Chapter Forty-Seven
Carter
The coffee burned. I didn’t mind drinking it before it cooled, however. Anything to jumpstart my mind and erase the fog in my head.
It was strange how I could feel so much better and like absolute shit at the same time.
Had my corruption levels ever been this low?
I doubted it, not since I’d changed, not since I’d started to use my powers, at least. Nothing hurt inside me, no gnawing pain from the corruption, no tightness at the back of my neck that never fully left me, none of that.
Was this how people normally felt?
It reminded me again exactly how important guides were, why they were valued.
At times I forgot, given how fraught that entire situation tended to be for us.
Guides didn’t want to join our squad, only did so when they lacked other options or were forced as some sort of punishment for something else they’d done.
It meant that while they did their jobs, they did it with only minimal effort.
Yun had gone above and beyond, pulling every speck of corruption from the four of us in a way I had no idea was even possible.
It reminded me of the test she’d taken, the reality of her skills.
The woman was astonishing, and the fact she’d all but fallen into our laps felt like a miracle I knew we hadn’t deserved.
It had been even better than when she’d guided us before, when she’d still held back a part of herself. She’d held nothing back this time, and it showed in lightness of my body. Strange that each time I thought it couldn’t get any better, she went and proved me wrong.
Still, while I felt great physically, the lack of sleep and questions inside me had sent me off to get this coffee, to try to spark awake my brain until it could work out the next step.
Yun would wake soon, and I doubted she’d be happy.
Sure, she’d chosen that, but I was smart enough to know backslides were a part of life.
Before last night, I’d thought using her as long as possible was good, but the idea of bonding us, of being together, of planning for any sort of a future, those things weren’t likely.
They hadn’t been anywhere in my mind, really.
After experiencing the way I felt, though, the way she guided, I knew better.
We could never let her go. Her skills plus our compatibility meant we’d never find another guide like her—and given our reputation, even if one existed, I doubted they’d ever get assigned to us.
It meant that no matter what happened, we had to find a way to get her to want to stay, to draw her in, to keep her close.
“You’re thinking too fucking hard for this early in the morning.
” Ingram stretched as he walked past me in the large dining area of the hotel lobby, set up with a continental breakfast. He didn’t bother with the food, however, instead going for the coffee just like I had. “Especially after a night like that.”
“After a night like that is exactly the time we have to think about it. It’s the right time to make a plan, to figure out where to go from here.”
He added nothing to the coffee, grimacing when he took a gulp of the hot and far-too-strong drink. After a moment, he pinned me with a knowing look. “Sometimes your brain is a thing of fucking beauty and other times, you fuck shit up by overthinking.”
“When have I ever done that?”
“Remember when we were young and wanted to buy alcohol with our fake IDs? All you had to do was show it, pay, walk out. Instead you went into some big explanation about why the guy in the photo looked different but you were for sure the same fucking person.”
“Yeah, well, it all worked out.”
“Because I snuck in and stole it.”
I cast him a lopsided grin. “Exactly. It worked out.”
He blew out a low breath, then stood beside me. “She’s up.”
“She say anything?”
“Nope. Got in the shower, probably to avoid any of us. Kenyon was gonna tell her about breakfast, then head down. Shear’s…well, who the fuck knows?”
“When she gets down here, act normal.”
“What’s normal?”
“I’d say that if it’s something you’d normally say, don’t say that.”
Ingram bobbed his head from side to side, his lips moving as he muttered the words back.
I would have kept bothering him, but a strange feeling ran up my spine, a sort of warning.
As a combat esper, I had great senses, and they often caught things my logical brain couldn’t make heads or tails of, at least not at first. Instead, I got this shiver, this tightening of the muscles in my back as though my body prepared for danger even if my conscious mind hadn’t identified it yet.
And in all the years I had been an esper, it had never been wrong.
I jerked my hand out to the side, something large and hard striking it instead of Ingram.
A table?
Had someone just thrown a whole ass table at me? I peered across the large room to find the culprit, his stance making it damn clear who had done it.
It was a man—at least, he had been at one time.
He had long black hair, tied back at the nape of his neck, and wore a black shirt and black jeans.
It wasn’t the gothic emo outfit that stood out the most, though.
Instead, it was the way his eyes shone pure purple, and black spidered out across his face.
Corrupted were easy to identify. Sure, any esper could balance on that edge, and I’d had a face like that more than a few times.
The difference was perhaps not so easy to tell by sight, especially at first, but by feeling.
Once an esper crossed that line, once they lost themselves, that corruption no longer existed within them, but poured out all around them.
Often electricity would flicker, people would feel this sudden unease, and I could spot the signs with him.
The whole throwing a table had been a pretty good indicator as well.
Ingram shifted his gaze between me and the corrupted, appearing less ruffled and more mildly annoyed. He took another drink of his coffee, then set it down with a drawn-out sigh, as though not getting to drink it were the most troublesome part of this whole thing.
The other patrons in the dining area rushed out, but their screams hardly reached me. I filtered it out as unimportant, focusing instead on the corrupted who stood there, clearly looking for a fight. That was the threat, the only thing that mattered at the moment.
Corrupted were out of their fucking minds, but in addition to that, they were arguably more powerful than espers.
With a larger capacity with which to hold corruption, they could wipe the floor with a similarly ranked esper.
It meant that it was good I wouldn’t have had to deal with this asshole all on my own.
“You want a cup?” I held up my drink. “I feel like that when I haven’t had my coffee yet, too.”
He smirked, and if I was into his type, I might have fallen for that sort of bad boy look.
He walked forward, tossing anything in his way to the side as he went.
Thankfully, the civilians had taken off, which meant the flying chairs, tables and random breakfast items only struck other furniture or made it to the wall. “What rank are you?”
“Isn’t that a little personal? Come on, wine-and-dine a boy before you get to those sort of questions.” I caught a chair that came sailing my way, then set it down.
“Combat?” the man asked.
“Obviously. Now, what’s crawled up your ass? I’m pretty sure I’d know if I’d done something to personally offend you.”
“I saw you all walk in here like you matter. Like you’re special. What, because the Guild is willing to suck your cocks, you think that means anything?”
“The Guild sucks cocks now? I must have missed that because I’m pretty sure no one’s done that for me yet.” I walked forward, closing the distance, Ingram remaining slightly behind me. I could take far more damage, after all, so it made sense to keep the asshole’s focus on me. “So who are you?”
“Daniel,” the man said, though he twitched at the name, as though it hurt.
Then again, the exact connection between the person someone was before they corrupted and after was hardly studied or understood.
Even if they were the same person, the cracks that occurred in their psyche ran so deep that their old self was all but gone.
Whoever they had been disappeared beneath the anger and hunger and madness of the corruption.
Which was exactly why guides mattered so much, to keep us from turning into that.
I didn’t recognize his name, but why would I?
Unless I’d dealt with him personally, I tended to avoid espers—or anything that might complicate my life.
Still, they didn’t usually have espers walking around who might go corrupt like this, were careful to keep an eye on levels of those using their powers.
It meant this sort of thing—an esper corrupting out of the blue, in public—tended to only happen with espers who had hidden what they really were.
I had to guess that meant him, that he’d wanted to use those skills for whatever the fuck he wanted without the complication of the Guild, or their oversight.
That didn’t tend to go so well for people, a point he proved pretty damn well.
“How old are you?” I asked, trying to keep him distracted and off guard. If he had to think about those answers, if he had to focus on his disjointed memories, we stood a much better chance.
I was pretty sure we could take him on, but I would prefer no one get hurt—including us.
“Twenty-five,” the man said, again jerking as though the answers didn’t come easily.
“So what are you doing here, huh? What are you hoping out of this?”
He went still, a sign that didn’t bode well. When anything stopped moving, it was a threat, a preparation. “I want you to pay for everything the Guild takes from us.”
The last word left his lips as he came forward, faster than the items he’d thrown, and slammed into me far harder.
Judging an opponent was one of the most important things I could do, to determine how powerful, to figure out the best way to counter, and it took only one strike from this corrupted to know one thing for sure.
We were in a lot of fucking trouble…