He wasn’t subtle.Protogenus never designed the earth-based ones with finesse in mind.He tore through roads and foundations with brute geological force, turning Denver streets into unstable fault lines.
Jem brushed dirt between her fingers.“He’s moving fast.Eastbound.Toward the business district.”
Chris nodded.“Then we meet him there.”
They moved out in tandem, leaping over buckled sidewalks and fractures spiderwebbing across the asphalt.Emergency sirens wailed in the distance, echoing off the glass facades of half-evacuated high-rises.Dust clouds turned the twilight air into a hazy blur.
They found him near a demolished parking structure.
The Dioscuri variant stood among the wreckage as if sculpted from the ruin itself.He was a tall, formidable figure with jagged plates of rock protruding from his forearms and shoulders, veins glowing faintly through stone-like skin.He turned toward them, lips curling back in a grimace that was half rage, half challenge.
Chris glanced at her.Their bond wasn’t about speed or power amplification.It was about synchronicity.Harmony.The way their earth manipulation wove together seamlessly, like parallel strata that strengthened under shared pressure.
She felt him through the ground before he moved.
The Dioscuri struck first, driving his fists into the pavement and unleashing a shockwave that rippled outward like a localized earthquake.The ground bucked violently beneath them, cracking open with jagged fissures.
Jem countered by dropping to one knee and slamming her palm into the concrete.She pushed her will into the earth, smoothing the tremor’s violent rhythm, redirecting the shockwave upward in a controlled burst of shattered debris.
Chris raised both arms, lifting slabs of broken pavement into a protective barrier around them.Jem stabilized it.Chris shaped it.
The Dioscuri charged through the smoke, roaring.
Chris dodged a razor-edged shale blade.Jem slammed her palms to the pavement.The street buckled, a wall of concrete erupting beneath the Dioscuri.
He countered, shattering it with brute seismic force.
“He’s strong,” Chris said, panting.
“He’s alone,” Jem replied.
Chris met him head-on, stone columns rising to intercept each strike.Jem circled to the flank, her hands sinking into the broken earth as she pulled a wall of shale upward to trap one of the variant’s arms.
He struggled, breaking free with brute strength, but Jem was already forming a second bind, then a third.Chris reinforced them, sealing seams with compressed sediment.
Within moments, they had crafted a stone prison around him.It was layered, reinforced, unbreakable.
The Dioscuri snarled once, a desperate sound.Then he went still.Foam bubbled at his lips.His glowing eyes dimmed.The stone prison held as his body went limp, sinking into stillness.
Chris lowered his arms slowly.“Five cities.Five dead.”
Jem closed her eyes for a moment, pressing her dirt-coated fingers to the earth.“And no answers.”
