Chapter Thirteen
Shear
Well, that girl was more than a bit fucked up. It was pretty obvious to me as she walked, even if anyone else would have missed it.
Her brain sparked up, so many ugly emotions twisting together, feeding off each other, even though her outer appearance gave none of it away. In fact, it impressed me that she could hide the turmoil so well.
Normally people gave away small hints, but she offered little beyond a rapid heartbeat.
It reminded me to be cautious when it came to her—the girl could probably lie very well if she chose to.
Kenyon had mentioned that she’d had a nightmare, but it was hard to believe it would affect her this much.
Mental activity like that implied the nightmare had brought up issues already deeply held.
It wouldn’t happen from just a bad dream, but only when trauma was pricked by reliving it, when it stirred up the past.
I’d thought the same thing after her reaction to The Pitt.
What exactly had she gone through? What was it that she kept locked up in that head of hers?
I wanted to take a spin around it, to dip my toes into her past, into the tangled mess of her thoughts. That was partly because I enjoyed it, because my powers meant it felt comfortable, but this was different.
It felt more personal, as though I somehow needed to understand. I wanted to unwind the mess of her head, to guide her back through it, to fix it so she could at least sleep.
However, none of that was for right now—probably not ever. That sort of work took trust, and I doubted she was planning on giving me any amount of trust.
Not that anyone ever did…
“Ready?” the police officer asked as he came out of the interrogation room, his voice tight.
Law enforcement tended not to trust espers. We were a force greater than them, something they could neither counter nor control. If we wanted to pose a problem, we certainly could.
That would put anyone on edge, even if we proved ourselves useful from time to time.
Times like right now.
I nodded, noting the way the officer refused to meet my gaze.
Did he think I couldn’t use my powers if he didn’t look at me?
Silly superstition. That might be true of lower-rank espers, but one of my skill didn’t need that.
If I wanted to tear into his mind, I could do it without even line of sight, so long as I’d interacted with him in the past month or so.
Knowing that wouldn’t make him any more comfortable, though, so I kept the fact to myself and simply nodded.
Speaking rarely helped me.
He gestured for us to follow, so I did, with Yun beside me.
The others had stayed in the waiting area, since the police didn’t want four espers traipsing around in their department.
As if that mattered. If we wanted to tear this place down to the slab, there was nothing any of them could do to stop us.
The officer held open the door to a conference room, waiting until we entered before he spoke. “I’ll go get him.” He didn’t wait for a response before leaving.
Yun shifted her weight from foot to foot, a sure sign of discomfort. “Why am I here?” she finally asked.
“Policy. When dealing with civilians, they require a guide to be present.”
“Why? This isn’t even a hard task.” As soon as she asked, she let out a soft laugh, as though she’d worked it through herself. “They worry that any esper will get corrupted, huh?”
“A few videos online about what happens and they think it’s something to worry about. Don’t concern yourself—I won’t need guiding. They just require it.”
Yun nodded and took a seat near the back corner. Her picking that place suggested that she feared someone behind her. It further drove home her unease, the idea that she was especially untrusting at the moment. “And the job?”
“You’re interested now? I would have thought you’d ask on the drive.”
She shrugged. “I figured I’d just sit in the car, so I didn’t really care. What the job is doesn’t change what I have going on, but I don’t usually have to be in the room.”
“The suspect they’re bringing in has likely abducted a child. The police had searched for the child, but have had no luck in locating him. If they put it off any longer, they fear they won’t find the child alive, so they need me to take a look inside his head for the truth.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“It would be if they used that information to convict him, but if it leads only to finding the child? Well, that’s a gray area.”
“And you don’t mind doing that? Prying into someone’s mind without consent?” Her question came out with a shakiness that I filed away, that I tried to fit into the rest of the puzzle that she was.
“Not especially. Slipping into someone’s mind is hardly intimate in the way you imagine. It’s no different to me than reading a person’s expression or their body language.”
She frowned, as though she didn’t agree but couldn’t—or wouldn’t—argue directly with that assertion.
We didn’t need to discuss it any further when the door opened and the officer walked in with a man behind him.
The sight of the man made me want to pull back.
People said you couldn’t spot a monster just by looking at them, but those people weren’t espers.
They didn’t have the information I did. The truth was that causing harm to others destroyed the mental faculties of the person doing it.
That sort of damage was like a form of self-harm, and the person carried those scars.
It was easy for someone like me, someone who could see deeper than most, to spot them.
This man was such an example. The damage to his psyche proved just how much pain he had willingly inflicted on others, and each wound there festered.
It honestly made me want nothing to do with him.
I’d told Yun I didn’t care about doing my job, and while that was true for the most part, there were some minds I’d rather not touch.
It was like a nurse having to help a bloated, diseased, rotten corpse.
A strong stomach went a long way, but that didn’t mean they enjoyed it.
The paperwork I’d read on the way over, however, played in my mind, a reminder of why I had to do this.
The child was only six, and they had no leads. The child had already been missing for two days— there was nothing to say that he would survive at all, and any delay only reduced those chances and gave this monster time to inflict more pain.
“These are the notaries that will handle taking your statement. Just give them your ID and sign the statement in their presence.”
Ah, that’s the ruse?
I didn’t much care what lie they told the suspect to get him in the room with me—I only needed a few moments.
“Can we hurry this up?” the man muttered as though we were wasting his time, as though we were the problem here. He pulled his wallet out and tossed the ID on the table in front of me, then slammed the page on the table, a pen in his hand. He went about signing it, motions quick.
Which gave me the chance to focus entirely on him. The sensation of his twisted mind made me want to recoil from the ugliness, but I pushed through.
I slid into his thoughts, so subtle he would never notice it. It was the skill of my rank, the ability to spark thoughts in his own mind in a way that made him think he had caused them, allowing me to observe his reaction, his thoughts like a string of statements.
Fucking idiots. Always think they’re so fucking smart. Not that smart, huh? They thought they had me, but they don’t have shit.
The man went through his little tirade, so sure of his own intelligence. I directed his thoughts with easy skill, making him think about the boy, about where he was.
The images that hit me made me worry I’d lose my breakfast. The boy, dirty, scared, crying.
I didn’t follow that further, not wanting it to cling in my mind forever. Instead, I pressed for details, for the location.
4925 Oak Dr. Basement.
Exactly what I needed. I reached out to Carter, the process easy after years of dealing with each other. I told him what he needed to know.
The man finished signing, then tossed the pen on the table with a self-assured smirk. He took his license. “We done here?”
The officer looked my way, and I nodded. He opened the door for the man, explaining directions to leave, then closed the door again for privacy. “What did you get?”
I repeated the address. “Basement, under the garage. It’s an abandoned house he’s done work on. The boy was alive as of this morning, and the suspect believes he still is. He won’t go straight there, though, so you’ll have time to retrieve the child first.”
The officer didn’t so much as give me a thank you before he was off. I sat, more of a collapse than a well thought out motion, but at least I’d gotten myself in front of one of the chairs, first.
“Are you okay?” Yun’s voice surprised me at first, since I’d been so consumed by the work that I’d entirely forgotten her presence. I hadn’t intended for her to see that.
“Yes. It’s just never a welcome experience dealing with certain minds. They feel like rooting around in refuse, like digging my hands through maggots.” I shuddered, trying to rid myself of the memory.
“But you saved the kid.”
“I did a job—nothing more.”
She frowned, as though she wasn’t sure why I would make a distinction. “Because of you, they’re going to help the kid. That’s good.”
I turned my head to look at her, hating having to burst her bubble but driven to do so.
“They paid me to do a job—that’s it. What happens next, that’s up to the police.
” I paused, then added on, “Besides, I didn’t save anyone.
Even if that kid gets rescued, even if they get him out of that basement, he isn’t saved.
He still will have the memories of what happened in his head forever. ”
She shifted in her chair, my words seeming to trouble her. Or perhaps it was trouble with understanding how she felt about it. Finally, she spoke softly. “That kid wouldn’t agree. Even if there are scars left, getting out of that situation is still worth it.”
The way she spoke drew me short. I’d already known she had something in her past, but the truth of those words, the conviction, showed just how much she understood.
“Tell me,” I said, a command in my voice.
“Tell you what?”
“Whatever it is that you went through.”
That shut down any chance I had. It had been stupid, and the moment I’d uttered the words, I’d wondered what the hell I was doing, what I was thinking.
I knew better than to push a person who wasn’t ready to be pushed. I’d seen her mental state, should have known that it wouldn’t matter what I wanted to know. Applying pressure would only cause her to retreat, for her to pull back and refuse to answer anything.
Yet I’d done it because in that moment, I couldn’t not do it. Perhaps it was from seeing the boy, from the way my brain still rejected the touch of that other twisted mind, but the idea of Yun in such a situation drove rational thought right out of my mind.
Worse, it made me want to crawl into hers, to see how it felt to curl up there, if it would be as calming as I suspected, as welcoming.
Well, not welcoming right now.
“I have nothing to say,” she snapped. “And don’t even think about trying to force your way into my mind. I’ll know.”
She would, of course. As an S-Rank guide, she’d be able to feel it, unlike most. That wasn’t the biggest reason I resisted, though.
Instead, it was because some part of me I hardly recognized didn’t want to do so.
I wanted her to welcome me in, to ask me for it, to have her trust. Doing it without that wouldn’t give me what I really wanted, so I didn’t give into the desire.
“You’ll tell me eventually,” I said, more hopeful than certain.
“Don’t hold your breath.”
But I couldn’t let go of the idea, of the fear, of the curiosity of what could have fractured the little guide’s mind so much.
Nor could I ignore the desire to watch someone burn for it.