Lock and Key

Ikky Delacroix, Age 15, District Nine Female Tribute

The room where we waited for our demonstrations was rather small and dark and quiet. And believe me, if you've ever been locked in an isolation closet for any length of time, "small and dark and quiet" is not such a good thing. All it does is make you think of being trapped in a similar, empty space, without any real means of survival—no food, water, bathroom, place to sleep, or way to socialize or entertain yourself. Just darkness. And silence. And nothingness. And sometimes, the sound of your own crying or screaming or wall-punching.

Worse yet, how many hours had I spent listening to the inmate across from me talk to themselves about superstitions? And now, here, a picture had fallen off the wall, and one clock hadn't rung at the hour. Bad signs, to be sure, if you believed in that.

Nobody else seemed to really notice, so I didn't say anything. Instead, I just listened to some Capitol attendant ramble on in the distance... sort of. I wasn't exactly all that interested in what they had to say. But they were also the one announcing the names, so I had to listen sometimes. Everyone filed out of the room one by one, a long pause in between, for our demonstrations. I had no idea what to expect on the other side of the door. The Stratagem game—it was all putting us in made-up scenarios, were the Gamemakers just going to watch us play a computer game?

"Jessalyn Daniels," said the attendant.

Jessalyn was from District Seven; Henrik and I would be up soon. Great Panem, we need more time, but for what…?

"Kenton Rienman," came several minutes later.

I wiped my palms on my pants and hoped Henrik didn't notice my nerves as Kenton left. A victor's brother—he would be well trained.

"Evangaline Jones."

Another girl headed into the main gym. Henrik would be next. "Almost time," he said. His voice didn't shake.

"Henrik Armfeldt."

He jumped to his feet. "Good luck," he said to me, and I couldn't get anything out of my mouth fast enough before he was gone, through the door that clicked shut in his absence.

Maybe I was just paranoid about it, but I felt like it was an especially long time before I heard, "Ikky Delacroix."

They pronounced my last name wrong. My anger didn't last long because I fought to stay upright, and make it through the door before it closed on me, damn Capitol technology. The main training area looked normal, just as it had this morning. I looked around almost stupidly from the middle of the gym, trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, when I heard, "Ms. Delacroix," pronounced correctly, and jumped. Man's voice, deep and loud and static-y from an intercom system. "Your demonstration will begin in thirty seconds." Thirty seconds? What was I supposed to do then, grab a weapon?

I could see a screen mounted on one wall that counted down for me. It was already nearly to twenty.

I looked over at the Gamemakers, who gave no further clues, and back at the door to where I'd been waiting, and at the elevator, and at the Avoxes and Peacekeepers.

Fifteen, fourteen—what the—?

A screen to my right, across the room from the Gamemakers and clearly in their view, flickered to life, but showed nothing. My left arm felt heavy and achy and tired all of a sudden, and I felt a bit disoriented, off-balance.

Were all of the demonstrations like this?

Three, two, one, zero.

. . .

The gym disappeared when I blinked, and suddenly I stood in the woods. It was almost peaceful, mostly quiet but I could hear birds chirping and water running; sunlight streamed onto me through the leaves. It smelled like damp pine needles.

Then there was a massive creeeeeaaaak from behind me. I whipped around and saw a tree branch coming towards me, and lunged to the side. Another one hit lower, and knocked my feet out from under me, sent me flying forwards. Oh great Panem great Panem what is this—

I scrambled up and dodged the same branch moving towards me again, ducked, jumped over a tiny stream and ran, ran for my life and for sanity and towards whatever would get me out of here, this sick challenge. This isn't real. I'm in the Training Center, in the Capitol, in Panem. There are no trees. They can't hurt me.

My legs weren't hearing any of it, carrying me faster, faster, faster, when something whizzed past my face and I heard a crackling behind me. Tree bark flew everywhere. I turned back, and another sphere-object hit my shoulder, making me buckle over and clutch a rock to stay up. A few stray pieces of bark scraped my face, burning and stinging. Balls of tree bark getting shot at me? That's new. I stumbled forwards when I almost got hit by another branch, leapt off a small cliff in the ground and dodged another branch, another sphere, and tripped over a tree root almost right into another stream. Some of the water splashed on the cuts on my face from the bark, relieving and soothing, and I pushed off the bank forwards, on and on—

—The woods disappeared. Now there was bloodshed all around me, coating glinting silver weapons in the harsh light, reflected in the golden Cornucopia. There was a knife not too far in front of me; I ran for it, and collided with the boy from District Five. The weapon was in my hand, the force of the impact sent him toppling on to the ground, and I plunged the knife into his chest, watched the life leave his eyes. I didn't start shaking until after. I looked for Henrik on instinct, saw him battling the girl from One, and on my way over to them, I grabbed a filled water bottle in my free hand.

The knife slipped out of my hand; the girl from One fell backwards to the ground. Henrik turned, saw me, and waved an arm towards the snowy mountains off to one side. I grabbed a small backpack and a blanket and ran towards them—

—In a flash of light, that scenario was gone, faster than the other one had been. The scene in front of me now seemed frozen in time just long enough for me to process it. Henrik was pinned against a tree by the boy from District Three, a knife against his throat—nononono—and the girl from Four had a spear in her hand, pointed at me. I had a knife in my hand yet again. Just one. I could kill the boy from Three, and give Henrik a chance to escape, while I would die at the hands of the girl from Four. Or, I could kill the girl, live while Henrik died.

Neither of our opponents moved much, just taunting, threatening, make your choice, we don't have all day….

I closed my eyes, my heart racing. I didn't want to die. I didn't want Henrik to die. I had to move, think, fast. I'd probably have only a few seconds before they just killed both of us. I could almost count down and then—

My knife found the heart of the boy from District Three.

. . .

When my eyes opened, the gym was back, and I had a lot of sets of eyes staring at me all at once. "You're dismissed, Ms. Delacroix," the same person said again, and instantly, I was running, towards the elevator, hitting the button for the District Nine floor frantically.

I wasn't sure what had happened. What was real, what wasn't. The boy from Three—was he dead? The girl from Four, from One, the boy from Five? … Henrik? The second the elevator doors opened, I just about toppled out of them, and almost at once my field of vision turned to blurry nothingness.

A few more seconds of processing. It turned out from what remained of the rest of my vision that the blur was Henrik's shirt, and he was suffocatingly squeezing me. I thought of saying, "Hi," but it didn't come out. Relief flooded me. Then nerves. Then the urge to pull back and see his expression, then the urge to say something stupidly corny like, Don't let go of me, all of which I fought and just hugged him back instead.

I became aware of being able to breathe before I noticed the fact he'd let go of me, and then I noticed Bryce's laughter somewhere beyond Henrik.

"I told you they wouldn't kill her yet," Bryce said.

Apparently our demonstrations had gone somewhat the same, then. "You're not dead, either," I got out, more choked than I meant it to. I still needed air.

Bryce spoke up again: "And all is well. Anyone up for cookies?"

"Really?" Henrik and I asked at the same time.

"Seriously?" he added.

Bryce laughed again, happily.

. . . . .

We stayed up later than planned for two reasons. One, Bryce's real insistence that in honor of his own joke there be cookies as an extra dessert course, and two, the mission of pulling the mattress from the bed in Henrik's room onto the floor, and dragging the one from mine into his room, a bit over from his. I guess listening to each other breath while we slept was supposed to be a comfort thing, for the inevitable, nightmarish day when we couldn't.

I probably talked more in the hour after we'd turned the lights off than I had in my entire life. It still felt awkward, and I kind of wished that the lights were turned on, and I talked mostly because I wanted to make sure Henrik was still talking, but still… it was nice. Other than the fact that in a few days we could've both been horribly murdered.

Oddly enough, we didn't have much to actually say about that.

The conversation had mostly faded out, and I got stuck listening to the impending silence. "Are you still awake?" I whispered at one point.

"Yeah. What?"

"Nothing."

Nothing, except the fact that I felt like I couldn't breathe because I thought too much. This time together—it was supposed to be for comfort, but it was just going to make everything worse, in the end… I got a nightmare vision of taking a weapon out of Henrik's lifeless body in the arena, of being all alone, of there being silence at night not even delayed by his voice. It could come down to the two of us, and only one of us would come back. I would die, or Henrik would die, just like in the tribute demonstrations. Only one of us could live, and it was more likely that neither of us would—

"It's not fair! A death lottery, that's all it is! A death lottery—it's not fair, it's not—"

My mother was right, except that it wasn't a lottery. We were meant to get chosen. Someone out there decided that out of every twelve- to eighteen-year-old in District Nine, we would be the ones to die. Why? What had we done? WHAT DID WE DO TO YOU?! I screamed mentally, and then I was hearing, "Ikky? Are you okay?"

I shook my head, forgetting about the darkness for a second, realizing that not-mentally, I was crying, for the first time in a long, long time. We were going to die. We were going to die, and that would be just, just… the end. And Panem only knew what came after that. We. Were going. To die.

Someone—Henrik—touched my shoulder, and I jumped. "It's okay."

"We're going to die," I said out loud. "Both of us, all of us—we're going—" my voice broke "—to die. And there's nothing we can—"

I stopped, sobbing too hard, and Henrik moved closer to me, hugged me again, just as tightly. "We're not going to die. You're not going to die."

"B-but we—we are—we're going to—to—"

"No. You're not. … My brother would kill me. I'd kill me."

It didn't help; nothing could. So, for a long time, I cried, and Henrik held me just the same, and at some point, I finally fell asleep.