“Excuse me, Mr. Shanagan?”

Myrick Shanagan glanced to his right, and his pulse immediately quickened. The Administration officer watching him held an orange ticket.

Orange tickets were always bad news.

“Come with me, please,” the officer said crisply.

Myrick nodded and slowly followed the officer out of his private office. Thankfully, it was Sunday or his co-workers would have witnessed this entire humiliating scene. He paused to lock the door, then pocketed the key and wondered if he’d ever step into his office again. He had had no time to say goodbye to his wife or daughter. What was worse, of course, was that he had finally been discovered.

The Administration officer escorted him to the car waiting below, politely indicating for him to get in first. Myrick quickly obeyed, his palms leaving damp prints on the cool, black leather seats.

The officer slipped into the backseat beside him, and the car pulled away from the curb. Myrick stared straight ahead, even though he could feel the officer watching him from the other end of the seat.

“You’re accused of using 34,903 words over the permitted limit,” the officer said quietly. Myrick jerked when the officer slipped the orange ticket into his hand, pushing insistently when Myrick refused to accept it at first.

Myrick sighed. “What took you so long to catch me?” He was making things worse by just speaking, but he couldn’t help himself. What was the use of prolonging the inevitable by reverting back to the norm, anyway?

“Your methods of hiding your extreme word usage evaded our sensors,” the officer admitted.

Myrick plunged his hands into his jacket pockets, where his fingers curled into fists. The orange ticket was now a crumpled ball. “What will happen to me now?”

“You know the punishment.” The words seemed brusque, but the officer was trying to limit his words, too. When Myrick finally looked at the other man, the sympathy in the officer’s eyes caught him offguard.

“34,914,” the officer said abruptly, as the car stopped. Myrick’s door opened, and another officer grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to his feet. The top of his head banged against the roof of the car, and Myrick heard himself cry out as pain ripped through his skull. The officer holding his arm loosened his grip. Just before they injected him with the hypo, Myrick heard the first officer whisper, “All is not lost.”

He craned his neck to look at the man, but the officer had already turned away.

His last conscious thought as they loaded him on to a stretcher concerned his wife - what would she say when her husband came home as a Mute?

Then the world as he knew it went black.