Stung (25 page)

In the front row sits a man dressed in a suit and tie, with a white-collared shirt. He is flanked on both sides by four short-haired men in black uniforms, with automatic weapons in their hands. I have seen this guarded man before. In a fire lit alley. The man who told the raiders to catch me and keep me, and kill me. His eyes are locked on mine. I stare into his narrowed eyes and slowly climb to my feet. He is the governor.

“Now that you’ve clapped eyes on this beastly sweetie, you
might want to change your bets. Or increase them,” the commentator says, the timbre of his voice niggling at my memory. I break eye contact with the governor and look around but can’t see the commentator. The noise dies down as people scramble to give slips of paper to several men dressed in black, wearing black caps.

“And now. Brace yourselves! Men, cover your wives’ eyes! The moment you’ve all been waiting for is here.” Everyone leans forward in their seats. “It is time,” the commentator continues in a quiet voice, “to introduce the
other three
before we open their doors. Door number one holds a Level Three male. Don’t let his small size fool you, my friends. We’ve been trying to catch this wily Fec for
years
. He’s the craftiest, fastest thing on two legs that has
ever
come from the tunnels. In fact, get this. He’s the Fec that usually
sells
the other Fecs to the pits! What a cruel turn of fate for him.” The commentator chuckles, and I recognize his voice. He is the man from the tunnels who always hid in the shadows. Shadow Man.

“Door number three,” the commentator continues, “holds our second female. She’s only a Five, but you know how female beasts are—they kill all other females so they can be queen bee. She’s clawing at the door to get to our Ten as I speak!

“And from door number four, you’ll see our second Ten. He’s …” The crowd shrieks so loudly, the commentator’s voice is completely swallowed. Even the black-dressed guards in the front row lean forward to peer down into the pool. Only the governor seems unaffected. When the frenzy dies down, the commentator continues, “This Ten is a male with a broken ankle and
some superficial skin wounds. But don’t let that stop you from betting on him. He’s the strongest beast we have
ever
seen. He
bent the bars of his cage
trying to get at our little Level Ten female down there. Steel bars, mind you! No beast has
ever
done that.”

I grit my teeth and force my legs not to buckle.
Why does it have to be him in here with me? What kind of sick and twisted reality have I been thrown into?
I wonder.
And where are you, Bowen?

The ground beneath my feet rumbles as the crowd stomps their feet on the bleachers in unison. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Just like at a high school basketball game.

“And now. Silence, please. We will open the other three doors,” the commentator says, his voice reverent. The noise disappears, as if it has been clapped beneath a hand. My ears ring with its aftermath.

Slowly, one of three doors built into the side of the pool slides open. A person is shoved into the light.

It’s Arrin, cuffed hands shading her face. She uncovers her eyes and squints. Her face has been scrubbed clean, her hair isn’t in her face, and her clothes are dripping. With her face clean, and her—my—clothes plastered to her body, she looks … male—square shoulders, hairy legs, and a beaky nose too big for her face. I can see it, now, what Bowen has said all along. I am looking at Arris—not Arrin. She
is
male. He grins at me and I shiver.

Arris’s eyes flicker away from mine, up to the bleachers above, and lock onto the governor’s face. He mouths the words,
Kill her and I’ll get you out
. Arris nods and grins.

The other two doors open, and two freshly scrubbed beasts, wearing scraps of damp clothing and bound by ankle and wrist
cuffs, are pushed out into the pool. One is the female beast that had been kept in the cage beside mine. I press my back to the wall and pray she doesn’t see me. Or smell me. Or whatever they do.

When I look at the other beast, I can’t breathe, wonder again what kind of sick and twisted reality I exist in, that I am facing my own twin brother in a death match. Jonah. He hovers on one foot, the other hanging at an odd angle just above the ground, his ankle swollen and purple beneath the cuff. His skin is slashed and scabbed over, and around his neck, ankles, and wrists are chafed bruises from the restraints that have been holding him. He glances at me—a flash of dark irises—so quickly I wonder if I’ve imagined it, and then his full attention is on the female beast.

So is mine.

She hisses. At me. And fights against the cuffs on her legs. She lunges for me and falls onto the pale-blue, bloodstained cement. Like a worm, she begins inching her way in my direction. I press my back harder against the wall.

Movement catches my eye, something bright, and I look away from the beast, squinting. Arris holds a knife in his clean hand, wiggling it so the bright new blade catches the light and reflects it into my eyes. He grins a brown-toothed grin and slashes at the air.

Memories flash in my head—my father, forever stuck in his wheelchair, teaching me how to defend myself.
Never get in a knife fight. You’ll get cut
. Like that’s going to help me now.
If your attacker grips your arm, twist toward his thumb. Don’t punch—grab the soft flesh of the inner arm or thigh with your nails. Bite. Stomp on the instep or kick the Achilles tendon. Go for the eyes. Use your elbows in place of punching
.

His voice floods my brain, an onslaught of information in the blink of an eye that makes my heart ache for his presence. His protection. Gathering up all the bravery I possess, I take a step away from the wall, balance on the balls of my feet, and wait. The crowd applauds my bravery.

I will not die without fighting for a life I am not yet done living.

The commentator’s voice rumbles, but I don’t take my eyes from the others in the arena. “At a down-count of ten, we will release the cuffs and the fight will begin!” he roars. The air trembles with an explosion of noise, and the count starts, shouted by the spectators as well as the commentator.

“Ten! Nine …” The numbers pulse against me, hammer my eardrums, and then fade to gibberish in my ringing ears. Until they get to …

“ONE!”

And then the arena explodes with action.

Cuffs release. Everyone leaps but me. Before I can move, before I can put my hands up to protect my face, I am buried beneath three bodies. My head smacks the pool floor, though I
don’t feel it, only hear the crunch of skull on cement, see stars in front of my open eyes. I cannot move.

Jonah throws Arris aside and then rips the female from me, rolling with her into the center of the pool, a thrashing ball of limbs and skin.

Arris scrambles to his feet and leaps onto me, his knees pinning my wrists to the ground, and stares into my eyes. He lifts his knife and grins, watching for my reaction instead of striking. I don’t wait for his knife to find my flesh. With a grunt, I thrust my knee between his legs, hard. His eyes grow wide, the knife trembles in his hand, and he topples, rolling off of me to stare goggle-eyed at the glass seal overhead. And now there’s no doubt. He’s male.

I jump to my feet and watch him. The advantage is mine. I could take the knife from his hand and eliminate him from the fight, but I don’t. The thought makes me sick. Instead, I creep past Jonah and the female Five to the other side of the pool and cower. Overhead, the crowd is staring, starved for action, insane with their desire for blood. The governor’s eyes never leave me.

“What did I tell you, folks? Looks like our female Ten isn’t as soft as she appears to be,” the commentator cries.

Across the pool, Arris drags himself to his feet and glares. Hunched over, gripping his stomach, he skirts around the two flailing beasts and cautiously approaches me. In spite of his youth, his eyes are old and filled with a hatred so deep, I can feel it.

“Why are you trying to kill me?” I call out to him. “Why do you hate me so badly?”

The noise of the crowd dulls to nothing. Confused by the sudden silence, I look up. The people crammed onto the stadium benches are staring down at me, mouths hanging open, eyebrows knit in confusion, shocked. The governor stands and walks to the edge of the pool, stopping beside a short man dressed all in white, with a round belly straining his shirt. The governor says something to the man.

“Cut the pit sound,” the man in white says, his booming voice annoyed. He is the commentator, the Shadow Man. And he’s just been given an order he doesn’t like. The governor nods and returns to his seat. “Folks, don’t worry yourselves over the Ten. The governor just assured me that she
can’t
talk. That was the Three speaking.”

From the corner of my eye I see Arris leap. I lift my hands to defend myself and am slammed into the pool floor again, skidding across the rough cement. The breath whooshes out of me. Heat stabs my forearm as Arris’s knife connects with it, slicing downward. His eyes, mere inches above mine, fill with glee.

I buck Arris off and roll onto him, grabbing his knife-hand wrist with both of my hands. But my injured hand won’t grip. And Arris is strong—his thin, wiry, vein-covered arm no match for me. Recognition niggles at my brain. I have seen this before, in myself and in my brother, symptoms of violence that are accompanied by an inhuman increase in strength.

Arris is on the verge of turning.

He shoves me off him like I’m a thin, limp blanket, perches on my chest with his bare feet, and leaning over, brings the knife to
my throat. I clasp his wrist with both my hands and stop the knife a millimeter from my flesh.

“I hate you,” he gasps, his body taut with the effort of getting his knife to my throat. “It’s not fair that you’re not a beast! And the militia helped you. Bowen helped you. No one ever helped me!” I struggle against him, trembling from the strain of keeping his knife off my skin, and he laughs. “All I have to do is kill you and the governor will let me live inside the wall,” he says. “Finally, someone is helping me.”

Heat fills my blood, fire tightens my muscles, and I move the knife an inch away from my neck. Confusion fills Arris’s eyes. “You’re strong. Stronger than you should be,” he says. The confusion in his eyes turns to satisfaction. “But my knife is already at your throat.”

The knife presses harder and Arris’s eyes grow darker. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus every bit of strength I have into keeping his knife from my throat.

“Open your eyes and stare death in the face,” Arris growls.

I open my eyes and stare into his. Little by little, the knife moves toward my neck until it brushes my skin.

I grit my teeth and close my eyes, and an unexpected heaviness flattens my body into the ground. I can’t breathe, can’t move, am completely trapped beneath Arris’s slight body.

Did he just kill me? Is this how it feels to die?

I blink and stare into Arris’s shocked, bulging eyes. Blue bleeds into his full red lips, and tan hands are cinched around his pale, sinewy neck. Arris’s knife clatters to the pool floor beside my ear.

Jonah lifts Arris from me and drags him to the far side of the pool, and I think I just might live for three more seconds. Until a warm, hard weight crushes me.

The female beast stares down at me, knees straddling my hips. I grab Arris’s knife from the floor and swing it at her chest, but she swats it out of my hand without taking her eyes from mine. Her hands grip my hands and slam them beside my ears, making my broken finger snap and flame with pain. She peels her lips from her teeth and stares at my neck.

“Look at this, folks! The female Five finally has her chance with the female Ten! She’s going for the throat!” the commentator shrieks. “And by the way the Five is taking control, I’d say she’s going to be victorious … but wait! Look at this, look at this!” He can barely contain his glee. “The male Ten! He’s coming in for a piece of the fun, too! Both of them against the female Ten!”

Jonah jumps onto the female, crushing us both beneath his weight. He grabs her shoulders and yanks her up. She doesn’t let go of me, grips my hands more tightly and pulls me to my feet. Jonah wraps his arms around her shoulders and flings her to the side. Her hands lose their grip on mine, claws raking my flesh. She flies through the air and strikes the side of the pool. And then I am living my worst nightmare—Jonah coming for me. He takes me by the waist and heaves me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“What? This is new!” the commentator blares. “Maybe he’ll body slam her into the wall?” The crowd cheers. “Bash her brains out against the floor?” They cheer louder, and I cling to the threadbare shirt hanging on my brother’s back.

Jonah hobbles to the side of the pit and stops, setting me gently on the floor with my back to the pool wall. He steps in front of me, faces the female, and crouches. I am stunned. Shocked. At this simple act of protection, tears sting my eyes, and my throat aches with the desire to sob.

The crowd starts booing. The female Five doesn’t budge from her side of the pool—just stands panting and staring at Jonah.

“What in the world? This is a first! It looks as though the male Ten is actually
protecting
the female Ten! I don’t believe it! Maybe he’s saving her for last? For dessert?” the commentator barks.

The governor stands and walks over the top of the pool, his hard-soled shoes clicking on the glass seal, and stops beside the commentator. Unheard words pass between them, while Jonah remains crouched in front of me and the female beast stays on the far side of the pool. After a moment, the commentator grins and the governor sits back down.

“It’s no wonder he got himself appointed governor! This guy is wily!” the commentator says with a chuckle. “He’s suggested another first for the day! Listen to this, folks … shall we add a …
handicap
… to the male Ten?”

The crowd starts pounding their feet on the bleachers and chanting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

My cuffs fill with heat, but it is Jonah’s wrist cuffs that meld together. The female, as if sensing her sudden advantage, hisses and takes a step closer. Jonah crouches lower and waits. The female begins pacing back and forth, her blood-streaked body tense, eyes never leaving Jonah. It is like watching two caged lions.