Triple Crown

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

“Luke!” I exclaim to myself, spotting him lying motionless through the miniscule electronic magnifying scope my suit projects for me onto the visor of my helmet. My first instinct is to fly to him immediately, but I know that that might scare him, so I force myself to find a small clearing to land in so I can go to him on foot. However, as soon as I have landed, despite the rain that’s been pouring for probably two hours now, I hear a rustling in the bushes to my left, and scrabble to draw the sword I’ve just set down in order to let my suit collapse. I then see a golden, black-spotted form bounding towards me, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Winston!” I cry as I squat down to have him throw himself onto me and knock me over. “Winston,” I repeat as I look up at him from the flat of my back, this time with less urgency, and raise a hand up to stroke his spotted face. He then gives me a gentle lick, and his eyes dart between my supplies and the forest in front of us where Luke lays dying. “Well, come on then,” I tell him, and, when he clambers off of me, slip the metallic lightning bolt I had been clutching into my pocket and pick up all of my supplies to let him lead me – I presume – towards Luke.
All of my questions of how he kept up with me while I was flying are immediately vanquished when I see how quickly he can move through the underbrush. As I sprint after him, I mutter to myself, “I guess he was just trying to slow me down earlier, for some reason.”
However, all of my thoughts of Winston purposely delaying me earlier are discarded by us stumbling upon the area where Luke lays. Seeing a small tuft of blonde sticking out near a tree about twenty five yards away, I run to him, heedless of the rain dumping on me and, despite my waterproof jacket and pants, getting inside my clothes and soaking me to the bone.
“Luke!” I cry when I reach him, seeing how cold and wet he is and the large, blood-soaked rip on the side of his ribs that must be where Terrell stabbed him and immediately stripping off my waterproof jacket and pants as well as the golden top layer of the arena uniform to drape them over him.
“Lizzie,” he murmurs, a weak smile spreading across his face and his ice-blue eyes locked on mine. When he sees me taking my clothes off, his grin gets slightly bigger and he jokes, “Man, if I knew dying was going to be this fun, I would have done it a long time ago.” He then raises a hand to gently caress my face before his arm slumps to his side because he doesn’t have the strength to hold it up any longer.
At his joke, my eyes widen, and, not being able to stop myself, I slap him on the cheek and give him an angry glare.
“What was that for?” he exclaims, reaching up to touch where I backhanded him with a look of shock on his face.
“For saying you’re going to die!” I shoot back, staring him down to make sure he knows I’m displeased with him. Then, knowing I’m probably confusing him greatly, I bend down over him and kiss him passionately to feel his arms wrap around me.
When I pull back, he asks again, this time with a much milder and happier tone, “What was that for?” as he gives me another weak grin that looks more like a grimace than anything.
“For everything else,” I tell him as I give him a smile of his own and gently touch the side of his face. However, our small romantic moment is broken by the reality of Luke dying in front of me setting in, scooping him up into my arms and looking for a place where we can go hide and I can treat him.
“Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be doing this?” he questions, attempting to and failing miserably at lightening up the situation.
“I’m not the one who’s hurt,” I answer in reply, not even bothering to look down at him as I scan the landscape all around us almost desperately for some bushes we can stay in, even just a rock we can hide behind. He doesn’t say anything in response, and I’m grateful because I know he won’t be wasting energy on talking to me. Suddenly my eyes pass over a small hole in the ground, and I look closer to see that there is a cave, though it doesn’t look big enough for Luke and I to fit in it, nestled in between a few short leafy plants. Whistling before I head towards the opening so Winston will follow, I gently set Luke down to lean him up against a tree trunk, then walk back over to the cave to pull aside the plants and find that the entrance is bigger than I first thought it was and that the cave itself is actually quite spacious.
“Whoa!” Luke exclaims, and I turn around to see Winston looking at Luke curiously and leaning forward to try to sniff him while Luke scrabbles around him for a weapon or anything he can use to discourage Winston.
“Luke, it’s alright, Winston’s nice!” I tell him quickly, hoping to dear God that he doesn’t aggravate Winston and get himself ripped up even more. When I see Luke’s confused and still very wary and frightened expression, I add, “The cat’s with me. He won’t hurt you.”
Luke lets out a sigh of relief himself, even though he doesn’t look completely comfortable with Winston’s presence, and pushes himself up with much effort to ask me, “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Yes: stop talking, relax, and conserve your energy,” I answer without turning around, pushing aside the plants hiding the cave entrance to slip inside and see how big it really is. Glancing around me at the solid, grey-colored, dry-looking rock, I reach a hand up to touch the ceiling and find that it is completely dry, without a hint of water or dampness to it. As I drop my packs, quiver, bow and sword off to the side, I smile in satisfaction, thinking that this is going to work perfectly as a makeshift hospital, when I realize that there is a flaw to my plan: I don’t have anything to treat Luke with.
“Crap,” I mutter under my breath, hoping that I remember at least some of the plants they told me had medicinal properties. Racking my mind, I sigh in relief when I realize that I have retained all of the information they told us about plants and animals in training, but I find, with surprise, that they didn’t mention anything about Winston’s species, which I think is odd because they covered every other animal I’ve encountered so far. Though I didn’t remember it at the time, the bird I killed a few days ago is called a poaton, and, from what they told us and from what I gathered, is basically the jungle version of a pheasant. The trees I’ve been spending nights in, as nearly all of the trees in this rainforest are, are called ‘inmortal’ trees, which is Spanish for immortal, since they can live thousands of years if they don’t have an untimely death. I think it’s funny that no one in El Nieve or apparently all of the Sections knows any Spanish when even their country has a Spanish name, El Tiempo.
I wonder why they call their country ‘the time’. If you ask anyone in El Nieve, they’d probably say it’s because this is the most miraculous time the country’s ever seen, and that they might as well celebrate it, but I think that maybe, though this reason would have been unconscious if it existed at all, it’s because the original rulers of El Nieve – the people who most likely named the country in the first place – knew it was only a matter of time before the system backfired and the Sections rose up against El Nieve.
I wonder how the Sections are doing, with their attempts to rebel against El Nieve and El Nieve cracking down on them. One, Two, Three and Four may not be experiencing much change, since they are the Sections closest to El Nieve and therefore least likely to rebel, but Five, Six, Seven and Eight – especially Eight, because of the salute they gave Luke and I and because that’s where I’m supposed to be from – may be suffering greatly right now for their efforts to free themselves of El Nieve. Of course, the rebellion is doomed if Fix, Six, Seven and Eight don’t get help or support from One, Two, Three and Four, but I think the people of Five, Six, Seven and Eight know that, and I think that they’ve decided they’ve had enough of living on their knees and would rather die on their feet, now that I’ve stirred them to make a choice.
Again I think about what they’ll do with my death. Undoubtedly they’ll at least use it as an example and tell others that’s what will happen to them, that’s what will happen to their kids, if they don’t rise up and stop it, but they might even make me a martyr, and paint my face on banners and posters and use me as their symbol, their inspiration, their light in the darkness. Even when I’m dead, I could be a spark for rebellion; in fact, to the Sections and to the rebellion, I’m worth more dead than I am alive. Those thoughts, no matter how dark and depressing they are, are one of the reasons why I’m determined to die, if not during One-Person, then most definitely during Team Survival, with words of encouragement and rebellion the last things I say. I want to make my mark on this world, and go out in style, so I figure that I might as well help someone while I’m at it.

[Sonmi-451]

More added; is anyone starting to like Marshall yet? xD

However, just as I am about to tear myself away from my thoughts and return to check on Luke and make sure he hasn’t contracted some disease yet, the sound of something hitting the ground next to me does it for me, and I look over to find Winston standing there and staring at me with a pleased expression on his feline face and a sprig of some brilliantly green plant hanging from his jaws.
“What do you have there?” I ask him, bending down to take the stem out of his mouth and examine it closely. When I realize what it is – a pain reliever and bacteria and virus killer with all-around healing properites – I wrap my arms around Winston and murmur in his ear, “Thank you.”
In response, he gives me a lick on the cheek, and I laugh to hear something – or someone, as the case is – adjust their position to listen better. Agilely clambering back out of the cave to stand in the pouring rain again, I find Luke staring at me with a small, happy smile on his face. However, the glazing of pain in his eyes and the obvious shivers racking his body concern me greatly, and I know that I have to get him into the cave and out of the rain if I intend to keep him alive.
“I like it when you laugh,” he tells me as I pick him up, his body limp and unresisting as I carry him. Another thing that troubles me is how much lighter he feels; even with his and my waterlogged clothes on, he probably doesn’t weigh more than one-ninety, which is ten pounds less than he weighed completely dry three days ago.
Ignoring his comment, I ask him, “You haven’t eaten or drank in three days, have you?” to have him shake his head in reply. “damn it Luke, you have to take better care of yourself!” I exclaim, making my number-one priority, as soon as I get him into the cave, to get some water and nutrients into him.
When we reach the cave opening, I lower Luke down to set him right next to the entrance, climb down into the cave myself, then lift him carefully through the opening to rest him against a large flat rock and adjust the layers of clothing covering him. Turning to my packs, I pull out one of the water jugs and have him drink as much as he can hold in little sips, and, once he’s finished with the water, get out three vitamin pills and have him swallow all of them. I then peel the layers of wet clothes off of him to reveal the blood-soaked hole in his arena uniform and, as I lift his torso up with one arm, strip the golden top shirt and black bottom shirt off so I can reach his injury more easily.
“Oh, we’re doing that now?” Luke jokes weakly, a pain-tainted smile creeping across his face as he reaches up and tries to pull my black top off. He gets about halfway done before he has to quit, and I finish the job for him to leave me in my sports bra and black pants of the arena uniform, thinking that he might as well get something he wants while he tries to die on me.
After giving him a smile and tossing my shirt to the side, the bandage Marshall made coming off with the shirt, I fix my attention on his wound to inhale sharply when I see how bad it is. However, Luke clearly doesn’t seem to notice my reaction to his wound, and instead raises his hands to feebly try to pull me down on top of him. “Let me hold you, please,” he begs, his eyes as well as his voice pleading with me, and I can’t help but be reminded of when I treated Jackson a week and a half ago.
“Luke, I have to fix you up so you don’t die, but then,” I tell him, uncomfortably reminded that that’s the same thing I told Jackson after rescuing him from his attempted execution.
Luke looks slightly more happy, and I turn back to his injury to be struck by its severity again. It’s a gaping, clearly infected slash that’s inflamed and red, with pus oozing steadily from it but, thank God, doesn’t have any signs of blood poisoning or anything more serious than the infection. Taking the golden top shirt of mine that’s laying off to the side, I rip a clean strip off, run to the cave entrance to stick the cloth out in the rain, then return to Luke to dab at his gash with the wet cloth. I then set the cloth down to the side and am about to go back out into the rain to find more of the healing plant when suddenly something wet gets pressed into my right hand, and I turn to see Winston nosing me with more of the healing plant in his jaws. Wordlessly taking the leaves and stalks from him, I turn back to Luke, shred up the plant matter and squeeze out the juice onto Luke’s wound to have him sigh in relief. Almost immediately, the pus begins to pour out of his wound, and it’s my turn to breathe deeply in comfort, because I know that means that his body’s reacting to the plant’s medicine and is flushing the toxins out. Looking around for something that could be used to catch the pus, my gaze falls on one of the packs, the one that’s empty after being used to hold the land mines, and drag it over to sit it right in the path of the pus streaming down his side. The inside and outside of the pack is completely lined with a waterproof coating, so cleaning it by setting it out in the rain or finding running water to rinse it in should be easy. I then lay the rest of the plant materials on Luke’s wound to let more of the extract seep into his skin, and am about to get a drink of water and some food myself when he speaks.
“Why do you care so much?” Luke asks me suddenly, startling me and causing me to look down at him in surprise to see him staring up at me with those incredible ice-blue eyes covered with a haze of pain. When I look down at him in confusion, he adds, the effort of talking clearly draining him, “Why do you care about keeping me alive so much? One or both of us are going to die in the end, and it would be easier for you to just put me out of my misery, so why are you doing this?”
Opening my mouth to answer, I freeze when I realize that I don’t know why I’m doing all of this. I could kill him, like he said, which would be easier on both of us, because then he wouldn’t have to be in pain any longer and I wouldn’t have to waste my supplies on keeping him alive, but I can’t kill him. Me killing or leaving him would most certainly make the fans in El Nieve hate me, but I don’t think this is about acting anymore, and I don’t think this is solely about not being able to go home without him either. As all of the kisses we’ve shared run through my head, the ones that made me feel something lingering in my mind, and I think about how my mood is made so much lighter by just seeing him and being around him, I realize that I’m not acting anymore.
“Because I love you,” I murmur in reply, looking down at the boy threatening to die before me and knowing, in the bottom of my heart, that it’s true, at least to a larger extent than it was a while ago. “I love you,” I repeat, more for my sake than for his, realizing the impact those three words are going to have on my life. For a moment, my mind wanders onto thoughts of Jackson, but I quickly force myself not to think of him, because I know that I’ll only hurt myself even more by doing so.
Something in Luke’s eyes changes, and I think he recognizes that I’m not acting anymore, because he tells me quietly, meeting my gaze with his own unwaveringly, “Te amo siempre, Elizabeth Eleanor Marie Lightning.” After a few moments of silence have passed between us, he questions, a smile twitching the corners of his mouth, “Do I get to hold you now?”
“Can I get a drink of water first?” I ask him, my eyes darting to the open jug and back again, and, like I knew he would, he concedes.
“All right. Just come right back,” he tells me, his smile getting playful and his ice-blue eyes twinkling as he watches me. I’m greatly relieved that Luke is feeling so much better, but I still know that he could very well die if the infection in his wound doesn’t go away.
After taking a few long swallows of water and one vitamin pill and quickly eating a strip of tasteless jerky and a few strips of not-so-tasteless dried fruit, I cross back over to where Luke lays, pull our soaking wet clothes over to find that they have dried some, help Luke slip one arm into my waterproof jacket, not covering the other side of his torso to let his wound continue to drain and air out, and settle down against him, resting my head on his shoulder and feeling his arm tighten around me.
I’m startled out of my thoughts of Luke dying interspersed with warnings to myself that I shouldn’t think about things like that because they could very well come true by Luke saying, attempting to sound disappointed but only sounding in pain, “Oh, come on, this is all I get? Just you sitting next to me? To make it worth it, you have to sit on my lap.” He then shifts some to give me room to sit on his lap, and looks at me expectantly, a hopeful and teasing grin illuminating his face.
After giving him a mock look of exasperation accompanied by a roll of my eyes, I move over to sit myself gently on Luke’s lap, being very careful not to bump him but getting the feeling that I’m causing him pain anyways.
However, Luke doesn’t give any indication that he’s in pain and instead wraps his arms around me and murmurs in my ear, his lips tickling my neck, “You know, Lizzie, I want to have kids some day, and I want you to be their mother, so I was wondering what we should name them.”
At his comment, my heart freezes and shrivels up. I don’t want to think about having kids, because, even though I do love kids and desperately want to have some of my own some day, I know that any child of mine would constantly be in danger since I’m so infamous, and I don’t think I could do that to my children. I’m also too skinny to have children; at five-eleven, one-fifty, nie percent body fat, I physically could not get pregnant unless I put on more weight, and I have no intention of willingly changing my physique any time in the semi-distant future, because I know that, if I were to put on more weight, I wouldn’t be as agile and limber when it came to combat.
But I know that I can’t let any of my thoughts or true feelings show, since that’s not what the audience in El Nieve wants to see, so instead I give him my best fake smile and tell him, partially truthfully, “Well, I like the names James and John as middle names for a boy, but I don’t know what we’d do about first names. If it was a boy, maybe Thomas, after my dad, since God knows my dad’s a great enough guy to have a kid named after him. Besides, then we could call him Tommy, and I think I’d like that.” For a few milliseconds, I allow myself to imagine what it would be like, to settle down and have kids and not have to worry about my and my loved one’s safety constantly. The reality that I don’t know if I want Luke to be the father of my never-going-to-exist children and that I could never have kids and that I will always have to worry about my and my loved one’s safety then comes flooding in and ruins my little fantasy, but for a few moments, a few shining moments, I could see it: myself, perfectly happy, with a perfect life and perfect husband and perfect kids and a quaint little house on lots of land and Gwillan and Gruffen, retired successful NFL players, coming by to visit their nieces and nephews often, and Timmy in college and playing ball and winning a Heisman or two. And, yet again, it all comes down to me wanting to go home.
“Thomas John Gates,” he says out loud, seeming to be considering the name, and I adjust myself so I can see his face. “I like it,” he agrees finally, giving me a smile. “But it doesn’t matter what we name our kids, as long as we have them.” I feel my heart free fall out of my body onto the cold stone floor, but I force myself to give him my best fake grin that I hope makes it look like I agree.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Luke exclaims suddenly after a few moments of silence have passed between us, moving a little so he can almost face me. “I haven’t gotten a real one of these yet,” he murmurs before kissing me gently, almost weakly, and, even though I know it will hurt him emotionally, I push him off of me and raise myself off of him to stand above him with him staring up at me in confusion.
“Luke, you need to save your energy,” I tell him when I see his hurt expression. “Besides, I need to go check on Winston.” Winston’s ears perk up at my mention of his name, and he looks at me quizzically for a few seconds before understanding that I want to get out and leaping to his feet to clamber out of the cave.
Following after Winston and forcing myself to ignore Luke’s eyes on me the whole time, I climb out into the pouring rain and take few deep breaths so I don’t so something stupid, like cry. Collapsing against a tree trunk, I’m grateful when Winston sits down next to me and nuzzles my cheek gently and affixes me with a beautiful, compassionate amber gaze.
“What do I tell him, Winston? I physically and mentally can’t have kids.” Pausing for a moment and painfully aware of the fact that I’m being recorded for everyone to hear, I shake my head slightly and a grimace of distaste crosses my face at the fact that there is no privacy anymore, then make myself go on, since I know that it’s better share it with the world than keep it locked inside of me.
“It’s not that I don’t want them; in fact, there’s almost nothing in the world I want more, but I couldn’t bring kids into the world to have them constantly fearing for their lives because of my infamy and all of the enemies I’ve made. And, of course, there’s also the Triple Crown, and I couldn’t risk having them being forced to compete. It just wouldn’t be fair for the kids for me to have them.” Shaking my head, I add after a few seconds of quiet, “Of course, I’m too skinny to have them right now anyways, and I don’t intend to put on weight any time in partly-distant future, so I guess I have a pre-made excuse.” Smiling bitterly and shaking my head again, I give a deep sigh and wrap my arms around Winston, clinging to him desperately and wishing he could save me from this capsizing ship that is my life.
“Murr,” he rumbles sympathetically, resting his head on my shoulder and staring up at me in understanding. He gives me a gentle lick on the cheek and lays down to set his head in my lap, his gaze on me the whole time.
“You know, Winston, it’s really a shame that you can’t talk,” I tell him as I stroke his head and look down at him with a small, sad grin on my face. “I really could use your wisdom right now.” Instead of rumbling at me again, however, he just noses my hand and looks at the cave entrance and then at me expectantly, clearly wanting me go back to Luke, which I really don’t want to do.
“Winston, I can’t face him right now. I need some alone time, I really do,” I murmur, hearing the desperate tone in my voice and almost laughing a fake laugh out loud at the fact that I’m pleading with a cat.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

However, when he refuses to stop nosing me and giving me looks, I sigh and rise to my feet to enter the cave again to find Luke dabbing at his wound, which looks infinitely better now, with the same strip I used to clean it up earlier.
Giving him a smile, I ask him, very surprised and very pleased by his already-increased energy, “You feeling better?”
“Lots,” he answers, returning my smile, but all trace of a grin falls off of his face when he sees the black and blue bruises covering my stomach, which he hadn’t noticed up until now because he was in too much discomfort too. “What in the hell happened to you?” he exclaims, a shocked and worried expression convering his face.
“I nearly blew myself up with homemade hand grenades,” I reply, shrugging my shoulders, and when he looks even more horrified, I add, not knowing why he’s so horrified when he lay dying for a few days, “I said nearly. I didn’t actually blow myself up.”
“Please tell me it was for a good reason,” he almost begs of me, and I can’t help but laugh at the still-mortified expression on his face. “I just don’t want to think you got those for nothing,” he finishes, gesturing to the bruises on my abdomen.
After taking a few moments to stop giggling, I tell him, “I blew the careers’ supplies up too, so yes, I did accomplish something by nearly killing myself.” I see Luke’s expression lighten some, and I shake my head as my grin gets bigger. Well, I guess that me actually getting something done by almost dying, considering that I put myself in mortal peril a lot, is much better than the norm of me nearly dying for nothing.
“Well, that’s good,” Luke murmurs, my grin becoming infectious and spreading from ear to ear on his face too. After a couple seconds of very awkward silence have passed between us, Luke pipes up and asks, “How on earth did you make homemade hand grenades? Did you find some explosive plant or figure out how to mix plant extracts so they would blow up on contact?”
“Well, I guess they weren’t really homemade hand grenades per say, since I dug land mines attached to our ankle cuffs out of the ground and loosened the cuffs enough so that the mines would explode on contact with anything, but they definitely weren’t intended to be hand grenades,” I explain to see Luke staring at me in confusion. Before he can ask the inevitable question, “How did you figure out there were land mines attached to the hand grenades?” I hold my hand up and answer in advance, “One night, on the victory tour, Max got really drunk and leaked that there were land mines that they never deactivated attached to all of our ankle cuffs near the giving hands, and I remembered that.” Shrugging again, I take a few steps towards Luke to push him back against the rock he’s supposed to be leaning on but is currently sitting up and away from. “How many times do I have to tell you to conserve your energy?” I ask him, fully aware of the fact that I probably sound like a preschool teacher or his mother, but I don’t care. Luke needs to get it into his thick head that he’s not helping himself by insisting on moving and talking and wasting energy he can’t afford to waste.
“I’ll stop moving if you do,” he shoots back, looking up at me defiantly and seeming very much like a preschooler himself. When I don’t budge, even when he gives me his best puppy dog eyes, he pleads, “Come on Lizzie, please. I want you to keep me warm.” He then fakes shivering, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Fine.” I roll my eyes at him, half-jokingly and half-not, and settle down next to him to rest my head on his shoulder and sigh deeply, allowing myself to admit that I’m enjoying the physical contact. That’s one of the many great things about Luke: he definitely isn’t bad to look at or to snuggle with. Despite the fact that his incredibly muscular upper body – I can’t help but sneak a few looks, since I know he’s sneaking a few looks at me – speaks to the fact that he’s a lot stronger than I am when he’s not injured, he’s always gentle and even hesitant when it comes to physical contact, which is a lot better than Jackson and his numerous non-consensual contact attempts. Luke is also, if I do say so myself, very attractive, with his fluffy blonde hair a few shades lighter than my eyes, his stunning ice-blue eyes and his amazing smile.
Hearing a throat being cleared, I snap out of my thoughts to see Luke giving me an almost incredulous look, and I know exactly why. Sighing for effect, I am about to scoot myself over onto his lap when suddenly he scoops me up into his arms and sets me down gently on top of him, which I find downright amazing.
“That’s amazing,” I murmur to myself as I wiggle around a little to get comfortable and Luke’s arms wrap their way around me and clutch me to him. I then lean back to stare him directly in the eye, feeling, for once in this Triple Crown, completely content.
“What’s amazing?” he questions quietly in return, raising a hand to gently caress the side of my face and giving me a warm smile. Without waiting for my answer, he begins to kiss my neck, and I’m tempted to push him off of me, since I find it very distracting.
“That you’ve recovered enough in such a short period of time to be able to lift me,” I tell him, shivers running up and down my body and goosebumps raising on my arms as his lips tickle a particulary sensitive spot on my neck. However, I almost immediately curse myself for my stupidity, since, as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know exactly why Luke’s recovered so quickly. I’ve been drawing energy from the storm and its electricity, and have been unconsciously transferring this energy to Luke, like I did on the rooftop the night before One-Person started.
Luke stops for a moment, removing his lips from my neck, to consider it, and finally agrees, “Yeah, that is odd.” However, he then adds, and all of my fears about him having lingering suspicions are quelled, “Let’s just consider it a miracle, and make the most of it.” He returns to kissing my neck slowly and deliberately, and, deciding that I have nothing to lose that I haven’t lost a long time ago, give it up, close my eyes and just let myself relax and enjoy his company and his touch.
“Did you know, Lizzie, that you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen?” Luke murmurs in my ear as he holds me against him even harder, and I can’t help but smile. For a moment the thought flits across my mind that I shouldn’t be this happy with him complementing me, since I don’t love him as much as he loves me, but I brush it away and tell myself that I do love him, at least to an extent, so I don’t have as much to feel bad about anymore.
“Did you know, Luke, that you are the sweetest guy I’ve ever met?” I question him in return, turning my head to kiss him gently on the forehead and resting my head against his for a moment before pulling back to close my eyes and lean against him again.
“Did you know, Lizzie, that I don’t even know your birthday, so I don’t when I should get you gifts, or throw you a party, or tell you I love you more than I already do?” I open my eyes to find him looking up at me expectantly, pulling back from kissing me on the neck and cheek for a moment.
“February thirteenth, and I turned seventeen four and a half months ago. Did you know, Luke, that I don’t even know your birthday, so I don’t know when to give you more crap or when to try to punch you in the nose again?” I hear him laugh into my neck, and I can’t help but giggle myself because he tickled me, and, when I realize that I really should make him want to tell me his birthday, add, “Well, and kiss you more than I already do.”
At the last comment, Luke obviously perks up some and pulls away to tell me, almost eagerly, “June thirteenth, and I turn seventeen… well, I don’t when I turn seventeen.”
A confused expression expression takes over Luke’s face as he realizes he doesn’t really know how old he is, and a somber silence then falls over us. However, I use the time to calculate when exactly he turns seventeen, and, after about two seconds, as my mind works at about two and half times the speed of the average human mind, I say, quickly checking my math and finding that I’ve done it right, like I always do, “Luke, you turn seventeen in five days, if I’ve done my math right.”
“That means that I’ll get to marry you for a late birthday present. Man, I am one lucky guy,” he murmurs in my ear, and, despite the fact that I really don’t want to agree with him, that I really just want to forget that I’m supposed to be hopelessly in love with him when I love him a fraction of that, I force myself to tell him, accompanied with my best fake smile, “I think I’m the lucky one.”
He then kisses me on the lips lightly, and I make myself swallow and kiss him back, all of a sudden painfully reminded of Jackson. I can’t think about Jackson right now though; my heart is getting pulled out of my chest enough by Luke already, so I make myself act like I’m enjoying the kiss for the sake of the crowd and for Max’s sake. After all, I’ve probably already turned some spectators by kissing Marshall and admitting that I don’t want kids, so I have to do everything I can from here on out to repair the audience’s opinion of me and make up for my earlier blunders. Still, I can’t help but feel bad that I have to act, even now, and desperately wish that all of this could be real, that I could feel the same way about Luke that he does about me, that I could be completely sincere and not have to know that I’m fooling Luke as well as El Nieve. In fact, I think there may be only two or three people watching right now that I’m not fooling.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

One of them is Max, since he put me up to all of this to begin with, and, while he may suspect I feel something for Luke, he knows I don’t mean everything I say to him. The second one is Rush, as I have a feeling that no amount of acting will actually convince him and that the only way he would believe me would be if I actually were completely and hopelessly in love with Luke. The third one that I’m not so sure about is Jackson, because I don’t know what he’ll believe and what he won’t. He may make himself believe that everything I say is me acting, even the part about telling Luke that I love him, or he might believe that everything I say is real, and that I’m not acting at all, and get even angrier with me than he was on the rooftop the night before One-Person started – was that really only three nights ago? – or, even though it’s highly unlikely, he might actually be able to tell when I’m acting and when I’m not, which might almost be worse than having him believe everything I say is real, because then he’d know I’m deceiving Luke as well as everyone watching.
I don’t know which one I’d rather have him think. If he believes that everything I say is a lie, that I don’t love Luke at all, then he won’t be angry with me right now, but he’ll be incredibly angry with me when he finds out that it isn’t all a lie. If he thinks everything I say is real, that I’m not acting at all, that I love Luke completely with all of my heart, he’ll be incredibly angry with me for betraying him again, and there might not be a Max around to save me this time. If he actually is able to differentiate from when I’m acting and from when I’m not, which I don’t think he will, he will be also be incredibly angry with me for loving Luke some, but he also might feel vindicated by knowing that I don’t have to act with him, that I love him more than I love Luke. Of course, he also could be even angrier at me for faking Luke out as well as everyone else watching, so I guess none of those options is very appealing in terms of Jackson’s reaction.
All of a sudden, I am jerked out of my depressing thoughts by an agonizing scraping sound very similar to fingernails on a chalkboard, and, feeling Luke pull away and clapping my hands over my incredibly sensitive ears and gritting my teeth as tears come to my eyes, I look around to see the stone ground in front of us sliding away to reveal a large basket that, based on the smells coming from it, is filled with food, and the presentation is complete with silverware, china plates and cloth napkins and is even spread out on a decorative tablecloth. The intoxicating smell of fresh, excellent cooking fills my nose, and, leaping off of Luke, carefully drag the tablecloth topped with the basket, silverware and napkins towards him to have the stone cave floor close itself up again with the same horrible noise. After covering my ears a second time, I finish pulling the feast towards Luke and settle down next to him, opening the basket to find a mountain of hot rolls, four whole roasted paoton wrapped in fern leaves to keep them warm, six dishes of steamed vegetables and a selection of about five different kinds of fruit, all of which I’ve never seen before but am very eager to try. I then hear the clicking of toenails on rock and look up to find Winston sitting just inside the entrance of the cave, his eyes glued to the food as he licks his chops. Smiling, I toss him a roll and part of a paoton, thinking that, with the wordless advice he’s given me recently, he definitely deserves them.
However, even as I am helping myself to paoton, two rolls, a heaping pile of greens and a fruit that appears to be an orange-colored plum, I can’t help but wonder what on earth Luke and I did to convince Max and the betters to send us something this expensive and extravagant. The betters and Max sent me the suit because they wanted me to survive, which I understand perfectly, but they know that I can hunt and gather well enough to support Luke and I for a while, so what made them send us all of this? But then it hits me: my comment about me being the lucky one most likely moved them enough to chip in money to make sure that we wouldn’t go without so our romance could continue, and I know what I have to do. To keep us alive, to make sure that we stay in the audience’s good graces and keep them dipping into their pocketbooks for us, I have to keep on acting and coming up with things like that. Besides, even if the betters did want to send us something, Max probably wouldn’t let them if I wasn’t acting like he wanted me to or as well as he thought I could, considering that he set me up to this in the first place and knows that I know Luke’s and my survival could depend on the goodwill of the people I’m fooling with my acting.
Sighing despite myself, I look over to find Luke feeding himself with difficulty, and can’t help but smile as he accidentally drops his fork and a piece of paoton in his lap because his hand is too shaky to hold the fork still long enough for him to eat. “Luke, you’re still hurt. Let me,” I tell him, and, without waiting for an answer, pick the fork up to feed him the paoton slowly and carefully, making sure that he doesn’t drop it again.
“Thank you,” he tells me after he finishes chewing, giving me a beaming white smile and reaching a wavering hand up to gently touch the side of my face. His eyes drop down to my exposed stomach for a moment before darting back up, but, despite the sneakiness of his look, I can’t help but notice and begin to laugh out loud. When he realizes what I’m laughing about, he mutters apologetically, averting his eyes to the ground, “Sorry.” After a second of silence, he adds, looking back up at me, “I’m just marveling at the fact that you’re not cold when you’re in a sports bra and skintight, thin black pants.” When I give him a skeptical look, partially because I know that’s not the only reason and because I desperately want to avoid me not being cold because it’s related to me being a wolf, he finally concedes, “Well, and I’m admiring your eight-pack and tan.”
Glancing down at myself for a moment, my eyes fall onto his exposed torso and onto his eight-pack, much better than mine, and I say to him, catching his gaze with mine, “You’re one to talk. How much did you bench as a max?” I know it’s somewhere in the three-fifties, three-sixties, but I can’t remember exactly how much it is.
“Three-fifty-five,” he admits quietly, dropping his stare again in a humility that he doesn’t deserve to have, and I whistle softly through my teeth. However, instead of taking my compliment, he instead says, “But I know that’s nothing compared to the fact that you weigh fifty pounds less than I do and are benching three hundred. Besides, what’s Jackson benching? Somewhere near four hundred, right?”
“Luke, you can’t compare yourself to me because I’m a girl, and Jackson happens to be the number-one high school recruit in the country and has three inches and twenty pounds on you, so you can’t compare yourself to him either.” I smile slightly when I see Luke bow his head in capitulation, and, gently pulling his chin up so that I can look him in the eye, tell him at least partially sincerely, “I still find the fact that you’re incredibly strong very attractive,” to have him kiss me again, and this time me kissing him back isn’t as forced.
“I still don’t know how you’re not cold though,” he murmurs when he pulls back, taking the fork out of my hand and clearly attempting to feed himself again. As I curse him for being so damn stubborn and doing exactly the opposite of what I want him to do by bringing up the topic of me not getting cold again, I idly think that he might actually not need help eating this time. His hand has stopped shaking violently now and realize absentmindedly that I must have transferred more of the energy that I’m drawing from the storm into him.
“I just…” I begin, realizing that I have absolutely no explanation and deciding that I’m going to have to hope to dear God that Luke is still dazed enough to not really care, “don’t get cold.” Shrugging my shoulders and painfully aware of how lame an excuse that is, I allow myself to roll my eyes at myself before looking back at Luke.
Luke, thank God, just nods and says, “Well, that means I can snuggle with you if I get cold,” as he gives me an almost mischievous smile that would make Marshall Moore proud.
All of a sudden I can almost see Max in front of me and hear him telling me, “Go on, say it,” and, returning Luke’s grin with a fake one of my own, tell him, “You can snuggle with me any time,” and know that Max is happy with that, since I’m actually being a good girl and doing what he told me to for once.
“Well, I thought so, but I just wanted to make sure,” Luke replies, his smile getting even bigger and gently kisses me on the cheek before returning his attention to the plate of food resting on his thighs. I stare over at him for a few moments, wondering how on earth he had the misfortune to fall in love with me, since I can tell that he thinks I’m not acting and, in his daze of pain, has forgotten about the fact that I don’t love him as much as he loves me, before looking down at my own plate, and eat the rest of the food piled in front of me with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
No matter how much I don’t want to recognize it or admit it, the fact that I’m deceiving Luke as well as everyone else watching bothers me greatly, and I really wish that I could just tell him everything: about me knowing what Max wants me to do and say; about me acting and then, a second later, not acting and maybe not even being able to tell when I’m faking it or not; about me being an immortal and a shapeshifter who, in the greatest irony of them all, wants to die even though I can’t; about all of the horrors Jackson has experienced that make him as unstable as he is; and, above all, above everything, about how I actually feel about all of this, about the fact that I want to be able to tell him what I think but knowing that I can’t, because it’s not what Max and Rush and El Nieve want me to think. I want to be able to tell him when I’m faking and when I’m not, so that way I won’t be deceiving him, and I’ll know that he won’t actually believe I mean what I say, that I’m not just acting the way I am to survive. I wish that Luke and I could have met this intimately on different circumstances, by both of us agreeing to it, not by one of us professing his love for the other on national television and therefore creating the pressure to be in love, even if it is fake, for the sake of the camera.
And that’s when a disturbing thought occurs to me: somewhere in El Nieve, we are probably being sold. They are undoubtedly making souvenirs about us or relating to us: pictures, quotations, our outfits even. Hell, they most likely have already started selling CDs or tapes or whatever technology they use here of Hand-on-Hand so that way people who have no lives – most of El Nieve, in other words – can relive how we first ‘fell in love.’ You know, if people in El Nieve didn’t treat the Triple Crown as such a game, if they didn’t consider it quality entertainment, then there might not even be a Triple Crown in the first place, there would just be more, non-public oppression of the Sections. But, since the Triple Crown is such a popular entertainment event, a huge moneymaking opportunity and a way of shutting down any rebellion in the Sections, they would never stop it, not with its relevancy and marketability. A shot of pure rage at El Nieve floods my bloodstream and my hands curl into fists as I realize that Abby died for the sake of money and amusement, but, despite the fact that all I want to do right now is unleash the largest, most violent hurricane the world’s ever seen on El Nieve and watch in satisfaction as the scary-white city and its scary-white people are destroyed, I force myself to take a few deep breaths. Losing it right now and at least revealing myself to Luke, if not hurting or killing him, would definitely be counterproductive.
All of a sudden I’m aware of the lack of a sound, like when an air conditioner turns off or engine stops running, and look over at Luke to find him fast asleep, his empty plate still on his lap and his fork still clutched in his hand. Gently taking the dish and silverware away from him so I don’t wake him up and setting them over to the side, I adjust the jacket he’s wearing so most of his torso is covered and pick up the backpack into which his wound drained as well as a half-empty water jug quietly. Exiting the cave almost silently to have Winston, who I had almost forgotten about, follow me into the cool, incredibly humid night air, I glance around me with my very sharp eyes, much better than a human’s especially at night, and, when I see no danger, sniff the air inconspicously, trying not to give myself away to the Triple Crown committee. I roll my eyes at myself when all I smell is water, since the humidity makes it impossible to pinpoint a specific site with lots of water, then stop breathing for a moment to let my keen ears have a go at detecting running water. I sigh partially in relief and partially in exasperation when I hear the unmistakable rushing sound of a stream that is at least three miles away, and, knowing that I’m not going to get there any sooner by wishing it were closer, take off in the direction of the brook I detected with the backpack slung over one shoulder and the water jug in hand.
It takes me about fifteen minutes to get to the creek, a decent-sized, fast-moving body of water with little to no debris or clouding. Taking the backpack off, rolling my pants up and wading into the at-least-sixty-degree water, I shove the pack under the surface, being careful to keep my hands away from where all of the pus drained into. An incredibly large amount of pus is quickly washed out of the pack under my satisfied gaze, and, after numerous inspections and rinsings, I’ve deemed the pack sanitary again. I then fill the water jug, which I had left on the shore of the stream, to the brim, add one drop of purifying chemicals, and am about to take off for the cave again when Puck’s booming voice interrupts me.
“There were no kills today, so your kill leader is still Lizzie Lightning, with eight kills-” – I sigh and roll my eyes, really wishing that they didn’t effectively paint a target on my back like that – “-but there is a very important annoucement you all should listen to.” Instantly I sit straight up. Puck’s tone is emphatic, like what he’s about to say might actually matter, and I wonder if the announcement is important or if they’ve just finally resorted to having Puck read aloud advertisements during the actual Triple Crown. “If one, two or three of your Section partners are still alive, you may team up with one of them, and you may both win One-Person Survival together. Good luck.”

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

It takes a few moments for the news to completely set it. When it does, I give Winston, who’s currently gnawing on the bones of a fish he recently caught and ate, a beaming smile. This means that I won’t have to kill Luke later, like I might have if the Triple Crown committee hadn’t changed the rules. It’s made all the more sweeter by the knowledge that Luke’s and my actions and the reactions they provoked out of spectators in El Nieve made the Triple Crown committee change the rules.
However, suddenly it occurs to me that there’s something off about this. The Triple Crown committee, with its incredibly strick adherance to tradition, wouldn’t actually change the rules that have worked for ninety-nine years. Then I realize that this is just them faking us out and making the most interesting Triple Crown. By having us believe that we can win and then changing the rules back at the last moment, they can make it incredibly interesting for the crowd, who would undoubtedly love to see team mates turn on team mates. It also will serve as a harsh reminder that we, as the Sections, are constantly at their mercy and would never be able to successfully rebel. Even as a wave of anger washes over me and makes my hands ball into fists, I know that I can’t let my revelation of the Triple Crown committee’s real motive show, so I take a few breaths to calm myself.
I can’t give anything away: not my real identity, not my real feelings, and certainly not my real thoughts. I have to keep everything guarded, because the only people that I can really trust to keep my secrets right now are myself and Jackson. Under torture, I have no doubt that, if Luke or Abby or Max were to actually know something about me, they would eventually break down and tell it. But Jackson and I wouldn’t do that; we’ve been through too many horrors together, been to hell and back too many times together, been protecting each other for so long that nothing could make us betray each other. Well, I take that back. Jackson might betray me if Alexa were going to die, but I don’t think anything could make me betray him. The thought that I might betray him if Luke were going to die flits across my mind for a moment, and I capture it to consider it carefully. Do I really care enough about Luke to betray a fellow immortal, who I love and trust and have sworn to protect till my last breath? Do I love Luke enough to forsake my honor and oaths and love for Jackson even?
The possibility that I might alarms me greatly, and I instantly make myself think about something different. I can’t dwell on this love triangle, because I will go insane without learning any answers if I do. Shaking my head, I look up to find Winston regarding me expectantly, and I know that it’s time to go back. I place the water jug in the newly-clean pack before slinging the pack over my shoulders, completely covering my tracks and taking off in the direction of the cave. As I run, I can’t help but think about what Luke’s reaction to the announcement will be. Undoubtedly he won’t recognize the deception, and will most likely just be happy, but that’s probably best. Sometimes – well, almost all of the time, when it comes to the Triple Crown – what you don’t know can most definitely hurt you, but being completely ignorant can also be completely blissful. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of being ignorant; I’m too preoccupied with the honor of being cherry-picked to win the Triple Crown to be ignorant.
Sighing, I wade back out of the water, roll my pants down, and take off in the direction of the cave again. I hear Winston running almost silently beside me to my left, and smile slightly after glancing over to find him with two fish clamped in his huge jaws. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost Winston now. Even though he does take up some resources, I can justify his presence by his moral support and his hunting ability. Besides, he’s one of the few things keeping me sane in this place, and I think that I could very well come unhinged if Winston died on me somehow, so the food he takes up doesn’t matter as much in the long run.
It takes about fifteen minutes for us to get back to the cave. Turning to Winston and sighing, I ask him quietly, to avoid detection from Luke, “Well, shall we?”and gesture for him to enter. It’s not like I’m going first, since there’s a very high possibility Luke is awake and waiting for me.
Winston rolls his eyes at me but does disappear into the opening of the cave, and, bracing myself for Luke’s unknowing reaction, slide into the cave myself.
“Lizzie,” Luke greets, a beaming smile creeping across his face. He’s standing up, with one hand resting on Winston’s head for stability, and is attempting to take a few steps towards me, despite Winston rumbling in protest.
I close the gap between us and embrace Luke so he doesn’t fall on his face like he’s threatening to. I feel his arms lock around me as I look over his shoulder at the expanse of gray stone wall, and I can smell the hope and joy radiating off of him. Despite thinking that he should know that it’s all a ruse put in the place by the Triple Crown committee, I can’t bring myself to destroy his ideas that neither one of us has to die. I think that’d be unfair of me, to ruin his fleeting moment of happiness, so I just stand there and cling onto him as tightly as he’s clinging onto me.
“We don’t have to die Lizzie, we don’t have to die!” he whispers excitedly in my ear, pulling back to give me an ear-to-ear grin and a kiss. “We don’t have to die,” he repeats, less exuberant but still incredibly happy, as he looks into my eyes with a gentleness I’ve never know anyone else to have. “Now Jackson won’t have to see you get cut open or burnt alive or however you would have perished.” His voice falls slightly as he realizes the nature of Jackson's and my relationship, and I feel my heart break into even more pieces. He then tells me, raising a hand to caress the side of my face, “And now I won’t have to lose it after seeing you die in front of me. Lizzie, I couldn’t bear that; I’d go crazy, haunted by the feeling that I should have done something, that somehow it’s all my fault, because I had promised you that I would be there, always, and then I wasn’t there, or at least I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to, and you died because of it. Lizzie, I don’t know if you wanted to do vows or anything for our wedding, but I can already tell you what mine would be: always.” Luke kisses me again, and I use it as an opportunity to hide the real tears that are trying to make their way down my face. And that’s when I feel it: the overtaking, all-consuming hunger for more, and I kiss him back, my arms locking around the back of his neck as he holds me to him even tighter.
When he pulls back, I wipe the wetness off of my cheeks with the back of my hand and look up at him for a moment. The realness of the situation then overtakes me, and I drop my gaze to shake my head and mutter, “damn it, this is so confusing.”
Luke presses me to him, his arms locking around my back, and murmurs in my ear, “I know. But sometimes – well, almost all the time – the most important things are the most complicated.” Even though I don’t glance up at him, I can tell he’s smiling down at me, and I just cling to him even harder, taking a few deep breaths to calm myself down, when a flood of hate and loathing washes over me.
I hate myself for knowing that I’m going to have to let go of him sometime soon, and, when I do, one of us is going to die. I hate the Triple Crown committee for being so sadistic that it’s not enough for them to tear apart families, they have to brutally tear apart relationships they made while having everyone else watch and revel in the destruction. I hate the people of El Nieve for being so blind to the awful things they witness and even endorse on television. I hate Puck for having his open but not doing anything to open anyone else’s. I hate Max for trying to keep me alive and wanting me to do what I’m supposed to and just win, without any care for any of the kids I’ll kill in the process. I hate Rush for proving to me by nearly killing Jackson that he can break me easily, that he and his carnations can and will stamp out any sparks they see. I hate Abby for being so perfectly cute and loveable and making me want to play the hero, making me feel like I owe it to her to save her, when I don’t owe her anything at all. I hate Jackson for burning with so much rage and hate for the world that it’s impossible for him not to rub off on me and change me and make me like him. And, most of all, I hate myself for ever thinking that I could be happy with Jackson, and I downright despise myself for loving Jackson even some, when Luke is clearly so much more deserving of my love.
I wish I didn’t have to act, that I could just tell Luke about all of my falsifications and beg his forgiveness for each one. I wish that I could forget everything that’s happened here and return home, andsee my family again, and go on living my life with no knowledge of El Nieve as anything but Spanish for the snow. I wish that I could forget Luke Gates as anything but a nice boy in my grade, and that I could date Jackson, and be able to really convince myself that I loved him, and maybe even have a fake happily ever after with him, because I think I’d rather pretend than face the truth. I wish that eveything that’s happened to me and Luke and Abby and Marshall and Max could have never happened, that the Triple Crown never existed, that El Nieve hadn’t been taking the lives of innocent children for the sake of twisted entertainment for ninety-nine years. I wish that the United States of America had never let itself get turned into El Tiempo, this twisted mix of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. I wish that the people here still had a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong, and could understand that the Triple Crown and everything it’s doing and everything it represents is completely wrong.
But then I remember that these people are the Mildreds and the Mr. Parsons, not the Montags and Fabers and Winstons and Julias that Luke and I are. They will never wake up, they will never see the truth, because the emotions they should feel and the things they should do are so ground into them by their society that they could never defy such a large amount of pressure, even if they were conscious to begin with. But they aren’t conscious; they instinctively bury their true feelings and thoughts and their sense of right and wrong in the thrill of the Triple Crown, in the bloodlust that overtakes them when one champion kills another, in the entertainment that has come to rule their lives. All these people live for is the Triple Crown, so they are not really living at all. And, if they are always kept in the dark and never come to realize that they should be existing for so much more than just a murderous game, then they will never want to live for anything but the Triple Crown, they will never find out how awful it truly is, they will never really care about the thirty or thirty-one families that get their children’s bodies sent home to them in white coffins every year.
If the people in the Sections were like the people in El Nieve, as in unconscious, the Triple Crown would go on forever. But the people in the Sections are not like the proles from 1984, or the kids in the beetle who nearly run over Montag in Fahrenheit 451, because they are not unconscious. The people in the Sections are the ones who see their children die on national television not once, not twice, but three times in the course of three to four months. The people in the Sections know what it’s like to never have enough to eat because they always have to send their crop to El Nieve so the people there can have enough to eat. The people in the Sections know what it’s like to have everything they’ve ever cared about stripped away from them because someone in El Nieve wants it. The people in the Sections know what it’s like to fight in the Triple Crown and either die or be broken. The people in the Sections know what pure hatred feels like, because they feel nothing but that towards El Nieve.
If there is hope for this society, if there is hope for the future of this twisted United States of America, it lies in the people of the Sections. They are the Low, the beaten, the abused, the used, the cast-aside, the worn-out, so they would be determined to prevent another all-powerful High from coming in and taking control. The people in the Sections would know how to connect with and lead each other, and, above all, they would know how to make everyone happy, and prevent a horror like the Triple Crown from happening ever again. In many ways, the people in the Sections are far more intelligent than the people in El Nieve. While they may not have incredibly large vocabularies or have attended the best schools, they have far more common sense than anyone in El Nieve does. They are incredibly self-resourceful, take care of their own, and are concerend with the well-being of nearly everyone around them. The people in the Sections are far more human than the people in El Nieve are, because the people in the Sections have not forgotten how to feel, do not get pleasure out of watching innocent children getting butchered, would never believe any of the propaganda El Nieve spews out, have not lost their moral compasses in the bloodlust of seeing someone bleed out, will never forget that everyone is human and no one is worthless, and, above all, they will never let themselves slip into the state of unconsciousness everyone in El Nieve is currently in.
I am interrupted from my loathing of the world and the people in it – including myself – and my musings by Luke pulling back and looking down at me with a concerned expression in his eye. “Are you alright?” he asks me, like he always does, and I can’t help but smile. His tendencies, especially his gentleness and caring, always manifest themselves in some way or another eventually.
I feel the words, “I’m fine, Luke,” form on my tongue, but I can’t bring myself to say them. Since I might as well allow myself to be honest for once, I tell him truthfully, “I was just thinking that the Sections and El Nieve are kind of like a mix between the societies in 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.” Even though I know that no one in El Nieve will have any idea what I’m talking about, I still feel like I’m doing something dangerous, that I’ll get punished in the end. But, oh, right, I’ll get punished in the end anyways. “Most of the people in El Nieve – Mitchell and Max, and, I hate to say it, Rush excluded – are the Mildreds and the Mr. Parsons, knowing and doing exactly what they’re supposed to all the time.”
“What does that make Mitchell and Max and Rush then?” Luke questions, staring down at me. I feel him swaying again, and have him walk over to the large flat rock so he can sit down and not fall on his face.
“Max and Mitchell are Julia and Faber, and Rush is Beatty and O’Brien.” Seeing the unspoken question, “And what are we?” blooming in Luke’s mind and about to be uttered by his tongue, I begin, “And we… We are Montag and Winston. But I will not let us end like Winston. When we go out, Luke, we will go out with our heads high, and we will go out in style.” As I smile and give the ceiling a salute, I wonder how much of my monologue they didn’t let the audience, and I wonder what excuse they used to make up for cutting away just when it was getting good.
“Lizzie, you’re treading on dangerous ground,” Luke warns as he looks up at me, and it’s all I can do to not burst out laughing, even though I wouldn’t really be laughing in amusement.
“Luke,” I begin, capturing his gaze with mine and staring almost coldly into his eyes, “all ground around here is dangerous.”

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

Luke and I have spent the day eating slowly through our supply of food and huddling together to keep warm. Well, to keep him warm. He’s doing better and gaining strength with every hour we spend lying next to each other. The rainstorm’s still going on, so that means I’m still the reason he’s recovering so quickly, but I don’t worry about him finding out anymore, because I know he won’t be able to.
However, I am slightly worried about Rush and the Triple Crown committee finding out, since they know I’m an immortal, and they could very well connect the dots between Luke’s speedy return to health and me. I don’t think even they would be able to figure out how I’m healing him though, since I don’t even know. I’m not consciously trying to heal Luke; my body is just instinctively transferring the extra energy I’m drawing from the storm into him. At least it’s a lot better to give it to Luke than the alternative of me accidentally causing a lightning storm with all the stored-up energy.
We haven’t really done much talking or anything romantic today besides constantly being in physical contact, so I know that Max and the audience are probably eager to see some romance happen. I can’t bring myself to act though, not quite yet, so I just continue to lay next to Luke and watch the rain drops drip steadily onto my discarded, very absorbant black undershirt shirt that I laid out to suck up the water and prevent the cave from flooding. I’m going to have to get up and go outside soon to squeeze my shirt mostly dry, but I don’t feel like moving right now, so I won’t.
Luke and I both got an incredibly good night’s sleep last night, despite the circumstances and the fact that we really shouldn’t have slept as long as we did. We were both passed out for at least ten hours, which I think is the most I’ve ever slept in about a year and is the most I’ve ever seen Luke sleep since the beginning of the Triple Crown. We both feel a lot better now though, since apparently we needed it immensely, so I’m not going to complain about neither one of us staying up to watch guard.
There haven’t been any gunshots today, or at least that we could hear, which means the audience is most likely blood-hungry as well as romance-hungry at this point. I definitely wouldn’t put it beyond the Triple Crown committee to drive another champion towards us to create some action, so I always have my bow, quiver of arrows, and sword within arm’s reach in case something gets ugly.
So far, in the brief trips I’ve made outside, I haven’t seen any signs of other champions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. However, it takes a very keen eye to find the cave, and a certain amount of flexibility to get inside, so I feel a little bit better about being immobile down here with Luke.
Even though he doesn’t say it – he barely says anything at all, which I find quite surprising considering his past record of eloquence and talkativeness when it pertains to me – I know Luke likes this alone time we’ve having together. I can tell that he appreciates just having me next to him, and just being able to reach out and touch me and know that I’m there, since I haven’t been there in the past. And I also know he is truly looking forward to our wedding, since he knows that I’m not just acting anymore. Of course, he doesn’t know that I still have to act some, but I’d rather have him be happy in his delusion that I love him as much as he loves me than have him find out the painful truth. I can also tell that Luke has no idea what I really am, and doesn’t even have any suspicions either. I thought that he might by now, after discovering many odd things about Jackson and about me that don’t quite add up when taken all together, but I’m glad that he doesn’t suspect anything. I’d have to wipe his memory clean of everything incriminating about Jackson and me if he did.
I learned a long time ago that the single most important thing, that, as an immortal, you should go to any lengths to preserve, is your human identity. If people find out what you really are, or even uncover some tiny clues that don’t really fit with your story, they’re going to start asking uncomfortable questions, and then you’re forced to erase the memories of the humans you once liked and considered your friends. I haven’t had to do that with anyone I’ve encountered so far, since the humans who know what I am I trust with all of my heart and would never tell another soul, and I don’t spend enough time with any other humans for them to figure it out. Well, up until this whole fiasco with the Triple Crown and Luke.
I know that there is a high possibility that, at some point or another, Luke will discover what I am, and I will have to erase his memory. But, I don’t know if I can bring myself to do that to him. I don’t know if I am capable of making the boy who loves me with all of his heart forget every moment he’s every spent with me; hell, he’d even forget my name. He’d forget everything he felt for me, and all of the incredibly touching things he has said that have made me cry, and he’d even forget the one word he has promised heill never forget: always. If I erase Luke’s memory for the sake of my own safety, I lose him for good. If he’s not blinded by his love for me, he’ll be able to see me for what I really am: a manipulative, controlling and exceedingly selfish person, and I don’t think I could bear to see his reaction upon finding the real me.
My musings are interrupted by Luke suddenly sitting up and placing a gentle hand on my exposed stomach. Sitting up myself and looking over at him in shock, he meets my gaze and murmurs, “Lizzie, you need to put on some weight. Nine percent body fat – actually, it’s probably more like seven now – isn’t healthy.” However, he doesn’t remove his hand, and, though I’m tempted to remove it for him, instead let it slide for now.
“Luke,” I begin with a sigh and a knowing, sad smile, “I don’t think that’s going to happen till we get out of here, if it’s going to happen at all.” I don’t know why he takes such a concerned approach on my weight – considering the circumstances, it’s not the most important thing, after all – but I guess he’s just worried about me. Maybe he even suspects that me not eating is part of my eventual suicide-by-Triple-Crown plan. Though it’s just because I don’t want to eat something prepared by slave labor, that wouldn’t be a bad idea.
“Lizzie, I just want you to take care of yourself,” he tells me quietly, his incredible ice-blue eyes locked on mine. “I promised you I would be there, always, and this is me keeping that promise.” He then kisses me gently on the cheek and takes away his hand. “Just eat, alright?” he almost begs of me, his gaze and voice pleading simultaneously.
Just as I am about to tell him, “Luke, you don’t have to worry about me,” I suddenly find that I can’t deny that deeply worried look on his face, and instead find myself saying, “I will Luke, don’t worry.” After a few moments of careful consideration of the possibility for damage control and steeling myself to fake out Luke, I add, “Besides, I have to fill out the wedding dress, don’t I?”
We both laugh at that, though I can’t help but hear the obvious forced tone to mine. Oh well; hopefully the audience in El Nieve thinks it’s just because I’m actually taking heed of what Luke said and am worried about my weight.
After sitting in silence for a few moments, Luke pipes up and asks me, looking over at me with an incredible intensity, “You know I love you with all of my heart, right?”
Instantly warning bells start chiming in my head, and I answer cautiously, with a slow, careful nod of my head, “You tell me that every day.”
However, instead of relenting, Luke shakes his head and questions me again, “But do you actually know that I love you with all of my heart?” When I stare at him blankly, not knowing what he means, he continues, “Do you actually know, in your heart, how much it kills me to be away from you for even a second? Do you actually know and can understand that I would die for you without a moment’s hesitation? Hell, I would die for a chance to hold you in my arms one last time.”

[Sonmi-451]

More added; any comments/suggestions?

My breath catches in my throat, and I have to turn away. I can’t deal with the guilt building up in my chest and threatening to crack my heart into pieces.
Luke then grabs my chin and forces me to look at him, though the whole time I try to look away and avoid eye contact, and tells me emphatically, “Lizzie, I don’t think you really understand how much you mean to me. Hearing me tell you that I love you with all of my heart every day and truly knowing it are two completely different things, and I want you to know it, not just hear it.” After a moment of him pausing to clear his throat and swallow, he keeps on, “You know, Lizzie, they say you’re not somebody until you’re loved by somebody else, and, by that definition, I don’t know if I’m really somebody yet, because I don’t know if you really love me.” I begin to shake my head, not in defiance of his statement but in warning him to not go on, since he could possibly spill something that would reveal our whole scheme, but it doesn’t seem to work. In fact, he doesn’t even seem to notice. “I mean, I know you feel something for me, but, despite the fact that you’ve agreed to marry me, I don’t know if you really mean it all.” For a second Luke stops, seeming to realize where this might go, and, just as I am about to sigh in relief at him dropping it, he continues, “I think you might have just been pressured into all of this by the how quickly it all developed, and, while I really would like to marry you in a couple weeks, I understand if you want to back out, whether it’s because you don’t think you’re ready or simply because you just don’t want to.”
“Luke,” I start, staring up at him and shaking my head when my mind goes completely blank. “Luke,” I begin again, this time very aware of the desperation and sadness creeping into my voice and also very aware of the fact that, if I want to stay alive long enough to die in defiance of El Nieve, I have to act and say I want to marry him, “I’m not going to not marry you. I’ve made a commitment to you and to everyone else, and I’m going to keep it.” As I turn away, I realize that what I’ve said will have the same effect as me straight-out telling Luke I don’t love him, and I sigh. Why does everything in and about this place have to be fabricated, including relationships?
“You honoring a commitment by marrying me doesn’t mean you’re doing it out of love. In fact, it most likely means you’re doing it out of necessity, because you said you would, and that’s not a reason to get married, Lizzie. Listen, all I want is for you to be happy, and if you aren’t happy marrying me, and aren’t actually doing it out of love, then I don’t want you to marry me.” Luke stares over at me, his eyes begging for a reaction or an answer. Instantly an idea pops into my mind, and, even though it’s completely crazy and I’ll probably regret it in the long run, I know I’m going to do it anyways.
“Does this show that I mean it?” I ask him just before leaning forward and kissing him passionately to feel that hunger overtake me again, and, before I even realize what I’m doing, I’ve pulled Luke down on top of me.
For a few milliseconds, before he truly knows what is happening, Luke is frozen in amazement. However, his shock quickly fades to be replaced by passion, even more than I have, and I feel his arms lock around me as he kisses me back. After a few moments, he pulls back, apparently lightheaded, to stare down at me with a small smile on his face. “You know, Lizzie, I think I’ve finally realized why we’re doing all of this, hell, why they do all of this.” He gestures around him at the cave, and I get that he’s talking about El Nieve and the Triple Crown.
“And why do we, why do they?” I ask him, intensely curious about his answer. My idea is that everyone in El Nieve have lost their moral compasses and have been duped into treating the Triple Crown like it’s something great by the Triple Crown committee. Of course, my thoughts might be biased, considering that I hate the Triple Crown committee and basically everything to do with El Nieve with a burning passion.
“Desperation,” he replies simply, shrugging his shoulders, and all of a sudden I feel goosebumps rise up on my back, because I know he’s right. Luke and I are acting like we are out of desperation for survival, and El Nieve holds the Triple Crown out of desperation for entertainment, out of desperation for something meaningful in their meaningless, empty lives. I guess desperation really is the natural, driving human emotion. Well, it and hope, but sometimes they are the same thing.
Luke speaking again pulls me out of my thoughts, and I come to in time to hear him murmur, his eyes locked on mine, “Lizzie, you are desperate. I am desperate. All of the other champions are desperate. El Nieve is desperate. The Sections are desperate. In this world, in El Tiempo, everyone is desperate, and everyone is determined to quell that desperation.”
He pauses for a moment before continuing, “Unfortunately, not everyone’s desperations can be quelled at the same time, because we all want ends that happen to interfere with others’ ends. If you and I win, we will stop our desperation, but we will kill off thirty other people in the process. By holding the Triple Crown to edge off its desperation, El Nieve hurts the Sections. If the Sections succeed in their rebellion and finally stop being desperate for freedom, El Nieve will be destroyed.”
“Lizzie,” he begins, “this is all one great game that has to have a loser as well as a winner. You told Jackson once that you’re a Lightning, and you don’t lose, so I have no idea why you’re trying to lose this. You will accomplish nothing except breaking my heart by dying Lizzie, so I don’t know how you got it into your head that somehow you would help someone by being dead. Trust me, Miss Lightning, you are worth so much more alive than dead, and I think everyone that knows you would attest to that.”
Turning away, I feel tears come to my eyes, but I force them down. No matter what Luke says, I am a concrete girl. I do not cry, and I will not cry, especially not in front of El Nieve. It’s bad enough that I cried on national television once already. When I’ve regained my composure enough to turn back to him and face him, I tell him, shaking my head slowly, “It’s not that simple Luke.” I am about to say, “I know I will help someone by dying,” but bite my tongue. I can’t let Rush onto my plan to become a martyr for the Sections, otherwise Jackson and I and probably even Luke are dead for sure.
“Oh really Lizzie? Because it’s pretty simple from where I’m standing. Either you win, and you live, and you get married to me, and we have kids and maybe even a happily ever after, or you lose, and you die, and I die with you, because I will not live without you, Lizzie. You are my world, and I literally could not live without you, because you are everything to me, Lizzie, everything. I would undoubtedly kill myself within five minutes of you dying, with my last words being, ‘Bury us together.’”
Luke’s eyes are locked on mine, his desperate, pleading ice-blue gaze plucking my heartstrings and making the tears I just shoved away come back in full force. But I am a concrete girl, not just in emotions but in decisions, and my mind is made up. I will die, and I will die so that the Sections can use my death to their advantage, and there is nothing Luke can say that can change my mind.
“Lizzie,” Luke starts, his tone even more passionate and almost hopeless, as though he knows that he won’t be able to sway me, “If you won’t do it for yourself, and for everyone else that loves you, do it for me.” When I don’t answer right away, he adds, determined now, “You’re always talking about how you owe me for everything, and this is your chance to repay me. It would mean the whole world to me if you would just stay alive, Lizzie. Please.” Staring at him in confusion, I feel a pain in my chest and know that I really should do it. Even if I don’t do it for anyone else – hell, even if I don’t do it for myself – then I really should do it for him, considering all that he’s done for me. “Lizzie, please,” he repeats, looking into my eyes with such emotion that I can’t help but pull away. Why does he always have to make me incredibly uncomfortable by his admitting his feelings and being so genuine all the time?
“Luke,” I murmur, my voice catching in my throat. What can I say to him that will convince him to let me go? “No matter how much you’d like to think that you can, you can’t save me from myself.” I then leap to my feet, grab my bow and quiver of arrows, and get out of the cave as fast as I can, since I can’t bear the realization that my plan might be off, and that, for once, I might be wrong.

“damn it, how can I go back now? I basically just confessed to treating this all as a way to commit suicide, and I know what Luke’s going to say. He’s going to tell me, like he always does, that I am it for him, that I am everything to him, that if I die, he dies too, and I can’t bear to hear him say that. You know, it’s kind of annoying that he can guilt-trip me into almost anything,” I tell Winston, who’s perched next to me, as I stare out of the tree I’m sitting in. I’m vaguely aware of the raindrops falling on me and soaking me to the bone, but I don’t care. I’d rather be drenching with rain than wet with my tears.
“Winston, no matter what way you look at it, I really am a concrete girl. I don’t show emotion that much, and it doesn’t matter what emotion I show anyways, since half the time I’m empty and just faking it. And, you know, maybe it’s best to be concrete, because if you’re concrete, you can’t be broken.” I place one hand on his head and scratch his ear absentmindedly, looking out at the drops falling down around us and glancing up for a moment to have one hit me on the tip of my nose. I then focus my hearing, which means, in a sense, that I ‘turn on’ my ears and allow myself to use my complete sense of sound, and hear the raindrops hit the ground individually. To the human ear, it often seems to be one large continuous sound, but my ears can distinguish each raindrop hitting the ground alarmingly clearly. The result is a never-ending rhythm of tiny, quick single beats that is so much faster than any rhythm in music.
Glancing over at Winston for a moment, I see him regarding me perplexedly, and I can’t help but smile. Despite his occasionally annoying but always well-meaning attempts to make me do the right thing, I really do like him. I know that he is a part of the arena, and that I will never see him again after One-Person is over, but I wish that it wasn’t like that, that he could leave the arena and come with me and die with me in the end. I could use a friend to die with.
“So what should I do, Winston?” I ask him, then add quickly, anticipating his undesirable response, “If you try to get me to go back there and face Luke right now, you will be a fur coat in a couple of days.”
Winston rolls his amber eyes at me, clearly not amused by my threat, before jerking his head around at the wilderness and looking at the bow in my hand.
“You want me to go hunt?” I question to get a nod of his golden, black-spotted head in return. After fighting off a distinct desire to not move, I sigh and leap down out of the tree to land on the spongy ground ten feet below without a sound. Glancing around me quickly to make sure that there is no imminent danger, I then freeze and strain my ears so that I can hear any sign of potential prey. When I hear an unmistakable rustling in the bushes to my left, I silently draw an arrow and aim into the dark masses of leaves and branches, waiting for any movement that will give away the location of the animal. All of a sudden I see a tail twitch, and my arrow flies to find its mark with a small squeak from the animal I just killed.
Walking over to drag the body of a fat but incredibly tiny squirrel-like creature out of the bushes, my arrow right through its brain, I smile in satisfaction and look up to tell Winston, who is staring down at me with his tail twitching like a housecat watching birds, “Not bad, eh?” I then toss the carcass up to him, knowing that there’s not enough meat on the animal to make it worth my time skinning it, to hear him bite down on the body with a distinctly satisfied crunch.
As I scan the low-lying, almost neon-green vegetation around me for more prey, a noise behind me jerks me to attention, and I whip around to find a completely oblivious paoton pecking at something on the ground. Rolling my eyes at the bird’s stupidity, I put an arrow through its skull before it can even realize what’s happened, then hang the feathery body over a low-lying branch of the tree Winston’s in. Deciding that I might as well use this opportunity to stock up on food, in case I’ve finally made the audience hate me by all the stuff I’ve said and done, I continue to shoot game for nearly fifteen minutes. Looking at my catch, I smile in satisfaction and shake my head slightly at myself as I realize that I have more animals than I can carry home. With five paoton, four squirrel-like creatures much larger than the one I first shot and gave to Winston, six actual rabbits that, for some reason, are in a tropical rainforest, and three larger rodents that appear to be a smaller version of a capybara, I don’t have enough hands to take all of this game back to the cave a mile away, so I’m going to have to give some to Winston.
Setting two of the paoton, one of the squirrel-creatures, three rabbits, and one miniature capybara on the ground for Winston to snack on when he pleases, I sling my bow over my back and head out in the direction of the cave. I’m feeling much better now, since the hunting cleared my mind, and I idly think with a smile that the game I left serves as my thank-you gift to Winston as well as me just not taking the extra.
After five minutes of running – I was slowed down some by the extra load of at least twenty pounds of meat – I arrive at the entrance. I take a deep breath and steel myself for talking to Luke, then slide into the cave, being very careful to not get dirt on any of the game in my hands.
“Oh thank God!” Luke cries as soon as I’m completely in the cave, and I stand up to have him embrace me in his arms tightly. Though he hasn’t returned to full strength yet, Luke still is very strong, and I can’t help but want him to let go so I can at least set the animals down.
When he pulls back, I ask him, confused by his reaction, “Why are you so happy? I was only gone a half an hour.” It’s not like I left him for an extended period of time or anything, but maybe he thought I was actually going to try to commit suicide.
“I heard a gunshot go off,” he replies, and instantly my heart sinks. One more dead, so now there are fifteen of us left. “I thought it might have been you.” He wraps his arms around me again and sighs in relief, but I don’t share his happiness. Even though our chances of survival go up with each death, I don’t want to hear anyone else’s name be read aloud, because I don’t want anyone else to die.
“I wonder who it was,” I murmur as I look over his shoulder at the gray stone wall behind him. I find it kind of surprising that I didn’t hear the gunshot myself, but maybe it went off during a thunderclap or when I was too focused on hunting to hear it. I don’t hug him back, since I don’t see a reason to, so I just stand there until he finally pulls away again.
“Lizzie, you don’t want to think about who it was,” he tells me quietly, meeting my gaze with his own. “In fact, you can’t afford to think about who it was,” he adds, and I sigh when I realize he’s right. In order to stay sane and win, we have to stoop to El Nieve’s level: we have to dehumanize the dead.
“Oh Luke, can I just quit and go crazy now?” I sigh as I drop the animals off to the side of the cave. As I feel the metallic lightning bolt pressing against my skin, I tell myself that I’ll clean the carcasses later. I don’t want to give away my secret weapon to Luke quite yet, since I was planning on saving it for when the moment’s right or when it’s really needed.
I hear the amazingly quiet thump of Winston’s huge paws hitting the stone floor of the cave, and I look over to find him licking himself in satisfaction. Rolling my eyes at his odd habits – and basically the odd habits of cats in general – I collapse to sit against the large flat rock Luke and I have been leaning against for the last day. Luke then sits down next to me and wraps his arm around me comfortingly, and I rest my head on his shoulder wordlessly. I idly think that it’d be nice if I could just stay here forever and become part of the rock I’m leaning against, because then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything: no Triple Crowns, no Luke, no family, no Jackson, no Winston, no survival. I would be completely free in my rock prison, as ironic as that is.
“Lizzie, you can’t give up, because I won’t give up on you,” Luke murmurs in my ear after we’ve sat in silence for a few moments, and I can’t help but smile at his very typical response that I could have predicted down to the last word.
“I know, Luke, but what’s the point? If we have to dehumanize the dead as well as ourselves to survive, what’s the point in surviving?” I look over at him to have him drop his head in admittance of the fact that he doesn’t know. “Because living like this, not knowing who just died, or who we’re going to have to kill next, or who’s going to kill us in the end, is not living at all. Luke, if winning this thing means losing my humanity and my identity, I’d rather lose.”
He almost unwillingly nods his head and tells me, “You know, Lizzie, so would I.” After a moment’s pause, he continues, “I don’t think we’d be the same people we used to be if we were to win, and I don’t want to be changed by this, because I know that something this awful can only cause changes equally as awful. So I think that, if I were given a choice between survival as someone else, as someone I don’t want to be, or death as myself, I would choose death.”

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

“You’re a boy after my own heart then,” I tease him feebly, giving him a smile and finding his empty hand with one of my own. He grins back at me and gives my hand a comforting squeeze, then gently picks me up and sets me down on his lap.
“No wonder we get along so well,” he murmurs in my ear, and my smile gets bigger as I lean back against him and sigh partially in happiness and partially at the knowledge of all that’s to come.
I sit there in his arms, thinking about our relationship and how it would have turned out if none of this had ever happened, for a few moments before remembering the animals to be cleaned and leaping to my feet. “Luke, I need to clean my kills,” I tell him in explanation to have him nod his understanding, and turn to the carcasses in the corner.
Grabbing them all and going outside – with Winston following me – I look into the rays of the setting sun and idly think, as I pull my lightning bolt and flip the blade open, that Puck should be announcing the dead soon. Most likely the gunshot Luke heard was one of the champions whose fellow Section champions were already dead and got cornered by a team or by the career pack.
Presumably the careers haven’t broken up, even with this new announcement, since they must recognize that they have a better chance of survival if they stick together than if they break off into factions and are forced to work with non-careers from their Sections. Of course, they might have broken off from each other anyways, since there is an all-career Section pair from Four left, and the gunshot might have been a career killed in the skirmish following the fracturing of the pack.
Speaking of careers, I wonder what Marcus is doing. I haven’t given him much thought so far, with my mind being so full of Marshall and Abby and Luke and staying alive to die at the right time, but all of a sudden I realize that the gunshot could have very been him. I know very well that no non-career team could take him down – hell, I doubt two non-career teams could take him down – but I’m pretty sure he’d be a goner if he got cornered by the career pack. As strong and powerful as Marcus is, I think that, while he would definitely put up a good fight, even he in the end would get overwhelmed by four incredibly well-trained warriors.
Murmuring a prayer that it isn’t him, I turn back to the animal carcasses in front of me and begin to skin and gut them with mindless, robotic motions ground into me by so much practice and repetition. In no time at all I have cleaned all of the bodies, and toss the extras in Winston’s direction, since I know Luke and I won’t use them. I then slip back into the cave for a moment to get a match, and start a small but very hot fire so I can smoke the meat to preserve it. The first animal I try to smoke over the fire accidentally gets dropped into the flames when I severely burn my fingers trying to pull it off of the stick I have it speared on. After I’ve muttered curse words in about five different languages and sucked on my roasted fingers, I turn back to the fire and sigh at the loss of meat. However, I know that the other animals won’t smoke themselves, and proceed to cook the rest of them thoroughly with little to no finger-burning in the process, thank God.
Wrapping all of the roasted meat up in a large, waxy green leaf I pulled off of a low-lying, fern-like plant nearby, I carry the bundle back in the direction of the cave, a very hopeful Winston sniffing the air and following behind me. I cautiously slide into the cave, being very careful so as to not spill any of the meat out onto the ground, and rise to my feet to find Luke watching me with an intense look on his face.
“What?” I ask him confusedly and half-warily, wondering what on earth he could be thinking this time. Considering that he has a habit of making very honest statements that make me very uncomfortable, I’m almost worried about what he’s about to say.
“You move like a hunter, like a killer. I saw you take down four careers and even set a fastest kill record during Hand-to-Hand, and I’ve been listening to them announce you as the kill leader for three nights now, and, you know, I’ve never wondered up until now how you got as good as you are. I mean, you don’t just develop the skill to kill as quickly and efficiently as you do overnight, so I’m puzzled. What aren’t you telling me?” Luke stares me directly in the eye, and I feel my heart free-fall out of my body. I knew that he would start asking question sometime – in fact, I was shocked it took him this long to ask questions – but I’m still not prepared for having to lie to Luke’s face.
“Luke, you should put my jacket on so you don’t get cold,” I tell him, completely ignoring his question to stall for time and try to come up with some halfway-believable excuse.
“Lizzie, I have you for keeping me warm,” he murmurs gently before asking again, his determined tone returning, “Now what aren’t you telling me?”
“Luke, I’m not telling you a lot of things,” I begin, sighing inwardly at my failing ability to lie to him, “but I think the most important thing that I’m keeping from you is my past. Now, I know you know that I transferred to EMS from Sagewood in eighth grade and have been going to Elizabeth schools ever since,” I say quickly when I see Luke open his mouth to interrupt, “but I’ve been doing a lot more than just going to school in that time.” Suddenly aware of the meat still in my hands, I set it down off to the side and straighten back up to face Luke again. “Luke,” I start, resigning myself to the whole barrage of questions that are undoubtedly to come, “I worked as an assassin for the government for three years, from the time I was thirteen up until February of last year.”
“What?” he bursts out, his eyes shooting open in shock. Clearly my answer isn’t what he was expecting, which isn’t surprising considering that it would be almost impossible to expect an answer like that. After a few moments of him processing the information in amazement, he finally asks, “How do you know how to use swords and bows so well then?” I give him a confused look, wondering if he actually heard what I said, and he explains, “Well, all modern assassins that I know of – or at least the ones in movies and video games and stuff – use guns and poison and modern weapons instead of outdated weapons like the ones you’ve been using during the Triple Crown, and I think that you must have used modern weapons since they’re more efficient and easier to use, so how do you know how to use bows and swords?”
“And now, Luke, you have presumed wrong.” I give him a smile, idly thinking that it’s funny he pulls his examples of assassins from video games and movies. Of course, he doesn’t know any other real assassins besides me, so I guess he doesn’t have anything else to base his assumptions off of. “On some missions I used guns and modern weapons, yes, but on most of my missions it didn’t matter what weapons I used as long as I killed my target, so, since I prefer using ‘outdated’ weapons and they’re harder to forensically trace anyways, I used them.” Shrugging, I see him nod his head in understanding, and I turn back to the meat, intending to have us eat some of it that I didn’t smoke so it won’t go bad and so we can save the rest of the feast for later, to be interrupted by Luke’s voice.
“Why did you work for the government?” he questions, and instantly I can tell that he’s one of the many people under the delusion that our government won’t break its own laws to achieve something. To the government, the means is completely forgotten as soon as the end is reached. “Well, to be more specific, why did the government hire you? I would think that they would be in the business of catching assassins, not hiring them.”
“The government is in the business of achieving its goals, and it will do whatever it takes to do that. To be honest, hiring assassins is about one of the most benign things the government does,” I add cynically. I lost all faith in the United States government the day Bush 43 was re-elected, and the fact that my parents were blackmailed into giving their consent regarding me working as an assassin didn’t help to repair my belief.
“Oh,” Luke says, obviously amazed that the government that runs his country is not nearly as holy as it claims or appears to be. We then sit in silence for a few moments, Luke clearly still trying to figure everything out and me hoping to dear God that he doesn’t ask any more questions, even though I’ve definitely given him enough puzzling material for thousands of questions. “How did your parents agree to it? I mean, even if the government didn’t ask them for their permission, they must have noticed you going away on missions, so what did you tell them?” Luke questions, breaking the quiet and causing me to look up at him.
“The government blackmailed them into shutting up. The government said it would take away all of my parents’ assets and completely ruin their reputations and basically make it so that they could never have a normal life again if they told anyone about me being an assassin. I didn’t want that to happen since I wasn’t going to have my parents throw everything away over a secret that didn’t really matter as long as I didn’t die, so I told them to what the government says and keep quiet, and it kept my family safe. That was all I could ask for.” In reality, the government blackmailed my parents by threatening to reveal their secret, which would have had the same effect as the government actually hacking into my parents’ documents and bank accounts and ruining their lives that way, but of course Luke doesn’t need to know that. Well, he might need to know it, but it’s better for him if he doesn’t. As I pull myself out of my thoughts, I shrug, idly thinking that it’s amazing how casually I’m speaking about this issue when, a year and four months ago, I was so angry at the government that I was in the process of destroying the agency I worked for.
“Oh,” Luke repeats, and I can’t help but smile. You’d think that, by now, he’d be used to my announcements of the government’s shady nature, but I guess not. After a couple more seconds of silence, he asks, “Who did you kill?” I look at him confusedly, not knowing what he means. He could be talking about the individual people I took out – all three hundred and ninety-one of them – but, since the names wouldn’t mean anything to him, I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about. When he sees my puzzled expression, he clarifies, “What kind of people did you kill? Like, criminals or public enemies?”
I pause, not knowing how to reply. I killed criminals and public enemies, sure, but I also killed a bunch of other people that just appeared to be normal citizens but were in fact immortals. I also took out perfectly normal citizens that the government felt threatened by for one reason or another. Of course, I can’t tell Luke that, so I simply and truthfully answer, “I took out people the government thought were better off dead.”
Luke nods wordlessly in response, and I can tell that he’s still having issues comprehending it all. I can’t say I blame him, considering that he’s been taught his whole life that government is good and right and helps its citizens, not hires assassins to kill them. Suddenly realizing that I’m incredibly thirsty, I grab one of the jugs of water from the packs and am about to drink my fill only to be interrupted by Luke’s voice. “Well, as much as I hate to say it, it’s actually a good thing the government’s morally corrupt enough to hire assassins, because your hunting, gathering, tracking and fighting skills are the only things keeping us alive. I mean, God knows I can’t fight like that.”
“Luke,” I begin, meeting his gaze with my own and willing him to understand, “that’s a good thing.” I see him open his mouth to protest and close it abruptly when he realizes what I’m getting at, and I turn back to the water jug in my hands, satisfied. Taking a few long swallows, I hear a ruffling noise behind me and I can tell that Luke’s actually putting the jacket on. For some reason, even though it hits a hundred with a hundred percent humidity during the day, the rainforest drops down to forty degrees at night. Since that would never happen in a normal rainforest, as all of the plants and animals would die, I guess that it’s just the Triple Crown committee making it tougher on us.
Suddenly Puck’s booming voice breaks the relative stillness of the air, and I stand straight up to listen intently. I’ll finally get to hear who died earlier.
“Section Seven: Lisa Miller,” he announces solemnly, and my eyebrows shoot up when, after a moment’s pause, it’s obvious no more names are going to be read aloud. I had thought for sure that either Nick or Sarah would be dead by now, considering that neither one of them are fighters or even know how to climb trees.
However, my thoughts are interrupted again by Puck saying, his tone much more excited now, “And your kill winner for today is...” I cross my fingers, hoping to dear God that someone’s finally passed me, “Lizzie Lightning, with seven kills!” I roll my eyes and groan at the fact that the Triple Crown committee seems to be determined to get me killed by having me constantly announced as the kill leader, even though they say they want me to win. However, I force myself to bite my tongue and turn back to the meat, thinking that some food could take my mind off of my hatred of the Triple Crown and everything related to it.
“Lizzie, we have other food. We can save for that for later if you want,” Luke tells me from behind me, but I don’t even bother to look up or turn around to answer.
“I know, but the food in the packs and the leftover feast will last longer than the meat I roasted,” I reply, and, anticipating Luke’s inevitable response to the contrary, that the roasted meat will last longer than the feast, I add, “Luke, the feast is full of preservatives. To be honest, I think it might last longer than the jerky in my packs.”
“Ok,” he finally says, his tone saying that he’s accepted that he won’t be able to beat me in a contest of who’s right or wrong, and I pull a paoton out for us to split.
We then eat in silence, the only sounds the sounds of us eating, and, even though we’re not really interacting, I’m just happy to have Luke around. I’ve realized that, while I don’t love him as much as I should, I do love him some, and it definitely is a relief to not have to act all of the time.
After I’ve finished, I toss my scraps and bones in Winston’s direction, since I don’t want to waste anything when he can eat it, and rise to my feet and cross the small room to wrap up the rest of the meat in the leaf I carried it on. Returning to Luke’s side, I sit down next to him to have him wrap his arm around me. I rest my head on his shoulder and sigh, thinking of all the other secrets I’m keeping from him and all of the other things I should tell him and how much I want to scream right now.
However, instead of doing anything like that, I murmur quietly, “Good night Luke,” and drift off to sleep with thoughts of how I really should be an actor if I ever get home.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

Luke and I spend a week in the cave, with only one gunshot – for the last champion from Five who I vaguely remember as a slight, short non-career girl by the name of Grace Thomas – going off the whole time. We don’t talk much and, when we do, our speech is low, quiet and quick, since we know that our survival relies on our ability to stay quiet and undetected. However, we also know that the Triple Crown committee is undoubtedly pushing other champions towards us to create a fight, as the audience hasn’t gotten its fair share of bloodletting in these last seven days.As a result, we are always on our toes and always prepared to run at the slightest indication of other champions. Luke gets much better and returns to full strength. His wound almost completely heals because of me drawing energy from the ever-present storm and leaves a long, wide scar running over the left side of his ribs. My wounds almost completely heal as well, though I still have some very colorful and very large bruises. We don’t get any more food or gifts from Max, as apparently we’re not being romantic enough for him to raise sufficient funds to buy us anything, so we hunt and gather everything we eat. However, with my hunting skills and knowledge of which plants are edible and which aren’t, Luke and I don’t want for anything, and so I can’t bring myself to be falsely romantic with him when he isn’t being truly romantic with me. I know Max must be disappointed in me and waiting for us to do something worth noting, but I won’t do anything worth noting, not as long as I don’t need to. I will do the bare minimum that it takes to survive, and nothing more. In fact, the most romantic thing that Luke and I do is fall asleep in each other’s arms every night, and that isn’t even because of romantic reasons. It’s because I need to keep Luke warm so he doesn’t get sick or frostbite, since nights in the forest are getting down to twenty degrees, and, even though I won’t get cold, he most certainly will.Despite our feelings that the champions must be out there, and that they must be close, we aren’t disturbed the whole week, and I drift off for another night’s sleep with my head on Luke’s shoulder and a nagging feeling of discontent and imminent danger on the edges of my consciousness.

A few distinctly human cries that sound like they’re not too far away break the stillness of the air to be followed by a gunshot going off, and immediately I start awake. After turning to Luke and seeing him staring back at with a surprised, worried and not at all sleepy expression on his face, I immediately jump into action. Poking my head out of the cave and beckoning Winston hurriedly inside, I glance around the outside of the cave to make sure that there is no sign of human habitation. When I find none, I turn back to the inside of the cave and make sure that all supplies are out of view of the cave mouth. I then grab my bow, quiver and sword and press myself flat against the wall farthest away from the entrance as I motion for Luke and Winston to join me.
For a few seconds, we wait in a frightened silence, all three of us listening intently for any sign of approaching humans. A heavy footfall right outside the cave appears to scare Luke and Winston out of their minds, but I just steel myself for a fight by drawing an arrow silently and fitting it into my bow. If someone comes down here, they will be dead before their feet even hit the cave floor.
Glancing over at Luke and giving him a reassuring smile, I see him relax a little at seeing my drawn weapons, and I can’t help but think that it’s ironic how he’s relieved by me having my weapons out. However, all of my thoughts are almost immediately interrupted by a pair of voices coming from the outside, and instantly I focus my ears in an effort to identify the champions who have us trapped in here.
“Do you think there’s anyone in there?” I hear one deep voice ask, and my eyes shoot open when I realize who it is: Marcus. He must have teamed up with a non-career from his Section, since it’s not like he’s going to be with the career pack. Slowly I lower my bow, since I know I wouldn’t be able to shoot Marcus even if he did come into the cave.
“Well, I’m not checking to see if there is,” I hear a female voice reply, and the thought darts through my head abstractedly that its owner must be the other champion alive from Two, since the other two people are dead already. “I mean, if there is someone down there and we go down there, we’ll be dead before our feet even hit the ground!” Even though I know I might end up killing her in the end, I can’t help but like this girl from Two. She and I seem to be kindred spirits.
“But what if it’s Lightning and Gates? I like Lightning; she’s smart and decisive and a survivor, and I think we can trust her Adelaide,” Marcus tells of the girl, and I’m sure she’s the other champion left from Two, since I vaguely remember something about a five-six, slightly-built but very crafty Adelaide from Two during interviews.
“Well I don’t think we can!” Adelaide shoots back, and, even though I can’t help but feeling a little insulted, I mentally applaud her for being so smart, since, if I were another champion, I wouldn’t trust myself either. “You saw the way she killed that career from One-”
“Danica Roberts,” Marcus interrupts. I guess his time spent around them made enough of an impression on him for him to remember their names.
“-in Hand-to-Hand,” Adelaide continues without acknowledging what Marcus said. “Lightning set a fastest kill record, Marshall. She’s dangerous, and, before you say something about her being engaged to Gates, that doesn’t change anything. She doesn’t actually love him; anyone could see that.” I feel Adelaide’s words pierce my heart and sting like needles, and I glance over at Luke in the dark for a moment to make sure that he knows that’s not true. Of course, I’m also doing it for the benefit of the crowd, but he doesn’t need to know that. The only person that needs to know that is Max, and the only people that do know it are Max and Rush.
“I think she does,” Marcus replies quietly, and I can almost see him drop his gaze to the ground in his shy way.
Instantly I feel immediately grateful towards him, and I mouth, smiling slightly, “Thank you Marcus.” The audience – and Luke - probably thinks that I’m grateful for Marcus defending me and my love for Luke, when in reality I’m grateful for him helping enforce the idea that I actually do love Luke. Trust me, I need all of the help and backing I can get, since I need all of the audience support I can get.
“Well you also want to die when you’re one of the favorites to win, so I’m not sure your thoughts and decisions can be trusted,” Adelaide tells him coldly, and I can’t help but feel bad for him. I know that, despite his huge size and outwardly tough manner, he’s actually a big softie, and that her comment hurt him a lot.
Apparently I’m right, because it’s not two seconds later that Adelaide is apologizing. “I’m sorry Marcus,” she murmurs quietly, regret filling her voice. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You shouldn’t have said a lot of things,” Marcus replies mildly, somehow making it all into a joke, and I can picture him in my mind giving her a beaming smile. That’s the thing that I like the most about Marcus; despite the fact that he is truly sensitive and sometimes you can’t tell if something you said offended him or not, he always is lighthearted about it afterwards. He also has a great smile, so that’s just an added bonus to him taking insults so well. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I think Marcus is very attractive, and, if I weren’t engaged to someone else and in love with another person and if Marcus and I weren’t supposed to be killing each other, I would flirt with him.
“Now, if there is a person down there, and that person is Lighting, she has heard everything we’ve said, so I don’t we’d be in any danger if one of us were to go down,” Marcus says, and all of a sudden I see his huge brown face appear in the entrance of the cave. I know he’s seen me, even in the darkness, when he mutters, “What do you know,” and tells me louder, “It’s nice to see you again Lizzie. You too Gates.” Marcus nods his head in recognition in Luke’s direction as Marcus climbs down into the cave to stand next to me, and a smile bursts out across my face.
However, even before I greet him reply, something strikes me as extremely odd, and I ask him, “Why’d you decide to take the risk and stick your head down here to begin with? I mean, you had to have known that the odds were against it being me down here, so you were taking a serious chance with a very high possibility of you ending up dead.”
“Well, I figured I was going to end up dying in the end, and if it was someone else down here waiting to kill me, at least it would have been quick.” He shrugs his shoulders as if it’s no big deal, and, even though – or perhaps because – he’s sharing my desperate feelings, my respect for him immediately grows.
“Spoken like a true Triple Crown champion,” I tell him with a small but sad smile, and I cross the cave to grab the packs. However, I no sooner reach them than Marcus cries out in surprise, and I jump up to see him holding his sword with his eyes fixed warily on Winston.
“Marcus, it’s ok! Winston’s – the cat’s – friendly!” I cry, running to him and breathing a sigh in relief when Marcus lowers his blade, even though he still appears to be suspicious of Winston.
“So you’ve been taming jungle cats as well as blowing up supplies,” Marcus jokes, his incredible dark brown eyes locked on mine. “Man, what haven’t you done?”
Even though I’m flattered by his comment on my accomplishments, I can’t help but wonder how he knows about me blowing up the supplies. “How do you know about that?” When I see his confused expression, I elaborate, “About me blowing up the supplies. I know Puck announced that Terrell died, but I didn’t think that he would announce how or who killed him.”
“I was actually watching you from the bushes around the career camp so that I could finish the job if you blew yourself up.” Marcus gives me a huge grin, and I roll my eyes at him. Just because I nearly did blow myself up is no reason for him to tease me about it. “By the way, you gave me quite a nasty bruise-” – Marcus rolls up his shirt sleeve to reveal a huge patch of purple and black about the size of softball – “-but I can see that you dinged yourself up even worse.” His eyes fall to the marks on my stomach, which I had forgotten about since they don’t hurt any more, and dart right back up again, and it’s all I can do not to laugh. I find it incredibly funny that Marcus is worried about proper conduct and being a gentleman even during a time like this.
Shrugging dismissively, I reply, “They’re not nearly as bad as they look.” Since I’ve been drawing energy steadily from the storm for the last two days, I’ve healed myself as well as Luke, and, even though my stomach still looks horrible, it doesn’t hurt at all now. Turning my head to look at Luke and give him a smile, I tell Marcus, “Luke’s the one with the real battle scar. For a little bit, I thought he was going to die on me!” Even though I try to make it all a joke, I can hear the panic in my voice, and I know Marcus hears it too, because instantly he scans Luke up and down, looking for his injury.
When he finds none, due to Luke having a shirt on, Marcus turns back to me and says, “Well, how about you guys gather your supplies and come up here, since I think we have a better chance of surviving if we work together.” Upon seeing Winston eying him hopefully, Marcus adds with a smile, “Yes, you can come too Winston, considering that Lizzie wouldn’t be very happy with me if I didn’t let you come, and I wouldn’t want that.” He gives me a sidelong look and a small grin, and I can’t help but grin back at him. The more time I spend around Marcus, the more that I like him.
Marcus then climbs back out of the cave to leave Luke, Winston and I standing together. Immediately I jump to action, carefully placing into a pack all of the extra meat and food we had sitting out, pulling on all of the layers of clothes that I didn’t already have on that are mine, and making sure that everything is packed up and ready to go. When I turn to throw Luke’s other clothes at him, I find him staring at me with a confused, defiant and angry look on his face.
“What?” I ask him, tossing him the garments anyways as I wonder what his issue could be. I thought he was all about surviving, and this is a good way to do just that.
“You’re not actually going to team up with them, are you?” Luke questions dangerously, his eyes flashing, and all of a sudden I know what his problem is. He’s jealous of Marcus, and doesn’t want me to be around him. However, unfortunately for him, we are teaming up with him, and there’s nothing he can do about that except not go with me.
“We’re teaming up with them, Luke,” I answer emphatically, in a tone that I hope leaves no room for replies to contrary. Gesturing to the clothes in his hands, I tell him, “Now put those on.”
After a few moments of him considering me carefully with a wary look in his eye, he finally concedes, and slips on the shirts wordlessly, making no sounds of pain like he would have just two days ago. His wound has healed up very well, so there’s no worry about it getting infected or him dying any more.

[Sonmi-451]

More added.

“I don’t like it,” he finally murmurs as he takes one of the packs out of my arms to sling it on his back, “but he’s right, we do have a better chance of survival if we stick together.”
I nod my head and give him a genuine smile as I sigh inwardly in relief. Luke’s cooperation as far as working with Marcus goes will make everything a lot easier. We then both turn to the cave entrance, and Luke gestures silently for me to exit first. I am about to climb out of the cave when I stop and turn around, realizing that I really need to tell Luke that there’s nothing going on between Marcus and me.
“Luke,” I begin, staring into his eyes and willing him to understand, “there’s nothing happening between Marcus and me. You are my one and only-” – I swallow, painfully aware of the blatant lie for Max’s and the audience’s sakes – “-and nothing can change that, alright?” I reach up a hand to touch the side of his face gently, and give him a short, sweet kiss, thinking that Max better be jumping up and down with joy at my performance.
“Alright,” he echoes, gazing down at me as a small smile curves his lips. He gives me a kiss of his own, and then motions for me to leave again, though he seems relieved and much happier now.
It takes a few moments and a couple muttered curse words for my eyes to adjust to the incredibly bright sun, as apparently the Triple Crown committee has decided to stop the rain for now. I mean, I’m not complaining, since in general it’s a good thing that it’s not raining, but I’m not a big fan of the amazingly intense sunlight. When my eyes have finally adjusted enough for me to see properly, my gaze falls on Marcus and a girl standing next to him that must be Adelaide.
My memory’s right – she’s the fix-six, slightly-built but obvious crafty girl I remembered her to be, but the one thing that strikes me as odd about her is that she’s clearly the dominant one in her partnership with Marcus, despite the fact that Marcus has a foot and probably one hundred and ninety pounds on her. Of course, Marcus, even though he’s bigger than everyone else, is not a leader, and in that aspect he and Terrell are similar, although Marcus isn’t a leader because he’s too timid and Terrell wasn’t a leader because he was too stupid.
“Lightning,” she greets tersely, jerking her head at me in recognition as she watches me with a wary gaze, as though she expects me to lash out and try to kill her and Marcus here and now. I can’t blame her for having such suspicions though, since things like that happened all the time on the Triple Crown footage I watched.
“Reynolds,” I reply in the same manner, eying her cautiously myself. Even though Marcus is on my side, I know very well that she isn’t, and I wouldn’t put it past her to try to kill me here and now herself.
“Let’s get moving,” she commands when Luke and Winston have come out of the cave, and immediately starts walking off in the opposite direction without another word. Turning back to Luke to see him shrug at me, clearly not knowing what to do, I think that, if we’re going to stick together, I guess we have to follow Adelaide’s orders. At first I hang back with Luke, neither one of us talking much, but it then occurs to me that Marcus probably knows more about what’s happened in the Triple Crown than either one of us do, so I catch up with him.
“Oh, hey Lizzie,” he greets when I step into stride with him, giving me a beaming white smile as he looks down at me. “What’s up?”
“What else do you know about what’s happened so far?” I ask him bluntly. There’s no point in trying to be subtle about it, since I might not get the information I wanted if I did, and I’m not in the mood for being subtle anyways.
“Well, what do you want to know?” he questions in reply, meeting my gaze with his own incredible dark brown one.
“Well, for one, do you know who died earlier?” When I realize that I might have falsely assumed and he might not know, I quickly add, to explain my assumption, “I mean, I presume you and Adelaide are the killers, since the kill happened so close to here and you guys were the only ones in the vicinity.”
“Yeah, we were,” Marcus confirms, then clarifies, “Well, I was. Adelaide isn’t strong enough or, to be perfectly honest, skilled enough to kill anyone unless she surprises them or somehow manages to hit them from a distance with a bow.” Upon remembering that he hasn’t actually answered my question yet, he quickly says, “It was Danica Roberts, the career girl from One.”
Despite the fact that I know it’s incredibly mean-spirited, I can’t help but smile at the fact that Danica finally got what she deserves. “Good,” I murmur, dropping my gaze to the ground when I feel Marcus staring at me intently. Feeling obligated to explain my comment, I add, “I never liked Danica much. She always was a jerk to me and the other champions, and I never really tolerated her to begin with.”
I see Marcus nod his head out of the corner of my eye, but I keep my stare locked forward. All of a sudden something seems to have changed in the look in Marcus’s eyes, and I don’t like it, because this newfound intensity of his makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
After a few long seconds have passed in silence between us, Marcus opens his mouth and breaks the quiet. “Lizzie,” he begins, and reaches out a hand to touch my arm gently, forcing me with the pleading tone of his voice to look up at him, “All I want is to help you, and do anything you need me to do, so I’m sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable. It’s just...” He pauses, and suddenly his demeanor changes; all of a sudden, he seems embarrassed and almost shy. However, he keeps on talking after a moment’s delay, and continues, “It’s just, I can’t keep my eyes off you.” With the sheer force of his tone, he draws my gaze to his unwillingly, and I look up at him in wonder for a millisecond before what he’s said truly sets in.
“Oh God, not you too,” I groan as I turn away from him, shaking my head. I’ve had enough of lovestruck boys for now, considering I’m surrounded by them. I thought that, by talking to Marcus, I might be able to get away from them for a moment, but apparently I was wrong. Suddenly all of my exasperation to annoyance, and I whip my head around to face him again. “Marcus, what is this about?” I ask him sharply, meeting his bashful, surprised brown gaze with my own cold, steely golden one. When he doesn’t seem to understand what I’m talking about, I elaborate, which I probably would have done out of anger anyways, “What is this ‘Oh, Danica’s dead, and, hey Lizzie, I’m in love with you’ stuff about? What on earth possessed you to suddenly announce this to me right before I’m getting married? Well, whatever it is, I don’t appreciate it Marcus, I don’t appreciate it at all.”
I then storm ahead so I don’t have to walk by him anymore and ignore his pained cries of “Lizzie, please let me explain!” I don’t want to have to talk to anyone right now, much less the boy who just told me he loved me and made everything so much more difficult.
However, I am torn away from my thoughts of Marcus and his stupidity by someone clearing their throat up in front of me, and I look up in alarm to find Adelaide pausing for a moment to fall into stride with me.
“You know, you’re all he’s been talking about since we met up last night,” Adelaide tells me quietly as she stares over at me and meets my gaze with her own incredibly intelligent piercing steel-gray one. “Even though he’s just made it harder on you – trust me, I know that he has, though I can’t imagine how much harder – he really does care about you, you know. If things don’t work out between you and Gates, Marcus will always be there.” After a moment’s pause, she adds, “Well, unless he gets killed off in Team Survival.” An awkward silence falls between us as I think about her words and how much she must actually believe them for her to say something like that. It doesn’t last long though, because she soon pipes up and speaks again. “By the way, you know about the rule that says your partner for Team Survival can’t be from the same Section as you, right?”
I nod my head in reply and eye her carefully as I vaguely remember Max mentioning something about that once and curse myself for actually thinking that Luke and I could both return home. I know exactly where she’s going with this but don’t really want to hear it, even though I realize now that it would have inevitably come up sometime anyways.
“Well, what are you going to do about you and Gates then?” she questions, and I’m exactly right about where I thought she was going with this. “I mean, I presume that he would be your first choice in a partner, but since he can’t be your partner, who are you going to choose, presuming that you get to pick?”
I know I can’t tell her about my plan to save Abby by choosing her as my partner, since I’m sure the Triple Crown committee would hate that idea, so I just shrug my shoulders and answer as I drop my eyes to the ground, “I don’t know. I guess I’ll just see what happens.” I don’t want to think about that rule and the fact that Luke and I both can’t return home, which means that our only option is dying together in Team Survival. I don’t want to think about my life falling to pieces around me, with its imminent end fast approaching, and I certainly don’t want to think about Luke and Jackson and Marshall and Marcus and all of the rest of the lovestruck boys in my life.
However, Adelaide seems insistent on making me think about all of those things, because, after a few silent seconds, she murmurs, her gaze locked on mine, “Do you love him?” and I feel my heart drop through my body.
I know exactly what she’s talking about, and I have no intention of replying. I have to though, for the sake of the audience and for Max’s sake, so, finding no relief in the fact that I’m not lying, I respond, “Yes, I do.” Pausing and realizing that I need to talk about it truthfully with someone, even if that someone might kill me in the end, I continue, “I don’t know how much though. I know I don’t love him as much as he loves me – to be perfectly honest, I think that might be impossible – but I do love him, and I fully intend to marry him.”
Adelaide nods her head wordlessly in understanding, and drops her gaze to the ground in front of her like I did, and I can tell that she actually understands, that she actually believes and knows now that I do love Luke. Hopefully my reply had the same effect on the audience, especially Rush, since he’s the one I really have to convince.
A much longer silence passes between us now, the only sounds the sounds of us walking, which is finally broken by Adelaide piping up again. “Well, I guess Marcus is out of the picture then,” she mutters, and it surprises me greatly when I hear a sympathetic and disappointed tone to her voice. I didn’t realize she actually thought Marcus had a chance with me, and I’m not happy that she did, because that means I didn’t act like I was in love with Luke well enough.
“Adelaide,” I begin, looking her in the eye, “Marcus never was in the picture. He knows that, and I’m pretty sure you know that too.”
She bows her head slightly in affirmation, and I wonder why she was let down upon finding that I love Luke. “I just...” she starts, and abruptly pauses, not knowing what to say. Clearly it’s a new experience for her, because she seems to get angry at her lack of eloquence and quickly, in an almost annoyed manner, repeats, “I just... I saw the way his face lit up when he talked about you, and I saw the pain in his eyes when he talked about Gates being the luckiest guy on the planet, and, even if his love for you is just an infatuation brought on by desperation, I can tell how powerful it was, and I can’t help but wish that Marcus, an incredibly sweet, kind, handsome, deserving guy, would actually get the girl for once.” She lowers her gaze to the ground again as her words tug at my heartstrings, and, yet again, I’m wishing that I loved a guy as much he deserves. However, even in my wishing and self-loathing, I can’t help but wonder about Adelaide’s praise for Marcus. She definitely isn’t the kind of person to give out that praise, even if someone deserved it, so I think she might feel more for Marcus than she’s letting on.
“Adelaide, no matter how nice and sweet Marcus is, Luke will always be the nicest, sweetest guy I’ve ever met.” When she doesn’t seem convinced, I embellish, “Adelaide, this is the guy who told me that, if we were to have marriage vows, his would be always. I know I’m not going to do better than that, so I’m not even going to try.”
Even as I turn my head away and look ahead, I shoot her a glance underneath my eyelids, reading her face for a reaction. Fitting with my theory that she considers Marcus as more than a friend, I see a small amount of relief flash across her face before she controls her appearance and makes herself look disappointed.
“Well, I think Marcus would do that and more, but you’re engaged to Gates, so I guess that doesn’t matter now.” She shrugs and slumps her shoulders like she really feels bad, but she can’t stop a small amount of excitement from creeping into her voice.
Another silence passes in between us, and I note with a small air of amusement that, considering all of the times our conversation has fallen away, neither one of us really have the best small-talk or even basic communication skills. During those long seconds, I can’t help but wonder if I’m right, if Adelaide does care for Marcus in more than a friendly way, and finally my curiosity gets the best of me.
“Adelaide, why do you care about Marcus so much?” I burst out, and, when I realize that I didn’t phrase my question correctly at all, I immediately backtrack. “Well, what I mean is, in what way do you care about Marcus? I could care less about why you care about him, but what’s been bugging me is that you clearly care for him a lot, but I can’t tell in what way.”
Adelaide regards me cautiously, her sharp gray gaze locked on mine as she tries and undoubtedly fails to read me. “What are you getting at?” she finally questions in reply, and I notice that her hands have balled into fists and her voice has taken on a defensive, angry tone. She knows I’m onto her, but she doesn’t want to admit her feelings or the fact that she allowed herself to be read by me.
“Adelaide, I think you’re infatuated with or in love with or whatever the hell you want to call wanting to be more than friends with Marcus,” I tell her bluntly, not taking any pains to lower my voice or even caring if Marcus hears our conversation. If that actually is how Adelaide feels, Marcus would find out in the end anyways.
Sure enough, Adelaide shoots a look over her shoulder in Marcus’s direction, and, when she sees that he’s not paying any attention to anything around him and is just hanging his head low with a pained look on his face, her gaze immediately darts back to me. “Lizzie,” she begins, and I hear the pleading tone her voice that tells me my suspicions are right without her saying any other words. “Please don’t tell Marcus, or anyone else, alright?” I see the desperation in her eyes, and I feel myself nodding my head in agreement before I can even think.
“Alright.” Even though Adelaide is clearly almost hopeless in her love for Marcus, I can’t help but smile at the fact that my predictions were right, yet again. So far I’ve proven Luke’s statement that I won’t always be able to read people correctly wrong – except for in the case of Luke himself, since, for nearly four years, I was completely oblivious to the fact that he loved me until he told me that he loved me. Knowing that what I’m about to say is probably quite stupid but that I’m going to say it anyways, I turn back to Adelaide and murmur, actually being careful about the volume of my voice this time, “I can talk to him and tell him how you feel and see if he’s interested too.” When I see the horrified look on Adelaide’s face, I quickly elaborate frankly, “Look, Marcus knows he has no chance with me, but he has a lot more than a chance with you, and any guy finds desire attractive, trust me.” I’m probably making myself sound like a slut, but I don’t care and it doesn’t matter. If it does anything at all, it will make the audience more interested in Luke’s and my relationship by making it seem like there’s a possibility I could cheat on him.
“You sure?” Adelaide questions skeptically, clearly doubting my level of expertise in talking to guys. I find that ironic, since earlier she essentially accused me of manipulating and using Luke, and, if that’s what she thinks, then I must be pretty damn good at talking to boys in her eyes.
“Adelaide, I’m sure,” I repeat, trying to reassure her with my tone. Apparently I succeed, since, while she still seems a little cautious about the whole idea, she has visibly become less tense and wary. Even though I know I’m testing my relatively good luck, I dare to add, “Besides, even if I’m screw it up somehow, I have a lot more experience talking to guys than you do, so I think I might be able to do less damage than you would if you screwed up.”
Instead of Adelaide being offended by my comment, like she very well could have, she just nods her head and mutters shyly, “Yeah, I have no clue how to talk to guys. I’ve never really liked one before, and I’ve never had one like me, so I don’t have any experience on the matter.” As I look over at her, all of a sudden I am struck by the fact that, despite her authoratative manner, she’s probably one or two years younger than I am. She’s at least that much younger than Marcus then, because there’s no way he’s younger than I am.
I manage to keep my suspicions quiet for a little bit, but in the end I can’t help myself from blurting out the question, “Adelaide, how old are you?”
“I turn fifteen today,” she replies quietly, and my eyes shoot open in surprise. She’s even younger than I thought she was.
“Well, happy birthday,” I congratulate her as I give her a smile. However, I know this isn’t a happy birthday for her, because it’s most likely her last. Seized by a sudden inspiration, I look over at her, capture her gaze with mine, and tell her, dead serious, “Adelaide, for your fifteenth birthday, I’m going to get you a date with Marcus.”
“Are you serious Lizzie?” She stares at me blankly, clearly in shock and, probably for the first time in her life, not knowing how to react or what to say.
“Adelaide, I’m completely serious,” I confirm as I give her a kind grin. “Besides,” I say, “I think it’s the least I can do to repay you for not killing Luke and I on sight. Trust me, I really appreciate that.”
Adelaide doesn’t say anything in reply, because she’s too busy grinning from ear to ear. I have to stifle back a laugh at her reaction, and, when she looks over at me curiously, I can’t help but giggle a little.
“What?” she asks me, staring over at me as though she worries about my mental health. To be honest, my mental health should be at the bottom of her worries.
“Oh, nothing,” I reply dismissively, waving my hand and instantly freezing my features into an emotionless expression. It’s a very useful skill that I learned to do almost instinctively during my three years as an assassin, and, with all the acting and deceiving I’ve already had to do and will have to do in the future, it has and will come in handy.
After Adelaide gives me one last calculating look and turns away, I allow myself to smile again as I think that it’s interesting how different people handle different situations. Adelaide’s handling the situation of being forced to fight in the Triple Crown by taking control and leading and caring for people, which is most likely what she did at home. However, this same girl – who happens to have more than a three and eighth percent chance of surviving the Triple Crown – has no idea how to talk to boys and is, for once in her life, asking me, of all people, for help on something.
Marcus is handling the situation of the Triple Crown by treating it as a way to die and leave this life that he didn’t choose behind, like I am. Unfortunately, he seems determined to make me feel like an awful person on the way by falling in love with me and telling me about it after I get engaged, so I can’t exactly approve of his plan.
Luke is handling the Triple Crown by simply trying to survive. While he’d like to think that he would rather die than be broken, I know the truth: that he will do whatever it takes to keep us, especially me, alive, and that includes being broken. After all, he’s already lied and manipulated and killed and done things that I couldn’t have ever imagined him doing, so I don’t know what his boundaries are, if he has any.
But how am I handling all of this? How am I dealing with being cherrypicked to win something I’d rather lose and being told to act when I really don’t want to? By rebelling, of course. Even though I’m supposed to be stopping a rebellion and putting out the fire I started and convincing people that I’ve done everything I have out of love for Luke, my actions speak for my motives. I am rebellious to the core, and I am determined to help the people of the Sections rise up and fight back and at least have a chance at living on their feet. I know, after looking out across their faces and seeing the desperate determination in their expressions during the Victory Tour, that they have had enough of living on their knees, and would much rather die on their feet after having just a taste of freedom. Since Mitchell has chosen to make me the spark, and since I won’t deny the people of the Sections their chance at liberation, I will be their martyr, and I will fan the flames that I have started in the hopes that I can help someone by doing so. I will die on my feet rather than live on my knees, like the Triple Crown would have me do, and I die with rebellious thoughts in my mind the whole time. I will not let myself become like Winston Smith: I will not let El Nieve get inside of me and break me. I will not let them change me and twist me and alter my mind to think the thoughts they want me to. When I die, I will die as myself, with my thoughts and feelings and identity, not as the brainwashed, broken excuse for a person that El Nieve would have me be.