With thanks to AbbyCoraby123 and Glassgift for your reviews of the last chapter.
Y 184-08-31 T 18:34:42
Day 1
The sky looked realistic, but small things betrayed how false it was. Cesal, even having grown up in a factory district, had seen the vista of the sky- it was a private pleasure of his to look up at the sky and see the majesty of the unending, rolling clouds. But here, in this dome, there were no vistas- there were clouds, but even though they looked perfectly real they couldn't emulate depth of field. They seemed to hang, stagnant in a sky that ended at some point only a few miles away.
Cesal wanted to find where the sky ended.
Emil, however, was less enthusiastic about the concept.
"Look, it's the first night," Emil gasped as he tried to match Cesal's fast pace. "Careers are gonna be out hunting people down, everyone's on edge, there is no reason to- can you slow down, please?!"
"You gonna say please to the Careers on your ass?"
"You gonna slow down?"
Cesal sighed and slowed his pace. "You know, I thought you'd be, you know, a typical Twelve kid. Quiet and useless and shit."
"Sorry to disappoint." Emil replied, his voice dry. He pushed his blood-soaked hair from where it fell in front of his eyes, before pulling up his backpack. "I thought you'd be a typical Eight guy, too."
"And how do I fall short of the typical Eight guy?"
"Well-"
They had been walking for some time, and the fake sun had turned from golden to crimson to a deep, bruised orange as it spread its colour pink across the skies that weren't quite right. It was a funhouse mirror sky, reflected in the spired glass buildings of the Capitol's Outer City.
And now, with finality, the sun slid beneath the fake horizon, and the two stood still as the skies suddenly and unnaturally darkened. Stars were visible in the sky. A moon loomed over them. The air cooled with an immediacy that chilled Cesal to the bone.
And then, above, making the entire arena thrum as if it were about to fall on their heads, 'Horn of Plenty' blared and the skies lit up with a seal. The two of them looked up in the dark, the glass buildings around them glittering silver in the light.
The seal of Panem faded and was replaced with the first face of the dead.
Cesal choked on his own spit.
"Holy shit," he murmured.
"Sheen Astara?" Emil murmured. "He was six-six and made of muscle."
"Congrats, kid," Cesal managed. "You're probably the first Twelve kid to outlast a One Career."
"Same for you."
Sheen's face faded, replaced by a girl's. Not the One girl's, not Anna Corinna's, so District 3. He liked District 3. He hoped she had died quickly.
Faces flicked past like so many pages in a book, like figures forgotten as soon as they were read. Victors lived in glory, tributes were forgotten, surviving only as lip service to the dead, names on a list.
They would survive as names, photographs; not the flesh and blood they had been, viscera and fury, power and strength.
The District 9 tributes flicked by as the anthem played. Cesal realised the girl was survived only by what was left of her in Emil's hair.
District 11's boy, District 12's girl, and the fanfare ended and the unnatural darkness returned. Cesal still stared at the sky, the stars that looked too close when projected on the screen of a dome.
"What was her name?" He asked.
"What?" Emil had already stopped looking at the sky; was already walking on.
"The girl. The Nine girl."
"You expect me to remember her name?"
"You remembered the name of the guy I volunteered for, kid, I expect you to have remembered it."
Emil tilted his head slightly. He closed his eyes and took a breath. Cesal squinted at him suspiciously.
"-The hell are you doing?"
Emil frowned slightly. "Remembering her name."
"...Are you trying to contact her spirit to ask?"
Emil pursed his lips slightly. "I've filed it somewhere, I have to access it."
"That's bulls-"
Cesal's words died in his throat. Around him, the glass buildings of the Outer City flickered, then glowed. The entire city, driven by the night, burst into light; the Inner City was largely walls of stone, but the Outer City was made of glass and steel, and it was resplendent in lights.
"The city that never sleeps," Cesal murmured, the words of a thousand Capitol propos on his tongue. "We're in daylight the whole time." He turned, but Emil still had his eyes closed.
"Hey, kid. Kid. Emil!"
Emil's eyes opened to the artificial daylight replacing the artificial night.
"Quit with the name thing, it doesn't matter." Cesal took off, this time at the same pace as before, and this time he didn't care if Emil told him to slow down. Thankfully, Emil seemed to have realised the danger they were newly in, and jogged to keep up without arguing.
"At night, even with Careers out in force, we'd have the advantage, because they don't have a direction and we do. But now, with everything lit up, we're as vulnerable as in daylight. I guess we're going to be taking your advice after all, kid."
"So we're taking a building?"
"Inner City's too obvious, too close to the Cornucopia, and with one Career dead they'll be looking for easy kills from the idiots in windowless buildings; I would. So we take an Outer City building, stay away from the windows, and stay in a floor that's high but not the top, somewhere that isn't obvious. A big building, one they wouldn't bother to check the entirety of. Something like-"
"That?" Emil managed, pointing.
The towering skyscraper of Valerian Tower, only outflanked by the pillar of the Training Tower, spired glass shining into the skies that weren't real.
"That's obvious and tacky and I love it." Cesal quipped. "You're about to get lessons in how to survive building assaults."
"I'd prefer the lessons on climbing stairs."
"What the hell did you think I meant by building assaults, kid?"
They stood in a beautiful apartment. It was almost half-and-half, red and black combined, the darkness flecked with red and the red flecked with shining, sparkling black. The carpets were soft, the beds luxurious, and the fridge empty. Cesal moaned into the fridge.
"Come on, I just climbed fifteen stories for this bullshit, and no food? There's sixteen lamps in this place and not even a cookie? Fuck the Capitol, man!"
"While we're inevitably muted for the next few minutes, want to come over here and find out what we've got?" Emil called from the living area. Cesal muttered about where he'd put what Emil got as he walked through, scrupulously avoiding getting too close to any windows as he flopped down onto a couch that was softer than any bed he'd ever had, deep red with black highlights. Emil sat on a couch with opposite colours, rooting through his backpack.
"Well? We got a gun or a whistle?" Cesal quipped.
"Neither." Emil pulled out a long length of bundled wire and dropped it to the ground in spools. Cesal groaned.
"Well, this lucky bag's going great. Anything else?"
Emil silently picked up the other piece of equipment in the pack and threw it onto Cesal's lap. Cesal picked it up.
"Oh my god."
"Yeah."
"That's fitting for the Capitol."
"It's fitting for a Justice Building."
Cesal stared at the object in his lap. "You know I used to stare at one of these things every day in school?"
"Used to?"
"I'd explain what happened to it but there's cameras everywhere." Cesal chuckled lowly. "A tiny-ass knife, some wire and this. We're probably the worst off of any tribute in the history of the Games."
"At least we have each other."
"Did you just make a joke, Emil? I think you just made a joke."
"Contrary to popular belief it's possible."
Cesal laughed, stood, and placed the stylised image of President Snow on the mantlepiece. "You, me, and Mr Snow, baby. I'm gonna see if there's any snacks hidden under the mattress."
Cesal was almost to the bedroom when Emil said it.
"Astara Vienna."
Cesal turned. "What?" He said lowly. It sounded familiar, he was sure, but-
"You asked before." Emil's tone was dark. "The Nine girl's name. Astara."
Cesal stood in a doorframe. Astara Vienna. The girl who had jumped off her plate, the girl who had defied the Careers and in doing so defied the Capitol, had a name. Astara Vienna was the blood matted into Emil's hair.
He wasn't sure why he cared so much.
"Take the bed, go to sleep," Cesal muttered. "I'll take first watch."
The night was dark and as Emil slept, Cesal knew he could not. He had been half-hoping for sleeping pills in the backpack, but it was a long shot and a hope of a desperate man and he knew it.
Without sleeping pills, he would go without sleep until he crashed from exhaustion.
And exhaustion would make him vulnerable.
Cesal looked down at the knife he flipped in his hands. One flick to an artery, and Emil's life would be over while he slept. He'd barely know he was dead.
Cesal looked into the night.
He flipped the knife in his hands.
As ever, thank you for reading this far.