Numquam Satis

by ladyqueerfoot

Raptor Voinov is never satisfied. He wages wars against his peers, forever in search of a challenge, yet he swears he'll never become the monster District Two's painted him as. The 99th Hunger Games seek to prove him wrong.

2. juggernaut

.

ii. juggernaut
an overpowering force that cannot be stopped

---

cw. explicit gore, body horror, overall drastic tone change from pre-games.

---

When Raptor rises into the arena, he notices two things right away.

The first is that he's indoors, something that's become increasingly rare in arenas as of late. But here, Raptor's as indoors as one could possibly get. Beneath his pedestal are shiny linoleum floors and the walls around him appear to be a concrete dome painted white. The space is tiny, all twenty-six tributes practically breathing down one another's throat as they line the dome's perimeter. Instead of a giant horn-shaped cornucopia, there are a few tote-bags peeking out of what appears to be a deep cylindrical hole in the ground.

And that brings Raptor to his second observation. The only way out of this room is what appears to be a hallway to his left. Hardly any outlier is getting out of here alive.

His heart thumps as a static voice counts down, "15… 14… 13…"

The past forty-five seconds were the longest of his life. He suspects the next twelve will be even longer.

But, it's a sufficient amount of time for Raptor to choose who he'll be targeting once the gong sounds. Obviously his first step will be making a beeline toward the center to grab the first weapon he can find. Then, he'll challenge somebody to a fight – the first of what will be many over the next however-many days. After all, taking out people who hardly stand a fighting chance isn't any fun. He'd hardly get a rush out of that and isn't that what life is all about?

"12… 11… 10…"

Raptor's eyes dart around the room as if he's a predator seeking out its prey. They land to his right, the furthest possible spot from the hallway out of here and the easiest place for Raptor to bolt to after he grabs his weapon.

"9… 8… 7…"

Unfortunately, most people to the right don't seem like they'd put up a fight. The young girls from what appears to be Five and Eleven, judging by the numbers on their gowns, would be too easy. Same goes for the girl from Seven who's hunched like she's about to puke.

"6… 5… 4…"

Luckily, one of the Tributes from Six is a different story. Even if they appear skinny underneath their gown, the scowl on his face is one of determination. Their eyes grow icey-blue with rage, and that's exactly what Raptor's looking for. Even if he tries to run away, there's not a chance in hell they get out of here alive.

"3… 2… 1…"

Raptor takes a deep breath, exhales through his nose, and slightly bends his knees. This is the moment he's spent the past decade of his life waiting for. He won't allow it or any of the moments that follow in here to be his last.

"Let the Ninety-Ninth Annual Hunger Games Begin!"

Instead of a gong, a buzzing alarm roars into the room. But, there's no time for him to wonder why as he dashes into the middle, knocking aside the boy from Nine when he tries to get in his way.

As strong as Raptor is, he's also fast – the first person to reach the center. He reaches into one of the totebags, his hands immediately wrapping around the familiar rings of a pair of brass knuckles that are only made better with knives protruding out of each of them.

Second to the Cornucopia is Amaro who says, "Go take out the kid you knocked back earlier. Should be easy money."

Yes, it should be. And that's exactly why Raptor doesn't want to.

Ignoring the Tribute from Three, Raptor stares down his target from Six. He's blessedly also made their way to to the center, and rummages around the different totes until Amaro tears them away – please don't, for Two's sake.

Amaro grabs a small knife from their pocket and chucks it right between Six's eyes. It's poorly calculated – he ducks before the blade makes impact then scrambles backwards in an attempt to claim it for himself.

"I've got them," Raptor says, far too unminding of the fact Six's hand is now gripping Amaro's knife, as it'll only make for a better fight.

Before the Tribute from Three can say otherwise, Raptor all-but-pounces on Six, his hands wrapped around their boney shoulders as they tremble in fear.

"Don't worry," Raptor chides. "Come at me – give it your all!"

The fire once in Six's eyes blazes back to life as he lifts the blade, aiming for Raptor's throat. A rookie mistake, which admittedly makes a lot of sense since Six is a rookie.

But, it's a mistake nonetheless. In the moment Six hesitates – the moment every outlier has before debating whether or not to harm the life of another – Raptor squeezes the brass knuckles tightly then jabs the left one's blade underneath Six's arm.

Though he bleeds onto his gown immediately, they still seem determined. Again, they try to stab Raptor with the knife and again, he plants his weapon in their flesh before they make any impact.

This time, Raptor's blade finds a home in the meat just above Six's collar bone. He doesn't mind the sensation of their blood sprouting on his face as the blade tears through their skin and sinew, the wound from Raptor's previous attack getting closer and closer.

Six holds on through the pain, grinding his teeth and flaring his nose. Raptor could easily take him out of his misery by taking his right blade to their throat, but that wouldn't make this much of a fight.

Instead, Raptor sends an uppercut into Six's jaw, his brass knuckle's pointy exterior puncturing the skin beneath their chin and – oh is that the sound of their bone crumbling? Nice.

He wraps his left hand around the back of their neck and thrusts the right blade through Six's cheek. They cough, blood dribbling out of his mouth and down his neck. Their jaw goes slack, allowing Raptor's blade to jut through the entirety of their mouth and poke out through the opposite side.

Raptor then takes his left blade underneath the hole left by his right and tears through what remains of Six's cheek until their skin splits into two flaps of flesh that fall in opposite directions. Though Raptor sees their eyes roll over, they still aren't satisfied with the fight so they withdraw their blades then kick Six in the stomach, their limpid body falling over into a heap on the ground.

It's not until he takes his first deep breath that he notices the rest of his allies surrounding him accompanied by several bodies on the floor.

"Are you done yet?" Selah groans.

Most of their expressions are a mix of judgment, concern, and confusion, all of which are valid. What's invalid is the snarky laugh that crawls out of Berengar's throat.

"Holy fuck, Raptor – you were like an animal out there!" He raises his hand, probably expecting a high-five or the sudden revival of the secret handshake they had when they were fourteen. Raptor gives him neither.

Does he not remember how insane he was last night?

"Berengar, please don't rile him up." Circe says, their arms crossed. "Raptor, the whole point of the bloodbath is to take out as many outliers as possible while also securing supplies. You grabbed two brass knuckles and beat the absolute shit out of one person that would've died regardless."

Raptor kicks over Six's hand, revealing the small knife still glued to their palm. "I also got us a knife!"

"Then I take it you didn't understand the point of everything I just said?"

Oh, Raptor understands her logic perfectly – he just disagrees with it profusely. Why kill people that are going to die in a few days time anyway when he can take out a potential big competitor. Of course, he could've instead approached the high-scorers from Twelve and Ten, but he'd rather such important moments for his victory come later in the Games.

"You guys killed people too, and there's lots of supplies!" Raptor's eyes scan the room as he counts the bodies. Before he's done, an alarm – the same one that marked the start of the Games – blares eight times. "Yeah, you killed seven people together. Mathematically speaking, you each got your chance."

"Well, not all of us," Selah chimes in, then points to Amaro.

"Sorry I wanted us to have supplies and not die of starvation!"

"You could've done that while also taking out the people who strayed too far from their alliances." For the first time, Eiran speaks.

Right. Eirian's here. He's never seen the One boy sound so authoritative, not that he minds. Raptor's just used to the bubbly lilt to Eirian's voice and the way his eyes flare whenever he's excited. But, that was Eirian as a friend (?), this is Eirian as a leader.

"See, I'm not the bad guy here!" Raptor says. "Or at least, I'm not the worst guy."

"It's hardly a competition," Catharsis sighs and clap's his back. "Grab whatever you can carry – let's blow this hotstand!"

As they walk, it clicks in Raptor's mind that one of these bodies is dead on the ground because of Ilara. Even after they shared a meal yesterday, he can't fully say he knows her.

(And he can't say he's seen her smile like this.)

---

They spend the rest of the day finding a place to set up their camp and ultimately settling on a large room with models of teeth, pointy metal tools tucked away into stations, and reclined leather chairs. At the end of the hallway when they left the bloodbath was a room with couches and a wall that opened into an area with several chairs and lots of vials scattered on the floor.

To the left was a staircase, which they took up two flights and then got off. As if they were on probation for their actions at the bloodbath, Raptor was forced to stay at the base and guard the supplies with Amaro while the others went in groups of three to explore other parts of the arena.

Hours later, he doesn't understand why he was being "punished," so maybe he isn't being punished. Maybe people just didn't want to spend time with him.

Was it because of what he did to Six? Raptor doesn't understand – he was just playing the games by his (admittedly strange) rules. Do they think he'd ravish all of them just the same? Honestly, he'd prefer if he didn't have to – Six could've easily avoided it by trying harder.

Now that Catharsis, Eirian, and Ilara are back, he at least has somebody to talk to. Amaro isn't the best at talking about things that aren't petty gossip. Every time he said he heard Selah and Catharsis in their room last night at Three's apartment, Raptor cared less and less.

"The good news is, we figured out where we are!" Ah; that's the Eirian Raptor's grown to more-than-tolerate.

"As in, what the arena is," Catharsis clarifies. "Obviously we know that right now we're in a weird teeth room."

"You mean, a dentist's office?" Ilara asks.

Eirian nods. "Yep! We can now say that we're for sure in a dentist's office because it goes in line with everything else we saw."

"Oh, get on with it already," Amaro sneers.

"We're in a hospital," Ilara says flatly. "That's why we have these uniforms. Upstairs we saw some sort of a decontamination room, and above that we saw three rooms that looked like they were meant for surgery."

"Really?" Amaro rolls their eyes. "That's fucking boring!"

"Respectfully, what did you think this arena was when we were put in these outfits and found a dentistry office?"

Yeah, even Raptor put those pieces together. "It could be interesting," he says.

It could be really, really interesting… His preferred arena would've been some sort of outdoor boxing ring forest zone, but that's basically what the mountains of Two are if Raptor squints. A hospital is definitely a suitable choice, though it's a shame there won't be any doctors to tend to people once he's done with them.

"I was personally hoping we'd be outside," Ilara says. "Something to remind me of Four'd have been nice."

"You already have something to remind you of Four," Amaro jeers, probably referring to Circe.

"Yeah. You're right."

"Guys, we can't talk to each other like this," Eirian chimes in. "I know we joked around during Pre-Games but now that we're here, we need to show the Capitol that we're a united front."

"A united front with three people missing," Catharsis says, rolling their eyes.

"We know vaguely where they are and that they're coming back. Missing isn't the word for it."

"Sheesh… You're uptight all of the sudden."

Raptor still doesn't mind. It makes Eirian feel more realistic as opposed to the heavenly saint he was a day ago.

"Would you prefer Berengar as your leader then?" Raptor asks. "Believe me, I've seen Berengar be 'uptight,' and it's not anything like this."

"You've seen Berengar uptight?" Amaro raises a brow.

Raptor doesn't understand. "Sure. But he's not like that right now. At least, I don't think so."

Things could've changed in the past few hours since Raptor last saw him. He's seen how quickly the other boy can shift into a completely different person – it happened last night. When he first saw one of Berengar's violent swings in temperament, Raptor was terrified. Now he sees them as a challenge.

"We should probably wait for them before we figure out any next steps," Eirian admits. "The good news is, I didn't hear any sirens since the bloodbath which means they're not dead."

"Could be injured," Catharsis says.

"Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

The room falls silent for a moment, and Raptor's back to trying and failing to come up with ways to distract himself since it's not like he can challenge anybody to a fight. If somebody did, Raptor can't quite say he's at the top of his game anymore. The bruise Berengar left last night has started swelling into a dark shade of purple. He's lucky that the general assumption from the alliance is that Six gave it to him during the bloodbath.

He doesn't know what he'd say if somebody – if Eirian – questioned it. Raptor's been wondering about it himself. Mainly, wondering if it counts as a fight and if Berengar's in the lead again. That wouldn't be very fair though – surely Berengar knows that.

Raptor scans the room, trying to see what everybody else is doing besides sitting and brooding. Catharsis seems to be counting food rations while Amaro arranges survival supplies into organized piles. Ilara's examining the room's dental machinery, which is definitely odd, and Eirian's sat on the ground with a notebook in his lap.

Raptor decides he'd be the least annoyed if he interrupted him. He scoots across the ground, closer to the One boy, then peers over his shoulder, trying to see what's inside the notebook but failing because he's too damn tall.

"Dude, what are you doing?" Eirian's neck snaps and he frantically closes the notebook. "Were you watching me this whole time?"

"Only part of it." A part of Raptor wishes he'd lied there just to see what Eirian's reaction would be. After all, Raptor needs to figure out what makes him snap eventually. He's the strongest person in this arena besides Raptor himself – they're going to fight each other when push comes to shove.

(And in order to get what he wants, Raptor is going to have to kill him.)

"You'd probably be embarrassed if you saw what's in there." Eirian pauses, as if he's waiting for Raptor to beg to see what's inside the notebook, which he doesn't do. "...fine. I'll show you what's inside if you insist."

The One boy opens the notebook to reveal a drawing of a young child and an older woman. "It's my sister and the kid she's pregnant with."

Raptor doesn't care what it is, it's objectively a very nice drawing. Even if it's in black and white, the kid's eyes are gleaming brightly and the woman's coiled hair looks like it's real. He didn't know Eirian was good at art like this; he has a feeling most people don't.

"It looks nice," Raptor says when he realizes he's been quiet for an uncomfortable period of time.

Eirian opens his mouth to respond but a loud DING! cuts him off.

Startled, Raptor falls back onto the ground. "What the fuck was that?" He anticipates the ground to shake underneath him yet it doesn't.

"Everyone get your stuff," Eirian calls out.

Raptor watches as the door handle toward the left of the room shakes side to side and pushes himself toward the pile of weapons. His left hand wraps around a dagger which isn't the most optimal, but it works.

As he rises to his feet, the door swings open. Raptor's brows furrow as he prepares to run toward whoever it is only for Circe, Selah, and Berengar to walk inside.

"Two almighty, what's wrong with y'all?" Berengar sneers as Raptor's dagger falls to the ground.

"Maybe ask that question about yourself," Catharsis says. "You scared the shit out of us – how were we supposed to know it was y'all behind that door?"

"You could've assumed," Selah offers.

"Why would I do that? You know what they say –'if you assume, you make an ass of you and me.'"

"And now the only person you've made an ass out of is yourself."

"Hmmph." Catharsis crosses their arms.

"I was expecting a warmer welcome, that's all," Berengar drawls, his eyes fixated on Raptor because of course they are. "You don't see us for a few hours and suddenly we ain't shit to y'all."

"Nobody ever said that," Raptor says quickly. "Seriously, you're just making things up out of nothing."

Berengar yawns, then rests his longsword on the ground. Circe trails beside them, dropping their bola, while Selah stands still with her hands on her hips. "Isn't somebody going to ask us saw"

"Ooh! Ooh!" Catharsis raises their hand with the enthusiasm of a child. "Pick me! Pick me!"

"Yes, Mx. Castello?"

"Ms. Alkane."They gulp as their face turns a deep shade of red. "What did you and your companions have the utmost privilege of witnessing on this fine afternoon?"

"We went into the basement!" Circe says, ignoring the ridiculous way that Catharsis now speaks and the fact their question wasn't addressed to her.. "It looked like a basement at least, since there weren't any windows. There was a ladder in a corner of the first floor so we took it down and saw a giant room of gurneys and various machines."

"Then I imagine you came to the same conclusion as us?" Eirian asks.

"What do you mean?"

"We figured out what kind of building we're in. Did you?"

"Patients of the Helfenbein Hospital," a static voice from the walls answers the question before Circe can. "Thank you for placing your trust in us today."

"Yeah, we thought it was a hospital," Berengar whispers.

"It is with great sadness that we report eight of our rehabilitants are no longer with us. Please join us in a moment of silence to honor Maverick Pirelli from District Six, Camellia Sherwood from District Seven, Heath Ballota from District Seven, Freya Berwick from District Eight, Florian Dundersen from District Nine, Roscoe Faucher from District Ten, Samara Figueroa from District Eleven, and Odin Aileron from District Thirteen."

"Are we actually supposed to be quiet now?" Catharsis asks loudly.

Selah forcefully strikes their shoulder with her wrist. "I'd strongly prefer we don't find out."

"Unfortunate, isn't it?"

"No shit," Raptor whispers. Beside him, Eirian chuckles.

"It would be in nobody's best interest to worry. Instead, continue your holistic medical experience here at the Helfenbein Hospital with a smile on your face. As we always say, your health comes first."

"That was extra," Amaro blurts out. "Couldn't they have just done the whole pictures in the sky thing?"

"What sky?" Raptor asks.

"Touché."

"Alright!" Eirian interrupts, but respectfully. "Let's do a final count of our supplies and then figure out who's going to take the first watch. Everybody else, let's stay in there"

He points to a door in the top right corner, across from the stairs. They all looked through it when they first got to this floor and found nothing threatening aside from large models of feet and cast material, which actually is threatening, but not immediately dangerous.

"Sounds good," Raptor says, the rest of the alliance eventually echo-ing him.

As everyone begins gathering supplies and counting, a nervous thought gnaws at Raptor from the back of his mind.

There's a 90% chance that one person in this room outlives the others and makes it out of here alive. So much is going to have to happen between now and then. At what point does it all become too much?

---

Of course Berengar insisted on accompanying Raptor on his first shift around the arena to "hunt" or whatever the fuck. Two forbid he spend too long without the other boy breathing down his throat.

Already, Raptor wasn't crazy about the concept of finding people he's just supposed to sneak up on and kill, but Berengar's company makes it a hundred times worse, because this is of course the exact sort of thing he wants to do.

There's a huge chance that whoever they find is going to be counterproductive. After fighting Maverick – that was their name, right? – Raptor now needs to go head to head with somebody a bit stronger than them, but not stronger than most of the other Tributes.

It's a tall order, especially considering the tougher competitors are probably smart enough to not be hanging out somewhere where a bunch of trained kids could easily find them.

"I thought you'd be happier about this, Raptor," Berengar coos as the boys make their way down a flight of stairs. "There's another fight headed to you soon!"

"It's possible." He grunts. "There's always the chance you get to them first."

"You really think I'd do that?"

"Fair enough."

Berengar's never been interested in taking on their strongest classmates (and the weaker ones) the way Raptor has. He obviously performed well considering he's here, but the only person he'd consistently fight is Raptor.

In any other situation, he'd be the one telling Raptor to avoid fighting, which always got on his nerves. A year ago, Raptor thought he'd finally escaped Berengar's nonsense in this font when he donned a mask and fought his peers under the guise of anonymity. In hindsight it was dumb, Berengar was always going to find him out.

Another flight of stairs and Berengar gestures at the door they've now arrived at. "What do you say we stop by here first?"

The wall's marked with a 3 which means they've only gone down one floor, and if Raptor remembers correctly, this one had all the bright children's furniture and what not.

"Why here?" Raptor's brows furrow – there's got to be a reason Berengar chose this floor in particular. Just that brief exchange was enough to make him forget he's mad at the other boy, but thankfully he remembers now.

(Why is it that Raptor always forgets to hate him when he's supposed to hate him most?)

"Close enough to the Cornucopia that stragglers might have found it by now."

Berengar's gotta be making shit up as usual. Raptor can't say he's surprised. "You sure that's the only reason why."

"Positive." As expected.

Raptor sighs. "Okay, if we go inside and see something, what's the plan?"

"You kill them, obviously."

"Why me?"

"You're the one looking to start fights." Berengar wraps his hand around the handle. "Now let's get in there and get it over with."

For the most part, room's the exact same way it was. The only difference is that the building blocks in the room's center are now arranged like a tower and the miniature bicycle is flipped on its side. Somebody must have been here.

"If you were an outlier, where would you be?" Berengar asks but doesn't sound like he's expecting an answer.

Raptor gives him one anyway. "Um… Maybe in the room in the back?"

"That's where I was going to go, obviously." Crossing Raptor's path, Berengar tiptoes past the part in the room's wall. Raptor follows and sees walls painted with unicorns and dragons in bright colors, various scales and pieces of machinery, and a purple examination table covered in parchment paper.

It's uncannily like the 12-and-under infirmary office back at Springridge. Fuck, Raptor hasn't been there in ages, but the memories easily come back.

Before he can reflect, he hears a door attached to the left wall click into place. He sighs. "There's somebody inside, isn't there?"

Raptor crosses his fingers – all he can do now is hope whoever it is is a worthy sparring opponent. If it's not, Berengar's going to act up and he really doesn't want to deal with that.

The other boy steps through the door and gasps before Raptor can see what, or rather who's inside.

"Oh, Raptor! Why don't you come take a look at what we have here?"

Begrudgingly, he accompanies Berengar inside, turns his head past the large operating bed and diagrams depicting newborn babies on the wall to see a young Tribute crouched behind a small cart with a screen.

Shit.

Raptor takes deep breaths as he observes the Tribute, who he's now identified as being from District Eleven, shivers and shakes, tears in his eyes. "What do you want me to do here?"

"Kill the kid," Berengar commands. "Isn't that obvious?"

"You do it!"

"Why? Are you scared?"

"I'm not," Raptor says, crossing his arms. "But, it was your idea to investigate this floor, so wouldn't it make the most sense if you killed him?"

"You're the one who said you wanted to fight everybody in this arena. What's the hold-up now?"

"I want to fight everybody that's capable of somewhat fighting back."

"What makes you think they're incapable?"

Even if Eleven miraculously learned how to fight between now and when he saw them in training fiddling with a slingshot, he's in no fighting condition now. He's practically made a mess of himself with snot and tears.

"You're supposed to be more logical. How do you not see that what you're doing is bad? I'm not saying we let the kid go but the least you could do is get it over with."

"Since when do you have morals?" Berengar squats and wraps his hands around Eleven's arms. Though they squirm, he's no match for the way Berengar worms his fingers underneath their armpits and slowly lifts them off the ground. "Besides, I can't kill him. My hands are full."

It was one thing when Raptor and Berengar used violence to settle their personal arguments back in Two because then other people weren't involved. Now it's just fucked up.

As he watches the kid uncurl his legs, there's a small part of Raptor that wants to equip his brass knuckles and stab Berengar in the neck instead. He can't, though. That's not a fair fight, though his recent behavior makes Raptor all the more willing to have one as soon as possible.

"Why are you just standing there?" The other boy sneers as Eleven begins to scream through his teeth, probably hoping it'll make Berengar drop them. "I didn't think you were such a coward."

"I'm not a coward," Raptor grunts.

"Then how come you won't kill them?"

Eleven wiggles side to side but Berengar's grip remains firm. There's really nothing they or Raptor can do to stop this, huh?

Still, he doesn't want to give Berengar the upper hand. He doesn't want to show him that he's easily malleable because that could just make this happen again. But at the same time, Raptor can't think of any other reason to kill Eleven.

"Some Cadet you are," Berengar growls. "Can't even kill the youngest Tribute in the arena."

An alarm sounds off and Raptor briefly closes his eyes, hoping that when he opens them, Eleven will somehow be dead in Berengar's arms. Of course, that's not the case.

"C'mon Raptor, the clock is ticking…"

He digs into the tote he brought and withdraws the right brass knuckle. He fits it around his fingers, but still stands frozen. Raptor could close his eyes and put an end to this in less than ten seconds, but his body refuses to let him. Maybe it's the way Eleven's eyes look the same way Raptor's did when he was a kid as they cry, or maybe it's because there's something so fundamentally wrong about this entire situation.

"You know, for somebody who volunteered to erase the stain on his family's name, you're not doing a very good job of—"

Without hesitation, Raptor rapidly plunges his blade into Eleven's chest. Berengar knows damn well Raptor's family isn't why he's here, but his words still cut like a knife.

He closes his eyes, afraid of the sight of Eleven's blood and more afraid of the satisfied smile he knows is painted on Berengar's lips. It's not until the alarm blares and Raptor hears something heavy drop to the ground that he opens them.

"There you are," Berengar drawls. "I knew you had this inside of you – I was just helping you remember. Welcome back!"

"Don't talk to me." Raptor turns around and walks out of the room. As expected, he hears the other boy's footsteps.

"What's the matter? Why so angry?"

"I said don't talk to me! Unless, of course, you want to wind up like them except a thousand times worse."

Raptor isn't even given the opportunity to process Berengar's bullshit when he arrives up the stairs and back to the base to see everyone huddled over a person in the middle.

"What happened?" He sprints toward the group then peaks over their heads to see Circe flat on the ground with blood gushing underneath their chest. "Holy shit."

"Holy shit is right," Eirian says, his voice firm as he applies pressure to the wound with a towel.. "We ran into Eight and Ten and I did everything I could to stop this from happening. I took out Eight no problem but man, Ten's brutal."

"It's n-not Eirian's f-fault," Circe croaks.

"Don't talk!" Ilara covers her mouth with her hand. "Just… take deep breaths, my love. Everything's going to be fine."

Raptor's not so sure. The color's been drained from Circe's face and they look far more dead inside than usual.

Berengar finally catches up to Raptor and joins the huddle. "Now what the fuck is this?"

"Shut the fuck up," Raptor sneers. "Look down and read the room."

He notices Ilara's brows furrow. She's livid and Raptor can't even blame her.

"I tried so hard," Eirian repeats. "I didn't mean for this to–"

"It's okay!" Catharsis cuts him off. "Nobody thinks this is your fault."

The look in Ilara's eyes begs to differ.

"Eirian, it's okay," Circe says, her voice muffled. "I promise."

A few seconds pass and the wound stops bleeding. Eirian scrambles on the ground, still holding the towel down. "Bandages. Who has bandages?"

Raptor reaches into his bag and pulls out gauze and a roll of tape. "This work?"

"It's fine." Eirian rips the supplies from his hands and begins dressing Circe's wound. "Deep breaths. It's fine; everything's going to be fine."

But Raptor knows it won't be. Between this and what happened with him and Berengar just minutes ago, he's not sure these happy days will last as long as he hoped.

---

Granted, Raptor's never been the biggest optimist, but there's no way Circe comes back from this shit. She clawed at her own wound dressings in her sleep and come morning, they were bleeding even more than yesterday.

Selah and Ilara have been trying to stop the bleeding for the past hour but it's been to no avail – whatever vein Ten severed must've been an important one. But, in the interest of being a valiant leader, Eirian offered to find some more heavy duty medical supplies. So, in the interest of being a cautious ally, Raptor offered to follow him.

Still, as they climb up the stairs, he can't help but think this is a lost cause. A shame, really. Circe got the same training score as Berengar – they were a shoe-in for one of Raptor's last fights before he finally faces the other boy one final time. Even if they survive this, Circe sure isn't making it to the endgame anymore.

Even though Raptor doesn't know how it all happened, it's scary knowing that what was likely one small mistake wound up costing Circe the Games and also her life. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing during training but it clearly hasn't served them any good. What does that say for everyone else?

"There should be supplies in here," Eirian says with a pant as he arrives at the landing point for the fifth floor. "At least, it looked like there were supplies here two days ago."

"Got it." Raptor takes his place next to the One boy. "Is there anything I should be looking for in specific?"

Eirian sighs then squeezes the door handle and pulls the door open. "Just… something you think would be more helpful than our makeshift tourniquet."

The boys slip through the door and into a stark white room with plastic covering the walls. The lights are dimmer than anywhere else in this place and they glow a neon blue across the floor. Most importantly, there's a low humming sound coming from somewhere Raptor just can't put his finger on.

"You hear it too, huh?" Eirian asks.

"Of course I hear it – why wouldn't I?" Raptor stumbles forward. "I didn't mean to sound so blunt."

(Translation: "I didn't mean to sound like I was talking to Berengar.")

(Further translation: "I didn't mean to sound the way I've sounded my entire life until I met you because you're still nice to me, three days into this, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it.")

"You're fine." As the One boy speaks, the ground begins to tremble. He points to the one door in the plastic wall's center. "You think we should look in there or head upward and find someplace else?"

Before Raptor can answer, a sickly green hand slides through the door. Before he can think, Eirian's fingers dig into his wrist. "What the fuck is that?"

That's the first time Raptor's heard the One boy curse, he thinks. Shit, he's not a great influence now is he?

Raptor steps forward, fingers laced between his brass knuckles, and grunts. Another hand reveals itself from the door, and then another and another. "Get ready Eirian. It's only a matter of time before they—"

A human-like figure lurches into the room, its sharp nails pointed in Raptor's direction. Without entirely processing what it looks like, Raptor plunges his fist in the creature's direction until he feels something crumble against his knuckle and hears it drop to the ground.

"Before they fight." He finishes his sentence.

Another entity sprints into the room. As Eirian readies his spear, Raptor takes in its features – giant eyes, wiry hair, and a body dressed in the same plastic as the walls. He blinks and the One boy spins his weapon so it slices through the creature's chest.

"Mutts this early?" Eirian asks. "Panem's sake, what did we do to the Gamemakers to deserve this?"

"Not enough," Raptor says as another mutation tries to claw its way to him only to be met by a slit throat and crushed skull. As it falls to the ground, a sticky white substance clings onto Raptor's gown. "They're probably bored of us already."

He doesn't have time to address the truth behind this statement as two more mutts crawl across the floor. Again, Raptor grabs one and quickly beats it to a pulp while Eirian defeats the other with the grace of a ballet dancer.

It's sort of awe-inspiring, the way One's Tributes manage to commit such unspeakable horrors with such elegance and poise. If it weren't for the gunk on his own hands, Raptor would think he's watching Eirian dance in a theater, loose skin hanging off the tip of his blade and all.

Eirian and Raptor rinse and repeat with more and more mutts until the lights turn bright and they're staring head first at the carnage they've created.

Raptor knew what he was fighting had human structure, but it's not until now that he's able to see their faces. Even though heads have been torn off necks and there's an eye or two rolling around the floor, the mutts look like they were once actual people.

(They look the same way Eleven – Lycoris, according to last night's announcements – did. Afraid because they never had a chance to fight back; this was always what was in store for them.)

They're not real, he reminds himself. You deserve better than fighting a freak of nature when you could be fighting living flesh.

"I guess we can take a peek inside that door," Eirian says, his tone no longer that of a distinguished warrior and instead one of a friend. "Nice going with the whole killing mutts thing, by the way."

"Anytime. You weren't too shabby yourself."

Raptor burrows past the matted plastic into a space littered with broken computer screens and what was once some other form of machinery. All unhelpful because it's not–

"Found something!" Eirian reaches for a clear plastic box in the corner, then holds it up to reveal it's filled with what appears to be medical supplies.

Carefully, Raptor moves toward him to take a closer look – yeah, should be good. Admittedly, he never paid much attention in Two when they were trying to teach him about all that first aid shit, but bacitracin sounds like it's good for stab wounds and clean gauze and bandages certainly can't be a bad thing.

"Great – let's bounce!"

For a second, Raptor's just as optimistic as Eirian seems to be that everything's going to be fine with Circe. The One boy cradles the supply box as if it holds the secrets of the universe and it's hard for Raptor not to believe him as they run down the stairs.

But then, the second Raptor's feet touch down on the fourth floor's platform, an alarm sounds.

"Shit!" Raptor clenches his jaw as Eirian swings open the door.

As expected, Catharsis, Berengar, Selah, and Amaro are circled around Circe's dead body. As expected, Ilara's knelt against the floor, a guttural scream escaping her lips as she falls to the ground.

Tears well up in Eirian's eyes. Raptor wants to tell him that if Circe was this close to death, their supplies wouldn't have made any difference, but it doesn't seem appropriate. Instead, he just stands by the One boy's side, just as shell shocked as everyone else.

From the left wall, a gurney rolls into the room and slips underneath Circe's limp figure. As it tries to take them away, Ilara grabs onto their body and screams, "You don't get to take her from me!"

Insistent, the gurney continues to pull and Ilara's cries only get louder, her voice scratching against the back of her throat.

(It makes Raptor wonder, is there anybody he'd cry like that over losing?)

(If there is, is it Berengar or Eirian?)

The gurney finally wins their tug-of-war and Circe disappears into the wall. Amaro reaches down, offering Ilara their hand, but she slaps it away.

"I don't want to deal with any of you today!"

"Ilara," Eirian murmurs. "I'm so sorry…"

To Raptor's relief, Ilara doesn't say anything else after that. If she wailed any longer, he'd have no choice but to worry that somebody would find them from all the noise. But, they remain safe inside their bubble of an orthodontist's office – what a wild sentence to say – at least for now.

But Raptor still wonders what he'll be like when he loses somebody important.

---

Granted, it'd be weird if Ilara made a complete 180 and acted all cheery and joyful hardly twenty-four hours after losing the love of her life, but jeez has she been miserable. An alarm sounded earlier in the day and if it weren't for the fact the whole alliance was in one place, Raptor would've thought Ilara jumped out of one of this place's few windows.

Surely she and Circe talked this through before they both volunteered. Surely they both knew what they were getting into and that one of them's deaths would arrive eventually, even if they didn't expect it so soon.

Then again, Raptor never had such a conversation with Berengar. At least not until the two of them are running upstairs because Ilara heard an alarm and fled the base. He can only assume she thinks she's somehow found a lead on tracking Circe's killer.

"The whole thing is really sad," Berengar admits. No, Raptor didn't invite him on this escapade and yes, he still is straight-up pissed over the shit he pulled with Lycoris.

He just took Ilara's spur-of-the-moment sprint as a call to a potential fight. Yesterday's mutts hardly taught him anything. All they did was make Raptor even more desperate to get in on some good action.

Maybe that'll come in the form of Ilara, maybe it'll be somebody else. Regardless, he can't wait to find out.

"You're saying that? Really?" It's embarrassingly easy for Raptor to fall back into old habits of playful banter around Berengar when he's in a less-terrible-than-usual mood. "I never took you as the sort to get all sentimental over two lovers doomed by the narrative."

"There's a lot you don't know about me," the other boy replies.

He's right, and that's probably part of the reason Raptor's kept him around as long as he has, not that he ever really had an opportunity to let go.

"Like what?" After not finding any sign of Ilara on the fifth and sixth floors, Raptor loops around toward the seventh.

"Well… you don't know that I've finally figured out how you and I are going to settle this."

Raptor doesn't have to ask to know what the other boy's referring to. "Is it any different than what we agreed upon at home? We do everything we can to ensure we're the last two standing and then go at it?"

Truth be told, Raptor had been so concerned with keeping himself alive (and keeping Eirian sane), he hadn't considered the format of him and Berengar's final encounter.

"No, actually. I just… I felt like I needed to remind you that I still plan on it being the two of us at the very end."

When he arrives at the seventh floor, Raptor hears screaming and crying from the other side of the door. Still, there's something he needs to ask the other boy. "Does that, by any chance, have anything to do with what you made me do two days ago?"

Berengar's eyes light up even though Raptor's merely pulling at straws. "I figured, the Capitol could benefit from seeing some tension between the two of us. That way, they're just as excited for our final fight."

"I don't get it. Why couldn't you have told me this was your new strategy before we launched?"

"I wasn't in the right headspace."

"Right." How could Raptor possibly forget?

"Also, I wanted your reaction to everything to seem natural."

"But you're telling me now because?"

"I don't want to hurt you." Funny coming from somebody who's dead set on killing him at the end of this whole charade.

Though Raptor doesn't understand where Berengar's coming from in the slightest and is nearly positive this is just his fucked-up form of damage control, he tells the other boy. "This makes perfect sense – must've picked up some of my intelligence."

"You wish."

It feels like old times and a part of Raptor wishes it were. He can't help but think him and Berengar's friendship would be actually productive and not… whatever the hell it's become. It's not anything salvageable regardless.

Another scream from inside the room is Raptor's cue to open the door. He rushes inside to see Ilara pushed up against two boys, the rage of a thousand suns in her eyes.

"You killed her, didn't you?" She hisses, grabbing one of them — he's from Five, Raptor notes — by the shirt collar and pushing him to the ground. "Why did you kill her?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Five says. He wraps his arms around Ilara's legs, trying to bring her down with him. "I get that you think screaming at me is going to somehow help me, but it isn't. If you're here to kill me, please just—"

"Zion, don't fucking say that!" The other boy, now identifiable as Maverick's District partner. Raptor's brow twitches. He saw the Six boy a whole bunch during training and immediately marked him as a capable opponent. A part of him wants to go at him now.

Ilara continues her pursuit of Zion, flipping him over on his side and readying his knife. "Why did you kill her?"

"I didn't. I don't know who you're talking about!"

As Six crouches onto the floor, trying to free Zion, Raptor plummets toward his stomach, knocking him over. He's about to plant his fist in his face when Ilara shoves him and says, "Get out of here."

"What?" Berengar asks. "Ilara, we're here to help you. We want to make sure that you're okay."

"I'm not okay! Why would I be okay?" Ilara gnashes her teeth then sinks her knife into Zion's chest. From behind, Raptor hears a high-pitched scream. He focuses his vision toward the back of the room and notices the young girl from Five's head poking out under what looks like an x-ray machine.

"Foden," Zion shouts, grabbing onto Six's ankle. "Take Mahina and get out of here. Now."

Though Raptor tries to hold Foden to the ground, Ilara eventually has the audacity to free him whilst she stabs Zion again and again, his sobbing quickly turning into muffled roars. Foden runs to the back of the room and kneels down and Mahina climbs on top of him.

Berengar tries to chase after the two of them but again, Ilara stops them, never taking her eyes off of Zion's chest as his blood splatters on her face. Even after the alarm marks his death, Ilara continues her butchering.

The first time she stops for air, Raptor swings her backward, her knife flying in front of her. "Ilara. Breathe for a minute."

"He killed them," she says with the utmost certainty. If Raptor recalls correctly, it was actually a Tribute from Ten that killed Circe, but correcting Ilara now would be alright. "He took Circe from me as if she was nothing!"

"He did, yes." Raptor tries to put himself into her shoes for a minute and think about who he'd miss but he's once again inconclusive. "If somebody hurt somebody I care about, I'd be mad too."

"So would I," Berengar chimes in. "It's okay to be upset when things like this happen."

"I know it's okay to be upset, that's why I am!"

"You need to think for a minute, though." Please, Berengar's hardly one to talk. "If you let it destroy you, you'll eventually get destroyed yourself. Would Circe really want that for you?"

Again with the incessant bluntness. Again with him being oddly right — fucks sake, Raptor can't stand him.

(He can't stand to lose him.)

"She wouldn't, you're right." Ilara lifts herself off the ground and sighs heavily. "I can't do this to myself. Circe wouldn't want me too."

"No they would not. Now let's get you back to camp."

Is it wrong that Raptor already misses Ilara's agitated form as the three of them walk to the elevator. Well, yeah, it's very very wrong. But, that Ilara was somebody Raptor could easily see himself taking down in a fight, and it'd be a good fight too — not crazy easy, he'd learn a lot even if it meant a few bruises. Besides, she let Foden get away — the least Ilara could do is face off with Raptor eventually.

Killing her would be easy when it came down to it — Raptor has no real sentiments toward her. Hell, he'd kill her a thousand times if it meant his bloodied hands never touch Eirian or Berengar.

(He knows they will regardless.)

---

It was a nice four and a half days holding down the fourth floor, but there was no way in hell it'd last. Regardless, Raptor wasn't expecting to wake up to the musty smell of rotting food and thick green mold climbing up the walls.

It didn't help that nobody knew where it was coming from considering all of their food was dried and sealed in airtight containers and there's also no scientific way this much mold would grow overnight naturally.

"I'm telling y'all, I blinked for a fraction of a second then all the sudden it was everywhere," Catharsis, who was on watch earlier, says for the upteenth time.

"Yet you didn't wake us up?" Eiran asks yet again. "If I saw mold everywhere, that's the first thing I'd do."

"Well, none of y'all coughed or anything and I didn't feel sick so I figured it wasn't urgent."

"You're actually ridiculous," Selah scoffs. "Honestly, you've got to be one of the most harebrained people I've ever come across."

"Woah there!" Eirian shouts. "There's no need for you to go that far."

"Well, there's no need for me to sleep in a room that's covered in mold."

"Nobody's debating that," Amaro chimes in. "The unspoken general consensus is that we're getting the fuck out of here, right?"

"No shit," Berengar says. He's been hunched over for a while now, haphazardly shoving his belongings into a tote. "I'm just waiting for our heroic leader to tell us which way we should go!"

"Berengar…" Raptor groans. "Really? You're still stuck on this?"

"I wasn't until now when Eirian decided to fuck off instead of saving us."

"How have I been?" The One boy sighs. "Forget it. Let's get moving."

Raptor doesn't take much with him – just his brass knuckles and a few water bottles and granola bars. Carrying anything else would be a major drag, especially when they have no idea where the fuck they're going.

A few minutes pass where the only sounds are Catharsis and Selah flinging insults at one another, though Raptor can tell neither of them mean it. It used to be like that when he talked to Berengar – he misses when he meant nothing he said.

"Alright, follow me!" Noticing everyone's just about done packing, Catharsis stands tall. "I know exactly where we should go?"

"Do you now?" Ilara whispers – Raptor thinks she's back to normal after yesterday but he can't really say.

"Sure do," they boast, then walk toward the door. "Don't just stand there guys, do something!"

Raptor sighs, then follows Selah who stands directly behind Catharsis. He whispers to her, "I think I know what caused the mold issue."

It has to be Gamemaker intervention – they're sending a message that the pack has to pick up the pace and continue on their road to ruin. Maybe, if Ilara actually let Raptor fight Foden yesterday, they wouldn't be running into this issue – fuck her for that one.

"We're being boring," Selah replies, which is validating since Raptor knows she's way more intelligent than he is. "I'd expect a brute like you to have gotten more action by now."

It's dumb, but Raptor hates that word. It gets applied to the Tributes from Two every year when at least one of them follows their tradition of getting worked up and losing their sanity. Yeah, it's an apt descriptor for somebody so eager to pick fights with people, but he still doesn't like it.

He's always thought that he's more than the average Tribute from Two, or at least that he deviates from the stereotype just a little bit, though he has no proof of it. Maybe not wanting to enact violence on those who can't fight makes him unique?

(Does it really when he can be so easily goaded to bypass those morals?)

Catharsis gets to walking up the stairs and stops by the fifth floor when Eirian shouts, "We can't go in there."

"We can't," Raptor echoes him. "That's where we were when we had that run-in with the mutts."

"Alright," Catharsis scowls and rolls their eyes, which is stupid. "What are everyone's thoughts on the sixth floor?"

"Seems fine," Berengar says. "Raptor and I were there yesterday, and though we didn't get a good look at what's inside, there seemed to be a lot more rooms than back on the forth."

"So we're going there then," Amaro chirps. "I'm getting sort of sick of y'all's indecision."

"I'm getting sort of sick of you not killing anybody yet," Catharsis sneers. "Are you too much of a princess to get your freshly manicured hands dirty? Are you worried people in Three will think less of your father?"

"Who the fuck told you about my father?"

"I did," Selah says. "Because it's not a big deal. Here, you're equal with us. Your father can't buy your freedom."

"Yeah, I knew that before I decided to volunteer."

"Guys please." Eirian's voice is more stern than Raptor's ever heard it. "We can't keep arguing like this, not when we're down a man and we have no base."

"So if Circe comes back from the dead and we settle down, does that mean I get to put Amaro back in their place?" Catharsis asks, then loudly snickers before anybody can answer. They take two steps, then arrive at the platform before the sixth floor. "Well, we've made it!"

Before anybody behind Raptor can fully step on the platform, Catharsis swings the door open. They rush into the room with their signature wicked grin when Raptor hears a click and then a thump and then "Fuckin hell!"

Selah runs behind them, grabbing her bow and a few arrows from behind her back. Raptor follows her to see a gaping hole in Catharsis' neck, blood oozing down their gown, and another Tribute across the room with a crossbow and a manic smile. He recognizes it as the Tribute from Thirteen that survived the bloodbath, his choppy pink bangs matted with sweat.

"Let me take her," Raptor shouts, equipping his brass knuckles and clenching his fists. He didn't think it'd be his next opponent, but he's still game.

Selah pushes his hand away and grunts, "Mine." She pulls back on the drawstring of her bow then fires an arrow right into his chest.

"What happened?!" Eirian sprints into the room followed by Eirian, then Berengar, then Ilara, then Amaro. "Catharsis?"

Raptor diverts his attention back to the Tribute from One as they fall to the floor, aggressively coughing as a fountain of blood forms out of their throat. Selah stares too, then starts digging in her tote bag. "C'mon, we've got to have something we can plug this with." Is it not incredibly obvious that Catharsis is a hopeless case?

"Babes," they croak. "It's f-fine. It's b-been fun with 'ya."

They close their eyes and the alarm immediately sounds off. Thirteen falls to the floor from across the room and it goes off once more.

Selah sighs. "What the ever-loving fuck was that?"

"You got your action," Raptor teases.

"Catharsis died!"

"And?" Ilara sneers. "I swear, if you act like a crazy person after this. I know I'm not one to talk considering yesterday, but at least it was justified considering how long I've known Circe."

"I don't think anything justifies stabbing somebody when they're already dead," Raptor murmurs under his breath knowing damn well how hypocritical he sounds.

"I'm not…" Selah says. "I'm just frustrated. Is that not allowed?"

Amaro cackles. "I'd be frustrated too if I lost my beloved fuckbuddy to a malnourished twink!"

"They weren't my–"

"C'mon Amaro," Berengar interrupts, which Raptor doesn't mind for once. "No need to speak ill of the dead, especially when you're not one to talk."

"I'm not malnourished!"

"We both know that's not what I meant."

"I didn't love them." Selah shakes her head. "I don't know why you'd think that…"

"I'm glad you didn't," Ilara says. "You know what they say about girls from Three with dead love interests."

"They said that one time. You really think I'm foolhardy enough to do what Vanya did?"

"I mean–"

"Guys! Stop it!" Eirian stomps his foot on the ground. Again, the boy Raptor knew in the Capitol is nowhere to be found, though he hopes he'll soon return. "There's eleven people left now and five of them aren't us. If we continue to fight like this, it'll give the others a way to get between us and then we'll all be dead. None of us want to make fools out of ourselves, so get it together."

"How leaderly of you." Berengar snickers.

"Did you miss the point of what I was saying? From here on out, we travel in groups of three – if I recall correctly, there's two allied pairs still left. Only one person can sleep at a time and when they do, at least two other people need to be watching them. We can't afford to lose more numbers."

"But what's gonna happen if we kill the five outliers?"

"Berengar, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it." Eirian wipes off the sweat forming in between his brows. "Let's see what we're dealing with on this floor."

He walks into one of the three rooms behind him. Even though he doesn't look over his shoulder to see if anybody's following him, Raptor does. It makes Berengar roll his eyes, though that's not a particularly novel event.

The room is light blue with dimmed- fluorescent lights on the ceiling that cast Raptor and Eirian's shadows onto the floor tiles beneath them. There are several metal cabinets implanted into the walls and wires dangling everywhere. Most importantly, there's a gray mattress in the center of the room on a white pedestal.

"An operating room, huh," Raptor muses, which makes Eirian flinch. "Right yeah, I followed you here. Hi."

"Hi," the One boy says, his voice still heavy and rough.

"I'm here because I'm worried about you."

It's a foreign feeling – Raptor can't exactly say he's ever worried about anybody but himself. But, to be fair, Raptor worrying about Eirian counts as him worrying about himself, since Eirian's a potential opponent. Yes, he's counted a million different ways he could make the One boy flip his shit, but that's not what he wants. When they do fight, Raptor wants it to be fair.

(He wants it to be like when he and Berengar were younger.)

"Actually?" A little bit of light comes back to Eirian's tone. "You don't need to be worried about me."

"I am worried though. Today's been really stressful." If Raptor got frustrated by the same things Eirian does, at least two more people in the alliance would've died today.

"Life is stressful. There's no point in me dwelling on it. I'll be fine."

Part of Raptor wants to tell Eirian he knows he's lying. That part of him scares him more than any picture of himself standing bloodied in a mirror.

Eirian's eyes seem to beg Raptor to call him out and tell him that he wants to hear the truth. The longer Raptor stares, the more tempting it becomes.

But this isn't the time for caring

---

Raptor's not sure how many more obstacles this alliance can face before it completely shatters. Their morning and afternoon went without any issue. Raptor, Selah, and Eirian went off and gathered more supplies then switched off with the others. It was like a weight had been lifted off everybody's shoulders, everything would be okay for a few more days.

Or so he thought.

There was a cannon about an hour ago, but Raptor wasn't too worried then – Ilara, Berengar, and Amaro must've found somebody and taken them out. Now that the robotic voice is about to share the day's victims, a sudden chill washes over his back.

"What if it's one of them?" he asks.

"Don't say that," Selah shouts. "Are you trying to jinx something?"

"I'm not but–"

"It is with great sadness that we report one of our rehabilitants is no longer with us. Please join us in a moment of silence to honor Amaro Yukawa from District Three."

"But what?" She crosses her arms before Raptor can even let the announcement sink in. "You jinxed it!"

"What the fuck…" Eirian's voice trails off and he stares up at this strange lobby room's ceiling. "What the actual fuck?"

"I don't know," Selah says. "Do you think the other two are okay?"

"I'm not worried about them right this second. What happened to Amaro?"

"We probably won't know until Ilara and Berengar come back," Raptor does his best to answer calmly. "If they do, that is."

"They've got to come back! I want to know what happened – what the fuck?"

"Well, you're not going to get anywhere just complaining," Selah sneers. "What happened to you? Seriously, Eirian. You need to get a grip."

"I would if any of this made any sense. I thought we were fine because I had a new strategy but now Amaro's dead and just…" He flops onto the ground and begrudgingly sighs. "I wish this made more sense."

"The Games aren't supposed to make sense."

"Don't tell me that!"

Not another word is exchanged until the elevator chimes and Ilara and Berengar walk into the room. The two look exhausted and their faces are covered in blood – is it Amaro's or someone else's?

"Tell us what happened," Raptor demands before Eirian can open his mouth. "Amaro. Where are they? What happened?"

"Mutts," Ilara answers matter-of-factly. "Ninth floor – they looked like goblins."

"Shit!" It seems like Eirian buys it. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! Was there anything you guys would have done or? Shit."

"I mean… maybe we could've tried to put their head back on their body after they clawed it off?" Berengar squints. "I don't think that's how things work though."

"Oh…" Eirian groans. "That's brutal. I wish I could do something."

"I wish you could do something too."

"I'm sorry?"

"I didn't mean to sound aggressive, that's my bad," Berengar says. "I just… you're the one who said you want as many living allies as possible."

"Yeah, you did say that," Ilara chirps.

Whatever act they're putting on, Raptor doesn't buy it for a second. Seriously, could they be any less subtle in their attempt to cover up that they clearly killed Amaro?

"Are you guys trying to imply this is my fault?" Eirian squints — surely he isn't actually falling for this shit, right?

"I'm saying that it is what it is," Berengar replies. "Amaro's dead — what are we going to do moving forward?"

Eirian frowns and Raptor shouts, "Give him time to think, for fucks sake."

He doesn't like seeing Eirian upset like this. With every misstep on the alliance's part, the One boy becomes less and less like himself. Raptor knows the Games can breed monsters but in a way it's even more fucked up when they make the largest titans seem so small in an instant.

Eirian's eyes dart back and forth as if staring at the same spot for too long would make him cry. Seeing him like this will never not be strange.

"We'll be fine," the One boy says, though he doesn't sound convincing in the slightest. "Before the war, there were only four to six people in the Pack and they did fine."

"Did they?" Ilara asks. "If I recall correctly, those groups weren't as successful and by quite a considerable margin."

"It doesn't matter!"

But Raptor knows it does. He knows that to Eirian, this matters more than anything. Yet there's hardly anything he can do about it. Accusing Berengar and Ilara of killing Amaro when everybody's tense could easily make things worse. Or maybe he should just rip off the bandaid now…

"You guys are doing a really bad job of hiding this shit," Raptor says.

Selah nods. "You're thinking of the same thing I am, aren't you?"

"What are we hiding?" Berengar sneers. "I can't read your mind, Raptor."

That's news – he's always been able to in the past. Raptor thinks he still can, he's just too afraid to say it too. Probably because he knows what Raptor's thinking is true.

"It's whatever." He crosses his arms.

"Guys…" Eirian says with a low groan. "We need to–"

He seems to catch his own words in his throat, his cheeks puffing up and his face turning red.

"What do we need to do?" Ilara asks – seems like the "changed women" she claimed to be a few days ago is dead and gone.

"I'll think it over." Eirian stands tall and stretches his arms above his head. He walks toward the elevator, but before he walks through the door, he turns his head over his shoulder, his eyes wide and staring directly at Raptor.

"Where are you going?" He squints in confusion.

Eirian shrugs. "Just come with me."

Raptor gets off the ground but his legs remain still. Everything in his mind tells him he has no reason to follow Eirian, his eventual enemy whether he wants to admit it or not.

But, his heart (since when has Raptor had one of those?) says otherwise. He takes a deep breath, taking in the collective anger of the room – Berengar, Selah, and Ilara all furious for very different reasons. Raptor's upset too, but for once he doesn't want to be.

He diverts his attention back to Eirian, because even in these trying times, he seems less angry and more hurt. That's what Raptor needs right now, so in spite of everything he's ever been and everything he'll have to become if he wants to make it out of here alive, he follows the One boy.

When the elevator arrives and Eirian takes an extended breath of relief, Raptor knows he made the right choice.

"What are you thinking about?" He watches as Eirian carefully examines the buttons on the elevator and selects the top one, marked with an "R."

"Everything and nothing at the exact same time."

The elevator shoots up straight, not stopping as it flies past the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. It dings, then its doors open to reveal an empty rooftop with nothing but what seems to be a power source in the middle.

When the cool air brushes through Raptor's hair, he realizes just how much he missed being outside – how has it been almost an entire week of being indoors? Now that he thinks of it, the last time he was outside, it was just like this: him and Eirian in the dead of night with hardly anybody around.

"It's nice here," the One boy says, tip-toeing around the roof's perimeter but never straying too close to the edge. "Quiet too."

"Almost makes me forget where we are," Raptor admits. "Emphasis on almost." Besides the uniforms, the only thing that reminds him they're in an arena is the large metal structure next to their building that's identical to it in size.

"I can't really forget where we are." Eirian finds a spot on the ground to sit, still too far from the rim for his feet to dangle off the building. "It's a bit impossible when–"

"When I'm next to you in a blood-soaked gown?" Raptor sits beside him. "Sorry about that – if that's something you want me to apologize for."

"I don't want you to apologize for anything. It's not just how we look. It's that no matter how hard I try to ignore it, everything downstairs is a complete shitshow."

"Life's a shitshow."

"Doesn't mean I want it to be."

"Of course you don't. Nobody wants that."

"I just…" Eirian pauses and his face turns red. He starts blinking rapidly, but it doesn't stop the rivulets of tears from falling out of his eyes and down his face. "This wasn't supposed to happen. I thought the eight of us would stay united for longer."

"Don't cry." Raptor's never dealt with a crying person before and he decidedly doesn't like it. He knows that when people are angry, he's supposed to take advantage of that and fight them, but when they're sad? Raptor has no clue. He rips off a strip from the bottom of his gown and hands it to the One boy. "You don't need to."

Crying shows weakness. Raptor refuses to believe even an ounce of Eirian is weak.

He wipes his face with the cloth. "I'm trying my best to be a good leader, y'know."

"I do — and you're doing a great job."

"Am I? Three of us are dead and it's only the sixth day."

"That's out of your control."

"Even Circe?"

"Yes. Even Circe." Granted, Raptor wasn't there when that happened, but for the sake of his argument, he'll assume Eirian couldn't have done anything to prevent it. He's got the feeling he's right.

The One boy takes a deep breath then an extended pause. Once the tears stop flowing from his eyes, he sighs and whispers, "I don't want to die, Raptor."

His heart sinks. "Since when are we talking about us dying?"

"It's going to happen eventually. At least one of us is going to die, and I don't know what to think about it, because I want more than anything to win, but that would mean you dying, and I don't want you to die."

Eirian's right. Raptor wonders if he's aware of the increasing chances that they'll be one another's downfalls. He always thought Berengar would be his final competition, but with every passing moment, Raptor wants it less.

(Because beating Berengar once and for all is just as much of an ending as his own death. If he spends all his time anticipating it, it gives him nothing to look forward to after.)

(Does he have anything to look forward to regardless?)

"We don't need to think about that right now," Raptor says, even if it's the only thing he can think about most of the time. "Tell me, Eirian. What in District One makes you want to keep living? Who were you before you volunteered?"

"Why don't you tell me the same first? I feel like I hardly know anything about you."

Well, it's not like there's much to know about Raptor anyway. His mom's a stereotypical loyalist prick and he hasn't seen his dad in years. He's supposed to be devoted to being better than the guy and bringing glory to Two, but he doesn't give a fuck in the slighest. All he knows is fighting after Berengar taught him, and he's never felt a drive to know anything else.

"My dad's been out of the picture for most of my life because my mom for some reason hates him," Raptor begins. "I don't have any siblings and I started training when I was around seven or eight because she wanted me to volunteer and clear the family name since he apparently ruined it. Everything was pretty boring until I met Berengar. Things are still boring at times, so most of my free time is spent fighting my classmates – sometimes I spice things up and go to technically illegal fighting rings, which Berengar always hated."

"That seems like quite the life!" Even though Raptor feels like he's being the least interesting person of all time, Eirian's positively beaming. "Why do you like fighting?"

A heavy question – he wishes to avoid it. "I'll answer when you tell me what your deal is. It's fair."

"Right. My parents are still together, but they seem unhappy lately. My sister Delytha's five and a half years my senior, and when I was born, my mother at least sort of expected I'd be just like her. She put me in Delytha' hand-me-down skirts and dresses in hopes I'd take up pageantry like Delthya, but I was never into it."

"So you were born a–"

"A pretty little princess, yep." Eirian chuckles – Raptor hopes he wasn't offensive. "Hard to believe now, I know. I'm lucky my parents stopped pushing femininity as soon as I expressed my disinterest, but it still took me a while to feel like a man. That's what made me think I needed to train for the Games, even if I didn't get chosen to volunteer. Then there was the issue of tuition, because we hardly had any money to begin with and my hormones were pretty expensive. Is it like that at Two's academies?"

"No, actually. They're completely free, but it's really intense so lots of people drop out with every passing year."

"Oh… Well, I studied myself sick and then somehow was lucky enough to get a scholarship – they even gave me medical insurance, a dorm, and three meals a day so my parents didn't really pay for anything related to me which meant I didn't need to get a job and I could focus on training. Turns out, I was really good at it, and because my mom's like six feet tall and my dad's seven, the hormones made me shoot up until I was the tallest in my year."

"Ah, yeah – I was curious about that."

"Most people are, especially once they learn I was born a girl. I'm not offended, I promise." Eirian closes his eyes, like he's unsure he wants to continue telling this story. But, he ultimately does. "So yeah, training went great for the most part, but whenever I visited home for weekends and holidays, things got really rough. My parents were really proud of me but that was basically the only thing they could agree on. Delytha sort of resented me though – she thought that I was the favorite child, and I do sort of get where she's coming from. Her modeling career wasn't going too great and eventually she got into drugs to cope which drained a lot of money. She met some guy and they didn't last long, but it turned out she's pregnant with his kid. He, of course, is nowhere to be found."

"I remember you mentioning that!" Raptor's mind travels back to the night he and Eirian first met. He still can't believe he hated him then. "You said you wanted to win so you could help her with the kid."

(And it made Raptor feel sick because his reasoning and motivating forces aren't nearly as strong.)

"I do, yeah. Oddly, being at her lowest made her hate me significantly less. It's been really nice getting closer with her the past five months or so. She was unintentionally the push I needed to actively seek the volunteer spot after everybody was already whispering that it'd be me. I never wanted to because I just… I didn't see how winning the Games would improve my life until Delytha gave me something to live and die for."

Eirian reaches back his gown, reaches into the pockets of his shorts, and pulls out the same drawing he was working on the first night. It's mostly the same, except there's now somebody standing next to the baby – himself. "It's strange that this could be the closest I ever get to meeting the kid."

"I hope you do meet him." Raptor's not sure if he means it, because that would again mean his own death. Despite Eirian giving Raptor a million reasons why he's the best person to come out of this arena victorious, he still wants to win.

That's perhaps the most selfish he's ever been, but he can't help it. He hardly lived before he entered these walls – he was always his mom's unruly disappointment or Berengar's hot-tempered subordinate. That's not who Raptor wants to die as.

(Then what is he supposed to live as?)

"I hope you get whatever you're motivated by," Eirian says, also visibly unsure. "You never told me what it is, by the way. And why you like fighting?"

Raptor was desperately hoping Eirian'd forgotten his lack of an answer. "I like fighting because it keeps life interesting, I guess. It teaches me different things about myself and my instincts and I get this rush when I'm observing the way other people move. I'm always striving to be better, and the more I fight, the more I find ways I can improve."

"So what's the end goal then?"

"I'm not sure," Raptor admits. "I spent so much of my time engaging in organized spars with Berengar and it propelled me to get to this point. We both figured the Games would be a fitting stage for our final fight and I'd like to win since he beat me in our first. Then there's the thing with my mom, and even if she hates my guts, I don't want to disappoint her."

"What if they're not in the picture?" Eirian asks. "Then what are you fighting for?"

He grunts. "I don't know. Maybe just… the chance to live a life where they're not pigeon-holing me into different roles. Everyone in Two says I'm a bloodthirsty vicious monster because of the sheer amount of fights I get in, and I'd like to change that."

When the One boy doesn't immediately answer, Raptor adds, "I know, you have lots of better reasons to be here and win. I'm sorry I–"

"Don't apologize! Everybody's different, that's what makes this world beautiful. If it means anything, I think you have the potential to be anything you want to be and I disagree with your peers' assessment of you."

It does. It means far too much.

"Even after what I did in the bloodbath?"

"I mean, we're taught in District One that everybody loves a show…"

A pause, then Raptor realizes, "We didn't talk about the alliance and what our next steps are!"

"I know we didn't." Eirian smiles. "I didn't want to talk about them, I wanted to talk about you."

"Well then I'm sorry that I mentioned Berengar."

"Don't be. He's clearly an integral part of who you are, even if you seem to want to change that."

"I do want to, yes."

"Like I said before, I think you can."

"You think a lot of me yet you hardly know me." Raptor's lucky there aren't any mirrors around right now. He's ninety-nine percent sure his entire face is red, and he doesn't want to see it.

"I know enough to mean the good things I say about you. Besides, something tells me you haven't told Berengar the things you told me tonight."

"You'd be right, unfortunately."

"Why is it unfortunate?" Eirian shifts himself across the floor so he's close enough to Raptor that their shoulders slightly touch.

Something weird and unfamiliar swirls in Raptor's stomach as the One boy stares directly in his eyes, maybe right into his soul as well. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do about it.

(He does know, but that'll only make things worse for him in the long run.)

Raptor yawns, then abruptly stands up. "We've been out here a while, huh? We should probably head back to the others – I don't want them to worry we're in trouble or anything."

"Right," Eirian says hurriedly, then rises to his feet and dashes toward the elevator, Raptor following close.

As the One boy repeatedly presses the elevator call button, he glances back at Raptor. Does he know what Raptor was thinking about just moments ago? Probably, but he can't bring himself to wonder further.

It arrives, and Eirian walks through the doors with a satisfied smile Raptor doesn't understand. "Thank you for talking to me tonight. I feel a lot less nervous about everything."

"Thank you for talking to me too." Raptor swallows his own smile. "I'm definitely less confused."

The joy he feels instantly fades away as soon as the elevator doors shut. He's no longer in some fantasy land where he can openly express his feelings. He's dancing on the line in between life and death where it doesn't take two to tango.

It may have been nice, but Raptor's not here for things to be nice.

In another life, there's so many things Raptor'd do differently, even if he doesn't know what those things are. Because this isn't another life, these fleeting moments of happiness will have to suffice.

---

He wakes up to the worst sound he's ever heard, and that's saying a lot. In Raptor's eighteen years, he's been subject to many terrible noises – his parents arguing, Peacekeepers arresting random pedestrians, unholy cries of desperation as the victims of Two's annual Cadet kill test meet their bitter ends, Lycoris' whimpers less than a week ago – but none of them would have prepared him for this.

Nothing has ever compared to Eirian's agonized screams.

Raptor springs from the operating table he spent the night resting on. He's not entirely conscious, but he doesn't need to be to grab his brass knuckles from underneath his pillow and identify that the noise is coming from the room directly next to him. He runs into the room, his knuckles white hot against his weapons and dreadful sweat dripping down his face.

In Raptor's eighteen years, he's also been subject to many terrible sights – his dad's look of horror as his mom insisted she and Raptor run away, people in the alleyways that didn't survive Two's harsh winters, the line of brutalized bodies at the conclusion of the kill test, Eirian's spontaneous tears less than eight hours ago – but none of them would have prepared him for this.

Nothing has ever compared to Berengar pushing Eirian against the wall with a drill held to his temple.

"R-Raptor?!" The One boy sobs, his voice scratchy as he tries to escape. . "I don't k-know what's happening?"

"Shut up, Velvedere," Berengar sneers. "Oh Raptor, what do you say I let you do the honors?"

"What do you mean?" Eirian tries to break free, leading Raptor to notice Berengar's somehow got his hands and legs cuffed to the wall. "You want t-to?"

"He talked about it the whole way to the Capitol. From the moment he saw you, he's wanted you dead."

"What?"

"No I don't!" Raptor roars, his vision red and the heat of a thousand flames crawling through his mind. "Eirian, I don't." He runs over to the boy and tries to undo his cuffs. "That was before I met you. I was… I didn't know you. I didn't know you were so–"

"Save it!" Berengar slaps Raptor's mouth and he bites down on his tongue. "Don't let him lie to you. He's never been known for his honesty."

"Fuck you." He shoves the blade of one brass knuckle into Berengar's left side. Even when he starts bleeding, the other boy doesn't move a muscle or make a sound.

"What are you doing this for? Remember, Raptor – Eirian's your enemy here. He's from District One and you loathe District One. He's getting in between our final fight."

"No he's not." Raptor clenches his teeth and continues to dig his blade into Berengar's flesh. "Eirian, you haven't done anything wrong."

"Don't listen to him!"

With his other blade, Raptor tries to remove the drill from Berengar's hand, but his grip remains firm. He trusts the other boy from side to side, but again he pays no mind.

"Eirian, this isn't your fault. Nothing has ever been your fault. Now give me a second and I'll…"

Raptor removes the first blade and holds it against Berengar's throat. Before he can sink it into his skin, the other boy squeezes tight on the drill's trigger.

Immediately, blood pours from Eirian's skull, in thick clumps. He tries to shout, but nothing he says is coherent. If it was, Raptor wouldn't be able to say anything in response, dust from the One boy's skull catching in the back of his mouth.

As Berengar continues to drill, Raptor pierces through his neck, though his coughing and shaking prevents him from cutting too deep. From his peripherals, he watches as Eirian's eyes roll over to a sickly white and frayed chunks of gray matter fall onto the floor.

The sound of Eirian's screaming gets drowned by Berengar's maniacal laughter which isn't much better. The alarm's piercing cry isn't better either.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" As soon as Berengar drops the drill, Raptor charges at him and shoves him against the operating table. "Why would you… FUCK YOU!"

"Why are you upset?" He coyly asks. "I'm just paving the way for us."

"YOU'RE NOT DOING ANYTHING!" Raptor plants one of his blades into Berengar's stomach then scans the room for something else he can use that's bigger. "Why HIM?"

"He was a distraction," Berengar answers. "He couldn't get in the way of our finale and he had to die eventually. Same went with Amaro."

"Of course you killed him too."

"Hey, Ilara helped. Give her some credit."

Raptor grabs a large saw off the wall and grabs the handle with his spare hand. "I don't give a fuck about our final fight, Berengar."

His smile softens into an expression of hurt. Good – he deserves to be upset. He deserves to feel the wrath of every kill at the hands of somebody from Two in the past century, and then the agony of all of his deaths.

Because Berengar… he– he– He took the one thing in Raptor's life that could've been good, and he ruined it.

"You don't mean that!"

But Raptor means it a hundred thousand times. Berengar doesn't deserve to cross Raptor's path once more, nor does he deserve a proper fight. He threw that opportunity away when he demolished Eirian as if he was nothing.

Funny how five years and 536 fights can stop meaning a thing in less than five minutes. Funny how Raptor doesn't feel an ounce of remorse as he saws across Berengar's throat. If Berengar wanted him to feel guilty, he shouldn't have done the one thing that'd remove Raptor's capability of feeling guilt.

He shouldn't have. He shouldn't have. He shouldn't have.

"FUCK YOU FOR SAYING THAT TO HIM."

With an aggressive movement, the saw sinks into Berengar's flesh, a crunching noise drowning out his screams.

"FUCK YOU FOR SUGGESTING I DO THAT."

Raptor digs through Berengar's throat, strips of the boy's skin falling to his sides and the remains of his trachea and vocal cords flying in bloodied lumps.

"FUCK YOU FOR THINKINING I WOULD."

Crimson bile spills from Berengar's mouth and a sick part of Raptor relishes in it all. No, every part of Raptor is positively ecstatic to watch the spine of the boy who ruined him snap in half.

"FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!"

He's not sure if he's heard the alarm mark Berengar's death by now but he doesn't give a fuck. Raptor giggles with glee as he tears the other boy's head off the rest of his body and throws it against the ground.

He laughs as he plants the saw into Berengar's stomach and begins to butcher him once more. The sides of Raptor's vision get more and more red with every movement, but it feels so right. As Berengar falls apart beneath him, completely helpless, Raptor knows with conviction that there was no way a final fight could be this satisfactory.

Raptor was born to flay Berengar for all that he's worth. From the moment the two of them met, this was always how it'd end. Fuck their promises and to hell with the idea of nobility, Berengar's taken Raptor off his leash once and for all. He doesn't need to be a valiant soldier or an honorable friend anymore.

He needs to be what he always was, a bloodhound.

(But whenever he sees Eirian's crumbled form, he doesn't want to. He wants to be the same person who put everything on the table last night and the same person who was eager to listen.)

(That person died alongside Eirian. This is who Raptor's always been inside – disgusting of him to think he was capable of anything else.)

"I'm so sorry," Raptor whispers to what remains of the One boy's ear. "You don't deserve an ounce of what happened to you." Even softer, "You don't deserve to witness the person I feel myself becoming."

And in a twisted way, Raptor's finally found what he's fighting for. If Eirian's dead, nobody here deserves to live. They deserve the same terrible fate, and Raptor's ready to deliver it.

He's too busy slicing Berengar to his core to notice the sound of the elevator and the panicked footsteps that chase toward him. It takes Selah tapping him on he shoulder for Raptor to notice her and Ilara standing directly behind him.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?"

"What did you do?" Selah's jaw drops to the ground.

Raptor gnashes his teeth but otherwise pays her no mind. Why should he? Him and Ilara are going to kill him, right? That's what they want to do right now.

They can't.

Nobody can kill him. In this form, Raptor Voinov's untouchable.

"I'M DONE WITH YOU BOTH."

He briefly ensures both his brass knuckles are still on his person, then cradles the saw in his arms. Raptor charges out of the room and doesn't notice he's ran all the way to the stairs until he's managed to trip over one of his legs and fall onto one of the platforms.

Raptor gets up. He's fine. That can't kill him. poNothing can kill him.

He looks at the wall that he notices he's on the third floor that once haunted him. It doesn't anymore. Nothing can haunt him like the sound of Eirian's screams. Nothing can haunt him like the sight of Eirian's body.

He notices various supplies scattered around the floor but he doesn't care if they belong to somebody. When they show their faces, Raptor will fight them until they're as dead as Berengar – as dead as Eirian.

(That's all he has now anyways – fighting. He needs to make them good. He needs to prove that he'd have beat Berengar if their fight was fair. He needs to prove that he can beat everybody here.)

The minutes feel like seconds and the hours feel like minutes as Raptor perches on one of the miniature couches. The only thing that indicates a long time has passed is the fact that whatever mix of Berengar and Eirian's blood has dried completely to his skin and gown.

Silence and inactivity should be calming, but they're the exact opposite. Every minute Raptor spends sitting still, as brief as they may feel, is a moment where he wishes his blades were prying open somebody's throats as they bled until they were dead like Eirian.

Eirian, because it doesn't matter that Berengar is dead. Nothing in the past five years ever ever mattered if this was always the other boy's intention.

Though the two people who eventually rush into the room scream at the sight of Raptor, he remains unfazed. There's two of them, yes, they're both from District Twelve, but they're hardly a match for him. Nobody's a match for him. The only people who were are dead.

Raptor unleashes a primal roar as he jumps off of the couch and tackles one of the Twelves, a girl with long dark blades, to the ground. The other Twelve, who's older and has shorter and straighter hair, hisses, then withdraws a pocket knife and slices down Raptors arm.

He's fine. That can't kill him. Nothing can kill him.

He pulls back the Twelve girl beneath him's hair and plants a blade into her eye socket. While he tries to push the other one away, he mushes and stirs the girl's eye until one would hardly be able to tell it was originally a solid object and not a red and white puree that leaks onto the carpet.

Twelve screams, and she even bucks her hips and tries to bite the inside of Raptor's wrists, but he pays it no mind. Instead, he gives up on trying to push the other Tribute away and sticks both his blades into the girl's mouth.

He grunts, sawing through her gum and her jaw and peeling her skin off of each bone. There's blood. There's lots of blood, but it's so red that Raptor doesn't even see it – it cakes into the blood that fills his mind and vision.

When the alarm marks her death, Raptor moves onto the other Tribute. She cries, but if it's saying any actual words, Raptor doesn't hear a single one. All he hears are Eirian's screams like a broken record that sets the rhythm for him as he tries to saw away the hand she's holding a knife in.

It looks at him with fury, then punches him square in the jaw. His mouth fills with the metallic taste of blood and a stinging sensation so he parts open his lips and lets one of his front teeth fall onto the ground.

He's fine. That can't kill him. Nothing can kill him.

Raptor's teeth sink into Twelve's knuckle as she tries to knock him to the ground.

"Go away," he whispers, shocked he's capable of doing so.

It doesn't – why? Instead, it stabs Raptor's hand.

She doesn't know what she's dealing with. Even when she stabs his other hand, she has no idea what's soon to come. Raptor wants to tear it to shreds. He wants to overpower her and outplay its wits because he's better. He's so much better.

Twelve doesn't deserve to be here. Nobody deserves to be here.

(Least of all, Raptor himself.)

A robotic voice plays through the walls but the only words Raptor hears are "Eirian" and "Berengar." They both send shivers down his spine, propelling Raptor to tear his hand away from Twelve's knife and curl his fingers into a fist and–

Everything is red and there's something underneath his armpit – Raptor thinks there is at least. There's so much red and it slowly turns to black and he's trying to fight it but the darkness only spreads quicker and it's so fast and almost everything is black now and he can't see even though he feels his eyes and he feels himself and he knows that he's here and he knows he isn't dying and he knows he's alive and and and…

… shit.

---

The next things he sees aren't red at all. Raptor opens his eyes and he's still in the same room as before. Everythings in the same spot it was in before Raptor got here, there's just a lot more blood.

He wonders whose blood it is, because he sure is covered in it. That's… not great.

"Right," he says aloud, albeit very softly. "It was me and the Twelves. One of them died and the other either died or got away."

The one that died is dead because Raptor killed her. The other one tried to kill Raptor back, but it clearly didn't work.

He's fine. Whatever Twelve did can't kill him. Nothing can kill him.

Raptor's eyes dart around the room as he looks for more clues. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the place where he killed Lycoris at some point in the past. There's a red stain on the ground still.

It was Berengar who made Raptor kill the boy, and it upset Raptor because –

"Holy shit," Raptor mumbles to himself. "Berengar's dead, isn't he?"

Yes. Because Raptor now remembers that he killed Berengar yesterday, and he didn't even want to fight. He let Raptor kill him and didn't care. There was no final battle because Berengar did not deem him worthy.

(He thinks.)

Eirian's either still on the roof, right where Raptor left him, or he's not anywhere at all. He's probably dead, though.

Shame. Raptor doesn't want Eirian to be dead.

Eirian is supposed to win, but he won't win because he's dead.

He's dead because Berengar killed him.

And that's why Raptor wanted to kill Berengar, even if he refused to fight.

Now Raptor's here, and he still wants to fight. He wants to fight everyone.

All of that seems true, but all of the noises in his head are Eirian except sometimes they're Berengar and all of the thoughts in his head are Berengar except sometimes they're Eirian. At the same time, Raptor's not sure he sees or hears anyone at all.

Despite the red mists that crowd around him, Raptor still knows what he wants – he knows that he wants to win and that nothing can kill him so he will win. If Eirian can't win, Raptor deserves to.

(Why? This is hardly a purpose.)

(He needs no purpose. He was born to kill and maim and slaughter.)

Raptor climbs off the ground and rubs his hands against his calves to scrape away the crusted blood. This is his blood, he knows. He was bleeding because Twelve stabbed him there.

His brass knuckles are weaved between his fingers again or maybe they never left as he walks out of the third floor because he has to keep going downstairs so he can find other people and then kill other people and there's not that many left so Raptor will kill them all.

He'll fight them first and then he'll kill them because he didn't fight Berengar first, he just killed him. Berengar didn't deserve a fight but then what does it mean for Raptor? What does anything mean for Raptor if Berengar is dead and he's covered in blood and nobody is fighting they're just dying until they're all dead.

He goes down two flights of stairs because after that there's no more stairs, just the entryway to another room, which Raptor enters but he doesn't look around because somebody's here and they've put all of their weight onto him and tackled him to the ground.

Raptor blinks several times and everything is more clear now so he sees that the other person is from Ten. They're who killed Circe and then Eirian was upset and Ilara was upset and everyone was upset and now they're all dead.

Ten deserves to be dead too.

They shove a jagged blade across the middle of one of Raptor's left fingers and everything is red and it's like he's burning alive and drowning at the same time. That's not what he wants – Ten can't kill him. Nobody can kill him.

He tries to free himself from Ten's grasp but he hears the meat and muscles of his finger tearing and he feels it consuming each of his nerves. Raptor's teeth grind against each other – he can't let this hurt.

Raptor clenches his entire body and he takes the hand that's not being cut and he punches Ten's eye, which stuns them. Again, he tries to tear himself away and he's away now but his left hand feels incomplete and it keeps stinging and hurting and then he stands up and looks down and his index finger is on the floor and the spot where it was severed keeps bleeding.

There's a trail of blood as Raptor stumbles backward and bends his knees. Ten regains their footing and Raptor notices that the blade in their hand is a saw but it's smaller than the saw Raptor used when he butchered Berengar because Berengar killed Eirian and they're both dead now.

Why are they both dead now? Why is Ten the last person Raptor may ever fight?

The hand with a missing finger still hurts so much but that doesn't matter when Raptor leaps off the ground and pounces onto Ten and knocks them on the floor. There's a loud smack which could be his head or it could be something else.

It doesn't matter what it is because now Ten's blade is planted in the same hand that hurts but it's a different finger that hurts just as much as the first finger. Raptor can't let it hurt but it does hurt a lot so Ten has to hurt even more and they have to die.

He uses the blade on his right hand to dig into Ten's cheek and now they're bleeding a lot but Raptor's seen so much blood, seeing blood doesn't mean anything now. Ten's so persistent and even though Raptor's left hand is in the air, they keep reaching and they keep cutting his finger.

Either a grunt or a roar or another sound escapes Raptor's throat and he digs his right fist into Ten's chest, hoping he hears the sound his ribs crunching but all he hears is screaming and it sounds like Eirian's screaming but he isn't because he's dead and Berengar killed him.

One of his eyes gets all fuzzy and blurry and Raptor notices Ten's pierced it with their saw. But it's harder to see in general so it's hard for Raptor to aim when he swings his right blade into Ten's chest with a resonant popping sound.

That's not the same thing as an alarm so Raptor stabs again and again and again even though his own blood's dripping down his face and onto the floor and it hurts so much. It hurts so much but it won't kill him.

Maybe Raptor deserves to hurt considering his current predicament but no he doesn't. He can't hurt right now because he has to kill Ten and then everyone else and then leave this place because then maybe things will start making sense or maybe they won't – he has no way of knowing.

The splotch on the left side of his vision keeps getting larger and more blurry and then there's an alarm which means Ten is dead but Raptor isn't.

There's a mirror at one of the medical stations where Raptor notices his left eye is still inside his head but his iris is jagged and everything keeps bleeding and every drop of blood that leaves his body makes him hurt more and more. He runs his right hand around the table because the left one keeps throbbing and it doesn't even hurt in a new way now, the whole thing is very dull.

Raptor discovers a pair of scissors and doesn't think before holding it to his left eye that still hurts so much and makes him see so little. It's deadweight, so Raptor snips the area by his tear duct which stings like a clean needle. He doesn't cry because he can't since there's no tear duct and even if he could, he wouldn't cry because Raptor doesn't cry.

There's more blood that Raptor doesn't care about or let hurt him when he sticks the scissors in between his eyeball and the other side of the socket. It aches again, but it's less of a sting and more of a continuous sharp sensation which makes sense because it's scissors.

The tendons holding his eyeball to the socket tear one after the other until a final searing blow and then his vision gets better because there's no longer an inconsistent splotch, just dark. With his right eye, he watches as his now missing eyeball rolls off the desk area and onto the ground, all ruined and disgusting but no longer Raptor's problem.

The blood is his problem because there's still so much of it and the pain crashes over him like thunder and lighting. Raptor remembers he did something similar to the Twelve girls eye but she's dead so it doesn't hurt anymore but Raptor's alive and he'll never not be alive.

There's cotton balls on the table which could stop him from leaking so much blood, so he scrunches two up and puts them where his eye was, but they instantly turn red so Raptor replaces them with two more cotton balls that also turn red which means he has to try something else.

It starts with more cotton balls but this time Raptor covers them with a large square bandage that sticks to his skin, then there's some vibrant blue masking tape so Raptor cuts off a long strip with the scissors that are covered in his missing eye's sclera, and he wraps it around the socket and presses it into his slicked back hair and all around his head.

The bandaged concoction puffs up a bit because there's still a bit of blood that lingers but it's not as much. It still hurts so bad and his entire head hurts so bad. Raptor lifts his left hand and notices now two fingers are missing so his ring finger is probably on the floor somewhere and it hurts too but not as much as his eye or lack thereof.

He falls to the ground in agony and feels himself fading but he knows that he's not dying because he said he wouldn't die so now he won't die.

(Right?)

---

Again, he doesn't know how much time has passed once he regains consciousness but this time he does know what happened leading up to it. His ruined eye on the ground makes it hard for him to forget. It also reminds him that he hasn't won which means he needs to keep going and there's no time to wait.

The small windows on this floor indicate that it's still light outside so it couldn't have been too much time he spent knocked out but he can't question that since he knows there's a basement beneath him but he doesn't know how to get there.

He tip-toes around a wall and steps on something crunchy which he realizes is one of his missing fingers. It's not on his body which means it doesn't hurt. Everything hurts less overall, but the left side of his head still throbs with a dull sensation.

Raptor doesn't mind that it hurts. It means that he's still alive. He'll stay alive forever if he has his way, which he will.

He finds a ladder then hears a loud scream from below which is a good sign because it means people are there and Raptor can fight them and win and kill them. It's hard to climb down but not to a ridiculous extent once he kicks off his clogs and takes advantage of the grips underneath his socks.

The screaming continues when he reaches the first basement floor, but it still sounds like it's coming from underneath. The floor is filled with all the medical equipment Raptor could think of if he was told to imagine a lot of medical equipment. There's also a stairwell in one of the corners so Raptor squeezes his brass knuckles harder than ever then walks downstairs.

An alarm sounds as he makes his first steps into the room and there's no more screaming anymore. Instead, there's a mangled heap of flesh on the ground that Raptor identifies as the Tribute from Twelve that hurt his hand thanks to the visible strips of a navy gown.

Behind her, a familiar face stands proud. It takes a second for Raptor to identify her because at first he thinks it's Berengar who wasted their friendship and their final fight and killed Eirian. It's not him though, because it's actually Ilara and she looks wicked as she gnashes her teeth and smiles.

"I was wondering when I'd see you again," she says, and her eyes are all but popping out of her skull. "Seems you've taken a few hits, huh?"

Why is she mocking him and not fighting him? His missing eye doesn't matter. His missing fingers don't matter. Nothing matters besides winning and leaving and the voices stopping because they're all so loud and he can't even tell if they're from Eirian or Berengar anymore.

"WHY DO YOU CARE?"

Ilara's covered in blood but there's not as much compared to Raptor and her hair makes her look put together and not like everything's hurting because maybe for her it isn't. Maybe for her it has to be.

Because she killed Amaro which made Eirian angry and that made Raptor talk to him and suddenly they were close and then he was ripped away and it hurt a hundred times more. Ilara also killed Twelve who Raptor was supposed to kill because it fought him first and he needed to get revenge because she got him when he was already weak, which doesn't count.

All Ilara did was take and take and take and now Raptor has less to live for and to fight for and he doesn't have anything to live and fight for because he never did in the first place but maybe now he does.

"You need to calm down, sheesh." That's a funny thing for her to say because she doesn't sound calm at all so why does it matter whether or not Raptor's calm?

This is so exhausting and Raptor's so tired even though he's slept very recently. No sleep helps – nothing helps at all, basically.

The only things that would help are maybe Eirian or maybe Berengar but they're both dead and District Two probably hates him because of what he did to his once best friend. But since when has Raptor cared what District Two thinks? Right – he hasn't.

(But he has so many times. He doesn't want to be shoehorned into a brutish vile beast like everyone said he was. He doesn't want to love fighting because he's a sadomasochistic prick like all the people called him. Yet now he's a brutish vile beast and he can't go back to whoever he was with Eirian and sometimes with Berengar.)

Raptor squeezes his fists and he chases after Ilara but he doesn't get to her because he falls over and realizes he tripped over Twelve's corpse and now Ilara's running away.

"WHAT'S WRONG? YOU'RE TOO MUCH OF A COWARD?"

She's just like Berengar because everybody in here is, which is why they have to have their final battle and then die because Raptor won since he can't die.

Ilara travels down a hallway then turns to the right and the end and Raptor hears a door slam shut. It sounds like Eirian gasping for air when Berengar was killing him. He follows the Four girl and twist's the door handle but nothing happens because it must be locked.

"LET ME IN!"

She doesn't do that so now Raptor has to find a way to break in himself. He shoves the door with his shoulder but it doesn't make a dent. Behind him though, there's a Kitchen with a lot of cooking supplies, including a large metal pan which just might do the trick.

He grabs the pan and grips it tightly which is very difficult when one hand only has three fingers and both hands can't bend much because of the brass knuckles and the pan is also very heavy.

When he swings it at the door, there's a cracking sound which makes Ilara scream. Raptor drops the pan then punches the part where the sound came from until there's a hole and he can peek inside to see Ilara hunched on the ground in a ball.

"DO I REALLY HAVE TO BREAK DOWN THE REST OF THIS?"

Why is he so loud now, always? Raptor's voice keeps scratching and burning against his throat but whenever he tries to whisper, he doesn't even hear his thoughts inside his head – it all goes silent.

Ilara gets up, thankfully, and walks toward the door. "I still don't understand what you want."

"WHY NOT?"

Isn't it obvious? He wants to fight and then win and not die but she will die.

She opens the door, finally, and Raptor immediately grabs her shoulders and slams her head into the wall. Ilara gasps, then tries to retreat back into the room that Raptor now knows is completely empty and nothing but padding on the walls. Not the best place for a fight.

But this hallway definitely is, as long as Ilara doesn't go into any of the rooms to hide again. With his right hand, the one with all five fingers, he makes a fist, then punches Ilara's face with the front of his brass knuckle. The tiny spikes hardly cut through her skin but they do leave a red mark, which is nice to see.

Raptor hadn't noticed it before but there's a knife in Ilara's hand and it looks like it came from the kitchen since it's very long and has a serrated edge. She raises it, though the rest of her body's trembling, and tries to stab Raptor somewhere but he ducks and she doesn't.

He tries to use both of his blades to immobilize her but she dashes so there's only a small-ish cut on her left collarbone without much blood.

Is she running away again? Really?

Raptor bolts, trying to follow her down the hall, but she stops in her place and pivots then her left foot flies into Raptor's stomach which makes him hunch over.

She grabs his right wrist, and tries to push it against the wall but he keeps kicking his feet one after another at Ilara's kneecaps. He hears one start to give out so he leans over with his left knuckle to try and immobilize her for good.

That just makes it easier for Ilara to press his right hand down but at least she's bleeding around the fold of her knee and a few sounds that sound like bones and screaming. With her other foot, Ilara kicks that hand and even though it wasn't a hard kick, it still hurts a little.

It doesn't hurt nearly as much as his right hand does, though. Raptor glances upward and Ilara's blade is pressed into his right wrist and she keeps tearing through his skin and it's like his fingers all over again except way worse.

But it's not so bad that it kills him. Raptor won't let it hurt that bad.

His teeth grind together so much, there's dust in his mouth which makes it sort of hard to breath but at least he's breathing – things could be so so so much worse, but they're not. He's still alive. That's all he needs.

Even though his grip on the left knuckles isn't as study due to the lack of fingers, it's sturdy enough that Raptor can plunge the blade underneath Ilara's armpit, and make her step away from him. As she does though, there's a sudden shot of agony in his right wrist and it's like he's Eirian and Berengar's digging through his skull except that's not what's happening – it's just his muscles tearing and his tendons giving up on him and then one final wretched heat before he doesn't feel his right hand at all since it's now on the ground.

Instead he feels the hurt of everything that's happened in this place at least a thousand times over and he bends down and puts the brass knuckle from his right hand onto his left. He doesn't want to run but he has to run into one of the rooms in the hallway and then close the door shut.

It's a really small room with a really small bed and a thin mattress. There's also a white sheet that doesn't look too sturdy but it'll have to be enough. The blood's gotten all over the floor but at this point, blood doesn't mean anything to Raptor. At least it's not his brain and he can still breathe.

He rips the sheet off the bed and wraps it around the stump on his right. It doesn't stop the bleeding but Raptor didn't expect it to. All it needed to do was prevent it from somehow getting worse so Raptor can run out of the room where Ilara's standing on the wrong side of the door, so it slams into her face and she shrieks.

Raptor wonders if he's made any noise this whole time because he doesn't hear it – instead he hears screaming over and over but it doesn't sound like him but maybe it is him and he's never screamed like this so he doesn't know what it sounds like.

He takes advantage of Ilara's brief moment of stillness and rams the now double-bladed but decidedly uncomfortable concoction into her throat. She starts coughing blood like she's running out of air but she hasn't run out of air yet so Raptor channels all the pain on his right as he tears through the front of her neck then kicks her to the side.

Ilara's eyes widen then an alarm sounds. Raptor's right arm starts hurting more again but he doesn't mind it because at least he got a proper fight with Ilara where he could experience all the highs and the lows and ultimately emerge triumphant which is all he really wanted anyway.

If only that fight was with Eirian or even Berengar. Then maybe he'd die happy but now he can't die at all.

(Maybe he deserves to?)

Two gurneys like the one that took Circe's body a while ago rise into the room from the staircase – so that's where they came from. The first one stops by Twelve's body because it's still here for some reason and the second by Ilara. Raptor steps backward and lets it scoop her up, and then it rises and both of them head toward the stairs again. Even though Raptor's arm hurts more and more, he follows.

By the time he reaches the bottom of the stairs, the gurneys are gone but Raptor still hears them shuffling through the walls. There's a line of filing cabinets that twist and turn through the room – a maze. Maybe at the end, he'll see where the gurneys went?

His head is spinning and he feels so light as he treks through the files reaching dead-end after dead-end. None of them even have anything important, they're just blank sheets of paper. The good thing is, he's able to crumple them into balls and then stick them underneath the sheet over his arm but again there's so much blood and it doesn't matter but there's just so much.

It hurts more and more until he finally reaches the end of the maze and sees two large glass walls with a walkway in between. Raptor can't see Ilara or Twelve's gurney, but he can see a whole lot of other gurneys and—

Raptor falls to the ground and screams.

He closes his eye and there's so much red inside his mind and so many terrible things he doesn't want to see, so he opens it again and what's in front of him isn't much better.

Twenty bodies arranged in lines, all dressed in plain white. Their eyes are gently closed and their hands are delicately arranged at their sides. They all look so peaceful, even though Eirian knows that they weren't always like that.

Maverick's silver hair makes stand out easily. There's white stitching all over his cheek and jaw as if Raptor didn't – he doesn't even remember what he did to them, just that it wasn't peaceful like that. A few bodies to the left, Lycoris is in the same position, their hair no longer matted with blood and instead falling gently over their eyes. Raptor doesn't remember what he did to them either.

But he does remember what he did to Berengar, who he didn't want to see but then he turned around and there he was. His neck's been sewn back to his body and he looks oddly like the boy Raptor met five years ago.

The boy who said, "You know, you're wasting your time just sitting around here. Don't you want to at least have a chance?"

Granted, that's the boy Raptor told to fuck off, but it's also the boy who bothered him every day until they were fighting on an elevated platform and Raptor fell off with a smile on his face. It's the boy who gave Raptor what he at the time thought was his purpose.

He can't help but miss that boy. The more Raptor stares at him, the more Raptor misses himself just as much.

Beside Berengar is just about the last thing Raptor wanted to see, but he's no choice. Eirian looks just like he did the night before he died when they were on the roof. His smile is just as bright as Raptor remembers it.

He doesn't deserve to be dead and persevered behind glass – Raptor should've been lying in the exact same spot. It's hard for him to not think about Eirian's sister, and the child she bears that'll never meet its uncle. It's hard for him to not think about Eirian's parents and the way their son's death could possibly be what pushes them to get divorced.

Would anybody really care if Raptor was in Eirian's place? Sure, his mom would be upset, but in a disappointed way and not a mournful one. He'd like to think that if Eirian lived, he'd care at least.

If Berengar lived, he'd also care but Raptor's the one who took that chance away from him in a way that was so unfair yet so deserved. He wonders what his family's thinking about too – do they care? Were they even watching?

Even though Raptor's the one who killed him, he's got no choice but to care. He also killed the person who made him take training seriously and the person who always took care of him when he had a stupid idea and got himself beat up. He killed the person who made Raptor capable of killing him.

Something drips down his face but it doesn't feel like blood. He reaches up to his cheek then looks at his finger to see a clear liquid. Is he – no. He can't possibly be crying now of all times?

But he is, and he lets himself. His one eye makes enough tears for two and it oddly makes everything hurt less – even stub. Raptor doesn't let himself wipe the tears away, instead embracing each and every one of them.

He pushes his nose against the glass in between Eirian and Berengar and whispers – yes, he's capable of whispering now. "I don't know what I'm sorry for, but I am. I know I'm no longer the person who cherished you both, but my feelings haven't changed."

"And I'm also sorry…" Raptor takes a deep breath. "For the path I have to further myself down if I want to be myself in the end."

(Or has he been himself for the past few days and was the Raptor Voinov who actually cared about people nothing but a scam?)

Ilara and Twelve's remains rise into the room and they're both dressed in white. Raptor exhales – it's time for him to get out of here. Unfortunately, the maze is just as difficult when traveling the opposite direction. More unfortunately, his stub is really starting to fucking hurt.

At least his legs work as he pushes himself up the stairs since he can't go down any further. Even in all his hurt, Raptor's oddly peaceful. His purpose may not be to live to remember others, but it can work for now.

The floor above where he killed Ilara is chock full of medical supplies, just as Raptor remembered. He tears off the sheet and all the pain instantly comes back – shit. He tries not to look but as he sprints around the room, the gnarly remnants of his flesh sneak into his peripherals. But at least he's seeing something and not the eternal void of death.

He won't die. Eirian and Berengar, wherever they may be, won't let him die.

Raptor dashes over to the first sink he finds and turns on the water on the coldest setting. His blood starts pouring into the basin but Raptor still feels relieved. He increases the water pressure until there's a chill running up and down his entire body and suddenly it doesn't hurt so much – it's just really numb. He'll take that over pain any day.

Underneath the sink, there's a bucket of ice with small plastic trash bags hanging off the side. It's hard with three fingers, but he scoops the ice into the bag, then leaves it inside the sink. He turns off the water and pats his stub until it's dry, which does make it sting a bit but at this point that doesn't mean a thing to him – nothing does.

He runs around again then jumps with joy when he finds sealed packages of gauze and elastic sports bandages. Raptor wraps the gauze tightly around his stump then seals it with the bandage until it feels secure. He wraps another bandage around his missing eye and over his head, more so as a precautionary method then anything else.

Then, he returns to the ice bag, sticks his stump inside, and pulls the straps until he feels more relief wash over him. Maybe there's more Raptor could do, but he sure as hell wasn't paying attention when he was being taught. This works for now – it'll have to.

Maybe he should be tired by now but the adrenaline pumping through his veins says otherwise. Instead, it tells Raptor to get his shit together, climb up the ladder, and do what he can to win because he's so so close now.

The three fingers and bag make the ladder quite difficult, but he makes it up eventually and notices the sun's beginning to set, thanks to the large glass door that seems to lead outside. Because there's nobody on the first floor, outside should probably be his next destination.

There's not much for Raptor to look at outside, just an endless meadow that seems like an illusion from every side of the building and then of course, the towering scaffolding.

He hears whispers, then turns to see the girl from Five, Mahina, and the boy from Six, Foden, squeezed closely together. How the hell is the little one still alive?

Maybe if Raptor fought and killed Foden when he wanted to before Berengar and Ilara stopped him, the girl'd be dead by now and then it'd just be Raptor and… shit. Selah's still alive, isn't she.

That's a problem for however long it'll take for Raptor to kill these two, not that he plans to go down without a fight first.

All the peace and serenity he thought he'd finally found seems to flee his body when he looks eyes (eye?) with Foden. Did it ever matter if it was gone so quickly?

(Yes. It matters. It's what Raptor can be someday.)

(No. It doesn't matter. A monster is all that he'll ever become.)

Raptor growls, then lurches toward him. Foden diverts his vision away from Raptor, then starts climbing up the scaffolding. Mahina looks at him, then Foden flashes her a thumbs up and she climbs too.

For Raptor, this is definitely going to be difficult, but it's what has to happen. He wraps the handless arm around one of the railings then the one with three fingers on top of it. With a jump, Raptor swings his legs around, making sure the bag on his stump can't slip off.

He clenches his teeth and tries to shuffle up the railing so he can hopefully knock the two of them off, but instead he hears his gown chafing against the metal and beginning to tear when he's not even three feet off the ground.

There's a childish giggle, probably from Mahina, then the sound of Foden jumping from above and landing flat on his feet. He lifts his arms up and catches Mahina when she jumps the same.

Raptor tries to shimmy down, already prepared to slice the two of them to shreds, but he feels something sharp in his thigh, as he thumps onto the grass and the world turns black.

---

He's no longer shocked when he wakes up despite the horrors he previously endured. So many things could've killed him by now, but none of them have and that has to mean something.

Though Raptor's skull throbs inside his skeleton and his severed hand is back to hurting, he can't pay it any mind. The sun's now rising instead of setting, which means he was out for quite some time and that's time he could've spent fighting and slaughtering Mahina and Foden. They left him like this and disappeared, too cowardly to actually kill him which will be the last mistake they ever make.

His gown is all but completely torn and there's dried blood down his left thigh where one of the two but more realistically Foden must've stabbed him. But, his shorts underneath are fine, so maybe he doesn't need the gown anymore. It's not like he'll be here much longer.

Raptor rises to his feet, secures his brass knuckles and rips off the now-melted ice bag. The stump is starting to sting again and that sting is turning into more of a burn, but he can't let that ruin anything. He can't let anybody or anything kill him because Raptor will have his final fight and he will emerge victorious.

That's what Eirian and Berengar want, right?

Walking's a fair bit more difficult with his leg injury, but it's not killing him and he's still walking. It's just that the stairs probably aren't his best option, especially if he'll be going up. So that means the elevator is his new best friend and it'd probably be more worthwhile if he started from the top floor then worked his way down.

The highest he can go is of course the roof, but Raptor doesn't dare touch that button. The roof is he and Eirian's space – he can't taint those glorious memories. So, tenth floor it is.

It occurs to him that he's got no way of knowing how many people are still alive since he slept through any possible alarms. It could be everyone that's left or it could be some random mix of two or just one person between him and victory. What the fuck is he supposed to do if his long-awaited final battle ends up being between him and a thirteen year old girl?

That's luckily not a question he needs to answer because the elevator stops and Raptor opens the door to see Selah pacing in circles, of course. Suddenly, he's afraid for the first time he's been in years – what's about to happen to him? Of the three of them, Selah's the most capable of doing the worst to Raptor, especially since she doesn't seem injured in the slightest.

"Is it just you?" he asks, already prepared to fight in this hallway with many doors if Selah doesn't answer.

"I mean, I'm the only one here, sure."

"But are you the only person left who's alive?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Selah rolls her eyes and snickers.

"Yes. I would like to know."

He'd also like to know why it doesn't look like she's holding any weapons. This can't be so simple, but why? What is she trying to do to him – these damn Three girls.

Talking to her is a waste of time, especially if this could be the grand finale Raptor's always dreamed of. He runs over to her as fast as his body allows, but the only thing she does is smile. Raptor's right about to get her hip but instead Selah winks then runs to the end of the hallway.

What is it with these people and just running away Thankfully, she doesn't close the door, so Raptor's able to barge inside only to be met with––

Fuck shit fuck shit fuck…. ohhh what the fuck?

The excruciating pain comes first and then the realization that Selah's holding a large piece of hot metal and holding it to his stomach, like the branding from Two but noooo this is way worse, FUCK. With every second that she stands there, Raptor feels himself withering away even though there's literally not a flame. Just… oh my FUCK… shit oh my fuck shit fuckkkkkk

"WHAT THE FUCK?!"

Just like that, the beast who killed Berengar and the Twelve girl and the Ten Tribute and Ilara is back with a vengeance.

He jabs his blade into Selah's wrist as she tries to push him away, trying to scoop away parts of her flesh but only making small cuts because whenever he tries to push into her, the metal just gets hotter and hotter and hotter and he feels himself becoming less and less and less because HOLY FUCK… it never ends. It never ever ever ends, until it does end and Raptor's hunched on the floor because the metal's not there but it feels like it's there and like he's burning to a crisp and never should've tried anything anyway.

This can't be his final fight. He can't die like this because it's hardly a fight and he's not even losing because he's not fighting, he's just kneeling on the ground and then he tries to get up and– WHAT? HOLY SHIT? WHAT IS THAT?

Selah's hands are on Raptor's shoulders and there's something sinking into him but it doesn't even feel like a weapon or anything, just something leaving his body and it could be his blood or it could be anything else but regardless it's not great and it stings and it aches and suddenly he feels lightheaded – this can't be how he ends. This can't be how he dies because he won't die – not allowed not allowed not allowed.NOT ALLOWED!

"What's wrong, Raptor?" Selah sneers. "I didn't know you were allergic to leeches."

"NO!"

He's not sure if it's pain or the ferocious look in her eyes but it makes Raptor howl and then crawl onto the ground and pounce. When Selah doesn't fall over, Raptor sinks his teeth into her calf and tries to break her skin but she just shakes her leg and now he can't bite but he also doesn't want to sit there and suffer so he follows Selah into another room and he tries to stand, but his stomach hurts like a bitch and his leg is being weird.

But Raptor's still alive right? Selah hasn't killed him yet. Nobody can kill him and nobody will.

Right? Right? Right?

It can't be wrong wrong wrong but it feels so wrong wrong wrong when Selah scrapes off one of the leeches and puts an adhesive pad in its place. Raptor thrashes on the ground, then tries to reach over and take the pad off but he can't because he doesn't have enough fingers and when he moves too much everything burns and hurts.

"You know, this would be a lot quicker if you held still. I can only imagine you're in a lot of pain."

Yes he is but no he's not going to hold still because that's just admitting defeat and the less he's still the more he can prove to himself that he's alive, even when Selah flips a switch and there's a tingling sensation all over coming from the patched area, so Raptor leans with his head and tries to tear it away with his teeth because it doesn't feel like a tingle anymore it's like there's a thousand needles piercing his body at the same time and then those needles are being run over by a train that keeps crashing into walls.

It hurts so much, Raptor doesn't even know if it hurts at all because so much hurts and it all feels so awful and then he finally gets the patch off of him with a final jolt, but nothing hurts any less and Selah's holding a syringe in her hand and smiling like a sick fuck madwoman sick and twisted fucked up SHIT!

She sticks the needle into the side of Raptor's arm and pushes down on the syringe while he tries to writhe away from it. It doesn't work because since when does anything work and what even did she give him?

What did she give him and why does he feel so light and fluffy like he's dead and up in the clouds but he still sees himself moving and he knows his body and mind are his but it doesn't feel like he's alive and controlling everything, he's just punching and kicking and screaming.

Did he actually die? No… dead people can't think except maybe they do, Raptor's never died before so he doesn't know what it's like. He doesn't want to die ever, so he just thinks really hard and his body is moving but it doesn't hurt. It's in pain for sure but it's not Raptor's pain – it's just pain that's in his body but he's not in his body? Is this what it felt like for Eirian and Berengar?

Even though it's hard for him to balance, Raptor gets up and stands next to Selah. She looks at him like he's a fool and maybe he is a fool but he also knows that she still doesn't have a weapon and the electricity machine is still on which means he can grab the back of the padding and slap Selah's face and then stick it on then twist a button on the machine and then she's shrieking so loud and she's on the ground vibrating.

He tip-toes away from Selah and he's back in the room with the hot iron, which he grabs by the handle and it makes his hand hurt a lot because he's probably holding it the wrong way but he doesn't feel it hurting, he just knows that it is.

Raptor shoves it against the back of Selah's neck, then uses his leg to kick her over while she still trembles and aches and screams screams that sound like Eiran and Berengar and everybody and nobody but now the iron's on her throat and Raptor can pull the patch off and stick it on her chest so she's kicking so hard and it probably hurts as much as it should hurt Raptor but it doesn't. Why doesn't it hurt? Was it… whatever Selah injected him with? Since when does something exist that can make a person feel everything and nothing?

He moves the metal onto Selah's face because it deserves to be ruined when she knocked Raptor around while this could've been a fight and now there might not be any fights left since an alarm has gone off.

Once it's over, Raptor thinks the whole thing will be over and they'll announce that he won which must mean that at least one more person is left and even though he's not sure where his mind is, he'll take whoever it is, both at the same time if he has to, because he isn't dying now. He can't die now or in five minutes or in an hour or however long it takes.

He can't die when Berengar's dead and so is Eirian and he hasn't had a proper fight so he needs to have a proper fight. The footsteps he may or may not hear from up above seem like a good starting point but he doesn't want to go there.

The roof is for him and Eirian – not fighting and hurting and everything being terrible and Raptor not knowing what to do with himself. He was vulnerable there, and he can't be vulnerable now because that means he'll die and Raptor doesn't want to die when he can live and fight and win instead.

Raptor goes there anyway and it doesn't seem like he's even controlling himself when he calls the elevator and stumbles inside and feels it going up and then he's on him and Eirian's roof but Eirian isn't there, just Mahina who's crying and screaming.

Is that his final opponent? Is that who Raptor has to fight? No – she's a child and she can't be his opponent, that's not fair. But life isn't fair because if it was fair Raptor would be dead and not crawling toward a child with burns all over his chest and a missing eye and three missing fingers and a missing wrist and something blocking his mind from feeling any of it.

Hardly an opponent but she can be an opponent as Raptor grabs onto her and smiles a smile that doesn't even feel like a smile. It's just him wanting to fight and wanting this to be as fair as possible because if he fights her and wins this will all be worth it. He'll have his moment and then it'll all be fine and he won't die because he can't die.

"YOU AND ME, LET'S SETTLE THIS. I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL."

Mahina screams and cries even more and Raptor doesn't get it – why is she crying when he's giving her a chance and he's going to win anyway but he wants to try and he wants to her to cry and he doesn't want her to start walking toward the edge – the same one him and Eirian looked over.

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

Everyone here is either a coward or somebody who wants to kill Raptor – except for when Eirian was alive and then also when Berengar was alive because he couldn't actually want him dead since he didn't fight back and he hardly even begged really. He just… let Raptor mutilate and brutalize him and called it the end when it shouldn't have been the end.

"You don't get to touch me," Mahina says with confidence as she gets closer and closer to the edge. Raptor follows her and tries to pull her back so they can fight and then he can win but she's insistent. "I don't want you to do to me whatever you've done to make yourself look like this. I'll go out on my own terms."

And then she closes her eyes and she jumps? Why?

Is she trying to prove a point because she isn't doing a good job considering two can play at that game and she'll have nowhere to jump if Raptor follows her, which won't even hurt because nothing hurts so he can't die and then he'll fight her on the ground and it'll be the best final fight of all time and then he'll win and nothing will ever hurt again.

Raptor takes a deep breath then dives off the roof in the same spot as Mahina.

He feels his cheeks pull against his skin and then there's something that hurts and it's actually everything all over him, every injury he's sustained both in here and back at training and they all hurt so much.

Is this what dying feels like?

He's engulfed in flames and being struck by a bat over and over and everything keeps ripping and tearing and ripping and tearing yet he still feels himself breathing and bleeding but mostly breathing until he feels pressure in his head like his brain's pouring out of his ears and he'll be brainless like what Berengar called him when he did something dumb. Even if his brain is still there, it did do something really fucking dumb.

Because he hears an alarm and then, "Presenting the Victor of the Ninety-Ninth Annual Hunger Games, Raptor Voinov from District Two."

And then the only thing he sees is black and it all hurts all over again.

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