Page 26 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

Dead?

Kenyon glanced toward me and shook his head. “If I can get in close enough I can put people under, but I’m not about to kill someone like this.” He paused, then added on, voice soft, “At least not if there’s any other way.”

Him not having killed the esper reassured me, like Kenyon was still very much the same man as before.

Something glanced my arm, and pain shot up through it. It was strange that a touch that could both feel so light as to count more as a brush than anything else could also hurt that damn much.

It took a moment for me to realize what it was—the woman had reached for me, but Carter had intervened, not allowing her to get a good grip.

And thank god for that, given the throbbing of my shoulder, as though that tiny touch had been enough to nearly dislocate the thing.

Kenyon was over to me a heartbeat later, hand over my shoulder, a warmth easing the pain.

I didn’t watch what he did, instead looking up on top of the building just in time to see shadows engulf the esper up there, like a monster consuming a flesh and blood person. A scream, and when the shadow cleared, only Ingram remained.

He winked, then disappeared again, this time headed to help Shear.

Shear could distract multiple people, could disorient them, could turn their minds, but it was far easier to have someone else disable them entirely.

Ingram seemed that ‘other’ person.

At least, I thought that until Ingram stumbled, falling to his knees, something I’d never seen before—something I hadn’t even thought possible. I took off in that direction, but Kenyon caught me before I could go. “Don’t,” he gritted out, then gestured at Ingram’s arm.

Green pustules covered his arm, large and almost neon. He coughed, blood spitting from his lips and raining down on the pavement. “It’s an esper who can spread disease. There aren’t many of them around, because they usually end up killed when they first present—too dangerous for fieldwork.”

“You can heal him, right?”

“Probably,” Kenyon hedged. “I won’t know until I try, but if I get close enough for that esper to touch, I won’t be able to do a thing. You either, so keep your distance.”

The esper walked past Ingram as though he were unimportant now, like he’d already died and didn’t matter anymore. Ingram fell forward but didn’t fully collapse, instead trying to drag his body on his hands and knees. If Kenyon hadn’t still held me, I’d have rushed over there, dangers be damned.

He’d have done the same for me.

The esper Carter fought broke off for a moment, slamming into Shear, at the same time Carter took the opportunity to snap the neck of the other esper, leaving only the woman and the disease spreader. Shear shook his head, but he didn’t seem able to get up again.

The woman and the other esper stood side by side, staring back at the three of us like we rested on opposite sides of a battlefield.

“You know that letting me end you will make this all a lot easier,” she said. “If Blake here touches you, death is slow and painful. I can make it quick, at least.”

“That seems like a pretty terrible offer,” Carter said, though his words came out more winded than I’d expected. It seemed that this whole fight had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit.

“It’s not. You’ve done this long enough to know that a quick death is the best we get. It’s the most we can hope for, and I’m offering it here for you. You’ve got my word, okay? You basically just go to sleep, no pain, no suffering, no risk to your little guide there. Easy, right? If we keep going like this, there’s always a chance that she gets caught up in the middle. It wouldn’t take much for Blake here to accidentally brush against her, and if that happens? Well, nothing your healer can do will save anything short of an esper from what she’ll end up with.”

Carter glanced around, as though trying to work out a plan.

He was always trying to do that. With Ingram and Shear down, we didn’t have that many real options, but them dying just to save me was sure as hell not the path I planned to take.

“Maybe,” he said softly, leaning over to speak to only Kenyon and me, “it’s worth thinking about.”

“She won’t be safe then,” Kenyon said. “It’s not like we can trust them to handle this, and they’re going to just let her go. She won’t be in a better position.”

“She’ll be alive. That’s a better position than dead, don’t you think? What do we learn from day one?”

Kenyon sighed. “That what matters is continuing the fight.”

“Exactly. Sometimes the best you can do is to keep moving forward, to make sure you can make another stand the next day. I don’t love the idea of her going to the Guild, but it’s better than dying. It’s better than her getting killed here, isn’t it?”

Kenyon shifted, not answering, and that suggested he agreed but refused to say it.