Page 191 of Mud

“No,” I barely managed. “I’m fine.”

“Very well, Miss La Rouge. Your grandmother will be proud,” the man in the green suit said, and I didn’t even have it in me to flinch. “And the IDD thanks you for your service. Please, follow the agent outside. Your work here is done. We’ll take care of the rest.”

The look in Taland’s eyes…

An agent, one of those wearing black suits that extended to their heads, too, so that I only saw their faces, grabbed me by the arm gently.

I’m sorry,I thought, but could never speak the words.

The agent pulled me back—again, gently.

I love you. I’m sorry. I can’t let you die.

The agent pulled me back—harder.

Taland broke right in front of my eyes when I wasn’t strong enough to resist the pull and took a step back.

“Somebody’s about to find themselves in the Tomb soon. You’ve gotten yourself into big trouble, boy. Big, big trouble…”

The agent with the green suit had squatted in front of Taland, and he was smiling, as if this was a good thing.

The Tomb,he said.

Prison.

Taland was going to prison, yet he couldn’t look away from me for a second as the agent dragged me all the way out of the room.

I couldn’t look away from him, either.

But though he was completely broken, and I’d seen the pieces of him all over the floor of that cursed room, hechanged.

I was at the door, about to be dragged out, and the agents at his side pulled Taland to his feet, then cuffed his hands behind his back. By then, the look on his face had changed completely—from broken toevil.

Pure, raw evil, even if I didn’t understand it in those moments.

I understood it after just fine.

The agent pulled me out of the room.

“You will not kill him,” I whispered, my own voice strange to my ears.

The agent kept pulling me down the corridor.

I stopped, jerked my arm from his grip. “You willnotkill him, will you?”

He met my eyes. “No, Miss La Rouge. We have orders to bring him in unharmed.”

Unharmed.

He grabbed my arm again, continued to pull me forward.

Unharmed—which meantnot dead.

He took me out of the building, all the way to my room in the dormitory to get my things because I’d apparently be leaving the school right away, as per Hill’s orders. Taland, too—except he wasn’t going home.

He was going to the IDD Headquarters—unharmed.Alive. Not dead.

That night, and a lot of nights afterward, that was the only thing keeping me from losing my mind.

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