XLIV. Desperate Outcomes
I was as one who still retains the feeling
Of a forgotten vision, and endeavors,
In vain to bring it back into his mind.
Liana Taylor. 41.
Head Gamemaker.
She sets her mug down on the table with an exaggerated sigh.
"Well, this is definitely interesting," Liana says, rotating her swivel chair towards Plutarch.
Eyes still glued to the overhead view of the arena, he frantically types away at his keyboard. "Interesting is certainly one word for it."
"Would ludicrous be a better one?" She realizes that her assistant isn't wanting to make eye contact with her, so Liana shifts her attention back to her own monitor, currently displaying a map of everywhere in the arena (her arena, mind you) that's been tarnished by Verdigris' flames.
As she watches the flames slowly climb up the walls of the cathedral she poured the better part of a year designing, Liana can't help but feel some sort of a profound loss. Bereavement is an emotion she's become well acquainted with over the past year, but familiarly doesn't make her feel much better. First was Clemensia and Lysistrata, who Liana hardly had time to morn before being thrust into their positions of power. The fact she had to act so impervious to their deaths at the time only made her mentality worse once the Games were over and done and she had time to decompress. Well, not that much time, because before she knew it, Liana was under fire for reasons she doesn't even know how to explain, being scorned as a traitor to Panem despite pouring every last drop of her soul into the nation. Losing Minerva was like being hit by a train, but because Liana wasn't obliged to act like she was relatively unaffected, last year's feelings of despondency have been replaced with those of wrath.
The fact her arena is at risk of being consumed by conflagration is just icing on the cake of what's been perhaps the most miserable year of her life. Yes, Liana Taylor may be in power, but that doesn't change the fact that she's on a continuous losing streak that very well may get worse in a matter of minutes. More than anything, she needed these Games to be absolutely perfect, everything according to plan and with enough excitement to keep the entire nation on their toes. While she's never outright considered herself to be someone who's incredibly rigid and punctilious, there's no use in Liana even trying to deny the firestorm of rage that tears through her body as Verdigris' flames grow higher and higher on her screen.
"You have to admit, her survival skills are impressive," Plutarch chimes in, zooming in on Verdigris' face, the girl's expression completely unfazed.
"Objectively, yes," Liana responds, gritting her teeth in an attempt not to let her anger show too much to the rest of her team. "I just would strongly prefer if she didn't destroy my arena."
"I know you would." He attempts to sooth her. "But at the same time, you're the one who thought it would be good idea to put the lighter in the barn house in the first place."
"That's true," she says. "I thought that somebody would use it to set another Tribute on fire, not to ruin everything, though. For Snow's sake, those District Six gremlins' explosion was enough harm to last a lifetime."
Good riddance to them, Liana continues in her mind. She was far happier when they were sequestered in the mountains for the first half of the Games, unable to cause much harm. The second they started tinkering with the power generators meant to keep the rooms well lit, she was undoubtedly nervous. Of course, the masses were thrilled for whatever scheme they were wanting to pull off, so Liana couldn't send mutts down to take them out, instead being forced to restrain herself from ripping out her own hair as the roof of the cathedral shattered. While most people were, Liana can't say that she was disturbed by what Hedy did to the Six boy. She'd never have the audacity to do something like that herself, mainly because creating a shower of blood seems uncomfortable. Regardless, the bastard had it coming.
"Do you think…" Plutarch begins to ask her a question, apprehension growing on his face, "that there's going to be an issue with the bodies in the cathedral? If it completely burns down, I mean."
"Fuck," Liana mutters under her breath. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She fiddles with the buttons on her keyboard, hoping that a wind will put out the fire, but she's unsuccessful. "Shit."
"I'll take that as a yes, then?" Plutarch raises his left eyebrow. "Do you think that it's time we launch—"
"One hundred percent, yes." Liana cuts him off and nods.
When she was initially developing the idea of creating an arena based on heaven to contrast last year's hell, one of Liana's first ideas was to leave all of the bodies in the arena until the final two Tributes were facing off against one another. Her rational was that the Tributes technically were already in the afterlife, something that got a round of laughter from her co-workers. Of course though, the bodies did need to eventually be removed so that they could be mailed back to the Tribute's grieving family's, so Liana figured she might as well make a spectacle out of that as well.
She aided with the construction of twenty-three robotic angels, each of which would be controlled to remove a body from the arena and into the Capitol's morgue so that they can be prepared for shipment. Though they're relatively petite in size, the angels are equipped with grappling hooks to ensure that they can lift even the heaviest of Tributes. The idea of the final angel observing the last two Tributes and only being able to take one of them up into the actual afterlife sent shivers down her spine when she first thought of it, and it still does now. It's just, rather unfortunate, that the angels will need to be launched now in order to save the bodies inside the cathedral from being burned to a crisp, as there's three Tributes left, not two as she had hoped.
But Liana has to get over this tiny preference of hers and send the angels out now. She's rational enough to realize that her haters will loathe her even more if she manages to let nearly a dozen bodies turn to ash, preventing parents from getting one last look at their children.
"Can somebody prepare the angels for launch?" She calls out to the room of Gamemakers behind her.
A voice responds, "Right now? Are you sure? There's still three of them left."
"I said what I said," Liana rises from her seat and begins pacing back and forwards around the room, her entire body filled with nervous energy. "Please, just listen to me."
"Yes, ma'am, I'm on it," another voice says.
She watches as a tall brunette man aggressively hits buttons before getting out of his chair and running out of the main Gamemakers' office and presumably the room where the mutts and various robotic contraptions are housed.
For the second time, Plutarch tries to reassure her. "Everything is going to be okay, Liana. The problem's being taken care of."
"You don't understand," she whispers under her breath, her voice so soft, nobody can hear her. "Nobody in this room fucking understands."
Liana isn't quite sure she understands herself. Everything that she's worked so hard for, every haunting memory that she's repressed so deeply, and every person she's proven wrong are slowly slipping through her fingertips like sand, and no matter how hard she tries, she feels like she can't scoop them up. While the vast majority of people do still love her (or at least they do for now), she can't help but feel like a disappointment. She can't help but feel as though she's failed the horrified fifteen-year-old girl who woke up thinking she was a monster, because she can't show that girl that it's okay to be an atrocity if you do it well.
She lifts her mug off the table and throws it to the ground, ceramic shards scattering all over the room.
Plutarch grabs her by the wrist and asks, "Are you okay?" but Liana tears herself away from him.
"Clearly fucking not," she says, crouching down to the ground to pick up all of the jagged fragments she created, everybody else in the room looking at her with confusion, and maybe even a smidge of fear. Liana tilts her head towards them and furrows her brow before screaming, "Stop staring at me, we have a Games to finish."
"Do you need a minute or two to yourself in order to calm down," Plutarch kneels to her height and whispers. "Don't worry about cleaning up the glass; I can do it."
"I'm fine."
Liana takes a deep breath and regains her composure. She said it herself, the Games demand to be finished, and she can't let her emotions get the best of her now.
She carefully gathers the remains of her cup into her hands, doing her best not to cut up her palms and then sits back in her seat, cool and collected as if her outburst had never happened. All Liana can do is hope that she didn't alarm anybody else, and that the rest of the Games go off without a hitch.
Lord willing, the arena won't be destroyed just like everything else she's touched.
Crista Cray. 43.
Victor of The 27th Hunger Games.
With the Games en route to end within hours, there's no point in sending Calsin anything valuable now. But, she can still write him a note.
Sitting cross-legged on the ground in the hallway, Crista tears a blank sheet of paper out of her notebook and firmly grips the ballpoint pen in her hand. There's only one issue, she doesn't even know what to say at this point.
The pride she feels for him is nearly akin to what she felt when Cressida took her first steps. Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but regardless, she's is positively beaming.
Crista has known from the beginning that Calsin and Atlantis were cut from the same cloth, both tormented by Four's nastiest zealots to the point of inexplicable devastation. She recognized it because her own brand of misery was formed the exact same way. Hence why she can't say that she was extraordinarily surprised when the two of them were able to reunite and form an undeniable connection within a matter of days. Crista knew that they had it in them, it was only a matter of time.
The two of them have grown without a shadow of a doubt throughout these Games, hence the extreme pain she'd feel whenever she had to remind herself that only one of them at maximum can make it out of the arena. Only one of them would be able take down Shane and the Collective at Crista's side, even if it was something that they both clearly dreamed of. It seems her co-worker in desolation has to be Calsin now.
(She's still recovering from when he killed Atlantis to put her out of her misery. The way his previously rugged exterior seemingly melted away to reveal the heart of gold Crista always knew he had nearly took her breath away. The only reason it didn't was because she had to explain to Cressida.
Her daughter had asked her as Calsin plunged the knife in Atlantis throat, "Why did he kill her? I thought that they were friends now."
Crista was without a doubt, at a loss for words.
Still though, she tried explaining it to Cressida. "Atlantis was in a lot of pain, and Calsin was just setting her free. He did it because he really cares about her, and he doesn't want her to suffer."
"Mommy was in a lot of pain too…")
(Though Crista's headspace remains hopelessly devoted to Sapphira Starlett, Cressida's harmless mention of her sets Crista off. She's spent the past year thinking about how she was unable to save Sapphira, unable to recognize the signs that her beloved was spiraling, even though in hindsight, they were abundantly clear. There's not an inch of Crista's skin that wasn't covered in tears as she spent her night under the covers, wishing that Sapphira was there to hold her and tell her everything would be okay.
And that's because everything is decidedly not okay.
Crista Cray is without a lover, watching as Four gets destroyed the same way it destroyed her. She's stuck on a boat in the middle of the sea, and no matter how loud she screams, nobody will ever come to save her. The one person who would've done so is six feet under, collateral damage to her ignorance.
She can't lose somebody else again.)
While Crista would obviously be delighted to arrive back in Four with Calsin Verrillo on the train besides her, she knows that the remainder of the District would be less than thrilled.
Caspian screamed in agony when Atlantis agreed to befriend him, and he punched a hole in the wall of Four's apartment when he stuck his blade in her throat. He swore to Crista, "If that little shit makes it out of the arena alive, there's no way in hell I'm letting him last even an hour back home. If I don't take him out, my father or Shane will."
As of late, Crista's biggest fear has been her own mortality, the fact that life seems to just be passing her by, and to some degree she's already dead, but Shane Odeen is still high on that list. She worries for Calsin's safety if he makes it back to Four, just as much as she worries for her own safety, because it would be just like Shane to kill her too as if she had some say in letting Calsin win. And if she's dead, now Cressida's without both her mothers and District Four is without its justice.
"I am so proud of you," Crista tries writing to Calsin once more but for the second time, her mind goes blank. There's so much she wants to say to him, so much that she wants to assure him of, but anything she says will probably be a lie, as much as she doesn't want it to be.
She rises to her feet and sighs. Perhaps a change of scenery will be enough to inspire her.
Crista delicately paces through the halls, her eyes on the walls with screens showing the Games the entire time.
"Out of the way!"
A man she doesn't know who's dressed in white opens one of the doors to the many offices and pushes Crista aside. She stumbles in confusion, but is aware enough to pay attention to the man as he talks into an intercom device on his wrist. "Tell Liana not to worry. They're being deployed soon."
What's being deployed? Tempted by her curiosity, Crista follows the man back through the halls, keeping a steady pace behind him as he sprints into the room at the end of the hallway, walking through a door that's clearly labeled "Muttations and Robotics."
He doesn't fully shut the door behind him, so Crista is able to overhear him as he again, speaks on the intercom. "Alright, I'm getting the first twenty-one ready to go out there now. Not sure what we'll do with the one meant for the One boy, since he's… you know, but we can figure something out."
"What about the other two?" Crista hears a muffled voice communicate back to him.
The man loudly plucks at a keyboard. "I'm thinking we put them on standby."
There's a pause in voices for a while, but Crista still listens keenly. She's not entirely sure what's going on, and she's a hundred percent sure this isn't information that she should be hearing, but she listens to it anyway. After all, this could be her secret to getting what she wants.
"Alright," finally, the man talks again. "I have the controllers for twenty-forth through forth place in my bag now, but that's all I can fit. I'll be back to get the others in a minute."
Crista ducks into a corner as the man leaves the office, luckily not seeing her. Once he's gone, she carefully sneaks into the room, looking around to ensure there aren't any cameras hidden anywhere. There's a large screen displaying a vast assortment of mythical beasts, but illuminated right in the center is a mechanical angel with some sort of a hook attached to it.
Her eyes dart to three remote controls laying flat on the desk. The has a sticker which says "fifth place, now void" and the others have stickers reading "third place" and "second place" respectively. Crista has no clue what compels her to do this, but she peels the fifth and third place stickers off of the remotes and swaps them. She grabs ahold of the "third place" remote, now labeled to be void, and slips it into her backpack.
She has no idea what she's doing, but there's a voice in her head telling her that she shouldn't stop.
Crista exits the room just as quickly as she entered and shifts her attention to the screens displaying the Games once more. In the corner of the sky, she notices angels not unlike the ones she just saw on the screen in the office. They fly in organized formations, almost as if they are birds.
After a minute or two of observing, it clicks.
With every ounce of energy left in her body, Crista sprints down the hallway, just barely catching a ride in an elevator. Despite her huffing and puffing, the other woman inside the vessel doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with her.
Instead, she cordially asks Crista, "Which floor are you off to?"
"The second floor, please," she quickly replies, noting the location of the Tribute sponsorship office.
The elevator takes them down a floor, and Crista jets off the elevator just as quickly as she boarded it, calling out behind her, "Have a great day!"
Once again, she sits cross-legged on the ground and pulls out her writing supplies, but this time, she knows exactly what she wants to say. Hopefully he's able to understand.
No matter how unfeasible her hardly thought out plan may be, she's desperate enough to deem it worth a try. The past year of Crista's life has been dedicated to self-pity over the fact she couldn't save one, and the last thing she wants is a repeat of that.
The only thing left to do is wait.