Daz watched Cora with tired interest. He saw that she seemed to be having trouble breathing. Had he hit her accidentally, or was it from pulling him up? It was likely the latter, seeing that Daz's arms ached and his heart pounded, and he hadn't even been on the lifting end. She wasn't an overly small woman, but Daz outweighed her by height alone. It took serious strength, willpower, or both to lift him out the way she had. It had been a sacrifice. Still, Daz didn't feel completely at ease with her. He let his focus drop to his lap. He could see that his hands were red and raw from holding on to the bag.<br/><br/>Daz looked up as Cora spoke and nodded. The woman seemed to understand right away, speaking in a cynical tone that rang through the voice of rebellion members. It was all about entertainment value. How interesting would it be to watch someone die in a pit? He wondered how the corpse had died. Did the person have to face some sort of trial, or did they simply die of hunger or thirst?<br/><br/>Even if her voice held that tone, it was still hard for Daz to believe that someone so close to the top would give it all up. From where Daz had been raised, he didn't think that people just did things from the goodness of their hearts, or consideration of other people. There was always some sort of reason.<br/><br/>As Cora shifted closer, Daz drew into himself slightly, but didn't move away. When she asked to look at his injury, he hesitated, hand lowering to touch his shoe.<br/><br/>"I don't know if I can take my shoe off," he muttered, "it hurts." The shoe didn't have laces and simply slipped on, and Daz was hesitant to try and move it. Yet he knew that if he didn't, he probably wouldn't be able to move far.<br/><br/>Gritting his teeth, Daz berated himself. Was he a child? He could take the pain, couldn't he? He gingerly grabbed the heel of the shoe and pulled slowly, teeth gritted. It was a duller pain than before, and more like a throb, but he still longed to get away from it, to stop pulling and to fall asleep and let the world slip away forever.<br/><br/>Daz wanted to be the one who could fight through the pain, the one who could pull their shoe off in one fluid motion with barely a whimper. He couldn't. But he continued to slide the shoe down painfully slowly until the heel reached the middle of his foot, where he managed to pull it off without disturbing his ankle.<br/><br/>Now that he could see his foot, he saw that it was tilted in slightly, and a bruise had formed below the bone. "I think it's just sprained," he tried to say calmly, but the appearance of the injury bothered him. He'd had a few sprains and breaks from fights and running around in the lower rings. They had been treated, but the slow way, that required as little medical equipment as possible. His mom couldn't afford the type of stuff in the upper rings that fixed bones almost instantly, and repaired bruised tissue like nothing.<br/><br/>Cora had mentioned her first aid kit. It was unlikely the council had given her any type of miracle equipment, but it had to be something.<br/><br/>"You said you have a first aid kit. What's in it?" Daz asked. He thought about his own bag. If there were other prisoners in the maze, maybe they had different items, forcing them to work together, or tear each other apart.