Chapter Seven
Yun
The Pitt.
No matter how many times I tried to purge that place from my memories, the very name conjured it all right back up like a shitty magic trick. I stood in the bathroom, splashing water on my face to try to clear away the energy coursing inside me.
The water remained freezing cold no matter how long I’d left it on warm, but maybe that was better. The slight shock to my system helped clear my mind.
Shear had stared at me as the meeting had closed, suggesting he’d caught wind of something.
I suspected that despite his presence in this squad, he was far too good an esper not to feel something.
I could school my features, I could keep myself from reacting outright, but even I couldn’t control my feelings.
I’d excused myself with a weak reasoning of needing a bathroom break. Most men knew better than to ask questions when a woman said that, so they’d let me go without interrogation or complaint.
It gave me a moment to try to gather myself.
I’d known it was coming, of course. The Pitt opened every ten years like a fucking alarm clock put on snooze, showing back up just to fuck everyone over again. I’d just ignored it, hoped that it would never be my problem again.
Who would have thought that the fuckups of the NAG would get put on the front lines? That I’d end up right back there?
I leaned forward, gripping the sides of the sink, desperate for something to help me gather my wits and shove the feelings that seemed far too large back inside my shattered psyche.
“Well, if it isn’t the Blizzard.”
The hated name echoed off the bright, tiled walls in the restroom, giving me what I needed to stand straight and turn around.
There stood a woman who appeared vaguely familiar. I couldn’t place her, but suspected I’d interacted with her at some point. Then again, espers sometimes ran together after a while.
“You actually show up here?” she asked, her toned arms crossed. “You’ve got more balls than I figured.”
I nearly asked her who she was when it hit me.
Rosalind. The last time I’d seen her, her face had looked different—but horror will do that to a person. No wonder I didn’t recognize her, what with the sneer of disgust on her features.
It also explained why she had that look.
Anyone who saw a guide put down a member of their squad would probably not be too thrilled with them.
“I was here with—”
“With Reject Squad. Yeah, I know—I saw. At first, I was pissed you would show your face here after everything you’ve done, but you know what? It makes sense that you’re with them.”
The words chafed, but I refused to let her see she’d gotten beneath my skin.
Besides, she wasn’t entirely wrong, not after what had happened.
“I’ll be going.” No reason to fight with her over any of this. She had reason to feel the way she did, and to be honest, I didn’t want to be here any more than she wanted me here.
Plus, with the information discussed in the meeting, I wasn’t anywhere in my right mind. Even if I could have handled this sort of exchange normally, I sure wasn’t up to it right now.
I went to pass her, angling my body so I didn’t brush against her, when a strong current gripped me and shoved me back. My heels skidded against the tile floor, my cheeks so warm I worried they might have burned from the blast of hot air.
My back struck the hard tile, knocking the air from my lungs.
I blinked quickly, tears rushing from my eyes—not because I cried, but because of the searing air. When I could clear my vision enough to see, I spotted Rosalind before me, her lip curled up on one side.
Right, she could control weather—specifically wind and heat. It was easy to forget—or ignore—the specific abilities of espers. Guides could do a single thing, but espers had a nearly unlimited well of powers to pull from, and keeping it straight had always seemed like far too much work.
This reminded me of Rosalind, however, of what she wielded. She was only an A-Rank, of course, but an A-Rank could kill me just like an S.
“You think I’d let you just walk out of here? You get to walk away and pretend like you didn’t do a damn thing? What, just because you’re a guide?” Spittle hit my face as she spoke, a testament to her anger—as though my being trapped against a wall didn’t make the point just fine?
“I’m a guide,” I said, my voice cracking from the hot air that surrounded me. “Do you really think hurting me here is going to go well for you?”
“You think being a guide is a shield for you? You’re defective, nothing but a useless guide who hurts those you’re supposed to help. We’d be better off without having a time bomb like you around.”
She isn’t wrong.
The feeling of her powers restraining me scratched at my already wounded psyche. It was the worst time for this, but she was lucky she hadn’t physically touched me. I doubted I could handle that, even if I agreed with her.
If someone ended things, wouldn’t everyone be better off?
If I wasn’t around anymore, I couldn’t hurt others, wouldn’t experience pain myself. The temptation to just give in hit me—probably because I hadn’t defended myself on purpose so far. It had simply been that innate instinct for survival that had protected me before.
Just as I gave in, however, as I accepted this as the logical end to my life, the heat disappeared.
I collapsed forward, my knees striking the tile so hard my teeth snapped together. I braced my weight on my hands, breathing in greedy lungfuls of air, realizing just how little oxygen had been around me.
When I lifted my gaze to see why she’d decided not to kill me, I found a sight I sure hadn’t expected.
Carter stood there, Rosalind dangling by the throat in his grasp, gripping his wrist as she kicked her legs. His eyes shone bright purple, casting a glow over Rosalind’s face, and he appeared every bit the monster espers could be.
The most terrifying thing, though? The one that really set me off?
The way he kept smiling. He didn’t glare, didn’t sneer. Instead, he still had an entirely unhinged smile on his face, as though he had no connection to rational thought anymore.
The sight, along with news of The Pitt and Rosalind’s attack, proved too much for my mind. After the lack of sleep, the lack of so many things, I found myself swallowed up by the blackness.
I had no idea how long I remained unconscious. I didn’t dream, didn’t fight against the wonderful void of nothing that occurred when under. Instead, I let myself rest in it, unbothered by anything.
The world came back slowly, hazy, a moment of bliss before reality struck again—as it always did. I found myself on a comfortable bed, a familiar one, instead of the tile I vaguely recalled smacking my face against as I’d passed out.
I opened my eyes, blinking away the remnants of sleep. It wasn’t good sleep, not the type where you woke refreshed, where you stretched your arms and inhaled deep breaths to energize.
Nope, this was the sort that happened when you fall back asleep, but not for long enough. It was like waking up after an impromptu, accidental nap, when drool coats your cheek and your mouth feels full of grit.
I expected to find myself alone, but instead, a broad back met me.
I gulped hard, but at least they sat on the side of the bed, faced mostly away, without any contact at all.
Carter.
I recalled how he’d looked in that bathroom, holding an A-Rank like she were nothing more than a pile of yarn and with about that much fight to her. Sure, he was a higher rank, but that didn’t explain how he could do that so easily.
And his eyes…
I jerked backward at the memory, having seen similar eyes in the past. My back struck the headboard as I tried to get distance between us, everything inside me screaming to get away, to do whatever it took to escape.
He turned, and I expected to see purple, to see that vicious shade of violet that haunted me.
Except…he looked normal.
His smile had the softened edges again, none of the signs of corruption that I’d seen in the bathroom.
Had I imagined those? Were they just sparks of my brain where the past mingled with the present, where my trauma forced me to relive things that I’d rather have forgotten all about?
“You with us again?”
“What—” My voice cut out halfway through the question, but I couldn’t say I minded that. I had no idea exactly where the question was headed anyway.
He gestured toward the nightstand. “There’s water beside you—should help with the throat issue. Rosalind controls air—hot, dry air, to be specific. So when she uses it like that, it can not only push people, but she can suffocate them. Plus, it’s hell on the skin, so make sure to moisturize.”
I found myself reaching for the glass he’d indicated, caught off guard by his words as usual. If he ever made sense, it might make me more suspicious. Somehow, his nonsense made it impossible to think straight, to recognize that he was a complete lunatic.
But I didn’t see what I thought I did, right?
There was no way. Eyes like that would mean standing on the brink of corruption, dancing just breaths away from absolute ruin. No esper could survive in that condition for more than a few minutes—maybe.
And looking at him now, I couldn’t imagine that. An esper that far gone couldn’t ever pretend to be normal.
Impossible.
The water helped my parched throat, and three gulps of it made me feel ready to ask again. “What happened to her?”
Carter tilted his head. “She attacked a guide. That’s a death sentence.”
I sat up straighter, clutching the glass tightly in my hands. Even if she was a bitch—which clearly she was—I didn’t want her to die. I didn’t want anyone to die, and certainly didn’t want that on my hands. “She didn’t mean to.”
“Of course she did. Come on, Yun, you should know better than most that we need to set an example, make it clear that people can’t do that. Otherwise, it could happen again.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want her dead.”
The word dead stuck in my throat as though I hadn’t drank any water at all. It terrified me.
People didn’t give dead the respect it deserved.
The truth was that it wasn’t death that scared me, but the moments that came before. The fear, the pain—I’d seen them all on the faces of others.
Even more terrifying than dying was the idea of others dying while I could do nothing. It was loneliness, the darkness, being isolated and without others because I’d lived while they’d died.
My breathing sped, turning shallow, making my chest burn.
“She isn’t dead,” Carter offered, his tone softening a hair. “I didn’t even report her, so she’s not going to get any additional punishments.”
Additional?
The word stuck out to me, but I refused to pick at it. If she hadn’t gotten turned over and she was alive, that was enough, right?
“She’ll know better than to try that again, though. I don’t like to repeat myself.” An undercurrent of threat rested in that statement, like a warning to me as well.
I shuddered, the memory of how he’d looked coming back to me, one I still refused to believe.
“Did she say anything?”
“Oh, she said a lot. People tend to run their mouths when they’re scared, after all. It doesn’t really do anyone any favors, but it’s still human nature, I guess.”
“About me.”
“Oh, you mean why they call you Blizzard? Well, I already knew that, so it wasn’t exactly new information.”
I pulled my legs up and wrapped my arms around them, setting my chin on top of my knees.
Sure, I’d known I had a reputation, but most of the details had stayed quiet because the Guild hadn’t wanted anyone to know about the unstable guide they kept shuffling around from squad to squad.
They wanted that to stay hidden, to keep looking just as pristine as ever.
I was their dirty little secret, too potentially useful to get rid of but too unpredictable to be let off the leash.
He turned more fully to face me, one of his legs cocked at the knee on the bed.
“How dumb do you take me for? You were called Blizzard, you’ve put espers in the hospital and you refuse to do physical guiding.
Do you really think I couldn’t have worked that out on my own?
It’s like a three-piece puzzle, Yun, I already had a pretty good idea how they fit together.
Besides, if the esper you put in the hospital broke that boundary…
” He shrugged. “I think he probably had it coming then.”
That was unexpected. So far, I’d gotten nothing like that as a response, not from an esper especially.
Most of them explained that the attraction between guide and esper was normal, that neither could really be expected to keep their hands to themselves in the heat of the moment, that guiding was an intimate exchange and contact should be expected.
In short?
This had always been a me problem.
So hearing Carter say that startled me.
“But—”
“But nothing,” he cut me off. “Boundaries are boundaries. Same goes here. If anyone on our squad gets handsy and ends up with their brain scrambled, well, that’s on us.
It’s a good lesson about consent, I figure.
Now, go ahead and rest up. Maybe wash your face first?
You’ve got drool—” He gestured first in a line at my cheek, then opened his hand and indicated the entire side of my face. “Pretty much all over there.”
He turned to walk away, his back looking even larger than usual, but the memory of what I’d seen wouldn’t go away.
“Was that just my imagination?” I asked without context.
Was that my way of giving him an out? Because I didn’t really want to know?
Probably.
Still, I offered it for us both.
He could say he had no idea what I was talking about, or laugh and tell me my imagination had gotten the best of me, or even ask me just what sort of fantasies I was having about him.
Instead, he paused by the door and spoke without turning back my way. “Instead, I’ll give you some advice. It’s good not to ask questions you really don’t want the answer to.”
Which was an answer all its own, wasn’t it?