Page 137 of I Will Break You

Jynxson has always been an asshole. Even from the age of ten. He’s the kind of dick who would lie in the bottom bunk in the middle of the night and kick a man while he slept, just to ask him for the time. Or borrow a man’s computer games without permission and return them splattered in juice.

He’s matured over the eighteen years since we first joined the facility, but not by much. And he hasn’t grown out of his shitty sense of humor. I only keep him around because he’s talented and a loyal motherfucker.

“Are you going to kill her, then?” he asks.

“Not until I’ve solved the mystery of her mind,” Imutter.

He glances over his shoulder toward the open grave. “Didn’t you just tell me she’s a user?”

“Who kills men and knows how to dispose of their bodies?” I ask.

“Point taken.” He folds his arms. “Do you think she could be a spy?”

“From the Moirai?”

He nods.

“No. A trained professional would have disabled the man she killed. When I walked in on them, she was losing and about to die.”

“Okay, so what’s special about her?” he asks.

“One, when I slid over the knife, she stabbed him without hesitation. Then she did it again.”

“But isn’t that normal for an angry woman?”

“Two, she called her mother in tears, who ranted about all the men she’s killed.”

Jynxson’s eyes widen. “Interesting.”

“Three, how many civilians do you know can fall calm after killing a man and go straight to clean up?”

Our gazes meet, and my mind races back to her first letter. Amethyst was one of multiple mentally unhinged women who wrote to me, but her letter stood out amongst them all. While the others sent nudes, used panties, and their poorly written fantasies, Amethyst intrigued me with well-crafted phrases on paper scented with her heavenly pussy.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

“I have no fucking idea. She saw me following her but just looked through me, like I was a figment of her imagination.”

We stand together, debating the nature of her mental state, when a soft grunt returns our attention to the open grave. Amethyst climbs out, her hair in disarray. With calm precision, she rolls the corpse into the open grave and jumps back in.

“You see?” I murmur. “She’s obviously done this before.”

“Hear me out,” Jynxson says.

“What?”

“Is she a former Lolita?”

I frown. “They stopped bringing girls after our first year. And she’s only twenty-four.”

“They stopped bringing girls toourfacility, because we kept asking questions. What if they moved them to another one?”

My stomach drops. All this time, I thought they were a failed experiment. None of the girls who joined the academy were former Lolitas, so I just assumed they were disbanded. I couldn’t stand the thought of more innocent girls being corrupted by that man.

“How the hell could he still be operating?” I snarl.

He places a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. There’s no way you could have known.”

I nod, my gaze darting back to the grave. “There’s only one way to find out.”