Page 15

Fight. Survive. Live.

I survived. I am alive.

Most of my physical wounds have disappeared after months of healing.

Like it never happened.

But it did. The memory of it will never leave me.

The tearing of my flesh echoes in my ears at night as I try to sleep.

The groaning of a freshie hot on my tail haunts me every time I close my eyes.

Every time I open them too.

And Jonah has no idea.

Or maybe he does, but he’s choosing ignorance.

I was in the lab for months.

Months. When Doctore had my arm sawed off, that healed within a day.

But that was a clean incision.

Easy fix. This time, my body was shattered.

Tendons, ligaments, bones, organs, and muscles all needed to weave themselves back together.

It took a full staff of scientists, nurses, and doctors to put all the pieces of me back together like a puzzle, to hold me in place long enough for my body to heal and regrow was eaten.

Months.

And Jonah didn’t show up for a single moment of it.

I’m furious with him.

Furious that he’s chosen this place over me.

Chosen this place over his own humanity.

I’m furious that he tells me he loves me one moment and looks away the next as Doctore throws nine freshies in my direction.

I hate him. Not just Doctore.

I hate Jonah.

“I’ve been told the last of your scars have fully healed,” Doctore says in that deep voice that does an almost perfect job of mimicking calm.

I hate it. I hate that he has the power to make me feel safe when the pit of my soul is screaming to run.

“The crowds at the Colosseum have missed you.”

Is he serious?

I hold back the massive eye roll as I turn toward his frame, casually leaning against the wall of the room I had spent most of the last few months in.

He is serious. What does he expect me to say to him?

The willpower I once had has dwindled over the years I’ve been held captive here, forced to fight, forced to endure pain and torture.

I have nothing left to hide behind and zero fucks to give.

I show Doctore my real face.

The face that shows him my unfiltered rage and hate.

A vision of my hands around his neck invades my mind, and it is all I can think of.

Anyone else should be afraid of the look I give him.

Doctore simply smiles at me.

“There she is, the monster of my creation. My gladiator.”

His words make my face fall.

“My creation,” he said.

And he’s right. The person I am today, this person filled with so much hate and fury, this is his creation.

I never thought I could kill a person.

Yet, here in this hell called Novus Seclorum, I have killed.

Not just zombies, but living human beings.

I killed because I wasn’t given a choice.

But the truth is, I was given a choice.

I can’t die. That much is evident from my last appearance in the Colosseum.

Though I might not have known it at the time, I wasn’t willing to chance death.

So I killed anyone Doctore threw at me.

Everyone except Jonah.

As much as I hate him, I don’t want to kill him.

I don’t want him to die.

Somewhere inside, my Jonah still exists.

Jonah, all the Praetorian Guards, me…

we are all Doctore’s creations.

He is more than the gladiator trainers of Ancient Rome.

He is the creator of monsters.

Mindless monsters with nothing better to do than kill.

Our humanity has been taken from us.

“Your last fight in the Colosseum has taught me so much about what the sacramentum gladiatorum can do,” Doctore says, ignorant of the internal epiphany I just had.

I look up at him with questions in my eyes.

Unspoken questions he readily answers.

“Sacramentum gladiatorum. It was the oath taken by every gladiator in Ancient Rome. What I now call the serum I’ve developed which has not only made you immune to the plague, but invincible. So now I ask you, will you give me your oath? Will you fight for me, with me, to bring us into this new age? To save humanity?”

I hold back a cackle, which comes out like a scoff.

“Do you really believe you are saving humanity?” I ask.

“I am saving–”

“No. You are destroying humanity. You might be this brilliant scientist who created a sacred gladiator serum or whatever, but you are not good. You do not intend to use this for good.”

Doctore’s lip curls into that maniacal smile again.

“I never said I was good , Laurel.”

I stare at him.

Am I shocked at his confession?

No. And yet I’m frozen in place, speechless.

Somehow I find my next words.

“What do you envision saving humanity looks like then, if you aren’t in the habit of doing good?”

“I’m so glad you asked this question,” Doctore says as he takes a seat on the round stool next to the gurney I’ve been sitting on.

“I plan to create an empire from the ashes of the old world. Just as I am doing here. The world will bow to me, their new god, creator of life. For that is what I have given you, Laurel. Life. Fight with me, and you will see a thousand lives. Fight against me, and you will see a thousand deaths.”

I can’t.

I won’t. But I know if I say this to him, he won’t just kill me over and over, he will kill everyone I care about.

That might be a small list, but I can’t help thinking about the children in the slums. Maybe I can help them by bargaining with Doctore.

I can do some good, even if I sign away my soul to the devil.

“If I give you my oath, will you help those poor children in the Pauperem Quartam? Create a school where they and other children can be educated? Grow up to be something other than bunker urchins or die without ever becoming who they are meant to be?”

“And here I thought you would ask me to promote your boyfriend or spend more time with him or both.” Doctore crosses his arms when I grimace.

Great, now he knows I don’t care about Jonah as I used to.

At least that means Jonah is safe if I ever cross the line.

I hate that I still care about him.

That I still need him.

He’s my only connection to the before, even though we are both chained to this place.

“I’ll give you some time to think, Laurel.” And with that, Doctore disappears back into the shadows from where he spawned.