XXXIV: ?
Mercia Mervaine, 14
DEZ: Independence, California
The sun rises, as does the news.
It's odd, because things happen in Independence as frequently as they do in this household when their parents are away which is to say, never. She's up at the crack of dawn, no surprise there, but Atlas is still asleep and she suspects he'll be there until eleven at the minimum.
By the time the news comes on she's already made herself a plate of toast and poured herself a second glass of juice.
There's nothing else on television at this hour or she wouldn't even be watching it.
Besides, it fills the time in which she wouldn't be doing anything else anyway. None of her friends will be awake at this hour either, especially not on a Sunday. School's out for the summer, after all. No one's getting up any earlier than they have to for the next few weeks.
Sometimes, though they're few and far-between now, she wishes for the Capitol. She doesn't properly remember it, growing up there. When they visited their Aunt Bell two years ago she had looked out the window of the car and tried to place a memory with every passing building and street, but couldn't find one that mattered.
Atlas sort of acts like he misses it, sometimes, but there isn't much he admits aloud.
At least there things happened. The news had things worth listening to, stories and breaking news that captured real attention instead of the awful, sickening monotony that she watched every morning on the stupid news.
She didn't even know the name of the main broadcaster that stared back at her every morning, which had to say something about how memorable he was.
This time was different, though. This time there was something. To anyone else it could have been just another day, another wreck just outside of town.
But like she said, things like that didn't just happen here.
From a distance, as the camera panned closer, she couldn't even tell what it was. A wide, sloping ditch barely illuminated by the sun that had yet to peek over the horizon. The two vehicles that quickly became distinguishable were so twisted together it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. There seemed to be a lot of commotion, too, more commotion than what anything in this place usually required. It didn't look like an emergency, though. The only vehicles that were present otherwise were the ones that the border patrol agency used. The only reason the footage itself seemed so blurry was because it had to have been coming from one of those cars, one of those mounted cameras that no one but the agency and her parents here bothered owning.
The broadcaster wasn't even talking. Why wasn't he talking? Was she supposed to be putting this together herself? There was enough commotion going on already - mixed shouting and the slamming of doors.
"Could you be any louder in the morning?" Atlas asks blearily, and she peers over her shoulder in time to see him sit down with a thump halfway down the stairs. This must be a new record for him.
"Not me," she insists, and shoves another bite of toast into her mouth. It was impossible to tell who it was, anyway. Atlas about shoved his head through the gaps in the bannister to watch whatever the hell she was watching, really, because she still had no idea.
"What's going on?"
She shrugs. "Car accident, it looks like? Fuck if I know."
It looked too brutal to be just a car accident, was what she couldn't help but shake. Whoever was in that was either dead or grievously injured and no one else milling around really seemed to be moving with the urgency that that came with.
If they didn't have urgency when it came to this, did they ever have it?
"D'you see that?" Atlas asked as she began to tear into her crusts, ignoring the crumbs that scattered in-between the cushions, never to be seen again.
"See what?"
She hadn't expected him to move with such urgency, either, not at this hour. When he snatches the remote from her other hand she jumps, nearly knocking her remaining plate of toast wrong-side up on the couch.
He rewinds the broadcast back a few seconds, fiddling with it until it pauses on a frame that's so blurry she can hardly make anything out, except for a handful of silhouettes.
"Look."
"At what?" she asks flatly.
"Does anyone else in this fucking town have hair the same color as yours?"
She blinks a few times. It does sort of look like there's a bit of green attached to someone's head like hair, almost the same color as hers. So bright that she's wondering how she missed it the first time. Among everything else it's startlingly out of place.
"I don't think so?"
Atlas bounces the remote between his hands for a few seconds and then quickly saves the whole broadcast. Once it's done it goes back to the same frozen frame, as if it wants them to make sense of it. "When are mom and dad getting back?"
"Few hours. Why?"
His eyes are impossible to read, the same equivalent to a black fucking hole like dad's are, sometimes. She hates it and there aren't enough words to express just how much. She reaches up after a few seconds and pokes him in the cheek.
"What?"
"Nothing. I don't know. I'm just going to show them that when they get back. Or you should, if I'm still asleep."
"Why?" she repeats, but he's already trudging back towards the stairs. She yanks one of the couch pillows out from behind her and throws it at him; he's already half-way up the stairs by the time it flies, and misses him by a mile.
"You suck!" she shouts after him, and he waves vaguely behind himself in acknowledgement and then disappears. Fucking typical.
She shoves the last of her toast in her mouth and turns back towards the television. It could mean something, maybe. It could mean nothing at all, as most things usually do. But this is her life, and her stereotypical bad-things-just-happen bloodline. It probably does mean something, if she's being honest.
She just doesn't know what quite yet.
Soran Faerber, 18
Applicant #8
Everything is a vague sort of off-white.
For a very long while he thinks that must mean he's dead only because he has no other explanation for it.
It turns out, though he realizes slower than an ideal pace, that he is not in fact dead.
It's tragic, really.
He only knows this for one reason, really. He wouldn't be in this much pain if he was dead, in hell or not. Fire's a different feeling than the one he's experiencing right now. He's not even sure how he knows that, just that he does.
Everything is so white when he finally gets his glued-shut eyes open that it's a miracle he can tell the difference at all between seeing and not. It's a little bit gray. Maybe off-white. It's not like he would know the fucking difference, would he?
There's only one thing in the small little room that isn't anywhere near sterile looking, and it just so happens to be the man sitting across from him. There's a table between them; that's gray. He's got a white uniform on but his features are dark, his olive skin slightly reddened from the sun.
And Soran has absolutely no fucking clue who he is, either, so that's interesting. There's a small tag pinned to the front of his uniform that reads 'ALDRICH' but nothing else.
Again, interesting.
He can't move, he quickly discovers. Whether that's because he's got one wrist firmly attached to the chair-back by some sort of restraint or because of how badly his legs hurt he's not really sure, and he's not exactly willing to figure it out. He's breathing. He didn't really expect to be, after the crash.
There's nothing in his brain to piece together. The pain, the light. Not much else after it.
Nothing else, in fact.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions," the man asks, lacing his fingers together over the desk. He's got a little notebook alongside him, a pen tucked into the first few pages.
Soran looks around. The room's the side of a fucking cubicle, if that. There's nothing else except the door behind him a foot to the left, three even bars across the window in the center.
"Am I being interrogated?" he asks hoarsely, and it feels like he's swallowed glass. Makes sense, because he can feel it practically every inch of his exposed skin. There's a shard of it embedded between his thumb and index finger; he'd pull it out if he had another hand to work with.
"That depends," he answers. "Your companions weren't so forthcoming."
He didn't expect them to be dead, not really, but hearing that they're alive makes his chest ache a little less. It doesn't do much good when it already hurts so much.
It was painful before - now every breath he takes is like getting stabbed all over again.
"What's your name?"
"Soran Faerber."
"Age?"
"Eighteen."
"Date of birth?"
"June 17th, 2263."
The man - Aldrich, whoever the fuck he really is, looks up at him. The pen pauses it's scribbling motions across the notepad, as if anything he's said thus far has been of any real importance.
"You do realize, Mr. Faerber, that that would make you nineteen."
He blinks a few times. "Would it?"
"The seventeenth was a week ago. Two days after you..."
"After I what?"
"After you all, if the information you've provided us is accurate thus far, disappeared. All twenty-four of the New Haven applicants were pronounced dead in the early hours of the sixteenth. The hovercraft crashed just outside of District One."
He's trying to process that, he really is, but his skull is throbbing with an intensity that he didn't think was impossible, and he's becoming increasingly aware of just how blurry his vision really is.
"You don't believe us?" he settles on.
"Would you believe a group of five children that came out of a near-uninhabitable valley with a trail of bodies behind them? Especially when they claim they're five of the children that died over a week ago?"
He shrugs, and pain flares up his neck and into the base of his skull. "Maybe."
"We've been in contact with the Federation. We were waiting for any information you could give us before we confirmed anything."
He gives the man a thumbs-up and fresh blood wells up from the side of his thumb. Maybe if he wiggles it enough the glass will pop out on its own.
"Mr. Faerber, we need to know if you participated in or instigated any of the killings that went on inside the valley."
He laughs, despise how bad it hurts. It's worth it. "Look at me. What do you think?"
"So you think this is funny?"
"Honestly, yeah."
That looks like it goes ignored, so Soran slides back into the chair as much as he can without falling out of it, which seems more likely by the second. There's no comfortable position - everything burns and aches like the pain is never going to go away. The scribbling in the notebook is incessant, like the man's writing a damn novel. When he looks up again his eyes are unreadable, or maybe his vision is just that bad.
"Your application had no emergency contacts listed."
"And?"
"When we talk with the Federation is there anyone you'd like them to contact? Any family?"
He dislodges a shard of glass embedded in the inside of his cheek when he laughs again, but this time he can't help it. Everything just seems so silly after what's gone on the past week. This conversation like anything's normal, like any question has a good answer.
And he's nineteen, apparently. That would have been what, the second day?
It's worth laughing at.
"I wouldn't worry about it," he manages. "You've probably already spoken to her."
"Sorry?"
Soran looks around, trying to loosen some of the tightness in his neck. There's no telling where everyone else is, what's happened in the hours that he's apparently been out. They have no idea where they are, what's happening, if something is going to happen next.
And he's still bleeding from multiple places, he's pretty sure.
"If you'd like to leave you'll have to clarify first."
"You said you've spoken to the Federation."
"We have."
"Pandora Quinn, then? You've got it covered."
It hurts to fucking talk already. He clamps his mouth shut after that and tries to focus on breathing, lessening the pain that comes with it every single time.
Aldrich stares at him. "Are you insinuating...?"
You'd have to be a fool to not get it, really, which is quite possibly an insult to Aldrich's seemingly rather average intelligence. He already decided he was done with talking, at least now. It's not worth the pain.
Aldrich taps something on the desk, on the other side that he can't see. A little speaker flares to life and crackles like it's embedded in his ears.
"You can come and get him."
He's unprepared for how quickly the door opens; he doesn't even get a good look at the face of whoever releases his wrist from the chair. He doesn't bother looking, either, because in the next two seconds he's jerked to his feet like a broken puppet.
He thought he was in pain before and now it's overwhelming.
His legs give way before he can even begin to think about trying to walk. There's one hand wrapped around his arm, another tucked under his shoulder, and it's the only thing keeping him from collapsing to the floor in a heap. It feels like his whole body is on fucking fire; when he looks down and comes to find that his whole body isn't smoking it comes as more of a surprise than anything else.
He can do nothing more than keep his head up as they drag him from the room and down the hall, though there's nothing worth seeing anyway. It's just all white, white and gray, nothing memorable or worthwhile. With every pull he swears something tears apart inside him, causing more fresh blood to well from his side and chest.
There's a window, too, just one set in the middle of the wall. There's bright afternoon sun seeping through the bars.
It's only been a few hours, but it feels like forever. Unless it's been a day, in which case he's slightly fucked.
Thankfully he's not dragged away for a terribly long time. Just down a few nondescript hallways and stairs with nothing to point him to an exit, a safe point.
This is what they were headed towards all along. So much for any sort of fucking safety.
There's another person lurking around the next corner, completed with a Peacekeeper-like helmet. They produce a card from their belt and hold it to the door, which chimes like some sort of imitation corner shop before it clicks open. Whoever it is lets go before the door is even fully open and plants a hand between his shoulder blades, shoving him clear inside the gap.
The door slams shut. Someone catches him, halfway to the ground.
"Oh, fuck my life," Icarus snaps, which about sums it up in the immediate moment considering he can hardly fucking breathe. "Can someone—"
"I got him," Tarquin interrupts. "Just let go, you can't even put weight on your foot."
"Why are you here, again?" he wheezes, as Icarus absolutely does not let go even though Tarquin's holding onto one of his arms too.
"Not because I'm enjoying it."
"No shit," he manages.
"God, put him down," Emmi snaps. "None of you should be fucking standing."
She looks like shit too, he wants to say, but he can't even get the words out. He's left looking down at the floor while they maneuver him around, at Tarquin's ruined pair of bare feet and Icarus' right foot, only the toes touching the ground. Hell, even Ria only has one fucking shoe on, and he's not even sure how long it's been that way. They put him to the floor, and their attempted gentleness is lost at how bad it fucking hurts anyway. He might as well be fucking paralyzed with the pain.
He slumps back against the wall the second they let go and watches Icarus do the same, using the same wall to slide awkwardly onto the floor next to him.
This room is about the same fucking size as the one before, and he can't even be bothered to be annoyed by it.
"You look even fucking worse in the light," Icarus says, somehow managing to make that sound concerned, albeit not very touching. "You need to breathe."
"Trying."
He really is, too, but it hurts so badly he's considering if it's even worth it. Being dead would be a hell of a lot easier, especially with everyone staring at him the way they are.
They all look fucking terrible, but they're looking at him like he's worse.
He wouldn't be all that surprised.
"Where the fuck are we?" he says, but it comes out as more of a gasp when pain lances all the way down his side again. It might as well have a hold on his heart.
"No idea," Emmi says. "You got one?"
He shakes his head; Icarus grabs him and forces him still before he can even get back into his previous position, holding a hand to his shredded jaw.
"You think were in that town we saw, the lights?" Ria asks quietly.
"Maybe not," Tarquin says. "They're border patrol. We might still be on the outskirts."
The outskirts... close to civilization, hopefully. But this still isn't safety.
"They don't happen to have a fucking doctor here?" he asks, holding a hand to his chest. It doesn't help that his hand still has hardly any feeling in it at all.
"They didn't tell you?" Emmi asks. "Until they sort this out they said no medical attention. Probably a fucking bargaining chip. They've seen us, they know how bad we are. They want us to tell them more."
"I'll fucking tell them, then," Icarus insists. "We can't fucking go on like this, he can't—"
"I'm right here," he says. "M'fine."
"You are not fucking fine—"
He tunes Icarus out, because he's definitely not and for the first time in his life is almost willing to bend to whoever wants him to bend to get a little bit of fucking help. There's something wrong with him, no doubt about it. Everyone else is bad but not this bad.
And who knows how much worse it could get.
He's the wrong person to ask to have hope - he's never had any in his fucking life, never had any reason to. That's the kind of shit you throw away early when you grow up how he did.
But he has to have some now, or else he's probably going to die.
Because he won't say it aloud, but it sort of feels like he already is.
The next handful of chapters are shorter (shorter than my usual, anyway) so I hope that doesn't bug anybody too much. We'll get back to our regularly scheduled programming soon, whatever that even means. What's the regular now, anyway?
Until next time.