“Well, of course.” He rolled something toward the exam table where I sat, the item some sort of computer on top with drawers beneath it. “Do you realize what I do there? I handle espers, generally, the most unusual, unique, and often dangerous cases that there are. These are individuals who could kill without a second thought, who have abilities so far outside of the range of even typical S-Rank espers. These are the ones who are too volatile to be released, who need such supervision and training. Many of them never get to leave because the world simply isn’t ready to know they exist.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t be like that if you treated them like people.”
“But they aren’t people. Some learn to pretend, to play the part of a person, but they aren’t. You truly don’t understand. Some of the cases I’ve worked with have included an esper who can turn anyone they touch to dust. Their first victim? Their own mother, when their powers manifested at ten years old. There is an esper there who had a hunger so deep they consumed no less than twenty people before we caught them, who will attempt to eat anything living the moment they have the chance. There was a mentalist who seemed born an esper—one of the few ever recorded—the most powerful mentalist ever tested, able to takeover the mind and compel the actions of hundreds of people at once.”
The way he said that had me frowning.
He nodded. “Yes, Shear. He came to us as a child, detached from all the people around him, seemingly empty minus power. I taught him how to harness that power, how to use it, how to at least pretend to be human enough that others would accept him.”
“He’s never controlled that many people.”
“I had most of his life to work with him, to put in safeguards, and yearly checkups to ensure they worked. He is like a rabid dog with a muzzle—still able to work, but not able to bite the hand that feeds him. He is, in many ways, my most impressive work. No one would have thought he could ever be released from Obsidian, yet he has been.”
I thought about what had happened during his test, when he’d done the seemingly impossible, when I’d somehow settled him down.
What did that mean? Did he truly have his powers dimmed by Mr. Yorn, and did he even know? I thought about the things he’d said, the way Mr. Yorn talked about his subjects, and the thought of Shear as a child enduring that hurt. It helped me to understand him better, or at least to know why I couldn’t understand him.
“Won’t he sense this?” I asked.
Mr. Yorn gestured toward a ring that ran around the top of the room, one that glowed a faint purple. “That will block his powers. I have spent years conditioning him not to question that sort of block, which means should he check for you, he will find himself encouraged to leave you be. He won’t even feel it is strange. I could strangle you here, and he wouldn’t feel so much as a blip in his mind over it.”
If someone had said that while smiling, it would have frightened me. The way in which Mr. Yorn said it, with no inflection, no reaction, as though he truly didn’t care one way or another…it terrified me. How could a person be that cold? How could they care so little about others?
Then again, maybe that was the difference. Mr. Yorn didn’t see me as a person. Did he see civilians that way? Perhaps he viewed espers and guides as tools—nothing else.
That did nothing to reassure me, so I folded my hands on my lap and remained silent.
I’d learned over the months that I’d spent withhimthat sometimes going along was better. Giving in, staying quiet, it could save me a lot of pain when something was inevitable.
Mr. Yorn went about the work quicker than I would have expected. Most doctors and higher-ups did little of the actual work, in my experience, and tended to perform them with clumsy motions.
Each of Mr. Yorn’s movements said he did this often, that he treated his patients hands-on, himself.
No, not patients. Subjects.
First he took vitals, drew blood samples for testing, then had me perform a short guiding test with a cube. It was all similar to what I’d done when I’d first arrived at the base.
It made me wonder if perhaps I’d misjudged this, if I’d worried myself over nothing. I’d done this sort of thing countless times before.
Then Mr. Yorn turned toward me, cruel excitement carved into his stark features. He didn’t give a damn about me—one way or the other—but it seemed the potential breakthrough was enough to thrill him. “Now we start the true testing. What we just did was simply to set a baseline, to compare results directly to other guides. From here on out, we see what you can do—and can survive—that no other guide is capable of.”
And those words did not bode well for me…
* * * *
Kaidan
I stared down at the woman I considered my closest friend in horror. It wasn’t her physical state that shocked me, though I suspected that had been worse before. I sensed the energy of a healer, telling me that she had been in a condition that had required one to step in already.
Instead, it was her mental state. She warred between laughter and crying, her words slurred and her sentences meandering with little coherence. Clearly, she’d been given medication of some sort, though I didn’t understand why.
She’d been brought to me by guards who had left her with little to no explanation beyond telling me to keep it quiet, to not contact her squad.
Not that I planned to do that. I didn’t trust them with her regularly, let alone with her in this condition.
I had her head in my lap, her body stretched out on the couch in my trailer, and she opened her eyes to stare up at me in confusion.
“You back with me?” I kept my tone light, hoping for her to react without panic.
