The world may have changed, but not for Ethan Havoc.

At least, not yet.

Ethan’s old truck bounced back and forth as he drove up the rocky, unpaved road marking the last part of his trip to Basin Lake. He winced as the metal groaned with strain, praying nothing else would break before he reached the parking lot. Despite the calendar shifting to fall, the oppressive summer heat had yet to fully wane, and even at this high altitude Ethan needed AC to keep cool.

Which he’d certainly put on, if his truck had any. As was typical for his luck, his truck’s AC broke on the first summer day to hit ninety degrees and the quote to get it fixed nearly made his eyes pop. It certainly didn’t help that he had been out of work for the past three months after the shutdown at the mine and never had much savings to begin with, but all that would change as soon as his plan worked.

If it worked.

Instead, all Ethan could do was try to ignore the sweat running down his back and hope his truck could reach the top of the trail so he could find what he spent the past three months searching for. If he was successful in his hunt, he’d have his life forever changed, just like the Protectors that safeguarded Ascension. Problems like ‘lack of money’ and ‘terrible car’ wouldn’t be problems anymore, at least not for him, once he had a Protector’s salary and all the financially fruitful endorsements that came with the title.

Well, there were a few more steps to his plan before he got to all those riches, and no shortage of extremely dangerous pitfalls should he ultimately succeed, but that would be a later problem.

If he survived, that was.

Of course, Ethan was acutely aware of how stupid and dangerous his plan to gain powers was, and he did not need anyone to tell him just how unlikely he was to succeed.

Unfortunately for Ethan, if he didn’t want that exact situation to occur, he shouldn’t have told Raz what he was attempting in the first place.

“Let me get this straight,” Raz was trying to keep a straight face, but his tone betrayed a thinly concealed smile, a hole in a dam wall held back by bubble gum. “While I’ve been recuperating, you’ve spent the past three months trying to find a hole in the ground that’s going to give you superpowers, like Alex has?”

“They’re called breach points,” Ethan pointed out, more matter of factly than someone saying something insane deserved to sound. “There’s a person online who thinks they can track where the Surge came from and predict where breach points might pop up along the path it may have taken before it burst from underground in Ascension.”

“And what exactly are these mythical breach points supposed to be?” Raz asked.

“Vestiges of the Surge, disturbed pockets of energy that act as vents from the Earth, like bubbles of lava bursting in a pool of magma.”

“Okay, I apologize for not knowing the lingo of your crazy online community,” Raz laughed. “Speaking of, you all follow this leader. They post coordinates, and you drive out there to find them, no matter how far.”

“Well, I only chase ones that are within an hour or two of Ascension,” Ethan offered. “And sometimes, like today, they’re places that I wanted to go to anyway, so at least I’m getting some value out of my trips, right?”

“Right,” Raz said slowly. “Kind of like how intentionally falling down a hole gives you a really good look at the bottom of the hole?”

Ethan rolled his eyes, and Raz was silent for a moment. Ethan secretly hoped that was the end of their discussion, until Raz started laughing.

“What?” Ethan asked pointedly.

“I just can’t get over the fact that you’ve spent the past three months driving all over the state on directions given to you by a stranger, willing and ready to stick your hand into what I can only assume is a glowing hole that may or may not disintegrate you entirely on contact.”

Ethan had to admit: when Raz really sounded the plan out, it sounded not only crazy, but also dangerous.

Then again, Ethan thought, trying not to glance down at Raz’s leg, so is life in the mines.

Despite the obvious danger in actually finding one, Ethan had been chasing down rumors of breach points nearly once a week on his own while Raz healed. So far, he’d gone the entire time without so much as seeing a moose. The lack of success was disheartening, but if he didn’t go, and someone else did and was changed, he knew he’d never be able to live with himself. So every time he got a notification, he drove out to the spot, trying not to let himself hope too much that his life really could change in the blink of an eye.

He’d wasted nearly three months chasing down leads, and now, with the mines reopening tomorrow, he had just one last day to find a breach point before he started working again and was far too exhausted to drive to the Four Corners on a whim. It was now or never, and Ethan had long made peace with how dangerous the breach points might be.

“Okay, let’s say this works,” Raz continued. “Then, let’s say this benevolent stranger is right, and we drive up to Basin Lake, walk out, and there’s a pool of glowing energy right in front of you. You then, presumably with a triumphant scream, slam your hand inside this unquantified radiation and, instead of losing your arm and suddenly coming down with every form of cancer known to man, you gain powers.”

“Well, nobody’s had cancer yet, and-“

“And, assuming you don’t disintegrate into a pile of goo, you’re hoping that out of an infinite number of abilities, the vast majority of which aren’t strong enough or practical enough to go head to head with a toddler, you’ll gain one of the few abilities useful enough to get you into Apex’s incredibly selective Protectorate program?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ethan smiled. “I’m already strong enough to fight a toddler. I don’t need enhanced strength for that, I need it to go toe-to-toe with the Showman, with Weaver, actual threats to the city, Raz. The good people of Ascension love watching Protectors battle Altered, and if I want to get us out of the mines, I need enough power to put on a show and, hopefully, not get killed in the process, Raz.”

“You just want to be as strong as Alex so you can supplant her as the top Protector in Ascension. Then you can spill coffee on her floor with impunity.”

Ethan scoffed. “This has nothing to do with her floors, or how massively popular and beloved she is.”

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“Sure,” Raz said dramatically. Out of everything Ethan said, he could tell that was the one thing Raz wasn’t buying.

Ignoring the urge to push his denial further, Ethan pulled into the gravel parking lot and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of just one other car. He shut his truck off, then turned to face his friend, his face grim.

“Raz,” Ethan said seriously, “this is about us. I’m trying to get us out of the mines, out of Stillrock and the same apartment we’ve had for years. Unless either of us can get in a time machine and buy a signed first edition copy of Dragon Daggee, gaining powers is the fastest way we’re going to escape.”

“More likely it’s the fastest way you’re going to get yourself killed,” Raz muttered. “Or did you forget what Protectors actually do? They don’t just sit around and book tv interviews, Ethan, they fight Altered. You could die!”

“We almost already did,” Ethan pointed out. “Or, more accurately, you almost did, because of me. What if I’m not fast enough next time to pull us out when something breaks? They’re not spending any money to fix the rest of the tunnels, Raz, especially after being shut down for so long. The mine’s a hundred years old and things are only going to get worse down there.”

“That was an accident,” Raz corrected him, instinctively tracing the scar on his thigh, “and I’m fine. We’ll keep working in the mines, earn enough money to get an apartment and finally move to Ascension. We’ll find new jobs there, ones where we don’t work entirely in the dark. We don’t need a shortcut, Ethan.”

“This isn’t a shortcut, Raz. This isn’t just enough money for one month’s rent which, by the way, we don’t have. Gaining powers is winning the whole jackpot. I’m doing this for us, whether you believe it can be done or not.”

“How selfless,” Raz scoffed.

Escaping the awkward silence that fell over them, Ethan shot him a look and hopped out of the car, breathing in the crisp mountain air rushing off the rock face in front of them. Fall had come early to the Lilac Mountains, and there was little remaining color to the mountaintop as the summer had given way to shorter days, sapping the grass of its life and leaving the typically verdant trees clinging on to their last remaining leaves, shaking in the unabated wind.

There was one beautiful, untamed element remaining: the glass surface of the frozen Lake Basin sparkled in the dying sun, dazzling against the brown and gray landscape. The sight left Ethan’s jaw agape, but not for its beauty.

“Frozen?”

Raz caught up to him, laughing. “Well, at least I won’t have to watch you die horribly today.” He studied the lake further, frowning. “Though, I have to admit, this is odd…”

“How could it be frozen?” Ethan yelled to whoever was in charge for this unfortunate deviation in his plans. “It was eighty yesterday! We were supposed to have until mid November before it even starts to freeze!”

Ethan dropped his shoulders, wishing he could bury himself beneath the ice.

“Damn it,” he kicked a rock hard, the echo bouncing off the mountains in front of them. “The post I received said the breach point was in the lake. I was going to swim down to the bottom, but I can’t drill down through the ice. We drove up here for nothing. Three straight months of nothing.”

Raz walked over and put his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “I know you’re disappointed, but this is for the best. I’d rather have you alive and poor than have to explain to Alex that I let you turn into a pile of goo.”

“Goo doesn’t have immense feelings of inadequacy,” Ethan sighed, his head low. “What a miserable waste of time.”

Raz ignored him, narrowing his eyes, focusing on a point across the lake. “Speaking of miserable…”

Ethan followed his gaze and spied a girl standing on the other side of the lake, yelling and waving her arms in an obvious fit of anger. She kept pointing at the frozen lake, as if the person she was speaking to was somehow responsible for it freezing over. Her anger made her seemingly indifferent to the blusterous wind ripping across the surface of the frozen lake that was blowing her chin length raven hair in all directions. She was wearing a dark gray jacket and black jeans that matched her hair.

Does she know something about the breach? Ethan wondered. And…who is she yelling at?

Moving his eyes to the right, Ethan gasped. Speeding towards her with skates under her boots was a woman Ethan recognized as Hailstone, one of the Altered that switched sides and joined the Protectors after it had become obvious Alex’s side was going to overwhelm the Altered. She had a reputation for being one of the more brutal Protectors and was appropriately assigned to cover sector five, the mostly abandoned, northern industrial sector of Ascension where violent, brilliant clashes between Protectors and Altered would impact the least amount of civilians.

“Whoa,” Raz said, seeing the same thing Ethan had. “What is she doing here? Protectors don’t typically work outside of their sectors, and never outside of the city.”

“No idea,” Ethan said, gesturing to Hailstone, “but I think it’s obvious who froze the lake.”

Raz furrowed his brow. “Why would Hailstone do that?”

Ethan shrugged, but he had a sinking feeling that it had something to do with the breach point. In the three months he had spent tracking down supposed breaches, there had never been so much as a downed log conspicuously put in place to block his path. If Apex had felt the need to send someone all the way out to Basin Lake, two hours from the city, then Ethan must have been in the right place.

“Oh, man,” Raz sighed, watching the woman do her best to rush at Hailstone, “she must not know who she’s dealing with.”

Or, Ethan thought, shifting uncomfortably, she’s desperate.

Hailstone reached the woman, her blades digging into the ice to stop just in front of her, spraying snow at the woman’s jeans. Ethan had a hard time making out what they were saying, but he could tell it was a heated argument. With an unnatural crackle, Hailstone manipulated the air in front of her and crafted a large, jagged mallet made of ice, glimmering in the sun. The woman in front of her just laughed derisively, stunning Ethan.

“Oh, no,” Raz sighed. “She needs to leave Hailstone alone before things get worse. Much worse.”

Ethan groaned. The breach point is supposed to be here, he thought, and maybe she’s here for the same reason. I can’t leave without exhausting every option, not when I might be so close.

“I”m going to help her,” Ethan said, more confidently than he felt. He started to walk, then run, towards the lake’s rocky shore.

“Wait, what?”

“Stay here, I’ll talk Hailstone down,” Ethan yelled, not quite sure if he believed himself, but very sure he didn’t have any other options if he wanted to find the breach point.

“What are you going to do?” Raz yelled. “I don’t want to have to call Alex to save you if something goes wrong.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “I’ll figure it out when I get there,” he yelled. His eyes were drawn to the mallet Hailstone was now spinning in her hands, a malicious smile spreading across her face.

I better, he thought, or else neither of us is making it to the breach point.