Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller Brandon Ellis (ebook reader for comics txt) 📖

not been manipulated. We’re still pure. You both, on the other hand, are more powerful than the Atlanteans, for a great power has been bestowed upon you. You carry human chromosome two and human chromosome seven.”

This just wasn’t making sense. Jaxx and Fox were Atlantean brothers, yet partly human as well? Then, who were his real parents? “A great power has been bestowed upon Fox and me?” asked Jaxx.

“You have much to learn, much to decipher. In time, it will come. Now, for you two,” she pointed an index finger to Jaxx and her other index finger to Fox. “You have a connection you haven’t quite understood and when you felt it in the past, you dismissed it as something else entirely or ignored it altogether.”

Fox gave a hearty laugh. “You’re full of shit, woman.” He supported his body with his hand on the ground and pushed himself up like a rickety old man, the electrical charge clearly still tingling through him. “How did we get here?”

“Mez Beds, please,” she said.

Two beds materialized in the middle of the room, crystalline in appearance with a glow pulsing from within. Ear muffs—or something similar—were at the head of each bed. “You can’t leave this dome until you find your true connection. It’ll bond you, even if you can’t overcome your kismet issues with each other. It’s your destiny. It’s our destiny. You’ll right a great wrong that’s facing our people.” She snapped her fingers, gesturing for them to lay on the beds.

Jaxx and Fox didn’t move and Liberty dipped her head. “It’s your choice. Until then, it’s by decree that you may not leave this dome until you have understood your bond.”

She left the dome and the door shut behind her, though no lines showed where a door should have been. No frame, no door knob, nothing.

Fox stood in a stretch. He cracked his knuckles. “This ought to be fun.” He rushed Jaxx.

36

Somewhere in North Carolina - Earth

He’d been on the road for three hours. All he’d seen on the way were a few cars and mostly people walking on the side of the freeway, their thumbs out. Drew would have pulled over many times, but each time, the memory of the men who stole his car came to mind. In a time like this, he could only trust himself.

Mya hadn’t woken yet. Perhaps the trauma had overrun her nervous system and her body kept her safe by conking her to sleep for as long as it could before the trauma reared its ugly head the moment she woke.

His chest tightened and his stomach fell when the red gas light blinked on. Near empty. Now he was feeling trauma. Not like back when the foreign military opened fire on his location, but still, a car with no gas equaled he’d be up shit creek.

He was passing Balsam, North Carolina on Route 74. Population 49.

He pulled onto the exit. The gas station was run down and his car jostled up and down as he pulled onto the broken driveway.

Mya continued to sleep.

He pulled up to one of the two pumps, a Country Mountain Store sign above the roof of the store only yards away told him exactly where he was—butt freakin’ nowhere. The store looked empty. Nothing in life from this point forward would be easy, not that it had ever been. But with the US economy in the toilet, people running to safety, and everyone—just like him—suspicious of everyone, life would be a shit-show of people stealing and pillaging and looking out for number one.

He opened his car door. “A mountain store?” he said quietly to himself. The smell of fresh air and pine seeped into his nostrils. The landscape was beyond gorgeous. Green, healthy trees dotted the mountains surrounding Balsam.

He took out his wallet, eyeing a credit card. He sighed. “I hope this works.” He slid it into the gas pump’s card reader. No response. The lack of digital numbers on the pump’s display should have told him exactly that—not operational.

A beat up truck was parked on the grass by the side of the store. Rust started to make its home on its roof. He hurried over, checking left and right, hoping nobody watched him. He opened the driver door and popped open the gas cap cover. He shut the door and walked over and unscrewed the gas cap, then took a whiff. There was gas in there that he’d have to siphon. He went to the store’s front door and jiggled the handle. Locked.

He glanced back at his car. Mya was stretching, yawning, and then rubbed her eyes.

She opened the door. “Mamma? Where’s Mamma?”

Oh, boy. Here we go. He strode next to her. Bending down, Drew rubbed her shoulder. He didn’t know if that’s what you’re supposed to do with kids, but he’d give it a go. “Mya? Your mom won’t be able to see you for a while. I’m going to be taking care of you until your dad arrives.”

Did he just say that? Taking care of her? He couldn’t even take care of his bong. And when was he going to explain that her mom would never see her again?

Kids were an anomaly to him, perhaps because he was an anomaly as a child. Growing up, he didn’t know how to talk to children his own age and especially didn’t like playing Legos or stacking blocks with them, since other kids were so elementary. Plus, being born with photographic memory had its down sides with runny nosed, piss-ant kids who made fun of him for knowing algebra and equations better than college professors by age ten.

“Where’s Daddy?” Mya stepped out of the car. A cold breeze brushed across them and she huddled against Drew’s leg.

Drew put his hands out and leaned back like Mya was a leach, trying to suck the blood out of his leg. A soft buzz sounded behind him and before he could look to see what it was, his mom materialized in