Page 29 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

Maybe I’m not as innocent as I want to pretend…

A slight zing in my head had me glancing in Shear’s direction, his stern expression saying he’d caught the stray idea. I shrugged, as though to remind him he was no better. He’d have participated himself if given the chance.

I didn’t get a second zap, which suggested he knew I was right.

“I just step through? I don’t need to have like, a running start? What if I don’t have enough momentum? Will I end up stuck between?” Her words picked up speed as she spoke, like going down a slide, losing control of herself.

Ingram grasped her hand, holding her tight. “I deal with the space between the realms, right? You won’t get stuck, but even if you did? I’d get you out.” He seemed to go to release her hand, but she didn’t let go. He stared down, then chuckled. “You want to hold my hand when we go through? How are you this fucking cute?” He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it, the touch oddly sweet, especially after his previous offer to fuck her right there. “All right, let’s go.”

Ingram stepped through first, holding her, tugging softly to get Yun moving. She went forward as well—dragged somewhat—until their hands touched the surface of the portal.

It sparked brightly for a moment, then turned so dark it nearly disappeared, purple swirling on the horizon of it to mirror the sky. Ingram pulled, but nothing changed, as though the portal rejected her entirely.

He came back through, looking around as though he thought someone on this side had held her. He tried to push her forward, using where they still held hands, to press against the surface, but the same thing happened again.

Yun couldn’t leave the dungeon…

Chapter Seventeen

Shear

The building we’d taken refuge in had been a fast-food restaurant that served tacos and burritos. Ingram had a cup of soda in his hand while Kenyon was in the kitchen, making food. He’d said he’d worked at a place like this as a teenager, before he’d presented as an esper, and, given the way he moved, it must have been true.

Yun sat on a counter back there as well, giving Carter and me privacy to discuss the things we needed to.

“What the hell was that?” he asked as he leaned forward.

Sometimes I hated the way they expected me to have all the answers. Carter was the one with the plans, sure, but they thought that given my skills as a mentalist, I knew more than everyone else.

It was foolish. I had a feeling no one knew what to do in this situation, or understood what had happened, because to my knowledge it had never happened before.

“Clearly she’s connected to the dungeon,” I said, hoping that as I spoke, I’d come up with some sense of understanding. Maybe just talking it through would help me get there. “It explains why the first tear happened, why we were all pulled here.”

“Because she drained some of the heart?”

I nodded, that a good a guess as anything else. “The power she took from it must have remained inside of her all this time, connecting her to the dungeon itself. It isn’t normal corruption, so she can’t process it as she would from guiding.”

“How does she get rid of it, then? Could we force another guide to try to take it from her?”

“Maybe, but we both know she’d never agree to that.”

Carter sighed as leaned back in the booth. “She is frustratingly moral, isn’t she? Life is so much easier when people don’t care about others.”

“So we have to find the heart.” I ignored his complaints about Yun—while I might agree, it wouldn’t really matter. Yun would never agree to sacrifice another guide for herself.

“Can she create another tear to get out?” Carter asked.

“Maybe, but that would rely on us all being trapped here and hoping that might work a second time.” I didn’t relish the thought of getting trapped here for ten years, waiting for it to open again. I didn’t know how Corsa had turned corrupted, whether it had occurred before or after the portal had closed, but I knew I didn’t want to risk it happening to me.

“Can she put that power back, then? She has good control over corruption. Maybe if we get her close enough to the heart, it will flow back on its own?”

I shrugged, because it was as good a guess as anything else. We didn’t have enough information to truly figure it out, to make a plan and stick with it. The best we could do was hope we figured something out as we went. “That means we will for sure have to deal with Corsa.”

“We were going to anyway.”

“Sure, without Yun. Now we’re going to have to have her in tow as we handle him. From what Yun said, Corsa is set up near the heart. It’s possible he is as connected to it as she is.”

“He was never going to walk away from this,” Carter said. “He’s one of the reasons this all went to hell in the first place. If he’d stuck with us, the Guild wouldn’t have used as a scapegoat. That happened largely because of his father and his connections. I could have let that slide, but after what happened with Yun? Not a chance that he’s getting off. Think of it like a one-stop-shop for all our dungeon needs.”