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