“Then get up!”
“No.”
“Five…four…”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Three…”
I stagger to my feet and brush the sand and rocks off my palms. “There, happy?”
“Yes. Now run.” He points.
“Since when are you my master?”
“I’m not your master. Just a friend.”
I know his intentions aren’t to boss me around or to hurt me; they’re to help me. But the way he’s doing it is driving me crazy. “Okay, okay! Just run ahead. I’ll follow.” My voice is harsher than I intended, but I’m too tired to make amends.
We continue on like this for a while, him glancing back at me, me grumbling every time he does. Every so often, a landmine explodes—but instead of looking toward the explosion, I’ve learned to train my eyes on the back of Arthor’s head. Maybe having him here isn’t as bad as I thought.
The sun hangs high in the sky and every step has my legs screaming at me. What I wouldn’t do to have my bike here. In the near distance, a whole bunch of landmines go off at once—fifty, sixty, maybe more—startling me enough to get the blood flowing to my brain. I stop and lean my hands on my thighs, giving myself just a moment to recover. Then, I hear whopping and screaming just beyond the gentle hill where Arthor is. He looks back at me, and his lips rise in triumph.
“We made it!” Arthor yells.
Chapter 13
My feet still ache, and I’m exhausted physically and mentally. I can hear the end of the marathon just beyond the hill, which gives my feet renewed strength. Go, don’t stop! Go, Heidi! Cresting the hill, I see water. Blessed water! The sun reflects off the surface of the lake like a gold medal and a sudden surge of energy awakens my tired arms and legs. With every muscle in my lower body aching, I dash toward the lake and jump into it. I plunge my face into the cool water and drink deeply. I hadn’t thought to ask if the water was safe, but everyone’s drinking it, so it must be. Unless they want everyone to die at once, which would make the Savage Run a complete tragedy. It would do nothing for Volkov’s popularity. I high-five Arthor, and his face is beaming.
“You made it,” he says.
“Yeah, thanks for pushing me back there.”
“You don’t need to thank me.”
I roll my eyes.
“Just keep going, okay?”
“Okay. And if you need it, I’ll help you out.”
We sit down and I pull off the Savage Run shoes. I dig my feet into the wet sand and feel the grains rubbing against my sore toes. I’m sure if we stick together, there will be an opportunity to pay him back.
A cameraman wearing a Savage Run outfit films me from a mere six inches away.
“Why are you filming?” Arthor asks.
“This is for President Volkov,” the cameraman says.
I just ignore him. It’s not like I have any extra energy to give him. A few of the cameramen are out on the water in motorboats. They’ll probably be following us all the way, catching the gory details of the interaction between the e-condas and us. President Volkov wouldn’t want to miss seeing how his precious creations interact with the inferior class. I try to look for any short-cuts. Nicholas said not every obstacle course had one, but I had almost expected that at least one of the two first would.
Watching the other participants brave the lake, wading forward into the unknown deep, I can’t help but dread what’s to come. They’ve probably starved the predators for days so the slithering electrical monsters will eat anything offered to them.
Arthor and I relax for a few more minutes before delving into the second round, allowing our muscles to regain some strength before we put more demands on them. There’s a flashing sign that reads if we wait longer than twenty minutes to continue, we’ll be disqualified. This could mean a myriad of things including being shot like the young man who tried to get a head start in the marathon. The sign also reads to swim toward the setting sun, which would be westward. How long will it take me to swim ten miles when I’m exhausted, hungry and find it hard to stay focused? At least four, I’m sure. My arms grow heavy at the thought.
If I were still back at home, I’d be riding around on my bike, delivering medicine right now, trying to sneak a peek of the Savage Run coverage between runs. But I don’t want to think about the life I had to leave behind. Nor the people I betrayed.
I wiggle my legs a little—the achiness in my joints is impossible to ignore. Sitting down, my body has decided to revolt and feels even stiffer than while I was actually running. But I don’t have the luxury of time to sit here and rest and I must keep going before I grow too sore, unable to get a move on.
I look over at Arthor. “Ready?”
“Yeah,” Arthor says, his eyes void of their normal energy, his shoulders slumping. Instead of getting up, like I expect him to, he remains seated for a while longer. Eventually, he climbs to his feet and slowly tilts his head from side to side, loosening the muscles in his neck.
I wade out until the cool water reaches my waist, and stop to wait for Arthor. Unable to hold my bladder anymore, I relieve myself in the water. It’s totally gross, I know, but they can hardly expect me to hold it until I have completed the entire first phase.
Of the three rounds in this phase, swimming is my least favorite, one of the factors being that I never really was a strong swimmer. Soon, the water reaches my chest, and I gasp at how cold it is. Once I get moving, I’m sure I’ll build up body heat again. I grit my teeth, submerge my shoulders into the water, and start to swim. From the very first breaststroke, I think I felt something in the water—an e-conda?
“You good?” Arthor asks, swimming next to me.
“Yes. Just a little…nervous.”
“And you’re okay with me swimming with you?”
I can’t tell if he’s being difficult or playful. “That was only during the marathon.”
“Good.”
Unlike the marathon, the screams come right away. Ahead of us in the sunlight, I see a young man, his arms flailing, his voice screeching in pain. “Get away from me! Help! I withdraw! I quit! Help me!” He continues to scream for help, but no one comes to his aid. The Unifers in the boats just ignore him. Like me, everyone knows that if they swim over to help him, they’re dead meat.
“This way,” I say to Arthor, taking a long detour around the poor guy. If I think about it too much, I might panic. We swim on, stroke after stroke, and again, we hear screams. This time the screams come from a distance, so we don’t see the person who’s being attacked. It’s a little easier to ignore these screams.
“Ah!” Arthor’s eyes go wild with fear and he gasps. “I felt something.”
For a moment, I’m unable to move. Arthor thrashes his arms into the water as his eyes search for an e-conda. All of a sudden, he lets out a shriek. “It shocked me!”
In an attempt to scare off the e-conda, I kick my legs as hard and as fast as I can. Then, as I feared, I feel a jolt, too, and a current rushes through my body, leaving my muscles immobilized. And everything throbs. Unable to move my arms or legs, I sink beneath the surface. Keeping my eyes open, I see dozens of thick, snake-like sea-creatures slithering below my feet, just waiting to make their next move. I tell my legs to kick, but they won’t. I try to scream for help, but below the surface the water drowns out my voice—no one can hear me. Even if they could, they still wouldn’t come. The water muffles the sounds of the e-condas’ sharp shrieks, making them sound like a deeper octave of my bikes’ squeaky breaks. I need to take a breath soon; the air is running out. Kick stupid legs, kick! This time, my right leg moves, and within seconds, I can move both my legs and my arms. Soon, I’m able to command all my limbs, enough for me to stop sinking and begin rising. I have to get up quicker—the surface is so far away. I see light up above, and with each stroke, my body feels stronger. Once I reach the surface, I gasp for air. Even though I wasn’t under for very long, the exertion of kicking and punching the water t
o get rid of the e-condas has made me breathless.
Arthor is still above water. “We have to continue, or they’ll eat us alive!” I yell. A motorboat approaches us with a Unifer holding a camera, coming to feed off of our demise. They think they’re so safe in their vessels, but I bet even the e-condas could tip the motorboats over with one flick of their tails, and they would be fighting for their lives, too. I almost wish one of them would fall into the water. It’s not fair how we have to fight so hard for our freedom while they were born with it.
Arthor and I swim as fast as we can, cutting through the water, kicking our legs. Adrenaline courses through me and I feel like I’m on the verge of death. This must be it! The hope that I’d make it through the first phase has vanished into oblivion. All I’m left with is envisioning my dead body at the bottom of the lake with a gigantic snake wrapped around me. Or maybe the e-conda will just swallow me whole, and I’ll slowly suffocate in his stomach.
A few feet in front of me, there’s another young man who appears completely incapable of lifting his limbs, and his head is bopping in and out of the water. As I continue to watch him, I see the water is dyed with blood and he spews and coughs pink water from his mouth. A long, thick snake with a head twice as big as mine, spirals itself around the young man, causing him to scream louder. I hear a loud buzzing sound as the snake shocks the young man—a thousand volts of electricity streams through the poor boy’s body. Before long, his screams melt into mellow whimpers, and he slides beneath the water’s surface with the e-conda still wrapped around him, leaving nothing except bursting bubbles on the red water’s surface. I become angry at once. How could President Volkov do such horrible things to young men? He must have absolutely no sympathy for others and be a cold-hearted monster to his core.
Arthor lets out a cry, sounding like a cross between a scream and a sob. His arms and legs go motionless and his head starts to sink beneath the water’s surface. With the drama dwindling around us, the Unifers turn on their engines, preparing to move onto the next location. A thought pops into my mind, and though it’s a stupid one, I’m willing to try anything at this point. “Swim toward the boat,” I say. Arthor doesn’t respond so I grab him by the collar to keep him from sinking farther beneath the gentle waves. I haul him with me toward the motorboat’s stern. When I reach it, I grab hold of the edge with my free hand, staying as far away from the moving propellers as possible, and trying to stay as low in the water as I can so that the Unifers don’t see me. Almost before I’m ready, the motorboat takes off with a jolt. I feel my fingers slipping, but I refuse to let this be the end of my short existence, and cleave on as we’re hauled away. The water gushes against my body and my fingers feel like they’ll be ripped off if there’s any more pressure. Water sprays in my face so I close my eyes. After some time, the boat slows down a notch, and I open my eyes to assess where we are. We’ve cleared the area where several attacks have occurred, so I let go. Sinking into the water, we stop moving. My hand and lower arm feels spent, like the muscles and tendons have been stretched beyond their limits.
I look at Arthor. “Can you move?”
“Yes, thank you. I would have drowned had you not…”
“We’re not out of danger yet.”
He leans his head back into the water. “Are you okay?” He swings his head quickly to the side, the drops from his hair showering the glassy surface. “Did they get you?”
“A little, but I’m fine.” My legs sting horribly, but I don’t dare to look at them, afraid the e-condas have burned my flesh to the bone, and if I see the blood, I’ll lose my courage to keep going. If I bleed to death while swimming, so be it. “You?”
“I’m good. Let’s keep moving,” he says.
The next few miles are uneventful. Every time I think I feel movement beneath the water, I snap my legs in beneath me, and silently pray it was just my imagination.
The clouds have returned, and as they turn to rose gold, a heavy fog rolls in. Now I won’t be able to see Devil’s Cliff in the distance—a hopeful beacon to swim toward. And with the fog there, it’s also impossible to tell if I’m swimming westward.
“This is ridiculous! We don’t even know where we’re going,” I say. “We could be going in circles.”
“Just keep moving. The fog must mean we’re close.” Arthor flips over and starts swimming on his back. “They want to make it harder on us—not easier.”
“Maybe,” I give him. We swim on for another ten minutes before I say something. “How do they expect us to get through this fog?”
“They don’t,” Arthor says. “The only expect the elite to make it.”
I shoot him an angry glare. “Whose side are you on anyway?”
He shakes his head at me. “Don’t even ask me that.”
I want to rip his hair out, but I think it has more to do with the fact that I’m exhausted and hungry than that I’m upset at him. As we keep swimming, I start to think about how I haven’t even made it through the first of three phases, and how I’m already both physically and emotionally depleted. How easy it would be just to give up and let myself sink into the water abyss. I’m sure it wouldn’t take long before I went unconscious and slipped into a quiet death. While contemplating this, I feel a warm current against my body. “Do you feel that?” I ask Arthor.
Arthor stops swimming forward for a moment and treads water instead. “We must be close to shore.”
The new information makes me abandon the thought of my suicide operation. If we’re almost there, it means I made it through round two! Eager to be done, I kick harder. But when my foot hits something hard, I immediately pull my legs close into my body and scream. It must be an e-conda, or worse, maybe there are a whole slew of them and is why the water turned warmer. Unable to control my fear, I cry out and begin to thrash my arms and legs sending the water in every which direction.
“It’s okay! It’s okay!” Arthor yells, taking my hands in his. “They’re rocks! We’ve reached the shore! They’re rocks!”
I pause as his words start to sink in. “Really?”
“Really,” he says with a broad smile on his face.
Chapter 14
Still not quite able to believe that we’ve reached the shore, I hesitantly stretch my legs downward. Soon the rocks at the bottom of the lake press against my feet—firm and unyielding. I exhale. Standing up, I gasp in relief; the water reaches just above my waist. We have reached the shore!
Ecstatic I have managed to live through two of the three rounds in this phase, I jump into Arthor’s arms, whooping and screaming. “We made it!”
He squeezes me back, and we stand wrapped in each other’s arms for a long time. Not until I start thinking about how he’s got his arms around me do I feel awkward. It’s not that I’m attracted to him, and I don’t think he likes me in that way either. But standing so close to him, sharing this, not only physical, but very emotional moment, it feels so good to have someone who understands what I’ve just been through.
I let go. “Sorry.”
“No apology needed,” he says.
When I turn toward the shore, I see bushes and trees—foliage—but I can’t make out any more than that; the fog is still too thick. Eager to get out of the e-conda infested water, I wade toward land, and the instant my feet touch the raggedy, stony shore, I lie down onto the rocks, my legs still in the water. I don’t really care how they’re stabbing into my back or how I’m cold and wet. I’m safe. And I’m alive. No more e-condas will come after me, and I don’t have to worry that one of them might electrocute me or pull me down. How many young men now lay there?
I press my palms to my eyes and release a laughing, crying sound, and with it, all the tension in my body releases. A moment later, it feels as if all my guts and muscles and bones have been scraped dry and pumped full of jelly. But though my survival has so much more to do with crazy luck than anything, the joy of having lived through the first two rounds is not any less.
When I finally r
esolve to open my eyes, I let them wander up toward the sky, and there I see Devil’s Cliff. It hangs over me like a bad omen. The mountainside is a jagged and vertical sloped monster of a rock, and it extends to the heavens like a pillar of fire—the height dizzying—the red surface looking like it could be something from Hell. Many participants are already climbing up the wall, their fingers and toes gripping onto the edges of the rocks. For the life of me, I can’t see the top. The fog is still just as thick. Something tells me it could be much higher than what I dare to imagine. Or dread. How in the world I’m supposed to make it to the top of that mountain is beyond my comprehension. And with the sun soon to set, my muscles already way past spent, climbing Devil’s Cliff at night will be impossible.
There isn’t a single part of me that isn’t achy or sopping wet, but I can’t lie here all day. I scramble to my feet and look for Arthor. I find him standing at the base of the cliff reading a sign. Walking over to him, I notice that my legs sting, and when I look down, I see that they’re riddled with minor burns. However, all my pain is temporarily forgotten when I see the back of Arthor’s right leg. Part of his calf has a chunk removed. And we still have a cliff—the tallest cliff I’ve ever seen—to climb. But what’s even more mind-boggling is that he hasn’t complained about it a single time. I pause behind him. Will he be able to climb the cliff? My heart drops. If he can’t climb the cliff by himself, I’ll either have to abandon him while I continue to press forward or help him climb to the top.
Arthor turns around and points to the sign.
Fifteen-minute rest stop max.
Without warning, there’s a scream from above, and then a loud thud behind us. Instinctively, I turn to look—but stop myself—I know what I’ll find there, and I don’t want to see it. I never in my wildest imagination would have thought that I’d grow so callous about a dead teenage boy that I’d refrain from walking over to him and showing my respects. But I don’t. And I hate myself for it. Instead, I tell Arthor to sit down, and after he complies, I rip off a piece of my uniform, to tie it around his injured leg. He moans a little when I cinch it, but stops when I stare him in the eyes.
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