Y 184-08-31 T 04:44:47
Day 1
The Peacekeepers had come for them before the sky began to lighten in the sky. Emma had been ready. Emma had not slept the entire night.
She knew she needed the rest for what faced her, but what faced her had dragged her breathing back to a flutter, her heart pattering unhealthily in her chest. She had been ready to face this, but that was before the Reaping, before her father had tried to fight his way to her, before-
Emma sucked in a shuddering breath with more difficulty than such a simple task should take. In these moments, in the silence of her room as she waited for the Peacekeepers to come through and take her to her fate, she wondered at the fragility of a person- nothing but tissue and flesh and blood, sustaining a temporary and painful existence.
Well. Perhaps only as temporary and painful as the Capitol made it, but she had little choice in that matter.
She had made her choice long ago, and now it was here to haunt her.
The Peacekeepers escorted Ronan and herself to the elevator and down- their guns were firmly trained on their backs, as if they were concerned they were going to run.
Frankly, Emma didn't blame their concern. But she had no intent to throw herself into the fire she had lit by Reaping, the one that had consumed her father.
She owed it to her brother to ensure he did not lose all of his family.
The van that took them through the Capitol was, surprisingly, complete with windows. While Emma had lived by and loved the sea all her life, the sheer opulence of the city that had entrapped her felt like a luxury she could allow herself for what could be the last time. So, as the sun rose, she leant her head against the window, the ride smooth enough that she could rest it there without the glass juddering against her skull.
The buildings in what was apparently called the 'Inner City' were mostly older, monolithic slabs of stone and steel; the seal of Panem inscribed on many, the seal of the Peacekeepers Guild inscribed on many more. The van took them down Victory Road; the same one she had visited only days before in a chariot ride that had turned to chaos. The street was clean now, but the memories abided.
At the end of Victory Road, the circular ringroad that should have contained their chariots days before stood empty, as did the rest of the Capitol; while a few stragglers and people partying into the late night remained on the streets, nobody was awake to see the dawn, merely not yet asleep. They turned, rounding the Training Center that towered over everything in the city, circling past the Presidential Mansion on the opposite side. These were all landmarks she knew; landmarks she had seen so many times before, although they had never towered over her before.
From here, however, the Inner City moved to the Outer City, and there was a palpable difference. Stone gave way to glass, steel to chrome; everything here glistened with modernity and innovation, sparked with a strange life and charm that didn't appeal to Emma but certainly must appeal to someone. The buildings here, while nowhere near as tall as the Training Center, still towered- one, with swirling spires of glass that appeared to light itself from its own surface, chased the sun with artificial strips of light, the primal meeting the modern in both city and sight.
These, she had seen once on a recap, were the creation of Lexus Valerian, Panem's rising star for technological innovation; and, apparently, the tech guy for this year's arena. Emma studied the spired buildings as she would a sparring opponent; searching for patterns in the lights, scanning for tells in the mysterious reflections of the glass.
It told her nothing, and she looked on into the streets.
Here, gambling emporiums held large screens in every street, proclaiming to offer odds on every tribute, along with their training scores. They were soundly unexciting and unsurprising, with the Careers taking top marks (and, Emma noted blandly, Anna topping the list) and the outlying districts lower, with Chal taking the bottom without much surprise or fanfare needed. Emma had fair odds but nowhere near as high as Ronan, Sheen or Theon; she expected that. Anna's topping the odds was really an aberration for most years; sheer physical prowess often won the games, and even the best-trained women often didn't have the prowess to beat a six-four guy whose biceps were made of iron. But Anna held the advantage in a high training score, a terrifying gaze and her promise in her interview to "watch everyone die", and the Capitol had favoured her despite her short build and soulless eyes.
Emma, save Glace, was the lowest-ranked of the pack.
She didn't much care for odds when they had done so little for her.
The van drove on, through wide, well-designed streets; it was hard to believe that only seventy-six years ago, these streets had bathed in the blood of rebels and Capitolians alike, when everything was so bright, glittering, opulent. The Dark Days were well-named if they had truly caused the devastation she had heard of- she wondered if the Capitolians set their world up with so many lights in an effort to drive away the darkness of their past.
Eventually, they came to the outside of the city, fringed on one side with a reservoir and on the side they arrived from with a rock face. The bane of the rebels when they had attacked, for the Capitol was set inside a natural basin in the Rockies, a perfect strategic post to hide in, a gilded hole for the Capitolians to wait out the war. Not all survived, but most did. The Rockies had been impregnable to the rebels.
Now, however, a thin tunnel ran through the rocks, and here they drove through, the pressure making Emma's ears pop, until they reached outside again and everything was covered in barbed wire and a helipad sat with a large, bulbous hovercraft on its surface. The entire space was enclosed with walls; it felt like a small cell in a large comb, and Emma imagined a thousand such hovercrafts in the same small helipad 'cells', just outside the Capitol's borders.
The Peacekeepers took her and Ronan from the car, guns trained to her the whole way to the hovercraft. Everything was well-timed, regimented, and Emma could not tell if she was impressed or terrified by how carefully so many people planned the deaths of a few children.
She sat in the hovercraft, silently accepted her tracking device, and waited for the other tributes to arrive.
Save a few crying younger children, the journey to the arena was fairly silent, and only a few hours in length. Emma used the time to rest fitfully; Ronan caught her eyes opposite her from time to time and offered a half-smile. She wasn't sure exactly why; while they would be allied at first, he had been unutterably helpful to her in the past week, and she wasn't sure why he had gone to such lengths to help a tribute he'd soon need to kill.
She didn't return his smile. She had lost too many people to become attached to someone she needed to kill.
They were pulled from the hovercraft individually now, two Peacekeepers to every child. They were already inside a dark cavern containing a helipad and a retracting door above; no indication of where they were was clear in the cavern, other than the gently sloping wall on one side suggesting the dome of an arena. As Emma was escorted into the dome, the floor angled downwards.
While the journey she then took seemed almost deliberately obsfucating, Emma could tell that she was now likely beneath the arena itself, in a series of small, poorly lit concrete corridors. Capitolians bustled to and fro, as did Peacekeepers- murmurs and flickers of activity sparked in the air around Emma, a general feeling of unease.
The Peacekeepers left her in a bare room containing only a small table, a glass tube from floor to ceiling, and a folded pile of clothes. Her stylist entered the room, professional and impersonal, smiling fakely as she instructed Emma to change into the outfit.
It was singularly unimpressive; largely grey, with some darker tones mixed in. The tank top and the thin jacket on top, her stylist said as she carefully arranged Emma's hair into a neat ponytail, was likely an indication of a warm arena; or, at least, certainly not a cold one. Emma was comforted; she had lived in District 4 all her life, and sun was something she could bear with ease. The grey, however, gave her stylist pause; she hummed and hawed about what it could potentially mean, but gave no concrete decision on anything. Her indecision made Emma's stomach flip and her chest beat in irregular time, and she was back to breathing slowly to try and negate her rebelling heart.
Finally, a grating polytone sounded from- everywhere, from the arena above and the floor below, reverberating into her core. Emma's stylist nodded, released her in her grey attire, directed her to the glass tube. Emma took her breathing in hand, did not return her stylist's smile.
Another polytone sounded, muted by the glass this time, and mechanics buzzed beneath her feet and she moved upwards, into expanding light.
For a few moments, Emma struggled to see where she was- the dark catacombs of the corridors beneath the arena had dilated her eyes, and now she squinted into the glare of an artificial (but deceptively real) sun. The air was balmy, and felt as real as anything else, but prickled her skin because she knew it wasn't real.
Finally, however, as she stared into the sky, her eyes adjusted enough to see the arena.
Silence clamoured around her.
And then the beating of her heart, intense and overwhelming, and Emma put out her hands to a glass tube that wasn't there, because she knew where she was. She looked at a circle of tributes in equal horror to the horror on their faces, because she knew where she was.
Stone flags beneath the metal panel beneath her feet. Behind her, a long road, subtly scorched. In front of her, a wide circle of tributes, obscured partially by a beautiful crystalline Cornucopia. And in front of that, a tall building, one of many, unutterably high, a slab of black glass and steel, and she had been here before, and Emma could not breathe.
She stood in the Capitol.
Jacquerie will return on Monday.