The crowd kept arriving, filling the seats, squabbling with those who’d gotten there earlier, exchanging fire. Battles broke out here and there. Something whizzed past my right ear, a shard nicked my cheek. I ducked, hid behind a rock, didn’t even have time to feel scared… an explosion… silence.
I waited it out, poked my head out of cover, and saw the crowd pouncing on the neighbors who’d been hit… I raised myself up, looked closer… yes, about twenty people in collars, my fellow slaves, it seemed… Another explosion, then a second… I ducked again, peeked out. Now it was clear: the fighters felled by the blasts had been torn apart by a mob of slaves, who grabbed their weapons and joined the firefight. With sheer numbers on their side, the slaves scattered their enemies, ripped off their collars, and settled into the newly won ground. They used the corpses of dead rivals and comrades alike as seats. Former slaves became masters. Former masters became chairs and platforms for slaves.
I envied the change of fate and shifted my gaze to the pistol grip sticking out of Verochka’s belt half a meter away. It seemed easier than easy to snatch the pistol and deal with the dominuses, as is the custom here. Two shots – two corpses. I had the opportunity to do it. I could!
Anton and Vera, absorbed in each other, weren’t paying any attention to what was happening. Anton was whispering nonsense to Vera. Vera giggled and kept nudging Anton’s hand from her backside up to her waist, once every five seconds. Her pistol was almost in my hand. I had to make up my mind to take control!
I can. I must!
Grab the pistol, cock the hammer… no, rack the slide… damn it, how does the thing even fire? Why am I such an idiot? Why can’t I do something this basic?
Because I’m spineless! The grenade the local had slipped me was still sitting in my pocket, and I still had no idea what to do with it.
Anton had said that once a year there is a day when a dream comes true. I could make mine come true now. Shoot down the masters of my life and turn into an individual. The whole time I had been here had been the time of a victim. Not once had I made a decision that could radically change my life.
The moment had come! Thirty centimeters from the pistol that would turn me from an outcast into a citizen.
No.
I pulled my hand back and sighed. How do you load and fire without a misfire? What if it misfired? What would happen to me?
Better to sit still and not twitch, resigned to the thought that I wasn’t a hero or a master of my own life. I was a monkey on a chain… pathetic, but alive.
I sighed once more, flinched…
A hundred loudspeakers thundered from the arena: «Attention!»
The ringmaster turned out to be a fellow in camouflage. He held the requisite pause and, shaking the air with the unimaginable power of the sound system, proclaimed: «We begin!»
Vanished.
