Drea and Sierra talked as they headed to the lobby.
"C'mon, stop pullin' my leg!" Sierra laughed.
"I'm serious! I can lift 200 easily!"
"You're still a kid!"
"Hey! I'm a legal adult!" Drea defended.
"You can't even drink yet!"
"Whatever, you're just jealous, man. Bet you weren't lifting 200 at 19." Drea retorted. She smiled as Sierra gave up.
"Fine, you're a beast. Hey, you know your power yet?"
"Ah.. No. Of course not." Drea said, annoyed.
"You'll figure it out eventually." Sierra smiled. "Mine was easy to discover, but yours might be something less obvious. Like telekinesis or something."
"Yeah, whatever. I probably just have a lame power that does nothin'."
"Nah, your family all had cool powers. Your dad with the flying, Lydia and her water, Cam and his lightning, River-"
"Stop! I get it! My family had cool powers, and I don't even know mine! I get it, man."
"Hey, hey, I didn't mean it like that." Sierra sighed. "C'mon, let's go to the vending machines."
"We just got food an hour ago."
"Dude, food is free on rest days!" Sierra looked at her, dumbfounded. "Gotta stock up, kid."
"Really? Damn, okay!"
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After grabbing some snacks, Drea and Sierra headed to their respective rooms.
In her room, Drea did some light training; push-ups, planks, and then some squats.
That was it. That was the last rest day before she would fight. She was terrified.
To deal with the nerves, she decided to watch reality TV. The ridiculous melodrama was soothing in a sense.
Afterwards, Drea took a hot shower. She tried to acknowledge every muscle in her body again as she did the previous day. That feeling of relaxing every part of her was the best she'd felt in weeks.
She looked at her hand, the bandages peeling up. Drea unwrapped her hand to look at the nasty scar. It was scraggly and scabbed, but at least it wasn't bleeding anymore. It really was a minor injury, despite spanning across three knuckles. She decided that wrapping it up again would be good enough, and that it didn't really matter.
She'd waited her whole life for what was coming the next day. Even so, Drea felt extremely unprepared.
So, after what felt like hours of overthinking, Drea drifted off to sleep.
She didn't dream that night.
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Drea's screaming alarm woke her up at 5:00 am sharp. One hour to get ready for the fight of her life.
She ate breakfast, trained for 20 minutes, then headed down to the locker room.
There, Drea got ready to go into the arena. The other 29 players in the room with her donned armor, spikes, knee and elbow pads that they bought over time. Drea wondered how many hundreds of matches they had to fight to afford the luxuries.
Drea wondered how many of them had to get top 3 to afford the luxuries.
The players with lesser abilities wore sparce leather pieces instead of the nicer iron armor. Those were the ones who rarely placed.
"Drea!" Sierra pat her back. "Are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be." Drea curled and uncurled her fingers.
"Contestants, attention. You will be transferred into the arena in five minutes. Your player numbers should appear at this time."
Drea looked down at the plain black shirt given to her by arena employees. In bright white, the number 26 slowly appeared. She looked to Sierra, seeing 78 was now on her shirt.
"Five minutes. Wow. This is so.. weird." Drea thought aloud. "I've imagined this day for all my life, Sierra."
"Well, how do you feel?"
"Nauseous.." Drea half-joked.
The clock showed two minutes until they would go into the arena.
Drea took a deep breath, steadied herself, and prepared her mind as the minutes dwindled into seconds.
"Here goes.."
YOU ARE READING
Number Twenty-Six
Action30 players enter, last one standing wins. Number 26, Drea Whitlock, was drafted into the Apok. Drea was always a competitive girl. Growing up the youngest of 5 siblings does that to a person. Her childhood was spent in front of the TV, watching her...
