The food bar tasted like cardboard and was as hard as rock, the water wasn't much better it tasted, and smelled, like mouldy fruit, but he ate it all anyway. It was the only meal he got each day, and since he hadn't fought in a few days, there was a good chance that he would be chosen to fight tonight, so he needed to eat. He, and a couple of others, had been given an apple like fruit as a special treat with their meal. Nibbling at his apple he looked around his cell.
The walls were brick, covered in some form of rock or clay. Whatever the coating was, it wasn't very hard, he'd been able to carve lines in it to keep track of the days using a small chunk of rock he'd pried off the wall. According to the scratches he'd been in the cell for almost two months - he'd been injured for the first few days, too confused and lost, to think clearly so the exact number was unknown to anyone except the guards and fight bosses.
In those months he'd fought nearly 16 times and from what the other fighters - the other prisoners - said this was a record. The highest amount of fights anyone had ever survived before him was 10, and that had been over the span of several months. According to them, the crowd liked him, they kept requesting to see the 'Lantean fight, so the fight bosses kept putting him in The Pit.
Sometimes he thought about losing on purpose, about letting his opponent win. Death had to be better than this agonising hell. But in the end, he couldn't do it, his pride, honour, some spark of hope that the others would come that they would find him, all kept him from fighting at anything but his best. So fight after fight, he came out the winner. For each win he was given a night of luxury - a shower, a warm meal, some bandages and clean water for his injuries, maybe a suture kit if needed, and once, after a particularly good fight that had earned the fight bosses a lot of money, they had gave him a thin mattress to sleep on.
Then when the sun came up, the comforts would be taken away. He would be back to his pathetic excuse for food and the cold floor to sleep on. They didn't want their best fighter to die anywhere but The Pit, so they allowed him to keep his wounds bandaged, and if there was any hint of infection, he would be examined by their doctor who only gave the absolute minimal care required to keep the fighter alive.
Thanks to his new diet, his lean, lightly muscled body had become merely thin, not weak, he still exercised, but thin. He could already count three ribs, and almost feel a fourth. His hair, normally clean and shiny, was now lank and slightly greasy, hanging around his face in shaggy clumps where it had started growing out. There were no brushes or combs, and when he was allowed a shower, he was only given a small amount of cheap, soap to wash it and his body with. His cheeks were sunken, they, like his collarbones, too pronounced, almost as if they were ready to burst free of the skin covering them.
There was a scar bisecting his eyebrow, from the night he'd been captured, a small scar that had only required a couple of butterfly stitches at the time. Other than that, he had been relatively lucky only a small scar on his side, a thin scar on his thigh, and a long, thick scar across his back were the only other imperfections. That scar on his back was one of the oldest, from his very first fight, at the time he hadn't wanted to kill his opponent. He'd stayed on the defensive, trying to talk his way out of the situation. Eventually he he was forced to kill the young man, but had mourned the death for days.
It was another four fights before he finally realised just what kind of life he was being forced to live, and from that day on he tried to kill his opponent as quickly, and as painlessly as possible. Keeping the fights short and as painless as possible, was his main goal when in The Pit, that and staying alive.
Heavy booted footsteps made him open his eyes, not realizing he'd closed them. He watched, half hidden in the shadows, as the guard came into view. His name was Keeshaw and he was one of the more sadistic guards, and it was never nice to see him. He stopped in front of his cell, leering at him from the other side of the bars. One meaty hand caressed the stun baton at his hip, the other gripped one of the hard iron bars.
He waited silently, not moving, not blinking, and was surprised when Keeshaw stepped back and continued walking. He frowned and quietly got to his feet, stalking to the bars. Pressing himself against the wall he listened. He heard Keeshaw continue down past more cells, heard him stop once or twice only to move on, until he reached the end of the corridor and opened the cell, but he had counted and knew that, that one was empty. That meant there was a new fighter coming. He wondered who it was, wondered how long they would last and wondered if he'd be the one to kill them.
He heard two more pairs of footsteps, accompanied by a soft, dragging sound, and looked to his right to watch the two other guards carry the new fighter to her cell. He couldn't see much of the girl, aside from her auburn hair and scrawny build, but from what he could see this girl wasn't going to adjust very well, he could tell that immediately.
Everyone waited for the guards to leave before they started to whisper, keeping their voices soft, so that only the people in the cells surrounding them could hear. He didn't participate in the round of bets being placed, never saw the point. The other fighters placed bets on the newbies to keep themselves occupied, to give themselves something to think about, but for him, that wasn't necessary; he had adapted to his new life.
He was a fighter, a killer, a source of entertainment for a bunch of sadistic bastards he didn't even know. He knew it, he didn't have to like it, but he knew it and accepted it. There wasn't anything that could change it.
The Pit was around twenty feet in diameter, sunken into the ground so that the crowd could watch from above. The top of the dome-shaped cage just came up to the railing on the lowest tier, meaning that if they wanted to, the crowd could touch the heavy metal bars, maybe even throw something through the holes but high enough up that none of the fighters could attack the crowd. The dirt floor was permanently stained with blood, bodily fluids, and thicker things. Fights were messy, and so were the deaths.
He glared half-heartedly at the guards as they pushed him into the Pit. It wasn't as if he needed pushing, he was one of the few fighters who went peacefully into the Pit. His opponent was forced into the Pit behind him. It was the new girl, the one who'd arrived the day before. The fight bosses were usually better at giving him stronger opponents, this girl wouldn't last five minutes against him.
Raising an eyebrow, he turned to look up at Forza, the big fight boss who organised and controlled this hell. He let the question show on his face, silently asking why was being given a newbie to kill. Forza just shrugged, and turned to talk to the lady next to him.
He had to wonder just how and where they were getting their fighters. They always had around thirty fighters, with newbies coming in every other day or so. But then the weapons were tossed into the Pit, and everything but survival was pushed out of his mind. The weapons were nothing special, knives, wooden bats and metal bars, things like that, things that were easier to use for wounding rather than killing, and nothing that could be used against the crowd. He was always thankful that they let him use weapons, because he didn't want to have to use his bare hands to kill.
The girl, he didn't know her name and didn't really care, looked around wildly, pressing her back against the wall of the Pit, as far away from him as she could possibly get. She looked terrified and confused, he didn't blame her. The other fighters had tried to explain what her life was going to be like now, but he didn't think she'd understood, so he tried.
"Kid, you gotta listen to me," He spoke quietly, his voice scratchy and hoarse from disuse. "You're gotta fight me, okay? Because if you don't, you're gonna die. Pick up a weapon, and attack me. Come on, kid, you don't want to know what they'll do to you if you don't fight, trust me on that one."
The girl didn't listen to him, she just fell to her knees and began mumbling, pleading, begging. He sighed, and picked up a knife from the floor. The least he could do was make the girl's death as quick and painless as possible, which was much more preferable to the alternetive but if he didn't put on a good show, he wouldn't get his night of luxury, and he desperately wanted a shower.
He was barely a foot away when the girl suddenly rolled to her left, grabbing at a wooden bat like object. She staggered to her feet, bat held in front of her, and her wild gaze was filled with fear and determination. He wasn't sure whether to feel glad that they would give the crowd a good show and thus, give him a night of luxury, or sad that the girl would fight and thus, force him to hurt her. Still, he was glad that the girl would fight, meaning that she was safe from the guards' torture.
He never really felt anything when he fought, it was as if part of his brain just shut down. He moved, he thought, he reacted, but never felt anything. It was like he was looking through a stranger's eyes, someone not a part of him. He remembered everything, but couldn't really remember actually doing it. It was as if someone else had possessed his body and used it as their own, only letting him return when his opponent was dead.
He remembered grabbing the bat from the girl's hands and throwing it away, remembered flipping the knife for a downward strike, remembered feeling the cool steel slide into the girl's body, finding the heart and shredding it, remembered the body jerking and going limp, falling to the ground and pulling him with it, and he remembered pulling the knife out of the body, but only when he stood up, taking a step back from the body, did the stranger let him have his body back.
Blinking he looked down at the body, watching the blood well up and run down the girl's side in rivers of red, to pool on the dirty, stained ground. The crowd was cheering, and things were being thrown down at him, some hitting him with short, sharp jabs of pain, but he noticed none of it. The girl's face was tear-streaked, and more tears hung on her thick lashes like tiny diamonds, sparkling in the harsh light of the Pit. She looked innocent and fragile like a broken doll.
The door clanged open, and three guards walked in, guns and stun batons held at the ready. He looked at them with dead eyes, and waited to be lead out of The Pit. The pool of blood was slowly creeping towards him, but he made no move to step out of the way, watching as it puddled around his feet, gleaming dark crimson in the light.
Thirty minutes later, he was standing in a rusty, metal cubical, lukewarm water pouring down on him. He stared up at the ceiling, not flinching away from the glaring light of the naked bulb. The girl's large, greenish eyes haunted his mind, softly accusing and harshly pleading. He wasn't sure why he couldn't forget the girl's eyes, usually he had no problem forgetting his victims, but there was something about this girl that kept tugging at his mind. The memory of her kept forcing its way out of the deep recesses of his mind.
Sighing he stepped out of the shower, water trickling down his thin body, and grabbed the small, scratchy towel from the floor, wrapping it around himself before stepping out of the bathroom.
The luxury room wasn't much, with a small table, chair, and mattress. There was a warm meal sitting on the table waiting for him, real food not the fake crap they gave the fighters. It looked like heaven, but he wasn't interested in heaven tonight.
Still, he sat down and ate the meal before flopping down on the thin mattress, still wrapped in the towel. This was his reward, he thought, his reward for being a killer. Briefly he wondered why he'd been given the mattress, it hadn't been a really good fight, it was over with in five minutes, he hadn't done anything to deserve the treat. But the thoughts drifted away as a numbing wave of sleep washed over him, brushing away all thought, all emotion, everything.
A/N: Don't worry in the next chapter or two you'll find out who 'He' is. Even though I have a good idea about who I want it to be let me know in a review who you think it might be because you guys are the ones reading this so any input you're willing to give would be welcome.