Page 16 of Guiding Desire

“I looked into why Orrey wasn’t tested. It’s such a basic clerical error, it hurts my eyeballs. There was an E-classer assigned to test his first-year cohort. On that day, the teacher apparently forgot to note that one of the cohort was missing, but Orrey’s medical record shows he was out sick that week. The E-classer did the semi-lazy thing where he didn’t mark individual students as not reactive and marked the entire class as such.”

“Which included Orrey on the file because the teacher didn’t pay attention. Shit.”

“Exactly. I know you’d want me to reprimand someone, but marking off each individual student has already become the standard. It wasn’t back then. And that teacher, believe it or not, was on the older side and has since passed away. You’re going to have to work through your anger through introspection and letting go.”

Senlas leaned against the sparkling white kitchen island, wishing there was something on there he couldCrush. He took a glass from one of the overhead cupboards and filled it by hand whileShiftingthe beads on his shelf wall, the one Orrey had stared at first upon walking into the apartment.

“What a fucking joke,” he said.

“I know, right? You and letting go. The Op-AI says it sent you a message. It encourages me to mentor Orrey.”

“Hence your willingness to share sex toys?”

Col’s giggles took on a gleeful note now. “What? Is he shy around you? Did you ever think it might be better to imprint on a Conduit who’s more or less dispassionate toward Guardians than one who’ll just throw themself at you upon a hint of the mention of the i-word?”

“There is no such Conduit except for one who chose to become a protector rather than a teacher.”

“O-hoo! You two’ll have so much fun. So many viewpoints to discuss, so many opinions of opposing natures to unravel,” Col said because he was all too well aware of Senlas’s opinion about how protectors were less than useful a lot of the time.

“I hate you right now.”

Senlas heard a candy wrapper being torn on the other end. That meant Col was in his office where he’d overwritten the AI to keep him stocked with his favorites despite their nutritional imbalance.

“No, you don’t.”

“But I’m trying.”

Col giggled again. “Not all that hard. Now, follow my words. There’s only so much I can do in terms of slowing things down when it comes to the change of Orrey’s legal status. The protectors got the notice about Orrey first, and his department’s fifth rank supervisor called me. She was extremely apologetic and ensured me that your Conduit had not ever been placed in undue harm while working there and that nothing upsetting had shown up when they reviewed his professional relationships.”

Senlas carried his water back over to the couch where the food tray still sat nearly untouched. He had a cracker, mostly to annoy Col.

“He was a good, obedient protector then.”

“Sounds like it. Scores are in the highest percentile too. I mean, I skimmed an essay he wrote on the protectors’ role in society. I was fully prepared for too much glorification and swooning descriptions of the protectors’ awesomeness, but he was actually more critical than the average. Has a great writing style too. The supervisor told me they were already busy packing him up to make his move to the Grounds as easy as possible.”

Senlas sagged back. “He won’t like that. He wanted to go back to his place.”

“And I had a feeling, but there was no way to get them to stop or put his things back, not without sounding like we mistrust them and blame them. I can’t make the protector branch lose face like that, not over this.”

Senlas sighed. “I understand. Are they carting his things over here?”

“Yeah. She told me end of day, but it’ll be way sooner than that if you ask me. On the plus side, while his mother is no longer his next of kin and emergency contact now that you are, I did convince the AI to hold off on informing her and let him do it. Say thank you, Col.”

“Thank you, Col.”

Senlas heard another piece of candy being unwrapped. “You’ll be good to him, right?”

“Are you seriously asking me that?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck, Col. Yes, obviously I will be good to him.”

“Because I’ll do some badass mentor shit to you if you aren’t. I’ll have to read up on what mentors do first, but this isn’t an empty threat.”

“Yeah, I figured. Not why I want to be good to the fucking Conduit I imprinted on though.”

“Extra motivation is good for you. Boop.”