Chapter 296: Putting An End

The two-hundred-foot spear of azure lightning hung in the center of the storm, surrounded by swirling clouds and blue light.

Inside the open cargo bay, the air pressure dropped so quickly that the aircraft’s metal frame began to creak. The smell of ozone filled the cabin.

"He’s dropping the whole sky on us!" Selena shouted, bracing herself against the vibrating frame of the open ramp.

Julie was flat on her stomach, her fingers gripping the metal floor as she blindly aimed her camera toward the sky behind them. Her pink hair whipped around in the wind as static crackled through the air.

"Chat! If this is my final broadcast, tell my mother I loved her, and tell my landlord the rent check is in the mail! Oh God, it’s glowing! It’s so bright!"

Nicholas didn’t blink. He stood at the edge of the ramp, his dark hair blowing across his forehead.

"Jump," Nicholas said.

"Phantom, that lightning will vaporize us mid-air!" Vixen yelled over the roar of the engines.

"Jump," Nicholas repeated, his voice calm and leaving no room for argument. "Vixen, fold us thirty yards west. Zero, take the fuselage."

Zero drew his longsword with a clean scrape of steel. The purple gemstone in its guard flared with violet light, and silver-white Qi immediately surrounded his body.

Without another word, the swordsman threw himself backward from the ramp and disappeared into the open sky.

Nicholas grabbed Julie by the back of her harness and lifted the screaming streamer off the floor like an oversized bag. With his other hand, he pushed Selena off the ramp before jumping after them. Vixen followed close behind.

Two seconds after they cleared the bay, the two-hundred-foot spear of azure lightning struck the transport jet.

KRA-BOOOOOM!

The explosion lit up the desert for miles, turning the dark Qattara dunes into a blinding sheet of white.

The transport was torn apart, its twin engines breaking apart in a huge fireball of burning fuel and twisted metal.

Three thousand feet above the desert, Zero spun through the air.

He swung his sword in a wide arc, sending a huge crescent of silver Qi through the falling wreckage. The attack cut through the largest pieces and knocked the burning metal away from the others.

"Vixen, now!" Nicholas shouted.

Vixen swept both hands downward through the wind.

Spatial Warp.

A huge tear opened in the sky five hundred feet above the desert. Nicholas, Selena, Zero, Vixen, and Julie plunged through it, their fall slowing almost instantly as they entered the distorted space.

A moment later, another portal opened ten feet above the soft sand of a high dune overlooking the necropolis.

They tumbled out and landed together.

Julie hit the sand face-first. Her legs kicked helplessly for a moment before she rolled onto her back, coughing and spitting out mouthfuls of warm grit.

"Sand!" Julie wheezed, desperately wiping at her mouth and eyes while somehow keeping her camera in one hand. "It’s in my teeth! It’s in my ears! It’s in my socks! I am being seasoned like a fried drumstick! How does anyone live in a desert?!"

"Stop whining and check your lens," Selena ordered.

She rolled to her feet with her sidearm drawn, scanning the surrounding ridge.

"We’re in the danger zone."

Nicholas rose from a crouch and brushed the sand from his coat.

He didn’t look at the burning remains of the transport scattered across the distant dunes. His dark blue eyes were already fixed on the massive depression two hundred yards ahead.

The Qattara sinkhole was a huge circular basin of broken limestone, dropping eighty feet into the desert. At the bottom was an ancient necropolis, its sandstone pillars covered in faded hieroglyphics. Massive stone archways disappeared beneath the sand, while a sunken courtyard sat at the center of the ruins.

And standing on top of a shattered obelisk in that courtyard was B.

The clone’s chest was still bare, his torn combat trousers covered in dirt and dried blood.

The jagged piece of the emerald Earth Stone embedded in his cracked sternum pulsed with unstable green light. But the shard wasn’t the only source of power surrounding him anymore.

Cyan lightning crackled around B’s body as he drew atmospheric Qi from the ancient ruins beneath his feet.

Below the shattered obelisk was a huge circular vault door made from dark blue stone. Bright runes covered its surface, and through the cracks in the damaged seals, the Azure Storm Stone could be seen resting inside.

B had been pounding the vault with his bare fists, trying to break the ancient barrier through sheer force.

Then the transport appeared in the sky.

B looked toward the dune and immediately spotted Nicholas standing against the stormy horizon.

A wide, feral grin spread across his pale face.

He threw his head back and laughed, the sound carrying across the limestone ridge.

"You really survived that?!" B shouted, his voice mixing with the rumbling thunder. "I drop a thunderbolt on your private jet, and you still crawl out of the wreckage like an annoying cockroach! You’re persistent, original! I’ll give you that!"

B stepped off the obelisk and slowly floated down, landing lightly on the cracked stone floor.

He spread his arms wide. Emerald energy and blue lightning pulsed through the veins in his neck and shoulders.

"Look at this place!" B sneered, gesturing toward the glowing vault beneath him. "Your little Association friends thought they could lock me in a hole four hundred feet deep! They thought a few metal clamps and a blue light could hold back the future! But Dr. Vance knows what we are. He gave me the keys! He gave me the sky!"

"He gave you a suicide leash," Nicholas replied.

His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried through the wind.

Nicholas walked down the dune, his boots moving smoothly across the sand.

"You’re absorbing two incompatible master frequencies without refining them," Nicholas continued, his eyes studying B’s unstable body. "The Earth Stone is tearing your Qi channels apart, while the Storm Stone is damaging your nervous system. You have ten minutes before your core overloads and turns you into a crater."

B’s smile disappeared for a fraction of a second.

His jaw tightened as a sudden spasm ran through his left arm.

He quickly hid it behind a vicious grin.

"I don’t need ten minutes to rip your head off!" B roared.

He didn’t bother with a careful attack.

B slammed his foot into the ancient courtyard floor and sent the storm Qi through the limestone.

BOOM!

The ground beneath Nicholas exploded in a burst of broken stone and blue lightning.

Nicholas didn’t run.

Plague Touch.

Black Void energy erupted around his forearms, forming two long, curved blades that locked together into a dark shield.

The lightning slammed into him.

The black Void swallowed the attack, breaking the surge apart into harmless sparks that scattered across the sand.

Before the dust could settle, B was already in front of him.

Spatial Fold.

B appeared only inches away, his right fist surrounded by a violent vortex of wind and gravity.

"Die, fake!" B screamed, driving his fist toward Nicholas’s face.

Nicholas tilted his head slightly.

The attack passed beside his cheek, leaving only a thin cut along the edge of his collar.

Nicholas immediately countered.

The black shield dissolved into dark mist.

With his right hand free, Nicholas drove his palm directly into B’s right armpit, striking the nerve cluster controlling his arm.

CRACK.

B let out a strangled cry as his right arm went completely limp.

"You rely on power because you have no discipline," Nicholas whispered as he stepped inside B’s guard.

His left elbow slammed into B’s jaw, followed by a low kick that swept his legs out from under him.

B crashed onto the limestone and rolled backward through the sand.

Up on the dune, Julie leaned over the edge and zoomed her camera in, a huge grin spreading across her dusty face.

"Did you see that counter-elbow?!" Julie yelled into the microphone, completely forgetting her fear. "Clean! Crisp! Absolutely disrespectful! Chat, the fake just got folded like a cheap lawn chair! Drop the celebratory emotes right now! We are witnessing a certified martial arts clinic!"

"Julie, shut up!" Selena hissed, keeping her sidearm aimed toward the shadows between the limestone pillars.

Down in the courtyard, B pushed himself out of the sand and spat blood onto the stones.

His dark blue eyes were completely bloodshot now, consumed by rage.

"You think... you’re better than me?!" B wheezed.

His chest heaved as the emerald shard in his sternum began to produce a high-pitched whine.

The ground around the ruins started to groan.

The air inside the dark sand-filled caverns surrounding the courtyard suddenly became cold.

"I didn’t come here alone, original," B sneered, a bloody grin spreading across his face.

Behind the ancient pillars, four massive figures stepped out of the darkness.

They weren’t ordinary impures.

Each one stood eight feet tall and wore a heavy containment suit marked with the dark insignia of Dr. Malik Vance’s syndicate. Their helmets had been torn open from the inside, revealing mutated skulls leaking streams of glowing blue and crimson Qi.

Their eyes were empty, filled with nothing but hunger.

"Meet the Vanguard," B laughed, his voice filled with excitement as he backed toward the glowing vault. "Master Vance made them specifically for this reunion. Let’s see your little friends handle them while I break the seal!"

The four mutated giants took a single step forward.

The ground cracked beneath their feet.

Nicholas didn’t move.

He stood in the middle of the dusty courtyard, his black coat barely moving in the wind as his dark blue eyes passed over the four monsters.

"Zero, Vixen," Nicholas said calmly. "Clear the yard."

He turned his attention back to B.

His right hand slowly extended forward as dense, black plague energy gathered around it, forming a massive seven-foot executioner’s broadsword.

"You and I," Nicholas said to his duplicate, "are finishing this right now."