I hate the feel of the knife in my hand.
I hate the way the blade is wet and red with blood.
I want to throw it as far away as I can, but I don't dare. Maybe fighting is a waste of time – this isn't an exercise we're meant to escape – but the desire to live is a fire raging in my bones, fiercer and hotter than just hope. Maybe the CC will still get away with all this, maybe we will all die here, but I will not make it easy for them.
I will fight.
My ear throbs with pain where Gavin caught it with his knife, but I still don't dare touch it. I don't want to know how bad it is.
Beyond the first room is a short stretch of black-walled corridor, dimly lit by flat lights in the ceiling, and at the end of that we find ourselves in another room, much like the first, split here and there by random panels. Maybe they're for people to hide behind?
I guess that when this started, this room was also filled with Prey in boxes. They don't look like they've fared as well – three Seconds lie dead in the middle of the floor, while another is crumpled in an entryway that I assume leads to another corridor and another room.
There's no sign of Taffy, but that has to be a good thing. If she's not here then it means she's escaped.
"Stay close to me," I whisper to Sonny and Priya.
We creep towards the next entryway, and we have to step over the body blocking our path. I realise that I recognise her – she was in the box next to mine.
My blood chills.
What if Taffy hasn't escaped?
What if her body is lying in another of these horrible rooms, waiting for us to find it?
In the third room, we find more bodies, and a girl sitting in the corner, holding a knife and sobbing.
Priya squeaks and clutches Sonny's arm.
The girl looks up. I know her. She's called Faye; she's Jackie's friend.
"I killed her," she whispers.
Her face is patterned with a mist of blood drops, and her hands are red and sticky with it.
Only then do I register that one of the bodies, the one lying closest to us, is Jackie.
She must have been Prey and Faye is a Predator, and she's killed her best friend.
Faye looks up at me and her eyes are absolutely shattered.
She might be a Predator, but she's a victim too.
What happens to people like her, people who initially prove they can kill, but are then destroyed by it? Unless she recovers from this, she won't be any good as a military asset.
"What do we do?" Priya whispers.
"Nothing," I reply.
I feel for Faye but she's killed once, which means I can't trust her to come with us. My friends are my priority. And I don't want to look at Jackie's body anymore. It was only yesterday that I had thought about how we would be friends going forward, because she was so willing to help us with Boots, and now she is dead.
We move through the room to the entryway on the other side, and it's not long until we can't hear Faye crying anymore.
There is no one alive in the next room, just more bodies and more blood.
I wonder what happens if a person marked as Prey manages to kill a person marked as Predator? Do they then become Predator themselves? Or are they still targets for the others?
There's still so much about how the Trials works that I don't know. Maybe I never will.
My eyes are drawn to the lift doors, set into the wall on our left, spitefully gleaming. I hate that they're so close, and that if I could just get them to work, we could all escape.
A camera sits on the wall overhead, and I spit at it.
"We have to find a way out of here," Sonny says. Priya is huddled against him, tucked under his arm.
I gesture to the lift doors that we cannot open. "Great. Do you have any ideas?"
Silence.
"Okay," I say, surveying the room. "We'll have to keep going forward."
"To what?" Priya asked.
"I don't know, but there's no point going back, and we can't stay here."
I walk towards the entryway on the far side of the room. There's something knotting up my throat and I think it's my heart. I'm glad that Taffy ran when I told her to, but I'm desperate to know where she is and if she's okay, and I'm struck with the sudden fear that we're just going to go from room to identical room, finding more and more bodies, until finally we're killed ourselves.
Priya and Sonny stay close behind me as we draw close to the entryway and what I assume is another short corridor beyond, but before we get there, a large shape hurtles through. Pain explodes along my jaw, and I realise that someone has hit me.
I reel back, knocking into Priya.
Recovering, I face my attacker.
Ice-water fills my veins.
I was expecting another Predator.
Instead I'm facing a furious Fletcher.
"You," he snarls.
Quickly recovering, I check his hands, but he's carrying no weapons. Is he Prey? Is this what Ripley meant when she said that he would be dealt with?
Despite the dire situation, I feel a savage kind of triumph to see him down here with the rest of the Prey, hunted, hounded. He must have thought himself so untouchable, and even if I don't make it out of this, I'm glad that he will never get to hurt another girl.
"Didn't expect to see you here," I say, and maybe I'm deliberately trying to annoy him.
It works. His face darkens and his hands bunch into fists.
"You did this to me. You lying little bitch," he spits.
I think he's about to lunge; I swiftly bring up my knife and he checks himself, staying out of range.
"It wasn't exactly a lie," I say.
"I never touched you."
But he would have. People like him, who enjoy power, who wield it against others, they don't care who they hurt or how they hurt them.
Besides, this isn't about me.
"You did touch Cole. I know all about that, so save your bullshit outrage," I shout.
I think perhaps I hate him more than anyone else involved in this.
Ripley is a monster, overseeing the murders of so many kids, but she is just a cog in a much larger machine. She keeps things running but she doesn't gain any personal pleasure from it.
Fletcher is different. Like Gavin, he enjoys cruelty. He thrives on it.
"They want me dead because of you," he snarls, his eyes wild.
"They want you dead because you're a sick, evil bastard. You did this to yourself," I snap back. "Do you think you're going to get any sympathy from us? You've always known what's going on down here and you didn't care, so don't ask us to."
He lunges suddenly, perhaps hoping that I won't be paying attention because I'm talking.
He hopes wrong.
I dodge out of the way, and quickly lash out with the knife at the same time. It's not a particularly coordinated movement, but it slices open his palm anyway.
He hisses and backs off, holding his bleeding hand.
"I'm going to kill you," he says, and even though I'm the one with the knife, I feel a cold flicker of fear.
Like Gavin, he's a lot bigger than me, but Gavin came into this expecting to be slaughtering unarmed people half his size. I doubt that Fletcher expected me to get my hands on a knife, but he's not going to be as easily put off by it.
A flicker of movement from behind him catches my eye.
"There's something I do need to know," I say. "Did you feel anything at all for Cole? Or were you just using her?"
He actually rolls his eyes. "Why the hell do you care?"
"Because she actually cares about you, and I just want to know if there is any part of you that cares for her too, even a little bit, or if she's just the latest in a string of girls you've used and manipulated."
"Oh for god's sake. No, I don't care about Cole. She was just another fuck, easily replaceable. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"I don't know," I say, and lifting my voice, I look past him. "Is it?"
Fletcher spins around.
Cole is standing behind him. She'd come through the same corridor a couple of moments ago – perhaps she'd been following him? – and she's heard every word. Just as I intended.
Her face is bloodless, her eyes burning like twin suns. A knife is clutched in her left hand, but I don't know if she's finally achieved the Predator role she was so desperate for, or if she's taken it from someone else. If she is Predator, I don't know if she was hiding when we passed through that corridor and the room beyond it a moment ago. I don't know if she chose to let us go rather than trying to kill us.
"Just a replaceable fuck, am I?" she says, and I hope that no one else picks up the pain in her voice.
"Cole –" Fletcher starts, in that patronising voice that I hate so much.
"Shut up," she shouts.
She looks past him to me. "Get out of here," she says.
I hesitate. I wanted her to hear what kind of man he really was, but that doesn't mean I want to leave her alone with him.
Fletcher looks her up and down, and sneers. "Are you planning on fighting me, Cole?"
"Yes," she says. There's nothing in her voice, no fear, no passion, no emotion at all.
"Cole, you don't have to do this," I caution.
She's potentially a Predator; I should want to get away from her as fast as possible, but I don't want to leave her to face Fletcher alone. He's twice her size.
"Yes, I do." She looks at me again, with flat, cold eyes. "This is my fight. Take the chance to run while you can."
I don't know if she's suggesting that she'll come after us once she's done with Fletcher, but I can't wait to find out. I have to protect Sonny and Priya, and, much as I pity Cole, I'm not going to risk my life for her.
So I leave her.