I awakened the END

Chapter 8: The one who stopped it

The safehouse had gone still, and Ryn sensed it before he understood why: Kerr mid-argument with someone, Sia cutting him off, Tav freezing where he stood, Sia's fingers already weaving thread through the air. Nera's gaze was fixed on the entrance as if she'd heard something no one else had.

END instinctively pushed up toward the surface, tightening Ryn's chest.

Veyr said in a low voice, without even looking at him, "Don't.”

There were three knocks on the outside door. Slow. Deliberate. Ordinary.

It was worse than an attack.

Veyr walked across the room and opened it for himself, holding one hand up to stop the others.

A young man, one arm pressed to his ribs, sweating and trembling, collapsed across the threshold as the door opened. A smoky, hissing spark flared at his fingertips, his Concept guttering like a candle in the wind. 

"Vanguard," he gasped. "They found me. I barely—"

Kerr was already moving to help him. Sia stood stiff, arms crossed, watching the stranger with narrowed eyes.

Studying the stranger as he had studied the men in the alley, Ryn remained standing, looking for the detail that didn't fit.

‘His Concept's dancing,’ Ryn thought. ‘As if it's been gnawing at it.’

Mira knelt over him at once, her hands smoking gold as she worked on restoring the damaged Core pathways under his skin. Ryn watched, and there was an awkwardness in his heart — It was the first time he saw the Black Lanterns turn their power to a stranger who owed them no favor, no kindness, no good, nothing.

"Why help him?" Ryn asked quietly. “He could be lying”

“We don't have to believe all people to assist them," Sia said, turning her head away from the man. "We just have to decide whether it would be worse to turn them away.”

Ryn shoved it back uncomfortably. He had learned over the years that kindness was a calculation, a debt owed, a debt paid. This wasn't that. He had no idea how to handle a different world.

Orr crouched down to the man's level, his eyes distant, as though he were reading something only he could see. He paused for a while and his face became more focused.

Orr said “he didn't mean to lie about the attack. But he is lying to her about his reason for coming here”

The man was as white as a sheet of paper.

Orr said flatly, but with certainty, “somebody paid you. To discover this safehouse.”

The man's breath caught in his throat. "I didn't have a choice. They said if I didn't—"

His Concept burst open, spluttering light bursting out and the entire safehouse shook as if something had torn through the ground under his feet.

"Move!" It was Veyr's voice that cut through the chaos.

It happened all at once. Kerr threw himself in front of Tav and took the impact of the shockwave, the walls shuddering around them. Sia's tendrils whipped out, grasping the limbs of the man who was convulsing, immobilizing him. Mira threw herself over the injured man, shielding his damaged Core pathways with her own body. Nera's eyes tracked the ripple passing through the room, calling out directions no one else could follow.

Ryn stood frozen for a split second, amazed at the coordination, people who had clearly done this together a hundred times before.

Then a support beam above them broke loose and fell straight towards Tav.

Ryn didn't think. He went towards it and END came running towards him.

It paused, inches above Tav's head, but the feeling of it traveled straight through Ryn and he knew it was there right away.

It wasn't the beam, he realised suddenly. The force that draws it towards the ground.

He took a step back, and instead of targeting the falling object, he studied the force pulling it down. The beam simply dropped, its momentum gone. It crashed to the floor beside Tav, gouging a scar into the stone, but Tav was untouched.

Veyr's eyes met with Ryn's, and his expression deepened.

He saw, Ryn thought. That was different. More accurate than the chamber.

---

When the shaking ceased, the infiltrator was unconscious and his Concept had completely burned out. Orr knelt by his side once more, solemn and silent.

Orr said, "He doesn't know who paid him. There is a catch, though: a phrase that he heard just before they sent him here.”

"What phrase?" Veyr asked.

Orr's eyes darted towards Ryn.

"Find the one who ended a Concept.”

The room went silent, not with menace, but with fear, dim and heavy, a blanket of dread settling over everyone at once.

Someone outside the Vanguard already knew.

And they were looking for him.

---

After the wreckage had been cleared and the safehouse had settled back into something normal, Tav found Ryn sitting alone near the stairwell.

"Hey." Easy as anything, Tav dropped down beside him. "Thanks for the beam.”

“All I did was react," Ryn said. "It wasn't—"

"Doesn't matter." Tav shook his head, as if still processing how close it had been.

“Why do you not fear me?” Ryn asked and hated how much he needed an answer for.

Tav blinked, somewhat amazed by the question. "Because you put a stop to it.”

Ryn didn't respond. He simply sat there, turning the words over, not knowing what to do with something that seemed too easy to be true.

---

Ryn arrived that night at the war room to find Veyr by himself, hunched over a map with a number of red pins scattered about it.

"Are we moving?" Ryn asked.

Veyr didn't raise his eyes. "I'm trying to guess where the people hunting you are going to strike next.”

Ryn's stomach tightened. "Who are they?"

Finally, Veyr raised his eyes and tapped one of the pins, well away from the safehouse. "Another Concept user was found here recently. Alive. Core intact." He paused. "Concept gone.”

Ryn's mind went back to the alley: the leader's power, that split instant, that terrible moment when a Concept was there, and then wasn't.

‘But if that was not a coincidence,’ he thought, cold settling through him. ‘If I really take it, what would happen?’

“Someone is taking the Concepts away from people,” said Veyr softly.

Ryn's throat tightened. “And you think I did?”

Veyr's eyes held steady, unreadable.

“I believe," he replied, "that somebody did it first”