We won. The plan to destroy the arenas simultaneously went off without a hitch. Or at least it did as far as everyone else is concerned. No one knows about the grueling hours I spent in Arena 3, fighting for my life against the vicious mutants the nuclear war created. Nor does anyone know what Ben and Ryan did for me, about how they both had a gut feeling that something was wrong, and how they put their differences aside to unite and help me with their secret plan B. No one realizes that if it weren’t for them, I would have died in the arena, our whole plan would have fallen apart, and we’d all be under slaverunner control right now.

I know I’ll never be able to tell them, that I will never be able to admit that I screwed up the most important thing I was ever going to do. I have to accept their praise even though I don’t deserve it. I have to let them comfort me over Ryan mysteriously running away from the compound, knowing I will never be able to tell anyone that he is in fact dead because of me.

No one knows any of that. They all believe, when they found me unconscious in the desert, that my skin had been burned by the bomb’s blast. They all needed me to be their hero and so I had no choice but to accept.

Only Ben seems to understand why I am so subdued. He knows why I don’t dance and drink and celebrate like the rest of them. Like always, it’s Ben who understands that what I have experienced has marked me, damaged me, possibly forever. The only good thing to come out of all of this is that I know we’ll be by each other’s side, silent, supporting, not needing to speak to understand where the other is coming from.

In the first week after the arenas are obliterated, we receive a message from a squad in the Midwest. Arena 4 has fallen, its prisoners liberated. They’re all on buses heading south since we have the infrastructure in place and plenty of food to support them. But still I don’t celebrate.

In the second week, we get an even bigger surprise when the Commander from Fort Noix arrives with his troops. He admits he was wrong to ignore my dad’s appeal for help. He vows to do everything he can to help, and they strike up a bargain to take in a thousand orphans from the fallen cities and rescued from the sex trade. They’ll be placed with families in the cabins in the woods.