by Frankie Rose
And then it’s over.
The priestess with the knife straightens her body, and the other one moves in. She is angled in such a way that I can see what she is doing this time. She draws a fistful of the purple-white powder from her robes again and rubs it into the open wound on Ryka’s chest. I can’t tell what the pattern is from this distance, but the area it covers is about the same size as my palm, and sits just off-centre on his right pectoral. The priestess finishes rubbing the powder into the wound and then collects even more from her robes. She blows this straight into Ryka’s face again and his body bows upwards, his head tipped back as far it can go. The great cloud of airborne powder rises and the two men holding Ryka up get it straight in their faces, too. The amount is so much less than Ryka’s received, and yet both of them collapse on impact, dropping him to the floor.
I’m there in a heartbeat. Ryka’s eyelids have a weird purple sheen to them, and I can hear his breathing is slow, rattling in and out of his chest. I tug his body until his head rests in my lap.
I look up when I see red, sheer material right in front of me. The priestesses both stand side by side, their heads angled weirdly.
“Such value to your sacrifice…” they whisper, just slightly out of sync. “…value to your sacrifice.” No one else hears them. The message is clearly meant for my ears only. My body reacts to the strange women, sending a violent judder relaying around my nerve endings. I hate them so much. If I thought I would get away with it, I would—
“RUUUUUUNNNN!”
The shout comes from somewhere outside. The crowd ignites—panic, anger, fear thick in the air, like a tangible force.
“LOCKDOWN! RUN!” The shout comes again, and this time I feel hands around me. Jack. He’s pulling me up. Urging me forward. I try to pull back—I have to take care of Ryka—but when I look behind me, I see his blond head slumped over his chest. James has him under one arm, a stranger has him under the other. A wall of men flank them as they move behind us. They wear set, grim expressions that tell me everything I need to know: they are protecting Ryka. He is their most precious cargo, and they aren’t going to let him get hurt now.
Outside, people are running, screaming, dying. Bright arcs of fire sail high into the sky before succumbing to gravity and falling in the midst of tents and human bodies. Each lands with a jarring explosion that rocks the ground. Fire leaps up to ink the night sky burned orange.
This is it.
They’ve come back for me.
“What’s happening?” I’m met back at the tent by Luke, pacing up and down. There’s a streak of black dirt on his face, and his hands are bloody.
“The Sanctuary are coming. Are you okay? Luke! Are you okay?” He snaps out of his daze and nods.
“There was a man, he was wounded. I…was trying to stop the bleeding, but…” My brother’s eyes are foggy. Distant. He’s barely here with me. I hate to think what became of the person he was trying to help. Jack, James and Ryka are right behind me, along with Scott, the stranger who helped get Ryka out. He’s taller than James, but not quite as broad. He has blood in his sandy-blond hair, although I can’t see if it’s actually coming from him or not. He doesn’t seem injured, as he and James lower Ryka to the ground.
I thank the universe that my tent and Jack’s is out of Freetown proper. Otherwise we would be right in the middle of the chaos.
“We have to leave,” James grunts. I just stand there, looking between my brother and Ryka. One of them is recovering from a serious stomach wound, and the other is unconscious.
“How?” It’s all I can manage.
“I can carry him,” James tells me, pointing to Ryka.
“Don’t be stupid! He’s almost as big as you!”
“He’s not nearly as big as me,” James retorts. He stands, swats the sweat from out of his eyes, and then stalks off into Jack’s tent. The old man watches after him, his grey hair wild and crazy with the fire and smoke cutting upwards into the sky behind him.
“Gather some things together. Quickly,” he says to me. I do as I’m told, grabbing hold of Luke’s hand and dragging him back into my tent with me. I’m not letting him out of my sight. Once inside the tent, I realise that I don’t really own anything to gather. I stuff some clothes for myself and Luke into my old rucksack and then drag him back outside again. For a moment, he looks like he’s going to have another episode. He’s frozen, looking at Ryka’s still body.
“What happened to him? Is he…is he dead?” Luke whispers.
“Not dead.” James reappears with a bag—Ryka’s bag—and tosses it to my brother. “Just conveniently taking a nap. D’you think you can carry this?”
My brother nods. “Why won’t he wake up?”
Jack squeezes Luke’s shoulder. “He will. In about twelve hours, most likely. You’ll be long gone by then.” This is all happening so fast. An explosion punches through the air, and the blast buffers our backs. “That was close. You need to go!”
I can’t. We can’t. We can’t just leave Jack and Melody and everyone else to their fate. The panic on my face must show. “It’s okay, Kit. They’ll stop soon. They’ll be coming in to look for people. There won’t be anyone here. They’ll have no reason to do any more damage.”
I know that’s not the case. The Sanctuary aren’t going to stop until they get what they want. I can see that Jack doesn’t believe it, either, but there’s nothing I can do.
“I’ll go with them,” Scott says. “We’ll move quicker with two of us carrying him.” He gestures to the lifeless Ryka at his feet, already bending to grab hold of his arms.
James just grunts. “Come on, then.”
******
The forest is pitch black. At first I can’t make out a single thing, not the tree roots at my feet, not James and Scott struggling with Ryka up ahead, not even my own hand in front of my face. Luke is behind me, moving quietly, but I can hear his breathing is irregular and uneven. Eventually I begin to make out the trees around me. The world is all blacks and greys.
I stumble with every third or fourth step until I can clear my retinas of the burns created by the fires still roaring behind us. After that I can see well enough to pick out a safe path. Luke sucks in giant breaths, each one louder than the last.
“Are you okay?”
“My stomach hurts,” he wheezes. “It’s okay…I’ll be fine.” He doesn’t sound fine, but we can’t stop now. Between the two of them, James and Scott set a fast pace. Ryka swings like a limp ragdoll between the two of them, and I am silently grateful that Scott is carrying him by the arms and not James. I doubt the other man would be so careful with my boyfriend’s head. We’re running for twenty minutes when we see beams of light cutting through the forest behind us. The sounds of engines follow.
“Guards,” Scott pants. We break momentarily while James scans the surrounding trees. He purses his lips and then fixes me in his sights.
“You’ll have to deal with them.”
“What? How many are there?”
James shrugs. “You’ll find out soon enough.” He sets off running, pulling Scott and Ryka along with him. Luke loiters behind me, his breathing still deep and laboured.
“Go with them,” I tell him.
“What? No, I want to stay with—”
“Go with them, Luke! Now!” My brother looks wounded, like I’m abandoning him or something. “Please! Go now! You’re hurt and I can’t fight and watch over you! I’ll be right behind you, I swear it.” With one last mournful look, Luke does as I ask, running into the night after James and Scott. I lean back against a tree, heaving oxygen into my lungs. “Damn it!” I close my eyes. Listen. There are three high-pitched engines buzzing through the forest. By the sounds of things, they’re headed straight for me. I risk a glance behind and see two long shafts of white light, angling up and down, left to right. The motion seems utterly random until I realise…it’s a headlight. They’re on motorbikes. I’ve only ever seen a motorbike once, when the Sanctuary put on a
display in the arena floor. Great dirt jumps, that riders flew over and landed with ease, stunning the crowd. I could only think that it was a waste of precious fuel at the time.
Another quick look. Closer now. My heart ramps up, forcing adrenalin around my body in waves that make me light headed and twitchy. What the hell am I going to do? One of the bikes veers off course and heads straight toward me. Thirty feet, twenty feet, fifteen feet…they still travel so fast, despite having to weave a pathway through the trees. Ten…Five…
I pull my throwing daggers from my knife belt and get ready. Timing is everything.
I throw.
The bike tears past me, and I hear a metallic clank as one of my blades ricochets off the fuel tank. The other finds its target, imbedding in the side of the rider’s throat. The bike wobbles and then crashes into a tree four feet away, somersaulting over. The rider ejects and sails limply through the air, crashing into the undergrowth without a sound. Already dead. Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t counted on there being two people on the bike.
A gunshot cracks through the air and I finally see him. He’s pinned beneath the bike, his leg trapped underneath. In the darkness, I can still make out the bright glint of his halo around his throat. He points the sleek barrel of a handgun at me and aims again, his arm shaking. He must be badly hurt. I zigzag closer until I’m up close enough to see blood pouring down his face underneath his visor. The guard looks up at me in a daze, his pupils large and black, before his arm goes slack. He’s not dead, but he’s barely conscious. I leave him there—I just don’t have it in me to kill a defenceless person right now—and start running back toward Freetown.
My pounding feet are louder than the remaining bike engines. Light cuts across me, shines into my eyes, and I have to shield them to see where I’m going. I’m running straight at one of the bikes.
“Over here!” The guards call to one another, but I’m already too close. I jump, plant a foot against a tree trunk, and use it to flip myself over the oncoming bike. The bike skids to a halt, and the lights go out. Two guards clamber off. I punch one as hard as I can in the back of the neck, and I feel bone crunch, but the guy doesn’t go down. He stoops over, trying to straighten out his shoulder blades, but something is broken in there now, I felt it, and he can do no more than reach for his gun—
I kick it from his hand. The other guard rushes forward, a gun of his own pointed directly at my chest. I block his arm and shove it aside just as he fires. My right ear rings painfully from the noise, so close to my head. The guard pivots his body and sweeps his arm over mine, out of the block. This guy’s good. I drop down and kick out as quickly as I can, slamming the soles of my boots into his shinbone. The snapping sound sets my teeth on edge, but it means the other guy collapses. I twist, pull back my fist, and then drive the knuckle of my index finger down into his windpipe. He chokes, claws at his throat, trying to breathe.
The first guard pulls me off his partner, still struggling to stand properly, and I see the flash of silver in his hand. I yank my arm back but not quite quickly enough, and a searing heat explodes down my arm. A thin, high scream rips through the night, alien and agonised. I grind my teeth together, working through the pain. My hand is wet—blood pouring down my arm. I bring my knee up and smash it into the guard’s face, knocking him out just as a beam of light strobes through the dark and locks me in its sights.
“Put down the weapon!” a voice hollers. I freeze. I’m not holding a weapon. The high-pitched sound of the bike draws closer and the voice grows louder, more insistent. “Put. Down. The. Weapon!”
I still don’t have a weapon. I frown at the oncoming bike, ducking as a bullet slices through the air, dangerously close to my head. Closer to the ground, I snatch the Balisong, the sharp butterfly knife that the guard cut me with, and then scowl. I can’t throw a Balisong. I’m going to have to get in close.
Not what I need.
I dash under cover of the undergrowth as a hail of bullets thuck, thuck, thuck into the ground where I was standing a second earlier.
“Kit?”
The voice startles me. Not only the voice. The name. He called me Kit instead of Falin Kitsch. Lowrence knows this is my new name because I told him back in the Sanctuary when I saved my brother. This is father. He is the rider of the third bike. Unlike the other bikes, there’s no one else with him. I see his lone silhouette against the light blaring from the motorbike.
“Kit? Come on, daughter, we need to talk.”
He doesn’t want to talk to me. He wants to drag me back to the Sanctuary so he can force me back into the arena. I say nothing. Keep as still, as silent as I can. It feels as though he must be able to hear my heart thudding so loudly in my chest.
“Kit, what do you think happens to these people you’ve befriended if I don’t get what I want? Hmm? Can you be reasonable about this? You need to bring your brother home. You are both my blood.”
“And what is our blood worth to you, Father?” I shout. I can’t stop myself. I want to kill him, tear him limb from limb for even trying to pretend like our biological connection means anything to him.
“Your blood is worth a whole lot me,” Lowrence replies, and I hear the laughter in his voice. “I’ve spent a lot of money feeding and training you the past sixteen years. I invested heavily in you so that you would be strong enough to defend yourself and win your House’s honour. Don’t you see that, Kit? Of course I value you and your brother. I always knew you would both be magnificent. I always knew you would own the Colosseum. For us. For your family.”
Laughter sticks in my own throat. Another gunshot rings out into the night, but it’s way off target. I don’t think my father is a very good marksman, but I also don’t think he’s trying to hurt me. I’m worthless to him injured or dead.
“Come on, Kit. It’s time to end this charade. Where is your brother? If you both come now, then I will make sure nothing else happens to these people.”
This is the final straw. It is within his power to end the attacks on Freetown? Then that probably means it was within his power to start them, too. I bet this is all his doing. I lunge out from under my cover, and the look of surprise on Lowrence’s face is almost comical. He rocks back as I dart for him, and I swipe up with the Balisong, cutting deeply from his cheekbone all the way up across his forehead. Blood pours down into his eyes, and he swings wildly, trying to point the gun at me.
“You little bitch!” he screams. “You’re going to pay for that!” He fires off another round and gets lucky. In the struggle, the bullet clips my arm, and I let go of him. I’m seeing stars, the pain is so bad. Such a stupid, stupid mistake. I clutch hold of my arm and hiss, pain spiralling through me like a juggernaut. Anger possesses me, takes a fearsome hold. I pull my hand back and strike out with the heel of my palm—a deadly blow that will break a man’s nose and drive the broken shards straight up into his brain. At the last second, an explosion tilts the ground, and Lowrence topples backward. Fate saves him from the deathblow I was going to deliver. I decide not to argue with fate anymore today. Luke needs me—I have to make sure he’s safe. It goes against every single instinct I have, but I force myself to turn and I run.
Losing oneself metaphorically can be a good thing. In your thoughts, in another person—that can be pretty remarkable. However, being physically lost sucks. Especially if you’re lost in a pitch-black forest in the middle of the night and you’ve been shot in the arm.
I find the first bike I took down, and the unconscious guard is missing. The one that was catapulted through the air remains face down in the undergrowth, limbs bent at odd angles. Now that there’s no one pursuing me, I spend a couple of minutes searching for the dagger that deflected off the fuel tank. The other one is exactly where I left it—still in the guard’s neck. I manage to tamp down the queasy feeling in my stomach as I draw the blade out and feel the steel scrape bone.
I know which way my brother and the others went, and I set off in that direction. They have been runni
ng for eighteen minutes longer than me, but they have Ryka to carry and my wounded brother to slow them down. Taking these things into consideration, I figure I can catch up to them if I run at an elevated pace for thirty-four minutes.
I run for thirty-four minutes. And then I run an hour after that, yet no matter how hard I peer into the darkness up ahead, I don’t find them. I’ve stayed true to their heading, choosing the easier ground as they would surely have done with their burdens, and still the night remains pointedly empty of anything bar gnats, mosquitos and the lithe forms of startled deer, reflective eyes shining like ghosts before they crash away through the forest. I come to the only conclusion I can at this stage: James has done it again. He’s gone off course, taken Ryka and my brother and left me to fumble around in the dark, without a hope of finding them. He never shared where our final destination would be, and even if he had, I’d realistically have little hope of finding it. I know how to fight, but I don’t know how to track or navigate in the dark. I certainly can’t claim to share the uncanny sense of direction that Freetown’s people seem to possess when it comes to this forest. I’m pretty sure I could blindfold Ryka, spin him around eighteen times, and he would still be able to find his way anywhere he needed to go. Right now the night is my blindfold, I’m thoroughly spun around, and there’s a very real chance that I might be travelling in circles. If I ever find my way out of this forest, I’m learning how to survive out here.
My arm throbs painfully with every step that I take, but honestly I’m kind of used to it now. After the river chewed me up and spat me out, it seems that I have constantly been in some sort of pain. I definitely don’t like it, but at least it reminds me that I’m alive. I inevitably come across the river but I don’t follow alongside it. The river means people in my short experience of life outside the Sanctuary, so I avoid it like the plague. I push back further into the forest and just keep running. I’m tired, exhausted, angry. I need to sleep, but I can’t risk stopping. Lowrence is a stubborn man; there’s no way he would give up on searching for me now that he’s laid eyes on me. I whisper a plea to the universe as I run, praying the people of Freetown are no longer under attack. Maybe the Sanctuary’s forces have been diverted, and now they are scouring every inch of these woods, looking for me. Looking for Luke.