Rogue?Did that mean they’d become corrupted? I shook my head. No, that wouldn’t make sense. An entire squad wouldn’t turn all at once, and they’d saidrogue. That meant they were no longer following orders.
“They’re going to die if S412 doesn’t do their fucking job!” someone shouted.
“They’re not responding to their mentalist communication and are headed in the opposite direction.”
“What about Corsa?”
“Unclear. It seems they left him.”
The words slipped through my mind, and I collapsed forward, everything going black. I’d wanted to hang on until the end, but my body had other ideas.
When my eyes opened again, I found more sunlight than before, implying some time had passed, but I was still there,before the portal. It seemed no one had thought it prudent to move me anywhere.
I rolled, my eyes blurry, staring toward the shimmering portal. It had started to break, streaks where the purple disappeared saying that the dungeon had almost closed.
Then others came through the portal—S412.
No, wait…not all of them. Carter, Kenyon, Ingram and Shear walked out, covered in purple, their eyes dulled in a way they hadn’t been before. The portal blinked and closed behind them, as though it had waited to spit them out before severing the connection.
The words from before echoed in my head, the conversation from the radio.
Corsa.
They’d left him to die and saved their own skin…
* * * *
Yun
The story that Kaidan told me made my heart race, the ending obvious no matter how little I understood it.
“That can’t be what happened,” I said, shaking my head. None of it made sense.
“I was there, Yun. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“I know you’re not lying, but maybe you don’t know all the details. There’s no way that they would have just left people to die to save their own skin. They aren’t like that.”
Kaidan laughed, though the sound was hollow. “You’d be shocked at how people act when their life is on the line. I’ve seen it over and over again. You want to trust people, Yun. It’s one of the things I adore about you, that you might be feisty and temperamental, but at your core, you’re a good person. Theproblem is that the world you live in doesn’t have a lot of good people.”
“But they’re not like that, not with me.”
“You give them something they want. They have a reason to act that way toward you. I’m not even saying they’re different than anyone else—most people will save their own skin when it comes right down to it. It’s just important to remember that four people walked out of that dungeon. They made their choice in there, they decided who it was that mattered and who was worth sacrificing. I’m not trying to say you should turn your back on them, but you need to always know where you stand. When push comes to shove with that squad, they pick their own. You should never make the mistake of thinking you’re in that group, because I saw what happened the last time someone made that mistake. The gravestone that says Corsa Ray tells you exactly where anyone other than the four of them stands. Careful, or you might be the next gravestone.”
Chapter Sixteen
Kenyon
Everyone was wound up. I didn’t even have to use my skills to feel it. It wasn’t just our squad, either.
Every last person I interacted with had this stress, this tension in their voices. Those who served food in the mess hall, the security, the staff, all of them.
Normally I’d just think it was us—it wasn’t like many people liked interacting with our squad—but this was different.
It was stress.
Humans didn’t do well with waiting, and it seemed espers were no better. Everyone wanted to do something already, to stop waiting for the inevitable, but there was nothing to do.
The Pitt would open when it opened. We had a general idea of the timeline, but it could change. We’d prepared all we really could, which meant now we just had to wait.
