51. The Last Game
Chapter 51
The Last Game
Raven
Present Day
O ne moment my face was inches away from the toxic acid below with fumes burning my eyes, and the next, the weight was being pulled off my body.
With my newfound freedom, I maneuvered away from the edge. Grunting drew my attention, and I was shocked to find a guard fighting with Dres, wrestling him onto the floor.
Lifting up to my knees, my eyes bounced around the room before landing on Oleks and Griffin. They were still held in place, their restraints confining them to their chair.
Shouldn’t they be released by now. What is going on?
Dres threw the guard to the ground next to me, and he tumbled head over heels through the door he must have come through, it was Miko . The guard from before.
I thought Dres might use the distraction to run to the end, but he didn’t. His lips curled cruelly as he stepped forward towards me.
“A stupid useless girl.” He grabbed me by the collar, tugging me until my feet no longer touched the ground.
There was nothing I could do as I struggled. He was larger, stronger, filled with hatred.
“Miko, you have to save her! You must!” Griffin barked. His order filled with rage and terror.
Dres’s jaw ticked. “It was just as I thought. I was never meant to live. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take what they want most.” He slowly turned me, drifting closer and closer to the edge again, but before my feet were over the acid, Miko was lunging at us.
In a deft move, he yanked me through the door behind him and pushed Dres into the acid. For a single heart stopping millisecond, I thought everything would be okay. That Miko had saved me, and we were done with Dres.
Miko’s eyes met mine and it was because of that, I knew when he realized he was going to die.
Dres’s hand, in a final move, extended and grabbed hold of the back of Miko’s shirt, dragging him into the acid below.
Jumping forward, I tried to catch Miko’s outstretched hand to save him, trying desperately to reach him.
Our fingers brushed, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Miko’s mouth opened on a scream that never finished, but was replaced with the broken noise of a dying creature in agonizing pain as he was dragged into the liquid below .
To his death.
Dres never made a noise, his end a silent affair.
Scrunching my eyes shut, blocking out the disgusting stench, I swallowed down the bile that made its way up my throat. I was unable to watch the horror unfold. It didn’t take long for the room to fall into complete silence.
“Raven!” Griffin shouted. “You have to leave. Go! We’ll be fine!”
I couldn’t understand him. Shock and horror were swallowing me. My hands shook as I backed further out the door and into the hallway. Outside of the game.
Right into another person.
Startled, I twisted around, ready to fight whoever it was.
“Player 33?” I asked, confusion rippling across my skin. This was 32’s teammate, our ally, but why was she out here?
“Raven! Thank God! There you are, we have to leave, something is going on! Come on, come with me now!” The woman grabbed me by the arm, tugging me along the hallway before I could say or do anything.
My body moved on its own accord as she continued to drag me to our destination. “Raven?”
33’s grip on my arm tightened. “Yes, I heard your men calling you that, come on, we have to go!”
“But what about my teammates?” I murmured, still in shock by how everything had played out.
A practical stranger had just died for me. But why ? How had Griffin known his name?
“What is going on?” I dug my feet into the ground, but I was still weak, my body barely doing its job of keeping me alive. I had no fight left in me.
33’s nails dug painfully into my skin as she wrenched me into a lift, as she typed in the code needed to raise us, as we climbed upwards .
At this point, I knew this wasn’t right, but I was essentially this woman’s prisoner. My shock and confusion were not allowing me to fight back. The mental walls I had so carefully crafted to keep myself separated from my own emotions were crumbling. Dissolving. Just as Miko had in the acid.
Shivering at the thought, I shut my eyes and tried to block out the flashes of his face as it melte—
“It’s time Raven. You need to go to the very last game that this hell will ever have. You can end all of this. You just need to trust me. I have helped to keep you alive, haven’t I? I’ve been a trusted ally.” 33’s voice pitching higher than needed.
“What are you…who are you?” My eyes flashed open to find hers. They were piercing into my skin as they widened in excitement. My breath came out in ragged pants as I tried to gain my bearings.
The elevator came to a stop.
“I am Player 33. Just as I was when I won the game last year.”
This time my mouth opened in shock. “You…you…”
33 didn’t wait for me to process, she simply continued dragging me along like a broken toy. And that’s exactly what I was, a toy that had been used and played in so many ways I couldn’t keep up. The amount of strings that had been tugged to put me into this game, with all of these people, with Julian.
Before I could ask anything else, 33 was pushing me through a door and slamming it shut behind me.
Stumbling forward, I twisted and fell flat on my back, my attention went up to the familiar dome. Where we had come for a game before, where I could see outside. It was pitch black again this time. But the sound of rain was unmistakable as it battered against the glass.
The dome rippled until it turned into hundreds of screens, reflecting my image and …
“Anadil?” I gasped, shifting quickly and staggering to my feet.
“Dear sister, I want to say congratulations. You have made it farther than most do.” Her words echoed around us, her face cast on all the different screens, but I stayed focused on her.
Seeing my sister for the first time since she had hurt me. Since she had nearly killed me. Since she had broken me in a way that I never had found a way to fix. It was eerie. As if I were in a fugue state, unable to absorb any of my emotions at all.
“You would be here.” It was all I could think to say. “What do you want from me?”
We stood on a platform that reached halfway across the dome, and my sister was nearly at the edge. Something shifted behind her, my eyes snapped to it for a second, before landing back on her face.
I didn’t trust my sister. Couldn’t imagine what she planned to do with me here.
“What is this? The last game?”
Anadil threw something to me. The item bounced a few times before landing at my feet.
“Remove your mask and collar, Raven. Let them see who you are. Our images will not be blurred for this. Let them see who it is behind the mask.”
Still not trusting her, but deciding it was best to establish what she was playing at, I bent and scooped up the item. A block-shaped key.
“It goes in the back, just reach and push it in, the collar will fall away.”
Is this how I will die? But surely she wouldn’t go through all of that just to kill me here?
Doing as she instructed, I popped the key in and the collar fell away. I then found the latch of my mask and undid it as I had in the past .
“As you can see. This is my beautiful sister, Raven. A woman that was sent here to fight and die for her crimes against Violencia. Except–” Anadil stepped aside, revealing what was behind her.
Who was behind her.
Familiar icy blue eyes, dark raven hair that matched my own. But a nose and lips that were the mirror images of Jayce’s.
I was seeing a ghost.
“Mommy?” The soft, sweet child’s voice bounced around me.
The word was a chord to a broken instrument in my chest that had never been played. It was a protective instinct that hit hard and fast. It was years of emptiness and longing.
I was sprinting to Sparrow before I knew what I was doing.
“A cherished mother. You put a mother in this game to die. Not only a mother, but one that bore a daughter.”
Anadil continued her announcement, but I ignored it.
Dropping to my knees and opening my arms, Sparrow rushed to me and wrapped her small body into mine.
Squeezing her to my chest, I took in years of sadness and longing. Of missing something that I would never have.
But she was here, she was real. “You’re alive.” I peppered kisses across her forehead and hair.
“Mommy,” my daughter cried. “They promised you would come. I missed you.” Her words were broken with the youth of her voice, but I understood them as if they were written before my eyes.
“A mother and daughter. This is what these games have devolved to,” Anadil shouted. “And now. They will be separated again.”
One moment I was taking in Sparrow, wrapped around her, soaking in her warmth, the next I was being dragged backwards away from her, tugged into bulky arms. “No, please! Please! Don’t take her from me again!” I begged. “I will do whatever you want.” Tears streamed down my eyes.
A flicker of an unknown emotion swept across Anadil’s face, but just as quickly, it was gone. “We will be in Violencia, where it all began.”
Where we stood shook until it began to extend across the remainder of the dome. I turned on my captor, scratching , clawing , a blind animal trying to escape, to return to my daughter.
My daughter.
Sparrow.
She is alive.
Anadil grabbed a screaming Sparrow up into her arms, walking across the newly formed bridge.
Finally, managing to escape the confounds of the arms that had trapped me, I sprung forward to chase Anadil. To my daughter.
Only to be knocked back by a large explosion. The sound bursting my eardrums, smoke filling my nostrils and lungs.
Debris flew everywhere as I landed flat on my back, and I choked trying to catch my breath. The dome above me cracked, rain filtering through.
“We have to leave. Now . You won’t be any help to your daughter if you are dead.” Felix–my captor, the man that had literally wrenched me away from my daughter–was now the one to offer me a hand to my feet.
But I didn’t take it. Ignoring my vitriol directed towards him, he carefully grabbed me until I was wrapped in his arms.
“I’m taking you to your freedom. It is time to leave.”
I wanted nothing more than to fight, to scream, to do anything at all. But my soul felt as if it had left along with Sparrow. I was an empty husk processing all of the information that had hit me fast and hard.
I didn’t have the energy to question him, to wonder where we were going. My thoughts were preoccupied with the crippling realization that my daughter had been alive for years, and I had never, not once, even tried to look for her.