XXXV: Witsonee Border Patrol Station.

Emmi Langlois, 17
Applicant #13

She's sort of decided that they're in purgatory.

It's the only semi-reasonable explanation. Maybe they all died in that car crash and someone decided they did too many fucked up things to pass on right. Maybe she died when she plunged off the cliff.

It's not like she would know, really.

What she does know is that they're stuck. She doesn't enjoy being stuck.

There's no time in here, no signs of the outside world or what's going on beyond these four walls. Occasionally they'll hear someone pass by the door, a muffled, inaudible conversation, but nothing more.

"How long do you think it's been?" Ria whispers, arms drawn up around her knees. It's not meant in any sort of offense, but she looks truly pathetic. Curled up in on herself, trying to become as small as possible. She's streaked through with blood and grime, trying to scratch it out from under her nails.

It won't work. Emmi's tried.

"Since when?"

"Since we saw someone."

That was when they dropped Soran in here, and Emmi has no fucking clue. "A day, maybe? A little less than that?"

"Do you think they're going to starve us?"

She snorts. "That would be fucking cruel after everything, wouldn't it? Death via starvation."

Ria doesn't smile. Maybe the cruel thing in all of this is living.

What matters to her right now is that nothing's being made any worse, at least not that she can tell. Tarquin nodded off not long ago. Soran's been out for a few hours, and while she'd like to think Icarus was doing the same she suspects he's feigning sleep only to stay next to him to watch his uneven, scratchy breathing.

That's still weird as fuck, but she won't bother saying it. Everyone knows it.

She wishes Ria would go to sleep, or something, because it looks like the longer she stays awake the more blank her eyes come. Like she's wished herself away.

Sleep would be easier than that. Kinder.

It's rich that she's wishing sleep for everyone else when she herself won't succumb to it. She's too worried to close her eyes; even when she fucking blinks she feels like something could happen in the split second of space that her eyes are closed, when no one else is paying attention. Someone needs to. To be honest she's getting sick and tired of it being her after what, two whole days?

She was the one that lit the rope, the last one to get out into the street. She's the one awake now, the one watching because no one else is.

"Are you alright?" Ria asks eventually. Maybe because of how long she's been staring aimlessly at the door, waiting for nothing. It's probably concerning to someone on the outside trying to look in.

"Do you actually care?"

"Yeah," she says quietly. "Yeah, of course I do."

Emmi sighs and leans back against the wall, finally easing away from some of the pressure that always seems to be present all the way from her waist to her neck. At this point her body is just crying out for a break and this is probably the only opportunity she's going to get even if it comes in the form of a cold, concrete wall and an even colder floor.

"I don't think I'd be alive without you," Ria continues. "I wouldn't have been able to plan anything on my own, and do you think they would have? If you hadn't been so determined to survive I don't think any of us would have. So I care. I'm sorry if it doesn't seem that way."

It sounds honest, more honest than anything Emmi's heard lately. Maybe her brain is just too sluggish and put-out to read too deeply into things, but it sounds like Ria does care.

She's not sure she expected that.

"Tarquin probably would have survived."

That earns a smile, eventually. Ria leans back against the wall next to her. "I don't think that counts."

"That totally fucking counts. He lives, it counts."

"I think we still lose in that universe."

"Good thing this universe isn't that one, then. Us five, Sentinels zero."

"They're probably laughing at us, you know," Ria tells her. "Wherever they are now. Probably laughing at our misfortune."

"Funny, considering they're the dead ones and we're not. They can laugh all they want, nothing will change that."

Or at least she hopes nothing will change that. She's desperately trying to ignore the thought lingering in the back of her head that says they're probably screwed anyway. Who knows how long they're going to be kept in here until someone shows up to collect them. Hell, who knows if the people here have even really contacted the Federation. Wouldn't something have been done by now if they had?

Maybe no one gives enough of a fuck about them. If the situation was reversed and someone told her some previously dead kids weren't actually dead she's not sure she'd even believe it.

It's a good thing that's not up to her. She's here, they all are. There's nothing not to believe when you're looking at it.

"Go to sleep," she tells Ria. "At least for a little while. It'll do you some good."

"And what about you?"

"I'll try eventually. Just not right this second."

Ria nods, but apparently that's enough to satisfy her. She curls back up ahead, cheek pillowed on the uneven surface of her knees, but she looks a smidgen less tense than before. Emmi knows from a terrible amount of experience just what good a smidgen can do in the long run.

She probably should get some sleep, close her eyes and rest while she still can. Who knows what's going to happen next.

Not her, certainly. And she's not sure she wants to know anyway.

Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4

When he finally closes his eyes it's the first time he's done so in days.

It's not like he really had the opportunity to; he couldn't rest, couldn't sit and risk something, anything happening. It didn't matter how bad his ears were ringing, how bad his feet stung with every step he took, more grime embedded into the bottom of his burnt feet.

The fire had been the worst part. Half the mine had collapsed already and then the fire had caught the supports, too, sending the last of it crashing to the ground. It had been everywhere and he hadn't even thought twice about nearly sticking his hand into the widest swath of it, until the metal around his wrist started to bubble and pull apart.

His skin had done the same thing, but it hadn't seemed like a big deal then.

He had had to peel what was left of his scorched shoes off of his feet, taking some skin with them and unstick his jacket from the worst of the melted skin before it got too impossible to do.

It's not like he has a mirror to look into, but he reckons he probably looks like someone stuck him over a fire and left him there for too long.

Sleeping is hard when it still feels like the remnants of the fire are lingering around him, but he does. It's nowhere near the best sleep he's ever had in his life, but it feels close anyway. That's what sleep deprivation will do to you.

Still, though, his status as relatively barbecued looks like nothing in comparison to the state of everyone else.

He's reminded of that every time he opens his eyes, no matter how many times over. Emmi is the only one relatively awake whenever he does so over the course of a few hours but every time he looks at her she's fixated on the same spot of the wall above his head, like she's mentally dug a hole out and is already gone. He hopes that she would wake them up if that was the case.

At her side Ria somehow looks the most intact, tragically. Sort of ironic considering she wasn't far from death a few days ago, same as the rest of them.

Or maybe Soran now. He's not too sure on that front and isn't willing to confront it just yet.

Emmi's still far away when he hears the footsteps outside the door, enough to properly rouse him. He rolls over to face it and watches Emmi's eyes blink a few times as the door creaks open and then hits the opposite wall.

She jumps at the sound - he does, too, but no one else even flinches.

That has to say a lot.

The man, unrecognizable this time at least to him, looks down and gestures at him. "You. Let's go."

"What?" Emmi asks before he can, still too busy trying to sit up without tearing himself apart in one fell swoop. "Why?"

"We're in need of another conversation." The man waggles his fingers at him, and Tarquin gets the message quickly. Either he moves or someone's going to move him, and he's not in the state for that right now.

"Hey," Emmi continues. "You can't—"

"I'm good," he assures her. "I'll be back soon."

Hopefully, he wants to add, but they really have no good reason not to bring him back here unless they're planning on killing him, and he can't see that. Whether or not they're in contact with the Federation doesn't matter; someone eventually will find out, and if they pull apart the details and find out he died after the fact, somewhere in this facility...

It wouldn't be so pretty, is what he's thinking.

He's frog-marched back down the same way he came from yesterday, arms pinned safely behind his back. What would he really do against this guy anyway in the state he's in? At least the man that's herding him this time is being slightly gentler about it, though, not digging their fingers into his burnt skin like the truly evil woman that had a hold of him yesterday.

His optimistic side is saying that they're going to return him safe and sound, if not slightly overdone. The other half is saying that woman is probably around here somewhere waiting to drag him around again like she enjoys it.

Maybe she did, and still would. Maybe that's his punishment for not having to deal with the Sentinels like the others.

The man opens a door, closer this time, and leads him into the chair just inside. It's not all that different from the room he was in yesterday, but it doesn't look so harsh and clinical anymore. There's less white - hell, the desk is some sort of wood tone, and that's a vast improvement. There is a woman behind the desk but it's not the horrible one; they're wearing the same off-white uniform, but her face isn't as harsh or angular, much less threatening. She's sorting through some files when he's sat down and doesn't look up, not when he sits down and not when the man who brought him here takes up his position by the door.

Tarquin waits for him to leave, but he doesn't.

That's different, and he isn't sure he wants to know why.

"Mr. Vierra, correct?" she asks, and he nods. He has the urge to fidget but can't move his hands away from the chair back. At least that's consistent.

"Mr. Vierra you told us yesterday that you had nothing to do with disappearances or presumed deaths of the other nineteen applicants from the New Haven Program. Is that still true?"

"I didn't lie," he says. "Do you think I'm lying?"

"It's an oddity," she points out. "If your accounts are true the number went from twenty-four down to five, and you're preaching that you got here... almost by coincidence. One of your friends I was told called it as it seems - another Games. Panem never saw a victor with no kills."

"I didn't," he starts, but nearly chokes on the rest of the sentence, like another heavy layer of soot has settled back over his lungs, down his throat.

He can still smell it, can still see it through the darkness. The bodies. The screaming.

"You didn't what?" she prompts.

"I didn't," he says again. "I killed someone. More than one."

"Who then, Mr. Vierra? Care to share?"

No, he doesn't. He's still wearing that first guy's fucking clothes like he owns them, threw his melted shoes off into some ravine or other, just like he did with his body. He wants to tear them all apart, burn them too and erase everything that says they even existed.

He sort of wants to do that to himself, too, so maybe it's not a reliable way to go. Or maybe he's the unreliable one.

"Do you know?" he croaks. "About... about the other people out there?"

She levels him with a stare. He starts to take back what he said about her not being the slightest bit scary. "People."

"You know, don't you?" he asks. "That's why you're guarding the border. To keep them in, and to keep the rest of the population out. Because you knew they were out there, you've known this whole time."

"I'm not sure—"

"They had a fucking facility in the mines, a fully stocked lab and medical room, don't tell me you're not sure. Whether the Capitol did it or not, someone knew. Someone set them up to keep them in there without complaint."

Even the man by the door seems uneasy, shifting on his feet. Tarquin two weeks ago wouldn't have even noticed it, but he does now. He had to notice everything when he was down there, every minuscule movement and hardly audible sound. Everything, or he died.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"It appears you already are, Mr. Vierra. Please do."

"You don't have to say anything else, just... just tell me this. Do you know how many of them were out there?"

He can see the cogs turning in her brain, rotating over and over like she's trying to figure out how to answer them. She closes the file she had been pondering, so it can't have been that important. Maybe it had something to do with the people out there; clearly that didn't matter much, if they never bothered telling the general population.

It should have mattered.

"Thirteen," she settles on. "Thirteen as of our last census - that was two months ago. Two other groups used to exist, but they either died off or were killed by the one you must think you're talking about, their ancestors. PF03 - that's how the Capitol refers to them. We just call them Fallout Three."

And somehow, miraculously, everything goes back to the beginning. Just like a new Games, the effects of the Dark Days continue to haunt them. The people living there when the Capitol dumped all their nuclear waste... every single one of them. They had thirteen ancestors left of all of them, of the hundreds of people that must have been out there. And now none.

"Thirteen," he says quietly. "They're all dead."

"I'm sorry?"

"They're all dead," he repeats. He can still see it. The one he shoved over the edge of the ravine. The ones buried in the collapse of the mines, the ones burnt alive.

The ones he shot and killed when he crawled his way out of the ruin, the ones who had refused to die the first time.

"And how do you know that, Mr. Vierra?"

He looks up at her. "Because I killed them all."

Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10

"Think they've killed him yet?" he asks.

Emmi hums, which isn't technically a fucking answer, although he doesn't tell her that. Soran shrugs - he only feels it because his shoulders poke up into the softest part of Icarus' stomach. For a while he was slightly touched that Soran had conceded to being manhandled and held like an overgrown child, but the longer he lays virtually unmoving in Icarus' lap the more worried he grows that it's not touching at all.

Everything from his right ankle to his toes is still throbbing. He tries to stretch out and relieve some of the numbness, but Soran only flinches.

"I barely moved," he insists.

"Tell that to someone wholly intact."

"You should probably lay on the floor, then," Emmi says. "You shouldn't make anything worse. Also watching the two of you basically cuddle is weirding me the hell out."

Ria cracks a small smile, Ria who is apparently not fucking asleep at all, although faking it very well. It feels at this point as if everything's working against him.

"Do you want on the floor?" he asks. The lump in his lap hardly looks like a person at all, let alone Soran.

"No. It's cold."

Emmi sighs, and then rubs a hand across her face. It's not cold in here, she mouths at him. They're surrounded by concrete in every direction, but it's really not. The coldest thing in here right now is Soran, who's temperature is equivalent to the inside of a freezer. Icarus can feel how clammy his skin is without even touching him - when he lays a hand on his back it's bad, like he's two seconds away from shivering. That or dying from hypothermia on the edge of a desert.

He has no idea what's wrong with him. No one does.

At least he knows his foot is likely broken, or something around there. Beyond that he's got nothing.

And even though it should matter it doesn't, really, because it's not like he can fucking do anything about it.

"How long's he been gone?" Soran asks into his leg, muffled as ever, but he's gotten really good at understanding his seemingly far-away questions, inaudible as they are.

"Twenty minutes? Half hour?" he questions. Emmi shrugs, although it looks like half-hearted agreement. "Not that long."

"But they don't want to talk to the rest of us?" Ria wonders. "It's... weird."

"Don't say that so fast," Emmi warns. "They'll get to the rest of us eventually. They just need to prioritize. C'mon, we don't even know what he was doing out there the past few days. You basically implied he was dead."

"I thought he was."

"What the hell were you doing out there?" he asks her. "You were alone longer than any of us."

"Nothing fun, that's for sure," Emmi answers quite obviously, as if any of them were having fun in the first place. "I don't think I need to ask what you two were doing."

He rolls his eyes. Judging by the slightly heavier weight in his lap Soran's probably gone back to sleep, which is for the best. Thinking of it like that is better than imagining him awake and unwilling to respond. Any other time and Icarus would be able to hear the ridiculously snarky retort before it came out of Soran's mouth - now imagining it just kind of hurts, oddly enough, because he knows he won't.

It's hard to stop thinking of everything as some greater doom and gloom constantly working against them when nothing will go right.

They won, it feels like. They won and for what? To be imprisoned here, dragged around and questioned like they didn't deserve to live in the first place?

Ria sits up as if on cue when the door scrapes back open and Tarquin is shoved back inside, some weird sixth sense that he's almost convinced she has just based on general weirdness. He winces at the drag of his bare feet against the concrete before he steadies himself against the wall.

The door clangs shut again, no one else retrieved. There's more dried blood on this floor than Icarus would like to admit.

"What was that about?" Emmi asks, but he turns away from them, hands over his face, and leans into the wall. Before he looked half-scary, like some sort of scorched, vengeful creature, and now he just looks small. Smaller than he should.

"I might just cry for a minute, or ten," Tarquin informs them. "Don't mind me."

Icarus has felt like that since he crawled out of the car's wreckage and realized he was still alive, for some stupid fucking reason. Nothing's come out though. He feels like all he can do is sit here and cry but he can't even do that properly. Maybe since Estella he's just run dry, or maybe he's just that dehydrated, which somehow seems simultaneously unrealistic and very, very possible.

"Are you okay?" Ria asks quietly. It looks like she wants to get up and do something, but she doesn't.

"Awesome," he says. "I killed thirteen people."

"What?" he asks, matched with Emmi's equally loud and confused excuse me? Even Soran twitches, although he doesn't actually do anything. Apparently it's not concerning enough for him.

Ria is the only one who doesn't look totally surprised, not at his words or his slightly distraught face when he turns around to look at her.

"There were thirteen?" she asks.

He inhales shakily. "Were. Yeah."

"Okay, fess up," Emmi demands. "What are you talking about?"

"I feel like it's... a lot, for someone that has no idea."

"Alright, does it look like we're fucking going anywhere?" Emmi asks. "Do you have plans or something?"

Icarus wishes any of them did, not even just himself. A plan that involved a place other than this, no matter where it was. He really would rather be in hell.

Tarquin turns to look at all of them properly for the first time, eyes slightly misty, a look on his face that Icarus can't place. It's different than the way any of the others look - he knows even he doesn't look that way, mirror or not. It feels like looking at some great unknown, a mystery too complex for him. He was never good at those, never pretended to be.

But it looks like he no longer gets a choice. He has to face it.

Was any of this really what he thought, though, what he wanted? He didn't even come here of his own volition, couldn't fill out a simple enough application and get himself here without someone doing it for him, someone who he swears is laughing at him from wherever she ended up.

He didn't expect what he got every waking minute of every single day that's passed and he didn't expect to still be alive, now. At this point it almost feels predictable, but not quite like a good thing.

Him a year ago, whoever it was that existed before, he would have hoped for change. Hell, he would have gone out and changed it himself.

He's tired, now. He just wants to sleep.

All he can hope for now is that that time comes, one day.

And happy official 200k. I'll be saying that again before this story is over much to my dismay. Let me know what you think is going to happen next, if you have any idea at all, considering I barely did when I was writing it!

Until next time.