Chapter 42 #3
People vanish beneath the wood. Six rows, maybe seven. Bodies crushed in an instant, blood spreading across white stone like spilled wine. The screaming starts—not just from the impact zone, but from everywhere as panic ripples outward through the crowd.
The giant screens flickering overhead cut to static. Then black.
“Let’s go, birdie!”
“What?”
Marco has both cutlasses in one hand now. His other hand wraps around my wrist with iron strength, hauling me upright. My legs shake. The deck rolls beneath my feet, the ship listing from the mast’s sudden absence.
“We’re leaving.” Marco drags me toward where the mast lies on the deck, extending into the arena like a bridge. “Together.”
People are dying. The screens are dead. Marco just—
“Robin!” Marco yanks me close, one hand fisting in my vest. “I’m sorry.
I couldn’t do it. They can take everything from me.
My home, my family, my freedom—but not this.
Not you.” His forehead presses against mine, breath hot on my lips.
“Five years, I’ve killed to survive. But you?
I’d die a thousand times before I let them make me your executioner.
You’re the only good thing left in this world, Robin.
I’d rather burn this whole fucking arena down than hurt you.
I love you more than freedom. More than survival. More than anything. I’m sorry.”
I kiss him. Hard and desperate, tasting blood and chaos and the end of everything we knew.
When we break apart, the world sharpens—screaming, blood, his hand gripping mine.
“I will get your sister home safe. But you’re coming with us.
” Marco leaps onto the fallen mast, holding out his hand for me.
I take it. The timber groans under his weight but holds.
Blood and concrete dust coat the wood. In the stands beyond, people push and shove, trying to escape.
More screaming. More death as the crowd crushes itself in panic.
Arena staff and game architects flee in every direction. Someone shouts orders I can’t make out over the roar of twenty thousand people losing their minds.
The mast sags in the middle where it spans the greatest distance. Bodies lie crushed beneath sections of it, arms and legs jutting out at impossible angles.
We reach the stands. Marco leaps down onto the stone, then catches me as I follow. My legs nearly buckle, but his hands steady me.
He presses my cutlass back into my palm, fingers closing mine around the grip.
“Don’t hesitate,” he says.
I nod.
And I don’t.
Not when the first guard rushes us, baton raised. My blade opens his throat before he can swing.
Not when two game architects try to block our path up the blood-slicked steps. Marco takes one, I take the other. Steel slides between ribs as if it were made for the purpose.
Not when someone dressed in a Victoran-blue robe points at us, screaming at us to halt.
We climb through the carnage, stepping over bodies and around debris. The crowd streams past us in blind panic, but they barely see us. We’re just two more people covered in blood, trying to escape.
An Imperial soldier appears at the top of the stairs, rifle raised. I duck left as Marco goes right. The shot misses, exploding behind us. My cutlass takes the man’s leg at the knee. Marco’s blade finds his heart.
Up and up we climb, through corridors that reek of fear and death. Emergency lights flash red, casting everything in hellish shadows. Doors hang open where people fled. Papers scatter underfoot like autumn leaves.
We round a corner into a wider corridor lined with entrances for the smaller glass viewing boxes. Through the arched openings, I catch glimpses of the chaos below—people streaming out of the arena, crushing each other in their desperation to escape.
That’s when Marco stops.
“There.” His voice drops to something animal.
I follow his gaze through one of the arches. In the distance, across a sea of panicking bodies, is the Emperor. Surrounded by six soldiers. Being rushed to safety while his people die.
“I’m going to end him,” Marco snarls. “Once and for all.”
He starts toward the arch, but I catch his arm.
“No, Marco.”
He tries to pull free. His muscles cord with tension, every line of his body focused on that distant procession.
“He will pay for what he’s done,” he shouts. “To you. To me. To everyone.”
“Marco.” I step in front of him, forcing him to look at me instead of his target. “No.”
“Get out of my way, Robin.”
“Look at me.” I reach up, fingers threading through his dark hair. The curls are damp with sweat and blood—not his own. “Look at me, baby.”
His eyes snap to mine, wild with rage and pain.
“We’re leaving here together. That’s what matters. Not him. Not revenge. Just us getting out alive. This is what we dreamed about. Don’t risk it for him.”
For a moment, his whole body trembles on the edge of violence. I can feel the war raging inside him—five years of abuse and humiliation demanding satisfaction.
Then something shifts in his face. The killing rage doesn’t disappear, but it banks like coals covered with ash.
“Together,” he repeats.
“Together.”
He nods once, sharply. Then he grabs my hand and we run.
Marco knows this place like the back of his hand. Down service stairs. Through maintenance corridors. Past storage rooms and staff quarters. Places that would normally be guarded if not for the panic above. The sounds of chaos follow us—distant screaming, the thunder of running feet.
We burst through an exit into blinding daylight.
The city streets are pure carnage.
Public viewing parties have devolved into riots.
Screens mounted on buildings flicker between static and a broadcast of a siren.
Bodies lie trampled on the cobblestones.
A woman screams for her lost child over the roar of the crowd.
People surge through the streets in waves, most fleeing the arena district, others racing toward it to see what happened.
“This way,” Marco shouts.
The wall looms ahead—gray stone separating Victora’s wealth from the wasteland beyond. A crowd has gathered at the main gate, shouting at guards who wave swords, trying to keep some sort of order in the chaos.
Marco pulls me into the shadow of a stone turret. “We’ll have to climb.”
I follow his gaze up the sheer stone face. No handholds. No rope.
“Are you insane?”
But he’s already pushing me toward the wall, hands on my waist. “Tuck the cutlass into your shorts. Use the mortar lines.”
I remember Atrea’s cliffs—scaling them as children while our parents screamed at us to come down. My fingers find the first handhold.
The stone is rough against my palms, sharp edges biting into my fingertips. Below, Marco starts his own ascent, moving with practiced grace.
Twenty feet up, my shoulders burn. Thirty feet, my fingers slick with sweat. Forty feet—my foot slips. For a heart-stopping moment I dangle by my fingertips. Marco’s hand steadies my ankle, guiding my foot to solid stone.
We reach the top together, hauling ourselves over the parapet.
We’re not alone.
Two Imperial soldiers stand frozen at the far end, eyes wide. One reaches for his sword. The other fumbles with a horn.
Marco and I lunge as one.
My cutlass opens the first man’s throat. Marco’s blade punches through the second soldier’s ribs. They drop without a sound.
Marco snatches up a rifle, checks the chamber, nods.
“Move.”
We rush down the tower stairs—flight after flight until my legs shake. Voices drift up from below. Men arguing about securing districts, about Imperial reinforcements.
We slow at the ground floor. Through the doorway, six guards cluster around a table, their commander screaming about incompetence.
They don’t notice us slip past like shadows.
And then we’re through.
Into the outside world.
The wasteland stretches before us—endless scrubland broken by scattered ruins and the bones of dead cities. Despite the hellscape we just left, the sun overhead burns bright in a blue sky.
Fucking hell.
Marco and I share a look—disbelief, triumph, terror all mixed together. We actually did it. We escaped Victora. We’re free.
Almost.
Marco’s already dragging me to the right, away from the wall. “This way,” he says. “Maria and Esme.”
The stench hits us before we see the dump—rotting garbage and human waste baking under the desert sun. Marco leads me through scattered refuse toward a cluster of ramshackle buildings where the city stores its trash before slaves haul it away.
A guard leans against one of the structures. One of the men who often takes Marco’s coin for small favors. His face lights up when he spots Marco approaching, probably expecting a fat payment for watching over Marco’s belongings.
Then his eyes shift to me. Recognition dawns. His expression changes from greed to alarm.
His hand moves toward his weapon.
Marco’s cutlass slashes his throat before the man can draw. Blood sprays across the dirt as the guard crumples.
“Maria!” Marco snaps. “Esme!”
Movement under tarps and blankets among Marco’s stored possessions. Then Esme’s beautiful face pops up to greet us.
“Robin?!”
I’ve never seen her look so shocked.
Marco hisses for silence. “We have no time.”
Maria emerges from the hiding spot, her face pale as she takes in our blood-soaked appearance.
“You didn’t,” she breathes.
“We fucking did,” Marco replies.
He’s already moving, locating specific bags among his things, tossing them to us with urgency.
I squeeze Esme’s hand as we break into a jog through the scrapyard.
“This was the plan all along, wasn’t it?” she says, breathless but grinning.
I can only laugh in reply. The sound comes out wild, half mad.
Marco weaves between towers of stacked tires and rusted car parts—engines stripped bare, door panels bent into abstract sculptures by time and weather. The metallic graveyard stretches endlessly under the burning sun.