All day, I had guests try to sneak in and get a look at the prisoners. They wore the same thing: fancy suits that cost anywhere from $20,000 and up. They all had that rich, entitled arrogance. The one that said, “How dare you try to tell me what to do.” Some of them even tried to bribe me into letting them pass.
I did my job, keeping them away from the Arena and directing them back towards the main area. I walked the entire perimeter at least a hundred times, just walking in a circle over and over again, studying the structure and telling people to fuck off (but in a nice way).
I recognised some of the guests. A few corrupt politicians. Some governors. They were people I’d seen on the TV, people in charge of not only our country but dozens of others as well. It made me laugh. If the general public knew what these guys were up to in their spare time, all hell would break loose.
The Arena was located a short distance from any of the main buildings. It sat nestled in the wilderness, completely surrounded by nature. Only one footpath led back to civilization.
Despite being far from everything, it was teeming with people setting up for the first event scheduled tomorrow morning, coming in and out of different entrances and carrying loads of equipment.
I debated briefly trying to sneak in with some of those workers, but that would only get me so far. I needed some sort of excuse to go down into the dungeon where the prisoners were being held.
My salvation came in the form of a tiny, young woman pushing a huge cart up the footpath. On it were plates of food and bottles of water. She was wearing the teal blue uniform of the kitchen staff with a white apron tied around her waist. She had dark hair tied up in a ponytail, pale skin and a face full of freckles. She struggled with that cart, the wheels getting caught on the cobblestone pathway, making the whole thing rattle.
I approached her quickly, hoping my instincts were right. “Hello. Do you need some help?” For the first time in my life, luck seemed to be on my side. At that precise moment, a bottle of water tipped over the edge of the cart and plummeted towards the ground. I caught it, spun it in my hand and offered it to her in one smooth move.
She gasped in surprise and then laughed. “Oh! Thank you!” She was young and extremely timid. She gave me a shy smile before taking the water and putting it back in its spot. “I-I’ve told them so many times how hard it is dragging this thing all the way up here from the kitchens. I manage to drop something every time.”
I offered what I hoped was a friendly smile. “If you need some help taking it the rest of the way, I’d be happy to offer a hand.”
“Wha-really?”
“Of course.” I smiled again and it felt incredibly forced. She didn’t seem to notice though, too flustered with the attention. “Is this food for the prisoners?”
Her nose scrunched up. “I don’t like that word. We call them fighters.”
First slip up, Nikolai.
“Oh, yes, my apologies. It’s been a terribly long day. All I can say is I’m glad the sun is finally setting,” I laughed. “Here, let me help you with that.”
She protested slightly when I took her place at the back of the cart and began to push, but then she saw how easy it was for me and shrugged, walking beside me.
“I’m Daniella.”
“Damien.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Damien. Is this your first time here? I’ve never seen you before.”
“Yes. First time.” The cart shook, the items wobbling slightly, but nothing fell out. “How about you?”
“Oh, no,” she laughed. “This is my third year.”
“Really? So you enjoy it?”
“The money, yes. It helps pay for my mother’s medical bills. She’s sick, and the only way we could afford the treatment was if I took this job. But everything else? Not really.” Was that how Talon got his workers? Targeting the desperate, people who had no other choice? It would guarantee their silence. Especially if it was people like Daniella, who had a loved one at stake.
She flashed her badge to the person standing guard in front of one of the entrances into the Arena. “Hey Jerry,” she greeted.
“Hey, Daniella.” He scanned the barcode under her picture. “Who’s this?”
“This is Damien. He’s helping me with the cart.”
Jerry laughed softly as he scanned my badge. “Still dropping things?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “At least this time it wasn’t one of the plates of food.” She turned to look at me. “Last time, I actually dropped a plate and the food went all over the ground. I had to go all the way back to the kitchen to grab another one. It was the worst.”
I honestly couldn’t fucking care less, but I smiled and laughed along with them.
“It was just a water bottle this time,” she told Jerry.
“Oh. Well, that’s good then,” he chuckled. “Okay, you’re all set. You know the way. See you in a little bit.”
“Yep.”
Daniella took point through the entrance and into the dark, gloomy halls ahead. There was next to no natural light, so the only illumination along the path were the torches and sconces on the walls.
Daniella knew exactly where she was going, zero hesitation in her steps as she led the way through the endless corridors and all the twists and turns. I felt like I was walking through old, ancient catacombs. A labyrinth of stone walls, concrete floors and arched tunnels filled with a dangerous, ominous air. At each archway stood two guards, armed with machine guns. Professionals. It was clear in the way they stood and in that laser-type focus on their eyes. They were Talon’s A-team. His best to protect the merchandise.
I trailed behind Daniella as slowly as I could without arousing suspicion. The longer I had to study the layout of this place, the more chance I gave my family of being able to rescue Father.
A left, two rights, another left, across a small bridge, one more right. The wheels of the cart squealed as we moved, a truly unpleasant sound that grated on my nerves. Daniella made small talk that I barely listened to, telling me about her life, her mother, her cat. I replied with the proper responses, acting interested in what she had to say, but I was quickly losing my patience.
So when Daniella finally stopped in front of this huge, imposing metal door, I breathed a silent sigh of relief. She looked up at the camera, held her badge up and gave a little wave. There was a loud clunk, a groan and then the door opened, another one of the A-team soldiers stepping out.
Shit. If we couldn’t go any further and they just took the cart to the prisoners themselves, this had all been a huge fucking waste of time.
“Daniella. Managed to finally wrangle in some help this time, hey?” he joked, scanning her badge. She seemed quite friendly with all of the guards, like they all knew each other well.
“Hi, Patrick. Yeah, this is Damien.”
“Hello,” I greeted, offering my badge for him to scan. He barely paid me any notice. His attention was entirely on Daniella. Someone had a crush.
“I guess it’s good he’s here. I won’t be able to help you this time. I know how much you hate going into that room. And you know I don’t mind doing it for you, but I have to report to the security tower for an emergency meeting.”
“Oh.” She wrung her hands together in front of her. “Th-that’s okay. I understand. Thank you.”
Patrick stepped back and opened the door wider to allow us to walk through. Any hope of breaking my father out of here plummeted in an instant. The walls on both sides of the room were lined with computer screens, each one displaying different camera angles of the prisoners, locked in their cells. Sitting in front of them were more A-Team guards, watching the monitors and cataloguing everything that was going on. Two, four, six, eight, ten…there were twelve of them, and all they were doing was watching the prisoners. These guys weren’t fucking around. There was no laughter, no joking around. It was just complete concentration. Complete focus.
There was a small, clear path that ran right down the centre of the room towards an elevator at the back. Patrick led us down and I wheeled the cart, keeping my gaze forward. Even though I was dying to get a look at their systems, I knew it would be far too suspicious.
Patrick placed his thumb on an imprint scanner on the wall and the elevator dinged, the doors opening. “One of the guards down there will let you back up. Sorry again that I can’t help you this time, Daniella.” He placed his hand between the doors to keep them from shutting as we loaded the cart into the elevator.
I might as well have been invisible to the man, considering how much attention he was paying me. Not that I was complaining about it.
“It’s okay! Don’t worry about it!”
“I’ll be here tomorrow morning, though, to help you with breakfast. Remember, it’s been pushed up an hour to accommodate the time of the fight.”
“I remember,” she smiled. “Thanks, Patrick. See you tomorrow.”
“See you.” Patrick stayed exactly where he was, his eyes plastered to Daniella right up until the moment the doors shut.
“You know he likes you,” I said as the elevator descended. There was only one button inside to press, which meant it only went to one place.
“What?!” Her face turned bright red. “No, he doesn’t. He’s just being friendly, that’s all.”
“Trust me, Daniella. The man likes you. You should ask him out.” Did I sound sincere enough? Fuck, I hoped so. I didn’t give a shit about any of it, but I couldn’t show that. I had to show interest, like I cared. Ugh, revolting.
I needed Daniella distracted, preoccupied. Not paying attention to me and thinking about something else. Patrick provided that perfect distraction.
“Really?” Her voice pitched higher with excitement. “You really think he likes me?”
“It’s obvious.” The doors opened and we wheeled the cart out. Two more A-Team soldiers stood right at the elevator. They nodded in greeting but made no move to do anything else. Another huge, metal door was at the other end of the room, being guarded by another two of them.
Jesus, Talon really spared no fucking expense. Any type of infiltration of this place would be next to impossible.
When we neared the door, one of the soldiers placed his finger on the scanner and then pushed it open when it unlocked. Daniella took the lead again, walking down the circular ramp.
I swear to God, if there was another set of guards and another locked door, I was going to lose it. Three was e-fucking-nough.
Once we reached the bottom of the ramp, Daniella stopped. Surprise-fucking-surprise. Another locked metal door. Another two A-Team soldiers.
This Talon dude was really starting to piss me off.
“Are you okay?” I asked. I was getting really good at this whole acting thing.
She bit her lip nervously, staring ahead at the door with a nauseated look on her face. “I don’t like going in there,” she whispered softly, her gaze dropping to the floor. “Usually, Patrick will do it for me. The fighters, they make me nervous. They say things. Horrible things.”
Probably because they’re experiencing horrible things. Fighting for your life isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
I tried to rein in the giddiness that burst through my body at her words. Luck really was on my side that day. “I can do it for you.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t ask that of you—”
“You’re not. I’m offering.” I laid a hand on her shoulder. An innocent gesture, but it still felt so wrong to touch another woman, even with no sexual underlines.
Relief filled her face. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I’ve debated asking for a different task, but I’m afraid if I do they’ll fire me, and I really need this job. I can’t afford to lose it.”
“Don’t sweat it. You wait here. I’ll take the food in.”
She nodded. “They each get one plate and one bottle of water. There will be a gap at the bottom of the cell for you to push it through. Just be careful.”
“Alright.” I pushed the cart forward before she could say another word, not giving her a chance to change her mind. It was my opportunity to get in that room and come face to face with my father. I wasn’t going to let it slip by me. Not when I was so fucking close.
One of the A-Team soldiers opened the door for me and I disappeared inside, the clank of it shutting behind me ringing out through the room. I took everything in with quick, assessing eyes. Six cells on one side of the room, another six on the other, each housing two prisoners. twenty-four people in total. The air reeked of oppression, cruelty, desperation.
It was one of the nicest dungeons I’d ever come across. Better than ours, that was for sure. There was ample light and each cell had two beds and a toilet. It reminded me of an actual prison cell, possessing the bare necessities a human needed to survive. Despite being held captive, it looked like they weren’t being entirely mistreated. Emphasis on “entirely”. It would have been no sweat off Talon’s back to have them housed in much poorer conditions than this, and yet it seemed he’d spared no expense to make sure they were being held captive in relatively bland accommodations.
I moved forward slowly, running my gaze quickly through each cell, searching.
Where is he? Where is he-there. I spotted him in the cell at the very end.
Father.
He was doing pull ups, his body heaving up and down, up and down, sweat gleaming along his bare skin. He wore no shirt. Just a pair of loose pants. There was a collar around his neck—around all of their necks—that put me instantly on alert. I wasn’t sure what they were for, but I knew it couldn’t be for anything good.
I slowly wheeled the cart to the closest cell. Most of the prisoners moved to the front of their cells, clearly knowing what was coming and eager to get their hands on the food.
As I neared the first cell, Father’s gaze drifted to me and our eyes collided. He froze, his body suspended in mid air as recognition took over. Then he continued on with his exercise, giving nothing but that brief moment of hesitancy as an indication that he recognised me.
It required a conscious effort for me not to look his way again as I stopped in front of the first cell. The man inside approached the bars, watching me with these angry, repulsive eyes that spoke volumes of what he thought of me and this place.
He was a big man with pasty skin, a crooked nose and a buzz cut that made me think perhaps he was a Marine, or had been previously. There was also a woman there. Actually, as I subtly glanced at all of the cells, I noticed they all had one man and one woman. A way of keeping the fights fair, I suspected. Any team with two males would have a slight advantage over those that didn’t.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the man spat, looking down at me with derision. “We’re people. Human beings. You can’t treat us this way.”
I said nothing, picking up two of the paper plates full of food and slowly pushing them through the gap that Daniella mentioned. The woman grabbed the water bottles I rolled through next.
“Please,” she begged, eyes glistening with tears. “This isn’t right and you know it. Please, let us go.”
Ah. So he was the bad cop and she was the good cop. Or, more accurately, the sad cop. He was meant to get me ashamed of my actions and she was meant to appeal to my humane side. Make me feel sorry for her, guilty. To make me want to help her.
A clever tactic that I’m sure they tried on everyone who went down there. Admirable, very admirable. I had to give them points for trying. But there was only one person I was interested in saving.
I moved from cell to cell, handing out the allocated food and water. I took my time at each one, dragging it out for as long as I could so that when I got to my father’s cell, it wouldn’t seem suspicious when I took a little longer. I knew each of these cells had a camera in it, and the prisoners were being watched vigorously. That meant I was too. I had to be careful not to blow my cover.
Each person tried their luck at getting me to let them go.
“Please, they’re going to kill us!”
“Have a heart.”
“You soulless bastard!”
I didn’t respond to a single one, which seemed to upset them more. It solidified the whole “heartless” thing they all kept yelling at me.
One thing I noticed as I went to each cell was that they were all in incredible shape. The men had no shirts on, so it was easy to see they worked out in some way or another. The same went for the women. They all wore identical sport bras and shorts. A few of them even had a better set of abs than I did. Whether they could fight or not was a whole other story, though.
Father was still doing his pull ups when I finally approached his cell. The woman was sitting on the bed, throwing balls of rolled up toilet paper at him. He just ignored it, heaving his body up and down, up and down. The slight tick in his jaw told me it pissed him off though.
She looked roughly the same age, with wild red hair, bright green eyes and, despite the angry scowl she was aiming my father’s way, a soft, delicate face.
How long had they been locked up in there together? Long enough to drive each other crazy, that was for sure.
Father dropped from the bar and landed flat on his feet. He was panting heavily, sweat dripping down his body. He rolled his neck along his shoulders and then walked towards the bars with complete casualness, not in any hurry. Like he had all the time in the world.
Now that he was closer, I could see the scars on his skin. Knife cuts. Purple/yellow bruises. Cigarette burns. He’d been tortured. Whether it was at the hand of my uncle or Talon, I had no idea.
Seeing him like that was harder than I thought it would be, but I tried to lock those feelings away. They wouldn’t help me, only hinder me.
“What are you doing here, boy?” he spoke out of the side of his mouth, his words barely above a whisper. He was angry. That was the only time he pulled that stupid “boy” crap, like I was still some shithead teenager.
I grabbed one of the plates and crouched. Father followed, slinking down.
“We have a plan to get you out,” I said softly, pushing it through the gap slowly.
“We?” He took it, placing it off to the side. “You rope your siblings into this?”
“It was a joint effort, actually.” I passed the next plate through. “Tell me about the collar.”
“Titanium steel. Set to explode if we pass through the cell doors, unless deactivated first. Equipped with anti-tampering and remote activation.”
I internally cursed. This Talon dude was really, really pissing me the fuck off.
That meant we’d have to get the collar off him before trying to go anywhere, and the anti-tampering device would make that next to impossible. One step forward, ten steps back.
“Go home, Nikolai,” Father whispered, catching the last water bottle I rolled through. “There’s no way out of this. Get out while you can. That’s an order.”
I stood to my full height and he did too. I fiddled with the front of the cart as a cover to continue the conversation, even going so far as to add a frown.
When I spoke next, I barely moved my mouth, but he heard every word. “Sorry, Father. You’re not Pakhan. You don’t give the orders anymore. Aleksandr does.”
His eyes narrowed into slits. Before he could respond, the woman came bounding over, picking up one of the plates.
“Who’s this?” she asked covertly behind a piece of steak. At least she was smart enough not to outright blow our cover.
“Mind your own business, devil woman,” Father hissed with venom.
She smiled and it seemed completely innocent, until she stomped down hard on the back of his leg. Father stumbled forward, smashing his forehead right into the metal bars with a painful grunt.
“Asshole,” she hissed back, her smile still firmly in place. She walked back to the bed and started eating her food, not paying any more attention to us.
Father grumbled in annoyance, wiping away the blood that had started to drip down the side of his face. When he made no move to retaliate, I gave him an odd look.
“What?” he snapped under his breath.
If I had more time, I definitely would have questioned him, because the Dimitri Volkov I knew would have never let a transgression like that slide. Maybe he didn’t want to risk injuring her, since she was his fighting partner. Any weakness she had, he had too.
Still, the interaction was…strange.
“I’ll see you soon, Father,” I whispered before walking away.
