"Where is he?" Leo demanded, gripping the bars tight enough to make his knuckles white.

I couldn't answer. The two soldiers dumped me in my cage and I collapsed, barely able to curl up. The rain water dripping off of my body mixed with the blood on my back and the dust on the ground, turning it into crimson stained mud. All I could see were those sixty one gashes, sixty one lines burned into my mind.

"Where is he?" Leo repeating, his voice growing louder.

"I'm sorry," I breathed, squeezing my eyes shut as if that alone would bring me relief.

"Where is he?" he screamed. I still didn't answer, and he paused, noticing the eleven stripes down my back. "How many did he get?" he said, softer.

I shook my head and cringed. I couldn't tell him.

"Tell me, Joel!" Leo yelled, throwing something through the bars.

The small pebble hit the back of my neck, right into my wound, and I shrieked. "Leo -" I started, my voice cracking.

"Get up and tell me!" He was hysterical, pounding his fists against the bars, and the sick feeling grew worse. "Ten lashes is nothing! You're pathetic! He could be dying and you don't even care!"

I finally managed to pull myself up to a kneeling position, keeping my head ducked. "I'm sorry," I said softly.

"Please, Joel," he begged. "Please, tell me."

"His punishment was forty," I said, wincing at his sharp inhale. Each one of my lashes burned, like they were filled with liquid fire.

"Forty?" Leo whispered.

"But ..." I rubbed my face with my hand, as if trying to hide myself. I didn't want to tell him. I couldn't.

"He got them all, didn't he?"

I nodded. "All forty."

"Why didn't they bring him back?" Leo asked. "Is he okay?"

"He's ..." I hesitated. "He passed out at the end, once they'd untied him. Then Howell took him away."

Leo staggered back, his hands grasping his heart. "No," he breathed. "Not Howell. Please, say it's not true. All my nightmares ... they can't come true. Tell me it's not true!"

"I'm sorry." I felt tears burning in my eyes again. I hated being so emotional. This place had knocked down every emotional wall I'd ever built, and every time I tried to build it back up, something else hit me and left me an emotional wreck.

"Braken ..." Leo tried to scream, but his voice cracked and trailed off.

"He'll come back alright," I whispered, narrowing my eyes and staring at the bars of the door. "I know he will. He's stronger than both of us."

"What are you talking about?" Leo snapped. "He's not strong enough. I could hear him screaming ... he's  dying, isn't he? There's something you're not telling me. He's dying and I'm never going to see him again ..."

I shifted my weight and cringed. "He's not dying. Or at least I don't think he is." He was right. There was something I wasn't telling him.

"Tell me what's going on," he said. "Please, I have to know."

"I don't want you to worry," I said, and then realized how stupid I sounded. "I mean ... sorry, I just ..." I sighed and rubbed my neck, letting out a shriek as I touched the gash. "His punishment was forty lashes, but on top of that, Howell said that every time he made noise, they had to start counting all over again."

"I can't take it," Leo muttered, pacing his cell back and forth, back and forth. "I can't live like this anymore." He turned to look at me, almost hesitantly. "So how many ...?"

Again, I hesitated. "Sixty one."

He put his hand over his mouth, backing up, and his words were muffled when he spoke. "That's more than I've gotten in my entire life." He turned around, unwilling to face me while he cried softly. "He's dead. He's going to die. No one can survive that. I don't understand!" he suddenly yelled, tipping his head up as if calling to someone above, calling to God. "All he did was save himself! He played by the rules, just like we did! It's not his fault. It ... it was Joel's fault!"

"My fault?" I squeaked in surprise.

He turned back to me, his face red in anger, though his eyes were sorrowful. "If you hadn't have given him your sword, he wouldn't've ... wouldn't've ..."

"I probably saved his life," I said defensively, scrambling back as if he could really grab me. My back burned again with every movement.

In all honesty, I did blame myself. What if I hadn't saved him? What if he could have saved himself, and I just made everything worse?

Leo needed someone to blame, so he threw the blame at me. I knew he knew it wasn't really my fault. I couldn't have made Howell give Braken a different punishment. But maybe if I'd been stronger, he wouldn't have given those extra twenty to Braken.

Even suffering through ten lashes was a pain more intense than I'd ever felt before. I hadn't had much physical pain in my life, I'll admit, but it seemed that with every snap, every time the whip cracked against my bare back, tearing me open, I had lost a piece of my humanity. My world had shattered into a million pieces. I'd realized, in the moment of agony, that they no longer thought of me as human. I was even less than the Unnaturals - I couldn't even fight. I'd gotten lucky, that's all. I had no skill, no power to make it interesting. Just a whole lot of terror and a smidgen of luck.

But Braken had gone through ten, twenty, forty without even making a sound. They didn't want him to be above me. They wanted him to be lower than dirt, and they wanted to make sure he knew it. They'd recognized his spirit was strong, and so they'd attempted to shatter it. Maybe it had worked. I didn't know. To me, it had looked like he'd given up when he crashed down, tumbled like a mighty tree finally giving in to the storm, but I didn't know. I barely even knew him.

What if he was dying?

"We have to get out of here," I whispered.

...

There was a round scheduled that night, and it sounded like it was a pretty violent one on top of that. It was Sunday, and I knew that if I had been home, my mom would have invited me to turn off the screen and join them for dinner. Her Sunday night dinners were the best. I would have killed for one of her dinners that night.

I quickly rephrased my statement. Killed suddenly didn't seem like an appropriate word to use. I'd been a part of too much killing recently.

Finally, after the screaming died down, both from the contestants and the crowd, and the lights shut off and the doors slammed, I was able to let myself lay down, flat on my stomach, and try to get some sleep.

Those sixty one lines haunted my dreams, both a chilling vision and a waking nightmare. Braken's scream of anguish and agony echoed through my head, and all I could see were sixty one bloody gashes, everywhere I looked. On the walls, dripping from the ceiling, on the back of every person in my dreams - at one point, I could feel them on my own body, across my chest and torso, up and down my arms and legs, the real fire and the real blood trickling down my shoulder blades, down my spine, and pooling in the small of my back. I saw Laszlo there, but instead of a sword, I was holding a whip covered in blood, and when he cried, it wasn't his voice, but Braken's. I couldn't keep my eyes shut for more than a few seconds, and even when they were open, I could see the burning lines, glowing white hot in the darkness, branded into my memory. I couldn't take it. I couldn't do anything but press my knuckles into my temples, trying in vain to push the images out of my head.

Hours into my battle, my war against my own memories, someone began to sing. I can't recall the words or the tune, but I recognized Leo's voice as if from far away. His voice was calm and comforting, as gentle as if it had been my own mother singing. It rang through the darkness, penetrating the visions dancing through my mind, and turning those sixty one lines into a staff and notes and words, as if I was reading sheet music, or playing the piano. It began to calm me down, and eventually, my breathing slowed down, returning to normal, and my heart calmed itself, thumping along to the rhythm of his voice, and finally, I relaxed, lulled to sleep by his gentle song.

...

I woke up the next morning stiff and exhausted. I sat up with a slow groan and rubbed my eyes, my back prickling painfully.

Leo was sitting with his back to the window, resting against the bars. I could see the top of his head, his black hair sticking up at all ends, as if he'd been struck by lightning.

"Hey, uh ..." I started, clearing my throat awkwardly. "Was that you last night? Singing, I mean?"

"Yeah," he said softly, his voice scratchy and pained.

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't mention it."

"No, really, tha -"

"Seriously. It's bad enough as it is."

I could definitely hear something straining his voice now, and it made me curious. "Are you okay?"

"I really wish you'd stop asking that."

I didn't say anything, and he turned his head a little, as if attempting to glance over his shoulder without showing his face. Seeing him move like that made me worry. Was something wrong?

Finally, he spoke again. "They caught me last night. They don't like my singing." He turned a little so I could see, and I inhaled sharply. He had two slashes across his face, starting from his eyebrows and crossing over the bridge of his nose, ending on his cheekbones. Parts of them were still bleeding, just a little.

Though they looked painful, they didn't describe why his voice sounded raw and scratchy. "What else did they do to you?" I asked softly.

He flinched slightly. "Nothing."

"Come on, tell me. I want to help."

"There's nothing -" He started to cough, loud, raspy coughs that shook his whole body. He sighed when he'd finished, realizing that it was pointless to deny it. "They just ... forced some stuff down my throat so I couldn't scream. I guess they wanted to make sure I couldn't sing." He chuckled a little, wincing.

I rubbed my throat uncomfortably, and sat up a little taller, looking out into the hall. "And why is your hair sticking up like that? Did they shock you or something?"

"No," he said, offering no other response. I could tell by his tone that I'd hit a soft spot, so I stayed quiet.

The silence that settled between us wasn't quite awkward. It was a dark, foreboding silence that crept into my body and made my back tingle. I couldn't move without a sharp stinging, so I spent most of the day laying on my side or my stomach. My mind wandered all over the place, mostly imagining those sixty one gashes, sixty one stripes on Braken's back, only this time, I wasn't so afraid, because the light from outside streamed into my cell. The light kept away the waking nightmares.

I slept off and on throughout the day, catching a few minutes here and there. It didn't help battle my exhaustion, but it passed the time quicker. Most of my sleep was dreamless and numb, though sometimes I awoke for a moment breathing hard and drenched in sweat.

Leo didn't move or say anything all day long. Finally, near sunset, I dragged myself over, my worry overpowering my pain, and looked into the window. I wished I hadn't.

He was asleep, slumped against the wall as usual, but his wrists were chained out to the wall on either side with single links, and his palms had ominous slashes through them. He was almost completely naked, with only a pair of underwear draped over him to cover him. His clothes were tossed on the other side of the cell, as if flung there by some intruder, and his bare chest was covered in dark red marks, as if something had scratched him, or some animal had bit him.

I gasped when I saw him, slapping my hand over my mouth. Who had done this to him? And why?

I suddenly remembered what he'd told me a while ago - that Howell enjoyed inappropriate physical contact. I backed up and stumbled, my heart racing. Why? Why? And of all the people, why him? After all he'd been through, after all the emotional pain they'd forced on him, how could they do this? 

Where was Braken?

A few minutes later, a pair of soldiers brought me my shirt and jacket from the night before, tossing them into my cell. I stared at the clothes for a moment, and then looked up at the soldiers. They motioned to the shirt, and I bit my lip nervously. They were waiting for me to put it on.

I slowly knelt down beside the clothes and picked up my jacket. Maybe that would hurt less than the shirt. I glanced up at the men and they smirked, sticking their electric spears into my cell. If I didn't put it on, they'd jab me. I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the sleeve over my arm, yelping as the fabric brushed against my gashes.

"Too slow," one of them said, poking me in the ribs with his spear.

I shrieked as the electricity shocked me, twitching backward, and shrieked again as the jacket rubbed up against the rips in my back again, sending a fire of pain through my entire body. He moved to stab at me again, but I quickly pulled my other hand through the sleeve, cringing and arching my back in a feeble attempt to dull the pain. Every time I breathed, the cloth touched my wounds, my eleven stripes, lighting them up, burning them into my mind. My frantic thoughts turned back to the number sixty one - each burst of pain, each burst of fear felt amplified, multiplied, all by sixty one.

The soldiers chuckled and moved on to Leo's cell, staring in as if contemplating what to do with him. They eventually decided to put his pants on, joking that he was "inappropriate." I wanted to yell at them, tell them what really happened, but I couldn't get my voice out. It was all I could do to keep completely still, feeling as if I'd been immersed in a pool of boiling water.

The screeching of the cell doors woke Leo from his sleep, and as soon as he saw them come in, he flinched and ducked his head down, enough so that I couldn't see him anymore.

"What was this thing doing last night?" one of the men asked with a chuckle.

"Looks like it got caught sleeping around," the other said, and they shared a laugh, as if they were the funniest guys on the planet.

I couldn't see what they did, but I heard Leo's long groan from the other side of the window. "Watch it," he muttered. "Still sore."

"Who was it last night?" they taunted.

"It wasn't my fault. I - hey - HEY -" He shrieked, shrill and high pitched, hurting my ears. It scared me and I flinched, letting out a cry of my own. "Stop it!" he wailed. I could hear him thrashing in their grips, and sometimes I could see the top of his wild hair. The looks on the men's faces scared me. I didn't know what they were doing, and judging by Leo's high pitched sounds of pain, I didn't want to know.

It only lasted a minute, and then they left him alone and slammed the cell door shut, the clang echoing through the halls and ringing in my ears.

As soon as they were gone, I ripped the jacket off of my back, and let out the breath I'd been holding. The chilly draft through the window soothed the fire in my gashes. I clutched my jacket with both hands, holding it in front of me. I couldn't even wear clothes, and that infuriated me.

"Leo," I said, my voice cracking slightly. He made a soft sound in response, so I continued. "Leo, are you ... I mean ..."

"Am I okay?" he grumbled.

I winced. "Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Sorry."

"I'm fine. I'm just cold and sore." I could see the top of his head move again, as if he was trying to look at me. "You have a girlfriend? Boyfriend? Can I go so far to ask if you have a wife?"

"No," I said. "I don't have anyone." I'd broken up with my girlfriend a few weeks before I'd been taken. Remembering her gave me a feeling of nostalgia. It just ... hadn't worked out, or at least that what she had said. Did she even remember me?

"Oh," Leo said. "Never mind, then."

It was almost time for another round, and I could see soldiers taking another Unnatural out to the arena. Varien. The one with dark magic, they called it.

And suddenly, I knew how we were going to get out.