With thanks to AbbyCoraby123 for your review of the previous chapter.
This is the bloodbath. As such, this chapter I have not held back on my writing blood and gore. While I have endeavoured to keep this within T rating, I certainly believe the infrequent use of swearing and the graphic fighting puts this on the upper limit of the rating.
Those with a nervous disposition, therefore, may not enjoy what is about to come.
Y 184-08-31 T 14:00:00
Day 1
"Je- sus- Christ!" Seneca yelled, taking the stairs up from the Gamemaker's pit two at a time. "What in fucking hell was that?!"
Two banks of table screens in circles made up the head Gamemakers. While other technicians were in abundance in the warren-like corridors beneath the arena, within this small room was the powerhouse of the Games. The head technicians sat and took orders from Seneca or Lexus- other workers came in or out as was needed.
And right now, Seneca really needed his Head of Communications.
Lexus kept his eyes on the projected image to the Capitol; right now, a zoomed-out projection of the bloodbath. They got the footage as it happened, and a thirty-second delay was all that stood between them and the public.
And right now, they had already cycled the footage of the 9 girl stepping off her plate to the public.
Lexus shook his head furiously. "She just stepped off the plate- she just-"
"Jesus fucking- Christ!" Seneca screamed, snatching up a beautifully crafted pitcher of water and hurling it against the wall, the crystalline structure shattering and spraying water across the Gamemakers' pit went silent. Seneca Crane was not one for sudden outbursts, and this outpouring of violent anger seemed unprecedented even in the face of the chaos unfolding in front of them.
An aide rushed into the room. "The President's on the line, sir."
"If she wasn't dead, I'd kill her myself!" Seneca yelled to the arena above him, aiming obscenities at the girl who was little more than flesh now, the girl who had stepped from her plate even as she stared down Anna, even as tears streamed down her face.
He left the room in a swirling fury, leaving behind shattered glass and silence.
Lexus, aware of the vacuum of power this outburst had created, anxiously paced down to the bottom of the Gamemaker's pit and regarded the screen again.
"Okay, camera five bring it in- further back than that, don't want to muddy the viewpoint. That's it. Can someone try camera twenty-eight, it appears to be broken?"
"There's blood on the lens, sir."
"Then find a way to clean it and get ready to cut close to that one later. Okay, guys, let's make sure we can at least get a bloodbath right. Camera seven-"
Elizabeth, frozen in time and drenched in the blood of a martyr, stood on her plate.
In front of her, tributes were sprinting forwards to the Cornucopia. Sheen Astara, large and fast, was first to get to the cache of weapons within- he hefted a mace in one hand, and in one jerking movement swung it to connect with the Nine boy's jaw; the boy screamed and fell, his jaw ripped so far out of its socket by the metal that it had ripped the skin, his entire lower jaw hanging loosely against his chest as he howled. A Twelve girl tried to grab a backpack and run, but Sheen had already picked up a sharp instrument, like an awl but longer, and embedded it in her chest.
Her screams did not rouse Elizabeth- the sound of cannon fire overhead did.
Suddenly, stumbling and afraid, Elizabeth tore free, backing up, spinning and running away diagonally through the circle. She had to get out, but she needed supplies- something, anything.
A small carbon-fibre box, held together with plastic clasps, sat towards the edge of the circle. Elizabeth stooped and grabbed for it, ready to sprint forward- but she felt a huge pressure suddenly unload itself onto her back, and she went crashing down with the box, little more than the size of her head, clutched to her chest. She spun on the paved ground to see Chal standing over her, his eyes wild and his neck still faintly scarred. He held a small axe in his hands, and Elizabeth had seen plenty enough of those in her time not to know when it was being held correctly.
"Sorry, babe," Chal said with a grim smile, "But your little revo group keeps getting me more hurt than you."
Chal raised his axe, ready to cleave Elizabeth's neck, as a spear embedded itself in his brain. A short burst of blood set itself free from his skull, running in rivulets down a pristine steel surface. For a moment, he seemed to be still moving; as if he had not yet registered the magnitude of his own death. Then he crashed bonelessly to the ground, staring up at a fake sky, the disillusioned follower dead and his false prophet still living.
Elizabeth would have mourned, or panicked, or done something, but she knew that she had been seen as much as Chal had been. Gripping the box in one hand, she leapt forward for the axe, snatching it from Chal's still-warm fingers as she sprung upwards and sped in zigzagging directions away. A spear hit with a clang onto the ground at her heels, and then Elizabeth was entirely a creature of instinct, all thoughts of blood and strategy purged in the interest of pure, overwhelming drives to survive. There was the escape and nothing else, the ground beneath her feet and the muscles straining in her body. She wasn't built for speed, but her human body was built for survival, and she lived off of her species' desire to do so.
She ran down Victory Walk now, past the stadia she had ignited with screams when she had sent the horses of the chariots on a blind, instinctual, wheelng sprint. /How quickly the tables turn- now who's afraid of revolution? They've singed your nose with some burning paper, and look how you run.
She sprinted across the wide street to the stadia themselves, wriggling underneath the thin slot between the bench seats below and the ones above. It was a thin slot, but she was slim-built, and she reckoned she could make it through.
But halfway through the slot, a boy, District 11, perhaps fourteen, spotted her.
No. No. Oh god, oh god no.
He flashed a small knife in his hand. Elizabeth was older, and stronger, but she was partially trapped beneath a bench, and she was pretty sure his district partner had been badly injured when the chariots had gone out of control.
What's to say he didn't want revenge?
Elizabeth gasped and tried to wriggle faster under the bench, but adrenaline lent her no finesse, and she was making little headway, and the boy was advancing faster, faster, his eyes full of hatred and his knife glinting in the sunlight.
But Elizabeth still had her grip on the axe, and it was in the hand not trapped on the other side of the stadia bench. As the boy came closer and swung downwards to her outstretched arm, she swung the axe clumsily into his hand.
And suddenly the knife was on the ground, and the boy was screaming, and he was clutching a bloodied stump for a wrist. He had sunk to his knees next to Elizabeth, and the course for her became all too clear.
She swung the axe again into his exposed stomach, and it stuck there. The boy howled, reached out blindly to try and stop Elizabeth- but she was stuck here, and the boy was too close, and she unstuck her axe and swung it again, again, lodging its edge into the boy like he was just so many logs she had to split to fill a quota.
But trees don't bleed, and trees don't scream for mercy.
The boy gasped, gurgled blood from his throat, and collapsed to the ground. A faint sucking sound could be heard where her axe had pushed into his lung.
No cannon sounded yet, but it was only a matter of time. Elizabeth kept swinging, stuck on the ground as blood began pooling closer to her. She wanted him to die. She wanted his pain to be over. She wanted to just keep hitting, sinking her axe into his flesh, over and over.
Finally, agonisingly, when the boy was little more than a moaning mess of flesh, a long final breath gurgled forth with a trickle of blood from the mess he had made of her throat. A cannon fired overhead. Elizabeth gasped in relief and horror, trying finally to extricate herself onto the other side of the stadia benches.
Ironically, the blood she had spilt made the job far more easy.
On the other side of the stadia, she was met with a mass of silent streets and wide monolithic buildings. She picked one at random and ran.
She was covered in the blood of three people, and none of it was her own.
Lexus stared in horror as the Seven girl, lying horizontal under the bench, swung her axe over and over at the boy.
"Hell." One of the technicians muttered. "Should we cut away?"
"No." Lexus muttered, before speaking up quickly. "No. It'll mix up continuity, people will wonder what's happening over there. Keep it on them until it's over."
The Eleven boy was moaning now, and he was slowly becoming little more than indiscriminate, bloody flesh, tangled in clothing. Lexus bit his lip sharply. "She just keeps hitting him- god, she's gotta know he's almost dead, he's almost dead, right?"
"Vitals are weakening, but we're not at nominal brain death yet. It'll call it when it reads no activity."
Lexus shook his head dully, trying not to retch at the sound of mangled flesh splitting at the dull cuts of the axe. "She's still hitting him."
"If you run over a dog, do you let it die slowly or do you run it over again to put it out of its misery?"
He turned- Communications head Josiah Lyman was at the door, leaning against the back of the Gamesmakers' pit room absently. Lexus shook his head.
"Generally I'd take the dog to hospital, Lyman."
"Yeah, well, Valerian, these guys don't have any incentive to do that. She's being merciful, really. The only way she can be merciful."
Lexus had seen many things he would call merciful, but reducing a person to a moaning pulp of flesh would not be one of those them. He returned to the camera feeds absently as he heard the relieving cannon.
"Okay, get ready to cut to camera two. Ready? And- now."
Theon was stuck in chaos. Thankfully, he had trained in chaos since he had first been left on the streets, and it almost seemed familiar to the adrenaline in his veins.
He leapt up to the Cornucopia, blood rushing in his veins as he saw dozens of potentially violent children flit in and out of his peripheral vision.
Always keep spatial awareness, Theon, his false father hissed in his mind. Theon shifted unconsciously, eyes sharp, face flushed slightly from the sudden exertion. He could see his Careers making their way to the Cornucopia; Glace was already here, but most were nowhere near as quick as him.
Weapon, Theon! Get a weapon! His father reminded him with a low voice tinged with fury. Theon cast his eyes across the crates of weapons. The sunlight cast through the crystal cornucopia split the light into rainbows of colour, and they shone upon his face, glinted upon the folded steel weapons. Theon picked up a machete quickly and turned back to address Glace.
He was only just fast enough to avoid the knife that whistled past his ear; and even then, he felt a jab of pain as the sharpened steel edge nicked it.
Glace was armed with a belt of throwing knives, and she had already picked out another from the wide webbing.
"What the hell are you-" Theon took in a breath sharply as Glace raised her arm like a whip, and ducked under the crates as the knife went whistling through the cornucopia, reflecting rainbows as it spun over his head.
Theon gripped his machete. Glace was a traitor, then. He should have noticed earlier that she wouldn't spar in front of anyone, that she barely spoke- she had kept herself an enigma on purpose and now he was a sitting duck.
He heard a scuffle of shoes, a grunt. In the distance were screams. Theon was in a glass cornucopia, and he had to move now, align the Careers together against Glace before he lost anyone too quickly.
He grabbed the crate he was hiding behind- a large box of water canteens- and hefted it, standing and throwing the box with all his might. Steel scattered and the plastic box cracked against a tribute's skull, and Theon vaulted over the other crates, driving down his machete into the tribute's skull.
He discovered as he watched blood spurting from the hole in the tribute's forehead that it was not Glace. It was Sheen Astara, lumbering and heavy, the tool of the Games, the tool of the Capitol. He had been high on the Games' odds board.
Now he stared unseeing at the machete sticking out of his skull, dug deep into the tissue of his brain. Glace must have lured him over, or attacked him, or something.
Theon had just killed Sheen Astara. He did not mourn him, but he felt he had dishonoured him in his death. They had been allies, and through accident or not, the cannon had just fired and proclaimed the death of the classic Career.
Theon pulled his machete, eyes boiling with fury, ready to attack the next person to make it worth his while. The mocking copy of the Capitol towered around him like the mountains of home.
There were screams, high and clear, on Victory Walk. Theon could see blood, and feel it drying on his hands. Tributes were running, dying, Glace was nowhere to be seen, and he had killed Sheen, and, god, where were Emma and Ronan? God, where were the Careers?
Theon, struck with an urge to find his bearings, clambered onto the slippery surface of the Cornucopia, getting a clearer view of the arena.
It was then that Theon realised he had missed a tribute from the list of Careers.
Stupid, his father chided him.
He heard her before he saw her, Anna Corinna, only too glad to be shed of the fetters of a Career alliance, sped towards him with a sword in hand. She was fast, but Theon was too, and as she sped forwards on the glass Cornucopia and swung he ducked under her attack, swiping up and raking the edge of her jacket but not hitting anything else before Anna lashed out with a savage kick, sending him sprawling.
"Too bad the Careers didn't work out," Anna shrugged, a savage smile on her face. "I would've enjoyed slicing your face up while you slept. Oh well-"
Theon was trying to scramble up, but she swept her sword casually across his chest. He pulled back, but not quickly, not quite quickly enough- he gasped, muted horror giving way to pain as he watched a thin line of blood emerge from the gash in his t-shirt. She had dug an inch deep into the flesh of his stomach and chest, and it hurt, it hurt so much, god, he couldn't breathe. The tang of blood, iron and sharp, hit his nose with cloying strength.
He collapsed back, eyes wide, horribly unable to do much more than scramble back as Anna advanced. She was enjoying herself; she was bouncing on the balls of her feet, giggling like a girl her age should, but it was like a funhouse mirror; distorted, sinister, darkened by the shadows behind her eyes.
Weak, his father hissed. You kill Arya to get this far, and you can't survive even the bloodbath.
A surge of anger, uncontrolled, unlike himself so much it was nothing Anna, his district partner, his former sparring partner, had ever seen. He fought Anna, but to him he fought the shadowy grasp his fake father had held over him since those dark, dark days after his real father's death.
He grabbed at her hand holding the sword; he had broken several of her fingers before her elbow slammed into his jaw, but he had anticipated the action and ducked back, stepping forward again with his long leg pushed into Anna's abdomen.
Anna went flying backwards from the slippery Cornucopia, and Theon launched himself in the opposite direction, weaponless and equipmentless and injured but alive. He flew with pure adrenaline, running from the Career pack, from Anna; from the grasp of his father's screams.
He was alone, and he'd probably be dead before the end of the week, but god if he wasn't free.
Lexus stared silently at the cameras.
"-Sir?"
Lexus did not answer.
"-Mr Valerian?"
His neck clicked slightly as he moved it rapidly to the speaking technician. "Hm?"
"-Should we cut to a recap or cut back to camera six?"
"-In a moment. Yeah. Cut to recap."
The footage switched to some cut-together close-ups of the bloodbath, of Theon slaying Sheen, of a spear cutting through Chal's head, of a pulpy, moaning mass of flesh without any face, without any throat. Lexus closed his eyes.
"Josiah, go sit in on Seneca's call. He needs someone to spin him shit to the President."
"Professional bullshitter on the way." Without looking around, Lexus knew he was the recipient of either a mocking salute or a sincere middle finger.
He couldn't bring himself to care. He sat down heavily on the floor, ignoring the technicians asking him if he was okay.
It was one thing watching the Games, but this- the intimacy of it, a tribute beating another to death in the ironic tang of Victory Walk, its stones stained in blood; Lexus could not reconcile it.
Someone handed him a glass of something. He drank it without looking at what it was, shuddering.
"Okay." He croaked. "While Seneca's gone- switch out to camera six. And- cut it."
And with that, the bloodbath is over. Originally I intended to add in Quint as well, but frankly making my deadline on even 3K words today was a struggle. Ah well, I'm reallt not a fan of switching narratives mid-chapter anyway.
Thoughts? I'd love to hear reactions on this one.
As ever, thank you for reading this far.