A/N: Caveat: a lot going on in this chapter, but it'll condense together soon enough. A note on Annie Cresta – she's still "Cresta" since technically, Finnick's been going to the Capitol for decades now. No real opportunity to get hitched, if you get my point. He's had business. Also, this is a rather bloody chapter, so…be warned. Yeah, Chapter 2 and I'm already getting to violence.
"Oh, don't think you're the only one in my grip, Miss Parker. My reach goes far beyond the little slice of knowledge you own."
Nihlus walked with Sam down a long, white hallway in the Sanitarium – the Capitol's largest hospital, buried deep beneath its rebuilding streets. He'd explained to her the events that had occurred in her week-long coma since the end of her second Hunger Games experience: With the death of Trajan, the rest of the military under Legate Marius Nerva had fled the Capitol and surrounding regions. They'd quickly overwhelmed the Peacekeepers of District 11, establishing a foothold in Panem's southeastern region and striking up arms against the nation.
Meanwhile, his Vox had continued their reign of terror, taking advantage of every inch of disharmony they could. Nihlus himself had been extremely active – indeed, forcing Sam to walk with him now to see something "special."
"Before you were plucked from the arena," Nihlus held up a finger as if lecturing an underperforming student. "I ensured that you wouldn't be alone here. After all, you were tired of being alone…wasn't that right? Didn't you say that in the arena?"
Sam stumbled as he yanked her along, pulling her by a cord attached around her waist. Her hands were bound by plastic ties in front of her, keeping her just unstable enough to be barely able to keep up with Nihlus's quick pace. Sam's only article of clothing, the same type of blue medical gown she'd worn for prep teams during the pre-arena parts of the Hunger Games, offered little protection against the sterile chill of the ward.
"Who's here?" Sam demanded. She was still off-balance from awakening a half-hour earlier, lost and despondent in the Capitol's grip. "Who'd you take?"
"Take?" Nihlus turned around, his face aghast. "Why…I would never-I would never take them. They were already here in the Capitol. Think of it like an extended invitation, Miss Parker. Not taking."
"An invitation they couldn't refuse," Sam retorted, struggling against her restraints.
"Minor details. Would you like to see them?
Sam figured she didn't have a choice. Nihlus dragged her like a dog into a wide, circular security room filled with hundreds of camera-fed screens. Each showed a different part of this wing of the Sanitarium – the security ward. Several showed pictures of criminally insane inmates, clawing at their skin, banging on doors, and running into walls in battles against their mind. They were the ones who legitimately deserved to be here.
Others didn't
"Let's bring a few familiar ones up," Nihlus sounded excited as he strolled over to the room's central holographic projector, manipulating two controls on a haptic pad and displaying a large, three-dimensional array of light. "Who would you like to visit first, Miss Parker?"
Sam felt panic rising in her throat. What had he done?
"No preference? Let's start small."
The projection shimmered into a clear view, showing Sam a view into an operating room. A steel table surrounded by various instruments held a small, blonde-haired girl breathing slowly and deeply – unconscious and far removed from her captive fate. Nihlus had made sure little Lily Everdeen would survive her near-fatal impalement in the Quarter Quell's climax. After all, she was just one more fate to taunt Sam with.
"What are you doing to her?" Sam immediately began losing her cool.
"My, Miss Parker, so hot-headed," Nihlus chided. "Do you remember when you had a sense of civility? You could use it again. For that matter, you should be thanking me – after all, it was I who commanded the medical teams to work day and night to save her frail little body. What? Should I have left her to bleed out?"
Sam held her words. Nihlus wanted a reaction out of her – he was quite clearly enjoying the exchange. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of unnerving her.
"Perhaps we'll deal with her later," Nihlus remarked, switching up screens. "To more interesting things. How far do you think a broken mind can be pushed?"
"If you're talking about me…" Sam started.
"No, of course not! Not yet, at least."
Another image fluttered into view. The scene had changed – no peaceful, snoozing girl shimmered before Sam's eyes. Instead, a gloomy, dark cell showed a Peacekeeper launching a kick into Finnick Odair's chest. The middle-aged victor reeled into a wall, yelling something inaudible to Sam as the view widened. Another Peacekeeper had his hands on Annie Cresta, dragging the love of Finnick's life away screaming. Finnick reached out an arm, shouting something to her as the Peacekeeper punched him squarely in the jaw.
The second Peacekeeper hefted Annie by the crook of his arm as she shrieked back towards Finnick, desperately pleading for the first man to stop his assault as she was carried away. Sam shied her eyes away, gritting her teeth and unable to watch.
"What are you trying to even accomplish?" Sam asked. "Are you just having fun? What is this?"
"Fun?" Nihlus replied with a question. "No, Miss Parker. I'm preparing your colleagues. You see…I stormed the Games Control Center for a reason. I wanted you and all your little friends here. When I feel you are ready, I have a new challenge awaiting you; one that will serve my own purposes. You should be familiar with games of death by now, however."
"How are you making another Hunger Games with a war going on?" Sam protested, not ready to believe his words. She'd just gotten out of the arena; now he'd be making another? "Who would watch?"
"Me," Nihlus replied simply. "But it's not a Hunger Games, no. It's far more important. I don't have time for petty contests of sport. You will be doing me a service – to see something I once saw years ago."
"What have you seen?"
"Patience, Miss Parker. Let's go see what your other friends are doing, shall we?"
A slightly-larger cell came into focus, showing a trio of women arranged in the single room. One was easily recognizable right off the bat for her actions – Johanna Mason pounded against the clear door of the cell, shouting unrecognizable obscenities at anything that crossed nearby. The other two took Sam a few seconds to remember from her year as a mentor: Jetty from District 4 and Persephone from District 1 sat across from each other, both young women looking rather despondent.
"Why'd you take somebody from District 1?" Sam asked, perplexed. "That's a Career district all the way."
"You didn't get the memo?" Nihlus asked. "I overran District 1 the same day I confronted you on that pyramid. The Vox's field leader, Thanatos, now schemes out of those ivory towers. Ironic, isn't it? The wealthy of that district – and there were many – believed their prestige would win them favors. Instead, it brought them ruin. The voice of the common man – the Vox Plebeius – has replaced the bleating of the overripe rich. It seems so…Biblical."
"So what?"
"You'll find out what 'Biblical' means later, Miss Parker. On to someone a little closer to you, shall we?"
The screen switched over for a fourth time, bringing up a pair of all-too-familiar people. Firth Odair sat in a tall, metal chair with two red-armored soldiers – Inquisitors, members of the Capitol's elite death units – standing before him. They barked something unintelligible at him, crossing their arms before their chests as he refused to answer. One looked back, indicating something with a flick of his finger.
Sam realized what he was doing. Strapped down a table next to them was a naked and dripping-wet River Fremont, Sam's closest ally in the Quell's arena and fellow District 4 tribute alongside Firth. She struggled against her bonds as a third Inquisitor strolled up to her, jamming a gun-like device against her neck and pulling the trigger.
River's scream was more than clear through the hologram, her violent thrashing far too much for Sam's strained psyche.
"No!" Sam leapt against the projector, her eyes wild. "Leave her alone! She didn't do anything!"
"Hardly," Nihlus looked amused, his mouth turning up in a sickly smile. "We like to call this 'aggressive interrogation,' Miss Parker. Although I'm not exactly sure what they expect to get out of Mister Odair when you would be a much better target."
"I'm not going to tell you anything!" Sam snapped at him. "Let her go!"
"Oh, well that's not the way to go about things," Nihlus snapped off the display, leaving the remainder of River's torture and Firth's Q-and-A session to develop in Sam's mind. "You act as if I would kill your pixie-sized friend. I leave that up to you. Let's go take some visitation hours, shall we? Then we'll see just how much you value a life."
"No, wait," Sam panicked as Nihlus yanked on her waist cord. "I didn't mean-"
"I don't need any information out of you, Miss Parker," Nihlus pointed out. "I know everything. I merely want to see how much you can take."
Sam whimpered as Nihlus dragged her along, pulling her down several sterile-white hallways. Her mind raced to make sense of things as her feet struggled to keep up. What did he want? And where would he be sending her – if not to another arena, then where?
…See something I once saw…and what did that mean?
Elsewhere, things had gotten out of hand.
The screams of medical coroner Carbo Saxa had finally ended, lost amidst the burning of the furnace he'd operated for the Sanitarium's cremation and morgue unit. He'd been ready to ignite the body of Trajan Arterius, commander of the Capitol's disgraced military – but he'd been given an unwelcome surprise.
By Trajan himself.
The former commander silently thanked the Capitol's cybernetic augmentation programs as he walked out of the furnace room. Without the small medical nanites flooding about his system – repairing damaged tissue, restarting his heart, and preserving his brain function all the while – he would have been small bits of ash by now. Technically he had never died – not his brain, at least. Still, he'd come awfully close.
Couldn't take those kinds of chances again.
"Where to go..." the stocky man muttered to himself, grabbing a pair of nurse's pants off the wall and sheathing his lower body. He'd be fighting out of here shirtless, but if his heavily-tattooed chest and torso could intimidate a few doctors, then so be it.
Trajan grabbed a skull chisel from the pathologist tools in the next room – an autopsy station, fortunately for his armament. The small utensil normally served morgue operators in removing the skull cap of victims, but Trajan would be able to find another use out of it. If it could work on the dead, it could certainly work on the living, as well.
He walked quickly out of the morgue, passing rows of bodies without a second thought. No real plan to escape came to his mind; the Sanitarium would have long-range ambulance hovercraft used for evacuating Peacekeepers from the farthest districts, but getting to the medical hanger would be so difficult it seemed laughable. One wrong encounter with security would lead to a horde of Peacekeepers flooding the place.
Already he was running into trouble. Trajan rounded a corner, looking for a computer to give him a layout of the place when he nearly bumped into a young female nurse. Unfortunately, he had been an easily-recognizable figure during his days amid the upper echelon – and even now he was still quickly picked out.
No time to think things over.
Before the nurse could scream for help, Trajan drove the chisel into her neck. She gaped in pain, her face contorting from the surprise and agony of the move. Trajan wasted no time, thrusting his fingers into the aperture made by the tool and ripping her vocal chords out. One couldn't take chances when secrecy was of the essence.
Blood poured out of the nurse's neck like Moses's parting of the Red Sea, staining the white floor with crimson seas. Trajan let her fall to the ground, gripping his tool tightly and moving on. There was no point in hiding the body when he'd made such a mess. His mind was still coming together, and bumping into her had taken him off guard. In most other scenarios he could have simply killed her quickly and without concern – but he couldn't think of such things now.
Just have to find a way out.
Success! Trajan finally found a computer, quickly accessing the map of the Sanitarium and locating his current whereabouts. Then came failure: The morgue was located far below ground, right up against the maximum security wing where prisoners were treated. He'd have to either trek through far too much terrain…or find an easier way to quickly cut the distance from here to the medical hanger.
Something out of place piqued Trajan's ears. A strange sound – the sound of a young girl screaming with all her might – alerted him to danger. She sounded positively agonized, as if sent to the brink of passing out before her cries subsided into a panting, whimpering tempo.
A small, recessed part of Trajan's brain told him to go investigate. Find her, free her – you're both prisoners of this diabolical regime. Save as many as you can.
The logical part of his mind quickly took over: Save yourself. You'll only get yourself killed. Heroes generally die. It could be a trap.
Trajan obeyed the latter, gripping his chisel with renewed purpose and clutching a mental image of the Sanitarium's map tightly. He needed to move, needed to get out – if only he could-
"Oof!"
Trajan ran smack into a security Peacekeeper, sending both men falling to the floor. The police soldier started to apologize as he rubbed his head, unaware of just who he had connected with. That misstep bought Trajan all the time he needed.
He pushed himself up in a hurry, diving on top of the Peacekeeper before the latter had even begun to recover. The soldier gasped with wide-eyed shock, finally recognizing who had collided with him as he reached for his weapon. Trajan didn't give him the chance to use his weapon as he swatted the gun away with a powerful smack from his fist.
The Peacekeeper kicked him off, getting to his feet and reaching for a backup knife. Trajan was faster. The military professional slammed his left fist into his opponent's armpit, driving his knuckles just between plates of protective armor. The Peacekeeper grunted in pain as Trajan followed up with a jab to the nose, snapping cartilage and bone with a sickening crunch. The minor wound produced an inordinate amount of blood, disorienting the Peacekeeper as Trajan went for the kill.
He knocked away the Peacekeeper's vain attempts at protecting himself, driving the skull chisel into the man's brown eye. The Peacekeeper yelled in rage and pain, falling to the ground as blood gushed like a waterfall from his orbital socket. Trajan stabbed again and again, driving the blade into the man's face, neck, and scalp as his opponent slowly twitched to a cold death.
So much for secrecy.
Trajan tossed aside his chisel and picked up the Peacekeeper's fallen gun. He'd need it to get out now.
Unknown Location, 200 Years in the Past
"Vexation!"
The sphere – Scion – floated quickly through a mess of dirty, industrial corridors littered with rusting pipes and flickering pale lights – nothing like the pristine, if plain, hallways of his Keep. Here he was an outsider - intelligence amid the discord of fracturing society. His forefathers had failed; their visions of humanity reborn had instead descended into madness.
"Think they will breach my walls, do they?" Scion swore to himself, flying faster and faster down the dirty hallways with each second. His trio of eye-lights glowed hot, burning from their normal white into an angry orange. "No. No. They might be still be humans genetically, but the Domain is mine."
A number of small, legged drone robots had come up behind Scion, skittering down the halls behind the drone as it accelerated while ranting, "Two hundred years of 'system failure!' How taxing! How did my forefathers expect their civilization to survive in such menial conditions? Surrounded by madness, I find my own grasp on reality slipping away. Now I know only these walls, whether pristine or savage. I spend my time reviewing the tomes of the civilization I am sworn to uphold even as it runs from my reaches of control. I do not believe my forefathers had planned for…boredom."
Scion floated down a longer hallway spotted with numerous fresh corpses littering the ground, attracting flies. "The Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verse 1. 'There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.'"
The spherical drone emerged into a wide foyer sporting a large elevator rising to numerous upper levels. The entire area was run-down and dilapidated; rusting metal pipes protruded into the air as rotting wood barely kept up rough walkways. Several splintered doorways led to dark alcoves, hiding secrets only the brave dared explore.
"Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verse 3," Scion continued to rant to himself. "'A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build.'"
A low, long screeching sound emanated from one of the darkened doorways. Three husky men emerged from the room, followed by a number of gaunt subordinates trekking in their wake. Each carried some sort of improvised weapon, from low-tech pipes and wrenches all the way up to the lead man's microwave rifle. They were dressed in torn navy suits and ripped pants, once fine clothing reduced to ribbons by time and wear.
"You fucking machine," the leader, an obese man with a face rotted by tumors and lesions, spat at Scion with a rich, throaty voice. "I'm strippin' you for parts!'
"Impertinent beast!" Scion cried, turning towards the leader with its equatorial bands of light illuminated to a bright blue.
A blast of white lightning shot out from the front of Scion, connecting with the leader's face. The man shrieked as the electric blast caught him just under his right eye, sending visible waves of current jumping across his skin. His eye exploded under the raw energy as parts of his face sloughed off.
"Hmm, hmm-hmmm," Scion hummed to himself as he finished killing the man. A number of the legged robotic drones had caught up by now, disgorging miniature yet lethal weapons from their carapaces and aiming at the confronting men. "Always up to me to clean up. The Domain commands it."
The men attacked just as Scion's platoon of drones opened fire. Bursts of lighting cracked across the offending humans before they could take more than a step, igniting skin and flesh and cooking vital organs. The men stopped in their tracks, gaping in agony as they died before hitting the ground. Unrestrained electricity coursed over their bodies, arcing from one to the next like a chorus of energy. To most any person, the scene was horrific; to Scion, it was merely duty.
"Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verse 8," the drone mused. "'A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.'"