With thanks to JadeRavenstone, deathless . smile and L. Reginski for your reviews of the last chapter.
Y108-02-01 T 22:47:07
DISTRICT 0
SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO
With February's cold, the soldiers had died in their droves.
The President sighed as he looked over the latest intelligence reports. Sometimes, he truly despised what his career had brought him; sometimes, he truly wanted to lie down and let the Revo Alliance win. He'd let District 13 kill his citizens, if he could just have one night of restful sleep...
You'll never rest again if she wins, his treacherous mind supplied. Because she won't just kill your citizens, she'll decimate them. Remember last month? Remember what she did to her own District's loyalists?
His eyes slowly drifted to the USB stick on his desk. Scorched, metallic, slim and printed with the sigil of an eagle, it was everything that told him why he was still fighting.
He squared his jaw and looked up at his intelligence officer, Daria Han. She was brilliant, if slightly drawn to the odd styles of the new generation; she forwent the austere style of her cooworkers for a strange, colourful outfit, covered in glitters and candy colours.
Today, her eyes were too shadowed with pain to bring out the glitter and shine of her lipsticked smile.
"How did they die?" He asked, knowing he knew the answer.
"She sent a short-range ballistic missile into the barracks; we believe it could be a newly developed pyrotechnic homing device." She sighed. "Mr President, it's time to discuss the final option-"
"No."
"Sir-"
"Daria, I am not going to send a nuclear missile to District 13. Not yet, not now. Not while we have other options to consider."
"Sir, if this is about the ethical concerns of killing citizens, the mayor surpassed that limit of war when she bombed the s-"
"I KNOW, DARIA!" The President roared, slamming his hands on his desk, standing straight up and staring Daria down. Her eyes widened in shock; he was only ever tired, cynical, joking, or all three at once. Never angry, never. He knew it too. He looked down at his hands, sighed, and leant back where he stood, adjusting his cufflinks.
"You think I don't know?" His voice cracked a little, and he silently berated himself for the weakness. "You think I don't know she deserves everything coming to her?" He took a deep breath, centering himself. He closed his eyes, unwilling to look at the numbers on the intelligence report. Every digit was another life lost in his name.
"President Sanchez?" Daria's voice sounded as lost as his, as scared as his. He sighed inwardly. He had to be the strong one, no matter what. It was his job as the official of his country.
He pulled himself up, opened his eyes; he stared down Daria with the last vestiges of his strength.
"We're going to respond with a comms strike; EMPs, missiles, anything that can damage antenna. They can't use a homing device if they can't control it."
"Yes, sir." Daria nodded shakily, turning to leave.
"Daria?"
She turned. "Yes, sir?"
"I want a briefing on the potential outcome of a nuclear strike. A briefing, nothing more. If it gets out to press, if it gets out to anyone, I'm revoking your codeword clearance."
"Sir." She saluted sharply, her way of thanking him for considering the nuclear option, and left the room.
President Sanchez sighed, looking up at the large clock on the wall. It was almost eleven, and he was still in the office. When had he last slept? Yesterday? The day before? He needed it, he knew that much.
Sighing, he dismissed his guards (a waste of resources, if someone was to ask him; he was the least important piece of the war), striding from the office and upstairs before he could be accosted for another purpose.
He brought the memory stick with him.
Matthew Sanchez, tall and caramel-skinned, with shots of silver on his temples mixing with his otherwise black hair, had never really expected to become President of Panem.
After all, when he had become President it had been Year 100, only a century after the Great Collapse; there was still so much work to do to fix the atmosphere and ground, to make the world liveable once more and finally lower the gates and walls that enclosed the Districts. Matthew was just a politician, in charge of the poorly funded Entertainment Sector; his entire Presidential platform had been a farce to try and push funding for his sector.
And yet, for some reason; District 0 had caught onto it. Something about his promise, his pledge of making Panem into something more than bread, to give 'panem et circenses', it excited the administration District far more than he had ever expected.
So they voted, and in their droves, for someone completely wrong for the job. Not Beatrice Quail, the expert in District diplomacy; not Sunny Malhotra, the expert in environmental matters. District 0, who were supposed to be the neutral force in the Districts, the ones voting for the most capable leader, voted instead for the face they liked and the words they could chant and the promise of an escape into entertainment instead of the hard work of self-improvement.
It had scared Sanchez so much to stand on a platform he had not wanted and did not deserve, to chant 'panem et circenses' like it was their deliverance from the world that was too hard to improve.
But the false glamour of Year 100 had coiled in his stomach like a snake, the chains of office glinting gold, and Matthew had followed them like his light in the darkness.
District 13, the nuclear District, the ones intended to try and find habitable land in the wastelands, to clean the mess of the toxic world the Great Collapse had left behind, got new orders. Matthew won re-election by claiming the work was finally done in fixing their broken world; he won it again by revealing the missiles he had created from the blueprints of the old world. Unneeded, certainly, when they stood alone on Earth as the only survivors, but it was a sign they were restoring the old ways, before the Great Collapse.
Complaints started surfacing; why still, then, the fences? Could they not leave if the world was better? And why did they still work so hard? Could they enjoy the endless sunlight of the administration District, could they share in Matthew Sanchez' light?
Matthew found the complaints were harming his reputation, and so soon before re-election. The chains of office glittered so sweetly in the light.
The fences became electrified. There were creatures, dangerous ones, he cried into a microphone to silence their anger; creatures that prowled the night, mutated by the Great Collapse. District 13 and 10 would work on fixing it, he said.
To make sure they believed him, he got hold of the best in District 3 and made creatures dangerous enough that they would believe him.
Dissent continued. They did not care if the mutts were real, they would take their chances; they wanted to leave, to rediscover their beloved world that was now, he said, made safe.
The world wasn't safe and Matthew Sanchez knew it and the top names in District 13, covering this up as they were, knew it too.
And so the mayor of District 13, maybe angling for promotion, maybe angry at Sanchez, who knew, told the world the truth; that the world outside had never been safe. That Sanchez had lied.
And then came the darkest days.
District 0 had missiles but so did District 13, and they pointed them at each other with malice. Sanchez took to the microphone to calm the people as he always did, but this time he was drowned out by the crowds. District 0, placated by their constant repetition of 'panem et circenses', stood alone with their President. Everyone else, angered by the lies and the work and the apparent corruption of the neutral administration District, stood against him.
But Sanchez had never believed anything would truly happen until Capitol School.
Capitol School, so named for how close to the center of District 0 it stood, was so large and beautiful it was often mistaken for the Presidential mansion. It was a school for the whole of District 0 to learn how to administrate Panem's Districts, and was well-regarded as both being free to its people and brilliant at teaching. Matthew's daughter Amy had gotten into the school without having to try; she was a natural diplomat, a brilliant debater of ideas and concepts. Matthew had been so proud of her when she first came home with an A on her environmental essay; he had always been proud of his baby girl, his only child.
District 13, it turned out later, had intended to end the cold war between the two of them surgically and quickly The mayor ordered a long range non-nuclear missile to hit the Presidential mansion, and only the Presidential mansion.
Capitol School, so large and so beautiful, so like the mansion and centred right in the middle of District 0, was targeted by mistake.
Matthew had to be forcibly restrained from leaving the mansion, from running into the hellish firestorm that his Amy, his girl, his baby girl was in. His screams of anguish had torn through his throat as a gutteral howl.
Capitol School was decimated and the war began proper. Matthew refused to stop, stop fighting, stop killing until he had seen the mayor dead, her and her son, and he'd kill her son first in front of her eyes. He didn't care anymore, not when Amy-
So many had died and yet he still did not have peace. Capitol School remained ashes on the ground, blowing in District 0's sky. So many children dead. His baby girl, dead.
Matthew had long been separated from his wife, and did not know until he saw her face next to an obituary that she had joined the most dangerous front in the army.
Sometimes he wondered whether she had wanted to see recompense, or just had wanted to see Amy once more.
Dark days and dark skies, filled with ashes. Matthew had seen the memory stick the next day, when it was presented to him, smuggled from the mayor's war office, from Volumnia Snow's clutches.
It carried the eagle of America on its scorched surface.
Okay, I hear you yelling right now. What is screening doing? Does she remember what she's writing? Why hasn't she shut up about that memory stick since chapter one of Jacquerie?
Because when I plan stories, I plan them /hard, folks. The whole plot's bare bones have been in the making since the beginning and it's so complex and huge I never even thought I'd get to the Sanchez chapters.
I'm a crazy crazy plotter don't look at me. I wrote this whole thing on a train 900 feet above sea level.
As ever, thank you for reading this far.