Trigger Warning: This is another one of those chapters where uncomfortable, victor prostitution-related things happen. Also suicide.
Gloss Goré, District 1
"I'll be a killer and a thriller and the cause of our death."
Big Thief, Paul
10 Things that Gloss Goré forced himself to do to protect people
1. Poisoning the volunteers.
The Goré twins were at the top of their class. There was nothing stopping them from both being picked for the Sixty-Fourth Hunger Games and being forced to fight each other.
Nothing apart from Gloss.
The twins had made a pact. If they both got picked, they'd flip a coin. The winner would volunteer and get all the glory. The loser would fake an injury and miss out.
But Gloss wanted glory for them both.
The night before the reaping of the Sixty-Third games, Gloss broke into the academy's kitchens and slipped poison into the special desserts. He knew that they were only served to the top five choices for male and female volunteers, as a reward for hard work and skill. It was only meant to cause vomiting and diarrhoea. Gloss' plan was to make all the top students too sick to volunteer so he'd step in at the reaping and look like a hero.
It didn't turn out like that.
The next morning, the academy's top ten students were all found dead in their beds.
Gloss had always been terrible with his poisons.
News of the poisoning spread fast throughout District 1. For the first time since Elites had been established, there was real fear in the district. There would be no volunteers this year. Innocent kids would be going to their deaths.
The crowd cheered for Gloss, so grateful to have a volunteer that they didn't mind that he wasn't who they'd expected. They didn't put two and two together.
They didn't know that Gloss had already killed ten people by accident.
2. Bullying the younger kids.
In the games, there were Elites and there were outliers. The Elites bullied the outliers in training, then they killed them in the arena. It was tradition.
The boy from Eight was only twelve. Gloss chose him as his target.
"Trying to learn edible plants, worm?" Gloss crept up behind the boy. "I wouldn't bother if I were you. I'll slice you in half in the first minute. You won't even have the chance to feel hungry."
He was only trying to give the boy a fighting chance. If he was too scared of the Careers to run into the bloodbath, he'd be more likely to run away and find a safe place to hide. Then there'd be a win-win situation. The boy would get remembered for lasting longer than the bloodbath rather than just dying straight away and Gloss would get the fun challenge of hunting the boy down.
"Hey, Shiny," a girl's voice yelled. "You'd better watch your back. I don't like bullies."
Gloss turned to see the girl from District 3, the fourteen-year-old who'd volunteered.
"I don't like cannon fodder that talks back," Gloss retorted.
"Wow, you must really hate yourself," the girl said.
Gloss tried to laugh it off but, inside, he was worried. What could a volunteer girl from District 3 possibly have up her sleeves?
3. Lying in his interview.
"In your interview, you need to be sexy," Mink told Gloss. "Flirt with your audience. You'll get all the sponsors."
"I don't feel comfortable doing that," Gloss said. "I have a girlfriend at home."
Gloss wasn't lying. Her name was Velvet Delahaye. She was in his class at the academy. They'd been dating for about three years.
"Not anymore," Mink snapped. "You gave her up the moment you volunteered. Now you have a choice: lose your girl because you flirted with someone or lose her because you died with no sponsors."
"Why do people sponsor the good-looking ones, anyway?" Gloss asked.
"I suppose you deserve to know," Mink grinned. "When you're a victor, you're expected to sell your body to the Capitol. If you don't, they kill your family."
"That's terrible!" Gloss cried.
"Are you kidding?" Mink asked. "It's so fun! You'd better get used to it."
"Okay," Gloss said, silently planning to jump on the mines the moment the countdown began.
"I know what you're thinking, kid," Mink taunted. "You're just like Amber. You're wondering how you're going to kill yourself. My advice is don't bother. It'll be seen as an act of rebellion and they'll punish your family. I'll be able to get Cashmere out of it, since I have some power, but I'll expect a little something from her in return..."
Anger took over.
"I swear, if you lay a hand on my sister, I'll murder you," Gloss seethed.
"Then you'd better give me a reason to be scared," Mink said. "Win the games."
Gloss realised what he had to do. He had to win these games and it didn't matter how he did it. He would give an interview that would break Velvet's heart.
But he'd do it quickly so she'd have time to move on before something else happened to him.
4. Sabotaging his district partner.
Gloss' district partner wasn't a volunteer. She was a girl named Aventurine Volhard. She looked pretty and sad, like she'd seen too much pain in her life. He remembered her complaining in the chariot about her barely-there costume.
Being a victor would destroy her.
The night before the games, Gloss snuck into Aventurine's room and woke her up.
"Mink told me what the Capitol do to victors after they win," he hissed. "You've seen how they looked at you in the chariot. They want you. Do yourself a favour and jump on the mines."
"Okay," Aventurine whispered. "I'll do it if you do it."
"I'll jump right after you," Gloss said. "I promise."
He broke that promise.
5. Killing the girl from Three in the bloodbath.
After the first day of training, Gloss came back to the District 1 floor with the knowledge that the girl from Three, the volunteer, had far too much bravado for an outlier.
"I'm worried about the girl from Three," he said at the dinner table.
Mink laughed. But Coco, Aventurine's backup mentor, shot him a glare.
"I think you dodged a bullet," she said, tensely.
"What do you mean?" Gloss asked.
"The girl from Three's name is Leda Screener," Coco said. "I've done a bit of digging - Beetee Latier owed me a favour."
Mink snickered. Coco aimed a withering look in his direction.
"She volunteered because her mother has cancer and can't afford treatment," she continued. "As far as I can see, she doesn't have any secret weapon. Not like that other girl, Ramona Hirose."
"What? The twelve-year-old?" Gloss asked, remembering the girl that'd been reaped for Three before Leda had volunteered - a brat in a pink dress who hadn't been able to stop crying.
"The twelve-year-old daughter of two of the biggest pioneers of medical technology in District 3," Coco said. "If her parents are smart people at all, they'd have taught her all their skills. That girl could be the next Joules Chau. She could be the next Beetee Latier. She could be-"
"Stop reminding me of all the times that we got beaten by nerds!" Mink complained.
"I'm just saying, she hasn't aged out yet. Her last reaping's for the Sixty-Ninth games," Coco responded, causing the two mentors to begin a long and vicious argument.
If Gloss took one thing away from that conversation, it was that the girl that Leda Screener had saved had very rich parents. Rich parents with backgrounds in medicine.
Surely, if Leda Screener was killed in the most tragic and demoralising way possible, Ramona Hirose's parents would feel obligated to save her mother's life. They owed her their daughter's life, after all.
When the countdown ticked down to zero, Gloss charged straight into the bloodbath and grabbed a pair of knives. He looked up and the girl from Three was right next to him, her back turned as she searched through the supplies for something.
She'd never find it. Gloss slit her throat with one slice.
6. Torturing the boy from Eight to death.
The arena was a nightmare for Gloss' alliance.
Gloss blamed Silver Oberst from two years ago. His popularity from killing his allies and single-handedly owning the arena had made the gamemakers desperate to get another Elite alone. Last year, they'd tried an arena with no weapons but the alliance had still survived due to Eidolon Wrack's strength and Enobaria Rossetti's brutality. So, this year, they tried a different approach.
Melia was the first to die, killed by a swordfish mutt. Kayak's head was cracked open by a falling coconut. Vitruvius and Honeydew had both come down with this mosquito-borne disease, which had killed the once-powerful boy from Two.
But Honeydew - or Honey, as she preferred to be called by friends - fought for her life.
Gloss liked Honey. She'd lost her brother to Enobaria's teeth the year before. They'd made a pact that they'd protect each other until the final two, so either Honey could win in her brother's memory or Cashmere wouldn't have to mourn Gloss.
While it was true that Gloss wanted Honey dead, since it was the only way he could win, he wanted it to be an honourable death in battle, not wasting away from a disease.
If he only had more sponsors, he'd be able to treat her illness and save her life.
The boy from Eight decided to take advantage of the Elites' misfortune. He tried to rob their camp. Gloss caught him easily. As he raised his knife over the boy's struggling form, he had a thought.
What if I gave the sponsors something fun?
Gloss forced a grin and started slicing. It was only when a silver parachute landed beside him that he put the boy out of his misery.
7. Telling Cashmere the awful truth.
"Cashmere, there's something I need to tell you," Gloss said, as Cashmere was helping him move his belongings into his new house in Victor's Village. He could see the desire and jealousy in her eyes whenever she walked into a new room. Cashmere wanted a house just like this one. She wanted to be a victor, just like her brother.
But Gloss knew the truth about being a victor.
"What is it?" Cashmere asked.
"You can't volunteer next year," Gloss said, hurriedly. "If you volunteer, either you'll die or you'll win and the Capitol will force you to sell your body. Please don't do it. I can't bear the thought of you going through all that."
Cashmere looked aghast.
"I can't believe it!" She shrieked. "You're lying! You don't want me to upstage you so you're trying to convince me not to volunteer."
"I'm telling the truth, Cashmere," Gloss pleaded. "I just want to protect you."
"Really?" Cashmere snapped. "Name one time you've been sold to someone."
"I haven't yet," Gloss answered. "But Mink told me about it."
"Mink?" Cashmere raised an eyebrow. "You want me to give up my dream because of something that Mink said."
"Ask another victor," Gloss said. "What about Coco? Do you trust Coco's word?"
"Okay, I'll ask her," Cashmere walked out, briskly, and Gloss waited for her return.
"She said that Mink was just messing with you," Cashmere said, as she came back.
Gloss breathed a sigh of relief and forgot about victor prostitution.
It was only after Cashmere had volunteered and Gloss had agreed to mentor his sister that President Snow introduced him to his first client. By then, it was too late to save Cashmere. Gloss stormed into the Control Centre and confronted Coco.
"You lied," he spat.
"I did," Coco said. "Do you know why I lied?"
"I don't care!" Gloss snapped.
"You're not supposed to warn people about victor prostitution," Coco said. "Imagine if I'd told Cashmere the truth. She would've told her friends and they would've told their friends and, eventually, everyone in the academy would've found out. We'd have lost half our students overnight. And then Snow would've probably got involved and then... You definitely don't want Snow to get involved."
"This is still your fault," Gloss muttered.
"I can live with that," Coco said. "Your sister is the greatest tribute I've ever had the pleasure to teach. She's a victor for sure. And the more victors we get, the less time each victor spends being sold."
"I think I understand," Gloss said, quietly.
He hoped that Cashmere would understand as well. It looked like that was her only option.
8. Selling his body.
Gloss gained a reputation in the Capitol for being willing to do anything that was asked of him, no matter how unpleasant. Other victors had a breaking point, where their smile dropped or they begged their client to stop. Gloss didn't. That was why he was so popular.
The truth behind it all was that Gloss was too scared to object to anything. He was scared that, if he showed the slightest bit of reluctance, the Capitol would hurt someone he cared about.
Cashmere asked him how he could stand it. He told her that he liked it. He enjoyed it. Nothing was too depraved for him. He could sense Cashmere's disgust at him growing with every day that passed. But he couldn't tell her the truth.
He was too scared to tell his sister that he hated being the Capitol's toy as much as she did. He hated the Capitol. He hated that they'd made it so he couldn't even trust his twin anymore.
But he'd do anything they said.
Anything at all.
9. Blackmailing his tributes.
"In your interview, you need to be sexy," Gloss said to his tribute. "It's the best way to get sponsors."
"I have a girlfriend," the boy said. "Couldn't I just talk about her?"
"No, you can't. You are now single. You will casually mention that you are single in your interview."
"Why should I?" The boy asked.
"Because if you don't, I'll cut you off," Gloss said, icily. "I'll give all your sponsor money to Régine."
"You can't do that!" The boy cried, green eyes widening with fear.
"Are you willing to bet your life on it?"
"No," the boy hung his head, defeated.
Gloss knew that he was giving his tribute the best shot at victory. He was doing the boy a favour.
Besides, it was rare that he got to exert any power over anyone these days.
It was six days into the Sixty-Eighth Hunger Games when Gloss got the letter, the one that made him realise that he'd made a mistake.
Dorian, It read.
I'm pregnant. Please come back.
Largesse.
Gloss cried when he read the letter. He'd got lucky with his tribute this year. He'd got a boy who'd had a shot at escaping victor prostitution. And he'd ruined it all. Now that Dorian had casually denied his girlfriend's existence in his interview, Gloss couldn't send the letter in to Dorian. That would just cause him to lose all the sponsors he'd gained for his looks. Dorian wouldn't be able to win any parent sponsors because the boy from Seven, Colin Birch, was a young father who'd worked his adorable baby son into his angle from the start.
All Gloss could do was hope that Dorian could win as things were.
And that was unlikely, given that Ramona Hirose was in the arena.
Gloss couldn't quite believe what the sobbing brat from the District 3 reaping of his games had turned into. She was an icy-cold and extremely smart volunteer. Smart enough to weasel her way into the Elites, set their supplies on fire and still somehow become the unofficial leader of their alliance.
Smart enough to get away with poisoning her allies when they reached the final five. And to do it so secretively that Gloss didn't realise what had happened until Dorian started vomiting blood.
Gloss had always been terrible at poisons. He was grateful that Régine Maurin, Dorian's district partner, was driven mad by the poison and stabbed him. He didn't want to watch his tribute die to a coward's weapon.
Even then, he couldn't get Ramona Hirose out of his head. He had nightmares about what could've happened if she'd ended up in his arena. He knew that it was wrong and twisted for an Elite to be afraid of an outlier but she'd used the one weapon he'd never been able to master. Poison.
It grew even worse after Ramona won. She was married off to Alexander Snow, the president's grandson, instead of being sold to Capitolites like she deserved. Gloss couldn't understand it. How was it fair that his sister - a powerful Elite - ended up as the Capitol's sex slave and the poisonous coward from Three got the high-profile marriage?
Gloss' hatred and fear towards Ramona Hirose ate away at him like poison until it became an obsession. He dreamed about her every night. Sometimes she killed him. Sometimes he killed her.
Sometimes he did more than kill her.
10. Killing his sister's friend.
The moment Gloss Goré saw the arena for the Third Quarter Quell, he knew who his first target was.
He'd never liked Maia Nuñez. She'd poisoned one of her opponents, which meant that Gloss had always held a bit of a grudge against her. Then Cashmere had won her games and she'd immediately befriended Maia. They'd both had a lot in common - a love of beauty and a hatred of being controlled.
Gloss would sometimes catch them sharing their troubles in the Control Centre, usually when Maia's boyfriend, Hatchet, was with a client. Gloss was banned from their conversations, since they were apparently 'girl talk'. He knew better. Every time Cashmere was used by a client, she drifted further away from the brother who shrugged everything off and closer to the friend who felt her pain.
Gloss wanted to kill Maia the moment she was reaped for the Quell but he knew that Cashmere would be angry if he didn't have a good enough reason.
He soon found one. The arena was a jungle, just like Maia's arena. Surely, if she survived the bloodbath, she'd have an advantage.
So Gloss sought her out and stabbed her to death.
Afterwards, he explained to Cashmere why he'd done it. Maia Nuñez was dangerous. She would've killed them both. He'd only killed her to protect Cashmere. He'd done everything to protect Cashmere.
He never figured out why Cashmere wouldn't look him in the eye.
When Gloss saw Ramona Hirose's mentor, Wiress, washing a coil of wire on a beach, he wondered if he would feel better if he killed her. He knew that the best thing would be killing Ramona Hirose, the girl who should've died in his games, but maybe it was for the best that she hadn't been reaped. He'd be constantly afraid, trapped in an arena with her.
Gloss slipped into the water and began to swim towards the woman from Three.
It was the last mistake he'd ever make.
Gloss is one of the more morally ambiguous victors. He's willing to do some terrible things, mostly murder and torture, but only to protect people. He's also got some very Career ideas about power, which leads to his grudge against Ramona and his murder of Wiress. At least he's better than Mink. Mink just gets more and more loathsome with every chapter I write.
We also get a glimpse of Dorian, the boy from One in Ramona's games. I thought it'd be handy if he got a bit of backstory here because Ramona's chapter is going to be from her perspective and she never really figures Dorian out.
Next chapter is Cashmere. It'll probably be quite a short one, since a lot of her life before and after her games is covered here.
