Page 14 of Mud

Then Taland stood up.

The man who’d tattooed him moved back and kept his head lowered as Taland looked down at his body. He’dtattooed the middle of his chest, but I had no clue what it was—it just looked like a big black stain on his ivory skin. He had a few tattoos on his back and two identical ones on his ankles before, but they were all small. This one was big, bigger than the palm of my hand, and I was dying to know what the hell it was.

“Can we zoom in?” I asked Cassie, and she did, but the quality of the image only became grainier, so I didn’t see shit before Taland grabbed a black shirt from the bench—his uniform—and he started for one of the stairways at the edge of the room.

The way he walked…

It was allwrong.He walked differently. His hair was too long, and his limbs looked too long, too, and he’d lost weight. Maybe it was all in my head because I really couldn’t see anything well enough on that screen, but I was willing to bet an arm that he’d lost weight since I last saw him.

And then he reached the second floor and he disappeared from my sight.

I put my hand on Cassie’s shoulder, which was strange because I never really touched people, and I never let people touch me. Definitely not someone who’dsqueezesomeone else the way I was doing right now, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Where did he?—”

Cassie switched the footage before I could finish my question. Now, we were looking at the second floor from the hallways that had cells on one side, and railings on the other, which looked out at the lounge area. No windows, no balconies, no nothing—just the cells and that open area. That was their whole world.

And did it even matter that the likes of Taland Tivoux,no matter how he was acting right now,did notbelong in there at all?

But there he was, stopped by the cell door of another inmate. The camera showed his back, the way he was carrying that shirt over his shoulder, his other hand in his pocket. His audience was growing. More and more inmates were climbing up and down stairs to get closer.

“Who’s in there?” I asked, digging my fingers harder into Cassie’s shoulder, but if she noticed, she didn’t complain.

“That’s the newest inmate. Transferred to the Tomb yesterday morning for killing his classmate in front of his entire class,” Cassie said. “He’s seventeen.”

“What the…”

Magic, black as the dread that had taken over me right now, burst out of Taland’s raised hand, straight into the cell.

“What is he doing?!”

“He attacked him,” Cassie whispered. “He attacked the kid. Left him half dead.”

And I saw that. I saw the amount of magic going into that cell as guards rushed to the group, and Taland laughed.

He fuckinglaughedtogether with all the other inmates until the guards came, and even then, he didn’t stop smiling.

No, no, no, no…

“The kid drew something for him, apparently, something he tattooed on his chest. Then he went to saythanksand he almost killed him,” Cassie continued. “That’s what some of the inmates told the investigators so far.”

“No.”That was not Taland. He would never hurtanyone, let alone a little kid, no matter how he got to the Tomb.

Hewould never…

“This is the last footage of him we have,” Cassie said, then typed on her keyboard again to change the image.

This one was a shot of at least ten cells, one next to the other, some with people in them, some empty. In the very last one was a man sitting on a bed, perfectly motionless.

“This is about two hours before he disappeared,” Cassie said. “He came to his cell after he almost killed that boy, activated a couple of anchors without even hiding, and sat on the bed. He didn’t move again.”

I leaned in, nose almost touching the screen. I saw his profile, his naked torso, the way he sat so perfectly straight and motionless on the bed, staring at…

“What the hell is he looking at?” I wondered. His hands were over his knees and he was so still it should have been impossible. It didn’t look like he was even breathing.

“No clue. All the guards found were some scratches on the wall. And…” She pressed another key on the keyboard, and the footage moved, but only slightly. I could tell it was in fast forward only because of the guards that made rounds every fifteen minutes—and then it stopped again.

“There.” Cassie pointed at the screen as Taland stood up all of the sudden, having not moved for almost two whole hours. He stood up and just walked ahead, right into what should have been the wall of his cell.

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