And he fell to the ground, silent and still.
52
Yiran
There was a slew of activity when they arrived in Outram. Traffic had been halted for several blocks, and impatient honks and shouts filled the air. Closer to the old subway station, squad cars were lined up by the roadside, and a blockade had been set up. Beyond the barricades, a team of Exorcists were assisting the police with civilian evacuations from the nearby office buildings. The main area of interest seemed to be the old subway station built underneath a spanking new office tower, a spiral-shaped monstrosity that Yiran thought was an eyesore.
This is big.He hadn’t expected a full-scale expedition. What was happening?
They hurried out of the car.
Ash pointed at a small makeshift tent. “Take Cadet Senai to the healer over there. I’ll be back after I get briefed.” He jogged to the group of Exorcists gathering by a fire hydrant.
Yiran waited outside the tent with Teshin as a healer attended to Ada’s eye and the cuts on her arms. He turned to Teshin, wondering what to say. There was a new awkwardness between them, and Yiran hated it.
But Teshin spoke first. “I’m not mad at you. I just thought better of you.”
Yiran felt their disappointment. It seeped into his bones in a different way than his grandfather’s disappointment. With the old man, all Yiran ever felt was anger and resentment in response, the fervent and unreasonable desire to dig in and continue on the wrong path. Teshin’s disappointment hit in another way, more painful because Teshin had treated Yiran as his own person from the start.
“I have no excuse,” Yiran confessed. “I wandered off because I was distracted, because I didn’t take the mission as seriously as I should have.I thought it was whatever it said on paper. Check the sensors in some old neighborhood. It wasn’t a proper mission in my stupid head—it wasn’t a proper mission because there weren’t supposed to be any Revenants. It was... logistics.” He felt like a complete ass.
“No fight, no glory,” Teshin said. “Just like Rui.”
Two different faces, two sides of the same coin.
“Except Rui cares more about other people.”
Shame flooded Yiran’s gut. “I... I won’t let you down again,” he said.
“It’s not me you should be making promises to. Ash is right about your shield, though. The way you’ve been using your magic from the very beginning—it’s unusual. Have you heard of Amplifiers?”
“No. What are those?”
“I’m not entirely sure. My grandmother used to talk about people who were born gifted with innate traits that gave them the ability to use magic differently. The Academy doesn’t teach this at all. It’s lore I learned from her. Maybe we should ask Tesha...” Teshin broke off.
Ash had come up to them. He stuck his head into the healer’s tent briefly before coming back out. “The sensors are buzzing. Everything up here seems fine, so we think the disturbance is coming from underground, which means we’re going down there. We’re entering from two points, with the third team as backup on the surface. The healer says Cadet Senai’s out of commission. Are the two of you sure about coming along?”
They nodded.
Ash asked Yiran, “Think you can cast that shield again if we need you to?”
Ignoring the echo of pain in his chest, Yiran nodded.
“Good. Come with me.”
They joined the other Exorcists. Yiran spotted a familiar face.
“Didn’t expect to see the both of you here,” Surin said, smirking at the teens.
Ash raised his voice. “Civilian evacuation?”
“Complete,” an Exorcist confirmed.
“The cops?”
“At the far perimeter. They’ve been instructed to let us handle this alone.”
“All right,” Ash commanded, “barrier up.”
