Arena Three

It shocks me to hear myself thinking this way. I really have turned into Flo. She didn’t care who she hurt as long as she survived. At the time, I hated her for it. But now I understand. And I understand, too, why my dad did what he did. Sometimes small acts of evil build up to greater acts of kindness. Not that anyone could call blowing up a stadium filled with slaverunners and spectators small…

My mission doesn’t leave my thoughts for even a second. Straightaway, I fumble in my pocket, searching for the red LED light of my GPS tracker. It’s hard to reach with the cuffs on and in the pitch blackness, but I find it nevertheless. I know once I activate it I’ll only have five minutes to escape before the bombs are dropped, so it’s absolutely critical that I secure myself an escape route before I do. I wish I had just the smallest amount of light to see by, so I could work out how many steps it will take me to reach the door. Every detail matters now. My plan is to activate the device when the guards arrive to take me to my fight, then attack them. I’ll be up and out of the arena before the bombs fall.

“What have you got there?” a disembodied voice says to me. It sounds like the voice of an old woman. The cruelty of the slaverunners for putting an elderly woman in an arena for entertainment is unimaginable.

“It’s nothing,” I say, not knowing whether I can trust her.

“Looks like something to me,” comes her reply.

I deliberate whether to tell her more. But then I remind myself that I’m not here to be polite or friendly. I have a mission and nothing should be distracting me from it, even if that something is just a light-hearted conversation with an old woman.

As I’m feeling my way in the gloom along the perimeter wall, I pray the other survivors don’t suss out what I’m doing, or haven’t been drawn to my movements by the nosy old woman. I can’t trust anyone, not even people who in other circumstances would be on the same team as me. I feel guilty knowing that my actions will be causing their deaths, but I have to remind myself that they’d all be dead anyway. At least this way, other people elsewhere will get to live. I shouldn’t have to turn them into martyrs, but I have no choice.

As I’m searching for a strategic place to prepare for my attack, I start to hear something that piques my suspicion. It sounds a lot like the distant shouts of a crowd. I listen intently, straining to hear over the sounds of the other prisoners shuffling around in the cell. It is unmistakable. I can hear the sound of an approaching crowd, their cries for blood growing louder and louder and louder.

The old woman who’d spoken to me before must hear it too.

“Must be a special event,” she says. “There ain’t usually fights this early in the day.”

I want to ask her how she can even tell what time of day it is, since we’re in a completely dark cell without any way of seeing outside, but I have more important things to think about. A special event could only mean one thing: the slaverunners have announced my arrival. I knew I’d be a draw for the crowds but I didn’t realize I’d be such a draw that they would move the games forward to the middle of the day. I won’t get the evening to prepare at all. They’re holding a special fight, right here, right now.

A jolt of panic races through me. I’ve barely been here twenty minutes and already the plan is diverging off course. My escape route hasn’t been planned. I haven’t had time to figure out what I’m doing.

Suddenly I hear the sound of footsteps approaching from outside. They’re coming for me. The lock screeches as someone opens it from the other side of the door, then a slaverunner appears, a silhouette against the dim light coming from outside.

“Brooke Moore,” he says. I recognize his voice as the slaverunner who first captured me back out in the city. “You were right about you being a crowd pleaser. The second we said we had you, our leader called a fight. A special fight. You’re coming to the arena.”

I try to keep calm. Everything’s happening more quickly than I was expecting—it’s barely been four hours since I left Ryan, Ben, Charlie, Dad, Bree, and Penelope at the gates of the compound—but I have to keep my wits about me. I’m a soldier, a fighter, I can do what I have to do. The time is now. The moment has arrived.

The old woman begins to chuckle. “Oh, you’re the special event. Well, good luck to you.”

I turn and glare at her, at her wizened face. She’s missing all her teeth and her hands are gnarled.

But I don’t have time for anger, I have work to do. I reach into my pocket for the GPS device. But before my thumb hits the button, the woman screams.

“She’s got something in her pocket!”