“Is she there?”

  Ethan felt his stomach drop at the sight before him. Standing at the edge of a cliff about a quarter mile away from Slate, he gulped hard. 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, but this was a whole new level entirely.

  Slate was standing atop the mesa 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 into the earth and pulling it apart, sending jagged rock jutting up to the surface. A moment after Surge energy leaked above, then dissipated in the air like steam as the Surge was thrust forward by Slate’s movement.

  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 her best where they can be the most useful.

  “Right where Quinn said she’d be.”

  “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.”

  “Well, now or never. 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 Sola to reinforce the shielding with as much time as Ethan could buy them.

  “Well, Raz, I’ve spent the past three months running away from everything, trying to outhink everyone and hide everything I’ve done. I’ve needed to be one step ahead and always realized too late that I was two steps behind. But now?” He opened a portal in front of him, hovering in the air a foot past the edge of the cliff face. He walked back as far as he could, his back brushing up against the stone wall. “I’ve got one job, and everyone needs me to do it. Even if I die, hell, it might be fun to try running towards something for a change.”

  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 nimbly rolled onto her feet, springing into the air and sliding to a stop as Ethan clumsily pushed himself up, testing out his almost certainly sprained left shoulder. He spied Slate twenty feet away from him, readying a boulder to throw at Ethan, 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 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 and landing him on his back. 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 stone, raising it over his face.

  “Again with this?” she asked.

  “Yep,” Ethan choked out, nearly unable to speak but slowly regaining his breath. Stalling was exactly what he need 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 sizzling sound as it drained all life from the grass in the valley, causing him to wince.

  “You’re pinned down. You’re going to lose, don’t you want to just quit? Make it easy for yourself.”

  “Sometimes,” he groaned.

  “We have to show them that they aren’t safe! That they can’t trust Apex! Don’t you understand?”

  “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, strength returning, 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 flinch just enough for him to wriggle out from under her. They stood, both panting, ten feet apart. 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, but couldn’t let up. He blocked another shot at his ribs with a void, then ducked as Slate swung for his head. He opened a portal to the other side of the mesa and dove through it, buying himself some time to recover.

  She’s much stronger than me, and she knows it. Hell, even Alex couldn’t beat her! It was stupid for me to try. I need to get out of here.

  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. What is Quinn going to say when she finds out that you came all this way only to flee yet again?”

  Maybe I should run, he sighed. Get Quinn and Raz out of Ascension while I still can. But how would they look at me then? As a coward? Is that what I am? Slate certainly thinks so. She thinks I’m going to run.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  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. If he fled, he’d be playing right into her hand. She wanted him to run, to leave her so she could send the Surge straight at Ascension. And, if he ran, he’d be letting her.

  Slate was wrong about…almost everything, but she was right about one thing: Ethan couldn’t tell Quinn he had run, especially with her working to reinforce the shields and keeping herself in danger. When Alex woke up, he couldn’t tell her that he hadn’t given everything he had to protect the Ascension and everyone who lived in it, because that’s exactly what she’d do. If he hadn’t lied to everyone, she’d be here to stop Slate. But she wasn’t, and he had taken her place.

  “Go ahead! Run! Do what you’re best at, and let me do what I came here to do!”

  I can’t beat her in a fight. But maybe I can be something she doesn’t expect.

  Ethan took a running start towards Slate, then opened a portal far off in the distance, drawing her eye. She dropped her baton and raised a sharp stone spear, ready to fire it off at the first sight of him. When he threw himself through the portal, she turned her head and telekinetically fired the spear.

  Ethan was ready. He summoned a void in front of him, the spear shattering against it with a loud crack. Then, he tilted his body, diving headfirst towards the valley below at a speed that made his eyes water and his face go numb. He gulped as much 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 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. He landed on his side, the Surge stopped, for now, and Slate completely subdued under his void. She struggled against the black, floating object, but Ethan lowered his palm further.

  “It’s over,” he told her. “You’re trapped, and the Surge has stopped.”

  Slate smiled maliciously. “Has it?”

  Ethan’s skin suddenly went cold and he had the distinct feeling he was missing something.

  “Do you know why I dragged Quinn here, on her birthday? You know she’s not a big hiker. 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. 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, a last stand 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.”

  “Get to the point,” Ethan told her, irritated. He was completely on edge, waiting for something bad to happen, only he hadn’t the slightest clue what.

  Slate tried 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. Ethan assumed he was safe, but Slate’s confident tone was making him question that feeling.

  “The path the Surge took left this valley immensely unstable. All the energy ripping through this valley bore a hole straight through it. 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, “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.”

  “I don’t care about the job,” Ethan snapped. “I haven’t since you stabbed my sister.”

  Slate stared at him a moment. “Then…what’s the problem?”

  “You’ve killed them,” he whispered.

  Slate flinched. “No, I didn’t…the Tower,” she said lamely. “It’s designed to absorb the Surge and disperse it into the air. 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! Now it’s too late!”

  Ethan sighed, ignoring Slate’s tirade behind him. The entire mesa was shaking with her rage, threatening to collapse. Alone, he wasn’t going to be strong enough to stop what was coming. But maybe with a power like Slate’s…

  “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. “Not yet. But we have to move right now.”

  “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 if we face our mistakes head on.”

  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 I 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. Unfortunately, that’s probably the best we can hope for.”