Hi, here I am, back with the newest update! Sorry this one took a bit of a while, I just started back in school, and I kind of hit a wall. Plus, if you aren't on discord and didn't know, I got my wisdom teeth removed recently and was out of it for a few days. But here I am, in the flesh! (Not really, this is digital.) I hope you enjoy the private sessions, featuring POVs from Scylla, Elior, Rooker, and Raihan. We've got a lot of action coming up, and maybe a few surprises too!
PS: I know that in canon the boys go first, but I realized halfway through Scylla's POV that I had the girls going first and this contradicted it, so let's just say that in my canon we had some Head Gamemaker who changed it.
Scylla Frigard, 18, District Two Female
"Turquesa Miracelest." The voice on the intercom is sickly sweet and peppy.
Marvel's district partner beside me stands up, rolling her eyes. She looks like she's trying to appear brave or aloof, but I can see the way her hands shake and wring themselves together, and it reminds me of myself. Her ally from Four gives her a thumbs up as she walks through the heavy metal doors, pushed open by twin avoxes, and disappears, leaving the rest of us still waiting in the lobby. Now it is bedecked with plush benches, and we sit in organized rows of six and time ticks by at agonizingly slow pace.
There's a foreign nervousness inside of me, the kind that I've never felt before when I'm about to fight, because that is what I'm best at. It contradicts all of the release that comes with it, all of the voice going numb, but it is still there. My feet rapidly tap the floor while my left arm pinches the scabs on my right. The pain feels nice, like a sharp frigid wave dousing me, quelling it all with a flash of heat, at least momentarily, because sometimes the rest of it isn't enough.
"You should feel it," Yung says, breaking the placid silence in my mind with his hushed, forlorn, raspy voice. "Something bad is coming."
"We'll fail, and you know it," Calisto agrees, his voice equally unbearable.
"Disappoint everyone…"
"That is, if you had anyone back home to disappoint," Calisto finishes, derisive and yet still with that same fearfulness.
"They don't care about a weird, shy little girl like you," Yung spits out. "Nobody has ever cared."
"Stop it," I mutter, tuning out everything around me.
I know that they're right to an extent. None of them were my friends back in Two, none of them saw or see me as more than a hunk of flesh to put into the arena to see if I win, especially not Father. I don't want him to care about me, and he never did as more than just an accessory to help spite his family, someone to gaslight once Mother couldn't take anymore. Einar cared, but now he's gone and left me all alone, and I have no one to lean on but myself.
I want to be strong. I don't want to give in like Mother did and Einar did, and this is supposed to make me strong. Fighting, that's the only thing that really helps, the adrenaline coursing through my body and rushing through my head. And yet, I'm still here, weak and desperate and insecure, because even though I'm fighting the voices, I don't have the sword in my hand. This is the only way to stop it for good, because then nothing can hurt me, and if what Yung and Calisto keep on predicting comes true and I do die, it won't be as bad as living on with them.
Death doesn't scare me as much as the Beast, that thing that is crawling up my arm and poisoning my thoughts, that thing that threatens to consume me every night when it inevitably wrecks the smoldering house, and the porcelain white paint chips and melts as the sienna wooden pillars and the maroon bricks crumble. That thing with the horrific, godly body of fire, that steps out from the wreckage with only his face visible, and it is him, Father, with his pale blonde hair and angular chin and piercing dark eyes, visible even in the dead of my dream's night. Surt, the Norse god of fire, the fire that will burn me to a crisp if I do nothing, so steeped in the history of what Father taught me of our noble Viking blood, so distinctly exactly like him.
I have to escape that thing and be defiant. I want to be like that old version of myself from before everything went wrong, who was free-spirited and extroverted and adventurous. That's what I'm chasing, that light at the end of the dark tunnel, my past life. That's what I still feel, every time I step out onto the mat as I am in my element, that girl who I want to be again. When I win, I can finally get the help and conquer them, with the Capitol doctors and psychiatrists that can rid my head of the voices and the false realities for good. They can help pull me from my chasm of weakness.
Weakness. That's what it all comes back to. I am weak, I know it. That's why I need the help, because I can't be strong the way that Einar told me in the note that he left me and every type he hugged me and caressed my back after a bad dream.
"You know you're weak," Yung and Calisto say in unison, sometimes one and other times two. "Why fight it?"
I only hear them when I'm afraid or nervous. I shouldn't be nervous, but I am, and I know why.
"Oh, shut up!" It's Ichabod this time, angry in his boyish petulance. "Man up! Show them all! You aren't weak, you only are if you think it, and people who think they're weak are the worst kind! You're the best of all of them, they have nothing on you!"
He is incorrect. I look back and I see Talisa sitting straight up, pridefully, on her lush bench chair, and behind her Imperia, hulking and monstrous, on hers, proud and cocky. Her time will come. Arlo is menacing as well, and they're all so much larger and heavier than I am, even Marvel, however lanky he may be.
"Oh, I'm so worried for her right now," Orchid says concernedly to whoever she always talks to, whether it be Ichabod or the twins or Einar somewhere down and deep, or nobody at all, with the air of a nervous mother. At least she's good in that regard. "She's up against such tough competition. If she doesn't get it together and keep it together, bad things will happen to her."
Orchid agrees with me that I'm weak, weak not because I can't fight, but because I can't fight them off no matter how badly I want to.
"Shut up, idiot!" Ichabod says. "You could beat all of those fuckers!"
Calisto cuts in, contradictory: "You'll die a depressing, boring death—"
"Don't listen to him! You're the best fighter in the training—"
"and be forgotten and ignored—"
"fighting is all that matters, and—"
"and ridiculed because you couldn't overcome yourself—"
"Stop bombarding her with noises before her session, she must concentrate or else she'll—"
"Fail!"
The twins join in together, and I can't take it anymore. I hug in on myself as the cacophony crescendos and bring my legs up to my chest, curling up in the way that I never used to do unless I was alone or with Einar.
"Scylla? You okay?"
I jerk my head up and to my right, and there he is, in the flesh, with emeraldine eyes and tan skin and the curly blonde hair I used to love to feel. Einar.
I recoil and squeak momentarily in shock and gratitude, and all of a sudden, he is the only thing that, however magically, exists. I just want to reach towards him and let all of it loose, that has been plaguing me for so long, come away from the pain and float towards him, because that's what it feels like I'm doing, floating in a celestial state of ecstasy. I don't care why, and I am deaf to the voices. My light chestnut hair falls in dense tangles in the corners of my vision for a moment, grounding me slightly, and I shake it away.
Einar looks to me again, his eyes confused but still gentle, and a dull, pernicious pang hits me. This isn't right. What am I doing?
"Scylla? Is there something wrong?"
Arlo looks at me with worry, cocking his head in a way that reminds me of it all and yet tears me away from it at the same time. His golden hair falls down his angular face, and those same green eyes, a bit less bright, shine back at me with incomprehension.
I let myself be fooled by it, just for a moment, just a little escape into something that could never be. Einar is dead, and there is no way he can reverse what he did to himself. It's all too much. I can hear the voices muttering, and I don't want it to come back. I don't want to face it! I can feel wet droplets welling up in my eyes, and I brush my hair back into my line of sight to hide myself from everything else around me.
A tentative hand rests itself on my shoulder. I make no effort to leap back, so Arlo leaves it there.
"Is something wrong, Scylla? Can you hear me?"
I steel myself and look into those dastardly green eyes that tricked me into thinking they were something better.
"No, I'm okay," I say quietly, shyly, and halfway looking away already. I hate the person that I am now, how awkwardly I talk when it used to flow so easily, how so many things rest on my tongue, but I'm too afraid to say them. "Just pre-Private Sessions jitters."
"Oh. I've got them too," Arlo says awkwardly, his hand resting limply on my collar bone now. He withdraws it quickly, embarrassed.
"Me too. Everyone has them, no matter how strong you are." Marvel smiles confidently at me from my left side, and he looks like he doesn't have any at all. There's something that he lacks and Arlo doesn't, some form of… sincerity? "We should know, we're the strongest," he adds, elbowing me, and pouting when I can't force myself to laugh along. "Sorry, didn't mean to eavesdrop."
"It's fine," I stammer out meekly, all of my nerves condensed into frustratingly antisocial behavior.
"Marvel Silver."
"That's me," he says, grinning ear to ear as he hops up. "Wish me luck," he says to us, turning his back as he enters the room.
The few conversations that were being had have ceased now in tense silence as we are all reminded of what is coming.
"Don't listen to him! You aren't one of the strongest, you're the strongest!" Ichabod yells as I try to tune him out.
"So… what are you planning on doing?" Arlo meets my eyes, his egging me on promptingly for a moment before they look away. "Sorry, if you don't want to tell, I won't make you."
"No, I'm not trying to be secretive or anything," I assure him, seizing onto the opportunity to distract myself from the voices. "I... uh, I haven't thought about it much yet. I'd probably just do swords for the whole time. Maybe try and demonstrate how I could use a mirror to mess with my opponent. I'm not much good at anything else." I trust Arlo enough to tell him about my mirror trick work, almost like confiding in a friend. As I talk, the words come out easier and easier, and it feels almost empowering to have some of my anxiety fall away from me and crumble on the floor. Maybe this is just the first step.
"There she goes, finally getting some momentum," Orchid comments merrily. "It's splendid to see her making new friends, too, she hasn't had any of those in so long."
"They'll all die soon enough," Yung and Calisto counter morbidly, voices intertwining.
I won't let them affect me right now, not when the biggest moment of the games yet is only fifteen minutes away and I am grasping at some sort of meager breakthrough.
"You'll probably do better than me," Arlo laments affably. "I can swing a sword like you and that's pretty much it. I don't enjoy doing it either, it's just something to make him happy." He nods up to his father, two floors above us.
"Don't be so pessimistic," I tell him. "Your selling yourself short. If you put your mind to it, then you can do anything." I can't believe the words coming out of my mouth! They sound so false and phony, just fake things propped up for cheesy encouragement, and yet they're real to me, because that's the only way that I can escape. I can feel that encouragement pulsing through me now, because if I can be this social and hopefully inspiration, then that is the first step to helping myself get better, if not over, it all. If I can be a light for others, then I light myself up from the inside.
"If you say so," Arlo says. I can see how it affects him. The way that he smiles is genuine even if he doesn't look to be taking it completely to heart. I feel solace without my sword in my left hand and my mirror in my right in months. That's something. Everything starts with a something.
I look back and find Aleyn in the very back of the room, dwarfed by his district partner and looking glum and anxious. I can help him beat it, too, because that's what it all comes back to: Beating it, the Beast, because the Beast is in everyone. It's just a matter of finding enough strength in yourself at the right moment to conquer it.
"Scylla Frigard," the intercom voice chirps in its Capitol accent.
This is the right moment.
I stand up, and all of a sudden feel a wave of nerves wash over me, and I freeze for a second as I feel all twenty-one pairs of eyes in the room on me. I'm abruptly aware of what all could go wrong again, what will go wrong, and it feels like I've just woken up from some sort of dreamy reverie. What was I thinking?
Arlo gives me a thumbs up as I glance back at the lobby for the last time before entering the training center. It keeps the dimming candle lit inside of me.
The gargantuan room we trained in an hour ago is now bleak and ominous, as if holding in its breath and at the same time blowing it out in a vicious icy wind. The Gamemakers stare down upon me, already judging me, and I get reminded of Father.
"It will all come crashing and burning down now," Yung says, weary and paranoid.
"We've only been set up for failure," Calisto elaborates somberly.
"There is no point in trying."
"Those people are just like him, hide from them."
I can't steer my head up to nod at the for more than a millisecond before hunching down and traversing the black marble floor to the sword station. I reach it, and without looking at the Gamemakers, swing it forth at the first one. The cold blade feels awkward in my hands, not like it did only an hour or so ago. It sinks only an inch or two deep into the dummy in the crook of its elbow, a horrible swing.
The voice telling me what arteries I hit is absent now. They must have turned her off for the Private Sessions to keep the tributes in the dark. I don't need it to know that my first try was a dud. I take the sword again in my left hand as the scabs on my right crack and begin to ooze blood from all of the picking. My next four are all also pathetic.
What I told myself in the lobby means nothing. It was only mindless talk that could never be followed through with. I can't escape the voices.
"You'll be lucky to get a seven if you keep going at this rate," Ichabod observes, seething. "Step up your game! What is wrong with you?!"
"Everything is wrong with you," the twins say in unison. "From your looks to your thoughts to your actions to how you fight in battle. Everything."
"I'm so worried that she won't be resilient enough to survive it all. I hope she doesn't die, but it's looking dangerously likely as of now."
Even Orchid has turned her back on me, and now I am alone and defenseless, with only a stupid, material sword to ward off the intangible voices.
On second thought, maybe it could. I always feel the best when I'm in battle, so I might as well try to escape the thoughts in my head that way, to hide from them in a mask of combat and adrenaline. It's the easy way out, but maybe I could keep it for once, and keep the inspiration that I caught only minutes ago.
I decide to head over to the mat and choose the hard-level trainer, picking up the small pocket mirror placed there for me. This is all or nothing, and I have to shove the confidence in myself into existence to raise my finger at him.
I grab the sword and stand with my knees bent in the corner as he makes the first move, darting forward with a lethal swing as I hop out of the way and shine a beam from the blinding overhead light down into his eyes. He stands in place, swinging his sword forward as I miss my chance to "slice" his Achilles tendon open with the blunted piece of metal in my hand.
"Come on, don't give up yet! You can do it!" Ichabod chants, and for once I am grateful for him, his loud voice carrying over Yung and Calisto's.
I won't let myself hear them.
The trainer tries to feint attack me, but I'm not fooled, and I slam my bland into his thigh.
"Atta girl!" Ichabod yells, but I can hardly hear him over the pumping in my own ears.
I can't let myself fail now, not when I'm performing with such flair. I must harness this strength and keep it. With it, I can ride any wave, ride the wave over everything that is wrong with me and over the competition.
The trainer lunges in a last-ditch effort to beat me, but I shine the beam of light in his face and he topples as I bring my sword down on his back and press it into his back.
"Yes! Now keep on showing them how awesome you are!" Ichabod's words, normally deafening, barely make an imprint on me.
He is right. If I keep on going like this, I may be able to save the session and pull off something respectable. I feel on top of the world right now, and I don't want it to win. Empowerment, that stranger, is with me now, and I can't let it go. I won't let it go.
Elior Gobel, 15, District Five Male
Sitting here, in this plush, navy couch covered in velvet as the crowd slowly starts to thin is agonizingly nerve-racking. It can feel the familiar, dreadful feeling of bile creeping up my throat and try to subside it. The same heat and stickiness is washing over me now. I feel a throbbing in my Adam's apple, the same kind I feel when I'm flustered, or when I'm trying to hold all of my negative emotions in.
No. The last thing I can do is think about Father now, compare this to home. This is much easier than the way he hit me, the way he shoved the food down my throat, ridiculed me in every way I could because I didn't look like him. I never wanted to look like him, even if I had power over it. If I wasn't eating just to placate Konani, I don't know if I could bring myself to. The fruits taste nice, but I don't think I'd be able to put the effort into fighting to live without her.
She puts a hand on my knee to stop the thumping into the floor, and her warm brown eyes meet mine. My stomach does a flip. "It's all going to be okay," she says. "Don't be too nervous, or else you'll be so focused on failing that you'll forget to try." She smiles her glorious smile, and it feels like a beacon of light shines down on the world, passing through me for a moment to pervade the lobby, if only for just a moment.
"How do you already know me better than I know myself," I say. Konani is too good to be true, it all is. Why would she care about me? Not even just in the Hunger Games, but in regular life? Nobody ever sees more in me than a rich boy or a disappointment. Except for her.
I'm suddenly aware of how bony my leg is, and how there must be no muscle there for her to feel. It doesn't seem to sway her. Hopefully, it doesn't even register, but I have a feeling that she wouldn't care.
It feels like I've already won the victor's prize. I still have to keep on fighting, though, because this is the Hunger Games, and I have to defend Konani. I don't want to just give up now, not until the end, because I have this to fight for while I still can. In the end, I don't matter, she does. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's all that I feel now. Every waking thought and every dream I have is about her.
I know that she wouldn't like me placing her life over mine, mainly because I suspect that she is doing the same to herself, but I don't care. Now that I know what truly being loved feels like, I don't want to go back to not having that. She has that.
Konani winks at me. "Woman's intuition," she says enticingly, tapping her head.
"Sure," I say, rolling my eyes and trying to look comfortable, even though I'm not. I'm never comfortable. I don't know what I'm trying to accomplish right now, whether it be looking cool or unflappable by the circumstances, funnier than I am, or something else. Konani knows that I'm not cool or unflappable, and that I'm certainly not comfortable, and she's told me time and time again to stop trying to project a version of myself that I want to be, that I think that people want me to be, onto her. She likes me how I am. That just seems a little hard to believe.
"No, really," she says, keeping up the act. "It's a superpower."
"Can you intuit me a better score than I'm going to get?"
"Will you stop being so self-deprecating?" Konani asks me, aggravated, repositioning herself so that her whole body faces me. "You're going to get a good score! Better than me, at least, if that boosts your self-esteem some. We both know how good you are with the spears. I tried for a whole day and I still wasn't worth a damn at them, and you were when we started!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I utter out hastily, holding my hands up.
"And you don't have to apologize either. I don't care whether you do or not. It's your actions that define you, not what other people say you are, and not what you think you are."
I'm taken aback by Konani's sudden change of mood. I want what she says to be right, but I still can't get out of my head the insults that Father threw at me, and the way they looked at me as if I were someone disgusting, literally everyone around me.
Snob.
Half-pint.
Beanpole.
"Why is somebody so rich so skinny?"
"Why is somebody so smart such a disappointment?"
"Why are you crying, son? Boys don't cry!"
I want to take it to heart, I want to so badly, for her. I want to be the one that she deserves, the dashing hero to sweep her off of her feet and into my arms. Alas, there's no way that I can do that now. The best I can manage is saving her. Besides, I'm not hero, and I'm definitely not dashing.
"I will, okay? And… thank you. I appreciate you saying that."
Her stressed expression softens at that into something much warmer.
"I'm sorry if I kind of blew up on you. I just… I got sick and tired of you beating yourself up for no reason."
"I thought you said no apologies."
"Oh, shut up." She playfully swats by back and reclines on the bench, staring forward with an anguished smirk. She turns back to me, caring but expectant. "Is that really all you took from that."
"No," I say, and I meet her sienna eyes for the first time of the day. I couldn't stand to look at her before, because I was sure that I would be disappointing her with my score. But now, when I stare into her face, I don't see anything but love and beauty. This is real, and what she says is real. I took a lot more than that, and she knows it.
"She's right, you know." The sound of a crisp, spirited voice disturbs us. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt that."
On Konani's left, the boy from Four waves at us, Cheshire-cat grinning and not at all looking abashed or awkward.
"Sorry, I wasn't eavesdropping! It's just that it gets a bit boring when you have no one to really have a conversation with. Anyways, I just wanted to agree with you, señorita, you're totally right."
Perplexed, Konani smiles. "Uh… thanks."
"Aquatico Espovera." He extends his hand flipping his hair away from his forehead, and in the process looking quite suave.
"Konani, Konani Sowka. And this is my partner Elior." Konani nods to me as she takes Aquatico's hand. It is gently shaken with a deftness that shows years of attempted perfection, and then, to her and my surprise both, he lifts it up and kisses it, before holding it out to me.
"Sorry," he says hastily, "common practice where I'm from with girls your age. I'm not trying to steal your girl or anything."
I go pink at that, and, even though I can only see the back of her head right now, I have a feeling Konani does too. Was it really that obvious to him, or was he just making a joking remark, the same kind I've seen him do since the Chariot Parade? Was it that obvious to Konani? If so… I don't know if I want to spurn that notion or not. I do't have much time left. A deadened pause fills the air for a brief second, as neither Konani or I object to it, and I can see past Konani a sort of toned-down giddy amusement in Aquatico's eyes.
I'm hesitant to give him my hand. They get clammy when I'm nervous, which I have been for the past hour and a half. Brushing it off on my elastic, skintight black slacks does little help, but the pause is elongating.
"I'm not going to kiss your hand, if that's what is bothering you."
Aquatico retracts his hand and begins to nod, but I seize it in the spur of the moment and shake it. I won't let Konani see me being weak and antisocial like that.
"Sorry if he put you on the spot, he's a weirdo."
The girl from Four peers over Aquatico's head and ruffles his hair. She smiles over at us, a practiced, dazzling smile, and I can't help but be in shock at the fact that a trained murderer is talking to us, especially when it could be us that she is trying to murder in only a few days' time.
The shock and fear my and Konani's faces must register with her, because a small flash of guilt darkens her for half of a second before she grins again charismatically.
"We're not all like that, you know?" she says, nodding her head to the girl from Nine only one space behind me to the right. That takes courage, even if she doesn't see it. "Hi, I'm Talisa." She waves amiably.
Konani and are a still too stunned and reclusive to speak, or rather, I am the reclusive one. Konani is enough for me, but these two seem oddly friendly. It's probably all an act to get us to trust them only to stab us in the back. If they want to trick us into that, then I'll let them think they are.
I laugh, and so does Konani, but mine is strained and so is hers. Eventually it peters out into nothingness, and the mood as tense as it was minutes ago.
"Ugh, why does everybody always get quiet around me?" Talisa asks, looking up ruefully as she giggles.
"There in awe of you, Talisa," Aquatico responds sarcastically, conjuring up a laugh from Konani, and a genuine one this time.
"That's not true," Konani says. "We just didn't want to seem rude or anything and say something that might offend you. You do seem much nicer than your ally over there, though."
"Definitely," Aquatico agrees. "Glad she isn't mine. But that's the point of being social, isn't it? Chatting with people who you wouldn't regularly? That and having something to do when you get bored."
"Talisa Rowland."
Talisa stands up to her full, impressive height. "Well, wish me luck everyone. See you all later." She turns to leave, but lurches to the side abruptly to turn around, holding up her index finger. "Wait! What I was trying to say before I got sidetracked was that your partner is right, Elior. You should think of yourself higher. Without confidence, nobody is going to be confident in you. It does great things for you, just look at me."
She winks and waves goodbye as she crosses the lobby to go through the spooky, domineering double doors, but this time, it isn't as if a vacuum sucks the tribute in. It's almost like she's snapped off the power cord. I want to be like that. I want to be confident in myself. I look down at myself, nervous once again. How can I be confident when I'll look dreadful compared to Talisa and Aquatico and half of the other tributes?
"It's just a matter of having the utmost belief in yourself," Aquatico says, staring me down with his vibrantly jocular seaweed green eyes.
"How'd you know what I was thinking?" I ask him, baffled.
"It wasn't too hard," Konani replies for him. "It's not like you have the best poker face around. Am I just not going to break through to you? I'm confident in you, but that won't mean anything unless you're confident in yourself."
"Preach, chica," Aquatico says, holding his hand up for a high five, which Konani follows through with.
"I will, I will," I say, looking down to avoid meeting their eyes. Konani seems to find them anyway. "I will," I say finally. I mean it this time. I have to be confident in myself, that's the only way to win. But I don't want to win, I want to save Konani. That's the only way to save Konani. Besides, she wouldn't like a boy who didn't like himself.
"Good," she says, her eyes staring into my soul and rousing butterflies in my chest.
I break eye contact after what feels simultaneously far too much and not nearly enough time, and peer around her to Aquatico. "Just curious," I start, "why did you talk to us? You didn't have to do that. You could have just chatted with Talisa or your ally," I say, nodding my head to the vacant spot the girl from Eight was five minutes ago before insisting on using the bathroom, seemingly only to spite the guards.
"Like I said before, dude, just trying to be social. I could see that you were kind of panicking internally, or rather hear, and I wanted to help try and fix that. I didn't volunteer to kill, I volunteered to save my best friend. I'm not what you thought I was. And since I'm not, why not have a little fun before the shit hits the fan? And that's not the only fun I plan on having, either. If you see anything suspiciously ridiculous or of note happen to anybody, make sure not to point any fingers my way." He winks at us, and there is something fiery lit up in his eyes now, the same fire that his allies had when they stood up to the girl from Nine. I get the feeling he intends to devote it towards retribution of a fairly different sort. "Besides," he finishes, "I'm a sucker for romance."
My face heats up with celerity as I can feel redness rushing into it. Konani flips her head around, cheeks rosy, and looks me in the eye, embarrassed but also complimented, enthralled and enthralling at the same time. A satisfied smirk rests on Aquatico's face, and he and I lock eyes. He's been playing matchmaker the whole time, hasn't he? The message he sent is clear now: No girl likes a boy without confidence.
The voice on the intercom calls out peppily: "Aquatico Espovera."
"Uh—uh—no, you—w-wait!" I sputter out hurriedly as he stands up and leaves.
Konani makes little effort to press more out of him, instead smiling to herself. He disappears behind the doors the same way Talisa did.
After fifteen minutes, the Gamemakers summon Konani, and I'm left all alone.
"Prove to them what we proved to you," she tells me as she rises. "You're good with a spear, so don't tell yourself that you aren't. It's only you, don't think about anyone else but you. Not me, not the Gamemakers, not anyone else. You."
"I will if you do," I reply. "Don't sell yourself short either."
She nods. "See you on the other side."
And then she's gone. It feels like I'm all alone without her. I'm not alone, though. She'll always be with me.
I'm called fifteen minutes later or so later, and I rise up, trying to hold my head high. That's the first step. I'm going to light up the double doors the same way that Aquatico and Talisa did. My hands are still clammy and tremulous, but I stuff them into a single fist. I'm good with spears. I'm good with more than spears. Konani thinks that I'm good at spears.
Konani wasn't wrong, not about anything she said, except for one part: I'm not going pretend like I'm the only one in the world, because I'm not. She'll be there with me. She thinks that I can impress the Gamemakers, so I can. I step through the archway. This is the moment of truth.
My whole body is shaking.
I can do this.
The Gamemakers are imposing, twenty feet above me, and I feel inferior.
I can do this.
I am not inferior. Konani doesn't think so. She thinks the opposite. And so do I.
I can do this.
Rooker Hilt, 13, District Twelve Male
Trigger Warning: This POV has excessive profanity in and out of dialogue.
How dare they make me wait five fucking hours just for a stupid Private Session?! Do they not think that my time is more valuable than that, that I could have been using it to train? Not that I would ever need to train, or to grovel at the feet of my mentors for advice. I don't need them. This is all just hypothetical.
My sneakers slam the hard, stone floor as I stomp into the room, trying to scare them, and if not that, then show them who they're dealing with. I want them to know who they're dealing with, not to just pass me off as some weak and bitter little kid who'll die in the first ten minutes. I'll keep on living just to spite them. That's what I've been doing for the past thirteen years. That and living so I can get my revenge.
It has never worked before, but it will now. This time is different. This time it is all or nothing, make or break, and I'm not just going to sit and whine about it.
Why won't they look at me?! The Gamemakers haven't even payed me any attention yet! They all stand there, feasting and glutting themselves past their brim. I deserve to be looked at by them. I don't even care how the look upon me, if it is with reverence or with fear or with mockery or with indifference. They're just like Mom back home, willing, or, better yet, eager, to turn a blind eye because they don't care about me.
I take a loud step with a thud that rushes through my torso and sends a sharp bolt of pain through my chest, leaving an ache residing behind. I wince instinctively and clutch myself, because this hurts like hell! Through my eyes, squinted out of pain and only slightly blurry, I can see the avoxes, all looking at me with pity. I don't want to be pitied, I want to be feared!
I snarl at them, and that gets them to back off, afraid that I might do something to one of them. One of them even scoots into the wall and hits her head. Good. I want them to fear me, because then I have control over them. It gives me an indescribable thrill, and I feel like for a moment I am powerful, because that is the most power I'm ever going to get. I won't earn anything from lashing out at other street monkeys, I just have to how them that I haven't given up yet. I have to show them that they don't have power over me.
If I have to cause fear to get what I want, then so be it. I don't care about any of them, just like none of them care about me. They all hate me. The world hates me, so I'll hate them back even fiercer.
I want to see them squirm.
I certainly won't let them see me in pain. I don't give a damn if my ribs are probably broken. Pain is weakness. That's what Dad would say when I fell through the doorway beaten and bruised and sometimes, most of the time, bloody, before he hit me anymore because he likes to see people in pain too. I can't blame him, but I can still hate him.
If they see me in pain, how are they going to take me seriously? How are they going to fear me? How are they going to give me any fucking cent of attention? I need that attention so bad!
None of them see me still. I'll make them see me.
I walk as fast as I can while still looking nonchalant to the word rack, careful not to hurt my ribs. The swords all look enticing on the rack, big and silver and menacing, even with the blunted caps. I place a hand my favorite one, the one with the obsidian hilt that matches the floor. It looks the coolest. The trainer said it was too big for me, but nothing is too big for me. This will get them to notice. The trainer's chagrin and infuriating disappointment is evident on his face.
Fuck him.
I begin trying to pull the sword off of the table, but the metal creaks against the handle, and an earsplitting screech emits from it. The blade comes about a quarter of the way out. I look up, and I see that all of the men and women in the top booth have their soulless eyes set on me now, boring into me. I glare at them, but none of them are affected. How?!
I pull again and keep on pulling even as my ribs agonize me. The sword finally comes out and drops heavily onto my foot.
"Aaaghh!" I cry out in pain. My toes are throbbing, and I drop the heavy sword to the floor to clutch them.
Damnit! Why is the world always against me! Can it get any worse? Life and fate and everything happy hates me, and there's nothing I can do about it except for hate them back, hate everyone and everything. I have the worst life on the fucking planet!
It's so unfair, my life compared to all of these peoples' who've never had to work or fret or feel pain in their entire lives! How dare they sit upon their ivory chairs and laugh at me the way that they are, eye me with disdain, as if I reek?
I stand up, even though everything inside of my screams for me not to, and lift, with great difficulty, the sword from the floor. I'm too short to hold it, so I drag it instead, over to the master trainer only twenty feet away, and look him in the eyes.
"I want to challenge you!" I yell into his face, heaving and exhausted as my torso burns with every breath I take.
I'm not going to show weakness, I'm going to do the opposite. I want to stick it to them just to piss them off, piss luck of for sending me here. That's all that I want to do anymore, make them angry and make them hurt.
"Are you sure?" the man asks. "I won't go easy on you." He is blunt and straightforward and rude, but I can see something deeper within him, a smugness at having someone who he thinks is an easy win to wipe the floor with, someone who has no idea what they're doing and will die an idiot in a few days' time. I'll show him. I want to make him hurt, and stand over his broken body, triumphant, pressing my foot further and further into his chest until he snaps and writhes on the floor, begging me to end it.
"Sure as hell."
He looks me in the eyes and beckons me forward. I drag the sword further until it rests on the mat and heft it up with all of my strength. I feel muscles in my back and neck strain and rupture, but I can't show that pain.
Another trainer steps forward, eyeing me with sympathy and shaking her head ever so slightly. I meet her gaze and lunge at her for only a millisecond. She doesn't flinch, but instead turns forward, void of all emotion now. It doesn't affect her at all. It doesn't affect her at all!
She begins to count down from three as the white-hot shock from my sudden movement wears off and the agony sets in once more. She doesn't care. None of them do. And I hate them so much for it, hate them all so much more than I can say.
"Three, two, one, go!"
The female trainer backs out of the ring as the male one steps forward, swinging his sword, even larger than mine, with ease and adroitness. He closes the gap between us like it is three feet, and all of a sudden, he is upon me. He gives one light tap at first on my shin, one that still hurts, trying to get me moving, trying to show some form of stupid mercy or pity, or maybe just trying to make me play his game. I won't let him think of me that way, and I certainly won't play his game.
I hop to the side, the familiar pain there and biting with its vice-like teeth and I stumble and try to swing the sword around into him. He hops back effortlessly, and it falls again to the floor. I strain to pick it up, but I can't, it's too heavy. Come on, this can't be happening now! Why does the world despise me so much as to humiliate me this way?!
I won't sit back and let it do that to me anymore, just to spite it.
The trainer struts around, putting on a show for all of the other Capitolites as he encircles me.
"Come on," he says aggressively.
"You come on!" I yell angrily for no reason as I rush towards him, somehow finding the strength to lift the sword at the expense of my body.
He deflects easily and hops up as the weapon drives itself into the ground at his feet, and before I know what is happening, I feel a crushing force hit my ride where it hurts in my side, and I can feel the bones fragmenting into even more tiny little shards. I don't know if I let out a scream of pain and anguish as I fall, but I certain do internally. I kick at him futilely as he places his foot on top of my chest.
The tears reach my eyes, bursting out as the pain truly sets in and ravages me. This is worse than anything I've ever felt before, but that isn't what is making me cry. I lost and humiliated myself, the same way that I always do, and it will never get better and never change. I hate the world that I live in so much.
"You asked for it," the man says sardonically, offering a hand up.
I slap it away and rise, determined to not to succumb to them and seem weak.
"Mr. Hilt, we recommend you either stop fighting using a blade that large or stop fighting altogether. You have already expended five minutes of your Private Session, and we feel that we have seen enough of your fighting with a sword that size." The Head Gamemaker speaks, a woman with an unnaturally upturned nose so that she looks like she has a permanent expression of disgust on her face. Her black hair frames her head so that it is ovular, and her skin is so pale it shines in the dark room. She must be the Head Gamemaker. She looks jaded and annoyed at me, ready to get the last tribute over with, most likely. I despise her.
I lift up my favorite finer at her, and all of the rest of them in the Gamemakers' box. "Fuck you, bitch!" I scream, my breath and inside rattling as I finish. I lug the sword over further to the dummy station. I don't give a damn what they tell me to do. No one can tell me what to do! No one can control me!
My eyes are still wet with tears when I arrive, ready to drop, at the sword station. I won't pick up another sword, even though I need to, just to fuck with them, just to deny them power over me. I need to be in control, because I am never in control. Life has bound me to this dreadful fate, and it isn't my fault!
I can't even lift up the sword anymore, no matter how hard I try. It hangs an inch or two off of the ground a few times before dropping with a bang to the floor again. I swing as hard as I can, but it is more of a drag. The sword gets lodged into the dummy and I can't muster up the strength to extract it.
"Raaaghh!" I drop the sword and kick the dummy with all of my might, not even denting it and further injuring my toes. "Damnit!"
I drop down to the floor again. Nobody comes to help. Good. I don't want them. I don't need them!
"Mr. Hilt," says the same woman from before, condescendingly, as if I am a petulant child, "let me ask you again: Please move on from the sword stations or choose a better weapon. If not, you will be dismissed."
I hate the way she annunciates everything syllable with such care and how her chin slowly rises as she talks, and the superior look in her eyes. I hate everything!
I can dismiss myself if I want to. She would hate that, wouldn't she? Wouldn't she?! I don't even know, I just want to seize the power again, because I'm definitely going to be dead in a week, probably even less. I just want to hurt them before I go, hurt the world that hurt me so much, and ruin their day, ruin their lives, because that is the only thing that I know how to do.
"Fuck you!" I yell out again, and I still don't get any reaction. "You're an ugly, batshit crazy, fat, evil whore, and an asshole!" I scream. The words claw my throat to get out, leaving scratches and pain, more, more pain, but she still doesn't seem affected negatively.
She starts to laugh. Then they all start to, a monotonous, high-pitched, and detestable little trill of a giggle. They're laughing at me, and life is laughing at me too.
I run out of the room, red-faced from fury and exhaustion. I'm too good for them. MY ribs are aching, and once I am out of the room, I clinch them. The lobby is still layered with plush couches, and I crumple onto the nearest one. I won't go up to my room, I'll sit right here until they have to carry me into the elevator. They can't move me!
I have been sitting here for I don't know how long, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe sixy, when, in a gasp for more breath, I hear two pairs of footsteps. One's feet clicker and clacker on the glass floor, but the shoes sound masculine and heeled. The other's sound like heavy boots, the kind the Peacekeeper's wear, but duller against the floor.
"Ah, Cornelius, so, how was the training?" The voice is familiar to me. Charming, deep, and peppy all at the same time.
The next voice that echoes off of the walls of the hall is loud and booming, sending tremors through me. Cornelius must be the name of the Head Trainer. I don't want to be found by that man, the one with the skin dyed so black it blended in with the floor and the walls, and the muscles so massive he looked like he couldn't fit through a normal-sized door. "I can't tell you much, but I can tell you that it was… entertaining for sure. The girl from Nine sure is my favorite, such a patriot, and such a force, too. You'll be getting some drama when the scores come in."
"But can't I see that sheet you have! Aren't those the scores?" He asks the man, almost flirting with him, and I risk a peek up at him to see a handsome man with an angular face and wavy, gelled black hair in a golden suit. That man was the one who filled in during the Chariot Parades!
"Sorry, Apollo, but these are the accurate scores. Con-fi-den-ti-al." He annunciates the word smugly, smirking. "They're for my eyes and Pennyworth's eyes only. You get the scores we show the audience. Drama is your specialty, isn't it."
Does that mean that… the scores they show the audience are fake? Maybe I can get a high score then!
"I guess you're right. I'll be keeping up the drama for a long while," he says, grinning deviously as Cornelius also smirks.
"You're much better than that old fart Catonius."
"And you're much better than whoever came before you. Now that I've buttered you up, can I see the scores? Please?"
"Fine, but you—"
I peek up to look at the sheet of paper as well, Apollo's face to my back, but Cornelius sees me, his white eyes fixating on me like a bird of prey. A brick drops in my stomach. I get up hastily, scrambling gingerly for the elevator door.
"Scram!" he yells as I run into the elevator.
The doors shut, and I begin zooming up the building.
I crumple down to the floor again. My heart is pumping at the speed of light. I need water. But I won't ask any of them for it, I'll command the avoxes. I still have power over them.
But not the scores. They control everything from the moment our names are drawn. I should have known better than to think we actually had a chance to prove ourselves to them. They'll always have the power. They'll always have the power, and I hate it!
The only thing left to do is to try and seize what little power that I can.
Raihan Everstow, 12, District Ten Male
The elevator dings as the doors slide open to reveal my floor, and I step out of it immediately. The mentors and Rhiannon are on the couch, and I run over to them, eager to seize up one of the lush, silky, fluffy blankets to snuggle up in.
"How did it go?" Dirk asks, and I notice a change in his demeanor from solemn to amicable. He probably is just happy to see me.
"Fine," I say, plopping down on the couch. "As well as I was expecting it to. I just ran the agility course and painted with the camouflage, and then I took a test on sorting edible berries."
What I leave out is that I didn't perform as well as I wanted to on any of them. I tripped on the agility course and barely kept myself stable enough to finish. All throughout training, camouflage had just been something fun to entertain myself with, not something I was ever much good at, like Bolt said I was. I only realize that now. I only made sixty percent on the berries test after forty-something questions. I'll probably get something measly and pathetic, like a three or a four. I don't want a three or a four, I want to be strong, the way that Noello is. He's in a wheelchair and he probably could have scored better than me!
I pull the wool blanket that caught my eye close to me, relishing that heavy feeling, like having a big dog pressed up against me like Wyola when she is swaddle dup in the covers that she tosses and turns in in her bed. I miss those mornings, and every meal with Daddy and Wyola, and feeding the scraps to the animals, and exploring with Noello. I'm too old for that now. It will never be the same. All I have left to do is play up being cute for them. That's all that I have. I can't be strong like Sierra, or Nerissa, or Bolt.
"How did yours go, Rhiannon?" I ask, trying to divert that sad, overwhelmed, panicking feeling away from me before it seizes hold. If I make cheery conversation, then it will all be better. Pretending like nothing is wrong is more favorable than crying my eyes out. Men don't cry, that's what Noello told me.
Rhiannon hesitates to answer, pensive in her placid, mystical aloofness. Those are big words that Daddy taught me.
I won't hold her to her little outburst from yesterday morning. We all have our moments. She's still a good person, I just know that she is. Everyone is good unless they're turned bad, like the District Nine girl. I don't want to think about her.
"Fine." That is all that she says, as she goes back to staring into space.
"Anything special happen in your Session? Any advice you want to ask? If not, then let's get dinner." Dirk smiles at me warmly, the way Daddy does.
They look so much alike aside from the scar running down Dirk's cheek. It looks cool. Macho. That's what the street boys in school use to describe anything that they like, anything masculine. I don't even know what it means.
"Not really anything special in particular happened, but I do have a question: What are some ways to look more intimidating to the tributes, not just like a pushover?"
"You aren't a pushover," he says, elbowing me rousingly. "Just hold in the tears sometimes. The Capitol does like an emotionally present tribute, but too much is too much."
"Okay, thanks! Now can we eat?"
"No problem."
The avoxes bring us our food, and we all sit down. I'm sandwiched in between Dirk and the Daria, the escort. Her pastel purple fur coat attracts glares from Rhiannon, and behind her heavy caking of makeup of the same color, her face is almost masked. I'm not a fan of the coat either, but it is insignificant, not indicative of her character as a whole. She's been nothing but nice, if a little strict, and definitely quite brainwashed, but still good at her core.
All sorts of food is laid out for us to eat, ranging from shimmering bowls of chocolate pudding to foreign fruity things in a rainbow of colors to crispy meats, untouched and mouthwatering. The last thing in particular attracts a disgusted side-eye from Rhiannon as she most-of-the-way stares off into her own little world and doesn't put anything on her plate but bread and a few berries. Bovina and Dirk remain silent. They must have just given up.
"So, what do you think your score will be?" Daria asks excitedly, like she's begging for the newest gossip. She leans into my face, as if I'm some sort of child. I don't mind it.
"I don't know. Probably a… a…"
I look into Dirk's face, and I don't want to disappoint him. I did as well as I thought I would, which is to say poor. I can already picture Daddy and Wyola back home, his disappointment and worry as Wyola asks him why I didn't do as good as most of the others, if not everyone else. I'm weak and cowardly and I know it. I ran away from Imperia today, and I couldn't hold in the tears. I did nothing as she tore into Sierra, or into Tabitha, or into anyone else over training, just like I did nothing when that feral dog jumped the fence and ran for Wyola. Noello of all people was the one to save her, the boy in the wheelchair. That is what being brave and strong looks like. I want to be both of those things so desperately, but I'm neither!
Dirk looks at me knowingly, his hazel eyes peering into mine. He knows, and so there is no point in hiding it.
"What do you think you got, Rhiannon?" Daria asks as she diverts her energy to her.
"Numbers are meaningless," is Rhiannon's response. She doesn't bat an eyelash and continuing to live in her own world as if nothing has just happened.
I wish that I was like her, impervious to fear and anxiety.
"Have you thought long enough, kiddo?" asks Daria as she turns swiftly to face me again.
"Yes. I'll probably score a five, or a four, or a three." I have to shove that last word out, and I look down to my plate and stab the steaming pork chop with my fork. It burns my tongue, so I swallow it immediately, and it rakes my throat, becoming lodged for a second as I bent down to choke, suffocating that heavy lump of shame and fear.
Dirk waits until I give him a thumbs up to start comment. "Don't look so dejected, Raihan. Like Rhiannon said, it's just a number." She doesn't entertain his efforts to interweave her into the conversation. "It won't matter when you're in the arena."
The mood dampens, as Dirk's attempt at kind, comforting words turns into a reminder of what is coming. I can't let it affect me, I have to be optimistic. That's what Daddy said, that and open-minded and courageous. I have to be courageous. Noello told me to be courageous, too, and so I have to be. I have to be. If I'm not, I'll sink into to same depression that always seems to arise at the words of times. I won't cry anymore. Crying is for babies.
"What I meant was that your score isn't as vital to sponsors as you think it is. You have to win their hearts in your interview, and in the arena itself. A score like that isn't bad, and it will just make you seem cuter to the audience. You'll attract a lot of fans just from that. Trust me, there's a contingent that only bases their donations off of sweetest and smallest tribute. They'll be behind you."
"Oh, but cute tributes never win!" Daria says, her overlarge lips thrusted out in a pout. "Every year it's always the same story. 'Hey, look at me, aren't I so precious and adorable? Would you like to sponsor me?'" She moves her violet hand as she speaks, her face contorting as her eyes cross and her nostrils flare. Is this really what she thinks of me? "They hardly ever make it out of the bloodbath. Tiny tributes are boring. Why couldn't we get two big strong ones like last year? Shame they drowned the way they did, so disappointing."
Dirk is dumbfounded, staring murderously at Daria, who goes back to slicing up her steak. Bovina white knuckles her fork silently, mirroring Dirk's glare. Even Rhiannon stares daggers at her.
"I guess I'll just have to be the first, then," I say, trembling voice slicing through the silence like the knife Daria is using to cut her dinner.
What she said stings, but it's true. I'm weak and all I have is cuteness. But I can have more than that. Daddy and Wyola believe in me, and so does Noello, and so does Dirk! They all believe that I can! I need the strength and the drive, and with that, I can do it. But I don't have that. I only have the optimism. Hopefully, with one comes the others.
If I die, I don't want it to be while I'm running away. I won't accept just their love, even if I never see them again. I want their pride. I want their admiration. I want to be strong in the face of danger. That's what bravery is, isn't it? Being strong in the face of danger. Being brave and optimistic, regardless of whether or not there is hope. Sticking up for what you believe in and the ones that you love.
That's what I want to be remembered as, not just some poor little kid who tried to be cute and then died.
"Good for you, having a little spunk in you!" Daria says, surprised, as I gulp and swallow as the wetness recedes from my eyes. "You aren't giving up, even when it looks hopeless."
"It's not hopeless," Dirk responds icily, cutting me off.
"Yeah, it isn't hopeless," I say, smiling again, because that's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? Smile even when there's nothing to smile about?
"It's all hopeless." Rhiannon's words hang eerily in the air, pervading the room with a sense of foreboding melancholy. They slither into my head.
It is all hopeless, isn't it? All of it is. This charade of cuteness and optimism and bravery. None of it will mean anything once I'm in the arena. Either I die shamefully, or I die admirably. Either way, I die.
I don't want to die, not the same way that Mommy did! I won't be able to keep it together then! Not if I die, or one of my friends does! It's petrifying, terrifying to picture myself with blood gushing out, and the screams and the screams, to see or to feel to the choking sensation as the blood laps on the walls of my throat in a sickening, rising pool and then gushes out of my mouth, and the grotesque and metallic taste of death in all of its finality. I can't face the blood again!
"Don't you dare try and discourage him." I can almost see the steam coming out of Dirk's nostrils and ears. "You have no business even being here, you ugly, purple little—" and then he says an unfamiliar word that I shouldn't repeat based off of the way that Daria gasps, hand on her breast, and falls back in her chair, and the way that Bovina, white-faced, turns to Dirk in shock.
"Dirk, what the hell were you thinking just then?!" she yells admonishingly at him; meanwhile, Daria slips daintily to the floor and covers her face with a handkerchief given to her by an avox, wailing loudly and Rhiannon mistily looks upward, unperturbed.
I don't know what to think myself. Daria is floundering, crying on the floor as if Dirk has just said something immeasurably painful. I want to comfort her, give her a hug the way Daddy and Wyola always did to me when I was upset, the way that we would do to her. It felt nice. Something tells me that this one wouldn't feel nice.
Besides, Dirk stood up for me, I can tell that at least. Standing up for people is good. That's what has been drilled into me for my entire life. He's on my side. Daria doesn't care about me. Noello would have called her the same thing.
Maybe the world isn't as good as I once thought that it was. People like Daria don't deserve to be hugged. After all, she is voluntarily and gleefully partaking in a deathmatch of children.
"I'll tell you what I was thinking," Dirk says through gritted teeth, seething and unaware or temporarily indifferent to the fact that I can hear him. "I'm sick and tired of that woman, and I'm sick and tired of seeing my kids die, year after year after year. I can't take it anymore! He so innocent and lovable, and he stands no chance, Bovina. He's going to die! You know how fucked up this is!"
His words hit my chest like an anvil is dropped in it. How am I supposed to have faith in myself if even Dirk has no faith in me?! He lied to me! He betrayed me!
I leap up from my chair and sway from the blood rushing to my chest, the heat in my face and my hands as tears slide down my cheeks. I run to my room and reach the door, sliding into the hefty wooden door.
"Raihan! Get back here! I didn't mean for you to hear that!"
I don't listen to Dirk. I don't want to think right now, so I just run to my bed and cry, stopping only to lock the door. The blankets are luxurious and pristine, and I lose myself in tears in them, my face buried in my goose down pillow like there is no tomorrow so long as I don't have to face it. That isn't too far from the truth.
The siren is the first thing that wakes me up. My face is glued to the pillow from snot and tears, and my shoes and training clothes are still on.
I immediately begin to panic. I have no idea what is going on. I'm scared, nervous, and I find myself clutching the covers like there is no tomorrow, frozen in place in fear and confusion. I can hear feet outside the door bustling around, the clopping of Daria and Dirk's boots and the clacking of the avoxes's heeled shoes. Indistinct voices shout out directions.
I don't want to face them or face this potential threat outside, just to stay hidden in here, safe and sound. I'm afraid of what I might find. I know what I'm doing, though. It doesn't take me that long to find it as I reach down into my brain; it's instantaneous, really. I'm being cowardly and weak, hiding, rigid in fear, just like what I've always resolved not to be. I don't want to be this way.
The door shakes all of a sudden, tremoring with some heavy weight, frightening me. I hop up and inch my way towards the headboard.
"Raihan, open up! We have to go down to the lobby!"
I sit there, crouched down and unmoving for a second more.
"Raihan, this is urgent!"
I hop forward and dash to the door at that, unlocking and running outside to find Dirk waiting for me, just as panicked as I am. He takes me by my shoulder with his rough and heavy hands, not gentle the way that they always have been up until now.
"What's going on?" I ask him as we bustle down the hall in a crowd of avoxes fleeing from the closet.
In response, the intercom answers me. The voice is vacant and hollow now, not cheery or human at all: "All tributes, mentors, and escorts will report to the training floor lobby immediately. We suggest taking the stairs."
"I don't know, Raihan, let's just get moving!"
Pulling me along with him, Dirk rushes to the stairwell exit and we run in.
"Rhiannon, come on, this is urgent!"
Bovina tugs Rhiannon along behind her, my partner looking serene and completely disinterested in said urgency.
Below us, the stairwell is crowded with people. I spot Aleyn and Sierra not far below us, and in front of them the Eights, the girl shooting forward persistently and the boy elbowing others out of his way venomously, their mentors far behind them. Dirk pulls me along, and before I know it, we have caught up to the bulk up everyone, all trapped in a line. I hear a squeak and see Tabitha only feet in front of me trip on an escort's shoe, but even as I try to extend my hand, I am pulled past by the crowd. I could have helped her if I was a bit stronger, quicker to take action.
The noise and proximity are overpowering, and I cling to Dirk's hand, pressing myself closer to him. I can't breathe! The cacophony is dissipating my thoughts, dissipating everything but fear. I'm so scared. I don't want to die yet. Tears of nerves drop down my face, and I'm not the only one, but it sure feels like it. Some woman collides with me from behind, and I stumble forward myself into the boy from Nine and fall to the ground. He looks at me, nervous and acidic, before continuing to wander off.
Dirk pulls me up from under the feet of the others like I weigh nothing. That's what strength looks like. I'm trying not to cry, trying so badly, but the harder I do, the easier they come. I begin to blubber and gasp for air, reaching out for Dirk as he pushes me towards something that I can't see over the heads of everyone else.
"Tributes, over here!" An angry female voice yells, and I can see the shiny white helmet of a Peacekeeper over the heads of everyone else as I near her.
A door is open beside her, and before I know it, Dirk shoves me through. I grasp at him fruitlessly as a further barrage of tributes pours into the dark corridor that must lead to the Gamemaking box. He is gone, and now I am truly alone amidst twenty others, ironically. I have to weather the storm. I have to be strong.
I'm prodded along further to a side door on the right. I can't see any of my allies in the dim light, only the bodies of the few nearby. We are steered into another room nearby, one of two bunkers, one of whom already seems to be full.
"What is happening?!" the girl from Six yells above the chaos as she clutches her partner fearfully in front of me.
"Everyone stay calm," a booming voice I recognize as Sierra's commands over the discord.
"Raihan!"
A small force rushes into me, and I look up to see Bolt gripping my shoulder, his spiky blonde hair reflecting the fluorescent lights of the steel-walled room. Nerissa is behind him, smiling despite what is going on around herm though she looks quite annoyed.
"You don't have any idea what's going on either, do you?" he asks.
I shake my head, the ball in my throat clogging it up.
"Well, it's a good thing we're able to regroup, at least," Nerissa says, smiling ever-so-brightly even given the circumstances. "This bunker is horrible, though."
"We're just glad you're okay," Bolt says, having to yell over the noise to be heard as we back into a corner. "We can protect each other now. We're a group."
And then, all of a sudden, I'm bawling into his arms, bawling in the same way that I did in the Justice Building. I don't want to show weakness, but the fear is consuming me. I don't want to be die, but I don't want to be weak either. I'm doing just that now, though. I have to stop this, but I don't want to stop it now.
I know that Bolt believes in me, and the rest of the alliance, too. They have too. If they don't, I'll have nobody. Without them, I can't be brave. Without them, I have no one to defend. But that's in the future. Right now, we are stuck in a vault with no idea what is going on, and I am in the middle of a meltdown.
And then the same woman as before steps in the room, holding a mounted rifle at anyone willing to try attacking her and escaping. She utters only two short sentences: "Cornelius Avery has been murdered. You will stay here until further notice."
And then she slams the door as utter pandemonium erupts, and the least that I can do is cling to Bolt and hide behind him in the madness.
So, what did you think of that? I FINALLY cranked this one out, and I had a bit of writer's block there at the beginning after coming back from getting my wisdom teeth out, but I think my writing still straddled the bar that I set last chapter. With this, we are officially done with round 3 of POVs and onto the final round! That's so exciting! For some of the tributes, this will be their last ever POV, which is still kind of hard to process. I can't believe I have made it this far in this story, and I couldn't have done it without all of your support. You guys are the best!
I have a long weekend for Labor Day holiday, and as next chapter is a one-POV Interlude with Viola as she looks over the Private Session reports and injects herself even further into the mosh-pit that is this sub-plot, I hope to have it finished by the end of it, though I may upload it a bit later to have better pacing and work on the Private Session Reveal POVs before posting the chapter.
But what did you think of the chapter itself? Scylla had some more internal conflict, Elior got some advice from an unexpected new friend, Rooker threw a tantrum and also could have some incriminating information on his hands, and Raihan's fuckstorm of a pre-Games continued. I loved writing everything one of these POVs, they all just flowed, and Raihan's actually broke 3.5k! Give me all of your thoguths in the reviews as always, please don't just read and not review, I love hearing them. Even though I love long reviews, I'd still be happy with just a short one going less in-depth just so I would know that you're still reading. If you haven't, go answer the poll as well, it will only take a minute of your time and will give me some influential feedback! I don't care if you aren't a submitter or haven't ever even reviewed, hit it up, and if that is the case, PM me that you did so I can give you some sponsor points.
Here is an alliance list as well, since I haven't done that in a while and there have been some changes.
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Three Nice Kids, Marvel, and the Bane of Paradigm's Existence (aka Careers): Marvel Silver (D1), Arlo Maddox (D2), Scylla Frigard (D2), Talisa Rowland (D4), Imperia Crimson (D9)
Three Crazy Names: Turquesa Miracelest (D1), Aquatico Espovera (D4), Mystic Archeron (D8)
Nerissa's Band of Merry and Manipulatable Misfits: Bolt Dattery (D3), Nerissa Doppler (D3), Raihan Everstow (D10), Sierra Hay-Fields (D11), Tabitha Declan (D12)
Awkward Teen Romance: Elior Gobel (D5), Konani Sowka (D5)
Good Cop and Bad Cop: Carroll Heinback (D6), Keeley Axel (D6)
Wholesome Beans Who I Can Think of No Other Good Name For: Rowan Hunter (D7), Tessa Oakhart (D7)
Vibing off Alone for the Time Being: Cassius Heart (D8), Coleus Yarrow (D9), Rhiannon Castor (D10), Aleyn Garsow (D11), Rooker Hilt (D12)
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With that, I'll sign off. Remember that you are awesome no matter what, but especially if you review my story, and have a wonderful day or night wherever you are when you read this!
-Mills