confessional hymns for the devil, himself
Comments: I woke up one morning and wrote the entirety of this. If I can manage to write each chapter like I did this one, I'll be set for this entire shebang. It is largely unbeta-ed, but as soon as I get word back from my current beta, the looked-over version will be posted in its place. I'm really just as impatient as you guys.
Disclaimer: I own nothing that has a copyright attached.
Chapter Two
This is the second time in twenty-four hours that Clove finds herself waking up in a strange room alone. This time, however, there is a plush, warm mattress underneath her back instead of the cold, sanitary metal of a gurney. She lies there for a few moments, stubbornly keeping her eyes shut and listening to the sounds of the building creaking around her.
She's having a hard time piecing together what the doctor had been trying to explain to Cato and her before he jammed his damn sedative into her arm. If the Games were truly fake, then how were they able to accomplish this and still account for all the very realistic deaths in the arena? Clove had drawn first blood during the first dash to the Cornucopia; there had been no mistaking that as the other kid's body crumpled to the ground. So was the male tribute from District Nine alive, too?
The doctor mentioned a simulator they interfaced with their brains. Compared to some of the other technology the Capitol came up with, it doesn't seem too far-fetched. But was it possible to build something on such a large scale that everything felt all-too-real for the game players and they were all none the wiser?
Clove's head isn't aching which makes her wonder what else was inside that injection besides a sedative. Instead, her entire body feels numb and shapeless almost as if she spent the whole night asleep on a concrete floor. She finally raises her eyelids, observing the room for the first time. It's bathed in shadows, but there's enough light slanting through the closed shutters that she can make out what's around her. It's identical in appearance to the room Clove stayed in at the Capitol before the Games. Is that where they've taken her?
She sits up, bracing herself for the vertigo that came on the day before when she did this. Surprisingly, this time there is no crushing pressure or pain. Her thick hair feels cumbersome around her face and it's only when Clove brushes it away from the nape of her neck does she feel the healing scab beneath her fingertips.
It's hard and about the size of a dime, but it's enough to send her reeling into a state of panic. Clove claws at it furiously, stumbling out of the bed and into the adjoining bathroom for a mirror. The scab is now peeling away underneath her fingernails as she twists her body to get a better view of her neck. It wells with fresh blood and Clove hastily wipes away the mess. Underneath is a clean, perfectly circular entry wound. She can't see how deep it is and she's not about to probe a finger around to find out.
Clove's mouth waters as she fights the urge to get sick; she doesn't remember receiving this injury in the arena. The Capitol has inflicted this wound and the placement and proximity to her brain does not escape her radar. Hijacking comes to mind, but the hole is too precise to be that of a tracker jacker stinger and too big to be from a syringe.
This could have been how they interfaced them with the simulator. The idea of someone inserting something in her brain stem has Clove moving quickly to the bedroom door. She turns the knob as it simultaneously swings in towards her. Cato is standing on the other side.
"Good, you're awake. We need to talk."
He brushes past her and she spins on her heel, biting down on her tongue hard. Clove notices Cato has a similar wound nestled between the short, blonde hairs at the nape of his neck. He perches on the edge of the bed, his heavy, muscular frame dwarfing everything around him. Cato makes a habit of making everything around him feel instantly weaker in comparison. It is something Clove's only recently grown accustomed to during their years of training together.
"So what have you figured out?" She appreciates that Cato thinks enough of her to know that she's capable of coming to her own conclusions about their predicament.
"They...stuck something in our heads so that we would experience the Games, but we were somehow never actually a part of them." Clove's pacing in frustration at this point. There are too many loose ends that need to be answered, and she doesn't know where to begin. "The dead tributes aren't really dead; their simulations are."
Her stomach bottoms out suddenly as she realizes what she's implying. "You didn't win." Cato's eyebrows stitch together, and he looks away.
"How could you have not won?" It sounds hypocritical coming out of her mouth, another defeated Tribute, but Clove's bets had always been on herself first, and Cato second.
"I was close," he replies shortly. The stony look of his eyes convinces her not to press further. "You're right about everything, as far as I can tell. I think they must have knocked us out sometime after we boarded the train after the Reaping; it would have been the easiest time to do so."
"It also could have been after our interviews. Everything I told Caesar all came out of my head, alone."
Cato's expression holds sorrow when he looks up at her. "How do you know, Clove? How can you be sure?"
Her hands fist at her side. How could such a large chunk of her life be missing? The false memories still seem so real to her, so where did she start drawing the line? Cato sits, silent, clasping and unclasping his fingers. It looks as if he wants to add something, but is holding it back instead.
"Spit it out! If everyone here is going to be keeping secrets from me, like hell you're going to be one of them," Clove snarls, stepping forward and shoving him roughly. He absorbs her aggression and rights himself on the bed stoically.
"One of the District Twelve brats won, I think. Both of them were still alive when I fell. If we're not really dead, does that mean they didn't actually win? It's been eating at me; where are all the others? I thought I was alone until you showed up yesterday."
"The doctor said we just woke up ahead of time," Clove replies, absentmindedly. Her thoughts are still circulating around what Cato had said about Twelve. How could Cat Piss and Boy Bread Wonder be the winning tributes? They were so pathetic.
"Meet me outside after you're dressed," Cato breaks through her thoughts. She can tell he has his mind set on something, and in this situation it'd probably be easier to just go along with him than to argue.
After the door clicks shut behind him, Clove locates a wardrobe right outside the bathroom door hidden by a revolving panel. She borrows a loose-fitting, cotton, buttoned shirt and a pair of unassuming dark pants from its contents. There is a pair of brown leather knee-high boots sitting at the back of the wardrobe and although she has to wrinkle her nose at their feminine cut, they fit on her feet like a second skin. Someone had taken great care to prepare this room for her.
The shower yells one last plea for her attention, but she wraps her dark hair in a loose bun at the back of her neck and heads out the door. Cato is leaning against the wall across from her bedroom, and when he sees her he shoulders away and motions for her to follow. Clove doesn't know how much of the place he's explored as she slept, but he seems to have a good handle on his whereabouts.
"Have you been outside yet?" she questions, as they pass a window. Clove presses her fingertips up against the glass, peering out. The scenery is a lot like the wilderness she saw as they neared the Capitol. Except it's so quiet and empty here. There are no high-rise apartments and throngs of Capitol citizens mulling in the streets throwing outlandish parties.
"Yeah, but it was still dark and I couldn't see much. We're in a lowland surrounded by mountains on all sides, and there are about a dozen buildings like ours." She feels his hand touch her shoulder briefly, and she shrugs it off. He may think she wants his pity right now, but that's the furthest from the truth. Feeling sorry for herself is the very last thing on Clove's mind.
It becomes apparent that they're in a normal two-bedroom house before they even wander upon the small kitchen and sitting room. It's all she can do to hold back a laugh at how domestic it all is. Training on the same team with Cato was a trial; their hopes of them living together in peace will be disastrous. However, Clove doesn't plan on sticking around that long to find out; she'll walk back to District Two if she has to.
As soon as she steps out the front door, she notices the scent of the juniper trees on the wind. This particular tree grows wild in their district by the numbers. Her walk back home might not be such a feat after all. Cato pauses outside of the front porch, cautiously surveying the similar houses around them. Once he decides they are in no obvious danger, he leads Clove toward a rectangular gray-bricked building at the bottom of a hill towards their left.
This door is also unlocked; they must forget how dangerous some of the tributes are. How angry some of them still are. They're back in the clinic that she woke up in yesterday, though Cato doesn't seem as surprised.
"After they had to drug you, the doctor and his assistants escorted me to the house we're staying in. They had to drag you."
Clove sneers at his smug face. "Why do you deserve special treatment, and I sedatives? You can easily snap their necks; I don't even have my knives with me," she argues.
"You have your teeth," Cato says simply, "and you did a number on the President's neck. I would have knocked your ass out, too. I was merely trying to threaten them into answering my questions, and you arrive all hell-fire and fury and ruin everything."
He ruffles her hair roughly. "Like usual, little Clove."
Clove knocks his hand away angrily. She didn't have much to do with Cato before the Reaping, but it seemed as soon as he volunteered after she did, he went out of his way to piss her off. Though only three years older, he severely underestimated her abilities, and her patience. He made a point to joke with District One's tributes that Clove was his "kid sister" who followed in his "large shadow". Several times during training days, Clove felt like sinking her knives into his soft flesh rather than the backs of wooden dummies.
Cato finds the doctor in his office a moment later, and her anger is redirected at him within a moment's notice. The older man looks up from the documents in front of him, nowhere near as flighty and nervous as he was the night before.
"We're here to talk, not to maim." Cato says the last bit with a pointed look in her direction, and it takes every ounce of willpower in Clove not to hiss back at him. The doctor seems very relaxed around them now, and it makes her wonder if he's medicated himself.
"I think introductions are in order first. I know who you are, Cato and Clove. My name is Docere. I'm the physician in charge of this facility and the well-being of you two, as well as the rest of the Tributes. President Snow wasn't very cooperative with your questions the first time around, but I've had a long night to think things through."
Cato shakes the hand the Doctor extends out to him, and Clove is taken aback by how polite he can be; she would have never thought he would have a sliver of it in that brutish body of his.
"So Docere, can you explain to us what this is for?" Cato immediately fires off, directing to the wound on his neck.
The man's face lights up in excitement. "Oh yes, that! That is my greatest accomplishment! You've probably already come to the conclusion that something was inserted into the back of your head. You're absolutely right about that."
Cato's face blanches and she can feel that sick feeling roiling in her own stomach. Docere must notice, because he waves his hands casually. "Don't worry; it has done no damage aside from that entry wound you see. What I inserted was actually far, far smaller than that."
"You see," he continues, rifling through a stack of papers on his desk before pushing a diagram towards the two of them, "is that I've invented a microscopic fiber that is carefully inserted through the back of the occipital lobe and into your corpus callosum." He points to a white, meaty layer in the middle of the brain on the page. "In the shortest terms possible, the corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres of your brain and relays messages and signals via axons back and forth. My biosynthetic fiber acts as a Trojan horse and integrates itself as one of the neural fibers. Through it, I was able to send false signals of your time in the arena across the hemispheres."
Clove processes this slowly as Docere goes on to further explain that they were all "hooked up" shortly after their last interview with Caesar. Relief floods her as she realizes her time in the training center had all been real memories. That narrows it down to when it all started to become hazy.
"And there's absolutely no damage done to our brain?" Cato questions, and Clove understands his trepidation at believing the doctor immediately; her own head felt like it was going to explode yesterday.
The doctor frowns fondly. "The brain is a very tricky and complicated territory. I can promise no physical damage, but it may have compensated for all the fake neural signals with very real sensory repercussions. Have you heard of phantom sensations, Clove?" This is the first time he's directly spoken to her since they entered his office, and she's surprised for a moment before finding her voice.
"I know about it. One of the Peacekeepers in the Nut lost his leg during the Rebellion, and he said he could still feel it sometimes." The doctor nods.
"Yes, tell me Clove, how did you perish in the arena?" She immediately feels vulnerable and ashamed of her death; she was not a martyr. She had her skull indented in by an angry boy with a big rock. Worse yet, she had been screaming for Cato's help seconds before.
"I'm assuming a brain hemorrhage," she mumbles back, not meeting anyone's eyes.
"You're correct. Well, partly. You obviously know your skull is not crushed, but because of those memories and signals sent across your brain, it thinks the skull is. As a result, you will experience very debilitating migraines as a result of the increased pressure inside your head, as I'm sure you already have. I will provide the necessary pain medication, but the full effects of the bio-fiber will probably last for a couple more months until the brain can fully re-route itself."
At least now Clove knows why her head was hurting so badly yesterday, though the prospect of lying in bed incapacitated for the next few months does not sit well with her.
"And Cato," the doctor continues, "this means something totally different for you. Your injuries in the arena were far more serious than Clove's. At times, you'll probably have to be placed on morphling to subdue you."
Clove turns to Cato, wanting to question him though she knows she probably shouldn't. He clammed up when she found out he died; asking him how that happened would likely produce fewer results.
"Yeah, that's putting it a little lightly. Though I'm glad to know why I didn't get any sleep last night," her partner replies sarcastically, sees his fingers clench down around his knees. What happened to him? "One more question Doc, why? Where are we and why are we here?"
Docere shakes his head sadly. "That is one facet I can't tell you everything about just yet. We call this place District Zero; it was created shortly before the beginning of the 74th Hunger Games. Snow...had a plan for you all, but I don't know if still plans to see it through. Do know that your group of tributes are the only ones that we ever hooked up to the simulator and probably will be the only ones."
Clove notices Cato's jaw clenching next to her, and knows it's not a good sign. That was not the answer he was looking for. "Is that all you can tell us about this place?"
"Everybody else was scheduled to awake this morning shortly after nine o'clock," Docere explains, skirting around Cato's question. "My assistants will be standing post to do damage control; I'm sure most of you will have issues with each other, but you have to remember all these issues are imaginary and just simulated conflicts. You're protected here. Trust me, you don't want to be out in the real world just yet after what everyone's seen you do. You were not a likable bunch from the start."
Cato moves to leave, angry, and Clove rises to follow him. The majority of her questions have been answered, and although Snow's plan eats away at her, she knows she's not going to get any more out of the good doctor today.
"One last thing, you two. The other tributes will be just as confused and disoriented as you were. It might be best if you're not the first people they see, so stay inside today."
Cato nods stiffly, stalking out of the room and down the hallway. Clove glances back once to see Docere standing awkwardly behind his desk, empty hand still outstretched. She rushes to follow Cato back outside, shaking to get the image out of her head. His parting words do not resonate with her, however, until they're just outside the front doors of the clinic.
A large, hulking man stands at the top of the hill leading towards the houses and even from this distance, Clove can see his fingers curl into a fist and his nostrils flare in outrage.
Thresh would definitely be the last person that wants to see them.