Ethan’s heart skipped a beat, shocking him awake as a high pitched noise rang in his ear, then dissipated. Instantly, his body shot off several warning signs that something was disastrously wrong, but his head was swimming, making stringing those pieces together nearly impossible, like trying to firmly grasp a cloud, leaving your hand cold and empty.
He felt…hungover, which didn’t seem quite right. He couldn’t remember anything after entering the diner, didn’t know where he was, and certainly didn’t know why everything was so…dark.
Then he realized his eyes were shut.
Okay, he thought, let’s fix just one thing at a time.
Trying to open his eyes, he recoiled against the light piercing his pupils and groaned softly, shutting them tight to protect them. From the little he could gather, it seemed like late morning, which would mean he had been out for at least twelve hours. Raz would undoubtedly be checking in on him, he realized, meaning he had to get up to find his phone.
Which he would’ve done, if he could stand. He pushed his legs against the carpet floor, but found something rough rubbing up against his bare chest. Finding himself pinned, he struggled against the constriction holding himself firmly in place, wriggling futily. His arms were heavy as lead, secured with rope digging into his skin. He was fully pinned to the chair, unable to move.
I’m…tied up? He wondered, taking the scene in. In an apartment I don’t recognize. This can’t be good.
Adding to his confusion was the fact that he was shirtless, which he didn’t think was voluntary, but had certainly been known to happen when he had too many drinks, so that particular detail didn’t illuminate things as much as he would’ve liked.
The harsh morning light invading the room was giving Ethan a headache, but he managed to force his eyes open fully and recalibrate them enough to notice the light pink walls dotted by water paintings of the English countryside, which Ethan thought was an odd decorating choice for any Altered who wanted to kidnap and, presumably, ransom him back to Apex.
Given he wasn’t actually a Protector, he idly wondered whether or not Amory would actually pay his captor anything for him, but he hoped he wouldn’t find out the answer to that particular question.
Ethan carefully raised his eyes, so as to not agitate his nausea, then noticed that his chair was seated in the middle of a living room, which would suggest whoever took him wasn’t expecting any more visitors. Following the hallway, he spotted a woman lying in bed, and he nearly called out to her before he thought better of it. Her face was turned away from him, leaving him with a sea of black hair and a tattoo on her left shoulder partially obscured by her hair. She seemed to be fast asleep, though she seemed positioned to hear him if he moved. After all, why else leave the door open?
Ah, right. Ethan nearly vomited as the rest of his memories snapped back into his mind: teleporting to the cafe, Sola rudely interrupting his peaceful cup of coffee, then realizing he was poisoned and then…everything was fuzzy. Before he had a chance to think further, his earpiece beeped, high and shrill. Ah, he thought, his head clearing slightly, so that’s what woke me up.
“Raz, can you hear me?” he asked quietly.
“Well, look who’s alive,” Raz said, fury clear in his tone.
“Barely,” Ethan whispered, holding back vomit as he tried to speak. He didn’t say anything else, watching Sola to see if she’d move. Regardless, even if he wanted to, his tongue kept sticking to the roof of his mouth, and he tried to move it around to lubricate things better.
“Where are you?” he demanded to know, “because you’re definitely not still watching the depot, which is where you were supposed to be.”
“Wish I could say,” Ethan admitted, sighing. He took a long pause in between sentences, waiting for his stomach to settle. “I waited in the cold outside of the depot until just before I was certain I was getting frostbite. I decided to head into a nice warm diner for one coffee while you watched the alarms. Sola was there, she said she needed to talk to me, and…that’s the last thing I remember. Now, I’m tied to a chair in a place I don’t recognize.”
“Oh my God. Were you kidnapped?” Raz exclaimed.
“Now that I think about it,” Ethan glanced at the ropes tied around his chest and wrists, then at the woman again, “that…is probably, exactly what happened. I’m kidnapped.”
“By Sola?” Raz asked. “Why would she do that?”
Last night was blurry, but at least Ethan was sure the hair color of the woman down the hall matched the Sola who met him in the diner last night.
“That seems fair to assume,” Ethan confirmed. “And she’s asleep right now, or else I’d ask her.”
“Okay, where are you? Just give me a general location and I can get Alex over there ASAP, she’ll get you out of there.”
“Wait on that,” Ethan ordered. “If she wanted me dead, she’d just have killed me already.”
“Seems likely, I would do the same.”
“Rude, but understandable. I’ve spent six nights searching for her and now, out of the blue, she’s right in front of me. I’m not going to get a better opportunity to capture her than right now. Give me a chance to get myself into trouble before we send Alex over here to bail me out.”
Raz paused, thinking. Ethan heard him tapping lightly on his keyboard. “I hate to say it, but you’re right. Sola could’ve killed you, but didn’t, so she wants something from you, which means she’ll keep you alive…for now.”
Ethan cursed, starting to feel more and more normal, his strength returning. “This is not the best place for me to fight her. I need more space! I had a whole plan where I was going to act helpless only to redirect one of her blasts to knock a large object onto her, only this time I was going to make sure there wasn’t anything over my head for her to drop on top of me.”
“Well, you’ll come up with something, I’m sure. Can you move?”
He glanced down at the ropes restraining him at the chest. “I have an idea.” Slowly, he used his palm to open a solid void in between himself and the rope tied to his chest. He expanded it, pushing it against the rope, but also against his ribs, compressing them.
“Ow,” he whispered, dismissing the void after the ropes didn’t budge. “That didn’t work, let me try something else.”
Looking over his shoulder as far as he could, he manipulated the void into a thin disk, then slid it in between the rope and the back of the chair, then expanded it until the ropes finally snapped, giving way and freeing his chest. He took a deep breath, sucking down fresh air, then did the same for his wrists, expanding a portal under the arms of the chair on either side, snapping the ropes.
“I’m free!”
“Awesome work, now find the door and get clear.”
He rubbed his wrists, took a quiet moment to stretch, then slowly stood up, wincing at the creak of the wooden chair. When Sola didn’t move, he turned, then walked as quickly as he could to the door, desperately reaching out his hand for the doorknob, then screamed and pulled it back as a stream of superheated purple energy whizzed right by him and sizzled on the metal doorknob, melting it and rendering it useless.
“Damn it,” Ethan sighed. His shoulders dropped at the realization that he had nowhere to go. He cursed quietly and turned slowly to face Sola. “Well, she didn’t just kidnap me to let me go. Raz, I’ll call you right back.”
Sola had pulled on her full suit faster than Ethan could’ve pulled on his pants. She wore a black mesh bodysuit with a faded yellow sun on her chest and bright purple accents running down her arms, arrows directing to the purple glow radiating from her hands. He kept his eyes trained on Sola’s hands. She held her fists at shoulder level, her palms radiating purple light in the hall, casting a dark glow under her face. He took a few short, deliberate paces to his left, shielding his lower half behind the counter. Silently, he noted her counter steps, keeping him in her line of sight. Ethan was a mouse in the cat’s sights, and she clearly had no intention of letting him leave.
Not before she toyed with him first.
“Man, was the coffee that bad?” Ethan asked.
Sola laughed. “I thought we both could use a night of sleep. Staying up all night staking out the depot was starting to wear on me.”
“How polite,” Ethan scoffed. “You poisoned me to keep me here, so what is it that you really want?”
“Initially, all I was after was just a conversation, but that was before you decided to have a conversation right in front of me about how you are supposed to capture me.”
“I thought you were asleep,” Ethan rolled his eyes. “Okay, so what I’m hearing is that if I don’t try to capture you, you could just….let me leave?”
“Or,” Sola said dragged the word out, “I could kill you now and not have to worry about you trying to find me later. I have people who are relying on me, and I can’t help them if I’m sitting inside Apex’s illegal mountain prison for the rest of my life.”
Ethan gulped, his eyes widening slightly, hoping the sweat suddenly pouring down his forehead wasn’t visible from down the hall.
“Are you…okay?” Sola asked. “You’re not going to throw up, are you?”
“Maybe,” Ethan answered, suppressing a burp. “Okay, I think I’m good. Now, I beat you at the museum, so we both know I can do it again.”
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“I don’t see your girlfriend here,” Sola taunted him.
Ethan glanced down at his bare chest. “Kind of wish she was, I haven’t drank any water all night and I look…kind of good?”
Sola rolled her eyes. “Odd choice of last words.”
“Now, frankly, I just wanted to leave, and I really don’t have the best follow through, so if you just let me go down the hall, I probably wouldn’t even-”
Sola fired off a blast of plasma with a grunt, aimed right at Ethan’s face. He gasped, leaping to his right and rolling on the hard, cold tile, slamming his weight into his knee. The sizzling of the cabinets drew his attention upward where he noticed the sink right above him, and, with it, the chance for a distraction.
Ethan took a risk, springing up from his crouch and flipping on the water. With his left hand, he opened one small portal the size of a bowl just underneath the faucet head, water spilling over the sides, then used his right hand to open his exit portal right next to Sola’s face. Luckily, she snapped her head in the direction of the open portal and was promptly met with a blast of water, spraying her and dampening her black hair, sticking to her forehead.
She sputtered, wiping her face and stumbling towards the kitchen, still blocking enough of the hall to prevent Ethan’s view. Ethan kept the water pouring onto Sola’s face, moving the portal to follow her, but had to duck when she sent sprayed blast after blast of superheated plasma wildly into the kitchen, finally connecting with the sink, sending the spray straight up into the cabinets and out of the direction of Ethan’s portal.
Sola roared and switched tactics, opting for brute force. She put both her fists together, pointed directly underneath the sink Ethan was hiding in front of, and sent out a stream of plasma impacting the kitchen island, a screaming hiss boring a hole through the wood. Ethan’s eyes widened in fear as the plasma began to leak onto the hardwood floor in front of him, forcing him to roll out of the way just as the stream blasted through the wood panel, slamming into the cabinet behind him.
Sola kept up the continuous stream, aiming her hands to follow Ethan, quickly eroding the cover he had left, the marble counter above him already sloping to the left as its base crumbled beneath it. Ethan could have directed Sola’s blasts back at her; after all, she should have been mostly immune to the heat and impact, but if she wasn’t….that wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. He discarded the notion and then, in a panic, Ethan opened a portal in front of him, then above him, surveying the living room to find anything he could use. Scanning quickly while inching himself out of cover, he noticed the bookshelf loaded up with knicknacks positioned directly to Sola’s left, hopefully just large enough to cover the distance and knock into her.
With a little luck, it just might be enough weight to pin Sola down, Ethan thought. And if it’s not, I’m going to become a soup that some poor person is going to have to clean up.
Ethan waited a hair longer than he wanted to, letting the stream get close enough to him so Sola wouldn’t change her position with Ethan out of cover, then opened one portal right in front of himself and another just in front of the base of the bookshelf, catching Sola’s blast that was meant for his chest and instead redirecting it to the legs of the bookcase. It ate through the wood, collapsing the bookcase directly on top of Sola, who gasped as weight came down right on top of her, pinning her into the carpet below.
“Ha!” Ethan yelled, pumping his fist. “Can’t believe that worked twice!” He shut his portal, closing his view of Sola, and cautiously approached her, his eyes darting to the ceiling, smiling as he noted there was nothing she could bring down on him. He won a fight all on his own, and his entire body radiated with success. Is this how Alex feels all the time? No wonder she’s so smug.
Sola was struggling to break free, cursing loudly and threatening Ethan in a multitude of unpleasant ways in both English and Spanish.
“I guess you could’ve used some situational awareness,” he smirked. Sola growled, causing him to jump back. He cleared his throat, thankful that nobody saw.
“Why were you hunting me?” Sola growled.
“Normally,” Ethan said, crouching next to Sola, “I wouldn’t go after anyone who could kill me, but Apex won’t let me be a Protector until I bring you in. I kind of owe my best friend, and I’m trying to impress a girl, so unfortunately I had to put myself in harm's way here. Now, one call to the logistics team and I’ll officially be a full-fledged Protector.”
“Well, look at you,” Sola said, each word coming after a long pause giving Ethan time to realize how sarcastic Sola was being. “And what are they going to think after I tell them that you created Slate?”
Ethan’s heart froze.
“Slate?” he asked. Sola nodded, a small satisfied smile creeping over her face at the hesitation in Ethan’s voice. “She gave you powers,” Ethan said, more of a statement than a question. Sola nodded in confirmation.
“Do you think she’s going to stop with me?” Sola asked.
Ethan froze, holding his phone in his hand. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not a bad person,” Sola shook her head. “I wanted power, sure, but from what she told me, so did you both. Apex keeps all their Protectors in Ascension, leaving the smaller satellite towns to fend for themselves. Maybell, my hometown, had no protection against any of the Altered, which of course the Altered knew. When they couldn’t get what they needed in Ascension, where do you think they came?”
“To the smaller, unprotected towns,” Ethan answered. He realized, with despair, that she was right: he had never seen a Protector come to Stillrock. They were left to fend for themselves while Apex draped Ascension in a proverbial safety.
“So, when Slate came to Maybell and saw me cleaning up the ashes of my family’s home after Detonator blew up a gas line while breaking into the town’s bank, she gave me a choice: gain powers, and help her, or remain powerless to whatever Altered decided to stroll into town that day. It wasn’t a choice.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Ethan replied, nodding. He sat down on the carpet next to Sola.
“But…that was in exchange for helping her. She gave me these powers and then told me the price: I had to steal enough diamonds for her to be able to make a staff. That part was fine, I honestly thought she just wanted a statement weapon. Nothing the Protectors couldn’t handle. But then, just yesterday, she changed her request: I had to get her something called a Firestone by the end of the day, or she was going to sink what was left of Maybell into the earth.”
Ethan’s blood turned to ice. She wants a firestone to hurt Alex, and she’s willing to kill for it.
“The diamonds, I was fine with. Who cares if a few jewelry stores take a loss for the month, they’ll never notice it at the end of the year anyway. But these…firestones? She told me what it could do, Ethan, and I don’t want any part of hurting Titan. She’s the only thing keeping this city together. And, let’s face it, you barely caught me, and I didn’t really want to hurt you until you sprayed cold water in my face. What Rainey created and sent another threat, like Tecton, to retrieve a firestone, only you didn’t know they existed until it was already in her hands?”
Ethan sunk his shoulders, his eyes moving away from Sola. He couldn’t admit it, but he had found himself asking the same questions. Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to answer.
“But,” she said, a smirk spreading across her face, her fingers curling around the dark wood of the bookshelf, “if you let me go, you can stop her before she unleashes whatever she’s trying to do with those firestones.”
Ethan eyed Sola suspiciously, hesitating, her words melting into his brain.
Alex wouldn’t let her go, he thought, guilt gripping his chest. Today is why she’s trained me for the past three months. She’d want me to turn her in and become a Protector, just like her.
Ethan slowly glanced around the destroyed apartment: water was flooding the kitchen from the nearly destroyed sink, there were holes eaten through the walls where Sola’s blasts had hit, and glass littered the carpet from the knicknacks destroyed when Ethan leveled the bookcase. He had the power to teleport anywhere he could see, and he couldn’t even manage to flee an apartment from a sleeping woman. All he had managed to do was completely destroy someone’s home, and for what? A new position at work he wasn’t even sure he deserved?
I’m not like Alex, he realized.
But maybe he could be, if he stopped Rainey’s plan and brought her in, leaving Sola to be a Protector in Maybell.
“I’ll let you go,” Ethan said slowly, “on one condition. I need you to do something for me.”
“I don’t do anything for free,” Sola said.
Ethan winced. That was really cool, he thought. I need to remember that line. He cleared his throat.
“Do you really think you’re in a position to negotiate?” Ethan scoffed. His smug look disappeared almost as quickly as half of the wooden bookcase was suddenly eaten away by Sola’s purple plasma blast, cutting the weight holding her down in half.
“I’d lose the attitude before I decide I don’t need you at all,” Sola said, her irises flashing purple.
Ethan nodded quickly, his advantage dissolving in front of him. “Help me,” he said urgently. “We can stop Slate, together. Then you can go back to Maybell to protect your hometown and I can bring Slate in and become a Protector.”
Sola smiled, then gestured to the bookcase.
I guess this is the first test of our partnership, he thought, I free her, and we will find out if she’ll try to kill me. Ethan got his arms underneath it, then pushed up, leaving just enough space for Sola to wriggle free. She stood up, wiping off her pants.
“She’s strong,” Rainey cautioned. “I’ve never seen someone with powers like hers.”
Ethan thought back to the night of their accident, watching Rainey pull herself out of the tunnels, and then to his fight with Slate just a few days ago.
“I know,” he nodded solemnly, “but with the two of us working together, we can take her by surprise, hard and fast. She won’t see us coming.”
Sola mulled it over, conjuring a ball of plasma in her hand and rolling it around. Ethan eyed it suspiciously. After a moment, she nodded, the plasma ball disappearing.
“If I ever want my town to be safe, I need her gone. I’ll help you, best I can.”
“Okay,” Ethan breathed a sigh of relief. “Good thing we both got a good night’s rest, because we go tonight.”
Sola nodded. “I’ll let her know I have a Firestone.”
“Tell her you got it from Apex,” Ethan instructed. “They’re notoriously secret, so they wouldn’t exactly announce that they were broken into. She should buy that.”
“Got it.” Sola dusted herself off. “Where should I tell her to meet?”
Ethan thought for a moment. “There’s a place, not far from the Stillrock Mines, that we destroyed. It’s in a valley, free from people. We should have cover for me to ambush her and space for you to attack from.”
They exchanged info, and Sola made her way out the fire escape, leaving Ethan standing alone. He sighed, then tapped into his comms.
“I’m alive. Sola escaped, but I know where she’ll be tonight. I’ll explain when I’m home.”
“Thank God,” Raz said. “I thought she boiled you for sure.”
“She tried to,” Ethan said, making his way to the door, “but I’m getting better at this than I used to be. Oh, and I got to use my plan afterall, it was so sick but I had to destroy-”
Turning, he lowered his shoulder and burst through the apartment door and out into the hallway, where an older woman was standing there, jaw agape. He immediately recognized her from the photos on the wall.
“Oh, uh, gas leak,” he explained, rubbing the back of his head, suddenly self-conscious of the fact that he was shirtless. “Think I saw Titan leave, so maybe she had something to do with it? Call Apex, mention her name, and they’ll reimburse you. Probably. I hope.”
He politely excused himself, then sprinted down the hall. Feeling exhausted from his fight and lack of sleep, Ethan spotted a window at the end of the hall, stopping short as he felt his phone buzz. He smiled, seeing the text from Quinn.
Coffee?
“I could definitely use that,” he nodded, opening a portal to grab out the window to head home, shower, and grab a new shirt.