The boy’s face appears above me, the sword glinting. He looks mournful, like he doesn’t want to kill me but knows he has to. I lie there, unable to move. But something catches his eye. There’s something coming toward us, floating as lightly as a feather on the wind. It’s coming from the audience. Someone has thrown a piece of white cloth, or a feather, in our direction. We watch it float down. Is it some kind of peace offering? I look up and scan the crowd, trying to see the person who threw it. When I do, my heart stops beating.

There, in the crowd amongst the other spectators, are Ben and Ryan.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more happy to see them in my life. They leap over the barriers and start running for me.

“Intruders!” the commentator cries.

I try to rise to my feet, finding my legs weak beneath me. Then suddenly their arms loop beneath mine and I’m wrenched to my feet.

“What are you doing here?” I cry to Ben and Ryan.

“We’re your plan B,” Ryan says.

“We’re getting you out of here,” Ben says, holding me close.

I wince, my scalded flesh sending bolts of pain through my body where he touches me. I notice Ryan is holding a GPS device and he hits it, turning the blinking red light into a solid one. The army has been mobilized. We have five minutes to get out of here before the whole place blows.

The crowd erupts into pandemonium. Half of them seem to be loving the abrupt change in course; the other half are angry to have been cheated out of seeing me and the boy fight to death.

But the boy doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening. He must think Ben and Ryan have been sent to help me kill him. He charges us, his sword raised.

Ryan snatches up the sword that was dropped for me and turns. Their swords clang together.

Ben gets to the metal disc that delivered me into the stadium and uses some kind of device in his hand, a tool of some sort, to ram the edge of the disc. It opens.

“RYAN!” I scream behind me. “COME ON!”

“GO!” he shouts. “While you still can!”

Ben tugs my arm and all at once we plummet downward, through the hole.

We hit the ground hard, winded. I feel one of my ribs crack on impact and take a sharp breath. The hole above closes over, plunging us into darkness. We’re back underground, and Ryan is trapped up in the arena.

“NO!” I scream, my voice tearing from my lungs.

But Ben keeps on tugging me, pulling me, forcing me to move on. We only have a matter of minutes to get out of the arena before the whole thing blows.