With thanks to Glassgift, MidnightRaven323, Technicolour Raincoat, JadeRavenstone, deathless . smile and LokiThisIsMadness for your reviews of the previous chapter.
THREE DAYS EARLIER
N 50º 54.80544' , W 115º 51.70896'
He was first aware of the dust.
He coughed at the feeling in his throat and found for a while that he couldn't stop coughing. The involuntary motion horrified him; the lack of agency was more terrifying than the action itself.
Eventually, shuddering to a halt, he could breathe, if shallowly. The dust was choking the air, and threatened to choke him too.
He tried to open his eyes to take in where he was, and realised his eyes were already open. He tried to put his hands out, but realised he couldn't move them higher than perhaps three inches; one was half-pinned above his chest, and the other was spread-eagled outwards. He tried to sit up and promptly smacked his head against a barrier he could not see. Dust crashed down more; his head was spinning with pain and darkness.
He stitched together the basic facts in his head in the darkness and the dust.
His name was- he was- He coughed more and winced as he felt the side of his head throbbing in pain. He was- Lexus Valerian. He was the Technological Head of the Hunger Games; he was the Secretary of Technological Innovation back at the Capitol.
He had stayed behind at the arena to give Josiah Lyman and the staff a chance at escaping without blame. He had let the tributes escape the arena, with Seneca Crane at his side. He had run, run through the arena's administrative basement levels-
And then the basement had crashed in on itself.
Shit. Oh, shit. Oh, dear god, no.
Lexus started to take in his body's response to movement. His head was throbbing and he felt bruised all over, but nothing hurt like it was trapped or broken; he couldn't feel any crushing forces.
But he couldn't move, either. He experimentally tried to shift back and forth, but a strange honeycomb of walls and holes seemed to surround him; an unyielding concrete floor lay beneath him. After a lot of shifting and wriggling, Lexus managed to move his right hand from its spread-eagled position to just above his face; he started to feel out his entombed position.
A cool metal bar, just above his face. Lexus swallowed and moved his hand down. Rough concrete; he discovered shards of what felt like plastic and wiring; perhaps the fluorescent lighting? Lexus bit his lip. That was the ceiling. That was very, very bad. Why hadn't it collapsed on him entirely? How was he still alive-
Ah. Just above his pelvis, Lexus felt out the reason for his survival. There was a huge steel bar, one of the major foundations of the arena; it had probably been set into one of the basement walls Lexus had been nearby. When the arena had been blown up- because that was almost certainly what had happened- Lexus must have been lucky enough to fall under it. The rest of the debris aboce him, steel and concrete alike, was being held up by this single metal bar. Move one piece, and he could be buried under tonnes of rock.
In short- he had been buried, intact and alive, twenty metres underground.
Lexus would have laughed if he didn't feel so much like crying. Sheer luck, the probability of which was almost incalculable, had left him safe and alive, and yet he was trapped. What was the fairness in that? Mathematics was conspiring against him; probability had decided to mock him in the cruellest way, playing with his life like mortal clay in immortal hands.
He tried to laugh and it came out in a wretched, strangled sob, muffled in the dust-filled, de-oxygenated hole in which he was doomed to die. Was this justice? Was this justice? Saving hundreds and being rewarded by a slow, torturous death in a lightless hell? It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair-
Lexus slammed his hand furiously against the concrete just at the top of his head.
His hand shot out without resistance.
Lexus frowned. He twisted and turned until he lay on his stomach, lifting his head just above the ground and facing out into the black abyss that had been confining the top of his head before.
He stretched out both hands. He felt out into the abyss.
His hands both slid along the concrete floor without resistance. He widened them, and once more did so without resistance. He shuffled forward a little, raising his arms upwards at the elbows.
The way beyond him, in one direction only, was clear. Lexus almost choked on the notion of freedom.
Wriggling forward, partially on his elbows and partially on his belly, Lexus managed to move forward and out of the tiny partition he had been miraculously encased in. For the first time, he could lean up; then sit up. He squinted into the dark, but he still couldn't see where he was going; he couldn't so much as see his hand in front of his face. Feeling out his way, slowly and carefully, Lexus stood up.
He could stretch out his arms in some directions, but not others. He could step forward great directions in some ways, but hit debris and shaking metal bars in others. Slowly, excruciatingly, Lexus began putting together a mental map of where he was.
The corridor he had been in was the major sloping corridor to the outside of the arena and the helipad; at a guess, he'd say it was around two meters wide and six meters tall. He explosion must have collapsed the side of the corridor he had been standing on; it was sheer luck that he had survived. However, the other side of the corridor was still intact, as far as he could tell. Lexus could now step around a meter at most widthways (if widthways was widthways anymore), reach upwards as far and higher than he could reach, and walk forward around seven meters in-
He stopped. He frowned.
While the ground underfoot was covered in debris, very little of that debris felt soft in any way. Lexus backtracked hastily and crouched down, tentatively feeling for what he had stepped on.
Fabric, faintly warm. He felt out the outline of the fabric and discovered the fabric was wrapping a leg; he found another, too. He felt upwards and discovered the side of a body, then a shoulder, then a face; and just by feeling Lexus knew who it was in an instant.
"Sene-" Lexus broke off into coughing for a moment; the dust tickled his nose and throat, coating everything and filling the air. "Seneca?"
He scrambled to find a pulse and found it; thready, to his horror, but there. He frowned in the darkness; if Seneca had been lucky enough to get trapped in the larger partition of the corridor, why was he in a worse shape than Lexus?
"Seneca? Sen? You hearing me?" Lexus felt upwards again for Seneca's face, then promptly slapped it. A soft groan, warm breath on Lexus' hand.
And then horrible, desperate, gutteral breaths, high and scared and in /pain, and they were Seneca's.
"Sen?" Lexus recieved no response but the frantic intake and exhalation of breath from Seneca, which was almost, almost a scream, but a scream without the necessary conscious input to carry it. Instead, Seneca was making high-pitched moaning noises. Lexus tried to continue while he frantically patted down Seneca to try and find the problem that had Seneca nearly-screaming. "Sen, it's me, it's Lexus, we're okay, we're in the corridor, we're okay-"
Frantically and with increasing clarity words began to get included in Seneca's wails of pain.
"-Please, please," he moaned, "Please, please, please-"
"Please what? Sen, please what?"
"It hurts," Seneca said, and the words were drawn out on a sob that threatened to shred Lexus' heart. "Please, please, Lex, it hurts." The words stopped as strengthless fingers fluttered over Lexus' wrist and then held on, and Seneca was back to helpless breath-screaming.
"What hurts, Seneca?" No response came, and Lexus groaned slightly. "Come on, Seneca, think with your head, please, what hurts?"
"Chest," Seneca grated out. "Lex, make it stop, please-"
Lexus had begun to probe the lower right of Seneca's chest; the closest area of his body to debris. The effect was instantaneous; Seneca jerked underneath his fingers and began to make one single note of pain. Lexus stopped pushing on his chest hastily, and the wail stopped, replaced by a hyperventilating breathing pattern.
"Okay, that was my bad, I'm sorry," Lexus murmured, trying to soothe over the top of Seneca's frantic breaths. "Something must have hit you in the explosion; something- maybe- maybe concrete, or something?" He reached out beyond Seneca and found a nigh-impenetrable wall of rubble. It seemed like just beyond Seneca, the corridor had caved in. Lexus bit his lip.
"Okay. Okay, you were lucky; beyond this the corridor is just bedrock and concrete, so you must've caught the edge of it. You were lucky, Sen."
"We're- the corridor- we're trapped?" Seneca moaned. "Oh, god-"
"Hey, hey, Sen, calm down, alright? We're gonna find a way out."
Seneca's laugh was typically clear, sonorous, and rang like a bell, so to hear it reduced to a snuffly tearful chuckle was almost a mockery of what Lexus knew. "You were- always a shit liar, Valerian." He laugh-sobbed. "We're stuck."
"Nah," Lexus said unconvincingly. "There's always a way out, right? Always a solution. That's what Technological Innovation is all about."
"Shut up," Seneca replied quietly. "That- that committee was just a- a publicity stunt for Snow. We never created anything that ever really made a difference."
"Probably because our fearless boss ran off to join the Gamemaker tech crew the second we started making headway."
"You- you joined me."
"Yeah, well." Lexus laid his hand against Seneca's arm and sat down in the rubble next to him. "Can't leave my boss behind."
"Just- your boss?" Now Seneca's pained voice was questioning, and something innate in Lexus rebelled against the tone.
"Woah, okay, Sen, I get we're stuck down here but this is /not a time to figure out relationships."
"It's the only time."
"We're gonna get out of here."
"Lexus." The voice was unmistakeable now; it was Seneca exerting his leadership. He was putting forward all the authority he still had the energy to give, and pushing it into this. Lexus sighed, trailing his hand against Seneca's arm slowly.
"Man, if that one night stand really made such an impression on you I should start charging." Lexus laughed. "It was years ago. I-"
Something of the dark snapped Lexus' defensive nature, just a little.
"-Okay. Yes. Maybe there was a reason the one night stand happened."
"Thought so." The tone was more recognisable now as the superioric tones of Seneca Crane winning a bet.
"Shut up," Lexus said, a rare and genuine smile on his face lost in the darkness. "You were my boss, you know? When we first met in that damn tech conference in the Mansion, you know, the one about future leaders in Panem-"
"You were in a sequin tux."
"Oh, god, you remember that?" Lexus laughed. "I looked awful, I thought it looked suave. And Plutarch Heavensbee's walking around and he introduces me to you-"
"-The architect."
"Yeah, Valerian Towers had just been built," Lexus said softly, "But you still stole the conference anyway, with your dumb genius holograph projectors and your dumb swirly beard and your dumb sexy face."
"Sexy?"
"Oh, don't pretend like you don't know, Mr Vanity," Lexus snorted. "With your colour scheme and your ridiculous beard and your dumb little smirk."
"Same to you."
"At least I don't have a beard," Lexus retorted.
The silence returned a moment. Lexus sighed; he knew he had to stop stalling.
"Okay. Okay, so maybe I joined the Tech Innovation Committee as your assistant because I liked you. A little. And maybe I followed you from Tech there to Tech here, because I liked you. A little. And maybe I rebelled against the Capitol and got stuck here, in this lightless hole, because I followed you wherever you'd lead me. And maybe-" Lexus sighed. "-And maybe-"
"-What?"
Lexus frowned. He squinted into the pile of rubble just beyond Seneca.
"Hang on." He stood up, carefully feeling his way around Seneca, and started to ascend the pile of rubble and rock.
"Where are you going?" Seneca asked worriedly as Lexus began crawling forward into the caved-in corridor.
"I saw something," Lexus murmured vaguely. A piece of concrete scraped against his suit trousers and ripped it; he swore slightly but crawled on.
"You know," Seneca called, "This is probably why your partners all leave you."
"My partners didn't leave me because my lack of availability, they left me because most of them were exotic dancers." Lexus coughed and sniffed with the dust, scrabbling a hand outwards when he couldn't comfortably go any further. He felt a soft breeze of cool oxygen. He could see a pinprick of light. "Bingo!"
"What?"
"It hasn't caved in entirely! There's a way out!"
Seneca laughed, then broke off into a sharp whimper of pain.
Lexus frowned as he began to feel out the route. "But it's tiny. Maybe if I-"
He shuffled back and tried to shift some of the rubble beneath him, but the majority of the rubble was concrete and steel; nothing he could move with his own strength.
"Lex."
"It's- I'm- Oh, come on!" Lexus smacked his hand roughly against a concrete block he was failing to shift.
"Lexus."
"It's- I can't make the passage bigger myself, and there's no way we could get through it as it is now."
"Come back down."
"Why should I-"
The light was, at first, blinding, and as Lexus scrambled down the rubble he had to cover his eyes with his arm. Slowly, painfully, his eyes adjusted enough that he could lower his hand.
Seneca seemed to have dragged himself into a seated position against the rubble. His face was pale but his eyes were sharp, and in his hands he held a match and a scrap of cloth, one of which, already lit, he held to the other.
"The hell?" Lexus asked. "What's with the matches? You can't smoke in here anyway."
"They confiscated them off of the Veux boy on the hovercraft; apparently he smokes even more than I do." Seneca lit the taper of cloth (Lexus realised that Seneca had torn it from an already-ragged section of his silk brocade waistcoat) and held it up, the two of them taking in their surroundings in the thirty seconds of light the fire afforded them.
A chamber, with a mess of steel and concrete collapsed on two sides, a wall on the other, and the rubble of the almost-collapsed wall behind them. The majority was as Lexus had assumed from feeling out the chamber; where he had been trapped, was, frankly, a mess from which nothing could have been salvaged.
But. On the other side of the chamber was something Lexus had missed. A doorway. The fire petered out and died as the taper burned to the edges of Seneca's fingers and he discarded it, but Lexus was already through the door.
"Light another," he ordered, and reached back to take it as Seneca ripped another piece from his waistcoat.
"You know how many credits this cost?" Seneca muttered, hissing with pain as he pulled at his torn waistcoat.
"Maybe if you didn't dick about buying so much Cinnaware you'd have money left over to buy your own cigarettes."
"Shut up and take the taper."
Lexus took the lighted piece of cloth and held it up into the gloom of the doorway. He whistled lowly.
"Sen?"
"Yeah?"
"We are quite probably the luckiest people in Panem."
"My waistcoat's ruined and I think I've broken several ribs."
"Yeah, well, I still look fantastic, and that's a plus for us both."
"What did you find?"
Lexus grinned into the small, dimly lit room.
"An emergency weapons cache." He threw the taper out of the room, working by feel as he reached out to the slim racks of guns. "One of those contingency plans we worked into the architecture, remember?"
"And they called us crazy."
"It's because we are, Seneca. We're crazy, crazy preppers." Lexus lifted a gun off of the rack. "How good are you with weaponry?"
"Not great, but better than you."
"Think you could identify these?" Lexus stumbled back in the dark and handed the weapon to Seneca.
"-From the feel, I think this is a Capitol Guard submachine, standard issue. The double rail's quite distinctive."
"The fact you can identify these by touch when you're injured in the dark astounds me."
"Want me to pull a rabbit out of it?" Seneca seemed faintly confused, and Lexus grinned.
"No, I was just wondering; what ammo would that kinda gun take?"
"Maybe .45? I wouldn't claim to be a weapons developer for a living, I'm just an electrical engineer. Lexus, why do you want to-"
"Gunpowder or cordite?"
Even in the dark Lexus could tell Seneca had just done his little movement of blinking in surprise.
"Lexus, you crazy asshole."
"Give me another taper."
"With what you're about to try, I'm not lighting a single match till you're done."
"Ye of little faith, Seneca," Lexus said as he started feeling his way back into the gun repository, searching until he came to a number of rattling cardboard boxes in a large plastic tub. Lexus grinned and took the whole tub, feeling his way back out and then up the pile of rubble half-obscuring the exit.
"I'm gonna direct the detonation down with the tub; do you have some fabric? I'm gonna put it inside and try to set off the primer."
With a soft flapping sound Seneca's waistcoat hit his head. Lexus rolled his eyes.
"Cute."
"That's for avoiding the relationship talk."
"I didn't even have a relationship talk with the mother of my kid, Seneca."
"I might be dying."
"You broke some ribs, you're not dying."
"But I might be."
"I hate you."
"Love you too."
Lexus smiled weakly. "Yeah. Love you too, asshole." He started tipping out the boxes of bullets into a pile, looking resolutely towards the pinprick of light and the soft brush of cool air that represented their freedom. He tore up Seneca's waistcoat, trying not to think about how many credits it was worth. He piled the cloth around the hundreds of bullets, then put the tub upside-down on top of it all.
"Okay, Sen, toss up the matches then move out as far as you can. You ready?"
"How far out do you think I can go?"
"Just shuffle or something."
"For someone who just declared his love to me, you're a hell of an asshole, Valerian." Seneca began making pained sounds as he started shifting in the rubble.
"Why is it that every time I say it to someone, they say that?"
"Probably because you never do it. How many times have you been out with someone and dumped them a week later? Remember Cherry Haven?"
Lexus laughed. "Man, she literally tried to stab me with her stilettos. If I hadn't been in the same business class as her in college, I'd think she was an escaped district girl."
Perhaps, Lexus mused, it was strange that under extreme stress the two of them had declared their love for each other and then proceeded to act like nothing had happened. Perhaps it was because of the situation; but Lexus was willing to bet it was far more based upon their mutual uselessness in keeping relationships together. They had tiptoed around their strange semi-friendship and semi-relationship for so long, and ruined so many other relationships in the meanwhile, that it was far easier to pretend like, in the heat of the moment, they hadn't said a word...
The matchbox clattered against the rubble next to him, and Lexus lit it, hesitantly placing it to one of the pieces of cloth, then rushing down the pile of rubble and half-tripping over Seneca's legs as he waited for the-
Boom.
The fireball was mercifully more taken up by the tub and the oxygen-rich environment outside their chamber, but it was still earth-shattering to be that close to it. The tub had directed the explosion downwards but it would inevitably ricochet a little, and the sound echoed with furious intensity in his ears; spots were left in his eyes with the flash of the fire, and there was a rattling sound from the bullets exploding like popcorn inside the tub.
Eventually, the ricocheting sound ended.
"-over?" Seneca's voice gradually swam into his voice. "I can't even make out what happened."
Lexus opened his eyes and rubbed at them. He frowned into the light.
It took him a moment to realise that what he thought were spots in his eyes was actually the light emanating from in front of them. A ten-inch hole had been widened to a meter in the rubble.
Lexus laughed. Seneca half-laughed and half-winced in pain.
Together, slowly, balancing and supporting each other, they stumbled towards the widened hole; Lexus helped Seneca painfully get through the rubble-filled cavity before copying him, sliding down the light-drenched pile of rubble on the other side.
Lexus supposed it was just his and Seneca's luck that four kids with way too many swords had already found their way to the opening to the outside. It was just plain unfair that they all had their swords pointed at him and Seneca.
"Hey," he tried nervously. "Any of you kids want a cigarette or something?"
"Oh my god, Lexus."
You really think I'd kill off my baes Sexus before they got a chance to declare their undying love for each other, pretend they didn't, then try to sell confiscated cigarettes to the underage kids they stole them from? I never miss a trick, ladies and gents.
In any case this would've arrived sooner if my internet and my life loved me. I've been irritably limping to and fro from the router all day trying in vain to make it work. But yes. This happened. Next chapter Lexus and Seneca try their hand at cooking up meth in an RV and Lexus becomes Heisenberg or something.
I swear to god, I have actual handwritten sheafs of insightful, motif-filled, beautiful notes on this story and then I sit down and this happens.
As ever, thank you for reading this far.