37
The Super-V stops sideways at the last minute, with Leo’s window overlooking the cliff. I hear the audience hail in the iAm, which I can hear now in the absence of the roaring of the Super-V, Carnivore, and the wind.
Leo looks back at me from the window overlooking the cliff. He shrugs.
“How close are we?” I ask.
“Right on the edge of the cliff,” he says. “Right on the edge, Decca.”
“So we made it?” I say, feeling like I’m finally waking up from a nightmare. “So let’s go.” I reach for Leo’s hand.
He pulls away. “You go first, Decca,” he says.
“What’s wrong, Leo?”
“Listen to me carefully,” he says. “There are things that I need to say to you before—”
“Before what?” I gasp.
“Just listen.” Leo is panting. Is he hurt? What is it? “You always ask me why I am here. You always say it doesn’t make sense. You’re right.”
“I don’t want to know now, Leo,” I interrupt. “Just take my hand, and let’s get out of the Super-V.”
“I can’t,” he says, looking at his left leg. Oh my God. It’s stuck in the bent metal of the side of the vehicle. How did I not notice this? He can’t pull his leg out. If he does, the wound will get bigger and bigger, and cut through his thigh. “Just listen to me,” he insists.
“Leo—”
“Just listen. You have to know the truth.” He tries to shift his weight, as he aches from the pain in his leg. The Super-V shakes and slides a little closer to the edge of the cliff. We’re going to fall from the cliff because of the shifting mud if we don’t get out soon. “I was sent here for you. That’s the reason why I am back in the games.”
“What? Me? Why?”
“I was sent here to protect you, and keep you alive,” he pants. “My mission was to either get you to survive and win the games, thus stay alive, or if I fail at that, I have been ordered to keep you alive in the battlefields by not saying I am alive.”
“Mission?” I mutter, my hands falling on my lap. Leo is here to protect me. What about how I felt about him? Was he just acting? “I don’t understand. Who sent you?” I say.
“Wolf, the leader of the Breakfast Club, sent me,” says Leo, trying to avoid my eyes.
“The Breakfast Club?” I swallow hard. “Why? Why me?”
“I don’t know,” says Leo. “I was sent to help you win the games, or find the Rabbit Hole and escape. At all costs, I had to keep you alive until they contact you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I removed the receptor from you yesterday.”
“Why?”
“Those were my orders. First of all, to disconnect you from being tracked by the Summit. Second, to make you remember your skills.”
“My skills?”
“I don’t know. That was my mission.”
“So the Breakfast Club sent you to save me when it was my time to enter the games? How did they know that I was going to be outranked?”
“They didn’t. But it was a possibility. They said you might find a way to enter the games to save a friend of yours who actually taught you all the skills you’re remembering since the removal of the receptor.”
“You know about that?”
“Yes. So I convinced Xitler that I wanted to be forgiven by the Summit, and came back.”
“What if I hadn’t been outranked?”
“I would have been stuck playing the games alone,” Leo says with that toothache-like smile.
“It doesn’t look like you could have survived,” I say. “Not without me.”
“You’re right.” He laughs, then winces, reaching for his leg. ”You made it, Decca. They were right about you.”
The mud shifts underneath the Super-V again, and Leo’s side slides lower toward the cliff.
“It’s time for you to get out, Decca,” says Leo.
“Not without you,” I insist.
“My leg is stuck in the metal of the Super-V. Besides, our weight is what’s slightly keeping the balance. Once one of us steps outside the weight will shift, and the car will fall from the cliff. Only one can survive this.”
“We can jump out together.”
“I can’t, goddamit!” Leo yells at me. He wants me to leave. He believes I am more important than he is. Although I want to ask about this mission thing, I don’t think it’s the right time. Leo has been here for me all through the games. He might be some kind of guardian sent to save me in this crazy and unbelievable story of his, but I can count on what I feel for him to be genuine and true.
“How about the kiss?” I ask.
“Not again, Decca,” he says. “Time is running out.”
“Did you kiss me in the dome?” I want to know.
“You’re about to die, Decca. And all you want to know is whether I kissed you in the dome?”
“Yes,” I say. “I know we kissed before you sedated me, so I take it that it was all business on your side, trying to save me. I know we kissed before we were going to die in the Super-V minutes ago, so I might believe it was a last kiss before dying thing. I know that everything you have done for me might have been part of the mission you were sent for, pretty soldier. But when I think about the dome, you had already saved me. You weren’t afraid of anything. You knew that your actions would be caught on live TV. You did it without letting me know. I understand why now. Because you thought you shouldn’t. You believed you were my guardian, sent for me on a mission, following your leader’s orders. So did you kiss me in the dome or not?” I have to admit, I think kissing me in the dome was a little weird on his part — if it actually happened. But it’s the only way I can make sure that what I think he feels for me is true.
“Why do you need to know, Decca. Really? Why?” Leo’s questions resonates with me for a while. I even lean away from him. His stare is piercing through me. “We both know Woo isn’t just a friend,” he says, aching from the pain in his leg. My sinister mind wishes he aches from the pain of thinking I love Woo. “You don’t risk your life like this for just a friend. Knowing if I kissed you or not, isn’t going to get us anywhere. Your heart is his. Besides, this is a goddamn killing game. We’re not supposed to discuss this.” He let out an aching laugh.
“This still doesn’t answer my question.” My stubborn brain is annoying, even to myself.
“Yes,” says Leo, looking right into my eyes, sweating from the pain. “And it’s what makes me not regret dying anymore.”
I let out a long sigh and lean forward again. This is not a reasonable move. My weight toward the cliff can kill us both. This isn’t a reasonable move. I should be in love with Woo, who I came to find or die with. This isn’t a reasonable move. I only know Leo a day or two ago, and you can’t say we even dated. This is not a reasonable move. This is my unreasonable gut feeling, pulling me toward someone I barely know. But wait. There is nothing left to know about someone you fought for your life with. All I know is I came here to die with Woo, but ended up living with Leo. “So you didn’t admit you did it because of Woo?”
“Not just that. I am not supposed to. To the Breakfast Club, you’re like a princess, and I am just a guardian. Us? Together? That’s prohibited. And I am on a mission that could be part of saving our world from the Summit.”
I smile with excitement when he says that. The Super-V shifts again. The audience holds its breath.
“I won’t leave you,” I cry out. “You hear me. I won’t leave you. Just give me a minute, and I’ll find a way out.” I look up at the Zeppelins. “What’s wrong with you?” I yell at them. “Can’t you send us any of your tech-stuff to pick us up? We won the game already. Please!”
“No can do,” says Timmy. He sounds different, as if he has been listening to our conversation, and feeling sentimental. Faustina is drying her Teen-Gene tears behind him, but she shies away when the camera closes in on her. “I am sorry, Decca,” says Timmy. Where is all the Bad Kidz, Monsters, and sarcasm attitude? “Believe me, a lot of the audience voted for you. A lot of them consider you to have won the game, but the Summit believes you have to continue the game. Killing Carnivore isn’t enough, if you can’t pull yourself out of the Super-V.”
“I won’t do that,” I say.
“He is not going to make it,” Faustina yells angrily at me. “What kind of Monster are you! Stupid, unreasonable, and weird. That’s why you’re an outranked. Get out of the damn Super-V. He won’t make it.”
The thought that fills my head is what if I win now. What will happen to me? Will I just follow the system, labeling people and marking them? I won’t get out unless Leo is with me. I need someone with me in this harsh world of Faya. Someone to accompany me and love me.
“Decca,” Leo says softly. “I changed my mind. I am coming out with you.”
“Really? How?”
“There is a metal rod attached to the outer side of the Super-V,” Leo explains. “If you get it for me, I could push away the metal that is trapping my leg. I can do it. Trust me.”
“Of course,” I say and turn around. “Right next to the door?”
“Yes. All you have to do is open the door as slow as you can, and reach out for it.”
I reach for the door and pull it open, then stretch out my hand, slowly looking for the metal rod, with my back to Leo.
That’s when I know that he has betrayed me.
He kicks me in the back out of the Super-V. I fall into the mud outside. The mud shifts like lava from a volcano down the cliff, pushing the Super-V to the edge.
“No!” I scream, reaching out.
“I love you,” Leo mouths, drawing the words silently with his lips. I see he has freed his wounded leg. I don’t know if he really does love me. I don’t know if he’d seen me since long before the games. I don’t know if the pressure of the games and the fear of dying made him say it. But even if it’s half a lie, I will believe in his words. I need to believe in them, so I have enough strength to survive. I don’t care if it’s a lie. My whole world has been a lie.
Leo tries to jump down on his own, separated from the Super-V. But will he make it? It happens so fast. The mud feels like a magic carpet sliding away that I can’t pull back, however I try with all my might. Leo is falling over the cliff’s edge.