A/N: closer and closer to the end of it all. I'm hoping my next story will have characters as entertaining as Maya, Crux and the rest.
Here's Chocolate Milk wishing you a happy, lucky day!
The Trial Games.
"-I h-hope this is enough..." Adelaide looks disappointed that only half of the cure remains. "...what happened?"
"I... I was surprised, I almost ran into Crux and Sin." I lie. "I must have spilled it a little."
I couldn't bear to admit that I had drunk half the cure to save my own life- not when Holden's life is on the line like this. I just pray that what is left in the little bottle of Cure-it-All will be all that's needed, or else I'll never forgive myself.
Holden manages to drink the liquid without much trouble, but some of the green liquid spills from the corners of his mouth- and I'm finding myself wiping his face clean with my fingers. As strange as it seems, this pulls a smile from my hollowed state.
This is the closest I've ever been to Holden, I guess. That hug didn't really count. This felt like a genuinely pure moment.
A few minutes pass, and his eyes flutter open- much to Adelaide and my excitement. Holden scrunches his face wearily and groans as he sits up from his place on the floor. Barely able to contain her happiness- Adelaide throws her arms around his middle and begins to cry his name into his chest. I breathe a shaky sigh of relief as Holden looks at me, obviously confused.
"...how... I thought I was dying-?"
"-M-Maya saved you-!" Adelaide cries, smiling through the stream of tears. "-you're okay- you're o-okay!"
She continues to babble and Holden smiles weakly. My own smile feels as though it's etched onto my face, as though it could never disappear. Seeing Holden rise from near-death gives me such hope, I know that today will be the last day in this wretched arena.
That's when Holden's smile disappears. He looks around, and I can see his eyes fall upon Boxen's scratches in the dust before he turns back to us.
"-Adelaide, where's Boxen and Cisqua?"
-those simple words were all it took to make our smiles crumble. Adelaide looks down at her hands, still clenching his shirt, and mutters something in the silence. Holden instead looks to me, and I realise that I'm the bringer of bad news.
"...they're... dead Holden."
Silence. Oh please, please Holden, don't do this now. I watch as Holden's smile disappears and his mouth opens wordlessly. He'd really been out of it this whole time- hadn't he? Adelaide looks at me apologetically, and I feel the tiniest pang of annoyance that she made me the one to break his smile.
"...it's just us left isn't it?" Holden whispered, his body going rigid. "Oh god- we're the only contestants left...?"
"-no, that's not true." I reach out to touch him, but he recoils as my fingertips brush his arm. "-Crux and Sin are out there... but... we're going to escape"
My voice vanished into a whisper, and Holden looks at me with this surprised look that shows nothing but disbelief. Adelaide knots her hands nervously and looks from Holden to me repeatedly- and I have the strangest urge to tell her to leave the two of us alone.
Escaping is the only chance we have. I have the strongest gut feeling inside that says I'm not capable of killing anyone else- and that sitting and waiting for morning will be welcoming Sin and Crux into the performance hall.
"...it's our only chance Holden; we three can escape the arena." I don't know why my mind is compelling me to whisper, but I know that they're listening. "You have to trust me... it was Cisqua's plan..."
"Lot of good it did her." Holden's voice is half stunned, half angry. I shrink away as he seems to grow angrier. "-we're not moving from here Maya, we're safe here! We've been safe here the entire time-"
"-H-Holden, we can't stay here." Adelaide squeaks. "...they won't let us..."
"What are they going to do, come in here and threaten us to kill one another?" Holden looks at me incredulously, as if I had just spoken. "They can't do that. I'd kill them-"
"-that won't work!" I'm already at the end of my rope. I thought it would be easier than this. "Holden, they can cause an earthquake- who knows what else they can do-!"
"I can't risk Adelaide's life-!" Holden begins, eyes flaring. "-And I'm sure as hell not going to let you lure us to our freaking deaths-!"
"-Staying here is risking all our lives-!" I say frantically, completely unsure of why Holden was so angry. "We have to leave or we'll all be killed!"
"Then you can leave-!"
"Stop! Stop fighting!"
Little tears stream down Adelaide's face as she throws her arms around her brother. I shrink back from the two siblings as Holden's shoulders relax and he looks at his little sister in despair. He's so worried about her... yet all I can think of is how much I want to save him.
"...Maya... we have no weapons..." Holden mutters quietly, barely audible- even to me. "Adelaide and I aren't in any condition to fight... we can't possibly make it..."
"I'll protect you," I plead. "Holden, I'm... I'm your friend- and I've been fighting to find you this whole time and... I... I love you. I'll protect you both until the end no matter what."
He doesn't move, Adelaide continues to wail, and I realise how powerless I really am in this arena of nightmares. Here, in this moment- I'm just a teenage girl, who after confessing her one-sided love... realised how stupid it sounded... for some reason I believed that after I confessed, the world would be perfect. But now... it just feels awkward...
"...okay."
I look up, and his tired and weary eyes meet with mine. A small smile breaks across my face as Holden holds his sister tightly around her shoulders, nuzzling his nose into her hair as he shushes her to calm down.
I'm envious that even in this time of need, even after I finally admitted my feelings to him outright- they're still the most important people in each other's lives. I was just a little voice of reason; telling them to run.
"Come on Adelaide, we have to go now-" Holden manages to pull the two of them to their feet, even though his legs quake beneath him from not standing for so long. "...lead the way Maya."
I nod, and with one swift motion- I pick up the stakes, the backpack and my cleaver- and the three of us slowly make our way across the stage. I can't help but cast one last look back at Boxen's tally marks as Holden helps Adelaide down from the stage. Each mark looks so small, and they all represent a person. A person I knew.
It's in that moment I realise that I never really knew any of these people. Not even Holden or Crux... even Boxen, who leaned against the sliding loading entrance, scratching tallies into the floor...
As I climb down from the stage on my own, I hear Adelaide snivelling as Holden tries to pull her away from the little door under the stage. I pause as Holden looks at my confused face.
"She... she wants to say goodbye to Ruby." He says quietly.
Ruby. My eyes widen in surprise as I remember what I saw on the second night on the midnight broadcast. Ruby had been in Adelaide's year, but she had been killed. A sandbag I remember, looking up to the catwalk above the stage, had fallen and hit her. The little girl couldn't handle such a strike. It was far too deliberate to be an accident.
...of course they hadn't taken her body outside. I would have seen it. Holden and Boxen must have hidden her under the stage, out of sight so Adelaide wouldn't be forced to see her.
"...I don't know how much time we have left..." I mumble, unwilling to deny her request outright. "Just... be quick, okay?"
Nodding, Holden grasps the little handles and pulls. Adelaide scrambles close and another sob escapes her as what little light illuminates her friend's body.
It was fortunate that Ruby died the way she did. There, under the stage, she looked as if she was sleeping. There was no bruise, no blood... her eyes were gently closed and her hands had been folded across her body.
Adelaide began to cry openly once more, and as Holden and I stood by her shoulders and waited, I couldn't help but notice the peculiar smell that was filling the Performance Hall.
It wasn't the body decomposing... it was oddly familiar... like...
"-can you smell something?" I ask Holden, who has become strangely stiff.
He turns to me, and at once I know that something is terribly wrong. His eyes are wide; the blood runs from his face and his body trembles as he grabs Adelaide's shoulders and pulls her back from mourning.
"-we need to get out of here." Holden says suddenly. "Something's on fire."
I'm mortified as I recognise the smell. It's burning paint. District 13 regularly had poisonous toxins being let into the air due to the reactor- but this smell had taken a little while longer to recognise. Mainly because all the paint we use is highly flammable and someone always ends up dead.
"-RUN!"
Forgetting all fire safety measures we might have learned as children- Holden scoops the small Adelaide up in his arms and runs for the exit. It isn't until he goes to fling the door open that I realise that he's about to make a terrible mistake.
"-DON'T-!"
-he just stops in time, whirling around as I tug him backwards. Holden looks at me with panic in his eyes as I shake my head frantically.
"-this isn't a coincidence, this is a trap." I hiss as quickly as possible. "We need another exit- was there another exit?"
"No." Holden is beginning to lose control. "-can't you fight your way out of here? You have the cleaver-!"
"-against two crossbows?" I don't like disagreeing with Holden, but I'm as scared of death as he is. "No, we... we have to get back onto the stage- quickly."
"What?" Holden gapes as I begin my way back up at the aisle. "Are you mad- we'll be burned alive or suffocated-?!"
"-there's a loading entrance!"
I wish I had remembered sooner. Where Boxen had scratched his death count- the scrolling door entrance was just behind where he had sat. I climb onto the stage, my leg clipping the still open doors of Ruby's tomb as Holden carries Adelaide right behind.
"-it's locked Maya, we can't get out that way." Holden whispers as Adelaide finally stands back on her own feet. "We... we have to fight it out."
"Who fucking cares about locks-"
'Time for brutal destruction.'
Holden and Adelaide scream as I swing the cleaver into the metal. It dents easily, and a tiny shaft of the morning light illuminates the dust that floats around us. I smash into it repeatedly, clenching my teeth as the noxious smoke begins to flood around us like sea water. I manage to get enough leeway to pull the top half of the doorway aside, and just like that- I leap with no hesitation onto the soaking wet grass below.
"-jump!" I hiss back up at Holden and Adelaide, who stare down at me in terror. "They're bound to have heard that-!"
For the first time, Adelaide looks brave. Pushing aside her hesitant brother, she leaps the two metres to the ground, her knees sinking into the mud beside me. Holden only takes another second before he realises that there is no time to waste- and jumps down, landing spectacularly on the balls of his feet.
"-now what?" Adelaide whispers timidly as sounds of the stage inside collapsing echo through the still dark morning.
"Now..." I look towards the sparse forest that lies beyond the burning performance hall.
"We run."