I awakened the END

Chapter 3: The Vanguard's verdict

Ryn braced for the attack.

It didn't come.

The woman stood right where she'd been a moment ago, hands hanging at her sides, watching him like a puzzle. “If I wanted you dead, the soldiers below would be shooting you now," she said, "you'd be dead before you could turn around.”

"Who are you?"

"Eris." She tilted her head in an almost nonchalant manner as if reading something only she could see. "Come with me."

"No."

She didn't push. She said, "What did you end?”

The question landed strangely, precisely where he least expected it. Ryn's jaw tightened. "I don't know."

“You don't know what you did? Or you don't have a name for it?”

"Both."

The look changed in her face, it was not happiness, so much as something settling into place inside her. Confirmation.

“That is the issue," she said. "Every awakened person has a Concept they can perceive but not control. Yours doesn't work like that. Yours doesn't create anything; it interferes.” She studied him. “That makes you unpredictable. And unpredictable things scare the Vanguard more than dangerous”

“What do they do with things that make you scared?”

She didn't answer right away.

The silence was enough answer.

Ryn bolted.

He didn't turn to see if she followed — he heard it, and he heard light feet, closing the gap much quicker than was appropriate. He sprinted for the roof's edge and vaulted across the gap to the next building, gasping for breath, and landed straight into her. 

She was standing in his way where she knew he was going to hit before he did.

His Core roused to panic, its END lurching out—

Nothing happened.

Instead, there was a pain that gnawed its way through his chest, raw and sharp, and he staggered, hand to his ribs. Does not work at the command. Not yet. Not against her.

“Don't fight this,” Eris said with a nonchalant tone.

But Ryn struck at her instead, a wild shot without any training, instinct only. She was taken aback for a heartbeat, and that was all he took. He pushed her aside and hopped, fell and climbed down to the alley below.

He hit the ground running.

---

The streets of the lower district had already changed.

Vanguard soldiers had gathered at the crossroads, comparing faces in the crowd to a rough hand-drawn sketch of him that was being passed around. The fishmonger who had allowed him to settle a debt was looking at him differently, as were the old woman selling bread near the eastern well who used to trade with him. Some flinched away. Others looked at him amazed as if he had turned into a story instead of a man.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach he realized that awakening didn't free him from anything.

It had made him impossible to cover up.

A tall figure was standing in the street in front of him with a dozen armed Vanguard surrounding them and Ryn's steps faltered before he could figure out why.

“Ryn,” said the man. Calm. Certain. “My name is Dren, I would like you to join us.”

"And if I don't?"

“It's much more difficult for both of us” Dren's eyes would not move. “We must find out what your concept is and if it is safe for you to be around people.”

Ryn said “That's not an option. That's a cage."

"It's a process."

Ryn ignored him, and the raised weapons, the half-formed Concepts hovering at the soldiers' fingertips, and the ring closing around him. Nobody was going to let him walk away from this.

“You have been able to disable an awakened Concept with nothing but a thought” Dren continued. "Twice, as far as we know. That makes you the first of your type that we've ever documented.”

“So you're afraid of me?”

“We don't know what you're capable of,” Dren said and for the first time something almost human came over him behind the eyes. "That's worse."

One of the soldiers came forward too suddenly, his hand reaching for a set of restraints, and something in Ryn's chest burst open before he could stop it.

This is not the first time END sought permission.

It radiated outwards in a quiet, invisible tingle — weapons stuttered as they were pulled out, three Concepts flickered, died, and the sound of the street thin and muted, everyone on the street stood still, as if the world forgot how to move for a moment.

Then it passed.

Ryn lowered himself on one knee, blood dripping from his nose and his eyes rolling around like crazy.

Then at the outskirts of the street, Eris watched it happen with more than a tinge of alarm.

Dren's voice penetrated the noise in Ryn's ears. "Restrain him."

The soldiers advanced. Ryn noticed the shackles in the hand, and in his mind he knew without doubt that if they were closed on his wrists, he would never be able to go outside whatever was next.

It was not only fear but also something colder. Something angrier.

This time, it was his Core that answered him and not instinctively, but for a reason, the first conscious thing he had ever pulled.

He wasn't shooting at someone. He pointed it at the opening between him and the mouth of the alley and at the synchronized stampede of bodies closing in; the world seemed to falter around him, bodies staggering over the steps that had once connected in the correct rhythm.

It was enough.

Through the hole it ripped, Ryn ran.

Dren stood behind him and watched him disappear in the darkness, his face now blank.

He whispered to the officer next to him “Don't use a regular bulletin. Catch him before he discovers what this power is capable of.”

---

Ryn didn't stop running until he was three streets away. He collapsed into the shadow of a closed doorway, chest heaving, blood drying on his upper lip.

He believed for a moment he'd escaped.

Then, he saw the public notice board across the way. Torchlight gleamed on the freshly pasted up sheet of paper, the ink still glistening; even from this distance Ryn could see his own face, drawn in hasty, crude lines.

He walked across the street with his feet moving in an unsteady manner and he gazed at it.

His name. His description.

Below that, a classification he had never been marked with before.

CONCEPT USER — EXTREME THREAT.

CAPTURE ALIVE.

Ryn stood frozen in front of the board, and the entire weight of it finally fell on his chest.

He was not just a new awakened Null, but one that was new to him.

He was the entire city's problem now — and the city had already decided what to do about it.