TW10 The Hellfire Rebellion NEW by Simon Hawke Read Free Book Online Page A

to come, cosmetic surgery could easily have removed it. but Drakov chose to let it stay., He wanted to remember.
    An old trapper took him in and Drakov learned to hunt and live off the frozen wilderness. Eventually, he made his way to the Russian settlements in Alaska. At the age of twenty, he was once more on his own and he took up the fur trade, He still looked very young. He could not have known back then that due to the advances of the future, he had inherited from his father an immunity to all known diseases and an extended lifespan that would be measured in centuries, not decades. He knew only that he had survived conditions that had killed ordinary men and he hardly seemed to age. He looked so young that many people tried to take advantage of him. He learned how to fight and how to kill. He had long ago learned how to hate.
    He became a seaman and hunted seals in the Pribilofs. Before long, he had his own ship and the hardened sailors soon learned to respect their tough "young" captain. At thirty-eight, he still looked like a teenager. although his rough life had given him a powerful physique. After a while his constant youthfulness started to cause comment and people became too curious about him. It was time for him to move on. He sold his ship and arrived in Boston a very wealthy man. He purchased a handsome mansion on Beacon Hill and invested in the stock market. Within a few years. he had multiplied his fortune many times. He was thought to be some European nobleman and he became much sought after in society. But notoriety soon led to curiosity and as the years passed. people again began to wonder why he never seemed to age. It was time to move on once again.
    He was seventy years old when he arrived in London, though he did not look a day over twenty-five. He had no need of looking for an occupation. He had millions. He had everything a man could want. Everything but answers. And he found the answers when he found Sophia Falco, alias the Falcon, one of the leaders of the Timekeepers, a terrorist organization from the 27th century. When they found out whose son he was, they eagerly accepted him into their ranks. The irony of Moses Forrester's son becoming a member of the Timekeepers was too delicious to pass up and from that moment on, Drakov's life had taken on a whole new meaning.
    He had joined the Timekeepers and traveled to the future, where a biochip had been obtained for him and he was educated via cerebral implant programming.
    With the native intelligence he already possessed, after the programming, he emerged a genius. He finally understood who and what he was and he was able to comprehend the convoluted principles of temporal physics. And he had made up his mind that he would devote the remainder of his life to destroying Moses Forrester and the perverse world that he came from.
    Now he was the last one left. Sophia. Benedetto. Taylor. Singh. Tremain . . . all of them were dead. The Timekeepers were no more. But Drakov wasn't finished yet. With all time at his beck and call, he had infinite resources. He would stop the Future, even if he had to destroy the world to do it.
    It had been a long, unpleasant voyage across the North Atlantic. The bunks were damp, the bread was weevil-ridden, and the beef was tainted. The merchant ships of this day were like crude, ungainly barges compared to the sleek schooner he had sailed in the Pribilof's and there were far easier ways to make the passage. He could have simply used his warp disc to clock to 18th-century America, but that would not have fit in with his plans. It had first been necessary to establish an identity for himself in London, set up finances, and make the right connections with influential men such as John Wilkes. Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord William Howe, and Benjamin Franklin, one of the colonial agents in London. If anyone in New England was to inquire into his affairs, he wanted to make certain that he could easily account for how he had arrived in