“How are they testing?”
“Blood draws to check for corruption antigens, then sample guidings.”
Blood draws, great.
The sample guiding was less of a problem, but the blood draws?
Something about needles just set my teeth on edge, making me want to flinch away.Worse than the needle was the tourniquet.The way they hugged tight around my arm, the sensation of helplessness—I hated it all.
Still, I smiled as though it didn’t bother me.“So where do I go?”
“You’ll get called when it’s your turn.Listen for your name.”He handed me a stack of papers.“Give these to the nurse who’s doing the draw.”With that, he returned to his laptop as though I wasn’t even worth a goodbye or good luck.
I held back the words I wanted to say and stepped away from the table.No reason to cause more of a problem here.Fuck knew I’d gotten myself into trouble enough times, and I didn’t need any more reasons for them to dislike me.
The room filled up more and more, and I had to admit, guides were an interesting group.Where espers had this power behind them, something almost tangible, guides held an ethereal quality.
They glided more than walked, with this lightness that seemed to absorb any darkness around them.
It made me wonder if I could ever be that sort of person.Could I ever feel that way?
Across the room I spotted the guide who embodied that description more than any other—Mercy.
She smiled widely.Her blonde hair hung down in loose curls around her, and she wore a sundress that hung to just above her knees.She laughed as though she had no worries in the entire world, as though nothing could touch her.
Again, a thought that would do nothing good slipped through my mind.
What if I could be like that?
Would my life be easier?No doubt about that, really.Squads would accept me happily, would fight over me.They’d cherish me, claiming me as their own, giving a damn.
Except, no matter how tempting the thought might have been for a moment, I knew it wasn’t possible.
From what I knew, Mercy had been flagged as a guide young, after living an idyllic life.Rich parents, a wonderful home, never had anything bad happen.
She’d gotten trained after ranking in as an S, then had her pick of assignments.Even though any squad would take her in a second, she’d decided to float, going where needed, only working with squads short term.
She was the epitome of what a guide should be—poised, sweet, sexy in a way that made me question my own sexuality.Basically, she was everything I wasn’t, and worse, she was even nice to me.It made it that much harder to hate her.
“Yun Moore.”
I snapped my head around toward the back of the room, where a nurse in blue scrubs stood next to one of the steel-and-cloth dividers.She checked the tablet in her hand and called my name again.
I headed over and gave her the paperwork, then sat where she indicated.The tightened grasp of the thin rubber used around my arm had me closing my eyes and breathing slowly.
At least she found a vein easily, proving that while she might not be nice, she was competent.
I’d take competent over nice any day, especially when it came to medical know-how.
She pressed a piece of gauze against the pinprick wound, then wrapped a pink bandage around it, just above my elbow, the material sticking to itself.“Go sit in the next area for a few minutes to make sure you’re not dizzy, and they’ll tell you what to do afterward.”She pointed the opposite direction from where I’d walked in.
Which meant that the back of the large room was sectioned off into at least two or three areas, intended for guides to move through them one at a time.
Right after I passed from the area for blood draws, the nurse called another name, moving us through like cattle.I sat in the chair she’d indicated, giving me a look at the next room.
It had four sections, telling me they expected this area to bottleneck.It made sense, as doing sample guidings was time-consuming.
Guiding espers was a back-and-forth sort of deal, which meant we pulled different amounts based on the esper.The closer the two were in terms of rank, the more intimate they were, the higher the compatibility, the easier it was, but it all changed based on the esper.
