If I could unbind myself, I’d end this immediately.I didn’t care for showing off, but neither would I just let things continue if I could end them.I wasn’t like Carter, willing to lessen myself to play a game.
A scream echoed through the space, and the pain in my head lessened, though it didn’t disappear.
Not gone?
I let out a soft laugh at the realization of how they’d managed this, of their fear when it came to me.They’d gotten not one buttwodebuffers to screw with my head.It explained why they’d had such an upper hand and it did something I rarely experienced—it angered me.
Normally, emotions were just information, something I saw in others.I didn’t have to suffer through them myself.It surprised me when it sprang up now at the idea that they would try such a dirty trick against me.
The roar of a monster echoed in the room, but I ignored it.Now with only one esper screwing with my mind, I could identify the others around the space with ease, their minds like spotlights in the darkness, standing out for me to attack.
Three monsters, all Rank S, one already dead.Ingram shifted closer to one of the monsters—moving in the shadows, only identifiable to me because of our bond, because of our years of working together.Carter went after two others, the darkness not a problem for him.Kenyon stood to the back, his eyes closed, telling me he sensed the health of us rather than focusing on the enemies or trying to see.
He trusted that the rest of us would ensure he didn’t get targeted.
Other than the monsters, one debuffer stood near a doorway across the gym and another was already down—thanks to Ingram.A third esper stood, and I got the sense they were there to keep things dark, to control the temperature, to cause the wind to whip through the space and throw us off balance.
In other words, the civilians in charge wanted to figure out how we handled monsters, so they needed to throw anything they could at us.They wanted to give us the unpredictable, to see how we would react in a situation that got out of hand.
And if something in here ended us?
Well, we were only worth as much as we were useful.A weak esper was no different from a dead one to them.
It made me think about each of us, about the things we’d sacrificed, the things they’d put us through.Worse, I thought about Yun, about what they might have done to her.
And something that had never happened before occurred—I lost my temper.I’d gotten angry before, something fleeting and frustrating but controllable.This took it to another level, it exploded through me, filling me.
Rage like I’d not known myself capable of exploded through me, causing me to put my hands out, to let it flow from me.I didn’t think about it, didn’t direct it, and it was met with absolute silence.
No screams, no roars, no sense of panic.
The darkness sank away when the large florescent lights flickered on.
We’d entered in the dark, so I hadn’t gotten a look at the layout before.Civilians stood on the second level, on a metal pathway that kept them up above the fray and followed along the walls.They wore night-vision goggles, allowing them to watch the test even without the lights.
They didn’t move, though, not to turn off the goggles, not to react, nothing.Similarly, through the space on the bottom level, the three monsters and the two espers not part of my squad remained frighteningly still, as though dead.
Only my squad remained unaffected by my hold, the grasp I had on each mind in the building, the fingers of my power so deep into their psyche they couldn’t even consider resisting.Ifelttheir fear, their panic, but they couldn’t budge, couldn’t worm their way out of my hold.
And I could end them allsoeasily.It would take so little for me to make sure that no one in this building was a threat again, to crush them.All of them, or just the monsters, or just the espers—it didn’t matter.
“Release them.”The voice came from the sound system, and my powers reached out, searching for the person, wanting to control them, to drag them down just like the others.
Except…they were too far away.Watching through the cameras?
Must be.
“That’s enough,” Carter said, his voice careful as he looked toward me.
“We were meant to kill the monsters.I’m doing that.”
“You’re holding humans, not just monsters,” the voice on the loudspeaker said.
I shifted my gaze around until I located the camera in the corner.When I spoke again, I did so to the person on the other side.“Is there a difference?Human.Creature.Esper.They’re all monsters.”My powers reached out even farther, stretching, searching, until they latched onto the man on the other side of that camera, the mind who spoke through the PA system.
He was terrified—his brain lit up in all the primal places, the deep spots, the ones that initiated fight or flight in people.He was so far away, nearly a mile, at the other end of the complex, but that wasn’t far enough, not to save him from me.
“Enough.”
