Author's Note
I do not own the Hunger Games.
They woke in the room marked 'District Ten Female.' The bed was softer than any they had laid on and the sheets were silk. The room smelt sugary sweet. A banging came on the door.
"Up up up," squeaked St Clarance from outside. Luciente groaned and windmilled her legs against the sheets.
"You can't be late for your first day of training!"
Well, they could, Hyperion considered. They'd never particularly been ones to care for societal norms and expectations. And being late to the first day of training would make an impact.
"And be fun," Luciente said.
Hyperion smiled.
St Clarance banged on the door again five minutes later.
This time they got up.
Go here, do this, go there.
They took turns taking long, hot showers. The hot water was a commodity they might never have again after the next five days. Luciente stood under it with her eyes closed and watched the sword slide through the neck of the girl from Three.
She dressed in the clothes that had been laid out for her on the red cushioned stool, a set of black trousers and a green t-shirt, along with supple black boots, all of which were emblazoned with the District Ten seal. Branded, marked, owned. Like cattle.
Hyperion had been given identical clothing. They sat at a long table laden down with more food than they could eat. Luciente nibbled at the fruits and bread while Hyperion helped himself to pieces of meat to go with his meal.
"You should eat more," Holden scolded.
"No point in stuffing ourselves," Hyperion grunted back.
They finished their breakfast in a stilted kind of silence that the mentors occasionally attempted to break only to go ignored and left to brush their teeth, returning to the common room to find St Clarance busying around.
"There you are, there you are. Come along, we must get down to the training centre."
The two of them fell into step behind him as he led them down to the elevator. The pair from Eleven were already aboard, along with their escort. The boy glared at them – suspicious, uncomfortable, Luciente judged – but the girl offered a smile.
"Good morning."
Hyperion grunted a reply.
"You're the pair from Ten, right?"
"Heaven," muttered her District partner.
"I- I'm sorry they're making you two go in together."
Hyperion found Luciente's hand behind his back, wrapping his fingers tight around hers. "I'm not."
They were together.
They had each other.
And he trusted in Luciente when she said they would be free.
The elevator stopped on the floor labelled 'TC' and the mirrored doors rolled open, revealing a large, well lit hall. In three places staircases led upwards, and a further two ladders vanished through the ceiling. Evidently there was something upstairs, Hyperion judged.
Roughly two thirds of the tributes were already there, stood in a loose semi-circle in the centre of the room. St Clarance led them over to take their place beside the District Nine tributes, while the pair from Eleven were to stand on their other side. The boy from Nine gave them a hopeful look and a raised eyebrow. Eight's tributes arrived a few minutes later, shortly followed by Three and Seven, which completed the group.
In a month's time, Hyperion considered, twenty three of these teenagers were going to be dead.
Luciente had yet to tell him if that number included them, only that they would be free at last.
A man with strict purple hair took the floor in front of them. He was tall and hard and lean, with violent amber eyes.
Luciente's shoulders tensed slightly.
"My name is Tiberius Oxam, and I am the Head Trainer here at the Training Centre." He strutted from side to side, taking long, luxurious steps. "While you are in training here there will be absolutely no physical altercations between tributes under any circumstances." He gave them a grim smile. "Save it for the arena."
A few of the Career tributes gave sneering laughs, and the girl from Two twisted her mouth into an awful kind of smile.
"Reckon it's a bit late to be telling that to Ten over there!"
Her District partner and the boy from One laughed. The girl from Four glowered at them. Anger, Luciente recognised, fire and resentment and rage.
"Now, you will find the layout here is very simple. The first floor contains stations for physical and combat activities you might find yourself facing, while the second floor contains survival stations. Remember that both are equally important to survival in the arena."
The boy from One gave an audible scoff.
"The Training Centre is open twenty four hours. You can spend as much or as little time here as you want. Just remember to eat and sleep as well. If you have any questions feel free to approach any of the trainers in the hall. There are four compulsory exercises, but everything else is individual training and you may spend as much or as little time on a station as you wish. Feel free to go and get started at your desired stations!"
He swept away to one side of the hall. The tributes exchanged anxious looks and quickly began to scatter. The Careers met up by the sword fighting station, Hyperion noted, while most others vanished upstairs. The girl from Five – did she give a name? – raised an eyebrow at them as she followed the boy from Nine up the staircase on the far right. He turned to offer Luciente a questioning look, but she was already trying to tug him off towards a door set into a large pane of fuzzy, distorted glass. What was even the point in that?
The room, as it turned out, was a swimming pool.
They had paddled before, in the black ponds of the outskirts, but never truly swum. Luciente paced the water's edge, glaring at it as though it might jump up and bite her. Hyperion was the first to join the trainer in the water, trying to both take in his instructions and ignore his patronising praises. Luciente slid in after him, paddling awkwardly, struggling to keep her head above the water.
"Well, it's a stroke," said one of the trainers timidly.
"It could be a style," agreed the other.
Luciente flashed them her teeth.
They spent nearly two hours in the pool, eventually being joined by the boy from Three and the girl from Seven. The girl gave up after only fifteen minutes, with an exasperated groan and a slap to the water. The boy persevered, taking frequent breaks on the pool's edge.
"You're a natural," one of the trainers gushed, even though a 'natural' was copying the coyotes and paddling in the shallow ponds when the moon was high.
"It won't stop him dying," Luciente said as they left the pool room and she watched his blood stain the water red.
They stopped by the slingshot station for the next two hours before lunch. Both were a sharp shot with a sling shot, and there were several of different designs intended to throw more lethal projectiles. They chose round, weighted projectiles for the time being and tried to pretend they were training rather than having fun as they drove shot after shot into the targets. Once upon a time he had been the better shot, but then he had been taken away for three years and she learnt to defend herself, making them now roughly equal in aim, though he could put far more power into his shots.
"We should train with them again," he said as they sat to eat lunch.
"Why? Do we need it?" Luciente asked.
"We need to show them we're good with them, so they include them in the arena," he replied.
"Hm."
"And we should practise with other weapons as well, just in case."
Still, they left weapons for later in favour of heading upstairs to the survival stations after lunch. Small groups of tributes were already forming around a few of them: Arielle from Six was at the foraging station with the girl from Three while her little District partner was trying to build a fire with the boy from Three; the girls from Nine and Eleven were at a snare building station, as was the girl from Three, and the boy from Nine was with the girl from Five speaking to a trainer with hot pink hair.
They found Nathaniel at a station for building traps, weaving one together with wire.
He looked up at them. Surprised, she read, and afraid. Ducking his head, he went back to work on his trap.
Luciente smiled. "You don't need to fear us. I like you Nathaniel Volkner."
He frowned. "Is this your way of asking for an alliance?"
Her smile widened. "See Hyperion, he's clever."
"Why?"
She tipped her head. "Because I like you."
"You know I'm going to die, right?"
"That doesn't mean I can't like you."
He creased his brow a little further. "You're weird."
"Do you want to be allies?"
"I- I guess so, if you're offering."
Luciente sat down beside him. "Good. And you should do that like this."
They spent a long hour working at the trap station with Nathaniel under the eye of the trainer.
"Can you swim?" Luciente asked.
"Swim? I- No."
"You should learn."
He eyed her. She smiled. "As part of joining our alliance."
Nathaniel nodded. "Sure."
They took him down to the swimming pool and spent the rest of the afternoon there. Luciente was determined that he would be able to paddle, even if he couldn't properly swim.
Hyperion was beginning to believe she knew. It would hardly be the first time.
Nathaniel left as evening began to draw in, whispering a goodbye and vanishing into the elevator.
"What is it about him?" Hyperion asked, though sometimes there was no fathoming with Luciente. She only smiled.
"I like him. He has a good heart."
He led her over to the knife station. The trainer hurried out to meet them. "Training late are we?"
Hyperion grunted a reply.
"Well, there's always some. Come, I'll show you what you need to know. Knives are the easiest weapon after all."
