XL: En-route.
Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17
It feels weird packing up to head off and not... having anything to pack.
The border guards took everything they had; who knows where any of that ended up. Pandora has assured them that anything they could possibly need will be waiting for them, and that even if something's missing she'll be sure to get it for them.
It doesn't make her feel as good as she ought to. She feels like she needs to be carrying something - she needs to be doing something with her hands other than endless fidgeting.
Eventually she shoves them into the pockets of her sweater and takes a hold of the fabric on the inside. She'll keep them still one way or another.
They've been told what's going on, one way or another. They're leaving before dawn, even, shuffled out a discreet side entrance and into a large, transport like truck. The windows are so blacked out she can't even tell what's on the other side. Even the thought of piling back into a vehicle with everyone else makes her want to be sick, but one of the nurses leads her downstairs when she announces she's ready to go, and she isn't left with much of a choice.
She steps outside, just barely. There's a rough two feet between the car and the side door, just enough to get a faceful of dust from the desert wind. The sky is overcast. It's weird.
Not weirder than anything else, but weird.
There's another nurse blocking the view from the east - one of the men who came with the group from the Capitol is standing to the west. She's got nowhere to run even if she wanted to try, not unless she wants to run back in the hospital for whatever asinine reason. No, she just has the car to get into. Nowhere else.
At least this way no one's grilling her.
She climbs gingerly into the car. She's relieved to see Soran and Icarus already inside, having claimed the back bench. She had almost started to believe that they would cart them all of separately, lying to them once again, pulling all of this apart by the seams. She edges to the opposite window and takes a seat, shoving her hands back in her pockets once again.
"I've got a weird feeling about this," Icarus announces, like all of them haven't had a bad feeling for two weeks now. At this point that's an ingrained part of her personality. A permanent fixture, if you would.
"I'm trying not to go there yet," she says, glancing back at them. Icarus humphs, the resounding squeaks of the seat underneath him the only sound she can hear besides it as he tries and fails to get comfortable. Soran cracks an eye open to look at her, leaned against the window, and then closes it again. She really is trying not to go there, not before she has proof that it's valid, but it's hard to feel any other sort of way.
Emmi joins them some ten minutes later, grumbling something under her breath still when she settles into the seat behind Ria's. She gives the nurse at the door a pointed glance and he goes two shades from completely white in the face, disappearing like a ghost.
"What'd you do to him?" she asks.
"He was rushing me."
"That didn't answer the question," Soran points out.
"You know, I'd reach back there and hit you if I wasn't afraid that one hit would kill you."
"Nah, aim for his legs," Icarus says.
"Hey," Soran protests. "Seriously. You want someone to leave you alone these days, just threaten to off them. They'll believe you."
"I'll keep that in mind."
People will believe them because they're perfectly capable of it, now, because they're killers and they could easily do it again given enough reason to. Icarus already has, although she didn't see it herself. She believes what Tarquin said he saw well enough.
Speaking of, she sees him from a distance, flanked by Pandora and the man that had been standing outside the car, who quickly reclaims his position until Tarquin is seated beside her. The door slamming shut shakes the entire vehicle, followed by Pandora climbing into the passenger seat and then the man behind the wheel. Whoever he is, he must just be here for protection purposes, keeping an eye on them all. He hasn't said a word to her.
Not like Eleine and Andere, although they've kept away since Eriska spoke to them. At least with her.
"Alright, guys," Pandora starts. "Airfield's only about ten minutes away. We'll be taking a hovercraft from there directly to the Capitol, as close as we can get to the Estate. And then just an even shorter car ride there. It'll only take a few hours."
"Yay," Emmi deadpans, although the look on Pandora's face isn't dampened any. She's learning, apparently. Or maybe just getting used to them.
"Am I the only one that hardly slept?" Tarquin asks quietly, though she can tell it's meant for her and her alone. She waits until the car starts fully, pulling slowly away from the side of the building.
"I don't think anyone did, really."
She hasn't been sleeping well period and she was under the impression that he hadn't been either. These circles under their eyes aren't just bruises. It doesn't help that the hospital beds were less comfortable even than the desert floor, that there was always a set of footsteps walking by or a quiet voice out in the hall.
It wasn't their pseudo-arena, but it brought her back there. All the paranoia started to resurface, hearing those things that she couldn't quite place, wondering if they were coming for her next...
"I hope whatever this Estate looks like, it has a nice bed for me to sleep in," Tarquin says. For someone who apparently spent a while wandering around and sleeping in the mines she'll be surprised if he ever manages to get a good night's rest in a bed again. She imagines they all feel sort of the same way, and that a bed will never be the same thing it was before.
"It's been in the family for five generations," Pandora breaks in. "You could get lost in it."
Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Ria honestly can't tell, and judging by Tarquin's face he's contemplating the same thing. It may just be easier to get away from anyone watching her than she thought, but sometimes getting lost isn't always a good thing. Sometimes it just makes things worse.
She doesn't need her physical body as lost as her brain already is.
Pandora says something else - Ria ends up leaning her head against the window and whatever words they were are drowned out. If they're important someone will let her know. If they matter, she'll find out eventually.
Besides, her brain has never been good at calming down. Her teachers always commented that she fixated on too many things at once, always said that she should focus on one thing at a time before moving onto the next. Of course they always wrote the stereotypical notes on her reports, too, about participating in class and possibly being encouraged by her parents to do more. And her parents encouraged her, alright. It just didn't do much good if she refused to listen.
It was just another thing to think about, among the millions she already had.
She sees the hovercraft from a distance, tucked out in the middle of nowhere. It's smaller, sleeker. Much more sophisticated than the one they had boarded trying to leave originally. When she looks around she can't even see the hospital anymore - she can't see anything for a few miles. It feels less like an airfield and more like a strategically chosen location, picked to avoid any prying eyes lurking around.
"Do you know if Ferrox and Cambria are coming with?" Tarquin murmurs. Pandora has taken up with the driver and doesn't hear.
"I don't know. Probably not?"
"It'd be nice to have someone on our side, I guess." It would, and she gets it. No one else has gone out of their way to save the lot of them; Pandora appears as if she's trying but there's no proving that just yet.
Only two people have bothered putting any amount of time and effort into keeping them alive, and they're probably leaving them behind.
It's not the most reassuring thought she's ever had.
Ria keeps her head down when they all file out of the car, Pandora leading the way closer and closer to the hovercraft. The back ramp is already down, and even the buffeting wind isn't enough to chase her inside. She feels the hesitation in everyone else, too, before the first of Emmi's feet hit the ramp and she makes her way inside, shaking the hesitance off.
The last time they did this...
It can't happen again. The Sentinels are gone.
They made sure of that, after all.
Instead of focusing on it, the metal ramp under her feet and the sudden absence of wind as she properly steps inside, she allows herself to wonder about them. Did they collect the Sentinel bodies, too? They found Carnelia, after all, and they know about the others. They had families once upon a time. Some probably still do.
She'd want her parents to have closure, if she had died. She doesn't get the feelings these families will be quite so fortunate.
And what about the other applicants, too? Are they just going to hold onto them until the information releases? She can't help but think of the nineteen bodies, locked away somewhere for safekeeping until their families can have them back.
Sixteen, really. No one's told her anything about Mel. Noelani or Topher neither.
Looking at Tarquin every now and then, she gets the feeling he doesn't know, and she's not about to be the one to bring it up.
"Alright, everyone can take a seat. The Captain is going to do one last check and then we'll be off."
No one moves, lingering in a half-formed group between the two rows of seats, across a small aisle from one another. While the outside looked quite different, the inside is eerily similar. She remembers the feeling of not being able to move, the metal restraints locked around her ankles.
"You're not strapping me into one of those," Icarus informs her, but it feels like he's speaking for everyone. "I'll sit still, but there's no way."
"Deal," Pandora says softly. "If there's turbulence—"
Icarus snorts, a clear as if without any actual words behind it. He leads Soran off down the left row and a second later both Emmi and Tarquin follow. There's a time where she wouldn't have went after them for a second, where she would have found a seat elsewhere, in silence.
This is probably going to be silent anyway, so she sits down at the end of them next to Tarquin and pulls both of her legs up onto the seat after her, far away from any type of restraints.
Pandora is still across the way. She sits down in the aisle seat in a similar silence, watching them all carefully only until Ria glances over. She's never seen anyone look away so fast.
"I mean, how bad can it go, right?" Emmi says. "If last time was rock bottom—"
"We can only go up?" Tarquin finishes.
Icarus snorts again.
Yeah, that's about how she feels as well.
Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10
His body is essentially a live-wire.
If someone even looked at him in the wrong way right now he'd blow. It feels like every muscle in his body is locked tight, coiled, bracing for impact that doesn't happen when the hovercraft takes off and continues on as smoothly as one can go.
Pandora watches their every move, trying to gauge their reactions, and he forces blankness over his face, a mask that doesn't betray how badly his stomach is turning at the thought of even being in here.
Soran, evidently the luckiest bastard alive excluding the brush with death, falls asleep five minutes after they leave the ground behind. Icarus can't really blame him for it - they gave him something before they took him off the last of IVs, and when he's not eating or risking life and limb to walk around without supervision, he's been sleeping anyway.
If only he could do the same. This whole trip would pass a hell of a lot faster if he could sleep through the vast majority of it.
Everyone else is trying, too, with varying levels of success. No one besides Soran actually looks properly asleep. He should have known as much - it's not going to come that easy just yet, and he's only saying yet because he has approximately half an ounce of hope that it'll be easier in the future. It doesn't seem like much, but with him, it's more than you'd usually get.
He hears the footsteps coming, soft and cautious, while his eyes are half-lidded, allowing just enough filtered light through to see Pandora sit down just across from them. Everyone looks - everyone glances away just as quick.
"Staring at him while he's asleep probably is your safest bet," he murmurs.
Pandora's lips quirk up. "That's not what I'm doing."
"What are you doing, then?"
"Thinking. I've got a lot of it to do."
Thinking doesn't seem like the right word, or maybe it is... he's not sure how to phrase it. Really she's just trying to piece everything together and they're stuck with all of the useless thinking, everything swirling around in their heads like a goddamn blender.
He got rid of the sick feeling that arose from being stuck in a hospital again, and replaced it with the memory of a hovercraft.
"I'm not asking you - or him, for that matter, to trust me. I'm not even asking for you to like me. I can't expect that from people who hardly know me. Just know that there are people out there who don't care what you want, or what you don't want. I'm trying to look out for your best interests."
"None of us want to be here."
"One of the other options was locking you back up," she says quietly. "Not prison, exactly... not like what they were doing to you at Witsonee. But they wanted you completely locked down. I got them to agree to at least let me take you."
"Oh, the life of a hardened criminal," Emmi laments, leaning back in her seat. Sooner rather than later he's going to end up sandwiched by both her and Soran unintentionally drifting closer to his shoulder.
"You're not criminals."
"I'm pretty sure murder is a crime," he points out. "Coerced murder probably still counts."
Pandora doesn't have words for that, or maybe she's beginning to realize what she's stuck herself with. Five definite murderers, the memories of nineteen dead others and a fucked up handful of Sentinels and whatever the hell crawled out of the mountains. And to think she fought for this, chose this. The victors may have done virtually the same things, but it's not the same.
Not even close.
"I need to pee," Emmi announces, with all the intent of someone who absolutely does not need to use the bathroom and who would rather get away from the conversation instead. His suspicions are confirmed when she takes off before receiving any direction, possible turbulence be 's probably going to take a lap and come back after a few minutes. He'd do the same if he wasn't more concerned by the minute that Soran was going to wake himself up after his head slipped too far down.
"I told her a few days ago that I'm going to keep you safe," Pandora says. "That's still true. I want nothing more than to protect you."
"Do you even know what you're protecting?"
"I know that he's family, whether he likes it or not," she insists. Soran most definitely does not like it, but Icarus doesn't feel the need to point out something that obvious. "You, at least, mean something to him. I know that. The five of you, regardless of your personal feelings, mean something to each other. You survived when no one else did. That's practically a fucking miracle."
"Is that what they're going to bill this as?" Tarquin asks. "A miracle?"
His voice says it all - not one of them feels like it was. Not one of them feels like a fucking miracle. He feels like he ought to be six feet under, five more graves dug alongside the numerous others that they did or did not dig.
This isn't a miracle. Not for one second.
Pandora hasn't answered, though. She's looking at Soran like he's the only one there. To her, maybe Soran is a miracle. Blood who crawled out from the woodwork when she was so convinced of her life, of her mother and her dead father and one brother, not two.
She might think him a miracle, but he wouldn't call himself that, and if Icarus stopped fighting him then he won't call him that either.
Part of him would, maybe, if it wasn't associated with the fact that he would be constantly reminding himself of Soran's dead body, for those few minutes.
It's not worth the thought.
"I want them to bill it as it is," Pandora says, blinking a few times. "You're alive, and that's all that matters."
There's a kindness in her, a delusion that comes from living the life she did. He lived virtually the same life. Cushioned and held close and protected from everything until they couldn't be anymore, until a loss wormed it's way in and told them that's not how life works. It really did break him, he thinks, in an irreparable sort of way. He's got a crack all the way down his chest and there's no hope of closing it.
Maybe Pandora escaped that. It almost seems like she did, like she recovered before it taught her the lesson.
If she had been taught the lesson, she would know.
That isn't all that matters.
Not even fucking close.
Emmi Langlois, 17
Applicant #13
She wanders for longer than she expected.
It feels good to do so without being in any constant sort of pain. She only returns to her seat when the nagging threat of someone coming to collect her reappears, the driver from before staring at her from down the emergency exit corridor.
When she does, she closes her eyes and buries her head between her knees, blocking out everything and everyone.
She doesn't come back out until they land.
Stepping out onto solid ground again is odd, the snow-capped mountains further off even odder. She hadn't even been in Eight that long, but seeing the Capitol again made it feel that way. You forgot about the way things before when you were out there.
The hovercraft is still partially cloaked, the shield around it shimmering in the sun just about to be eclipsed by the clouds.
There's thunder rumbling in the distance. Rain seems better now than it did before.
The car ride is nothing spectacular. Still darkened windows, but more sleek. Clearly a new Capitol design. The driver is the same, at least for the car she gets in. They split them up, this time - Icarus and Soran take the backseat of one, and she gets in the other without thinking, shoving both Tarquin and Ria in the car by the shoulders before she slides in after them.
The windows are so dark that she can hardly even see anything from the inside, which doesn't seem sensible nor safe, but it's not like anyone's going to listen to her about it. Her opinions on car manufacturing and the safety behind the decisions isn't going anywhere fast.
That may not be, but the cars certainly are. She gets almost no chances to make anything out. Every building they pass is a blur, the occasional park nothing more than a mess of green edged with concrete. Eight's not really all that wild either, but it's not the concrete jungle that the Capitol is. It's all low-lying factories spread out over miles compared to the towering skyscrapers here. It couldn't even compare.
Her house was on the opposite end of the city, closer to the mountains. When she was young her mother liked to hike, but she wasn't so much a fan as she just went along because she had to.
She wishes she had been more willing, now.
Ria is picking at the edge of her shirt but Tarquin is looking around as if he's searching for something, waiting for something to appear. He'd know if it was - their location isn't exactly a secret. All three of them know, at least vaguely, where in the Capitol they are.
His eyes never light up with any sort of recognition, though, so clearly he never finds it.
She really wishes someone would find something.
They're far from the center of the city when the car finally slows, where the trees start to grow a little thicker, where the air is slightly clearer and free from the smog. They don't see anything for nearly a mile or two until the gate that appears at their left-hand side. There's a house in the distance, although that's not the right word. It looks closer to a fortress, at least in size. There's fencing all the way around, over the height of her head and beyond it.
Rose Point Estate reads the sign by the gate, which begins to swing open when the driver produces some sort of identification and points it toward the camera.
"Isn't this where the Snow's lived?" Tarquin asks quietly.
"Oh, great," she mutters. "This'll end well."
"A few of them, after the Presidency," the driver says. "The ones that were left. It wasn't nearly as large then."
No, probably not. The last of them died not long after the fourth quell, probably poison because it was the predictable thing with them, though no one really knows. The thing that lies here now is a practical behemoth that even the trees can't hide. It could house a hundred people if it wanted, let alone five. It won't even notice their arrival, their staying presence.
It is pretty, though, she can admit that. Nothing close to what she lived in.
Nothing close to what almost everyone lives in, really.
The cars stop at the end of the courtyard, set at the bottom of a staircase that seems far too grand for something that's really just a house. Pandora is out of the car behind them before Emmi even reaches for the door handle.
The sky is darker, now. They probably don't have all that long before it opens up on them.
Emmi sets two feet down on solid ground just in time for the doors to open, things big enough for giants to use, at the top of the staircase. Two men emerge - one she knows as Evander Quinn immediately. His face was on the news several years ago, after all. She'd have to be stupid not to see the resemblance. The other man is unfamiliar, though, quietly lurking behind him like a shadow. His eyes are nervous.
Beyond that. She's not sure what word to use.
"One of us needs to talk to you," Evander calls. "Right now."
It's clear the words are directed to Pandora, who's eyebrows furrow in confusion. So she doesn't know what it's about, then. Evander's eyes linger on Soran for only a second when he steps free from the car before they're reclaimed by whatever pressing matter he's thinking of.
"About what?"
"Not here," he continues. "Not in front of—"
He trails off, but she hears the rest of it anyway. Not in front of them. More secrets, already? What can't they know about now?
The other man lurking behind Evander makes a few gestures with his hands - it becomes clear after a few moments that it's sign language, evident in the way that Pandora's eyes widen slightly, still confused.
Oh, this isn't good. This can't possibly be good.
"Okay," Pandora says easily, but the attempt at brushing it off fails. "Alright, Ev, can you watch them? Maybe show them around, where they'll be staying."
"Got it. Go with Crynn."
They need to be watched still? Christ alive, of course they do. Pandora abandons them almost immediately, up and over the stairs before she can hardly blink and disappearing into the house after probably-Crynn before she can even think to ask the question. What the hell is going on?
Evander looks worried. She couldn't tell, standing all the way down here, but when he gets close she can see it swimming in his eyes. Worried, and scared.
Scared of what?
It can't be of them. He's had all this time to prepare, all this time to learn the things they did.
But if it's not them, then what is it?
Pandora Quinn, 29
Member of the New Haven Federation
"What the hell is going on?" she hisses, but Crynn doesn't stop his progress down the hall. He doesn't even turn around. "What about their families—"
He grabs her around the forearm and drags her off, sharply. Crynn doesn't do anything sharply. He wedges open the door as soon as they turn the corner and pulls her into the study after him, flicking the light at the door. It's still dark like everything else in the house, but it's enough to make out his face and the worried crease of his brow, the upset downturn to the corners of his mouth.
"What?" she asks. "Tell me."
He puts both hands on her shoulders and squeezes. That feels more like him. Warmer, gentler.
It means breathe without any words being spoken.
What does she have to breathe for?
Shes does take one, fully. "Okay. Tell me."
His eyes are wavering, shiny like he's about to tell her something awful, and oh God what if he is? She's never been good at handling bad news, and she's dealt with her fair share of it. She's never gotten any better.
He lets go of her shoulders. "You know we had... teams, watching their families," he signs.
"Yes?"
"The one in Eight was late to start, and Emmi's father didn't show up for work. They sent someone from the office he works at to check on him and he was dead. Like he—"
"Wait, what?" she interrupts. "What are you talking about? He's not—"
"He's dead," Crynn repeats, signing the words again. "Murdered, by the looks of it. Strangled, or... garroted, is what they're saying. It's all over the news. It got out before we could stop it."
"No," she insists. "No, that's not— that's not possible? How is that possible? What am I supposed to do, how do I tell her that?"
"Hold on," he signs, and then holds a hand out to lean against the door before she can reach for the handle. Just outside it she hears the chatter go by, the group headed deeper into the building, led on by Evander. Away from all of this, but not far enough. There's no way in hell there's any running from this.
"Don't," she says quietly.
"It's not just them."
"Don't," she snaps. If he doesn't do anything sharply she certainly doesn't snap at him, hasn't since the day she met him. She feels like she's lost that right to anyone that doesn't have a tongue.
"I don't know what you want me to tell you," he signs. "The team in Three found them both five minutes after we sent the word out to check-in. Both in the basement, both killed the same way. Evander went with both teams here himself because we didn't believe it. We would've sent someone to One if Soran had anyone there, but we've checked for the other four and they're all... they're all gone. All of their parents."
She doesn't realize she's crying until Crynn reaches out to swipe away some of the tears that have begun to streak down her face, but by then it's pointless. She might as well just dunk her head into a bucket and call it a day.
"You can't be serious," she manages, even though he is. He wouldn't do something like this to her if he wasn't.
And it really is to her - it's on her.
"How is this happening?" she cries. "We kept it on lockdown, no one knew it was the five of them."
Did something get leaked, somehow, or was this the plan all along? Did someone they've known all along do this to them? Are they still doing it right now, pulling the strings and laughing at them while they do it?
It's what she's known all along - someone did something more than they thought possible.
"I have to tell them. How am I supposed to tell them?"
Crynn shakes his head. He looks as sad as she knows she does, distraught in a way that's hard to put into words. You'd think with everything he'd been through he'd be less sensitive to things like this, but it only seems to have made it worse.
"I have to tell them," she repeats, and reaches for the door. Crynn's hand falls away but he's close on her heels when she steps out into the hallway, turning in the direction the chattering went. They're gone, now, but they can't be far. Evander could only lead them so far away, especially if he knows. If he saw it, both of the Devereux's and the Vierra's...
She's nearly sick thinking about it.
She's still crying by the time she catches up to them, all the way up on the second floor and headed down the east wing, towards all of their bedrooms.
They place where she thought they'd be safe from everything that could possibly hurt them.
It seems ironic, really, but Soran's the first one to notice her intrusive arrival. He looks over his shoulder and catches her eye, making it seem like the first real time he's ever done it. Maybe it is. He's the only one she's not going to shatter right now because her parents already made sure of that years ago, like they broke him in anticipation of all of this.
She thinks it again, sees Crynn's hands forming the word in her head. Breathe.
She takes one last, huge breath. "I need to talk to you all."
Sign language is a decent part of the conversation from here on out, for various reasons. For reference it's going to be written like any other old language or conversation because... it is. That's literally what it is, so there's no point in making it seem otherwise.
And yeah, don't kill me. We totally don't need any more death right now. Totally necessary part of the story right here. Maybe.
Until next time.