Chapter Thirty-Five
Yun
I would have figured that being surrounded by guides would make me more comfortable, but it never quite worked out that way. Instead, I felt almost more unnerved, as though they could see right through me, like they knew everything that was wrong with me.
I felt like a broken version, and every last one of them knew it.
Which wasn’t too far off from the truth, given the looks I got.
It wasn’t like it shocked me. I’d been used to guides staring at me like that, which was one reason I preferred not dealing with them when possible.
Kaiden wasn’t anywhere that I could see—and it wasn’t fair to expect him to protect me.
Instead, I pulled my shoulders back and walked into the busy room as though I had no idea that anyone thought anything about me. It wasn’t fake it ’til you make it so much as ‘fuck ’em.’
I spotted a few people I recognized, but none I was close to. I passed by those meandering around the large room and headed for the check-in table. Civilians worked that location—two older men who sat with open laptops in front of them.
“I’m checking in,” I said. “Yun Moore.”
The man on the left typed, his gaze on the screen rather than me. Then again, civilians tended to do that.
They either had hero worship—putting us on some pedestal anyone would fall from—or they acted like we were tools to sacrifice for their wellbeing.
It seemed from the lack of any basic niceties that they viewed guides the second way, as something for their benefit, but not really human at all.
“Rank S. Assigned to Squad S412.” He rambled, his voice bored. “You’ll be ranked again today.”
“How are they testing?”
“Blood draws to check for corruption antigens, then sample guidings.”
Blood draws, great.
The sample guiding was less of a problem, but the blood draws?
Something about needles just set my teeth on edge, making me want to flinch away. Worse than the needle was the tourniquet. The way they hugged tight around my arm, the sensation of helplessness—I hated it all.
Still, I smiled as though it didn’t bother me. “So where do I go?”
“You’ll get called when it’s your turn. Listen for your name.” He handed me a stack of papers. “Give these to the nurse who’s doing the draw.” With that, he returned to his laptop as though I wasn’t even worth a goodbye or good luck.
I held back the words I wanted to say and stepped away from the table. No reason to cause more of a problem here. Fuck knew I’d gotten myself into trouble enough times, and I didn’t need any more reasons for them to dislike me.
The room filled up more and more, and I had to admit, guides were an interesting group. Where espers had this power behind them, something almost tangible, guides held an ethereal quality.
They glided more than walked, with this lightness that seemed to absorb any darkness around them.
It made me wonder if I could ever be that sort of person. Could I ever feel that way?
Across the room I spotted the guide who embodied that description more than any other—Mercy.
She smiled widely. Her blonde hair hung down in loose curls around her, and she wore a sundress that hung to just above her knees. She laughed as though she had no worries in the entire world, as though nothing could touch her.
Again, a thought that would do nothing good slipped through my mind.
What if I could be like that?
Would my life be easier? No doubt about that, really. Squads would accept me happily, would fight over me. They’d cherish me, claiming me as their own, giving a damn.
Except, no matter how tempting the thought might have been for a moment, I knew it wasn’t possible.
From what I knew, Mercy had been flagged as a guide young, after living an idyllic life. Rich parents, a wonderful home, never had anything bad happen.
She’d gotten trained after ranking in as an S, then had her pick of assignments. Even though any squad would take her in a second, she’d decided to float, going where needed, only working with squads short term.
She was the epitome of what a guide should be—poised, sweet, sexy in a way that made me question my own sexuality. Basically, she was everything I wasn’t, and worse, she was even nice to me. It made it that much harder to hate her.
“Yun Moore.”
I snapped my head around toward the back of the room, where a nurse in blue scrubs stood next to one of the steel-and-cloth dividers. She checked the tablet in her hand and called my name again.
I headed over and gave her the paperwork, then sat where she indicated. The tightened grasp of the thin rubber used around my arm had me closing my eyes and breathing slowly.
At least she found a vein easily, proving that while she might not be nice, she was competent.
I’d take competent over nice any day, especially when it came to medical know-how.
She pressed a piece of gauze against the pinprick wound, then wrapped a pink bandage around it, just above my elbow, the material sticking to itself.
“Go sit in the next area for a few minutes to make sure you’re not dizzy, and they’ll tell you what to do afterward.
” She pointed the opposite direction from where I’d walked in.
Which meant that the back of the large room was sectioned off into at least two or three areas, intended for guides to move through them one at a time.
Right after I passed from the area for blood draws, the nurse called another name, moving us through like cattle. I sat in the chair she’d indicated, giving me a look at the next room.
It had four sections, telling me they expected this area to bottleneck. It made sense, as doing sample guidings was time-consuming.
Guiding espers was a back-and-forth sort of deal, which meant we pulled different amounts based on the esper. The closer the two were in terms of rank, the more intimate they were, the higher the compatibility, the easier it was, but it all changed based on the esper.
With a sample like this, corruption was contained inside a low-level heart, and the guide removed the corruption from the heart.
Using a known factor would help them evaluate a guide’s skills on their own—they’d be able to see how well the guide did compared to others without the bond or esper playing a part.
It wasn’t that pleasant, of course, because removing corruption from a sample was more work, required more effort from the guide.
The heart was small and cube-shaped, appearing more like a piece of dull obsidian.
A guide stumbled away from the cube, a civilian catching him before he hit the ground.
Yeah, not a wonderfully good time.
The civilian escorted the guide away before another nurse in scrubs met my gaze, then gestured for me to approach.
I used the armrests of the chair to push myself to my feet, then followed her order. Someone else traded out the cube with a fresh one, this one humming with corruption. They used gloves, then set it right into the space carved out of the metal structure.
Civilians didn’t react well to corruption, so they tended to avoid it when possible.
“Your records show you’re an S-Rank, right?”
“Yes, S-Rank.”
She nodded, tapping her fingers on the screen of the tablet. “Any recent changes to abilities? Any problems with guiding?”
“No.”
She ran through the questions with an ease that said she did it often, that she was used to this work. Some nurses and doctors specialized in guides or espers, and that seemed to be the case with this one.
“We’re going to use an S-Rank sample for you. Now, if you aren’t S-Rank, there’s a risk to doing that. The corruption could overwhelm you, so make sure you’re honest.”
I almost laughed at her warning, as though I hadn’t been through this enough to fully understand the risk.
A lower-level guide couldn’t handle as much corruption, meaning they could accidentally take in more than they could filter. It wouldn’t usually do long-term harm, but it would knock them out and it wasn’t all that pleasant a recovery.
However, despite all my flaws, all my problems, there was no doubt as to my rank or abilities.
It was one of the few things I could manage.
And at least this time it was just a sample, which meant I didn’t have to worry about the whole ‘no-touching’ thing.
“Go on. An average time would be five minutes to clear the corruption.”
I nodded and walked up to the heart, the sickening sense of corruption thickening as I neared it. I could smell it, feel it in the air. It was worse than an esper, since this corruption felt stagnant, as though it had festered and rotted.
However, it was just a cube, and that reassured me. It was nothing more than a rock capable of holding corruption inside of it.
I shook my hand once, then set it on the side of the cube. A beep signaled the start as the nurse pressed a button on her watch.
A timer, no doubt.
I pulled the corruption from the cube quickly, allowing it to rush into me.
It was easier in some ways than guiding an esper—less complicated, at least—but I had to do all the work myself.
I drew that power into me, feeling my body already filtering it, changing it, absorbing it and rendering it harmless.
Five minutes?
A joke.
The corruption slipped into me, comfortable in a way that unnerved me, easy in a way it shouldn’t have been.
It almost felt like the corruption was rushing from the cube to me eagerly, as though it knew exactly where it wanted to be.
It terrified me how easy it really was, how little effort it took.
The words in my head came back to me, the fact I was ruined, that I was bonded with him. It made me remember what he’d said, made me question that.
Was it because I really was broken? Had what happened altered me so much that I wasn’t normal anymore?
Those doubts wrapped around me tighter and tighter until they strangled me, but even that didn’t stop the flow of the corruption.
It felt as though only a few moments passed before the corruption slowed and stopped, all of it emptied from the cube and into me.
It no longer hummed with that energy signature, telling me I’d drained it.
A low whistle had me spinning, fear beating at me after all the thoughts that had tumbled around in my skull. Instead of my past, instead of the terrors that lurked in my mind, I found only the nurse staring at me, her gaze moving between her watch and me.
“Forty-two seconds,” she said, frowning as though she couldn’t believe it.
Then again, given that the average for my rank was five minutes, I’d beat it by four minutes and some change. I hadn’t intended to show it up that far, but that didn’t change anything.
The look she gave me said she wasn’t impressed, but rather suspicious.
Yeah, great job making friends…