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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.

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.