Chapter Forty Three

The silence was almost deafening. It took Brenda an embarrassingly long moment to realise that the birdsong had stopped. There wasn't even a peep from the wind, sending a creeping chill up her spine. It felt a lot like anticipation, and Brenda breathed carefully as she awaited it.

Whatever it was.

Her legs were stiff and beginning to tingle with needles when Brenda discovered it to be voices. She had almost convinced herself that she was just frightened, paranoid to believe she'd heard anything other than a bird or the breeze settling the ropes. But it was real. A genuine voice, quiet but deep and guttural and frightening in a way it might never have been outside of the Arena. She edged as far forward as she dared, curious to hear but not stupid enough to show herself in any way.

"… dick-move. It's almost funny. What's your game?"

The second voice was even quieter, calm in a way that was odd and off somehow, in a way she couldn't put her finger on. She strained closer to the platform edge to listen.

"… shouldn't have been hard for you Gally. You had them cornered and outnumbered and somehow you still fucked it up." There was a mocking chuckle, smug and cutting. "Lost your edge already, shuck-face?"

Brenda found to her surprise that there had been a smirk curling onto her mouth. She listened to her heart pounding, to the sound of that deep voice- Gally, that horrid huge boy with death in his eyes - as it growled back. There was something strange, something ridiculously appealing about the second voice. Even in the Arena, even there as she hid mere feet above them, sure to die if they found her, there was something in that voice, that tone that made her want to smile. To laugh. To join it in mocking a tribute who could slaughter her without so much as blinking.

For some bizarre reason it made her just a fraction less afraid. The tribute had a clear disliking for Gally. That was something Brenda could get behind. And for what it was worth, which was very little in reality, it seemed the second tribunate was dry and sarcastic. So much like her father it made her homesick. So much like Teresa that she wondered if she was wrong in assessing the voice to be male.

Regardless, she shook herself. She had to focus on what they were talking about. It might save her skin. She needed to get a better grip on her wits. Focus, dammit!

"Look who's talking." Gally answered him, sounding mocking himself. "Shacking up with Gladers, now that's losing your edge."

Brenda swore her heart stopped at the word. The owner of the second voice had been around Gladers? What? Her heart began to hammer again as she felt dread for her district-mates. She had watched the skies every night, waiting for the inevitable and wondering if she would live long enough to see one of her friends up there, or whether she'd be the first to go. Neither option was all that appealing.

"Fared better than your shuck-ass posse though, didn't I?" Voice Number Two snorted.

Gally growled, and there was a scuffling sound that had Brenda's heart in her throat. She listened, picking out grunting and curses, almost certain she was hearing a fight. She was beginning to feel hysterical, trapped like a flightless bird three levels above the ground with nothing but the swinging rope nets between her and the ground and those tributes between the base of the structure and her freedom in the sands. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself as she listened and waited for something, anything, to make them go away so that she could get down.

If Gally was there it was bad news, because he was the Career who was usually off doing the hunting for the other tributes while the others stayed behind. Brenda had watched them from the open Doors of the Maze for the last three mornings, and he had quickly risen to the top of her Must Avoid At All Costs list. Because it truly sounded like he enjoyed being here, in the Arena. And Brenda knew her chances against such a huge and well-trained tribute were practically non-existent. He'd squash her like a bug and probably be pleased with himself for doing so, if his hatred of Gladers was as real as it sounded.

There was a muffled howl and someone spat a curse just as Brenda picked up the sound of someone running away. She held her breath as the tribute left below grumbled and groaned, moving around in the grassy dirt. Her heart was going wild again and she faint faintly sick. The boy below could be dying right now and here she was, hiding quietly above him. Every instinct urged her to look over the metal edge to see. There was an itching to help scuttling up her spine even as logic told her doing so would be shuck stupid.

"Crank." the tribute spat again, and Brenda didn't know whether to hope it was Gally or not.

It would serve him right to have lost whatever fight he had just had, but on the other hand she dreaded to address the possibility that he was still there. She looked up towards the dawn sky and tried to ignore the growing danger she was in.

"You know, I thought your size would make you pretty hard to overcome." commented a familiar voice, and Brenda's breath caught in her throat as she jumped a little.

There was someone down there, so close she could hear her quiet footsteps in the grass.

"Seems I was wrong."

Teresa's voice was light and airy in that way she had when she was mocking someone. Breezy with a keen edge, like a razor blade slicing through spring air. What on earth was she doing in the Centre? Out in the open like that made her a huge target for the Careers. Brenda wasn't foolish enough to believe they'd given up their goal of slaughtering the Gladers. She had already seen first hand that they were not best pleased to be the first Careers in history to allow their Glade-district opponents to survive the first night. If she hadn't been in such a dangerous place Brenda might still have felt victorious about that small detail.

But triumph had very swiftly given away to true horror at the place she was in, fear and exhaustion battling hunger and all of it leaving her constantly on edge like a violin string ready to snap. She had barely escaped with her life on Day Three.

Brenda listened as the boy gave a frightening chuckle, spitting loudly. She cringed as she heard it hit the ground and wondered if it was blood. He did sound pretty wounded, and he sounded like Gally. A shockingly fierce hope that he was dying struck her, and instantly gave way to disgust at herself. True, he would most definitely kill her first chance he got, and true she did hate him. But she felt sick, wishing him dead like that. She closed her eyes against it. The Arena didn't just kill tributes. It twisted them too. It killed their souls if they stayed alive long enough.

"What, come along to try and off me when I'm down? I wouldn't be fooled by blood, Glader. I'll still kill you."

Teresa simply laughed at his threat, and Brenda wished she could risk a look just to see what the raven-haired girl was playing at. Gally was dangerous, even when wounded. Teresa should be keeping her distance like Brenda wished she had. The smaller girl bit her lip hard to stop herself from calling down a warning to her. She was no use at all in helping. All she would do was get herself killed.

Knowing that didn't stop her from feeling guilty, though.

"I don't doubt you'd try." came Teresa's reply, far too calm for Brenda's liking but a relief to hear just the same.

At least she was alive.

"But I didn't come to kill you."

Brenda's eyes popped open in surprise. She listened to Gally as he shifted, and she felt him slump heavily against one wall of the warehouse structure. He was wounded with more than just a scratch, or he was acting it anyway. Brenda's pulse thrummed in her ear as she bit a deeper furrow into her lip. The want to warn Teresa grew steadily.

"Oh?" Gally huffed, pushing off from the way again. "Not even going to try and pretend Gladers have a chance?" he laughed, wicked and mean.

Brenda heard Teresa make a familiar, unimpressed sound. She knew the girl enough to know she'd just rolled her eyes and drawn Gally one of her spectacularly loathing looks. She could tell by the way Gally growled in reply. Teresa merely laughed again.

"I came to offer you a deal." Teresa said, tone bland as though she were checking her nails but Brenda wasn't fooled, her ears straining as she held her breath.

Teresa's voice had that undertone to it that she had when she dealt with people she didn't truly care for. It was level and polite, but empty. Brenda had never believed Teresa to be some innocent little angel, she wasn't stupid. But she'd never thought Teresa would be idiotic enough to confront a Career, even if he were wounded. What was she playing at?

"What could a shucking Glader have that I want?"

Gally spat the word like it were disgusting, and Brenda felt herself bristling even though she knew it was stupid to do so. What was she going to do, jump down and punch him because he spoke about her district in a condescending tone? Be realistic here, Brenda!

"Well for one I have bandages and medical supplies." Teresa demurred. "And secondly I have a proposition I think you'll like."

There was a pause in the air, heavy with curiosity and foreboding.

"Like what?"

Brenda felt like shouting it along with him as Teresa paused. Like what, Teresa? What kind of proposition do you risk your life for? Brenda felt like she'd run the full length of the Arena she was so out of breath, her heart racing as she waited, silent in her hiding spot.

"Like being the last Glader standing, that's what."