When Ethan emerged from the portal, he was standing on a gravel rooftop near Apex Tower. After a quick scan of the skies, he saw Alex’s purple cape fluttering in the wind a few roofs over. He teleported to her, her eyes immediately snapping to this intrusion in her space. She was on one knee, wrapping a piece of her bright purple cape tightly around her thigh.

“What happened back there?” he asked, eyeing her leg. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine, but I can’t be seen right now,” she said, finishing what to Ethan looked an awful lot like bandaging a wound.

“Did you get…hurt?” he asked, looking closer, as if he could see through the bright purple fabric. Alex paused, then sighed.

“There’s a piece of a firestone embedded in my leg,” she confessed, her voice quiet. “I didn’t even notice until I tried to leave, but…it cut right through my skin.”

Ethan gasped, shaking his head. “That’s…not supposed to be possible. Detonator threw an oil tanker at you on River Street that nearly leveled a warehouse and you walked away without a scratch, minus a few incinerated strands of hair. How could a tiny firestone burst hurt you?”

Alex’s eyes wandered over to Apex Tower. “There’s something about the radiation the Surge energy gives off that makes it able to hurt me. I don’t know what it is, but when I last fixed the shielding surrounding the Junction, it burned my skin pretty badly. It took two months to heal.”

Ethan nearly shuddered. Alex, or Titan, was the glue holding the Protectors together. If any of the Altered thought she had a vulnerability, they would exploit it until they got rid of her and then the entirety of Apex’s Protectorate program was at risk of falling apart. Ascension would be thrown back into chaos, only this time there wouldn’t be a clear leader to stop the Altered.

“Should we call Amory?” Ethan asked.

“No,” Alex said definitively, shaking her head. “I can’t have anyone know about this, okay? Something isn’t right at Apex right now.”

“Have you seen their Tower? Of course something isn’t right there, the whole building looks evil!”

“It’s…more than that, Ethan. I think Kingston is working against us.”

“Kingston?” Ethan thought back to their brief interaction. He didn’t pick up on any sort of evil vibes but, then again, he wasn’t exactly looking. “What would he want?”

“I’m not sure yet, but I’m almost confident he’s the one who’s been leaking information. When I went to visit Amory this morning, he was responding to potential breach activity in Maybell, but he never reported it.”

Ethan scoffed. “Could it just have been…noise? Those probes probably aren’t accurate all the time.”

“Maybe,” Alex shrugged, “but I want to be certain. You’re faster than me over long distances. I need you to go to Maybell and investigate before he’s able to tell anyone we’re coming. I’ll be right behind you after I get my leg taken care of, okay?”

He nodded, stretching out his neck and arms. “What am I looking for?”

“Circle the town, look for any signs of breach points. You’d know better than anyone what the signs are given you actually found one.”

“They are my specialty,” Ethan joked. “Okay, I’ll keep in touch with Raz if I find anything.”

“Thank you, Ethan. I know it’s hard to keep secrets, but I need this to stay between us.”

I’m getting pretty good at keeping my mouth shut, Ethan thought. Glad it’s finally coming in handy.

Ethan opened a portal in front of him, then another one on the least snowy peak he could see nearly sixty miles away from him, the farthest point away he could safely teleport to. “Consider it done,” he told her, pulling out his phone and putting directions in for Maybell. Satisfied he knew the general direction, he gave Alex a nod and then stepped through, nearly losing his balance as an unfettered wind gust pushed him down the icy cliffside.

“Or not,” he said, his words taken by the wind as he regained his footing in a dry patch of the cliffside, instantly shivering. His eyes were watering, blurring his vision.

“Not my smartest move,” he said through chattering teeth, opening a portal high into the sky to give himself a better vantage point.

Maybell, he knew was about four hours away by car to the northwest. He hadn’t travelled farther west than Stillrock, so he carefully picked the greenest, least snow packed peaks to teleport to, jumping through the Lavender Mountain Range.

He took a moment to appreciate the fact that he was standing on peaks he had only ever seen from thousands of feet below, peaks that no other human had ever stood on. Of course, he didn't have to use any climbing gear, making his summits less impressive, but it was still a cool feeling that kept him warm until the mountains smoothed out to a lower, warmer altitude. In just a few minutes he reached the town of Maybell, opening a portal onto the water tower overlooking the town center, panting with exertion as he stepped out onto the metal grating circling the tower.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

From above, the town looked like any other “Historic Old West” town he had taken a field trip to in Elementary school. There was a general store, a feed store, a sheriff’s office, and not much else. The main street was nearly empty save for one pedestrian, and Ethan’s eyes followed the road west until he saw a few homes sporadically lining the sides of the street. A few miles further than that, however, a house caught his eye, standing out as the most modern looking home of the bunch. If someone wanted to hide out without being noticed, they certainly couldn’t do much better than this.

Ethan tapped his communicator twice.

“Raz, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear. How was your date?”

“Eventful, but not in a good way,” Ethan sighed.

“Uh-oh. Did you spill something on her?”

“No, but a rock, also called a firestone, kind of spilled some stuff on us.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain later. Look, I’m in Maybell, and I’m on the hunt for any sort of seismic activity that may be caused by breach points. Alex is backing me up but I’m flying solo for the moment. Are you able to log in to Apex’s system and see if there’s been any seismic alerts triggered?”

“On it,” Raz repiled, the sound of typing clear through the communicator. “Hm,” Raz said after a moment. “That’s…strange. There’s nothing. Why did Alex think there was anything in Maybell, exactly?”

“She thinks someone in Apex has been clearing the seismic logs, specifically in Maybell.”

“Why would they be doing that?”

Ethan wiped the sweat from his forehead, his face hot despite the chill. “Not clear. Is there anything else you can try?”

Raz thought for a moment. “Actually, yes,” he said, much to Ethan’s relief. “I can check the sensors to the north and south. If they were in a rush to manipulate Maybell’s data, it’s possible they didn’t get a chance to delete any others.”

“How was I ever going to do this without you?” Ethan laughed.

“You weren’t,” Raz told him plainly. “Hm…there isn’t a sensor to the south, but there is one near Sunbeam towards the north end of town. And…there you go, that one registered a whole heap of activity about a month ago, then again today.”

Could that have been when Sola got powers? Ethan wondered. It took him weeks to fully recover, not that Alex let him have any training days off. She also didn’t seem entirely familiar with her powers when they fought given that she lost to Ethan, but maybe he was just a better fighter than he thought.

“Heading there now.”

The Lavender Range made a crescent shape as it yawned its way up towards Canada, and way out in Maybell the mountains seemed to accelerate their northward shift, blocking the town off to the north and creating a grassy valley to the east. Ethan picked a smooth, rocky vantage point about halfway up the mountains that allowed him to take in the entire valley below. The field was nearly monochromatic in the winter, entirely brown and dead, save for one odd, disturbed patch of land not too far from the edge of the town. Ethan opened a portal over the area, then widened it out so he could get a closer look without having to actually go down there himself. He exhaled slowly at the sight.

“There’s…something here.”

“A breach point?” Raz asked.

“Has to be,” Ethan grimaced. There was a massive, jagged scar in the earth, just like the one he opened in Stillrock. He shivered involuntarily at the memory of a thousand tons of stone dropping on top of him until he magically escaped. Rainey had, apparently, escaped too, though Ethan still couldn’t quite understand how, especially looking down at the breach point now. This one, however, had one new wrinkle to it: Ethan could still feel the faintest tingle of radiation leaking from the breach point. Whoever opened the breach point was hasty and hadn’t quite closed it, which worried Ethan.

Could whoever did this plan to use it again soon to give someone else powers?

“Tell Alex we found the source of that seismic activity. I’m going to head back to Ascension.” Ethan told Raz, opening a portal. “I don’t want to stick around in case anyone just got powers and was waiting for a practice dummy.”

“Wait,” Raz instructed.

“Exact opposite of what I just said I want to be doing,” Ethan muttered, holding his portal open.

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked, his heart suddenly racing. He peered around his portal, then behind him, looking for any signs of motion, but all was still.

“I’ve gone further back and Sunbeam has been registering activity for months. It started small, but the readings have grown. Whatever’s been causing these disturbances has gotten bigger.”

“Or,” Ethan offered, a sense of unease growing in his stomach, “more practiced. When I first started using my powers, Alex only let me open portals as wide as I could close. We began with teleporting a marble, then moved onto a tennis ball, and so on until I got experienced enough to be able to teleport myself. What if that’s what’s happening here?”

“That is…worryingly possible. The weird part, though, is I just looked it up, and nobody in their database has tetrakinetic abilities.”

“Actually,” Ethan sighed heavily. “I think I know someone.”

“What? And you’re just telling me this now?”

“I know, I know. We’ll talk after,” Ethan brushed him off.

“No, we should-wait, there’s more seismic readings coming right now. They’re…nearly on top of you.”

Ethan perked up, putting himself in a combat stance and shifting his gaze all over the valley. “Can you locate where they’re coming from?”

“Not exactly,” Raz exhaled. “But they shouldn’t be too far north of where you are now. Do you see anything else?”

Ethan closed his portal and turned back north, the setting sun behind him still illuminating the valley below. From below, he saw a massive boulder rise from the ground, levitate, then rush his way faster than any object its size ought to be able to move. Ethan gasped, opened a portal to a higher up point in the mountain above him, and watched the boulder crash into the side of the cliff, shaking the ground he was standing on. He tapped his communicator, his breathing quickened.

“Good news: I found the source of the seismic activity.”

“And the bad news?”

“It’s trying to kill me, and coming pretty damn close.”