The Shrink Program

Chapter 74

'... could we maybe just go catch butterflies together?'

"Vain?"

I said the word, felt my lips form the name...

But the voice didn't belong to me.

I've never sounded that lost before.

At least it was too quiet for anyone else to hear...

I held as still, afraid to move... To react... To acknowledge what had just happened.

The moment I did, it would become real.

'I don't understand....'

'I know. You can't understand. Not until it's too late.'

"You..." My hands clenched into the material of my shirt, white-knuckled and visibly shaking.

I forced myself to speak louder.

"You were working with them?"

'.... If Maddison refuses to go along with you, Vain will help her to the very end....'

He was watching me, his expression calm.

Detached.

If he was hurting, he didn't show it. If he grieved at all for the way I was breaking, he didn't show it.

He was making me go through this alone.

Finally, Vain shook his head and said the words I desperately wanted to hear.

"No Maddison."

'Where are you taking me?'

'To our...'

I felt my chest tighten to a point I could barely breathe.

"I'm not with them...."

'I know we don't get along, and will probably never agree on anything....but she cares about you, and you care about her.'

His crimson gaze settled on the torn cards in his hand.

They could never be made whole again.

"I'm their leader."

No-

My hands fell limp at my sides.

I almost denied it.

Right there, as he confessed the truth to me, all I wanted to do was say he was wrong.

That he hadn't...

But he had.

Since the beginning.

Vain had wanted to talk to me about something in the courtyard. Immediately after, we were attacked, and Nigel had been lured to the scene.
I told Vain that Devin had run off, and Apollo had turned up soon after, so quickly he had to of been close by in the first place.

'As clever as you are Maddison, you are naive, and tend to resort to denial when the facts threaten your view of things....'

I was with Vain when the student had abducted me from the classroom.

Vain had come with Alex and Alan to Apollo's hideout but had avoided going inside the niche.

'...That is why you're going to lose.'

Apollo had given me to Vain for safekeeping while he fought Jack, but Vain hadn't made a single attempt to escape, nor get me out of the Jar.

'So I'd appreciate it if you would... Stop this...'

The reason I had gone to that teacher's house that night, the night I was framed.

'...Before you break her heart.'

Was because I got a message saying that Vain had been taken, hostage.