With thanks to Katrace, SeungriPanda98, and AbbyCoraby123 for your reviews of the last chapter.
Y 184-09-01 T 05:31:44
Day 2
Seneca woke up in darkness; having lived in a glass skyscraper all his life, the dim light of a yellow bulb didn't come close to replicating the sunlight he knew. The morning had come, he knew, but he would not see it, and could not until the Games were done. Leaving the Arena Administration Unit, the labryinthine under-city of the huge dome holding the tributes, was punishable by death- death sentences were rarely threatened in the Capitol, but when you went four hundred miles away to a self-contained unit of weaponry, planes and explosives, Peacekeepers treated every movement with suspicion.
In the fake sun the bulb supplied, Seneca dressed. After years of being the Technology Head of the Games, and years more as the Head Gamemaker, he had lost all interest in formal wear for directing the Games- he wore a simple black ensemble, a shirt on his torso without a jacket or cravat. Formality was not needed so far from the Capitol.
The corridors for the 76th Games Arena were just as dense and poorly signposted as any other arena he had been to over the years- eventually, however, he found the Main Administration Block. Banks of computers hummed as he brushed past them- workers greeted him automatically as they panned cameras, searched for tributes, operated the arena's movements. Many had been there since the opening of the Games the night before, and it was starting to show.
But his place was not with the workers busily doing the grunt work of the cameras and arena maintenance- his place was in the Gamemaker's Pit, the most senior workers and necessary staff together directing the Games. Seneca entered the glossy, clinically white room, and all inhabitants stood.
"Keep your seats," he yawned, taking the stairs to the bottom of the pit, walking straight through the holographic arena in its centre and walking up again to meet Lexus Valerian and Josiah Lyman. "How'd the Capitol Beat thing go, Lyman?"
"Embarassingly, as expected," Lyman said with a tired flick of his hand. "I'm not getting promoted anytime soon after taking responsibility for that mess."
"Someone had to, and it wasn't going to be someone important," Lexus quipped dryly. Josiah rolled his eyes, idly fiddling with a control panel.
"Getting antsy without your collection of eager-to-please fans, Valerian?" He shot back. Lexus smirked.
"Why, you getting lonely without your Avox girlfriend, Lyman?"
Josiah's head shot up, but Seneca cut him off before anything could escalate.
"Guys, I could really care less about your dual lack of a love life." He turned towards the Gamemakers at their positions by the control panels. "Someone want to give me a report of the night?"
One spoke up, flicking a few videos to the front screens.
"It's been mostly quiet- no kills, although Anna Corinna was definitely prowling around for some action. Ronan and Emma are at City Studios with a weapons cache, The Twelve male and the Eight male are in Valerian Tower. Quint Barkwater- Josiah has some files to show you on that-"
Seneca groaned slightly. "Lyman, I've seen the footage of the bribery, and nothing needs to be done."
Josiah shrugged. "I'll discuss it with you later, but I disagree. Can't have anyone fraternising visibly, Capitol or not. If this gets out and they find out we had this info, we're in the drink. Probably literally."
Seneca decided to ignore that veiled comment on the Capitol's practices for his own safety. "Later on, Lyman. What's the Two boy doing?"
"He sewed up his injuries, and he and the Seven girl stumbled onto each other in the Justice Building." She opened footage on the screen- a door bursting open, a girl with short red-brown hair holding an axe to Theon's throat.
Josiah frowned. "What's with that? He's a Career. How'd he let himself get overpowered by a girl with a tiny axe?"
"He just sewed up his own chest, you want him doing the hula?" Lexus said, his tone dry. Josiah didn't rise to it, but he did 'accidentally' stamp down hard on Lexus' foot. Valerian whimpered slightly.
"And they allied?" Seneca said, suspicion marking his tone. "The revo girl and the Career?"
"It appears so. They brought up the Chal incident at the Training Center- we had to mute the majority of their allying exchange."
"Of course they did." Seneca sighed, dragging his hand across his chin. "Okay, so they're together. Anything else I should know?"
"The One girl."
"What about her?"
Lexus and Josiah shifted uncomfortably. A pained silence blanketed the Gamemakers' Pit. With finality, the woman at the control panel brought up the final video.
Glace Gratton, at the Training Center, in the penthouse if the location stamp was to be believed. She looked around carefully, then made for the elevator doors, prising them open. She carefully leant into the elevator shaft, a small sliver of her body still visible where it hung from the cable- and then she moved upwards, and was gone.
Seneca frowned. "I don't understand."
Lexus sat down heavily. He sighed, loosening his sky-blue tie. "That happened late last night," he admitted weakly. "We think she was looking for a roof."
"-And?" Seneca questioned.
"And, there is no roof," Lexus sighed. "As I've mentioned in meetings before, the arena's too large to stand unsupported- I put in a supporting column, disguised as the highest building in the Capitol. It was an easy enough thing to do."
"I think I remember that," Josiah said. "But I'm not really getting your point."
Lexus dragged a hand back through his hair. "There were-concerns- raised about the security of having a building going to the top of the arena, and frankly I agreed. So I built in a- failsafe, of sorts."
Seneca could sense a tension headache coming on. "Lexus, what are you saying?"
"I didn't think she'd get up there, I didn't think anyone-" Lexus groaned. "Okay, there's no cameras there to prove she did or didn't find anything, but I built in a helipad-accessible hatch at the top of the dome. From there, there are explosive bolts built into the top of the Training Center." Lexus stood, moving down to a control panel- he brought up a holographic mockup of the Training Center, and uncovered the floor pattern beneath. "If anyone tries to storm the top of the building, or use the structural integrity of the arena as a weapon or escape route- we have a bank of computers up there, remotely accessed, that can blow those bolts."
"And then-" Josiah murmured.
"-And then the supporting column is gone, and anyone who tried to use it." Lexus said. "It's not something you want going off at the beginning of the Games, and it's especially not what you want in the too-curious hands of some goddamn tribute."
Seneca closed his eyes. He inhaled slowly.
"Did anyone get broadcast any footage of her going up?" He finally managed.
"-No, no sir," Josiah said, recognising the dangerous note in Seneca's voice.
"And has she got the ability to get that hatch open? Use any of the computers?" He pressed.
"I designed that programming for Capitol engineers, and without an oxyacetylene torch she'd struggle to even try that hatch," Lexus said. "She's harmless up there."
"See that she is," Seneca announced sharply. He pulled at his shirtcuffs furiously. "And I don't know what else you've set up in that building, but encourage her to leave it before she finds anything else."
"Yes, sir."
Seneca sighed. Everything was so much easier when he had been the Technology Head. Problems and solutions, engineering and mathematics; not messy politics and unpredictable tributes. He was surrounded by chaos, and the increasingly incensed eyes of the President weren't helping matters. He let silence blanket him for a moment.
Then he threw the blanket off, stalking to the bottom of the pit, observing the holographic arena flickering by his waist.
"Okay, so it's, what, six?"
"Five to, sir."
"Close enough. Lex, can you ring through to Caesar and make sure he's in a recording booth?"
The call only took a few seconds, and from the muffled swearwords Seneca could make out on the other end of the line, Caesar wasn't happy at being up this early to record. Seneca couldn't care less about the Master of Ceremonies' petty problems back in the Capitol.
"Okay, get ready to hit the anthem and bring up the sun to an- eleven o' clock position. If the tributes aren't awake, we want them awake. Blare that anthem loud. Got it? And- go."
This chapter is a new addition from my initial plan, but I wanted to consolidate the action so far before introducing more, and I needed to add in a few pieces that weren't covered otherwise.
And another reason. You guys are all making an excellent point- which is while my grasp of events in the Games is perfectly clear to me, I'm the one who is a) writing it, and b) has a six-page breakdown of the events in current and upcoming chapters. So yeah, I'm not being clear enough about timings and such. So, I've put in this chapter to show what I thought was obvious and naturally wasn't- that this is actually the first morning. Everything so far has been one afternoon and night, but every character started off at the same point in the bloodbath before I progressed, which is probably where the confusion started.
In any case, I've retrospectively gone back and added timestamping to every chapter since the start of the Games, and will continue this for all chapters afterwards. Hopefully this will make everything a bit clearer. Thanks for bringing this up.
(And as an aside to AbbyCoraby123, as I'm unlikely to cover this in the content of the chapters itself- Elizabeth's new hairstyle is loosely based on my own, albeit slightly choppier as she cut it herself with an axe. Imagine short at the back, around an inch, developing to around four inches of hair at the front. While mine flicks uncontrollably upwards, however, Elizabeth's flicks down in a choppy fringe. Closer to Anne Hathaway than Shailene Woodley. Hopefully this is clear enough to give you a picture.)
This is a very long author's note- sorry. I wanted to cover a few bases to explain the retconning of previous chapters.
As ever, thank you for reading this far.