The world swam.

I tried to think, but all I could see was her face, her eyes, a thousand different memories. Yaneli holding me in the night. Yaneli teaching me how to fix a circuit. Yaneli laughing at my jokes.

Yaneli telling me to fight.

But I didn't know how to fight. Yaneli had taught me how to read, how to fix things, how to be an engineer. She'd taught me to think. Not to fight. Even she had to know I couldn't survive this.

Then, like he'd come from the sky, a new man stood before me. Sword in hand, covered in blood. This time there was no running.

Dagger.

Though he'd come to kill me, my pulse quickened at the sight of him, in horror and awe both. He was glorious, terrible, an angel of death. His bare chest was a map of muscles marked in blood and sweat. On screen he had been a sight to see, but in person... I had no words.

He paced forward, carrying his spear with confidence, contrasted with the small screwdriver clutched in my hand. The difference between our bodies, our weapons, our everything, was laughable. His clear, hard eyes devoured me with an intensity and focus I'd once admired.

A man who never hesitated.

I pressed a final kiss against Yaneli's head. Gently, I set her down, and then stood, only the tiny screwdriver clutched in my hand. Instead of fear, I felt only a sense of doomed justice. This was right. This was what I deserved. Yaneli and Xyla were dead because of me. This was the justice of the Beast. I would be killed by the man whom I'd admired for killing. A man I'd bet on.

But I wouldn't die a coward. I would fight, like Yaneli had said, even if the only weapon I held was a tiny screwdriver. I met his eyes straight-backed and unshaking, ready to die as an engineer of the Belly.

He stopped.

A line of blood ran down his chest. This close I could see his eyes were a stormy, dark gray. Not the impenetrable black I'd thought. It seemed an odd detail to notice right before he killed me.

What was he waiting for?

Behind him a man raised his sword, and my eyes flicked behind him, my mouth opening in warning, and Dagger turned, meeting the sword with a clash of steel.

It had been only a moment, lost in the chaos, but the truth soaked me like a coating of blood.

He'd let me go. He'd hesitated.

I backed up, hands held outstretched behind me, until I touched the edge of the wall, watching the battles rage around me. It was only a matter of time till they turned to me.

Fight.

But Yaneli didn't teach me to fight. All she taught me was the Beast.

Fight.

I stared down at the screwdriver, not the knife, and then looked up... and realized that I'd seen a pit like this before.

When Smoky's partner Yute died in one.

The world suddenly shifted.

I scanned the wall, and then I saw it, only ten feet from myself.

Fight.

My legs trembled as I made my way to the control box built into the wall. I turned my back on the Pit, hands shaking as I undid each of the tiny screws, letting them fall to the ground, praying if someone attacked me from behind, they'd kill me fast. Then I reached inside and threw up the lever.

At first nothing happened. For three agonizing seconds, battles raged around me.

Then a deep groan sounded beneath the Arena. Several of the fights paused, as rust-colored water sputtered and then flowed into the bottom of the Pit.

"Hey girlie, why don't you come say hello? Or goodbye."

The laughing man who'd killed Yaneli stood behind me, blood splattered across his ruddy face. All hesitation evaporated; I yanked out the hose, and then pushed down the spout. He jumped back as a jet of rust colored water hit him square in the chest.

"What the... " Then he lifted his sword into the flow, washing blood free from the steel as he laughed. Water pumped into the bottom of the pit now, swirling red with blood.

I jumped onto the tiny ledge created by the open control box, now suspended over the water as I jammed my pinkie into the socket.

"Well, if you want me to kill you with a clean blade, I won't— "

I turned on the electrical current.

Every fight stopped as the electricity pulsed through the Pit.

They didn't scream, didn't call out. Instead, they seized up and fell. The clash of steel and roars of pain stopped, replaced by the thrashing of bodies in water. I clung to the wall, staring at the cold steel, an unthinking machine of blood and bone...

... until all was still.

Then I flipped off the switch, and lowered myself into water swirling darker and darker shades of red. Blinding lights burned down from above. The crowd had fallen silent, hundreds of stunned expressions trained on me, so far below them, a broken machine in a pit of dead men.

Then a voice broke over the intercom, shattering the silence.

"Ladies and Gentlemen... I give you the first ever solo female victor of the Tuv Letter Trial."

*