Despite his protests that teleporting across the snow covered mountains with each of them under one arm was far safer than driving, Raz and Quinn proved unwilling to let Ethan carry them through his portals. Instead, after Raz grabbed Ethan’s arm and showed Quinn the branching scars Ethan had gotten after accidentally teleporting himself through an alpine forest, Ethan relented and helped Raz pack up their belongings from Alex’s shared Ascension apartment.

  With their belongings boxed up and put into the truck, Ethan hesitated before getting inside.

  “Hold on one second,” he told them, shutting the door and teleporting back up. He opened the balcony door and walked slowly through the living room and into the kitchen, stopping just short of the stain he left on Alex’s wooden floor from his spilled coffee all those months ago. Not wanting to leave it any longer, he went under the sink, pulled out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and dropped a small amount on the stain before blotting it, soaking up the majority of the coffee.

  The floorboard wasn’t perfectly uniform like the rest, but it was improved, with only a hint of a blemish remaining, and that was the best he could do. He hoped Alex would see it one day when she was back, but maybe the point was that it was fixed and nobody would notice it anymore.

  Satisfied, he deposited himself back down onto the street and hopped into the truck, sighing as he prepared for the journey back to Stillrock.

  “I told you to pee before we left,” Raz shook his head.

  “He had two coffees this morning. I have no idea how many times he’s going to make us stop,” Quinn sighed.

  Ethan laughed. “I don’t need to use the bathroom anymore. I thought we talked about this?”

  “What?” Raz and Quinn both asked.

  “Explain,” Quinn demanded.

  “Or…don’t?” Raz chimed in. “If this involves portals I’m going to be really upset.”

  “Or jealous,” Quinn shook her head.

  Ethan hadn’t driven his truck since he gained the ability to teleport and he expected he’d be annoyed by the inherent stop and go nature of their travel, but the time spent with Raz and Quinn proved almost therapeutic, taking his mind off the events of the past few days. They talked about everything: how Amory fired Ethan, what the best lunch stop was on the way to the mountains, Raz and Ethan’s ill-fated summer jobs as door-to-door salesman (tough to do in a town of a few hundred miners without a lot of disposable income) and Quinn’s life growing up in the West Virginia hills back east. When they took the exit off the highway for Stillrock Ethan hardly wanted the trip to end. Regardless, when he pulled up to their old, somehow still standing townhome apartment, he hopped out of the truck and held his hand out for Quinn.

  “Ready for a tour of the manor?”

  Quinn took his hand. “Lead the way.”

  “Um,” Raz hesitated, stepping out, “has anyone, like…cleaned this place since we’ve been here?”

  “Oh,” Ethan’s face flushed. “Uh, no. That might’ve been smart.” He turned to Quinn. “It doesn’t normally look like…however it’s going to look like.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” she rolled her eyes.

  Ethan gulped and pushed open the door. His immediate reaction was that the inside of the apartment wasn’t great, but was probably habitable. Quinn’s face, he noted, suggested otherwise. Stepping back into their apartment in Stillrock, Ethan was surprised by how small it looked. The kitchen was separated from the living room by a short wall, and their TV, not half the size of Alex’s, sat leaning against the wall on top of an old chest they found near a dumpster.

  “Um,” Raz said, eyeing the apartment’s condition and reaching a similar feeling to Quinn’s, “are we sure about staying here?”

  Ethan nodded. “We can’t operate in Ascension. Besides, none of that was ever really ours, you know? Doesn’t this feel more real?”

  Quinn grimaced at the sight of a large, red spider that had made itself comfortable on top of the fridge.

  “Real good chance of being eaten alive,” she muttered.

  “We’ll…hire a cleaning person,” Ethan assured her. “Come on, there’s a ton more to see!”

  They took a few steps down the hall where Ethan stopped and opened the door to his room. It was exactly how he left it months ago: barren and cold, empty aside from his bed and a few pieces of clothing he had left behind.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  “You never put anything up in your room? No photos of you and Alex, not even a poster?”

  “I never thought I’d stay here,” he shrugged. “It could use some work. Maybe a…candle.”

  “And yet you dragged us back here,” Raz sighed, shaking his head. “I was really getting used to the life of luxury in Ascension.”

  “Yeah, well, get un-used to it because I got fired.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “As my PAL, you are contractually obligated to go down with the ship that is my career.”

  Raz huffed and walked over to the couch, sinking into the once-beige cushions. His nose wrinkled as a cloud of dust enveloped him.

  “Speaking of careers,” he dusted his shoulders off, “we can’t exactly go back to working in the mines, after a certain someone exploded them.”

  “Two people exploded the mines, and one of them is still out there. Rainey is working on her plan and we need to find her. We can’t do that without Kingston.”

  “Okay, what’s the plan?” Raz asked.

  “First, hire a cleaning lady. While you do that, I’m going after Kingston.”

  “Who is…where?”

  “I found out where he’s hiding,” Quinn said, holding up a location on her phone. “He’s in a town called Crestone right near the Dunes. He probably told his daughter they were taking a vacation.”

  “Makes sense. So, we find Kingston, get him to tell us what the second part of Rainey’s plan is, then stop her. Easy peasy, except need I point out that you haven’t been able to stop Rainey from doing anything yet?”

  Ethan’s initial reaction was to snap at Raz and deny that statement, but then he remembered he wasn’t supposed to be doing that kind of thing anymore. Raz’s statement was, of course, true: Rainey had absolutely kicked his ass every time they met. Instead of retorting, he took a deep breath.

  “You’re right. I can’t do this. Not without help.”

  Raz raised an eyebrow, then smiled. “Finally,” he said, shaking his head. “I did not think I’d live to see the day. Or you, for that matter.”

  “Well, you did. I’ve been doing this all wrong and-”

  “Save it,” Raz pulled him in for a hug. “I believe you.”

  Ethan nodded. “Thanks, man. I better get going.”

  He walked down the hall to his room to grab his goggles. Turning to leave, he saw Quinn standing in the doorway.

  “I thought…since we’re getting sentimental…”

  Quinn went into her bag and pulled out the suit Alex had made for Ethan. She gestured to his jeans and faded Ace’s sweater. “You can’t go out in…that. I know you didn’t want to wear it until you were a Protector, but just because Amory didn’t give you the title doesn’t mean you aren’t one.”

  Ethan softened at the sight of the lavender costume. It hadn’t even crossed his mind to take it when they were at the apartment. He knew what Alex wanted for him, and he still wasn’t sure if he was living up to it, but maybe Quinn thought he was, and that had to count for something, right?

  He reached out and took the costume from Quinn, running his hand over the swirling bronze emblem in the middle, the same color as the accents on Alex’s Titan costume.

  “It’s certainly better than what I have now,” he admitted sheepishly. “But I’m still not sure I’ve earned it, you know?”

  “Then go earn it,” Quinn told him.

  Eagerly, like a child on Christmas, he pulled the shirt over his head. The material felt flexible, yet dense, more than enough to keep him from freezing as he teleported through the mountains. “Oh, man,” he smiled widely, “this is much better than what I had.”

  “Wasn’t much of a competition,” Quinn laughed, “but it does look better than what the other Protector’s I’ve seen wear. Alex really wanted you to have the best.”

  “And she got it,” he said, staring down at his shirt, marveling at the way the lavender caught the light when he moved his arms. “You know, the last thing Alex said to me before she…she said, ‘I didn’t get these powers so I could run, and neither did you.’ Do you remember what Kingston said to me, during my evaluation?”

  “‘He’s really good at running away,” Quinn chuckled humorlessly.

  “Exactly,” Ethan laughed.

  “Well,” she said, “that just means he won’t see you coming.”

  ——

  After a few passes over the few cabins dotting the forest just off Crestone’s main road, Ethan spotted Kingston’s white SUV parked in front of an A-frame.

  “Can you see him?” Quinn asked.

  The bright afternoon sun was reflecting off the tinted windows, making peering inside all but impossible. Ethan frowned, tapping his comms. “I can’t see inside.”

  “Probably not a good idea to just bust into someone’s house…unless we have a good reason, of course,” Raz said.

  “Which we do!” Quinn added. “Mostly!”

  Ethan thought for a moment, then smiled. “I have an idea. If I wasn’t trying to be a superhero I make a really good spy…”

  He opened a small portal in front of him, no larger than a penny, then another inside the cabin, about where he figured the roof would be. Instantly, they heard two voices, a deeper man’s voice and a higher pitched teenager’s.

  “Britley, I don’t expect you to understand, but you’re in danger”

  “-I’m missing my game and everyone’s going to hate me and-”

  Ethan shut the portal before he had to listen to anymore. “He’s in there, sounds like he’s with his daughter.”

  “Okay, get him out first, find out what he knows, then we’ll get his daughter out after.”

  “Easy,” Ethan stretched out his neck and made a plan. The sand dunes just to the west of Ethan were practically deserted this far from the visitor’s center and offered few places to hide if Kingston tried to escape, making it a great spot to force a confrontation. This, Ethan thought, was going to be as simple a kidnapping as it gets.

  He opened a portal inside the house, then another in front of him where he approximated the living room would be, stepping through and instantly locking eyes with Kingston. His daughter screamed shrilly at Ethan’s intrusion, forcing him to cover his ears. He hadn’t been around a teenager since he was in high school, but the pitch of her scream seemed to throw him off balance. He waited until she ran out of breath to face Kingston.

  “Kingston,” he pointed at the man, “you need to come with me.”

  Instead of responding, Kingston laughed. Ethan watched as he reached inside his pocket and pulled out a pair of ear plugs.

  “You’ll have to get through her first,” he said loudly, pointing to Britley.

  Ethan turned warily, noticing that Britley was taking a huge breath in. She unleashed a scream aimed right at Ethan, knocking him back with a disorienting wave of energy that slammed him into the wooden cabin wall.

  “Oh,” he groaned, trying to push himself up. “So this is not going to be an easy kidnapping.”