『"Awakening isn't a gift"』
For several seconds, neither of them spoke. Just rain hammering pavement, and the possessed man's broken whimpering in the background.
Ethan looked at the sword in her hands, then at her face, and said, "Looks like you've awakened."
"Observant as ever." She wiped rain from her face, not bothering to hide her frustration. "You've been weird all day. Care to explain?"
"You didn't just awaken Amara." Ethan moved toward her, hand extended. "You awakened as one of the Five."
"One of the what?" Her grip tightened on the sword's hilt. "Ethan, you're not making sense—"
"It's difficult to get into right now. But you need to come with me, and you can get all the answers you need." Ethan reached out for her hand but she recoiled.
She laughed, frustrated. "It's not difficult, Ethan. You open your mouth, words come out. Try it."
Ethan exhaled through his nose. This was the sound of a man who'd run out of patience hours ago.
Then the sword dissolved into motes of pale light soon after, leaving her hand empty.
"What—" Amara stared at her palm then back at Ethan.
"Amara—"
"No." She backed up a step as though sensing his patience running thin. "I have a choice. Enlist or walk away. I choose to walk."
His expression darkened. "This is so much bigger than both of us. We have to find the others. I was already tracking them. Your energy spike must have triggered their awakening as well. And you know what happens when one awakens without proper guidance."
She did know. Everyone knew. The news didn't show the bodies anymore, but the statistics were public record. Forty-three percent of new Awakeners didn't survive their first week without training.
But what really got her attention was the fact that he said he was 'tracking'. Also, tracking what others?
Amara got even more confused, but during moments like this, she leaned on her plan. And Ethan trying to prey on her morality wasn't going to sway her.
"We don't have to do anything," she said finally. "I'm not throwing away my future to become some... some soldier." She turned to leave.
He looked past her, toward campus, then sighed. "And we don't have time for this." He moved faster than she expected. One arm hooked around her waist, the other behind her knees, and suddenly the wet ground was falling away as he lifted her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing.
Her white locs tumbled over her face, and her feet kicked out on violent instinct, catching nothing but air.
"Ethan Bass!" Her voice was caught between fury and disbelief. "Put me down right now, or I swear to God—"
"I will." He was already walking toward the curb where his blue van was parked. "When you're somewhere safe."
She pounded his back with her fists, solid muscle that didn't give an inch. "I will forget this ever happened if you stop right now!"
"No, you won't." His grip on her thighs was iron, completely unmoved by her struggling as he walked them both towards his car.
Behind them, the possessed man's whimpering faded into the rain, and Amara forced herself not to look. Thanks to her new found position, it wasn't difficult to do.
Blood rushed to her head as he carried her across the wet pavement. She could feel rain soaking through her clothes, could hear her bag bouncing against his hip with each step as the ground moved beneath them in dizzying passes.
This was her life being hijacked by someone she'd trusted. This was assault. This was Ethan Bass being a controlling, manipulative—
He suddenly stopped moving. Then she heard a beep, then another, then a series of rapid electronic chirps that made her eyes narrow with recognition.
She recognized the sound from watching the news. Some enlisted Awakeners were given tracking devices to help them locate other new Awakeners that didn't yet know how to suppress the energy they gave off.
And he said something about tracking others not too long ago. The dots were beginning to connect.
"Is that an Institute pad?" She craned her neck, trying to see past her own hair, but the angle was impossible, all she could see was the ground and her own ass blocking the view. "Are you fu—"
Amara caught herself. Even hanging upside-down over Ethan's shoulder in the rain, she regained her composure quickly. "Are you enlisted?"
Ethan's silence was all the answer she needed.
He pressed forward towards the vehicle when shadowy figures began to move in the background.
Amara saw it first when she lifted her head. Three figures stepped out of the alley darkness with that telltale jerky, backward-jointed movement. More wraiths. Drawn by her Awakener energy most likely, like moths to flame.
"Ethan—"
She didn't get to finish as light erupted around them, shaped into a mobile sphere of translucent silver-blue energy that encased them both.
The first wraith hit the barrier with enough force to break through a brick wall. However, the shield didn't even ripple. Just held steady as the creature rebounded and staggered back.
Ethan kept walking.
"What—" Amara's voice came out strangled, her world tilting in more ways than one as she watched the wraiths surround them. "What is that?"
He didn't answer. Didn't even slow down.
The second wraith lunged, shadows pouring from its stolen body. It slammed into the barrier inches from Amara's face, and she flinched hard, but the shield held firm.
The creature's contorted features pressed against the energy like hands on glass, mouth wide open, while the third circled, looking for an opening that wasn't there.
Ethan adjusted his grip on her, shifting her weight and continued toward the van as if he were taking a casual stroll through campus instead of walking through a wraith ambush with a struggling woman over his shoulder.
The barrier moved with him, a perfect dome that maintained its distance from his body no matter how he moved, shielding them from even the rain.
"This is—" Amara breathed, her earlier fury draining into something closer to shock. "You're—how are you—"
All three wraiths attacked at once this time.
They hit the barrier from different angles, hammering against the shield with enough force that Amara felt the impact. But he didn't stumble. Didn't even seem particularly concerned.
He reached the van, yanked the passenger door open with his free hand, and deposited her in the seat like he was setting down something fragile.
Before she could bolt, the barrier expanded, then split into two to cover both the van and himself.
Amara yanked the door handle. Nothing. She tried again, harder. Still nothing.
"Don't bother," Ethan said as he tapped on the glass. "Sorry."
"Sorry?" She tried the window controls next but it wasn't working. Then she pulled out her phone, but no signal. Of course not.
Amara sat frozen, staring at him through the window as he circled to the driver's side. The barrier around himself flickered out the moment he slid behind the wheel. But the barrier around the van remained.
As for the wraiths, they were still there, still reaching for them, but they couldn't seem to approach the vehicle now, like something invisible kept pushing them back.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Amara's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs, trying to ground herself.
Three wraiths. A forcefield. And the 'others' he spoke of were most likely her friends awakening as well.
Ethan Bass had just kidnapped her, and somehow that wasn't even the most insane thing that had happened in the last five minutes.
"What I did? That was out of line," he said quietly. It wasn't an apology exactly. Just an acknowledgment.
Amara stared at him. "Yeah," she said. "It was."
"Don't even think about doing something crazy," he added as he undid the forcefield around the van and drove off. "I know you too well."
She opened her mouth, trying to say something, anything, but no words came.
What the hell was she supposed to say? That she'd just watched him walk through three wraiths like they were an inconvenience? That a forcefield—because that's what it had to be, right?—had appeared around them?
That everything she thought she knew about him had just been obliterated in the span of thirty seconds?
He was already scrolling through the pad, mounted on the dashboard now, and his face hardened. Three red dots pulsing on the screen.
Amara leaned forward, squinting at the display, then at his expression. "Hiro and Raj?" She said, recognizing the dot positions on the layout of the campus map.
"And one more I don't recognize." His voice was quiet now, almost gentle. "They're awake too, Amara. We don't have much time. They'll be sending out a signal that every wraith within a hundred-mile radius will sense. They'll be drawn to them like—"
"Like shark to blood," she finished. The government-mandated supernatural awareness courses had been very clear on that point. Probably to scare more Awakeners into enlisting.
Basically, awakened humans were like catnip to wraiths in particular, until they learned to suppress their energy signature.
Outside, the wraiths were still chasing after the van. She watched them through the window, shadows in human skin running after them.
"How long do they have?" she asked.
"Before every wraith in the city converges on them?" His eyes stayed on the road. "If we're lucky? Twenty minutes." He took a corner too fast, losing the chasing wraiths, and Amara braced herself against the door.
She stared out the windshield as campus lights blurred past, the city tilting into something unfamiliar. Whatever plan she'd clung to for years had shattered the moment the sword found her hand.
And apparently, Ethan had been keeping secrets that made her awakening look like the least strange thing that had happened tonight.
"Damn it," she whispered.
She had questions. So many questions.
But right now, if what Ethan said was true, and somehow, her awakening triggered their friends', then Hiro and Raj needed help. And Ethan was the only one with a car, a shield, and a plan.
She glanced at him sideways, taking in his profile in the dashboard's glow. He looked calm. Focused.
"We're going to talk about that shield," she said quietly.
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "I know."
"And the Institute."
"I know."
"And how long you've been lying to me."
His hands flexed on the steering wheel, but he kept his eyes on the road. "I know."
Good. Because if she was having her entire life upended tonight, Ethan was going to explain every single secret he'd been keeping.
Starting with whatever the hell that forcefield was.
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AMARA MURRAY | The Sword
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Spirit Weapon: Angel's Bane (Sword of Truth)
Rank: Dream Walker (Newly Awakened)
Ascendant Sigil: ▮ (1 Bar - Right Ribs)
Abilities Unlocked:
┣ Lie Detection
┣ ??? [LOCKED]
┣ ??? [LOCKED]
Status: Overwhelmed but Determined
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ETHAN BASS | The Shield
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Spirit Weapon: Bastion (Shield of Faith)
Rank: Shaper
Ascendant Sigil: ▮▮ (2 Bars - Left Shoulder)
Abilities Unlocked:
┣ Resonance with the rest of the weapons
┣ Force Field Generation [MASTERED]
┣ Belief Barrier
┣ Multi-Layer Barriers
┣ ??? [LOCKED]
Status: Protective, Hiding Secrets