With thanks to Glassgift for your review of the last chapter.
Y 184-09-01 T 21:10:05
Day 2
On his way through the city, the night had drawn in- the faces of the dead had flicked past. Emil had barely given them more than a glance- he didn't care who they were. He counted them in his head, calculated thirteen left of twenty four, and gave it no more thought.
If Quint was dead or not, he couldn't care less. Just so long as he stayed the hell away.
Emil walked alone through dark streets. He had been uneasy the first time Cesal had left him alone in the arena, but now something had changed- the stress of having to single-handedly save Cesal's life and physically remove his assailant from the building only this afternoon had reduced all other stressors in Emil's mind. The dark, eerily empty streets held little fear for him anymore.
That being said, he wouldn't be travelling through the night, so soon after Cesal's injury, if he didn't believe it absolutely necessary. Neither of them had eaten anything for coming on two days now, and it was taking its toll. Emil was no stranger to hunger, but the overwhelming, gnawing sensation, coupled with the loss of blood sugar and the loss of energy, was beginning to drag on his limbs. He could survive, but if Cesal was going to then he needed food.
He could approach a tribute for food, but tributes aren't people. People are mostly empathetic, largely kind. People would help. But tributes ran on their basest instincts, their desperation to survive. Tributes were not people, and tributes would kill before they could think.
So Emil was left with one choice, and it wasn't a good one.
Go to the Cornucopia.
The Careers always, always controlled the Cornucopia in the Games, but if Sheen Astara was dead, there was the outside chance the Careers were depleted enough to not have posted a nighttime guard. Emil had to take that chance- even if he had a weapon, he didn't have the slightest chance of using it against a Career.
The Waterfront's edge had long graduated to the Outer City, and the Outer City's shining glass buildings now shifted to sharp-edged stone and moonlit streets, silvery marble towering high above him. A turn, another block, and his journey was complete- he found himself on the end of Victory Walk, a street wider and longer than most buildings and empty stadia watching him as he progressed down it, a tiny figure in a sea of blood-stained stone. Alone and slightly afraid, only proceeding for the benefit of a person that would have to die for him to live, Emil walked down the wide stone streets, the glitter of sculptured glass under the towering gaze of the Training Center drawing his eyes.
He listened intently for anything, any sound, so much as a tap of footsteps on stone. He heard nothing.
As he proceeded, he wondered if Sheen's death was a sign of something more devastating within the Career pack. Perhaps, Sheen had died at the hands of another Career- and perhaps, just perhaps, Emil, and by extension Cesal, could survive this.
Emil found himself in the Cornucopia, and alone. He unhooked his emptied backpack from his shoulder- he tentatively loaded ration packs and water bottles into it, walking further and further into the glass sculpture. On a whim, spotting the glitter of moonlight on steel, Emil picked up an object from a crate. Short, with a leather-wrapped handle and shining steel surface, the baton was short enough for concealment and long enough for Emil to potentially hit with it. He had seen them used enough in District Twelve to understand their purpose and know how to use one.
The implications of the weapon in his hand caught up with him- there was nothing to stop him taking a Career weapon, to become as armed as they were.
Emil stared at the baton in his hand, then quickly put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. The jacket's profile looked the same despite the steel rod contained in it. Emil raised an eyebrow, then went further inside the Cornucopia, to the weapons and first aid, both deep inside the core because they were the most valuable.
Medicine packets were few and far between but Emil picked up as many as he could see and jammed them into the backpack. He passed over the swords and greathammers, for obvious enough reasons- a rack of daggers, sheathed and each with a holster belt, attracted him; any idiot could use a knife, and daggers only had an extra blade side to contend with. He picked up the holstered blade, taking off his jacket and slinging the belt over one shoulder so the sheathed blade was hidden from view when he put his jacket back on. He packed another of the daggers for Cesal. He was still determined that Cesal would emerge from unconsciousness as his ally, and he intended to give Cesal a blade to replace the one he'd lost.
Emil finally picked up a large glass bottle. It wasn't clearly labelled, but the label, if you knew what you were looking for, revealed its contents to be a poison- not one Emil had seen often back at Twelve, but often enough that he knew what it could do. It would bring quick unconsciousness, convulsions, and death by an inability to take in oxygen. Mostly in Twelve it was used in mining, to dissolve precious metals into a liquid that could be easily extracted- but there was always some idiot that would end up ingesting some. Usually, by the time they brought them to his mother's table, it was entirely too late. It would be the perfect poison for Emil to use, but it was in a giant glass bottle.
Then, he remembered the tiny object in his pocket. He pulled it out. A copper bottle, stopped with cork- his accidental token from his mother, intended for gathering honey.
Emil carefully decanted some of the liquid into the copper bottle and replaced the cork on the top. He had done a lot in the scant days since he had been asked to use the bottle for aiding in medicine. He needed it now for a darker purpose, and now it did not scare him to do so.
So, armed with blade and baton and cyanide, holding food and water and medicine, Emil stepped free of the glass Cornucopia, shining in the moon.
That's when he heard it. Faint, but there. Emil's journeys beyond the District fence had taught him to fear the slightest sound, in case of a boar, or cougar. But now, he knew that no sound would be a mindless animal.
He wasn't sure of its origin. Careful, hand brushing the pocketed baton and the holstered dagger beneath his jacket, Emil proceeded down Victory Walk, alert and aware.
No more sounds occurred as he walked. He stopped again and again, listening, watching, but the streets were silent again. As he made his way from the Inner City to the shining, reflective Outer City, Emil relaxed- he was certain now it must have been his own imagination. He walked on, privately enjoying the light and glamour of the Outer City. Perhaps it was hypocritical of a District child with a dislike for the Capitol to enjoy their architecture, but he did- the lights, the shopfronts veneered in rich velvets, the deep colour of burgundy on stone.
He stopped. He looked at the dark red colour staining the ground.
That was not right. That was not right.m
He looked up, around, anxious and now alert again. Bloodstains littered the street he had just walked onto- bloodstains drawing into a single shopfront, a single gambling emporium alit with light and blood down the street.
Emil pulled out his baton. He needed to get down this street to get to the Waterfront. He proceeded slowly, eyes always on the bloodied shopfront, trying to percieve beyond the window into the gambling emporium itself.
He had to get terrifyingly close- to the doorway- to see through the myriad of bloodstains. Inside, propped up, staring at him as he stood by the door, were bodies. Chal Detria stared at him, unseeing. A girl lay by the corner, a sword folded in her still arms. Sheen was tied to the screen that should show the tribute odds, his eyes open, extra limbs tied to his body beseeching the heavens above.
This was the emporium of nightmare. This was insanity given voice, given the Games to do as they wished with the craft of death. Emil had seen death and gore before, and it did not scare him- but this was crafting with bodies to make grotesque figures, to satisfy some innate destructive fantasy, and Emil was terrified by it.
He looked at the hellish tableau again, trying to make out anyone he knew.
That's when he realised the girl lying with her sword was gone.
He gasped, backed up, ran. He knew what it meant and he knew what the sound had been. This must have been her plan, to lure people into the Cornucopia, to track them from there until they found her tableau, her creation, so they might join it before the hovercrafts could take them away...
Emil heard sound now, closer, closer. He knew he shouldn't have but he turned. Behind him, sprinting, a hellish smile on her face and smeared with blood, Anna Corinna ran behind him, gaining on him.
Baton or not, dagger or not, Emil didn't stand a chance of outrunning or outfighting her. He had travelled to the Cornucopia, alone, and he was going to pay the price now. He wished he hadn't lied to his parents so much back at home- he wanted to go home, to apologise, that his single talent with words had caused such a rift before his-
-His-
-His talent with words. Emil scraped to a halt on the bloodstained streets, turned and flung aside his baton, and spoke to her as she sprinted to him with sword drawn.
"Wait-wait-wait- I understand, I understand it!" He said, injecting the same hellish jubilance into his voice as Anna showed in her smile. He copied her smile, hiding his fear, lying as he knew he could. It was only a case of whether Anna cared if he did.
She paused, halting in her sprint and moving instead into a casual walk, predatory but for now at rest.
"They usually don't say that," she hummed. Emil's mind raced. They. She thought of her victims as a they, but it was a singular- it was dehumanising. She thought of victims as prey, but if he could break of that cycle, if he could just do that-
"Yeah, well, they don't understand- how beautiful it is," Emil gasped with fake joy, trying to become Anna so as to appeal to the narcissism any psychopath had. "You have made something- incredible, something inhuman. You've gone beyond this world, Anna."
She tilted her head carefully. She paced and paced and Emil had no idea where he was going with this, only that it was prolonging his life, for now.
"You're a Twelve guy. What do you know of what I've made?"
'You're' was humanising. 'You're' was a start. Emil had to keep going, keep doing something.
"I know as you know the joys of making flesh meet flesh in new ways," he said, trying to be enthusiastic even as he balked at the prospects of what he extolled. "Of taking them and making them anew, into something better, something they can't take away."
Anna's eyebrows lifted. Her eyes widened.
"You've done this before, I imagine," Emil said softly, fear playing with the edges of his voice now, "But they stopped you before you could create, told you that a Career does not kill until the arena. That's what you wanted to do with Chal, right? But they stopped you?"
It was occurring to him as he said it, and it was all he could do not to retch at it. This girl, this girl almost his age, someone whose obsession with death had gone undetected amongst the myriad of killers the Career training created, who had killed before, but always told, wait until the arena, wait until the arena. And so she had. And now she had found bodies the Capitol could not touch, bodies she could create anew, create in her fantasised image.
If Emil did not step carefully now, he would join them.
"They never understood," Anna muttered furiously. She wanted to talk about herself- someone like her would want to, would be narcissistic enough to only care about her own interests. His only hope was to turn her interests around. "They always took it away. They always stopped the fun before it even began. So what?" She waved her sword in the air like it was made of paper, not steel. Corded muscles moved beneath her skin. "So- what? What are you gonna do? Take it from me? No! I've finally gotten this, something they can't touch! I'm not letting them stop me anymore, so what the fuck are you getting at here?"
Emil licked his lips quickly, anxiously. "They're going to stop you, Anna. They're going to take it away. You know that, because you're clever. You know that. They're going to take it away. But you can beat them. You can beat them, because you're clever."
Anna snorted. "What? Fight off the Capitol?"
"No, no, of course not. Because if you really want to stop them- if you really want to beat them- you need to become what you've created." Emil came up with his solution almost as he said it, and he did it with hollow, dark guilt of what he was about to do. Anna tilted her head softly, her wide eyes blinking.
"Become it?"
"You've created something wonderful, Anna," Emil lied, his silver tongue tarnished in his mouth. "You deserve to join what you've made."
And maybe she did, but not by his hands. Not like this.
Anna smiled, and it was the smile of a young girl, not a killer. She was a person of innate propensity to what she had done, but the machinations of her District, looking for a killer, for a source of entertainment so they could bring financial benefits to their people, had drawn her further into her darker fantasies, encouraged her to do what she had done.
Perhaps Anna had always had the potential for what she had done, but Emil firmly believed that if he had been raised to kill as Anna had been, he wouldn't have been so different. The thought of that, of this, of what he had done and was doing, made this victory hollow in his mouth.
And still he did it, because he didn't feel guilt enough to save her life in place of his. Anna stepped forward carefully.
"I will be timeless," she murmured, voice reverent at the possibility. "I will be- forever. They'll never take it away."
"You will," Emil murmured, still copying her tone and despising himself for it. He held out a tiny copper bottle, stopped with cork. "You will be forever, the same as them."
She unstoppered the bottle. She looked up at Emil.
"You will take me there? To them?"
She was so innocent in that moment. She believed herself, her actions, so pure.
She had always been taught this. She knew no better.
"I promise. You'll be with them. I promise."
She smiled. She was smeared in the blood of innocents. Perhaps she believed that made her one.
"Thank you," she murmured. And she drained the tiny bottle.
The sword dropped from Anna's hand a minute later. She dropped the next.
Emil flinched as in the third minute the cannon fired, the death knell. Her life would be listed as a victory next to his name.
The hovercraft dropped. Emil looked down at Anna's prone body, waiting to be taken to the hellish creation she had devoted her life to, that he had promised to take her to.
He stepped back and let the hovercraft take her.
He had lied.
He did that.
He walked away into the night, leaving behind the bodies their creator would never return to.
I was about to upload this last night, but stopped at the last second, pulled up this chapter and completely reworked it. It's not the first time, either. Across the story plan I've had pretty much every character kill Anna in various different ways. In the draft I almost uploaded last night, Emil tricked her and stabbed her to death. I'm pretty sure an earlier chapter plan involved a weird pseudo-slap fight between Ronan and Anna.
But I think I'm finally happy with this. Hopefully you agree.
As ever, thank you for reading this far.