Chapter 154: The Lights Go Out

Chapter 154: Chapter 154: The Lights Go Out

The knock came hard against the reinforced gate — three sharp strikes, followed by a voice calling through the metal, breathless and urgent.

"It’s Ethan! Please, I need to talk to someone!"

Erik was already moving before the second strike finished, Kai a half-step behind him, both reaching the gate in time to see Penelope arriving from the other direction, drawn by the same urgency in the boy’s voice.

Erik keyed the lock and pulled the gate open. Ethan stood on the other side soaked through, chest heaving like he’d taken the stairs at a dead sprint, eyes wide with something closer to genuine fear than Erik had seen from him since the night of the jewelry district run.

"What happened," Erik said, already scanning the stairwell behind him for signs of pursuit.

"The lobby’s flooded." Ethan’s voice came out ragged, fighting to catch his breath. "Completely. Water’s up past the front desk, maybe higher by now. And the power just went out — the whole building, not just down there. Emergency lights too, everything."

It had been raining without pause for four days now, and Erik had known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that the building’s lower levels wouldn’t hold out forever. He just hadn’t expected it to break all at once like this.

"Since when?" Kai asked, already moving toward the nearest window to check.

"Maybe twenty minutes ago. It happened fast." Ethan swallowed hard. "People are panicking. Really panicking. Someone started screaming that we’re all going to drown, and then someone else said the building’s structurally unsound, and now half the lower floors are trying to force their way up the stairwells looking for higher ground."

Erik’s jaw tightened. "How many people."

"I don’t know. A lot. More than just our floor." Ethan’s hands were shaking slightly, whether from cold or adrenaline, Erik couldn’t tell. "My dad sent me up here because he said you’d need to know before it reaches you. He’s trying to keep our floor calm, but there’s people banging on doors, trying to get others to open up and let them in, and some of it’s turning into actual shoving matches."

Penelope’s expression had gone sharp, calculating. "They’re trying to come up."

"Some of them, yeah." Ethan nodded. "I think most people just want somewhere dry. But there’s no way to know who’s actually desperate and who might—" He stopped himself, clearly not wanting to finish the thought, though everyone in the hallway understood it anyway.

"Who might use the chaos as cover," Erik said flatly.

Ethan nodded again, smaller this time.

Killian had appeared in the corridor by then, drawn by the commotion, already reading the tension in the room correctly before anyone explained it to him. "How bad is the flooding, structurally?"

"I don’t know. Bad enough that people are scared the ground floor might not hold." Ethan’s voice wavered. "Dad said the water was moving fast when he checked. Like it was actually flowing in, not just pooling."

"Four straight days of this," Killian said, quiet, more to Erik than to Ethan. "It was only a matter of time before something gave. We don’t know yet if it stops at the lobby or keeps climbing."

"There’s something else," Ethan said, hesitating now in a different way than before — not fear this time, something closer to uncertainty about how the information would land. "When the lights went out, my dad panicked. Really panicked, more than I’ve ever seen him. And then — his hands started doing this thing."

"What thing," Erik asked.

"Glowing. Faint, but real. Like there was something building up under his skin." Ethan swallowed. "A few seconds later he just — pointed at the emergency exit sign, the battery-powered one, and it flickered back on. Not because the battery suddenly worked. Because of him."

Penelope and Erik exchanged a glance.

"Your dad awakened," Erik said. "Some kind of energy or light manipulation, by the sound of it."

"That’s what William said too. He saw the whole thing." Ethan’s voice picked up speed now, some of the fear giving way to something closer to overwhelmed excitement. "And it’s not just Dad. William tried lifting a fallen shelf off someone’s foot in the panic and it came up like it weighed nothing. He looked as surprised as everyone else."

"And you?" Kai asked, watching him carefully.

Ethan hesitated. "I don’t know. Maybe. Since the lights went out, I keep — hearing things I shouldn’t be able to hear. Like just now, climbing the stairs, I could hear people arguing four floors down like they were standing right next to me. And I saw movement in the dark on the landing below ours that I don’t think I should’ve been able to see at all."

"Heightened senses," Killian said, matter-of-fact. "Consistent with several documented awakenings so far."

"So I’m not imagining it."

"You’re not imagining it," Erik confirmed. "It sounds like the fear, or the crisis, is what triggered it. That tracks with what we’ve seen from others too — most people don’t awaken from calm moments. They awaken from the ones that nearly break them."

Ethan absorbed that for a moment, some of the earlier panic in his posture settling into something steadier, more grounded — the particular relief of understanding what was happening to your own body even when the explanation itself was strange.

"That’s good, actually," Penelope said gently. "Whatever’s happening down there, your floor just got measurably safer because of it. Your dad and William both have something now that can actually help hold your position, and you’ve got a way to hear trouble coming before it arrives."

"I hadn’t thought about it that way." Ethan managed a small, uncertain smile. "Feels less like something happening to us and more like something that might actually help." ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"That’s usually how it goes," Kai said. "Terrifying for about ten minutes, then suddenly useful for the rest of your life. We’ve all been there."

Ethan’s smile steadied slightly at that, though the underlying tension of the night hadn’t fully left him.

"What about the people who haven’t awakened yet?" he asked. "The ones down there panicking with nothing to work with?"

Silence settled over the hallway for a moment.

"We can’t take in everyone who’s frightened," Erik said finally, not unkindly, though the words clearly cost him something to say. "We don’t have the space, and more importantly, we don’t have the certainty. Every person we let through that gate is someone we’re trusting with everyone else’s safety, and right now, in the middle of a panic like this, we can’t verify who deserves that trust and who’s just going to use it."

Ethan’s jaw tightened, though he didn’t argue. "That’s what my dad said you’d say."

"Your dad’s smart," Kai offered quietly.

"Yeah." Ethan looked down at his soaked shoes. "Doesn’t make it feel any better, though."

Penelope stepped closer, resting a hand briefly on his shoulder. "It’s not supposed to feel better, Ethan. It’s supposed to keep the people you love alive. Sometimes those aren’t the same thing."

He nodded slowly, some of the tension in his shoulders easing slightly at the acknowledgment, even if the underlying weight of it clearly hadn’t lifted.

"Go back to your floor," Erik said. "Tell your dad to seal your own entry points the same way we sealed ours, if he hasn’t already. No exceptions, no matter who’s asking. If anyone forces their way toward your door, you already know what to do. And tell him — and William — to start testing what they can actually do with what they’ve got. Better to understand it now than to discover the limits of it during an emergency."

"And if it gets worse?" Ethan asked. "If the water keeps rising?"

Erik considered that for a moment. "Then we’ll figure out the next step when we know more. Right now, panic is doing more damage than the flood itself. The best thing any of us can do is not add to it."

Ethan nodded, some resolve steadying back into his posture, and turned to head back toward the stairwell.

"Ethan," Killian said, stopping him. "Thank you. For coming to warn us instead of assuming we already knew."

The boy managed a small, tired smile. "Figured you’d rather hear it from someone than find out the hard way."

"One more thing," Penelope added. "If your hearing keeps sharpening, or you notice anything else changing, don’t keep it to yourself out of fear it sounds strange. Every ability we’ve seen so far has been worth understanding, even the ones that seemed useless at first."

"I’ll remember that." Ethan glanced between the four of them, something quietly grateful in his expression despite the exhaustion. "Thanks. Really."

He disappeared back down the stairwell, and the moment the gate swung shut and locked behind him, the hallway fell into a different kind of quiet — not calm, exactly, but focused, the particular stillness of people already reorganizing their entire strategy around new information.

"We need eyes on every access point," Erik said, already moving. "Kai, check the elevator shaft — make sure the reinforcement’s holding even with the power out. Killian, the stairwell gate needs another pass, see if there’s anything more you can do to strengthen it now that people are actually trying to force their way through instead of just wandering past. Penny—"

"I’ll check on Aurora and Aunt Mary," Penelope said, already anticipating the request. "Make sure they’re secure before anything else happens."

Erik nodded, some quiet approval in the look he gave her before it hardened back into focus. "We hold this floor. Whatever’s happening below us, it stays below us."

"And if more of them start awakening down there," Kai added, already moving toward the stairwell himself, "let’s hope it’s more people like Edward and less people who decide their new trick is a reason to start taking what isn’t theirs."

Nobody had an answer for that. It was, Erik thought grimly, exactly the kind of variable none of them could plan around in advance — power arriving in a moment of crisis said nothing about the character of the person receiving it, and the building below them was about to find that out the same hard way everyone eventually did.

The rain continued its relentless assault against the windows somewhere beyond their reinforced walls — four days now, with no sign of easing — and far below, through floors they couldn’t see and voices they could only imagine, the building’s lower levels continued sinking deeper into chaos, some of its residents discovering, in the same breath as their fear, that they were no longer quite as powerless as the flood wanted them to believe.