by J D Jacobs
“And this,” he slides the back glass door open, letting us lead the way, “is my view!”
A wide open patio section spreads out across the side of the building. There’s nice garden furniture set up around a grill and hot tub. There’s a short brick barrier that separates the patio from the huge drop to the Arena, and there’s an elevator protruding out from the brick barrier and to the side of the patio. On the Arena floor is a small crane that definitely wasn’t there last night. I’m pretty sure that will have something to do with my Atonement today. Directly across from us and on the opposite side of the Arena is the large screen that displays what is shown on the TVs inside. I then realize that this is where Ricardo stands when he’s being filmed during the Atonements. “Where’s the wheel at?” I ask him.
“It’s being upgraded, specifically for you.” He smirks at me, wanting me to ask him more about the wheel.
“Wow, I feel special,” I tell him, trying to act unfazed but, in all honesty, feeling nauseous. We walk up to the elevator that leads us from the patio to the Arena floor. One of the men presses the button to open the elevator door, and the other man pushes me in the back to force me in the elevator.
“I’m going!” I yelp at the man. Ricardo gets in the cab with me while the other two men stand outside the cab.
“I’ll take him from here,” Ricardo tells them. “Chime the bell.”
The men nod, and the elevator door closes. “What do you have planned for me?” I ask him as our cab falls toward the main floor.
“Shut your fucking mouth!” Ricardo barks, startling me. “I should’ve slit your throat on the spot for sleeping with 12!”
“Does that bother you, Ricky?” I hiss. “I thought you said last night that she meant nothing to you? Why do you keep acting like she’s Gabriela?”
Ricardo’s hand clasps against my throat as he throws me against the side of the cab. “I swear to God, you better not ever mention Gabriela’s name or call me Ricky again!”
“Or what?” I struggle to squeak through my smothered windpipe. “You’ll kill me?”
His hand pushes harder against my throat, the air no longer able to make it through. “You don’t realize how stupid you are. You messed up my strategy for you…” Ricardo goes blurry as my sight dissolves. “…you let those pitiful kids of mine leave the city…” The saliva in my mouth bubbles out through my lips. I feel as if blood is going to explode out my ears. “…and you slept with my Ribbon!”
He pulls his hand away from me and I drop to the floor, gasping for air. “Bet you wish you had that knife of yours right now,” he taunts me. I look up at him, shocked he even knows about it. “Didn’t think I would notice it on her nightstand? I can’t wait for 12 to try and use that thing on me! She doesn’t stand the slimmest chance against me!”
My eyes must show the horror that his statement just brought on me, as it fuels his malevolent grin. He squats down to make sure I grasp onto his every word as I continue searching for air. “One of my favorite things to do is push someone to the brink of death and watch as their life drains out of their face. A lot like I just did to you, but that’s sadly as close as I’ll get with my bare hands. But 12? I’ll kiss her forehead as she coughs out her final breath. I’ll enjoy every single moment of watching her life bleed out from her eyes. And I’ll do it all with the knife you gave her.”
“Fuck you,” I counter between pants, spitting on his shoes. The door of the elevator opens up, and he kicks me in my ribs, rolling me out of the cab.
“Get up! It’s time for you to die!” I stand up and look around. I’m underneath the bleachers, with a tunnel leading directly to the Arena floor in front of me. He seizes my arm and leads me down a different, darker alleyway that leads further under the bleachers.
“Do whatever you want to me, Ricky,” I weakly tell him, “but you’ll get what you deserve one day.”
“What did I tell you about calling me that!?” he shouts at me, shoving me in the back and launching me to the ground in front of us. “You stupid little shit! You never listen and you never learn!” He kicks me as I stand up, sending me back down to the ground. I crawl away from him as he approaches me again, looking to land any hit he can on me. “You don’t understand. I never planned on killing you! You were supposed to kill the fat man in the Arena! But no, you had to do everything your way!”
“You what?”
“Oh, now you listen?” He kicks my legs, and I quickly recover. “We were going to egotone the fat man. You were going to fight him. Simple as that. That was a guaranteed victory for you! You’d be the next warrior here in Avvil! Every Ribbon would’ve been at your disposal. You’d be adored! You’d have your own house in Avvil!” He pulls his arm back and rushes closer to my face. “But you didn’t want that. You wanted to let the fat man and the black boy escape with Camila and Isaac. You had to make ME look like a fool in front of my own city!” His foot swings into my ribs, rolling me over on my stomach. “I should’ve killed you long ago!”
I cough into the dirt, a dust cloud shooting out under my face. I hold my coughing in to tune my ears to outside the Arena. The Avvil bell rings in the distance. Ricardo reaches down and pulls me up by the back of my shirt collar. “You hear that?” he whispers. He pushes me by the back of my neck to continue walking down the corridor. “I’m glad we could spend this moment together. It may help you out, too. It’s always good to have an adrenaline rush induced before battle!”
I don’t answer him, mainly because I’m afraid. Not of Ricardo, but of what’s about to happen to me. A faint light creeps out of the wall further in front of us. Ricardo picks up our pace toward the light, and it grows brighter and stronger the closer we get to it. There are two more of Ricardo’s men waiting for us at the light. As we reach the men, I notice we pass under a metal gate that’s directly above us. On the wall underneath it is a wooden handle that’s used as a crank to lower the gate.
“It’s been a pleasure, El Zorro Feo,” he insults me for the final time. He gives off one last wicked laugh as the two men approach us. “You better put on a good show! It’s going to hurt, so scream as loud as you can! I want 12 to hear you!” One of the guards grabs me by my arm and pulls me toward the light, while the other one begins cranking down the gate we walked under, separating Ricardo from us. I stare at Ricardo as he waves goodbye to me. I’ve never detested a human more in my entire life, and that’s saying a lot.
33.
The guard drags me to the light. An identical metal gate separates us from the Arena floor. I look out into the vast Arena, wondering what evil and unfair disadvantage Ricardo has waiting for me. Wondering how long I’ll last in the Arena. Wondering if Sabrina will even watch.
“Well, this is it,” the voice surprises me. I look at the person holding my arm and just now realize that it’s the same woman that sliced my cheeks and caught me tearing down the wall last night. Her eyes focused ahead, studying the Arena.
“Why didn’t you tell Ricardo what you saw last night?” I ask the woman. I can hear the chatter of the crowd outside getting louder.
“I’ve thought about what you told me yesterday,” she recites, her eyes not moving away from the Arena. “Everybody in this city is frightened just like me. We don’t want to die, especially not at Mr. Ricardo’s hands. We’ve seen what happens to those who do. But you…” Her eyes now swing to me. “I’ve never seen anyone push Mr. Ricardo’s buttons like you do. Nobody would’ve dreamt of running away, of punching him, of tearing down walls to be with his Ribbon.”
“I didn’t tear down that wall to make Ricardo mad. I did it because I genuinely care about Sabrina.”
“There it is again. You let love outweigh your fear of Mr. Ricardo. If I were in that room, I wouldn’t have made a peep, and I would’ve been dead long before I actually quit breathing.” The woman’s hand grips my shoulder in a friendly gesture. “I respect you, kid. No one in this city has the guts to stand up to that man. Maybe–hopefully–you convinced enou
gh people to follow in your footsteps.”
“Thank you,” I tell her. I hear the speakers in the Arena turn on, and Ricardo bellows his welcome to the crowd. I turn back to the woman holding my arm as Ricardo continues on with his greeting that I can’t fully understand from where I’m at. “These people aren’t going to do it without a leader,” I add on, “and to be a leader, someone needs to take down the one occupying the throne.” I point to the pistol strapped to the woman’s hip. “Only Ricardo’s guards have guns. Why not turn on him? Yeah those bullets are rubber, but they’ll do the trick. You know he would turn on you in an instant.”
She purses her lips and doesn’t answer. I turn back to the gate in front of me, trying to decipher what Ricardo is saying. I can only figure out a few words at a time.
“…a dangerous man… brought harm to citizens of Avvil… ¡El Zorro Feo!” The gate rises, and the woman pushes my back for me to walk forward. The crowd greets me with a loud wave of boos.
My foot makes contact with the concrete Arena floor as I bring myself into the amber light. My head spins around the spacious area in front of me and into the crowd as I soak in the atmosphere. Boos thrown at me, but for some reason, they don’t seem as malicious as the boos from prior Atonements. I even see a few people clapping down at me. Maybe these people are only booing me out of habit.
I then look directly across the Arena to the gate on the opposite side. I see two figures, but I can’t determine who they are. One of them leans weakly against the gate, the other one is knelt in front of it. Someone approaches them from behind, and the two suddenly collapse and fall on the ground. My heart skips a beat, and I check behind me to make sure the same isn’t about to happen to me.
“For the egotoned, we decided to change things up a bit,” Ricardo states over the Arena. “There were two Avvil citizens who made the fateful decision to assist El Zorro Feo in his wrongdoings. As a result of their assistance, these two people have egotoned, all due to Zorro’s perilous actions. So, allow me to introduce the egotoned. They are both people that are well-known and loved in the Avvil community, and it’s a shame that we had to lose them. May they be able to avenge their own deaths. Ladies and gentleman, I regretfully bring out Mrs. Margaret Johnson and Mr. Lucas Lowery.”
The gate across the Arena rises. Attached to balls and chains strides out the deranged body of Lucas, his red beard patchier than the last time I saw him. He pulls his chains out into the open, and once he does so, Mrs. Margaret follows him. Mrs. Margaret’s egotoned self looks much calmer, but still utterly delirious. She lugs her chains closer to the center of the Arena. I can see her eyes from here, and for the slightest moment, I feel like she’s healthy, that she actually hadn’t egotoned. But she heinously screams at me, leaving me to throw that option out rather quickly.
The crowd is left awkwardly indecisive, not sure whether clapping or jeering is the correct move. Many spectators don’t do or say anything. They know that these two people were safe and healthy just a day ago. Do they know that I had nothing to do with this? Maybe they’re just unenthused by two Atonements in two days.
Both Mrs. Margaret and Lucas have on the same cyan wristbands that every egotoned in the Atoning Arena has worn. I’m heartbroken to see Mrs. Margaret’s egotoned corpse, and maybe I’m to blame for her fate. She wouldn’t be out here if she wouldn’t have helped me. Somehow Ricardo found out about her bringing Jasmine to the thirteenth floor and punished her for it. I shouldn’t have brought Mrs. Margaret into this at all. But at the same time, the fact that she would risk her life just to help me says a lot about her character. She was a great woman. She doesn’t deserve this.
I’m guessing Lucas’s reason has to do with helping derive the plan for Cody to win his Atonement and attempt to rescue me. I’m surprised he didn’t get out of Avvil, too, since he was behind the entire plot. I’m also surprised that the other scientist, Reggie, isn’t out here with him.
The same thing applies to Lucas: he risked his life to save a few kids that he hardly knew. And for Lucas being so close to Ricardo and being one of Avvil’s top scientists, that also says a lot about how ready he was to get out from the abusive grasp of Ricardo.
Ricardo has been talking while I was examining Lucas and Mrs. Margaret, but I hadn’t been paying him any attention. The crowd chanting “rueda” snaps me back into my Atonement. The screen that’s above the Arena floor shows the red wheel spinning, green and red mixing together as it does so. My heart races, knowing that Ricardo somehow rigged this thing so I get the worst possible choice the wheel has. The wheel begins slowing down. Finally, it lands on a green triangle that reads “Al Revés Piñata.” After looking at the stopped wheel, I notice that all of the triangles read “Al Revés Piñata.”
“Hehe, haha!” Ricardo bursts out, hysterical. The crowd is again left awkward because they don’t know what the triangle says. “Al Revés Piñata! Upside-down piñata! What a truly gruesome Atonement this will be! Guards, equip the Atoning Arena!”
I watch one of the guards come out from the tunnel behind me and head over to the crane in the Arena. As he does that, the woman from earlier comes out with a coiled rope in her hands.
“What’s about to happen?” I ask the lady as she ties my hands behind my back. I look across the Arena to see guards laying out an assembly of weapons on a long table in front of the other two. The egotoned body of Lucas screams at the guards; the egotoned body of Mrs. Margaret slams her fist against her temple repeatedly.
“That crane is going to lift you up,” she tells me as she now begins tying my legs together.
“Upside-down?”
“I’m so sorry for having to do this.” I try not to think of the situation, but there’s no way around it: I’m about to be bludgeoned to death as I hang upside-down, completely defenseless. Ricardo wanted to make my Atonement the most publicly humiliating one yet; not only having me lose it, but having me massacred without even the slightest chance of winning. And I think the crowd realizes it, too. As Ricardo explains the situation to the crowd, the people in the stands seem to lose their appetite for this particular Atonement. I can see a lot of remorseful and distasteful faces in the crowd as they watch me being prepared for my brutal death.
The crane rolls its way closer to me and the hook lowers. The woman clips the hook under the tied rope around my ankles. If I want to make it out of this arena alive, my best chance is to get out of these ropes and off that crane’s hook. The razor blade in my back pocket is my best friend right now.
My stomach turns as the hook rises. I start sweating the higher my legs lift off the ground. I’m terrified. There’s no way I win this Atonement. As my shoulders begin lifting off the floor, I look up at the amber glass above me. Rain has started falling on top of the glass. I’m right underneath the crack that the bellhop mentioned to me earlier this week, the crack that was made by a forsaken egotoner that was fighting for a breath of the clean, Avvil air that he was refused. Or maybe that person tried to break the glass when he saw what was happening beneath it.
My surroundings flip upside-down. I lift higher off the ground, just high enough for somebody to hit me with a bat. The guards pace out of the Arena and lower the gate behind them; the guards across the Arena do the same.
I quickly fidget through my back pocket before Mrs. Margaret and Lucas are released from their chains. I’m barely able to pull the blade out, and I start sawing it against the rope around my wrists. It’s very ineffective, though, as I can’t put any force into the blade due to my wrists being bounded. The guard gave me a little bit of slack, but not enough for me to work with and certainly not enough for me to slip my hands out.
“May the Forty-First Atonement begin!”
The announcement scares me as it bellows across the Arena. The chains hooked to Lucas and Mrs. Margaret drop. Lucas rushes to the table and grabs a sledgehammer, while Mrs. Margaret continues pounding her head with her fists. The reality sinks into my stomach even deeper. The grip in my fingers l
eave, and the razor slips through my fingertips and falls to the ground.
I close my eyes, hoping that I won’t feel it if I don’t see it coming. Right before I shut them, I see a figure standing in the middle of the Arena.
Xander.
“What the–?” I blurt out, too startled to continue on.
He swipes his nonexistent eyebrow, and the rope around my hands vanishes, immediately sending my hands above my head. The crowd gasps at my freed hands. They can’t see Xander; they just thought I somehow escaped from the rope by myself.
“Listen. Point at the bearded guy running at you.” Xander hastily commands me. As Lucas gains ground across the Arena, Xander takes a step toward him.
“What?” I ask him, still shocked.
“Don’t ask questions! Point at the bearded guy!”
Lucas’s full-out sprint doesn’t seem to stop. He’s about to pass by Xander when I finally lift my hand and point at Lucas. Once I do, Lucas’s eyes immediately widen and follow Xander. Xander’s hand rushes up to Lucas’s face, and Lucas’s egotoned body collapses to the Arena floor, stiff as a board.
The entire crowd gasps and clamors in uproars at what they just saw. My hand stays pointing at where Lucas’s body was running. Now he lies motionless, his eyes staring straight ahead. I just witnessed the paralyzed fear that seeing a Grim causes an egotoned. I just saw Lucas get Delighted. For the first time in my life, somebody else saw a Grim.
“Jaden!” I look away from Lucas’s lifeless body and at Xander. Now, Mrs. Margaret has begun running toward me, a machete clutched in her hand. I point to her and watch as Xander’s hand glides up to her face, Delighting her instantly.
The crowd again bursts out in shock. I catch one last glimpse of Xander before he swipes his eyebrow and disappears again. I immediately sit up and struggle to get my feet untied and off the hook. I eventually do, violently dropping me on the concrete floor. I stagger to stand up, looking in the crowd as I do. Hands clasped to mouths and covering hairlines in disbelief. People leaning forward over their seats to get a better look at me. Silence has replaced the commotion. They soak in every detail about me to see if anything peculiar stands out to them; something that could’ve caused me to do what I just did.