I was at the sandwich stand with Bridget when it happened. Bridget was telling me about her dog in real time, and about how he always chewed up her father's shoes. I was laughing, my rifle held in the crook of my arm, when the other side of the arena caved in, caught up in flames.

Bridget and I instantly dropped to the ground. We couldn't see what was happening, but no one could see us, hidden behind the counter. We heard a lot of machine gun fire, and it seemed like it was coming from everywhere. "It's David," I breathed. Bridget didn't say a word.

We crawled on our hands and knees to the door that led into the arena. Just before it,Bridget grabbed my arm. "We should stay here, where it's safe," she said to me, "We should wait and see what happens."

"They're destroying the arena, Bridget," I said. "We'll die if we stay here. Follow me, and stay close." At first she didn't look like she would, but she followed me after a pause.

I poked open the door a little and looked out. The main area was filled with smoke and the heavy smell of gunpowder. I saw Henry run by, about twenty meters from me. I opened my mouth to yell over all the noise, when I saw his body jerk backward. He fell to the concrete, jerked once more, and then he was still. I saw movement above me, coming from the high arena ceiling, and I looked up.

David was dressed all in black, and he was scaling down the inside arena wall from the hole in the roof. There was another big man with him, scaling down on another rope. I didn't recognize him. Right as the two made contact with the floor and dropped to the ground, an Army vehicle coated in steel came crashing through the front doors.

"This is it, Bridget," I yelled. "We need to go now, or we'll be trapped here!"

Her eyes were very wide, and it looked as though she'd been crying, but she gave me a curt nod.

Still on our hands and knees, we scampered through the sandwich stand door and ran in a low crouch through the arena. Bullets whizzed by us, but they seemed far off their mark, too high. We made it to a relatively safe place behind the pond at the arena's center. Trish and Kit joined us almost immediately.

"We thought everyone was dead!" Trish screamed. "Amanda got hit! They came in from the back of the arena, so we ran to the front. But, shit, look at this mess!"

"Amanda?" I yelled at her. "Is Amanda okay?"

"I don't know," she cried. "We had to get out of there!"

"Shit!" I said, and I couldn't even hear myself. The noise was intense.

"Be ready!" I yelled.

We stood in a low circle, backs to each other, loaded and searching for a target. A boy came running around the corner, carrying an old-fashioned Uzi, and Bridget, Trish and I opened fire. He was torn to shreds. Though unspoken, we began to move as a group around the pond to the front of the arena.

When we came to the edge of the pond, Bridget and I dropped to the floor, prone, machine guns in front of us. Kit and Trish ventured their heads and guns over the top edge of the two-meter pond wall.

I estimated there were about fifteen of them. They were all wearing black, and they seemed unorganized, shooting everywhere, seemingly at random. I hoped that this was the entire group, that there were no more behind us. I drew back.

"How many of them are at the back of the arena?" I screamed in Kit's ear.

"If any made it out of there, I'd be surprised," she answered, never taking her eyes off the intruders.

Satisfied, I returned to my place on the floor. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Kit fall to the floor to watch our backs. In the midst of all the screaming, I smiled. Somehow I felt we'd live through this.

I joined the firing. There were maybe four intruders on the ground, still as the suspended people around us. The people in real time had either fallen, or had large pieces of them missing. As I looked to a woman loaded down with shopping bags, most of the top of her head was blown away. I couldn't even see where it landed. I shot at a boy in a wide stance, ammunition wrapped around his arm. I saw him go down, and I felt a sick satisfaction.

I felt Bridget flinch as a thunder sounded from near the back of the pond. I looked up, and saw Billy and Nigel, brandishing a rocket launcher we had confiscated from the Base. From the look of it, the recoil had knocked Nigel from their vantage point on top of a bronze statue of dolphins. Billy shook his fist in victory as the rocket hit the Army truck the intruders had driven through the front doors. When the smoke cleared, it looked like all the intruders were down. Billy saw us then, and smiled. I wasn't sure who the smile was for. But then a shot rang out.

Billy's smile faltered, and it looked like he had only slipped. One foot was on a dolphin's head, another in the angle of another dolphin's dorsal fin. The foot on the dolphin's head slipped forward, and Billy started to fall. It was in slow motion. I saw every nuance. We all did. We slowly turned our faces back to the truck, to see a man on the ground, rifle out in front of him and aimed where Billy once stood. He was smiling.

One of the bodies near him reached up a hand, and shook the assassin's. I recognized the man as the one who had come into the arena with David. I leveled my automatic at the man, and fired.

I hit him, I know I did. But he didn't fall. And our hiding place was remembered. The man swung his rifle around toward us, and we got as low to the ground as we could. I heard automatic fire from someone in my little group, but I don't know who it was. I think it was Trish, up on the pond's wall, because Bridget says it wasn't her, and so does Kit. That leaves Trish, and Trish is dead.

The man nearly buried in his friends' bodies fired at us, three distinct shots. Kit said she heard firing from the other side of the pond at nearly the same time. Even from far away, I could see the blood pouring from the man's forehead, before he slumped in with the dead.

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