Summary: It wasn't that Tony cared about Steve Rogers and his ridiculous, pathological and in all actuality psychologically disturbing and no really Steve how fascinating why don't you tell me about your childhood desire to get himself killed. It's just that he was so damned bad at it. The bloodbath's over, and tributes like us, baby we were born to run
It wasn't that Tony cared about Steve Rogers and his ridiculous, pathological and in all actuality psychologically disturbing and no really Steve how fascinating why don't you tell me about your childhood desire to get himself killed. It's just that he was so damned bad at it, doing every possible thing he could to ensure he'd get himself splattered across the pavement in the first five minutes, yet somehow managing to escape the bloodbath like he was some kind of miracle. Well, maybe he was; the big blue eyes might even make old Obie turn into a wibbling monkey. Or maybe Rogers was some kind of secret genius sociopath, playing them all, and halfway through he'd turn vicious and cut down the remaining tributes in a number of hours.
See, this is why the ladies loved Tony; his sense of humour was so good he cracked himself up.
"Jarvis, see if you can get me a readout on the nearest toy store, something like that," Tony said into the subvocal receptor, pushing Suicidal Steve from his mind. "I need to start picking up supplies and making myself some friends."
"Sir, the Arena appears to be in the middle of the slums," Jarvis said, sounding apologetic. "There are no toy stores. There is a pawn shop perhaps half a block away that likely has a security system you could pilfer; other than that, your best bet is the automotive factory. It should take you about an hour on foot."
"Wonderful." Tony blew out an annoyed breath and looked around. "You patched into the cameras yet?"
"Yes, sir, I have made successful contact. Would you like to know the location of the young man from District Six?"
"What? No," Tony said, nettled. "Why would I want -" he sighed again. "Actually yes, tell me what he's doing, and you might as well keep an eye on him for me. He's the one Fury was wetting his pants over, I bet, so it'll be good to keep tabs on him. And give me a feed for Banner, too; I want to know what it is he did to disable the grenades, and if he's got any more tricks up his sleeve."
"Of course, sir." A pause, as Jarvis checked the various camera feeds. "Rogers and the girl from Eight appear to be heading off in the same direction as Banner and the girl from Five. I can only assume he is attempting to meet up with them and create an alliance."
Jarvis sent the camera imagery to the HUD in Tony's sunglasses, and sure enough, there was Rogers, running through the streets with the kid on his back. Tony clicked his tongue and blinked twice, shutting off the feed and sliding it off his screen with a sideways flick of his eyes. "Of course he is. A nice, big, suicidal slumber party. He and the big guy and their little girls can hang out, toast marshmallows, wait for the Careers to come knife them in their sleep. It'll be cozy. That's just great." Tony ran a hand through his hair. "Are they close? Where's the nearest tribute to them?"
"They do appear to be closing on Banner, sir," Jarvis said, pulling up a map of the Arena, filled with moving dots. As Tony watched, one of them flickered and changed from white to red, probably indicating a mortal injury. Jarvis isolated and enlarged a corner of the map, where two dots converged on another pair. "As for the nearest tribute likely to pose any danger, that would - oh dear."
"Oh dear? What 'oh dear'? Don't say 'oh dear', you know what that does to my blood pressure."
"I have reason to believe an explosive has been activated at the Cornucopia. I'm disconnecting from the cameras in the area, lest they damage the network. One moment."
Tony kept walking as though Jarvis didn't say anything, not letting the cameras see that he had any foreknowledge. He even jumped when the explosion actually happened, though it was loud enough that it actually wasn't much of a stretch to look surprised. "Jarvis?"
"A series of grenades, buried amongst the weapons, linked by a single detonation point that spread throughout the system," Jarvis said. "Attempting to link back to any remaining cameras to survey the damage."
At last a grainy, static-ridden feed showed up in Tony's glasses, the camera having fallen to the ground and cracked a lens. The building housing the Cornucopia was nothing more than rubble now, and the bodies of the tributes that had bitten the dust too close to it were now in pieces. Tony swallowed his disgust. He was a textbook narcissist, not a psychopath, and just because he could be detached about the whole thing didn't mean he wanted to look at some kid's arm lying in a chunk of concrete. The Careers poked about in the rubble, ignoring the corpses and picking through the litter looking for weapons. Some of the bigger swords and a few knives might have survived, but it looked like the bounty of food had been destroyed at least.
He imagined the hovercrafts and their giant claw-hands dipping down time and time again to retrieve the pieces, no easy one-stop pickup this time around. They might even have to send a tech down with a bag to gather up all the parts and put them together, otherwise it might take too long. Tony double-blinked to cancel the feed and ran his tongue over his teeth in distaste. "Well, that's something, anyway," he said. "They'll have to start looking or begging for food a lot sooner than they thought, so that means fewer dead kids I guess. Unless they decide to eat the tributes." That's the sort of thing that sounded funny in Tony's head, but now just made him wince. Better not to think about it; cannibalism was one of the few things that got a tribute Gamemaker-killed nowadays, but that didn't mean it would never happen.
"As soon as the Career tributes are clear, I believe the hovercrafts will come and remove the victims, and then the official count will begin," Jarvis said, and Tony avoided nodding, squinting off into the distance instead.
"Right. Time for me to get on that automotive factory and make me some friends, I guess. How lucky Six is such a picturesque district so I can enjoy my stroll." Tony rolled his eyes behind the safety of his glasses. "Jarvis, if you don't mind, pull me up the fastest, least likely to get me killed route to the factory and cross-reference it with tribute activity, will you? I'd like to get there in one piece."
"Yes, sir."
"And I don't suppose you've made any progress on why the hell Fury rigged the Reaping to put me here, given that my response was pretty much guaranteed to be a) not the one he'd want to hear and b) unsuitable for television?"
"Not yet, sir, but I'm still looking. I'll alert you as soon as I manage to come up with the relevant information."
Tony's jaw twitched, and he forced himself to unclench his jaw. What Fury thought he could accomplish by forcing Tony into the Arena, he had no idea; was it a threat, telling Tony that not even a Stark was safe, that he'd better join the rebellion or Fury would burn his labs down? Maybe Tony was never supposed to find out, the whole thing leaving him pathetically grateful for Fury's offer to save him. Not that any of it mattered.
As an afterthought, Tony added, "Also, once I get out of here, I think you deserve either one hell of a raise or an extremely lavish retirement."
"Indeed, sir."
The sword Tony had stolen banged awkwardly against his hip, and he'd likely have a bruise there by the time he actually got to the factory, but it was better than walking around unarmed. Not that Tony knew what to do with a sword other than 'hold the end with a handle and shove the dangerous end into the other person', but he was a genius. He'd figure it out.
"Have you absolutely lost your mind?" Hank fumed, tightening his grip across the backs of Jan's legs. She'd stopped shrieking at him and trying to pound his spine through the his chest, at least, otherwise he didn't know what he would've done. Probably wouldn't look too good if he knocked her unconscious, but for god's sake, these Careers had ears. "I'm trying my best to keep you alive, okay, and what do you do, you throw a knife at the biggest guy in there?"
"He's a bully!" Jan protested, her voice thick and semi-hysterical. It's the voice she used to use on her father when he scolded her, the one that made him apologize and kiss her on the forehead and promise to buy her a new dress. Unfortunately for Jan, Hank's priorities were a little different than dear old dad's now that they were, you know, running to their deaths. "He was going to hurt that little girl!"
"I don't know if you noticed, but you're a little girl," Hank snapped. He stopped running for a second to evaluate their surroundings, try to figure out which would be the best way to go. He'd been in cities before, on supply runs with Mr. Van Dyne, trying to draw up new contracts with potential clients, but he never really got the hang of them. Too much to ask that the Gamemakers ever advantage Seven by having a woodland Arena, apparently.
Jan sniffed, and her elbow knocked against Hank's back as she crossed her arms in a sullen pout. He shifted his grip, hefting her a little bit higher so she didn't hang all the way upside down. "I'm a Van Dyne," she said, as if that meant anything - Hank used to think it did, used to think being named successor to the business actually meant something, but look where he was now - and Hank didn't know what to say to that.
All right, so Jan didn't seem to get it. She had some massive kind of privileged daddy's girl denial complex going on, one that only started to slip a little last night but that got put back on twice as firmly after, and Hank didn't think it was a good idea to tear that down. Not that the lumber mills had much use for psychology or anything, but it seemed like a bad idea to force an Arena meltdown this early on in the game. Jan had managed to miss the worst of the little kids dying by rooting around for her stupid knives and blow guns - and Hank did not miss that those were there, fairly close to the edge, but no hatchet as far as he saw, so thanks for that, Gamemakers - but give it a few days, when starvation hit and the streets ran with the blood of the fallen, and, well, it would happen.
Hank sighed and started walking again. The city was empty, eerily so, and so the sounds of the bloodbath - the screams, the hacking of metal - were faraway and almost dreamlike. Hank shuddered. "Jan, I'm sorry," he said, and he set her down. Jan's face was blotchy from the effort of holding back tears - angry ones, Hank recognized that look in her eyes - and he winced. "I'm sorry, I'm stressed, I shouldn't yell at you, okay? It's okay."
At the end of the day, Jan was just a kid. Kind of annoying, spoiled by her father, and it was no end of disturbing how she kept telling him they'd get married one day, but a good kid with a good heart, and it wasn't her fault she ended up here. Hank hadn't done enough to explain the Games to her after her dad died. That would've been Mr. Van Dyne's job, after her twelfth birthday, to sit her down and talk about the Hunger Games, what they meant and what happened, about volunteers and Careers and everything else. She should never have thought it was a good idea to stand up in that square and march up those steps to be with him.
This was all so messed up, and Hank couldn't think about it. Not if he was going to - well, whatever he was going to do, probably die messily, but oh well.
He turned to suggest to Jan that they find somewhere to hole up and hide for a while when an explosion sounded from the direction of the Cornucopia. No shockwave, so nothing huge, but the sound still smashed through the air loudly enough to startle Hank and make Jan stumble. "What was that?" she demanded, whipping back around. "Was that one of the cannons?"
Hank shook his head. "I don't think so, there's only one, and we know more tributes died than that. If I had to guess, I'd say somebody blew up the Cornucopia."
"Really?" Jan stood on her toes, as though that would help her see over the skyline, and Hank felt a flash of guilt for thinking unkindly at her over the last week or so. It wasn't her fault, any of it, and he'd be just as dead if he'd gone in alone, what with the Two giant and his demonic district companion. "Who do you think blew it up? That was fast."
"No idea, but now we definitely should hide," Hank said, looking around. "If that was the Cornucopia, you can bet it wasn't the Careers that caused it, and they'll be angry and looking for whoever did. And now they won't be sticking close for the rest of the day, picking out the best weapons. They'll be trying to take ours."
He had a short sword, the kind they left for anybody, and it had been far enough from the Cornucopia that he'd been able to get it quickly while snatching up a pack, and Jan had her tiny knives and blowgun and a small pack of supplies as well. All things considered, things weren't looking too bad.
"We should go up high," Jan said, looking at the high rises with their crumbling facades. Wherever this was, it sure hadn't been the ritzy area of town. "We could see anybody coming, and it would take longer for them to get at us."
"Yeah, and if they found us, we'd have nowhere to go but off the roof, and that's a short trip with a predictable ending," Hank countered. "Better to stay closer to the ground, preferably somewhere with back exits." He racked his brain, trying to think of the cities he'd visited, what sort of structure would serve their purpose best. "Maybe … a parking garage? That's where lots of people put their cars. There should be places to hide and lots of ways out."
Lots of ways in, too, but no helping that. Hank wasn't good enough to be able to hold a single point of entry; that was for someone like a Career, who could hold off an assault with a sword and block the entrance with his massive body. They were better off trying to run and hoping it never came to that in the first place. Hank wished the tracking device in his arm came with an alert system so he'd know when another tribute came close, but that would make things too easy, of course.
It could be worse, he reminded himself. There was the desert year where all the water was poisoned with a hallucinogenic, so that the choice was die of dehydration or slowly go insane. By the end, tributes were wasting all their energy fighting enemies who weren't actually there. Trust the Gamemakers to find something even scarier than just being hacked to pieces; he would choose straight-up sword to the stomach over losing his mind any day.
They wandered, finally coming across a big open building with lots of ramps and levels that Hank vaguely recognized. "I think this is what we want," he said. "It should be far enough away that we can stay here without trouble, I think. We can sleep in one of the cars, that should give us a little more protection, too."
"Okay," Jan said agreeably. She had one of her little knives out, and Hank couldn't decide if it was funny or sad that she thought it would help. Sure, the Gamemakers had favoured her by giving her weapons in the first place, but without poison on the tips, all they'd do was annoy whoever she hit.
"Let's stick to the second level," Hank said, glancing around. "Ground is too close. Second will give us that vantage point you were talking about without killing us if we have to jump." Not that he particularly wanted to, but he and Janet had both fallen from trees higher up than this. The only difference was hard concrete instead of soft dirt and pine needles, which, admittedly, was not a small thing to worry about.
It went well until Hank tried to open the door of a car only to find it locked, along with every other car on the level, putting an end to his idea of finding somewhere hidden to sleep. Right. This was the slums, and nobody was going to park their vehicles and leave them open and ready to strip down or hot-wire or whatever it was people did with cars. This whole city thing was looking better and better.
"Oh well," Hank said, and climbed up onto the front of one of the cars instead, leaning back against the windshield. He gave Jan a hand up and they sat together, then spread out the contents of their packs. A thick hunting knife, some rope, matches and a tin of fire starter, a compass and flashlight, two thin blankets made of a shiny insulated material, some dried food - fruit, meat, nuts - and a container of water, and a vial of some sort of cream that Hank wasn't going to test on his skin, thanks. Burn treatment, maybe, or antiseptic, or maybe absolutely nothing, if the Gamemakers were feeling especially sadistic.
"Huh," Hank said. "We hit the jackpot there. Good. Let's pack this stuff up and maybe we can look for food, now that we know where we're going to sleep. They should still have grocery stores in the slums."
Assuming, of course, they hadn't been cleared out, but it wasn't like tributes could hunt deer or forage for mushrooms in a city, so the Gamemakers would have to throw them a bone somewhere. Hank guessed there was probably one main supermarket or something like that, well out in the open so that everyone would have to come out and be vulnerable to get there, plus a few smaller ones for those smart enough to look for it.
They made their way back down the ramps and were almost to the exit when Hank heard it, a low humming sound, like an exposed power line. One time back home, a wicked storm had brought down a tree that in turn took down a utility pole, and they'd had to cordon off the entire area until an emergency team from District Five could be brought in to clear the whole thing away. The sound now was remarkably similar, but without the crackle of electricity that made the hair on Hank's arm stand up.
"Do you hear that?" Hank asked Jan. She had better ears than he did, and she nodded. "It might be a trap. You stay here, and I'll go check just in case."
"No!" Jan said, stamping her foot. "If it's a trap, that's just what they'd want us to do. I'm coming with you."
The sad thing was, she was probably right. "Fine, just stay behind me," Hank said. If this place was rigged to blow as well, he wanted to know now, not when he and Jan were asleep.
They followed the noise to a low-hanging metal beam, Jan pausing and tilting her head to listen whenever Hank wasn't sure which way to go. When they finally reached the source, it wasn't a bomb, booby trap, or anything else, but Hank still had to clap a hand over his mouth to hold back a shout anyway.
"Tracker jackers," Janet whispered, and even though she was too naive to know that sticking a knife in the thigh of a Career tribute was a bad idea, she knew enough not to mess with jackers. Not since one of the neighbour kids had poked a hive with a stick when she was little and had to spend weeks in the hospital with a face that looked like it had been chewed up and swallowed. He'd never fully healed, thrashing in pain and screaming with hallucinations, unable to recognize his own family, and in the end his parents opted to take him off life support.
"We need to go," Hank said. "And fast."
"We should destroy the hive," Jan said urgently. "It's not safe here now, and it's the best place we've got. And I can use the poison for my knives!"
"That's great, if it weren't suicide," Hank snapped.
"No, it's okay, I know what to do! Daddy showed me when we found one in the backyard!" Janet shrugged off her pack, pulled out the matches and one of the cubes of fire starter, then lit a small fire under the hive.
"Jan!" Hank hissed, muscles tense. He knew he should pick her up and run right there, except she did almost have a point. Getting venom from the tracker jackers to put on the tips of her knives and darts would turn her tiny weapons from a joke into something actually lethal, assuming she could get close enough to hit anyone. Still, that didn't mean he was going to let the twelve-year-old be the one to do the honours. "Get away and let me do it!"
"Daddy said the smoke will make them sleepy and some of them will suffocate," Jan said as she darted back. "Wait until they fall asleep, and then you put another piece of the fire starter just inside the mouth of the hive and light it. The whole thing will go up really fast and then we can collect the bodies and I can get the poison."
"This is a horrible idea," Hank muttered, but so was being in the Games in the first place, so what the hell. If nothing else, maybe a show of moxie would impress the Gamemakers or the sponsors and they'd get a treat out of it.
The smoke from the fire drifted upward into the hive, and sure enough, the pitch of the buzzing lowered and slowed. The tracker jacker who'd been wandering around the outside of the hive slowed to a crawl, its antenna twitching sporadically. Finally the humming stopped altogether.
"A horrible idea," Hank said under his breath, as he stepped closer and placed the cube of catalyst in the small opening. It took him three tries to light the match, his hands were shaking so, and Jan was practically vibrating with anxiety. Finally the flame caught, and Hank stumbled back when the cube ignited.
The hive exploded into a mess of activity, the suffocated wasps dropping to the ground and the sleeping ones struggling to get away as the flames licked the sides of the nest. "Okay, now we go!" Hank said, grabbing Janet's hand and running. "We can come back and get the bodies for the venom later!"
They were almost to the exit when a sharp pain stabbed Hank through the neck, as though someone had lit a sharp stick on fire and jabbed the flaming end into his skin. He screamed and stumbled, dropping to his knees as waves of agony flowed through him.
"Hank!" Jan cried out, her hands on his face, but how could she be touching him when her voice was far away, so far away, and underwater, too?
Every kid in Seven had the lecture on tracker jackers as soon as they were old enough to go outside on their own. One sting wasn't the problem; the tracer venom that would draw the rest of the hive to hunt the victim down, was. One sting should not have Hank on the ground, writhing as the world shimmered and wavered before his eyes, except for one fact.
Hank was one of the small percentage of the population allergic to tracker jacker venom. His hand slapped at his thigh, looking for the emergency anti-venom he'd kept there daily since being tested as a child, except of course it wasn't there. It was such a habit that he hadn't even thought about it when he saw the hive; his allergy was always under control, always able to be treated, and the hypodermic syringe at his side as constant as clothing.
His throat closed and his tongue swelled up, choking him. Hank looked at his hands and saw giant, purple, oozing hives forming and bursting across the backs of his hands, the palms, the fingers.
Jan was screaming something, far, far away, and Hank tried to look for her. When he saw her, he screamed again and scrambled back; as he watched, tracker jacker wings burst out of Janet's back and started flapping, buzzing in the air, and her yellow and black jacket transformed into chitinous armour, closing over her stomach, spreading out to her arms and legs. "No!" Hank cried. "No no no nonononono -"
Tracker-Janet darted up into the sky and grabbed another jacker from the air, this one silver and the size of a small infant. "I'm going to help you," she said, venom dripping from her mouth.
Hank tried to run, but his body was changing, too, curling in on itself, extra arms sprouting from his stomach, and he couldn't. He rolled into a ball and hoped he would die soon. Please, please, please let him die soon, anything but this, anything but turning into some kind of monster, some tracker jacker muttation like Jan, who didn't even know she was already dead.
Then something cool, amazing, like life and health and beauty poured into a bottle, pressed against his skin, and Hank gasped. His body shifted back to normal, and when he opened his eyes the pustules were gone, as were Janet's wings, though her face was blotched and pale and tears ran down her face.
"I got you anti-venom," Jan said, holding up a silver parachute with an opened container attached to it. "The sponsors. They gave it to us. But you still didn't wake up. It's been a long time, a real long time, hours maybe. The sun moved all the way from there -" she waves to her left - "to there! I was scared. Are you okay? Please tell me you're okay."
"I think so," Hank said, drawing in a shuddering breath, but his lungs felt open, and when he checked both sides of his hands they appeared clean. "Thank you."
Jan flung herself at him, sobbing, and Hank wrapped his arms around her. The worst of the pain from the sting was ebbing, and all that remained was a low buzzing in the back of his brain, like there was a hive somewhere inside his head, but he could ignore that. "You saved me," Hank told her, running his fingers through her hair, and Jan squeezed him tighter. "You're a good kid. Your dad would be proud."
"I got the bodies of the wasps, too," Jan said, hiccupping a little, and she held up her pack. "I put all the supplies in your bag and I put the bodies in mine. I can poison my weapons now."
Motion flickered at the corner of Hank's eyes, and he whipped his head around only to see nothing. Hm. Must be his imagination. The anti-venom would've stopped his allergic reaction and chased away the hallucinations, but it made sense he'd be a little jumpy from now on. It was okay.
"Let's get some food," Hank said, forcing himself to stand, and his legs were shaky but otherwise held him. He had one hell of a headache and one of his hands trembled when he held it out in front of him, and as soon as he thought about food his stomach flipped in a way that didn't make sense considering he'd eaten breakfast just a few hours before. "I could eat a whole groosling raw right now."
Janet laughed and stuck close, both arms wrapped around one of his, making it tricky to walk, but Hank let her. Again he saw movement at the edge of his vision, but again it was nothing. Food. He just needed food. And the sponsors had shown they liked him and Jan, which was a good sign. Hank adjusted his pack over his shoulder and started walking.
Eight cannons. Eight kids dead who hadn't been dead an hour ago, except that wasn't really true, was it, because they were all marked for death as soon as the Reaping started. Fury said he would get as many people out as he could, but Sam saw at least three children go down before he ran, and he didn't mean to run - he meant to stay and fight, to see if he could save some of the little ones - but the fear took him, and the screams, and the frenzy, and suddenly Sam was sixteen again with his father's blood soaking through his jeans as the man who was everything Sam aspired to but never would become bled out into the grass.
The next thing Sam knew, he was running. Away from the bloodbath, from the slaughter, away even from Ororo with her dyed-white hair and her big eyes in her dark skin, and Sam wouldn't know until nightfall whether she'd made it out. He hoped so; she was small, and fast, and clever, and if anyone had the chance to dart out before one of the others caught her, it would be the girl who picked Caesar Flickerman's pocket.
Still, that didn't give Sam much comfort, and he wished for the reassuring softness of Redwing's feathers beneath his fingers. He and Redwing understood each other - he didn't actually have some sort of magical power to talk to birds like Ororo seemed to think, but it didn't take one; all a guy had to do was listen, and ever since his parents died Sam became very good at that. If Redwing were here, he would have company inside this mess; would have an extra set of eyes and a pair of talons to help him hunt, even if it was just rats or whatever ran around in the city and you probably shouldn't because who knew what filthy diseases lurked in those critters. Give Sam a good, honest District Eleven squirrel any day, but they almost never had Arenas that advantaged the outliers. No Gamemaker-tended orchards for Ororo to hide in, no apples to eat until her stomach burst with no one to stop her and no fear of a public beating - at least, not until another tribute's spear flew through her heart.
Sam wondered what it was like for victors in the central districts. In Eleven, the year's worth of food would be nice and the big, plantation-style house a good perk, but even a victor still couldn't eat the apples without being horsewhipped. In Twelve, if they went out beyond the fence and got caught with so much as a rabbit, not even a victor could avoid being lashed to the pole and beaten until their bones cracked and the life drained out of them onto the cobblestones.
Not that any of this made a difference now. Sam didn't know the going rate for rebellion members these days, but he highly doubted the pension plan was any good.
Sam's feet slapped against the concrete as he ran, the sound shockingly loud and reverberating off the buildings around him. He used to run back home in Eleven, up and down the orchards before work started at dawn, and when he moved into town after his parents died he went running there, too, but it was nothing like this. The towns in Eleven still had open spaces, not enough people or money to urbanize the whole thing, and so there were none of these cramped alleys and twisting streets, buildings half falling apart as the twisting train lines and electric wires for the trams ran overhead.
He ran, but the bloodbath kept a hold on him, a fishhook in the skin, dragging him back, and the farther he got from the Cornucopia the tighter it pulled. Sam felt like a sapling, tied down so it would grow into the proper shape, straining against the rope and doing its best to spring free. He stopped running, doubled over with his hands braced on his thighs and fought to choke back the rise of bile in his throat.
How could he run? How could he run and hide and wait for the others to die and Fury to save him? How could he be worthy of being saved when he didn't do a thing to help others to the same fate? Sam's father had been a preacher, a dangerous profession in these times if ever there was one, only avoiding execution, he used to say, because his words gave the citizens comfort under the yoke of oppression. Never enough to galvanize them into rebellion - not when slipping a grape into their mouths resulted in fifty lashes and four broken fingers - but enough that they could drag themselves out of bed and into the orchards and still feel like there was a point to life. It was something he struggled with, before he died, and the kids who'd stabbed him had said the same thing - said he did nothing but make the people content to be cattle, that Eleven needed to writhe and scream under the master's boot, not lick it and be content to root for scraps in the dirt.
What would he say, knowing Sam had turned his back when he could have helped? Sam was big, and strong, corded arms from working in the fields, and he had his weapons, two short, curved swords hanging at his sides. He'd run and eight children were dead. His father would not be looking down at him with pride. Sam clenched his fists, but he knew what he had to do. He turned and headed back toward the Cornucopia.
He didn't expect to find it in pieces. He'd heard the explosion but assumed it was part of the end of the bloodbath ceremony, didn't realize it had actually be a real, physical thing that would tear apart buildings and bodies and leave the street in ruin. Sam jarred to a halt in a side street, looking out at the destruction. Nothing left, not even the Careers, who'd obviously given up trying to look for anything useful in the wreckage, and apart from dark splashes of blood mixed with the dirt and grit of the concrete, no sign of any of the bodies of the fallen.
Fool and a coward.
When he was young, Sam's father cut him a new one for only offering to help with a chore or task when it was almost completed, so he could have the self-righteous boost of trying to help without the disadvantage of actually doing it. Sam assumed he'd learned his lesson, but apparently not.
He turned to go, sick with fear and disgust when he heard the noise, a low choking sound, and Sam spun around, sword at the ready - what was he going to do with it, well, he didn't know - only to see a foot disappear, pulled back behind the dubious cover of a large trash can. He gave the ground a closer look, and noticed a large, still-sticky smear of liquid that started close to his boot and ended up somewhere in the middle of the trash bins.
Sam sheathed his sword, since he was mostly kidding himself with it anyway, and, keeping an eye over his shoulder, edged his way around to find the victim. He recognized the girl from Twelve, redheaded and sharp-faced with the mark of starvation in her protruding bones, now curled in a ball with her stomach a mess of red. He barely made out her hands, splashed dark with blood, pressed tight below her ribs.
"Here to finish me off?" Twelve asked, her face bone-white, breath coming in short gasps. Shock, Sam guessed, not that he had any experience with it. "She would've done it, but then that stupid explosion."
It couldn't be long now. In the twisted world of the Games, the best thing Sam could do for her would be to end it quickly. No one could ask him for anything more than that. Sam shook his head and dropped to his knees next to her.
Twelve girl gave him a baleful look. Her jacket had a large slash in the fabric, and Sam could only guess that whatever weapon had done this to her had caught on the material, and that was why her hands were soaked with blood but not full of intestines. Her breath hitched in her chest, and sweat stood out against her skin. "Stop staring," she gritted out, and her head lolled to the side before she jerked it back upright. "Th' cameras're enough."
Sam hadn't bothered to check his bag before running, and he opened it now, sorting through the supplies and dried food. At the very bottom was a basic first aid kit, meant for the Arena and not for household injuries, and that meant large self-sealing bandages and, glory of glories, a needle and thick, black thread for emergency stitches. Sam had seen kits like this before - field accidents, either with actual farm equipment or a mistake with a scythe, were nasty - and the materials at hand to combat an injury like this one had to stop someone from bleeding to death before they could be taken to someone with more supplies.
He'd once helped a kid with a mangled hand from an apple-picking incident, but that was nothing on this. Still. "I'm going to help you," Sam said. Twelve didn't say anything, just stared at him with wide, glazed eyes that didn't seem quite able to focus on him. The upside of this scenario was that Sam couldn't actually make it worse; if he left her alone she'd be dead within the hour.
"Could've used those swords before I got sliced up," Twelve said dryly, shaking, but she let Sam peel one hand off her stomach in order to peer beneath it. He saw nothing but a mess of pink and brown and red, so much red, hot and stinking and pulsing with every heartbeat, but when he pressed his hand to the wound he didn't think he felt the slippery slide of guts against his palm. It might be all right.
No way to sterilize the wound or his hands to any doctor's satisfaction, but they didn't have time to be picky. Sam's backpack held a metal container full of water, and the first aid kit a small bottle of alcohol or something like, and if he couldn't get her fixed up then finding something to drink didn't make much difference, did it. The kit also contained a small amount of antibacterial cream, but that wouldn't help them now, not yet.
Sam tipped a small amount of the disinfectant into the thermos and shook it, poured it slowly over the gash in Twelve's stomach. She didn't wince, which Sam thought was impressive until he saw her wide, dead eyes staring at nothing, and only the heave of her chest let him know she was still with him, at least nominally.
Sam had big hands, not clumsy exactly but not meant for work like this. Sweat dripped into his eyes as he worked, and Sam leaned his head to the side to wipe his forehead against his jacket sleeve. Twelve's eyes fluttered back, nearly closing, and her breathing narrowed to low, shallow rasps as her head fell back against the wall behind her.
He managed to close the final stitch and apply another round of the treated water before staggering back and vomiting into the street. He listened for the firing of the cannon that would make this entirely useless, but the skies stayed empty and silent, and finally Sam straightened and turned back.
Twelve stared at him, eyes wide and uncomprehending, but then her hand twitched, moved to tug her ruined jacket closer over her. "Thanks," she said, her voice thin, but she gritted her teeth and pressed her hands to the ground to hold herself upright. "Even if I die of infection or blood poisoning or internal bleeding, that was some good television."
"You won't," Sam said, even though he had a lifetime of knowledge to tell him that sometimes the best, most long drawn-out efforts toward good can come to nothing. The universe had a sense of humour, and the Gamemakers' was even worse. "We should get out of here."
"Wouldn't want all your hard work to go to waste," Twelve said, and Sam missed the quiet, understated strength and wry humour that Ororo displayed, but he could work with fire, too. Rather than bothering waiting for her to try to stand, Sam got his pack firmly settled on his back and lifted Twelve into his arms. She hissed aloud and cried out in pain, but shook her head when Sam started to set her back down. "No," she said, her face tight. "No, it's fine. Better than dead. Let's go."
"I'm Sam," he told her, standing slowly and settling her in order to jostle her as little as possible.
"Jean," she said through her clenched jaw. "Let's hope this show of friendship is worth something to the sponsors." Sam didn't know how to answer that, so he said nothing.
The whole time they walked, Sam felt like someone had painted a target on his back, even as they stuck to the dark side streets and back alleys. Wind whistled through the empty streets, occasionally sending paper, trash and other debris swirling around Sam's feet. "They didn't clear everything out," Jean remarked at one point, opening her eyes long enough to take in an upturned trash can spilling over with garbage. "They just - the people, it's like they disappeared."
Like they'd all been called to heaven, though Sam hoped that wasn't the case, that they were all alive and well somewhere, watching from a secure Capitol facility until they could return to their ruined neighbourhood and start again. He hoped they'd be compensated, but wouldn't bet on that.
Wait. Sam stopped and studied the streets, looked at the signs. He couldn't read well - his father had taught him, but it wasn't a skill he needed much, and the letters swam in front of his eyes and gave him a headache, and he'd much rather be out with Redwing than staring at books - but he could sound out the words if he tried hard enough. He looked for one word in particular, and finally, eyeing every sign he could find, he saw it:
SUBWAY, NORTH STREET ENTRANCE.
He nudged Jean, gently, and turned her so she could see the sign without having to move her head. "Huh," Jean said. "Do you think we could hide down there for a while? Won't save us if somebody else gets the same idea, but at least it feels safer than walking around up here."
Sam had heard of subways, even though he'd never seen one, as Eleven had no need and he'd never been out past the district border. Even in the cities it was never populated enough to justify the cost, but he'd seem them in books. A subway was a train that ran underground. He didn't think the Gamemakers would leave the trains running - likely they'd shut off power to the whole Arena so they could control it at will - but that just meant a labyrinth of tunnels that would be much easier to hide in than skirting around aboveground.
"We should try," Sam said.
Jean let her head fall back against his arm. "Hey c'mon, guys," she said to the sky, and for a moment Sam's heart clenched at the thought of her losing her mind from pain until he realized she was talking to the cameras. "That's a smart idea, right? Plus all that heroism earlier, and my plucky never-give-up attitude. Gotta be worth something. It's the first day, stuff's still cheap. How about a reward for ingenuity and inter-district harmony? Isn't that what these Games are all about?"
Sam stared at her, and Jean gave him a toothy smile. "What? Worth a shot. Just wait a minute, see what happens. You never know."
She shook in his arms, full-body tremors as her body fought to deal with the shock and the blood loss and the trauma and everything else. "Please," Sam added, looking up to the skies, like he might have to God before the universe turned its back on him.
A high, metallic tone, and a silver parachute dropped from the sky. Jean's laugh sounded like the screech of a prey bird diving through the sky, and Sam manoeuvred them so that Jean caught the silver container before it hit the ground. "That was quick," Jean said, and her tumbling, trembling fingers struggled to open the canister. "They must've been trying for sponsors since you started to help me. Heroes make a good show, I guess."
She finally managed to pry it open, and inside was a large, terrifying syringe filled with electric-blue liquid. Jean pulled back the plunger and inserted the tip into her arm, shaking her head when Sam made a noise of protest. "So maybe it's poisoned," she said. "Maybe this is the biggest, most expensive joke our two districts have ever pulled, but it's this or infection, and I've seen that happen." She pressed the plunger, and Sam closed his eyes as the liquid disappeared into her veins. Jean sucked in a sharp breath, but when Sam opened his eyes again she looked calmer. "Okay," Jean said, face pale but not looking quite so drawn. "That's all the help they'll be able to afford a while, sorry. We should get inside."
Sam carried her down the stairs into the subway station, where everything was grey and concrete and artificial, even stranger than the streets because at least there the sky was visible, dirty and smoggy though it was. The lights flickered when he reached the bottom stair, and Jean raised herself enough to grope over his shoulder for the zipper of his bag, where she pulled out a flashlight. The lights died once her hand closed around it, and she cursed softly before flicking the switch, casting the beam around around.
Nothing, no one; just the sound of Sam's regulation boots against the floor, occasionally hitting a ticket stub or piece of litter and sending it skittering over the tiles.
The walkable part of the station soon stopped at a wall, with no way to go around it. "Well," Jean said, looking up at him, her face ghoulish in the harsh circle of light. "Only one way to go. And at least if a train runs us over it'll be quick."
Sam swallowed, looking over the edge of the platform into the darkness behind. His heart hammered, and panic built up in his chest until he heard it: the soft, insistent cooing of pigeons, nesting somewhere along the tunnel. His fear eased. All was not dead and lost. Redwing would sulk for days at the thought of Sam taking comfort from pigeons - common, dirty birds, at least in cities, riddled with parasites from eating trash and drinking polluted water - but that meant Sam would have to be alive to tell him.
"I can walk, if you help me," Jean said. "Maybe not the whole time, but I can give your arms a break. Put me down, and then you can lower me onto the tracks and jump down after. I'll hold onto the edge and it'll be fine."
Really, walking along the subway tracks wasn't any more suicidal a move than anything else a tribute might try, and maybe the dark tunnels would actually give them some privacy. "All right," he said. "But I'll go first and lift you down."
"Whatever grows your crops," Jean said lightly, only hissing a little when Sam set her down on the ground. He slipped down onto the tracks, getting his footing, then reached up and helped her down. "Thanks," Jean said again, and she sounded stronger than she had in the alley, though it could just be Sam's imagination or wishful thinking.
"It's not a problem." Sam took a deep breath of the stale, artificial air and looped his arm around Jean's waist. It didn't make up for turning his back on Ororo and the others, but hopefully he would be less of a stain on the Wilson family name now. He and Jean could lie low for a couple of days, heal up, and then Sam would try to find Rogers and the others. Hopefully by then Fury's plan would go into effect and they could be out of here.
