Night 4 is here! Bit of a shorter chapter, but hopefully it updates you on where everyone is and how they're doing!
40 - Night 4
Magnus Tweed, Arena Designer
When Malvolia had told him he could take it easy despite this year landing on a Quell, she wasn't kidding. The most he's had to do this time around is erect a wall around Elysium, stopping tributes from swimming into the open sea, and plant bombs for the island city's eventual demolition. For the first time since starting this job, designing every unique arena to stand out on its own, he's had nothing to do. Even the mutt designers, who'd believed up until Florence had lodged her sabotage that they'd be unneeded, have more work to do than Magnus.
He drums his fingers against the monitor he's situated himself in front of. As much as Malvolia probably intended to give him a well-earned break, Magnus wants to do his job. He loves coming up with outlandish or simplified, yet still effective, designs. Being productive keeps him busy, and if he's busy he doesn't worry about things. Things like lectures he's been invited to do at the university. Things like if his dog is lonely and needs a companion. Things like how Adele is doing—
Magnus kicks his desk, sending his chair wheeling to the opposite side of the room. The monitors detailing the remaining twelve tributes' heart rates and health are flickering away, with Malvolia hovering over the shoulder of one gamemaker in particular. Magnus looks at the screen above them, showing a collapsed house with dust slowly clearing around it. If he looks carefully enough, he can see a thin, brown arm poking out from the rubble and weakly twitching away.
The drone capturing the footage zooms in. From a small gap where the last rays of light peek through, they can see the curls of Oryza Belfast tangled in the mess of wood and brick. The monitor with her name on it beeps away, heart rate slowly dying as all other vital signs flicker off. Her hand twitches more and more, the nerves in her shoulder probably being pinched by the angle she'd been crushed under. It continues to twitch even as she flatlines.
Malvolia doesn't order the cannonfire yet. Bel's brain is still active, a small spark that may prove she's still worth saving.
As she waits, she says without looking to Magnus, "Any catch your interest?"
Immediately he looks to the screen where Gossamer Wormwood is busy pulling Calico Hemingway through the park, searching for the perfect spot to hide while they gather their bearings. It's an unexpected pairing, he thinks, but the pairing itself isn't what has him curious.
"Why'd Calico cough up blood so soon?"
"Hm?" Malvolia looks to him now, her attention still half on Oryza's vitals.
"Aspestine is poisonous, but even inhaling it for a few days prior to the explosions wouldn't damage his lungs that far."
"Oh. That." She looks down at Calico's vitals, where his breathing is notably stunted. It never was in a healthy zone to begin with, though. "The factory he works at has a history of children sustaining lung damage from the fumes. He was never going to survive beyond the final twelve, ideally."
Magnus hums. Both he and Malvolia turn their attentions back to Bel's vitals, where brain activity slowly fizzles out. The hand on the screen no longer twitches.
"Fire," Malvolia orders. The sound of a cannon rings out through the speaker, and then they move on to the next screen.
The next monitor is that of Finnegan Styx, whose vitals seem to be otherwise fine. His blood pressure is up and his heart is hammering away, but Magnus assumes that's normal for someone stuck in a fridge that's stuck under a house. He wouldn't know personally. Despite one corner of the fridge being visible, they don't have much of a sight to see with Finn. The drone above the mansion circles a few times, probably looking for a better angle, but it's practically hopeless.
In the corner of the screen is movement, another tribute running in the mansion's direction. Magnus watches as the gamemaker drags another tribute's vitals next to Finn's, and he isn't all that surprised to see it's Luxor Aricunai. He was only a block away from his ally when Simoleon's sabotage kicked in, and he probably would've arrived sooner if he had a proper mask instead of what appears to be one of his pants legs wrapped around his mouth and nose. He's certainly not stopping himself from inhaling the aspestine, but at least he's reducing the amount he's inhaling through the material.
The drone focuses on Luxor as he climbs the rubble, visibly trying to retrace the steps he would take to get to the kitchen in the mansion. He points in one area, panics, and adjusts his gaze to the left. He's uncertain as he explores further, and every so often he stops to move larger chunks of the mansion.
"Lola says the viewers are rather attached to Luxor," Malvolia reports. The gamemaker in front of her hums in agreement.
"There's been a number of complaints that his sponsorships never reached him," they say. "Not that it stopped them finding other ways of helping him."
"If there were such thing as a people's choice, he and Finn would win." Magnus swivels around in his chair lazily. "How big will the riot be if he doesn't?"
The gamemaker snorts. "His fans are a force to be reckoned with. Think Dark Days levels of riots."
"He's found the fridge," Malvolia tells them. Magnus focuses on the screen again, where Luxor now moves as quickly as possible to unearth the fridge Finn's inside of. Smart of him to tell him about it, Magnus thinks. Most kids forget that the fridges are sturdy and big enough to keep someone safe during a disaster.
The majority of rubble is shoved aside, and Luxor knocks on the fridge to check if Finn is inside. Finn's brain activity lights up, and the Capitol boy only works faster to get the rest of the debris off. Soon enough the fridge is free, and Finn wastes no time bursting out with a sheet stuffed with their new supplies in his arms. Luxor sets to work trying to make another mask for Finn. Attention moves on to someone else.
All eyes go to the anomaly of the Games, Cyber Tronovsky. There had actually been a pool running on how he'd fare, being more machine than human by this point. Magnus had been on the side betting that Cyber would be targeted en masse. He wasn't necessarily convinced it would mean the boy would die. Most of the Gamemakers betting on his mechanical body being his downfall are on the edges of their seats now, though, and they watch with one eye at all times as small spurts of coolant leak from his stumped arm.
Magnus isn't a robotics person, but he knows enough to realise losing too much coolant will eventually cause Cyber to overheat and and force his body to shut down. There's already signs of it happening now, an uncharacteristic fatigue settling over him and a notable strain on his lungs and heart. Magnus stares at the screen the careers at the focus of, where Valentina bandages up Cyber's arm as best she can now that the large leak has been clogged with spare clothing. Through her mask are tear stains on her cheeks, and from the looks of things she's the most shaken up about the turn of events.
He looks at Morganite, who carefully gathers their things and sets them inside the sturdy cornucopia. It's what shielded the four within, and Cetronia hadn't taken long to shove the debris blocking the front out of the way. So far Morganite is the only one actually taking stock, separating things into bags and counting the food they can divide between them. Nikostratos is the only one by Cetronia, and he's gesturing as he talks. He motions to Cyber, then to the coolant on the ground around them. Croix goes on to gesture to the now demolished arena.
He's obviously convincing Cetronia to end the Games as soon as she can, for all their sakes. The filters will only last so long. There isn't an infinite amount to use among them.
"She won't last the night," another Gamemaker notes, and Magnus flicks his gaze to the tribute in question. One Phyllis Hamilton clutches her side with intense pain written all over her face. Her injury is bleeding through her clothes again, and the force of Gossamer's kick must've opened it further than what the morningstar had originally accomplished. No doubt she's been exposed to the aspestine through the injury—who falls first between her and Calico is anyone's guess at this point.
At least her ally is taking care of her instead of chasing after Gossamer. Octavia helps Ham stay on her feet as they make their ways back to the rubble of the government building. They'd been smart to use the honey the first time, but it's been their only source of food up till now. There won't be enough to bandage up Ham again and satisfy their hungers. A tough call might have to be made, Magnus thinks.
"Any other tributes in the red?" Malvolia asks. A few Gamemakers mumble, but the result is unanimous: Only one perished from the mid-Games twist, the remainder either toeing the line between life and death or free to fight another day.
"Alright," Malvolia says, "play the eulogies."
The screen that focused on Bel now changes to that of Panem's flag, the national anthem playing over the scene. He notices a few weary heads peek up at the sky, seeing who's left in the chaos that had unfolded before their eyes.
First appears Simoleon Serif, whose sabotage was one of the ideas that Magnus could respect. Simoleon knew their weaknesses and their reservations, and to make up for it they made their own death a curse upon whoever killed them. Had Magnus been in their shoes, he would've done the same.
After Simoleon is Oryza Belfast, the small, deaf girl from Nine who'd made it to twelfth place. Rye wasn't the best mentor, and her lack of hearing definitely had her at a disadvantage—but to make it this far is still a feat in itself. According to the Gamemakers who'd scored her, her climbing skills were pretty decent. Magnus wonders if she'd have made it further in a mountain arena.
Finally, Epsilon Church appears. Simoleon's killer, Oryza's caretaker. Magnus's hand twitches, almost ready to reach for his heart. Watching Church die had been… intense. None of them knew what a death by overloading a tracker chip could do—none of them had needed to terminate a tribute in such a way, after all—but it's definitely among the deaths that'll keep them up at night until the next Games.
The anthem fades out, and the flag of Panem fizzles out of sight. Silence reigns over the arena once more.
Magnus gets off his chair and wheels it back to his station. He can hear Malvolia discussing where the tributes are, though other Gamemakers are placing bets on the top eight.
"Was kinda hoping to see Four on TV again," one Gamemaker murmurs to another beside them. She nods along in agreement.
"I don't mind all the trees and foliage in Seven, though."
"At least the eyesores of the Districts are out of the running," a muttation designer jokes. A few others voice their agreement, talking about how dreary Twelve and Five can look at times. Magnus isn't so sure about Five, but he does tend to avoid broadcasts featuring Twelve.
Malvolia claps her hands twice, silencing everyone. All eyes move to her form, where she stands in front of the virtual map displayed over her own station. Eleven little lights are still on, slowly moving across the rubble.
"We're at the halfway mark, everyone," she announces. "From here on we pay extra attention to the tributes and what they do. If you don't know who they're with, what they plan, who they hunt, when they even sleep, you're going to fall behind. The owl is compromised, which means we have to rely on them stumbling across each other more than ever to make sure the viewers get a show."
She looks to one station—the sponsorship request and deployment, consisting of a mere three people. "Eunice, I'm relying on you to make sure the packages are more visible than before. If more than one group can see it descend, we'll manage to bring them closer."
Eunice nods and says, "Yes, ma'am."
"Everyone else: Game faces."
A bit on the shorter side, but I wanted to do a post-twist POV from the Gamemakers and while also showing how everyone else is doing in the aftermath! But at least now we know what happened to everyone :D
QQ #35: Bit of a simple one, what are your thoughts on Magnus? You can base this on just Ad Mortem or, if you read Ad Aeturnum, what you knew of him there as well.
I couldn't really think of a big question since the last chapter I literally asked who you'd think would die leading up to the final 8. So how about some opinions on Magnus Tweed!
Eulogies:
14th Place: Simoleon Serif, C-District 4, 17 - Sent by Kate-The-Great-And-Powerful
Hacked to death by Epsilon Church
Sim! Writing scenes with them always made me so emotional, they were always doing their best even if no one else saw it that way! Like I said in Adrianne's eulogy, Sim's dynamic with her and their interactions was one of the most blessed things in Mortem, I feel so bad for taking them both out so gruesomely D: Despite all of Sim's struggles, though, they made it to 14th and did their best until the very end! Thank you for sending Sim in, Kate, and I hope you enjoyed their portrayal! I enjoyed writing them :)
13th Place: Epsilon Church, C-District 9, 17 - Sent by david12341
Killed by Simoleon Serif's sabotage
Ooof, Church went out pretty painfully. But prior to his death, he was absolutely interesting to write and show interacting with others! I think my favourite scene with Church's POVs has to be during training, where we see him interact with Bel and treat her like a sister rather than an ally. Like Adrianne and Sim, Bel and Church's dynamic was one of the ones I enjoyed writing as well! He was stoic and intimidating but he still had a soft side and a reason for his steadfast actions. David, thank you for sending him to Mortem and giving Bel someone to bond with during their time together!
12th Place: Oryza Belfast, District 9, 15 - Sent by Wetstar
Crushed under rubble of a house
Ahhhhhh, it's like a lot of you said - she wouldn't have heard the explosions like everyone else did. Bel was an absolute sweetie and despite the rough treatment she got from people back in her District she was still an amazing girl who was nice to everyone. While I wasn't as familiar with ASL and used Auslan for Bel's signing, it was still a fun opportunity to refresh my memory on signs I knew as a kid and learn some new ones along the way. Thanks for sending Bel, Jess :D I hope I did her justice!
Till next time!