The air smells thick in here, sort of like oil and petrol from the factories back home but indescribably different.
Pete can't deny the encroaching claustrophobia he is feeling stuck in this glass cylinder, waiting to be rocketed up into the arena, into mortal danger.
He thinks distantly that this should be the most safe he's going to feel in a while, considering nobody is yet trying to kill him, but Paul and Zoey left them hours ago, and now when he looks around for reassurance he sees only the blank stare of the Peacekeeper's helmet as the soldier stands guard of him.
Paul still hadn't cried when he had said his goodbyes. His lip had been trembling suspiciously, but Pete has never seen the man shed a tear in his lifetime, and now maybe he never will.
Zoey had kissed him on the cheek and wandered off. Paul checked over his shoulder, then took one of Pete's hands in one of his, and one of Steph's hands in his other.
"Remember who the enemy is." He'd said, eyes wide and grip slightly painful. "And stay alive." The last part had been desperate in the way that Ted had been when Pete last saw him.
Ted had cried when he'd said goodbye.
Now, standing in this weird glass elevator waiting to take him to his violent demise, he takes a deep breath.
"Fight, Peter." He tells himself. The ground jolts beneath him at the same time as the ceiling does above him, and he instinctively braces himself against the sides on the cylinder. Then the platform begins to raise, and he pushes through the vertigo to peer up and around him as he emerges into the arena.
It's dark. He can hear breathing over the countdown that has started ticking in his head, and blinks rapidly as he peers into the shadows. If he squints, he can make out the figures across the room from him - and it is a room that they're in, with a tall ceiling and vast, echoing walls. He spins and almost loses his balance, searching frantically for Steph.
White light floods his vision, and he is blinded once again. Squinting now, he takes in his surroundings: it looks like his school hall back home! The floor is a waxy sort of wood and there are rows of seats along one side, although they are impossibly far away - the room is so big he feels he has been shrunk down to a foot tall. Scattered ahead of him are piles of various supplies; bags, weapons, the occasional mysterious bright colour amongst the spoils. But he can't think about what he needs, what he should aim for first, until he finds Steph.
Finally, he catches a glimpse of her, poised on her toes ready to run. She is four people away from him clockwise around the circle; he can get to her if he's careful.
He doesn't hear anything, but people start to sprint. Shit. He starts running too, bending at the waist to grab the first thing he passes, a coil of thick blue rope. He can't think of a single scenario in which it might help him but he slings it over his shoulder anyway and keeps moving.
He ploughs into someone smaller than him and they both go sprawling onto the floor. Pete flings himself up onto his knees but it's just a little girl, chestnut hair in twin braids and eyes wide. She clutches a lighter to her chest and stares at him, but before he can open his mouth to tell her to run, a blur rushes past him and grabs her by the shoulders.
The blur is a boy, looking about the same age as her, with a blue sweatband pulled down over his hair. He hauls her to her feet, glancing towards Pete with alarm before dragging her away into the shadows. The pair disappear and Pete carries on running, except he's lost Steph now.
People are whizzing around and shouts permeate the air making it thick - he drags some oxygen into his lungs and has it knocked straight back out of him when another force slams into him.
On his back now on the floor, he looks up to find Max Jägerman standing over him.
"Spankoffski." He laughs. "You haven't even found a weapon? What, are you gonna go rock climbing?"
Trying to stand, Pete kicks out at Max's leg but doesn't catch it with enough force to do much more than bruise.
Max kicks him in the chest, flooring him again, before stomping on his left arm hard enough for it to give beneath his weight.
Pete doesn't hear the crack over the sound of his own scream.
A shadow appears over Max's shoulder; as he laughs and gloats some more, pulling what looks horrifyingly like a machete from his belt, the shadow draws nearer and takes form as the crazy girl from training, Grace Chastity. Before Pete can give her away in his utter disbelief, she lifts what looks like a section of heavy pipe high over her own head, and brings it down with a thud on the bully's.
Max staggers and spins around to throw Grave away - that pause is all Pete needs to scramble away and launch himself towards the seating bank in his peripheral vision. He hears his name shouted and arms catch him from behind; he yelps only once before he realises that he knows those arms, that voice.
"Steph!" He cries out in relief. He catches sight of something glinting in his peripheral vision and yanks her to one side just as the axe that had been on course for her head sails past.
"Come on!" She yells, and takes his right hand, left arm still hugging uselessly to his chest.
They run together, slipping in blood and tripping over debris, to a set of double doors in the nearest wall, banging through them and sprinting down the corridor beyond.
It's only once they can hear only the sounds of their own footsteps and panting breath, having run for so long that they couldn't retrace their steps if they tried, ducking and weaving through doors and corridors alike, that they slow. Steph releases his hand, and Pete braces his working arm against his knee, trying not to keel over.
"Well," Steph pants, looking like she might well throw up. "That could've gone better."
