by Morgan Rice
I pull her into me, hugging her tightly. Over my shoulder, I catch sight of Charlie watching me. I know he’ll take care of Bree if I don’t return. She’ll have Charlie and Penelope and Dad. If there was any time for me to disappear from her life, it would be now.
I let go of her and straighten up before my own tears have a chance to fall. I can hardly bear to look into her sorrowful eyes, and so I don’t. I move along, pain swirling in my gut, and come face to face with my dad.
In unison, we salute.
“Commander,” I say.
“Good luck, soldier,” he says.
Then he reaches forward and pulls me into a tight embrace. “You can do this, Brooke,” he says into my ear. “I believe in you.”
“Thank you, Dad,” I whisper back.
And then there’s nothing left to do but to mount my motorcycle and head off into the desert, alone. I kick the engine to life and rev, making fumes spew out behind me. Then I’m off, heading away from the compound, away from the Eden my dad has created. I am leaving behind everything I care about.
I decide not to look back.
*
The Texas sunshine is blistering hot. It’s the height of midday and the sun’s rays are burning into me. Being back in the desert makes me uncomfortable. It brings back all those horrible memories, of the wild dog attack, of the slave city in the crater of Memphis. I try not to think about all that I’ve endured because it just serves to remind me that what I’m about to do is only the first step in reclaiming the planet. Ridding the world of slaver cities and crazies and mutated creatures will take far, far longer to do. Eradicating the arenas is just the catalyst needed to start that process.
I head west toward San Antonio, where Arena 3 is located. Remarkably, the road is still intact. It will barely take me three hours to reach the city. Which means that in three hours’ time, I’ll be heading back into an arena, back into the place of my nightmares. But for now, everything is peaceful. The road stretches on forever, seemingly into oblivion. There is nothing left of the civilization that once used this route. No gas stations at the side of the road, no fields growing crops. There’s just desert as far as the eye can see, and above it a cloudless blue sky. If there was anything that could make me feel insignificant, it would be driving along this road alone.
I have to remind myself that I am not insignificant at all. Right now, I am a very important cog in a machine that will change the course of the world forever. I know that elsewhere in the country, there are other soldiers like me, riding motorcycles alone down endless, straight roads, heading toward other cities and other arenas.
As time passes, I feel my anxiety growing. It’s forming a knot in my stomach. There is so much resting on my shoulders, the pressure is almost too great to handle. But then, all at once, I see San Antonio appearing on the horizon and a strange sense of calm settles over me. I feel like I was always meant to be here. I was always meant to do this. Every road I have traveled, every decision I have made, every person, crazy, and creature I have fought, every friend I have lost, it was all to take me to this exact place, this exact moment. I am about to face my destiny.
Then I see it, appearing out of the distance. Arena 3. It is enormous, rising up from the ashes of the city that once thrived here, casting a shadow over everyone who still lives here. Light glitters off its metallic surfaces. It is by far the most imposing arena I have seen yet.
But my time to dwell has come to an end, because all at once, as though appearing from nowhere, several motorcycles appear and surround me. Their riders are dressed all in black and they each have gun trained on me. Slaverunners.
I kill the engine of my bike and slowly get off, my hands raised into a truce position. I’m surprised by how completely calm I am. My heartbeat has hardly increased at all.
The slaverunners approach me cautiously, as though expecting me to pull a weapon out. But when they frisk me, all they find is the knife. Once again, my Marine Corps branded weapon is stolen from me. This time, I know I will get it back again. I will survive. Because I’m not doing this alone; I have a whole army behind me. Somewhere back in Houston a red light on a machine is relaying my GPS’s coordinates back to a room full of soldiers.
“What have we got here then?” one of the slaverunners says to me.
“My name is Brooke,” I say. “I’m a fighter. The only person to have survived Arena One.”
The slaverunner raises his eyebrows as though in disbelief. “Is that so? A slight little thing like you?” His face is so close to mine I can smell his breath.
I set my jaw firm. “You could’ve asked their leader if I hadn’t killed him.”
There’s a murmur around the rest of the slaverunners. News of my victory over the leader in Arena 1 must have filtered down south. The man questioning me frowns, studying my face.
“What are you doing here?” he says. “How’d you make it all the way to Texas if you were fighting in Manhattan?”
“I’ve been touring the arenas,” I lie. “Giving the spectators what they want to see: the famous Brooke Moore.”
He looks at me skeptically, as though not sure whether to buy my story. But since I’m not packing any weapons, I’m not exactly a threat. They have no reason not to cuff me.
I don’t resist as my hands are wrenched behind my back, nor when I’m marched toward a bike. In fact, as I’m sat on the back, heading down the road toward the arena, I smile to myself.
Game on.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
It is like déjà vu, like stepping into a nightmare. The sounds of the arena, the metallic smell of blood in the air, it all brings back such horrible memories. Since it’s midday, there are no fights taking place yet and so no crowds to satisfy. It means I don’t need to worry about accidentally being thrust into an arena anytime soon. It also means I have plenty of time to plant my device and plot my escape. We need everyone in the arena before I set off the device because we only have one chance to destroy the city and the people within it.
But it also means the place is more or less silent. The only noises I can hear, other than our boots as we march along, are the crazed screams of the prisoners deep in the bowels of the arena.
The slaverunners lead me far underground, along winding corridor after winding corridor. They seem thrilled to have found me and keep grinning to one another, rubbing their hands with glee. I despise every single one of them. The farther I go underground, the stuffier it becomes. The prisoners kept down here aren’t afforded any kind of ventilation system, and the air is thick with the smell of sweat, urine, and terror. The cries become louder the closer I get to the cells. I try to keep my emotions deep inside, but my heart breaks for them.
As I go, I mentally map out the whole route, every corner we turn, every staircase we descend, committing everything to memory. I’ll need to know the exact route to take to get back to the surface when the time comes. Five minutes is all I’ll have to escape the arena before the bombs obliterate it. So the whole time I walk, I take mental pictures of every single twist and turn, every little chink in the brickwork, anything that will help me find my way to the surface.
It grows darker and darker with each new corridor I’m led down. The place is lit only with emergency lights which bathe everything in a grimy dark yellow light. It’s hard to believe how harsh the light is on the surface down here.
My captors don’t speak to me. They just prod me along, like an animal, like I’m less than human. I keep my chin high, not about to give them any kind of satisfaction for their bad treatment of me. Then they draw to a halt outside of a large steel door. One of the guards takes out a key and unlocks the door. It swings open and I’m kicked in the small of my back. I stumble inside and fall to my knees, colliding with the hard cement ground. Before the door is slammed harshly behind me, just enough light streams in from outside for me to see the gaunt, hollow faces of the prisoners locked up inside. Then the doors are locked behind me, and we are plunged back into darkness.<
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The smell in here is horrendous. There must be at least a hundred prisoners in here all crammed together, chained, sitting in their own dirt and filth. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that no one inside here has washed since being locked up. Being so close to them brings awful memories flooding back to me, of the gnawing hunger I felt when I was locked up in Arena 1, and of the heavy cuffs around my wrists. I feel nothing but empathy for them all. But I don’t speak to anyone. I’m not here to make friends. If I so much as let myself care for anyone inside here, I could jeopardize the whole mission. Everyone here is going to die. They’re collateral damage to a grander plan.
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!”
Chaos breaks out in the cell as prisoners start panicking. I quickly press my thumb into the button, but in my trembling haste I can’t tell whether it fully activated or not. I don’t get a chance to double check; the guard is there in one second flat, wrenching my hand and the device out of it. I can’t see whether the red blinking light has been activated because the guard drops it on the ground and slams his heavy boot into it.
My insides drop like a ten-ton weight. If I didn’t manage to activate it before he destroyed it, the rest of the army won’t have seen my signal. They won’t know that the moment has arrived much sooner than anyone was anticipating. Even if they did pick up the signal, it would only have been for a split second. They could easily have blinked and missed it. And there won’t be anything to guide their missiles. They have one shot to hit their target and now they’re going to have to do it blind.
I’m so taken aback by the speed with which everything has changed, I don’t even have time to attack. The guard has already grabbed me roughly by the arms and is dragging me from the prison cell. Meanwhile, the sounds of the crowds above intensifies. I can hear their footsteps as they march above my head and take their seats. I’m being taken to the arena and there’s nothing I can do about it.
As I’m pulled from the cell, I narrow my eyes at the old woman who turned on me at the very last minute. I know she probably just wanted to survive another day, to not be the one called to fight today, but her callousness has ruined everything. That one decision to call me out might even have changed the course of the future of the world.
The cell door is slammed shut and I’m dragged, stunned, along the corridor. As I go, my calmness completely disappears. In its place comes a frantic, racing heartbeat, a whirring mind, and palms slick with sweat. It’s all gone wrong. My worst nightmare has been realized.
I’m heading for Arena 3.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Each one of my footsteps echoes as I am prodded along the corridor by the guard. My mind is a frantic blur. It is so dark down here with only the emergency lights to illuminate the path I can hardly see my hand in front of my face. It makes everything stark. I feel like I am walking into hell.
Slaverunners walk ahead of me and behind me. They must have gotten the lowdown on me. They know what I did in Arena 1, how I killed the leader there, and they’re not taking any chances.
The corridor bends, taking me away from the path that leads to freedom, steering me in the opposite direction, toward the jaws of death. I can hear the crowd above stamping their feet, chanting my name. Everyone wants to see me fight, but no one wants to see me survive. They all want to bear witness to my death.
I dig my heels in, my body not letting me move. A slaverunner comes up behind me and kicks me in the small o
f my back, making me take a stumble forward. I almost lose my footing. Because my hands are bound so tightly, if I fall, there will be nothing I can do to stop myself hitting the floor. I have no choice but to let myself be shoved onward.
Finally, the corridor opens out into a circular room.
“Stand there,” one of the slaverunner says, pointing at the ground.
I can just about make out a metal shape on the floor in the middle of the room. It looks like some kind of trap door.
As I step on it, metal cuffs wrap around each of my boots, sticking me to the ground steadfast.
“What is this?” I ask, frustrated to hear my voice trembling. “What’s happening?”
The slaverunners don’t get a chance to respond, because in that moment a circular panel opens up directly above my head. Stark daylight pours in through the hole above me, blinding me. I turn my head to protect my eyes from the glare. Along with the light, a blast of sound comes down the hole, so loud it’s deafening. It’s the chanting, screaming, braying crowd. At the same time, I feel someone fiddling with the cuffs around my wrists. They’re unlocking me. And that can only mean one thing.
All at once, the ground moves beneath my feet. The metal thing I’m standing on is beginning to rise. My hands are free but my feet are locked into the ground, making sure I don’t go anywhere. I rise slowly, the light blinding me. I want to cover my eyes but I know that within a matter of seconds I’ll be in an arena where anything could happen to me. I have to be alert, ready for anything they might throw at me.
A voice booms over the loudspeakers as I rise.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Brooke Moore!”
The crowd roars, the noise so loud it is deafening.
My head tips through the hole, just enough for me to be able to see the arena before me. It’s circular, built in an old sports stadium. The arena is like a desert, with dusty yellow sand covering every inch of the ground. It is completely open to the elements and the blue sky up above me.