Chapter 11: First Steps

Ethan, as it turned out, should've listened to Alex.

Before Alex had the chance to grab him, Ethan leapt through the portal, hoping to land on top of the Ace's scoreboard, regroup, and continue on to Stillrock. Instead, as he stepped through the portal, he quickly realized that he had stepped out onto nothing but air, the stadium's metal platform a foot away from him. He screamed, throwing his arms out in front of him and managing, just barely, to wrap his fingers around the edge of the platform, his battered body crashing into the steel beams. That was nearly enough to make him let go, but even though Protectors were notably stronger and more durable than the average person, Ethan didn't think he'd survive a forty foot drop, especially given the state he was in.

"How do these powers work?" Ethan asked himself, straining to hang on. "How?"

His forearms were burning and his fingers struggled to hold his weight. Below, the game hadn't stopped just yet, but even a few blocks away, with the wind rushing by his ears, he was able to hear a boom as the supposedly impenetrable glass to his hospital room window shattered when Alex threw herself through it. She darted up into the sky, above Apex Tower, clocked Ethan dangling a half mile away, turned, and headed straight for him.

Alex was fast, but Ethan was drained, and his fingers started to slip. With his options quickly running out, Ethan made a drastic choice.

Instead of waiting on himself to fall, Ethan let himself drop, then tried to open another portal, trusting that his powers wouldn't let him crash into the outfield below. His lack of experience, however, reared its head: instead of glowing purple, his hands stayed their normal hue, and Ethan dropped like a stone, screaming as he flailed.

Alex, thankfully, pushed herself, growling with effort, and swooped down, diving towards the grass. She managed to wrap her arms around Ethan just before he slammed into the earth, tearing up the manicured outfield until she came to a stop just in front of the center fielder. She shot Ethan a look so angry it made him gulp, then groaned at the grass stains marking the entire left side of her shirt. She pulled Ethan to a stand, holding his arm up and smiling to thunderous applause.

"Take it all in," she growled through a polite smile, waving to the sold out crowd, "this is the last moment anyone's going to see you alive."

"That's the second time I've had that thought recently." Ethan played it up, faux-wiping his brow and bowing to Alex, trying to buy his way out of a near-certain execution the second they left. Alex fake laughed, a chilling sound to Ethan.

"Alright, time to get out of here. Work, portals, work." He went to pull his palm up, only for Alex to intercept him, pulling it down.

"What are you doing?" She hissed. "You're not even supposed to exist. At least…not with that."

"How was I supposed to know that?" Ethan asked. Instead of answering, Alex grabbed him under his shoulders and took off, landing on a skyscraper near the western edge of town.

"Why did you do that?" Alex demanded to know, her face an inch from Ethan's. "You could've died!"

"I had to know!" Ethan shot back, holding his ground. "I have to go back, to see if she made it out. To see if I…" he trailed off, sighing.

"Killed her?" Alex finished.

Nausea overpowered Ethan, who suddenly became dizzy. He dropped to a knee, putting his head in his hands. His breathing quickened, but he felt more and more like he couldn't get any air.

"Slow down," Alex told him softly, putting her hand on his back. "Deep breaths. In, hold, out. In, hold out."

Unable to do anything else, complied. A few minutes later, his breathing was back to normal, but the nausea remained.

"You didn't kill anyone," Alex told him. "Whatever happened down there was an accident. You couldn't have known the entire tunnel would collapse, even if it was stupid to go down there in the first place."

"Can you take me there?" he asked quietly.

"Apex has the area cordoned off," she told him. "But we can get close. Do you think that's a good idea, though?"

Ethan nodded, rising to his feet. "I have to know."

Alex hesitated, then nodded. Ethan shut his eyes tight as they took off, keeping them shut and shivering against the cold as Alex flew at half speed to Stillrock and, then, to the collapsed mine. She landed gently on a mesa overlooking the area, setting Ethan down. He centered himself, then ran to the edge of the mesa, eyes scanning the area.

The devastation in the valley below him was in full view thanks to the bright light of the afternoon sun. The collapsed mining tunnel sunk a huge swath of the valley, leaving a jagged scar the length of a football field and nearly fifty feet at its widest in a serpentine pattern. The collapse had mostly filled itself in with earth and stone, but left the former grassland with rocky depressions marking the landscape.

The destruction was impressive, but what really caught Ethan's eye was the grass: a hundred feet in every direction of the scarred earth, the grass was gray and crisp, like a wildfire had ripped through the valley. Apex had thrown up a security fence surrounding the site establishing a perimeter, bright yellow caution tape lining the way to a single point of access with a hastily constructed guard tower stationed on either side of the gate.

"Man," Alex shook her head, "you must've really hated working here."

"What is all this?" Ethan gestured to the valley below them. Apex must've had thirty people in protective, full body suits scouring the site from end to end, all of them carrying devices that looked like metal detectors emitting various shrill pitches as they hovered over the ground.

"Remember when I said that you weren't supposed to exist?"

Ethan nodded, his eyes glued to the scientists waving their instruments over the edges of the collapse, listening to the shrill whine from the ones closest to them.

"Apex successfully took control of Ascension from the Altered largely based on a perception of being…inevitable. Everywhere the Altered went, there we, the Protectors, were. We did not leave one area of the city for them to operate unchallenged, dicing Ascension up into sectors and overlapping patrol routes to keep a watchful eye. We may not, as a whole, be stronger than the Altered, but we're organized and disciplined, two things the Altered are not. When, for example, Detonator tries to rob a bank, she does so alone, yet we have three or four Protectors show up to stop her."

"Strength in numbers," Ethan said. Alex nodded, then continued.

"So, when we fought them to a stalemate last summer, everyone assumed Apex knew what they were doing. After establishing the new status quo in Ascension, Apex assured everyone that a Surge would never happen again. This led to a complacency among the Altered; sure, you could rob a store here or there, but you couldn't take over the city, at least not without gaining some significant firepower, and now that the magic power spout was shut off, the best the Altered could hope for was to make themselves rich rather than acting as a unit like we do. A lack of hope keeps them divided."

Ethan rubbed the back of his neck, confused. "And how do I fit into this picture, then?"

"When you collapsed the tunnel, you proved Apex wrong, Ethan. Now, they're in full crisis containment mode, trying to keep all of this a secret and, in the process, ensure nobody else who wanders up here could get powers and disrupt the balance we've carefully crafted in the city, like someone with far more evil aims than yours. If we can manage that, however, adding a Protector might make them desperate, but it also gives us an opportunity to turn the tide if you ever learn to control your powers."

Ethan felt insulted. "I've been awake for, like, two hours."

"I was flying after one," Alex told him.

Ethan rolled his eyes, but thought about what she said. "I'm…not sure if I deserve to become a Protector," he told her.

"Isn't that why you did this?" Alex asked, bewildered. "You can't turn your back on your decisions now."

Ethan shook his head, unsure. "If anything happened to her, and it was my fault…" His eyes dropped back down to the valley. A shrill, high pitched whine from one of the detectors drew his attention. There, resting on top of the overturned soil, there was a glint from the sun. The scientist made a note, but kept moving, missing what looked like nothing more than a large piece of mica fused in the limestone, except it had a strange, blue hue to it. Ethan's breath caught in his throat as he realized what it was:

Rainey's necklace, the chain ripped, but otherwise intact, lying in the field. Last he had seen it was on Rainey as she was swallowed by the earth, but here it was, sitting in the grass, on the surface.

Ethan wanted to scream in joy: Rainey had made it out, somehow. She was alive!

His relief, however, was short lived, at the realization of some of the last words Rainey had spoken to him: a threat against Alex that Alex didn't even know was coming, a threat he had created.

"Did you…find what you needed?" Alex asked.

Ethan nodded, trying to contain his conflicted relief. He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. "I think I did," he answered. He pointed down to the piece of her necklace. "See that stone? She had it when we went into the tunnels, but now it's here. She made it out, somehow. She's alive."

"Oh, thank God," Alex breathed out in relief. "I know I said it wasn't your fault, but it was, like, totally your fault."

"Wow, thanks," Ethan laughed. "Okay, I got powers, and I'm not a murderer. So, what do I do next?"

Alex's grin was quickly replaced with a grimace. She rubbed her tired eyes, then caught a look at Apex's operation below. "I don't know how you thought your life would go after gaining powers, but things…aren't going to be easy. Amory isn't exactly a soft hearted person, and she won't like that you're proof that they failed to contain the Surge, Ethan. That they've lied to everyone in Ascension."

He winced. His whole life was contingent on becoming a Protector, and, now, he didn't have many other options. "Are you saying that Apex won't let me become a Protector?"

"This hasn't ever happened before," she sighed, picking at a piece of grass on her shirt. "So I can't say for certain, but you can bet they won't make it easy for you. Plus, training lasts three months, and every Altered still operating in the city is going to love seeing a rookie. It's been six months since we last initiated a new Protector, and they Altered will test you every chance they get. Your actions have consequences now."

Ethan faced the mines. "Haven't they already?"

Alex sighed curtly. "I guess so. Which brings me to my next point: if I take you under my wing and train you, you're going to have to do exactly what I say. Everything is going to have to be by Apex's book and you can't give Amory any more reasons to deny you from becoming a Protector, understand?"

"Well," he said, letting out a curt sigh. His voice was picking up confidence. "I'm too far in now to quit. I've lost everything. I didn't exactly have much to start with, but it's all gone now, and I can't get it back. The only path for me is forward, to becoming a Protector."

Alex sighed. "Alright, but just know: I can't always protect you. You almost died three times already, and two of those were before you ever had powers."

"I know," Ethan said softly. "But I guess it's a good thing I'll have the strongest Protector in Ascension looking after me."

"After the pitiful display you put on this afternoon, we have a lot of work to do," Alex laughed.

Ethan chuckled lightly. "So, where do we start?"

Alex tapped her finger against the rock. "Well, firstly, you should pick an identity."

"Like…a new name?"

"Yeah, you know, like an alter ego. It took me a few iterations to finally land on Titan, so I don't expect you to have one immediately, but it'd be good to start thinking of one."

Ethan paused. "Who am I now," he told her, "is…who I've always wanted to be. I don't think anything's changed, really. I…I think I'm still just Ethan."

"Well…we'll work on it," Alex told him.

"Okay," Ethan laughed, relieved. "What's next?"

"Well, I don't have to patrol for a few more hours, and there's no pressing emergencies I have to attend to, and you seem to love jumping head first without thinking, so…how about…"

Alex flew a few feet off the ground, then spun herself around Ethan, and put her arm around his shoulders.

"Right now," she said, and with an effortless wave of her arm, she knocked Ethan right off the edge, sending him tumbling and screaming down the cliffside below.