I can feel my hands trembling. I don’t want them to. This is my moment, I have to be brave so that everyone knows I can do this.

“I’ve done it before,” I say.

I can tell Dad is growing tenser. “That doesn’t mean you can do it again,” he says.

“I know. And if I can’t, you’ll just have to blow the place up with me still inside.”

There’s a perceptible change in the atmosphere as everyone realizes what it is I’m offering. Instead of sending a group of soldiers into the city and risking all their lives, I’m offering to infiltrate, to allow myself to be caught. I’m offering to return to the worst place I’ve ever had the misfortune of entering in my entire life, without the guarantee of coming out the other end, just for their cause. I can feel the respect of the soldiers in the room begin to build.

“You don’t have to do this just to prove a point, Brooke,” my dad is saying.

I shake my head. “I’m not,” I say. “I’m doing it because I can. Because I’m the best person to do it. You said we get one chance, that we only have enough weapons for one attack. So let me draw everyone to one place. It will increase our chances of success, won’t it?”

My dad can’t argue against me. He knows I’m right.

“Let me do this,” I say again, firmly. “It’s the right thing to do. If we don’t take these cities down, if we don’t eradicate the arenas and the slaverunners, then survivors will keep being tortured and enslaved. Children will keep being taken for the mines, for the sex trade.”

My voice falters as I think of Ben’s brother whisked away on a train for the mines beneath Grand Central. I have to do this for him, and for everyone else who died because of this stupid, brutal war.

I can tell I have the support of the rest of the soldiers. But I’ve put my dad in a difficult position, because now he has to fight between his heart and his head. He has to decide whether to listen to the father in him who is inevitably telling him not to let his daughter do this, or the commander in him who knows this is the best chance they’re ever going to get.

Eventually, he stands, having made his decision.

“Brooke’s right,” he says. “She’s in by far the best position to infiltrate Arena Three.”

And with that, I have sealed my fate. For the third time in my short life, I am heading back into the arena.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR