Sam took an instinctive step back from Nihlus and nearly tripped over a tree root. He had been watching her all this time – who else would have known she'd be out here? Who would have found her, would have bothered to go tromping into the woods to dig up several teens doing little in the name of flaunting security (outside of her, of course?)
"I…" Sam felt fear hurtling up through her gut as she questioned Nihlus's next move. "I didn't mean anything, I swear. I was just trying-"
"Oh, I don't find fault for leaping the fence," Nihlus interrupted, stroking his thick chin and delving from predator to philosopher in the snap of a moment. "I…find this place they keep me in insufferable. I hate these things called people and this district. This…zoo they pen you in. Gawk at you. Try to poke and provoke just enough to force a reaction…for what? For nothing. That fence is just as purposeless as this district itself, a mere metaphor for the ridiculousness of the entire system the Capitol perpetuates. Yet they want me…here. Watching."
"Why…why do you think that is?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Sam tried to steady the unstable, powerful man hunched in the tree.
"Well let me tell you," Nihlus cracked a joint in his neck, flexing muscles that bulged from beneath layers of rough skin. "They say I'm some 'security prototype,' that I have purpose to test out their covert espionage technology in the districts. You wonder why the Peacekeepers have calmed down – why nobody gets hanged, or put in the stocks? It's not just an evolution of the usually-lax attitudes of the district controllers in their petty game of autocracy, no…it's because I'm here, Miss Parker. Me. I'm supposed to be a pioneer for the Capitol leveraging a new fist of power over their districts…yet…I don't want to be that. I don't want to pretend to play a butcher in this…tick-ridden back country, relegated to a covert spy for the stinking disease that is humanity. I am far more interested in…little things."
"In this twisted society, it is purpose that defines us, guides us, tells us we are right," Nihlus leaped out of the tree and bounded easily on his two trunk-like legs, rising up to tower above Sam by a full foot and change. "So I have decided that I have the only purpose that exists in this world – none. There is no purpose; thus, I am undefined. I therefore spend my time focusing on things that entertain and interest me when I'm not feigning agent for the Capitol – I watch little ants like you."
"I keep wondering why my Father finds you so intriguing. He, caught up in his mathematics that will guide humanity to a new golden age…yet another petty scheme without meaning; the lies of five pounds of gray matter - itself the result of an accident of natural selection and just as artificial as the words you spoke to your friend."
"Your father…" Sam put the pieces together. "The Head Gamesmaker?"
"I suppose father is a poor term," Nihlus fretted and raised his eyebrows. "He created me. Nothing more. Now I prefer to be his lurking Sword of Damocles, waiting to slash holes in his grandiose-yet-impotent plan of enlightenment. Maybe I do find you interesting, as well. Somehow you keep getting intertwined with the very people I hate so much: those schemers in their towers in the Capitol. So pointless. Just like everything."
"How do you know about that?" Sam asked, shocked by his level of confidential knowledge. "You weren't even there in the Capitol."
"Location is a poor substitute for information," Nihlus corrected her. "And it is the latter I need. My Father built me as an information-gathering tool…yet now I serve only the universe's tug of entropy. I want nothing more than to be Oedipus, to kill my own Rex…and Octavian, and many more. Maybe all of them. As Octavian and Rex square off to do battle, it's a perfect time to sneak in the only agenda that matters."
"Oh? Not what you were expecting?" he continued. "There is strife in the Capitol, Miss Parker. Soon either Octavian or Rex will lie dead – though preferably both, if I had my way."
"What are you trying to tell me?" Sam felt just assertive enough to make the demand in light of Nihlus's self-obsessed rants against the Capitol. "Why stalk me out, why follow me around?"
"Because you are my one-way ticket to them," Nihlus poked his finger into Sam's stomach. "You've already signed on the dotted-line. My Father finds you so enrapturing that he wants to use you in his power play against Octavian. Consider the notice my gift to you. Octavian of course will see this, and find a way to use you in order to hedge himself against my Father. And through it all, you are an unwilling participant…which makes you and I partners. Unwilling, forced into roles…you into these pointless Games that do nothing more than speed up entropy's march; me, into a weapon honed simply into further disgust for everything Panem is. We make quite a team already."
"I'm not your teammate," Sam protested. "I'm not getting into any of these…whatever things in the Capitol, even if you're telling the truth. I'm just a teenager, not a revolutionary. How would you even know? What if you're just lying to me to try and get me killed for…whatever reasons you have?"
"You say it, but you don't believe it," Nihlus nodded, more to himself than anything. "Because my Father has courted you in that room in the Capitol. Because Octavian has made his intentions very clear to you. Because all those words you heard…you know they are just the beginning. You, you…you who are everything I hate, everything human. You and your bubbling emotions, your twists and turns of passions, your everyday ups and downs, triumphs and failures that make you so disgustingly wholesome as you fight to find meaning in a meaningless world. My Father believes you are the computational machine like he is; Octavian believes he can turn you into his pawn and toy. Yet only I know what you are, Miss Parker."
Nihlus leaned in over Sam, reaching out a colossal hand to weave her ponytail between his thumb and forefinger. "You're just human. So easily bent to someone's will…like mine. Mine, mine…my purposeless, undefined will."
"What makes you any different?" Sam countered. Nihlus looked human enough to her, after all – just larger.
With a bounding leap, Nihlus took off from the ground and settled in a tree branch eight feet above – an entirely inhuman physical feat that caught Sam off-guard.
"It's like my Father told you, Miss Parker," he laughed quietly. "A good architect sculpts his creation, whether that's the Hunger Games…or something else entirely. Humans aren't sculpted. I am. Don't slip up, now."
Nihlus bounced off out of sight, leaping like a lemur out of the tree despite his impressive muscular bulk. Sam felt cold inside – what did the strange man, now so clearly a creation of the Capitol (and concordantly, Rex) have in mind? She couldn't doubt his assessment of tension between Octavian and Rex. She'd seen it herself, judged the two to certainly not be friends, but latent enemies. Yet why did Nihlus rage with so much burning hate for the Capitol – and people in general? And how had he known everything that had gone on? It was like he was in her mind.
A chilling thought swept over her as she felt goosebumps sweep her skin despite the warm air. Rex could certainly make mutts as Head Gamesmaker – she'd learned that personally. Could he make one part human?
Could he lose control of it?
"Sam?"
Cal pushed some leaves out of his way, catching her lost in thought and shock.
"Is something wrong?"
Sam looked up, confused and hurt. She didn't know what to say, what to do – the Capitol already was dragging her deep into their mischievous games, and now Nihlus had dug her deeper into the ravine. She realized that for all the times she could lose herself in peace – like at the pool and with Clay, Clara, Jake, or others – she'd attracted all the wrong kinds of attention to her from terrible sources that wouldn't leave her until they died…or she did. For the simple matter of winning the Games with a modicum of intelligence, Sam had drawn herself into a dangerous trap.
"I, it's," Sam wouldn't implicate her newest friend in these dangers, even as she found herself desperate to talk. "Clay and I just had a difference of opinion. That's all. He's going home."
"He didn't…like…"
"No, no. No."
Sam brushed away the lie and walked slowly back towards the pool, where Clara had already begun changing back into her clothes.
"Did he just leave?" she exclaimed.
"Yeah," Sam replied, picking up her own garments and getting dressed. The urge to tell someone and get the feelings off her chest intensified, regardless of what Nihlus had said back in winter – it seemed now that Sam could do nothing to avoid the axe falling her way courtesy of the political infighting brewing off in the Capitol.
"I don't know what his problem is," Clara remarked. "We still have all day, though. Are you going home too?"
"I…" Sam hesitated. Clara was a talker, but she wasn't excruciatingly dumb enough to go blabbing about secrets of the Capitol. Furthermore, she wasn't idealistic enough to concoct dangerous plans, either – just the emotional shoulder she needed. "Look, Clara, can I talk to you privately?"
"Sure," she chirped. "Cal, go take the horses back. I'm gonna go home with Sam."
Her cousin agreed and departed, leaving the two girls departing the woods on their own. They rode Daisy up towards Midland Hill, where the warm currents of the mid-afternoon seemed less welcome and more ominous to Sam. Every off-key chirp of a bird or incessant whine of an insect unhinged her tangled nerves as she dismounted.
"I just need to get something off my chest," Sam said as she sat down in the soft grass of the hill, looking out over the prairie extending on for miles.
"Is this about Clay?" Clara asked. "I know you two are a little more than close and all but…did he hurt you or something?"
"No, it's not him," Sam sighed. "There's something following me, Clara. Something from the Capitol…something ever since I won the Games."
"Following you?"
"I guess some people in the Capitol liked how I won, or something…I met the President and the Head Gamesmaker during the Tour. Both of them are…they're watching me. It's like they're trying to get me to do something; to start something or worse."
"You're just the most recent victor, Sam," Clara's expression showed sympathy, yet total confusion. "People will look at you until the next kid wins this year."
"No, it's not like that," Sam said with a pressure in her chest building. "It's like…it feels like there's a storm building and I'm supposed to take a side between people in the Capitol. And there's something here…here in District 10. Something's been following me ever since they replaced the Peacekeepers who were here. I heard him again today."
Clara's expressions morphed from confusion to frustration to outright mystery: "Him?"
Shoot, Sam thought. I've said too much.
"There's a man from the Capitol here not with the Peacekeepers," Sam said after looking around and assuring they were alone. "I don't know what he's supposed to be doing, but what he is doing is watching me. That's all I know…I'm scared, and I don't know what to do or even why this is happening. I just turned sixteen; I'm not some…soldier or anything."
"Sam, it's probably just effects from the arena," Clara did her best to re-assure her friend. "I don't think anybody's gonna try and do anything to you. Everybody in Panem knows who you are now."
"It's not me, don't you see?" Sam complained frustratingly. "So they can't do anything to me physically. What if they hurt you, or Clay, or my brother? What if they push me just far enough to do what they want and leave me hanging?"
Sam put her head between her knees, punching the ground and letting out a sob. "I should have just died in that arena; I should of let the mutts kill me or Royal kill me. Then none of this would be happening and you all could still be happy. Now I'm hurting everyone."
"No, listen to me," Clara interjected. "You're a good person, Sam. You're gonna be fine; we're gonna be fine. I know it's hard but you deserved to win, and now you can be whoever you want to be – not whoever someone else wants you to be. You and I still have our entire futures ahead of us, okay? Years from now we'll be happy and still out here – nothing's gonna come get you or me."
Clara gave her a hug, holding Sam's tear-streaked face against her blonde hair. "Once this year's Games are over, let's go back down to the pond. You'll feel better then; maybe just the two of us. It'll be sunny and summer and we can just stay out there as long as we want."
Sam wanted to believe Clara – she wanted to believe everything would be alright, that she'd live out her life in District 10 and find happiness. Yet all she saw as she closed her eyes and buried her face in Clara's shoulder was Nihlus's predatory smile, warning of a whole host of unseen dangers lying just below the surface of things.
"A good architect sculpts his creation…"
Who was sculpting her?
A/N: Yeah, so Sam's kinda emotionally messed up right now with the fun Capitol hurricane brewing. Yes, the Nihlus/Sam arc is going somewhere, for those confused. He's a rather important character in the grand scheme of things. Lemme know thoughts through nine chapters! Good, bad, shouts of "I can't believe you wax so much philosophical; where's the action you pretentious hack," reviews are always welcome!
