Shattered Ones (eBook)

Adam Sergent (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
372 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-6901-6 (ISBN)

All hail, Anarchy. The world is in turmoil. Fires and explosions plague a dark city. With a deep yearning for sunlight that no longer shines, Ace stopped believing he had a destiny. He was wrong. He is one of 'The Shattered Ones' in Adam Sergent's new science fiction novel.

Adam Sergent is a filmmaker, screenwriter, graphic artist, and author. He is the founder and president of the award-winning Bad Image Productions, Inc. as well as the writer, director, and producer of the feature films 'The Devil's Instrument' and 'Darkness Hunting.' He was born and raised in Harlan, Kentucky to elementary and high school teachers, Cheryl and Darrell Sergent. After high school, he received two Bachelor of Science degrees and a Master of Science degree from Eastern Kentucky University. His independently creative mission in life is to produce high-quality, engaging films that entertain, educate, and inspire the human spirit. He runs the The Bad Image BLOG - For All Things Independent Filmmaking and co-authored and illustrated the children's picture book, 'Ollie & Orville.' He resides in Nicholasville, Kentucky with his wife Ashley and their beautiful daughter, Lennox.

Due to decades of pollution and abuse, the world has been completely engulfed in darkness. An enhanced seasonal affective disorder (also known as sunstarve) threatens to turn the world's population into hyper-violent schizophrenics. Through a series of fortuitous events, Ace discovers that he is one of eight extraordinary individuals who have received a set of cognitive transmissions from an unknown source. The transmissions contain a set of coordinates that will lead each of The Shattered Ones (a.k.a. protectors) to a mysterious relic that may end the darkness once and for all. A powerful, corrupt organization and a gang led by a supernatural being, unleashed by the darkness, will stop at nothing to defeat The Shattered Ones. The race to find the relic and return the light to planet Earth begins. Their quest will push each of the chosen protectors to their breaking points, and their pasts will help determine their future. The climactic showdown will reveal the true nature of darkness in Adam Sergent's new science fiction thriller, "e;The Shattered Ones."e;

Chapter 1

Acquaintances

The sun did not rise again today, but, of course, Ace had not been expecting it to. The twenty-eight-year-old former-bouncer was standing in his living room gazing out the window, just like he used to do in the old days.

Before the darkness began, Ace used to stand in front of that window for hours on end. He would look for signs of trouble, and if he ever saw any he would make them go away, as inconspicuously as possible. He realized long ago that he had been blessed with many gifts, and he used to use those gifts to protect the defenseless throughout the city. He used to be the savior of the desolate, the hopeless, and the wretched. But that had been long ago, before the hopelessness, before the fires and the explosions plagued the city, and before he, along with everyone else, yearned for sunlight that never came.

On the corner of Eighth and Main, high-up in the bloated apartment building, Ace had an immaculate view of virtually the entire city. As he stood in his living room, staring out the window, a somber-look apprehended his face. He was simply wondering how it had ever come to this. Turmoil was all that he could see for miles. Women were screaming, as they ran for their lives down the gloomy streets of the city. Machinegun fire lit up the night, and for some strange reason it made him think about a question that a straggly homeless man had asked him yesterday over on L Street.

“Say boy, where were you when the sky went black?” The homeless man had asked, revealing a toothless smile.

Ace hadn’t given the homeless man an answer. He had forgotten where he was on that particular day.

It all started about seven months ago. On July the second, around two o’clock in the afternoon, everything changed. People became glued to their televisions, listening to reporters go on and on about how the worst natural disaster in the history of mankind had occurred. Religious scholars went on all the talk shows and warned that the end had come. Nobody could believe that darkness had engulfed the earth.

Protesters and activists blamed anything and everything from nuclear testing and chemical manufacturing to deforestation and waste dumping. There were also the riots that occurred in the beginning along with the looting and the public hysteria. But, of course, that was to be expected. What wasn’t expected was the organization among the chaos.

That unexpected organization took physical form in a new gang that had sprung up out of nowhere. They were really just a simple band of thugs. But not after Drake Dengrove came along.

Drake was, more or less, a shadow in the darkness. Some people called him a demon of the night, while others simply wouldn’t talk about him at all. No one knew if it was true or not, but it had been said that he appeared as quickly as the darkness prevailed.

Despite what many people called this gang, they simply referred to themselves as Anarchy. In the beginning, much to his displeasure, Ace noticed that their symbol had been popping up all over the city. He had noticed it on the side of his building and under that bridge on Gibson Lane and on the side of the fire station downtown: it was a solid black circle. It was amazing how much fear could be induced by their symbol. It had come to represent everything: the blackness of everyone’s soul, the emptiness that everyone was feeling, but mostly it represented the all-consuming power of the darkness.

Despite the darkness and the overwhelming feelings of loneliness and sorrow that it had brought with it, the world tried to go on functioning normally. People were consumers, after all. But people were rapidly becoming the consumed.

Drake and his gang had never faltered when it came to exploiting the consumptive effects of the darkness. They were one of the reasons why Ace gave up. They were like gasoline to fire, making things worse, and leaving their symbol as they went. Ace had always thought that a symbol should live up to its name, and unfortunately for everyone, their symbol was no exception. For in the dark city that Ace inhabited—it was truly anarchy.

Dawson City was by no means a grand city. It was an average-sized city located in the Midwestern United States. It was once a gorgeous city, but now—it was a blazing nightmare. Ace had never been all that impressed with it, but, then again, he was also completely unaware of the fact that soon it would play host to the battle for every human soul on the planet.

Ace stepped away from the window and turned his back to it. He was going to let it all slide this time. He may have been a great protector of the city at one time, but that was long ago, and sometimes even heroes have to turn a deaf ear.

Ace now spent most of his time making money by doing odd jobs that usually involved lifting heavy objects. He looked like a Raggedy Andy doll with jet-black hair and muscles. He was wearing his usual attire which consisted of a white T-shirt, a black leather jacket and a worn pair of blue-jeans. He started wearing the jacket several years ago because he had found that it concealed his weapons well. He used to hide his weapons under his jacket for a couple of valid reasons; one, because he didn’t want to spook civilians, and two, because he didn’t want to give the police anymore reason to arrest him than they already had. After all, he used to be quite the tireless vigilante.

As Ace crept toward his desk he touched the side of his jacket, and much to his surprise, he noticed that he had his weapons on him now. This struck him as an odd thing. Why even bother? He hadn’t used his weapons for quite some time, and yet there they were, under his jacket; then he remembered that he had put them on that morning because he had felt naked without them. It’s funny how routine and comfort become synonymous as the years go by.

Ace teetered over to his desk and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He opened the bottle and filled a nearby shot glass to the brim. He took the shot, hammering it down his throat as if it would be his last, and then he took a moment to hate himself for it. The poison slithered through his entire body in an instant and made his lengthy hair tingle somewhat. He set the shot glass down and flipped up the collar on his leather jacket, as if he didn’t want anyone to see his face—probably a force of habit. He used to flip his collar up on his jacket when he punished the wicked or protected the innocent, so that no one would be able to identify him. Ace didn’t give his actions a second thought, though. He was too drunk.

Ace has never been able to pinpoint the exact date that he became an alcoholic. He figured it was probably sometime between that little girl that got trampled by a mob during the East End Riots, and the old man in front of city hall, who was quoting scripture and then lit himself on fire. Ace has never been good at remembering dates, or at remembering a lot of things for that matter. He drank to forget.

Ace looked down at his twelve-inch television set that was sitting on top of his scratched-up coffee table. The evening News was on. There was a reporter sitting at a desk and stating the obvious—as always. The reporter was talking about how it had been seven months since the earth’s atmospheric composition had been severely altered, leaving an impenetrable blanket of chemical compounds across the sky and completely blocking out the sun’s rays. The reporter was also going on and on about how scientists were continuing to pull all of their resources together in an effort to end the darkness once and for all. The reporter said that they were very close to an answer. Some people say that false hope is the best hope. Ace was not one of those people. So, he picked up the remote control and clicked the television off. He had heard enough of that. He knew that none of them had the slightest idea as to what went wrong.

Ace’s apartment (apartment twelve A) was not elegant by any means. It could probably be described in a variety of tactful ways, but, in a nutshell, it was a dank shit-hole. The living room consisted of a vintage couch and a table with an antique lamp sitting on top of it, along with the scratched-up coffee table and the pathetic television set. In the corner of the room was a modest desk and chair, where Ace used to do most of his searching. Ace had been searching for one thing or another his entire life.

There was a time—shortly after the darkness transcended—that Ace believed that he had been given an answer to the question of how to end the darkness and bring the light back to the earth. It was given to him in a dream, he believed, and it consisted of seven others who were gifted like him and a relic that was hidden on earth in a cold, distant place. The dream spoke to him. It told him to find the seven others, and it became known to him that if he found the seven others then together, they would be able to find the relic. They would then be able to use this relic to cleanse the sky and bring back the light. But all of this was ages ago, it seemed, and Ace had long sense dismissed these aberrations as silly incarnations of hope brought on by post-traumatic stress in the aftermath of the apocalyptic events that had transpired.

The walls in the...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	2.8.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-6901-6 / 9798350969016

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