Jack Tailleur, 15
District Eight
Jack was rather impressed by the hovercraft. The technology needed to keep a piece of metal this big and this heavy with this many people on it in the air, without it seeming like the hunk of metal was even moving, must have taken years and years to develop. With the trajectory he was on, Jack figured that he would be capable of developing similar technology someday, but it would take years and years of schooling and training. He wasn't presumptuous enough to assume that he had that skillset quite yet. But he sure hoped that he could someday. Imagine the problems that he could solve!
While he was impressed by the technology of the hovercraft, he was, admittedly, not particularly impressed with his quarters. They were small. Jack could extend his arms and pretty much touch both walls at the same time. Jack had really no basis for complaining; he would only be on the hovercraft for one night as far as he knew, and there wasn't really enough space to make the quarters bigger and to have a common room. But, for him to not go crazy, Jack would have to spend as much time as he could in the common room before going to sleep. So, he took the book he was reading and snagged a seat on a very comfortable couch in the common area.
Just as Jack got to a good part, he heard some noise coming from behind him. He looked up to find Ella and Sigmund coming out of one of the rooms. Ella came over to Jack, while Sigmund began knocking on the other doors around the common area. "Hey, Jack. Am I disturbing you?"
"Hi, Ella. No, not at all. What's up?"
"We wanted to have a meeting of everyone on this hovercraft. It'll, of course, be happening here in the common room, so you don't have to move."
"Gotcha. What are we meeting about?"
"You'll find out when everyone gets here," replied Ella cryptically. Jack raised his eyebrows but chose not to push for answers. He turned back to the book, finishing up the section he was reading, then quickly put his book back in his room and went back to the common room, in which most of the other competitors were already gathered. Jack took a seat next to Paisley, who gave him a concerned look. Jack responded with a shrug. Eventually, after quite a bit of time, Sigmund approached the circle with one of the girls from Seven, who plopped down on an ottoman with a scowl on her face.
"All right. Hi, everybody," Sigmund began nervously. "I wanted to talk about an idea that Ella here and I had for the Events. As we all know by this point, we're going up against what is effectively a Career pack. With most of the well-trained tributes aligned together in one group, it will undoubtedly make it a lot harder for those not in the Career pack. Both Ella and I are incredibly frustrated by the thought of having a Career pack in the Games, particularly because it goes against all the work that is being done to get rid of the Games mentality so pervasive in this country.
"In the face of adversity like this, it's easy enough to give up and say, you know what, there's no way we can beat the Careers so why even try? But I think there's no reason to give up because we have two things the Careers don't have. First of all, we have intelligence and knowledge about things that don't connect to training. While training will be helpful for at least some of the challenges, if last year's Events give any indication of how this year's Events will go, another subset of the challenges will absolutely be based around knowledge that everyone in this circle is more likely to have than the Careers are. And secondly, we all, in some way or another, have motivation to win that I don't think the Careers could ever understand. Whether it's a desire to change or eliminate the Games to protect innocent kids, a hope to find oneself in some way, or to win to make a better life for one's family, we want to win to a degree that the Careers could never understand. If we combine these two things together, we become a force way more powerful than the Careers.
"Ella and I want to propose an actually secret counter-alliance. The worst thing we can do as outer district tributes is target each other; we are much better off targeting the Careers. Knowing that we all have each other's back is valuable, because it keeps us somewhat safer, allowing us to maybe take bigger risks during the Events. And the Careers would never see it coming; while we are specifically targeting them, they'll be ad hoc targeting all of the outer district competitors, allowing us to hopefully gain an even greater upper hand." Sigmund took a breath. "What do you think?"
"What happens if we say no?" asked Paisley.
"Nothing," Ella asserted. "It doesn't make sense for us to go after you when the Careers are our biggest threat. We just ask that you keep the alliance a secret."
"Why us four?" asked Kiyo.
"Well, I enjoyed getting to know Herman and Jack when we played Dungeons and Dragons, and Ella was adamant about including the team from Seven when we discussed the matter the other day. It's just good luck that we all ended up on the same hovercraft.
The group fell silent for a moment. "Can we have some time to think?" asked the other girl from Seven, who wasn't quite so angry.
"Yeah. Just let us know what you think and then we'll have a more final alliance meeting at some point later."
Jack beckoned for Paisley to follow him, then made his way to his cubicle. Once the door was closed, Paisley asked, "So, what do you think?"
"Honestly, I'm apprehensive. I don't know how much I can trust the other teams because it feels like Sigmund and Ella just threw the alliance together with the teams that happened to be on this hovercraft. It makes me nervous to put my fate in the hands of other people. What do you think?"
"I mean, I think there is no way that this goes badly for us," Paisley admitted. "Any team that agrees to an alliance is agreeing to have the back of the people in that alliance. Plus, even if things go badly, we have the elimination challenge as a buffer. And I really do think that we can win those."
"And we could still end up in the elimination challenge anyway because of the popularity thing?" Jack mused. "Do you really trust the other teams?"
"Honestly? I do. I really do."
"All right. I'll agree, but I think we still need another layer of protection."
A brief moment of silence followed. "And what is that?"
"I think we need a plurality."
"A what?"
"A plurality. Basically, we need to add one person to our alliance, so that if we have to vote on something, we have the highest concentration of individual votes. It's an extra security feature"
Paisley shrugged. "It makes no difference to me. If you can get Sigmund to agree to it, go for it."
Darcy Spades, 17
District Seven
Darcy was not exactly what she would consider a people person. Sure, she had interactions with other people from time to time. But she was not the kind of person who went out of her way to interact with other people. The moments in which she interacted with other people that weren't her husband usually came because of her profession; Darcy often found herself comforting those mourners whose graves she dug, even occasionally acting as somewhat of a (completely unlicensed) therapist. And the status of her social life didn't really bother her. Someday when she had a child, she was sure that she would be spending time with the parents of that child's friends as the children ran through forests and playgrounds, and that they would all end up supporting each other when those kids broke their first bones from falling out of a tree, as was a rite of passage in Seven. But for now, she was quite happy with her husband and her trees and her work back in Seven.
Of course, the Events were different than Seven. These Events were built around your social abilities. You needed to make friends with other competitors to be sure that you didn't become easy cannon fodder at some point; it was much easier to send someone to elimination with whom you had no connection. And you needed to network with Capitolites so that they would eventually vote for you, so you didn't become the least popular. Darcy had a feeling that she and Oksana weren't doing too hot on either count. The elimination challenge provided an opportunity to save the girls, but it wasn't foolproof. First of all, one could only win so many of them in a row when your luck ran out. And secondly, when one's district partner was currently planking on her bed, crying unstoppably, it didn't bode well for one's ability to win any challenge.
Darcy wasn't giving up, though. Darcy wanted to win. She really, really did! The money would be a huge help for her and her whole family and would allow her to financially support them so that her parents would have to work shorter hours and so that her child would maybe not have to take a job until they were out of school. To do that, she needed to convince Oksana to join this alliance, to give them a safety blanket and therefore a fighting chance. But that was proving to be easier said than done.
"Oksana? Can I come in?"
"No."
"Oksana, come on. We have to talk about this alliance idea."
"No. I don't want to talk about it."
"Why not?" Darcy paused to allow Oksana to answer.
"I… I just don't want to talk."
Darcy pushed Oksana's door open and stepped inside. "Oksana, you can't keep giving that answer every time someone asks you to do something. There has to be something bigger going on."
"How do you know?" Oksana asked in a very accusatory tone.
"You've basically spent the entirety of the past few days either alone and crying in your room or scowling at everyone in your general vicinity. You haven't talked to Anthony, You haven't talked to Sawyer, and you've barely talked to me or Alvin. You're pushing everyone away from you but being alone is not making things any better for you."
"But it doesn't matter! Nothing matters with these Events."
"What do you mean?"
Oksana curled up in fetal position, facing the wall. "I don't want to talk about it."
Darcy closed the door behind her and took a seat next to Oksana on her bed. "You never really had a chance to grieve for Avery, did you?"
Oksana turned her head to face Darcy. "What makes you say that?"
"Avery was one of the first people whose graves I dug. I was young then, I think I was nine or ten. My parents were struggling to make ends meet, so I volunteered to take on some work after school. The best and safest thing they could figure out for me to do was to stay as far away from falling trees, and the only place they could find a job for me was with the gravedigger. Over the summer before school started I trained with the gravedigger. The first grave we worked on was Avery's grave, because… well, it was smaller than some of the others. You were young when he died, right?"
"I was seven."
"And he was the oldest sibling, right?"
"Yes. He protected me and my siblings."
"Did you ever have a chance to grieve for him?" asked Darcy.
Oksana looked stunned. "I grieve for him every moment of every day," she snapped. "When I go to sleep at night, I miss his hand rubbing my back. I miss waking up and going downstairs to see him waiting for me and smiling. I miss his chocolate chip pancakes that he used to make for me on special days. I miss the way that he used to spend time with me and Sebastian and Marcella whenever he could. And I miss not knowing the truth about my father and being able to just be a kid without having to worry about the next time he would lash out at any of my siblings and not needing to be the one to protect them."
"But did you ever have a chance to go through the grieving process? Have you truly accepted the fact that Avery is dead? It's OK to be sad every now and then, but to be this incapable of functioning for this long is alarming, and potentially even dangerous."
"I don't know if I'll ever accept that Avery is dead. How could I? He was torn from our family when he was just twelve. Twelve! What did a twelve-year-old do to deserve being killed?"
"Nothing. Nobody can justify it. But people are working to stop it. Like Ella. That's what she was trying to talk to you about the other night. Finding a way to make it so nobody has to lose their Averys again."
"But she doesn't get it! Losing a sibling is a kind of pain that nobody can understand."
"Nobody except for everyone who has lost a sibling to the Games before you," Darcy teased a little bit. Seeing how upset Oksana became, Darcy backpedaled a hair. "Look. Even if other people don't have the exact same experiences as you have, they have similar experiences where they can understand what you're going through. Building those connections with other people will help you heal."
"Forming this alliance is not going to bring Avery back."
"No, but it might bring Oksana back. And who knows? Maybe Ella and Sigmund will get so smart that they'll find a way to raise the dead and bring Avery back to you."
"I doubt it," Oksana grumbled, curling back up into a ball. "If you want to join the alliance, go right ahead," she gave up. "But don't expect me to do much of anything with it."
"All right. If you need anything, let me know, OK?"
"OK."
Feeling moderately satisfied, Darcy left Oksana's room and closed the door quietly. She'd accomplished the first part of her goal, getting herself a little bit more protection.
Now, she just needed to figure out how to motivate her partner to actually win this thing.
It was late, probably later than Ruby Emerald should have been in her office. But Ruby didn't particularly care on this night. Ruby probably wouldn't get much sleep until the Events were over and all twenty-eight competitors were safely back in their home districts. In the Games, if something happened to one of the competitors, it wasn't the end of the world. Sure, Ruby wanted everything to be fair, but the sad reality of the Games was that twenty-four children would die anyway; a little accident before the Games wasn't the end of the world. But if any little thing went wrong during the Events, if any competitor had any form of injury, it could be disastrous for Ruby and all the changes that she was striving to make for the country. And now, the competitors were traveling to compete in the Events at the farthest possible point from the Capitol. If something were to happen, it would take far too long to either get to Thirteen or to get a competitor back to the Capitol for Ruby's liking.
Of course, with the military based in Thirteen and state-of-the-art medical facilities just across the border in Twelve, the odds of something happening that couldn't be dealt with before someone from the Capitol could get there was rather slim, a fact that had been reiterated to Ruby multiple times by her son and niece. It didn't really do anything to quell Ruby's nerves, but they kept trying.
A knock on Ruby's door caused the president to look up from the paperwork she was reviewing. "Who is it?"
"It's Violet."
"Oh, come on in, darling." Ruby worked to neaten up her papers so that Violet had a place to sit.
Violet opened the door and took a step in. "What are you working on?"
"Just reviewing some paperwork that really needed to be reviewed." The paperwork absolutely did not have to be reviewed at that moment. "Is everything good?" Ruby swiftly changed the subject.
"Yeah. I was just coming to let you know that the transport is safely off to Thirteen."
"Very good. And everyone and everything was checked?"
"Yes, anything that went onto any hovercraft going to Thirteen was checked and all people were wanded down."
"Fantastic. Any problems?"
Violet sighed. "A few supply bags were found to have objects in them that might be used to create an explosive. It's unclear who exactly placed them in there. I brought the objects in question to Soorim, who said that those things do have other uses in Thirteen in particular and that while some of those materials were actually used for Events competitions, Soorim was under the impression that they had all they needed already in the Arena. We'll double-check on the numbers but for now, we've confiscated those items and are keeping them under tight guard."
"Do you know who had access to the bags?"
"They were packed under careful supervision in our facility, and checked and inventoried by me, then Soorim, and then Cerise gave each bag a final check as head of the Events Fairness Committee. Each bag was inventoried and numbered by Soorim and me, and I believe Cerise had worked with Soorim to organize the system by which and the people by whom those bags would be unpacked and organized when they got to Thirteen."
"Hmm." Ruby took a deep breath, feeling very glad that she had put extra security procedures in place. "What's your take on the matter?"
"I don't know. I would like to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's a misunderstanding, but with two rebel groups at play, it wouldn't surprise me if there was somehow some interference. But I struggle to figure out how they would have gotten access to the bags. They were guarded around the clock from when they were packed to when they were brought out to be put on the hovercraft by elite Peacekeepers and SpOps members."
"All people who have gone through extensive background checks."
"Precisely."
"Hmm. All right. We'll have to check the security tapes from that room and try to figure out what happened. Do you have anything else?"
"Yeah, I have the final competition descriptions for you to look over. We finally solidified which is going to happen on which day."
"About time, huh?" Ruby asked, a teasing smile on her face. She took the folder from Violet's hand and opened it, taking a moment to skim the piece of paper it contained. "These look good. I'm still really concerned about the District Four challenge. You're collecting that information unobtrusively, yes?"
"Yes."
"And you have therapists that will be available immediately after each competitor finishes?"
"As per your request, yes."
"Just be ready to pull the plug if it becomes necessary. The competitors' safety is my biggest concern." Ruby looked over the document once more. "You know, that District Seven challenge looks epic. Will there be enough time to set it up?"
"Soorim assures me there will be, simply because the second challenge that day is really rather simple."
"Great. Tell Euodia that it looks really good and she should be proud. Now, is anyone official going to Thirteen tonight? I know it's only for one night and then we're basically sending the kids back in this direction."
"Well, you know Garnet is already there for the Opening Ceremony tomorrow. Cerise, Soorim, and I are going in about twenty minutes. Everyone else is staying here for last-minute preparations. And we should beat the competitors there too, honestly."
"Really?"
"Yeah. To stall, we sent the competitor and stylists hovercrafts west for an hour before heading east towards Thirteen. Our craft will go faster because it has fewer things weighing it down, and we'll hopefully beat them by about two hours."
"Very smart. Anything else?"
"Yeah, one other thing. What do you want me to do about this Career alliance?"
Ruby sighed. "I'm not thrilled, to be sure. It kind of undoes what I've set out to do with the Events, namely set them apart from the Games, more than anything. But I don't want you to interfere. First of all, we should not interfere with the Events under any circumstances unless the lives or health of the competitors are being put in danger by another competitor. But more importantly, Career alliances never last, and especially considering that some of the Careers have already begun to interact with other competitors, I'm not sure if they'll really be able to be as separate as they purport to be. We should keep an eye on it but I don't want to meddle as my grandfather would have done."
"But if we do things that are in our purview to chip away at it?"
Ruby smiled a little bit. "I mean, I wouldn't complain."
Well, this chapter is a bit delayed. The dang coronavirus has kind of mixed up all of my plans and also wasn't the best for my mental health. But we're here and we're pushing on, and hopefully being at home for the foreseeable future will help me get some writing done!
So, what did you think of this chapter? Did you see Sigmund's plan coming? Do you think it'll work any better or worse that the Career alliance? What did you think of that little Ruby section at the end? What happened with the supply bags? And what is Violet thinking about doing?
I have now two more stockpiled chapters for the story, and after that, we move into the Events! Which is very exciting. I can't wait for everyone to see what I have in store!
See you soon,
Goldie031
