『"Good times has never seemed so good..."』
The wraiths were gone, at least for now. The vehicle's engine hummed steadily as they pulled away from the medical center, while Sophia's ragged breathing slowly evened out in the back seat.
"Caroline, baby, you did good." Ethan's voice went soft with genuine affection.
Hearing this, Amara's head turned sharply toward him. Who the hell was Caroline? And why was he calling someone baby in front of all of them?
For one bewildered second she thought he'd acquired a secret girlfriend in the last ten minutes. Then she noticed the affection wasn't directed at a person at all. He was rubbing the steering wheel with tenderness.
It was ridiculous. Ethan Bass, secret agent and liar extraordinaire, cooing at his vehicle like it was a beloved pet.
Amara's brow lifted before she could stop it, and there was almost a smile. Almost. "You named your ride?"
"Where are my manners?" Ethan patted the dashboard with the kind of reverence most people reserved for family heirlooms. "Amara, this is Caroline. Caroline, Amara. Built her from scratch with the Director. Every modification, every system, every—"
"Every obnoxiously expensive detail?" Amara finished.
"Precisely." He grinned, completely unashamed.
Amara shook her head, but the 'almost' smile remained. There was something oddly charming about watching Ethan show genuine affection for a vehicle. Even if that vehicle was currently missing half its roof.
"Maybe Caroline should settle for being a convertible now," Hiro offered from the back, staring up at the jagged hole where the roof used to be. Where rain now dripped through steadily, pooling on the floor.
"Don't listen to him, Caroline," Ethan muttered. "You're still beautiful."
The moment of levity shattered when Amara's gaze drifted forward, landing on their destination. She straightened in her seat, composure returning. "We're here."
***
They arrived at the stadium to find it in chaos.
Emergency vehicles blocked half the entrances, their lights painting the pavement in reds and blues. People still streamed out in panicked clusters, some limping, others supporting friends.
The earthquakes from wraiths "dropping in" had done serious damage. Cracks spider-webbed across walls, and support beams hung at dangerous angles.
Ethan parked as close as he could and Amara was out of the van before the engine fully died. She moved through the crowd with purpose as she scanned faces, looking for one in particular, until she found him on the field.
The scoreboard lay in twisted ruins at the center of the field, metal warped like it had been hit by an explosion. Support structures had collapsed in on themselves, and electrical wiring sparked and hissed where rain touched exposed connections.
And in the center of the destruction, laid on his back like a fallen giant, was Raj Patel.
The tattoos that snaked all the way from his arm to his neck were covered in burns. Despite obvious exhaustion and what had to be excruciating pain, he was grinning like he just won the lottery.
A group of cheerleaders surrounded him, staring like he'd performed a miracle. One girl had written her number on his palm. Another was dabbing at the burns on his forearm gently.
Amara felt relief from seeing him ok, but she didn't let it show.
"What happened here?" Her voice interrupted the chatter, drawing everyone's attention.
Raj's grin widened. "Oh, nothing much. Just awakened, discovered I'm apparently a superhero now with a sick looking breastplate, and saved a bunch of people from getting crushed." He gestured vaguely at the collapsed scoreboard. "The cheerleaders were really grateful."
One of them giggled and another actually blushed.
"You lifted that?" Hiro pointed at the scoreboard.
Raj nodded. "Scoreboard came down on about fifty people. Turns out I'm really good at holding things up." He flexed one burned arm experimentally. "Also turns out there's a ceiling on how long I can do that before my body starts sending strongly worded complaints."
Amara rolled her eyes in a playful, affectionate manner. "We need to go. Ethan will fill you in."
She found Ethan's eyes and he looked at her like the absolute last thing he wanted to do was explain this all over again.
Too bad. Her expression clearly left no room for arguments.
Ethan sighed with his entire body. "Fine."
He knelt beside Raj, running his hands over burns that should've required immediate medical attention. "Still conscious. That's a good sign. Can you stand?"
"Probably?" Raj tried, leveraging himself up with one massive arm, and immediately swayed.
Ethan caught him with one hand, and that translucent blue light flickered into existence again, the same forcefield from the wraith attack, now forming a barely-visible support beneath Raj.
Amara's eyes narrowed as she was reminded that she still had questions about that.
"According to the records, the Breastplate grants potentially infinite strength," Ethan explained quietly as Amara moved to Raj's other side, helping guide him toward the van she wasn't planning on calling by name any time soon.
"But at your level, it's going to burn through your life force if you push too hard," he continued. "You probably nearly killed yourself holding up that scoreboard."
She shot him a look. "Records?"
"Later," he said firmly.
"I regret nothing," Raj announced, waving at the cheerleaders with his free hand. "Ladies, I'll call you—"
Then his eyes rolled back and he passed out mid-step, leaving Ethan with a relieved smile that Amara so desperately wanted to wipe off his face.
"Of course he manages to get a harem while almost dying," Hiro muttered, eyeing the lipstick marks covering Raj's cheeks.
"Alright Hiro, help me get him into the car," Amara said, adjusting her grip on Raj's considerable weight. "Damn, he's heavy."
Getting Raj into vehicle was an operation that required combined effort and creative problem-solving, as well as ignoring the disappointed protests from the cheerleaders left behind on the field.
The man was built like a small building by normal standards, all muscle and height. Being an unconscious dead weight didn't help either.
Sophia pulled from inside, still too worried to step out of the vehicle that now had panels dented, windows cracked, and a roof missing.
Amara and Hiro guided Raj through the door, careful of his burns, and managed to lay him across the back seats where he immediately started snoring loud enough to rattle the remaining windows.
With all five of them crammed into the van's damaged interior, Ethan finally pulled away from campus and headed toward the city's edge.
"The Institute?" Amara asked, watching the familiar streets blur past.
"The Institute," Ethan confirmed. His hands moved across the dashboard, inputting coordinates into systems. "One of the few places on this planet that has the answers and the training you all need."
He glanced at Amara, that sharp grin returning despite the exhaustion in his eyes. "Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get a few hours of sleep before everything gets worse."
"Worse?" Sophia said without opening her eyes, still focusing on her breathing exercises. "Please explain how this could possibly get worse."
For a moment, there was only the sound of rain and Caroline's engine.
Then, as if the universe had been waiting for that exact question, another rift tore open in the sky with a sound like fabric tearing at the seams.
It was double the size of the regular rifts wraiths normally poured from and something huge moved within it.
Then as quickly as it came, it snapped shut, as though the rift couldn't sustain itself.
The wraiths that had been tormenting humanity for as long as she could remember were shadows. Children's nightmares.
That thing, for however brief she saw it, was what nightmares had nightmares about.
Silence quickly followed as nobody spoke in the van.
"Like that," Ethan said grimly, his entire demeanor shifting to something serious in an instant.
"The wraiths we've been fighting," Ethan said quietly, "they're nothing. Scouting parties for something bigger. The Institute calls them Malices."
He glanced at the rearview, where Sophia slumped against the window, then Amara. "Everyone hold on. This next part's going to feel weird. Institute recommendation is to close your eyes."
"What—" Amara started.
He pressed something on the console that glowed red before Amara could finish, and reality folded in on itself.
The sensation felt like being turned inside out while standing perfectly still. Like falling upward while the world fell down. Everywhere and nowhere at once, stretched across infinite space and compressed to a single point.
Amara's stomach lurched violently. Her vision blurred into streaks of color as sound became texture, and light became taste. Every sense scrambled and reassembled the wrong way.
Then everything snapped back into focus with a feeling like a rubber band released, and they were no longer on any street she recognized.
***
The Institute stretched out before them in impossible vastness.
Amara's breath caught in an instant. She'd seen impressive things before, her parents had taken her to museums, to monuments, to places designed to inspire awe. But this was something else entirely.
An underground city of light, with steel and architecture that seemed to exist in multiple dimensions at once.
Massive support pillars rose like cathedral columns, each one etched with symbols that glowed. Platforms suspended in midair connected through walkways that appeared and disappeared based on some pattern she couldn't discern.
Aircraft moved silently between the platforms, and agents in black and white uniforms moved with military precision through areas that shifted and reconfigured as walls became doorways, becoming walls again.
Ahead, massive holographic displays showed maps, data streams, surveillance footage from hundreds of locations worldwide.
"Holy shit," Hiro breathed, face pressed against the window like a child at an aquarium. "Is that—are those—are we inside a mountain? Underground? Are we even still on Earth?"
"Yes to most of those," Ethan said quietly, something complicated in his voice. He sounded proud but there was something else mixed in that Amara couldn't quite put her finger on. "Welcome to home."
Amara studied his profile, noting the way his expression had changed. This wasn't Ethan, the charming college student. This was someone else, someone who'd been shaped by this impossible city. Because that is what this was, a city.
In the back seat, Sophia's eyes had finally opened, drawn by the sheer impossibility of what lay beyond the windows.
The psychic pressure that had been crushing her seemed... muted here. Like the Institute itself was shielded.
"Fuck... that's better," she said, relieved.
Raj groaned, consciousness returning in stages. "Did we die? Is this Valhalla? Because I'm pretty sure this is what Valhalla looks like."
At the end of its designated platform, where Caroline materialized with a soft hum of energy, a man waited. He carried a walking stick he probably didn't need and was dressed in a dark three-piece suit that looked like it had been tailored decades ago and maintained perfectly ever since.
He was tall, silver-haired, probably in his fifties, but he had the build of someone who could still throw hands and had, many times.
His presence was immense, the kind of natural authority that made Amara straighten instinctively even as every rebellious bone in her body wanted to resist.
"Director," Ethan said as they exited the van and walked over, his tone shifting to a mix of respect and affection.
"Ethan." His voice was deep, as she suspected it would be. "You've brought them."
"Sir." Ethan's posture shifted, shoulders back, something almost military in his spine.
The older man's steel-gray eyes swept over them with an assessing gaze that felt like it was reading their souls, cataloging their strengths and weaknesses, calculating their potential and their limitations.
Amara met his eyes directly. She didn't let her exhaustion show, or let her worry and confusion crack her composure.
The Director's gaze lingered on her for a fraction longer than the others. Then he nodded slightly, as if she'd passed some unspoken test.
"So." He stroked his chin. "The Five have gathered at last."
His gaze moved to each of them in turn before speaking. ""You carry weapons as old as the universe itself, if not older." He tapped his walking stick on the ground once. "I suspect you don't understand what that means yet. You will."
"I don't know, but I'm guessing you're gonna tell us." Sophia offered weakly.
The Director's lips twitched. Then he turned, clearly expecting them to follow without question. "Come. You have much to learn, and very little time to learn it. The Malices are waking, and they know you've awakened too."
He walked away, his footsteps echoing against strange metal, and they followed.
Amara walked and tried to organize her thoughts into something manageable. What in the hell was that rift? What was the Five? They had questions, and the Director, apparently, had answers.
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RAJ PATEL | The Breastplate
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Spirit Weapon: Juggernaut Shell (Breastplate of Conviction)
Rank: Dream Walker (Newly Awakened)
Ascendant Sigil: ▮ (1 Bar - Chest)
Abilities Unlocked:
┣ Strength Amplification
┣ Regeneration
┣ ??? [LOCKED]
Status: Exhausted, Overconfident