Z 2134

fierce to hold inside.
    She brushed by a lone zombie standing as still as a tree, almost as if it had been waiting for her to pass. It growled as she screamed, then thrust its arms out, reaching for her. Its fingertips grazed the edge of her arms as it moaned. Ana screamed, somehow managed to get away, and ran as fast as she could, racing blindly into the belly of the woods and farther away from the Fire Wall, hoping like hell she wouldn’t lose the seam that could lead her back to Liam.
    She kept running until the moaning disappeared behind her. Just as she nearly settled into the comfort of quiet, she heard moaning. It was coming from in front of her, behind her, and to her left.
    Shit, shit.
    She moved farther from the seam and spotted a cave to her right.
    No way I’m going in there. Gotta find a way back.
    Moans suddenly multiplied in number and volume, seeming to come from all four directions, pushing her closer to the cave, even as she desperately searched for anywhere else to go.
    Then she saw zombies moving among the shadows. There were at least a dozen of them surrounding her, save for her only path of escape — into the cave.
    She looked around and thought there was a small chance that the zombies had not yet seen her. She prayed the cave would offer a safe harbor until the threat had cleared. She hunched over, trying to make herself as small as possible as she quietly ran toward the cave, ducking her head and crawling into its wide-open mouth.
    She was inside only a handful of seconds before the whoosh of a Network orb followed behind, throwing bright blue light against the black walls. The color screamed loudly enough to alert the zombies outside the cave.
    The orb would get her killed.
    As if to punctuate the threat, Kirkman practically screamed: “And here’s City 6 fan favorite Anastasia Lovecraft, daughter of murderer and winner of our most recent Darwin Games, Jonah Lovecraft, seemingly trapped inside a cave! What WAS she thinking?”
    Kirkman filled his delivery with the usual dramatic pause, then said, “What will Anastasia do next? Will she display her father’s derring-do and inventiveness? Or will she die a vicious death like her poor, dear mother?”
    “Shut the hell up!” Ana growled.
    A handful of zombies ambled into the cave as Ana fell several steps back, terrified, wondering how deep the cave went and how many minutes — if not seconds — she had before her inevitable death.
    Ana kept backing into the depths as the tunnel grew musty and murky and wet all around her. She turned around, staring into the darkness beyond the orb’s glow, then took a step forward as the orb floated beside her. She managed one more step before the floor beneath her disappeared.
    Ana screamed, fell flat on her ass, then spiraled down a sliding metal chute, spinning faster and faster, round and round for what seemed like forever before it finally spit her hard onto the ground and into darkness.
    Ana tried to stand, rubbing her head with her right hand while massaging her bruised ass with the left. Halfway to her feet, a row of red lights flickered above, then turned brilliant, fully illuminating her long and narrow glass-box prison, the bridge in front of her, and the enormous cavern she’d fallen into.
    Two orbs dropped from the darkness, one of them coming closer to her and the other moving ahead of her into the darkness.
    The box was placed on one end of a long and narrow bridge. A second light clicked on at the far side of the expanse, where the second orb had gone, about 200 yards away, bleeding crimson light on a second glass box. Inside the box stood a young man, whom she saw on the orb’s monitor, no more than a few years older than she, wearing the blue coveralls they wore in City 3.
    The guy on the other side looked enough like one of her oldest friends, Barnum, to make her uncomfortable. She swallowed the thought as a third row of lights lit a wide, round platform in the middle of the bridge. The center of the platform had a wide pedestal with a big red button on top of it. A short sword leaned against the pedestal, glowing red from the glimmering light above.
    Oh God, not The King of the Bridge.
    She peered down as bright white lights flared to life beneath the bridge, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
    One hundred feet below them was The Pit, well stocked with vicious mutant boars, many of which were said to weigh more than 600 pounds. Even through the glass box, she could hear the