The Sound of Wind
Book One of The Powers series
by Raegan Millhollin
Copyright 2013 Raegan Millhollin
And webcomics at AStrangeFruit.net
A BIG GIANT THANKS TO:
My family for always being there for me,
The awesome peeps who helped make this story a thing:
Colleen, Kyle, and Kelly
And a special thanks to Jason,
because in the end, everyone is just stealing from him anyway
Table of Contents
Chapter One - It Started With The Explosion
Chapter Two - Fire and Lightning, Literally
Chapter Three - A Promotion?
Chapter Four - Getting to Know the Founders
Chapter Five - Adam
Chapter Six - Everyone Makes Mistakes
Chapter Seven - A Nice Afternoon Scotch
Chapter Eight - William Is Dead
Chapter Nine - There Were 12 Monkeys
Chapter Ten - Trading Secrets
Chapter Eleven - Killing Relatives is a Man's Job
Chapter Twelve - Christian is Handling the Cleanup
Chapter Thirteen - It's Only Fair
Chapter Fourteen - Different Styles of Playing
Chapter Fifteen - Rock Star
Chapter Sixteen - We're Going to Need a Bigger Vacuum
Chapter Seventeen - Effects of The Substance
Chapter Eighteen - Terms and Conditions
Chapter Nineteen - All Kinds of Monsters
Chapter Twenty - What Makes it Right
Chapter Twenty-One - Kinda Scary
Chapter Twenty-Two - It's Just Not Fair
Chapter Twenty-Three - It All Ends
Chapter Twenty-Four - But He Wasn't on the List
Chapter Twenty-Five - Weapons of Legend
Chapter Twenty-Six - Dressing Up for the End of the World
Chapter Twenty-Seven - Zombies? Really?
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Education
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Negotiations and Storms
Chapter Thirty - Resolve
Chapter Thirty-One - Seeing the Problem
Chapter Thirty-Two - Standing on Broken Glass
Chapter Thirty-Three - You'll See
Preview of Book Two: The Ticking of the Clock
Chapter One - It Started With The Explosion
“Dude, you can’t still be nervous, we’re almost done!” Steve’s mouth was quirked in a disbelieving smile as he aired out his t-shirt. The shirt had a black skull on it with a single gold tooth that was flashing in the dim light. Hugo brushed damp strands of bleached-white hair out of his eyes.
Before he could think up a response however, Peggy was snapping her fingers at them, stalking forward like a hunched cat, “Times up! You’re doing great guys, now get your asses back out there and kill this thing!”
His heart squeezed as he climbed the three stairs to the stage. His hands were shaking so bad there’d be no chance of him pulling off the guitar solo in Anhedonia. At least it started out slow. Maybe he could leave the nervousness that had been building all day behind by then. His brown eyes scanned the darkness as he pulled the guitar over his shoulder, settling it. Then he touched his fingers to the strings and started.
A pressure was building in his head, behind his eyes, but he was already on automatic; he knew the song by heart. He knew all their songs by heart. In fact, there was a lot he was remembering lately in perfect detail. But the stage lights were burning his eyes, so he closed them for a moment. When he opened them again he was standing at the window of his bedroom, sunlight oozing through the closed blinds. He wasn’t wearing his brown plaid pants, light and dark blue stripped shirt, and purple checkered Converse anymore. Instead he was wearing a pair of pajamas he didn’t own, his feet bare.
Hugo opened the blinds, but they didn’t make that plastic zipping sound; they just revealed the scenery of Capitol Hill with an eerie quiet. The sky was so clear it was a flat blue sheet, not even the dark shadows of birds marred it. He pressed his palm against the window, but couldn’t feel the glass against his skin. His attention slid down to the sidewalk, but there was nothing to see there; there was no one on the sidewalk or in the street. The world wasn’t moving.
Just as Hugo was beginning to realize that what he was experiencing was strange, a mushroom cloud billowed upwards in stark contrast to the perfect blue sky. His window rattled, a violent sound, the only sound, and fire rolled towards him.
Then everything was dark.
He was dead…until his eyes adjusted to the shadowed, upturned faces of the crowd. The awkward silence was punctured by the growing sound of booing. A plastic cup bounced off his shoulder, flinging foaming beer wildly about. In its wake other debris hurled toward the stage, but miraculously nothing else hit him. Instead a cold breeze wiped the sweat from his face. His thudding heart rate plummeted to something reasonable, his breathing slowed and his hands stopped shaking. Everything would be alright.
Hugo leaned towards the microphone, dazed that he had something to say, because his tongue certainly hadn’t shared that information with his brain. “I just saw the end of the world,” his voice seemed quiet, even amplified by the humming sound system, but it still flattened the noise of the crowd. “Declare this an emergency, come on and spread a sense of urgency, and put us through…” It only took a moment for the band to catch on as he launched into a cover of Apocalypse Please by Muse that they’d been using as a warm up during practice the last few weeks. The audience caught on a moment after that and roared.
Peggy is going to kill me, Hugo thought, and then the music seized him and flung him into its world.