Ethan had spent almost the entirety of his past week sleeping until the sun went down. Now, face to face with the blazing winter sun setting over Ascension, he couldn't help but take a quiet moment to appreciate the imposing mountains swallowing the light and sending the city into darkness. He and Raz were alone just west of Stillrock, taking cover in a small patch of alpines that were beginning to bend and flex against the wind of an oncoming snowstorm.
That is, until Raz's panicked voice broke his zen moment.
"Oh my God," he exclaimed. "We're basically outlaws. I'll never have a job again."
"Well, good news on that front," Ethan told him, feeling oddly calm himself. "If we don't stop Rainey, there won't be a city to work in."
"Not helping," Raz shook his head. "Speaking of our imminent destruction, do we know where Rainey is?"
He tapped his comms. "Quinn, everything okay back at the Tower?"
"Good as they can be," she laughed. "I walked in to find two idiots barricading themselves against the Surge, but we're managing. Kingston is down here welding away to try and protect us while I monitor for any Surges. He wanted to fire them I need help keeping track of the sensors."
"Good," Ethan nodded, "and thanks for the help. We wouldn't have made it out of there without you."
"Guess you owe me another dinner."
"It's on me, I promise," Ethan smiled. "Better than hot dogs this time, too."
"I'll hold you to that. Now, what do you guys need?"
"Were you able to find out where your sister is heading?"
She nodded. "If you think of the Surge as a river running deep underground, Apex set up radiation probes essentially along its banks to monitor its flow. Rainey has effectively dammed everything up river and is pushing the energy where it's easiest for her to maneuver: straight forward through what I'd have to guess is a cavern that's been slowly eroded by the Surge for centuries."
"Okay, so where's the next set of probes?" Ethan asked.
"If you look West, there should be a mountain in front of you with a flat peak, Mount Vista. If I'm right, she'll be there in about…fifteen minutes."
Ethan's heart started racing. He instinctively started moving through the stretches that he and Alex went through before every training session, holdovers from her wrestling days. "I see it. We'll be ready."
"Bottom of the ninth," Quinn said, and Ethan could practically hear her smile through his comms, "two outs. Bases loaded, tie game. Can the Aces pull this off?"
"They tend to strike out, but, as far as I know, none of them have superpowers, so maybe this will go a little differently."
"They will," she assured him, the confidence in her voice that attracted him to her in the first place shining through. "I've got to get back to helping Kingston. Call me when you win."
"Thanks, Quinn." He tapped the comm, ending the call. "She thinks I'm going to win," he smiled, "and she's pretty smart, so I like our odds."
"Hard to argue with that," Raz shrugged. "You nervous?"
He nodded, stretching out his hamstring. "Of course, but…I've spent so much time running from this that it feels like a relief to run towards it. Even if I might get my ass kicked again."
Raz laughed, shaking his head. Ethan raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"Despite your utter recklessness…Alex would be proud."
"You know for the first time since I got these powers, I agree."
Raz pointed to a dense patch of trees. "I'm going to go hide behind those and call for help if something goes wrong."
Ethan pulled Raz in for a hug. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this."
Raz chuckled. "You know," he sighed, looking out at the dark clouds billowing against the mountains portending an incoming snowstorm, "it does beat the mine."
"See? I told you," Ethan punched him in the shoulder as Raz rolled his eyes. "Alright, the party's about to get started. Go hide so you don't get hurt."
"On it, boss," Raz nodded, running off into the trees. Ethan turned, facing the mountain.
"Right back where we started." Around his palm, a ring of purple energy swirled excitedly around his wrist, glowing gently in the receding light. Despite the impending danger, Ethan had to smile. More changed in the past three months than he could've believed.
Ethan knew that he should've been nervous, just moments away from a fight for his life against an opponent that had already beaten him twice with the fate of Ascension on the line, but he had so much more behind him now than he had then.
He wasn't hiding anything from his family, or from his friends. He somehow wasn't worried about having a job, even having now blown up not one, but two potentially places of employment.
He had spent so long trying to cover up his own mistakes that having one singular object to overcome directly in front of him had a weight off his shoulders. He had one last chance to try and make things right, to stop Rainey and save the city, just like Alex would have, if she was here. Of course, she wasn't, so it was all on Ethan's surprisingly loose shoulders. He readied himself, waiting for the fight to come.
He didn't have to wait long.
Quietly at first, the ground rumbled, an impending sign of Slate's fury heading his way. The rumbling grew and grew until it was hard for him to stand. Slate suddenly crested the mesa and came into view.
Despite it all, Ethan smiled.
"Go time," he said, taking a deep breath, opening a portal to an alcove across the way from Mount Vista. His breath caught in his throat when he saw her.
If he wasn't entirely sure he could stop Slate before, he was doubting himself even more now. He knew she was powerful, and had seen it first hand when she attacked him and Alex in the Colosseum, but this was a whole new level of power entirely.
Slate was standing atop the summit of Mount Vista like a one woman army stalking the city wall, ready to burn the whole thing to the ground. She wore dark jeans and a black long sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, exposing the rapid movements of her forearms. Even from this distance Ethan could tell she looked strained, raven colored bangs sticking to her damp forehead, gritting her teeth as she manipulated the earth nearly a mile below the surface.
The time for evading Apex's sensors was, Ethan could tell, over. The earth in the valley below her was ripping apart at the seams like unseen hands reaching deep into the earth and pulling it apart, sending jagged rock jutting up to the surface. Not a moment after Surge energy leaked out like blood rushing from a wound, then dissipated in the air like steam as the Surge was thrust forward by Slate's movement, mastery of her powers on full display.
Ethan likened it to squeezing out the last bits of toothpaste from the tube, only the toothpaste was radioactive and aimed right at Ascension. Oh, and he was solely responsible for stopping it while Amory kept every Protector on standby in Ascension, avoiding this suicide mission entirely and keeping Apex's best where they can be the most useful.
The snowstorm that had been brewing behind the mountains crested over their peaks, dark clouds spilling down the shadowed forest, bringing a mess of wind and snow barreling down on his location. The weather was forcing his hand; he needed to move fast or he was going to lose visibility, rendering his powers nearly useless.
It was now or never, and he wasn't going back to Ascension, back to Quinn, without giving this his best shot. Everyone was counting on him, whether they knew it or not, and he wasn't going to let them down.
"Right where Quinn said she'd be," Ethan told Raz.
"Perfect."
"Yeah," Ethan sighed as Slate ripped open a piece of earth the size of a building and tossed it aside like a toy. Surge energy hissed out of the hole, then she pushed the earth forward, maneuvering it ever closer to the city. "Kind of."
"How are you going to stop her?"
"A plan might be nice," Ethan whispered to himself, tapping his foot impatiently, wishing the puzzle pieces would come together, but, like usual, they evaded his mind entirely.
"You…don't have one?" Raz asked.
"No. You wouldn't happen to have one, would you?"
"Fresh out."
"Alright, then," he rolled his neck, "I've tried to make plans for the last three months, and look where that got me. It's time to try something a little different."
"Sounds rash?"
Ethan glanced back at Apex Tower. On the slim chance that Ethan failed to stop Slate, Quinn was still inside the lab, working with Kingston to reinforce the shielding with as much time as Ethan could buy them. Attacking Slate head on certainly was rash, but he didn't see any other option.
Before he had the chance to second guess himself, Ethan took off, legs pumping as hard as he could make them, leaping through the portal when his foot hit the edge of the cliff, shooting himself right at Slate. She turned at the sight of his portal opening, snarling something that Ethan was grateful he couldn't hear. He slammed into her like a freight train, feeling a bright, red-hot pain in his shoulder as it absorbed the blow that sent them tumbling across the dirt.
Slate dug a hand into the ground to stop herself, sliding to a stop as Ethan clumsily pushed himself up, testing out his almost certainly sprained left shoulder. The rumbling noise stopped; he had broken her concentration and forced her to deal with him instead of directing the flow of the Surge.
Before he could celebrate his fleeting victory, he spied Slate twenty feet away from him, readying a boulder to launch his way, expecting him to retreat like he had the previous two times they fought. Instead, Ethan took an athletic stance and opened an unconnected portal behind his foot and used it like a sprinter's starting block, pushing off launching himself at Slate, wrapping his arms around her waist, tackling her to the ground.
The boulder crashed into the ground next to them, kicking up a cloud of thick dust that forced Ethan to shield his eyes. Slate took advantage of the moment, summoning a pillar of stone that crashed into his chest, throwing him into the air.
Ethan cried out when he hit the ground, struggling to catch his breath. Slate pounced, putting her knee on his chest and covering her fist in black stone, raising it over his face.
"Again with this?" she asked. "Again with you?"
"Yep," Ethan choked out, nearly unable to speak but slowly regaining his breath. Stalling was exactly what he needed right now and, luckily, Slate never hesitated to talk about how much better she was at this than him. She gestured to the Surge behind her, which had come to a halt, leaking out into the earth below. Ethan could hear an awful, familiar sizzling sound as it drained all life from the grass in the valley.
"You're pinned down. You're going to lose, don't you want to just quit? Make it easy for yourself?"
"Sometimes I'd really like to," he groaned.
"Then do it! We have to show everyone that they aren't safe! That they can't trust Apex!"
"They're not safe…because of you."
Slate growled, baring her teeth at him inches from his face. "You gave me this opportunity! I never wanted to hurt you; but you're never going to stop, are you?"
"Nope."
"Only one thing left to do with you, then."
Slate roared, lifting her stone-encased fist above Ethan's head, ready to slam down straight into his forehead. He flinched when she reached her apex, but, having stalled long enough, Ethan opened a portal next to Slate's head, then another just in front of his finger. He flicked her right in the ear, causing her to recoil just enough for him to wriggle out from under her. They stood, both panting, ten feet apart, both unsure of what to do next. Slate watched him closely, her gray eyes looking for any signs of movement. After a moment, she growled again, waiting for him to make a move.
A black stone shot into each one of her hands, ripped from the soil beneath them. They liquified in her hand, turning into short batons the length of Ethan's forearm. With a roar she rushed at him, rearing a baton back to crack him across the face. Ethan ignored every instinct he had urging him to teleport away and instead opened a void in front of him and sent it careening into Slate. She used a raised pillar of stone to launch herself over it and slammed into Ethan's right side, cracking him against the ribs.
"I like this a lot better than when you run," she said, walking up to him slowly. He was again short of breath, an unfortunate recurring pattern, but couldn't let up. He blocked another shot at his battered ribs with a void, then ducked as Slate swung for his head. He opened a portal to the other side of the summit and dove through it, buying himself some time to recover. Slate raised two boulders, hovering haphazardly in front of her, readying a strike at Ethan.
She thinks I'm going to run because that's all I've shown her I can do. And, right now, that'd be the smart move. I'm not sure how many more hits I can take.
He opened a portal back to the cliff face where he originally landed, but stopped himself at the sound of Slate's cutting laughter.
"There he goes," Slate called out. "You spent so much to gain powers, and yet all you use it for is running away."
Slate's right hand twitched, waiting for him to open a portal so she could start launching stone spears at him, hoping to pin him down or send one right through him.
I can't beat her in a fight. But maybe I can be something she doesn't expect.
Ethan opened a portal way off in the distance behind him, catnip for Slate's murderous impulses. She turned her attention to it, firing off sharp pointed spears that would've eviscerated Ethan had he jumped through.
Instead, he feinted moving through the portal, then, while keeping that one open, took a running start towards Slate. When she had launched the last of her projectiles, Ethan sprung his trap.
He summoned a void in front of him, the same height as him, hovering gently just above the ground. Then, he tilted his body, diving headfirst towards the valley below at a speed that made his eyes water and his face go numb, putting him out of Slate's sight. He gulped as much air as he could and opened a portal under him and another just above the mesa, aiming himself like a missile directly where Slate was standing.
He sailed through the portal as if he was shot out of a cannon and, instead of slamming into her with his good shoulder, he summoned a void that crashed into her back and knocked her to the ground face first with an oomph. He springboarded off of the black void and tumbled onto the earth, just barely able to keep his palm flexed as rocks tore into his legs and arms while he slid to a stop. He eventually landed on his side, the Surge stopped, for now, and Slate completely subdued under his unbreakable void. She struggled against the black, floating object, but Ethan lowered his palm further.
"It's over," he told her, breathing hard. "You're trapped, and so is the Surge."
Slate smiled maliciously. "That so?"
Ethan's skin suddenly went cold and he had the distinct feeling he was missing something.
"Do you know why I chose here, specifically, to bring the Surge? It wasn't an accident, Ethan. This is the only spot in the entire Lavender Range that has a direct view of Ascension. From here to the city is almost a perfect, totally interrupted slope, as if a separate Surge carved the same path a million years ago. Kingston told me that Apex, of course knew this, and that's why after they discovered proof that the Surge really existed in one of their drilling claims they put their tower directly in the path to Ascension, one last bulwark before the Surge could hit the city. They were right and saved Ascension during the Surge, but, unfortunately, they forgot to warn us and Quinn and I nearly died in the process. Oops."
"So what?" Ethan challenged her, not as confident as he would've liked. "You're not going anywhere, and neither is the Surge."
Slate grunted in effort, trying to crane her neck to see the progress the Surge had made through the valley. Before Ethan stopped her, it had stopped about fifty feet short of the valley's edge, leaving it short of the downslope path towards Ascension.
"The path the Surge took the first time eighteen months ago left this valley immensely unstable. I didn't need to send the Surge all the way to Ascension, Ethan. I only need to get it here and give it just…a little…push."
Ethan glanced at her, quizzically, then spun around at a sound so loud it sounded like the valley was splitting in half. When he rushed over to the edge of the mesa, that was almost exactly what he saw. The last push Slate had given the Surge was akin to pushing a snowball down a cliff, leading to an unstoppable avalanche: The shelf holding the Surge back completely collapsed in on itself, sending dust and debris flying into the air. From there, the Surge dove downstream, leaving a scar in the earth as it flew downhill towards Ascension with nothing left to stop it.
"No," Ethan breathed, his eyes wide. The beautiful, horribly dangerous multicolored energy tumbled down the grade towards the city, following the same grooved path the original Surge did eighteen months ago.
"Where's it going?" Ethan demanded to know, pulling his gaze from the flowing Surge and redirecting it back at Slate. "Where did you send it?"
"Back where it belongs," she smiled, satisfied. "I'm sending the Surge straight to Apex's Tower. I end the threat of the Surge, destroy their tower, and put their incompetence on full display of the entire city."
"No," Ethan's jaw dropped slowly.
"Relax," Slate told him, "you can still get a job as a Protector after this, it just won't be through Apex."
"You've killed them," he whispered.
Slate flinched. "No, I didn't…the Tower," she said lamely. "It's designed for this. It'll be a great light show, more people will gain powers, and we'll show how incompetent Apex truly is."
"It's broken," Ethan spat.
"The fact that they couldn't be bothered to fix the only thing protecting the city from the Surge is further proof the city needed to be shown that Apex isn't going to protect them!"
"And who will now?" Ethan asked her, exasperated. "You nearly killed their strongest Protector and you threw a tidal wave of radiation at the city and demanded they fix a problem you caused!"
"They caused this when they refused to let the people know how dangerous the Surges were in the first place! Quinn nearly lost her leg because they didn't warn us about what was coming, and-"
"Enough!" Ethan yelled, the void exerting even greater pressure on her chest and shoving her down into the earth, causing her to yelp out in pain. Ethan eyed her, then flexed his palm, removing the void from on top of her. She eyed him suspiciously, then rose like a cat ready to take off. Ethan, though, didn't attack her. He lowered his voice.
"Yes, Apex hid the Surge. Yes, they were wrong to do so, but they were trying to fix it and…Oh, God, she trusted me. She trusted that I'd stop you from doing this and I…couldn't."
Slate rose slightly. "Who? Who are you talking about?"
"Quinn," Ethan said shakily. "She's still in the tower."
"Why didn't you tell me that?" Slate shouted angrily. "I could've stopped this!"
Ethan sighed, ignoring Slate's tirade behind him. The entire mesa was shaking with her rage, threatening to collapse.
"It's not too late," Ethan shook his head. He watched the Surge rip through the earth's surface like a shark stalking towards a helpless seal. He started pacing back and forth. "Not yet."
"What are we going to do?"
"As much as it pains me to admit this…I caused this problem as much as you did, and we're the only ones who can fix it." He held out his hand. "I have a plan, but I need you to execute it. We can't change what we've done, but we can stop ourselves from making things worse."
She stared at his hand, but didn't take it.
"I don't think I can face her," Slate said quietly. "Not now. Not after this."
"I thought the same thing," Ethan admitted, "after lying to Quinn for so long about knowing you, I thought she'd never forgive me. I thought things would never be the same after she found out."
"And?"
"She's better than us. She didn't give up on me, and she wouldn't give up on you, so I won't either."
Slate grabbed Ethan's hand and he pulled her up, bringing them face to face. "Say you're right, and say I go. What do we do now?"
"Grab tight." Ethan opened a portal as far as he could see towards Apex's Tower. "We put ourselves in front of the Surge, and we see what happens."
"We tried that once," Slate said, wrapping her arms around his chest. "We both nearly died."
"But we didn't," Ethan pointed out. "It hurt a ton, but we lived."
"We got lucky," Slate muttered, eyes low. "What if we aren't this time?"
"At least then we won't have to live with the disappointment," Ethan chuckled, hopping through his portal to face the Surge head on.