A few hours after the afternoon sun set and the last light fled behind the mountains, several purple portals opened across Ascension, terminating on top of a rocky mesa overlooking the collapsed mining tunnel on the western edge of Stillrock. Even through the few rays of clouded moonlight illuminating the scene below, Ethan could tell life had yet to return to the valley, its field still singed from the hungry radioactive energy he unleashed three months ago.
Ethan walked to the edge of the mesa, then perched himself halfway behind a tree, furrowing his brow when he realized Sola wasn’t there yet. Winter had returned, and he shivered against the wind, protected from the cold only by a black sweater and sweatpants he wore to be stealthy, then pulled out his phone to text Sola, only to be interrupted by an urgent beeping in his ear.
“I’m hoping one day I won’t have to ask this,” Raz said, “but are you sure this a good idea?”
Ethan rolled his eyes, then realized Raz couldn’t see him. With luck, in fact, he hoped no one could see him hiding amongst the thick branches of the evergreens. His heart beat faster, realizing Rainey could show up at any second and potentially throw a spike through his leg.
“No,” Ethan answered honestly, sighing. The best case scenario was winning a fight against Rainey and facing the consequences of hiding her existence from Amory afterwards. The worst was…well, there was a lot that could go wrong. “It is not. Rainey is a lot stronger than me, and even though I’m more mobile my ability to escape goes out the window if she takes the ground out from underneath my feet like she did in Maybell.”
“Hm,” Raz mulled that over. “I think I liked it better when you lied to me.”
Ethan chuckled quietly. “Yeah, well, I’m trying to get away from that. Speaking of, thanks for not telling Alex my plan.”
Raz was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was urgent. “Don’t screw this up. Capture Rainey and let’s never have to worry about her ever again, okay? She’s dangerous, and she needs to be in Apex’s custody before she can hurt anyone.”
Ethan mulled Raz’s words over, his thoughts drifting to Quinn as a passing cloud momentarily blocked the moonlight. If he did succeed in capturing Rainey, he’d be responsible for putting Quinn’s sister in Apex’s Altered prison. If he failed, though, Rainey could strike at Alex.
He rolled his suddenly knotted shoulders, trying to ignore the moral quandary. What Rainey was doing was wrong, he tried to tell himself, and she needed to be stopped, but who was responsible for giving her powers in the first place? Wasn’t Ethan himself at least partially responsible for Rainey’s plan?
As if reading his mind, Raz chimed in. “You know, we can still tell Alex everything. We can bring her out here, have her capture Rainey. I’m sure she’d be willing to give you enough credit for Amory to promote you to Protector.”
Ethan shook his head, glad that Raz couldn’t see the pained expression on his face. “I promised Amory that I’d deliver Sola. Eventually, she’s going to find out that I’m responsible for Rainey getting powers in the first place, so I need a bigger fish to even have a chance of getting a job. I can’t come clean with nothing in hand, Raz.”
Raz was silent on the other end.
“Let’s hope your combat lessons with Alex paid off, then.”
Ethan’s phone buzzed, and his hand shot to his pocket. A text from Sola flashed on his screen.
“We’re about to find out,” Ethan breathed. He took a moment, then opened it.
“Where are you?” He read aloud, shaking his head. “Right where I said I’d be, which you’d know if you bothered to show up when I asked,” he read as he typed. “So get here, now.”
“What’d she say?” Raz asked.
Ethan’s phone buzzed again. “Found a better spot for an ambush,” he read, with a pin dropped marking a location not far from him. He turned and slid his back against the rock, obscuring him from view entirely.
Ethan pulled it up, squinting against the bright screen in the dark evening. After a few moments of orienting, he traced the new location. It looked familiar, but he didn’t have time to interrogate. “Moving,” he told Raz, opening a portal in the sky a half mile away. Scouting from above, he picked a spot at the edge of the treeline, teleported there, and tucked himself in the brush to conceal himself.
That they were essentially giving Rainey a home field advantage in this fight was not lost on Ethan. Rainey, of course, could launch a boulder at him from anywhere so long as she could see him, and she could pull stone from anywhere in the mountainside surrounding them. It was like putting on a scuba suit and trying to fight a shark in the ocean, only Ethan was supposed to have a woman who could shoot plasma from her hands on his side.
Maybe his metaphor wasn’t perfectly apt, but it was still a dangerous move, designed to make Rainey feel more comfortable about meeting Sola. So far, it hadn’t seemed to have worked, which made Ethan feel queasy. It would be easy for Rainey to ambush Ethan if she wanted to. So, the question then became: if she was here, why hadn’t she? He tried to push the fear from his mind, but couldn’t stop the sweat forming on his brow.
Something felt wrong, but he was in far too deep to back out now.
In front of him was an open space, about the size of a professional soccer field, with a few shrubs dotting the landscape. Worryingly, he still saw no sign of Sola. He pulled out his phone to text her again, but a burst of light from the ground in front of him caught his eye, standing out like a flash of heat lightning in the dark. He paused, checking left and right, but, seeing no one, took a few tentative steps out of the brush, hoping for any signs of Sola. When he wasn’t crushed by a massive boulder, he kept moving, finally stopping just short of the light.
In front of him was a puncture in the earth, jagged, asymmetrical, and deep, far deeper a gap in the dirt than any sort of animal or pulled root could have created.
Ethan’s stomach dropped. In front of him was a breach point, no wider than a basketball, but somehow deep enough to cut into the river of radiation, which was now creeping out in front of him and already poisoning the grass around it, choking the life from them and draining each blade of its verdant color.
After the realization of what he was looking at sunk in, his eyes picked up a detail he had missed: the edges of the breach point were practically dripping with purple plasma hissing quietly in the dark.
Two things then occurred to Ethan in quick succession.
“Sola’s compromised,” Ethan told Raz first, then, “I’ve lost my backup, I need to get out of here, now.”
Without thinking, he opened a portal behind him, then nearly had his face pushed through the breach point when a boulder the size of a wrecking ball was slung directly at the void he conjured, exploding as it crashed against the void and knocked Ethan back.
He was falling straight into the breach point, then, panicking, shot out his arms and barely caught himself, his eyes nearly blinded by the rainbow light that felt like sticking his head in a hot oven. With a growl he used all of his strength to force himself to roll to the right, landing flat on his back, staring up at the night sky.
Somehow, he thought, it almost looked like the moon had broken orbit and was falling right on top of him. Then, he realized what he was actually seeing.
“Ah!” Ethan exclaimed, rolling sideways like a child down a hill, bumping over rocks and divots in the ground as far as he could until the boulder slammed into the dirt next to him, throwing soil all over his face. He spit, brushing it off and wiping it out of his eyes, then threw himself onto his feet.
He was in an open field, bereft of cover, and unable to spot where Rainey was hiding. This was not a scenario Alex had gone over, but, if she had, Ethan was certain her advice would’ve been call me, and try not to die until I get there.
Calling Alex and using his abilities as his get out of jail free card was not an option. Even worse, Ethan watched the long arc of another rock twice the size of his body on the perfect trajectory to crush him, whistling through the air.
He opened a portal underneath the rock and, thinking quickly, opened another one at the treeline in front of him, sighing with relief as the boulder changed course, sailed through his portal and went crashing through the trees, branches shattering and raining leaves down.
“What’s happening?” Raz asked.
“Rainey’s attacking, Sola’s gone, and I’m trying to get out of here!” Ethan summarized.
The boulder he redirected must’ve landed somewhat close to Rainey because Ethan had a moment to take a few steps to get a running start and better orient himself through his portal. Just when he thought he might escape through, he felt something wrap around his ankle, causing him to slam into the ground below, sending a fire through his left elbow.
“Ow,” he grunted, flipping and seeing a stone serpent moving slowly up his leg, digging into his skin.
“Ethan, are you okay? Do you want me to call Alex?”
“No!” he yelled. Luckily, he had a chance to review Rainey’s attack from this morning, and he was ready. Borrowing his trick from being trapped by Sola, he slipped a portal underneath the center of the stone and expanded it outward until the rock shattered, freeing him. He scrambled to his feet and tried to run, gasping when a sharp stone whizzed by his face, cutting his cheek and drawing a thin line of blood.
“Damn it, I can’t get any space,” he cursed, throwing up a void to shield his left side, wincing when four more stones shattered against the black oval. “I can’t open a portal until she stops attacking!”
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“Maybe you should try attacking back?” Raz suggested.
“I don’t know where she is!” Ethan yelled back over more explosions of stone to his left.
“Get a better vantage point!”
“Easy to say when you’re sitting comfortably in a chair miles away,” Ethan muttered, waiting for a break in the ear-shattering sound of stones crashing against his shield. The moment the last batch dropped to the dirt, Ethan dropped his shield, feinted a move forward, then opened a portal behind him. He stopped his momentum, falling backwards and ducked as a rock whizzed by his head. A second later his world flipped upside down, and he found himself falling through the air and hurtling towards the earth.
Which, somehow, was an improvement on his evening.
With the few seconds he had until he hit the ground, and using the breach point light as his guide, Ethan spied the old Stillrock water tower on the opposite edge of the clearing and teleported himself there, leaning over the rickety railing of the catwalk that encompassed the top and catching his breath.
”I caught a break,” Ethan said in between pants, “but I don’t know for how long. She’s so strong, Raz, I don’t know what to do.”
”I can’t listen to you die, Ethan,” Raz told him, “I’m calling Alex, now.”
”No,” Ethan spat. He was out of options. “She’ll kill her, Raz.”
”What?” Raz asked, surprised.
Ethan sighed. “There may have been one more thing I wasn’t exactly honest about.”
Raz sighed in frustration. “How? How am I still surprised by you doing this to me every single time?”
“Last time, I swear!”
“Like I believe that. What were you hiding this time?”
“Rainey wants to kill Alex. She hates Apex and sees Titan as a symbol of their strength. If I call Alex here I could be playing right into Rainey’s plan. I have to do this myself.”
”You never told me that!” Raz exclaimed. “But aren’t you forgetting that Alex is literally invincible?”
”She’s…not entirely invincible,” Ethan admitted, hanging his head.
”What do you mean?” Raz asked.
”Alex has a weakness. Intense amounts of Surge energy can pierce her skin, and Rainey’s already figured that out. She’s opened a breach point here and could rip the earth apart if Alex showed up, and she’s strong enough to push Alex in and let it swallow her whole. Nobody could survive falling into a lake of Surge energy. Rainey has all the pieces in front of her and I have to stop her before she puts it all together.”
“Damn it,” Raz slammed his desk. “Okay. Can’t call Alex. Can you find Sola?”
Ethan peeked around the corner of the water tower. This time, something was different: the clearing wasn’t empty. In the middle of the field, next to the breach point was something gray and vaguely human shaped with a purple glow on each side.
“Trapped,” Ethan exhaled, his shoulders dropping. “Rainey’s encased her in stone, baiting me to come rescue her.”
”I knew you’d run,” Slate yelled out to him, her voice faint but still audible. “Did you not expect me to have a plan for this?”
”Can you break her out?” Raz asked.
”No,” Ethan shook his head, trying to locate where Rainey’s voice came from, “the stone is too thick, but Sola’s plasma can eat through it with time. Maybe if I stay up here long enough, I can-”
Ethan was interrupted by a series of crashes that reminded him, chillingly, of the cave-in he barely escaped with Rainey. He looked up to see the earth ripping apart, more bright Surge energy leaking through a new jagged path leading right up to where Sola was imprisoned.
”You have one minute,” Rainey called out again, “or Sola suffers the same fate you should have months ago.”
“Well,” Ethan sighed softly, shaking his head. “So much for sitting and waiting until I come up with a good idea.”
”What are you going to do?” Raz asked softly.
“I can fix this,” Ethan whispered, tapping his knuckles lightly against the metal railing, then more intensely as he thought, running through his options. “I have to.”
Spying Sola, Ethan developed a plan, or something close to it. If he timed everything right, he could summon a void, knock the encased Sola off balance, and open a portal underneath her, teleporting her on top of the mesa and out of harm’s way, allowing them both to escape. He’d have to be quick, but it was his only shot.
He maneuvered himself silently to the front of the water tower, hoping his black sweatshirt would keep him out of sight, then, keeping his hands as close to the metal grate as he could, flexed his palm and summoned a portal to give Sola a push.
The stone, however, was heavier than Ethan anticipated, and his power flashed bright purple around his palm as he strained against the rock. Before he could fully push Sola hard enough to give himself something to work with, he heard Rainey’s oddly cheerful voice cut through the dark night, sending a chill down his spine.
“Found you.”
Before he could stop what he was doing to outmaneuver her, he felt the water tower shift, groaning in a deafening pitch as its legs buckled and lurched forward. His eyes shot downward, gasping as the earth around the water tower shifted like a tide receding from the shore, leaving the tower’s front weight completely unsupported. With a snap the water tower came crashing down, with Ethan unable to fully dismiss the void and open a new portal before he hit the ground hard, the impact rattling his teeth. He rolled over the pieces of broken metal like a ragdoll, stopping right in front of Rainey’s boot and barely registering how badly his left arm was bleeding, his sleeve cold and wet.
His heart was pounding out of his chest as his whole entire body flashed danger to everything in him that could listen. Ethan tried to stand, but nearly blacked out from the effort, falling to a knee. Rainey smiled, crouched down, to come face to face with him, then reached a hand out to Ethan’s head.
“They really ought to hide these better,” Rainey told him, ripping the communicator out of his ear and crushing it in her fist. She laughed as any chance Ethan had of being rescued blew away with the wind carrying away the pieces.
“Ah,” Slate sighed contentedly. “I’m going to make this quick.”
Ethan wasn’t sure if she meant his life, but he was too tired to ask. He wanted to scream. Instead, he swayed, wearily, the moonlight barely bright enough to let him see Rainey’s all-too-pleased face in front of his, her gray eyes practically glowing, streaked with green.
“You look like you’re having a bit of trouble standing,” Rainey said, shaking her head almost tenderly, like a vet looking at a wounded animal. Disappointingly, Ethan had the sneaking suspicion Rainey never believed he was a threat, even before she dropped a water tower on top of him. “Let me help you with that.”
She waved her hand over him and Ethan felt rough stone encasing his body, wrapping him tightly and entombing him, leaving a cutout for his face, but forcing his arms and legs tightly together. Rainey flicked her wrist and Ethan’s body rose to a standing position, facing her like a mummy’s sarcophagus.
He hated to admit it, but he was too weak to stand, almost grateful to be able to rest his broken body against the cold stone.
“Oh, Ethan,” Rainey shook her head. “What would Quinn say if she saw you like this?”
“What would she say if she saw what you’ve done?” Ethan shot back with all the fury he could muster, little more than a tired gale from a faraway storm. “She happens to like me, you know.”
At least, Ethan was pretty sure she did. It was always difficult to tell, but he couldn’t interrogate that situation too closely right now.
Rainey glared at him, but Ethan, figuring things really couldn’t get much worse, kept his face blank, which only served to further infuriate her. She waved him off.
”She’ll understand, eventually. After all, she joined Apex to try and chart the breach points, working to find a way to shut the Surge down entirely. Quinn and I are trying to accomplish the same goal, Ethan, I just have the ability to employ a more direct method.”
”And you want to start by killing Titan?”
”That,” Rainey clarified, holding up a finger, “is up to you.”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. A small beam of hope suddenly sprang to life in his chest, but he forced himself to ignore it, like dismissing a birdsong before he was ready to wake up. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t want Titan dead,” Rainey clarified, “but Ascension is in danger, and Apex won’t do a damn thing about it so long as they can hide behind Titan’s invulnerability. We all got lucky the first time, but people will die the next time the Surge bursts, Ethan. Hell, it nearly killed the two of us, and we searched for it!”
Rainey checked her watch, then sighed impatiently. Her eyes darted to Ethan, whose heart rate spiked.
“I know you won’t listen to reason, so let’s try something more direct.”
Rainey raised a spike of black stone, impossibly sharp, pointed directly at Ethan’s chest.
“Titan had a gash on her leg, I saw it for myself, thanks to you. I know she can be hurt with a firestone. Tell me where to find one,” she growled, forcing the spike closer, “and I promise I won’t kill her.”
”No,” Ethan resisted, trying to worm his way back in his coffin. His hands were bound, the energy that came so freely at his beck and call completely restricted, absent now when he needed it most. “I won’t let you hurt her!”
“That is no longer up to you,” Rainey shook her head slowly. The spike raised from the earth, moving painfully slowly towards Ethan’s chest, just barely breaking his skin. He gasped, finding no more space to move behind him. He was shaken by a voice calling out weakly behind him.
“He doesn’t know where they are,” Sola told her.
”No!” Ethan shouted. Panicking, he turned his attention to Rainey, his distressed tone giving him away. He balled his fists, trying to rock them forward enough to gain some space. “She’s lying, Apex has a horde of them and-”
Rainey launched the spike towards Ethan, stopping just short of his chest, quieting him.
”Finally,” Rainey said, “someone with something concrete. Where can I get one? How are they made?”
“The last one was made here, in Stillrock. You need a stone that can absorb enough radiation without breaking.”
“Ah,” Rainey smiled, pleased. “Thank you, Sola. You’re released.”
With the wave of her palm, the stone receded from Sola, who fell to the ground, limp. Ethan instinctively reached out a palm to stop her fall, his knuckles crashing into the rock holding him.
“Growing up, Quinn was always reading. She had such an interest in what was beneath us. On road-trips with our family, she would constantly recite common stones and their uses. Drove me insane at the time, but now I’m grateful.”
“Is this going somewhere?” Ethan asked, annoyed.
Rainey pulled a gold necklace out of her black sweater. “You know, after our incident in the mines, I realized I was missing something. Something Quinn gave me for my thirteenth birthday. I figured it’d have to be here, but I couldn’t come back to Stillrock, not until I was ready.”
I do not like where this is going.
Almost like a metal detector waving over the beach, Rainey carefully and deliberately moved her palm an inch above the surface of the earth. Ethan watched for a moment, transfixed, until Rainey suddenly stopped, smiled, and snapped her hand into a fist, the smack of something solid hitting her palm. She wrapped her hand around the smoky topaz that was formerly dangling on her necklace.
Ethan grimaced, noticing now what he didn’t see three months ago: it was streaked lightly with red veins. His heart sank immediately, recognizing the partially charged firestone. His heart sank; he had led Rainey right to it.
“Quinn got me this for my birthday,” Rainey said softly, “my last one before the Surge. It was supposed to protect me, or something like that. She’s big into rocks and what they mean. It didn’t protect us then, but maybe I can use it to protect her now, but it needs a little more. After all, I’m not just trying to cut Titan.”
She put the topaz in her palm, then let it float in front of her. Without warning it suddenly darted into the breach, which sealed itself neatly.
“You know, you surprise me, Ethan,” Rainey told him, arms folded over her chest, like a blacksmith waiting for their blade to heat.
Ethan couldn’t believe it had come to this: trapped in a mound of stone, getting a lecture he fully deserved.
“Titan is the most powerful person on the planet,” Rainey continued. “You could’ve asked her to stop me and she would’ve. But you’ve been too prideful, and waited too long.”
“Why should I listen to you lecture me?” Ethan yelled, straining against his stone bindings.
Rainey smiled. “It’s not like you can go anywhere else.”
With a wave of her hand the topaz shot back up, floating in front of him just out of his reach. Instead of the electric blue streaked with glowing red from the Stillrock site, this one was glowing white and streaked with crimson, impossibly bright and difficult to see for too long. She pulled stone from the earth, forming it into a long handle. Then, like a magnet, the Firestone snapped onto the end of the rod, forming a spear. Rainey pulled the tip close to her face, illuminated by the glowing red stone. Her eyes were somber, with dark circles under them.
“I guess I should be thanking you, Ethan. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
“Don’t do this,” Ethan pleaded, pushing his body against the stone. “You don’t have to do this!”
Rainey turned to face him one last time.
“Don’t you understand?” she asked, looking genuinely confused. Ethan stared back, icy fear freezing in his veins.
“Of course I do, because I’m the only one who can.”