Post-Reaping. On the trains. Afternoon.
"There are more than fifty-three jackets on the cycler in my closet. I've tried to get to the end of them before, but eventually I stopped counting." Aldera thumbs a command into the keypad, then slides the chrome screen open again. All the jackets available are in shades of red this time. "You can sort clothing items by color, material, and body type. Three's been testing a new learning algorithm for the closets that'll help them personally adapt to their users, so they can automatically offer outfits based on your past choices. And the program's synced with local meteorological readings, so if the weather's bad outside, it'll automatically recommend its selection of raincoats and galoshes, and things like that."
"Goodness," Graham says, Adam's apple bobbing. "Any contents for emergency situations, then? For instance, if you told it you needed armor?"
"Actually, yes. If the fire alert system's activated anywhere on the train, the closets all open up to breathing masks and flame resistant suits with LEDs sewn in, so you can find your way out in case of smoke. They do gas masks in case of chemical leaks too. But I don't think they have the kind of armor you're thinking of."
"Goodness," Graham says again, with reduced although valiant enthusiasm.
Aldera sighs, backing her chair up from the closet. "I'm sorry. I know it's not really any help. I thought it would be interesting. When I got on this train the first time, my partner didn't leave the dining car even once, but I was obsessed with the clothing. In the district, I had exactly eight dresses, and one was just for the Reaping. And I had ten hairbands, four cardigans, three pairs of tights, and two pairs of shoes. Technically three, but those were galoshes. Not flattering."
Graham nods raptly, chin supported by his hand. Simulating interest in inane topics could be a legitimate survival skill when it comes to sponsors, Aldera thinks, both relieved and repulsed that this is the first place her mind goes to now.
"...So I produced an easy equation to make sure I could wear a different outfit every day to school. There were 1680 possible combinations. Or 2520 if I counted the galoshes. I really put it to work. There would've been enough unique outfits to last me more than four years." She gestures to the chrome closet. "Then they took me here. I wanted to update the equation, mostly to distract myself. But I kept scrolling and scrolling. It was ridiculous. And if that was just the jackets..."
"Enough outfits to last you for lifetimes," Graham supplies.
"And once I got to my room in the Capitol, there were enough for the rest of District Three. I gave up on the formula. Just ended up choosing a new set of eight dresses. A kind of 'analysis paralysis.' Easton thought that was funny."
"I was going to mention how lovely your dress is. I've admired your style since the 58th. The bobbed curls and tartan skirt for your songwriting showcase in the Talent feature — classically brilliant."
"Oh. Thank you, Graham." She folds her hands in her lap. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting...my tribute last year barely said a word to me. Even when we got to interview prep, I mean."
"Unfortunate but forgivable stance. The odds of Milo's survival, which would've made the third of a nearly unbroken District Three cluster, were next to 'fuck-all,' if you'll pardon my Ten."
Aldera flushes, breath drawn between her teeth. Pascale had told her as much in the same year. But everything Pascale said with those dead-gray eyes facing down on you sounded like that, as if you weren't just a fool for your optimism, but an obstruction. Easton bought into all of it. Didn't step up to mentor a doomed kid, leaving Aldera to flail for sponsors and media coverage and strategy, and Pascale to guide her begrudgingly. And just because she ended up right didn't mean it wasn't the right thing to do.
And look where Pascale left her tributes anyway. Easton, shell-shocked and bereft without her on the stage, trying numbly to address his frantic girl Hex while a hundred other plans and challenges flooded him to distraction. Aldera had already known he was being suckered into a rebels' game he couldn't play. And Pascale knew it, and she ran, after she'd coaxed him too far to turn back.
"Not that I'm suggesting I'll refuse to work with you," says Graham, long fingers reaffixing his glasses over his ears. There's only the hint of a tremor. "I simply don't believe that either of us should get our hopes up."
"Graham..."
"I am a sensitive boy," he says, with the nearest thing to good humor. Reaching past her, he enters a command into the keypad, and opens the screen to a fine array of tasseled scarves. He flips a sapphire-colored one out and tries it around his neck with a jaunty twist, raised brow seeking approval. "As they termed me in the schoolyard. I think of myself as a conscientious pacifist."
"So did I. It doesn't...matter. What you used to think of yourself. Before you find out what you actually are." Aldera tries to clear the drumming pulse in her temples, pressing the heels of her palms down. "You can't compare it, living before the arena and during the arena. Everything you cared about starts to wither out of you. The only thing left is your brain stem trying to stay alive. It's a sense you've never had before. Right now you have a sense that you're Graham, and you're sensitive, and — I thought I was Aldera, who earned good grades and had a personality that wasn't compatible with — with poisoning somebody. It's not natural to kill each other. It has to be kicked in. If you'd known me in school, you never would've thought, she could do that, when it counted. Do you see?"
"Even if I could do that." Graham moistens his lips, looking down with a cough of laughter, as if it's been prodded out of him. The train car jolts, and he catches the closet handle and Aldera's armrest to stabilize her. Skating over the track, it rattles beneath them for a moment, and he waits. They would just be crossing through Nine now, Aldera thinks. There was set to be a storm crossing too. Throwing trees over the rails. "I hate to cast judgement on newer talent, but I did think it seemed rather doomed when the preeminent Pascale Desai failed to even grace us with her appearance."
Aldera has to bite her tongue, staring back, when the truth tries to slip.
It would help Graham if he knew it, wouldn't it. That Pascale, for all her cold duplicity, left the district for a far-fetched greater cause, not out of dismissal. It would even imply to him that there was a chance of change this year. He could stay a pacifist and survive. If he stayed alive, the rebels could come for him. Aldera can't imagine what they are trying to do, if not dissolve the Games. If she'd heard that whisper in her year — if Milo could have heard —
She can't. There's no chance she can. Panem, she wishes she'd never had a clue. Easton's leaked too much to her already, and it was bare enough. Does he know where Pascale actually ran? He'll snap if they question him. He could never keep the secrets like she can.
"That's all right," Graham says, running a hazel-brown fingertip thoughtfully around the edge of the fine scarf. He smiles, kindly and pained. "It's really all right. We each play the parts we're given."
He reaches down to hug her, and she responds automatically. Forgiveness. He's already forgiving her for not being enough. This is worse than last year, she realizes. Worse than Milo's self-dug pit of silence and denial. Graham is trying to accept what he shouldn't have had to accept. And it will be the same for years, because when the district realizes what the Capitol must already know, that Pascale is never coming back — the tributes will keep coming to Aldera, made Victor because the branch crushed her lower spine and not her trachea. They'll come to her over and over without believing she can help them. She didn't have the chance to learn how. And if Easton is killed for his secrets this year, she will do this all alone.
Graham might forgive. Aldera's cheek is damp, staining his royal blue scarf a muddy, clouded gray. She doesn't think this is something she can forgive.
Misty finds Selena by the window of the bar car, nursing a snifter of pure grenadine, with fat bruises on her face and arms and her blonde braid stuck to her face in strips. Against her better judgement, she joins her there, and takes a minute to observe the background. She's not going to talk unless Selena wants to do it.
Raindrops racing each other across the glass in wavering horizontal trails. The flattened, indistinct landscape between the lighted urban areas of Five, growing darker yellow and still more indistinct as a storm kicks in. The area is only broken up by the specters of wind turbines in long rows of white, like the massive, thrumming gravestones of an ancient race of giants. Lightning illuminates the sand and rocks, startlingly close. Tapping fingers on the sill, Misty counts only two seconds before the thunder chases it.
The land is dead here — has been for longer than the history books will say. She's wondered how many people used to live out here before it was scourged. There are places in the expanse that are permanently determined out of bounds, captured in rusty signs and fences so old they aren't electrified. There's nothing you would want to break in for and steal, anyway. The signs say as much in pictographs that a child could understand: skulls for 'death beyond this point.' The sickly black and yellow symbol of ionizing radiation. Places where the sand has melted into glass. The nuclear testing zones of the past bide their time. When the fences have fallen and the signs have been seared blank by the bright, terrible desert sun, the zones will still be waiting, and still poisonous. Like the shadows of District Thirteen. The unsurveilled space stretches for miles, but District Five knows not to try to run. There are enough skeletons already burned into this ground.
If there's one thing to be said for it, the sunsets are incredible out here. They come in every chemical color of the rainbow.
"You know about Pasiphon Otterly?" Selena asks, sucking a stray rivulet of grenadine noisily from her glass. Her breath smells like sugar and vomit. Misty's thankful for the excuse to look away from the deadlands, though she tries not to breathe in too deeply.
"He's the assistant to Caesar Flickerman, I think? They've brought him in as a guest on a few of the Games channels. He's not bad. He mostly analyzes the Career packs year to year." Misty squinches an eye. "Really gorgeous violet dreadlocks. Or indigo, I can't remember. It's his signature."
"Great. Hope he's a good fuck, too. He bought me for the night after the chariot rides. Looks like the 61st is starting out with a bang."
Selena's face is carved out of ice as she raises the syrup, swirls it, and takes it like a shot. Misty presses her lips together.
"Don't even try to tell me you're sorry."
"I was going to mention that you shouldn't say that where Ling and Newel could hear you."
"Oh, the eff-word, or the sex slavery?"
Misty winces. "The latter, if possible."
"My bad." Selena peels a strand of her hair out of the sticky pink residue. "Wouldn't want them to think they're not cut out for the Victoring business. What are you gonna tell Ling if she makes it, 'just lie back and think of Panem?' Or do you pretend it's Snow? Maybe Kieran Stonebrook? He's fit. I bet he effs."
Misty hesitates, open-mouthed.
"I'm just messing." Selena doesn't really soften, but she smacks her on the shoulder with something passable as good-naturedness, finally leaving the window to rinse her glass under the faucet. "If I had the chance, I probably would've jumped in with the Careers too and everything. Survival instinct."
Misty risks a weak smile. "Effing liar."
Selena cackles until she has to gag up pink syrup. It stretches in a mucousy string between her lips and the drain, the consistency appearing as though she's managed to spit up an organ. Misty almost hurries to aid her, but she's brusquely waved away, and Selena scrapes the rest of it off her tongue. The snifter goes under the grenadine bottle again in seconds, filling the bottom quarter with the vile, cloying-sour mix. The bottle itself is down by more than half.
"Have you been camping here all day?"
Selena toasts her. "Not yet. Got here after I let Newel beat me up. It was pretty cathartic. He cried, thanked me, then took a nap, so I guess it was a job well done."
"Why would you even — okay. You know that Vito didn't want you doing this. The binging."
"I knew Vito for two years total before he went on sabbatical, and you knew him for half that, Miss Flawless, so thanks for the insight. It's not like he has room to talk. This stuff's not even alcoholic."
Misty's lame idea of joking that Selena isn't legal anyway withers in her mouth. She is pretending so hard not to seem defensive, with her battered arms angled cockily and her head upright. Misty's arena of cramped, twisting ventilation pipes and leering, faux-charming Careers was a kind of hell, but she would admit that outlasting a slowly freezing, rat-infested concrete basement at fourteen years old, completely alone, is a whole different kind of hell on the mind. If Selena wanted her to admit it. Which she would never say. She's right about Vito too. Misty was always the favored girl. 'Flawless.' Selena's six years out of the Games and not even legal yet, and it's a bad deal. She can't fix that.
The lightning rips through the bile-colored sky again, and thunder blasts hard enough to tinkle the glasses on the bar. Misty crosses the distance, collects a crystal snifter, and holds it out to Selena, who stares back from under her lids as though the older Victor might be made of worms.
"Try me," Misty says.
"I bet you throw up on the spot." Selena drips a generous share of syrup into the glass. "I will fully have the right to laugh at you for ten minutes."
"I accept your wager," she says, with the affected primness of a Capitolite.
Is Selena breathing a little easier now? The rocky planes of her jaw and shoulders have loosened, and her voice is not so brittle or defiant. Misty can read danger in a person if she can do anything, and she can placate it when she finds it. It kept her safe up to the day the Careers split, and when she stood on that stage for her Victory Ceremony, looking up into Snow's avuncular gray eyes as he crowned her, it told her to bow her head and keep bowing, for the rest of her natural life if it could be managed.
Principles aren't real things, she told Ling. But your life is. You can only choose one. I will do everything in my power to help you keep that choice.
Of course it was life. She's a Five, not a Nine or a Twelve. She's a good girl. Snow would like her very much. Maybe not as much as Misty, but that would be hard to beat. Selena hasn't caught onto it, since Misty has not in fact had to fuck an interviewer's assistant, Gamemaker, or Minister in all her tenure.
If Selena lets a whisper of rebellion slip, she'll give it up. If one of the Nines drops a clue; if a Four shows signs of cracking; if a Six breaks his cover, Misty will bring it home. She doesn't make much noise. It won't be hard to hear them. She promised she could do it right.
It's not hard to understand. Misty doesn't want to burn out there like a Thirteen, preserved only as a shadow against a wall or a skeleton sunk in glass. She refuses to burn up her life for a principle.
Eyes squeezed shut, she slams her shot of viscous grenadine, and holds it down for three seconds before the gag reflex kicks in, flooding it titanically out of her mouth and nose. Selena throws a fist in the air and whoops like a demon.
"She rides! Miss Flawless Johnston RIIIIIIIDES!"
He's not one to complain, but for a second-year mentor, Killian has been handling quite a lot of the tribute-corralling on this train. As to say, all of it so far. Dorian was jabbering on the mobile with his fans and supporters almost as soon as the cameras shut off, and Etan received some handbook from his big holo reality sponsor and disappeared into his room with it. Gill never showed up, so that was something else. Lingering in the Justice Building, Killian heard them muttering about Peacekeeper deployment, and when someone dropped Gill's name...it was hard not to start making assumptions.
Killian senses that he is on the outside of something portentous, and neither party will let him in on it. Which is truly just typical. But he's tried to cope — what else can he do? He doesn't have the privilege of walking away from either of these kids while they need him. If Gill had abandoned him in the 59th, focused only on his partner, he's under no illusions of his lone survival. He was close to a freak accident anyway.
But it's his turn, and he's going to do better than that.
"Water," he says, slapping his hands together with bracing vigor. "Let's start with some facts about water."
Tacita and Marcel exchange a bemused glance.
"Most years, there's going to be a natural source of it in the arena, right? But if there's not, you have to depend on sponsor gifts and Cornucopia crap, which makes the Games a lot shorter. If we peek at the recent arenas...say, five, to account for the last complete cycle..." He draws up his flowchart on the viewing screen, zooming into the latter section with a pixelated flourish. "Aaand...look what we can predict from here. 56 through 60. We'll group them from 0 to 3 on a scale of 'no water' to 'plenty,' is that cool? We have an industrial arena with a 2 — counts even if it's contaminated and you have to boil it, but we'll get into that. Then we have a cave which I'm gonna say was a 1, a pine forest at another 2, a schoolhouse — mine, I guess you remember — which I'd call a 2, with the swimming pool and the fountains. Finally, they close the decade with a beautiful, natural 3, because of the lake and the rivers. The decade-ends are always some type of extreme. What does all that tell us about our upcoming arena? You can answer," he hastens, slightly out of breath. "That's not rhetorical."
Eyes pale yellow and watery, Marcel is still gazing between him and the screen with faint distraction, half-perched on the arm of the couch. Tacita coughs, stolidly picking at her reddened cuticles. "What does it tell us?" she mutters.
"That's — okay. What we can predict to almost total certainty is that we're not going to have another 3 this year. Those are for showstoppers, and they're way more expensive than most arenas. If they kicked off the 60s cycle with that, it'd be a letdown to try to follow it. But apart from that, how were the other recent arenas composed?"
"2's and 1's. Mostly 2's."
"Yes. Yes." Killian points at Tacita, flipping through a slideshow of the mentioned arena pictures with the remote in his other hand. "The arenas themselves: not as challenging on a survival level as they could've gotten, because that wasn't the theme. So what kinds of Victors did we get? A Five, two Threes, me, and only one Career. So the point is, the Capitol wasn't throwing real hardballs, and it gave outer districts a chance to last longer, show their personalities, okay? I think what they're going to do this time..."
The remote button sticks. Killian grits his teeth and knuckles it until it skips forward to the end. Even Marcel cups a hand over his mouth. Tacita leans forward, eyes narrowing. "You want us to — "
"Wait, wait, not yet. I know, but listen." Killian rolls the slides back until he reaches the right collection of concept pictures. A snowbound, howling emptiness; a red, rocky canyon; a dry and abandoned cityscape. "I'm predicting they're going to give us a 0. An endurance arena. Tells the audience that they're way done with the last cycle. If the tributes don't go for each other fast enough, the arena will kill you first."
He exhales hard, scrubbing a hand through his hair. The final slide is a collage of sensational kills. Jupiter Grantforth's hunting knife embedded an inch from the hilt between his One once-ally's breasts. Antonia Sargent's double-kill in as many seconds, the mace crashing forward to burst a Twelve boy's heart and then back into the skull of her own partner behind her. Kaito Ebihara's stand against the draconic mutt on the volcano, dragging his shortsword across its throat even as his dominant arm was devoured from the shoulder.
"What they want is a Career. Or somebody who plays like one. No more soft choices."
The idea hangs there like a grenade, transfixed by the quiet humming of the train.
"You think you can tell all that because there's been too much water in the last Games," says Tacita, face pouched with deadened resistance.
"I mean — yes. You can see it compounds. They have a formula. Lots of water, ergo, easier arenas. Easier arenas, ergo, outer district Victors. After too many of those, they'll want Careers. Like a- a domino effect."
"A butterfly effect," says Marcel absently.
"Yeah, or that. I know you don't like it. But you understand it, don't you? These odds aren't in our favor this year. At all. I wouldn't tell you that if I didn't think it was true. I've written about the Careers. I study them." Killian clenches his fists over his churning stomach. "I just want you to be competitive. You'll have the best chance."
"You don't even want Marcel to have the best chance. He's not your tribute," Tacita snaps, which is maybe true, but Killian was the only one stepping up for either one of them, and why would she say that? Do they know each other from the district? He's been so concentrated on pitching the gameplan, he never considered asking about it. "If we play competitive, we're supposed to play against each other. Kill each other. Like those Careers you showed."
"I killed Camelle. I had to. And I'm here."
Tacita's lip curls above her teeth. "Yeah, 'cause district loyalty didn't mean anything to you. Knowing what people say about you at home doesn't mean anything. Your brother's the mayor, so maybe that's good in your book. You didn't have to worry about selling out. You don't live with that where we're from."
"What? Come on, you can't be-" Tacita is pulling away from the couch like a small avalanche, steering Marcel with her, who belatedly swings his gangling legs down. Killian digs his fist into his thigh. "I'm telling you it'll be the only chance for either of you if you can get far enough. I'm trying to help you!"
"Ride or die, asshole." She flashes four blunt-nailed fingers in a sign that he's still trying to cross-reference by the time she's disappeared. "Real Sixes don't turn. You can keep your shitty slideshow."
Killian sinks into the cushions, eyes tightly shut. What is happening this year? Has it been screwed from the beginning?
Gill went AWOL. Etan won't talk about it. His tribute is some kind of morphling gangbanger junior with a loyalty complex, and her partner is hooked. It's bad on the small scale, and probably worse the further it goes. And nobody will buckle down to listen to him. Just because he's too young, or too unassertive, or a 'turncoat.'
He has to be right. He knows what the water means. The domino effect. They're all going to see he was right.
Instead of pitching the remote at the window, Killian takes a full, cleansing breath, and clicks the screen off. He lowers his head between his knees.
'Real Sixes don't turn.' Doesn't matter. Tacita can thank him or hate him, but he's going to keep her alive to do it. And whether anybody tells him or not, he's going to figure out this conspiracy.
(Thanks you for the commentary so far! A discrepancy you might notice from the original books in Killian's part is that technically, when the arenas/food supplies were normal and not as threatened by natural conditions, the Careers actually had the advantage, and Katniss comments that it was mainly when disasters like floods or mutts washed away the Career camps that the outer districts would actually have a chance. But...I wanted to think of a sensible reason why so many outer district Victors (with their specific arenas accounted for) would have been clustered so recently. Plus, I have nothing against Suzanne's idea that Careers aren't well-equipped to deal with unpredictability or hunger, but in my 'verse, there's definitely more room for survival training in their programs. Plus, individual mentors might not be as right as they think they are. c;)
(Also, there is a reason why most of the Victors who are 'in on it' are having their POVs saved for later!)
(This chapter ran surprisingly long. I swear I'm keeping up. I am enjoying the writing deeply. Much to follow!)