Page 38 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

“I do. I feel that band weakening. Just like guiding is never a one-time job, neither is you saving me. I’ll need you to guide me again, to keep doing it until we both die.”

“Both?”

He smiled, the expression almost romantic. It was as though he saw us as a couple, like two souls meant to be. “Of course. I won’t live long after you go anyway, so I suspect I will follow you over that threshold as well. As I said, we were meant to be right from the start. There is no stopping that, no changing it.” He paused, then let out a chuckle that held no sanity within it. “I might even be looking forward to it. It isn’t that I want to die, but I wonder if death with someone else might not be a peaceful endeavor.”

I thought back to the time so many years ago, to the memories I had tried to bury or erase. Had Corsa been so crazed back then? Was he being honest—had I somehow held together his fractured mind? That the years without me had pushed him along this path until he struggled to hold onto any semblance of control?

I swallowed hard, wanting nothing more than to yell for Shear, for Carter, for anyone.

“You can call for them if you want,” Corsa said. “They won’t be able to do anything to change this. They can’t stop the inevitable. Besides, haven’t they proven what they really are? Cowards who can’t make the hard decisions. They say they chose the children because it was a moral choice, but have you never considered that their choice had them safe? That they got out because of it? If they had done as ordered, would they have made it out? Or ended up like me? I would suggest you don’t put them on too high a pedestal, because they certainly don’t deserve to remain on it.”

“I don’t want you,” I said, an almost desperate attempt to get him to understand that. I’d fallen for others, had a life. If he gave a damn about me like he claimed, he’d understand that, right?

He smiled, and for a moment, I thought I’d gotten through to him. I thought maybe he’d realized what I’d meant. “I don’t care what you want.” So much for that… “This isn’t about what either of us want. I don’t want you either, at least not in the way you mean, in the way you and they are together. That is cheap and pointless. What you and I have is so much deeper, so much more real. We don’t have to like each other, we don’t have to love each other, because we are bound tighter, in a way that matters more.”

I shook my head, refusing to believe him, chalking that up to madness, to his obsession, to the corruption that had damaged his mind. I crouched, the towel soaked from the water, and slipped my fingers into the damp strands of my hair. It wasn’t just the fear of him that got to me, it was the unknown. It was having no idea if what he said was true.

Maybe we were bound together in some twisted way, maybe that was why I’d been able to guide him when that hadn’t been thought possible before, maybe the ability I’d gained afterward to hurt espers was proof of how broken I’d been from the start.

“In the end, all of this fighting has been for what? You’ve ended up back here with me, right where you started, right where you belong. You’ve hurt others along the way, dragged them into your mess, and for what? It hasn’t changed a thing. If you take one lesson from this, let it be that the more you struggle against the current, the more water you breathe in. If you keep pushing it, the ones who pay the ultimate price won’t be you.” He disappeared, shimmering out of existence before my eyes. It made me feel lighter, as though the weight he’d placed on my mind went away.

Even if he left, though, the words didn’t. They circled in my head, and before I knew it, the water had gone cold.

“Your fingers are turning into prunes.” Carter’s voice had me lifting my head, realizing that I hadn’t even noticed he’d come in. “The water’s cold, too.” He reached past me to twist the handle, the freezing spray turning off, then wrapped a fresh towel around me. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

I recalled Corsa’s warning—and the wound that Kenyon had no doubt healed on Carter, the injuries they’d all gotten—and forced myself to hide it all. “Nothing. I guess I was just thinking.”

Too bad I couldn’t seem to come to any conclusion.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kenyon

“I should do another pass.” I stared over at Carter, who still favored his other side.

“It’s fine.” His tone was distracted, as though his mind were anywhere else than it was.

I came over, using my powers to dig deeper, to see if I’d missed an injury somewhere. I’d done a lot to help the deep gash in his back, had sealed it up, but I could only do so much, especially at once. The body required time to readjust before I could heal it again.

He looked toward me then, eyes sharp, a warning there. Right, just like Carter didn’t like Shear in his head, he didn’t like me poking around in his condition without asking. He didn’t usually react like that, though, which told me even more that something was wrong.

He blinked slowly, then erased the expression he’d worn with a false smile. “Sorry. On edge, I guess. Yun…” He blew out a long breath, then shook his head. “No, it’s nothing. She just seemed off earlier.”

That explained his behavior. It seemed all our problems came back to Yun, as though she had put herself at the center of our galaxy and we just orbited around her. Any change to her threw us all off.

“She’s probably just nervous. We’re used to this sort of thing, but she isn’t.” And it was far more personal to her.

“You’re probably right. I just wish we weren’t in here, where there isn’t anything we can do. Back home, we could have run a bath, could have taken her somewhere to ease her mind. Here though, we don’t have those options.”

“It’s just temporary,” I reminded him. “We’re going to keep going, deal with Corsa, get her unstuck, then get back home.”

He nodded, but I wasn’t sure if he understood what I was saying, if he accepted it. I could still see those wheels turning, see his desire to fix the problem right now.

I’d been around him long enough to tell what he wanted to do. He wanted to leave immediately—probably without even Ingram—and track down Corsa on his own. I understood that desire, since I had it myself, too. I didn’t want that monster breathing anywhere near Yun, either.

Of course, Carter was in a position where he could actually do something about it, unlike me. Even if Corsa stood right before me, I was even more helpless than Yun, unable to do a damn thing.

Which pricked at my pride more than I wanted to admit. It wasn’t easy to admit my own weaknesses, especially when they felt so glaring compared to the rest of my squad.