Chapter Six
Shear
I focused my attention toward the stage and not on the rest of the turbulent room, not on the espers that surrounded me, the guides dotted about, and certainly not on the woman who sat beside me.
In fact, I tried to make that space a void where nothing could get in or out. I pretended it didn’t exist, limiting my skills so she couldn’t distract me.
Yet distract me she did.
Something about her forced my darker instincts to rise, as though she called to the corruption that swarmed inside me.
Why?
What made her different? Special?
In my experience, everyone was special, which meant no one really was.
We were all just bad copies of one another, all mimicking the behavior of others to get accepted into whatever little tribe we found ourselves near.
Instinct compelled people, even espers, to form groups, to use social structures for our survival, and it meant that people ended up much the same at the end of the day.
So why couldn’t I write Yun off as I did others? Why did she interest me in a way no one else had? It wasn’t a great feeling, not entirely, but rather like those intrusive thoughts that told people to throw themselves off tall cliffs.
The reasons behind it hardly mattered. Instead, I needed to focus on how to react.
Why something was the way it was didn’t change the course of action to take, after all.
“We are three months out from the next stable dungeon appearance.” The speaker was Jin Foley, a debuff esper, S-Rank, who ran most of the planning for Guild-wide offensives.
He was young, at only twenty-two, but even I had to admit to feeling impressed when I had seen him move through a battlefield just two years ago.
The Guild president sat off to the side of the stage, appearing much older than he had just a few years ago, as though time had suddenly moved faster.
He rarely spoke much at such meetings anymore, leaving the running of the Guild to the younger crowd.
Instead, he’d morphed from a powerful esper capable of great things to a figurehead.
“After the stable dungeon, The Edge, appeared six months ago, it came to our attention that the casualty numbers were far higher than they should have been. The reality is that we can’t expect squads who never work together to show up for a large-scale offensive and collaborate perfectly on the spot.
We do not want a repeat of that fiasco, so we will be hosting joint missions for the next three months in preparation.
These missions will put those of you with cooperative powers together, to help you work through difficulties, prior to the dungeon opening. ”
“So we know where the dungeon will open?” someone called from one of the front tables.
Jin shook his head. “We know it will be in the southwest of the United States, but nothing more than that. That’s why, in the days before, we want all squads prepared at the Guild staging center in Tucson, ready to move out. From there, we can be at any potential location in a few hours.”
My lip lifted on its own, though I agreed with the reasoning. I had gotten used to working with my squad, had gained a certain level of comfort with them. The last thing I wanted was to end up stuck with a bunch of strangers, to have to exist in close quarters.
Learning to close out people was a difficult skill, and the more trust I had with a person, the more time I spent around them, the easier the task was for me. Having to spend time in close proximity to others was bound to strain me.
And, as much as I would love to think we wouldn’t be expected to participate—as we often weren’t—we wouldn’t have gotten called here if they didn’t intend us to play some part.
“Is everyone here going?” some idiot called out.
Some idiot meaning Kenyon, sitting at the end of our table.
Jin looked back, squinting as though our seat rested so far toward the back of the room that he could hardly see us.
“Yes. Every squad called in here will be part of the local groups. We will also call in other squads from farther away, but they will come near the end for backup. We want to keep this to the Western Section for the main work.”
I rolled my eyes at that, at the games these fools played.
They cared about territories, about how their group looked compared to another.
We were all part of the North American Guild, but loyalty rested with the individual sections within NAG—and their acronym was fitting.
At the end of the day, the Guild was what controlled everything about our lives, and they didn’t mind fucking us over for their own benefit.
They wanted to prove that we’d taken care of this ourselves. They wanted to pat themselves on their backs and talk about how great they were, how they’d handled the dungeon all on their own.
It reminded me of how every esper in the Guild acted as well, all scrambling over the corpses of those who came before to try to reach some top spot, as though that would justify our tenuous position in the world.
“You’re seriously going to let Reject Squad in?” a voice asked from the crowd.
“Didn’t we learn our lesson before?” another chimed in.
“Things are bad enough as it is—why make it worse by letting them come?”
Person after person spoke up until a low murmur rushed through the space. I could pick up each one if I wanted—even if I didn’t—but I tried to ignore it.
None of the insults were new or all that inventive. No one had thought about it too deeply nor spent the energy to at least come up with something creative.
It meant that no matter what they volleyed, nothing landed.
I’d rather not be there either.
I’d seen what doing the so-called right thing got a person, and I wanted nothing to do with that. I preferred not to make the same mistake more than once.
Carter rose, and for a moment, the room quieted. Was he about to say something profound? Something that would reassure them all that we were meant to be there? To remind them that despite all appearances, we were still S-Rank espers who were more than capable?
“I know you’re all concerned, and trust me, I understand.” A good start. “I want to assure you that I don’t want to be there anymore than you want me there. To make up for it, I’ll bring brownies.”
Wonderful.
I sighed at the sudden silence that engulfed the room, as not a single person in there knew how to react to such absurdity.
Then again, that was Carter’s move. He knew exactly how to throw people off their game, how to toy with them, how to play the part of an idiot so he could get them to follow his lead.
This was no different. Beneath that amused smirk, I sensed the things he kept hidden.
The fear. The anger. The pain.
Something stabbed back through that line, like a needle slipping into the center of my brain, and if I didn’t recognize it at his warning to stop poking around in his mind, I might have believed he had nothing to do with it—given his completely unchanged expression.
He sat back down, the scratching of his chair against the tile floor loud.
After another awkward heartbeat, Jin spoke up as though the exchange hadn’t happened.
“Every squad here has been chosen because we think you’ll bring something important to this offensive.
I will send all the relevant information along with the upcoming schedule of training to your squads.
I have complete confidence that we will be able to face this danger as we have others, that we will overcome as we always have.
This will be the third time some of you have faced this dungeon.
Many of us have lost good people to it. However, we will absolutely not allow The Pitt to win. ”
The Pitt.
The name sent a general unease through the entire room. Sure, anyone with a calendar knew it was coming, that the appearance of the stable dungeon was going to happen soon, but hearing the name never failed to put any esper who had faced it before on edge.
That wasn’t what caught my attention, though.
Instead, it was a sudden blast from my side, from the little guide perched there between us. Her expression didn’t change, her body language didn’t change, but her mind? All the little synapsis inside that secretive, illusive little brain of hers lit up like a fucking Christmas parade.
Well, it seems someone has a history…