Page 19 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

The portal appeared even larger than it had before, a sign that we were nearing it. I’d guess we were only two hours, maybe three. Less if we could move on our own, but we had to pace ourselves.

Maybe longer because monsters always congregated just inside the portal.

It made me wonder what they thought, what went through their brains before they threw themselves at the doorway.

Were they truly trying to escape?

I recalled what Yun had said, that they calmed once the portal closed. Could the energy from the portal cause a reaction that we didn’t understand, since we’d never studied what happened inside a stable dungeon after it closed?

“Don’t think so hard,” Carter said. “It isn’t your thing. Leave that shit to Shear.”

I flipped him off, though the gesture lacked any true annoyance. The lackluster insult said Carter’s heart wasn’t really in it either.

“I was just wondering exactly how much don’t we know? I mean, we know better than to trust shit the Guild says, but we still do it. We still accept facts because it’s what we were always told. What if corrupted aren’t as bad as they say? What if monsters are just sick? What if everything could change?”

Carter didn’t answer right away, but I had no idea if that was because he was truly considering my words or if he was just wondering how he’d gotten saddled with an idiot squad like us. Finally, he shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s probably a bit of both—usually is. The Guild lies like hell, but they’re also really fucking stupid. So is there shit they don’t tell us? Oh, I’m sure of it. Do they have all the answers and they’re just lying? Not a chance. They aren’t smart enough or well put-together enough to manage that. I figure the truth is somewhere between those two.”

I sighed. “You know you offer the least satisfying answers ever, right? It’s amazing that Yun still fucks you given how unsatisfied you tend to leave people.”

Carter flashed a bright smile. “Maybe she just really likes edging, you ever think of that?”

I shuffled my foot against the ground, kicking a small rock so it skipped down the concrete sidewalk. It was cracked, and I had a feeling it had been long before The Pitt had opened up.

“We need to be careful,” Kenyon said. “I saw the way the scout team looked at us. It wasn’t good.”

“Obviously,” Carter answered. “The first esper, she was surprised that we were here because we weren’t at the base when the portal opened. The other two, though? They weren’t surprised at all.”

“Well, sure, because the first one told command about us,” I said.

“It was more than that. They’d been briefed on it, on us. There’s more than this going on, I’d guarantee it.”

I’d known Carter long enough to never fully discount his gut feelings. He was just too smart, too good at guessing the intentions of others. If he said it, it usually had at least some amount of truth to it.

“So what’s their play?”

Carter shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. Best bet? They’re still hoping to get us off the playing field. Without us around, they can do what they want with Yun. We’ve been a thorn for a while, and while we served a purpose before, that isn’t so much true anymore. I think maybe they ran another pros and cons list and we ended up too far in the negative.”

“So you think they’re trying to take us out?” I asked, feeling like that was too far, even for the Guild. Would they help us? Nah, not a bit, not unless it benefited them. Actually killing us was a different thing, though.

Not because I thought they were morally superior, that they were too good to do that, but rather it seemed like an awful lot of work, and a bigger risk than I would have expected from them.

Still, I couldn’t totally discount it, either.

We had made ourselves a problem, and since we’d paired up with Yun, it had only gotten worse.

“Shear told me they keep sending out searching messages from their mentalists. Basically, they’re trying to ping his location. He’s ignored them so far, figured he’d blame it on whatever dragged us in here, but it means they didn’t have anything to do with us getting thrown here, but they sure as fuck seem interested in where we are.”

“And that’s why you didn’t want to stay where any of the kids were,” Kenyon said.

“Bingo. We’ve got to get to the portal—no way around that. It’s best if we do it as quietly as possible. Once we’re in front of more eyes, the Guild can’t do much, and out of the dungeon, it’s a lot harder to fake anything. Four espers dying outside of a dungeon isn’t the sort of thing that’s easy to cover up, but in here? No one would think twice.”

I ground my molars together, hating just about everything having to do with this bullshit. I didn’t have any great love for the Guild, but even this was too far.

It felt like the Guild was a fucked-up little family, but one I understood. The idea that they would go this far, that they’d directly target their own?

I had no idea I could be any more disillusioned with the Guild than I already was, yet here I was.

“Should we let her know?” Kenyon asked, not needing to specify who he talked about.