With thanks to AbbyCoraby123 for your review of the last chapter. :)
Screams and chaos sounded on the screen behind them as they pored over the papers on the desk. The screams were visceral, gutteral- they grated on Josiah's every nerve.
"Damn it- Donna! Can you mute that?"
A woman with long blonde hair and a crisp blue tunic pushed her head round the door. She mockingly saluted him, and Josiah did the same.
The screams stopped. Josiah returned to the sheafs of notes.
"Really?"
Josiah looked up. "What?"
Lexus snorted as he scribbled a few notes on one of the equipment lists. "You call your Avox Donna?"
This wasn't the first time Josiah had gotten criticism for this, and he had less patience for it every time. "Well, what am I supposed to say to her, 'Avox'? 'Blondie'? 'Hey you over there, that one- no wait, not you, that one'?" His tone was dry; he didn't look up from his notes. "Now, you were saying about the Cornucopia?"
"Yeah, it's crystalline- we have some mesh arrays set up for later on in the eventuality of a feast occurrence." Lexus leaned forward across the large desk. "You don't need a name for your Avox, you know."
Josiah shuffled his notes around with more force than strictly necessary. "We felt it sent the wrong message if we used electricity to potentially kill any tributes- we were talking to a guy in your department and he mentioned the possibility of putting up a visible laser array instead." He flicked up his gaze towards Lexus' piercing blue eyes. "Her name's Donna, and she answers to it. Live with it for five minutes and get on with the work."
"I'm getting on with the work. Look, I don't know who in my department you talked to, but they were either messing with you or on morphling. A visible laser array is not only dumb, it is nigh-impossible to design, produce, transport, and build into a transparent crystalline structure a visible laser array, especially when it's just a dumb idea thought up by the communications department." Lexus looked like he was about to stop talking, but he continued like a boulder on its inexorable course downwards. "You know, if you want company, you could get a cat... Or buy an Victor or something. Don't have to settle for getting an Avox and calling her Donna."
Josiah pursed his lips slightly, brushing back his hair. "Look, what Tech do isn't what Communications do, but I'm just trying to keep both Snow and the Capitol happy." He, too, tried to cut himself off, but it was proving impossible at Lexus' prodding. "I didn't call her Donna, cats make me sneeze, and not only are Victors expensive they're distasteful."
"That's the sound of a man who tried."
"To get a cat? Once. Like I said, made me sneeze."
"You've never had a Victor?"
Josiah really, really didn't want to get into this conversation. "We came to discuss the games, not to talk about my sex life. What about the arena's boundaries?"
"It's almost too big for regular dome construction, so we had to add a supporting column within it. It's disguised, unless someone's looking for it they'll never see it. As for the edges, we've just made them blank walls with a solid boundary behind; they'd need something huge to get through that, so no worries there." Lexus twirled a pen in his hand, the other tapping absently on his thigh. Josiah had seen Lexus a couple of times since their first meeting in Seneca's office, and he had always looked edgy. "Something up?" He asked. "Victors put their price up? The blow-up dolls too expensive?"
Lexus shook his head, with a faint smile crossing his features. "Here I thought we were done with the blow-up doll joke when Caesar went off to have his temper tantrum." He stilled the pen, but his hand still tapped against his thigh. Josiah wasn't a tech guy, but he knew people.
"Lexus. What's going on?"
Lexus looked Josiah in the eyes. He flicked his gaze around the room, as if afraid of sudden attack.
"Does anything seem- wrong, to you?"
Josiah frowned. "What, like we've missed something out?"
"No! Nothing like that." Lexus had leaned in and lowered his voice, which went against his typical M.O by too much to be normal. Josiah leaned in to match, and the two murmured in the yellow-orange light Josiah's home office provided.
"Like- in general. The Games. The Capitol. Nothing seems- off, to you?"
This conversation suddenly rung home with hundreds of anti-insurrection lectures Josiah had heard at school. The office closed in around him, and the air was staler in the air. He kept his voice steady only by pure will.
"I- no, what do you mean?"
"The arena. You said the polling board were concerned."
Josiah bit his lip. That was true, and there was no way to deny the concern. He was mildly concerned himself. "I- they're always concerned, Lexus, that's their M.O."
"Not like this." Lexus had the pen in both hands now, and seemed to be quickly and ruthlessly disemboweling the mechanism. "I mean- have you seen it?"
"Not yet." The horrified awe in Lexus' voice gave him pause. "I'll be there with you as the envoy to the Capitol, so I'll see it then."
Lexus shook his head. "It's- it's incredible. The pictures don't do it justice. It's- it's desolate, silent, for miles and miles. It felt abandoned." Lexus moved his head oddly- just once, sharply, to the left. "We're putting a couple kids in there and leaving them until they've ripped each other apart."
Josiah had no words to answer with. He did not want to hear this. Not when he had climbed so far, he couldn't have anything like this happen, not now.
"Yeah, well, it's brutal but it's necessary." Josiah arranged his papers hastily and stood, anxious to get Lexus out. "I need to-"
"No, wait, listen." Lexus leapt the table like it wasn't there; a far younger man in a middle-aged man's body in that instance gripped Josiah's arm. A pen spring bounced softly on the carpet beneath their feet. "What's your security clearance?"
"-Six. It's the same for all Gamemakers. You need to read the stuff they give you to sign, Lexus-"
"-I do read it. As carefully as you do, you must do, you're communications, you know what the Capitol can do."
Josiah tilted his body back- the desperation in Lexus' eyes afforded the Technology head a far more dangerous edge than usual. "I'm the Games head, not the government head."
"We're the only ones in that room with six clearance, Josiah."
Josiah's arms tensed beneath Lexus' grip. "What?"
"Josiah, I can't tell you much, I don't know much myself. But security's being taken up, information's being reclassified- I took a quick look at some file movements on the Capitol servers, and everything's being shifted off their usual servers onto something I can't get into because I didn't design it. I designed almost everything here- what have they got that I can't find?" Lexus was babbling, his eyes wide and imploring- Josiah got the feeling that Lexus had nobody to tell these things to. But he didn't want to hear them. Anti-insurrection lectures rang round his head, telling him to report Lexus to the nearest authority, to not hide incriminating information.
Reality made those orders so much more muddy and so much more in focus- if he reported this now, he was in trouble as much as Lexus. Something major was happening if everything was locking down, and the Games Communication head was clearly not senior enough to know. He would, probably, be put in a Re-education Facility.
He shuddered.
"Look, I- I don't want to know, I can't, I can't hear this- Lexus, ask about the electrocution arrays, go home."
"But-"
Josiah grabbed Lexus, voice like steel, honed by years of rising in the ranks of communications.
"Lexus. Go home. This arena's risky and everyone's on edge. You're on edge. You need to go home and calm down. Okay?"
Lexus swallowed, his silver hair starting to flop after too long since its last gel appliance. "Okay." He collected up some notes, movements slow. "Ask your guy about the security snafu in Sector 7."
"Sure."
Lexus nodded painfully and walked away; to the door of the office.
It was then that Josiah held up his hand.
"Lexus- wait."
Lexus turned around. Josiah sighed, carding fingers through his hair.
"I'm not undermining you here. It does sound- it sounds really damn dangerous. But you can't tell me this. You can't tell this to anyone. Just hearing it has made my life more dangerous, yours- look, if you find anything really bad for either of us, tell me, but if not- don't go where we're not wanted, Valerian. We're probably still down at level six for a reason."
Lexus nodded, appearing more positive despite the warning Josiah had just given him. He was out the door a minute later.
And Josiah slumped through the doorway, making his way to the kitchen.
"Donna?" He called weakly.
A blonde woman in a blue tunic was by his side almost immediately, tilting her head to show her interest in what he wanted.
"I need a drink. And to talk." The words were a command, but his tone suggested nothing more than pleading. Donna smiled, leading him into a parlour of his house with old, squashy couches and a large television; and, most importantly, a liquor cabinet. Donna poured Josiah a drink of wine, then at his suggestion poured another as well for herself. The two of them settled on a couch, Avox and Capitolian both.
He looked down at his drink pensively. "Lexus just told me shit I shouldn't know. Shit that could get me-" he looked up at Donna's face. He wondered what it had been like to be made into the Capitol's property, tongue and all.
Donna nodded. She seemed to understand. She rarely wrote her thoughts if she did not need to- she had claimed in the past that when put in comparison with the swift speech of a man whose job contained the word 'Communications', her writing skills could not give fair comparison in speed to allow a conversation. But over the year since Josiah had seen her in the Capitol offices and demanded her as her personal Avox, they had achieved a tacit understanding of one another's feelings.
The outpouring of unwanted truth had given Josiah a sudden taste for it, and he looked up at the Avox. "I never asked. Why were you-" Unable to finish the sentence for the horrors it contained, he settled for putting a finger at his lips.
Donna's smile changed from understanding to something- deeper, more melancholic. She made a movement with her hand to simulate a pen, and Josiah grabbed up a pad and pencil.
She wrote six words only.
"I heard what I shouldn't have."
He looked at her, his eyes searching. She looked back, her eyes glassy with fear, a detached despair for her creation as the Capitol's own.
He looked back at the paper shaking in his hands.
He blinked.
There was a pen spring on the floor of his office, and he needed to retrieve it. He needed something to do. He didn't want to think. Not now. He stood, draining his glass, made his excuses and left.
A piece of paper laid on the couch, incriminating and understanding in a single unused breath.
When I started writing this chapter, it was going to be Lexus'. Now it's gone to the poorly hidden reference from a previous chapter, Josiah Lyman, and his even more poorly hidden reference of an Avox, Donna, because I have no self-control. Points to anyone who recognises my utter uselessness in society in making this reference. Many more useless and obscure ones to come, I assure you.
As ever, thank you for reading- apologies for the hour's lateness in getting this one up on the day, but I got a tad carried away.