Tested

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

I led Sonia and Pria to the old cell block. When I had been told it was off-limits, I hadn’t given it a second thought. Now I knew I should have listened to Dad more. I should have been suspicious.

The guard at the door watched us approach, his confusion clear to see. “You’re... not supposed to be back here.”

Smiling, Sonia walked right up to him and punched him in the jaw. He staggered. Sonia’s second strike knocked him out.

“Soldier, my arse,” she spat. She brushed her hair away from her face as shouts came from down the hallway. “We’ll block the dooor after us."

Pria and I exchanged an impressed look as Sonia opened the door. We followed her inside, keeping as silent as possible.

Old-fashioned cells lined either side of the room. Each cell was overcrowded, faces I recognised mingled with complete strangers. They looked at us in confusion, too.

“Go,” Sonia whispered, pressing her back against the door to keep it closed. "Me and Pria will be right here."

My fingers trembled, and my heart raced as I turned away from them. Dace stood before a cell at the far end of the room, taunting the men within with a sickeningly smug look on his face. My feet moved as if by themselves. He didn’t look around as I approached. I recognised both men in the cell. Dad and Bruce, locked up and obviously beaten. Dace had hurt almost everyone I knew, and for no reason at all.

With a scream of rage, I raced up to Dace and jumped on his back, beating him around the head with closed fists. Reacting quickly, he slammed me against the bars of a cell, knocking me off him and pinning me by my neck.

More of his fake soldier friends finally burst into the room. Sonia and Pria got in the way, leaving me to face Dace alone. Dad called my name, almost as if he didn’t believe I was really there. I focused solely on Dace and how I was going to beat him to a bloody pulp.

Dace grinned at me, surprised, but not concerned by my presence. “Well, look who it is, back to rescue her pervert father.”

I threw a punch, but he blocked it, surprising me with his speed. I ached still from the fighting at the games, but I had faced far scarier monsters than the one before me. I wasn’t concerned. I was mad.

“He has the keys!” Bruce called out as Dad kicked at the cell door in frustration.

I glanced back at Sonia and Pria. They were outnumbered. If I could open a cell, we would have a chance at winning.

I pushed at Dace, wrestling him to the ground. He fought back, his face hard and determined as he struck at me, but I barely felt the blows. I wanted to hurt him, to scare him, to make him feel as terrified and helpless as we had. Even more, I wanted to pay him back for the tear he had left in my heart when he betrayed me. I had let myself trust someone, had desperately needed to trust somebody, and he had ruined it. A monster had stolen my first kiss, and I could never get that back.

The red mist covered everything, making it easy to forget what else was going on. I hit him again and again, relishing the blood on my fingers. Dace’s strikes weakened. I would show him all about being pretty and able to take a beating. I gripped his hair and banged his head against the floor for Beth, for Denise, for every girl who had died in the games. He would pay. Dad would want this. Dad would understand.

But it was Bruce’s voice I heard over the din.

“Don’t do it,” Jess,” he pleaded. “Let it go. For now, let it go.” I hesitated, and his voice grew louder. “You don’t have to do this. It isn’t the way you want to live, right, Jess?”