XIII.

Damas Mancer, 13
Applicant #12

He doesn't remember a single thing.

It's odd. Odd, like he is. He usually has such a vast memory, is able to remember the most random of details, no matter how small.

But now there's nothing. His whole brain is a swimming pool and there's water sloshing up against the sides, unbidden. He slowly recognizes the feeling of a chair underneath him, toes brushing against the floor and then back presumably to the leg of the chair, where it rests when he finds he doesn't have the energy to move it again.

The light, when he finally cracks open his eyes, is almost a garish yellow. Like the sun is hanging from the ceiling, though that makes little sense either. It wouldn't be that color. It's nothing like the darkness of the hovercraft. The two don't even match up in the same realm.

There's someone just in front of him, a wobbly figure perched on what must be the little bit of desk in front of him. Red hair. Too bright.

"Hey, sweetheart." He knows that face. He doesn't, though.

He just recognizes it, and he's not lucky enough for it to be Harper.

Verity is to his right, shoved into a similar chair and desk. Her eyes are widening by the second, he suspects, in alarm, though she looks just as groggy as he feels. There's something shimmery-silver around her wrist, a thick band of it, and at the same time the woman in front of him reaches for the one that's on his own. He can't pull away fast enough, not before she does something to it. The little screen at the top lights up with several things; the date, June 17th. A number clear over a hundred, hovering over a series of jagged lines? His pulse? It feels like it could be that; even his fingertips are thumping, and the skin of his wrist where she's touched him.

There's two numbers in the top left corner, and he stares at them. 24/24.

"Alright, we're up and running," she says, and hops off the desk. "You can go and get her."

There are two other men at the head of the room, maybe slightly older. The one with the longer hair disappears out the door towards the right. There's only one other door, on the left wall. There's a set of windows behind them, too, shut tight. Outside, only the desert. Some buildings. Like the land that surrounded the facility, but obviously not.

Everyone else is here too, in identical chairs and desks and bracelets. All twenty-four of them.

24/24.

There's nothing stopping them from getting up. He should. Maybe he could run. From what, he's not sure, but it's not good. His brain is telling him that much.

But no one else is. There was something exchanged while he was still out of it, while everyone else was waiting for him to wake up. Don't move, or else. He doesn't want to know what else could happen, besides what already has.

There are footsteps coming back towards the door, easily more than just the returning man. He doesn't have anything, except the weight of the tarot cards he can still feel in his pocket. Everything else is gone, and judging by everyone else's abrupt stillness they're in similar states.

His head is still foggy - he shakes himself, once, twice, and tries to clear it.

The door opens during his hasty attempt at clearing some of the blur in his eyes, blinking a few times to try and chase it away. Beside him, Verity makes an awful, choked little noise and her bracelet clacks against the table-top as her fingers lock around the edge of the rough wooden surface. Any harder and she'll break it, get some splinters for her troubles.

He shakes his head again, so that the number of figures that has since doubled at the front of the room become a little clearer, snap into focus.

Three more women, and then a fourth. Two more men as well. That's nine.

Nine is a troublesome number in this country.

But it's not just nine, unfortunately for them. It doesn't immediately click or find a connection, his poor brain, between what he's seeing and behind the noise that came out of Verity's mouth. He doesn't recognize any of them, not really. Even the last one that comes in, blonde as can be, isn't necessarily familiar. But there's something there itching in the back of his mind, a sense of familiarity. She stands there like a marble statue even in the sickly yellow light, not fitting in with the rest.

"Oh, fuck me," someone behind him says, but he doesn't turn around. Doesn't turn, because it finally clicks.

It's no wonder he didn't recognize her. It's not like he ever saw her in person, only on old newsreels and tapes that are already started to be considered historical, only nine years past.

This is the reason his brother died, standing before him. Not a an illusion, some sort of hologram. A living, breathing almost-statue, looking them over like she has all the time in the world.

Though he's beginning to realize they may not.

Verity is shaking. He's not sure if it's fear, anger, or confusion. A warring combination of all three, if he was a betting man.

But he's not. He never has been. Some days he wonders why he even trusts the cards with his fate, if they couldn't warn him about what was to come.

He thinks Old Man Red was right, about all of this.

"So," Carnelia Trevall says, leisurely. Casually. "You ready to listen?"

Jupiter Valentine, 18
Applicant #9

Beside them, Mal stands up.

They nearly throw up at how quickly he does it, because by the time he's on his feet they haven't even thought about what they'd do, if someone else around them moved. Of course it's Mal, though. They should have seen it coming.

"Sit down," they hiss, because Carnelia Trevall is staring at him like she's going to chop him into pieces and then put the bits under a microscope, and there's no words for how much they don't want that to happen.

Behind Mal, Tarquin grabs the back of his shirt, but he stays resolutely standing, pulling back against the grip.

"Mal," they plead, and finally his eyes flicker down to theirs, and Tarquin yanks him back down into his chair with a thud. He shrugs the hand off as soon as he's seated once again, leaning forward into his chair.

Carnelia smiles. "Well, now that that's over."

She slaps a paper down on the first desk she can reach, Noelani's, and Noelani flinches away from her hand, squeezing back into her chair.

"If you'd so care to look that over, it would be appreciated. Oren put a lot of work into averaging out that data."

Noelani snatches up the paper as soon as Carnelia retreats, holding it to her chest, only glancing down at it for half-seconds at a time. They don't even want to imagine what's going on there.

"So, what is it?" Mal asks, and if they had the reach they'd slide over and slap their hand over his mouth, if only to get him to shut up.

"What your fellow applicants think of you," Carnelia says. She leans over Noelani again, who must be sucking up every inch of willpower in the world to not fall out of her chair. "Gideon Mallory, number twenty-two. Not so good."

Well, Jupiter certainly didn't rank him that far down, but as much as it stings to admit they see why. He didn't exactly make a go at friendship with anyone other than them, at least not one that lasted.

"You can pass that around," she tells Noelani, who looks like she'd rather die than do just that. "Everyone else can listen. This is how this is going to go. The bracelet you're wearing now is implemented with a tracker, as well as sensors to monitor your pulse and vitals. Everything will be recorded on it and sent back to us, if we so need the information."

They never thought they would say it, but they almost wish they were back in the hospital.

"You're in an area just over fourteen-thousand square feet. You may know it as Death Valley. There are no active cities or communities within these boundaries. If you approach these boundaries looking for help—"

Their breakfast is about two seconds from coming up. Mal looks at them.

Breathe, he mouths, and they inhale, hold it for a few seconds, let it out again. It doesn't do much to help.

"Listen, whatever you're trying to make us do," Myra starts.

"I'm not going to make you do anything," Carnelia interrupts. "You're going to do it yourselves. If you don't, you'll die at my hand. Would you rather someone sitting at your side kill you, or me?"

It's the Hunger Games, their brain is saying, but this is worse. This is so much worse. How many people did Carnelia Trevall kill, nine years ago and before that? Dozens? Hundreds?

And they're next.

"If that's not enough incentive, consider this," she continues. "Meliodas Vergara - your mother is currently on assignment just outside of Eleven, near Calhoun. Taking photographs of the community they're building there. Should we stay with you all, or pay her a visit?"

Two seats behind them, he goes whiter than what she thought was possible. All the blood drains out of his face.

"Meris Loucare, your brother left for work an hour and seventeen minutes ago. How does an accident at the construction site sound to you?"

This isn't happening. It's not. If they close their eyes...

"Jupiter Valentine, your parents made reservations at a local restaurant for tomorrow night, just after your scheduled arrival back home. What do you think they'll do, when you don't show up?"

They're not going to show up. They're not here. They're anywhere but here.

"There are so many people out there I could kill instead of you," Carnelia says. "But the fact of the matter is, you're the prize. The children of the place that turned us all into monsters. They created monsters without wondering what would happen if they let them run wild instead of slaying them. I think it's about time we showed them."

The price they pay, for the past's sins. They hardly even watched the Games. They were confined to their room, and they never liked to show them in the children's ward. It was the one place the government didn't care to taint with their games.

"I'll give you an hour," she offers. "We'll leave, you can take off. But after that it's fair game. Go after each other, or we'll kill you instead. Look for help, and we'll kill you. There's only one way this ends and I think I've made it obvious enough."

Who knew about this, they want to ask. They want to scream it. Did the Instructors let them go knowing this would happen? Someone had to have known.

But that someone isn't here now, if they exist at all. That someone isn't going to save them.

Now, it's just them, and who will be left when it's all over.

Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10

No one moves. Not them, not the people standing at the front of the room.

And certainly not Carnelia.

Someone has frozen his veins, certainly, or he'd be crying. Just hysterically crying for no reason at all. Maybe at the irony of it all - great job, Estella, signing him up for his own death.

But she didn't know, she didn't know, she only wanted him to be happy.

And look where that's got him.

"If you go after our families..."

"If I go after your families, what?"

He closes his eyes. He's fine, still breathing. Estella's not. Most of the people in this room might not be, sometime soon.

He doesn't even care about his parents. Hasn't seen them in months, has stilted, awkward conversations with them when he calls. Someone here probably doesn't even have parents, siblings. The threat still feels so real, so world-shattering. Like she's capable of it, maybe.

He takes a deep breath, opens his eyes. "You can't. You wouldn't. The last time you went after this many people, you went off the grid for nine years. They won't let you live again. They won't—"

"You're alone out here, last I recalled," another one of the women says. "You'll be lucky if they ever find out the truth of what happened to you beyond what we feed them. I'll glorify it for you, if that's what you want."

"It's easier to get away with things than you think," Carnelia says. "Why don't we discuss that, hm? Two of you were hospitalized last year and both lived, if you call that getting away with it. Sabre Hennedige was checked in by his father after he fainted two times in three days - listed officially as severe dehydration and malnutrition, but we can all take a stab at what that means. And Damas Mancer, though nothing officially came of it. The report said you only attempted to harm yourself at home, not that you actually went through with it. And they certainly couldn't admit a twelve year old to a psych ward."

He's not sure who looks more awful, in that moment. Damas looks like he's waiting for a sinkhole to open up under his feet and swallow him. Sabre looks like he's already crawling into it.

"Mancer sounds familiar, too," she continues. "The last name of someone interning at the mansion when we killed everyone walking around in it. A brother, perhaps?"

This just needs to stop, all of it. They can't let this go on any longer.

But what are they supposed to do? Say get on with it? Let her kill them faster?

No, she's not. Well, maybe she is, but her goal is very clearly to get them to kill each other. And it's not like he hasn't thought about it, it's kind of hard not to when you're shoved into such a small space with so many people, but it's a joke. Usually.

How many people in here are joking when they have such thoughts?

"I think I can get through a few more of these," the other woman says. They're all listening to her, like she's almost as important as Carnelia is.

No one could ever be.

"Kidava Vaud was suspended three days into attending Ridgeview High for starting a fight with two classmates."

"And?" Kidava mutters flatly, shrugging too violently. Somehow, that's not very surprising. Trojan, otherwise blank and serious until this moment, smirks until Kidava reaches across the aisle and slams her foot into the leg of his table, rocking him back and forth.

This really isn't the time.

"To our knowledge both Arwen Paoul and Emmi Langlois have both been rumored to have been in school-related fights but escaped without a mark on their record."

"Oh, twins," Emmi mutters.

"For someone laughing at violence Trojan Geomantra has certainly had a fair hand in it - again, rumor is he and a friend beat a man within an inch of his life and put him in the hospital for two months, comatose."

"He had it coming," Trojan says. "Besides, who cares? Apparently it was just practice for this."

Half the room, at least, turns to look at him. Icarus is sure his eyes can't be the most shocked. Coming from Trojan, much like Kidava, he's really not all that surprised.

"What?"

God, this really isn't good. But apparently it's the perfect time.

"Your hour begins in two minutes," Carnelia says. "Consider taking a look around first, before you run and don't look back. It may serve you well when you're running to have something of use on-hand. Don't worry, though. Little one over there isn't the only one with family that I've had the pleasure of murdering. I don't play favorites."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Soran asks.

They're nearly sitting next to each other, so Icarus almost throws up when she stops right in front of Soran's desk, leaning down to look at him. They're both fucking smiling, inches from each other's faces. It's up there for worst thing he's seen in the past year. Up there, but not at the top.

"I think you know exactly what that means. Everyone meet Soran Faerber, who's real surname was so thoroughly obliterated that even our searching couldn't unearth it. Your father did that - to you and your mother both. Changed your names and sent you off. Hid you. That level of scandal was unheard of for someone as important as Renatus Quinn."

His blood very quickly unfreezes. He's not sure to what, because he clams up even worse than before. Soran looks so terrifying calm, and he almost wishes that he could have even an ounce of it. Just the littlest bit...

"You're not serious," he whispers.

"Everyone, Renatus Quinn's son. Bastard son, I should say. Let's hope you don't die as easily as he did."

"Oh, she's serious," Mel says, and he just about chokes. It's a good thing he didn't eat much this morning, or it would be all over his shoes.

Of all the things to be in a room with, and this is it.

And this, all of this... this is what will be killing him, if he doesn't get them first.

Anyone in my discord server knew what the arena was back in like, January, so if you didn't... tragic.

Everything else was sort of a surprise, though! So hooray for that.

I'm in a different timezone for a bit so sorry if the timing on this and the next chap is a bit wonky. But hey, bloodbath next Sunday, am I right? Any final thoughts before the Murder? Let me know.

Until next time.