His gaze shifted to the injured man, taking in the damage, then swept across the crowd. He could hear them—the whispers rippling through the gathered students like wind through grass. Psychopath. Crazy. Dangerous. The words hissed and slithered, barely audible but impossible to ignore.
'What is wrong with her?' The thought struck him with physical force, a tightness in his chest that made breathing difficult.
'This is not the Shanazer I know.' His mind raced backward through memories—her laugh, her kindness, her fierce loyalty.
'What has happened in my absence?' But he knew, with the certainty of experience, that this was neither the time nor the place for answers. The crowd pressed in, hungry for drama. The officers waited, tense and ready. Everything balanced on a knife's edge.
"We'll go to the police station and examine this incident carefully." His voice carried disbelief, the words tasting strange in his mouth, as if speaking them made the situation more real, more impossible.
The officer stepped forward, cuffs catching the light, metal glinting. The sound of them—that distinctive jingle—made Shanazer flinch. Tairen's frown deepened, lines carving into his forehead.
"Is this necessary?" He kept his voice level, reasonable, but his eyes held a challenge. "She will cooperate."
"It's protocol, sir." The officer's voice trembled like a plucked string, vibrating with barely-contained anxiety. His hands shook as he held the cuffs, and he couldn't quite meet Tairen's eyes.
Tairen's gaze locked on Adrian London, reading him in an instant—the superior officer, the one calling the shots. The air between them crackled with unspoken tension.
Adrian hesitated. The pause stretched for a heartbeat, two, three. His throat worked. Then he spoke, forcing authority into his voice that he didn't quite feel. "Sir, it must be done."
"Fine." The word dropped from Tairen's lips like a stone.
He knew how the system worked—had worked within it, around it, through it for years.
Fighting this battle here, now, would accomplish nothing. His jaw clenched as he watched the officer approach Shanazer, as the metal closed around her wrists with that terrible clicking sound. Then the injured man was cuffed as well, groaning as the movement jarred his wounds.
Minutes crawled by like hours. The crowd began to disperse, reluctantly, still craning their necks for one last look.
Two vehicles waited, engines idling, exhaust shimmering in the heat. In one rode Tairen, Shanazer, Anna, and Adrian London—the air inside already thick with tension before the doors even closed.
In the other, the officer, the principal, and the accused man, blood still seeping through the makeshift bandages someone had applied.
Inside the first car, the leather seats creaked as bodies settled. The air conditioning hummed, but it couldn't quite cut through the oppressive atmosphere.
Adrian reached across the space between the front and back seats, his movements deliberate, measured. His fingers found the cuffs on Shanazer's wrists. The click of the release mechanism sounded impossibly loud in the confined space.
The gesture stunned them all. Tairen's eyes widened fractionally. Anna's breath caught audibly in her throat. Silence fell like a physical thing, heavy and suffocating, pressing against eardrums, making the air feel too thick to breathe properly.
Adrian's phone buzzed against his thigh—once, twice, three times in rapid succession. The vibration seemed to echo through the car.
He pulled it out, the screen's glow illuminating his face from below, casting strange shadows. His thumb swiped across the glass. Videos. One after another.
His expression remained carefully neutral as he watched, but something flickered in his eyes—calculation, perhaps, or satisfaction. Without a word, without preamble, he handed the phone across to Shanazer. His fingers brushed hers briefly—her skin still sticky with drying blood, his cool and dry.
"See for yourself."
The words were simple, but they landed with weight. Shanazer took the phone, her hands trembling now, adrenaline finally catching up with her. The screen glowed in her grip.
Adrian turned back to the front, his movements smooth, practiced. He started the engine—the rumble vibrating through the chassis, through the seats, through their bones.
He checked the mirrors, one hand on the wheel, the other on the gear shift. The car reversed slowly, tires crunching over gravel, then he shifted gears with a smooth motion, the transmission engaging with a soft thunk. They pulled onto the road, the world outside sliding past the windows.
Then—laughter.
It erupted from Shanazer like something breaking free, sudden and sharp and utterly unexpected. The sound filled the car, bouncing off windows and leather and metal, echoing in the confined space.
It wasn't the laughter of joy or relief. It was something else—something that made the hair on the back of Anna's neck stand up, that sent a chill down Tairen's spine despite the warmth of the afternoon.
The laughter rang out, high and bright and wrong, unsettling in its intensity. It went on and on, filling every corner of the vehicle, drowning out the engine's hum, the road noise, everything.
Tairen and Anna exchanged glances, their eyes meeting across the space between them. Confusion etched itself into every line of their faces—furrowed brows, parted lips, wide eyes. Anna's hand gripped the door handle, knuckles white. Tairen's jaw clenched, muscle jumping beneath the skin.
'Has something snapped in her?' The thought materialized unbidden, unwanted, but impossible to dismiss.
The word hovered between them, unspoken but present as if written in the air—madness. It hung there, heavy and terrible, as Shanazer's laughter continued to echo, and the car carried them forward through the afternoon heat toward whatever waited at the police station, toward answers or more questions, toward truth or deeper mystery.
The laughter finally began to fade, trailing off into something that might have been a sob or might have been another laugh—it was impossible to tell.
Shanazer's shoulders shook. The phone remained clutched in her bloodstained hands, screen still glowing, still playing whatever videos.
Outside, the world continued on, oblivious. Students walked to classes. Cars passed in the opposite direction. The sun beat down on concrete and grass and metal. But inside that car, in that moment, four people sat suspended in uncertainty, in tension, in the terrible space between knowing and not knowing, between before and after, between the person Shanazer had been and whoever she was becoming.