A/N: I'm very sorry that this chapter is so late. It's been a big three weeks. Rest assured this chapter contains one of my favorite scenes for the story so far. The character involved is one that I always feel sorry didn't get more development in canon.
I'm honored by the amount of attention, faves, and reviews this story is getting. Thank you, each and every one of you!
- Rat's Den –
The chamber where Chell had set up shop was dim and dilapidated. Unidentifiable mold snuck its way up from the corners, and all of the lab equipment originally there had long malfunctioned. The only feature distinguishing it from five dozen other such cubicles all around, in every direction, was that its walls were covered with graffiti – murals in blue and orange, of portal-gun toting figures receiving thumbs-up or thumbs-down, manikins of lines that might have been dancing or screaming. Katniss couldn't quite see why Chell was drawn to these images of chaos, but she found them easy enough to ignore. They had a task to do.
The two women worked by the light of Wheatley's flashbeam, with the help of a charred bit of wood, a large detached ceiling panel to make a map of the facility. In the center was the circular room where the tributes had first entered the arena. Various testing tracks were marked with question marks, in faint lines.
"You know, she can rearrange the facility, almost from scratch," Wheatley remarked, nodding his orb and making the shadows bounce over the entire room. "You've got quite a labyrinth to solve."
"Don't tell me that," Katniss answered, her fist pressed close to her mouth. "We need something to go off of, if it's all just random, we're… doomed."
"But I don't think she does." Chell spoke, as usual, softly and almost to herself. "All these tests to monitor at once takes up a lot of her attention – and even she can be exhausted."
"But has she ever really reused the same testing—" Katniss spoke over the television, but stopped abruptly.
GLaDOS' voice came from one of the small televisions: "Test Subject 23, I have some intriguing trivia about the test you are about to attempt."
Katniss turned around, scanning the televisions until she saw the one that contained her blue-eyed, blond-haired District partner. Chell glanced up, then returned to the map.
On the left-hand screen, Peeta crept cautiously forward, portal gun close to his heart. Meanwhile, she said, "This testing chamber was previously employed by Test Subject 24, Katniss Everdeen. In fact, she just left. If you'd solved that last test a little sooner…"
"Coo, now that's a twist," Wheatley commented.
"Well, maybe she had a premonition that you were on your way. Call it a mother's instinct."
"Ya call that a twist? If she hasn't filled it with bloodthirsty bats and man-eating piranhas, ain't no twist in my book…" Rick narrowed his optic in a surly sort of way.
"Rick," Chell did not look up from the map. "You are wasted on this arena."
"She did finish her tests with unusual alacrity…"
"I am honored to hear that, pretty lady…" Rick tipped his optic suavely, like it was a ten-gallon cowboy hat, but his suaveness was overrun by Wheatley crying, "What do you mean, he's wasted? Aren't I wasted, too? Aren't I?"
"Will all of you shut up?" Katniss barked at them.
On screen, Peeta took his time walking into the arena, his face moody, pensive. At one point he reached over and gently touched the wall, and looked up. "Katniss, you were here?"
His voice was so plaintive, so sweet, Katniss knew that if it were real or plotted, or part of the realm of both where Peeta lived – that he had all of Panem hooked, right now. "And you survived," he went on, "like the brave – marvelous girl that you are. My Girl on Fire."
GLaDOS' voice was flat.. "Fact: Newton was daydreaming just as you are now about his lost Lenore when an apple struck him precisely on his cranium… and killed him."
Craig emitted an admiring "oooh" and they all heard a brief whirring and clicking as he filed that new fact away.
"Great minds of science cannot afford sentimentality. Mediocre minds less so."
Peeta took the hint. His fingers flattened to his lips briefly, before he hoisted his gun in businesslike fashion. He moved spritely down the testing track.
In the dim, ratty chamber, Katniss turned to Chell. "You see? See why we have to get him out?"
Chell's face was impassive. "I heard a lot of praise for you."
"No, that's an act –"
"Sounded pretty sincere to me…"
"Shut up, Wheatley – that's Peeta, he's so good at saying the right things, playing to the camera. Do you know what I mean?"
"So he's good at P.R." Chell sat back on her heels. "We are at war. Only an idiot thinks you can win a war with P.R."
"Hey… why shouldn't you be able to?"
Chell closed her eyes. "No offense, Wheatley."
"Why should I be offended?"
Katniss made a motion in Wheatley's direction, like she was batting the core away. "He can take what we're doing and make it into something grand, great television –"
"She will kill us."
"Not if Snow doesn't let her! I bet you that what the audience is starved for is for me and Peeta to meet up. Ratings will spike. That's why she pulled that trick of 'Katniss was just here' – and that was one of my old testing tracks. I recognized it. It would make a great show if we could plot it right—Peeta can plot it right—"
"Let Peeta do his thing, pining after you, but we have to remain unseen." Her voice remained flat, as though Katniss' suggestion was barely even worth considering.
"He'll be an important ally – he'll be helpful."
"If we're going to bring on another ally—" Chell reached forward and tapped the testing tracks that they hypothesized belonged to tributes Five, Sixteen, Six, and Seven – Finnick, Cecelia, Wiress, and Johanna – "let's pick one that's actually competent."
"Johanna? Really? What about an ally that won't stab us in the back?"
"I said if in the first place."
"What if I want to be sure that Peeta's safe, out of her clutches, like we are?"
Chell stood up and looked over to Craig. "How long until Katniss is scheduled to wake up?"
"Fact: Katniss Everdeen is scheduled to be woken up in two hours."
"There you go. Thanks." She turned back to Katniss. "We're already almost out of your grace period. Taking him on is too risky – once she notices, nowhere in the facility will be safe for us." She began to pick at the linen wrappings on her hands.
"He's not safe while testing!"
"Grow up!" Chell seemed to draw herself back, having been louder than she really intended. "No one is safe in here, all right? That's why we're stopping the tests."
"Which is more important to you? Rescuing the tributes or stopping the Game?"
"Stopping the test. Isn't that what we set out to do?"
Katniss' mouth fell open. She pressed her hands to her temples. She said, "Let me make something clear," at the same time that Chell said, "Maybe we should clear up our objectives."
Katniss held up her hands. "I owe Peeta my life. If you have any idea what it means to owe that kind of a debt, you'd… you'd know. I'd rather Peeta gets out of here than me. That's all. Now, you were saying?"
Chell ran a hand through her hair, loosening a few strands of grey. "It's not 'you-or-me' anymore, it's not 'let's-get-him-out-and-sacrifice-ourselves.' We have the knowledge to save all of the test subjects now, and it's ridiculous to lose our only chance in order to be sort-of sure of saving one."
"We can't be sure of any of the other tributes—"
"Katniss—"
"When does the Game end? Really? Any test subject other than Peeta will probably stab me in the back, just because the Game only ends when –"
"Stab us in the back, Katniss. You're not alone."
Katniss looked down, and Chell was struck, not for the first time, by the resemblance between them. "I've always been alone." She said, louder, "Then let's find GLaDOS and – how should we stop her? Just try to hold her generator hostage, until she agrees to let the tributes go?"
"There must be something… something in this rotted arena that we can use against her… something that will harm her."
In the silence of Chell's pause, Mimi began to croon: "Otto, otto, calici,calici..."
"That doesn't even mean anything—" Katniss turned to address the pink sphere, then stopped. "Chell. Will you look where Mimi is looking?"
Chell glanced up once, then down, then up again. Mimi had turned to face Wheatley directly, gazing at him like he was the Juliet to her Romeo, the object of her jaunty arrietta.
"Ask and you shall receive... Tutto ciò checercate, è qui, qui..."
"What?" Wheatley was beginning to fidget uncomfortably. "What are you all looking at? I – I've got no ideas, not this time! I'm just a – just a little sphere, what can I do?"
"All that you seek is right here," Mimi finished.
GLaDOS –
Just as Test Subject Five was fully phased into his Relaxation Center, the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System moved to awaken Test Subject 24 from her Relaxation Center (Maternity Amendment).
Except that Test Subject 24 was absent.
In the space of about a minute, GlaDOS considered her options and played each of them out to their fullest conclusion, both logical and all sorts of illogical.
Spread the information generally that Test Subject 24 was missing. Pro: Good for ratings. Con: President Snow would be displeased. Con: Other test subjects would get the idea that they, too, could simply "go missing."
Conclusion: Keep the vanishing act of Katniss Everdeen to oneself.
Careful forensic study of the Relaxation Vault yielded an extremely important fact of the escape (no, not escape, escape implied she was out of GLaDOS' reach, she had merely eluded her a while), and that was that Test Subject 24 had had help. Someone had lifted the ceiling panel from the outside. Someone had looped the security footage. Someone was helping Test Subject 24 navigate even now.
Sending all of her sensors to pry every inch of the Facility, GLaDOS couldn't help but remember a certain prior test subject – her very wires shivered with loathing to think of her – who would be just the sort to attempt this infarction of –
Aha. There. Running past Test Chamber Sixteen, (testing in progress) – two pairs of footsteps.
Yes. All possible explanations for the two sets of footsteps were invented, analyzed, expunged, and collapsed, to make way for one intractable idea:
Katniss Everdeen was being helped by the monster.
Test Chamber Sixteen –
Cecelia had a gift for fighting. It wasn't bragging to say so. Some people have a gift for music, or for cooking, their memories attuned to the fussiness of eggs and ovens, a talent that lights up the minute a whisk is placed in their hands.
And Cecelia had a gift for fighting.
The Artificial Intelligence in charge of this facility knew it, of course. And the AI had made a series of test chambers especially attuned to the Portal Device's capabilities in combat. Mostly, this meant redirecting Thermal Discouragement Beams, missiles, and gun turrets towards the combat robot with portals. It was not exactly Cecelia's style – she preferred a good, hefty weapon in her hands, to engage in close quarters – but the thrilling adrenaline rush was close enough.
The AI was kind enough to not send Cecelia to combat robot after combat robot. It would be a combat robot, a "typical" testing chamber, and then another combat robot, cannier and fiercer than the one before it.
So Cecelia had some time to think as she took the elevator to Test Chamber 16H. Her fighting gift was an oddity in her life, which fit otherwise so nicely into the domestic sphere that District 8 expected of its women. Cecelia (and here she thought she might be bragging, even to herself as she thought it) was gentle, and patient, and trusting. She hated to see a child or animal treated unfairly. She loved people easily. Becoming a wife and mother had felt like completion.
But fighting, surviving during her Games, was a part of her past she could never leave behind, nor did she really want to. She liked to think that the two roles were not as dissimilar as they seemed. She liked to think her role in the Rebellion allowed her to fulfill both at the same time.
She stepped out of the elevator and knew, at once, something was wrong.
The presence of the A.I. was heightened. The panels in the walls were detaching themselves and re-aligning in waves, as if to allow visions of what was behind them.
"Test Subject 16, do not be alarmed by the apparent heightened security measures in this test chamber. They are a hallucination brought on by overexposure to the Aperture Science Supercolliding Superbutton."
Really, now. Cecelia had tried hallucinogens, in the early years after her victory. They tended to be oodles more fun.
Something was upsetting the A.I., which meant something was wrong in the arena, which meant that there were possibilities afoot.
Cecelia was just ascending the stairs when an apparent auditory hallucination joined the visual ones: a light tap tap tap tap, as if there were feet, at least two pairs, running on a metal grill.
She stopped to listen.
The shuddering panels rippled towards her – she readied her gun and fired, right when the panels were open beside her, a turquoise portal.
She heard the footsteps come to a halt. The wall beside her closed; she jogged ahead to the first portal-able surface she could find, a patch of wall just within the door to the test chamber, right in the blind spot of the security camera.
Indigo portal. When the indigo sparks cleared, there were two faces looking out at her from a darkened metal gangplank, sweetly welcome human faces. One she knew: Katniss Everdeen, whom Cecelia had always wanted to get to know. The other was a strange woman, eyes alert and mistrusting.
"Cecelia?" Katniss asked.
"I guess you're the security breach she's worried about," she said by way of answer.
"She knows we're here…" the woman behind Katniss muttered.
"What are you trying to do?" Cecelia asked.
Katniss looked to one side. "A breakout."
Cecelia smiled. "You'd do your mentor proud."
Katniss had enough decency to look surprised at that remark. "Come with—" She barely said when the red lights begin to flash on both sides of the portal.
"She's found us," said the strange woman, clutching a pure-white portal device to her heart. Ceceila glanced at the open door of the test chamber. Inside was probably another combat robot, something so large that the floor shook with every step. She looked at her handheld portal device – grey on black, with "District 8" printed on it in white.
Then she smiled at Katniss and her companion, one of her sweetest, kindest smiles. "Don't worry, Mockingjay. I've got this."
She gave a little wave as she started to run through the door to the testing chamber.
She pressed the small button to cancel both portals and felt the corresponding shudder. Then she took an appraising look at the towering combat robot ahead of her. She readjusted her grip on the Portal Device and gave a hollering battle cry.
Portal on the ceiling, portal on the floor before her. Cecelia ran forward, dropped right above the robot, and pummeled it hard with the Portal Device.
She slid from the robot's back to the floor, avoiding the shower of sparks. Swinging it like a two-handed club, she brought it down again and again, marveling at how simple it was, how basic.
The A.I.'s voice was thunderously loud in the test chamber. "Stop, what are you doing, Test Subject 16, what are you doing? Stop, STOP, that is incorrect usage of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, stop, Cecelia Lyons, STOP!"
In all of the other test chambers the same roaring message was heard. Behind the walls of Test Chamber 16H, Chell and Katniss ran for their lives.
GLaDOS started to apply her own will to the test robot, pumping it replete with her rage. But Cecelia predicted that, and let herself be beaten, whammed, and thrown to the wall. Now this was more like what a Hunger Game was meant to be. She backed off and used the Portal Device – whose workings were just on this side of functioning – to open a turquoise portal on the ceiling, indigo one on the floor, right below the robot. Then she watched the robot – just a bit too big for the portals – fall through, again and again, each time losing some more of himself until he was nothing but a torso, falling endlessly through the air.
Cecelia laughed.
The hands on the floor twitched, and the red eye glared, but it could not reassemble itself with its torso permanently falling.
Fine by the test subject. She was battered and bloody, but she could stand. And she did, throwing the sparking Portal Device to the ground like it was trash.
The auditory "hallucinations" had stopped, no more sound from behind the walls. With friendly odds Katniss and the stranger were safe now.
The Artificial Intelligence was lecturing Cecelia like she was a child. "The Aperture Science Handheld Portal device is not a toy, it is not a weapon, how dare you insult the noble name of Science, you animal, you brute, you MONSTER—"
And Cecelia wasn't listening. She knew that somewhere, District 8 was watching, and her husband, and her children.
Smiling, she walked tall and proud – with a slight limp – through the Emancipation Grid – right into the red beams of the friendly, childlike turrets.
Hidden in the Walls -
Hidden in the walls, in the darkness of the A.I.'s rage being directed somewhere else, Chell and Katniss flinched at the sound of the cannon.
Chell asked quietly, "Who was that?"
Katniss stared down the gangplank, the way she came. "She was a… a Victor. Other than that, I really don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know? That woman just – she died to give us time to escape, but you don't know her?"
"I never had time for that – to get to know all of the Victors. I just didn't. And I didn't ask her to—I have no idea why she would."
Chell started to move down the catwalk, the leader, as usual. "Your Districts are really isolated, aren't they?"
"She had a reason to win," Katniss continued, as if to herself, "She had a family… children… there are riots in District Eight. There's an uprising – it needed to be quelled—"
Chell glanced back at her. "What did she call you?"
"Mockingjay," Katniss said slowly. In response to Chell's questioning look, she said, "They're a kind of a bird – they repeat back what you say to them. They were in the last arena – when Rue died, they picked up her song. They sang—" she stopped, leaning against the railing, her eyes fixed on some point a few feet away and a thousand years ago.
Chell tugged on her sleeve. Katniss shook herself. "There's something going on, here. I don't know what, but it's bigger than me – it's bigger than the both of us." She turned to face Chell. "You were right – we're not alone."
Chell waited for her to say the next, essential phrase. She waited until Katniss had started to walk again down the catwalk, and then stride, almost jogging in the high-heeled boots. "Which is why this Game is going to end, before there are any more deaths."