A is for Ares

17- Redemption

Twenty-five of the contestants were prisoners, five (including Ross) were guards. The beatings, suicides, maimings, rapes, and more were all frequent sights. Matt and Bridger had begun engineering an escape plan. It had been seven months in hell, and the daily occurrences of rape and torture were too much for everyone.

"You either risk dying in the escape, or you stay in the salt mines, where you feel like you've been fucked by a train. How does gay sex feel? How does being maimed feel? How does suicide feel? How does all of this feel?! You wanna escape here and try and continue the tests, or stay in the salt mines" Matt said.

"Don't you see?! This is one of the tests!" A member of the audience said. "I've had enough of this!" He said before raising the shank to his throat and thrusting it in. Two more men followed in his footsteps. Matt sighed.

Ross and his four goons soon came running in, guns blazing. The prisoners decided to get busy dying. They clashed, and eventually, only nine people were left standing. Eight prisoners and Ross. A turned and saw Matt slowly fall to his knees, clutching his chest, blood on his hands. He gasped one last time.

With a battle cry, A took the two suicide shanks and forced them into Ross' eyes. The screaming artist was silenced with the hunting rifle Bridger took from a downed guard. The seven remaining prisoners dispersed out into the dust cloud.

• • •

Ulysseus was dumbfounded. In total shock. His mouth was agape, if anyone could see it.

"I want that man either by my side or dead!" He ordered his servants.

• • •

The arena was split into twelve sectors. One large hub in the centre and eleven smaller sections, each inhabited by one of the eleven most painful stings in the world. The centre would be home to the death match, where people would be slowly led.

A began in the sweat bee sector. He was stung countless times, but shrugged them off. Bullhorn Acacia ants were also painless. The fire ants were irritating but not painful. Honeybees and Bald faced hornets ached, but not much. It had been six days in the endure arena. After the paper wasps and Yellowjackets, there was no stopping Bridger from making it out of that arena.

He slowly felt the Velvet ant stinger slide an inch into his skin and retract instantaneously. It was worse pain than all of the other stings combined. It was only minutes before the tarantula hawk.

He dropped to the ground and began screaming his head off. He was in hell. Another plane of existence for exactly five minutes before the pain abruptly stops. He finally confronted the final step to winning. The only thing standing between him and the death match: the bullet ant. A single sting to the finger rendered his hand useless, numb, and immobile. He passed out in minutes, only awaking to be surrounded by the men he only knew by their code names, as he did Mike, Nick, and Sam. They were all together in the death match... But not a single attempt had been made to harm someone else.

Dolton, Watson, Lyan, Gavan, Rowin, and Martin all sat around Bridger.

"Get the fuck up! We need your help to bust out of here and kill Ulysseus!" Dolton said.

"I heard that!" Ulysseus' voice echoed.

Bridger quickly leapt up and ran for the box wall, fending off honeybees on the way. He gripped the barrel of an extendable gun turret tasked with killing him, only using his good hand, burning it dramatically on the barrel. He kicked through the hatch in the wall. The depressurisation was over in two seconds. All of the bugs, all of the assets, all of the contestants, were dead, all except Bridger, who looked down, only to see New York City below him.