As I step into the arena, I begin to hear the crowd screaming in a language I can’t understand. Once in a while I can pick out names in amidst shouting.

“…Yuri… Pak Yan…”

“Daniel, Daniel, Daniel!”

“….Amira!”

The last one churns my empty stomach as I can’t stop myself from wondering what these aliens are chanting about me. Fear paralyzes me so suddenly that my “mulatto” guard walks right into my back. He grips my shoulder viciously with his mutant hand, an ugly pale thing with green and blue streaks invading the pigmentation. He shoves me forward into the circular space.

Rage fills my chest so suddenly upon seeing his hand. He’s half human. I’m fully human. Therefore we are both discriminated enemies of this alien race. I can’t believe he would let himself be organized into this job, just because of his DNA.

Across the arena, about 200 yards, Pak Yan stumbles into the sunlight. I can’t get a good look at him, though, because just as I spot him, a foot-long beetle zips right up in my face. I nearly gasp, but along its side I notice a screen with my startled face on it.

It’s no beetle; it’s a camera.

The mega jumbotrons at the top of the crowd seating display my face beside Pak Yan’s before switching to footage of my pregame interview. Alien text is displayed at the top of the screen, and I assume it must have been the question they had asked me: “What are you most looking forward to in the battle?”

They edited out my scoff. “Seeing other humans,” I had replied. The mulattos had kept us competitors separate for several days prior to the “battle”, so I really had been fed up with the hideous lizard-like faces of the aliens.

I look passed the camera to the other dark arches. I can now make out the figures of Daniel, Yuri, and Emma.

I start to get so dizzy all of a sudden that I drift to the center of the arena without even taking in anything around me.

The mulattos stand us all in a tight circle, back to back, as all the trapdoors in the ground begin to open. Any moment, gargantuan alien creatures will leap out and we’ll have to fight until either they’re all dead, or we are.

The mulattos leave us there and for a moment I’m sure that’s the end of me, but then the mentors come running out of our arches. Mine, Risba, makes it here before the others and puts his green hands on my shoulders. His face is remarkable for an alien, not stretched and gaunt like the others, but full and kind.

He touches his forehead to mine. “Amira,” he whispers in that thick accent, “there’s something I never told you.” His tone is full of dread and sadness. “The game… it’s rigged against you.”

My heart is threatening to hammer its way right out of my chest. “What do you mean?”

“You know each competitor is taught one of the five skills to fight in the arena?”

“Yeah.”

“Well.” He pauses for just a moment, closing his eyes. “Your skill has too many wins. The betting has to be profitable.”

Tears prick my eyes. “So you’re saying-“

I never get to finish, though, because foreign words call the mentors back.

I look back at all the competitors: terrified children who will never graduate high school. My hands start to shake.

“I can’t do this,” Emma mumbles.

“We can all do this,” Pak Yan says.

A red circle comes up on the jumbotron and a big orchestral fanfare blares through the arena. A tenth of the circle disappears. And then another. And another. The whole thing really makes me miss pizza, if I’m being honest. Finally, the last slice is eaten and the nauseating sound of grinding gears replacing the music—the creatures coming up in the lifts.