Rules of Survival | afi

night three

The hardest choices require the strongest wills.

-Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War

•••

At first, I'm convinced I'm hallucinating. That I broke my neck when I fell and these are my last few moments of life, spent swimming around in my subconsciousness. Then Wren is shoved through the door, bound by a small but stocky blonde girl, and my last remaining bit of hope shatters.

"Eliza." My name rolls off Luke's tongue almost like a snakes, as if his sharp gaze was really that of a sly reptile. If I weren't still trying to stifle the bleeding in my stomach, I would get up and strangle him.

"Luke." I say as calm as possible, still coughing, refusing to show him weakness even though I am in so much pain. "Nice to see you again. New shirt?"

He looks down at the ratty tank top he's wearing, and shrugs. "Beer free. Thought you would like it."

As if it were even possible, Luke looks even more dangerous than the first day I saw him. Streaked with dirt, dried blood on his clothes, in his hair. A direct threat. As if he sensed my thoughts, Ashton stops coughing, gives me a look, gathering his wits in favor of lunging right at the boy in front of us.

Luke slams his elbow into Ashton's throat in a perfectly executed move that leaves him gasping for air on the floor once more.

Michael moves to help Wren, but one flash of a knife at her throat by Luke's parter stops him.

"Nobody moves." She says, her voice cold yet firm. "One wrong twitch and I'll slit her throat."

The girl is pretty but small, with pointed features and a strong frame. A bow and arrow is slung across her back. She somewhat reminds me of a gymnast. A gymnast with a knife at my allies throat.

Slowly, I begin to piece together what happened. The girl sniped me with an arrow, probably from the top of one of the other tanks, purposefully in a non-fatal place so that I would fall and survive. This was the distraction her and Luke needed, herding us like dogs to what we thought was safety, and here we are.

"Delaney is right." Luke says, pulling out a short knife and kicking the door of the building shut. "Now we don't want to spoil the fun just yet, right?"

"What the hell are you doing, Luke?" I pant, tasting blood in my mouth. The arrow is preventing me from resting my body at all, so I'm left kneeling in an awkward, painful position with no way to defend myself. "I know your beef is with me. So leave them out of this and fight me like a man."

Luke laughs, flipping the knife playfully through the air. He bends down next to me. "Well, Eliza, then it wouldn't be easy. I'm all for saving dignity, but I despise putting in more effort than necessary."

I spit in his face. While he's distracted, I inch my fingers closer to my gun.

Delaney just stands back, watching with a defiant look on her face. Wren is fighting in any way she can against her grip, but there's not much she can do. With every move she makes the knife gets closer to piercing her jugular, and there's already a decent amount of her own blood all over the front of her shirt.

"You see, I came here for one thing, hot stuff." Luke says, slinking around the room like a cat. All three of us are frozen in place, unmoving in fear of Wren's life.