Page 60 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

“I attacked you,” I repeated.

“That, Spark, was just a love bite. You should trust us a little fucking more than you do, because that was nothing. Oh, I’m willing to suffer way more than that.”

“I hope so, because your dumb ass came right to a place where way worse could happen. You knew how dangerous Corsa was and you still showed up here?”

Ingram walked forward, pausing just before where the barrier must have been. “Worth it. You can bitch and moan all you want, but we were gonna chase you no matter what, and if you didn’t know that, well, that’s on you.”

I wanted to argue with him, but what was the point? They were here, now, for better or worse.

And I was pretty sure it was all worse, given our current status.

“Where’s Corsa?” I asked, instead of going on with the scolding since they didn’t seem to give a damn about it anyway.

“He walked off a while ago,” Carter said. “He claimed he was going to hand us over to some enemy.”

I nodded, pushing my hair back from my face. “He said there was some other world.” I paused, then asked softly, “Is there any truth to that?”

“None I know of,” Shear said. “I’ve heard similar things before, but it’s always just a theory that usually is laughed out of any scholarly spaces.”

“He just seemed so sure. We didn’t know that a corrupted could be guided, we didn’t know that a guide could interact with a heart before. Who’s to say there isn’t more we don’t know?”

Carter reached forward, then flinched when he touched the barrier I still couldn’t see, yanking backward with a rough sound that came across like a growl. He glared at the crystal nearest to us like he could explode the thing with that look alone, then paid attention to me again. “Don’t listen to him. He’s mad, and he’s spent almost a decade here alone. Who knows what that would do to a normal person, let alone someone who’s corrupted. Do you have access to our packs? Because when we woke up in here, we were missing all our weapons.”

“I can look around, but I didn’t see them in the cabin.”

“He probably got rid of it all.” He peered at the crystal, crouching to look at it more closely. “Shear, any idea about this?”

“I can feel energy from it, but it isn’t corrupted energy. It’s similar, but not quite the same.”

“There’s a bigger one in the cabin,” I said. “Corsa said it was for heat and cooking.”

“How big is it?” Carter asked.

I held my hand up, judging from memory where it reached, about mid-waist. “He said not touch it because it could burn.”

“I have another question,” Ingram piped up. “How to fuck did a mentalist manage to stop me mid-air like he did? That isn’t a power he should have. Have you ever seen anything like that from him?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t see him use any other powers before.”

“There was a pull from somewhere else,” Shear said, his voice distant, the way it always got when he considered something, when he tried to work something out. “I felt it a moment before he knocked us all out, when he stopped Ingram. It was like he used a different power, one separate from his innate mentalist powers.”

“Could it have to do with these things?” Carter gestured at one of the crystals with his toe but ensured he stayed far enough away not to risk the shield.

“It’s similar,” Shear acknowledged. “I don’t know where these things came from—I’ve never seen them before, but the frequency of the power is related. If I could properly examine the crystal, I might have a better idea, but for now all I can say for sure is that it’s power he isn’t supposed to wield.”

Which again made me wonder if Corsa had been telling the truth about what happened, about the truth behind the dungeons. What else could explain all this? Things we’d never seen before, never heard of? The more I learned, the less I understood.

“I’m sorry,” I said, the words thick and nearly choking me. “I’m sorry you’re here. You were supposed to just go live a good life. You were supposed to go and move on. You deserved that.”

Carter met my gaze, his expression surprisingly soft and sweet. It was a side of him I rarely saw, one I valued each time he bared it to me. “Don’t you get it, Yun? Ever since you walked into our office, since you lectured me and stood there in the middle of our space, there hasn’t been a life without you. There’s nothing worth a damn to go back to, not unless you’re there. So don’t be sorry, don’t you dare tell me that. Instead? Let’s figure out how to win this thing so we can get back to that good life you’re talking about—together.”

I didn’t know if I believed him, if I thought it possible, but I had to admit that I liked his hope, because that was exactly what I wanted, too.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Shear

While I often ended up in tight quarters with the rest of my squad, it never felt like this. We were trapped together in what was about a ten-by-ten space, with room to stand, sit, even lie down, but not to get away from each other.