He nods. “Shutting your eyes doesn’t make you a better person. It just makes you a coward. You’ll notice my uncle didn’t watch the man he sentenced to death actually die. He turned away.”
I close my eyes and think of Dr. Reynolds. He had the same depravity as the crowd, the same delight in doling out punishment for transgressions, real and imagined. I open my eyes again, looking at Jacks. I’m so tired of running. I so desperately want to trust him, to have a real friend.
“I shouldn’t have brought ya here,” he says, his tone filled with concern, his accent more pronounced.
“No. I . . . was thinking about the Ward.”
“You talked about the Ward before, then you freaked the hell out. Over a hospital?”
I shake my head. “No, it only looked like a hospital.”
He doesn’t say anything, just waits for me to go on.
“I . . .” I’m trembling, but I want to tell him. I have to. “I was placed in the Ward, a sort of institution . . . because I questioned the rules of the society I was living in. But when I was in the Ward”—I pause for a moment—“there was a girl I knew . . . I didn’t even like her, but she didn’t deserve what they did to her. They damaged her beyond repair.”
I picture Amber’s lobotomy scar. The dead look in her eyes.
“What happened to her?”
“They didn’t kill her, but they destroyed everything that she was. They . . . unmade her.” I stare down at my shaking hands. I grasp them behind my back, trying to hide them.
“Were they going to do the same to you?”
I swallow hard and nod. “I’d rather let a Florae kill me than let that happen.” Jacks is lost behind a wavering screen of tears. I blink him back into view.
Jacks puts his hands on my shoulders and looks me in the face. “Amy, you have every right to be scared. Look at this screwed-up world. Everyone is afraid, and if they say they’re not, then they’re lying . . . or really, really stupid.” He wipes a tear from my cheek. “You just have to keep going. I know, it sucks. But you have to be strong.”
I nod, unable to speak. Rice told me the same thing.
“Maybe we should head back, let you get some rest.”
“No! I can’t rest. I need to find Ken.”
“Okay, then let’s go.”
I have to pull it together. I wipe my face on my sleeve and shake out my arms. The truth is, I won’t ever be okay with everything that has happened to me. But I need to stay strong for the only family I have left.
We head down the metal stairs to the Yard. The crowd has subsided, so we cross the Yard instead of circling it on the wall. Still, we keep to the edge. Then we come to the area Jacks called the Arena, separated from the exercise yard by a chain-link fence. To one side of it is exercise equipment, muscular men using weights, and other machines used for strength training. I recognize some of the equipment; we had it in the gym in the Rumble Room in New Hope. On the other side are two sets of bleachers facing each other across a concrete square. In the center of the square is painted a red circle about twenty feet across.
“What’s this exactly?” I ask.
“People call it the Arena. Another blood sport. Right now the fighters are training, but once a week the Warden puts on fights to entertain the masses.”
“Boxing?”
“More like UFC—”
“Get off me!” someone shrieks.
I spin around. A boy with a shaved head stands at the entrance to the Arena. Two men have him by his arms as another, smaller man punches him in the stomach. They all look strangely similar, muscular, their heads shaved like the boy’s. Without thinking, I run toward them.
Before I can get there, the boy jerks his legs up, supported by the men trying to hold him, and kicks the smaller man in the chest. Using that momentum, he breaks their hold.
When I reach them, the men have circled back around him, joined by two other skinheads. I pull out my gun, but Jacks runs up next to me and pushes the barrel down.
“That’ll only make it worse,” he says, then sprints forward between two of the men.
I put my gun away and follow Jacks to stand next to the boy, who I can now see is a girl. I mistook her because of her shaved head and muscular build. The men still outnumber us, each one clearly fit, but none of them are nearly the beast that Tank is. I sparred with men as big as these in Guardian training. Nobody around us moves to help, just like when those men grabbed me when I ran into the Yard alone. Everyone is struggling to survive; no one wants to get involved in someone else’s problems.
Suddenly, as if by silent agreement, the men come at us as one. I focus on fighting off the two nearest to me and hope Jacks and the girl will do okay.