Chapter Twenty-Eight
Shear
Having Yun out of my sight made me uneasy. I wasn’t sure why—I rarely cared much about anyone else.
It was like having a string pulled across my bare skin, slowly and unending and impossible to ignore as it agitated the hairs, the sensation soft and almost ticklish. No matter what happened, it drew my focus back toward them, wanting to walk into the room, to go speak to them.
“She’s fine,” Carter said.
“You sure? How do we know she’s fine?” Ingram asked.
“She’s with the other guides in the private guide room. That’s the safest place for them,” Carter pressed. “Nothing is getting in there.”
“I don’t like it,” I said before I could stop myself.
Carter lifted an eyebrow. “It’s bad enough for you to care? Well, fuck, maybe we should be worried.”
I wanted to ignore his statement, but I’d started this by stupidly opening my mouth. “People are easily swayed, especially when alone. I dislike her being with the others.”
“Who knows what they’re telling her?” Kenyon muttered.
“You can’t just lock her up,” Carter pointed out.
“Of course we can. She’s only a guide. She can’t get past locks,” I said.
Carter sighed, as though I’d missed the point.
Perhaps I had, but that didn’t make me wrong. We could lock her up. We could restrict her movements so she wouldn’t go out of our sight, so she was never at risk.
Guides were protected by the Guild, but that didn’t mean they’d care if we were overly careful with her. If anything, they’d consider watching her more closely, ensuring her safety, as a positive and reasonable measure.
“You want her to run? Because that’s how you get her to run away.” Carter shook his head. “You might be great at recognizing others’ thoughts and feelings, but you sure don’t understand people that well.”
I crossed my arms, hating that he wasn’t wrong. It was true that I’d never quite figured out how minds worked. It felt like nothing more than a constant form of observation. I knew what people thought and felt in the moment, but working out why they felt that way? What they might think next?
Perhaps it was because I was a mentalist, because I’d turned into an esper younger than most.
That was what my records said, at least. The doctors I’d seen from that early age had chalked up my faulty social skills to my lack of use. I’d never had to develop them since my powers fed me that information.
Whatever the reason, it usually had me keeping my mouth shut instead of risking others realizing how little I actually understood.
We headed into the large space where the class would take place. It had a stage up front and a large projector screen, no doubt hooked to a computer with all the scary pictures of The Pitt.
Being here was a massive waste of time for us. We’d not only dealt with stable dungeons in the past, but had personally come to this one and survived it. I doubted there were many working espers who could say the same.
Still, we’d gotten told to attend because they thought we needed the refresher. It was a not-so-subtle way of reminding us that our last time hadn’t gone well.
Or rather, that the Guild blamed us for the outcome.
Eyes turned our ways, the reaction more hostile than usual. Generally, we got pity or derision, but right now?
Hatred.
Anger.
Rage.
Why? Probably because the idea of going into a dungeon with a squad they saw as untrustworthy could put the entire mission in danger. It was like building a bridge—every last section had to stand, because if any fell, the whole thing would collapse.
They didn’t want us to be that weak link that took them all down.
“You’re this way,” a low-rank esper said, one of the people working the event to keep it running smoothly.
They couldn’t stand in a fight for a job like this one, so instead, they took on the administrative tasks.
We followed the woman to a set of chairs near the front and to the left.
It was like getting sat up near the teacher’s desk at school.
She left us there, and most of the spots were still open.
I can’t believe we’re back here again.
We didn’t have a choice, didn’t have a way to get out of it, but that didn’t change just how fucking much I hated it. This dungeon had almost killed us before, had ended up destroying our lives, and they expected us to face it again?
Hadn’t we paid our price? Hadn’t we done what we needed to do?
It was someone else’s turn to take over now, to throw themselves into this mess.
Despite me thinking that, however, I sure as hell didn’t want to suffer the fate of an esper who got thrown out of the Guild.
No thanks.
It meant we had to sit there and do as we were told, that we had to accept this bullshit assignment. My gaze moved over to the seat beside me, the one with Yun’s name printed on the card.
This time, we have something worth protecting…