Inner Circle

by Y A Marks

  As soon as we got five feet from our previous position, I felt exposed. This was the kind of situation in which the goofy soldier in war movies ran out and got killed. The soldier that everyone swore they would avenge by the end of the movie. I really did not like being in this situation.

  The five barn-like buildings, Norwood’s Office, and the arch over Circle One towered over us. Anyone from anywhere could send a flurry of whatever weapon they wanted toward us. My body twitched. My eyes jumped to any movement, even a blade of grass blowing in the breeze. Every sound pulled my focus until I was just a zombie of nerves jogging blindly behind Jonas.

  We reached the area at the back of Circle One. Jonas pulled out some kind of cloth-like thing. It was cylindrical and moved in his hands like gelatin. I didn’t even want to know what that was. It would just boggle my mind. Right then, I needed as much of my brain power as possible to focus.

  Jonas placed the cloth-bomb as far up on the wall as he could. He hammered the top into the concrete. The Razorback guy and I stood watch. Each slam of the hammer shot shockwaves through me.

  My gaze sought out safe areas, places I could run and be protected. The more I searched, the more I realized there were none. This whole place was made like a Roman arena.

  After ten seconds, Jonas turned around. “We’re good. Let’s move back.”

  I couldn’t believe that was it, but I didn’t want to wait any longer.

  We dashed around the side of the wall. It curved due to the arch above, so we could find a bit more cover around the left side of Circle One.

  “Give me the gun,” Jonas said.

  I didn’t argue and handed it over. Jonas looked around, took a few steps toward the center of the field, turned, and fired the gun at the bag of goo on the wall. I held my breath and closed my eyes. The first gunshot yielded nothing. He checked the gun, aimed, and fired again.

  The ground beneath me rocked, and I fumbled onto my knees. My ears rang. A few seconds later, I couldn’t hear anything. Debris shot out and wrapped dark clouds around us. The area became a giant fog of dust.

  I spun around trying to get my bearings. My ears struggled to understand sounds. First, they were distant, but soon they were back to normal levels. I fell forward as I worked my way around the side of the wall. My gaze slid into the dusty mist. Two figures were fighting inside. One of them had to be Jonas.

  I dashed over, nearly tripping over my own feet. With my breathing echoing in my head, I shut my eyes tight. My focus was gone. The explosion shocked it right out of me.

  Something hit me, and I fell into the dirt. It wasn’t a hard fall, but someone grabbed the back of my head and pressed my nose into the ground. Small granules entered into my nostrils and mouth. I couldn’t breathe. In desperation, I grabbed at my right side where my gun holster was, but the gun wasn’t there. Jonas had my gun. I didn’t have any weapons.

  I rocked back and forth trying to get air. My lungs drew tight and bits of dirt cut into my windpipe. My chest heaved and a flow of mucus and grime flowed back and forth within my throat as my body struggled to stay alive.

  My arms swung backward. I grabbed something. It felt like a boot. I yanked at it, trying to sweep my attacker off his feet. He stumbled back, which gave me just enough room to flip over and take in a few, needed breaths.

  A fist shot down on me. I went into defense mode with my arms protecting my face. My attacker’s hard bones pounded into my wrists. Two more punches came, rattling me. I couldn’t continue like this. I was coughing up dirt, floundering around, and my balance was still slightly off. A few more hits and my face would be exposed from my exhaustion.

  I started to fall into myself. My anger flared. As much as I wanted to get back to being myself, the desire for my attacker’s blood filled me. I didn’t want that mental state. I had rejected it, but it flashed into my mind and took over.

  I tried to think about my conversation with Jonas. He had explained about different battles and about figuring out what type of one I was in. We also briefly went over misdirection and my attack strategy. In this moment, none of that advice seemed helpful. My thoughts were only on surviving.

  I had to get some leverage, but how? That’s when it came to me—I had to do what I’d always done—something unexpected.

  My attacker yanked at my right arm, trying to move it away from my face. As soon as his hand touched my arm, I rotated my body around and bit into his wrist. He wailed and started to hit me in the back of my head. Before he could get more than three strikes in, I crawled back as fast as I could, like a crab over the ground, his wrist firmly between my teeth.

  His body curled under, and he fell on his back. I released his arm. Clambering to my feet, I yanked off my jacket. Once the jacket was free, I jumped toward my attacker’s head with my heel. He stopped me from stomping into his head and pushed me off. I hit the ground only a few feet above his head. I scrambled back as he tried to readjust. However, I had him where I wanted him. I wrapped the jacket sleeve under his chin and around his neck, and then wedged my tiny body into the gap between his back and the ground. I tightened the sleeve and tucked my body into the smallest ball so he would have nothing to grab.

  His arms flailed, trying to grab a part of me. After a long struggle, his body slowed and went limp. I yanked a few extra times on the sleeve just in case. After I was satisfied that he wouldn’t be coming back to haunt me, I released the sleeve from around his neck and pulled back.

  In the distance, the light whip of bow strings and the whistle of arrows dotted the air. Shannon and Pyra had to be shooting at something. Since I’d been attacked, I guessed a group of people advanced into the dust cloud. Once it was dissolved, we’d be vulnerable.

  As soon as I wondered where Jonas was, a grunt sounded behind me. I spun around and saw someone over Jonas, forcing Jonas’s arm onto the ground in a repeated pattern, trying to get him to release the gun. Jonas’s arm angled toward me. His eyes were desperate. The man he was tumbling with pressed down on Jonas’s fingers. The gun fired. Its explosion echoed through the area. Instinctively, I wrapped my arms and legs around my body.

  I was okay.

  My focus narrowed on Jonas’s attacker. I searched around me for a weapon. There was nothing. My attacker had assailed me with nothing but his fists, and Jonas had my gun. I searched my attacker’s body, moving him around and looking for any loose object, but there was nothing. He didn’t even have a belt. His body slumped over and went still. His boot, however, rocked a second or two later before stopping.

  Without another thought, I yanked off the boot. I dashed over the ten-yard distance between me and Jonas, wrapping a tight fist around the top soft area of the boot. As the last of the dust cleared, I swung the boot across the face of the man attacking Jonas. The man reeled back, just long enough for Jonas to turn and shoot him two times in the stomach.

  I stood there for a moment, proud of myself, and trying to regain my breath. My back felt like lead. I smiled at Jonas. I had saved him. A laugh tickled my throat, but I was too tired to release it.

  The last of the dust settled. A howling whistle shot through the air. A blur stretched directly at me, but I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. My reflexes wouldn’t act. I slammed into the hard, Georgia clay, my legs yanked from under me. I glanced up at a monstrous three-foot piece of metal vibrating into what was left of the outer wall.

  Jonas stood barely above me as my head rotated to absorb my new position. He took a few, deep breaths. “You’re welcome.”

  “Thanks,” I said, my voice high with my embarrassment.

  The final clouds of dust slid to the west. I rolled over just in time to see Ares yank a woman off a wooden catapult and throw her to the ground.

  I wiped my eyes and pulled my shaky knees under me. Jonas sped away. Before I understood what he was doing, he threw another pouch, just as big and jiggly as the last explosive. The pouch flew onto a cylinder-like structure that had a slight hourglass shape with rings that wrapped aroun
d it. The structure wasn’t moving. From what Jonas and Trivet had said, this ringed-thing was some kind of generator.

  The pouch hit the ground right at the edge of the generator. Jonas didn’t waste any time. He kicked me out of the blast zone and fired at the pouch. It exploded, but this time a spray of fire and metal parts shot forward.

  As I rolled on the ground for the… how many times had it been… fourth time that day? I was appalled that he had kicked me. I was so beaten up that I couldn’t even form any mental sentences to complain. I was alive and that was all that mattered. Two steps had been completed. The generator was gone, and Ares had stopped the catapult and its slice and dice ammo. All we had to do now was climb up to Norwood’s office and disable the fences. I was hoping that this would be the easy part, but everything within me knew that it could only get harder from here.

  CHAPTER 21

  As the last of generator’s core sparked and then fizzled out, I turned toward Jonas. A few bodies littered the ground near our feet. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself as he stepped over one of the dead assailant’s arms.

  “I’m sure there will be more,” Jonas said.

  I was sure of it, too. If these people really wanted me dead and they knew Jonas was protecting me, they would send their best. However, I didn’t know if any assassins knew where I was or what we were attempting. So far, we had only run into two groups of people, one in the forest and one at Circle One. In either case, neither seemed to call out my name or target me individually. If the Death Days were a free for all, then these people could have just been defending themselves.

  When I thought back to the woman I had killed and her avenger, I had to consider that they may have believed our end game was to attack the Rattlers. It was possible that the guy didn’t know who I was or why we were there. Maybe they were like the Twelve of Twelve, the TOTs, who protected the Nobody Township.

  I wanted to shrivel up and disappear. I didn’t want to consider the possibility that I had killed an innocent person. I wondered if this was how Jonas felt. He had said that he had done horrible things in the past, simply to survive.

  After a moment, Jonas nudged me with his arm and motioned for me to follow him toward the base tower of Norwood’s office. As we went, Shannon and two of the other Razorbacks joined us. Ares carried Pyra, and I scanned around. In various places lay three bodies dressed in red, the color for the Razorback Circle.

  Everyone exchanged glances. Their expressions had the same look I was sure I was wearing. It was part shock but mostly held the realization that all of us were on a suicide mission.

  “Lucky Seven,” Shannon said.

  I speculated that the only reason why we were still alive is that no one would expect a small group of people to head to Circle One. There was nothing here, no weapons, few hiding places, and soon there’d be the watchful eyes of Norwood. What I didn’t know was how the weapons for the Death Days were snuck in or what kinds of communications were used.

  I started to go over everything that I knew. There were no watchtowers beyond Norwood’s office. The arch was the only way in or out. The prison covered over twelve square miles of land. The main features were the two rivers, the stone wall, and the electric fields.

  Besides Trivet’s plan, I couldn’t fathom a way to escape. The whole prison might as well have been an island in the middle of the ocean. It was as if the prisoners were dropped off and left to fend for themselves, like in a re-creation of early Australia. So if that was the case, how would Norwood get information into various Circles to even try to get inmates to do their dirty work?

  “You alright, Paeton?” Shannon asked, standing next to Ares and Pyra. She touched Pyra’s head with her forearm before running her fingers around Pyra’s temples.

  My gaze slid from her to the other three’s faces.

  “You were mumbling to yourself,” Shannon continued.

  Embarrassment flushed my neck for a brief moment. I didn’t know I was mumbling.

  “You’re good, right?” Shannon’s right eyebrow stretched high on her forehead. She turned back to Pyra and whispered a few words to Pyra as she dangled in Ares’ arms.

  I drove my worries from my mind. I had to concentrate on the facts at hand. My fingers grabbed a handful of the black jacket I was wearing. For now, the rough cloth would have to take the place of my backpack straps.

  “I’m just wondering how information is sent back and forth in this place. It’s not like the prison has some kind of intercom,” I said.

  “We have the PCDs,” Jonas’s eyes locked onto mine for a moment. “Norwood contacts the PCDs, then we tell our township what he wants them to know.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, concentrating once more on the flurry of facts in my head.

  Shannon left Pyra and limped over to me. My gaze focused on her wide eyes. “C’mon little Jonas, I want to get out of here as soon as possible. Let’s worry about PCDs later.”

  I agreed and we moved to the tower, which was only a few yards away. Without stopping, Jonas and Shannon started climbing. The others kept watch with Pyra, who appeared to be half asleep. I don’t know if Jonas had told them to keep watch or not. I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts. I hadn’t paid attention to anything over the last few minutes and had even ignored the fact that the sun started to peek over the horizon. It would only be a matter of minutes before Norwood would be drinking his morning coffee if he wasn’t already doing so.

  “Let’s get up this thing quick. Everyone fan out. I’ll go up the middle and put this bomb at the base,” Jonas said.

  Still lost in thought, I followed closely to Jonas. He pushed his leg out a few times to keep me from getting too close to him. I would have been annoyed, but it was my fault for not paying attention.

  I couldn’t understand how a death sentence could pass unnoticed into the circles. If Norwood communicated to the circles via PCD, then he would communicate to the leaders of the circles, people like Vogel, Trivet, and Jonas. Someone important would know if Norwood wanted any particular inmate dead.

  We scaled the bottom three stories of the four-story tower in a matter of minutes. Like Jonas had said, the jagged brick face was easy to climb. He set the bomb and scooted around the left side in order to detonate it with my gun. Hopefully, the bomb would open up a hole in the floor large enough for us to get into Norwood’s office and not shake us off the tower in the process.

  Jonas raised his left arm to shoot around the tower’s cylindrical shape. That’s when I heard the first dozen whips. The sound was all too familiar to me now. Arrows were in the air, but where they were and who they were aimed at I didn’t know.

  I heard a few grunts below. My eyes focused three stories below me. Two of the Razorbacks had multiple arrows sticking out of them. Ares lifted Pyra and tried to find a bit of shelter around the wide cylinder of the tower while the final Razorback returned fire.

  I turned my attention away from the tower’s edge and saw at least fifteen Rattlers striding forward. Vogel walked on his cane in front of the others.

  The last whistle sounded before the soft thunk of an arrow piercing flesh. I had heard all the arrows flying, but this was the only body piercing that was sharp in my ears. Panic buzzing inside of me, I mentally checked my body, slightly moving places that I couldn’t spin my head around to see.

  Before I could finish my inventory of personal muscle, bone, and skin, Jonas slumped forward. His arm that held the gun was pressed against the wall. Heavy breaths shot through his gritted teeth.

  I could barely see what happened. Jonas’s body blocked my view. Shannon was on my far right and fidgeted trying to figure out what was going on. I wanted Shannon to do something. Unfortunately, she needed both hands to hold on to the wall and would need those same hands to shoot an arrow.

  I cursed the world, the wall, and this last stroke of bad luck. I didn’t want Jonas to die like this when we were so close, but I had no idea what to do. The only weapon was the gun, and I didn’t ev
en know if Jonas had dropped it.

  “Well, well, well, now who’s on the other side of the proverbial canon.” Vogel’s voice echoed around the empty buildings.

  “So, you’re the one.” Jonas’s words and breath spurted at odd intervals. The arrow might have pierced a lung.

  I leaned over to see where the arrow was. The wooden shaft and feathery end protruded out of someplace near his shoulder, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “The one? What’s that mean?” Vogel asked.

  “The one sent to kill Paeton,” Jonas said.

  “Paeton?” Vogel’s tone lifted. He quieted for a few moments while he tried to understand what Jonas meant. After a moment his voice sharpened. “Oh, you mean the girl you wanted so badly.” Vogel strode to a few feet from the wall not paying much attention to Pyra, Ares, and the last Razorback, who stood with his hands in the air. “No, don’t know much about the girl. I know everybody’s talking about her, but I try not to watch the news. It’s too depressing for someone like me. Life in prison you see—three consecutive life sentences. I just watch old cartoons like Aladdin and the Lion King.”

  He motioned with his head for one of his people to walk forward. They disarmed Ares, Pyra, and the other Razorback.

  Vogel continued, “Nope, no—don’t know much about her.”

  Jonas grunted. “Then… what do you want?”

  “Simple, I’m here for you.”

  Jonas stared down into the brick wall he held onto. His face was tight, but he didn’t seem overly surprised.

  “Yeah, the powers-that-be always thought it was weird when you left the Razorbacks and formed your little hovel out there. Didn’t know exactly what Nobodys were, until little miss sunshine over there came. Even with my meager, fifth-grade education, I could tell that anyone who went to bat for her must be someone special.”