My captors don’t speak to me. They just prod me along, like an animal, like I’m less than human. I keep my chin high, not about to give them any kind of satisfaction for their bad treatment of me. Then they draw to a halt outside of a large steel door. One of the guards takes out a key and unlocks the door. It swings open and I’m kicked in the small of my back. I stumble inside and fall to my knees, colliding with the hard cement ground. Before the door is slammed harshly behind me, just enough light streams in from outside for me to see the gaunt, hollow faces of the prisoners locked up inside. Then the doors are locked behind me, and we are plunged back into darkness.

The smell in here is horrendous. There must be at least a hundred prisoners in here all crammed together, chained, sitting in their own dirt and filth. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that no one inside here has washed since being locked up. Being so close to them brings awful memories flooding back to me, of the gnawing hunger I felt when I was locked up in Arena 1, and of the heavy cuffs around my wrists. I feel nothing but empathy for them all. But I don’t speak to anyone. I’m not here to make friends. If I so much as let myself care for anyone inside here, I could jeopardize the whole mission. Everyone here is going to die. They’re collateral damage to a grander plan.

It shocks me to hear myself thinking this way. I really have turned into Flo. She didn’t care who she hurt as long as she survived. At the time, I hated her for it. But now I understand. And I understand, too, why my dad did what he did. Sometimes small acts of evil build up to greater acts of kindness. Not that anyone could call blowing up a stadium filled with slaverunners and spectators small...

My mission doesn’t leave my thoughts for even a second. Straightaway, I fumble in my pocket, searching for the red LED light of my GPS tracker. It’s hard to reach with the cuffs on and in the pitch blackness, but I find it nevertheless. I know once I activate it I’ll only have five minutes to escape before the bombs are dropped, so it’s absolutely critical that I secure myself an escape route before I do. I wish I had just the smallest amount of light to see by, so I could work out how many steps it will take me to reach the door. Every detail matters now. My plan is to activate the device when the guards arrive to take me to my fight, then attack them. I’ll be up and out of the arena before the bombs fall.