The Colosseum

Bon Appétit

Kova

We tied, fair and square. Ten and I crossed the finish line at the same time, both of us begging our lungs for air and our legs for strength. The next person to cross the end was Ajax, sporting a few minor scratches and a bruise or two from his Josephine encounter. "It's usually the top three who get the points, right?" Ajax beckons Annette – who stands over us like an unwanted ghost – between breaths.

"Yes," she coolly informs, scrunching her face at me in disgust. Once the others notice how she looks at me with such contempt, she finally decides to cast her pale brown irises elsewhere. As a victor of the Colosseum, Annette doesn't have to hide her revile of me, considering that my actions towards Josephine are cardinal sins down here. She can blame those glowers and scowls on her fury at what I did, rather than the fury that I'm alive when she left me for dead.

"Then we can finish this and head back inside, right?" Ten figures, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

"No, we're still waiting on a third place," she denies.

Furrowing my brows, I decide to join the conversation. Pointing at the three of us, I count, "One, two, three. There you go – you have us."

Wickedly, Annette wryly smiles with dry and cracked lips. "Instructions state that you needed to have your ribbon tied to your body for identification." Nodding at my ribbon-turned-weapon looped around my fingers, she justifies her decision by saying, "You crossed the line without any identification. You could have come from anywhere, so we can't qualify your place."

"All the courses are the same distance!" I snap, then throw a hand at a drone. "Check the footage. I deserve –"

"Rules are rules, and any further dispute will result in deduction of your current ranking, which would drop you to the negatives." Placing her heavy palm on my shoulder, her spidery fingers squeeze me with force. "You wouldn't want that, would you?"

Do you want to make an enemy out of me? The tactics of verbal cornering between Annette and Ten really is astonishing. I wonder who learned it from who – or if they both were always like this, and that's why they gravitate to each other. Without realizing it, thinking of Ten makes me look at him. When our eyes meet, he looks away, though it's clear that he now understands why I compared him to Annette earlier.

"It doesn't matter what I want," I growl. It never does.

"But as for your question, Ten," Annette picks up, voice completely different when talking to someone she actually respects. "You guys are done. I'd prefer if you stayed so the drones could get shots of the next runner, but you can head inside and start getting ready with the stylists."

"Stylists?" Ajax echoes, excitement about getting dressed up giving him a second wind.

"Deveraux's hosting an event tonight, so look alive," she chirps. Then her eyes meet mine. "...for once."

"It'll be easier to do that now that someone actually cares about my physical being," I dish back, stalking away. As I move past Annette, I stiff my shoulder and ram into her.

"Hey!" she barks. The impact of our collision causes the pocketknife in my pocket to fall to the ground. The small thud it gives off sounding like thunder in the tense moment. Slowly, I swivel around. Keeping contact with Annette, I pointedly bend down and pick it up. As I come back up, I stay in place and watch her, gripping the knife as if it were open. I'm not afraid of you, I convey in my stare. You've done your worst to me already, but you have no idea how bad I can get, too.