“What do you think you’re doing?”
Looking up, she found Jason gaping at her incredulously. The gears of her mind seemed rusty and slow to move. Her eyes moved between Jason and the IV needle in her arm, while her mind struggled manfully to answer his question. Her thoughts were syrupy slow, and it took an agonizingly long time for her to realize that she had no idea why she wanted to pull the IV out, not when she felt like she’d recently been run over by a large truck of some sort.
“I don’t know,” she croaked out.
He shook his head in apparent disbelief, pushing her fumbling, careless fingers away from the IV and pressing the tape back down with surprising gentleness.
Dumbly, she watched him work as her mind labored to turn over anything vaguely resembling a coherent thought. But there was something wrong with his fingers. His skin. Red, and a little raw, like he’d polished himself with sandpaper. She placed her hand over his before he could draw it away.
“Your hands,” she said slowly. “They’re…” She reached for the right word, her head pounding painfully. “They’re wrong.”
“Wrong,” he said, drawing the word out slowly, seemingly turning it over in his head. He smiled wryly. “You could say that.”
Only then did she arrive at the correct conclusion. Jason had stayed with her when she’d dropped the protective barrier. He’d thrown his jacket over her, saving her from the worst of the sandstorm, while enduring it himself.
“Why?” she asked.
He grinned wolfishly though his handsome features had been similarly marred by the sand. “Don’t forget—you’re still my meal voucher. My ticket to the top.”
She didn’t think that was it at all, but that thought was brushed aside by another much more pressing one. “Chi,” she said, her voice no more than a hoarse whisper. “Did they find him?”
Jason nodded, but he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. She knew Chi was gone.
This time, she didn’t bother peeling the tape away before yanking the IV needle from her arm. She struggled to her feet, impatiently untangling herself from unwieldy bedsheets determined to trip her up.
Jason raised his eyebrows but seemed to accept there was little he could do to stop her. He pressed a towel to her arm where the IV needle had left a lazy trail of blood and allowed her to lean on him. He led her through the room, winding their way between the nurses bustling back and forth, the doctors shouting out instructions, and the other Finals participants sitting in beds, their expressions dazed with shock and horror. But she barely saw any of it, her eyes drawn to a curtained area at the back of the room.
She pulled the curtain back, deaf to Jason’s whispered words of caution.
Behind the curtain were six beds, five of which were filled with bodies with sheets drawn over them.
Allyra reached out with a trembling hand and gently peeled back the sheets, revealing the identities of the dead.
Meyling and Asher—the Seconds from the Oceanic College.
Orrin and Anja—the Thirds from the Terra College.
And finally—Chi.
He was barely recognizable. His skin had been sanded away, leaving his face raw and sickly white. The sand had even taken his eyelids, and his opaque eyes stared out at her with a lingering look of horror and pain.
Allyra turned away with a choked groan, her stomach heaving. She didn’t want to remember Chi like this. Never like this. She tried to smother the vision of his lifeless body with memories of the kind and sympathetic friend he had been. The one who loved books and always did everything he could to help and protect those he loved.
Grief burned like a river of acid through her veins, flooding through every crack and crevice, threatening to overwhelm her. She recognized the hollow darkness; it was the same desperate emptiness she’d welcomed into herself after her father’s death. If she gave in to it now, she might never break the surface to breathe again.
Instead, she turned to anger and fury and vengeance, allowing bitter hate to drive her forward.
“Where is he?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“Who?” Jason replied, his brows furrowed in confusion.
“Jeong. Where is he?”
“Allyra—” Jason’s voice carried a note of warning, but she ignored it.
“Fine,” she said, shrugging his hand from her shoulder. “I’ll find him myself.”
Allyra stalked back into the larger room, her eyes darting from side to side, searching for Jeong. When she found him, lava-hot hate surged through her. He was sitting on a bed, joking and laughing with two of his friends—completely unconcerned by recent events.
She pushed her way through them and shoved hard on his shoulder, forcing him to turn and face her.
Jeong grabbed her wrist, his fingers digging deep into her flesh until she could feel the force of his grip against her very bones. “Careful,” he said, pleasure thick in his voice. “You wouldn’t want to be kicked out of The Five Finals for hurting a fellow Competitor.”
Allyra smiled dangerously and grabbed his hand, forcing his fingers backward until he released her wrist with a yelp of pain. The smile spread wider across her face.
“You’re going to pay for this,” Jeong warned.
“Really?” Allyra asked with a hollow laugh. “You’re not a Competitor anymore. There’s nothing stopping me from destroying you and showing you to be the coward I know you are.”
“What is going on here?” High Master Zhuang’s impassive voice asked from behind her. “Miss Warden, please let go of Mr. Lee,” High Master Zhuang continued as he appeared beside her.
Reluctantly, Allyra released Jeong’s fingers. She turned to
