The Tribute
My eyes are glued to the staticky screen of the old TV as Dellon the Drone takes his final voyage. In his claw dangles a long-haired doll covered with dark stitches. I remember when Beetee had sent Fawkes a spool of red string.
"Use this to embroider names on her." He'd told Ernest.
"What kind of names?" The twelve-year-old had asked, his eyes wide.
"The worst you can think of." Fawkes had said. "I'm sure you can think of some really nasty ones. Maybe put "Kick Me." on her back. That'll be good."
Ernest had looked troubled and Fawkes had caught that look with dark, serious eyes.
"Whatever you can do to her, she deserves it. I watched her kill a girl, right in front of me. She's dangerous. Now we can even the odds a little."
Now all I can do is watch as my drone travels through the house. Fawkes reaches across and twists a dial. His fingers barely brush it but the image on the screen changes to where the Careers are hunting. Dellon floats onto the screen like a ghost.
I examine Picaresque. I'm not as good at reading people as Fawkes is but even I can tell something's wrong with her. One of her eyes is covered by a bandage and her hands keep fluttering up to it. Something must've happened to her. Maybe she'd been the first to scream, when the Careers had been attacked on day three.
The moment Picaresque spots Dellon carrying her doll, she jumps backwards. She hides her face in her hands, like the doll will just disappear if she can't see it. The other Careers all react differently, from Candida, who rushes to comfort Picaresque, to Victor, who throws his head back and laughs. When Dellon drops the doll onto the floor, Victor's the one who grabs it.
The moment his fingers close around the doll, the shriek begins.
My hands instinctively fly to my ears. It feels like they're being cleaned by red-hot pokers. The pain makes dark shapes dance in my field of vision. It only lasts a few moments but when I glance back at the screen, everything's changed.
Picaresque's spear is sticking out of Victor's neck.
The cannon sounds muted under the ringing in my ears. I watch as Picaresque tugs her spear out of her ally's neck with a spray of blood and throw it at her district partner. It hits Bagman right in the leg. The other Careers scatter as Bagman desperately tries to limp away from the wild-eyed girl stalking him.
"Oh, Picaresque," Fawkes says, his eyes bright with joy, "Where did you go wrong?"
I watch Picaresque's hands close around the spear in Bagman's leg and tears it upwards, severing tendons and ensuring that he can't escape. When she strikes again, plunging the spear into his back, a cannon fires and I see the expression on Picaresque's face.
It's not triumphant. It's not glorious. She's relieved.
"She's scared." I say, softly.
"We all are." Fawkes says. "Fear is a fickle thing. When you're afraid, you can move mountains or you can crumble. It's the one weapon us outliers are trained to wield and the Careers aren't. We stand there like sheep at the reaping every year praying that it won't be us. When it is, we have to adapt. We know that fear keeps us alive. But Careers... they're told that fear makes them weak. So when someone happens that shocks them, like an injury from a particularly tough outlier or a mutt, it grows inside them like a parasite until they snap."
"That's... interesting." I say. Now that our plan to divide the Careers is complete, I can't help but feel a little sorry for Picaresque. I know she's a Career, just like the girl who'd tortured my best friend to death. But it was how she was raised. The ordeal that we'd put her through - that we're still putting her through - had lasted for days.
The more I watch the desperate look in Picaresque's eyes, the more what we're doing to her looks like torture.
"Who do you think will be the next to die?" Fawkes asks, grinning. He's enjoying this! "My bet is Candida."
There's nothing to do. Nothing but sit and wait and wonder. I wonder how long Fawkes will stay loyal, what I can do to stop him if he doesn't.
"What's our next move?" I ask as Fawkes is turning the dial on the TV, following Picaresque on her hunt.
"Hopefully there'll only be one Career left after this. Then it'll just be us, the last Career, Ramona 2.0 and Stema. I reckon that Ramona won't be taken down easily. If she's made it this far without being targeted, she must have something dangerous up her sleeve. She'll be our next target."
I try to think back to the last time I saw Ramona Lopez. It was her interview in a bloodstained dress. Ever since the games had begun, she'd most likely been lurking somewhere in the shadows, forgotten, unnoticed.
Waiting to strike.
I'm glad the Fawkes has realised that we'll all need to work together to defeat her. Now I know I won't need to worry about him until Ramona 2.0's dead.
A cannon fires, shocking me out of my thoughts.
"Yeah! Candida's dead!" Fawkes punches the air. "Didn't I say she'd be next?"
"How did you know?" I find myself asking.
"She was too friendly with Picaresque." Fawkes explains. "Gravel and Cornelia were both smart enough to put some distance between themselves and the traitor in their alliance. Candida changed her mind and went back to reason with Picaresque, so she paid the price. The arena's no place to make friends."
"Is that why you're so annoying?" I ask. "Because you don't want to make any friends?"
Fawkes laughs, bitterly, "It's actually quite liberating. Being annoying. Not giving a damn about other people. I wish I'd figured it out sooner. It would've saved me a lot of heartbreak."
"It sounds lonely." Ernest says, quietly. It's rare he gets involved in my conversations with Fawkes. I get the feeling that Ernest doesn't like Fawkes very much, especially after Fawkes had asked him to sew those words on Picaresque's doll.
"I'd rather be lonely in Victor's Village than a corpse in a mass grave." Fawkes says.
Yay! A betrayal! I'd been planning for Picaresque to turn on the others since the beginning. I knew from the start she'd be the most vulnerable to Fawkes' psychological warfare. A few events led to Picaresque losing her mind, including the death of Zostra in the bloodbath, which lead to Picaresque becoming paranoid that Zostra had put a curse on her.
I can now reveal, without fear of spoilers, that the arena is the Betrayal at House on the Hill game board. When I was struggling to think of a good arena for Binah, I thought of this game, where the players are one of up to six explorers in a haunted house, who work together until a supernatural event causes one to turn on the others. I know what you Hunger Games fans are thinking: They're just like the Career pack! I based all the Careers on characters from the game (and one of the outliers. Hello, Zostra), although some are more obvious than others. As well as this, nine of my tributes owe at least part of their name to one of these characters.
11th Place: Victor Beaufort, Speared by Picaresque
So Victor's name didn't come true! I based Victor on Professor Longfellow, which didn't come across much in the arena. Victor had a similar backstory to Longfellow, which I'll go into in another story. I did try to make Victor the smartest and most level-headed of the Careers, which put him in a good position to become their leader. Unfortunately, it also meant that he was the most dismissive of Picaresque so he became her first target.
10th Place: Bagman Clerval, Speared by Picaresque
Because you're not a real traitor unless you're a district traitor as well. Bagman was the hardest Career for me to write because he seemed a bit like the extra one, the sixth wheel. I tried to base him on Ox Bellows but the only thing they really have in common is a fear of the dark. This arena was definitely a mixed-bag for Bagman because it was so dark but also he got to kill people with a chainsaw. Now his chainsaw is silenced forever.
9th Place: Candida Dubourde, Speared by Picaresque
Candida is probably one the most faithful Careers to the character she was based on. Just like Missy Dubourde, Candida was a wannabe doctor and that caring doctor's mentality extended to all of her patients. It didn't extend to the outliers, as Binah almost learned the hard way in the bloodbath. Unfortunately for Candida, she grew to care too much for Picaresque and prioritised helping her ally over saving herself.
As the 'traitor' has killed over half of the 'heroes', I think it's safe to say Picaresque would've won quite a few haunt scenarios. She deserves some credit for winning this game of Betrayal at House on the Hill, even though she's supposed to be playing the Hunger Games.