Arena Three

“We’ve been in strategic communication with the compound up in Massachusetts,” the General continues. “We’re preparing to coordinate a large-scale attack on Arena One and Arena Two in New York, while at the same time taking down Arena Three, here in Texas. We have only one shot to get it right. We’ve amassed enough bombs and weapons to eradicate all three. Once the first three arenas fall, it won’t take long to break the stranglehold of the other, smaller ones across the country. A coordinated attack on the major arenas is step one in the liberation of the people of America.”

I hadn’t fully understood the arenas and how they came about before now, but as I listen in on the meeting, I start to comprehend the logistics behind the war. The first two arenas weren’t for bloodsport at all, but mass public executions. Different sides of the civil war had different strongholds in the north and south. Anyone who opposed the dominant group in the north were taken to the arenas and killed. In retaliation for their people’s slaughter, Arena 3 in the south turned the public execution of rebels into a vicious game. It was a form of retaliation for what was happening to their sympathizers in the north. The north responded with more bloodshed, turning the arenas into perverse battlegrounds. This all had the effect of making the arena places for survivors to congregate. As more and more people died and the different sides slowly obliterated one another, the arenas became the central hub of the remaining cities, and the survivors who’d gone there had a choice: join the brutal new societies or die.

I remember the moment back in Arena 1 when I’d been offered the opportunity to join them. I’d chosen to face death instead. I wish others had been as strong when the moment counted. Perhaps if they had, the cities wouldn’t have gotten such a strong hold over what remained of civilization.

The General moves over to another board, this one showing a picture of a small electronic device.

“This is the GPS tracker which needs to be placed in each of the arenas in order to guide the bombs. Once detonated, they will completely eradicate the arena and the city around it entirely. Over a hundred thousand people will die in each attack.”

The thought of all those deaths makes my stomach turn. But I also know it’s a necessary evil. Fighting war with war doesn’t sound like it makes much sense but I understand why it has to be this way.

As the conversation turns to strategy and how, exactly, we can get the GPS devices inside, I am hit by a sudden moment of clarity.

“Send me into the arena,” I say, before my brain has even had time to catch up to my mouth.

Silence falls. Everyone looks at me. I can feel their eyes burning into me.

“I’m sorry?” the General says. I can almost hear the derision in his voice. He’s wondering what a seventeen-year-old girl can do in an arena built for slaughter.

“I’ve fought in them before,” I add. “They’ll all know my name, all recognize my face. I’ll be able to walk right in there. Everyone will want to see me fight. I’ll be able to draw every single person in the city into one place. Once I’m there, I can activate your GPS device.”

It’s my dad who speaks first. “How will you get back out again?” he says.

I can feel my hands trembling. I don’t want them to. This is my moment, I have to be brave so that everyone knows I can do this.

“I’ve done it before,” I say.

I can tell Dad is growing tenser. “That doesn’t mean you can do it again,” he says.

“I know. And if I can’t, you’ll just have to blow the place up with me still inside.”

There’s a perceptible change in the atmosphere as everyone realizes what it is I’m offering. Instead of sending a group of soldiers into the city and risking all their lives, I’m offering to infiltrate, to allow myself to be caught. I’m offering to return to the worst place I’ve ever had the misfortune of entering in my entire life, without the guarantee of coming out the other end, just for their cause. I can feel the respect of the soldiers in the room begin to build.

“You don’t have to do this just to prove a point, Brooke,” my dad is saying.

I shake my head. “I’m not,” I say. “I’m doing it because I can. Because I’m the best person to do it. You said we get one chance, that we only have enough weapons for one attack. So let me draw everyone to one place. It will increase our chances of success, won’t it?”

My dad can’t argue against me. He knows I’m right.

“Let me do this,” I say again, firmly. “It’s the right thing to do. If we don’t take these cities down, if we don’t eradicate the arenas and the slaverunners, then survivors will keep being tortured and enslaved. Children will keep being taken for the mines, for the sex trade.”

My voice falters as I think of Ben’s brother whisked away on a train for the mines beneath Grand Central. I have to do this for him, and for everyone else who died because of this stupid, brutal war.