“You're making quite a name for yourself,” Jurg said and clapped me on the back.

“Yeah, great.”

Overhead, the stomping of feet and the muted roar of the crowd filling the arena filtered down into the holding cage area. I heard the voice of the announcer echoing loudly and cringed when he called my name.

This was my fourth fight, each victory gorier and more brutal than the last. Three men dead – and I never knew a single one of their names. It turned my stomach, but if I had any chance of making it back to Kiarra, I had no choice but to fight. And to win.

The bloodlust of the crowd seemed like it would never be sated and it made me sick. To cheer and applaud for the grisly death of another – for your own entertainment – was a disgusting perversion of the soul I'd never be able to understand.

“Dryx isn't happy about it, but the fight's going to be a little different tonight,” Jurg said.

“Different how?”

“You're squaring off against two.”

I looked at him and felt my eyes widen. “Two on one?” I asked. “Seriously?”

He winced but nodded. “Apparently, people are realizing you may have – abilities.”

“I've done my best to keep them quiet.”

He laughed ruefully. “Yeah, well, I think lifting Qang off the ground and breaking his neck with one hand may have provided them with a clue.”

“Fantastic.”

The roar of the crowd grew louder and the blast door to the arena slowly and noisily started to creak and clank its way upward. I looked over at Jurg, a flutter of nerves in my gut. Handling somebody one-on-one was tough enough, but two on one?

“Any last minute tips?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Keep both of them in your sight at all times,” he replied. “And, don't die.”

An unexpected chuckle burst out of my throat and I shook my head. “Thanks, Jurg.”

I walked out of the holding area and onto the floor of the arena. The crowd seemed bigger than before, and it was definitely louder. The cheers and cries rumbled so loud, I could feel it reverberated all the way down into my bones.

Across the arena from me were two men. Both in full body armor, including helmets. I was half-surprised they didn't give them guns to help even the playing field. I still wore the same metal chest plate and armor on my upper body I'd had since the beginning, and I still carried that thin, curved sword. Jurg had worked with me and I'd been getting used to it. The motion of slicing and parrying attacks now seemed a little more natural to me.

I was by no means, an expert with a blade, but then, the men I was facing in battle weren't either. So, at least on that count, the playing field was pretty even.

The two men strode toward me, fanning out so they could come at me from either side. I smirked and shook my head as they approached. The armor may protect them from a blade, but it was inhibiting their movements. Whoever decided to dress them up for this fight had made a very poor choice in wardrobe – a choice that was about to get their men killed.

The first one rushed at me from the right. It was a jerking, stumbling rush though. The man inside the armor was obviously not used to wearing it. The other man came at me from the left. As they converged, weapons in motion, I shoulder rolled to the side. The two men smacked each other with their blades, the dull echo of steel ringing off their armor loud in my ears – though not as loud as the roar of hoots and laughter from the crowd.

The men were armored but were obviously inexperienced fighters. Granted, I still lacked experience in the pits – four fights was hardly a lengthy resume – but I'd trained as a soldier. I'd trained in hand-to-hand combat. These two obviously, had not.

It was cruel and unfair to have stuck those two in a pit with me, as raw as I still was, let alone with a real gladiator. A seasoned pit fighter could have shredded them in half the time it was going to take me. Though, a seasoned pit fighter likely would have drawn it out a bit.

That was something Jurg told me I needed to work on – my showmanship. Quick kills were boring, he'd said. The people came to see a fight. A real fight. A struggle between two hard men. They wanted it drawn out and filled with suspense. Though I'd won every fight put to me to that point, Jurg told me that Dryx wanted me to take my time and not make it look so easy. Make it more of a bloody spectacle and less like a fast, sanitized impression of a fight.

I'd told Jurg I couldn't care less what Dryx wanted. He ordered me to kill, so I killed – all in the effort to win my freedom and get back to Kianna. Jurg told me though, that if I was too efficient in my kills and didn't maximize Dryx's profits, he could conceivably keep me longer than one hundred wins. He could keep me until he felt satisfied that he'd recouped his investment.

One hundred wins to achieve one's freedom was a tradition but was hardly a rule.

I stepped forward and as one man struggled to get to his feet, still on his hands and knees, I planted my boot on his ass and launched him forward. Using barely a fraction of my strength, he still slid halfway across the arena, to the cheers and laughter of the crowd.

The second man was already on his feet, bringing his sword to bear. I could tell by the way he stood – not to mention hands that trembled so hard, his sword swayed side-to-side – that he was scared shitless. He was terrified of what was to come. As well he should be.

Though I felt bad for doing what I was doing – taking innocent lives – I had no choice. Until I could find a way to break out of where ever I was, I had to fight. I had to stay alive. Which meant that I had to kill.

Part of me feared though, that at some point, I was going to lose the decency in me. That I would come to accept killing as just a matter of course. That I might even grow to like it. I feared that I would grow to love and crave the sound of the crowd cheering my name.

Those fears were like lead weights in my soul.

But I knew that for now, I had to focus on what was right in front of me. Handle only those things I could handle. And at the moment, the thing I needed to handle was lumbering toward me, his sword raised high.

He ran at me clumsily, awkward in his armor, even more awkward with a sword. I sighed as I sidestepped his rush and delivered a punch to his back. I heard him gasp even with his helmet on, as he was propelled forward, stumbling, falling, and sliding face down across the smooth, bloodstained surface of the arena's floor.

Casting a quick glance behind me, I saw the second man still struggling to get to his feet. He'd be on them and heading back for me soon enough, but for now, I needed to deal with the first man in front of me.

The crowd cheered and started chanting my name as I strode over to the man, who'd managed to flip himself over onto his back. He quickly took off his helmet and tossed it to the side. My heart sank when I saw that he was just a kid. Couldn't have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Which would, of course, account for his lack of experience in a fight.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself.

He looked at me, standing over him with my sword at the ready, his eyes wide, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Please,” he said. “Don't kill me.”

I knew I shouldn't let him get to me. If the situations were reversed, he probably wouldn't have hesitated to gut me. It was our own survival at stake, after all. Kill or be killed. Those were the only two options. Still, the kid's wide eyes and terrified face tore at my heart. It tore at my soul.

The crowd, anticipating the sight of blood, roared their approval. Roared with their desire to see blood spilled. To see death.

Kianna's face flashed through my mind. I saw her smile. The way the sunlight made her eyes sparkle. I heard her laughter. Felt the soft touch of her skin upon mine. My heart swelled and then ached with a desperate longing to be back in her arms again.

The man must have seen a change in my face as my grip tightened on the hilt of my sword. He shook his head and started trying to crawl backward, all the while, begging me to spare his life. Stepping forward, I raised my blade and the man let out a wide-eyed, blood-curdling scream. I drove the point of my sword into the man's forehead, feeling the bone cracking and giving way beneath my thrust. The man's eyes remained open and fixed, his gaze entirely sightless. He was dead. Very dead.

I heard a scream behind me and suddenly felt the second man bearing down on me. I quickly ducked to the side, the edge of his blade narrowly missing me. The man stumbled forward, obviously off-balance after trying to cleave my head in two with his sword. He tripped over the body of his friend, sending his sword sliding across the arena floor, and drew a muffled, anguished cry from beneath his helmet.

He crab-walked backward, trying to get away from me as I closed the distance between us. Pausing for just a moment, I yanked my blade free from his friend's forehead, the tip of it red with blood. The man looked at the blade, and I didn't need him to remove the helmet to know his eyes were probably wider than dinner plates.

“Please,” his muffled voice called to me. “Don't do this. Please don't do this.”

His voice sounded young. Scared. Like his buddy. I shook my head, feeling the guilt and sorrow washing over me like a powerful wave. I did not want to take his life. I just had no choice. Like these two, I ended up here, not of my own accord. I wasn't there because I wanted to be. I was there because I'd been enslaved. Just like them. And just like them, I had to survive by the same rules – fight and win. Or die.

“This is not my doing,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

The crowd cheered and I felt the energy, that electric bloodlust, fill the air around us. They chanted and went wild, knowing they'd be getting their fix of death in just a moment.

The man got to his knees and stared at me, though his helmet kept his face hidden. I didn't need to see his face though, to know it was etched with terror and desperation. I stood about five feet from him, the crowd cheering and chanting my name, staring down at the kneeling man.

And then he surprised me.

In a fit of obvious desperation, the man launched himself at me, moving quicker than I'd expected. He drove his shoulder into my midsection hard, driving the air from my lungs, and moved me backward. I drove my fist down into his back and felt him immediately weaken.

It took me a moment, but I finally got myself under control and stopped him from driving me backward. I wasn't sure what he'd hoped to accomplish, but he'd failed. Grabbing him by the back of the neck, I pulled his body from mine and pushed him back a step. From beneath the helmet, I could hear his muffled sniffles and sobs. He knew it was all over.

Reaching up, he started to take his helmet off, but I stopped him. I didn't want to have to look into his eyes. Didn't want to have to see the judgment and pain. Didn't want to feel the guilt. I stepped forward and put my hands on both sides of the kid's helmet and started to press.

He screamed and beat at me with his fists impotently. I squeezed harder and harder. It wasn't long before I felt the helmet begin to buckle and a moment after that, I felt his skull give way and then felt his head literally pop inside that tin can. Blood and chunky matter poured down from the helmet, covering his chest and arms in a thick, bloody goo.

The crowd cheered and roared their approval, appreciating the sheer brutality of it all. They'd gotten their money's worth.

“Fucking ghouls,” I muttered to myself.

I let go of the man's body and it hit the floor with a meaty thud and all the grace of a piece of raw meat. The blood continued to pour from his helmet, pooling onto the arena floor around him. His dark blood would be just another stain on a floor filled with pools of goo in various stages of drying.

As I walked back toward the blast doors and the holding area beyond, the crowd roared louder than I'd ever heard them and chanted my name fervently. And I would have been lying if I'd said there wasn't some small piece of me that lit up with the praise. That was starting to crave it. It was like a beast inside of me had been roused and was hungry for that kind of acclaim and recognition.

I really needed to get the hell out of there before the monster came fully awake and devoured me whole.