Chapter 34
Time contracts to a single bright line. In the center of the pit, it’s just me, her, and the wall of faces howling for more.
I taste my own blood, cataloging the texture: iron, spit, and ozone.
I can feel the rattle in my ribs—two, maybe three cracked.
My left eye is swelling shut. But I’m still upright, and for a second, I catch sight of Kang at the edge of the ring.
He’s not cheering, not scowling. He’s perfectly motionless, except for his hands—white-knuckled on the rail, like he could snap it if he tried. The look in his eyes is not Authority cold. It’s naked, raw. The kind of look that says he’s calculating how to save me, or how to end it if I don’t.
I use that look to focus. To rip a last ounce of clarity from the soup of adrenaline and panic.
My opponent charges, barreling straight at me.
I sidestep, just barely, and she clips my shoulder with her hip.
The force is enough to send me spinning to the concrete, knees screaming on impact.
I scramble, hands clawing the floor, and my fingers close around one of the test tubes—old, capped, half-full with something viscous and blue.
The crowd’s noise dims, replaced by the rush of blood in my ears.
I lurch upright. She’s circling now, wary for the first time, blood pulsing down her forearm where I gashed her before. Her face is a map of old trauma: broken nose never set, a seam of scar across her lip, the jaw too square for any mercy. She grins, showing teeth filed flat. “Got you,” she spits.
I ignore her, inventory the rest: another tube, this one cloudy yellow; the shard of metal; the memory of every protocol I ever wrote for controlled violence in a closed system.
She charges again. I let her come, absorbing the first hit—her shoulder in my gut, my back slamming the chain wall—then use the momentum to grab her around the neck and pull her forward, toward the tubes scattered at our feet.
She tries to bite my ear off, but I jerk away just in time. She gets a chunk of hair instead.
I snatch the yellow tube, crack both against the ground. The stoppers pop. My hands are shaking, but I manage to mix the blue and yellow behind my back, using the last moments before her next attack.
She roars, goes for my legs, tries to take me down. I drive my thumb into her bad eye—brown, the weaker one—then use the empty tubes as a shiv, raking it across the bridge of her nose.
She shrieks, tries to gouge my face, but I’m already moving.
I bring my hands up, the mixed chemical cocktail sloshing between my palms, and as she lunges, I fling the liquid straight into her eyes.
The reaction is instant.
It hits with a fizz and a sizzle, the blue-yellow mess foaming as it reacts to the salt and sweat on her skin.
She staggers, howling, hands to her face.
Steam rises off her cheeks, her eyelids starting to go red and then pale, the surface bubbling in a way that makes my stomach turn even through the high.
The crowd goes silent. Then, after a heartbeat, they go ballistic.
I don’t wait. I tackle her at the waist, both of us hitting the concrete.
She claws at her face, trying to scrape the burning away, but I’m on her, grabbing the nearest rock—sharp, heavy, probably a fragment from the wall—and smashing it down on her temple.
Once, twice, and the flesh gives way, spurting blood and something thicker.
The animal in me is in charge now. I can hear it, snarling, urging my hands to keep moving, to make sure it’s finished.
I don’t stop until her body goes limp and the air is thick with the stink of burnt hair and copper.
The world tunnels down to a single point: my hands, the blood, and the distant sound of boots on concrete. I just wanted to live. I didn’t want to become this. But maybe they’re the same thing now.
Suddenly, someone yanks me up by the collar.
I twist, ready to fight, but it’s Kang, breath hot against my ear.
He wraps his arms around my waist, locking my arms to my sides.
“Enough,” he hisses, There’s something in his voice I’ve never heard before—panic, not for himself, but for me.
It scares me more than anything else in the pit did.
I don’t stop struggling. Not until he squeezes tighter, grounding me, reminding me of the body I’m still in.
He drags me upright, half-carrying me toward the exit. I see the other guards entering the pit, their guns out but pointed low, not at me—for now. They circle the corpse, prod it with a boot, then whisper to each other, eyes darting from the body to me and back.
One guard pulls out a radio, says something clipped, then nods grim. He holsters the radio, draws his gun, and with zero ceremony, puts a bullet in the corpse’s head.
The echo is louder than the crowd.
Silence follows, complete and total. Every inmate, every guard, every Authority figure in the building is watching me.
I sag in Lance’s arms, breath coming ragged.
He walks me to the corridor, stopping only when the noise behind us comes back, louder than before. The chant isn’t my number anymore. It’s my name.
“Diana. Diana. Diana.”
My ears ring with it.
In the hall, Lance pins me against the wall, hands pressed to either side of my face. His eyes flick over the bruises, the cuts, the blood on my lips.
“Are you alive?” he says, voice barely above a whisper.
“Mostly,” I manage.
He pulls me close, crushing my mouth to his.
It’s not romantic, it’s not soft—it’s a frantic, animal need to prove I exist, that I’m not just a story being told to scare the new inmates.
I let him, let the weight of his body and his need hold me up.
I want to laugh, or cry, or scream, but all that comes out is a shaky, broken sigh.
When he finally pulls back, there’s blood on his mouth, too.
He wipes it with the back of his hand, then grips my shoulder tight. “Don’t ever do that again,” he says. “You could have—”
“I know,” I cut him off. “But I didn’t.”
He shakes his head, but can’t hide the relief.
We stand there, silent, for a long minute.
Then Kang exhales, a sharp sound more exasperation than relief. His hands are still braced on either side of my face, thumbs hovering just above the bruises he hasn’t yet named.
“No one informed me you’d be in the pit again,” he says, voice low and flat—but undercut with something volatile. “If I’d known—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t need to.
I lift an eyebrow, despite the swelling. “What? You’d have swapped me out? Pulled rank? Gotten yourself thrown in instead?”
His jaw flexes. A muscle twitches near his temple. “I would’ve done something.”
I let the weight of that settle between us. Let it crackle.
He steps back finally, jaw still clenched. “You pulled that chemistry stunt and now half the damn block thinks you’re untouchable. That kind of attention? It’s a death sentence in here. You don’t know who’s watching.”
I shrug, blood still crusted on my lips. “They were watching anyway.”
Kang swears under his breath, a word I can’t quite catch. Then he looks at me again—not like a soldier, or a handler, or even a man assessing risk.
He looks at me like someone trying to memorize a thing he knows he’s going to lose.
“You’re a goddamn magnet for chaos,” he mutters.
“And you keep circling back,” I shoot back, voice rasped raw.
A long silence follows.
Then the PA crackles, slicing through whatever almost passed between us. A voice cold and clinical: “Inmate One-Three-Two. Report to Medical for debrief and treatment. Immediately.”
Lance laughs, sharp and bitter. “Debrief,” he repeats, like it’s the punchline to some sick Authority joke. “They’ll want to know how you did it.”
“So will I,” I mutter, wiping dried blood from my brow. “I wasn’t exactly planning on the chemistry set.”
He grins—sharp, feral. “Next time, bring goggles.”
We move together down the corridor. My steps are uneven, favoring one leg.
Every part of me burns—my ribs throb with each breath, my wrist is sprained if not broken, and blood crusts in my nose, my mouth, the corner of one eye that won’t open fully.
My shirt sticks to my side where the glass sliced deep, bandages already blooming red beneath the fabric.
Guards line the hall. Most avert their eyes, like my gaze might brand them. But not all. Two near the end murmur as we pass.
“Why her?” one says, low but not low enough.
“The pit’s supposed to be punishment, not a science show,” the other replies.
Lance hears it too. His hand presses harder to my elbow, possessive without thinking.
I keep walking. If I stop, I’ll break.
In Medical, the fluorescents are too bright, too sterile. I blink against the glare as the med techs descend with gloves and swabs and too many questions. The antiseptic scorches my skin. The needle to the shoulder—two injections, maybe sedatives or antivirals—sinks deep.
One of them hums while stitching my forehead. Another takes a vitals reading with a cheap scanner that whines like it’s about to die.
“She’s fine,” one tech says to the other. “No concussion. No neural bleed. Just a lot of old-fashioned rage.”
They both chuckle, like I’m a case study instead of a person.
I sit there, wrapped in gauze and silence, barely hearing them as I stare at my reflection in the glass tray—split lip, puffy eye, blood caked in my hair. I look like something pulled from a wreck. And somehow, I won.
The door creaks. Lance leans in, arms crossed.
“You ready?”
“Always,” I say, even though it’s not true.
He walks me back slow, still guiding me like I might tip over. Most of the block is quiet now, lights dimmed, the others pretending not to watch as we pass. But I feel their eyes on my back—wide, uncertain, wondering if they’re looking at salvation or an omen.
Stitch is waiting outside my cell, propped against the wall like she’s been there for hours. Her nose is bandaged, and a new shiner blooms along her jaw.
When she sees me, she lets out a low whistle. “Medical bay, huh? Must be nice.”
I blink, confused.
She grins, wicked. “Most of us just get tossed a rag and a bottle of iodine. But you? Princess treatment.”
I almost laugh, but my ribs protest too hard. “They probably just wanted to make sure I wasn’t about to melt the next pit fighter’s face off.”
Stitch shrugs. “You’re a legend now. That doesn’t come with a first-aid kit.”
Her words hang heavy. I nod once, too tired for more. She claps me on the back and heads off.
I step inside my cell and sit slowly on the edge of the cot. The pain is everywhere now that the adrenaline’s gone. My hands still tremble, blood under my nails. I lie back and stare up at the ceiling.
There are new cracks now—fractures running like veins through concrete. Like something inside the prison is shifting, just beneath the surface.
I think about the pit. About Kang’s hands on my face. About the way the crowd chanted my name like it was a prophecy or a curse.
I wonder what I’ll do with these hands next.
I close my eyes.
The sound of my breathing fills the room.
It’s loud.
It’s alive.
It’s mine.