Culling

Part I • Chapter VI

I bit my lip. "...Yes..."

"Damn!"

"Jesus Christ!"

"What kind of backwards town are you from?"

There were more voices joining in the conversation and I noticed that everyone in the immediate area was now focused on me.

The gladiator guy crossed his arms and was glaring at the district six men near me, as if my being here was their fault. "The men in your district are that hard up that they sent in a little girl to fight in their place?"

"Hey!" Jer interjected, offended. "It's not like we had a choice in coming here either!"

"You know that's different!" A new voice joined the conversation. "Yeah it sucks, but we are men. You don't send a woman into a man's fight!" The owner of the voice was the bearded man two rows over and he was looking at the guys around me with narrowed eyes. "Surely someone should have volunteered to fix this fuck up?"

As much as I didn't have super fond feelings of my hometown, I couldn't let them blame the people. This was my mother's fault, and no one else's.

"Umm..." Everyone focused back on me. "People volunteered, but they said it was too late. It's not their fault..."

The surrounding men burst into laughter, including Mike, Jer and the others from our district that were in hearing distance. I blinked, not sure what was so funny. "What?"

"Girly..." the gladiator man was clutching his stomach. "Bless your heart."

"What?"

This time it was the guy from my district who was standing between Derrick and Mike that interjected. "They are laughing because that is just an excuse. The losers that volunteered probably only did so for the bragging rights that they 'tried' to help the poor girl chosen for the games. They had to have known it was too late by the time they said anything. If anyone really wanted to help you they had plenty of time to do so beforehand."

This realization stunned me.

I had really thought that some people out there genuinely cared and wanted to help. That means that even Maro had abandoned me willingly. I had been giving him the benefit of a doubt, assuming that he had also tried to volunteer.

"Look at that wounded puppy look." A gruff looking man who stood behind the gladiator looked at me with a strange glint in his eyes. "She's not going to last two minutes out there, but maybe we can have some fun beforehand."

The man with the black beard was next to him and shoved him back. "That's disgusting."

The tall man glared back at him and made to move forward. "What do you care? She's not even from our district."

"Human decency, Dyllan. Don't be a dick." The short man who had originally noticed me was looking at Dyllan. "We might be stuck doing this thing, but there's still a certain line that shouldn't be crossed. I'm not sure that I'm ok with this to start with..."

He looked at me, measuring me with his eyes. "I don't think I can kill a little girl."

I wish they would stop calling me a little girl. However, I wasn't going to say anything - but they had to know that I was at least sixteen, right?

The gladiator man turned to me and rolled his eyes. "Ignore Dyllan, he's an ass."

He put out a hand for me to shake and I nervously accepted. "I'm Octavius, he's Aakil and that is Keyne." He nodded towards the man next to him and then to the bearded man who had pushed Dyllan earlier.