Chapter Thirty-Six
Shear
I closed my eyes against the pain in my head, the sharp, stabbing sensation that reached deeper than physical pain. It felt like an attack on my psyche itself, something I wanted to yank away from but knew better than to attempt.
Resistance always proved fruitless. It never got me where I wanted to go and just increased the amount I suffered.
So I didn’t try to stop that clawing sensation in my head, the one spawned from a debuffer putting up a shield to stop mentalists from fiddling around in anyone’s head.
It wasn’t just a matter of not using my powers, however, it also affected my brain.
It sizzled through my gray matter, causing that agony.
I hated when they pitted us against each other.
Fighting monsters or dealing with civilians was one thing. I could do that anytime without a problem.
Fighting against other espers always took me backward, reminded me of the years I spent training. All I had wanted back then was someone to trust, to rely on, but Obsidian had made it clear that wasn’t a luxury afforded to espers.
It meant when this training camp pitted us against each other, it turned my stomach. They wanted us to learn to work together, but decided to make us enemies instead?
I could almost hear Carter in my ear telling me they weren’t doing that, that friendly competition would help people bond.
I knew the truth, though, because I could hear it all in the heads of the civilians who watched over us.
They wanted to see how far they could push us, wanted to see what we could do and had a morbid fascination.
Civilians always did, in my experience.
It took me back to Obsidian, back to when I’d been nothing but a science experiment for them, too young to control my reactions, to know how to handle it.
I wasn’t a child anymore, though.
“Debuffer?” Ingram asked from beside me, all of us in a large gymnasium, the lights turned so low and a lack of windows making it nearly impossible to see anything.
I nodded. “Rank-S putting out an anti-mentalist blanket.”
Ingram glanced away, his eyes catching the stray light to make them almost glow. “Near the back. Got him.” He didn’t have to tell me what he planned to do—I never had to fear that Ingram wouldn’t handle problems.
He was difficult and broken, but loyal.
He disappeared, the darkness closing in on me, the blindness almost terrifying. It stole my most trusted and relied upon sense from me, plunged me into a void where I couldn’t understand the world around me. The lack of light mattered so much less to me than losing my abilities.
Few debuffers had the strength to put me in such a state. The fact that they’d found one unnerved me.
However, this was our rank test, not the other squad’s, so that meant the Guild would pick the perfect people able to counter us.
I had no idea where Kenyon or Carter were within the space, unable to sense them, unable to see them. My vision was the same as a civilian’s, my other senses and skills no better than any human.
It meant I had no idea what exactly they were doing, but history had taught me they had things well in hand. If only I could get rid of this horrid pain…
If I could unbind myself, I’d end this immediately. I didn’t care for showing off, but neither would I just let things continue if I could end them. I wasn’t like Carter, willing to lessen myself to play a game.
A scream echoed through the space, and the pain in my head lessened, though it didn’t disappear.
Not gone?
I let out a soft laugh at the realization of how they’d managed this, of their fear when it came to me. They’d gotten not one but two debuffers to screw with my head. It explained why they’d had such an upper hand and it did something I rarely experienced—it angered me.
Normally, emotions were just information, something I saw in others. I didn’t have to suffer through them myself. It surprised me when it sprang up now at the idea that they would try such a dirty trick against me.
The roar of a monster echoed in the room, but I ignored it. Now with only one esper screwing with my mind, I could identify the others around the space with ease, their minds like spotlights in the darkness, standing out for me to attack.
Three monsters, all Rank S, one already dead.
Ingram shifted closer to one of the monsters—moving in the shadows, only identifiable to me because of our bond, because of our years of working together.
Carter went after two others, the darkness not a problem for him.
Kenyon stood to the back, his eyes closed, telling me he sensed the health of us rather than focusing on the enemies or trying to see.
He trusted that the rest of us would ensure he didn’t get targeted.
Other than the monsters, one debuffer stood near a doorway across the gym and another was already down—thanks to Ingram. A third esper stood, and I got the sense they were there to keep things dark, to control the temperature, to cause the wind to whip through the space and throw us off balance.
In other words, the civilians in charge wanted to figure out how we handled monsters, so they needed to throw anything they could at us. They wanted to give us the unpredictable, to see how we would react in a situation that got out of hand.
And if something in here ended us?
Well, we were only worth as much as we were useful. A weak esper was no different from a dead one to them.
It made me think about each of us, about the things we’d sacrificed, the things they’d put us through. Worse, I thought about Yun, about what they might have done to her.
And something that had never happened before occurred—I lost my temper. I’d gotten angry before, something fleeting and frustrating but controllable. This took it to another level, it exploded through me, filling me.
Rage like I’d not known myself capable of exploded through me, causing me to put my hands out, to let it flow from me. I didn’t think about it, didn’t direct it, and it was met with absolute silence.
No screams, no roars, no sense of panic.
The darkness sank away when the large florescent lights flickered on.
We’d entered in the dark, so I hadn’t gotten a look at the layout before. Civilians stood on the second level, on a metal pathway that kept them up above the fray and followed along the walls. They wore night-vision goggles, allowing them to watch the test even without the lights.
They didn’t move, though, not to turn off the goggles, not to react, nothing. Similarly, through the space on the bottom level, the three monsters and the two espers not part of my squad remained frighteningly still, as though dead.
Only my squad remained unaffected by my hold, the grasp I had on each mind in the building, the fingers of my power so deep into their psyche they couldn’t even consider resisting. I felt their fear, their panic, but they couldn’t budge, couldn’t worm their way out of my hold.
And I could end them all so easily. It would take so little for me to make sure that no one in this building was a threat again, to crush them. All of them, or just the monsters, or just the espers—it didn’t matter.
“Release them.” The voice came from the sound system, and my powers reached out, searching for the person, wanting to control them, to drag them down just like the others.
Except…they were too far away. Watching through the cameras?
Must be.
“That’s enough,” Carter said, his voice careful as he looked toward me.
“We were meant to kill the monsters. I’m doing that.”
“You’re holding humans, not just monsters,” the voice on the loudspeaker said.
I shifted my gaze around until I located the camera in the corner.
When I spoke again, I did so to the person on the other side.
“Is there a difference? Human. Creature. Esper. They’re all monsters.
” My powers reached out even farther, stretching, searching, until they latched onto the man on the other side of that camera, the mind who spoke through the PA system.
He was terrified—his brain lit up in all the primal places, the deep spots, the ones that initiated fight or flight in people. He was so far away, nearly a mile, at the other end of the complex, but that wasn’t far enough, not to save him from me.
“Enough.”
The voice in my head wasn’t my own—it was Yun’s. It drifted past that temper in a way even Carter hadn’t managed, dragging me back from that edge. She couldn’t connect with me, so had I found her mind? Had I reached for her without meaning to? Sought her in my moment of madness?
The reason didn’t change the facts, and her mind was enough to ease me, to allow me to take a deep breath, to wrestle my control back.
I crushed the minds of the three monsters, their bodies hitting the floor in motionless heaps. I also released the two espers along with the civilians, offering one last mental push to the one who had spoken through the cameras.
Carter put his hands on his hips and smiled as though nothing strange had just happened. “Well, looks like we won.”
I shook my head, rewarded with the knowledge that the man behind the camera, the one in charge of this entire little stunt, was wiping blood from his nose.
Serves him right.