Page 60 of Anchor

It hurt to look at footage of her, to see her on screen from so far away, only bits and pieces, of her spinning in the air while she showed me what she could do in the Greenfire challenge, her leading me to the edge of the branch—and we’d walked for much longer than I’d realized when I’d been there—and the shot from the Whitefire challenge as well.

Nowhere in the videos was I shown using my magic—ornotusing it—but instead turning to my weapons. My circle at the beginning of challenges was captured twice, and they’d turned it red. A pale red, but a red nonetheless.

They’d turned my circle red, so it fit with the lie they told the people, the lie they’d hadmetell the people, too.

Now barely anyone online threw the wordMudin the same sentence with my name just a few days later. Barely anyone evenremembered—that I saw, of course. Or maybe the Council was just keeping an eye out and taking down anything that didn’t fit the story they wanted everyone to believe.

It made me wonder…had another Mud done what I did before, and they covered it up in the same way?

It made me wonder about a lot of things.

By Monday, I no longer had any hope of finding the paperwork of the mission I was sent to by Hill at that school. I found no paperwork on Taland before he was taken in, which was absolutely insane because I’d had his file in my hands! That professor had brought me the folder with Taland’s info on my second or third day of school. It had been a complete report with his grades and schedule and date of birth and fucking measurements—I hadn’t made that up! I had seen that folder with my own eyes, and when I got back from themission,I had given it to Madeline at her request. I hadn’t even thought anything of it—I’d just given her the folder because I’d been so broken, so completely ruined that just the thought of having Taland’s picture in my possession tore me apart.

Now I wished I’d held onto it just to have it. As proof.

Against whom? I asked myself, and I felt like a damn fool. This was the IDD we were talking about, and Hill was at the top of it. What would I have used that folder for?

When the familiar voice reached my ears, I was about ready to close my eyes and fall asleep right there over my desk, hidden away from the world inside the plastic walls of my cubicle. My coworkers, at least, had stopped trying to make small talk with me, especially since I’d been staring at them dead in the eye without answering when they spoke to me, until they walked away. Yeah, I was acting mentally unstable on purpose to get them to leave me alone—so what? These people were awful. They’d have let me die right in front of their feet when I wasMud. I hadn’t forgotten. They wouldn’t get any love from me now—not even a smile.

So other than Cassie, I didn’t even talk to anybody else, and Cameron had yet to assign me to a team, and I usually blocked out anyone who spoke near my cubicle, butthisvoice in particular I recognized. This voice in particular I’d been looking forward to hearing.

It was the voice of either Jim or Jam, the twins who used to be on Michael’s team with me. I’d only seen them in the hallways twice since I’d come back, and they had practically run away just to avoid having to talk to me.

Now they were here, in the main office, and maybe they thought I’d already gone home because I hadn’t left my cubicle in the past four hours, and it was over two hours since my official shift ended. Or maybe they were tired of running from me and they understood that no matter how long it took, they were going to have to talk to me eventually. Answer my questions.

The reason why I hadn’t gone to their place until now—because I knew where they lived—was because they’d saved my life once. They’d sat back and watched while Erid and Michael had tried to kill me in the forest, but then in the infirmary, they’d done theirparty trickof a spell and they’d frozen time within that room for as long as it took me to get to another, so that Madeline and all the other people who’d been in there wouldn’t see me. Madeline and all the other people who’d have interrogated me and thenkilledme for having become Mud.

So, yeah, I gave them the time they needed, and now they were finally here.

I stood up when I heard the other one talking, too—either Jim or Jam, didn’t really matter. They were standing by the cubicle of Celia, a Blackfire who was only a couple of years older than me, talking and laughing—right until they noticed me standing there and watching them in silence. The walls of ourcubicles went up to my neck, so all they saw was my head, but still. My eyes told them all they needed to know because they couldn’t see my fisted hands: I waspissed.

A second later, they both turned and smiled at Celia, then made for the doors with their heads down.

Like hell.

I’d waited enough and I was angry, so fucking tired of having been lied to, and I couldn’t find Taland, and I couldn’t wait for September to arrive, and now they thought they could run from me again?

Fuck no.I was sick and tired of their lies, too. My lies. Everybody’s fucking lies.

So, I chased them.

Not something I’m proud of, but it had already been eight days since I’d come back to work, and I couldn’t wait a second longer, so I ran behind them, out in the hallway and straight ahead.

They were running, too, so I barely caught one disappearing down the hallway to my left. The way I moved, you’d think a house-sized spider with sapphire eyes was after me. I saw them turning the corner at the other end of the hallway. No way was I going to let them get away this time.

I crossed through the corridor to the cafeteria and the door on its other side, which led me closer to the toilets, and just around the corner from where Jim and Jam would end up at the end of the hallway they’d run to.

My lungs threatened to explode by the time I made it around the corner and slammed into Jim and Jam, and we all screamed.

“Fucking hell, Rora!” said one of the twins.

“You scared us!” said the other.

“Why are you chasing us? What the hell is the matter with you?!”

“I was about to have a heart attack—why would you?—”

“Don’t.You. Dare,” I cut him off—Jam, judging by his hair that was tied behind his back, but of course I could be mistaken. But I was resting to catch my breath here, and I needed a second, and they knew very well why I was running and chasing them, and that’s why they said nothing else as they looked at one another. Nowhere to go now.

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