The tournament

1700: Sight

"Daphne, you need to slow down."

It's been hours since we left the forest. Through the dark, we walked until another late evening. I didn't talk or even attempt to look at Harper, I kept gaiting forward struggling to lift my feet after every painful step.

All I want is to get done with this. If I'm to die let's get it over with.

"We are running out of time," I say with no emotion.

"Striding that way is draining too much of your oxygen."

The f**k I care. "It's the last day, I am running out of air, and time." I remind her.

My timer is low that I doubt my fate.

"Exhausting yourself wouldn't do anything, it would only kill you. I think you need to rest." She scolded like she's been doing for hours.

"There is no time to rest."

"Daphne, I'm sorry I had to tell you all at once, I know is a lot to digest. But I was just protecting you. God knows he had a plan, I wanted to keep you safe from him, from everyone. You came back for me when I thought I have no one. Now I feel responsible." She said the last part almost inaudible.

I swallow the bile in my throat and mumble: "Is okay."

"You are kind and innocent, I mean you don't even deserve to be here, quite frankly you've earned the truth. The least I can do is tell you a bit you should know."

Well, that got my attention, I turn around and instinctively ask: "How much do you know?"

She stares at me for a while and a weird expression flashes across her face before she says: "You don't want to know."

What?

My eyes narrow at her, and I have the urge to remind her how wrong she is.

"Is my life, my choice. It shouldn't be taken away from me like I do not deserve it."

"I am not sure you're ready for it, Daphne."

"How much do you know?" I insisted.

She delayed before she confesses: "Everything."

In my life, I have very little understanding of myself. When my father was executed, I was young I haven't gotten the chance to start having important conversations with him. All we talk about was stories and wonderland that doesn't exist.

And when I became alone I have even more little knowledge of everything around me. That I have no idea who the chairman is, I let myself get fooled thinking the man who showed me the way here was exclusively a professor when he was the man who ordered for my father's death ten years ago. Not to mention he's the man who illegally swapped the place of his son in the annual mandatory game and made me a participant just with fake audio that for a moment I believed it was my mother talking all the way from the ultimate planet.

"I demand to know everything then," I urged.

Harper stepped closer and took off her hand gloves before I could stop her.

"Take off yours and hold onto my hand." She instructed like it's the simplest of things when I am aware of the harm of this universe.

"What?" I exclaimed, staring at her through my face protector like she's insane.

"I can protect you from the corrupted aura around us."

"Does that mean we could take off the suit?" I curiously ask.

"I can only provide you with a limited time to sense human touch but I can't with breathing." She answered.

I cautiously observe her for a while below my eyelashes, should I trust her? Should I take off the material that has been insulating me from the destruction that this atmosphere holds?

"You still don't trust me." She smiles softly, bringing shame to my expression.

"I just..." I honestly have no words to say.

"Let me show you what I know." she pleaded, holding out her hand again.

Hesitant with my eyes connected to hers, I took the two steps between us and reluctantly take off my right-hand glove in front of her.

When my skin touched hers, it carried the kind of relief that words cannot express. It explains how much humans needed this sort of connection.

For the first time since we left Archiefield, I felt warmth and ease, I feel steady and corresponding. Nothing affected my flesh despite the air blowing against my exposed skin.

But that feeling is taken away from me in just a few seconds and what I could see is a weird vision of what I got stolen away.

***

"I shall come back to you, my love." Says a pretty young woman of Harper's age.

She was a petite beautiful woman made of pretty brown eyes and long dark brown hair.

The woman's words were for a swaddled baby wrapped in the arms of a tall man that looks very familiar.

"Don't go." Says the familiar man in a black uniform I'm sure is meant for Archiefield prisoners.

"There is nothing we can do, Vincent."

"I can hide you." The man mostly pleaded, swaying back and forth to comfort the sleeping baby.

"There is nowhere to hide in this bunker, I must go." The woman looked pained, she has tears welled in those big pretty brown eyes.

The man steps forward, his free hand grabbed her arm. "She needs you. I need you." He kept trying to convince her.

"You will be fine, I promise I will return as long as I am alive, for now, you have to hold on to this for her." The woman inserted some golden stone that is so much familiar into the man's hand.

Those thick tears stream down her face and into the neckline of her dress as she turns away.

"Erisa..." Exclaimed the man holding tight to the baby, his facial expression was the heartbreaking I've ever seen. His Adam apple rocking up and down his throat with every swallow he takes in while watching the mother of his child leave through a potent steel door.

That he barely heard the security behind him notifying: "The time is over, let get moving."

It was like a description in a dream that felt so much real watching that same woman in hazmat suit that matches those for the yearly annual game as she's been injected out through those same familiar transport tubes that I was in two days ago.

But as soon as she woke up from her long slumber she wasn't as lucky as I was. Her suit material got stuck into the ziplock of the oxygen tank.

She struggles for a period of time trying to free her arms against the bag she consumes air from but everything went wrong when she uses additional strength and peel off the material from the zip

Her suit tore, exposing her to the deflagrable atmosphere that shouldn't contact her skin.

She gave all efforts to cover herself, but nothing helped, she ended up making it worst.

The fear in those brown eyes was legit as the timer continues to count and the effect began affecting her brilliant skin as if a griddle flesh in a fat oil, the heat was severe, it penetrates the surface of her skin so badly, is hard to watch, her skin was reddish and swollen and blistered. She was bleeding through every hole in her body.

The shrieking cries coming from her sore throat as she's punished for what she doesn't deserve. Her skin burning rapidly from the intensity of heated temperature.

It shoot a piercing pain into my chest, I couldn't control myself when I swerved back and let loose of Harper's hand in an instant. Disconnecting myself from my painful history.

What was that?

I was breathing hard and fast from the horror I've just learned, I couldn't think straight.