Y 184-09-02 T 00:48:03
Day 3
It was a promise that lit every hopeful vestige in Elizabeth's mind, and set on edge every nerve of her body. It was a promise that was likely fake, a promise of escaping the arena, living, instead of just surviving in this place of fire and blood.
But it was a promise that galvanised her resolve.
Theon still had a hand on her shoulder. "Can we believe them?" He gasped into the now-searing heat of standing so close to the mansion. They could hear the cracking of wood, and sparks were flying to even where they stood. Elizabeth backed up.
"We were burning the building. Not the people." She said with a sense of guilt to the words. "And it's worth a try."
"Yeah, alright, I'm not happy with leaving them to die either," Theon sighed furiously, "But how the hell do we help them? Climbing's out of the question with the heat, so what?"
"Have you thought about water?" Said a voice that was neither Theon nor Elizabeth.
They spun around, as she had expected. Elizabeth had her weapon at the ready, which she had expected. Theon had immediately sunk into a fighting stance.
And she had expected that, because the tip of her sword was already at his throat.
Elizabeth bristled. "It's Emma, right?"
Emma sighed, trying to explain herself as quickly as possible. "Look, I don't want any trouble."
Theon's voice was strained as he cut her off. "I can see that, the swordpoint's really friendly."
Emma bit the inside of her cheek and lowered the sword carefully. Theon relaxed slightly.
"What do you want, then? Celebrate around the bonfire?" Elizabeth asked with a snapping, tense tone.
"I'm trying to help is all," Emma offered. "And if you want to save those kids up there, you need a rope, and some water to cool down the climbing space so they and the rope don't combust." She shrugged. "We did it all the time in District Four."
That was an exaggeration, but it got her usefulness across to them. Theon frowned.
"One, we don't have a rope, two, we don't have water, and three, why do you care?"
"Well-"
None of them had heard Glace Gratton speak more than one or two words, so to hear her yell down from above was a surprise.
"ARE YOU GOING TO HELP US OR SAY OUR LAST RITES?!" The usually silent tribute screamed down from her perch in the burning building. Theon looked up at her quickly.
"WE'RE HELPING, CALM YOUR TITS!" He yelled back, and despite the fear and heat and adrenaline Elizabeth was clearly stifling a laugh.
"Explain as we go?" Emma offered, making a show of putting her sword in her scabbard. Elizabeth squinted then copied Emma, tucking her axe in a loop of her belt.
"Why are you doing this?" She asked as they set back towards the fountains.
Emma licked her cracking lips pensively. The truth was, she had killed under Ronan's manipulation. Her doing so under Ronan's persuasion did not excuse her actions. Now she was freed of the Career's influence, she had three lives to atone for. The Eleven girl she had stabbed only that evening, the Twelve girl the day before, and her father's death trying to stop her volunteering.
She could save these two lives. She could atone for two of the three.
It was a start, and this time- Emma was picking her own team in doing so.
But what she answered was, "Rebellion is fun," and with that unpacked paracord from her backpack and submerged it in the waters of the fountain.
"What are they doing?" Quint gasped as the baking heat threatened to start hurting his lungs. Breaths were hard to take now- he had to consciously struggle to inhale, and even once he had inhaled the smoke rendered breathing impossible. The fire was largely, for now, on the other end of the building, but smoke was roiling from every direction in hazy grey waves, and the two tributes within the corridors took to sinking below the smoke level in an effort to breathe, occasionally standing up to try the cooler air and views below from the windows. It was hellish, and neither option offered real relief from the heat.
Glace bobbed up and down again, sucking shaking breaths from beneath her makeshift cloth filter as she settled down against the wall next to Quint. "They're in the fountain," she sighed furiously.
"Oh, great," Quint breathed. "Maybe they'll do a few laps in it before throwing us a rope."
They sat in silence then, side by side, listening to the destruction of the building around them in the unbearable heat singeing their skin.
"This is dumb!" Emil yelled after Cesal as they moved swiftly through the Inner City.
Cesal ignored him in favour of checking out his newly gifted shoulder-holster dagger. "Nice! The tang on the blade goes all the way down to the base of the hilt. For someone who's never picked up a weapon before, you picked out some nice kit."
Emil hurried after him. "Cesal, what the hell is this about?"
Cesal pointed to the glowing, spark-showered sky ahead of them. "Adventure."
"There could be Careers there! It could be a trap! This entire place is literally a death trap, you were stabbed this afternoon, and you want to go chasing an inferno?!"
"'There could be Careers-'" Cesal mocked Emil's severe tone lightly. "What did you just tell me about a certain Career, kid?"
"-Cesal-"
"Hmmmm?"
Emil rolled his eyes. "She's dead, Ces, that's not a cause for-"
"Tha-a-at's right, my little kid ally took down the biggest Career in the business!"
"I am both a year older than you and four inches taller than you."
"My little Emil!"
"Now that's just creepy."
"Look," Cesal said, "I need to make sure that Capitol drug shit hasn't left me with some kinda internal bleed or anything, and we need to make sure that that fire isn't something we need to worry about. We're just going to go out and take a look! No harm, no foul."
"You're jealous I outsmarted Anna Corinna while you were drugged up tucked in bed, aren't you."
"Shut the fuck up, Emil."
They travelled with surprising haste through the Waterfront and Outer City- as they came to the core of the Inner City, a thin and acrid haze of smoke began to increase in thickness. Cesal coughed and instantly regretted it- his skin had knit together again, but the underlying muscle layer had not. Emil reached into his now well-stocked backpack and offered a bottle of water and a hastily torn bandana- Cesal drank deeply (water still felt like a luxury), drenched the bandana in water, then wrapped it around his nose and mouth. Emil did the same. They were tributes from the textile district and the mining district, after all, and they were no strangers to fire. If they were going to find out what was going on, they would take necessary precautions.
They walked down Victory Road, past the Training Centre, and around- and they stood in the square of the Presidential Mansion. Obsidian basins of silver-orange water flowed from their four corners to a beautiful fountain in the centre- an eagle clawed in the water's depths, and above, the Starving Statue stood, lit by flickering golden light.
Cesal and Emil stood in the firelight by the fountain and stared in shock.
The mansion's stone facade and huge steel doors were blackened by flame. The majestic tiered roof was partially alight, and that was what was causing the pillars of flame that stretched sparks and light to the sky- but in the centre front, the fire had not yet touched it too badly. Still, it was clear the rest would be gone in only a matter of time- the mansion was cracking and breaking, and even from on the other end of the square the wave of heat it was giving off was palpable.
"That's incredible," Cesal muttered. "The mansion on fire- that's practically rebellion."
"Ces." Emil's voice was warning.
"Relax, I'm not condoning anything- 'sides, I don't reckon any microphones can pick us up."
"Cesal." Emil repeated with increased force.
"Okay, okay, I'm very sorry Capitol-"
This time, Emil just grabbed Cesal by his cheeks and physically turned his head.
Three tributes stood only a hundred metres away at the fountain. They were all staring at them.
Emil then smiled lightly. "Well, that was a fun adventure. And now we're going to die. I almost died a couple hours ago, and I had to kill someone to survive, and now you've dragged me into this. Well, good going, Ces."
"Emil, now is not the time to develop a sharp-shooting sense of humour."
"Well, it's not like I have any other time."
The tributes all stared at them for a moment longer. Cesal was at least partially relieved to not see Quint amongst them.
And then one of them waved.
"Hey!" A female voice called. "Want to get out of this dump?"
Emil blinked. "Sure? We'll leave now?"
But something in the woman's tone made Cesal stop still.
"Get out of where?" He called back.
"Well," she said, swirling her axe in the air, "The arena."
Cesal laughed weakly, because this was just surreal. "Yeah, sure! Why not?" He called. "Can I have a back massage while we're at it, too?"
"Okay, nice joke, this isn't funny, Ces," Emil muttered, backing up. But Cesal knew something must be going on, and as a male voice spoke up, the voice of the Career guy from Two, it was clear something was up if Elizabeth and Theon were together.
"Those people up there-" he yelled, pointing to the mansion, "Have a plan to get us out. Now, you can leave, but if you help us- we could all live. You want in?"
Emil and Cesal shared glances.
They weren't similar people, he and Emil- their backgrounds, their personalities, their appearances and their senses of humour all differed greatly.
But in this moment, they were both as certain as the other on what they were about to do.
They took a deep breath and walked forward to join the group.
"Are we broadcasting them?!" Lexus said as he frantically flipped between cameras. "Are we sure all the mikes are off to the public?"
"We're claiming fire damage," Josiah called as he alternated listening to the Gamemaker's Pit and a cord phone he had practically glued to his ear. "But Caesar's worried they're not going to buy that all of them just suddenly went down."
"Caesar's awake?" Seneca asked where he manipulated camera feeds from his holographically surrounded post. He shook his head. "Of course he is. Who goddamn isn't?"
"Half of the Capitol, apparently," a spin doctor said from his phone next to Josiah's. "Everyone asleep is being told by others to wake up, and all the partiers are switching on feeds as we speak. We're starting to get a fourty percent share of the Capitol's eyes."
"Shit." Seneca growled. Josiah frowned at a blinking light on his cord phone and switched his lines. He blanched.
"The President's watching. He wants a conference call now."
"Shit!" Seneca snarled louder, trying in vain to ignore the throbbing pain in his probably broken hand. "Take your spin doctors with you to the conference room and deal with it."
"He wants you."
"Tell him I'm too busy cleaning up Plutarch Heavensbee's goddamn mess!" Seneca snapped. Nobody wanted to argue with Seneca, and the Communications team filed out of the room.
"Right, okay," Seneca snapped. "They want to be rebels? Their own little revo group? Fine. Let's give them the full Dark Days treatment." He gestured sharply to Lexus. "If any of them get out of there alive, I'm going to fire you personally. Get to work!"
The call came through as Sisyphia was finally drifting into fitful sleep. She fumbled over the unfamiliar bedside cabinet in the Training Centre, grabbed the glassy surface of her phone and held it to her ear.
"Hello?" She managed groggily.
In three minutes she was fully dressed, made up, and on the elevator to one floor below her, where the call had told them all to mass- the escorts and mentors of One, of Two, Four and Six and Seven and Eight and even Twelve. They all stood there together, watching the huge screen in the Six escort's room as the Presidential Mansion was set alight and seven tributes massed around it. Sisyphia's perfectly lipsticked lips were hung open in a misshapen 'o' as she watched Elizabeth, the young girl that she had sentenced to death with her fingers and a piece of paper, allied with Careers and outliers and all as she set the mansion alight and then tried to save the people within it.
And then as Quint leant out of the window and began to yell, the audio cut out.
"What the-" The escorts and mentors let out a stream of confusion and annoyance. The Eight escort frowned.
"I thought we got the censor-free feeds?"
Sisyphia shushed him. "Hush now, dear, some of us are trying to understand what he's-"
"-We can get you out of the arena," two men chorused at once. The first was the escort for District Six- the second was the singular mentor for District Twelve, Haymitch Abernathy. The two of them exchanged glances as the crowd of Capitolians and Victors fell silent.
"You sure?" One asked.
"Rewind it, somebody rewind it-"
"-No," Sisyphia snapped. "No, let it be. We need to see this live."
The escort for District Two threw up her hands and stood. "I will not stand for this," she blustered. "Theon Veux has surrounded himself with your filthy revo tributes, Sisyphia! He is no proper Career tribute, not anymore! You've ruined him!"
Sisyphia stood furiously. "Excuse me, Ambrosia?! What are you accusing my tributes of?!"
"Being revolutionaries, Sisyphia!" The escort screeched. Sisyphia stormed forward, but Haymitch stood between them.
"Now, ladies, ladies; both your tributes are revolutionaries."
The escort for Twelve, Effie Trinket, piped up, desperate to calm the situation. "Oh, Haymitch, do sit down, please-"
"You're not my escort, darlin', so howabout you sit down there and keep an eye on whether or not our guy is deep-fried yet."
"Nobody here is your 'darling', Abernathy! We are professional women-" Sisyphia snapped.
"Can everybody shut up?!" Johanna Mason called, to the horror of Sisyphia. "They're doing something with the fountain!"
The Two escort, along with One's and their respective Victors, left with swirling fury in their wake. Half of District Four left. Everybody else remained, silently watching in solidarity with the tributes they could not help.
"Jesus," Haymitch muttered after a while of the microphone-censored silence and the silent death throes of the Presidential Mansion, "They're all going to be killed."
And Sisyphia, terrified for herself and for her tribute, had to agree with him.
Okay!" Emma called. "That's probably a good enough rope, right?" She held up her hastily tied paracord, knotted into a rope she had made a thousand times back in District Four. "Now what?"
Elizabeth yanked it from Emma's hands and submerged it in the waters of the fountain again. "Now we get it wet," she gasped through the smoke that was blinding and winding them all. "And now-"
"Now what? Climb up with it?" Emil said with a frown. "Anyone going up that would be dead before they could get up."
Elizabeth pursed her lips. "If I- was covered in water too-"
"-You'd still get burned, and you know it, tree girl," Cesal quipped furiously. Emma noticed his shirt was bloodied and torn, but all she could see beneath it was a thin pink scar. "That's a proper fire, not some match- you wouldn't be able to scale it."
"You got a better idea, cloth boy?" Elizabeth asked dryly. Cesal shrugged slightly.
"Asking them how to get out of the arena before they die?"
"I HEARD THAT-" Quint's rebuttal from above cracked in his throat as he relinquished his breathing to coughing up smoke and inhaling more in.
"I think he heard that," Emil pointed out quietly. Cesal smacked him on the arm and Emma wondered why she had thought atoning for her kills had to start here.
"Look," Theon sighed. "We need to get this rope up there somehow. We have the climbers- we just need to cool the climbing surface, and fast. Ideas, now."
"We could pour buckets on it?" Elizabeth offered. Theon sighed.
"Nice idea if we had any. Anything else?"
Emma raised her hand slightly, before realising that this wasn't the Training Centre and she wasn't beholden to anyone but herself. "The fountain," she said.
Elizabeth raised her hands to the air. "Yeah, if it wasn't over there."
"It doesn't need to be," Emil said, seeming to catch onto Emma's idea as behind them geysers of water shot into the fire-seared sky. "These things are usually on piping- we use them to drain out the mines, we learnt about it. So long as they're flexible enough to move-"
"-We could make the front cold enough to climb up and secure the rope," Emma finished.
Theon gaped. "I think we have it."
"We have it." Elizabeth laughed, then. "We have it!"
The group, for a moment, celebrated their realisation with joyous, adrenaline-driven laughter.
And that's when the blood-curdling howls began.
Quint was on his feet in an instant, despite the smoke and heat and fatigue. Glace looked up at him with a frown.
"What are you doing?"
"Mutts," Quint murmured into the glowing night. "Oh, god, they brought in the mutts."
Cesal felt the blood drain from his face. His abdomen ached harder than it had for a long time, and it was taking all his willpower not to groan from the pain and fear.
He remembered that sound. That sound had been the call of the mutts, the hellish mutts with white eyes and bladed teeth.
Everyone looked around curiously. "What is that?"
"I don't-"
"Mutts." Cesal snarled. "That's mutts." It was now that his training as a gang member overtook his fear and as the others looked at him in shock, waiting to be told where to go, what to do, Cesal snapped to action.
"Everyone with a weapon, you need to get to the outside now! Those are Gamemaker-owned mutts! Emma, we need you, give your sword to Theon- you and Emil go get that damn fountain-hose ready! Everyone else get ready to defend them!"
The group of young teenagers stood in stunned silence, as they were for the first time in the arena given clear direction. Cesal groaned and waved his hands.
"What, am I speaking Capitolian over here? Go! Go! Go!"
Seneca watched as the first of many mutts came into the square.
But it died only seconds after crossing into the square, Theon's sword crashing down on its head. Another came through, jaws snapping, but Theon had trained with a sword for year after year just for these few days, and he was fast and he swirled the sword like it was made of paper and brought it down like it was made of steel. Muscle and bone rent and the mutt collapsed to the ground.
Mutt after mutt appeared on the camera feeds, and the camera feeds were starting to melt in the heat now, and Emma and Emil were desperately unscrewing the piping of the fountain while the other three defended them. Cesal had little more than a knife and moved as expected of one recently injured, but he and Elizabeth, as relative amateurs next to Theon, were moving so as to cover one another's blind spots, spinning and turning, ace and knife working in perfect tandem. Occasionally they crossed Theon or defended him, but they announced each other's positions and moved with a determined grace.
To Seneca's eye, they all moved like a Career pack- precise, trained, working as a team.
And yet they consisted of an outlier gang member, a mid-district revo, and an ex-Career. Seneca bit his lip and worried it between his teeth. Is this what you wanted from your little gift, Plutarch? To destroy everything we've ever worked for? If they don't die now, everyone in this room is going to be executed as a traitor or taken care of quietly. Is that what you wanted to see, Plutarch? Everyone you work with killed for your petty ideologies?
Emma and Emil were pulling free a slim green pipe; at first it was silent, but then a geyser of water rushed free from it, and the two of them pointed it at the building. Cool water rushed and burst into steam and poured through the window in which, Seneca could only guess, Glace and Quint resided behind. He had no confirmation until a camera in the square picked up their movement. Every camera in the mansion had long since been destroyed by the heat, and most in the square were beginning to malfunction.
Seneca watched in horror as the last few mutts fell.
"THAT'S ALL OF THEM!" Theon yelled over the rushing water and crackling fire and the furious sucking sound of the air. Elizabeth looked up as she removed her axe from the skull of a mutt. They were all shaking from adrenaline- and it seemed, in Cesal's case, from pain. His voice cracked on the first time he tried to yell to the group- the second time, however, he forced out every syllable loudly and painfully.
"ELIZABETH! GET THE ROPE AND GET UP THERE!"
Elizabeth tucked her axe in her belt and sprinted to the rope, trailing it behind her and over her shoulder- a blast of cold water doused the mansion face and her, and she sprinted and caught a ledge and dragged herself upwards, the same as she always would climbing trees, avoiding the authorities, playing with her little brother. Buildings were harder to climb, and the heat of the building still seared the flesh of her hands. Still, with erratic blasts of cool water, and the desperation of knowing she had condemned Glace and Quint to die if she did not scale the building and tie off the rope, she moved upwards slowly but surely, coughing from the smoke, wincing at the fire and sparks raining down upon her.
Finally, finally, as the reach of the cold water left her and the pain of the heat became unbearable, she reached the window and tumbled through, dragging paracord rope after her. She stood up, dragging the rope to a window latch and tying it as firmly as possible, before turning to try and find the other two.
They were collapsed on the ground.
"Hey? Hey!" Elizabeth called, shaking them both. She coughed in the smoke. They had been standing in this mess of heat and smoke for far too long- she was feeling dizzy after only seconds, and they had been here for far, far longer than that. She slapped Quint, then Glace, then again. Glace gasped, coughed, and sat up, staring into Elizabeth's eyes- Quint breathed shallowly but did not move. Elizabeth and Glace, in silent tandem in the roar of flame and smoke, dragged Quint to the window frame and exchanged glances.
"Go down," she ordered Glace. "I've got him."
"If we're going to escape," Glace gasped, "We need him."
"Go," Elizabeth breathed, and Glace did not ask twice. She was slim and young looking, perhaps even innocent looking, but her countenance was logical and severe and she grabbed the rope and swung down swiftly. The group below recieved her and Elizabeth was left above with the semi-conscious Quint.
Elizabeth leant Quint against the window frame and slapped him harder. He coughed and stirred but still did not move.
"Come on, man," she muttered. "I can't get you all the way down."
But Quint did not answer. He did not stir again. His breathing was becoming shallower and shallower.
If Elizabeth wanted to escape the arena- if any of them did- their fate apparently relied on Quint.
She couldn't carry him down.
But she might- might- be able to abseil him down.
She pulled her axe from her belt and ripped off her jacket. The flimsy strips of cloth she cut from it were all she had. She tied one between her belt and the rope; she grit her teeth and tied Quint's belt to hers, then braced strips of cloth over her shoulders to her belt and the same with his. She draped his arms over her shoulder and tied his wrists to her torso.
She pulled both herself and Quint onto the window sill, gripped the loop of cloth and the rope, and hoped to hell she could slide her and Quint down before it broke.
She launched them into the smoking, fiery abyss.
"We've lost the last feed from the square," A tech guy sighed. "This fire's getting goddamn big. If anyone's survived in there, it's a miracle."
"Miracle isn't the word I'd use," Lexus said. "Are there any drones we can send in? Just to check for ourselves, not to broadcast?"
"There's a hovercraft with a couple of maintenance cameras."
"Send it in," Seneca said. "I'm hoping to see a lot of charred bodies, guys."
And god, he thought with disgust towards himself, I really, truly am.
The drone hummed as it descended. It performed a sharp 360 degree turn, and while the cameras were rudimentary and the thermal imagery was entirely blown out by the inferno, it provided all they needed to see.
With all cameras broken and with no Gamemakers to watch them, the group had disappeared. All that was left was the Starving Statue, its bronze melting in the heat, the kindly face of President Snow turned to a grotesquery.
Slowly, silently, Seneca watched the melting head of President Snow drop to the ground in a puddle of metal.
And in the square, in the gap the broken cameras had afforded them, the revolutionaries had all disappeared.
And, ladies and gentlemen, like the Avengers, the revo crew has finally assembled.
Wondering what the hell is happening? Why I've been not-so-neatly abseiling the normal SYOT format out of a window for a while now? Well, all I'm telling you before the end is that this was always the plan.
In the meantime, I can't tell you how much joy I got out of making Theon say 'calm your tits'. They're all so serious and he's a trained killer but he's like not even old enough to legally drink yet and he'd totally say 'calm your tits'. I'm so immature sometimes it's unbelievable.
Enjoying this? Despise this? Want to tell me just how unrealistic this is to fountain plumbing, the tensile strength of cotton and medical science? (I know.) Do send me a review! I love recieving feedback from you guys.
As ever, thank you for reading this far.
RQH YLFWRU VHYHQ VXUYLYRUV. RQH YLFWRU VHYHQ VXUYLYRUV. RQH YLFWRU VHYHQ VXUYLYRUV.