She is lying down, and her limbs feel stiff and heavy, like she's slept for a hundred years. She has to get up. She's going to sleep through her morning run around Lake Mutagenic. She's going to be late for work.
Isn't she?
No. No, that's not right.
Leela opens her eye, and finds herself staring at a wall so white it hurts. She turns her head away.
A bedside locker. A vase as clear as crystal, filled with clear, clear water and colorful plants.
The stems are green, but the tops are orange, yellow, pink. They curl like scraps of silk.
Pretty. Delicate.
The air in here has a harsh, chemical smell, but the plants are sweet and fragrant, like the perfume Linda wore at her interview.
Leela blinks.
Interview. There was an interview . . .
She puts out a hand. If she can touch something she can ground herself in the world again and it will all come back to her, it will all make sense . . .
There is plastic tubing taped to the back of her hand, burrowing into her skin.
They're dripping chemicals into her body.
Horror courses through her and Leela snaps upright, ripping the thing off.
The Games. The mutts. The explosion. Fry.
It all comes back to her in a rush, Jrr's teeth and Fry's blood and the brick dust from the building collapse all jumbled together in her head. She doesn't know whether to cough or cry or fight or scream.
"Leela," someone says, and the real world intrudes on her memories. She sees rubbery green skin and a bald head and -
The Amphisobian girl. The Amphisobian girl has come to kill her, she's come to kill Fry . . .
"Leela!" the voice gasps again, and she realizes it's not a girl – it's a boy. Last year's victor, Kif Kroker.
"I'm not here to hurt you," he gasps, and Leela sees that she has wound the plastic tubing around Kif Kroker's neck and is strangling him with it. She doesn't remember deciding to do this. It must have been instinct.
Reluctantly, she lets him go.
Once his head has shrunk back to normal, he gives her a reproachful look.
"That really wasn't necessary, you know."
"Why are you here? Why am I here? Where is here?"
Kif sighs.
"You're in hospital," he says. "Recovering after the Games. You remember the Games, don't you?"
Leela nods.
"Hospital?" she says guardedly.
So the white white walls and pretty plants are hospital, on the surface. It makes a kind of sense.
"Hospital," Kif confirms. "There was no need to rip out the IV, by the way. It was only fluids."
When Leela only stares blankly at him, he indicates her bleeding hand. His face softens.
"I know how confusing this must be for you. But you're safe now. I promise."
Leela ignores this. She was in the Games. She won't ever feel safe again.
"Where's Fry?" she demands.
She tries to get up again and Kif winces, gently pushing her back down.
"In another part of the hospital," he tells her. "The Gamemakers would prefer not to reunite you until your interview, but he's safe too. You saved his life. What's the last thing you remember, Leela?"
Her name sounds all wrong in his mouth, in that quiet, gentle tone. It doesn't fit her anymore. Leela was a girl who loved her mother and missed her father and felt things. The girl who put a fleem through Jrr's skull and kissed Fry for food and turned Celgnar into a screaming fireball can't be Leela as well.
"I remember the poison," she says "The darts. We won."
It doesn't feel real.
Kif nods.
"After that?" he prompts.
Leela frowns as more memories float to the surface. Hovercraft engine-noise and celebratory cannon-fire, and Fry seizing violently as they tried to tear him away from her. White-clad strangers with bright lights and hands everywhere, and the sting of needles and the beeping of machinery, and . . . cameras. Cameras in her face and at her elbow. She kept trying to get to Fry on the table, but they were always in her way. She had to kick and punch and spit – she stops and stares at her knuckles when she remembers this, but the skin is pink and unbroken, already healed – and then she got to the table.
They cut a line in his chest with metal teeth, and then they cracked his ribs apart and lit his insides up like lightning.
The memory hits her like a punch to the guts. She doubles over, dry-heaving, and Kif thrusts a paper dish at her. Leela bats it aside.
"They cut him open," she gasps. "And they stuck . . . they stuck . . . they were torturing him!"
"No, no," Kif says hurriedly. "Leela, his heart stopped. That was the only way to get it started again." He grimaces. "You didn't understand. It's not your fault. But you became . . . ah . . . um . . . distressed," he says delicately, "and your doctors decided it was best to sedate you."
Leela goes cold.
"I attacked them."
"Yes."
"And the camera people. I attacked them too."
"Yes. But you were in a state of shock. You were dehydrated and suffering from blood loss, smoke inhalation . . . any number of things detrimental to your anatomy. As Amy said in her statement to the press" - here Kif slows down and looks her dead in the eye - "it's clear you didn't know what you were doing."
Amy gave a statement to the press before her tribute was even conscious. There is only one reason she would do that. Damage control.
Leela feels a shadow of foreboding.
"Where is Amy?" she says. "She's my mentor. I should see her."
"She's with Fry. She's his mentor too, remember? And his condition was much less stable than yours," Kif reminds her gently.
Under the statement, Leela hears the one Kif is really telling her. Fry was the one the Gamemakers wanted dead from the start. Fry is the one who would raise the least suspicion if he succumbed to his wounds. Leela kept the cameras on him in the hovercraft, and if she knows her mentor at all, Amy hasn't left his side since.
They're not trapped in the arena anymore, but they're still playing the game.
Leela looks around. She can't see any recording equipment in this stark white room, but from the careful way Kif is talking, she knows it must be there.
"Can we go for a walk?" she tries. "I need some air."
Kif shakes his head.
"You have to rest. Doctor's orders."
"I just woke up," Leela points out. "They fixed me up, anyway. I'm fine. I can't just lay around in bed all day."
Kif's mouth twitches in what might be a smile. If so, it's the first Leela has ever seen from him.
"I know it's hard to get used to," he tells her, "but you're not in the sewer anymore, Leela. No-one expects you to get up and go to work as soon as you can stand."
"How did you -"
Kif raises his arm and pulls back his sleeve. There is an old scar on his wrist, a black brand seared into the skin. Leela doesn't recognize the symbol.
"The rubber plantations on Amphibios 9," Kif says in explanation. "I worked there, the same way I imagine you worked in the sewers of Earth. Because there was no alternative. Because I had a family to feed." He smiles thinly. "Because I knew nothing else. It's very different here. You'll see."
The only thing she wants to see is Fry, but Leela doesn't know if she can say that without it being misconstrued somehow. She's still trying to get her bearings in this strange new place, and knowing her every word is being listened to doesn't help. She can't afford to slip up. Not now. Not when the game is still on and she is no longer sure of the rules.
"You're right. I'm tired," she lies.
Kif nods.
"Get some rest. I've been doing a crossword while you sleep. You could help me, if you'd like. Can you read?"
Leela nods.
"Then what do you think of four across?" Kif's tone is neutral. "I'm stuck."
He passes over the pad of paper.
YOU'RE IN TROUBLE, Leela reads. YOU MADE THEM LOOK STUPID.
"I know," she says. She takes the pen and scrawls an answer, trying not to seem too hurried.
WHAT DO I DO?
"That's clever," Kif hums. He pencils in another sentence. "And now 'tarantula' fits for nine down."
He rotates the pad and shows her his response, in large, clear letters.
TALK TO AMY.
Kif stays with her day and night. He sleeps in a plastic chair by her bedside, and springs to his feet if Leela so much as twitches in the night. When she surreptitiously worms the IV free, he buzzes a nurse to put it back in. When she feigns sleep, he sits and watches her, not fooled for a minute. It's clear he expects her to be good and wait for Amy to come to her. It's a course of action Leela hates.
A day passes, then two. There is no word from Amy, and no sign of her, which Kif says means Fry is likely still unconscious. According to him, Fry was in major organ failure by the end of the Games. His kidneys had shut down completely and his liver couldn't cope with the strain. Both organs had to be replaced and the poison flushed out of his blood by putting it through a machine. Another machine is breathing for him, and they're feeding him through tubes like the one in Leela's hand.
Kif keeps talking, but after that Leela stops listening. She doesn't want to hear any more, doesn't want to think of Fry lying there like a broken puppet, stuck in whatever artificial existence she saved him for. Kif seems to think he'll wake up, but Leela doesn't trust him. Even the surface can't break a person so thoroughly and put them back together again. It's not possible.
She stops talking to Kif - which he doesn't notice immediately - and stops listening, which he does notice. Leela doesn't care. She turns to face the wall and pulls the covers over her head, blocking him out. In this warm, soft prison, she has nothing for company except the dark and the memories she can't blot out. She relives them, half-dreaming and half-awake, and never knows what will hit her next. Mutts' jaws close on her leg and make-up sweats off her face under studio lights. Rubble crushes her chest and white-clad doctors crack Fry's ribs apart like a rusted hinge, exposing the slick redness inside. Flood water swirls around her legs and Jrr's blood coats her hands and her mother screams at her as the Peacekeepers drag her away - "No, Leela, no!" - and then Fry smiles and Celgnar screams and blades glint snick snick snick in the sun. She kisses Fry again in her sleep, the way she did after the flood, and when she wakes her face is wet and her lips taste like salt, the way he did then, and she realizes she is crying.
She should have done what he wanted in the arena. She should have killed him. A quick death – even the Amphisobian girl was willing to give him that.
But she was so determined not to let the Gamemakers win, and now Fry is suffering for it. They broke him apart and put him back together again with tubes and machines and other people's organs, the human version of a mutt from the Games.
It's all her fault.
Someone peels the covers back and light floods in. Her head hurts. Her eye stings. She just wants the world to leave her alone.
And then a cool tentacle touches her forehead.
"My baby," a soft voice says. "My sweet baby. What did you do?"
Leela swallows. There is a hard lump in her throat. She can't cry any more, but it won't go away.
"I don't know," she whispers. "I don't know."
Her mother is a better medicine than anything the surface doctors have to offer. Her presence alone makes Leela feel stronger. More real.
She helps in other ways too, making sure Leela eats at meal times and stopping her from sleeping too much. When the doctors come in to check Leela's vitals, Munda shrinks back into the shadows instinctively, but she always keeps a hold of her daughter's hand. Leela is quietly grateful.
They don't talk about the Games – Kif must have somehow communicated that the room is bugged – and Munda doesn't ask about Fry. She doesn't say anything at all about him, in fact, and if Kif happens to mention him her face becomes carefully expressionless, or she suddenly becomes very interested in Leela's IV line or the flowers on her bedside locker. It's not that she doesn't like Fry – Leela doesn't think her mother has it in her to dislike anyone without good reason – but she is visibly uncomfortable. There is obviously something she isn't saying.
On the third day Leela wakes up to find Kif gone. Amy is sitting by her bed instead. Her mentor is wearing sweats and looks like she hasn't washed her hair in a week, but she is smiling. It softens her face in a way Leela has never seen before.
"Hi, Leela," she says. "How do you feel?"
Leela sits up immediately, ignoring the rush of blood to her head.
"What happened?" she demands.
Amy puts a steadying hand on her forearm. In the background, Leela sees her mother wince. She doesn't need to ask why. Two years' ago, Amy used that hand to slit Moose's throat.
But she can't think about that now, because Amy is still smiling.
"He's awake."
"What?"
"Fry. He's awake." Amy laughs as if she can hardly believe her luck. "He's awake, you're awake! Two of my tributes are alive!"
For a second, Leela thinks Amy might actually hug her.
But this doesn't make any sense.
"He can't be awake," she argues. "You're lying."
Amy shakes her head.
"Not lying. He's alive. We just have to keep him that way."
Maybe she sat up too fast after all, because Leela's head is still spinning.
"I want to see him," she says.
Amy suddenly turns serious.
"They're gonna let you both out tomorrow," she says. "Your interview is tomorrow night." She squeezes Leela's hand, a little harder than necessary. "I'll find you," she promises. "We'll talk about it. I'll prep you before you go on, like for your interview in the Games. Remember that?"
Leela nods. She is smart enough to read between the lines. Amy isn't offering to help her with stage-fright. She's going to tell her exactly how to play this to keep both her and Fry alive.
Amy beams.
"Super!" She swoops in unexpectedly and kisses Leela on the cheek. "I haven't slept in like, a week!" she giggles loudly. And - "Be smart," she says under her breath, right in Leela's ear. Then she pulls away, as if nothing happened.
She shakes Munda's tentacle (Leela is impressed when she doesn't flinch) and makes small talk about hospital food (which is better than Leela has had in her entire life, but doesn't impress Amy) and "beauty sleep" (whatever that is), and then she leaves, promising to see them both soon.
On her way out she holds eye contact until the door swings shut and cuts her off.
Leela replays her words again. They were so quiet she could almost have imagined them.
Be smart.
She stares at the flowers on her bedside locker. The petals are drying out, turning brown at the edges.
Be smart.
But she doesn't know this world. She only has the vaguest idea how to play this game.
There is a feeling gnawing at her insides. It's so different from the wild terror she has become used to that Leela doesn't immediately recognize it. But it has the same root, she realizes.
It's fear.