Eirene Luna

Head Gamemaker

Eirene hadn't talked to her wife since yesterday. It wasn't like she had been totally bored, of course. Chariots were tomorrow, and the touchup preparations for the arena could finally begin now that she'd seen the batch of tributes this year. It was a good, malleable bunch of kids. There would be fun to be had, a story to be told here, and she couldn't see very many that she would be unhappy with as a victor. It was going to be a good Games.

But the only contact she'd had with her wife were two messages sent to her via their mansion servants. Just a simple talk to you later xo and then, after that, won't be home for dinner sorry, update you later xo. Nothing satisfactory, and no explanations.

All she'd been fed so far was the lie that everyone under the clearance zone received: It was a gas leak, some kind of issue with the piping, an accident. But she wasn't stupid enough to swallow that like everyone else. Hell, she wasn't sure everyone else was stupid enough for that either. It wasn't Isidora's best cover-up work, which didn't bode well for the country. That meant the problem was big.

"Mrs. Luna," one of her assistant Gamemakers said, calling her back into the moment. She looked down at the paperwork she'd been signing, authorizing some of the little arena tricks to be created with their available funding. It was expensive this year, but considering the unrest in One, she couldn't be more willing to go above and beyond to build distractions. "Do you have a minute?"

She focused on who was speaking to her. It was Renna Paolo, the newest addition to the team. She showed a lot of promise, but seemed so dedicated to proving herself, she never let herself have any fun. Whenever conversations devolved beyond work, she would shrink into herself and take any opportunity possible to scurry back to her desk. It had become Eirene's background mission to bring her out of her shell, see if she was better at stepping outside of the box when she was prodded at.

"Of course," Eirene said, and Renna shut the door to Eirene's office behind her. "What's up, Miss Paolo?"

Renna clutched a stack of papers and a binder to her chest, looking like a schoolgirl anxious about talking to the principal. "I found a flaw in the arena plan," she said, her voice quivering somewhere in the middle. Not like she was going to cry, but definitely like it was difficult for her to muster up the courage for every single word.

"Okay," Eirene said, much more used to Gamemakers critiquing her arena design than Renna was probably aware. She made it clear every year when the Gamemakers gathered for the first time that if they held out on her even a little bit, they wouldn't be making it back onto the team next year. A lot of them got the hang of the balance between serious and comfortable that Eirene liked in her workplace pretty quickly, but Renna was so soft-spoken, Eirene worried she'd have to cut her. But she wasn't going to give up so easily. "Lay it on me."

Renna set her binder down on the corner of Eirene's desk and pulled out the layout of the arena, seemingly an annotated version. Renna had different sections highlighted, and a little key for what each color and marking meant off to the side. There were a lot of little scribbles and question marks, and after Eirene eyed a couple, she saw that they were actually really intriguing ideas that Renna hadn't voiced to her yet.

"This is amazing, Miss Paolo," she said, reaching out and pulling the map closer to her. She traced over a rough outline on the flexible muttation schedule. Her gaze fell on an area circled in red pen, highlighted in green—the color Renna used for technical placements, as in things implanted in the ground or the tree, things tributes wouldn't see but that would be vital to carrying out some of their special plans. "Oh, is the issue here?"

Renna nodded and came around the side of the desk, beginning to pour out an analysis on improvements that could be made on this section of the arena and others like it. It was amazing, and exactly the kind of professional input she wanted out of the girl. When Eirene pushed back against her plan, just to see if the younger Gamemaker would give in, Renna bit her lip, nodding slowly. She started to gather up the map, and then shook her head quickly. "No, Mrs. Luna, I really believe we need to take care of this, before the tributes are in there and it's too late," she said. "I think it requires personal assessment, but if we send a team by hovercraft out there tonight, we could have adjustments planned, funded, and executed in just a couple of days. Which would also bode well for my second point…"

Eirene raised he eyebrows. "Second point?"

Renna started putting her papers back into her binder, avoiding Eirene's gaze, but while she did so, she began to give Eirene the most brilliant idea she'd heard in a long time. And an excellent addition to an arena that needed to be more spectacular than ever.

She'd heard from their communications duo that the Capitol was extremely dissatisfied with this year's Quell twist. It had little to no bearing on the arena, and the districts were beyond pissed since it separated their partners for the first time since the Eight-first Hunger Games. So things had to be perfect. They had to be above and beyond. And Renna had just the idea for it.

After work that night, Eirene collapsed in her comfortable lounge chair, flipping on Karamo Morningstar's talk show. She had poured out a generous glass of wine when she got home. Normally she would be brainstorming this close to the events, but she just wanted to stop worrying about Isidora.

Why hadn't she at least come home? There was no way she would be working forty-eight hours straight. She'd drive herself insane, or at least make herself horribly sick.

Sometime halfway through her glass of wine, when Karamo's comments on the reapings to the retired District Thirteen escort started to get on her last nerves, the door to the living room slid open and Isidora slipped inside.

Eirene was on her feet in an instant. Isi looked bone-tired. Her beautiful eyes were bruised and bloodshot from how hard she'd been working since the incident, and Eirene's frustrations and worries flew away upon seeing her.

"Oh, dear," she said, putting her hands on her wife's arms and rubbing up and down gently. "You're sleeping. Right now."

She guided Isidora to their bedroom with little protest. They put on pajamas and brushed their teeth in silence, their nightly routine dragged down by Isi's exhaustion. Eirene braided back her hair and slipped into the bed.

"It's chaos out there," Isi whispered. That must have been in the high-clearance zone of the mansion, where the work was so official, only the president and her highest cabinet members could enter.

The Head Gamemaker wasn't a cabinet member at all. Normally those in her position didn't have as much clearance as Eirene did, but marrying the president had its business perks. But sometimes those ran short, like now, when the situation was too dire for a Gamemaker to hear.

"What happened?" Eirene asked, searching her wife's eyes for the truth. There had been times—not many, but still—where Isidora lied to her about what was going on. But she always told the truth eventually. Eirene didn't want the bullshit now, though. She was stressed from the Games, from missing her wife, from whatever was going on. She wanted to know the facts.

Isidora heaved a sigh and turned her face so it was mostly hidden in the pillow. "Rebels," she whispered, barely audible through the sound-smushing cushion of the pillow. "We think, at least. Posed as Peacekeepers, executing well-known Capitol associates of District One."

Eirene had tried not to think about the deaths of the three victors and the mayor in One. She had known Cecil Kenneth and Tan Nolan well. And although she hadn't spoken much to the Ninety-sixth's victor, Magnus Whitechurch, she knew that he was a valuable player in the victors' circle. Gone. The only one left was poor Nicolette Dion, undoubtedly mourning Tan Nolan's death, if she had heard at all yet.

The news reports were spotty. At first, they wouldn't even show One's reaping in the recaps. But on the news channel directly afterward, they reported the "gas leak" incident. And not an hour later, Violetta Bane, the main news reporter in the Capitol, was the first to report on the story of three of One's four victors being killed.

"And they didn't round up Nicolette? Why?" Eirene asked. She knew that they must have been rounded up sometime after the explosion, mostly because the "blast" clearly didn't reach the Justice Building in the brief clip she'd seen of the incident.

Isidora shook her head. "We don't know. Neither does she."

Eirene couldn't bear to press more, even though she wanted to know every little detail that Isidora was willing to give out. She was afraid her wife would be gone by the time she woke up the next morning, though, and she couldn't waste another minute on business that was stressing her out outside of home. She leaned their foreheads together and shut her eyes, willing to forget about everything for now, for Isi's sake.

"It doesn't matter here," she whispered. "I want you to rest."

She was sound asleep before she could even answer.

Atticus Carter

Second Rebellion Radical

NO MAN'S LAND

Atticus Carter woke up in a hovercraft. The last time he'd been in a hovercraft was during the Second Rebellion, twenty-six years ago. And now he was in a hovercraft again, with no memory of ever getting on it.

He hadn't left the Panem Maximum Security Facility in five years, since the last time there was a lead about some of his contacts from the rebellion. He had been sent then to scour out details based on what he knew, and help to track them down for the price of his own life. Over time, and with every detail about the rebellion he handed over, his quality of living had improved. At first it was a nicer bed, with actually warm sheets and a pillow. Then it was books, and nicer food, until the little cell he lived in was comfortable, and the Peacekeepers treated him with some semblance of respect. Or even kindness, in the cases of the softer ones who actually liked him.

It wasn't living, really, but it was okay. And it was worth not dying for. So he kept giving up secrets, as much as he could. They hadn't even asked him for anything in ages, but as long as he kept the allowances they'd given him, he'd give up anything.

He wasn't so sure what they wanted now.

A man in a dark brown suit came into the room not long after he'd sat up from the cramped little bed in the corner. "Carter," the man said, his voice deep and uncomfortably raspy. Like he needed to clear his throat. He leaned against the doorframe of what Atticus assumed was a backroom of the hovercraft, one leg over the other dramatically. It was like he'd prepared this entrance, specifically for the drama. The most disturbing thing about him was his mouth, which he seemed to barely move, even as he spoke and smiled. Never showing his teeth. "How would you like to give President Luna a scare?"

SO chapter question what are y'all making of the intermission so far?