XXIII: Day Five, Daybreak.
Gideon Mallory, 16
Applicant #20
There's a quiet peel of thunder, far off in the distance.
He stops so suddenly that Jupiter stumbles into his back, grabbing at his shoulders with a murmured apology. Their voice feels like sandpaper against the back of his neck, and he can see the pain in their face every time they swallow, struggling not to grimace.
He's much the same way. That thunder might be the best thing he's ever heard.
"Rain?" Jupiter asks. "Really?"
"It's not impossible." The clouds closer to the horizon don't look all that impressive, but they are a shade darker than the rest of them. In fact, he can't even remember the last time he saw this many clouds out here - never? There's always been a few, barely-there wispy things that seemed to disappear as quickly as he saw them. There are tons of them, now, and the wind is stronger than before, blowing directly back in their face.
Hopefully that means the clouds are headed towards them.
Jupiter rubs a hand over their face, wiping some of the dust from their eyes. "I think I could die happy if it rained."
He hums in agreement, still staring off in the distance. He's just tired, but it seems like a waste to not keep walking towards it. That, and the sun is covered every so often - walking now isn't as bad as it usually is, when the sun hasn't even fully risen yet in the sky.
Jupiter is still holding onto his shoulder, though, repeatedly rubbing at their eyes. He's not sure how much it's helping.
"You want a piggyback for a bit?" he asks. "I don't mind."
"Walking in sand sucks," they emphasize, rubbing at their thigh, then. "I've never walked in sand in my life. It's hard."
It's hard on his legs, constantly pulling his feet out of the sinking sand, trying not to trip over the wide cracks in the dirt brought on by lack of rain. He can't even imagine how Jupiter feels with it being an entirely new experience after moving for so much in the first five days as it was.
He bends down, slightly. "Up you get, then."
They frown. "It's just going to make you tire faster."
"You're tiny as shit," he points out. "It'll be like carrying an ant."
They sigh and clamber awkwardly onto his back, taking the bat from his offered hands as they drape their arms over his shoulders.
"Not for very long," they insist. "I don't want you dropping dead on my account."
He doesn't care, really, but Jupiter clearly does, so he keeps his mouth shut and straightens out. He can't remember the last time he actually carried someone for even a few seconds. One of his asshole team-mates back in the Capitol, perhaps, when the whole lot of them would celebrate and spray water over each other after every win. They always jumped on each other then.
Jupiter has to be half the weight of any of them. It's awkward, having almost no human flesh to grab onto. He wraps his hands around the curve of their knees and while he can't see the prosthetics through their pants he can now feel every disjointed angle of them, the odd curves and dips.
The baseball bat bumps lightly against his chest with every step, with every minuscule swing of Jupiter's arm draped over his shoulder.
It's hard to ignore the mess of blood and whatever else still clings to the end of it, whatever came leaking out of Myra's skull when he beat it in. Maybe the rain would serve to fix that as well. It could probably fix a lot of things.
"Are you sure you're alright?" Jupiter asks.
"Just consider yourself my umbrella and it doesn't seem so bad."
"It's not raining yet."
"From the sun, then. And the rain when it comes."
He's not even sure it will; the wind appears to be coming this way, and the clouds along with it, but what are the chances? It probably hardly ever rains here, let alone in the dead of summer when everything around them is so dead that there's no point in rain anyway, some of their fellow applicants.
God, he's getting morbid. More-so than before.
Jupiter rests their head on his shoulder. "I'm tired."
"Because we walked all night."
"That was the smart thing to do, though."
"Take a nap," he offers. "If the rain comes I'll wake you up."
"I don't think you'll need to wake me up if it starts raining. My subconscious will just start screaming. You'll probably be able to hear it too."
Screaming in delight, in delirious happiness. That would be a nice change, same as the weather. He could still hear them retching when he had caved Myra's head in, the goosebumps all the way up and down their arms. He had expected Jupiter to be scared of him, and they weren't. He still didn't really understand that part. Even he was scared of himself, now. That was him - he had a knack for fighting, for running his mouth.
Now he has a knack for killing, too. He just had to pretend he was back at practice with his team, that her head was the ball balanced perfectly on the tee, just waiting to go flying.
He's not sure anyone had noticed, least of all Jupiter, that he had closed his eyes at the first swing. He hadn't even looked, and it had still happened.
Hell would freeze over before he missed. That type of thing was ingrained in him like breathing was.
Again he thinks back to his parents, and Connie. His parents fight their way to the front of his brain before his friend can gain the top shot. They never raised him to be a fighter, he just was. Chances are they didn't want that for him at all. They themselves weren't athletic, weren't sharp-tongued, didn't have that ugly viciousness in their blood like he did.
Maybe he came from somewhere else, then. It's a stupid thought, but it makes more sense than his proper birthright.
Nothing makes sense anymore. He's not sure why he's so surprised that this doesn't either.
Emmi Langlois, 17
Applicant #13
Her plan is in pieces, but it's a plan.
Sort of.
She's never walked at a slower pace in her life - justified, at least, by the branch still stuck in the lower part of her abdomen. Her shoulder is still throbbing dully but it's nothing in comparison to the fire in her stomach, the burn that continues towards the line of her hips.
She hits the sign just before dawn, cracked into two distinct pieces. She almost misses it in the dark, the wood and the crumbled rock and the faded red-pink of the mountains and letters painted on it.
Death Valley National Park it reads, or at least it would, if it was still in one piece instead of scattered all about the ground, ruined by time.
If she sits, it's a miracle, but it's more likely that she collapses feet away from the sign. Who knows if this is the real boundary. She hopes it is. The map has to be telling her the truth.
It's hours that she sits there for, leaning up against what remains of one of the pillars that used to hold the sign up, only holding her up now. She keeps one hand wrapped around the branch, sometimes holding on too tight. It's such a struggle to breathe that it feels like she needs to hold on, give herself something to do.
She's long since given up on breathing normally, in and out through the nose. Her lips have been parted for so long that they're cracked and bleeding, renewing the taste of blood in her mouth.
As the sun rises she doesn't hear the approaching footsteps, a testament to how sluggish the speed of her brain is. It's not until a foot nudges her in her legs that she looks up, towards the person now standing over her. With the sun she can barely make them out; they're nothing more than a shapeless, black form, clothes rustling back and forth in the breeze.
"If I didn't know any better, kid, I'd have said you were dead."
Their hair is tied back, voice higher. It's not Carnelia.
Well, that's a relief.
She swallows a few times, gets the taste of blood down her throat before she speaks, voice a hoarse rasp. "Who says I'm not?"
The woman bends down and tugs her hand away from the branch, none too gently. It hurts, but she can't even raise the energy to scream.
"Well, judging by your pulse, I'd say you're still alive," she says. "Maybe not for much longer."
"Is that your professional opinion?"
"My medical opinion," she says. "Why do you think I'm out here right now?"
"To kill me, I'd assume," she says flatly. The woman leans back on her feels, examining with her with a scrutinizing gaze. It's a good thing she doesn't have the fight left in her to be irritated by it.
"Maybe," she agrees. "Maybe not. If you were in a position to be fixed they'd rather me go that route, patch you up enough to draw out your life a few days more. Is that what you want?"
"You're not serious."
She shrugs. "Maybe I am. So, what's your answer?"
This woman isn't going to save her life, no, she's just going to prolong the agony, and Emmi can't imagine she's going to do it any sort of kind, gentle way. She doesn't look malicious. Soft around the edges, in fact, very easy light blue eyes. It sort of makes her want water even more, which makes no sense.
"I have to take it out to fix it," she explains. "You know that, right?"
"Do I look stupid?" she asks, gasping when the woman's hand wraps around the edge of the branch and pulls a fraction of an inch.
"Sort of," she says. "You were sitting out here asking for it, after all. That's what you were doing, right? Waiting for someone to come get you."
"How'd you figure it out?" she chokes. She's still pulling at the branch - Emmi can feel everything moving inside her, pushing and pulling against the force. Oh, this is going to be worse than she thought, isn't it?
The woman flattens a hand on her stomach, too. How nice it must be to have two hands to work with.
She pulls, and pulls and pulls and pulls. Her hand leaves her stomach and flattens over Emmi's mouth a second before the first of the screams erupts. It's all she can hear, that and her own blood rushing in her hears. She let go of her stomach only because she has a good grip, pulling and pulling. She feels the end disappear back into her abdomen, the end no longer poking out of her side.
"You want me to fix it?" she asks, and something in her voice sounds terribly genuine. "Say so."
The branch comes out, and the woman's hand falls away from her mouth. With nothing holding onto her she goes tipping to the side, hitting the ground with a limp thud in the ruins of the welcome sign, more wood digging into her side. It makes the shock come back again, the thought of not again sending a tiny little spark through her brain, forcing her to squirm away.
"Say so," she repeats. This woman is not as nice as she looks, or maybe she just wants a bit of groveling first.
Emmi hasn't groveled to someone in years. She isn't about to start now.
She can hardly see, what with her hair in her eyes from the way she's fallen, the dangerous amount of fog creeping in at the edges. Gray, dark gray. Gray seems scarier than black.
It's the same color as the clouds, now closer to her than they are to the horizon line.
She could live, if she wanted to.
And she wants to, but not with this woman's help. She's one of the many reasons why Emmi is lying here in the dirt at all.
She bends over her, head tilted. She looks like a mother bird watching her eggs. Emmi very much feels like a helpless baby bird right about now, so it's not an inappropriate comparison.
"If you want to be sixteen, I can let you," she offers. "Or not. Just say so."
"Fifteen," she rasps.
"Sixteen. One of you is out there running in fear, thinking they can escape if we can't track them. I'll admit, it was a smart move, but not smart enough, unfortunately for them."
"You really think you're all letting us run in fear?" she forces out. "Maybe— maybe you're the stupid one then. I don't think we're all running in fear. I think some of us are running loose. And there's a big difference."
There's a huge difference, in fact. She chokes out a horrific, little wheezy laugh, and the woman above her shakes her head, as if in amusement.
"It's small enough."
"Not really," she laughs, forcing a hand under her own side, again sticky with blood. "Not really."
Her hand closes around a piece of wood, a few inches long and a few inches wide, and she aims for the center of the woman's face, hardly able to move. She sees blood, not where it hits. The woman pulls back from her hand and takes the shard of wood with her, both of her hands unable to coax all the blood back in that's pouring from somewhere in her face.
Emmi drags herself a few inches closer and reaches for the branch, discarded to the side. She swings her arm about until it cracks into the woman's leg, as wildly as she can, and does it again and again until she falls, still making this awful wailing sound.
She hits the ground next to Emmi. There's so much blood all over her face. Maybe she can't even see.
Emmi grabs the edge of her shirt, the light jacket hiding her shoulders, and drags herself up a few inches. The tip of the wood has pierced right through the bottom of her eye socket and is soaking everything in the vicinity in the blood that ensues.
She can't see at all.
Oh well. Maybe she would feel worse if this was another applicant - hell, even Myra.
She doesn't feel bad at all, though, so she smashes the branch into the woman's face again and again, until there's so much blood she's not sure where the individual slopes and dips of her face ever are, where they had been before Emmi had destroyed them.
She only calls it quits because she can no longer force her arm to keep swinging the branch, up and down, up and down. She drops it - it hits the woman in the face and bounces off.
She almost laughs again, and then collapses by her side.
There's no number change to indicate death, nothing except for a ring of red, flashing light around the screen of her bracelet. She holds it up above her head. It's just so much red. She can't even begin to imagine what that means, but...
She just killed one of them. It's a very distant thought, but it's there.
Emmi tilts her head to the side, allowing herself to look at the body again. The woman was going to fix her, this nameless and now faceless woman. She was going to fix her. There's a pistol and a machete in her belt, along with a few small knives.
That's interesting. She's very tired, though.
It's going to rain soon; she can feel it in her bones because she can feel almost nothing else. She can't go to sleep here - she doesn't want to get soaked.
She already is.
She reaches for the strap of the woman's bag and gives a single experimental tug. It's heavy; it would be heavy no matter when Emmi tried for it, but heavier now with the weakened state of her muscles, the exhaustion.
It would be so easy to sleep. Her mom wouldn't want her to sleep, not like she did.
She can't. She's not going to.
For now she remains awake.
Percius Marigold, 17
Applicant #2
Someone's shaking his shoulder.
For a long, delirious moment he allows himself to believe that it's Nic. It seems better that way, more peaceful. Like normality. Hell, right now he'd accept either one of his mom's waking him up even earlier than he gets up on his own, a gentle hand on his shoulder.
If that was the case everything really would be okay. They would keep him safe from harm; they'd let themselves get hurt before they let the same happen to him, that he knows. That's all they've ever done, and all they would ever continue to do should he get back home.
He's probably not, though. It's not as terrifying admitting that as it used to be.
"Percy," Verity insists, prodding at him harder. "Percy, jesus—"
"What?" he mumbles, keeping his eyes shut. It's the first time he's slept without some nightmare or other plaguing him the whole time. In fact, he doesn't remember falling asleep in the first place. That's what happens in the calm and the quiet, when there's nothing else going for him.
"Percy, he won't wake up. He's still breathing, but he won't wake up."
His eyes are still blurry with sleep when they snap open, too fast, and everything spins. Right, the by-product of not eating for so long. He should probably figure that out soon.
But something else is taking priority over that - Damas. He's in the same position he was when Percy fell asleep last night, curled up on his uninjured side, taking quiet, wheezing breaths. Percy can't hear him making those same noises now. If not for the minuscule rise and fall of his side as he breathes, Percy would think him dead without even moving to check.
"I was going to ask if he wanted to go out and get some water, but he won't wake up," Verity says, voice rising in pitch. "I didn't want to move him too much, but he won't respond to anything..."
His legs are still absolute mush, so he slides awkwardly over in Damas' direction, pausing just behind his back.
"What's his pulse at?"
"Uh, it's hovering around 50?" she says slowly, gently turning his wrist. "It goes up a bit, sometimes. Is that bad?"
"Why are you looking at me?" he asks. "Do I look like a doctor?"
"Well, I don't know!" she exclaims. "You're older, you've probably been in like, a better health class or something, right?"
Yeah, right? That's what he wants to quip back but it won't help at all. If he's being honest, he wishes Verity just hadn't woken him in the first place. Better to sleep through this than be awake to deal with it all, considering he doesn't know what to do about anything.
There's no telling what's going on. An infection, maybe? His body could just be shutting down. It's been five days, for crying out-loud, and they've done hardly anything to stop it besides try to tape the wound shut. He's had nothing to sustain him, nothing to help the healing process.
People don't just heal on their own the way he would need to.
"What do we do?" Verity asks, and he squeezes his eyes shut. There's nothing they can do. He's dying. He knew that last night.
He's known that, almost inevitably, since he found the two of them in the first place.
There's no fixing something that doesn't want to be fixed, something that was already broken in the first place.
"Just leave him be," he instructs. "Stop poking at him."
"But—"
"You asked me what to do. Stop."
He can see the frustration in her clenched fists, in the way her eyes keep looking around, waiting for someone to come and help them. He feels just as useless, but he's felt that way since Nic died. It's hard to raise any real energy to be mad about it when it's become a part of him.
"I don't want him to die," she murmurs. "He doesn't deserve to die."
Do any of us? his brain asks, and then, too late.
Verity flattens herself to the ground alongside Damas and scoops up his hand, once again, cradling it between both of their own. Sometime she seems older and sometimes younger - this time is one of the latter, something about her looking tragically small and fragile as she stares at his very peaceful sleeping face.
At least he looks peaceful. That's one thing he's got going for him.
Percy waits for quite a while, convincing himself not to go back to sleep. Verity would kill him, certainly, a fate he's pretty sure he does not want to suffer. Suffocated in his sleep, most likely, by a thirteen year old girl half his size. Not the ideal death.
Not that he has one. He'd prefer no death above all.
Damas' hands twitch in Verity's death-grip. To be honest, Percy is surprised the kid even has any feeling left in them after the punishment Verity has inflicted on them.
He stays put, ignoring his urge to get a good look at Damas' face as his eyes crack open, no more than a few millimeters between open and closed. He looks at Verity distantly, like he's having trouble recognizing her. His mouth opens slightly, closes again. He hears that wheezing breath again, but it's worse now. A hundred times worse.
"Hey," Verity whispers. "You don't have to talk. Everything's alright."
Chances are he can't talk, not anymore. Not enough air left in his lungs, trying hard as they are. He pulls his hand from Verity's grip and reaches into his pocket, searching feebly.
Percy's the one to pull his hand away and reaches in himself. He pulls the worn cardboard package out containing the tarot cards and rests them flat in his palm. They're smaller than he thought they would be.
"We'll keep them," Verity answers, to an unasked question. "Don't worry."
Damas smiles, barely, and the breath he lets out then sounds almost like a relief. She reaches for his hand again when he closes his eyes, but this time her grip is gentler, softer.
And Percy knows, in the pit of his stomach. He just knows.
Sitting like this on the ground next to him, Percy realizes just how small he really is. Smaller even than Verity, than anyone else he's certain. The smallest of them all.
They're both right. He knows that none of them really deserve to die, but Damas deserves it the least of any of them.
And yet when his eyes closed, for what Percy knows is the final time, he didn't look scared at all.
It takes a lot of unique bravery to act that way. Percy almost wishes he would wake one more time so he could say that to him. Maybe he's wrong, and hopefully he is, but he can almost guarantee that no one has ever told Damas that in his life.
He's braver than most of them too.
It's only a few minutes, in retrospect, but it feels like hours. Percy watches the gaps widen, between the breaths he takes. Every time he waits for it to be the last one; they all have that heaviness to them, accompanied by a terror that he knows is pointless.
He doesn't notice when it finally stops.
What he does notice is the line on the bracelet, gone flat.
Jahaira Aurelion, 16
Applicant #23
When Arwen laughs, she jumps nearly a foot into the air.
A few raindrops splatter all over her arms, though, and she takes a deep breath. Arwen is holding her arms out to the sky and laughing, and well, Jahaira gets it.
She smiles, too. The rain is cold, colder than she expected.
It feels like a miracle.
She's still not sure if she feels any sort of connection to Arwen, not like she wants, but this mood she can at least understand to it's full potential. She's something of an enigma - Jahaira feels like she knows her, and doesn't a single beat later. It's a tricky balance.
But right now this is just pure, unbridled happiness, a moment in which all of the horrors of the past few days have faded away.
"The bottles," she says, slightly breathless. "We should refill them."
Arwen nods. The rain is coming harder, now. The clouds aren't very widespread, dark as they may be. It's probably not going to last long, so as much as she'd love to dance around in it, forget everything that's happened, she knows it's not allowed. It would be, maybe, if they were all still here together. She can imagine it with an eerie amount of clarity, banishing the image that appears in her head almost as soon as it forms.
She reaches into the backseat and starts pulling out the load of empty water bottles, setting them down by her feet one by one. Arwen still hasn't moved that she can tell, shielding her eyes from the downpour as she looks up, mouth opened wide.
She's so eager to get back out there, away from the shelter from the car, that she almost misses the figure running towards them. In fact, she's not sure how many times she does before she spots them, a soaked little figure peeling towards them in the downpour towards the back of the car.
"Arwen," she warns. "Arwen, look."
Arwen turns, still with a sort of delighted look on her face, one that quickly falls at what she sees. The bottles forgotten, Jahaira takes a few paces back, hand instinctively reaching for the shovel lying in the backseat. It was Myra's, she felt like. Myra was the one who found it, the one who insisted it be put in the car along with the rest of them.
It's hers, now. It has to be.
"That's one of us," Arwen says. "It's too small to be anyone else."
"Small or not we've got like thirty seconds tops before they're here."
"Hold onto that, then," Arwen suggests, headed even closer. Jahaira hurries to follow, brandishing the shovel like it's a damn sword, like she really knows what she's doing at all. Chances are it's not fooling anyone.
Upon closer inspection it's definitely one of them. One of the younger boys, Noelani's sibling. She can't even remember his name.
She used to wonder how tributes couldn't remember everyone else's name. Not anymore.
The closer he gets, until he's nearly upon them, she realizes just how hysterical he is. What could so easily be considered the rain almost looks like tears of relief, instead, ragged breaths tearing from his throat even over the sound of the rolling thunder. He slides to a halt, nearly slipping in the freshly wet dirt, bent over with his hands on his knees, struggling to breathe.
He's still doing it when he looks behind him, eyes searching the horizon.
"Is someone following you?" Arwen asks. "I swear to fuck if you just led someone to us—"
"I don't know!" he cries, a pitiful. "Someone.. someone..."
"Someone what?" Arwen snaps. She reaches for his arm, thinking better of it before she comes into contact.
"Noelani," he chokes. "Someone killed her. It wasn't— it wasn't any of us, they killed her..."
"Who?"
"I don't know!" he repeats, voice rising into a thin, reedy wail. She hates the sound after hearing only two seconds of it. "I don't know, I don't know, I'm sorry. I went back and Tarquin and Jay were gone, and there was just so much blood, I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry."
Jahaira's not sure who he's apologizing to here, certainly his dead sister who he must believe is somehow listening. His apology other than that is falling on deaf ears, to Arwen who mostly just looks perplexed, and herself, who is very much still clutching the handle of the shovel with an intensity she shouldn't be. He's clearly not any harm to them.
She can't force herself to put it down.
Maybe it's the anger that she's been nurturing down in some unknown pit of herself, the only emotion she's been able to feel over than overwhelming despair at all of this. Anger that Myra and Emmi are gone, anger that Gideon and Jupiter took off.
Anger that she's stuck with this.
She's not an angry person. No one knows her as that. She doesn't not care the way she does right now, not ever. Sometimes she doesn't get it, sure, and she certainly doesn't now, either. But this is too much.
He's no liar - Noelani is dead, too, and even though she had next to no relationship with her that strikes a chord. They're the same age. Of the same cut, really.
Jahaira will end up just like her, dead at some unknown expense. No camera will be able to capture that.
He looks at Arwen. Topher, her brain ever so helpfully informs her, but it changes very little.
In fact, it changes nothing.
"I'm sorry," he says again, looking her dead in the eyes, and they're the last words he gets out before she swings the shovel.
Perhaps it's the shock that keeps him from crying out in surprise, the same way she sees Arwen's mouth fall open, slightly, before the shovel connects with his skull. It makes a very dull thud, tremors traveling back up her arms from the hit. She drops it, everything tingling all the way up to her shoulders and watches him careen to the ground instead, motionless.
There's a very odd dent in the side of his dead. She didn't think she was that strong.
"What did you just do?" Arwen asks, voice slightly strained.
"I... I killed him?"
"No you fucking didn't," Arwen insists. "Christ, he's still alive. You couldn't have hit him harder?"
"I thought I did!" she shouts. It was as hard as she could hit him, what else was she supposed to do? Hit him again?
Maybe. Probably. But now the shovel is lying at her feet, while she almost certainly just knocked someone out to the point where they may never wake up again. That's more comatose than anything else, hard as that is to admit, and he definitely is still breathing.
"What do we do?" she asks. Arwen looks around for a bit, as if waiting for a solution to appear out of thin air.
They're wasting a lot of time not filling their water bottles whilst dealing with this.
Arwen snatches the shovel away from her feet, passing it from hand to hand like a baseball bat. If only Gideon was here. He could figure this out, having already brained one person to the point of death. Apparently he's better at it than she is.
Unsurprising, really.
Arwen does not go for the braining method, instead choosing to bury the sharp end of the shovel in the top of his head, like she was scooping out the inside of a melon, licking the sticky juice away from her fingers.
Not good to think about it like that, she discovers, when she nearly retches.
"Okay," she says, weakly. "I think— I think he's dead."
"You think, or you know?" Arwen quips. "Fucking check."
She looks down at the bracelet, swiping away the water that's gathered on the screen. It's definitely a number lower - two numbers, actually. She doesn't even want to imagine. Topher definitely looks significantly dead, as well. It's pretty easy to put two and two together.
"Uh, he's dead," she says flatly, swallowing hard. Arwen pulls the shovel out with a horrific sounding noise, bits of brain and bone stuck to the edge of it. Yet another similarity they have to Gideon and his bat, now. This is almost worse because of how small he is, practically defenseless in his desperation. Myra was defenseless, too, but at least she didn't look so weak. At least she would have fought back, had she gained the chance.
She doesn't think Topher would have.
Arwen buries the tip of the shovel back in the earth, leaning on it with a heavy sigh. She rests her forehead on the top of it, sighing heavily.
"Go fill the water bottles," she says flatly. Jahaira nods, quickly, and practically sprints back to the car. Not once does she turn around.
She's just going to fill the bottles. Nothing else.
It's almost like nothing even really happened, if she doesn't look back.
Meris Loucare, 17
Applicant #15
"Can you get a cold from sitting out in the rain?" she calls back.
"Not the rain, no," Ria says. She's vaguely wet, some of the strands of her hair sticking to her face, but not soaked like Meris is allowing herself to be. "I'm not sure in any irradiated zone it's a good idea to sit out in it, but it's been so long..."
She looks over her shoulder back at Ria, sheltering against the wall.
"It's probably fine," Ria decides. Probably fine is good enough for Meris. She has no inclination to move, instead flopping back to the ground on her back, letting the rain splatter all over her face.
"You shouldn't sit out for too long, though," Ria expresses. "The jump from hot to cold like that won't do you any good in the long run."
She nods, raising a thumbs up into the air. Another minute or two will do. It feels good right now but Ria is probably right, and she has to trust her brain over her own. There's a very large jump in intelligence there and even she isn't about to deny it.
The time she allotted herself to spending in the rain is over far too soon, punctuated by Ria hovering over her a few short minutes later, hand outstretched as if to help her up. That's a gesture of good faith if she's ever seen one, an unusual one for someone such as Ria, so she takes it. Can't pull too hard without bringing her toppling to the ground all the same, so she uses it as an anchor instead to bring herself back to her feet. It's not until she's standing again that she's reminded of just how tiny Ria really is. It wouldn't be hard to mistake her for someone much younger, if not for the sharp look in her eyes.
Ria probably thinks the same thing about her, the odd reverse. No doubt she looks older than she should.
It's probably a good thing out here, but it hasn't helped them in the slightest. They haven't solved the mystery of who or what attacked Mel when the two of them weren't around to stop it, they haven't done much of anything, really.
Besides sit in the rain. Meris allowed herself that much, at least.
"I have an idea," Ria announces as the two of them head back into the little shack, away from the worst of the rain.
"Shoot."
"The bracelet is obviously equipped with some sort of tracking mechanism, a chip or something like it. But I think it's unlikely that the Sentinels had the exact technology the Capitol did, so chances are it's slightly more primitive."
"This is primitive to you?" she asks, tapping on her own bracelet. "I'd hate to figure out what's advanced."
Ria cracks a little smile. "I don't think they can really be that far off, if they're properly tracking us. The Gamemakers could afford the distance, but I don't think it's the same with them. So they're close by - not a good thing, normally. But if they are then chances are they've seen the same things we have. They probably know what's out there."
"You think?"
"It's an optimistic guess."
"So, what?" she wonders. "You want to rock up and ask them? I don't think they'd take too kindly to that."
"No, not quite," Ria says. "I think they're probably lying low, in order to avoid the same things happening to themselves. But if we were to remove the trackers, theoretically speaking, that would bring them out, right? It would put them at risk from the same outside forces..."
"That got Mel," she finishes. "Christ."
Well, that's one possible way to solve their problem. If they could stay alive long enough to outlast the Sentinels, then that would do them some good. No one would be able to stop them from getting help then.
"I think with some work I could get mine off," Ria says. "And then yours, but I want to figure it out first. I don't— I don't want to risk hurting you."
"You think it's going to hurt?"
She shrugs. "I don't think that, necessarily, but I'm worried about that. I don't want to test that theory out on you."
Ria is far more willing to hurt herself than others, is what she discovered, and that's what makes Mel hurt so bad in hindsight. Back then, only a few short days ago, Ria's pleas and apologies had fallen on deaf ears. She had killed him, for crying out-loud. There was no avoiding that.
What Meris is slowly beginning to realize is that not a single part of her wanted to - hell, it's looking more and more likely by the minute that Ria didn't mean to do it at all.
It doesn't change the fact that he's dead, but it makes it a little better.
That's sort of sick, when you think about it.
"Do you think we should?" Ria asks, peering up at her. With the edges of her hair plastered to her head, wrapped up in both her sweater and Mel's against the sudden oncoming chill, she looks like a child.
She is. Meris is too, but she doesn't often feel that way.
"Why not," she sighs. "You're the genius."
"I'm not—"
"More than me you are," she interrupts. "Let's do this."
Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10
"Why are we stopping?" he asks blearily.
Definitely not on the fast track to falling asleep, as he seems to do so often, even when he doesn't want to.
"It's raining."
"Thank you," he says flatly. "I hadn't noticed."
"I know your delicate constitution won't allow you to walk around in the rain, but—"
"Shut up."
"But," Soran continues. "We're running low on gas."
He blinks a few times until those words really sink in, sitting up to glance at the numerous signs and ticks behind the wheel. Soran points at one of the gauges with a sigh, the one that appears lowest of all. Not quite all the way to the bottom, but getting there.
There's a little cluster of buildings twenty feet ahead, blurry shapes in the rain that don't become clear even as they roll to a gentle stop just behind them.
"Gas?" he asks.
"Maybe." Soran shrugs. "Gotta go look to find out."
Even after Soran's abandoned the car, disappearing out into the rain and into the darkness of the building, it takes him a moment to move. The thing that finally makes him step out of the car is the thought that something could go wrong in there while he's sitting out here minding his own business. Because he cares, apparently, slightly and no more than that.
Obviously.
He clambers out of the car none too happily about it, scooping up the broken bottle and tucking the wrench away in his pocket before he heads in after him, into the grayness of the building. The icy rain has fogged up all the windows, though only a few have been left intact anyway, and even the ones that are have boards having off of their edges, rusted nails threatening to fall to the ground. There's already shit everywhere underneath his feet, glass and broken ceramic and scraps of fabric. He's not even sure what he's looking at, really. Most of what had been in this building must have been torn out, the places where it would have made sense for people to stand, to sit.
It looks a little bit like a diner, like the old fashioned ones the Capitol seems to adore so much. The counter spanning almost all of the leftmost wall is still standing, although the top has been chipped away, turned brown and black over time.
The appliances look as if they've been taken to with a machete, but he swears he's not imagining the faint traces of gasoline he can smell in the air.
There's a loud crash from the back and he jumps, tightening his grip on the bottle.
"Soran?" he asks. No response. Fuck's sake.
He eases behind the counter and peers into what is certainly a kitchen, or at least used to be. There's not much in it, a few supply closets opened up and emptied out. He turns back, towards the only other option he can see, a hall next to the front entrance.
There's a set of two bathroom doors, one of which is nearly hanging off it's hinges. He doesn't even consider opening them; you couldn't get him to, not for any amount of money in the world. It's darker and darker the further he gets down the hall with no windows to be seen, and he edges the last door open even further than it already is.
No Soran in that room to be seen, either. A break room, maybe. There's a few letters left on the door - a few lowercase e's, along with an n and a y on the bottom. Employee's only? Probably.
There's a fridge, brown with age, but the smell is only slightly foul. There's a table balancing on only three legs and remnants of chairs lying around it's base, scattered about in several different pieces. Another line of counters, and a wide open door—
Oh, there he is. Something in him deflates. Soran lets out another curse as he knocks something over off the shelf he's rummaging through.
"You couldn't have answered me?" he questions, stalking through the last door and the bit of halfway that separates them.
"Couldn't hear you," Soran insists. He shoves the hammer at Icarus' chest so there he stands, an armful of makeshift weapons clutched against him as Soran begins to clamber up the shelf like a damn squirrel. Icarus sees what he's going for, though, an oddly shaped canister up against the wall, nearly hidden behind a few cardboard boxes.
The back door is blowing in a faintly chilly breeze through the shattered window. He stares as far off into the distance as he can see, wondering how the hell he ended up in this situation.
Soran hits the ground with a thud, nearly careening over with the canister tucked in his arms.
"Not quite full, but almost," he says, shaking it again as if to prove a point. "We should probably pick through here anyway, see if there's anything useful we could take with us. We could spend the night here."
"Could we?"
Soran shrugs. "I don't see why not. Unless you want to spend another night fighting for the back-seat."
They haven't been fighting lately, though. Soran stops the car and dives back there before Icarus can beat him; he tumbles back there himself when he grows tired and Soran moves just enough for him to lay down.
"What's with the face?" Soran asks.
"I'm not making a face."
"Yeah, you are," Soran points out, while he's working out exactly what is is he's doing. "You look like your brain's all twisted up. That, or you're having an aneurysm, I'm not sure which."
"In your dreams," he scoffs. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."
"As I've come to discover," Soran says. "So, are we staying here, or not?"
"You're actually asking my opinion?"
Soran leans against the shelf, arms crossed against his chest - his eyes look very, very dead inside, before he rolls them. He too glances out the back door, almost like he was wondering what Icarus was staring at a few short minutes ago, except there's no way he noticed. Soran doesn't notice that much, and he's not about to give him credit for something he doesn't really do.
He bumps against Icarus' side when he strides back, headed back into the previous room. He turns to watch him go, still with the handful of weapons. Soran's got the gas, but he has all the weapons.
He could kill him, he realizes. And that means, indirectly, that Soran trusts him enough not to.
Which isn't really all that odd, because it took him so long to think of it in the first place. He wouldn't actually kill him. Maybe he should, before his brain gets anymore confused.
He's not even sure what is brain is confused about these days.
"We can stay," he announces, out of the blue, which is about the stupidest thing he could have said. They were already staying - Soran basically told him, and that's evident in his face when he turns around in the hall to look Icarus in the eye, for once. Something about looking Soran in the eye makes him squirm, and he's having difficulty figuring out what it is.
"Aye aye, captain," Soran says at long last, a cheeky smile on his face when he salutes him, mockingly to the full extent.
The worst part is, he finds himself smiling too, even after Soran turns back around, continuing his descent back into the building.
He's having trouble getting rid of it, like a lot of things.
He's not all that surprised.
Day five starting off not so good, I say, as if any of these days really have. I feel like I felt worse about this one though for the most part.
Let me know what you thought, please.
Until next time.