Chapter Thirty
Carter
Having to sit here and listen to someone tell me about The Pitt annoyed me more than I wanted to admit.
It didn’t dim my false smile, of course.
No, nothing could shake that. It was easy to sit back, my hands folded over my stomach, my legs kicked forward beneath the table and pretend that none of this mattered to me.
The person up front was Inlan Price, the mouthpiece of the Guild, at least for the espers. He liked the spotlight, loved being up there telling everyone what to do even though the asshole didn’t know anything from the last time The Pitt had opened—he’d been way too far back to see shit.
He’d enjoyed his spot at the back, telling others what to do, sending better espers off to their deaths so he could take the glory on television the next day.
My only benefit was that it was also his job to stand there and apologize for my behavior.
“The Pitt is one of the most dangerous stable dungeons currently active,” Inlan explained, the screen behind him showing images from The Pitt.
Funny how it appeared like most other dungeons, yet I’d have recognized it anytime. That place had tattooed itself onto my mind, the place where everything had changed.
I’d walked into that dungeon a fucking hero, the cover model of half the damn magazines out there, and by the time I exited?
I peered around, noting the way no one sat too close to us, the looks we got, the snide little comments, and that showed what had happened when we’d come out.
We’d lost everything.
And here I am, ready to go in again.
“One of the most dangerous things about this dungeon is the corruption gain. It causes corruption levels to rise at five times that of other similarly ranked dungeons. This means that the presence of guides is going to be instrumental to this mission. We will have both squad specific guides located in well-protected areas near the portal, along with many floating guides to fill in the blanks. The most important thing is that we keep sessions short to ensure espers remain at optimal levels.”
“It can’t be that bad, can it?” someone asked from the peanut gallery. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I didn’t bother myself with learning anything about new espers. There were so many of them coming in each year, and it would be a full-time job trying to keep track of them.
I wasn’t the HR department for the Guild—no reason for me to worry about that.
Inlan at least had the decency to put the esper in place with a sharp look that shut him up. “Do you know how many espers we lost to corruption last time The Pitt opened?”
The esper huffed.
“I’m serious. Answer.”
“Two?” the esper guessed, but his tone suggested he saw it as the trap it was.
“Fifteen.”
The esper at least appeared properly scolded. “A stable dungeon will have casualties, of course—”
Inland cut him off as though he weren’t speaking at all. “Fifteen to corruption. Another thirty died or were declared missing in action when the portal closed, but fifteen turned.”
The gravity of that rushed through the crowd, silencing everyone. It was normal to lose espers, but to have them turn during a mission? To have so many killed by corruption rather than actual damage?
The truth was that most espers would happily take a bloody death rather than losing themselves, instead of becoming shadows of the people they used to be.
Inlan took the silence as understanding, because he released the mouthy esper by looking away. “Since we are on that topic, I would like to introduce Kaiden Phillips, one of our top guides. He will share his insights, so pay attention.”
Kaiden stepped onto the stage from a table to the left, looking different from earlier. When he’d run up to Yun, when he’d wrapped his arms around her as though he had every right, he’d seemed younger, carefree. Now, however, he seemed like the high-ranking guide I knew him to be.
Kaiden was the sort of guide that everyone knew. He was likely the most powerful guide, and despite some of his personal life getting in the way for him, no one would doubt his knowledge or place in our world.
I’d never worked with him, not even when we sat up at the top as well. It hadn’t been any real choice—back then we’d always had our own guide and Kaiden had always refused to settle down with his own squad.
And there was the whole rumor that he was a top.
Not a lot of espers were willing to let a guide top them—and I wasn’t interested in that—but it wasn’t like he didn’t still have a place.
Besides, if anyone knew better than to believe every rumor, I did.
“I’ve interacted with The Pitt twice,” Kaiden said, his hands folded behind him, resting at the small of his back. The position pushed his chest out and made him look larger. Hell, he could almost pass for an esper. He proved that not all guides were women or waify, feminine men.
Maybe I’d let him top me…
A sharp look from my side said Shear had probably caught a strand of that thought. I didn’t bother to deny it—Shear knew me too well for me to try. Instead, I gestured toward the stage as though to scold him for paying attention to my perverted musings instead of the point of our being here.
Math—not my strong suit—kicked me in the head as I tried to work out how Kaiden could have been around for The Pitt twice. It only opened every ten years, and Kaiden couldn’t have been older than thirty? Maybe he just looked good for his age?
“My first exposure to The Pitt was when I was twelve—my first stable dungeon after appearing as a guide. I was still in training at the time, and this was when The Pitt appeared outside of Phoenix. We had twenty guides working that day, plus others in training like myself, and we could not get ahead of the corruption levels. We lost only two espers that day to monsters, but twenty fell to corruption.” He paused at the end of that statement, as though to ensure it sank in.
He didn’t really need to—not with a group of espers.
Guides prevented corruption, sure, they helped give us more time, but no one understood the danger of corruption like the one staring down the muzzle of that gun.
I knew exactly what it could mean, what it would mean, eventually, if I didn’t get myself killed by a monster first, if I didn’t take my own fate into my hands and deal with the problem myself first.
It was just a long fucking path with a single possible outcome. I either died or I ended up as much a monster as those I’d spent my life killing.
There weren’t other options, not for espers, not since we’d started appearing around eighty years ago.
Still, sometimes guides liked to act like they were the experts of it, like it was their job to make sure espers understood the danger.
Kaiden struck me as that sort of asshole.
Or maybe I just really disliked him because of how close he was to Yun. Some part of me wanted to put a claim on her, to make sure he understood that he was second to us. I didn’t care that he’d known her longer, that she sure didn’t smile like that when she saw us. We were espers and guide.
She’d guided us, lived with us, was under our protection. That meant we had a connection with her that Kaiden never would.
That thought helped me to settle deeper into the chair, scooting down slightly so I looked like a delinquent at the back of a classroom.
“You have already heard what happened the last time The Pitt opened right in the middle of San Diego, near the beach. We lost over a thousand civilians by the time the portal closed, and more in the months and years since with breakthrough monsters. The San Diego appearance was an absolute disaster, aided by a lack of Guild planning, a failure of squads to work together, and…” Kaiden’s gaze moved over to us, a sharpness there that said he knew what had happened—or at least the official story.
I smiled as though I couldn’t feel the daggers there.
“Other issues,” he finished. “We can’t have that happen again.
That is why we are putting so much into these practices first. I will handle training with guides ahead of time while the espers receive their own training over the next month until The Pitt appears.
We will be prepared to travel to where The Pitt opens as soon as it starts to appear.
” He gestured to Inlan, signaling he had nothing else to say.
Inlan took center stage again. “Part of what this meeting is for is to alert you all about what is coming up. Our joint missions so far have taught us something important—squads don’t work well together.
If we want to create a cohesive group to ensure we are ready for The Pitt, we have to take more drastic measures.
For that reason, we have decided to move forward our timeline.
You all have one week to finish your preparations, to settle your plans, because every squad involved in The Pitt offensive will arrive at our training location in Nevada in one week to give us time to actually prepare. ”
I lifted my eyebrow at that—it was the last thing I’d expected to hear. Working together was one thing—a stupid idea, but whatever—but housing and training us together? Full-grown adult espers used to having our own way?
I chuckled to myself at what a fucking disaster this was going to be.