Page 8 of Guiding Desire

Most operations here were AI run and overseen by administrators. Of those, most were Conduits, but F-classers who were either not field trained or no longer suitable for field service for one reason or another also usually ended up as administrators.

“Did he do some buffering when you touched?” Col asked, one eyebrow raised at Senlas.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Am I wearing my ‘Ignore me, I’m just kidding’ pants?” Col asked.

“You so deserve that, for the radio alone,” Karmine mumbled.

“What’s buffering?” Orrey piped in.

“He did. A little,” Senlas said.

“Perfect.” Col took a left. The wall’s colors shifted to spell out what lay that way: intake, testing, medical. “Buffering’s when you channel some of the Guardian’s power, and with imprinting, it occurs spontaneously in all the cases I know. That means it’ll show up in a blood test.”

“A blood test?” Orrey said.

“A really quick one.”

“It’ll be fine,” Senlas found himself saying.

“Says the man who told me not to whine when I got an arrow in the leg last year,” Karmine said.

Senlas clenched his fists. “Did you or did you not check that damn corner like you should have?”

Col pointed a thumb at Senlas and Karmine. “I’m not sure if you can tell, but they are friends. Karmine does fire and electrical storms, and surprisingly, firearms work for him. Senlas isn’t too shabby when it comes to telekinesis, and he’s a nullifier.”

That dropped like a weighted corpse. Senlas was used to the reaction, and it came often enough because even the media team preferred to focus on his telekinesis as opposed to the nullification.

“You can stop everything? With a touch? Even a person’s heart?” Orrey asked, his copper-brown eyes wide all over again. They matched well with the hallway’s colors, although Senlas doubted the AI got that involved. He was probably just overly infatuated. It could happen with imprinting. He wasn’t sure whether he hated it or not.

“Pretty much,” Senlas said.

“Although most of the time he just grabs you by the balls for exactly no reason,” Karmine added.

Col snorted. “Try enduring them over comms for a few hours. I do that on a regular basis, and do you see them show me proper respect? No. Ah, here we are.”

The door to a testing office slid open. The testing office, by its very nature, was tidier and even more bereft of any personal touches than any other admin office. The admin currently occupying this office had set one wall to stream the parade, and from behind her wide desk, she was watching it with one eye while inputting data. Senlas recognized her as a petite administrator Taros had seen a few times.

“Coldis!” the woman said, giving Col the beaming smile he usually got when he walked into a room. She banked that really hard when her eyes landed on Senlas. “And Lead Guardian Warrak. How can I help?”

“We have an imprinting to register, and I’d like to add a buffer test to the file, just to be on the safe side,” Col said.

The administrator’s eyes landed on the odd one out. “That one? He’s a protector. We don’t have any Conduits working as protectors. That’s not done.”

“You don’t say,” Senlas grumbled.

Col gave him a look. “That’s why I thought we should be thorough.”

The admin nodded. “And who imprinted?”

“He’s mine,” Senlas said and stepped up to Orrey to place a hand on the Conduit’s shoulder. And to get a closer look at that sunburn. Chances were he had a mild sunstroke to go with it too, just one more reason to get all the filing done and take him home where he’d be able to rest before anything else.

The admin was agape. “I see,” she finally managed. “Let me get the testing kit.”

She was out of her seat fast, strode over to the wall opposite the door, and hit the control panel there.

One cabinet slid out from the wall. It held testing devices from brain wave scanners to skin sensors, all of which Senlas was much too familiar with for his liking, but then, what S-classer wasn’t?