The Frozen Wave

Troy Reyes, Age 15, District Four Male Tribute

I quickly became convinced that I was the only Career not involved in some conflict going on. Sage, Aurelia, Delora and Saber had their whole deal about someone from Three being in the alliance. Jullius had isolated himself over his breakdown and so was generally suspected as the one that would try to kill us all in our sleep. Evander seemed under attack by his sister. That left me.

I didn't really care about Saber being in the alliance; I had some level of trust in (and maybe pity for) Jullius; I wasn't getting in the way of the twins.

Maybe that would all work in my favor in the arena.

Or not.

The second day of training found us at knife-throwing, and Aurelia seemed to be the best at it, so stood several feet further away from the targets than the rest of us. Which gave her plenty of chances to scare the living daylights out of her brother by just nearly hitting him by aiming at the target he stood closest to.

I wasn't ridiculously far away from him, but I wasn't about to move.

One knife went especially close, and Saber, apparently sick of the twins' arguments, snapped, "Watch it, Two."

Aurelia smirked at him, but apparently she was plenty willing to play that game, because she almost-hit Delora next. Saber clearly saw it coming and grabbed the knife out of the air, whipped around, made sure it went close enough to Aurelia for her to (almost) flinch, and let it find a target at the nearby archery station, where the poor tributes seemed scared out of their minds. One—Eleven, I think—screamed and nearly fainted, but one of her allies caught her. Saber seemed unconcerned, and Aurelia said, "Watch it, Three," all high-pitched-sing-song like, clearly just to mock him. I made sure to stay out of the way, but Evander looked at them, distressed, and I had to feel bad.

I walked over to him, as the weapon throwing mostly came to a halt. "Hey, don't freak out or anything, but Saber's glarin' daggers at your sister."

He glanced over his shoulder at them, shooting the same kind of look at Saber. He attempted to make light of it all: "'Hey, don't freak out or anything, but': I'd be more concerned about the way he's looking at Delora. … I planned on getting some sleep during the Games. Guess not, eh?"

I stared, my reaction delayed by shock that he'd dare to say that, and then I started cracking up like I hadn't since I was back home, safe in Four. "We'll just get separate tents. One for us, one for the girls, and one for them."

"If there's that many in the arena."

"Hope it's not a small one." I felt something like a coy smile coming onto my face.

Evander smirked, and it looked remarkably, creepily like his sister's.

"—Hoverboard station. Now," Saber snapped at us, and as most of the alliance was already halfway there, it became apparent that we'd missed that conversation.

"So wha'd'ya think about that creepy computer game thing?" I asked him as we walked behind the others.

"Creepy is the word," he said.

"What'd it—what'd it make you do?"

He glanced around, talked quieter: "Put me in a bunch of hypothetical situations mostly around my sister."

"Yeah," was all I said, since he hadn't asked the question back.

"What about you?"

"Hypothetical stuff, too. Alliance issues and fights and stuff." I shrugged. "Some of it wasn't that bad."

He nodded.

"I'd rather be swimming, though."

"You're really into that stuff, in Four?"

"Yeah. 'Course. I was raised on the water."

"I'd rather be dry," he deadpanned after a few seconds. "But to each his own."

The instructor at the hoverboard station gave us a "shut up" look, so we did. He explained how the hoverboards worked (it was like a surfboard, except small, and it floated in the air instead of on water), and then pointed out the area of the gym that they worked in (because there was something underground that made them work, long word that I didn't know).

We all grabbed one and started trying to get on them. Harder than a surfboard. They weren't balancing on anything and so were a lot easier to move, which made getting both feet on them hard. But Delora and I were still the first ones on them, which meant that District Four had done something for us. I experimented, and working them became fairly obvious: lean right, turn right, lean left, go left. Leaning backwards made you stop, and the more you leant forwards, the faster you went. I tried to see how tight I could get the turns to be, how fast they went.

When Delora almost ran into Saber when she tried to get off her hoverboard, it turned out that Aurelia had unknowingly created the running joke of the Careers this year by throwing Saber's words back at him. Now, he said, "Watch it, Four."

. . . . .

At lunch, Saber suggested we split up for the afternoon. Whether it was to keep certain people from killing each other or just out of his annoyance, I didn't know. But then the groups became Sage and Aurelia, Evander and me, and him and Delora. "Yeah, right," said Aurelia. "Why do I think you two going off on your own isn't a good idea?"

"And what about Jullius?" asked Evander, as if he wasn't sitting next to him.

"He can come with us," I said, jumping in, and before I could get to what I thought of splitting up, I got interrupted—

"—Whatever," Saber answered that conversation, and to Aurelia, "As much as a bad idea it is for you and Sage to have time to make plans."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you're just as likely to betray the alliance as I am!"

"As if. I'm not a traitor."

"Hey," Evander cut in, interrupting whatever Sage was about to say. "How about you go with Saber and Sage can go with Delora?"

"And you're not planning anything?" his sister scowled at him.

"Far less likely," said Saber. "Fine."

. . . . .

After lunch, Evander proposed going to the sword station, since we could all stand to brush up on that. I had to agree, but Jullius went pale and said he might go back to the hoverboard station for more practice. He left, awkwardly but really fast, and Evander just kind of shrugged at me. We headed to the sword-fighting station.

We were the only ones there, so if we were acting as allies, we had no opponents, or at least one of us wouldn't. The instructor solved this easily, rather than just having us go against each other. "You two! Fancy a match?" he called to the tributes at the next station over. They seemed rather unabsorbed in their edible plant sorting, so just exchanged a glance and then walked over. The instructor seemed to know them and seemed amused at this idea, so they'd probably dropped by before.

They were the pair from Nine, I realized, and my confidence immediately went up. The crazy district. The girl was five-foot-nothing-ninety-pounds-soaking-wet (apparently the District Nine prison system's catering sucked), and I had years of experience on them both.

"All right, pick your weapons."

I finally noticed the rack of sword choices, and in the moment that the Nine duo stepped towards them, Evander pulled me back, said, "I'll take the boy, okay?"

"Sounds like a plan."

I noted what weapons our opponents had chosen before picking mine, and noticed that the girl had chosen a brand of smallsword that you didn't fight with unless you were (a), very, very good, or (b), a complete idiot who didn't know the former. And the Nine girl didn't strike me as a complete idiot. I chose the same, although I knew from training that even Delora, who was a long-distance fighter, could take me in a swordfight.

"On your marks."

There were several pieces of tape on the ground, and we all stood on one that was a corner of the smallest possible square, Evander on my right, the Nine girl in front of me, her partner in front of Evander.

"Rules: no kicking, biting, scratching, clawing, hair-pulling, full-on hand-to-hand combat, or anything else that may cause serious injury. Sword-fighting only. They're dull blades, and you only need to tap one of the red sensors on your opponents uniform for them to be out, you don't need to stab them, all right?" Red sensors? As he said it, he hit a button and red circles starting to glow on our uniforms over wherever an injury would be fatal.

We all nodded, and he said, "Get set." I pulled my sword in close to me, diagonal across my heart.

"And… start."

All four of us shifted around a bit, and every move I made, the Nine girl mirrored perfectly. Tilt my sword to be diagonal the other way, so did she, so that I'd have to change my angle to be able to knock her sword out of her hand. None of us had made any attack, and if Nine's reactions weren't so quick, I would've moved already. (Well, there was the way that her partner cocked his head at me, daring me to so much as take a step towards her, too.)

I took in a breath, whipped my sword around to the other side and swung it out towards hers, but she'd already sprung at me, dodging my weapon and trying to hit one of the sensors on my side. I jumped back (and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Nine boy and Evander well into the battle), brought my sword up to knock hers away, twisted to the right, brought my sword back to the left and back again, the metal colliding and making a shrieking noise.

One of my swings went high and she ducked right under it, so I had to angle lower (and the twisted part of my mind was noting that she was around the same height as Aurelia so I'd have to do the same thing if that ever happened—)

I stopped thinking so much, let instinct take over, realizing how much fear came into it even though we were fighting with dull blades in a gym with rules, not sharp ones in the arena. I went on the defense, blocking attacks with quick moves, the sword not going too far either direction.

And then it got complicated: the Nine boy, never turning away from Evander, jabbed his sword at me while he jumped out of the way of an attack on him. Oh, so you wanna fight now, too?

I got my sword away from the girl's and turned to go after the other Nine, when I realized my mistake, and by then, it was too late. The Nine girl hit one of the sensors on the back of my uniform, and while that distracted Evander, the boy hit one of his blinking red lights, and the instructor called round one over, a Nine victory.

What if we were in the arena?

"Well, damn."

The Nine pair high-fived.

"Yeah. Damn."

"Better learn to be better allies, eh?"

. . . . .

Back at the Stratagem game that night, realizing it would be the last time before my demonstration, it gave me an estimated training score of eight. I'd gotten a seven the first day of training and an eight for today, so it assumed I'd do about the same for the rest of the time. Eight. That was somewhat… low. The Gamemakers were hard to impress this year. I suspected it was because everyone was trained.

That seemed kind of unfair to me, but there wasn't anything to do about it then.

I'd just have to work at it tomorrow.