Nearly two years ago, Alexandria Aetos had been given what almost anyone would describe as an incredible gift.
Her skin had become nearly as dense as diamond, and she had the strength to punch and rip holes through steel. Most amazingly to her, she had gained the ability to fly, allowing her to zip around the gridlocked city at high speeds during rush hour and avoid public transit entirely (after she learned how to control her abilities, of course).
But she hadn’t been the only person in Ascension to change, far from it, in fact, and not everyone was as satisfied as she was to use their newfound abilities to simply beat traffic or finally be able to open any jar in her kitchen on the first try. Altered, anyone changed by the Surge who Apex deemed a threat to the city, began pillaging the city, taking anything they wanted with no one to stop them. The entirety of Ascension was thrown into chaos, the streets coming under siege with no end in sight.
Then Alex stepped in.
As a former all-state highschool wrestler who was unafraid to take a hit, Alex immediately leapt into the fray, pitting herself against people looking to use their powers against those without them in order to take what they wanted, or destroy what they couldn’t have. While she was inexperienced in hand-to-hand combat, she soon discovered she was stronger, immensely so, than everyone else she came across, a fact she would have to re-learn almost daily after fighting Detonator and Maelstrom and every other themed villain who popped up in the ensuing summer months after the Surge, looking to make a name for themselves.
The early days were difficult. Flying had taken her some time to get used to. She had no visible means of propulsion, no wings to flap or (luckily) no jet engines to activate. None of it made any sense to her, but, then again, the Surge had re-written what was possible, and everyone around here was also playing catch up. Luckily, there was one thing she was good at, and it was suddenly a skill in demand.
Fighting helped her learn to control her burgeoning strength and gave her a purpose she never felt before. In the span of just a few months, Alex had traded in her teaching duties for a local community college and workouts in poorly lit gyms with deteriorated wrestling mats for flights in the morning sun and real fights that helped people instead of (somewhat) entertaining them. It wasn’t long before Amory Webber, leader of Apex’s newly formed Protectorate Program, approached Alex at her day job and plucked her from the streets as an amateur hero, gave her a uniform, and turned her into a professional.
Practically overnight Alex went from a normal, very breakable amateur wrestler to the leader of a group of Protectors working to take their city back. It was a whirlwind year that constantly challenged what she thought possible and now, somehow, nearly a year later, it was Ethan who was rewriting what was possible. Amory had swore to her that Apex had everyone cataloged, anyone who could so much as make their pinky finger glow went immediately into Apex’s database of people affected by the Surge. Additionally, in the eighteen or so months since the Surge, Amory assured Alex that nobody could gain new abilities. The Surge was a one-time deal, never to be repeated or replicated.
And yet, here Ethan was, not recorded in Apex’s database and teleporting all over town, getting himself into fights that he had no business being in.
Alex smiled at the last part. She remembered how many times she was in over her head in the early days, watching as someone’s hands lit up a new color and pointed it directly at her: a brilliant amber, a sickly yellow, the color of an angry storm. But she was invincible, and Ethan was not.
That last part worried her, but this was the path Ethan had chosen. He had made himself known to the Altered and intervened. Amory would want a report on what Ethan had done and, as his mentor, Alex would have to give it to her, but she wasn’t ready for that, not quite yet. Pushing herself through the cloudy afternoon sky she allowed herself just a few moments to herself, floating gently a few hundred feet above the city she had called home for almost her entire life.
Looking down from above, Ascension’s skyline could’ve been confused for any other major city’s skyline across the country. Blue and gray hued steel skyscrapers dominated its bustling, rebuilding downtown, with large windows reflecting the brutal summer sun down onto the streets. The majority of the office buildings downtown looked cloned from one another, with a few of the more modern skyscrapers jutting out with a contemporary angularity, demanding to be seen and differentiated from their older, more brutalist counterparts.
But, Alexandria knew, there was one building that seemingly did not wish to be seen. Drifting west, she spied Apex’s headquarters, located on the very edge of Ascenscion’s borders in one of the last remaining neighborhoods not revitalized by the sudden influx of money from the city’s recent population boom. The secretive energy company had built an obsidian tower, a sleek monolith that felt very much out of time and out of place in the sea of blues and grays, crescending into a piercing spire adding to the tower’s threatening aura. The building was also a few stories shorter than any other skyscraper in the city, hidden as discreetly as a building of its design and size could be, while the jet-black color of the building, and its lack of windows or outside lighting, meant it became almost invisible each time the sun set behind the mountains and brought the cover of night.
The building felt almost like it was dropped by an unseen hand onto the western edge of the city. Nestled as closely as it could be against the mountains, Apex’s tower was nearly hidden from the east by anyone looking through the maze of skyscrapers downtown, and almost impossible to see through the forests to the west. The building could, however, be seen from the top of Quandry Peak, one of the more difficult hikes in the Maroon Mountain Range, and that top-down view provided a look at one of the more intriguing aspects of the building: a segmented, slate-gray metal tube that started somewhere inside the building’s base, possibly underground, and snaked itself all the way around its outside, hooking back inside just before the spire.
Alex dove, launching herself through the tubing like a swimmer through a waterslide and deposited herself in the Apex’s underground laboratory, her eyes struggling to adjust to the sudden darkness, and a sharp noise pierced her ears. It took her a moment to shake off her disorientation, but she realized an alarm was blaring overhead.
“We have a front door, you know!” Kingston yelled down, struggling to be heard over the blaring alarm.
Alex’s eyes immediately darted to the Junction. The shielding was the same cool blue color as when she left it, with no holes bursting with Surge radiation. Whatever the alarm was for, it at least wasn’t an imminent breach.
“Kingston,” she called out, leaping up and over the railing to come face to face with him on the second floor, away from the Junction and right in the middle of all the monitoring equipment. “How’s the shielding holding up?
Kingston held out a palm, waving it with a grimace. Alex noted the sweat forming on his brow. “We’ll live a bit longer.”
Alex gestured to the speakers above them. “And what’s going on here?”
Kingston waved her off. “False alarm.”
He tapped a few more keys and the alarm, mercifully, silenced. He stood, sighing. “One of the sensors thinks it’s got something, the engineering equivalent of a dog digging in the wrong place for a bone.”
“Well, did it?”
He shook his head, but didn’t elaborate further.
“Where was the sensor tripped?” Alex asked.
“Oh, some podunk town way out west,” Kingston shrugged, providing a nonanswer. Alex narrowed her eyes, but Kingston changed the subject. “Got a meeting with Amory?”
“Oh, not exactly, but I’d bet she’s expecting me.”
“I was,” Amory said as she walked through the lab’s door, wearing an olive colored blazer with matching pants and a white button down that probably cost more than Alex’s whole wardrobe. She had maintained her trained physique since leaving the Army, and sometimes Alex wondered if Amory could take on a few Altered by herself. “It’s been a while, Alex.”
Despite the two ostensibly being partners, Alex always felt more than a little intimidated by her presence. She stood up a little straighter, then cleared her throat. Amory stopped just short of the railing, her piercing blue eyes glaring down on Alex.
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In the early days after the Surge, when they were trying to piece together exactly what the Protectorate division was supposed to be, Alex and Amory talked every day, multiple times a day. Now, with tensions falling between the Protectors and Altered, Amory spent more time managing budgets than crises, something Alex did not envy. The pair hadn’t caught up since Ethan fought Sola, and Alex was keen to get more information on what she wanted and where she came from.
“So, do I have you to thank for Ethan becoming the latest pain in my side?”
Alex rolled her eyes. “I told you this would happen. You kept dangling an evaluation in front of him, but wouldn’t commit to letting him take one. He was going to try and prove himself eventually, as soon as he had the chance.”
“So you gave him the opportunity, leaving him alone?”
“I didn’t know that Sola would be there, but I certainly hoped,” Alex admitted. “We put enough resources into Ascension, Stillrock was completely undefended, and anyone who knew that Apex recently had an excavation site near there would’ve figured out something valuable might be nearby. She certainly seemed desperate enough to strike, and with just Ethan standing in her way, that gave her the best opportunity she was going to get.”
Amory raised an eyebrow. “It sounds like you engineered an opportunity for Sola to steal an object that Apex planned to retrieve.”
Alex paused, holding Amory’s gaze. “I didn’t know we had anything in Stillrock worth stealing.”
“Nobody was supposed to know that we did,” Amory told her quietly.
Raising an eyebrow, Alex went to interrogate her further until Amory subtly waved her off. Amory turned to Kingston.
“Kingston, why don’t you grab lunch?”
“It’s, uh, 9am, ma’am.”
“Breakfast, then. There’s bagels in the breakroom.”
Kingston ducked his head, pulling out his phone and ignoring Alex before heading out the door, leaving Amory and Alex alone in the lab. Behind Alex, the Surge wall she repaired remained, for now, mercifully dark, but she well knew that could change in a heartbeat
Amory met Alex on the first level of the lab, sitting in a chair as far away form the Junction as she could. Alex spoke first.
“What did we have in Stillrock?”
“Quinn can answer that a lot more eloquently than I can,” Amory shook her head, “but that’s not the real issue.”
Alex nodded in agreement, her fists tightening at her sides. “Someone sold us out.”
“It would appear so.”
“Who?”
Amory shook her head, dismissively. “There were a hundred Apex employees working on clearing the Stillrock site. Any of them could’ve noticed our team bagging items and marking them for transport. I don’t expect to know anything further until we figure out what the value was in this stone.”
“Let me know if I can help,” Alex told her. Amory nodded her thanks.
“Well, we’re even more lucky that Ethan intervened, then, aren’t we? To keep it out of Sola’s hands?”
“Apex is grateful that Ethan was able to intervene,” Amory said, her voice strained. “However, you know my issue is not with his talent, which he proved this morning, but with his…creation.”
“You’ll have to take that one up with our parents,” Alex said. Amory glared at her.
“Sorry.”
Amory pushed herself out of the chair, walking to Alex. Amory’s voice turned to ice, matching her eye color, and Alex’s blood did the same.
“You’re a field general. You want wins.”
“Damn straight,” Alex nodded. “This war is simple. We win by fighting until they quit fighting.”
Amory laughed like someone listening to a child explain their version of the universe. Alex felt a hint of embarrassment rising in her, but pushed it down before her face flushed.
“But,” Amory stopped just in front of Alex, “during the skirmishes, we didn’t take Ascension back by letting every Protector run around as they saw fit, right?”
Alex shook her head. She remembered the long nights looking over their roster of Protectors, identifying what Altered were generally attacking where, and moving different Protectors to different Sectors, like pieces on a chessboard, only their opponent was so chaotic they didn’t even realize there was a board.
Which, looking back, is probably why Apex won.
And, of course, that was Amory's point exactly.
“We won through organization,” Amory continued, her passion bleeding through, “by building a seawall to hold back the tide rushing against this city, deliberately and purposefully, brick by brick.”
Alex was one of those bricks. A foundational piece, to be sure, but still just one of many. She wondered where Ethan might fit into Amory’s carefully crafted wall, if he fit anywhere at all.
“Most importantly,” Amory continued, “it worked. Now, I can’t let new, unquantified variables enter the field because, at the end of the day, I am responsible for this city’s safety, and anything that happens here is on my shoulders.”
“We’re both responsible for Ascension,” Alex said, taking a step towards Amory, “and you know I vouch for Ethan. He put in the work to get powers already.”
“That’s what worries me,” Amory sighed.
“What do you mean?” Alex asked. Amory shook her head.
“For the past year, we’ve maintained a peaceful city, you and I. But things are shifting again. New variables are entering the field that are past our control. First Ethan, even if we didn’t know it, then Sola, and now this stone. What else might be out there that we don’t know about?”
Alex was silent for a moment, unable to think of a suitable answer. Instead, she changed the subject.
“Do we have any leads on why someone might want it?”
“Quinn called, just before you arrived. She wants to use Ethan for an experiment that she thinks might que us into what someone would want the stone for. Can you get him here?”
“She was right about what Sola was after, we should follow her instincts,” Alex agreed. “I’ll get Ethan here.”
“Good. Let’s hope you all can illuminate one factor that we’re in the dark on.”
“The sooner we figure this out, the sooner I know who to fight.”
“That’s one way to look at it.” Amory smiled curtly then headed up the stairs.
“Oh, Amory,” Alex called after her, walking to the stairs. Amory turned, waiting. “Have you been getting a lot of alarms lately? Sensors being set off by bursts of radiation?”
“Alarms?” Her expression turned quizzical. “No. We’ve been clear since you nearly burnt your arm to a crisp. Why?”
“Oh, just checking,” she smiled politely as Amory walked up the stairs, leaving Alex alone in the lab.
She checked her watch. She’d been gone for almost half an hour, which should’ve been more than enough time for Ethan and Raz to patch their rift. She called Raz, asking for Ethan to show.
“Tell him I have some news for him,” Alex instructed, hanging up.
And something I need to check out, she thought, leaping up to the computer Kingston was using when she walked in. On the screen was a map of the Western Slope overlaid with sets of green pins, which Alex assumed were the sensors that Apex had set up all across the Lavender Mountain Range. Of the fifty or so sets, only one was blinking yellow: a set near Maybell.
“Maybell?” she whispered. The town name was vaguely familiar, and she thought she remembered it as a place really rich people went to get away from the city. “What could be all the way out there?”
Just as she went to investigate further, the door swung open, and Kingston walked back inside. If he was surprised to see her at his station, he didn’t show it.
“Quinn will be down in a minute. Would you mind going up to grab Ethan?”
“Sure thing,” Alex told him, walking out of the lab and towards the elevator door. Despite being much stronger than Kingston, her heart was pounding at nearly being discovered.
Why isn’t he elevating the alarms to Amory? Alex wondered. Are they really not worth her time? Or does he not want to know that there’s something else going on?
She sighed, stepping into the elevator. Then again, he didn’t seem to care when he saw me looking at his computer. If he’s hiding something, Alex thought as the doors shut, he’s doing a damn good job of it.