The knocking continued as Ashton took a moment to compose himself. He needed to be normal. He needed to not be having an existential crisis. He couldn’t let his team down by falling apart now. As he tried to brainwash himself, the knocking quickly became frantic pounding. It seemed like he wouldn’t be able to put this off any longer.

  Ashton opened his door just a crack, letting himself hide in the darkness of the apartment behind him. Summer stood on the other side of the door looking frantic, staring at a phone screen filled with short messages he couldn’t quite read. Had MysteriousMaskz called her here?

  “What happened?” he asked. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded far too dull. Fake, even.

  “Are you alright?” Summer asked, shoving her way inside the barely opened doorway.

  The force made Ashton stumble back slightly but he could barely muster the energy to stay standing there. He didn’t have it in him to comfort Summer right now. He couldn’t bring himself to lie and tell her everything was fine. When he didn’t respond, Summer shoved the phone she had been holding into his face.

  Just as he had suspected, the messages were from Maskz. He must have started sending texts to Summer once he realized that Ashton was not checking any of his. It was no wonder that Summer had panicked after being sent so many short and frantic messages from someone usually so calm and collected.

  “What did you find out?” she demanded, “This isn’t a joke. I can tell how shaken you are by whatever it is, and even our enemy is freaking out. Don’t even think about trying to hide it from me!”

  That was a difficult question to answer. What should he even say? The truth, of course. Summer deserved that much. Even if it meant telling her the truth would reveal his secret dark desires, she needed to know. Ashton pulled Summer the rest of the way inside so he could shut the door. It was a habit more than anything else since he knew that people would find ways to eavesdrop regardless.

  “Untouchable doesn’t work on me,” he admitted in a whisper. Once he began, everything he had been holding inside began to burst out in a rush. “I have spent so long dreaming of the day I can finally be free of my power. What do I do now, Summer?”

  Summer’s eyes met his own as Ashton looked up to check her reaction. She was worried about him, and definitely a bit confused, but he did not see any fear or rejection there. Despite their drastically different pasts, she did not judge him for wishing for his power to disappear.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” she offered, her voice both desperate and somehow warm, “The one you used could have been a dud.”

  “A dud,” Ashton repeated, latching onto the words instantly, “That’s right. We can’t know for sure if I am immune from just one sample. Back then, those two greedy CEOs never would have allowed me to be rid of my power. They must have given me a fake on purpose.”

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  “Definitely,” Summer agreed, pulling him into a hug.

  Both of them knew that there was still a high chance he truly was immune to Untouchable, but that didn’t matter. As long as there was a chance that it was a dud, a ploy to throw him off, Ashton could still cling to the vain hope that had carried him through all these years. He didn’t need to face the harsh reality that he would never be free of his powers yet.

  The two held each other in the doorway for a while before Ashton finally pulled back. Now that he had calmed, his rational mind had started to churn. They could use this. MysteriousMaskz had witnessed the whole fiasco, and while it wasn’t part of the original plan it would be a great way to move their ‘plot’ forward.

  First, he pulled out his phone to see what kind of frantic nonsense Ned had sent him while he was busy having a breakdown. The first one was calm, but things quickly spiralled as he realized what Ashton was doing.

  “What are you doing? I don’t usually like spoilers, but you are making me uneasy.”

  “You aren’t about to do what I think you are, right?”

  “Ashton, answer me.”

  “Ashton Gray!”

  “You must not take that serum!”

  “It’s too late.”

  “Why did you do it, you fool?”

  “Snap out of it! You still have a fate to fulfill!”

  “Stop ignoring me!!”

  After that he must have resorted to phone calls since Ashton found a grand total of forty two missed calls from that same unknown number. This incident made some things clear. First, MysteriousMaskz had known Untouchable would not work. Second, he was more concerned that Ashton might do something drastic after finding out the truth than the idea of Ashton losing his powers. Third, if the situation called for it he trusted Summer to help pull Ashton out of danger.

  “We need to test if the Untouchable I was given works,” Ashton told Summer, “Not on me. We will sneak one outside and let someone unrelated use it. If they acquired it illegally, they can’t complain to Gale Research when it doesn’t work.”

  Of course by someone unrelated, Ashton fully intended for the serum to find its way into Checkmate’s hands. The problem was, how? MysteriousMaskz had gone dead silent after Summer had arrived, so even if he was still listening he was unlikely to help. It wasn’t like Ashton actually had any black market connections. He couldn’t ask Derrick to do it since he was trying to frame him, not make him actually complicit.

  “If we sell it online we will be caught right away,” Summer muttered, clearly following a very similar train of thought, “Maybe if we donate it to an auction or sell it at a flea market?”

  “The auction would report the stolen item right away, so that one is out,” Ashton considered, “I don’t know if any flea markets are going on right now. No one would buy this kind of thing at a yard sale either.”

  Finally, Ned seemed unable to keep his silence and texted both of them one thing. An address.