The rain is coming down heavier than ever. Driving. Blinding. Leela shakes her bangs out of her eye, grimacing as salt water slops into her open mouth.

Fry is yelling, frantic.

"Jrr! Jrr!"

The water has risen to waist-level. The flood is coming faster now. Gamemakers, Leela thinks bitterly.

"Jrr!" she shouts.

Fry stumbles, almost goes under. Leela has to hoick him up by his collar. He grips her arm tightly, white-faced and disoriented as the current sucks at his skinny body.

"Leela," he chokes. "Leela, I can't swim."

Damn, Leela thinks. Of course he can't swim. He didn't grow up in the sewer, and it's not like that orphanarium had a pool.

"Keep a hold of me," she tells him. "I'll keep you afloat."

She grips his shoulder tightly, her injured arm thrown out for balance. It hurts, but it's better than going under. Fry fumbles for handholds – walls, garbage cans, brickwork – and the two of them push on down the street. There is no possible way to conceal their approach. Every step results in ripples ten feet ahead of them. Fry has the laser gun tucked inside his jacket, but other than that they are completely unarmed.

Jrr is two blocks away, trapped under a weighted net. He is gurgling, screaming as the water floods his mouth and nose. Every time he tries to stand the weights around his neck drag him down again. The harder he tries to free himself, the more entangled he becomes.

Leela tears the net away and Fry grabs Jrr's arm, hauling the stocky Omicronian to his feet.

"What happened?"

Jrr gapes at them.

"The Careers!" he gulps out. "They got me, they're coming! You have to get out of here! Leela, you promised!"

Leela barely has time to open her mouth, to tell him that Fry is safe, it was just a trap . . . when she realizes it was just a trap. The aim was to drown Jrr and draw out his allies, and like a fool, she walked right into it.

Just as she has this thought, the Carcaron girl shoots up from under the water.

Of course. Her species is closest to Earth's sharks. All her senses have evolved to function best under water. The salt flood must be a dream come true for her – her natural habitat replicated for her in the arena.

Her head snaps back and forth. Water sluices out of her gills. And then she lunges at Jrr.

He must be dizzy from his near-drowning, because his reactions are slow. He loses his balance, goes down again, and with the weight of the Carcaron girl on top of him, he's not getting up easy. They wrestle, partway under the water.

Something sharp whizzes past Leela's ear. Blood streaks across her cheek as she turns her head to catch sight of it, but it's too fast. It's already gone.

Another whizzing sound, and this time she sees it – an evil bronze throwing star, stuck in the wall behind her. She follows its trajectory and realizes it came from the hulking green shape on the balcony opposite. Brett the blob. The stocky Neptunian boy appears at his shoulder, a machete glinting cruelly in his hand.

Careers never hunt alone, she snaps at herself. She was an idiot to forget it.

"Fry, get down!" she shrieks. He is still standing beside her, frozen in fear.

Wait, no. He's not. He's frozen in shock. As Leela watches he puts a hand up to his shoulder. Bright red blood comes away on his fingers.

That first throwing star found a mark after all. It's half-buried under Fry's collarbone.

His forehead creases in confusion.

"It's stuck," he says dumbly. Before Leela can stop him, he reaches up and yanks it free.

Blood pours out. It sprays Leela's face, turns the water around them swirling crimson. Up on the balcony the Careers are laughing. They must have learned from their earlier mistakes at the bloodbath. They intend to drag these deaths out, give the Gamemakers a show and increase their own chances of going home.

Fry starts to shake. The blood is still surging out of him. All Leela can do is say his name, over and over.

"Fry! No . . . Fry!"

She feels broken.

The color is starting to drain from Fry's face. He fumbles in his jacket, searching for the gun, and . . .

The gun.

Leela stares at it. At Fry's shaking hands as he tries to pass it her.

With her good hand, she sets the charge. Her fingers curl around the trigger. Brett scarcely has time to register the weapon before Leela fires a violet ray at him. It's a loose, poorly-aimed shot, but it hits his slimy underside, searing a smoking line into the vivid green flesh. Brett hops instinctively away from the pain and loses his footing. He topples from the shelter of the balcony into the churning brine below.

His scream is agonizing. Too extreme for simple salt water, Leela thinks. But salt water seems to work like acid on his alien body. He screams and writhes, shriveling up before their eyes as great streaks of green are sucked out of him. Osmosis, she thinks dully. She remembers the word from chemistry class.

Boom. The cannon sounds.

The Neptunian boy disappears from view. Whether he intends to flee the scene or join the fray Leela doesn't know. It doesn't seem to matter anyway, because Fry's blood is still spilling into the water, and she can barely hold him up.

From somewhere behind her comes a terrifying, inhuman roar.

She turns slowly.

Jrr is rising from the crimson water. He has the Carcaron girl in his hands. His eyes are wide, mad, the pupils contracted to tiny pinpricks.

He roars again, shaking the girl like a rag doll . . . and then he rips her throat out. Her blood gushes into his open mouth and he swallows it eagerly. His limbs are shaking now, nostrils flaring wide. He bellows out an inarticulate war cry, and tears apart the corpse in his hands.

Boom.

Jrr sniffs. The smell of blood settles deep in his lungs. He reaches over his shoulder, grasps his fleem and spins around. The Neptunian boy is creeping up on him, machete raised to strike, but he doesn't stand a chance. The metal teeth of the fleem grip his neck, Jrr pulls the handle upwards, and the boy's head flies off.

Boom.

Leela wants to be sick. Fry is shuddering violently.

"Jrr," he whispers.

Jrr's attention snaps to him. The Omnicronian stalks over to them. His eyes are still bright. Crazy. When he looks at them, there is no hint of recognition on his face. Something does flash there - confusion, maybe? Leela isn't sure and she can't waste time wondering, because he has dropped the fleem and is reaching for Fry. He touches the boy's face. Runs his hands through his hair. Tastes the blood . . .

He opens his mouth wide.

"Jrr, no!" Fry yells.

Leela doesn't have time to think. She picks up the fleem, throws all her weight behind it . . . and drives it through the roof of Jrr's mouth.

Gray matter spatters the wall. Blood runs down her arms.

Fry screams, Jrr grunts, and together the three of them fall.

The cannon sounds.


The water rushes in her eardrums, and every panicked beat of her heart sounds like the cannon going off again.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

You did that, a voice whispers in her head. You killed Jrr.

Leela surfaces, gasping. She can't think about that yet.

Fry is still screaming when she pulls him up. He thrashes wildly, fighting her with all his feeble strength.

"Fry, it's me! It's Leela! I'm not going to hurt you!"

It's no use. Fry's eyes are wide and unfocused. Every muscle in his skinny body is tensed tight, and he won't stop screaming. He's hysterical, Leela realizes. Gone off the deep end. Suddenly she remembers herself at ten, screaming when she heard of the pipeway collapse. She wonders if she looked anything like this then. Gone, empty, absent from her own head.

It's an unsettling thought.

Fry can't hurt her – he doesn't have the strength – but it's hard to keep a hold of him when he won't stay still, and Leela is worried about the trouble his screams might bring down on them. Celgnar and Mrrxxss are still out there, and the Amphisobian girl. Right now they'd be easy pickings for any of them.

Blood is still pouring from Fry's shoulder. They are standing in a red river that stretches half the length of the street. How much of the blood belongs to Fry is hard to say, but the flow from his shoulder is steady and persistent, and his face is deathly white. He has clearly lost more than he can afford.

Leela slings her injured arm around Fry's neck and slaps him hard with her good hand. It's brutal, but it works to snap him out of it. He stops screaming and gulps for air like a stunned fish.

"We have to move," Leela tells him. "We're not safe here."

Recognition dawns on Fry slowly.

"Leela?"

"Yeah, Leela. C'mon."

"Are you going to hurt me?"

"Why would I hurt you?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

Leela frowns. In a way, he's right. Fry is pretty much done for. She could leave him right now and he would bleed to death in an hour. Maybe less if he passes out and slips beneath the water. The Career pack is mostly out of the running. There's a chance Leela could take the remaining three tributes with a little help from her sponsors. Now that she's a killer, she could ditch the love angle and step into the vacated shoes of the Careers.

But to do it she would have to leave Fry, and for some reason she can't do that. She can't spend tonight alone in the cold, waiting for the boom of the cannon. Knowing that the next time she sees his face it will be projected onto the sky in eulogy. If she walks away now she will spend the rest of her life stuck in this moment, hating herself.

"I told you," she says numbly. "I'm trying to keep you alive."

"Why?"

The answer is complicated. Because you saved my mother, Leela thinks. Because you treated me like a person. Because I kissed you and it meant something I can't explain.

Because you're waking me up, and it scares the hell out of me.

But she can't say any of this in front of the cameras. His interview got Fry in enough trouble. Talking about how he broke the rules and offered friendship to a trespassing mutant would only make it worse. Mentioning the jealousy she felt when he told the truth about Nixon's regime would kill their sponsor support stone dead, and telling the world he makes her think seditious thoughts would probably get them both murdered.

So she does the only thing she knows the Gamemakers won't interpret as treason. She leans in and kisses him hard on the mouth.

He tastes like salt. At first Leela thinks it's the water, but when she pulls away she can see the tear tracks on his face. She doesn't know why he's crying. Maybe it's pain. Maybe it's grief. Maybe he no longer trusts her reasons for kissing him. She doesn't dare ask.

"We need to move," she says instead.

Fry nods.

"Okay," he whispers.

Leela peels off her sweater, wads it up, and presses it against the wound on his shoulder. The pressure stems some of the bleeding. Fry keeps the makeshift compress in place with his opposite hand, and Leela wraps her good arm around his waist to hold him up. They make slow progress like this, but for once the Gamemakers seem to be on their side. The flood waters are already starting to recede. By the time they reach the ruined city center, the streets are wet but passable, and the rain has stopped.

Fry is in a bad way. Between blood loss and sheer exhaustion he can barely stay upright. His grip on the compress keeps going slack, and he sways even without the current sucking at his legs.

Leela drags them into one of the high rises. The ground floor is slimy and reeking after the flood, and she doesn't trust the Gamemakers not to send another one, so they make camp on the third floor. Their clothes are sticking to them and the cold is making Leela's teeth chatter, so she gathers up all the furniture she can find and sets a fire in the center of the room. Fry protests but she waves him down.

"We can't afford to get sick," she tells him.

"B-but . . . the others," Fry says weakly. "They'll see."

"Maybe," Leela concedes. "I don't think they'll come though. Mrrxxss is the only Career left, remember? She can't guard everything at the Cornucopia by herself. I bet one of the others will try to take her tonight, before she figures out the rest of the Pack is dead. Celgnar, probably. Martians aren't built for the cold, and I don't think he was getting any sponsors. He'll be tempted for sure."

"What about the g-g-girl?"

Fry is shivering. He drags himself closer to the fire, steam curling from his clothes.

Leela shrugs.

"She'll be careful, I think. She seems crafty. If she wasn't anywhere near when . . . when everything happened today, then she probably just heard a bunch of cannons go off. She won't know who's dead yet, or what happened. She might even think the Gamemakers set something off. That would be good. She won't want to come too close."

"Is – is that it?" Fry asks. "J-just the f-five of us?"

"Yeah."

Leela loads some more rotting planks onto the fire. They sputter fitfully.

"M-maybe we should split up," Fry stutters.

Leela stares at him.

"What? Why the hell would we do that?" The suggestion makes her angry somehow. "I already told you, I'm not going to hurt you. Jrr was – Jrr -" Her voice keeps catching on his name. Sweet, softhearted Jrr. His blood is still crusted over her jacket. You promised, she reminds herself. "He attacked you," she tells Fry. "I did what I had to do."

Fry shakes his head.

"Tha's not what I meant," he mumbles. His words are starting to slur. "'s the Games, remember? 'S all ending. An' then . . . you know. What happens."

He seems to be having difficulty staying awake.

Leela frowns.

"Fry?" She shakes him by the shoulder. "Fry, wake up. You can't go to sleep."

"Mmnhmm . . ."

"Fry!"

She hates herself for slapping him again – he's beat up enough by now – but she can't think what else to do. The thought of him falling asleep in this condition fills her with terror.

Uncertain what else to do, she drags him as close to the fire as she can get without turning him into human kindling. The heat sears her face, but it barely seems to touch Fry. He remains as pale as before. His eyes keep drifting shut.

In desperation, Leela unzips his jacket and crawls inside, pressing her body against every inch of him she can reach. She knows it's bad when he doesn't even react.

"Stay awake," she growls. "We'll get something soon. From sponsors. You have to hold on until then."

"But . . . ending . . . the Games . . . we . . ."

"We're not splitting up," Leela snaps. "End of discussion."

There is a long silence. She huffs on Fry's cold hands. Tries to rub some life into them.

"Talk to me," she orders. "Tell me something."

"Like . . . like . . . what?"

"Anything."

"Well . . . I always wanted to go to space."

It's an unexpected confession.

Leela snorts.

"I thought the whole reason you were doing this was so you wouldn't have to go to space."

She doesn't mention Halley's Comet by name. She feels like using the words would be bad luck somehow, even though they're already out there and sponsors surely can't forget them.

Fry catches her meaning anyway.

"Not like that," he argues. "That's not real space. That's just . . . a prison. I mean . . . I mean exploring. New worlds and aliens and rocket ships, forever and ever and ever. That's what I used to dream about, when I was a kid."

"In your time?"

"Always, I guess."

He's warming up, Leela notes with relief. He no longer sounds like a drunk slurring his words, and he winces when she puts pressure on his wound. It's a good sign.

"Where would you go?"

Fry considers the question. The look in his eyes is one Leela has never seen before. Far-off. Dreamy.

"The Moon," he says. "To see the site of the moon landing, and . . . oh, Neil Armstrong's bootprint. And the Keeler crater on Mars. And the Venusian Gardens, and the Ice Fields of Hyperion. And Pluto, even though everyone says it's not a planet anymore . . ."

"It's not? What is it then?"

"I dunno. A big rock, I guess."

"Who lives there?"

"Um . . . penguins. It's a penguin reserve."

"Penguins?"

"Yeah, but I still wanna go. It's Pluto! It's cool."

"I think you mean cold."

"You're laughing at me, aren't you? I can't see your face but I know you're laughing at me."

Leela bites down hard on her smile.

"No! It sounds adorable. Penguins on Pluto. Fluffy, flappy, fat little baby penguins. It's the cutest thing I've ever heard."

Fry groans.

"I'm never gonna live this down, am I?"

An awful silence falls.

"You're not -"

"I didn't mean -"

They both shut up then because really, what's the point? Fry was right earlier – this is the Games. They only ever end one way.

The soft chime of a parachute alert breaks the silence, and Leela scrambles up to get it. If there is a lump in her throat, she pretends it doesn't exist.


The parachute haul is a good one. There is clean water, a hot stew with real meat in it, and another heat-reflecting blanket to keep out the cold. Fry gets bandages for his shoulder wound, and more of the antiseptic cream that stopped him bleeding before. Leela gets a blue jello tube that locks around her injured wrist and pulses steadily every sixty seconds. It makes her ache, but it's healing the broken bone. This gift comes accompanied by a shiny new hunting knife. The message couldn't be clearer: sponsors like Crazed Killer Leela.

She touches the sharp tip of the blade, turns the knife over in her hand.

Behind her eye she can see Jrr's blank gaze, feel the resistance as she pushed the fleem into his skull. She can see him rolling around on the floor that same morning, laughing at her and Fry. Teasing them for conserving body heat. Telling her he didn't want to be a killer. She thinks of herself - teasing Fry with him, feeling sorry for him. Making him a promise she didn't even think about until he was already dead.

She feels sick.

All of it – everything they got tonight – was bought at a cost she can hardly stand. If it weren't for Fry she would toss it all out the window. But the other tributes are still out there and she can't afford to look ungrateful when her sponsors have sent her such a wonderful gift. So she smiles woodenly in the direction she guesses a camera must lie, and feigns excitement when she shows the knife off to Fry.

She's in the running again, isn't it great?

Bile is twisting her up from the inside out.


That night Leela takes watch. Fry tries to argue, but she successfully wears him down. He's too weak, he can't be trusted to stay awake. Besides, he could use the rest. The supplies from the parachute have helped, but Leela is under no illusions. Nothing in the arena can replace the blood Fry has already lost. For all she knows, he could be bleeding internally as well. The cream they were sent only works on surface injuries, after all. His leg was pretty mangled the first time she saw it, and that throwing-star cut deep. If the Games don't end soon . . .

She glances over at him.

He is sleeping beside the fire, which is still going strong, and Leela has put the foil blanket over him. His breathing is shallow.

Leela herself has taken up position by the window, wearing both their jackets to guard against the chill. The cold air blows in through the broken window and makes her cheeks sting. Her discomfort is deliberate – calculated to keep her awake as long as possible – but it's still miserable.

Mrrxxss is building a bonfire by the Cornucopia. She must assume most, if not all, of the Career pack survived the day. Maybe she thinks they were delayed by some trick of the Gamemakers'. Either way, she is busy readying the camp for their return; checking on the stash and gathering wood for a fire she won't need to light until the mammals in the group show up.

Celgnar is hiding in the cover of the trees. His spear glints in the moonlight.

The Gamemakers have arranged a crisp, clear night, perfect for an ambush. After the action-movie drama of the flooded street, they seem to be going for a film noir feel. This kill will be dramatically backlit, an interplay of gold and black set before the gleaming Cornucopia. Hopefully Celgnar and Mrrxxss will provide a suitably cinematic battle. If the effect goes to waste the Gamemakers will be pissed, and Leela has no desire to be on the receiving end of their revenge.

The anthem plays. The faces of the fallen flash in the sky.

Leela stares at her lap so she won't have to see them. She polishes her knife on the bottom of her jacket, and lets her mind wander.

She wants to be somewhere different. Somewhere happy. She thinks of her father, of the way he used to make her stand on his feet and hold his hands, so he could waltz her around the kitchen. It's a nice memory.

Below her, Celgnar and Mrrxxss are waltzing with weapons. They parry each other's blows with a surprising grace. The audience must be enjoying this one, Leela thinks dully.

She tries to retreat into another memory. It doesn't work. Everything she comes up with is twisted and reshaped to reflect her current reality. The muted gleam of her tin can xylophone becomes the shining Cornucopia. Fishing on the mutant lake becomes drowning in the flooded street. Her mother's smile becomes an anguished scream as the Peacekeepers pull her away, and the warmth of Fry's mouth turns into the heat of a raging fever.

She bites down on her knuckle, and fights a growing urge to scream.