Finn looked at the mountain of a man before him and spoke with his voice coming out thin and trembling.
"I'm so sorry," Finn choked out, his eyes darting to the Grounder army, "For what I did to those people in your village... I never wanted that to happen, I was worried and looking for…"
"Shut up, boy," Gustus growled at this whimpering insolence in front of him with annoyance in his voice, "Your words are meaningless here. Only blood speaks today."
Without another word, Gustus lunged at him. He moved with a speed that defied his massive frame, a burst of violence that shocked him. Finn panicked, his instincts screaming as he scrambled backward, barely dodging the heavy lunge. His boots slipped in the dirt, and for a terrifying second, he almost lost his footing.
The comparison was sickeningly clear to everyone watching. Finn did not have a chance at winning this fairly. He was smaller, lighter, and brittle compared to a man who had survived decades of brutal tribal warfare. Gustus was a general, a man whose skin was a map of scars earned in the name of the Heda. Finn was just a boy who had spent his life in the sterile, cramped halls of the Ark. Even with the crash course in survival Jason had drilled into the 100, Finn was outmatched in every conceivable way. Strength, speed, experience, and the raw, cold will to kill. Gustus held all the cards. Death for the Space Walker seemed as certain as the setting sun.
Jason stood at the edge of the circle, his face was set in a mask of iron, though his mind was racing. 'Well then, Finn,' he thought, his eyes narrowed as he tracked the movement. 'What will you do? Play the hero, fight fair, and die in the dirt? Or…'
He didn't finish the thought as a shout reached him from the one sided beat down in front of him.
"Stand and fight me, you coward!" Gustus roared, chasing Finn across the clearing. He swung a massive fist that whistled through the air, narrowly missing Finn's temple. "Show me that confidence with which you slaughtered my people! Show me the warrior who gunned down the old and the weak!"
Finn dived to the side, his breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps. He looked toward the gate, toward Clarke and Raven, then back to the giant closing in on him. He saw the hatred in Gustus's eyes, a hatred that wouldn't be satisfied with a quick death.
"I said stand!" Gustus bellowed, reaching out and snagging the collar of Finn's jacket, yanking him backward with effortless, terrifying strength.
A massive fist collided with Finn's jaw, and a sickening crack echoed across the field. Finn spun, his vision blurring as he hit the dirt. He tried to scramble away on all fours, but Gustus was a mountain in motion. He caught Finn by the hair, dragging him upward only to drive a knee into his ribs. The sound of snapping bone was followed by Finn's strangled scream.
"Fight like a man, whimpering fool!" Gustus spat, grabbing Finn's throat and slamming him backward against the base of the unlit pyre.
Finn, blinded by blood and pure, primal terror, lashed out. As Gustus leaned in to finish him, Finn arched his neck and bit down hard on the warrior's ear. Gustus roared in fury, a sound like a wounded animal, and tried to pull away, but Finn held on with the desperation of a dying man.
Finally, Gustus tore himself free, his ear had become a mangled mess of red. He snarled, delivering a backhand that sent Finn flying. As Finn rolled in the dust, he saw a heavy boot coming for his face. He twisted at the last second and lashed out with a desperate kick, his heel catching Gustus squarely across the bridge of his nose.
For a second, the giant staggered. A spray of blood erupted from the warrior's nose, staining his chest.
The Grounder army went into a frenzy. They beat their spears against their shields, a rhythmic, deafening thunder.
"Heda! Gustus! Yu gonplei ste odon!" they chanted as their faces contorted with a bloodlust that demanded Finn be torn limb from limb.
Back at the fence, the atmosphere was a suffocating shroud of horror as they saw the beat down on the bleeding boy who was trying his best to scramble away from the bloodlusted giant.
"Come on, Finn! Get up! Move!" Bellamy shouted, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the gun tighter. "Don't stay down!"
Clarke had her hands clamped over her mouth, her eyes wide and wet with tears. "He's killing him," she whispered through her fingers as Gustus recovered and delivered a brutal kick to Finn's stomach, lifting the boy off the ground. "He's just killing him."
"What's the point of this?" Raven screamed, her voice breaking. "Look at him! He's being beaten to death! Jason, stop this! He's going to die!"
Octavia, her eyes fixed on the struggle with a grim, focused intensity, shook her head. "This is his best chance, Raven. It's the only chance. He just needs an opportunity. One opening. He just needs to win."
"An opportunity?" Marcus Kane asked, his voice shaking with revulsion. "This is insane. This is barbaric. How the hell is he supposed to find an opening against a man who weighs twice as much as he does and hasn't broken a sweat?"
Jaha looked at the spectacle with a distant, hollow expression. "The Romans understood this, Marcus. Panem et Circenses. Bread and circuses. They knew that if you give the people a spectacle of blood, they forget their hunger for war for a moment. This isn't just a trial; it's a sacrifice to keep the peace."
"It's a slaughterhouse," Abby snapped, her eyes shifting from the bloody mess in the circle to the man standing twenty yards away. "What the hell was Jason thinking?"
———
Jason stood apart from the group as a solitary figure against the backdrop of the woods. His expression was a complete blank and void of emotion. He didn't flinch when Gustus's fist met Finn's face. He didn't move when the Grounders cheered. He simply watched the beatdown with the cold gaze of a man watching a clock tick toward zero.
In the circle, Finn was back on the ground, his face unrecognizable, coughing up dark red as Gustus loomed over him like an inevitable shadow.
"Finish it!" Indra screamed from the sidelines.
Lexa stood beside her in a pocket of unnatural stillness. She wasn't watching the blood spray from Finn's mouth, nor was she focused on Gustus's heavy, rhythmic footfalls. She had absolute faith in her general's ability to execute the offender.
Instead, her eyes were locked on Jason.
He was standing too still. His arms were crossed, and a faint, maddeningly annoying smile played across his lips. It wasn't the smile of a man watching his friend die; it was the smile of a gambler who knew exactly what the next card was. As the fight drifted toward the edge of the clearing, Finn scrambled and crawled, Gustus lumbering after him and yet for some reason unknown to her anyone watching the boy, the smile only widened. This entire proposal was a death sentence. Every soul from the Ark to the Twelve Clans could see it. So why did Jason look like he had already won?
The unnerving sensation crawled up Lexa's spine. 'What are you playing at, Butcher?'
The fight had become a hunt. Finn's face was covered with purple bruises and drying blood, pushing himself off the ground and began a frantic, staggering sprint toward the treeline.
"Stand and die like a man, Sky Boy!" Gustus roared, his voice echoing through the trunks of the ancient trees. "You run like a rabbit, but there are no holes deep enough to hide you from me!"
Gustus didn't rush to follow after his prey. He didn't need to. He followed with a relentless, heavy pace, enjoying the terror radiating off the boy. Finn tripped over a protruding root, falling hard into the mulch of the forest floor, only to scramble back up and keep moving deeper into the shadows.
Back at the fence, the leaders of the Ark watched the figures disappear into the brush.
"Is that allowed?" Marcus asked, his voice tight. "Shouldn't the fight stay in the clearing? They're leaving the arena."
Octavia squinted, her eyes tracking the movement through the leaves. "No one is stopping them," she noted, her voice hushed. "The Grounders aren't moving, and Lexa hasn't called it. If the executor follows him in, the circle just got bigger." She looked at Bellamy, a silent question passing between them.
——
Finn was wheezing hard with each breath sounding like a rattling sound in his broken chest. He ducked behind a massive cedar, his fingers digging into the bark.
"I can hear your heart, coward!" Gustus's voice was closer now, vibrating through the undergrowth. "It beats fast, like a bird in a cage. Are you going to die behind a tree? Is that the legacy of the man who killed innocents?"
Finn didn't answer. He wiped blood from his eye and looked up. For a split second, the panic in his eye vanished, replaced by a flickering memory of Jason's hand gripping his earlier that morning.
The lone tree never stands empty.
Gustus burst through a thicket of ferns with his massive chest heaving, his skin glistening with sweat and Finn's blood. He saw Finn standing by a cluster of rocks, backed against a steep incline. There was nowhere left to run.
"Finally," Gustus growled, cracking his knuckles. "No more running. No more games."
He lunged forward with his massive hands reaching out to finally close around Finn's throat. Finn didn't move until the last possible second. As the giant closed the distance, Finn dived to the left, not away from Gustus, but toward a specific, moss-covered log he had been eyeing a few meters away.
His left eye was swollen shut, and every breath felt like a serrated blade was scraping against his lungs. He scrambled, his hands clawing at the dirt, his body rolling over roots and through thorny thickets that tore at his skin.
Behind him, Gustus turned and immediately came after him without any room to catch his breath. The Grounder didn't care about the briars; he simply crashed through them, his focus entirely on the bloody boy running and falling in front of him with fear and desperation.
"Run, little bird!" Gustus bellowed as he moved behind the boy, "The woods won't protect you! These are our woods!"
Finn lunged toward a narrow gap between two massive oaks. His boots skidded on a patch of loose shale, and he felt the wind of Gustus's reaching hand whistle past the back of his neck. He dived forward, tucking his shoulder and rolling through a pile of dead leaves.
As Gustus stepped into the same gap, his massive foot came down on a patch of forest floor that looked no different from the rest until the ground gave way.
A sharp thud of tensioned vine erupted from the undergrowth. A hidden sapling, bent back with agonizing tension and snapped forward. At the end of it was a heavy wooden stake, sharpened to a needle point. He had moved with impressive agility and reflex so it didn't hit Gustus in the chest but he wasn't fast enough to completely avoid the trap and it caught him squarely in the thick of his right thigh.
The scream that tore out of Gustus's throat was a primal sound of pure agony that bypassed the trees and reached the clearing. At the camp gates, Lexa's head snapped toward the sound, her eyes widening in surprise. Indra gripped her sword hilt so hard her knuckles turned white.