22

  LEVEL ONE: THE DRAGON STONES

  REMAINING CONTESTANTS: 9,160,998

  TIME UNTIL CULLING: 50 days

  NAME: JACK REN

  CURRENT RANK: 314,873

  Panic strikes me like a hammer.

  I try to count the enemy and give up past twenty—even if they didn’t outnumber us, it doesn’t matter. We’re sick. Weakened. Possibly even dying. We don’t stand a chance.

  I see, as our killers draw closer, that although they are human, they’re not quite like us. They’re strangely pale, with eyes threaded with gold. Perhaps they’re from Earth’s distant past—or maybe from another timeline or another world home to our species. The details hardly matter. What matters is that they’re big, strong, and well-armed. They’re wearing expressions that tell me they’ll show us no mercy.

  So, I run at the closest of their group, chaos erupting all throughout the clearing as Cole’s people either try to flee or fight. Cole himself gets up, twists his ring, and immediately starts shooting out torrents of flame. I can feel the heat of them. I can hear someone screaming.

  I tackle one of the enemies. My thinking is that I need to do as much damage, take out as many of them as I can, before I can no longer move. It won’t be long, I know, until I reach that point. My stomach cramps again. My vision swims. I hit the ground alongside my victim, who immediately draws a knife from their hip and drives it through my shoulder.

  I hadn’t expected him to be so fast, so decisive. It doesn’t help that my reflexes are slowed by whatever’s ravaging my body. The pain is immense. It paralyzes me for a moment. The man beneath me grins savagely, victorious, the gold in his eyes brightly gleaming before I hit him with a fist that craters his face. It turns out I’m even stronger now—frighteningly strong. The man isn’t quite dead, but he probably wishes he were. I hit him one more time, bone crunching, blood splashing my face, and roll to my feet, dizzy, barely able to stand. I glance at my shoulder, see the knife still jutting out of my flesh. I vaguely recall reading that, when stabbed, one should never pull out the sharp object, because it’s the only thing keeping all that blood in. So, I leave it. I doubt I even have the balls to remove it. It hurts so much that I wonder if I’m going into shock already.

  I take a moment to assess the carnage. Adrian, the FBI agent, is on the ground with his hands at his throat, trying to stem the bleeding, to cover the gaping wound across his neck . It’s a futile effort, and he’s becoming visibly weaker by the second. Elsewhere, Mary and two others are also on their knees, unharmed, but with golden-eyed foes behind them holding swords to their throats. They either intended on executing their victims or taking them captive—I can’t quite decide which outcome would be worse.

  Elizabeth is still fighting, taking aim with her crossbow, firing a bolt, then immediately reloading—but even as I watch, three men charge her all at once from different angles, and she’s lost from view. Then there’s Cole, pinned to the grass by two larger individuals.

  Ella, another of Cole’s people, lets out a shrill shriek when an arrow buries itself in her stomach. She staggers back. A golden-eyed man strides toward her. He’s as tall as I am, a little broader, head shaved, with sharp, angular features. It takes me a long, confused moment to figure out what he’s wearing.

  Skin. Human skin.

  Several skulls hang around his waist from a leather cord. Around his throat is a necklace of fingerbones.

  He nocks another arrow, and this one takes Ella through an eye, snapping her head back. The air shimmers around her killer, the ghosts of golden words forming around his head as he levels up.

  Another cramp. I twist to the side, vomit, almost fall to my knees. When I look up, the tall one with the bow, who I presume is their leader, is readying another arrow—and this one is clearly meant for me. His golden eyes meet mine. His smile is cruel and slow to form.

  “Alive, remember!” He barks, glancing at one of the others.

  And then he shoots the arrow at me.

  I know it’s coming, and I’m ready for it—I’ve slapped arrows out of midair before, after all, and I’m stronger and faster now than I was then.

  But that, I realize, isn’t account for the fact that this man is a high level contestant.

  The air blurs around the arrow. The arrow becomes four arrows, all aimed straight at me, and moving unexpectedly fast.

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  Desperately, I throw myself to the side, hoping to simply dodge all four—but sudden, sharp pain from my arm and ribs tells me I’ve been hit. I hit the ground again, then push off the grass with my Spring Boots and launch myself up. I catch a tree branch, try to pull myself up—and as I do, the Spider Bracelet wrapped snugly around my wrist becomes suddenly ice-cold. I hoist myself up amongst the branches with superhuman ease.

  And then, without even thinking, without taking any time to examine my wounds, or to look back, I flee.

  I flee as fast as I can. As frantically as possible.

  I crawl through the branches, slipping, almost falling, jumping from one tree to the next, the bracelet getting colder and colder. I know what it does now. My boots make contact with the trunk of a particularly large tree, and instead of losing purchase or falling, I simply stick to the hard wood surface, completely defying gravity, and run vertically. At another time, I might have found the experience joyful—certainly, there’s a thrilling ease to it, a grace that feels good—or would have felt good, if it weren’t for my cramping stomach, the pain of my wounds, the rapid loss of blood leaving me increasingly weak and light-headed and worried that at any moment I’ll simply fall to my death.

  Somehow, I don’t fall. I don’t pass out.

  I keep going until I can’t anymore, until the sun is setting.

  I remain, then, amongst the upper branches of the sycamore trees, wedged between one thick branch and the trunk itself. I close my eyes, knowing that I can’t remain conscious for long, that, for the moment, my life is no longer in my own hands.

  #

  When I wake, I have no idea how much time has passed.

  My immediate reaction is to try to stand—until I remember, a single moment later, that I’m precariously balanced upon a branch about as wide as my leg. I stifle a cry and take several deep, slow breaths, calming myself. It’s sometime during the night, so I can’t see anything except the distant, dark impressions of other trees around me. The moon, half-covered by clouds, is almost full, providing just enough illumination for me to see that I’m covered in dark, dried blood. My own blood.

  Ah, shit.

  The wounds. I remember them now.

  And the moment I do remember them, the pain hits me like a tidal wave.

  I bit into my lip to stop myself from screaming. Slowly, I turn my head. A knife in my left shoulder. An arrow in my right arm, buried in the meat of my bicep. Also, my side aches. I eventually muster up the courage to examine my ribs, where I see that a third arrow has grazed me badly enough to leave a nasty, long cut—but thankfully, that’s all it is. A graze.

  The other two injuries, however, are a much greater concern.

  The cut along my ribs doesn’t look bad. In fact, it already looks as though the healing process has undone the bulk of the damage, leaving me with a question: is my natural healing ability improved by my current level? I’m pretty sure it’s not normal for a wound, even a shallow one, to close so quickly, leaving behind little more than a scratch and a discolored bruise. It’d make sense, I reason, since I already know that my immediate durability is superhuman, as is my strength and speed.

  And that leaves me wondering what will happen when I remove the knife and the arrow. Will the wounds seal themselves on their own? Or will I bleed to death up in the tree?

  The answer doesn’t matter much, because I know I need to try it regardless. I can’t sit around with them still inside me. I know very little about first-aid, about penetration injuries or medical science, but I’m pretty sure that the longer they’re buried inside me, the greater the risk of infection. I doubt the metal is entirely clean. Right now, they’re just sitting there, potentially poisoning my blood.

  So, I grit my teeth, cling to the branch as tightly as I can with my left hand, and with my right, I grip the hilt of the knife and wrench it out in a single, brutal movement.

  I suppress my scream, which instead becomes an animalistic grunt. Every muscle in my body tenses, sweat dripping into my eyes, another cramp seizing my stomach and nearly sending me tumbling out of the tree. Fresh blood pours down my shoulder, unexpectedly warm. I want to throw up, and not just because of my stomach. I have never felt such pain. I have never felt so wretched, so sick, so tired, so alone, so afraid.

  And at that moment, I want to give up. I want to throw my hands up and shout to the heavens and tell the bastards who have put me here that I’m done, I’m out, I won’t play their fucking games any longer. I’ve had enough.

  But then, of course, I think of Sarah.

  I imagine her in their clutches. Asleep, awake, it doesn’t matter.

  I picture her face. I picture her on one knee, proposing to me.

  I picture her pregnant with our child—and I picture our future together, the future we always dreamed of.

  I grit my teeth until it feels as though my teeth might explode.

  I won’t give up.

  Not now. Not ever.

  I count to ten. And then, on the count of ten, I pull out the arrow.

  The arrow is worse than the knife. It hurts so much that tears fill my eyes and, upon the branch, I curl up into a tight, miserable ball, bleeding all over myself, and waiting for death to claim me.

  But death doesn’t want me yet. My wounds slowly, painfully, start to close. It’s not the instant healing I’d hoped for—it’s still quite slow, and it might be days before the wounds are truly gone—but it’s enough for me to know that I will recover from them. Assuming I can remain alive and relatively healthy.

  My stomach still feels awful. Whatever those bastards used to poison the water continues to run amok through my system. But it’s not as bad as it had been.

  I won’t leave the tree yet. I’ll stay up here for the rest of the night. I’ll sleep as much as I can.

  In the morning, when the sun rises, I will find the people who did this.

  And I will kill them.

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