A/N: Hello! For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a sort-of prequel to my story Nevermore. However, you don't have to have read it before this one. Please read and review!
District 2 Career Training
Advanced Class, Year of the 71st Games
Trainers
Iago Roberts, Victor of the 46th Hunger Games, also father of Oline Roberts
Eria Albany, Victor of the 59th Hunger Games
Quartz Penick, Graduate of the Training Center, current Peacekeeper
Aleksander Ettison, Graduate of the Training Center, current Peacekeeper platoon leader
Students, according to current rank
1. Solomon Hart-male, blonde-brown hair, blue eyes, white. 18.
2. Parish Avinsday-male, blonde hair, blue eyes, white. 17.
3. Terrin Kettle-female, brown hair, brown eyes, black. 18.
4. Emilia Chaney-female, brown hair, brown eyes, white. 17.
5. Io Finnigan-female, blonde hair, blue eyes, white. 16.
6. Josias "Ziggy" Hunt-male, black hair, brown eyes, black. 16.
7. Oline Roberts-female, black hair, green eyes, olive skin. 16.
8. Lori Toleen-female, brown hair, gray eyes, olive skin. 17.
9. Saul Arrison-male, red hair, blue eyes, white. 15.
10. Andrei Wilkins-male, black hair, brown eyes, black. 16.
11. Maria Nolan-female, red hair, blue eyes, white. 16.
12. Marcie Nolan-female, red hair, blue eyes, white. Maria's sister. 16.
13. Basset Moses-male, brown hair, brown eyes, white. 15.
14. Nero Slate-male, black hair, brown eyes, white. 17.
15. Ezra Gardner-male, black hair, green eyes, white. 15.
16. Scioto Heallens-female, black hair, brown eyes, black. 17.
17. Roland Delfuenso-male, brown hair, brown eyes, white. 15.
18. Talia Rowan-female, black hair, blue eyes, white. 16.
1.
Ezra Gardner
My ears were ringing.
We were under hundreds of thousands of tons of rock, breathing in the stale air of our own tomb. There was no way we would ever see the sun again or breathe fresh air.
I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt and swiftly took in my surroundings. Dust filled the alcove and there was no sign of light. It was impossible to tell if another explosion would rock the Nut. Not five feet away from me Quartz laid on her stomach, her white Peacekeeper uniform dirtied from the dust and her head scraped and bleeding. A thin stream of blood trickled out of her mouth and puddled on the floor. I tried to stand but a wave of nausea knocked me to my knees and I vomited the contents in my stomach up. I crawled on my knees and hands to her. "Quartz," I rasped.
She didn't stir, didn't show any sign of life.
"Quartz!" I rolled her over onto her back, my head spinning. The shrill ringing was still reverberating in my ears. "Wake up, damn it!" I pressed a finger to her carotid on her neck and swore. No pulse. I tilted her chin back and began to do chest compressions. There was no change in her pulse. Head swimming, I put my mouth on hers and breathed, trying not to focus on the blood pooling around her.
Nothing.
More chest compressions. I swayed unsteadily over her body as I tried to revive her. I fell, head spinning, across her. I tried to move back on my knees and slipped again, my face scraping on the stone floor. "I'm so sorry," I gasped, chest shuddering for breath. "I'm so sorry." I wadded my shirt and covered my mouth, my eyes burning. I waited thirty seconds, sixty seconds before attempting to move again. This time, I made it back into a crawling position and managed to make it to the wall beside Quartz's head. I leaned against it and wheezed into the cloth.
Quartz had been beautiful once, but now I gazed at her emaciated body. I was going to be next. I wondered if everyone else would die, too.
I didn't realize until then that I was crying.
Four Years Earlier
It was cold.
Cold was a light way of putting it: the air rolling off the mountains above was biting, the rain was freezing into sleet, and the bag in my hands was heavy and kept slipping in the mire, and when I reached down to grab it my hands would find icy brown mud. I swore.
"Hey," Marcie called from where she watched under the shelter of the roof eave. "Who died?"
"Some bastard from the class behind us." I kept my voice level, and Saul nodded, his eyes fixated on a point above my shoulder.
"Who killed him?" Scioto asked. She was shivering in the cold, the rain coming down right on top of her. There was no more room left under the eave for her. Or for me, for that matter.
Saul met my eyes as he hauled the other end of the bag. Saul had the feet. I had the head. "Dunno," Saul answered.
"You sure?" Andrei scoffed.
"They probably did it," Talia said loudly with a snort. "Wouldn't put it past them trying to go up in rank."
"Shut your damn mouth, Talia," I snapped. "You're ranked last now, so you'd probably murder us all in our sleep if you thought you would move up."
The crowd under the eave snickered. Saul grinned.
"Where's the grave?" I asked.
"I think we have to dig it still," Saul answered.
"Are you serious?" I hissed. "The ground's frozen. We don't even have shovels."
"You think we'll get any points for this?" he mused. We were out of earshot of the others. My foot sank into a hole as we hauled the body bag, and cold mud slid inside between my toes. With a shudder I dropped my end.
"This looks like as good of a place as any," I said.
"Okay," Saul agreed. "What are we digging with?"
"Our hands?" I suggested.
"That'd be really ineffective."
"Arrison, Gardner," a hard voice called. It was Eria. She held a shovel in each hand and shoved them towards us. "Make sure you bury him deep enough that the rain doesn't wash him out."
"The ground's frozen," I objected.
"See if I care," she retorted. "And you're not to talk to the others about any of this."
Saul ran a hand through his dirty red hair but said nothing. Sullenly I stared back at her.
"Don't just fucking stand there," she snapped. "Are you going to tell the others about this?"
"No ma'am," we muttered. She eyed us contemptuously for several seconds before turning back to the gray stone building. "You lot!" she shouted to the others. "Get inside or you'll be the next one to be buried!" The words usually held no weight; behind her rough exterior, Eria was pleasant enough, if not a tad bitter. I wouldn't have thought any more of it, if a body hadn't appeared in the quarters that morning.
As she strode away and the others moved to follow her, Saul turned to me. "Jesus Christ, Ezra, did you see her face?"
I nodded.
"I bet Roberts did it," Saul said brazenly, digging his shovel into the earth.
"Oline?"
"Iago."
"Come off it," I scoffed.
"I'm serious!" he protested, shooting me a filthy look. He pushed the mop of greasy red hair out of his eyes. "You don't think he'd try to give Oline an advantage?"
I snorted. "Yeah, whatever."
"So who else would want to kill her?" he mused. "It's not like she died in a training exercise-that would be different."
"Maybe Parish," I said, thrusting clumps of dirt over my shoulder. "Is this deep enough?"
"No. And why the hell would Parish want Emilia dead?"
"How should I know? Maybe he knew she was going to be recruited."
"She was?" Saul looked up, interested.
"No. I don't know."
The sleet steadily fell and water collected at the bottom of the pit we dug. Furiously I rubbed my hands together, friction causing warmth to bloom in my palms. At last, when both of us decided that we'd had enough of the weather, we lifted the bag from the side and heaved it into the ditch. It landed with a thud, the plastic rippling in the wind. Inside was the butchered body of Emilia Chaney.
"At least she didn't stink yet," he said, wiping his hands off on his shirt. "God. I hate this."
"What?"
"Touching a body. It's unclean."
"You're trying to get in the Games, aren't you?"
"Yeah, but the hovercraft gets it then."
Burying the body took half the time that digging the grave had. Mud squelched under my feet. We fell into a reiterating, jejune pattern: pick up dirt, throw dirt onto the body, pat it down, stretch, and again and again, covering someone else's crime with filth.
"How much you want to bet that they know who did it?" Saul said, jerking his head to the building.
"Who?"
"The trainers. God Ezra, you can be so dense."
"Don't know if they would care much about hiding it from the rest of us."
"Everyone likes Emilia, though. Liked, not likes. You don't think they'd be afraid of Parish going rogue?"
"No. It's not like he could do anything, either. They'd just shoot him."
"But they like the rivalry between him and Solomon. It entertains them."
"It's entertained them for what, six years? They'll put an end to it. And Solomon's always been on top. They won't hesitate to shoot him. And I seriously doubt that Parish would riot just because Iago killed Emilia."
"So you do think it's Iago?"
"No."
"As if Parish is somehow more believable to have done it," Saul snorted.
My shoulders were aching. "Parish is insane. I wouldn't put it past him." Last year I had watched, dumbstruck, as Parish beat the hell out of a boy in the training center with nothing more than his own hands. I hadn't missed the admiration in Quartz's eyes, either. It had been enough to make my stomach turn. Three days later the boy had died in the infirmary.
Saul shrugged. "I doubt it. Bet it was Iago."
"It won't take till the end of the evening for the others to figure out," I said. There was a blister on the heel of my hand. "That it was Emilia, I mean. What's Eria want us to do about that?"
"Dunno. It's not like we know anything more than the others."
"I guess."
The grave was full of frozen soil. It was done.
"We'd better get points for this," Saul muttered.
Eria was waiting for us at the door. She took our shovels and jerked her head towards the quarters. "Go. You're not to talk about how you found her." Her voice was a fierce whisper. "You're to say that I found her, and that you were the first ones Iago and I saw. Understood?"
We nodded. She watched us as we went, her eyes boring holes into our backs. I slid open the door to the quarters and slipped inside, Saul behind me. "Would it kill her to take a day off sometime?" he muttered to me. I grinned, but my smile faltered when I saw the others lounging around.
"I thought you were training," I said.
Ziggy shook his head. "Nah. They said to-to take the day off."
"They're busy with whoever died," Maria added.
"Oh. Yeah," I said lamely.
Io yawned. "Any idea who it was?" She sounded bored.
"No clue," I lied. Saul shrugged.
They hadn't even noticed Emilia was gone. Emilia, who was everyone's favorite. She had been friendly, unlike most of the others. We knew that one day, either in the Games or in training, we would have to face off eventually. But none of that had seemed to bother her. And they didn't even realize she was missing.
Over six years only five in our class had died. Two from pneumonia, two from training accidents, and one died from injuries after a fight-the one Parish had killed. Now six were dead.
Emilia's bloodstained mattress was gone and replaced with an identical but clean one. No one would notice a thing if they hadn't been there to see her corpse on it.
I laid on my bunk and closed my eyes. Maybe I could make sense of it all in the morning.
"Where's Emilia?"
The sentence jolted me from my sleep. I struggled to sit up, my arms aching and sore. It had been, rather unsurprisingly, Parish who had asked.
"What time is it?" I muttered to Saul, who sat on the bunk opposite of mine.
"Ten," he answered. "In the evening."
"Where's Emilia?" Parish repeated, his voice louder this time. His gaze swept across the group, curious.
"I haven't seen her all day," Terrin said, unconcerned. She glanced towards her bunk. "Eria said she was in the infirmary."
"She's not hurt, though," Andrei pointed out, frowning.
"Probably pneumonia," Scioto murmured. "She's been coughing."
I bit my lip. Pneumonia. What would they do if they knew Emilia had been stabbed through? Saul glanced at me, clearly nervous.
The door slid open. It was Quartz. She looked utterly exhausted, her usual static demeanor gone. "Lights out," she said. "Girls, to your side."
"Where's Emilia?" Parish demanded, crossing his arms across his chest. I watched him warily. He could have easily killed her. They had fought bitterly yesterday.
"The infirmary," she answered automatically. "Now, lights out. Get some sleep. Big day coming up."
"What?"
"You'll see." Her eyes flickered over Saul and I. She closed the door behind her and flicked off the lights. For a moment everything was still, and then I heard Io say, "Wonder what that meant."
"Emilia isn't in the infirmary," Parish said. His voice was quiet but everyone was silent, listening. "It doesn't make sense."
"If she has pneumonia-"
"She doesn't have pneumonia, she had a-a cough." My eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and I could make out his outline as he stood. "Ezra and Saul buried her today," he accused, swiveling to glare at us.
"What? No way!" Maria exclaimed, ripping aside the curtain that separated the girls' bunks from ours. "No way is Emilia dead."
Parish crossed his arms and glared at Saul and I. I fidgeted uncertainly.
Saul cracked almost immediately. "Okay-it was Emilia."
"You have got to be shitting me!" Io exclaimed. She sat down beside Nero and turned to watch us intently.
"I'm not."
"What happened?" Parish demanded. His eyes were bright with tears but he quickly blinked them away.
"Eria and Iago asked us to bury her."
"How did she die?"
"Don't know," I answered, before Saul spilled the beans on what really happened. "They didn't tell us anything."
"I don't believe you," Parish said, deadly quiet.
"Ask Eria, if you want to know," I retorted.
Parish lunged at me, and before I had time to react, he had slammed me against the wall. "What happened to her?" he snarled. His elbow jammed painfully into my throat.
"Don't-know," I gasped.
He dropped me. A few people snickered. I rubbed my throat and glared at him.
"I don't believe you," he repeated.
Saul and I had found her lying on her mattress, blood soaking the sheets and bed and her clothes. There had been a wound in her chest, right at her heart. It had been hard to tell how long she had been there for. An hour, at the most. She was very dead when we found her, her chest split open and dead eyes staring at the ceiling. I had ran to find one of the trainers, and Eria and Iago had been drinking coffee in an office. Neither had seemed surprised when I mentioned a murder-they happened here every few years-but Eria was startled when I told her it was Emilia, the most popular in our class.
Aleksander had came next, and he had locked the door to the quarters and we examined the scene. He made a call to his superior, because Emilia had been selected to be a Peacekeeper. That was the purpose of the training center: to determine who would volunteer for the Games, and then the Peacekeepers had their pick with the rest. Aleksander swore at Eria and Iago before calling in Quartz, who had taken care of burning the mattress and sheets.
"Bury her," Iago ordered.
"What?"
"Bury her. Outside in the field. We can't have a body in here stinking the place up."
"Don't we need to know who did it?" Saul protested.
"Yes, and we'll figure it out. Do as you're ordered."
"But what about-"
"I'm beginning to think it was you two," Iago snapped. "Now, bury her before we have to bury you."
We had fallen into a sullen silence, mostly due to our mutual terror of Iago, and did as they told us. Eria watched the entire time with a cigarette rolling between her fingers. That was what she spent her wealth after winning the Games on: cigarettes and booze. She didn't know any more than us who killed Emilia, but she hid her interest better than we did.
And now Emilia was dead and buried in the field.
I tried to shake the thoughts of her corpse out of my head. With her gone, Io and Terrin would fight brutally to claim a spot in the Games, and the rest of us would go after the position she'd filled as a to-be Peacekeeper.
"You can't tell anyone about her being selected," Eria had said. "She hadn't even known herself."
She was dead. It didn't matter.
Io glanced over Saul and I, then Parish, clearly apprehensive, before returning to her end of the quarters. The curtain was pulled back over. Within minutes, snores filled the room.
I sighed and closed my eyes. Maybe we would get an explanation in the morning. Maybe we would make sense of it then.