Page 91 of Mud

The guitar strings were playing themselves. The glossy, black piano let out a beautiful sound from those keys that were moving up and down fast without anybody touchingthem. The drums, too—the sticks beat them in perfect precision.

And then the microphone standing at the head of the stage on a tripod began to sing, too.

Red, red, red is all we see

It’s what we’re made of, you and me

Red, red, like blood and fire and pain

Red like all the rage that hides in this game

It went on and on about the color red, and it sounded like country music but not quite, and the voice coming from the speaker attached to the microphone was female, but not quite.

For a good long while, all of the players just gathered around that stage, looking left and right, waiting for someone to come instruct us on where to go next.

Nobody did.

That pissed me off more.

I shook my head, taking in a deep breath, but that song was getting on my fucking nerves.Red, red, red—it wouldn’t fucking stop.

Yes, we were aware that we were all from Redfire here, so it could stop saying that fucking word for one second because my head was going to explode soon.

Breathe,I kept reminding myself, and I was breathing, but it wasn’t doing anything to calm me down. Because I was exhausted. Damn it, I was fucking exhausted by the past four days, and I just wanted this nightmare to be over. I wanted to be home, taking a bath and reading a book—but no. I had to be forced into this fucking game that wasgoing to kill me, probably as soon as the first challenge began.

And if that wasn’t enough, everything that had happened to me since the second I got that text came back to my mind with a vengeance, each scene crystal clear, the memory of each feeling so powerful that I relived everything all over again.

The laughter of that siren in the interrogation room. The look in Michael’s eyes as he made it clear to me that he planned to kill me. The look in Erid’s face as shefelt badfor trying to kill me but tried anyway. Jim and Jam, being the fucking cowards that they were, stepping away and letting them.

That bullet going through my leg—fuck, thatpissed.Me. Off!

He fucking shot me while we were on a mission! He shot me, my own team leader—and that wasn’t even the worst of it.

Images spun in my head. The pain was still there as if fresh, as if my leg was still bleeding. It didn’t help that my head was still throbbing for real where that fucking guard had hit me with his gun to knock me out.

Oh, when I got my hands on that guy. When I got my fucking hands on that guy…

And then Taland Tivoux—my undoing.

The memory of his face, his smile, the look in his eyes as he watched his brothers torture me was in the very center of my mind, so clear I could be looking at him directly right now. He’d just stood by and did nothing but reminded his brothers thathehad called dibs on my life.Hewould get to be the one to kill me, and as long as his brothers agreed to that, he had no problem standing in the corner, watching me scream.

But most of all, it wasmethat did me in.

You betrayed me—those three words. Those threetruewords he said to me twice that filled me with so much shame and guilt and pure rage.

And please let’s not forget that Madeline, my very own grandmother, would have to throw away her precious armchair because I sat on itand. Made. It. Dirty!

Laughter burst out of me all of a sudden. It was short and it sounded awful even to my own ears, and other players looked at me like I’d lost my damned mind, and maybe I had. Maybe I wanted to. Fuck, I was so angry I could kill all of them and flood this entire playground so that nobody would ever play this stupid game again.

I hoped they talked to me. I hoped someone said something to me, anything to get me moving, because all these emotions going through me right now were pulling me under. And the more they pulled, the angrier I became—because they were right.

I was weak, useless, a damn traitor. I was stained, filthy, worthless, just like Madeline said.

Then a small surge of electricity went through my right wrist, and I almost fucking shot my own hand off the way it fried my nerve ends so suddenly. The damn stupid chip those smugglers had branded me with.

If I ever laid eyes on them again, if I ever even smelled their scent or saw that fucking bandana, I was going to?—

“Are youMud?”

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