I begin to struggle against my cuffs. "You don't need to do this," I breathe, kicking and pulling at my restraints. "I'm not going to misbehave. I promise."

Reyes' hands clamp down on my shoulders like weights, trying to keep me still. "Calm down," he growls, his breath warm against my neck. "It's all right."

His words somehow break through my panic. I search his face, desperate for a sign that he's telling the truth. Instead, I find nothing. You can't read the eyes of a man who doesn't want to be read.

"Now, now, Miss Gomez," Litchfield says. "If you follow the rules and behave yourself, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. The device will only be used on those who become unmanageable before entering the arena."

"Will it hurt?" I ask as Doctor Litchfield walks around the table, positioning himself behind me.

"Just for a second," he assures me, pressing the knife to my neck.

"Wait!" I shout, my heart pounding harder. "Are you even a real doctor?" I already know he is, since this is no longer considered unethical for doctors. I just want to delay that scalpel plunging into my neck for as long as possible. "At school," I swallow, "they tell us doctors refused to administer the lethal injection because it went against their ethics. Doesn't this go against your ethics?"

It's true, too. In History class, we learn the government got rid of the lethal injection in favor of the Harvest because the lethal injection went against the eighth amendment.

It was discovered that drug dosages differed greatly among states, and as doctors couldn't ethically perform the procedure, it was being performed by those unqualified to do so. This caused some of the inmates to experience pain during their execution, making the punishment cruel and unusual.

Death via organ donation, however, which would later become known as the Harvest, did have a benefit, and therefore could be justified and conducted by professional doctors. The Harvest is considered both humane and painless and means an inmate's death now serves a purpose. Society has one less dangerous criminal walking the earth and their organs can be donated to somebody who deserves them–in theory.

"Of course I'm a real doctor," Litchfield says,
bemusement lacing his words. "The Arena of Justice isn't cruel or unusual, Zoe, not when the inmates volunteer for this."

Reyes positions his mouth near my ear again, causing my heart rate to spike. "The less you struggle, the sooner it will be over. All right?" "Thanks for the advice," I say, but I keep my eyes fixed on his, using him to center myself as the tip of the scalpel rests against my skin.

I didn't raise you to be weak, my father's words echo.

He might not be here, he might have abandoned me a long time ago, but I imagine him standing over me in Reyes' place, his thick eyebrows furrowed and his mouth a thin line. He spent most of his life pushing my brother and I to be harder, crueler, because the world is a monster and if we didn't want to be eaten, we had to be the bigger monsters. Now I realize he was preparing me for something like this all along; I don't know whether to resent him or thank him.

The scalpel cuts deep, causing a searing hot pain to shoot across my neck. Reyes instantly moves his hand to mine, allowing me to grip it as Litchfield gets to work, prodding and pulling at the open incision. Blood trickles along my skin, the incision beginning to pulsate. Litchfield takes a small chip from out of a thin metal case and places it into my neck. I grip Reyes' hand as hard as I can, knowing my nails must be cutting his skin, but he doesn't pull away.

"There," Litchfield soothes after jiggling the chip into place. "The hard part is over." He cleans the incision and proceeds to glue it back up before pulling off his surgical gloves. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Let's see how you like it," I mutter.

Litchfield chuckles. Reyes flexes his fingers underneath mine, reminding me that I am still holding his hand. I quickly let go, and as he pulls his hand away, I see the little half-moon crescents my nails have left on his skin. They're the same kind of marks my brother's nails would leave during our many fights growing up. At seven years old, his unusually long nails were always his weapon of choice during an argument. His second, his teeth.

After Litchfield gathers up his briefcase, the pair start to move toward the door. For some reason, the thought of being left alone again scares me more than anything else right now.

"Wait," I say, causing Reyes to glance over his shoulder. "Where are you going?"

He shoots me a look that tells me to stay quiet. "I'll be back soon," he promises, closing the door behind him.

I take a deep breath, resting my forehead on the cool surface of the table in a bid to stop my pounding headache. Another waiting room, another day in limbo, except this time, I know there's no salvation at the end of this, no uncertainty about my fate. At least before my sentencing, I could pretend there was still hope for me. Now all there is left to do is wait for death.

This must be what it was like for the inmates waiting on death row, knowing that death was coming for them but being powerless to stop it.

I've seen all of the ways death came for them, too, during one of Mr. Gordon's virtual History lessons. I'd turned up late the morning of the death penalty lesson, because my mother hadn't paid the bills for the third time running and I'd taken longer to get ready without hot running water. When I did finally make it to class, the first thing I saw were the words Dead Men Tell No Tales scrawled on the Smartboard, and my classmates waiting patiently with their virtual reality glasses on.

We've always used the glasses to witness events from the past, from standing in the middle of bloody battlefields to watching jousting tournaments up close. Usually, the lessons are interactive and we're able to pick things up or walk around in the worlds we're transported into, but in this particular lesson we were simply spectators, glued to our seats as the glasses transported us back to what looked like an old settlement—a triangular palisade made of wooden logs.

"The year is 1608," the speakers informed us. "In what was once known as Jamestown Colony. You are about to witness the first execution in American history." A man materialized only a few feet away, his back pressed against the fort wall as though he hoped to push right through it. He was young–too young–with pale skin and long brown hair that half-shielded his terrified eyes. "The man you see before you is Captain George Kendall, a man accused of being a spy for the Spanish government. He has been sentenced to die by firing squad."

The headset zoomed in on Randall as several men littered his body with bullets. As soon as his body thudded to the floor, the glasses were whisking us away.

Next, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of people. In the distance stood a man on wooden gallows, a noose placed tightly around his neck. His eyes were closed, his mouth moving softly, though I was too far to hear what he was saying.

When the gallows creaked open and the man dropped, a united gasp erupted across the classroom. For some reason, this hanging horrified my fellow peers, the same people who criticized the government for not allowing the Arena of Justice to be televised.

The rest of the lesson continued on in the same vein, the glasses taking us to the gas chamber next, and then to what looked like a room in an old church. I looked to the red wall at the end of the room and through the glass partition.

The headset zoomed closer, so close that it was as though my own eyes were pressed against the glass. Inside was a chair made from the darkest oak, with a jumble of cables that led out of the back and into the wall behind it. A man suddenly appeared, his back pressed to the headrest and his arms strapped beside him.

"Notice he's quite skinny," Mr. Gordon said from somewhere in the classroom. "Many inmates chose to fast before their execution date in a bid to be closer to god."

He was right, the man before me was extremely skinny, with long, black hair and skin so pale it was almost translucent. But it was the expression on his face that scared me the most. I remember I'd wondered how somebody so close to death could be so calm. It is only now that I realize his calmness wasn't calmness.

It was hopelessness.

Before we could watch him being electrocuted, we were transported into a hospital room, where a woman lay resting in a hospital bed, her eyes closed shut as though simply sleeping. Doctors in white coats gathered around her, cutting into her skin before carefully removing her organs.

Seconds later, the glasses switched to a different woman running through a field of dandelions with her daughter. Somehow, even before Mr. Gordon told us, I knew this woman had been saved by the inmate's organs.

"The government didn't just change the execution method," Mr. Gordon informed us as the headset zoomed in on a dark, dank room. "They changed who could be executed. People argued murderers being sentenced to life in prison or solitary confinement was a waste of the tax payers' money and far more cruel and unusual than death could ever be."

A man sat crouched in the corner of the room, his cheek pressed to his knees. "Allowing a person to live out the rest of their lives in a small, confined room with no human contact was inhumane and went against the eighth amendment," Mr. Gordon explained. "It was the ultimate form of punishment, except no one was really benefiting from it. The prisoner jumped up with a feral roar, pressing his face to the bars with a speed that made me jump. "Our society was ever changing and laws needed to be changed with it. It was decided all murderers would be eligible for the Harvest."

I'd always liked Mr. Gordon. He was one of the few teachers who actually listened to you when you spoke; who actually wanted to know what you were thinking. He always pushed us to be better, to take more of an interest in the past, because learning from the past, he'd say, paves the way for a better future.

Supposedly, the Arena of Justice didn't come into play until many years after the Harvest law passed. People had been complaining for a long time that the justice system no longer delivered adequate justice. Criminals didn't deserve a pain free death, or to feel good about themselves before they died. People wanted criminals locked up in solitary confinement because they wanted them to suffer, to have nothing but time to think about what they'd done. Now that these murderers were given an easy death, there was no justice being served, so the government created the arena.

I doubt it was much of a shock for the people at the time. Reality shows had been pushing the boundaries for years, anyway, becoming more brutal and calling for more bloodshed in the name of entertainment. The public would never see what went on in the arena, anyway. It was only for the victims' family and friends.

Some opposed it at first, tried to argue that the Arena of Justice was both cruel and unusual punishment, but the government disagreed. If criminals volunteer to enter the arena, it cannot be considered cruel or unusual. Is it not crueler to deprive the family and friends of victims of justice?

I think about how it would feel to be so close to death and make it out the other side. Statistics claim those who have survived the arena never go on to reoffend, and so the advantages to the arena are threefold–at least according to the president. It punishes the guilty, works as a deterrent for the rest of society, and rehabilitates the survivor.

I suppose not many are stupid enough to survive something like that, only to go on to reoffend. You don't get to enter the Arena of Justice twice.

Most of us won't get to leave.

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What do you guys think of Reyes?? Is he a good guard or bad 🤔 and thank you so much for sticking with this story so far. Please vote, comment and share!