’t know, I’m not sure I know what to say.”

I stopped talking when I heard someone yelling down the hallway.
Brand followed my gaze and said, “Really? Tell me that 
I’m
 hearing
things! Better yet, tell me that I’m seeing things!”

He wasn’t. We saw Nathan Jessup pushing past the security guards
just as they made a grab for him. He yelled, “You fuckers! You’re all goddamn
assholes! Vaughn Hagen lies! His friend’s lying, too! The Avatar
didn’t kill my brother! Vaughn Hagen and Brand Houseman did!”

Before he could get any farther, Sinclair and Gutierrez grabbed
him. They almost had him cuffed when he looked down the hallway and saw the two
of us. He went ballistic. Screaming with rage, yelling, “You are fucking dead,
you sons of bitches! I’ll kill you for what you did to my brother!”

I started to back away out of reflex, but I didn’t need to.
Hector moved with surprising speed for someone of his size. He moved past his
boss and grabbed Nathan from behind. But, Nathan was just as fast. Hector
couldn’t get out of the way of Nathan’s backhanded swing to his jaw.

Hector knew how to take a punch. All Nathan did was
make
him smile. Nathan was in handcuffs in less than a
minute after that. Unfortunately, his words had caused enough damage. The
reporters were yelling questions. They were demanding answers from Jessup,
Hector, and the two of us as we went to watch the cops take Nathan away. Of
course, the reporters wanted to know if Nathan was telling the truth.

“This is turning into a crappy year, so far.” I muttered.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Time
passes; slow or fast, it passes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pass easily. Thanks
to Nathan Jessup’s attempt to come after us at the memorial, we became the
center of the media’s attention. Don’t get me wrong—not all of them believed
Nathan’s claim about the two of us murdering James Jessup. The news media
looked over all the released testimonies and reported that Alex had confessed
and signed his testimony. I learned a lesson about the media; they could do a
good job now and then.

However,
thanks to my speech—and Nathan’s ranting—reporters would call, come up to me on
the street, even come to my home, and ask about Alex, and his involvement with
Jessup’s death. While my dad was dealing with business problems in Chicago, I
ignored the requests for interviews. But after weeks of constant prodding, by
all the major networks, I talked it over with my parents. After almost half a
night of discussing what to do, I decided to give them what they wanted.

My
dad wasn’t happy with the idea, but he accepted it amiably enough. My mom
followed suit, telling me I was old enough for the responsibility. Brand
however, thought it was a bad idea. To him, I was giving in to the bad guys.

I
had known Brand wasn’t going to be happy. And it took a blunt demonstration to
get him to back down. One night, after watching a news segment about a large
political conference occurring between the nations of Africa, a segment about
the Avatar came on. The segment featured a panel talking about religious
arguments of Alex as the new messiah. After a moment of watching, I called and
told Brand to turn to the channel and listen to what was going on. He did, he
began to understand.

The
arguments on the television were no longer about whether Alex was the new
messiah or not, but rather how much of a messiah he was. Given the deaths and
sicknesses his actions had caused, there were still arguments. The debate was
over, and it was now a matter of what size pedestal to put him on. And not once
did they mention his name. They only used the title, ‘Avatar.’ By the end of
the show, Brand gave me his blessing, not that I needed it. But it left me with
a good feeling, just the same. So off I went.

The
pundits couldn’t wait to tear into me. But, even as new to this as I was, I
still managed to hold my own in the first few interviews. It helped that there
were production people sympathetic to my feelings. I was actually able to talk
about Alex because of their influence with the interviewers. To my surprise, I
became a popular guest. Producers and desk reporters said that I was photogenic
and communicated well. Because of that, they asked me back as a guest ‘expert’
on Alex Shaw, the Avatar.

Weeks
passed, and I flew from Chicago and New York City to Los Angeles and back
repeatedly. All of it followed schedules set by producers. It wasn’t easy to
do, and while my mom went with me to Chicago for the first interview, she
couldn’t go with me to the others. She had a job, and I was on my own. At
first, I was nervous. But once I got used to dealing with the news industry, I
enjoyed appearing on shows. It made for some fun times.

I
didn’t just go in and out of interviews; I also got the chance to see the
cities. And I met new friends. Many of the production assistants were friendly
and quite happy to show off their favorite local places. After the interviews
were over, we would go out to some great nightspots. But that was when things
turned strange. Instead of enjoying watching all the various women at the
clubs, I kept seeing a certain blonde. Or rather, I kept seeing someone who
looked amazingly like Angela. Worse, I kept seeing her show up in clubs that I
went to on both coasts. Yes, I was smitten, and weeks after the memorial, I was
seeing her appear in places where she couldn’t possibly be. Wonderful, she was
driving me insane!

But
it seemed that all the interviews were for nothing. Once they knew me, I became
a target for fanatics. And worse, people didn’t just attack my viewpoints; they
used them to turn the Avatar craze into a full-blown movement. As the weeks
wore on, I found myself sitting across from people who demanded to know why I
hated the idea of Alex being the Avatar. I even had to back away from one
blowhard when he decided that I was the devil incarnate. It got scary. But what
frightened me more was that people really believed his assessment of me. I
found that out when screaming crowds appeared outside the buildings where the
interviews took place. And all of them were yelling for my head.

Worst
of all, was the growing feeling that I 
was being spied
 on.
Inside and outside of studios, on the street, even on planes, I would feel as
though someone was watching me. It was especially strong whenever I talked on
the phone. It became so pervasive that my dreams even had a mysterious shadow
in them. The shadow woman dreams occurred enough times that I began to think
all those comic books I read had returned to haunt me.

Finally,
after some problems during my last interview, I went home for good. To my
surprise, my parents had changed. For the first time since Yama and the Day,
they seemed at ease with each other. The two of them even laughed at jokes
about the divorce. And—dare I say it—I felt as if I were part of an actual
family. I said nothing about it to them, though. I didn’t want to curse it.

But
if I thought my home life was going to be easier, I was sorely mistaken. Total
strangers stopped me on the street and demanded that I ‘grow up’ and ‘fly
straight,’ lecturing me about my ‘bad attitude’ about the Avatar. It happened
enough times that I started feeling just a tad paranoid. Then, after one
particularly nasty encounter near the high school, I decided I had had enough.
I stayed inside and hung out with online friends in Internet chat rooms.

And,
to my disappointment, even that wasn’t back to its normal craziness. Many of
the chat rooms I enjoyed using over the years were still down. And the few that
were active made me edgy. Every time I went into any of those chat rooms, I
would get a feeling of 
being watched
. 
Literally watched.

It
happened often enough that simply going into one was enough to make me tense.
And yet, I had friends I wanted to talk with, to make sure they were doing
okay. Because of that distraction, when my mom came down to lean on my
bedroom’s doorway one morning, I didn’t even notice. When I finally did see
her, I jumped at her presence.

She
chuckled and gave me a quizzical look. I leaned back in my office chair,
clasped my hands atop my head, and waited for her to speak. Because I was only
wearing jogging pants, I hoped she hadn’t planned to have me go out and shovel
snow. Snow had just fallen, and it was getting colder. Still, with so few
people to talk to at the moment and that constant sense of someone watching me,
I definitely didn’t mind the interruption. She shook her head, and smiled
toward my look of curiosity.

Finally,
I asked, “What’s up, Mom?”

She
smiled and said, “You haven’t even thought about it, have you? Last year, your
dad gave you a car.”

I
blinked in confusion, and then it hit me what she was saying. I moved my mouse
arrow over the clock at the bottom of the screen. “Holy shit, I’m eighteen!”

She
laughed and came in to give me a hug. Ruffling my hair, she said, “Come
on, birthday boy, get dressed. We’re going out for breakfast, and Brand
said he wanted to do something for you today.”

She
looked back at me as she walked to the door. “You really didn’t know?”

I
shook my head and said, “Nope. Thanks to all the interviews and plane hopping,
it completely slipped my mind! Wow, I really need to get back to living again!”

She
gave me a thoughtful look as she said, “I think everyone does, now hurry up!”

With
that, she turned and went back upstairs. I didn’t move right away. I just sat
there, thinking about the fact that I had actually forgotten my birthday. I had
been going on adrenaline from one thing to the next for so long, that it was no
wonder I’d lost track of days. I shook my head, and with a sigh, I went to grab
a pair of pants and a shirt from the dresser. I stopped when I noticed the
picture on top of it. My dad and I were in it, standing in front of the car he
had bought for me last year. Unfortunately, while it was parked on the
street, 
the car was totaled by a drunken driver
 only
a few months after I got it.

I
smiled ruefully. Dad wasn’t going to be giving me a car this year. Thanks to
Yama, things were just a tad on edge with employment and budgets. And, although
my mom was still working a full-time job, my dad wasn’t. His business in
construction had gone flat since the Exodus. I wasn’t too worried, I suspected
he’d find something soon enough.

Once
I had clothes, I went to log off the chat room on my laptop. Before I could
type in my goodbyes, though, a private message caught my eye. 
‘Happy
Birthday, Vaughn,’
 had been typed into the chat window from a ‘P.
Doxis.’ That was impossible. No one could know who I really was in that chat
room. I hadn’t said anything personal about myself, and I went online as
VladDImp. A cold feeling crawled up my throat. I was feeling like I 
was being watched
…again.

No
one else saw it. I asked how this P. Doxis knew of me. The private message
didn’t go through. And a quick look at the room list told me that P. Doxis had
left. I was about to ask if there was anyone in the room who had talked with
the mysterious P. Doxis, but just then, my mom called for me to hurry up. With
a sigh, I closed the laptop and left the room to go take a shower.

Before
too long, said birthday boy—that being 
me—
was
enjoying a nice breakfast at Celia’s Restaurant. A long, rectangular café on Main
Street, Celia’s was almost fifty years old, and it showed. Clean but
worn-looking, it wasn’t a place to go for fancy dinners. But it 
was still kept
 busy by farmers and families. The place
didn’t do anything extraordinary 
food-wise
. But I
had always thought that the pancakes and omelets were fantastic. Sitting in one
of the booths near the front, my parents and I talked while eating just that
while catching up on events that had been going on since the memorial.

For
the most part, the area was back to normal. Or at least it looked that way.
Most importantly for the region, the farmers were getting back to work. They
were beginning to plant, even though it still felt like winter these
days. 

Apparently,
the weather patterns were chaotic due to the near brush with Yama. Snow was
still coming down across the Midwest and temperatures were fluctuating wildly.
The sudden changes in temperature were causing problems with flash floods in
the rivers and lakes. Adding to the snowstorms were early season tornadoes and
mysterious and sudden “burst” storms in the southern states. But while it was
hard on the country, people were moving on. That held true for Riverlite, as
well.

Then,
finally, Mom got to the heart of things as she said, “So, son, are you going to
come out of the ‘man cave’ you’ve turned your bedroom into?”

I
winced, but continued eating. My parents looked at me, though, waiting.
Finally, I said, “Um, yeah. I suppose I should. I’m sorry I’ve been such a
hermit.”

My
dad coughed and then said, “Look, son, I know that it’s been hard for you. All
those interviews would take a toll on anyone. And we know what happened at the
school…but—”

I
held a hand up as I said, “Dad, Andrews’s grandson did his best to humiliate me
in front of an entire crowd of Avatar nuts! Yeah, it’s been hard!”

And
there it was, one of the underlying problems going on. Most of the people of
Riverlite had returned home, true. But we also got something more. We got fans
of the Avatar moving to Riverlite as well. These were not families intending to
find a new life here; they were people who were obsessed with Alex. They were
the same type of people that had been berating me on the streets. In short, we
were getting zealots.

I
looked at my parents and saw that it also troubled them. My dad said, “You
didn’t go into detail, but since Andrews’s grandson was involved, we suspected
that something went down at the high school.”

Dropping
my gaze to my plate, I said, “Yeah. Bobby Andrews was there. He saw me and came
over. We had some words, and after making it clear that I was scum to people
there…”

I
looked at them and said, “Judas is a nice word, right?”

My
mind went back to what had happened. After flying all over the country, I had
needed a touchstone to normalcy. That’s why I had gone walking around. And it
had helped—somewhat. Meandering around the blocks in the southern part of town,
I passed Brand’s place. Seeing that he wasn’t home, I walked up Kurtz Avenue
towards the high school. Walking around the entire school block, I thought
about next year’s graduating class and how they would handle things, given the
Day and the Exodus.

My
thoughts drifted to the events of the Day as I walked around the school
grounds. I didn’t pay attention to what was going on around me until I reached
the area where Alex had lifted off. My attention came back to the world when I
ran into a group of zealous believers of the Avatar. They were working on plans
to place a memorial marker of their own making. A couple of people were digging
up the ground near the maple. The rest of the group was waiting for them to
finish to place a two-foot high memorial sign dedicated to Alex—The Avatar.