With thanks to Katrace and Glassgift for your reviews of the last chapters.

Y 184-09-01 T 05:57:44

Day 2

Quint lived with his muscles tensed, his body in a state of readiness for anything, any scenario. Peacekeepers were trained to hold this readiness at their fingertips, but a District boy with no parents, living in a District ruled by corrupt governance and drug barons- he existed in a state of readiness, trained from birth into instinctual response. Sleep was his only escape, and only vulnerability. In unconsciousness, his muscles could relax, his mind put at rest from constant readiness. And this morning, sleeping in a bed almost softer than anything he had experienced in his lifetime, Quint was at rest.

Until, naturally, the entire world shook at a blaring trumpet call, and Quint promptly fell out of bed.

He sat up sharply, feeling twinges of pain in his back.

"Where's the fire?" He mumbled irritably, clamping one hand over his head in a half-hearted attempt to block out the sound. After a long moment of both listening to and despising listening to the sound, he discerned a familiar pattern to the tones- the 'Horn of Plenty'. A song he had heard far too many times in the past few days, and never with good connotations.

It faded, eventually, and Quint sighed and let his hand drop from over his ear. He stood, reflexively checked that the chest-of-drawers was blocking the bedroom door, then went to the window, inspecting the dawning sunlight. It was still fairly dark- he would place the time at around five or six in the morning, if he had to guess. He looked up at the skies.

And then a midday sun was burning into his retinas, and a few cursewords escaped his tongue as he screwed his eyes shut against the unnatural blaring sunlight. It had gone from dawn to midday almost immediately, and it was categorically disconcerting.

Also painful. Quint winced, spinning around and collapsing back against his bed again.

Having not seen where he was going, Quint then slammed the back of his head against the wall the bed was leaned against.

"Son of a-" he rolled on the bed, clutching his head forcibly. He despised mornings at the best of times, but today was becoming insufferable. If he didn't know the Gamemakers were grown adults, he would have been certain they were mocking him today.

After a long time, Quint decided he was going to risk standing up- unless the building was demolished, he wasn't sure what the Gamemakers could do to thwart that particular action.

He stood, feeling slightly woozy from having hit his head. The ground remained beneath his feet, although the world was spinning slightly from a combination of staring into faux sunlight and slamming his head into a wall. Quint took a deep breath-then another. And then he prepared for his first morning in a Capitol-mandated death trap.

He slid a chest of drawers from the bedroom door, moving out into the spacious living room with its glass spiral staircase running through the center. Floor-to-ceiling windows were letting in streams of light this morning- more than should be for a morning, but then again the Capitol appeared to have made the morning into the early afternoon in a matter of seconds, so little could be done about that. Quint laid out his belongings on a table and sat on the minimalist pastel couch adjacent to it. The spear fired at him, a water canteen and his precious cargo of unlabelled medicines; it was not much, but it provided most of the essential equipment he needed. There were, naturally, drawbacks. Quint had no idea how to use a spear, and his medicines were not only unlabelled but fragile and encased in a crate of unwieldy size. And, most importantly- his water canteen was empty, and he had no food.

Quint was starting to sense that in this fake city, there would be no food or water to find anywhere. There were no signs of plumbing in the buildings, and the refridgerators were plentiful but their insides were bare; he was beginning to wonder if this was a ploy to ensure that in a large arena there would be a lot of conflict. The only sources of food, he theorised, would be in the Cornucopia or with other tributes.

And within other tributes, he mused darkly. He still remembered the year tributes had resorted to cannibalism. He didn't put himself above the possibility of doing so himself, but he knew that it would, as it had in that year, bring him to the Gamemaker's attentions and make him the target of assassination. But the point remained that he was hungry, and his options would be to either target a Cornucopia that would be bristling with Careers, or hunt down individual tributes in the hopes that they would have food instead. Quint despised the Capitol's practices, but he had to respect the Machiavellian strategising that such a lack of food instilled in their tributes. The Games were for entertainment, after all- without bloodshed, there would be nothing for the insatiable Capitolians to drink.

So Quint was hungry. And thirsty. And he needed to rectify both before either severely impeded his health. Thankfully, he had a solution, one that appealed to his sense of formulaic strategy.

The arena was, by nature, finite- and for it to be finite, it had to have an end. He had travelled into the Capitol with its cargo trains enough to know the outside of the place- and therein lay his solution. On one side of the Capitol laid a mountain range, which was perfectly replicated here on the horizon (although he was willing to bet the majority of it wasn't real). On the other- while the buildings between him and it prevented him from seeing if it was replicated in the arena- lay the Capitol Waterfront, the great reservoir that provided the Capitol with both defence and water.

It stood to reason that in an arena with a finite end, the Waterfront would be its edge. It stood to reason that in a fake city with no food or water, the Cornucopia would hold the food and the Waterfront would hold its water- fostering both a reliance on the center of the arena and an incentive to explore the rest. Quint wasn't an entertainer, but he could understand logistics, and if he could do that he could, potentially, survive.

Picking up his spear, he twirled it experimentally in his fingers. Perhaps he stood a chance after all.

Then he fumbled the twirling spear, dropping it with a clatter to the ground.

Water first, he decided, weapons-training second.

The midday sun had ruined his intention of starting out before light had truly hit the sky, and as such Quint was even more paranoid than before as he adjusted his spear in his hand and his makeshift backpack over his shoulder. The canteen had been small enough to pocket in his jacket, but the fragile vials needed padding, and that forced him to take the entire crate- he had sliced open a bedsheet and threaded it through the clasps, but it was hardly a real backpack, and the crate thumped irritatingly against his back.

As he walked through the arena, marble buildings hid in shadow gave way to monoliths of shining, iridescent glass. The buildings were impressive in the glittering night, but at day they were alive in pearlescent sheens- he walked in a hallway of sun-soaked glass, his face lit from every angle.

And every building, it seemed, had dual purpose as a storefront. Quint had inspected each for purpose, but much like the Capitol almost none had any purpose- most were either concerned with beauty, entertainment, or gambling. Quint supposed that did make sense- they were the non-essentials of life, the things that without the strife of survival made life have purpose for the empty Capitolians in their empty city.

Beauty sold status, and established a complex social order- the Districts held only authority figures and subordinates, but the Capitol had time, and when time was found focus would inevitably fall upon who fell where in the world, how they were percieved by others. Beauty- or voluntary disfigurement, as Quint would describe many procedures done by the Capitol- gave a talking point, a calling card of someone's personality, status, worth.

Entertainment was the warmth that reassured Capitolians when preening did not. Comforting figures, like Caesar Flickerman, soothed their troubles- violent bloodlust, like the Games Quint found himself in, gave the Capitolians their outlet for the darker, repressed recesses of their souls. In the heart of the government, emotions were repressed for the same reason they repressed the Districts' power, and television was to the Capitol as the mayor was to the Districts- a taste of freedom, emotional or democratic.

And gambling- Quint knew it held the same significance to both District citizens and Capitolians, no matter how attractively dressed up the storefronts were. Gambling sold hope. The hope for money, for betterment; for a life that excels your own. Gambling was the mirage in the desert, and like that mirage it was real in veneer only.

Quint looked away from the storefronts. He had gambled, once. He had tried to better himself. He had lost what little he had scraped up to put forward, and he had never done it again. Hope, as it turned out, had a price, and it was one he couldn't afford.

He pressed on to the edge of the arena through the halls of mirrored light.

This is entirely unrelated to this chapter or story, but you should go google the Pacu fish. They have teeth like people. Fish with people teeth, tell me that isn't trippy.

I don't have anything of note to add tonight. I'm going on a trip across the country tomorrow, and if I have wifi during the trip I'll upload chapters. Until then, Google the Pacu fish.

Thank you, as ever, for reading this far.