Chapter Forty-Three
Yun
My parents had taken me as a kid to a spot out in the desert called Giant Rock. It was this massive boulder—almost. A large chunk of it had broken off years before and still lay beside it, something that seemed impossible given at the sheer size of the thing.
I felt like that rock, a shattering pain through my head that made me think my entire psyche might just split under the pressure.
“Breathe.” Mr. Yorn’s voice found me even though I couldn’t see anything because of the pain, like it scrambled all the signals in my brain. “If you pass out, we’ll have to start again.”
Which would mark the fourth attempt at this, and I really didn’t want to give it another go.
I didn’t even know what it was exactly. I never did.
Mr. Yorn didn’t see me important—or human—enough to warrant any sort of explanation of his actions.
Instead, after sending guards to collect me from Kaidan’s—something I’d gone along with despite Kaidan trying to stop—Mr. Yorn had sat me down in that same hated exam room and strapped a few devices to me.
I knew better than to ask, given the last time he’d tried this with that tiara thing, he’d lied to me about what it really did. I couldn’t trust anything he said, even if he chose to answer me.
This time he’d put two silver bracelets on me, one on each wrist. He again stared at a screen, a habit I’d noticed, as though the real me meant less than nothing to him. I was only a set of data for him to explore at the end of the day.
At first it had only felt like this undercurrent of energy, but as time had gone on, it had increased until I’d passed out. This time I refused, wanting to make it through the damn test so I could go back and sleep.
At least this kept me from thinking about them, about what they might be doing, or who they were doing it with.
I was going through this all and for what? For men who were going to toss me aside soon enough.
My eyes burned even though I couldn’t see anything. Despite realizing that we were on the downswing, that they’d get rid of me before long, I hadn’t fought the guards. I hadn’t said no to Mr. Yorn.
Did that make me stupid? Pathetic? Just a doormat?
Probably all of them, but it didn’t matter. As it turned out, I loved them more than I hated whatever the fuck Mr. Yorn was doing. I couldn’t stand the idea of anything happening to them, which put me here, enduring this hell.
The pain stopped so abruptly that everything inside me tingled and burned, the absence of that overwhelming sensation nearly as bad as it being there. It made me feel hollow, as though it had emptied me out.
I leaned forward, trying to draw in deep lungsful of air, my vision returning slowly. It blinked in and out a few times, like static on an old television, until I panted hard and stared around the room.
Funny that it could look the same when I felt anything but the same.
Mr. Yorn had his gaze turned away from me, focused entirely on the screens before him, dragging a finger over the writing there as though he found me irrelevant.
“Amazing,” he whispered, the word hardly sparking any joy in me.
“Are we done?” I asked.
Mr. Yorn turned toward me, his lips curving into a smile that turned my stomach. “No, we aren’t.”
His voice held something ugly, something dark. Or perhaps it was better to say something uglier and darker than usual. It felt as though something had flipped inside of him, like a leash had broken.
“Do you know how you could change everything for us? If we could make all guides into copies of you—or at least in terms of your power—nothing would be the same. We would no longer lose espers to corruption. We could ensure that espers were guided efficiently, pairing the right guide with the right squad. We would remove any of the nonsense that holds the Guild back.”
“You know how this happened. You can’t replicate that.”
“Of course we can. That is the point of science, after all, to discover and replicate the desired results. You gained this power by having a corrupted force you into guiding. It seems it may need to happen inside a closed dungeon when their minds are more clear, so we create a base inside a dungeon.”
“That isn’t possible.”
He chuckled as though he nearly found me cute.
“Of course it is. We don’t publicize our less above-board projects, but we do in fact have bases in stable dungeons.
Just like we don’t officially keep any corrupted alive, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my share of them at Obsidian.
” He paused, then smiled. “Of course, you’ll find that out soon enough. ”
“What?”
“It seems I underestimated your influence. I have no idea who you had to negotiate with to gain the favor of the Guild, but you managed it. I received strict orders to end all work here and return to Obsidian.” His words seemed level and uncaring, but something simmered beneath the surface, proof that he wasn’t as calm as he let on.
“I don’t understand,” I pressed. If he had to leave, what did he mean about me meeting—
It came together in one horrific realization.
“That’s right. I’ll take you with me. Obsidian is my baby, and I am King there. The Guild might be able to decide things here, but the moment we are back in my territory, there won’t be a thing they can do.”
“And you think that’ll work?” I tried to tamp down the panic inside of me, that threatened to explode. I couldn’t let it, though, that would render me helpless and I didn’t want to be helpless.
If the Guild had made the decision—and I had no idea why they had—that meant that the threats against the espers wouldn’t hold anymore. If Mr. Yorn was butting heads with those in charge here, he couldn’t expect any favors if he betrayed them.
Which meant I didn’t have to go. He’d lost his footing.
Maybe Kaidan had stepped in? Maybe he’d called in favors I hadn’t realized he’d had?
It didn’t matter, because the last thing I wanted was to end up in Obsidian. It would be like part two of what Corsa had put me through, except I was older, I knew what I would have been missing this time.
I got to my feet and darted for the door. I wasn’t the best runner, but Mr. Yorn hardly appeared like someone who did anything outside a lab. Maybe I could outrun him, and if the Guild had sent him orders, that meant I only needed to find a guard, right?
I yanked the door open to the exam room to find an esper there. “Help me,” I pleaded. “Please, take me to someone in charge—”
The words died on my lips when the esper caught me by the arm and pulled me back into the room, closing the door behind us. He didn’t do it with anger, as though it didn’t matter to him one way or another. “Are you nearly ready, sir?”
Sir? I noticed then that the esper wasn’t one I recognized, not someone from the base that I’d seen.
“He is one of a few I brought with me. I’m not foolish enough to travel alone.” Mr. Yorn went about inserting a USB drive into the computer he’d been working on. He moved quickly, but wasn’t frantic. He didn’t rush, but each step he took had purpose in it.
“You can’t do this.” I pulled against the grip of the hand that held me.
“And why not? Dear, this should feel like going home to you. You’ll be so much more comfortable there instead of trying to pretend as though you’re normal. You won’t have to pretend anything there, able to just exist, to not worry about being thrown away again.”
I allowed the fear inside me to manifest, the power coursing over my skin, but the esper didn’t respond. Instead, the bracelets warmed until they burned.
“You think I would have tried this before I disarmed you? Your little trick will be no good so long as you wear those.” Mr. Yorn gestured at my wrists before dropping the USB into his pocket. “We’re done here.”
“Yes, sir. There is a car waiting for us just outside, then a helicopter twenty minutes north.”
Mr. Yorn nodded, his expression saying he was far too pleased with himself for this entire thing. He thought he’d won, and I had no idea how I could prove him wrong.
The thought of never seeing the men again hurt worse than the idea that they’d betrayed me, that they didn’t want me anymore. I couldn’t stand the thought that I’d end up in Obsidian and not see them daily. That seemed worse than whatever Mr. Yorn had planned there.
I pulled with all my strength, but nothing helped, nothing shook the esper’s grip in the slightest. He felt like a handcuff around me, unmovable. It countered the gentleness Carter had always used with me, reminding me of the difference between espers and guides, the power and strength imbalance.
A scream outside the door stilled me, followed by another. They were full of pain, fear—nothing good.
Had another tear occurred? No, I would have felt that. Still, it took a lot for guards or espers to make noises like that.
The answer came when the door opened—well, not so much opened as burst inward, splintering from the force of the strike.
There stood the only thing that could have caused trained soldiers to make sounds like that—Reject Squad.